Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Search results 391 through 400 of 6552

˂ 1 ... 38 39 40 41 42 ... 656 ˃
96. Original Impulses fo the Science of the Spirit: The Way to Higher Knowledge and Its Stages I: The Rosicrucian Way 20 Oct 1906, Berlin

This (Fig. 8a) is a figure found in all kinds of configurations on the astral plane. If you understand this figure, you will also understand, with its aid, how one human race changes into another. When the first sub-race of our present root race came into being, the sun was in the sign of the Crab.
In the same way concentrating on the eye will give understanding of the sun. The whole organization of the macrocosm is thus found in the spirit in our own organs.
The fruits will then be apparent to him, if he endeavours to learn under the continued guidance of his teacher and he need not be afraid that this occult way might lead to an abyss.
96. Original Impulses fo the Science of the Spirit: The Way to Higher Knowledge and Its Stages II: Imaginative Perception and Artistic Imagination 21 Oct 1906, Berlin

Thus the same powers are active in the solidification of lead and the organism of rational thinking. We will only understand the human being if we are able to see the connections between the human being and the powers of nature.
96. Original Impulses fo the Science of the Spirit: Matters of Nutrition and Methods of Healing 22 Oct 1906, Berlin

Nature does, of course, include all actions that come under the laws of nature. And what is a poison? Water is a powerful poison if someone consumes it by the bucketful, for it will then prove most destructive.
We thus have a natural process which must first be understood. Something else that proves an obstacle in the matter of entering into dialogue with scientists is the materialistic way of thinking.
This is all that is needed for the rational mind. But you can understand as many ideas as you like, this will have no effect at all in your organic life—life in the ether body as well as the physical body.
96. Original Impulses fo the Science of the Spirit: Karma Technique 22 Oct 1906, Berlin

To look at what happens to the soul after death we have to understand above all that the relationship the human being has to the worlds around him is then completely different.
It is a strange life he lives at this time. We can best understand it if we consider how the individual has lived until then. Let us assume an average citizen of today has his favorite dish, something he really enjoys.
The astral corpse dissolves in the astral world. To understand what a human being does in the devachan one must first of all consider the way life goes here on earth.
96. Original Impulses fo the Science of the Spirit: Signs and Symbols of the Christmas Festival 17 Dec 1906, Berlin

The sixth degree was the ‘sun hero’, and we need to understand what this means. We shall then come to see that pupils in the mysteries would feel a shudder of veneration if they knew something about a sun hero and were able to share in the festival to celebrate the birth of a sun hero at Christmas.
On Atlantis they appeared surrounded by rainbow haloes the sacred iris. People were then still much more able to understand the language of nature. The lapping waves, the sound of the wind in the trees, the whispering leaves, the rumble of thunder still speak to us today, but we no longer understand them.
In our hearts, celebration of holy night will lead to joyful hope and to understanding that yes, I too shall experience within me what we must call the birth of the higher human being; in me, too, the birth of the saviour, of the Christos, will come.
96. Original Impulses fo the Science of the Spirit: The Lord's Prayer: An Esoteric Study, Prayer and Meditation 28 Jan 1907, Berlin

And even for the most naive of individuals who is quite unable to understand them, the seven petitions reflect human nature as it is seen in the light of spiritual science.
Prayers have to show this kind of order if they are to be a power also for simple people who may not even understand the meaning of the words. This will be clearer if we compare what happens in the human soul with something that happens in the natural world.
A prayer can have no real significance for those who understand and those who do not understand unless it has come from that wisdom. We now live in an age when people who have looked at the plant for so long, letting it lift up their hearts, can be guided towards discovering the wisdom-filled content of those laws.
96. Original Impulses fo the Science of the Spirit: The Lord's Prayer: An Esoteric Study, Movement and Change an Essential Principle 18 Feb 1907, Berlin

If we are to go a bit more deeply into the question as to how the great wisdom of old originally came to be part of religious beliefs, we need to consider a basic question. We have to understand that anything we are able to know today, the things taught out of the science of the spirit today, were not presented in the same way in the earliest religious belief systems. We have to understand that the way in which such things were presented varied in the course of time. The old religious books you open speak to human beings in images and not ideas.
For ordinary mortals, dreamless sleep is an unconscious state, but for initiates it is a condition in which they consciously perceive the world of the spirit. To understand how this unconscious state comes to conscious awareness we have to consider the intermediate state which we also know—dream-filled sleep.
96. Original Impulses fo the Science of the Spirit: Human Biography and Planetary Evolution 04 Mar 1907, Berlin

This is not without importance, for you will only begin to understand something of the way these human powers relate to the present-day forms of those corresponding stars if you think back on the time when earth itself was a similar star.
Here you see the first inner seed of the widespread and tremendous wisdom that has come down to us as astrology from the times of the truly great initiates, a science that is no longer understood today. As there is this inner relationship between Saturn and childhood years, you can now understand how these things are inwardly connected.
People can only develop a sense of beauty if they come to understand what the Sun does so beautifully on earth, the spiritual deeds of the Sun. This is very important.
96. Original Impulses fo the Science of the Spirit: The Significance in World History of the Blood Flowing on the Cross 25 Mar 1907, Berlin

Religious impulses have the most powerful influence on the ether body. Under this influence part of the ether body differentiates out and is transformed into buddhi, the logos, the word.
This has an important result. To make it easier for you to understand what needs to be said I once referred to a conversation between Anzengruber and Peter Rosegger.
They shall have this wisdom again, exactly because it is the same for all. To understand what is said of the Holy Spirit we must understand that wisdom is the same for all. People have not yet got that far, however, for they’ll still say: ‘That’s the way I see it; someone else may have his own point of view.’
96. Original Impulses fo the Science of the Spirit: Purifying the Blood by Removing Egoism through the Mystery of Golgotha, an Easter Lecture 01 Apr 1907, Berlin

The air is merely the body, the substance, of the spirit. You also have to understand that something else was connected with this way of breathing air, with the spirit coming down into the human form.
These would come into play within the blood relationship, but they brought about blood-based love. We must also understand that feelings then became more egoistical. Self-seeking came to be increasingly more present in the blood.
We shall only understand the further evolution of the human race if we perceive how crucial this fact is, realizing that the most tremendous and complete change in humanity's spiritual evolution on earth is connected with this fact.

Results 391 through 400 of 6552

˂ 1 ... 38 39 40 41 42 ... 656 ˃