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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 421 through 430 of 6552

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97. The Christian Mystery (2000): How do we Gain Insight into the Higher Worlds in the Rosicrucian Way? 11 Dec 1906, Munich
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

One has heard of the Rosicrucians as a secret brotherhood which first appeared under that name in about the 14th century. Anything one finds in encyclopaedias and the current literature about them is of no account.
Caught in this inner storm and outer strife the mind does hear a word that's hard to understand: Man needs to overcome and free himself of the great power binding all creation. 153.
‘For of this will I bear witness for nature: wanting to study it you must tread your books underfoot. Written works are studied by studying its letters, but nature is studied land by land, a land as often as a page.
97. The Christian Mystery (2000): The Significance of Christmas in the Science of the Spirit 15 Dec 1906, Leipzig
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

Today the science of the spirit helps us to understand Christmas, which for two millennia has been felt to be the feast of great idealism. When the service begins in that holy night, in the midnight darkness, and the candles are lit, they shine out into the darkness.
97. The Christian Mystery (2000): Education—the Spiritual Scientific Point of View 12 Jan 1907, Leipzig
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

The child is thus an imitator, everything is for him under the sign of imitating things he hears and sees. Dictates and prohibitions carry little weight at this age.
97. The Christian Mystery (2000): The Supersensible Brought to Expression in the Music of Parsifal 16 Jan 1907, Kassel
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

This is how Wagner was searching for a way of helping people to understand cosmic thought. In 1857 Richard Wagner was standing outside the Villa Wesendonk near Zurich and looking out upon the Lake of Zurich and the countryside.
The sign of the rose cross expresses a thought that is part of the whole of world evolution. Someone who understands the ideal and the symbol is able to find it everywhere. Ancient legend tells of Cain looking for the door to paradise.
When we see the group of holy people gathered around the grail, and Parsifal who first of all kills—he shoots the swan—and then becomes the redeemer, we understand what Wagner meant with the words: ‘hopes and dreams found peace’. He had wanted to show that it was possible to reach in the musical sphere what it had not been possible to show by means of drama.
97. The Christian Mystery (2000): The Sermon on the Mount 19 Jan 1907, Stuttgart
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

We have our own particular approach to the natural world, but we do not criticize it. With the science of the spirit we seek to understand things in the world of mind and spirit, doing so without bias and with real understanding, and look at everything in life. Understanding is the keynote in the science of the spirit. If one seeks to use the methods of modern science to study the life of mind and spirit, one learns things.
In the science of the spirit the aim is to explain the Bible and offer a way of understanding it without bias. The division of the story of genesis into two101 can be understood if one learns to distinguish the human being who is sexless—this is the spiritual, astral human being.
97. The Christian Mystery (2000): The Gospel of John 03 Feb 1907, Heidelberg
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

57 This is deeply important if we are to understand the questions we meet when we take the gospel of John in a spiritual sense. Until a few centuries ago, the gospel of John was considered to be a book of meditation. It had to become inward experience if one wanted to have inner understanding of Jesus. It was for priests who wished to behold the secrets of Christianity. Hundreds of people have truly done this, and hundreds of them have gained the fruit of it.
Man takes his food from the body of the earth and tramples it underfoot. Jesus said: ‘He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.’ Older writings often have keywords, specific terms for particular things.
97. The Christian Mystery (2000): The Lord's Prayer 04 Feb 1907, Karlsruhe
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

You will therefore feel the need, as I do, to take a very comprehensive look at the world in order to understand the Lord's Prayer. We'll have to take a long roundabout route to understand it. We need to consider the nature of the human being from a particular point of view.
A Christian has the right relationship to this name if he understands that every aspect of the kingdom is an out-flowing of the divine, and knows with every bite of bread that it is an out-flowing, a mirror and a part of the godhead. A Christian should clearly understand this in relation to even the least of things. In human nature, the individual spirit brings it about that each becomes an individual compared to others.
97. The Christian Mystery (2000): Who are the Rosicrucians? 16 Feb 1907, Leipzig
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

In the same way you might see an old civilization spiralling into itself and a new one snaking out. This spiritual process can help us understand such a sign that is part of the script (Fig. 6). [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Fig. 6 800 years before Christ was born the sun entered into the sign of the Ram or lamb.
In the early 19th century Oken171 and Schelling172 presented the basic ideas of this, which were quite correct. They sought to gain understanding of the essence that lies in an organ. Oken got a bit grotesque when he said the tongue was a cuttlefish.
Rudolf Steiner would frequently refer to these words from Timaeus (chapter 8), but always in the form given by the Viennese philosopher Vincenz Knauer, who was a personal acquaintance, in his Die Hauptprobleme der Philosophie in ihrer Entwickelung und teilweisen Lösung von Thales bis Robert Hamerling. Vienna 1892, S. 96 (the passage is underlined in the copy of the work in Rudolf Steiner's library): ‘We know from mythology, in Timaeus, that god placed this world soul in the universe in the form of a cross and stretched the world's body upon it.’
97. The Christian Mystery (2000): The Origins of Religious Confessions and Set Prayers 17 Feb 1907, Leipzig
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

How did they get there, however? Here we must understand that the things we are taught today were not presented in the same way in earliest times. The formulas of religious confessions differed greatly through the ages.
But why was it that earlier peoples were spoken to in images? Let us try and understand how religious teachers would speak to the people before Hermes, before Buddha, Zarathustra and Moses and before the Christ as greatest founder of a religion.
They could not have been given the wisdom in words, for those would not have been understood. Human beings did not have the bright daytime consciousness that we have today. On the other hand it was easy to put them in a state where the godhead illumined them from inside.
97. The Christian Mystery (2000): Christian Initiation and Rosicrucian Training 22 Feb 1907, Vienna
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

The Christian way is laid down in a text that is little understood outside occult circles. The gospel of John gives a complete outline of the right way of Christian initiation.
It is a book for life. Above all you have to understand that even the first words are not written just for people to read or for philosophical speculation.
That is the transformation of coal into diamond. You'll now understand the significance of bringing rhythm into the breathing in Rosicrucian training and know what was meant by the philosopher's stone.

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