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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 4441 through 4450 of 6552

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171. Goethe and the Crisis of the Nineteenth Century: Eleventh Lecture 14 Oct 1916, Dornach

So instead of birth, there is contemplation and striving for an understanding of death. Instead of the physical kinship of forces and beings, there is the contemplation of evil, pain, and suffering in the world.
In particular, van't Hoff was one of those chemists who recently constructed bold stereometric forms in order to understand the atom. And we know – at least most of us will know – that theosophists of a certain orientation have also been very much involved in this nonsense about the structure of the atom.
Just imagine how Goethe, for his part, also strove for an understanding of the relationship between living beings, but not by seeking a merely physical order, but by trying to fertilize these relationships through the imagination, which arose in him through contemplation.
171. Goethe and the Crisis of the Nineteenth Century: Thirteenth Lecture 21 Oct 1916, Dornach

We have tried to visualize the main ideas that are struggling for expression, or one might say for existence, in our fifth post-Atlantean period, struggling for existence in such a way that they develop one-sidedly under the characterized twofold impulses. Under the influence of the one impulse, more or less everything that can be connected to the fact of birth, the fact of the relationship between living beings, and in general the beings and forces within our earthly existence, is formed and shaped.
This is felt particularly strongly by those who understand the Goethean worldview in its nerve. Of course, spiritual science itself cannot yet be found in the Goethean world view, but it will be able to arise more and more under the influence of the understanding of the Goethean world view.
In our time, there are still few favorable forces and impulses working outside of the anthroposophical movement for an understanding of Goethe's world view. For as justified and as magnificent as the so-called democratic principle is for the development of humanity, when it is understood in the right sense, it has a corrupting effect in our time, when it is often grasped and applied in the wrong way.
171. Goethe and the Crisis of the Nineteenth Century: Fourteenth Lecture 28 Oct 1916, Dornach

If such a piece of tin is (it is drawn), then they got something like such bubbles, which are raised in this way; underneath it is hollow. If you then squeezed these bubbles, the tin underneath was dusty, it was like dust at the spot.
On this medal you will find such elevations everywhere, real pockmarked elevations that can be dabbed, then they come off. And underneath, the whole thing that is under these elevations has become dusty, dust-like. In this case, one speaks of pewter plague.
Then he returns to the human being in nature, and says of this human being in nature: “He is born into the fate of this world of phenomena by virtue of a mechanical necessity, by virtue of a supreme decree that he does not understand.” What a fine thing for a theologian to say! Man is born into the fate of this world of phenomena, namely: by virtue of a mechanical necessity, by virtue of a supreme decree that he does not understand.
171. Goethe and the Crisis of the Nineteenth Century: Fifteenth Lecture 29 Oct 1916, Dornach

For it is my concern that, precisely in these reflections, we gain an understanding of the essential in the transition from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantic period, how the forces that have been at work in the last few centuries are flowing into our present and how they can and must be observed by those who really want to understand how spiritual science has a specific task for each individual in our present.
Anyone who wants to understand the situation in which humanity finds itself today, one can already say the whole earth, must understand how the impulses that now dominate people's minds have gradually crept into the human soul since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantic period, largely unconsciously, they know nothing about it.
A man like Anatole France, of course, comes to terms with it by saying, “Well, it does happen that people do all sorts of things under the influence of suggestion, of fantastic powers that come from people like the Virgin of Orleans.”
171. Goethe and the Crisis of the Nineteenth Century: Sixteenth lecture 30 Oct 1916, Dornach

And so we see that the West developed almost exclusively under this principle of suppressing the Gnostic. But this Gnostic element has not been completely suppressed.
There was a certain power in the old esoteric; because the one who understood something about the spiritual world could do something. Today many people can do something, because they learn from science to achieve a high level of skill; but they do not understand the subject, and those who understand it, that is, who repeat the words that come from understanding, they cannot do anything, they want the secrets to remain “secrets”, as I hinted to you yesterday. This time had to come, because humanity had to undergo a crisis in moral terms, and because certain secrets had to be reconquered from human freedom, which only took place in our fifth post-Atlantic period.
171. The Templars 02 Oct 1916, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Into what flowed from the souls of the Templars, however, there began to enter more and more that which flows from the Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic impulses and is steeped in the Mephistophelian element, and which was inaugurated on the racks where the Templars were tortured, inasmuch as they were forced under torture to speak untruths about themselves. This fact—not alone, but as one of the spiritual grounds of modern materialism—has to be understood if one would acquire an inner understanding of modern materialistic evolution.
That is to say, even if in a religious way men had some notion of a spiritual life and perhaps also talked about it, their gaze was really only actually directed upon what is lived out here in the physical world between birth and death—what is lived out here, that one can understand. (Even that of course is not yet entirely understood; nevertheless one can understand it when one directs one's attention solely to the external physical body.)
Equality belongs properly to the spirit. No human generation will understand how the three ideals of Brotherhood, Freedom and Equality can come to realization in the life of mankind, unless they understand that Man carries in him this threefoldness of body, soul and spirit.
172. The Karma of Vocation: Lecture I 04 Nov 1916, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker, Gilbert Church, Peter Mollenhauer

Then in Pater Brey we see the cult of false prophets play a part and, under the mask of holiness, do all kinds of things. This, indeed, is not ridiculed but objectively presented with much humor.
The fact that he was made minister of state without having been previously—what shall I say?—under-councillor and upper-councillor, required at least some justification from the Duke, and that is what he produced.
He had to attack it in a living way, and he resolved it comprehensively in his own way in the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. When Schiller undertook to show philosophically how man ascends from ordinary life to a higher life, Goethe undertook to show in his fairy tale, through the interplay of spiritual forces in the human soul, how man evolves spiritually from an everyday soul life to a higher one.
172. The Karma of Vocation: Lecture II 05 Nov 1916, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker, Gilbert Church, Peter Mollenhauer

This illness is, to be sure, a natural phenomenon in the organism. However, we never learn to understand a man who creates out of the elemental forces of the world—indeed, we never learn really to understand any man—unless we take into consideration such events in the course of his karma.
Anyone who enters deeply into the tragedy of the ninety-one year old Sophocles, however, will be able to estimate how difficult it is to find the way to a human individuality and how such an individuality is bound up in the most complicated fashion with world events! Many things could be adduced to show under what deep layers we must penetrate in order to understand the world. But how much is alive, even in the earliest parts of Faust, of that wisdom that is necessary for an understanding of the world!
What does this signify in his life? To further understand the life of a man, we must first understand what such an event means to his life. I know how little inclined the present world is really to arouse those forces of the soul that are necessary to fully sense and feel such a phenomenon—to completely feel what is already alive in the first scenes of Faust.
172. The Karma of Vocation: Lecture III 06 Nov 1916, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker, Gilbert Church, Peter Mollenhauer

This often makes it necessary in the sphere of spiritual science to adapt what we say to what can be understood by others. Now, the description we generally give in spiritual science is that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego.
Whatever, we cannot suppress our astonishment that people are so amazed when animals perform something that is seemingly human. How much more objective understanding, how much intellect, is actually associated with the so-called instinctual behavior in animals.
Of course, if all this had depended upon a real understanding of number as a mathematical concept, it would not have been possible without actual reflection.
172. The Karma of Vocation: Lecture IV 12 Nov 1916, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker, Gilbert Church, Peter Mollenhauer

Their specialization will be a necessary by-product of world evolution, and this question will soon become one of the weightiest of family problems; anyone who wishes to educate children will have to understand it. To place oneself rationally within the course of evolution then will depend altogether upon an understanding of the question: How shall I place my child into the evolution of humanity?
The labor in the objective vocational process is detached from us and becomes the external sheath for elemental beings who thereby continue their development. But this occurs only under a certain condition. If it be said that we must first begin to understand the meaning of what is often belittled as the prosaic part of life, we must also understand that this meaning is not clarified until we comprehend it completely in its comprehensive cosmic connection.
Because this applies to the sensory world, people understand it, but they do not understand such foolishness in reference to the spiritual world. Yet, it is the same for spiritual relationships as if someone were to suppose that mere external evolution could continue to progress; it cannot.

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