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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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196. Spiritual and Social Changes in the Development of Humanity: Twelfth Lecture 08 Feb 1920, Dornach

Some people cannot understand this. We also try to prove the harmfulness of materialism; but on the other hand, we must recognize that materialism had to come into the 19th century.
As a result, understanding of Christianity gradually declined from the 15th century onwards. Only tradition remained. The underlying conditions are actually misunderstood in ordinary external science.
What is needed is for something to be touched in the souls that will lead to a new understanding of the mystery of Golgotha, and with that, to a new understanding of all of Christianity. In ancient pre-Christian times, as I have already mentioned today, there was a widespread, magnificent, admirable primeval wisdom, and anyone who wants to admire pagan wisdom is right to do so.
196. Spiritual and Social Changes in the Development of Humanity: Thirteenth Lecture 13 Feb 1920, Dornach

These learned gentlemen describe something that works like a fist to the eye, quite literally. And they want to understand vision through this. One understands the activity of the senses only when one regards it in connection with what is no longer there at all: Saturn development, sun development, moon development. One understands human intelligence only when one regards it in connection with that which is no longer there at all: the development of the sun, the moon. One understands memory only when one regards it in connection with that which is no longer there at all: the old development of the moon.
196. Spiritual and Social Changes in the Development of Humanity: Fourteenth Lecture 14 Feb 1920, Dornach

Now I drew your attention to the fact that these three soul faculties can only be understood by looking at their development. In order to understand memory, which is relatively one of the more recent abilities of the human being, we must turn our gaze back to times when the Earth was not yet what it is today, when the Earth was undergoing its development as the Moon, which preceded the Earth.
Furthermore, we have seen that by carrying these three soul abilities within us, we are at the same time the hosts for beings of higher hierarchies in the organization that underlies these soul abilities. So that through the organization of our sensory activity, we are the hosts of the archai, the spirits of time.
In the same way, when we look at feeling today, we must say, understandingly: When the earth will no longer be, but something else will have come out of it, when the earth will have become the future Jupiter, then feeling will have become what it can become.
196. Spiritual and Social Changes in the Development of Humanity: Fifteenth Lecture 15 Feb 1920, Dornach

Certain things that are happening in the present, that underlie the serious events of this present, cannot be understood at all if one does not have the opportunity to focus one's attention on the spiritual qualities of the members of humanity.
And economic life, the actual field of the more recent development of humanity, has been given to the English-American people. All that belongs to the understanding of economic life has therefore found its best expression in England and America. The French understand nothing of economics; they are better as bankers.
Such things should truly be known far and wide today, so that there would be a sufficiently large number of people who would have an understanding for these things. Because today it really can't be about anything else but finding a sufficiently large number of people who, to begin with, have an understanding for such things.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture I 05 Mar 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

I have made it quite clear on a number of occasions that to understand the way individuals need to face those challenges we must be aware of how human evolution progresses all over the globe. The whole course of human evolution can only be clearly understood if we gain more profound insight into the powers that intervene in the course of earth evolution as a whole and also in human lives.
What did those Egyptians know of the earth? It was the ground under their feet. They knew more about the heavens. They moved in the vertical in gaining their experience.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture II 07 Mar 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

Europe initially was given the explanation, its understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, out of the oriental tradition. Christianity was understood in the light of oriental wisdom, a wisdom of soul and spirit that was truly great at a time when the Mystery of Golgotha, and the way Christ related to the whole of Earth evolution, were still perceived gnostically.
The further we penetrate into the actual life of the mind and spirit the more it becomes apparent that something new is emerging in the life of humankind today. Central Europeans are far from understood by Western Europeans; Western Europeans are far from understood by Central Europeans, even in ordinary life.
This is an attitude that has to be overcome in the new age; it cannot hold true in Central Europe, and the spirit which must arise in Central Europe will have to fight this attitude. It will have to fight it by coming to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in the new and spiritual way I have talked about. It will have to come to understand the presence of the Christ in human life.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture III 09 Mar 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

No one thinks that development should be such that the individual undergoes a complete change. Above all no one thinks that something objective should enter into the soul of that individual, something that was not there before.
The divine world was right among them, made absolute and visible under the conditions regularly created through the mystery cult. When such a ruler wanted something, decreed something, it was a god who wanted it.
The ideas used by people nowadays to fill their heads with illusions, wanting to understand history by merely going back as far as ancient Greece, are limited ideas. Yet it is only possible to understand the whole structure of ancient Egypt, for instance, if we know that the ancient gods still walked on earth.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture IV 13 Jun 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

They are the fountainhead of everything that usually comes under the heading of Jesuitism. Many people talk about Jesuitism and the like, but still large numbers of our fellow citizens are little inclined to pay proper attention to what is really going on.
Nothing goes more against the grain for instance with certain Catholic or Protestant groups today than that humankind should today gain true understanding of the Christ Mystery. It is not in their interest that the true Mystery of Christ comes to be known; all they want is to hold on to the old ideas.
Well, you see the kind of mentality one is dealing with. But do not underestimate it! You have to realize that it is going to be a hard fight, particularly in this direction.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture V 24 Jun 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

People of little understanding will say: ‘You are using analogy in applying the threefold order of the human body to the social organism’.
Now a realistic view is taken and it is realized that if the stomach is undermined in the human organism, the head will suffer. In the same way there can be no sound metabolism in the social organism and economic life must fall into decline if morality, religious life and intelligent thought are undermined in the social organism.
The other pole, the other extreme, of human understanding, must be there as well; it is the pole of human understanding where it is possible to enter into a human individual, to go deeply into the life impulses of another person, and so on.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture VI 25 Jul 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

Again and again the point has been made that when any work is undertaken or any proposal made in connection with the anthroposophical movement proper regard must be paid to the gravity of the present situation.
We are not merely producing logical definitions or correcting our views, but something is happening when human beings endeavour to gain inner experience of knowledge and look for the truth outside them, endeavouring also to let each enter into the other. This has to be understood in the present age. The present age must understand that human beings must hold the balance between the two extremes, between the ahrimanic and the luciferic poles.
The language of the earth and that of heaven are different, alas, and it is part of the tragedy of our age that people do not even want to understand the language of heaven. Since it has become customary to speak in the most earthly terms possible from the pulpit it is no longer possible for people to understand the language of heaven.

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