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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 4651 through 4660 of 6552

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187. The Birth of Christ in the Human Soul 22 Dec 1918, Basel
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker

And, as it comes to be known how the human being is placed in the world in a relationship of balance between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, it will be understood also what this human being really is in the external physical existence. Most of all must understanding come about, Christian understanding, in reference to a certain aspect of human life.
Most particularly will it be understood why the Old Testament occult conception possessed a special insight into the nature of the prophetic gift.
We can feel that it places us amid the impulses of cosmic evolution, no matter what may befall, so that we can feel ourselves in unison with these divine impulses in the evolution of the world; that we can understand them, and can draw power for our will from this understanding, and light for our life of thought.
188. Migrations, Social Life: The Migration of People in the Past and the Present 26 Jan 1919, Dornach
Translator Unknown

But something else should be borne in mind: Marxism was kindled of its own accord; but spiritual science is something which must be taken up by people in freedom. If we bear in mind that human understanding is really something which is subject to evolution, it will be easier to understand many things which are,we can really say, not only possible, but also necessary to understand, and which people really do not wish to understand.
To-day all the people who cling to old ideas, under the guidance of the so-called intelligentsia, particularly under the guidance of modern science, which has proved so unfruitful in the social field, to-day all these people stand between,the spiritual stream which should flow down to the proletarian stream and this current which flows upwards.
Goethe also believed that the ordinary understanding, based upon the senses and the intellect, could not reach the “homo”, but only the “homunculus”!
188. Migrations, Social Life: What Form Can the Requirements of Social Life Take on at the Present Time? 31 Jan 1919, Dornach
Translator Unknown

He could cherish the hope of climbing up the social ladder. Under certain conditions, these organisations were more or less useful in the development of humanity. Then the new age dawned.
Even in thought, they should be given up. People, however, find it difficult to understand that they should not merely judge the things that lie under their very nose, for those judgments will never be conclusive; they should learn instead to develop now thoughts, new ideas.
When we study the fundamental laws of the individual human organism, we come to the threefold structure of the nerves and senses: the rhythmic system and the metabolic system. And we can only understand the human being within the course of time if we understand the interplay of these three systems in the human organism.
188. Migrations, Social Life: The Emancipation of the Economic Process from the Personal Element 02 Feb 1919, Dornach
Translator Unknown

The above idea has a tremendously suggestive influence upon the modern proletariat. If the conditions of social: life are to be understood, it is also necessary to study the soul constitution of the modern proletariat. There we find that such ideas exercise a strong, suggestive power over the minds of modern proletarians, which consists therein that workmen believe that they are completely at the mercy of their employers.
What is needed to-day, above everything else, is that people should realise that not only the individual human organism, but also the social organism, must now be understood in a spiritual-scientific manner. Meaningless abstractions must be abandoned. For a connection can be found with deeper human interests, with deeper human impulses, and these are beginning to work in the present epoch of human development.
The chief point is to find the possibility to make people understand that a change is needed in the field of thought. The whole way of thinking must be transformed.
188. A Turning-Point in Modern History 24 Jan 1919, Dornach
Translator Unknown

I have had in my hands Goethe's copy of Kant's Critique of Judgement; he underlined important passages. But the underlinings became fewer well before the middle, and later disappear altogether.
Economic life, it is said, must be brought gradually under the control of the State. The State should become the only capitalist. Spiritual life came long ago under the dominion of the State. On the one hand we have man, who does not understand himself, and on the other the State, which is not understood, because man no longer finds himself within the social structure.
188. The Relationship Between Human Science and Social Science 25 Jan 1919, Dornach

And just as the human being receives his metabolism from nature, so the social organism receives its nourishment from the human head. You can only understand the social organism in relation to the human being if you turn the human being upside down. Here in the human head is actually the human being's land.
It draws its nourishment from the individual human beings. This is how we must inwardly understand the social organism. It does not matter if we use analogies; but the view of the true reality, of the genuine reality, that is what matters.
And in the social process there is a great danger that corresponds to the loss of spirit in the materialistic world view: in the loss of a production that is as satisfying as possible for humanity, of the most possible insight into the productive process. Now, one cannot come to an understanding of the social structure if one does not train oneself in the threefold nature of the human being and thereby learn how to shape the relationship between the science of the human being and the social science.
188. Goetheanism as an Impulse for Man's Transformation: The Difference Between Man and Animal 03 Jan 1919, Dornach
Translated by Violet E. Watkin

To many people this has appeared as the most shattering feature of the present world situation. For there are men who understand how to estimate all the seriousness of the present time, who have for some time understood how to estimate it.
The head is immediately above the earth, the earth is under the head organism in all animals, approximately of course, according to the nature of the being.
[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Diagram 1 In man his head stands on his own breast organism and extremities organism. In man the breast organism is under the head organism, as in the primal the earth is under the head organism; man stands with his heed on his own earth.
188. Goetheanism as an Impulse for Man's Transformation: St. John of the Cross 04 Jan 1919, Dornach
Translated by Violet E. Watkin

For you have seen that it is a question of spiritual events that lie at the basis of the physical world, making it necessary at present for man to take a new standpoint in relation to the whole understanding of his connection with the world and with the rest of mankind. Yesterday we pointed out how much must be differently understood which, apparently well founded, shines forth here and there into the spiritual life of mankind.
This 'legitimate vision' is that the present day hall-marked cleric of Rome considers valid. What does ne understand by it? You will be able to form a concept of what he understands by it when you distinguish between two kinds of gifts which, in the sense of the orthodox Catholic Church, man can receive as a believing Catholic.
And now I would ask you: what are we supposed to understand when one of those who write about heresy today says it is heretical to assert that God is identical with the human soul!
188. Goetheanism as an Impulse for Man's Transformation: Clairvoyant Vision Looks at Mineral, Plant, Animal, Man 05 Jan 1919, Dornach
Translated by Violet E. Watkin

For in the mineral and plant kingdoms lives something man can only fully recognise if—please understand me, thoroughly he looks back to the world from which he came on entering physical existence through birth.
Isn't it so? You see, Spiritual Science as we understand it here and as in a sane way it reckons with the unbroken sequence of the thoughts in the way you know—well, it is not that this Spiritual Science cannot be understood if thinking is made active, but men simply want to understand Spiritual Science in a different way from how they must understand it; instead of which they would like the thread to be continually broken.
There is indeed no lack of such people in the world. I have never been able to come to an understanding with these people about what out of a certain inner ground I learn from the spiritual world.
188. Goetheanism as an Impulse for Man's Transformation: Human Qualities Which Oppose Antroposophy 10 Jan 1919, Dornach
Translated by Violet E. Watkin

Already today it is necessary, and will become increasingly so for all men, to learn to understand the spiritual world, to learn to understand it with sound human intelligence in the way the spiritual world is spoken of in Spiritual Science.
And now you will be able to realise why people Shrink from understanding the spiritual world in spite of the fact that this understanding is to be acquired simply with sound human intelligence.
For even with the intelligence, that is not sound human intelligence but human intelligence carried to a high pitch through the authority of science, the external part of our physical environment can be particularly well understood. It cannot be understood inwardly, spiritually, but directly understood in its external aspect.

Results 4651 through 4660 of 6552

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