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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 4831 through 4840 of 6552

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184. The Polarity of Duration and Development: Third Lecture 08 Sep 1918, Dornach

But Comte speaks from the standpoint of ordinary materialistic science; he does not know what underlies spiritually this consciousness that one is human, which lies in the background of our soul life.
But he extends into the other formations, for we have seen that even in sleep man is under the influence of the third hierarchy. This hierarchy is further than he is, and is already in the fifth formation today, and the other beings are further still.
Since you are not physicists and probably will not get involved in understanding the matter, I will not go into it further either. Time is an illusion, that is a profound truth, because time as an illusion underlies many other illusions of life.
184. The Polarity of Duration and Development: Fourth Lecture 13 Sep 1918, Dornach

And one is pointed to man in his ambivalence if one wants to understand the whole context, if one wants to find a transition from cosmic hatred to the individual-soul hatred that occurs in human nature.
But what stands in the individual is not just next to each other according to causes, but it is imagination, an image of what stands behind it. We do not understand the human head if we understand it only as if it grew out of the rest of the human organism, whereas in truth it is formed out of the whole cosmos, and out of the cosmos in a different way than, for example, the organism of the extremities.
{For words following the lecture, see the end of the volume under “Notes” on p. 326]
184. The Polarity of Duration and Development: Fifth Lecture 14 Sep 1918, Dornach

We can understand the human being's life in the same way that we seek to understand anything scientifically, by looking at the seven-year cycles of human life.
One cannot understand it. One can come to some understanding of what takes place in childhood if one seeks this understanding inwardly in the human being, in inner experience, say between the ages of fifty-six and sixty-three.
But it is difficult for people to reconcile this with their subconscious or unconscious desires, so they say to themselves: Yes, with the understanding that is the normal understanding of the present, one must refrain from understanding something that comes from the time of Homer or even from the time of Aeschylus.
184. St Augustine, St Simon and Auguste Comte 06 Oct 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Manichaeism only `gets' on with Dualism, (in its own way quite correctly), by uniting certain old pre-Christian basic concepts with its acceptance of the polarity in World-phenomena, Above all, it unites certain ideas which can only be understood when one knows that in ancient times the Spiritual world was perceived by humanity in atavistic clairvoyance, and perceived in ouch a way that men's visions of the Spiritual world were in their very content, similar to the impressions made by the Sense-world of perception.
We see how from the standpoint we have acquired to-day we can look back at the standpoint of St. Augustine, how we can understand him, and to a certain extent can see in him what he himself could not yet see. Thus, St. Augustine stands for us as a specially significant figure in the twilight of the 4th Post-Atlantean age, because with especial sharpness he points to the one stream in world-happiness to the stream of the Ideal; and in this stream he seeks to find a firm point.
Now what Schelling most sought, especially in the last period of his life, was to understand the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha into the history of mankind. That he sought especially; and while so doing it occurred to him that, with the ideas at the disposal of modern learning, one could never really understand the life which flows from the Mystery of Golgotha; which means that one could never come to understand the true life of man.
184. Goethe, Comte and Bentham 07 Sep 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown

These are the Beings of the third Hierarchy, but they were poetically altered, as seen under the influence of that delusion of life, as we to-day see everything which refers to man under the influence of our delusion of consciousness.
These modern human beings who knew themselves to be under a theocratic Ordering, had no such idea of Truth as human beings get to-day under the authority of Natural Science.
But it cannot be done, even with the old concept of Truth as divine Judgment, for that stood under the influence of the Delusion of Life. Our modern concept of Truth stands under the influence of our Delusion in Consciousness.
184. The Polarity between Eternity and Evolution in Human Life 15 Sep 1918, Dornach
Translated by Paul Breslaw

But as the human being lives here on earth, he views a mixture of Above and Below, and can never come to an understanding of his own being when he sees it mixed up in this way. He can only understand himself when he understands how to separate what is mixed up.
In the sphere of transitoriness we should recognise that the old have something to say to the young which only the old can tell them. If we understand this, then why should we not also understand that there is an initiation wisdom which we take in inter-personally?
In conclusion therefore, what is important is to understand the signs of the times, and from them to nurture the spiritual life in the various areas of human endeavour.
184. The Bridge between the Ideal and the Real: Lecture I 06 Sep 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Above all, it unites certain ideas which can only be understood when one knows that in ancient times the Spiritual world was perceived by humanity in atavistic clairvoyance, and perceived in such a way that men's visions of the Spiritual world were in their very content, similar to the impressions made by the Sense-world of perception.
Your attention is turned to that with which is connected the life of Birth in the World's evolution. And one does not come to understand this life of Birth in the Cosmos unless one can go beck to the Riddle of the Old Moon. know indeed that the preview: incarnation of the Earth before it became Earth was Old Moon, and in many of the phenomena connected with our present Moon, that camp-follower, so to speak of the Old Moon.
Now what Schelling most sought, especially in the last period of his life, was to understand the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha into the history of mankind. That he sought especially; and while so doing it occurred to him that, with the ideas at the disposal of modern learning, one could never really understand the life which flows from the Mystery of Golgotha; which means that one could never come to understand the true life of man.
184. The Bridge between the Ideal and the Real: Lecture II 07 Sep 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown

These are the Beings of the third Hierarchy, but they were poetically altered, as seen under the influence of that delusion of life, as we to-day see everything which refers to man under the influence of our delusion of consciousness.
These modern human beings who knew themselves to be under a theocratic Ordering, have no such idea of Truth as human beings get to-day under the authority of Natural Science.
But it cannot be done, even with the old concept of Truth as Divine Judgment, for that stood under the influence of the Delusion of Life. Our modern concept of Truth stands under the influence of our Delusion in Consciousness.
184. The Cosmic Prehistoric Ages of Mankind: The Threefoldness of Space and the Unity of Time 20 Sep 1918, Dornach
Translated by Mabel Cotterell

At the same time, however, he experienced the indefinite—if I put it crudely—when one stands on one's head then the under is above and the above under. So too is it for the antipodes, and if one counts oneself in with the earth, the below is above and the above underneath.
Men still feel the depth, but that is the last shadowy relic of space-experience. In the evolved religions an understanding for the Oneness of God has taken precedence of the real understanding of the threefoldness. The understanding for the unity of God has an origin similar to that for the threefold nature of God through space.
One who reads Plato and Aristotle today, not as is often done by a schoolmaster, but with really deep understanding, finds that this feeling for space was still fully in existence in the 6th, 7th, 8th pre-Christian centuries.
184. The Cosmic Prehistoric Ages of Mankind: Lucifer and Ahriman 21 Sep 1918, Dornach
Translated by Mabel Cotterell

He would, it is true, be a dreamer in his youth, and in later years be extremely clever and understand many things through his own practical experience, yet he would receive nothing as a revelation from the spiritual worlds.
But to know that one stands within it, and in this standing within one must guide one's life with knowledge, that must be said today as a necessity of life for man's future, and it must be understood. There can be no mere science of silence for the future. Anyone who wishes to get a true knowledge of life must develop cosmic sensitivity.
And again human community-life is interwoven with the hatred of Lucifer against law and Ahriman's sympathy for it—and one does not understand life if one does not understand it as a dualism. Ahriman likes all that is outer form, that can stiffen; Lucifer likes—the Luciferic beings like—all that is formless, that dissolves form, becomes fluid and flexible.

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