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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 4941 through 4950 of 6552

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181. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future: States of Consciousness 25 Jun 1918, Berlin
Translator Unknown

For the ordinary consciousness, all this is so vivid, so intensely real, that a subtle undercurrent of finer consciousness, a low-toned background as it were, is overlooked. The truth is that the head is dreaming all the time we are awake.
The source of these perceptions is the weaving of the “underlying” consciousness which I have mentioned, and this is itself a kind of dream. But what is the dream about?
Then came the Thirty Years War, the tomb of much which should then have come to mankind. What should have been then understood, was not understood, was even consigned to oblivion. The “Chemical Marriage” was written down about 1603, ostensibly by one who signed himself Johann Valentin Andreae; little notice was taken of it because in 1613 the Thirty Years War began.
181. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future: The Building at Dornach 03 Jul 1918, Berlin
Translator Unknown

There we have the proud achievement of the new world-civilisation, and it has a variety of consequences. To get an insight into the underlying meaning of this, we need only look at a case where “natural” civilisation projects deeply into the “magical”—for instance, with matches.
The laws of symmetrical proportion, usually followed in buildings, have to be disregarded under the influence of this main conception. The Dornach Building has, properly speaking, only one axis of symmetry, which goes straight from West to East; and everything is ordered upon this single axis.
In Munich it would have been a case of inner architecture only; windows were necessary for the Dornach Building. To understand these, I would ask you first to make the effort to grasp the whole idea of the wooden building.
181. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future: East and West 09 Jul 1918, Berlin
Translator Unknown

In a quite definite way it will come back in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and no one can truly understand human development without taking account of such truths as these. What arose in humanity was to be found under varied forms in the most diverse regions of the earth.
To omit this from consideration shows a very indifferent understanding of the development of the West and its whole influence on the history of mankind. Precisely the most important things in the West, the occurrences due principally to the Anglo-American race, happen under the influence of mysterious inner knowledge such as this.
People talk a great deal today about Fichte, but, needless to say, those who talk most about such great thinkers, understand least. What a revival of understanding would be possible if, in the genuine, real sense of the words, “the Goethe-spirit” animated mankind!
181. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future: History and Repeated Earth-Lives 16 Jul 1918, Berlin
Translator Unknown

With their pagan ideas, pagan culture and pagan experiences, they understood little of the Roman social structure, which had gradually become more and more powerful under the influence of money.
I have often heard that it is said “These things as presented in Spiritual science we simply cannot understand; they are so very difficult! If only there were not these hindrances!” Thirty years ago the simple country people would have understood such subjects well, but in course-of the last few decades a great change has come about.
They said: “What you say is all very well; it is excellent to talk in this way about the spiritual world, but people understand none of it. We talk in such a way that people can understand it.” I said: “You know, reverend sirs, that neither you nor I ought to lay down the law as to how we should speak to people.
181. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future: The Being and Evolution of Man 23 Jul 1918, Berlin
Translator Unknown

The Gospel is speaking of the man of whom I have told you to-day, and that is why it is so difficult to understand and is so erroneously expounded, fettered as it is by the conceptions current, to-day. Without the conceptions conveyed by Spiritual Science, the underlying, aspects of the Gospels cannot be understood; with them, a sudden light breaks in.
Very many features of the present day become clear when we realise that not all that called itself Christian was intended to communicate the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, but that much was even intended to hinder that understanding, to raise a barrier against it.
Manifold endeavours, including that of Protestantism, were always in opposition to the Church, because the Church in many ways had the task of erecting a barrier against the understanding of Christ, and men could do no other than strive for that understanding. Petrus Waldus felt that need when he had recourse to the Gospels.
181. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future: Problems of the Time I 30 Jul 1918, Berlin
Translator Unknown

Bolshevism cannot be understood except by recognizing it as an after-the fact of the Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 A.D. You cannot understand it except as a result of the atrophy of the forces which man once had for apprehending the super-sensible world. In order really to understand the happenings of the outer world, in order to confront them, we must perceive this inner connection.
The impulses active in human evolution take on various nuances, and events can be understood only in this light. The peoples of the Italian and Spanish peninsulas have come under the sway of Christianity, in the course of its expansion, as well as the peoples of modern France and the British Isles.
181. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future: Problems of the Time II 06 Aug 1918, Berlin
Translator Unknown

One idea, according to this view, must be received by those who hold themselves to be among the really intelligent leaders of thought: the idea of “the conservation of matter and energy” as understood at the present time. Quite comprehensibly, everyone is adjudged to be a duffer who does not admit this indestructibility of force and matter to be a truth underlying the whole of science.
To understand how far Christ-Jesus is this double Being is a great task; but at the same time many have taken pains to create obstacles to such an understanding.
Over against these diverse peoples stand something which was understood in a better time than this—universal humanity. It has a totally different origin. It may be discussed in the abstract, but can be truly spoken of only as one genuinely understands what the seed of the future in humanity is .
182. Death as a Way of Life: Man and the World 29 Apr 1918, Heidenheim

And one must appeal to something quite different in the imagination if one wants to understand spiritual science. Therefore, when people approach spiritual science today, they are afraid to take the first step!
In the future it will be especially difficult to understand how political programs, without any relation to reality, can be found in which the crazy ideas of world treaties and peace treaties between nations and so on are laid down.
But to do this we must begin with the small. We must develop in the child not only an understanding of the abstract concept, but also of the real, the conceivable. We ourselves must first have the connection with it.
182. Death as a Way of Life: Signs of the Times: East, West, Central Europe 30 Apr 1918, Ulm

What has spread across the earth as a physical body in commercial, industrial, or other ways, needs a soul, a soul that offers the possibility that people on earth understand each other spiritually as they understand each other commercially and monetarily. To give the earthly body an earthly soul is something I have often spoken of as desirable.
For this, there must be real, true knowledge of the spiritual world, there must be understanding of the reality of the spiritual world. And this understanding of the reality of the spiritual world is not possible today other than by adding a spiritual-scientific attitude to the natural-scientific attitude.
To understand how the spiritual tableau is spread across the earth, to understand what is placed on our souls, for this spiritual science is intended to be a guide.
182. Death as a Way of Life: The Rebelliousness of Men Against the Spirit 30 Jun 1918, Hamburg

So they agreed to give him the portfolio he didn't understand: public works. But lo and behold, in three months he had familiarized himself with the subject and achieved great things as a minister in precisely this field, which he had previously understood nothing about.
So on the one hand there are certain reasons for not being able to understand spiritual science: people do not want to understand that things are completely reversed when it comes to the dead.
What is happening in the present can only be understood by looking at the real course of human development, by replacing what is taught as history with the real history.

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