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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Fourth Lecture 22 Nov 1915, Stuttgart

And for the one who immerses himself in spiritual science, many a riddle must be solved in order to understand life, not from a theoretical point of view, but from a life point of view, from the life point of view that not only occupies thinking, but the soul in its entirety and in its entirety. Let us try to imagine what we can understand from ordinary life in relation to death. The dead person leaves us. What changes externally is that our eyes no longer see them, that we can no longer exchange a handshake with them, that our words no longer go from us to them, from them to us.
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Fifth Lecture 23 Nov 1915, Stuttgart

We only have to be quite clear about the nature of this sense of self in the waking state. The best way to understand it is to imagine you are moving through a room. At first you feel nothing; now you are touching something.
Just as one gradually lived into nature here from childhood, learning to perceive nature and understand nature, so in the time after death one lives into the effects of one's own deeds, into the effect of one's own thoughts and words, in short, into the entire world of effects; one pours oneself into the world of effects.
But the dream uses the physical life memories from the etheric body to make visible the invisible activity of the ego and the astral body. Therefore, one can only understand the dream if one takes these images in terms of their character sequence, that is, if one learns to understand these images.
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Sixth Lecture 24 Nov 1915, Stuttgart

But then comes the sun, which draws out the forces, so that under the influence of the sun's effect, what was first enclosed in our little earth now comes into extra-terrestrial spheres of activity.
But always, when death does not occur in the way I have now indicated, it is something that can be understood from the other side. If one enters the other world through a death from illness, from old age, or through suicide, then one has what is needed to understand death there.
Then the time will have come when one can really understand spiritual science. In a certain sense, spiritual science will already transform the world from this point of view.
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Seventh Lecture 12 Mar 1916, Stuttgart

But I would like the small group of those who belong to the spiritual science movement to understand what will be said in more detail tomorrow more deeply than it can be understood at first, if one does not penetrate deeper into spiritual science.
This is something that the English or the French cannot understand. The Frenchman wants to have a beautiful word, to have everything shaped into a beautiful phrase, and then he is satisfied.
But this pure and honest striving for truth was understood in a strange way, and the distortions of the truth were also understood in a strange way. You know that the relationship between the German spiritual movement, to which we belong, and the Theosophical Society was dissolved long before the war.
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Eighth Lecture 15 Mar 1916, Stuttgart

In order for me to make myself quite clearly understood, I must start from a comparison: We physical people work here in the physical world. Let us assume that our work consists of making machines.
In my book Thoughts During the Time of War, I have drawn attention, as far as one can in public literature in order to be understood – and indeed it has been little understood – to certain currents that are everywhere in the East and in the West.
And in many respects Slavophilism and Pan-Slavism are truly the seeds that sprouted from what many had planted from these very Masonic orders. Under the mask, under the cloak of ceremony, people were initially befuddled, so to speak, and all kinds of nonsense was paraded before them so that they might then be inclined to favor certain plans.
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Ninth Lecture 11 May 1917, Stuttgart

In my presence today, I intend to speak to you about things that can help the seeking human mind to understand the events of the present a little more deeply. These things should not be discussed in an external way, but rather, some should be pointed out that can help man, so to speak, in a spiritual expansion of understanding of our present time.
And from what they said, it was clear that they could not really object to anything in particular from their Christian doctrine, as they understood it, as they knew it as theologians - perhaps not so much as priests bound by any obligations as theologians.
But we are faced with the peculiar fact that precisely those who could undertake such an examination are absolutely not concerned about it, have not been concerned about it until now — I am ignoring those who, in our circles, have received the stimulus for it — that no one has set themselves the task of really testing the spiritual-scientific results of anthroposophy against the, fully understood, natural-scientific research of the present!
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Tenth Lecture 13 May 1917, Stuttgart

It is certainly understandable that in the soul of the present man, more than is perhaps otherwise the case, the need arises to understand time in its peculiarity.
Today I would like to try to bring before you some of the developmental laws of the human race, which, if we understand them in the right way, can help us to understand what is happening around us. That we live in the age of materialism is by no means due merely to the wickedness and depravity of the human soul at large, but to certain laws of development.
From what we have already absorbed into our souls, we can know that not only does the individual human being undergo a development in the physical world between birth and death, but that humanity itself also undergoes a development.
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Eleventh Lecture 15 May 1917, Stuttgart

The fact that history says nothing about the fact that this feeling has been lost today is only because we live in the age of materialism. No one really understands Homer, no one understands Sophocles or Aeschylus, if they do not read them with the feeling that the Greeks had a different spiritual experience than that of today's people.
The event is to be understood as a spiritual one. But an initiate like Nero, who knew this also from the mysteries, rebelled against it.
But then it is also necessary that the whole person tries to understand it perceptively and willfully. But when the whole person understands this spiritual science perceptively and willfully, then he can live accordingly in it.
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Twelfth Lecture 23 Feb 1918, Stuttgart

But genuine communication with the so-called dead is only possible under these conditions. On the other hand, if you consider that you have to completely change your inner attitude, you will understand that relationships between the so-called living and the so-called dead are always possible, but that the so-called living will show little inclination to recognize these relationships.
But this moment of falling asleep actually resonates in the following sleep, resonates in the dream. If we understand the matter correctly, we will not interpret dreams of the dead as messages from the dead. They could be, but usually are not.
But it is precisely by not recognizing one half of reality that one separates oneself from reality. This does not lead to a deeper understanding of reality. If only people would realize that what I have just said is very, very practical for the present day!
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Thirteenth Lecture 24 Feb 1918, Stuttgart

This awakening will only be possible if certain underlying facts are no longer regarded as fantasies or dreams but as realities that play a part in our times.
Do not underestimate the great social significance of what is said here. You might think that this is only important where science in the narrower sense is effective.
In our anthroposophical field, our friends had the opportunity to see how, long before there was any external compulsion to see things in the right light, the right thing was pointed out again and again. May these things be better understood in the future than we have decided to understand them in the past! And I would especially urge you to bear this in mind: much of what is coming to light in the field of our anthroposophical science is infinitely better understood than we have so far chosen to understand it.

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