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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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333. Freedom of Thought and Social Forces: Humanities, Freedom of Thought and Social Forces 19 Dec 1919, Stuttgart

Rudolf Steiner
Everything that people think in this direction is based on an understanding of inanimate nature, of the physical and chemical, which then passes into technology, into everything that underlies our life institutions, and which, for example, is also incorporated into our healing methods, that is, into those insights that are intended to help human life from a certain point of view.
They come from the fact that people actually pass each other by without understanding and that they do not comprehend one another. And why do they not understand one another? Because their knowledge, what they call knowledge, does not engage the whole person, because it remains in the head, because it is limited to the mere intellect.
Should we not continue to develop this spiritual striving instead of stopping at mere words and quoting them? Those who merely quote Goethe today do not understand him; only those who develop him further understand him. Those who merely quote Johann Gottlieb Fichte are doing something nonsensical if they do not develop him further in the spiritual life.
333. Freedom of Thought and Social Forces: The World Balance of the Intellectual and Spiritual Life of the Present Day 27 Dec 1919, Stuttgart

Rudolf Steiner
However much we partake in this oriental spiritual life, however much it has been instilled into our culture, we must always reflect on our deepest powers of understanding and knowledge if we want to understand what forces of aspiration are alive in the Orient today, and even more so if we want to grasp from which powerful spiritual sources in the Orient, centuries and millennia ago, today's oriental spiritual life has developed.
The people of the West could not even begin to understand what had been developed over the centuries out of the spirit of the Orient. They materialized it.
It took place in the Orient, but it is a fact that took place for all of humanity. But what has allowed the West to understand the mystery of Golgotha so far, out of the human soul and spiritual condition, came from oriental tradition.
333. Freedom of Thought and Social Forces: Spirit-knowledge as the Basis for Action 30 Dec 1919, Stuttgart

Rudolf Steiner
Rather, before he was even introduced to the secrets of existence, he had to undergo a transformation of his entire being. In these mysteries of the Orient, it was taken for granted that man, in the way he lives his outer life, could not penetrate to the secrets of existence.
Many people consider these to be abstractions, utopias, and yet they are the most real, because they are based on that new understanding of reality that cannot be achieved by any natural science, since it is too much affected by intellectualistic life.
Before we descend into physical corporeality and take on the covering given to us by the inheritance of father and mother, we undergo a development in a spiritual-soul world just as we do here on earth. And just as our life after death is a continuation of our life here on earth, a development of the experiences we have had here, so the life we undergo between birth and death is a continuation of the life we had before birth.
334. From the Unitary State to the Tripartite Social Organism: Paths and Goals of Anthroposophy 05 Jan 1920, Basel

Rudolf Steiner
As if we had not progressed since then, as if we did not need a new understanding of Christianity! Oh, the characteristic of infertility is everywhere, the impossibility of one's own creation.
The few spiritual researchers can communicate their spiritual insights, and common sense will understand them. But that is precisely what people today deny. They come and say: What you spiritual researchers communicate to us may be beautiful fantasies; but we dissect it logically, we do not accept it, because it does not show itself before our human understanding.
A man who is, well, a “university professor” says, where he gives me the brush-off as a philosopher and, as he says, as a theosophist: Yes, there Steiner claims that one must also become a chemist in order to understand chemical things, a physicist in order to understand physical things; one can admit that to him.
334. From the Unitary State to the Tripartite Social Organism: The Spiritual Foundations of Physical and Mental Health 06 Jan 1920, Basel

Rudolf Steiner
And here it is necessary, I might say, to touch on the foundation that must be laid in order to understand the interaction between healthy spiritual and mental life and healthy physical life in the right way.
There will then be some things that the child absorbs in the belief that the authority believes in them; but it does not yet understand them. Then the time may come, perhaps fifteen or twenty years after the child has left school, when he remembers: “You learned that then and didn't understand it. Now you have matured, now you are bringing it up from the depths of your soul. Now you understand it.” Anyone who is familiar with the soul life of a human being knows that such an understanding, mediated by later ripening, of what one has carried in one's soul for years, perhaps decades, develops forces that strengthen the human being inwardly; nothing pours such energy into the will from the innermost part of the soul as learning to understand something through one's own ripening power, something that one took in years ago on authority, on someone's saying.
334. From the Unitary State to the Tripartite Social Organism: Moral and Religious Forces in the Sense of Spiritual Science 07 Jan 1920, Basel

Rudolf Steiner
We human beings live, I would say, as Faust goes through life, saying, “I have only run through the world.” We run through the world. Of course, we undergo a development between birth and death, from month to month, from year to year, from decade to decade; but we undergo this development by, as it were, abandoning ourselves to external objectivity.
What happened in Palestine as the event of Golgotha was understood with the ideas that in a certain way came from ancient times, from primitive human attitudes. For centuries, those who were able to do so were honest and sincere in their understanding of the event of Golgotha through such ideas.
The question today is whether real religious understanding is to be found in those who speak as they do or in those who try to speak as I have spoken to you today.
334. From the Unitary State to the Tripartite Social Organism: Anti-spirit and Spirit in the Present and for the Future 17 Mar 1920, Zürich

Rudolf Steiner
During the war, he was assigned to the English Treasury and was in a position to form a basis for such a judgment from the underlying facts that presented themselves to him there. On the other hand, he was among the envoys, among the collaborators of the Versailles Peace Treaty itself.
And the four to five years of horror that we have behind us have shown the world domination of the phrase at its peak. Today we live under the world domination of the phrase. What is the remedy for this world domination of the phrase? Only the acquisition of a new spiritual content, a conscious spiritual content.
Therefore, in the age of natural science, the dependence of spiritual life on political and economic powers has developed, and under this influence the world domination of phrase has developed. This is the first link in the chain of present-day organizations that are working towards destruction: the world domination of phrase, of empty talk.
334. From the Unitary State to the Tripartite Social Organism: Spiritual Forces in Education and in National Life 18 Mar 1920, Zürich

Rudolf Steiner
But that is only one element. The other element is that, under the influence of this way of thinking, as it has emerged in the scientific world view, man has also come to contrast volition-barren thinking with thought-barren willing.
In the already mentioned “Waldorf School”, which was established in Stuttgart under the aegis of our friend, Mr. Molt, an attempt has been made to found education as an art on a spiritual-scientific basis.
For materialism has its domain, and it must be clearly understood that if man wishes to save the soul-spiritual, he must also go beyond the thinking of which he is so proud today.
334. From the Unitary State to the Tripartite Social Organism: Threefolding and the Present World Situation 19 Mar 1920, Zürich

Rudolf Steiner
This currently prevailing materialistic-scientific worldview cannot actually lead to a real understanding of the historical development of humanity, because what we call “history” today is basically more or less a fable convenante.
Before, the child imitated; now it becomes one who needs to come under a certain authority and to follow the judgments of people. Again, at puberty, a transformation of the soul life clearly begins.
Of course, the circumstances of the time make many things understandable, but something greater, something more significant is the historical, the purely human necessity.
334. From the Unitary State to the Tripartite Social Organism: Address to the Swiss Citizens 18 Apr 1920, Dornach

Rudolf Steiner
Dear attendees, at your request I would like to discuss with you today some aspects of the social impulse, which wants to face the world under the name of the threefold social organism. And it may be carried out into the world from here, for the very reason that spiritual science is to be practised here and actually already today the widest circles could understand that a recovery of the general world conditions can only come about through a deepening of the spirit.
These thirteen official languages could not be brought under one roof; one could not bring them under one roof under the impression, because the people with the different languages had the most diverse intellectual interests in Austria.
But threefolding is being trampled underfoot everywhere. If only one percent of people would understand things to a certain degree, things would get better.

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