Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Search results 521 through 530 of 6552

˂ 1 ... 51 52 53 54 55 ... 656 ˃
148. The Fifth Gospel III: Hamburg Lecture 16 Nov 1913, Hamburg

It was an inspiration, as it was once revealed to the prophets in the great, ancient times. It happened that he had to suffer pain under the impression of these inner realizations. It had become deeply ingrained in his soul: the old truths were given to the Hebrew people at a time when their bodies were such that they could understand them.
People need something that those who want to understand will really understand. It will only be necessary to acknowledge that, as in the past, revelations can only come from the spirit.
Therefore, the teaching could only penetrate minds as a matter of faith. It was the worst time for understanding, which people were furthest from. But the effects of Christ do not depend on what people can understand.
148. The Fifth Gospel III: Third Berlin Lecture 18 Nov 1913, Berlin

Poor, poor humanity – it went through his soul – if the voices of the old pagan prophets were to sound to you, you would no longer understand them. If the voices of the old Jewish prophets were to sound to you, you would no longer understand them.
So he knew that now there were no longer any ears to understand what once sounded for Judaism in the voices of the prophets, but also for the other, which once sounded for ancient paganism, now there were no longer any ears to understand it.
Then he also told of his fellowship with the Essenes, especially what would have been difficult for him to understand if his mother had not already shown him such an understanding of mind: that he once saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing from the gates when he left an Essene meeting.
148. The Fifth Gospel III: First Stuttgart Lecture 22 Nov 1913, Stuttgart

If the great Bath Kol were to speak to any human being now, there would be no one to understand the voice from the spiritual world. Humanity has changed from the time of the old prophets. Even if those great, those glorious revelations of primeval times were to resound today, the ears to understand them would be missing.
For it is only by observing these facts that one can fully appreciate the course of human development, how an ancient wisdom was also present in the Jewish people and how impossible it was to understand this ancient wisdom at the time when it only, one might say, tentatively in a single soul between the ages of twelve and eighteen, but only caused this soul agony because no one could have understood how this Bath-Kol had expressed herself, how this revelation was only there for this soul to suffer endlessly.
The strange thing was that everyone around him seemed to understand him less and less. Only his stepmother or foster mother had gradually developed a certain understanding of the tremendous — albeit incomplete — emotional and loving process taking place in this soul.
148. The Fifth Gospel III: Second Stuttgart Lecture 23 Nov 1913, Stuttgart

The conversation between Jesus and his mother proves to be of great significance for the real understanding of the mystery of Golgotha from the point of view of spiritual scientific research. The mother understood Jesus better and better.
He spoke of the great teachings of Bath-Kol. He spoke of how no one had been able to understand him, how he could not speak of what was pushing him to tell someone. He told his mother that even if the old teachings had been there, the people to understand them would have been lacking.
But even today, humanity is not particularly far in its understanding of the Christ impulse. The effectiveness of Christ did not initially depend on the understanding that was shown to him.
148. The Fifth Gospel III: First Munich Lecture 08 Dec 1913, Munich

Many scriptures were applied to him. The scriptures were not understood, and he was also understood little with the mind; but with the heart, one felt all the more deeply his love, the extraordinary of his existence and his effect.
Jesus of Nazareth was not inclined to perform the pagan cult, as is understandable; but when he looked at the people with his gaze, which had now been heightened to a kind of clairvoyance, born of pain and love, he already understood something of the essence of the decline of paganism.
Now something strange happened: little by little, the love and understanding of the stepmother or foster mother for him grew more and more, while his brothers and sisters did not understand him.
148. The Fifth Gospel III: Second Munich Lecture 10 Dec 1913, Munich

Thus spoke Lucifer to Christ Jesus, in whom, to be sure, the divine essence of the Christ was now present, who could understand Lucifer, but in order to understand, had to make use of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, as it had developed through the Zarathustra ego, which had permeated the astral body of Jesus, so that he could use it as a tool.
To understand this mystery of Golgotha better and better will be the task of progressive spiritual development.
If one does not know what to consider the main thing, and believes that one is doing real theology today by adhering to words in this way, adhering to what is true, that the sayings have already “been there,” it is implied that we are in a deep crisis with regard to the understanding of Christianity, from which one can already understand that a real understanding of Christ can only come into the world when today's theology, which has the public office of watching over the understanding of Christ, first dies.
149. Christ and the Spiritual World: The Search for the Holy Grail: Lecture I 28 Dec 1913, Leipzig
Translated by Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond

But one has also had the experience of being separated by three worlds from understanding the root-causes of that Graeco-Roman world. And then, perhaps, one turns to the men of that time who tried in their own way to understand the change.
Yet when we look at this with the aid of what Anthroposophy should give us today, and are yet powerless to understand what the star should signify, separated as we are from it by three worlds—and if we ask the Gnostics: Have you understood what happened at that time in the historical evolution of humanity?
The more you feel that what I have told you is not an explanation; the more you feel that I have put before you contradiction after contradiction and have shown you only one occult experience, the perception of the star, the better will you have understood me for today. I would wish you to see clearly that at the beginning of our era there appeared in the world something which influenced human understanding and was yet far, far from being understood; I would like you to feel that the period at the beginning of our era was a great riddle.
149. Christ and the Spiritual World: The Search for the Holy Grail: Lecture II 29 Dec 1913, Leipzig
Translated by Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond

In this fourth epoch, however, men lack the possibility of finding their way to a real understanding of what is happening. Indeed a strange paradox, is it not? For the fact that confronts us is actually this: the Christ appeared on Earth in an epoch that was least adapted to understanding Him.
The Christ was born in the very epoch that was least adapted to understanding Him. And if in the evolution of humanity the essential thing had been for Christ to work on the understanding of human souls on Earth, then—one must say it—this working would have been in a sad way.
One can understand Paul quite well, if one wants to understand him only from the standpoint of ordinary rationalism.
149. Christ and the Spiritual World: The Search for the Holy Grail: Lecture III 30 Dec 1913, Leipzig
Translated by Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond

We will simply look up to the Christ Being as a high spiritual Being. But for understanding human evolution something else is necessary, and we have seen how necessary it is, for in relation to a certain fact the concepts and ideas which in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch aspired to understand the Being of Christ were powerless to do so.
2 Of one of these we need not speak further here, for he can be readily understood from previous anthroposophical explanations. I mean the Jesus in whom lived the Ego of Zarathustra.
And it was necessary that these forces, also, should be modified. If they had remained under the sway of Lucifer and Ahriman, the vital organs would have become merely organs of greed or organs of loathing.
149. Christ and the Spiritual World: The Search for the Holy Grail: Lecture V 31 Dec 1913, Leipzig
Translated by Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond

And so I shall want to appeal to your souls to understand by these words something far more spiritual than anything they can signify for the and scholarship of the present time.
The profound difference between the Greek and the Hebrew conceptions of the world will never be understood unless it is recognised that the Greek conception belongs to Meteorology, and the Hebrew conception to Geology.
4 That can be said as well of John as of Elijah. Or even better of Elijah, as will be understood by those who remember my saying that Elijah remained in spiritual heights and worked through a representative, so that he himself never went about on Earth.

Results 521 through 530 of 6552

˂ 1 ... 51 52 53 54 55 ... 656 ˃