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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 5161 through 5170 of 6552

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161. The Problem of Death: Lecture III 07 Feb 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

I say it is an understandable tendency to picture this kingdom on the other side of death somewhat as a kind of continuation of the kingdom here.
Goethe, too, from a rich, full life, wrestled through to a beautiful saying, the deep meaning of which one must fathom, though it cannot be understood as people imagine, using it in every situation of life. To understand it thus is—I should like to use the paradoxical term—far too simple, for to understand it thus is possible for every child. But as it must be understood, as Goethe understood it upon the foundation of a rich, and over rich life-experience—I refer to the words, “Know thyself and live in peace with the world”—is not possible to every child.
162. Artistic and Existential Questions in the Light of Spiritual Science: Second Lecture 24 May 1915, Dornach

But what actually happens between the world and consciousness? As a spiritual scientist, one must understand what happens there. Certainly, it is only images that are created by the physical body. The physical body is created out of the universe.
If you do not consider this, you will never understand that, alongside the sentence “Out of nothing, nothing comes into being,” the other sentence is also fully correct: “In the deepest sense, existence is always generated out of nothing.”
Unfortunately, however, none of the philosophers at the time understood what was actually meant philosophically. Even the chairman of the congress, the famous philosopher Paul Deußen, is one of them.
162. Artistic and Existential Questions in the Light of Spiritual Science: Third Lecture 29 May 1915, Dornach

It follows that the spiritual researcher has to understand that there is no memory for the results of spiritual research. The experiences of the spiritual researcher cannot be memorized.
Suppose it took much longer for the Earth's culture to develop, would this opening monologue of “Faust” have been written exactly the same way in 1840 as it was in 1772, exactly the same way? All these things are part of the real understanding of “Faust.” This great, gigantic idea cannot be understood if you do not grasp it in its details.
But it is obvious that freedom can only be understood by people who gradually develop the will to study spiritual science. Freedom cannot be understood by other people, because other people will always confuse certain peculiarities of external institutions with freedom, whereas freedom can only ever exist in the state that a person can acquire at any given moment.
162. Artistic and Existential Questions in the Light of Spiritual Science: Sixth Lecture 17 Jul 1915, Dornach

But that is perfectly sufficient, because otherwise it would only become a little too complicated. Such laws of transformation underlie all language development; regulated down to the last detail, they underlie all language development; only that in the actual development, the most diverse developmental impulses cross each other.
They did remain as they were, but not just as they were. They also underwent very extensive and significant changes: they rearranged the words, they did not leave the words as they were.
But the power that formed it will pass over to the power of the human soul at a higher level and help people to understand the nature of death in the sense of our spiritual science. In order that the power to understand the nature of death in the sense of our spiritual science may arise in our soul, the word had to be born in Greek, then had to undergo development into a youth in Gothic, in English 'death', had to undergo development in German to the later age: 'Tod', and will come to the point where it will die.
162. Whitsuntide in the Course of the Year 23 May 1915, Dornach
Translated by Violet E. Watkin

Read these words at the beginning of Part II in Goethe's “Faust” with understanding, The spirits must dive down, They can emerge only when the budding and sprouting life withdraws.
You know that we try as far as possible to keep away those who are generally the least cultured of those attending our lectures, those who write for the newspapers. As a rule they understand the minimum of what is spoken about, But sometimes it happens that these very clever people of the present day cannot be kept away.
Art has to be an interpretation of the mysterious laws of nature. Today there is no longer any understanding for that. Hence one sees that in all spheres there is a gradual falling away from the real inner life of truth, in what appears as knowledge on the one hand, and on the other as art.
162. Intervals of the Life on Earth 30 May 1915, Dornach
Translated by David MacGregor

What we think, what we feel, in short the whole content of our life, depends on the time into which we are born. Now you will readily understand that what thus surrounds us when we are born into physical existence is dependent on preceding causes, on what took place previously.
He also has no interest in following their gradual erosion, but returns very soon in order to make amends, in order now really to live with the conditions with which he must live in order to learn to understand their gradual destruction. Someone who has not lived with earthly conditions does not understand their destruction and disintegration.
In this way I have tried to toss a thought into the philosophical hustle and bustle and it will be interesting to see whether it will be understood or whether even such a very plausible thought will be met again and again with the foolish rejoinder: ‘Yes, but Kant has already proved that cognition cannot reach things.’
162. Heaven and Earth will pass away but my words will not pass away 03 Jun 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

But this mineral Jupiter will take shape under any circumstances. That is definitely provided for, and is a certainty, in the further evolution of the Cosmos.
In one of my last lectures I mentioned something relative to the idea—which must be realised if we are to complete our Bau—of the Group to be erected in the east—with the representative of humanity in the centre—(you may call him the Christ, if you wish), with Lucifer above, falling with broken wings, Ahriman below in a cave, crouching down under his feeling of defeat. That is the idea. What its completion will be like, will be seen only when we have the group erected.
One would hardly believe how one-sided words, and everything else, are used today. We talk, without any sort of attempt to understand the other—to “think ourselves into his mind”, as it were. All this must vanish if the Spiritual impulses are really to take a place of honor in our Souls.
162. The Lost Union of Speaking and Thinking 18 Jul 1915, Dornach
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

The reason why a man does not understand a foreign language today is because the ideas do not lie in the words themselves; the words have become divorced from the ideas.
The difference in the languages was brought very clearly into evidence because each of the representatives spoke in his own tongue—with the inevitable consequence that the majority of them were not understood. Nevertheless, with the idea of promoting some measure of mutual understanding, the principle was followed of each representative giving at least a short address in his own language.
If we are to understand these, we must turn our minds away from Earth-evolution; for the Luciferic Ahrimanic element became what it is as a result of the Moon-evolution.
162. The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: Tree of Life I 24 Jul 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

We see how endeavour was made in every possible way to draw ideas from the whole range of world conception in order to understand what hid behind this Mystery of Golgotha. And one can say, if one observes closely: it was a despairing struggle towards an understanding, a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.
Out of the civilisation based on knowledge which was beginning to dry up and wither ascends this Mystery of Golgotha: but it is to be understood by those who, through their whole nature and being, have not been able to attain to the fine crystallisation of the Latin knowledge.
One cannot understand Europe if one does not bear this connection in mind; one can, however, understand Europe in all details if one grasps European life as a continuous process.
162. The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: Tree of Life II 25 Jul 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

We spend this life from going to sleep to awaking—it is a fact that can shatter one—in, one might say, the arms of Lucifer. And one can understand the deep mystery that underlies this whole world of facts when we see: in the same moment that man was punished by being forbidden to eat of the Tree of Life, Lucifer was condemned to eat of the Tree of Life perpetually.
But in the moment of waking, something comes in which we must unfathom if we would understand the necessary development of life that should come today through the world-concept of Spiritual Science.
As earthly man, in the ego, we experience the knowledge that is our ordinary human knowledge, all in fact which we can acquire about the world under the circumstances of our earthly existence. But the knowledge that we obtain like this has precisely the peculiarity of becoming obscured in our ego.

Results 5161 through 5170 of 6552

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