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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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218. Planetary Spheres and Their Influence on Mans Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds: Christ and the Metamorphoses of Karma 19 Nov 1922, London
Translated by George Adams, Mary Adams

Rudolf Steiner
For we can only build the physical body for our future life under the ceaseless influence of this speaking of the Stars. So then we work our way through the spiritual realm.
Now this entails a change not only for the Earth; it involves changes also for the life man undergoes between death and a new birth. Since ancient times of earthly evolution it has been as I today described it.
Only by doing so shall we be helping mankind's future. In the true sense we must understand the word of Christ: “My Kingdom is not of this world”. How then shall we understand it? Did He not after all come down to Earth?
Planetary Spheres and Their Influence on Mans Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds: Introduction
Translated by George Adams, Mary Adams

George Adams
During the years of war, Rudolf Steiner had put forward his epoch-making conception of Threefold Man and of the Threefold Social Order, on which was based the attempt, in the years 1913–21, to give shape to the social events of the time out of a deeper spiritual understanding. It was in the midst of this attempt that many practical activities, notably educational and medical, evolved under Dr.
Steiner gave the course of nine lectures since published under the title The Spiritual Ground of Education and three further lectures on the social question.
108. The Poetry and Meaning of Fairy Tales: The Interpretation of Fairy Tales 26 Dec 1908, Berlin
Translated by Ruth Pusch

Rudolf Steiner
The first thing we must do in order to understand the meaning of genuine fairy tales and myths is to stop regarding them as fantasy derived from folk imagination; they are never that.
His wife was placed on the little horse—and this is the point that proves to anyone who understands these things the occult origin of fairy tales—and the king's son asked, “How fast shall we travel through the air?”
Fairy tales stand in relation to the great popular myths of the gods in the following manner: The myths can be understood when we realize the huge comprehensive circumstances of the cosmos underlying them, and fairy tales can be understood when we realize that the different happenings and pictures are nothing but the repetition of astral events.
62. The Poetry and Meaning of Fairy Tales: The Poetry and Meaning of Fairy Tales 06 Feb 1913, Berlin
Translated by Ruth Pusch

Rudolf Steiner
] that in the course of evolution on earth, human soul life has undergone a complete change. When we look far, far back into the past of humankind, we find the soul of ancient man having totally different experiences from those today.
In those earlier times the human soul felt its connection to spiritual existence and felt more or less consciously the inner battles it had to undergo, even without understanding them. The soul formed these into pictures and images which had only a distant resemblance to what was happening in its depths.
The battle the soul has to undergo is exactly what corresponds—though this cannot be understood perhaps with the intellect—to the various descriptions of people having to fight giants.
193. The Problems of Our Time: Lecture I 12 Sep 1919, Berlin
Translator Unknown

Rudolf Steiner
New soul-qualities and attitudes arose in humanity and we can really only understand what has entered its evolution if we turn our spiritual vision to the forces active within it and see, for instance, their effects in the revolution which occurred in the middle of the fifteenth century.
Among the many activities belonging to the beings of these three Hierarchies is this: to work together upon the pattern, or picture, which underlies the physical organization of earthly man. We enter physical existence, at birth and grow therein: the pattern or image of humanity is stamped upon us.
That does concern the world, urgently. “So difficult to understand,” people comment on all this! They must take the trouble to understand it, however, otherwise they will more and more fall out of the general evolution of the time—a momentous alternative, indeed!
193. The Problems of Our Time: Lecture II 13 Sep 1919, Berlin
Translator Unknown

Rudolf Steiner
After much stumbling he finally broke down, and, having no more to say, gathered up the threads with "I must there­fore claim to have proved that old age no longer understands its own youth," and went out. I replied that I quite saw we had not understood him, for the simple reason that his speech and behaviour had been those of an old man; he had in fact enunciated as principles, like an ancient grey-beard, the last word in abstractions.
Say to a man today: "to partake of immortality needs an activity of soul, that thou thyself mayst carry thy soul wide awake through the gates of death"; he will not understand. He has been made wholly un­accustomed to direct his understanding to such a question. Instead of this he is told: "You need only believe in Christ and in what the State does."
to the effect that a classical education should not be undervalued, seeing that it had contributed to the greatness of the German people, so gloriously displayed in the latter days.
193. The Problems of Our Time: Lecture III 14 Sep 1919, Berlin
Translator Unknown

Rudolf Steiner
These differences lie in a part of the soul more on the surface than that which to-day, out of the depths of Spiritual Science, must lead to a new understanding of Christ Jesus. Nor will understanding be complete, really satisfying the needs of man's soul to-day, unless it can bridge the differences among men imposed on humanity by the various creeds.
Otherwise we do not understand things deeply enough. All that is connected , with the Threefold Commonwealth must be proclaimed in the external world.
These forces continue their effect—a fact which is very hard for men of to-day to understand. How do they work? They work in all that man develops as spiritual life in this, world.
333. The Problems of Our Time: The Main Features of the Social Question and the Threefold Nature of the Social Organism 15 Sep 1919, Berlin
Translator Unknown

Rudolf Steiner
But to be able to teach and educate him means learning first to understand him. As it fell to me to give the preliminary course to the teachers working at the school, there came under my notice certain things which are nowadays taken as a matter of course.
It would be a terrible mistake to push to extremes the State control which has hitherto been under the direction of the ruling classes, and extend "Corporations" over the whole life of the State, using the framework of the State for the purpose, a procedure which could but undermine all connection between such a planned economy and the economic forces outside it.
It is easy enough to see clearly if we think impartially. We have undertaken to found a school for Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum, at Dornach, near Basel, in Switzerland.
143. Psychoanalysis in the Light of Anthroposophy: Reflections in the Mirror of Consciousness, Superconsciousness and Subconsciousness 25 Feb 1912, Munich
Translated by Mary Laird-Brown

Rudolf Steiner
Through this soul experiment a real way is opened to experience within himself, in a certain manner, his own Karma. You may say: “Yes, but I do not understand exactly what you have said.” If you say that you do not fail to understand what you imagine, but you lack understanding for something which even a child can grasp, but about which you simply have not thought. It is impossible for anyone who has not carried out the experiment to understand these things. Only he who has done this can understand. These things are to be taken only as the description of an experiment that can be made and experienced by anyone.
It is quite in order that no one grasps this who has not yet made the experiment; it is not however a question of understanding in the ordinary sense, but an acceptance of information regarding something that our soul may undertake.
143. Psychoanalysis in the Light of Anthroposophy: Hidden Soul Powers 27 Feb 1912, Munich
Translated by Mary Laird-Brown

Rudolf Steiner
The relation of this ordinary consciousness to the underlying causes of its activities has already been described in one aspect by this phrase: the impotence of ordinary consciousness.
It has been recently reported that many do not understand how to distinguish a genuine vision or imagination [This term as used by Rudolf Steiner, denotes a super-sensible faculty (Tr.)] belonging to something objective from that which appears in space but is the creation of our own subjective nature.
When he has this image before himself he will be able by its means to exert an attractive force upon the being which we may call the group-soul of the rose and which underlies its existence. He will be looking into the elemental world, seeing the rose's group-soul in so far as it dwells there.

Results 5811 through 5820 of 6456

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