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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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124. The Ego: The Temple Language 12 Dec 1910, Munich
Translator Unknown

Rudolf Steiner
Honest people must really say to themselves, if the Mark Gospel begins thus in this Weizsacker: I do not understand a single word of it all. Whoever will understand it must really resolve to do something. Whoever goes sincerely to work, cannot understand anything when it is said: “Behold, I send my messenger before thee, who shall prepare the way for thee; listen how it calls in the wilderness; prepare the way of the lord; make straight his paths.” For either a triviality is uttered, or something is said which one cannot understand. One must first bring together those ideas which make it possible to understand such an utterance as that of Isaiah's here.
For especially when one will preserve the mighty style of old, one may not as it were attempt to remain as much as possible with the old words. One cannot do it, one understands them no more, but one must attempt to transform the ancient words into a direct understanding of the present.
117. The Universal Human: Individuality and the Group-Soul 04 Dec 1909, Munich
Translated by Gilbert Church, Sabine H. Seiler

Rudolf Steiner
The I can be understood least of all through science with its materialistic methods and way of thinking. How can we understand the I?
When we keep in mind the ideas we can gather from the cosmos, we understand that the I, as the real master, works on the other members. Then we gradually come to understand what we mean by the word “I.”
What is in our soul while we speak can therefore be understood only by those soul faculties that are bound to the physical brain as their instrument. As a result, when the soul is disembodied, it understands nothing of all that has been said with these words.
117. The Universal Human: The God Within and the God of Outer Revelation 07 Dec 1909, Munich
Translated by Gilbert Church, Sabine H. Seiler

Rudolf Steiner
The content of the gospels was then taught to other people in a way they could understand. Now we have to ask if those few people who read the gospels, the spiritual leaders, were really such tremendous fools that they did not realize what every child can see these days, namely, that the gospels contradict each other.
However, they saw they had to understand how these four different points of view originated. Then they could develop an idea of what the individual can derive from the four Gospels.
There was yet something else connected with this contribution of the ancient Hebrew people, and we will understand what it was when we consider people in other civilizations who had dim clairvoyance. We can ask how they received what was most important to them, what they revered most in all the world.
124. The Universal Human: The Lord of the Soul 12 Dec 1910, Munich
Translated by Gilbert Church, Sabine H. Seiler

Rudolf Steiner
Honest people must really admit that if Weizsäcker begins the Gospel of Saint Mark like this, they do not understand a single word of it; those who claim to understand this are fooling themselves. People who work honestly will not be able to understand the lines, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” For they express either a triviality or something that cannot be understood. The concepts that make it possible to understand what Isaiah says here must first be acquired.
That can't be done; the old words are no longer understood. Instead, we must try to translate the ancient wording into the immediate understanding of our time.
165. The Universal Human: The Universal Human: The Unification of Humanity Through the Christ Impulse 09 Jan 1916, Bern
Translated by Gilbert Church, Sabine H. Seiler

Rudolf Steiner
Today we will start from a particular point that can only be reached through spiritual science. In spiritual science we must first understand things; then, when we have understood them, we can find them confirmed in reality. Some of the most important things in spiritual science must first be understood before they can be seen.
To accept such truths, people need to take in the ideas of spiritual science. Without them one cannot understand these things at all—that is, one cannot understand the evolution of humanity if one has not taken in these concepts.
When you feel you belong to such a spiritual stream, and feel at home in it, because you see that it is necessary for human evolution, then you have the right understanding of our spiritual movement—you belong to it in such a way that you rightly understand the greatest of its goals based on your increasing understanding of the contrast between Christ and Lucifer-Ahriman.
202. Course for Young Doctors: Soul and Spirit in the Human Physical Constitution 17 Dec 1920, Dornach
Translated by Gerald Karnow

Rudolf Steiner
Similarly, a destructive, partially destructive, process takes place whenever we breathe out. Our airy organism undergoes a certain change with every indrawn breath; it is not exactly newly born, but it undergoes a change, both when we breathe in and when we breathe out. When we breathe out, the airy organism does not, of course, die; it merely undergoes a change; but there is constant interaction between the airy organism within us and the air outside.
An impulse of will proceeding from the Ego works upon the warmth organism. Under present earthly conditions it is not possible for what I shall now describe to you to be there as a concrete reality.
202. Course for Young Doctors: The Moral as the Source of World-Creative Power 18 Dec 1920, Dornach
Translated by Gerald Karnow

Rudolf Steiner
As has been said so often, the prevailing world view—which relies entirely upon natural science for knowledge of the outer physical world—can only resort to earlier religious beliefs when it is a matter of any comprehensive understanding of the life of soul. In modern psychology there really is no longer any such understanding—this world view is unable to build a bridge.
Nothing of this can be grasped if we study only the solid component of man's constitution. To understand it we must pass from the solid organism through the fluid and airy organisms to the warmth organism. Our connection with the universe can be understood only if the physical is traced upwards to that rarefied state wherein the soul can be directly active in the rarefied physical element, as for example in warmth.
202. Course for Young Doctors: The Path to Freedom and Love and Their Significance in World Happenings 19 Dec 1920, Dornach
Translated by Gerald Karnow

Rudolf Steiner
Imagine that you are living for a time purely in reflection as usually understood, that you are engaging in no kind of outward activity at all, but are wholly engrossed in thought.
Just think how abstract modern thinking has become when it uses abstract words for something which, in its reality, is not understood! Men such as Kant had a dim inkling that we bring mathematics with us from our existence before birth, and therefore they called the findings of mathematics ‘a priori’.
That is how the past, dying away into semblance, is kindled again to become reality of the future. Let us understand this rightly. What happens when we rise to pure thinking, to thinking that is irradiated by will?
316. Course for Young Doctors: Christmas Course I 02 Jan 1924, Dornach
Translated by Gerald Karnow

Rudolf Steiner
Only by remembering this principle will you begin to understand the possibility of illness; otherwise you will not understand. You will have to say to yourselves: Everything that goes on in the human organism is a process of nature.
This is only one indication of how necessary it is not only to understand the nature of the organs with definite contours but also the nature of the fluids, the fluid process outside in the cosmos as well as within the human organism.
We shall try to understand health and disease in this way during the lectures, my dear friends, and we shall consider, too, what I will call the moral side of medical studies and medical science.
316. Course for Young Doctors: Christmas Course II 03 Jan 1924, Dornach
Translated by Gerald Karnow

Rudolf Steiner
You realize now, surely, that illness is simply not to be understood from the external, physical organism. The process that constitutes illness lies entirely in the super-sensible.
You will understand them when you know that the liver is an organ within the human being which is most foreign to him.
All these things are exceedingly important for an understanding of the nature of man. But although they are investigated and known, here and there, they remain fruitless for the modern world of science as long as there is no basis for understanding how man is membered into the world around him.

Results 5881 through 5890 of 6456

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