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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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230. Man as Symphony of the Creative Word: Lecture XII 11 Nov 1923, Dornach
Translated by Judith Compton-Burnett

There exists only one true source of the moral-spiritual in mankind, and this is what we may call human understanding, mutual human understanding, and, based upon this human understanding, human love. Wheresoever we may look for the arising of moral-spiritual impulses in mankind, in so far as these play a role in social life, it will invariably prove to be the case that, whenever such impulses spring forth with elemental power, they arise from human understanding based upon human love.
And fundamentally speaking, in so far as he is a spiritual being, man only lives with other men to the degree that he develops human understanding and human love. Here one can put a deeply significant question, a question which is indeed not always voiced, but which, in regard to what has just been said, must be on the tip of every tongue: If human understanding and human love are the real impulses upon which communal life depends, how does it come about that the very reverse of human understanding and human love appears in our social order?
Whence come human hatred and lack of human understanding? Now, if we are unable to look for this lack of human understanding, this human hatred, in the sphere of the spiritual, of the soul, it follows that we must look for them in the sphere of the physical.
231. Supersensible Man: Lecture I 13 Nov 1923, The Hague
Translated by Mary Adams

My dear Friends, The theme proposed for our lectures is: Supersensible Man, as he can be perceived and understood out of Anthroposophical wisdom. We shall try to give expression to this knowledge and understanding of man from many different sides; and as the number of lectures has unavoidably to be small, I will plunge at once into the heart of the subject.
When, therefore, we follow the direction of the skeleton from behind forwards, we must pass from Moon right through to Saturn if we are to understand the bony structure of the animal. We cannot relate the form of an animal to the ether form of the planets; we must go to the movements of the planets if we are to understand it.
Earthly man—the being who comes into existence at birth and passes away at death—can be understood in the light of Anthropology. Supersensible man, who merely permeates himself with earthly substances in order to manifest in the outer world, can only be understood in the light of Anthroposophy.
231. Supersensible Man: Lecture II 14 Nov 1923, The Hague
Translated by Mary Adams

The souls who have been learning to know one another, who have been continually gazing upon one another, begin now, in a way that belongs to the life after death, to have understanding the one for the other. They begin to understand spiritually the moral-spiritual physiognomies.
Then begins the period which I described as that of the growth of mutual understanding. The one begins to understand the other; he gazes deeply upon him and looks into his inner nature, knowing the while that the sure working of destiny will link the future to the past. Then the great process of transformation begins, where the one is able to work upon the other out of a profound knowledge and understanding, and the plastic moulding of the spirit is taken up and changed to music and to speech. And here we come to something more than understanding; the one human being is able to speak to the other his own warmth-filled, creative word.
231. Supersensible Man: Lecture III 17 Nov 1923, The Hague
Translated by Mary Adams

So, too, when people hear about Ahrimanic beings, they cannot understand why these beings have not long ago given up all hope of gaining the victory over the Earth Spirits.
If a man was a rank materialist in earthly life, he has no understanding at all of the Beings in the Venus sphere. For here the forces of cosmic love pour down upon him.
In the lecture this evening I will speak of further experiences undergone by the human being in his existence between death and a new birth.
231. Supersensible Man: Lecture IV 17 Nov 1923, The Hague
Translated by Mary Adams

We are taught in physics that the processes we have in the physical world—processes that are subject to the force of gravity—undergo a change, when we go out into space. Physical science tells us the exact proportion in which the force of gravity decreases.
In community with the Beings of the Hierarchies the human being builds the spirit-germ of his future head. But, to begin with, this head is built for understanding the Cosmos—not the Earth! It learns first to understand Cosmic Speech, Cosmic Thoughts.
Having, therefore, learned to understand, in some of its aspects, the spirit nature of man, his super-sensible being, we will return tomorrow to the study of the connection between super-sensible man and physical man.
231. Supersensible Man: Lecture V 18 Nov 1923, The Hague
Translated by Mary Adams

The more we have learned to rejoice in the physical world, the more deeply we have entered into all the joys which the sense-world has to bestow, the greater the measure of understanding we shall bring to the world of the Angels, who are waiting to tell us of these mysteries which here on Earth we do not yet understand and shall only learn to understand when we have passed over into the superphysical world.
When the soul is deepened by this knowledge, then an understanding of still other mysteries can be added. This further understanding can also be reached on quite another path.
This, my dear friends, is what I wanted to say to you about the super-sensible nature of man, anthroposophically perceived and understood.
231. Anthroposophy as a Demand of the Times 15 Nov 1923, The Hague
Translated by Luise Boeddinghaus

Then one renounces insight into the most precious, the most valuable in the human being himself. But thereby one also undermines one's real inward self-confidence. Whereby does man feel himself to be part of the natural world which today has been so successfully explored?
This different way is actually interesting, and I must start from this different, often much desired way of knowledge of the soul, so that we can understand one another about the knowledge of soul which I actually mean. But I mention beforehand that I only start from this other knowledge of soul in order to explain what I want to bring, but that I don't want to attribute a special value to it.
And it is a fact that man has to pay for his longing for immortality, that it becomes a mere belief if he wants to forgo knowledge of not-yet-being-born, because he will only understand eternity when he recognises both sides of eternity, the not-yet-being-born as well as the immortality of his being in unity.
231. Spiritual Knowledge: A Way of Life 16 Nov 1923, The Hague
Translated by Mary Adams

The road that leads to a knowledge and understanding of the spiritual world differs in many respects from the method of knowledge that meets with general acceptance to-day.
Normally, man takes nourishment, and this, when it has undergone change inside him, enables him to replace what he has used up in his body; and in this metamorphosis of the means of nourishment man has a feeling of well-being.
We discover that the whole being and existence of man depends on his coming together with the world in this way. Similarly, too, we learn to understand how the lack or neglect of such truths is like having to live in the world without the organs for receiving nourishment, driven to feed on our own body.
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: On Man’s Life Of Soul 23 Nov 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

If you read that book as it is meant to be read you will understand what it means to live in thoughts. The Philosophy of Freedom is based upon experience of reality; but at the same time it was entirely the product of thinking.
You feel that everything comes inwards, not from below, as it were from the centre of the Earth upwards but from the cosmic expanse, the Universe. And you feel that to understand Man, this sense that something is streaming in from the cosmic expanse must be present. This applies even to a true understanding of the human form.
Our temperament in old age is often a result of what we have undergone in life and has become memory in the inner life of soul. What enters into a man inwardly in this way, may again—though this is more difficult—become reality.
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: The Effect Of The Soul Upon Physical Man 24 Nov 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

Here we come to two considerations: firstly, the experiences which man as a being of soul-and-spirit has undergone in pre-earthly existence. We will leave this for later considerations. Secondly, there is something that is connected with his physical, bodily constitution which he, as an individual, carries over into that bodily constitution.
Hence it became necessary for the primeval Teachers of mankind to leave the Earth where such regulation would not have been possible. It cannot be undertaken during a man’s earthly life, and when that life is over he is obviously not on the Earth. The primeval Teachers were therefore obliged to withdraw from the Earth and continue their existence on the Moon.
If this is actually experienced, the passage in the Mystery Plays about beings who breathe light will be better understood. So we find that Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces are also part and parcel of the phenomena of external Nature.

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