Thoughts are realities

To penetrate into the spiritual world, a thinking in accordance with truth is necessary. This requires  a clear recognition of how things stand. Thoughts are real entities, and untrue thoughts are evil, obstructing, destructive entities. […]

The ideal, which the man of today should set before his soul, is to be true; for thoughts are realities, and true thoughts are beneficial realities. Untrue thoughts — however well they may be enwrapped with the cloak of leniency as regards their own nature, — untrue thoughts received into man’s inner being, are realities which retard the world and humanity.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 181 – Earthly Death and Cosmic Life: Lecture 4: The Cosmic Thoughts and our Dead – Berlin, 5th March, 1918

Translated by Harry Collison

Spiritualism/Materialism

Many spiritualists are much more materialistic than the ordinary materialist! The average materialist states: ‘ there is no spirit ‘, and calls matter ‘matter ‘. But a large number of spiritualists want to, in that they make the spirit visible, see the spirit physically – either because it manifests as light (thus in a material way) or because it becomes tangible in some other way. Contact with the spirits can manifest in various ways. This is a materialistic approach to the whole spiritual world.

We have to acquire the ability to embrace a deeper reality than that which is mediated by the senses. It becomes quite absurd when the spiritualist, the materialistic spiritualist, wants to see the deceased with physical eyes while he can’t assume that he will be able to see the dead with physical eyes after death; because at death the physical eyes are laid down. When one wants to see the dead one should try to see as one would perceive him or her when one has died oneself, that means without physical eyes, obviously.

Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 163 –  Zufall, Notwendigkeit und Vorsehung – Dornach, September 6, 1915 (page 130)

Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger

Previously posted on March 22, 2016

Counteract the egoism

To counteract the egoism that can arise so strongly that one can feel very disturbed by it one could read the Lord’s Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount or the beginning of John’s Gospel and let them work in one. This will create quiet in us for awhile. What was given as the Fifth Gospel can also prevent a further increase in egotism.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 266 – From the Contents of Esoteric Classes – Part III – Bergen, 11th October 1913

Previously posted on May 24, 2016  

The dead are always present

We are living together with the so-called dead. The dead are always present. They move and have their being in a super-sensible world. We are not separated from them by our ‘real being,’ only by our condition of consciousness. We are only separated from them as in sleep we are separated from the things around us; we sleep in a room and do not see the chairs and other things. Though we do not describe it thus, yet as regards our feeling and will, we ‘sleep’ in the so-called waking condition among the dead, just as we do not perceive the physical objects around us when we sleep.

Thus we do not live separated from the world ruled by the forces of the dead, we are together with them in one common world. In our ordinary consciousness we are only separated from them by the state of that consciousness.

This knowledge of our common life with the dead will be one of the most important elements which Spiritual Science is to implant in the general human consciousness, in the general civilisation of mankind for the future; for those who believe that what takes place around them occurs only through the forces perceived in the life of the senses, know nothing of the reality; they do not know that the forces of the dead are always at work, always present.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 181 – Earthly Death and Cosmic Life: Lecture 3: The Living and the Dead – Berlin, 5th February 1918

Translated by Harry Collison

It is very frequently pleaded that ‘Truth must be very simple’

If one wished to understand the mechanical action of a watch, one would have to bear in mind the connection of the wheels, etc. Yet it is supposed that one can talk of man’s highest being without the requisite trouble being taken to gain knowledge of man’s nature. It is very frequently pleaded that ‘Truth must be very simple’ — and the accusation is made against Spiritual Science that it is very complicated.

Man longs to acquire in five minutes — or in less time — what is necessary for the knowledge of his highest being; whereas he is by nature a complicated being, his greatness in the universe is due to that very fact, and we must overcome the tendency to indolence in respect of knowledge if we really wish to penetrate to the human entity.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 181 – Earthly Death and Cosmic Life: Lecture 2: A Contribution to our Knowledge of the Human Being – Berlin, 29th January 1918

Translated by Harry Collison