For centuries mankind has developed intellectual life. This intellectual life, gradually led humanity away from spirituality . The intellect is mind, even pure spirit, but does not have spiritual content. It finds its contents in external nature, the outer world of nature. So the mind is spirit, however, it is filled with something that cannot appear to him as Spirit. That is the great tragedy, the tragedy of the world today, that man can look into himself and must say: If I am mentally active, I am spiritually active, but at the same time spiritually powerless to immediately take this spirit into myself. I will fill this spirit with physical-sensory existence. – This causes fragmentation and isolates the human being. And even if one does not want to admit this fragmentation and abandonment, it is still present in the spiritual realms of the human soul, and forms the root of all evil. It is at the basis of the tragedy of our times.
Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 211 – Das Sonnenmysterium und das Mysterium von Tod und Auferstehung – Vienna, June 11, 1922 (p 2oo)
Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger
Previously posted on September 13, 2013
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