It is only a question of finding the point at which every single thing in life becomes interesting

Tedium is so widespread nowadays! I have known numbers of people who find it irksome to acquaint themselves for example with banking procedure, or the stock exchange, or single or double entry bookkeeping. But that is never the right attitude. It simply means that the point has not been discovered where a thing burns with interest. Once this point is reached, even a dry cashbook can become just as interesting as Schiller’s Maid of Orleans, or Shakespeare’s Hamlet, or anything else — even Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. It is only a question of finding the point at which every single thing in life becomes interesting.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 191 – The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman: Lecture 2 – Dornach, 2nd November 1919

Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

Previously posteds on December 11, 2016

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When people are asked to look a little further than outward appearances, they draw back as if something were going to burn them

It is quite obvious that human beings today are being wrenched away from the realities of life just because they are taught only one small fraction of reality. When people are asked today to take the fact of repeated earthly lives in all seriousness and to look a little further than outward appearances, they draw back as if something were going to burn them. 

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 203 – Past Incarnations of the Peoples of Today – Stuttgart, 6th January 1921

Previously posted on December 9, 2016

For many centuries men have grown accustomed to look at only one fragment of reality

For many centuries men have grown accustomed to look at only one fragment of reality. And the inevitable consequence of this was the attitude of mind which has culminated in the catastrophic events of the present time. Men are utterly lacking in that understanding of existence which is demanded of them at their present age of evolution.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 203 – Past Incarnations of the Peoples of Today – Stuttgart, 6th January 1921

Previously posted on December 7, 2016

Love is higher than opinion

Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another, the most varied opinions can be reconciled. Hence it is deeply significant that in Anthrosophy no religion is attacked and no religion is specially singled out, but all are understood, and so there can be brotherhood because the adherents of the most varied religions understand one another.

This is one of the most important tasks for mankind today and in the future: that men should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of occult development is empty.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 95 – At the Gates of Spiritual Science: LECTURE ELEVEN – THE POST-ATLANTEAN CULTURE-EPOCHS – Stuttgart – 1st September 1906

Translated by E.H. Goddard & Charles Davy

Nourishment for the dead

It will become increasingly clear to us how this earthly life is connected with spiritual life. We rely on nature, which is on a lower level than we are, for our nourishment. For some time after death, the dead derive their nourishment from the ideas and the unconscious emotions that we here on earth take into sleep with us. Those who have died perceive a tremendous difference between people who in their waking life are filled only with materialistic feelings and ideas and also take them into sleep, and others who are wholly filled with spiritual ideas while awake and who continue to be filled with them in sleep. 

The two types of people are as different in their effect on the dead as a barren region where no food can grow, where people would starve, and a fruitful area that offers nourishment in abundance. For many years after death, the dead draw a vitality from the souls sleeping here on earth filled with spiritual content, a vitality that is similar, only transposed into the spiritual realm, to what we draw in our physical life from the beings of the kingdoms of nature below us. We literally turn ourselves into fruitful pastures for the dead when we fill ourselves with the ideas of spiritual science. And we turn ourselves into barren ground and starve the dead if we take only materialistic ideas and attitudes into sleep.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 154 – The Presence of the Dead on the Spiritual Path: Lecture Three: Awakening Spiritual Thoughts – Basel, May 5, 1914

Translated by Christian von Arnim

Previously posted on November 29, 2016