Spiritual Science/Occultism/ Superstition

There is a very prevalent opinion that what spiritual research says about the reality of higher worlds is merely the result of some form of ‘inspiration,’ so-called, or of subjective, intellectual deduction, or even of pure fantasy. Indeed it is not so. Clinical research, astronomical research, for example, demands specialised and difficult work. But what is acquired inwardly in the way described, learnt as it were from man’s own being by inner experimentation in order to unfold perception of higher worlds — this is an even more difficult task, demanding greater devotion, greater care, greater exactitude and methodical perseverance. 

What is here described in all seriousness as Spiritual Science is fundamentally different from current forms of Occultism, Mysticism and the like. As science stands in contrast with superstition, so does anthroposophical Spiritual Science stand in contrast with current forms of Occultism which try to acquire knowledge through mediums or by compiling external, sensational data in amateurish fashion. This particular brand of modern superstition is vanquished by nothing more decisively than by genuine spiritual research, with its absolutely scrupulous and exact methods.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 79 – On the Reality of Higher Worlds – Christiania (Oslo), November 25, 1921

Translation by D. S. Osmond

Previously posted on March 5, 2017

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Love/Self-love

The love one person believes he feels toward another is for the most part nothing but self-love. A person supposes that he loves another, but in this love really is loving himself. You see here a source of an antisocial disposition that must be the source also of a terrible self-deception. In other words, a person may suppose that he is giving himself up in an overwhelming love for another person, while he really does not love the other person at all. What he feels as a state of rapture in his own soul in association with the other person, what he experiences within himself by reason of the fact that he is in the presence of the other person, that he makes declarations of love, if you please, to the other person — this is what he really loves. In the whole thing the person loves himself as he kindles this self-love in his social relationship with the other person.

This is an important mystery in human life and it is of enormous importance. This love that a person supposes is real, but that is really only self-love, self-seeking, egoism, masked egoism — and in the great majority of cases the love that plays its role between people and is called love is only masked egoism — is the source of the greatest imaginable and the most widespread antisocial impulses. Through this self-love masked as real love, a person becomes in preeminent degree an antisocial being. He becomes an antisocial being through the fact that he buries himself within, most of all when he is unaware of it, or wishes to know nothing of it.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 186 – The Challenge of the Times: Lecture IV: Social and Antisocial Instincts – Dornach, December 6, 1918

Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker

Previously posted on March 3, 2017

Democracies will always, after a certain length of time, die

We frequently hear it said that the ideal of community life within a state is a democracy. Good! Let us assume, that the ideal of community life in a state is a democracy, but, should this be introduced anywhere, in its last phase it would inevitably bring about its own destruction.

The tendency of democracy is inevitably such that, when the democrats are together, one is always endeavoring to overcome the other; the one always wishes to have his way against the other. This goes without saying. Transferred into the realm of reality, a democratic order leads to the opposite side. There is no other possibility in life.

Democracies will always, after a certain length of time, die as the result of their own democratic nature. These are things that are of enormous importance for an understanding of life.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 186 – The Challenge of the Times: Lecture IV: Social and Antisocial Instincts – Dornach, December 6, 1918

Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker

Previously posted on March 2, 2017

Morality/Beauty/Ugliness

Here on earth we carry a body made of bones, muscles, arteries, and so forth. Then, after death, we acquire a spiritual body, formed out of our moral qualities. A good man acquires a moral body radiating with beauty; a depraved man a moral body radiating with evil. This is formed while we are living backward. Our spirit-body, however, is only partly formed out of that which is now joined to us. Whereas one part of the spirit-body received by us in the spiritual world is formed out of our moral qualities, the other part is simply put on us as a garment woven from the substances of the spiritual world.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 226 – Man’s Being, His Destiny and World-Evolution: Lecture II – Kristiana, 17th May 1923

Translated by Erna McArthur

Previously  posted on February 28, 2017

Why should I worry about life after death?

The dead can experience their present spiritual environment only to the degree in which they formerly reflected, as much as earthly men are capable of doing, on the spiritual world.

You know how many people are saying now-a-days: Why should I worry about life after death? We might as well wait. Once we are dead, we shall see what is going to happen. — This thought, however, is completely misleading. People who have not reflected, while still alive, on the spiritual world, who have lived in a purely materialistic way, will see absolutely nothing after death.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 226 – Man’s Being, His Destiny and World-Evolution: Lecture II – Kristiana, 17th May 1923

Translated by Erna McArthur

Previously posted on February 26, 2017