Daily Contemplations E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Rudolf Steiner's inspiring words provide rich and nourishing thoughts and ideas for self-development and spiritual enlightenment. Daily Contemplations offers a separate passage from Steiner's lectures – a special gift upon which to reflect – to accompany each day of the year. Carefully selected by Jean-Claude Lin, the quotations are sourced from lectures and addresses that Steiner gave on the specific day in question. Thus, the ordering is not arbitrary but arises from the historical fact of the lectures themselves. This unique volume gives us a new way of working with Steiner's research on a daily basis. The short passages encourage us to ponder and delve further in order to make our own creative discoveries.'Wisdom is the premise, the foundation of love; love is the fruit of wisdom reborn in the I.' These words from Rudolf Steiner are the founding motifs of his immense lecturing activity – to which this book gives manifold entry points. As Lin notes in his introduction, 'wisdom and love are the alpha and omega of the human being who strives for truth and freedom'.

Leseprobe

DAILYCONTEMPLATIONS

Wisdom and Love

An Almanac for the Soul

RUDOLF STEINER

Compiled and edited by Jean-Claude Lin

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Translated by Matthew Barton

Rudolf Steiner Press,

Hillside House, The Square

Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2021

Originally published in German under the title Weisheit und Liebe by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Basel, 2011. This translation is based on the second edition, 2018

© Rudolf Steiner Verlag and Jean-Claude Lin 2011

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2021

All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries should be addressed to the Publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Print book ISBN: 978 1 85584 590 9

E-book: 978 1 85584 621 0

Cover by Morgan Creative

Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Vishakapatnam, India

Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd, Essex

CONTENTS

Introduction

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Sources

When the human being warm in love

gives himself as soul to the world,

when our being in bright and clear reflection

takes to itself the spirit from the world,

then in spirit-illumined soul,

in spirit that is soul-sustained

our spiritual being will truly be revealed

within our bodily being.

Rudolf SteinerBerlin, 10 December 1915

INTRODUCTION

‘Wisdom is the premise, the foundation of love; love is the fruit of wisdom reborn in the I.’ With these words Rudolf Steiner concluded the first edition of his Occult Science, an Outline, published in 1910. While he added a few ‘Details from the Domain of Spiritual Science’ and some ‘Supplementary Notes’, this ‘summation of anthroposophy’—as he called his Occult Science in 1925, shortly before his death, by and large ends with these words about wisdom and love. In the same way we find wisdom and love also as the founding motifs of his immense and manifold lectures: they are the alpha and omega of the human being who strives for truth and freedom.

In the following pages, passages by Rudolf Steiner have been chosen to accompany each day of the year. They are all taken from lectures or addresses that he gave on the day in question. Thus the ordering of these utterances does not originate, as is often the case in an almanac, with the volume’s editor, but arises from the historical fact of the lectures themselves. The editor has of course decided which particular passages to select for this book.

In many cases I could have chosen a different text, either from the same lecture or from other lectures given on the same day of the month but in a different year. I am pleased that I was able to find passages for each day of the year which seem to me, at least, to have the right tenor. But there were also lectures that escaped my attention. It is perfectly possible that I might eventually make changes here or there, and therefore I make no claim to any general or ultimate validity of this selection. But I hope that it will encourage readers themselves to delve and reflect further, and to make their own creative discoveries.

I first formed the idea of this ‘soul almanac’ of comments by Rudolf Steiner at Epiphany 1987. But it was not until September 1999, in a conversation with Hannelore Roder following a lecture by Florian Roder on the clairvoyant power of faith, that this idea gained greater shape. I then embarked on a more detailed conception and realization of the book. I wish to thank her most warmly for this conversation and her firm encouragement.

Everything that Rudolf Steiner developed and created as an outcome of his experiences in the spirit was orientated to life: to help people take hold of their lives in ever more autonomous and creative ways for their own benefit and that of their fellow human beings. It is with this in mind that I gratefully dedicate this book to friends travelling the paths of truth and life, especially to Peter Wege and to my companion in life and inward endeavour, Susanne Wege.

Jean-Claude LinStuttgart, Epiphany 2011

January

1 January

From wisdom rightly understood, virtue rightly understood will indeed be born in the human heart. Let us strive for true understanding of world evolution, let us seek wisdom; and then assuredly love will appear as the child of wisdom.

Hanover 1912, GA 134

2 January

Consider, if you will, that a significant impulse, a significant idea, needs 19 years to be fully and inwardly encompassed and understood.

Leipzig 1914, GA 266

3 January

Two sayings can guide us, can be extraordinarily important for us. The first of these, which we should inscribe deeply in ourselves, is this: Strive for thought’s death in the universe. You see, only if a thought dies into the universe does it then become a living power outside us. And yet we cannot unite ourselves with this living power if we do not take heed of the content of the second saying: Strive for destiny’s resurrection in the I. If you accomplish this, then you unite what is reborn in thought with the I resurrected outside you.

Dornach 1915, GA 275

4 January

To someone who regards it imaginatively, the whole rainbow reveals a streaming forth of the spirit, then a vanishing of the spirit. Wonderfully, it does indeed reveal something like a rolling spiritual cylinder. And at the same time we can see that as these spirit beings emerge, they do so in great fear, and as they enter in again, they do so with an unconquerable courage. If you look at the red-yellow region of the rainbow, fear streams forth from it. If you look at the blue-purple region, you gain the sense that everything of the nature of courage dwells there.

Dornach 1924, GA 233a

5 January

The teacher led the pupil out again, and, before taking leave of him, said: The human being of today and the earth of today are in such little accord with each other that you must receive the revelation of religion from the spirit of your own youthfulness high upon the mountains above the earth, and the revelation of nature from deep under the earth, in the crevasses below the earth’s surface. And if you succeed in illumining with the light that your soul has drawn from the mountain what your soul has felt in the deep chasms of the earth, then you will come to wisdom. You see, in this form—I am speaking of the time around the year 1200—the deepening, the fulfilment of the human soul’s wisdom was accomplished.

Dornach 1924, GA 233a

6 January

And behold, three from the group of those gathered there were truly destined to forge a special bond with the world of spirit, not by some kind of mediumistic powers but by development of that mystic, meditative, pious mood. And these three, who were then specially protected by the others of the group, really inwardly nurtured, sometimes experienced a kind of absence. Their outward corporeality was wonderfully beautiful, they acquired something like a shining countenance, sun-luminous eyes; and during this time they wrote symbolic revelations that they received from the world of spirit. These symbolic revelations were the first images in which the Rosicrucians were shown what they should know about the world of spirit. These symbolic revelations contained a kind of philosophy, a kind of theology, a kind of medicine. And the remarkable thing was that the others—and it seems to me as if there were four others, so that together there were seven—were able to reproduce in ordinary speech what they had experienced as the meaning of the symbols in the sun-luminous eyes, the shining countenance, of their three brothers. The brothers destined to draw forth these symbols from the world of spirit were able only to inscribe them. When they returned to their ordinary state of consciousness again, they were able to say only that they had walked amongst stars and star spirits, and had found there the ancient teachers of esoteric knowledge. They themselves were not able to couch these symbolic images, which they drew, in ordinary human language. But the others were able to do so and did.

Dornach 1924, GA 233a

7 January

If we are to try to understand Christianity in a manner that accords with the most contemporary needs of humanity, then we will have to penetrate it with the spirit which hitherto has only pervaded natural science, with all its social consequences, through the powers of the West. In any worldview drawn from these powers of the West, people are not content unless they can formulate it in clearly detailed and sharply outlined concepts. For the future of the earth, human beings will need such clear and sharply outlined concepts.

Dornach 1922, GA 210

8 January

The Western world has fewer traditions. Only in the chronicles of certain secret Orders does it retain traditions from the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the age of cosmosophy—yet these are traditions that are no longer understood but rather are presented to humanity in uncomprehended symbols. Here in the West, however, there is at the same time an elemental power capable of unfolding new evolutionary impulses.

Dornach 1922, GA 210

9 January

Today I gave you an example of how we can develop a schema like this from the lecture cycles. I hope that many of you will gradually come to develop such schemas for yourselves. Then, firstly, insubstantial speculation about the content of the cycles will grow less, and that is a very good thing; and secondly, through such compilations and configurations, you can really undergo processes of inner evolution. Individuals will make progress if they compose these kinds of fruitful compilations. Besides just combining a few such passages from the cycles, you can render fruitful the material contained in the cycles by juxtaposing and combining not only hundreds but many, many thousands of passages, perhaps even more.

Dornach 1915, GA 161

10 January

A wonderful example of how you can allow anthroposophy to enliven you is to be found in the beautiful poem ‘Lucifer’ by our dear Christian Morgenstern—a poem which, it seems to me, lives fully in the atmosphere of feeling that I tried to hint at today, which can attend our efforts to pass on from the ideas of anthroposophy to the grasping of living beings.

My light from yours I wish to hide away,I do not want you, me you shall not enjoyuntil my own light brightly I have kindled.

And I bring evil thus to manifest beingas separate spirit, spirit of negation,yet my spirit order creates new world.

At odds with beings who never leave the fold,a line of gods in error will unfoldwho make their own—not your—resolves;

who do not walk in truth from the beginning,but only gain truth at last through suffering,who suffer the truth they gain through their own action.

Dornach 1915, GA 161

11 January

Many violent expressions of human nature, especially those that come close to being pathological, would be avoided if people were less forgetful.

Munich 1912, GA 143

12 January

Interpreting symbols is really nonsensical. All nit-picking deliberation about their meaning is nonsense. The right way to relate to symbols is to make them, to experience them; and in the same way we ought not to absorb fables, legends and fairy tales with the merely abstract intellect but should identify ourselves with them.

Dornach 1924, GA 233a

13 January

It is true to say, my dear friends, that, having experienced the Rosicrucian principle of initiation as it is here intended, and then studying the tenets of Haeckel with all its materialism, studying this and imbuing yourself with methods of knowledge as given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, then the following will occur. If you read Haeckel’s Anthropogeny about human ancestors, learn about this though you may find it distasteful, learn everything about this subject which you can gain from outward science, then bear it upward to the gods, you will arrive at the nature of evolution as described in the book Occult Science… And what we do here by taking scientific tenets, or also works of naturalistic art, or also the sentiments of a religion that works naturalistically within the soul—for basically even religion has become naturalistic now—and bearing them upward into a world of spirit, by developing the capacities for this, we actually encounter Michael… But Michael is a unique being. Michael is a being who in fact reveals nothing unless we bring toward him something from the earth through our own industrious efforts.

Dornach 1924, GA 233a

14 January

There is not just one kind of health but as many kinds of health as there are human beings.

Berlin 1909, GA 57

15 January

It must inevitably lead us deep into the secrets of human existence if we can ask how the human being becomes evil. He does so by using in the wrong place the powers he is endowed with to perfect himself!

Berlin 1914, GA 63

16 January

Only in future will it become possible to fathom many things in the Gospels.

Berlin 1911, GA 124

17 January

Though paradoxical it is true to say that one person, let’s imagine a ‘statesman’—a word we nowadays usually use ironically—may say all sorts of clever things, things regarded nowadays as clever, but will never have formed a relationship with the supersensible world. What he says, when translated into reality, will bear a germ of death within it. Another, on the other hand, may show no overt sign that he is preoccupied with spiritual science, and unless we know, we may be unaware of this. But he speaks differently about things. What he says, for instance, about social issues, may not betray any sign that he is preoccupied with spiritual science; but the fact that he is gives his ideas a real underlying impulse.

Dornach 1920, GA 196

18 January

True practice of thinking requires us to gain the right attitude, the right feeling about thinking. How can we do so? No one can gain the right feeling for thinking if they believe that it is something that unfolds only within them, in their head alone.

Karlsruhe 1909, GA 108

19 January

Just consider all the things people today wish to draw upon in order to succeed, or be someone—everything except their native spiritual inner life! … But we have to feel true reality within us, we have to feel our connection with the world of spirit. And we can only do this if everything that connects us with our pre-earthly existence remains intact. And all this is consolidated if a person, as I will put it, has a leaning toward unvarnished truth and truthfulness. Nothing so greatly secures our original, authentic sense of existence as our sense of truth and truthfulness. To feel obliged to test things before we say them, to first seek the parameters within which we can say the things we intend to, helps inwardly consolidate our sense of a worthy human existence.

Dornach 1923, GA 220

20 January

Truly, thought is our most intrinsic quality. If we find the relationship between our thought and the cosmos, the universe, then we also find the connection of our most intrinsic being with this cosmos…There is just one difficulty…most people have no thoughts!…Most of what is called thinking in ordinary life occurs in words. People think in words. This is true to a far greater degree than people generally believe.

Berlin 1914, GA 151

21 January

There is not one, single worldview for the thinker who can penetrate the nature of thinking but 12, equally justified outlooks; they are equally justified in so far as each worldview can be supported by equally valid reasons. There are indeed 12, equally justified outlooks on the world.

Berlin 1914, GA 151

22 January

It is particularly beneficial for people to really practise and experience the various moods of soul—occultism, transcendentalism, mysticism, empiricism, voluntarism, logism, gnosis—so that they can call them to mind, can feel their effect at any moment, as it were, and then place all these moods—as if at one and the same time—into the single constellation of phenomenalism, into the Virgin. Then there will arise before us, with a very distinctive grandeur, something that can disclose the world and its phenomena to us.

Berlin 1914, GA 151

23 January

For anthroposophy, ideas are the vessels, fashioned from love, into which the human being spiritually draws his essence from worlds of spirit.

Stuttgart 1923, GA 257

24 January

Herman Grimm once said that there are four minds, four individuals, to whom the German looks up when, in a sense, he seeks to receive his life’s direction. These four figures are Luther, Frederick the Great, Goethe and Bismarck. Grimm says that if German people can no longer look up to the orienting power of these four minds, then they will feel themselves bereft and abandoned within the federation of the world’s nations. This comment, which many in the nineteenth century firmly adhered to—though I was not among them—can today weigh rather heavily upon us. We have to acknowledge the following precisely in relation to such a statement: Luther does not essentially and intrinsically live within the traditions of the German character. Goethe, as we have repeatedly said, never came to real life within it; and Frederick the Great and Bismarck belong to a whole fabric that no longer exists. Thus, in these terms, the time would have arrived when the Central European German, the German altogether, would feel himself bereft and abandoned. Nowadays people do not feel things fully enough to really fathom such things within their soul.

Dornach 1919, GA 188

25 January

If you remove the intrinsic and basic strength from human spirituality, that is, freedom, individual freedom, this is exactly like trying to raise someone without giving them anything to eat.

Dornach 1919, GA 188

26 January

I have often had occasion to point out in these reflections that, in relation to the most important life questions, contemporary people can learn from the incisive, profound and indeed overwhelming events of our times; but that only a very few people practise this kind of learning methodically. It is commonly thought that learning from experience is done by judging events then regarding such judgement as experience. This may be very pleasing to people, but is not only entirely inadequate for the needs of our time, for social insights, but also completely inappropriate. What we need to do, instead, is not impose our view upon events but really learn from them—allow events themselves to judge.

Dornach 1919, GA 188

27 January

You see, when people affect our will, when we not only feel strong antipathy or sympathy for them but wish to act out or actively express in some way the sympathy and antipathy we feel, then such people were somehow or other connected with us in a past life. When people make an impression only on our reason or aesthetic sense, they enter our life with no past connection with us from a previous life.

Dornach 1924, GA 234

28 January

Through someone we meet for the first time ever in the universe, we can look more deeply into the world. It is also good fortune to meet someone for the very first time; and we must try to develop a subtle feeling for this fact—that a person we meet for the first time enables us to know the world better. The moment an initiate meets a person with whom he is not karmically connected, whom he meets, we can say, for the first time ever in the cosmos, then he has a duty towards this person: he has the task of connecting with the guardian angel in the sphere of the angeloi who stands by this person with special protectiveness. It is not enough just to become acquainted with the person; we must come to know his guardian spirit too. This person’s angel will also in turn speak from our own inwardness with great clarity…This gives the initiate’s engagement with the person in question a certain character. He himself adopts something that the angelos seeks to tell this person with whom he becomes acquainted: he transforms into the person’s angelos. By this means, what can be said to the person becomes more intimate than is the case for ordinary awareness. It is because of this, too, that the initiate is basically different in character toward each person whom he meets for the first time ever in the universe: in every such instance, he assumes something of the angelos of this person.

Zurich 1924, GA 240

29 January

We must come to feel again that geology does not equate to knowledge of the earth. A huge rocky colossus, surrounded by the surging oceans and by air, is not the earth; and the Milky Way and the stars are not the entirety of the cosmos. The cosmos consists of ahrimanic beings below, and luciferic beings above, who manifest through outward sense phenomena, and beings of the normal hierarchies to whom we raise ourselves when we penetrate both kinds of sense appearance and come to the truth. You see, these beings do not appear intrinsically in outward sense appearance, but only reveal themselves through it.

Dornach 1921, GA 203

30 January

Thus anthroposophy begins everywhere with science, artistically enlivens its ideas, and ends with religious contemplation; it begins with what the head can grasp, then approaches what the Word can configure in its broadest scope, and ends with what the heart imbues with warmth; it leads the heart into certainty so that the human soul can find itself at all times in its true home, in the spirit realm. Upon the path of anthroposophy, therefore, we should learn to start with knowledge, then raise ourselves to art, and end in religious inwardness.

Stuttgart 1923, GA 257

31 January

Two virtues shine their light upon our past incarnations: wisdom, and justice or fairness. Courage and discretion, on the other hand, shine forth upon future incarnations…When people today read Iphigenia by Goethe, or Schiller’s William Tell, they usually think back to their schooldays when they first read these works, and regard them as lying in the past. But that’s not right; you see, we should not forget that these works act upon us best when we read them in old age, for then they serve faculties of justice and wisdom.

Zurich 1915, GA 159