Monday, April 30, 2018

The secret of progress for the future of humankind

The Himalayan Institute, Honesdale, Pa.

Rudolf Steiner:  ""This is the secret of progress for the future of humankind: to work out of communities. . . . As little as an eye is still an eye if it is torn out of one's head, so little is a human soul a human soul if it is separated from community. You will see that we educate our talents best if we live in sisterly and brotherly community, that we live most intensely if we are rooted in the totality. Of course, we have to wait till that which forms roots in the totality ripens to fruit in quiet inwardness. We may not lose ourselves into the outside world nor into ourselves, because it is true in the highest spiritual sense what the poet said: that one has to be quiet in oneself if one's faculties are to appear, but those faculties are rooted in the world. We are only able to strengthen them and to improve ourselves if we live in community, because it is true in the sense of genuine mutual help that working in a sisterly and brotherly way makes us strongest in the fight for survival, and we will find most of our powers in the stillness of our hearts if we develop our total personality, our total individuality, in community with our human sisters and brothers. It is true that a talent is formed in quietude. It is also true that in the stream of the world, character is formed — and with it the whole of one's being and the totality of humanity."