The Ocean of Being: The Spiritual Sea of World Evolution

Rudolf Steiner:  "We must study what proceeds behind the veils of world history; otherwise every account of the flow of history remains a jumble of external, seemingly fortuitous happenings. But they are not fortuitous when their background is known and understood; they become so only if men refuse to recognize their background. They throw up waves, as it were, of which man believes that each is separate and distinct from the other, whereas the truth is that they all surge upwards together from the depths of an ocean. In reality, processes in history are waves thrown up to the surface, into the sphere of man's life, from the depths of a spiritual sea of world evolution. In each historical fact we should perceive one such wave, and abandon the belief that one wave arises fortuitously by the side of another. Each wave — that is to say, each historical fact — arises from spiritual depths of that historical evolution which flows onwards eternally, from age to age."