"My kingdom is not of this world."

Rudolf Steiner:  "Whoever is not capable of living with ideas that have no reality for the physical plane 'dies' for the spiritual world."

Rudolf Steiner, February 6, 1917:  "Times such as these must necessarily bring home to us in a quite particular way that being together in a spatial sense on the physical plane is not the only means of maintaining the strength and integrity of our relationship to spiritual science; for sharing in the thoughts and convictions of our spiritual-scientific endeavors — even if only in the realm of thoughts — has the potential to bring us through this difficult time of tribulations and sorrow and, hence, be a test for the strength of our spiritual-scienfific aspirations."

We look outward
With our world-engendered eyes,
And what we see thus binds us
To world delight and world despair.
It binds us unto all
That springs to life there, but not less
To all that plunges there
Into the dark abyss.

But we also behold
With our spirit-entrusted eye.
What we thus behold binds us
To spirit hope and spirit’s upholding power.
It binds us unto all
That roots within eternity
And bears within eternity its fruits.

Yet we can only then behold
When we feel the inner eye
Itself as God-given spirit organ,
Which at the focus of the soul,
Within the temple of our body,
Fulfills the deed of gods.

Humankind is in forgetfulness
Of the Godhead’s innermost.
We, though, will raise it and take it
Into our consciousness, flood it with light
And then bear it over dust and ashes—
The divine flame in the human heart.

So may the lightning shatter into dust
Our sense-built houses.
We will erect instead soul houses
Built on knowledge,
Upon its iron-firm, light-woven web.
And downfall of the outer
Shall become uprise
Of the soul’s own innermost.

For pain passes upon us
From powers of material force,
But hope illumines
Even when darkness enshrouds us,
And it will one day
Emerge within our memory
When at length, after the darkness,
We may live again in light.
We do not want this clear illumining
To be in future brightnesses denied us
Because we have not now,
In pain, implanted it in our souls.

                           —Rudolf Steiner