Rudolf Steiner: "But this very pain, this tragedy, contains the most precious seeds of the new, constructive life that has to be built up in the midst of our decaying culture. For the truth is that everything in life that flowers and bears fruit is an outgrowth of pain and suffering."
"They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." — Psalm 124:5-6
But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. — Job 23:10
Rudolf Steiner, from a lecture given April 18, 1909:
...the essential thing in Christianity is the deed which can become one's own possession only through free will, through a voluntary ascent into the higher worlds. Man takes the Christ-force into himself because he voluntarily receives it, and no one can receive it who does not do so voluntarily. This has only been made possible for man because he has become human upon Earth, because he was called to grow into man on Earth.
The fallen Angels who have spread over the Earth as Lucifer are in a different position. These ought really to have become men on the Moon; they have remained behind in their development, hence they can enter the astral body but not the ego. They are in a peculiar position, a position which we can only describe graphically, even if it appears somewhat pedantic. Let us suppose, leaving aside the physical and etheric body, that the astral body of man during the Lemurian development was represented by the circle A-B-C, and the ego was the circle enclosed (a) in that astral body. The Ego gradually entered the astral body. What happens now? During the Lemurian development the Luciferic forces slip on all sides into the man's astral body and penetrate him with their activities, which find expression in his lower passions. That through which he succumbs to error and evil is rooted in his astral body; the Luciferic spirits have implanted this into him. (If they had not done this he would never have had the possibility of error and evil, he would have been lifted up to the place from which he receives his ego, untouched by all hindering influences.) So it goes on, but the great leaders protect humanity as far as it is necessary so that it should not sink too low.
Now comes the Advent of the Christ. Let us take a man who has voluntarily received the Christ. Christianity is only at its beginning. But let us take the Ideal; the man's ego has voluntarily, with complete free will, allowed the Christ's force to flow into him. When the ego has progressed so far that it has filled itself with the Christ, then this Christ force irradiates the astral body also. In that same astral body into which the Luciferic powers had formerly implanted their deeds, the Christ power is now radiating from within outwards. What happens in the future? Because we have overcome with the help of Christ, and only with His help, all those human qualities which come from Lucifer, we also, as men, gradually release the Luciferic powers; and a time will come when the Luciferic powers who, during the Moon development, had to sink downwards into a certain lower evolution for the sake of human freedom, and who had not themselves the opportunity of experiencing the Christ force upon Earth, these Luciferic powers will experience the Christ force through man, and through Him they will be released. Man will save Lucifer when man takes the Christ force into himself in the necessary way. And because of this, man will again grow stronger than he otherwise would have been. For imagine: if man had not received the Luciferic powers, then the Christ force irradiating him would not have encountered the hindrances of the Luciferic forces, and it would have been impossible for man to progress so far in wisdom, goodness, and truth as he may do when he has to overcome these opposing forces....
Rudolf Steiner: "If, on the other hand, Arianism alone had won the day, there would of course have been much talk of this god in the inner being of man. But it would not have been spoken of with the necessary depth of reverence, and above all, not with the necessary inward dignity. Arianism alone would indeed have come to regard man at every stage as an incarnation of the god who dwells within him. But the same may be said of any animal, indeed of the whole world, of every plant, of every stone. This conception only has real value if it contains at the same time the active impulse to rise ever higher and higher in spiritual development, for then only do we find the god within. The statement that there is a divine within us at any and every stage of life can have a meaning only if we take hold of this divine in a perpetual upward striving of the self by whom it is not yet attained."
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| "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." — John 8:12 |
Rudolf Steiner: "You can calmly feel the truth as an ideal placed before you at an immeasurable distance yet with the awareness that you are on your way toward it."
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Read the entire lecture:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19090418p01.html
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