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  • Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 1: The Relationship of Anthroposophy to Religious Life
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    • Yes, my dear friends, theology as we have it now, is rooted in quite different conditions than those of modern mankind. Ultimately the foundation of theology — if it wants to be correctly understood — is precisely the same foundations as that of the Gospels themselves. I have just expressed a sentence and naturally in its being said, it is not immediately understood, but it has extraordinary importance for our discussions here. Theology as inherited tradition doesn’t appear in the form in which modern science appears. Theology is mostly in a form of something handed down, as such it goes back to the earlier ways of understanding. Certainly, logic was later applied to modern theology, which changed the form of theology somewhat; theology no longer appeared as it had been once upon a time. On the other hand, it is Catholicism which actually has something in this relationship which works in an extraordinarily enchanting manner on the more intelligent people and which is firmly adhered to in many Catholic clerics upon studying theology, through what has been handed down as knowledge of the so-called Primordial Revelation (Uroffenbahrung).
  • Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 4: Anthroposophy and Religion.
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    • You see, spiritual science first and foremost wants to gain human knowledge through Anthroposophy, modern physiology and biology need to some extent be considered as the most unsuitable instrument for acquiring real human knowledge. Modern physiology and biology unfortunately base their knowledge on what can be seen in man’s corpse. Also, when living people are studied, they are unfortunately only studying the corpse. At most they indulge in a certain deception, which extraordinarily characteristically was revealed when Du Bois-Reymond held his famous lecture on the Ignorabimus. He is quite clear that nothing — because he was besides a scientific researcher also a thinker — of this modern manner of research of the soul — he called it consciousness — can be gained; so that one actually through natural science, according to Du Bois-Reymond, can’t find out anything about the actual being of man. He is submitting himself to an ever-greater deception; he says that with outer scientific beings we will never be able to recognise conscious people, at most only those who are asleep. When a person lies sleeping in bed, according to Du Bois-Reymond, the sum of all processes is within the person, but at the moment of waking, when the spark of consciousness jumps in, the possibility of observation ends. It would be correct if one was able today, to scientifically understand the life and development of the plant world. The life and development of the plant world is still not comprehensible through science today because the method is not recognised through which this would be understood. So that too, is an illusion, what current science explains about sleeping people; it can only be in their domain to explain sleeping people, the corpse; further than this they don’t go. They can only explain those who are sleeping; the ones who are lively they can’t explain.
  • Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 9: Religious Feeling and Intellectualism
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    • You see, this sacramental process would have been fulfilled in the old Mysteries. Why could they have been accomplished in the old Mysteries? They could have been fulfilled because a certain inherited spiritual perceptivity was available for them. The very moment when a person who lived before the Mystery of Golgotha, pronounced the corresponding words, therefore expressing what we have in the Gospels today, these words were taken into account by the Divine-spiritual. With the ceremony the people surrendered their continuous dying process to the Divine-spiritual forces. These Divine-spiritual forces left the earth during the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. It is only a historical prejudice to believe that the earth is in a continuous development. This is not so; it is certainly not. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not been fulfilled then we could not fulfil such a ceremony, then what dies is given over to the etheric and astral worlds and not, however, to the world where our ‘I’ belongs. It was not like that before the Mystery of Golgotha.
    • erse ceremony of birth processes, which are dying processes, would be mindlessly given over to historical development, and abandoned. This all relates to the time of intellectualism when the human being could no longer directly find the spiritual within the physical. So it can be seen, that if religious content is to be saved at all, it would be to formulate it in such a way that it has nothing connecting it to a content of knowledge. This will always stand as a gaping contradiction for anyone who does not, in theory, want to ignore the practical impulses of the soul’s life.
  • Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 11: Insights into the Mystery of Golgotha, Priest Ordination.
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    • To a certain extent we can research from the oldest times the evolution of the earth and man, and we will reach a certain stage in the development, but we do not arrive at seeing the Mystery of Golgotha within this research. We definitely come through research of this evolution, if we do not look at the Mystery of Golgotha, to the feeling: we are moving to the end of the earth, as human beings we must find our grave in the earth. — This way we arrive at quite a decisive conclusion of the earth dying away. Then we can turn our gaze to the Mystery of Golgotha and so we will find that the earth was renewed, fructified by the Mystery of Golgotha, that a new seed from the expanse contained up to that moment evolutionary streams, and that this new seed, having arrived through the Mystery of Golgotha, forms the foundation for the renewal of the earth. This is primarily the meaning of the Gospel’s words which I mentioned yesterday when I said: The spiritual beings who remained on the earth would have perished with the earth (if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place): The demons screamed when they saw the Christ, because he stripped them of their rulership. This is certainly a real process. You can be quite certain it isn’t merely about accepting some or other event given in the Bible, but it is about a clear observation of the processes.
    • As a result of this primal sin the Christ appeared on the earth — I am speaking in the consciousness of this time period — in order to gradually heal people from their dying through what Lucifer had done to them. That we outwardly know so little about the constitution of consciousness, is a result of the really innumerable things proclaimed by the Roman Catholic Church, which is based on this ancient tradition. Above all, everything Gnostic was eradicated and also later the reproduction of anything that still had an older soul constitution was made exceedingly difficult. You know the writing of Scotus Eriugena had been lost and only later rediscovered, and for centuries people knew nothing about Scotus Eriugena because all copies of his writing which one could get hold of, had been burned. It is certainly so that it deals with looking again at an event which took place in the supersensible world and into what human beings had become entangled.
  • Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 13: The Sacraments, Evolution and Involution
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    • A participant: Like you also have in the Catholic Church, in relation to the priest’s help with the dead, with the sacraments of the dying.
    • What we have here in the germinal cell is certainly the rising evolution, while the involution is through the soul-spiritual of the organs by which they are first established in the mother’s body, from the Chorion, from the Amnion, and then gradually moving to the actual egg nucleus, to the actual embryo, so that we have here an involution of the soul-spiritual into matter. This matter becomes pushed out and then we have the continuation of embryonic evolution. The embryo is born and now puts forward its forces, as I’ve already explained to you, which it had been developing during the embryonic phase. This continues into the development of speech and still remains available in our bodies until later. We carry within our entire earthly lifetime the forces that remain inside us as remnants of embryonic development: the forces of birth. These birth forces develop within us, evolve in us like a gift of nature. This happens, if I may use this expression which sounds somewhat trivial, out of itself. However, immediately, from taking our first breath, from being in contact with the outer world, other processes come into play, processes related to those of dying. From the beginning we also have forces of dying in us. In these forces of dying our soul-spiritual becomes involved in our exchanges with the outer world.
    • Through observation, through thinking, we allow dying processes to be integrated into us. This is the opposite process of the developmental process at birth. Like humanity developed since the time epoch a bit before and after the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity experienced those changes of which I have spoken, and people had to a certain extent turn the involution processes into something holy, in contrast to the contrasting evolutionary processes. Evolution is natural, it is a gift of nature; that which is given to us at birth and continues to work, is a gift of nature. If we begin to feel the involution process starting to take hold of us as a dying process is, then it must be sanctified since that divination of the world which I spoke to you about this morning, which means, it must be included into what comes out of the Christ impulse. So we see since the development of Christianity something which should be added into the sacraments due to this dying process, and that is the sacrament of baptism. We will still speak about the ritual involved. In order for us to say: what is an evolutionary process at birth, the baptism should take place as a process of involution. We should add to this rhythm in which we are placed in at birth, the repulsion through the pendulum of baptism. (He writes on the blackboard.)
    • Earlier evolutionary processes we’ve always contrasted with sacramental action and processes of involution; however, the evolutionary processes have gradually become similar to processes of involution. The process of involution during repentance is in a certain way the outer unfolding of quite an inner decisive recollection process; it is the process of involution which is slowly approached by the process of evolution. We need, when we now want the sacramental action for this natural involutionary process of death, to introduce it in a somewhat cultic, ritualistic form, in which something of a spiritual side of nature’s knowledge can be perceived, which serve to confront the dying person and manage to do something to the dying person which is simultaneously stimulated in his soul-spiritual life, stirred by the natural processes of his physical bodily being. It shall, expressed in a rhythm, let the physical-bodily aspect disappear upon death, and the soul-spiritual in turn take shape. For certain reasons, which we will still discuss, one can always see in oils, in everything oil-like, that something leads back to the soul-spiritual. In nature as well, oiling processes are regarded as processes of salvation. Therefore, the holy last anointment is performed here. (He writes on the blackboard.)
  • Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 14: Gnostics and Montanists
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    • For Basilides, this darkened his observation. His gaze becomes clouded the moment he approaches the last acts of the Mystery of Golgotha with his inner gaze; it clouds his gaze when it comes to dying and resurrection. His gaze is drawn to the route towards Crucifixion, the route to Golgotha of Jesus Christ, but he couldn’t accomplish, out of a lively imagination, that the Christ carried the cross to Golgotha, was killed on the cross and resurrected. He regards it in such a way that Simon of Cyrene took the cross from the Christ, that he carried it up to Golgotha, and instead of Christ, that Simon of Cyrene is crucified. This is the Christ imagination of the Gnostic in as far as the image of Basilides appears and is basically the historical expression of the Gnosis.
    • During ancient times, long before the Mystery of Golgotha, what I’ve just said was something obvious; had a self-evident answer. For those who lived in the time epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha, such an obvious answer didn’t exist. People first had to dive into physicality. Because a fear existed of bringing intellectualism into this physicality, one entered the corporality with the power of the imagination and we get to know the descriptions of the forming of Montanist visions, which have also disappeared. In descriptions of Montanist visions — and this is characteristic — we always find the repetitive idea of the Christ soon returning in a physical body to the earth. One can’t think of Montanism without thinking of the imminent return of the Christ to earthly corporeality. While the Montanist was familiar with the idea of finding the returning Christ, he strongly set before his soul what happened at the cross, what was accomplished through the death on the cross, what is involved in dying, what is involved in resurrection. The re-descent of the Christ, the physical-bodily immersion that takes place, was tinged by materialistic feelings in this view of the Montanists; they lived in the idea that Christ would come again and live in time and space. This was pronounced and those who believed this in the schools were only those who responded to the belief of the imminent coming of Christ Jesus to the earth, where he would stride along as if he is in a physical body.
  • Title: Foundation Course: Other Books Translated by Hanna von Maltitz
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    • This book is a First Edition, never before translated into English, series of six lectures. Rudolf Steiner gave these lectures early in the year of 1919 at Zurich, Switzerland. Here Steiner proffers ideas to solve the social problems and necessities required by life, by studying the life sciences and social life, and the living conditions of the present-day humans. ISBN: 978-1791660536
  • Title: Foundation Course: Summaries of Lectures
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    • Soul constitution of people at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha (formation of mind or consciousness soul). Mystery of Golgotha as a cosmic, free divine deed; change in soul conception since Golgotha. Renewal of dying earth existence. Rise of intellectualism, working of spirit in matter ever less understood. Scotus Eriugena, Augustinus. Start of dogma and ritual in Catholic Church. Anthroposophy to help clarify present day understanding regarding Golgotha. Luther and the rise of two time streams. Luther and Faust. Christian symbolism in art. Meaning of priest ordination.



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