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  • Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 1: The Relationship of Anthroposophy to Religious Life
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    • I presume, my dear friends, that you want to actively position yourself in this religious life and that you have looked for this Anthroposophic course because you have felt that religious activity has lead you increasingly towards a dead end, and that through the religious work today — with our traditions, with the historic development and others, which we will still discuss — elements are missing which actually should be within it. We notice how just today even important personalities are searching for a new foundation for religious activity, because they believe this is needed in order to progress in a certain direction. I would like to indicate it as a start, how even the most conscientious personalities ask themselves how one can reach a certain foundation of religious awareness, and how then these personalities actually search more or less for a kind of — one can also call it something else — a kind of philosophy. I remind you only how a home is sought for a kind of philosophic foundation for religious awareness. Obviously, one has to, through the current awareness, recognise something absolutely necessary and one should not ignore that an extraordinarily amount has been accomplished this way. However, one can’t comprehend, with unprejudiced observation, what is strived for, and come face to face with this: such an effort, instead of leading into the religious life, actually leads out of the religious life. —
  • Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 3: Theoretical Thinking and Living in the Spirit.
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    • Yes, my dear friends, if you take life seriously you won’t want anything other than what appears in Anthroposophy, what appears to you as spiritual foundations penetrating everything in outer life. I’m still talking about Anthroposophy; we will still touch on what religion has to say about it. That’s just the trouble, we are no longer in the position to bring what we experience in the spiritual into our outer life, and finally this happens just in those areas where it is the most noticeable. Just imagine you had said to a Greek that he couldn’t express his spiritual experiences in outer life. Just as the Greek thought about his Apollo, as he thought about Zeus, he created his Zeus temple accordingly, his colonnaded temple. We no longer create, we imitate what is old; we don’t have the possibility of taking those areas relating to the spirit and also create an external physiognomy of life. The only thing we can create is a department store. The department store is the grandiose creation of the materialistic spirit of the present day. However, if we wanted a home for the spirit and turn to a builder, then he would build it in a romantic, gothic or some or other style, and we would have no feeling, when we stand there within the walls, of anything being expressed of what we had inwardly lived through spiritually.
  • Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 8: Prayer and Symbolism
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    • This is what comes over into the 13th chapter of the Matthew Gospel. With it we are immediately in a starting position. If we take the content from the 53rd to 58th verses of the St Matthew’s 13th chapter of the Gospel, and lead it over to the following, then we find that the greatest importance is the Christ Jesus now returns to his hometown, and through the experience of being in his hometown, express the words which appear in the 57th line of the 13th chapter: He says: “A prophet is nowhere less accepted than in his hometown and in his own house.” The 58th verse now continues with the line: “And he was not able to do many deeds of the spirit there, for the sake of their unbelief.” When we understand this situation, we are immediately led to see how Christ Jesus stands amidst people who have not understood the words: “Behold, in those souls live my mother and my brothers.”
    • Let’s enter more deeply into this situation. Already in the first sentence we are drawn more intimately into the situation. It is important firstly, to be able to enter right into it. You are already standing in it if you take what leads up to it and away from it; it is important to stand completely within it: “On the day of Saturn Jesus left his home and sat down at the lake.” — If this is read without a lively engagement and purpose, then the 13th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is not actually being read. First of all, what is happening there is on the day of the Sabbath, the day of Saturn. We will discover, my dear friends, that the enfolding of the liturgy is found throughout the year but it is not indifferent regarding how a priest applies the Gospel; we will see that the Gospels are placed in the course of the year in such a way that people can find a connection in the Gospel to what can be experienced in nature, otherwise you will not really give the words of the Gospels their correct inner power.
    • We will still talk about the details of the year’s liturgy, but we need to get closer to these things. If you look at it spiritually, the 13th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel speaks about the end of the world, that means the earthly world, and it is clearly indicated that it will happen in the manner of the prophecy. In the 35th verse it says: “That it might be fulfilled, that which is spoken by the prophet, who says: I want to open my mouth in parables and speak about the mysteries of the world’s primordial beginning.” — Here in the 13th chapter the end of the world should be spoken about. Christ Jesus chose the Sabbath because earlier people turned to it when they wanted to understand the beginning of the world, to compare it to the truths about the end of the world. The reception of these words needed an inner peace, it is indicated directly by the time setting. The effort of the preceding days must have taken place for man must be in need of rest in order to understand what would be said in the 13th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. He goes out of his home because he has something to say which goes further out than what can be said at home; this is the immediate recovery of verses 53 to 58. At home he couldn’t have said anything. The writer of the Gospel is aware of indicating this in conclusion. You can’t get close to the Gospel if you don’t have the precondition that every word of the Gospel carries weight; it can’t be indicated outwardly, you must try to let it enter into your inner life.
    • Today we are standing in a completely changed time. We read in Matthew’s 13 Chapter that initially explanations of the parables would only be given to the disciples. This we can’t do today. It would be impossible today because the Gospels are in everyone’s hands and the meaning of the parables can be read by everyone. We really live in a completely changed time. We don’t really notice this at all. We must in a new way understand what the Matthew Gospel Chapter 13, contains. In the sense of our time, we must consider the structure of Matthew 13. Firstly, we have Christ sitting in front of the people, he delivers the parables to them about the kingdom of heaven, and from the 36th verse it is written: “Then Jesus left the people and came home, and his disciples approached him and said: Explain the parable of the weeds on the fields. And he explained it to them.”
    • Let me clarify this situation completely. Firstly, the Christ speaks to the people in parables, which are clothed in outer events. He points to these parables for his disciples. He utters during these explanations meaningful words of mystery, which I have tried to bring closer to you. After he has returned home and spoke to his disciples about the parables of the weeds, he spoke to them about a number of other parables — about the treasure in the field, the priceless pearl, and some of the discarded fish found in the fishnet. Thus, he spoke about other parables to the disciples, after he had left the people. This all belongs to this situation: in the Gospels everything is important. We also have — let us place this clearly before our souls — the Christ at the lake, sitting in front of the people, telling them about the parables, then turning away, turning to the disciples, leading them into the situation in which he utters important mystery words, speaking to them alone away from the people, explaining the parables with the help of other parables, then, after he had again led them to the spirit-godly revelations, he asks if they had understood. Their answer is “Yes.” Now the very next conclusion is — because everything else is just an introduction -: “Having been initiated into the scriptures you will conduct yourselves like a man who is master of his house, who takes out of his treasure that which he has experienced, but that part of what he has experienced which he has filled with life inwardly, so that he can add something new to it and then be able to present it to his listeners.”
  • Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 12: Prophecy, Dogma and Paganism
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    • The art historian Herman Grimm had roughly the following view: when we go back with our examination of history, from our time to the Middle Ages and further back to the migration of peoples, back to the Roman empire, we still may have the possibility to understand the history. We have such feelings today, we could say, through which we can understand the roman imperial age and roughly the roman republic. We are still capable today, to understand this. When we go back into Greek history with the same kind of soul understanding then we enter into the highest form of illusion if we believe we can understand an Alkibiades, Sophocles, Homer or someone similar. Between grasping the Roman world and the Greek world there is an abyss, and what has been inherited from the Greek world, so Herman Grimm says, is basically a fairy tale; here starts the world of fairy tales, a world into which we no longer can enter with our present day understanding. We must be satisfied with the inherited images presented to us, but we must take these in a general sense as a world of fairy tales, without intellectual understanding. — It still has a soft echo of something which human beings need to create; an inner feeling towards the historical development of mankind.



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