Artikler

  A conscious hatred can – in the depths of the soul – be rooted in love We must now emphasize that the soul life of the human being is, as it were, twofold. In the soul not only does there exist what man ordinarily knows, but in the depths of the soul life things are happening that cast their shadows — or their lights — into ordinary consciousness.  Ordinary consciousness, however, does not reach down to this level. We can find in the hidden depths of soul hatred and love, joy and fear and excitement, without our carrying these effects into conscious soul life. It is therefore entirely correct to say that a phenomenon of hatred directed from one person to another, taking place within consciousness, actually can be rooted, in the depths of soul, in love. There can be a sympathy, a deep sympathy, of one person for another in the depths of the soul, but since this person at the same time has reasons — reasons about which he perhaps knows nothing — he is confused about this love,...

  For centuries mankind has developed intellectual life. This intellectual life, gradually led humanity away from spirituality . The intellect is mind, even pure spirit, but does not have spiritual content. It finds its contents in external nature, the outer world of nature. So the mind is spirit, however, it is filled with something that cannot appear to him as Spirit. That is the great tragedy, the tragedy of the world today, that man can look into himself and must say: If I am mentally active, I am spiritually active, but at the same time spiritually powerless to immediately take this spirit into myself. I will fill this spirit with physical-sensory existence. This causes fragmentation and isolates the human being. And even if one does not want to admit this fragmentation and abandonment, it is still present in the spiritual realms of the human soul, and forms the root of all  evil . It is at the basis of the tragedy of our times. Source (German): Rudolf  Steiner ...

  "The profound thought that lies in this is that the kingdom of darkness has to be overcome by the kingdom of light; not by means of punishment, but through mildness; not by resisting  evil , but by uniting with it in order to redeem  evil  as such. Because a part of the light enters  evil , the  evil  itself is overcome."  -Rudolf  Steiner  (Nov. 11, 1904)

*The Challenge of the Times* Chaos is necessary for the total course of events, and he must often take up his position in the midst of the chaotic, as well as in what has been harmonized. Especially is our fifth post-Atlantean epoch such a time as causes man to pass through much that is chaotic. But this is connected with the entire characteristic, the whole nature, of this epoch. We are living at a time in which man must pass through those impelling forces in the course of evolution that set him upon his own feet and permeate him with individual consciousness. We are living in the epoch of the consciousness soul. We must ask ourselves what is the most profound characteristic of the evolution of the consciousness soul in our epoch. The profoundest characteristic of this epoch is that man must become acquainted in the most profound and the most intense way with all those forces that oppose the harmonizing of humanity as a whole. For this reason a conscious knowledge of those ahrimanic ...

  Anthroposophists must feel part of the whole and, to some extent, responsible for all that happens. Anyone who is unable to feel that he is partly to blame if someone steals tomorrow is also unable to know how he is connected to the whole; he is unable to see the root of  evil . […] No one should imagine himself to be good or even much better than other people. We must be permeated by the thought that we can’t be much better than others. What is the advantage of making a few happy when our lifestyle reduces many to unhappiness? Ignorance is the root of suffering. Ignorant as we often are, we help sharpen the knife for those who use it for  evil . Source (German): Rudolf  Steiner  – GA 266a – Aus den Inhalten der esoterischen Stunden – Berlin, 15 February 1904 (page 34-35) https://odysseetheater.org/GA/ Buecher/GA_266a.pdf#view=Fit