5. Ways of Knowing the Eternal Powers of the Human Soul

GA 70b/1916-01-08/p079 ·1916-01-08 · English MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
Record: unknown. How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.

This does not always have to be the case, dear ones present, it does not always have to have this cause! In the future of the earth's development it will perhaps be quite different when genius powers develop. But for the life we can see, this is initially just a strangely mysterious connection, a connection that certainly provides insights that are really such that one says: spiritual science provides insights that give us insights into the meaning of life - even when this life touches us particularly hard, particularly painfully in some places. We can also investigate pain and suffering as meaningful phenomena in life. And spiritual science leads to a certain higher point of view - although it is not there to make people shallow, superficial people who are beyond pain and suffering. No, pain and suffering must be felt, otherwise they cannot become the cause that now arises from them. If one were to believe that spiritual science would simply be a means of numbing pain and suffering, then it would eliminate pain from the world and prevent the emergence of what should arise from pain and suffering. No, spiritual science does not numb pain, but from a certain higher point of view, it shows how pain and suffering also fit into the meaning of life.

Read this passage in another edition
DEoriginalENEnglish
Raw JSON: /v1/steiner/en/ga/70b/1916-01-08/p079.json
Cite: GA 70b/1916-01-08/p079 · edition English