It should not be expected that what is spiritual can be brought before the eyes, before the senses. It must be experienced inwardly and spiritually.
The history of our spiritual life is a continuing search for the unity between ourselves and the world. Religion, art, and science follow, one and all, this aim.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the ongoing quest to find harmony between our inner selves and the external world through various avenues like religion, art, and science.
Rudolf Steiner suggests that throughout history, humanity has sought to understand its connection to the world, an endeavor that is reflected in our spiritual, artistic, and scientific pursuits. This unity represents a fundamental desire to reconcile our individual experiences with the larger forces at play in the universe, highlighting a universal search for meaning and understanding across different fields of human expression.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on spirituality, one might use this quote to illustrate the interconnectedness of diverse pursuits.
More from Rudolf Steiner
All quotes βIn ancient, prehistoric times, the temples of the spirit were outwardly visible, but today, when our life has become so unspiritual, they no longer exist where we can see them with our physical eyes. Yet spiritually they are still present everywhere, and whoever seeks can find them.
Only a person who has passed through the gate of humility can ascend to the heights of the spirit.
Most actions derive not from your own initiative but from your family circumstances, your education, your calling, and so on. You must therefore give up a little time to performing actions which derive from yourself alone. They need not be important; quite insignificant actions fulfill the same purpose.
Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another the most varied opinions can be reconciled - thus one of the most important tasks for humankind today and in the future is that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of development is empty.
We will not find the inner strength to evolve to a higher level if we do not inwardly develop this profound feeling that there is something higher than ourselves.
Similar quotes
Only by a frank discussion of the very details of dying can we best deal with those aspects that frighten us the most. It is by knowing the truth... that we rid ourselves of that fear of the terra incognita of death.
The longest journey is the journey inward.
A wise man will see to it that his acts always seem voluntary and not done by compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.
Poverty in itself does not make men into a rabble; a rabble is created only when there is joined to poverty a disposition of mind, an inner indignation against the rich, against society, against the government.
To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things - and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect.
Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!