Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind By Rudolf Steiner

Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind CW 197, eleven lectures by Rudolf Steiner given to members of the Anthroposophical Society in Stuttgart, 5 March to 22 November 1920.

Lecture 1
The development of conscious awareness; luciferic and ahrimanic spirits. Early humanity thinking in images and dependent on higher spirits. Gradual separation from those spirits; intellectual thinking developing to train humans in freedom. Ahriman's aims and purposes. Opposition in Norway.

Lecture 2 - 0:48:54
Different potentials of Asians and Europeans. Need to understand Christ in a new way. Development of the intellect from beginning of postAtlantean period.

Lecture 3 - 1:25:35
Stuttgart 9 March 1920 Changing awareness in political life. Empires evolving in three stages on earth. Stage 1: Imperialism of partly prehistoric times; earthly and hierarchic order one

Lecture 4 - 2:10:18
Powers of decline in present-day civilization. Secret societies, Jesuitism and Leninism: three initiation streams in the present day. Religious confessions opposing spiritual science.

Lecture 5 - 2:53:51
Decline of human civilization as a consequence of materialism. Material world can only be truly understood in the spirit. Materialistic view of the human heart as a pump. Head as the fruit of previous life on earth. Materialistic view of history

Lecture 6 - 3:46:40
Materialism and mysticism. True perceptiveness as a deed of the human soul. Disguised materialism in theosophy and spiritism. Materialism of modern science. Mysticism gives experience of physical matter by revealing material processes within the human organism. Mysticism as a disease.

Lecture 7 - 4:34:24
Materialism and mysticism on the wrong road. Active perceptiveness in Anthroposophy. Looking for nature of matter in the phenomena of the outside world leads to feeblemindedness; looking for the spirit by practising inner mysticism leads to childishness.

Lecture 8 - 5:22:12
Distinction between knowledge and belief. Ancient wisdom had to fade to make freedom possible. As modern science evolved, knowledge reduced to mere belief. Jesuitism. Rome as the source spring of materialism.

Lecture 9 - 6:08:45
East, Middle and West. The threefold social order. Sleeping and waking. The threefold nature of the human being. In the East, life before birth was experienced in the spirit.

Lecture 10 - 7:05:35
Transition from luciferic to ahrimanic age and the Christ event to come. Technology; human beings and machines. Ahrimanic demons active in the present, luciferic elemental spirits in the past. Appearance of the etheric Christ in the present time. Ahrimanization of the world. Increasing stress in human souls. Need to prepare for the Christ event.

Lecture 11 - 8:04:43
The impersonal attitude of modern science. The Christ spirit which has to enter into science. The threefold social order as 20th century Goetheanism. Spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man cannot evolve through forces provided by the earth but only through the Christ. Schiller's letters on aesthetic education and Goethe's Tale. The mystery play The Portal of Initiation as a metamorphosis of the creative potential in Goethe's Tale. Golden, Silver and Brazen Kings representing the three aspects of the social organism.

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