“Useless talk is harmful. Whatever you may say about anyone and in whatever spirit, all are indeed your very own. Thus you are but talking about yourself. So long as one has not realized one’s true Being, one should be intent on fostering within one’s heart the attitude that one’s real Self, which is present in all, is none other than God. Embrace the excellent and relinquish mere pleasure. The whole world is one spiritual family. This is the attitude of mind to be cultivated. For those who accept that He is mother, father and beloved - everything in one, and also for those who think in terms of Ashrams, actually the whole world is one single universal Ashram. In this there is no question of boundary or limit - it is boundless, unlimited; all are of the One, are the One.”

~ Anandamayi Ma

The map is not the territory. The menu is not the meal.

«Those people who today receive such impulses from the spiritual world, who today know about the truths and insights that must enter the evolution of mankind, they know this: If not through this science of initiation to be handled by such people, what we call natural knowledge, namely, What we call art, is how mankind is heading towards a rapid decay, a terrible decay. Let it be taught for three more decades as it is taught in our universities, let it be thought about social issues for another thirty years as it is thought about today, then after these thirty years you will have a devastated Europe. You can set up so many ideals in this or that area, you can talk with your mouths sore about individual demands that arise from this or that group of people, you can talk believing that with such urgent demands something will be done for the future of mankind - everything will be free being when transformation does not occur from the foundations of human souls: from thinking of the relationship of this world to the spiritual world. If there is no re-learning, if there is no rethinking, then the moral deluge will come over Europe! »

― Rudolf Steiner, in GA 194, «The Michaels Broadcast», S. 197 / Dornach, 14. December 1919

«At the moment when today, in this age, not the general human, but a group of people, in some form, becomes, in a sense, group egoistic carriers of a spiritual movement, in those moments, harms the general human progress, does not benefit it, does not really take it further. This matter is actually not to be discussed at all, just as it is to be discussed about a natural law. (... ) As anthroposophers, we must be intensely interested in what is going on in the world. The world is interested in anthroposophy; if we are not interested in the world, then the world becomes hostile. »

― Marie Steiner, «Rudolf Steiner and the Civilization Tasks of Anthroposophy», Dornach 1943, P. 159 ff.

"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."

— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

Art: Painting by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610)

'(... ) Let's think about the very everyday life. There one is rushing through the world, and many things get in his way that he could think about, what he could process in his mind, but he does not try in the least to put what he experienced into work or even think deeply about it. He just wants to «experience» and chase from one sensation to another. There are a different kind of people who go through life with no attention to the outside world. They murmur and speculate about their own thoughts. They do not notice what is going on around them; always and forever they rumble. Both extremes are not healing man. But there is a middle, and that is that: to weave through all the experiences with your own thoughts. This state of mind is the most healing for the humans of the outside world. »

― Rudolf Steiner, in GA 125, «Ways and Goals of the Intellectual Man», S. 63 / Copenhagen, 5. June 1910