{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 101/1907-12-29/p007","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"The best means for a larger circle of people to arrive at a thinking free of sensuality is today Theosophy, if Theosophy is understood in the sense that the human being learns to detach the images from sensuality. Particularly in those areas that go a little beyond the most elementary, man is led by theosophy to thinking that is free of sensuality. If, for example, you want to understand what the etheric body or the astral body is, you cannot see them externally. That is precisely what theosophy gives you: it describes things that you cannot see externally. Or when we describe the old moon in Theosophy, we create a picture of it, a very drastic one, in fact, in which we combine sensual and supersensible ideas, so that a materialistically minded person would say: He is painting something that is not possible. Yes, in Theosophy one must teach something that is almost impossible for today's conditions and describe the old moon in such a way that there were no such rocks, minerals and stones on it as there are on our earth today. The entire old moon consisted of a living substance that could be compared in density to a kind of spinach puree or cooked salad, a body halfway between minerals and plants, half plant, half mineral. We find something like a semi-vegetable life on the old moon. Minerals as they are today did not yet exist at that time. If you look at today's peat bogs, where there is also a kind of semi-vegetable substance, you would get an outwardly similar picture to the substance of the old moon. Instead of rocks and mountains, you would have found at most something on the old moon that is like the bark of our trees today. Now every naturalist will object that something like that could not exist as a planet. But it is precisely this that is needed, and it is a necessity in order to understand other epochs of development, for the human being to tear his thinking away from what today adheres to the conceptions of ordinary sensory thinking and feeling, and to arrive at a thinking that is free of the senses. Thinking that is free of the senses is not abstract thinking, but very, very real thinking. If we think of the old moon as a kind of large salad with its bark and so on included, then this is “sensual-supersensual” thinking, as Goethe says. By detaching color and form from sensuality and projecting them freely into space, you have gained imaginations through sensual-free thinking. Anyone who regards this as a firm foundation will never be able to stumble when ascending to higher worlds.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"IX. Pictorial Representations as a Necessary Educational Tool for Mental Training","site_heading":null,"date":"1907-12-29","location":null,"word_count":450,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/101/1907-12-29/p007","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:identity","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"Myths and Legends, Occult Signs and Symbols","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA101/English/SOL2024/19071229p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/101/1907-12-29/p007"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/101/1907-12-29/p007","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"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.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 101/1907-12-29/p007","passage_number":7,"text":"Das beste Mittel für einen größeren Menschenkreis, zu einem sinnlichkeitsfreien Denken zu kommen, ist heute die Theosophie, wenn die Theosophie so aufgefaßt wird, daß der Mensch lernt, die Vorstellungen loszulösen von der Sinnlichkeit. Namentlich auf den Gebieten, die ein wenig über das Allerelementarste hinausgehen, wird der Mensch durch Theosophie zu sinnlichkeitsfreiem Denken geführt. Wenn Sie sich zum Beispiel klarmachen wollen, was der Ätherleib oder der Astralleib ist, so können Sie diese ja äußerlich nicht sehen. Gerade das gibt Ihnen die Theosophie, daß sie Dinge beschreibt, die Sie äußerlich nicht sehen können. Oder wenn wir in der Theosophie den alten Mond beschreiben, dann entwerfen wir von ihm ein Bild, ein möglichst drastisches sogar, in dem wir sinnliche und übersinnliche Vorstellungen zusammenfügen, so daß ein materialistisch gesinnter Mensch sagen würde: Der malt da etwas hin, was gar nicht möglich ist. - Ja, man muß in der Theosophie etwas für heutige Verhältnisse geradezu Unmögliches lehren und den alten Mond so beschreiben, daß auf ihm keine solchen Felsen, Mineralien und Steine waren, wie sie heute auf unserer Erde sind. Der ganze alte Mond bestand aus einer lebendigen Substanz, die man vergleichen könnte in der Dichtigkeit mit einer Art Spinatbrei oder Kochsalat, also ein Körper zwischen Mineralien und Pflanzen mittendrin, ein halb pflanzlicher, halb mineralischer Körper. Wir finden auf dem alten Mond etwas wie ein halb-pflanzliches Leben. Solche Mineralien wie heute gab es damals noch nicht. Wenn Sie die heutigen Torfmoore betrachten, wo auch eine Art halb-pflanzliche Substanz ist, würden Sie ein äußerlich ähnliches Bild bekommen, wie die Substanz des alten Mondes war. Statt Felsen und Berge würden Sie auf dem alten Monde höchstens so etwas gefunden haben, wie es heute die Borke unserer Bäume ist. Nun wird Ihnen jeder Naturforscher heute einwenden, so etwas könne nicht als Planet existieren. - Aber darauf kommt es ja gerade an - und es ist eine Notwendigkeit, um andere Entwickelungsepochen zu verstehen -, daß der Mensch sein Denken losreißt von dem, was heute den Vorstellungen von gewöhnlichem sinnlichen Denken und Empfinden anhaftet, und zu einem sinnlichkeitsfreien Denken kommt. Sinnlichkeitsfreies Denken ist nicht abstraktes Denken, sondern sehr, sehr wirkliches Denken. Wenn wir uns den alten Mond als eine Art großen Kochsalat denken mit eingeschlossener Borke und so weiter, so ist das «sinnlich-übersinnlich» gedacht, wie Goethe sagt. Indem Sie Farbe und Form loslösen von der Sinnlichkeit und sie frei in den Raum hinaus projizieren, haben Sie durch sinnlichkeitsfreies Denken Vorstellungen gewonnen. Wer dies als eine feste Grundlage betrachtet, der wird niemals straucheln können beim Aufsteigen in höhere Welten.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":418,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/101/1907-12-29/p007"}],"english":["GA 101/1907-12-29/p007"],"method":"identity","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":418,"en_words":450,"ratio":1.08,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"verified","verified":true,"evidence":["length","meaning","anchors","audit"]},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.07,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":6715,"original_word_count":6277,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"Myths and Legends, Occult Signs and Symbols","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA101/English/SOL2024/19071229p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. 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