{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 119/1910-03-21_02/p036","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"By what means, then, can man, provided he deepens himself inwardly, to a certain extent induce those conditions that were described at the beginning of the lecture? In ecstasy, the Ego is poured into the Macrocosm, while the astral body has remained in the Microcosm. In what does the mystical state consist? Our life by day in the physical and etheric bodies, in the Microcosm, is remarkable in the extreme. We do not actually descend into these bodies in such a way that we become aware of their inner nature. These two sheaths make possible our life of soul and our sense-perceptions. Why is it that on waking we become aware of our life of soul? It is because the etheric body does not allow us actually to look within it, any more than a mirror allows us to see what is behind it and for that very reason enables us to see *ourselves* in it. The etheric bodies mirrors our soul-life back to us; and because it does so, it appears to us as if it were the actual cause of our soul-life. The etheric body itself, however, proves to be impenetrable. We do not penetrate into it, but it throws back to us an image of our life of soul. That is its peculiarity. The mystic, however, through intensifying the life of soul, succeeds in penetrating to a certain extent into the etheric body; he sees more than the mirrored image. By working his way into this part of the Microcosm he experiences within himself what in the normal state man experiences poured over the outer world. Thus the mystic, through inner deepening, penetrates to some extent into his etheric body; he penetrates *below* that threshold where the soul-life is in other circumstances reflected in joy, suffering, and so on, into the interior of the etheric body. What the mystic experiences in passing the threshold are processes in his own etheric body. He then experiences something that is somewhat comparable with the loss of the Ego in the state of ecstasy. In the latter case the Ego becomes evanescent, as it were, having been poured into the Macrocosm, and in mystical experience the Ego is ‘densified.’ The mystic becomes aware of this through the fact that the principle adopted by the ordinary Ego of acting in accordance with the brain-bound intelligence and the dictates of the senses, is ignored, and the impulses for his actions arise from inner feelings issuing *directly* from his etheric body and not, as in the case of other people, merely reflected by it. The intensely strong inner experiences of the mystic are due to the fact that he penetrates right into his own etheric body.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"1. The World Behind the Tapestry of Sense-perceptions. Ecstasy and Mystical Experience","site_heading":null,"date":"1910-03-21","location":null,"word_count":452,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/119/1910-03-21_02/p036","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Dorothy S. Osmond and Charles Davy","identified_edition":"RSP1968","book_title":"Macrocosm and Microcosm","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA119/English/RSP1968/19100321p01.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/119/1910-03-21_02/p036"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/119/1910-03-21_02/p036"}],"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},"unit_kind":{"kind":"second_lecture_same_day","base_unit":"GA 119/1910-03-21","note":"Another lecture given on the same date as 1910-03-21; the suffix only separates two lectures of one day."},"paired_german":{"status":"no_paragraph_pairing","note":"No paragraph pairing exists for this paragraph, so no German text is given. The German paragraph of the same number is a different passage or an unestablished one. Read the German unit (german_unit.fetch_unit) and find the place by its content.","german_unit":{"lang":"de","edition":"original","unit_locus":"GA 119/1910-03-21_02","paragraph_count":36,"fetch_unit":{"ga":"119","lecture":"1910-03-21_02","lang":"de","edition":"original"},"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/119/1910-03-21_02","json_url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/ga/119/1910-03-21_02?lang=de"},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"nearest_pairs":{"before":{"de":[28,29,30],"en":[33]}}},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":0.77,"band":"watch","note":"This witness is somewhat shorter than the original. Minor omissions or condensation are possible.","word_count":6508,"original_word_count":8479,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Dorothy S. Osmond and Charles Davy","identified_edition":"RSP1968","book_title":"Macrocosm and Microcosm","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA119/English/RSP1968/19100321p01.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."},"entity_parity":{"status":"not_checkable","note":"No verified paragraph alignment covers this passage, so its names cannot be compared with the German."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}