{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 157/1915-03-02/p011-p013","extent":"range","passage_number":11,"through":13,"paragraph_count":3,"first_locus":"GA 157/1915-03-02/p011","last_locus":"GA 157/1915-03-02/p013","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"title":"X. The Three Decisions on the Path of Imaginative Cognition: Loneliness, Fear, Dread","date":"1915-03-02","location":null,"alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"no_original_to_compare","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Alice Wulsin","identified_edition":null,"book_title":"Esoteric Development","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/EsoDevel/19150302p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line"},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. 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Wording differs between translations, so a quotation found in one need not occur in the other."},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":null,"band":"no_original","note":null,"word_count":8238,"original_word_count":null,"may_be_abridged":false},"site_heading":null,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/157/1915-03-02/p011-p013","json_url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/157/1915-03-02/p011-p013.json","lecture_url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/157/1915-03-02#p011","word_count":974,"quote_safe":true,"passages":[{"passage_number":11,"locus":"GA 157/1915-03-02/p011","text":"The Portal of Death has from time immemorial been described by all mystery teachings. This Portal of Death can only be attained if we strive to reach it through what has long been known to us as meditation, that is to say, complete surrender and devotion to certain thoughts or perceptions which are suited to our individuality and which we place so entirely in the center of our consciousness that we identify ourselves wholly with them. Human effort, of course, weakens very easily along this particular path, because there truly are and must be inner hindrances and obstacles to be overcome. It is a matter of repeating, again and again, the silent inner efforts to devote oneself so completely to the given thoughts and perceptions that one forgets the whole world and lives wholly in these thoughts and perceptions. After constant repetition, however, one gradually begins to perceive that the thoughts that have been made the center of the consciousness are taking on a kind of independent life. One receives the feeling that, “Hitherto I have only ‘thought' this thought; I have placed it at the center of my consciousness; but now it is beginning to unfold a particular life and inner agility of its own.” It is as if one were in the position of being able to produce a real being within oneself. The thought begins to become an inner structure. It is an important moment when one notices that this thought or perception has a life of its own, so that one feels oneself to be the sheath of this thought, of this perception. One can then say to oneself: “My efforts have enabled me to provide a stage on which something is developing which now, through me, is coming to a particular life of its own.”","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":300,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/157/1915-03-02/p011","witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Alice Wulsin","identified_edition":null,"book_title":"Esoteric Development","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/EsoDevel/19150302p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line"},"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."}},{"passage_number":12,"locus":"GA 157/1915-03-02/p012","text":"This awakening, this enlivening of the thought, is a moment of great significance in the life of the meditator. He is then deeply stirred by the objective reality of the spiritual world; he realizes that the spiritual world, so to speak, is concerning itself with him, that it has approached him. Naturally, it is not a simple matter to reach this experience, for before doing so, one must go through various sensations that one would not, from one's own inclination, gladly go through. There is a certain feeling of isolation, for example, a feeling of loneliness to be undergone—a feeling of being forsaken. One cannot grasp the spiritual world without previously feeling forsaken by the physical world, without feeling that this physical world does many things which crush one, which wear one down. But we must come through this feeling of isolation to be able to bear the inner animation to which the thought awakens, to which it is born. Much resistance now confronts the human being; from within himself there is much resistance to what leads to true perception of this inner awakening of the thought to life.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":189,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/157/1915-03-02/p012","witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Alice Wulsin","identified_edition":null,"book_title":"Esoteric Development","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/EsoDevel/19150302p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line"},"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."}},{"passage_number":13,"locus":"GA 157/1915-03-02/p013","text":"One feeling in particular comes—an inner feeling that we simply do not wish to have. We do not admit this, however, but say instead: “Oh, I can never attain that; it sends me to sleep; my thinking and inner elasticity forsake me, they will not continue.” In short, one chooses involuntarily all sorts of evasions of what one must experience: that the thought which thus becomes enlivened becomes substantial. It becomes substantial and forms itself into a kind of being. And then one has not merely the feeling but the vision that the thought is, at first, like a little rounded seed which germinates into a being with definite form, which from outside our head continues inside so that the thought seems to tell us: “You have identified yourself with it, you are within the thought, and now, you extend with the thought into your own head; but you are essentially still outside.” The thought takes on the form of a winged human head, flowing out into infinity and then extending into one's own body through the head. The thought, therefore, grows into a winged angel's head. One must actually achieve this. It is difficult to have this experience and we therefore like to believe that in this moment when the thought grows in this way, we lose all possibility of thinking. We believe we shall be taken at this moment. The body we have known hitherto and into which the thought extends is felt to be like an abandoned automaton. Besides, there are present in the spiritual world all kinds of hindrances which prevent this from becoming visible to us. This winged angel's head really becomes inwardly visible, but there are all conceivable hindrances preventing its becoming visible. The point thus reached is the real threshold of the spiritual world. When one reaches the point I have just described, one is actually on the threshold of the spiritual world. But there, at first quite invisible to one, stands the power whom we have always called Ahriman. One does not see him. And it is Ahriman who hinders us from seeing that which I have described as the germinating thought-being. Ahriman does not wish one to see it. He wants to hinder this. And because it is primarily on the path of meditation that one reaches this point, it always becomes easy for Ahriman to erase what one must come to, if one clings to the prejudices of the physical world. And truly, one must say: The human being does not believe how very much he clings to the prejudices of the physical world; neither can he imagine that there is another world whose laws are different from those of the physical world. I cannot mention today all the prejudices which people bring with them to the threshold of the spiritual world, but I will allude to one of the principal and more intimate prejudices.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":485,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/157/1915-03-02/p013","witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Alice Wulsin","identified_edition":null,"book_title":"Esoteric Development","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/EsoDevel/19150302p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line"},"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."}}],"witnesses":[{"lang":"en","edition":"English","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"first_passage":1,"last_passage":45,"passage_count":45,"word_count":8238,"completeness":{"ratio":null,"band":"no_original","note":null}}],"aligned_witness":{"status":"no_other_language","note":"No German witness of this unit is served."}}