{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 199/1920-08-21/p011","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"If we wish to look into what it is that the world of the East brings forth out of the depths of its folk character, it becomes obvious that it is possible to discover the fundamental nuance of feeling in the East only by going back into earlier times and learning through them. For, in regard to its original character, the East has become completely decadent. Forgetting its very nature, the East has allowed itself to be inundated by what I have described as the most extreme, radical offshoots of Western thought. Certainly, it is true that what was once there is still living within Eastern humanity, but today it is all covered up. What once lived in the East, what once vibrated through Eastern souls, survives in its final results where it is no longer understood, where it has turned into a superstitious ritual, where it has become the hypocritical murmurings of the popes of the Orthodox Russian ritual, incomprehensible even to those who believe they understand it. A direct line runs from ancient India to these formulas of the Russian church ritual, which are now only rattled off to the multitudes in the form of lip service. For this whole inclination which thus expressed itself, which bestowed on the Eastern soul its imprint and also does so today in a suppressed form, is the potential for developing a spiritual state of mind that guides the human being towards the prenatal, to what exists in our life before birth, before conception. In the very beginning, the nature of what permeated the East as a world conception and religious attitude was connected with the fact that this East possessed a concept which has been completely lost to the West. As I have said here before, the West has the concept of immortality, not that of “not having been born,” of “unbornness.” We have the word immortality, we do not have the term “unbornness.” This implies that in our thinking we continue life after death, but not into the time before birth. On the other hand, the East possessed that special soul inclination it had that still included Imagination and Inspiration in its thoughts and concepts. By means of this particular manner of expressing the conceptual content of its soul world, the East was far less predisposed to pay heed to the life after death than to that before birth. In regard to the human being it viewed life here in the sense world as something that comes to man after he has received his tasks prior to birth, as something that he has to absolve here in the sense of the task given him. He was disposed to regard this life as a duty set human beings by the gods before they descended into this earthly body of flesh. It goes without saying that such a world conception encompasses both repeated earth lives and the lives between death and birth; for one can quite well speak of a single life after death, but not of only one before birth. That would be an impossible teaching. After all, one who refers at all to pre-existence would then not speak of *one* earth life only, which is something that should be obvious to you upon reflection. It was the way they had of looking up into the supersensory world, which was brought about by the whole predisposition of these Eastern souls, but it was one that focused their attention on the life we lead between death and a new birth prior to being drawn down to earthly life. Everything else, everything in the way of political, social, historical and economical ideas was only the consequence of what dwelt in the soul due to the orientation towards the life between birth and conception.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Lecture VII","site_heading":"Eastern Spirituality, Western Economics, and Central European Rights","site_heading_note":"A heading the site wrote for this unit from a summary of it; not in the edition, and not the words of Rudolf Steiner or of the translator. Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote it.","date":"1920-08-21","location":null,"word_count":630,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/199/1920-08-21/p011","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Maria St. Goar","identified_edition":"AP1986","book_title":"Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA199/English/AP1986/19200821p01.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/199/1920-08-21/p011"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/199/1920-08-21/p011","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},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1920-08-21","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 199/1920-08-21/p009","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/199/1920-08-21/p009"}],"bead_confidence":"high","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":601,"en_words":630,"ratio":1.05,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. 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Was im Osten gelebt hat, was im Osten die Seelen durchzittert hat, das lebt in den äußersten Ausläufern zuletzt da, wo es nicht mehr verstanden wird, wo es abergläubischer Kultus geworden ist, wo es heuchlerisches Gemurmel der Popen geworden ist in dem letzten, eben orthodox-russischen Kultus, unverstanden auch von denen, die diesen orthodoxen russischen Kultus zu verstehen glaubten. Es war eine Linie vom alten Indertum bis zu diesen bloß noch auf den Lippen heuchlerisch in die Menge hineingeplärrten Formeln des russischen Kultus. Denn diese ganze Veranlagung, die sich da auslebte, die diesem Osten seelisch das Gepräge gab, die es ihm auch heute gibt, aber unterdrückt, das ist die Veranlagung dazu, eine solche geistige Verfassung zu entwickeln, welche den Menschen zu dem Vorgeburtlichen hinlenkt, zu dem, was in unserem Leben vor der Geburt beziehungsweise vor der Empfängnis liegt. Ganz ursprünglich war dasjenige, was als Weltanschauung und Religiosität diesen Osten durchdrang, so, daß es zusammenhing damit, daß dieser Osten einen Begriff hatte, der dem Westen ja ganz verlorengegangen ist. Der Westen hat, wie ich das schon einmal hier erwähnt habe, den Begriff der Unsterblichkeit, aber nicht der Ungeburtlichkeit, des Ungeborenseins. Unsterblichkeit sagen wir, aber wir sagen nicht Ungeburtlichkeit. Das heißt, wir setzen in Gedanken das Leben fort nach dem Tode, wir setzen es aber nicht fort hinaus in die vorgeburtliche Zeit. Aber dieser Osten war durch die besondere Veranlagung seiner Seele, welche noch Imagination, Inspiration in die Gedanken, in die Vorstellungen hereinnahm, dazu veranlagt, durch dieses besondere inhaltliche Ausleben der Vorstellungswelt weniger hinzusehen auf das nachtodliche Leben als vielmehr auf das vorgeburtliche, und dieses Leben hier in der Sinneswelt für den Menschen als etwas zu betrachten, was ihm zukommt, nachdem er seine Aufgaben empfangen hat vor der Geburt, was er hier auszuführen hat im Sinne der empfangenen Aufgabe. Er war dazu veranlagt, dieses Leben als die Pflicht aufzufassen desjenigen, was einem von den Göttern gegeben worden ist, bevor man in diesen irdisch-fleischlichen Leib heruntergestiegen ist. Es ist eine selbstverständliche Forderung, daß eine solche Weltanschauung die wiederholten Erdenleben und die Leben zwischen Tod und Geburt in sich einbezieht, denn man kann wohl von einem einmaligen Leben nach dem Tode reden, aber nicht von einem einmaligen vor der Geburt. Das würde eine unmögliche Lehre sein. Denn derjenige, der überhaupt redet von der Präexistenz, der redet dann nicht von nur einem Erdenleben, wie Sie bei einer rechten Überlegung sich klarmachen können. Es war ein Hinaufblicken in die übersinnliche Welt, welches durch die ganze Veranlagung dieser östlichen Seelen hervorgerufen war, aber es war ein Hinaufblicken so, daß man im Grunde genommen im Auge hatte dieses Leben zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, bevor wir hier in das Erdenleben eingezogen sind. Alles andere, was gedacht wurde in politischer, in sozialer, in historischer Beziehung, in wirtschaftlicher Beziehung, es war nur eine Konsequenz von dem, was in der Seele ruhte in bezug auf dieses Hingeordnetsein auf das Leben vor der Geburt beziehungsweise vor der Empfängnis.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":601,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/199/1920-08-21/p009"}],"english":["GA 199/1920-08-21/p011"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":601,"en_words":630,"ratio":1.05,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.06,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":6615,"original_word_count":6259,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Maria St. Goar","identified_edition":"AP1986","book_title":"Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA199/English/AP1986/19200821p01.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":"ok","checked_against":["GA 199/1920-08-21/p009"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"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. 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