39. Original Sin. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. The Invigorating Power of Childhood

GA 246/1911-03-04/p013 ·1911-03-04 · English High

Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Nach zum Teil bruchstückhaften Mitschriften» (From transcripts that are in part fragmentary). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 246), which also speaks of "fragmentarischen Hörernotizen und Vortragszusammenfassungen". The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

Let us remember: the physical body is formed in the first seven years; later growth occurs on the basis of the forms that have been formed in the first seven years. In the next seven years until sexual maturity, the etheric body develops a free activity. During sexual maturity up to the twentieth year the astral body becomes free, then the sensory soul; what we call the intellectual or emotional soul is not developed until the 28th year; by then we have already to a certain extent killed off the actual ego. It might therefore seem to us that it would be better if one could not develop one's physical powers so freely before the age of 28, but rather if the powers on both sides could act on each other completely unweakened. If Lucifer and Ahriman had not appeared, man would stand quite differently in the world; man would allow his brain to mature; he would then still have the ability to turn this brain into an instrument of human life with full consciousness.

Read this passage in another edition

DEoriginalENEnglish

Raw JSON: /v1/steiner/en/ga/246/1911-03-04/p013.json
Cite: GA 246/1911-03-04/p013 · edition English