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

GA 246/1911-03-04/p016 ·1911-03-04 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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.

The animal grows into the position it occupies in life through its innate equilibrium; this is not the case with humans; they must first acquire the upright gait, and this is a work of the ego, which first crystallizes the equilibrium. The animal is not capable of acquiring knowledge; what is called truth does not live in the animal. But in the first three years of its life, the ego gives man “the way, the truth and the life”. The unconscious ego brings this about. So what must man say when this is accomplished for his spirit? “I” am the way, the truth and the life; and if you do not become fully conscious in spirit as you are unconscious in the first three years of your life, you cannot enter the kingdoms of heaven. - If we think of the childlike ego as spiritualized, it must work through all subsequent incarnations, and it is the Christ ego.

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Cite: GA 246/1911-03-04/p016 · edition English