43. The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity III

GA 246/1911-06-07/p056 ·1911-06-07 · 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.

I say: they never can. This “never” refers in particular to our present time. It was not always like this. If we were to go back to very ancient times of human development, we could not say that no one was ever able to distinguish between the entities they encountered on the astral or devachanic plan. When an ancient Egyptian in very ancient times became clairvoyant and encountered an entity of the astral or devachanic world, it had written on its forehead, as it were, what it was. He could not confuse them. In contrast, the possibility of confusion is already very great today. While ancient mankind was closer to the path into the realms of the hierarchies, today the possibility of error is very great, and the only protection against it is to endeavor to acquire such mental images, such ideas and such clear thinking as is now indicated, if one wants to distinguish the laws of evolution. For this clear thinking alone gives us the possibility of distinguishing between the types of entities that we encounter on the astral plane.

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Cite: GA 246/1911-06-07/p056 · edition English