78. Abstract Thoughts, Living Will

GA 246/1922-03-04/p004 ·1922-03-04 · English Medium

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 am able to speak to you again after a long time. Today I would like to say a few things that can complement yesterday's public lecture. One must try to recognize man as he is now. When a person dies here in the physical world, his body remains behind as a corpse. He is abandoned by his soul and spirit and handed over to the earth. The dead person is actually no longer a person, but only an image of a person. What is death on earth is a birth in the spiritual world. If, on the other hand, the human soul builds a body after conception, this means dying for the spiritual world. The soul dies for the spiritual world. But where does this soul corpse remain? It does not remain in the spiritual world, but is buried in the human body, in the brain. And what is this soul corpse? It is the abstract thoughts of the human being. The thoughts of man are not alive, they are dead.

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Cite: GA 246/1922-03-04/p004 · edition English