{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 266a/1909-12-05/p004","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"We must turn to the beginning of the Gospel of John for the answer: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God ... and the Word became flesh.” Through the Word becoming flesh, the method of teaching in the esoteric schools also changed. In pre-Christian times, the Word was not yet effective. Teaching was given in silence, and silently, in images, the disciple received the messages from the spiritual worlds through contemplation. He was led silently into a dark room, and in this place of silence the image of a winged old man appeared before him, pursuing a female figure shrouded in blue clouds, striving to unite with her. This image appears before the seer in the spiritual worlds when he observes an old man who has passed through the gates of death, living his life backwards in Kamaloka and striving to attain his higher self—the female figure shrouded in blue clouds—in order to unite with it and ascend to the higher worlds, to Devachan. The color blue always represents the striving toward higher things. When the disciple meditated on this image, which represents only the spiritual, the forces necessary to reach these higher worlds flowed to him.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Esoteric Lesson","site_heading":"Christ Power and the Transformation of Esoteric Teaching","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 Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote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":"1909-12-05","location":null,"word_count":202,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/266a/1909-12-05/p004","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"Esoteric Lessons 1904–1909","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266I/English/SOL2024/19091205e02.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/266a/1909-12-05/p004"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/266a/1909-12-05/p004"}],"record":{"record_type":"listeners_notes","scope":"volume","note":"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":"Gedächtnisaufzeichnungen von Teilnehmern sowie Notizen von Vorträgen","evidence_translation":"Participants' records written from memory, and notes of lectures","evidence_source":"Rudolf Steiner Verlag Gesamtverzeichnis 2022, volume subtitle. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one."},"paired_german":{"status":"no_paragraph_pairing","note":"No paragraph pairing exists for this paragraph, so no German text is given. The German paragraph of the same number is a different passage or an unestablished one. Read the German unit (german_unit.fetch_unit) and find the place by its content.","german_unit":{"lang":"de","edition":"original","unit_locus":"GA 266a/1909-12-05","paragraph_count":4,"fetch_unit":{"ga":"266a","lecture":"1909-12-05","lang":"de","edition":"original"},"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/266a/1909-12-05","json_url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/ga/266a/1909-12-05?lang=de"},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.05,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":1169,"original_word_count":1113,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"Esoteric Lessons 1904–1909","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266I/English/SOL2024/19091205e02.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":"not_checkable","note":"No verified paragraph alignment covers this passage, so its names cannot be compared with the German."},"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. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}