{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 266b/1910-12-31/p008","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Through esoteric work on ourselves, we should acquire a new way of thinking, feeling, and willing. We must tell ourselves that once we have summoned the courage to follow the path of the esotericist, we must take a leap across an abyss. We must allow a well-considered thought to pass into our feelings and then permeate them completely, so that we do not carelessly say something that we have not actually grasped in all its depth. A sentence that one hears so often from people today, and yet one that is used as abusively as few others, is: “I am a Christian.” Esotericists should realize that “being a Christian” is a distant, distant ideal that they must strive for unceasingly. Living like a Christian means above all accepting whatever fate brings us with serenity, never murmuring against the work of God, accepting with joy whatever He sends us. This means letting the following sentence become second nature: “Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow, they do not reap, they do not gather into barns, and yet they are given food.” Accepting what we are given with gratitude means living according to this saying. If we do not do so, it becomes blasphemy on our lips. It should be clear to us that if we do not prepare ourselves sufficiently for the leap across the abyss into the spiritual realms, we can cause such damage through words and thoughts that the gods must destroy worlds in order to repair this damage. For what is corrupt must be destroyed in order to be rebuilt.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Esoteric Lesson","site_heading":"Loosening the Bodies: Esoteric Practice and Spiritual Development","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 Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote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":"1910-12-31","location":null,"word_count":266,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/266b/1910-12-31/p008","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2025","book_title":"Esoteric Lessons 1910–1912","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266II/English/SOL2025/19101231e02.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":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/266b/1910-12-31/p008"}],"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","evidence_translation":"Participants' records written from memory","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 266b/1910-12-31","paragraph_count":5,"fetch_unit":{"ga":"266b","lecture":"1910-12-31","lang":"de","edition":"original"},"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/266b/1910-12-31","json_url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/ga/266b/1910-12-31?lang=de"},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.07,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":1042,"original_word_count":977,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2025","book_title":"Esoteric Lessons 1910–1912","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266II/English/SOL2025/19101231e02.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."}}