Esoteric Lesson

GA 266b/1911-01-17/p005 ·1911-01-17 · English LowLow alignmentMost translators re-paragraphed Steiner substantially. The locus identifies the same chapter or section, but paragraph-N to paragraph-N mapping is loose. For exact-quotation precision, compare with the German.
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: «Gedächtnisaufzeichnungen von Teilnehmern» (Participants' records written from memory). Rudolf Steiner Verlag Gesamtverzeichnis 2022, volume subtitle. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

All thoughts are of two kinds: those that are evoked in us through the perception of the physical plane, and those that Theosophy gives us. Everything in the physical world is maya, including our physical body. What actually causes it to exist? What causes the plants, animals, and stones around us to exist? It is because higher beings conceived a thought millions and millions of years ago and then thought this thought over and over again. With these things, it is as the proverb says: constant dripping wears away the stone. The same thoughts coincide and ultimately form physical objects. The harder the stone, the longer it has been “thought.” Our physical body is also nothing more than the thoughts of many higher beings.

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Cite: GA 266b/1911-01-17/p005 · edition English