{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 266b/1911-10-14/p007","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"A weak esoteric would be someone who is constantly preoccupied with talking about his difficulties and physical pains, who daily gives an account of all the great and small torments he has to endure. Those who want to progress must develop the strength within themselves not to constantly try to cure their suffering with all kinds of remedies and cures, but must understand that all this is part of an esoteric development in which the whole being of human beings is subject to transformation. It would be an example of a thoroughly sick soul life if, for example, someone were to walk across a meadow and see a colchicum and think that it wanted to devour him. But even if he is not sick, the esotericist may have the feeling that he is being seized from behind by higher beings and, as it were, sucked up. Among ordinary people, there are phenomena such as being afraid of an open window when they are on a high floor, because this gives rise to the desire to throw oneself out of the window. Or there is what is known as agoraphobia, where a person does not dare to cross a certain space. The latter sensation ceases when there is someone else nearby. Official medicine gives reasons for all these phenomena, but the real reason is that such people lack legitimate solitude. Solitude is something that all people need to a certain extent and is not mere selfishness. Anyone who wants to help others will eventually feel that they cannot continue to help unless they draw strength from solitude. Anyone who always wants to talk will eventually feel that they are only speaking empty words if they do not allow their spiritual strength to come to them in solitude. We must be alone in order to pray and meditate; communal prayer can only bring people to a certain level of group consciousness. Those who think it is selfish to seek solitude simply have a need to be with other people, not to help them, but so that they are not alone. Even the selfless “desire to help” can in reality spring from selfishness, from simply seeking company. For example, magnetism, which is supposedly used to relieve pain in others, can arise only from the need to feel good about oneself by stroking the body of another. Although love and egoism are opposites, it is nevertheless true that in certain borderline cases the two come very close to each other and it is difficult to distinguish between them.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Esoteric Lesson","site_heading":"Maya, Spiritual Perception, and Esoteric 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":"1911-10-14","location":null,"word_count":424,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/266b/1911-10-14/p007","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/SOL2025/19111014e02.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/266b/1911-10-14/p007"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/266b/1911-10-14/p007"}],"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/1911-10-14","paragraph_count":14,"fetch_unit":{"ga":"266b","lecture":"1911-10-14","lang":"de","edition":"original"},"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/266b/1911-10-14","json_url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/ga/266b/1911-10-14?lang=de"},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.04,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":5218,"original_word_count":5007,"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/SOL2025/19111014e02.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."}}