Esoteric Lesson

GA 266b/1912-02-22/p016 ·1912-02-22 · 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.

But this is precisely what the backward Luciferic spirits want to stir up in us, the memory of the past as something still existing and beneficial in the present. If the teachings of the ancient Brahmins or of Buddhism, which promoted the development of human beings in their time, were still being transmitted to people today in exactly the same way, it would be as if the memory of our soul had been transported across time into the present. We would be living in hallucinations. An esotericist should be firmly centered, not indulging in any of these currents and especially not flirting with them, as is all too often the case today when people want to “reconcile” all parties and hold them together in a great brotherhood. Time and again, one hears that this or that personality spoke, wrote, or preached “so theosophically,” or that this or that view is so deeply imbued with theosophy. This is just allowing oneself to be misled, to be pulled out of one's center in order to temporarily go along with another current. It would be better for such esotericists to continue with such a partly good or partly evil current for a time or for their whole life than to constantly swing back and forth between one opinion and another.

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Cite: GA 266b/1912-02-22/p016 · edition English