{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 326/1922-12-24/p022","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"So, in his search for the self, Meister Eckhart felt that he had fallen into nothingness. This feeling evoked in this medieval mystic words that profoundly touch the heart and soul. They can be paraphrased thus: “I submerge myself in God's nothingness, and am eternally, through nothingness, through nothing, an I; through nothing, I become an I. In all eternity, I must etch the I from the ‘nothingness’ of God.”[^16] These are powerful words. Why did this urge for “nothing,” for finding that I in nothingness, resound in the innermost chamber of this mystic's heart, when he wanted to pass from seeking the world to seeking the I? Why? If we go back into earlier times, we find that in former ages it was possible, when the soul turned its gaze inward into itself, to behold the spirit shining forth within. This was still a heritage of primeval pneumatology, of which we shall speak later on. When Thomas Aquinas, for example, peered into the soul, he found within the soul a weaving, living spiritual element. Thomas Aquinas[^17] and his predecessors sought the essential ego not in the soul itself but in the spiritual dwelling in the soul. They looked through the soul into the spirit, and in the spirit they found their God-given I. And they said, or could have said: I penetrate into my inmost soul, gaze into the spirit, and in the spirit I find the I.—In the meantime, however, in humanity's forward development toward the realm of freedom, men had lost the ability to find the spirit when they looked inward into themselves.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Lecture I","site_heading":"Nicholas Cusanus and the Birth of Modern Science","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 Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote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":"1922-12-24","location":null,"word_count":266,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/326/1922-12-24/p022","alignment_confidence":"medium","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Maria St. Goar and Norman MacBeth","identified_edition":"AP1985","book_title":"The Origins of Natural Science","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA326/English/AP1985/19221224p01.html","evidence":"lecture_list_row","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/326/1922-12-24/p022","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1922-12-24","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 326/1922-12-24/p016","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/326/1922-12-24/p016"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","length_check":{"de_words":318,"en_words":266,"ratio":0.84,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.19,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":5437,"original_word_count":4579,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Maria St. Goar and Norman MacBeth","identified_edition":"AP1985","book_title":"The Origins of Natural Science","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA326/English/AP1985/19221224p01.html","evidence":"lecture_list_row","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":"ok","checked_against":["GA 326/1922-12-24/p016"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"medium","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"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."}}