7. How Do We Understand Illness and Death?
GA 68b/1907-01-21/p027
·1907-01-21
·
English
HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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: «Da keine professionellen Stenogramme vorliegen, handelt es sich oftmals um notizenhaft festgehaltene Zusammenfassungen oder Berichte.» (Since no professional shorthand transcripts exist, these are often summaries or reports kept in the form of notes.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68b). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
Spiritual science does not just speak of this birth of man, but also of others; and this must be understood. Until this physical birth, the physical human body is surrounded by an outer physical shell that nourishes and protects it, sending its juices into it. What happens to the physical human body until physical birth happens to the etheric body until a certain point in human development. Even after the human being has been physically born, the etheric body is still enveloped by a protective motherly shell of etheric matter for the initiate. When the human being is physically born, he is not yet born eterally.
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