34. The Beginning and the End of the Earth
GA 68b/1907-12-16/p040
·1907-12-16
·
English
MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
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.
For spiritual science, the sleeping human being is a different being than the waking human being. We now ask: What does the astral body and the ego do throughout the night while the person sleeps? Everything in the world, in the cosmos, has its task; so too does the astral body and the ego. Everything is wisely arranged in the cosmos. A being like the human being today could not exist without sleep. If the astral body were always in the physical body, always active in the senses, eyes and ears, the hands, then fatigue would ultimately have a wearing effect.
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