10. The Essence of the Human Being

GA 68d/1907-07-02/p041 ·1907-07-02 · English High

Record: mixed sources. This volume draws on more than one kind of record (transcripts, notes, documents). Check the volume's own front matter before weighing a single passage. Evidence: «Vorträge aus den Jahren 1905 bis 1909 in Form von ausführlichen Mitschriften, Zuhörernotizen und Zeitungsreferaten» (Lectures from the years 1905 to 1909 in the form of detailed transcripts, listeners' notes and newspaper reports). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68d). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

As long as the astral body is in the physical body during the day, it perceives through the physical organs. Through the eye it receives light and colors, through the ear sounds, and so on. The astral body senses these things because the sensation is in it. But because it is inside the physical body, it also senses the disharmony of the environment; there is no harmony around it, and that wears it out continuously. This wear and tear of the astral body is expressed in the fact that the person tires. As long as the astral body is inside, it is occupied with the outside world, but as soon as it is outside, it works to repair the physical body, it is busy at night getting rid of the fatigue substances. That is its business at night. Man would die much sooner if the astral body did not do this every night and did not send its forces down into the physical body to bring it into the state in which it needs to be to continue life.

Read this passage in another edition

DEoriginalENEnglish

Raw JSON: /v1/steiner/en/ga/68d/1907-07-02/p041.json
Cite: GA 68d/1907-07-02/p041 · edition English