{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 7/intro/p015","lang":"en","edition":"RSP1960","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"The transformation which is effected in the whole nature of man when he looks at things in this way is indicated in beautiful words in the Indian poem, *The Bhagavad Gita*, of which Wilhelm von Humboldt therefore said that he was grateful to his destiny for having permitted him to live until he could be in a position to become acquainted with this work. The inner light says in this poem, “An external ray from me, who has attained to a special existence in the world of personal life, attracts to itself the five senses and the individual soul, which belong to nature.—When the effulgent spirit materializes in space and time, or when it dematerializes, it seizes upon things and carries them along with itself, as the breath of the wind seizes upon the perfumes of flowers and sweeps them away with itself.—The inner light dominates the ear, the touch, the taste, and the smell, as well as the mind; it forms a bond between itself and the things of the senses.—Fools do not know when the inner light flames up and when it is extinguished, or when it unites with things; only he who partakes of the inner light can know of this.” So strongly does *The Bhagavad Gita* point to the transformation of man that it says of the “sage” that he can no longer err, no longer sin. If he seems to err or sin he must illuminate his thoughts or his actions with a light in which that no longer appears as error and as sin which appears as such to the ordinary consciousness. “He who has raised himself and whose knowledge is of the purest kind does not kill and does not defile himself, even though he should slay another.” This only indicates the same basic disposition of the soul, springing from the highest cognition, concerning which Spinoza, after describing it in his *Ethics*, breaks into the thrilling words: “With this I have concluded what I wanted to set forth concerning the power of the soul over the affections and over the freedom of the soul. From this it appears how superior is a wise man to an ignorant one, and how much more powerful than one who is merely driven by passions. For the ignorant man is not only driven in many directions by external causes and never attains to true peace of soul, but he also lives in ignorance of himself, of God, and of objects, and when his suffering comes to an end, his existence also comes to an end; while the wise man, as such, hardly experiences any agitation in his spirit, but rather never ceases to exist in the as it were necessary knowledge of himself, of God, and of objects, and always enjoys true peace of soul. Although the path I have described as leading to this appears very difficult, it can be found nevertheless. And it may well be troublesome, since it is found so seldom. For how is it possible that, if salvation were close at hand and to be found without great effort, it is neglected by almost everyone? But everything sublime is as difficult as it is rare.”","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Introduction","site_heading":null,"date":null,"location":null,"word_count":533,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/7/intro/p015","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:identity","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":null,"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["RSP1960"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"en","edition":"RSP1960","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/7/intro/p015","paragraph_aligned":true},{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"locus":"GA 7/einfuhrung/p015","anchor_mapped":true,"anchor_method":"vocab","anchor_confidence":"high","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/7/einfuhrung/p015"}],"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"einfuhrung","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 7/einfuhrung/p015","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/7/einfuhrung/p015"}],"bead_confidence":"high","length_check":{"de_words":498,"en_words":533,"ratio":1.07,"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":null,"band":"no_original","note":null,"word_count":7052,"original_word_count":null,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"status":"unknown","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 7/einfuhrung/p015"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","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."}}