2. The Human Soul, Destiny and Death from the Point of View of Spiritual Science

GA 70a/1914-12-02/p045 ·1914-12-02 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: unknown. 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.

We see people dying in the prime of their lives; we see the outer body detach itself from the person – compressed into a short moment in time – how the outer body detaches itself from the soul, which we must assume would otherwise have had years of strength to prevail over this physical life. And as we contemplate the essence of the human being as revealed to us by this spiritual-scientific portrayal, we ask ourselves: What is it like for a person who lays down his physical body in the prime of life, that is, in the spiritual world, where the experience of self comes about through memory? What does this early death mean for the core of a human being who would still have had the strength to permeate physical life for many years? How does fate present itself here? I believe that we can best come to terms with this if we compare those who sacrifice themselves for their fatherland - which current events demand - with those who sacrifice their body, with an ascetic who also sacrifices the physical in a certain way.

Read this passage in another edition
DEoriginalENEnglish
Raw JSON: /v1/steiner/en/ga/70a/1914-12-02/p045.json
Cite: GA 70a/1914-12-02/p045 · edition English