I. Free Will, Immortality

GA 71b/1918-04-24/p020 ·1918-04-24 · English LowLow alignmentMost translators re-paragraphed Steiner substantially. The locus identifies the same chapter or section, but paragraph-N to paragraph-N mapping is loose. For exact-quotation precision, compare with the German.
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.

Most people maintain that this is a subject for belief only, but this is really simply because they do not wish to make any effort to consider such things as the human spirit, that they say this. The actual method and practice of the scientist of spirit proves that it is not just a belief that is acquired, but knowledge as certain in its sphere as is scientific knowledge in the natural sphere. We must, of course, be quite clear that by undertaking certain exercises and functions, the soul has to attain a quite different constitution from the one it has in normal life and ordinary science. It has to acquire a different kind of perception. In my writings, where more detailed information about these matters can be found, I have called the first stage that the soul reaches in investigating the spiritual world, imaginative knowledge.

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Cite: GA 71b/1918-04-24/p020 · edition English