24. On Scotus Eriugena
GA 87/1902-04-26/p029
·1902-04-26
·
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: «Auch wenn die Mitschrift noch nicht die später übliche Genauigkeit aufweist» (Even though the transcript does not yet have the accuracy usual later). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 87), which calls the cycle the earliest of which a listener's transcript exists. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
The first stage is the body. The second stage is that which animates the body, the life force that flows through it. On the third level, the sense is animated. From this arises the animal soul. Fourthly, the spirit awakens within the sense. The higher stages, which are no longer bound to the elements, no longer bound to the senses, are contained therein, thus fifthly: the receptivity for the spiritual hovering above the senses. Then, sixthly, bliss, spirituality, develops. The spirit is [...] turned towards the senses, thus still permeated by the body of desire, which chains it to material existence; at the seventh stage this ceases, there the spirit steps before itself in its pure existence. [This makes it possible to embark on the path to return to God, to the divine. The divine would then be the [highest] level.
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