4. The Beings of the Astral World

GA 88/1903-11-18/p021 ·1903-11-18 · English High

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: «Aufzeichnungen von neunzehn Vorträgen und vier privaten Lehrstunden» (Records of nineteen lectures and four private teaching hours). Rudolf Steiner Verlag Gesamtverzeichnis 2022, volume subtitle. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

When a "cosmos" begins to develop in the first, second and third round, then it is like a child develops in the first three years of life. It is indicated with it, as it were, the way which it will take in the life. Only then comes that which is the actual task of the cosmos; we call this the "truth" of the cosmos. On our present earth the truth has come to light; the three preceding rounds of the path of development represent the "way". The "truth" is the outer manifestation of this "way" in our present earth development. We will go through the third part of the development, the "life", when we will have penetrated our souls more and more by the truth. We will learn to recognize the truth, but the truth will become our life; then we will no longer need to gain the truth. Now this is still necessary to lead us to a moral and ethical life. But in the future, this truth will permeate us, it will be our life blood. Therefore, the one who is a representative of the truth flowing through the cosmos has taken this triple into his consciousness and has expressed it in the words: "I am the way, the truth and the life.

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Cite: GA 88/1903-11-18/p021 · edition English