Lecture I

GA 90a/1904-10-10/p006 ·1904-10-10 · 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: 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: «Frühe Vortragsreihen und Einzelvorträge für Mitglieder in Berlin 1903–1904 nach ausführlichen und z.T. fragmentarischen Mitschriften.» (Early lecture series and single lectures for members in Berlin 1903-1904, from detailed and in part fragmentary listeners' transcripts.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 90a); the description calls them "Hörermitschriften", and the served text carries the note-taker's gap marker "[Lücke in der Mitschrift]". The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

The Initiate who communicated what is contained in the Apocalypse, surveyed the epoch which preceded that of our present Root Race, surveyed the two human races preceding our own, surveyed the time when man first assumed his present form in the middle of the Lemurian Race, surveyed too the life that stretches beyond birth and death. Before that point of time in the middle of the Lemurian epoch, the constitution of man was quite different from that of the human being who stands before us today. I will start from a quite definite point. Man of the present day consists, as you know, of seven bodies: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and four others. We are concerned here with the three lower bodies only. There is the physical body which is perceived with the ordinary senses, and then the etheric body which is not perceived by these senses. The etheric body can be perceived by those who have acquired the requisite faculty, by suggesting away the physical body of the human being concerned. They then see in space a “double” of the man. The color of this “double” is more or less that of peach blossom. Embedded as it were in this “double” is the astral body, a shining oval. When a human being dies today, the higher bodies, including the etheric body, rise out of the physical body. During the period immediately following death, the astral body is still united with the etheric body. After a few days the astral body leaves the etheric body and begins to traverse the path it must take between death and a new birth. The position of the etheric body today is only that of a mediator between the activity of the astral body and the physical body. In man's present earthly existence, it is the physical body that is of the greatest significance for him. The physical brain is the instrument for man's highest spiritual activity. The etheric body is the mediator, the connecting link between the activity of the higher bodies and the physical body. There was no dissolving of this connecting link in the first two Races nor in the early part of the third Race.

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Cite: GA 90a/1904-10-10/p006 · edition English