XII. About the Gospel of John

GA 90b/1905-06-26/p005 ·1905-06-26 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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 1905–1906 nach ausführlichen und z.T. fragmentarischen Mitschriften.» (Early lecture series and single lectures for members in Berlin 1905-1906, from detailed and in part fragmentary listeners' transcripts.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 90b); 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.

We will now try to penetrate a little into the meaning and power of this Gospel of John. For those for whom it is the main thing to penetrate into the spirit of Christianity and into the tasks of our immediate future, for them the Gospel of John is the most important, and it is only due to a misunderstanding of our time that the Gospel of John is neglected today. The mystics knew that the Gospel of John is a book of life. I have mentioned something similar before. Anyone who reads the Gospel of John from the thirteenth chapter onwards is not just reading a book, not just absorbing the knowledge of certain facts; each sentence is a source of occult powers. And when we read this Gospel from there on, we generate spiritual forces in ourselves, we become different people. It is not important that we know the sentences by heart, but that we experience their meaning, that we become one with it. The occultist says: Each sentence from the thirteenth chapter onwards is written for you in such a way that it initially means an inner human experience. Something happens in us when we become completely absorbed in it and let the magic of the words take effect on us. Things light up in us that we did not know before, and through this we understand our task for the near future.

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Cite: GA 90b/1905-06-26/p005 · edition English