XVIII. Theosophy in Daily Life
GA 90b/1905-10-30/p032
·1905-10-30
·
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.
Myth and legend have expressed this beautifully in symbolic language; you can find it expressed in the myth of the brownies: in the past, when man did not think so much, they were there. Then came the time when man began to think; then the nature spirits withdrew. This is expressed symbolically, but corresponds to a hidden reality. Just as man, in his physical body, is consigned to the earth when he dies, so these nature spirits, in their elemental bodies, are sunk into the mental earth in the upper worlds, and there they die. Man dies in the physical earth, the nature spirit dies in the “earth of the spiritual world”! There they have their grave, and it is prepared for them by the megalomaniac, clever thinking of men.
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