XXI. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds II

GA 90b/1905-12-18/p028 ·1905-12-18 · 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.

Illumination has something light-like about it, which is why it is also called illumination. Inspiration is completely free of all these pictorial representations. Here the human being floats in the purely spiritual world. That is why it is also said that his ideas take on a content without the need for them to be images first. It is the word 'imageless' that can be used to compare it to. That is why it is also said that at this stage, a person receives the inner word, that is, he is able to find truths through inspiration, in that the spiritual world works into his understanding in such a way that it is not the image that affects him, but that the spirit speaks directly to him. The language of the spiritual world itself flows into his concepts. That is inspiration. It is the conversation with the beings of a spiritual world. The person is quietly closed in on himself, rejects everything visionary, everything pictorial, keeps quiet and still, and the spirits tell him the truth. That is the level of inspiration, the inner word. This level of inspiration makes it possible for a person to not only see objects wherever he goes, but for them to tell him something everywhere, so that he can hear everywhere what is buzzing around in a new space. This level of knowledge is what Goethe means when he speaks the words at the beginning of the prologue in heaven: “The sun resounds in the old way in the brother spheres of value singing.” This is not a phrase, it is reality. He speaks of the spiritual sun that resounds. The whole world becomes a resounding world that teaches us significantly about the inner core of our being. In this world, we then make acquaintance with a higher group of spiritual beings, which we call the sun spirits or also the fire spirits. Just as we got to know the spirits of twilight there, we get to know the spirits of fire here.

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Cite: GA 90b/1905-12-18/p028 · edition English