XXXVIII. The Transient and the Eternal

GA 90b/1906-01-10/p005 ·1906-01-10 · 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.

“Theosophy literally means 'wisdom of God'. However, today's movement does not mean that we want to receive wisdom from God; the divinity we are looking for is also for the theosophist that which he wants to approach continuously, but which he cannot grasp with concepts; because there will come a time when we will have completely different, much higher insights into the concept of God, into that which we look up to. It would therefore be presumptuous to want to comprehend the Godhead with today's abilities. Nor can we say of the future that it will. To spread the wisdom of God, that is what Theosophy wants; it wants to usher in a different kind of knowledge. What man can perceive with his senses and combine with his mind, he calls knowledge. But let us now consider how much is still present in the soul if we ignore everything that we experience in a given place – Lugano – and at a given time – today – over the course of a day. We would feel quite differently if we were in Moscow instead of Lugano, or a hundred years ago instead of today. So let us discard our ties to place and time and see how much remains in the soul.

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Cite: GA 90b/1906-01-10/p005 · edition English