XXXVIII. The Transient and the Eternal

GA 90b/1906-01-10/p034 ·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.

The astral body is constantly attacking the physical body. The heart is good. Now the astral body – the body of desire – comes along with wine, tea and other stimulants and disturbs its normal beat. It takes a long time for the astral body to become as wise as the physical body. But then it can work on its etheric body. When the etheric body is also wise, the physical body is worked on; in the future it will strengthen the physical body. But who is working in the physical body today? The Godhead; it is working on the limbs of human nature, on which man does not yet work himself. Let us go back to the example of the cut-off hand. The hand can only exist on the body; removed from it, it withers. Likewise, if I were to be lifted just a few miles above the earth, I would wither away like the severed hand. From this it follows that as a physical human being I am bound to the place where I am placed. Just as I cannot consider the hand by itself, I cannot consider the human being without the earth. Man is not a body in itself, but a part of the whole earth organism. He can only exist with the properties that the earth offers. For example, he could not exist at a temperature of two hundred degrees Celsius. Just as our organism is enlivened by the soul, so is the whole earth organism enlivened by the earth soul.

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Cite: GA 90b/1906-01-10/p034 · edition English