Lecture XIV

GA 94/1906-07-11/p007 ·1906-07-11 · 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: «Zusammenfassungen und Notizen von Vorträgen u. Vortragsreihen» (Summaries and notes of lectures and lecture cycles). Rudolf Steiner Verlag Gesamtverzeichnis 2022, volume subtitle. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

The first step is the washing of the feet. One arrives at this step by having for months tried to live with the following ideas in mind: The plant cannot live without the mineral kingdom, which is beneath it. If it could speak, it would have to say: You mineral kingdom, you are admittedly lower than I, but I owe my higher existence to you. And when man looks around at life, he must admit to himself: If I have come far in the spiritual, then others must work for me. We must therefore bow down in humility and gratitude to those who stand below us. “Whoever wants to be first will be last in the kingdom of heaven,” is a word of the gospel. This practice eventually leads to the inner image of the washing of feet. Christ washes the feet of the apostles to offer them the tribute of his thanks. He who lives in these conceptions of humility will realize that the image of the washing of feet appears to him in the form of an astral dream. Thereby what is described in the Gospel of John becomes one's own experience.

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Cite: GA 94/1906-07-11/p007 · edition English