Light ether

The light ether, not to be confused with the hypothetical ether of classical physics, arose on the Old Sun when the heat that came over from the Old Saturnian development partially split and refined itself into the light ether on the one hand and condensed into the air element on the other. Today the light ether has a formative effect down to the air element.

The light itself is completely invisible to the eye, which is why the starry sky, apart from the shining stars, is absolutely dark, although it is flooded through and through with starlight. The light only appears where it hits the material world and then shines in the most varied colours, similar to how the cone of light from a torch only becomes visible through the fine dust in the air.

The eye is not only a sensory organ that can perceive the effects of light, it is at the same time an organ that was first formed by the formative powers of light. Goethe rightly pointed this out in his Theory of Colours:

If the eye were not sunlike, It could never behold the sun;

Light can therefore not only produce sensual effects, but it also carries within itself living, formative powers.

Furthermore, the light ether is not only of particular importance for external perception, but also for the inner experience of man, for it is in the light ether that feeling expresses itself. This becomes clear when one looks at what feeling actually is. Feeling is closely related to dreaming. In feeling, we are actually constantly dreaming, but we are not usually aware of this in our waking daily lives. However, this cannot escape a finer observation, you don't need extrasensory abilities to notice it. The light ether is active in the wafting dream images. Just as it conjures up the sensual world of colours on the outside, so it creates brightness and darkness in the inner life of the soul and floods of colours whose pale shadows we experience as feelings in the waking state.

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Geisteswissenschaftliche Impulse zur Entwickelung der Physik, I, GA 320 (2000), ISBN 3-7274-3200-4 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Geisteswissenschaftliche Impulse zur Entwickelung der Physik, II, GA 321 (2000), ISBN 3-7274-3210-1 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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