Man, Nature and the Cosmos

GA 91 — 27 August 1905, Berlin

20. The Eye and Ear

We want to consider as an example an organ which can show us how, towards two sides, a being can be dependent. Basically, one can also consider a human organ as independent to a certain extent - for example, the eye. It is more noble than the whole human being, it is more developed. The eye rests as a round body inside the eye socket. If we could take it out and make a cut, we would see the following: In front, the wall of the eye is transparent; light can enter the eye through the pupil. [Behind] is the lens of living material, in there the light is refracted; it passes through the fluid that fills it, and a small image is formed on the posterior wall. So far the eye is a physical apparatus; the same thing happens in any photographic apparatus.

So far the eye is physical body, Sthula Sharira. It goes to the generation of the image. But it this image would never be my image if the eye were only physical body. For that, the eye must be in some connection with the person concerned, it must be a part of his organism, it must be alive. This is brought about by the fact that the eye is continually maintained in life from the body. The blood circulation supplies the eye with blood, inside the eye is wallpapered with small blood vessels, clothed with the choroid. Through it it is a part of the body, it lives, is maintained as a member of the living body by the choroid. This is the lower self of the eye.

But of the image we would know nothing [yet], the eye is only living. It must enter into the service of something higher, which is the retina, a fine nerve membrane that is in communication with the brain. The image is transformed into consciousness and led to the brain. The eye gives itself up, to a higher self. So it grows out of a foundation, gets form and gives what it creates to a higher being. So it is with every being, also with the human being. As the eye is rooted in the human being, so the whole human being is rooted in the physical earth and draws its means of support from it. And just as the eye has a physical body, so man also has it and in turn gives himself to a higher being. In the whole world the same is to be found; one sees how everything is connected.

Now it is a question of our becoming precisely aware that a being can be a physical body in particular, without connection with another; but that it cannot be a living being without connection with others. Hence we speak of a general Brahma and not of a particular one.

So as we have considered the eye, it is with the present man. But it was not always so. In lower animals we can consider a kind of eye point, that pushes out, seeks first to come into existence; therein lies desire. Before the eye became such an unselfish organ, there was in it the desire to develop, its kamic, the desire to come to the light. If we look at this eye, we see:

First: the physical that is formed.

Second: a kind of force, that the eye is formed just at this point.

Third: the desire to come to the light.

It is just like human beings: physical body, etheric body and astral body. The desire must be present, but has already given way to selflessness at the eye, has surrendered to higher purposes. Through desire it called itself into existence, and later devotion arose instead of desire. Such is the astral body, it has the meaning to call into existence, to create, and when the human being is there, it must transform into devotion. The whole man must come as far as the eye, instead of desire there must be devotion.

[If you turn to this contemplation again, you will ask yourself: yes,] what does the eye actually perceive? In order for it to perceive, an image of the object must first be created. Between that which perceives and the object itself an image slides in, so that one must distinguish: Object, image and perception.

Let us now consider the ear. A superficial observer might think it is the same, but it is not. First of all, the ear has an external auditory canal. Attached to it is the eardrum, it closes the ear inward. After that, the actual organ of hearing begins. It has the little cartilages and the three arches; these are lined with a network that goes into [the cranial nerve]. There are a lot of little fibers in the ear, each tuned to a particular tone. When a sound comes from outside, for example, " the little fiber that is tuned to starts vibrating, the others don't. They have in their ear something like a real piano, Corti's organ.

The difference between seeing and hearing is this: in seeing, an image is made of the object; this is completely omitted in hearing, one perceives the object directly. So one enters into a much more intimate relationship with what is happening in the world. The ear is therefore more advanced than the eye, it is much more absorbed in the object, no image is pushed forward. The eye, too, will eliminate the image, at a much higher level, and then the eye will perceive not merely images, but objects directly. But then they will be higher, finer objects than those which the ear perceives{[, ethereal objects.

I have said,] man is, as it were, the transformed plant, the head is the root, firmly rooted in the earth. The ear as the most advanced organ should show how it has grown out of the objects and how it grows in again. The three arches do not stand at random, but in three different directions. If any of these channels is defective, man begins to stagger, he cannot stand vertically; so that man owes his orientation to the three arches. They are placed perpendicularly in three directions of space, and only through them man can orient himself.

What holds man to the earth? Gravity. As long as the earth itself directed man upright, he did not need special gravity organs. Since the earth has released man, he has just in the ear, the most advanced organ, the organs to straighten up in the sense of gravity. So that we have two senses in the ear: the sense of gravity or gravitation, sense of orientation, which is the lower, lower sense, and the higher, the sense of hearing.

So we can see how complicated everything is in life. In the eye, when the image will be off, we will also have two senses. This is something that lets in the development do a look in perspective.