Lecture VI

We might now make the attempt to describe in a general way what facts and processes are to be observed when we look at the etheric body, and turn our attention away from the physical body. Now, we could really only see the physical body clairvoyantly in the way I have described, if we were suddenly awakened clairvoyantly from the very deepest sleep. Then would the physical body expand into the structure described. But the etheric body can, in a certain sense, be more easily seen; it may indeed be seen if we try in a certain way to seize the moment of going to sleep, so that we do not pass over at once into unconsciousness, but remain conscious for a time after having, with the astral body and the ego, left the physical body and etheric body. We then look principally at the etheric body, and see the moving realities in the etheric body in the form of very vivid dreams. We then see ourselves divided, as by a deep abyss, from what goes on in the etheric body; but we now see everything not as happening in space, but as events in time. When we are outside our etheric body we have to perceive these experiences of movement in the etheric body, as though we had slipped back into it again with our consciousness.