Lecture VI
Thus we must feel as though we were separated from our etheric body by an abyss filled, as it were, with ether, with universal cosmic ether; as if we stood on the further shore of the etheric body, and there various processes took place. And as, in this case, all these processes take place in time, we feel like a wanderer returning to our own etheric body. In reality, we are going further and further from it, but in our clairvoyant consciousness we approach it. And in approaching this etheric body of ours we feel ourselves approaching something which thrusts us back. We come, as it were, to a spiritual rock. Then it is as if we were allowed to pass into something. At first we are outside, and then it is as though we were let into something, it seems as though we had first been outside and now were inside, but not in the manner in which we had been within it during the day. Everything depends upon being outside with the astral body and ego, and only looking in; that is to say, we are only inside the etheric body with our consciousness. And now we can see what is going on within it.