Lecture Four

These two worlds are actually so constituted that the one is turned towards us, and the other away from us, as it were; it lies behind the world of sense although we have our origin in it. Man felt in olden times—and the East still feels it—that a reconciliation between the two is possible. As you know, we in the West search for the reconciliation in a different way; but the Easterns, even today, a line (sketch) still attempt to find it in a relatively conscious way, although their methods are already antiquated for the present humanity. The act of eating is symbolised by a line (sketch), for when we take food, the process following takes place in the sphere of sleep (unconsciously). We are not aware of what is really happening when we eat an egg or a cabbage; it takes place in the unconscious like the happenings of sleep. The cabbage and the egg manifest their exterior to our sense-perception. But the eating really belongs to the completely different world. The reconciliation however, is to be found in our breathing.