Lecture III

But now we can also find the other side of the area bordering on human experience, and that is the one that lies more inwardly beyond thinking. We can indeed say: This perception is connected with the I (see drawing on page 135). Now we enter the astral body: we have imagination. Now we go down into the etheric body: we have the activity of memory. And in the physical body, images. Ordinary consciousness does not come down into the etheric body; nor does it go out of it. Outside, there is the world, which must be said to be the world of living, weaving angels. It is therefore a spiritual world that exists above our world of consciousness. It is not outside the realm of human life, but it is outside the realm of ordinary consciousness. For our ego, it was explicitly said that it lies outside the sense perceptions and carries them in, so our ego is definitely connected to this world. It is the world that we can only enter with strengthened consciousness, because otherwise we would have our consciousness diminished, that is, we would fall into unconsciousness. We do indeed fall into this unconsciousness every time we fall asleep, and then we descend into this world. So that is how we penetrate beyond sense perception into this realm.