Fourth Lecture

It is quite difficult for people today to accept forms of experience in the same way as forms of understanding. Now I will tell you about one such form of experience. I can only describe it, but anyone who tries to go through what I describe with their own experience can understand it. How can one perceive such a form and feel what it expresses? One can do so in the following way. When you get out of bed in the morning and start your daily work, you can realize that you have now transitioned from a lying position—some say a reclining position—to standing and walking. This is an experience; however, it is an experience that not many people are aware of, but it is an experience of transitioning from a lying position to a standing or walking position. It is an experience. The experience consists in the fact that when you lie down, gravity acts on you like on a lying sack, say a sack of flour. Gravity really does act in a deeper sense, because when you lie down, you always lie on some surface of your body, and this surface presses on its support, so that you always press on the surface on which you lie. You don't usually feel this pressure, but it is there; it is an impulse that is connected with the whole sensation of gravity, and it acts, as it were, into your astral body. What exists there as a pressure surface acts into the astral body.