Lecture VII

Now you must attend very carefully to what I am going to say, and please bring all your powers of understanding to bear upon it. In the environment of man, where the sphere of the senses is, there are real processes at work which play their part unceasingly in the life of the world. Let us suppose that light is working upon the human being through the eye. In the eye, that is, in the sphere of the senses, a real process is at work, a physical-chemical process is taking place. This continues into the inner part of the human body, and finally indeed into that inner part where, once again, physical-chemical processes take place (the dark shading in the drawing). Now imagine that you are standing opposite an illumined surface and that rays of light are falling from this surface into your eye. There again physical-chemical processes arise, which are continued into the muscle and blood nature within the human being. In between there remains a vacant zone. In this vacant zone, which has been left empty by the nerve organ, no independent processes are developed such as that in the eye or in the inner nature of the human being; but there enters what is outside: the nature of light, the nature of colour. Thus, at the surface of our bodies where the senses are, we have material processes which are dependent on the eye, the ear, the organs which can receive warmth and so on: similar processes also take place in the inner sphere of the human being. But not in between, where the nerves spread themselves out: they leave the space free, there we can live with what is outside us. Your eye changes the light and colour. But where your nerves are, where as regards life there is only hollow space, there light and colour do not change, and you yourself are experiencing light and colour. It is only with regard to the sphere of the senses that you are separated from the external world: within, as in a shell, you yourself live with the external processes. Here you yourself become light, you become sound, the processes have free play because the nerves form no obstacle as blood and muscle do.