Lecture XIV

Suppose that an attempt be made to represent all this in graphic form. Through sight, through the visual process, a phantom is incorporated into the organism: and the other ego-structure lies a little deeper within, a little more inward. (See Diagram 25. Yellow portion and white portion.) The latter, more deep-seated structure is so constituted as to be perceptibly tinged with physical forces. It is an almost physical phantom that the ego inserts and erects; a real scaffold, but what the eye transmits is still etheric. And here we come to a striking difference between short-sighted and long-sighted people. In people of short sight, these two frameworks approach one another; the portion coloured white in the diagram moves inwards, closer to the yellow. In long-sighted persons, on the other hand, the white framework moves outwards, away from the yellow. In fact, if you study the organisation of the eye in any human being you will have the material for a sound judgment of the person's etheric body; the etheric body which is so like what I have just termed a framework. You cannot better train yourself to divine something of the nature of an individual etheric body, than by attentive study of the organisation of the organ of vision. Having once grasped this, you will find that the rest will be easy. Acquire the habit of observing whether individuals focus their gaze at a distance or near by, and let this impression work on you; and you will cultivate a sensibility to the perception of the etheric body. Call meditation to your aid, and it will no longer be so difficult to ascend from a devoted attention to the effects of the eye-organisation to the contemplation of the etheric body itself.