Second Discussion

In the case of carcinoma, we are dealing with the fact that a sense organ is evoked at a point in the organization where there is no reason to evoke a sense organ. Take, I would like to say, the most radical sensory organization – just to understand the matter – take the eye. How does the eye come about? You know that it is actually formed partly from the outside; it is incorporated into the organism. Roughly speaking, the organism leaves out the eye socket. Then the eye is embedded. This indicates that essentially extra-human processes are at work in the formation of the eye. The eye is only embraced by the human being. When we have such a striking sensory organ as the eye, we can say that a foreign body is incorporated into the human organism. This is a radical concept because it is so unusual. Nothing like the shape of the lens or vitreous humor, or the substantial composition of the lens or vitreous humor, would ever arise from the human organism. Now, all that is deposited, which is partly even in the eye ethereal, not merely physical, is embraced by the astral body and the ego organization, which are actually as emancipated as possible from the physical and etheric in the eye. In the eye, the connection between the I, the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body is quite different than, let us say, in a piece of muscle. In a piece of calf muscle, you see a very intimate connection between the ego, the astral body, the aetheric body and the physical body. This is the normal constitution in this respect. If I were to write a chemical formula to describe the eye, I would say that the ego and the astral body are closely connected (see drawing I and A), and the other two are also closely connected! There is only a loose affinity between the etheric body and the astral body. This is only the case with the eye.