Questions Regarding Nutrition in the Light of Spiritual Science

Sunlight and the human astral body are, in a sense, two opposite things. For those who become acquainted with the astral body through clairvoyant consciousness, the astral body is an inner light of a spiritual nature, invisible to the outer eye. This astral body is a spiritual body of light. It is the opposite of the outer, outwardly shining light. Imagine sunlight becoming weaker and weaker until it goes out, and then let it go even further in the other direction, let it become negative, and you have inner light. And this inner light has the opposite task to that of the outer light, which is to build up the plant body from inorganic substances. The inner light, which initiates the partial destruction that alone makes consciousness possible, brings human beings to a higher level than that occupied by plants, by transforming the process of plants into its opposite. Thus, through their inner light, human beings stand in a certain contrast to plants. This is the spiritual understanding of the matter, and if we were to consider it further, we would see how the destruction wrought by the astral body is continued by the ego. But we need not concern ourselves with that today.