Lecture XXVIII

GA 93a/1905-10-31/p007 ·1905-10-31 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Notizen von einem esoterischen Lehrgang» (Notes from an esoteric course). Rudolf Steiner Verlag Gesamtverzeichnis 2022, volume subtitle. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

The sense of sight perceives by means of the light ether the objects around us. There was however a time when everything was dark. Let us go back to the moment of time when sight came into existence and the outer world as such became perceptible to us. Previously the eye was not yet opened to the outer world. We must imagine the same force which the eye receives from outside in the light ether, pouring outwards from within, streaming out through the eye in the opposite direction. If this were the case the being would illuminate the others around him. This was so at a certain time when human beings possessed eyes like the Cyclops. Illumination was brought about through the out streaming light; this light streamed from within outwards. Then man illuminated, as many sea creatures still do today, the objects around him and his own body. At that time he had no consciousness of his own, but he was solely an instrument for the corresponding divine being, in order to illuminate the world for him. The divine being had no means of seeing the surrounding objects other than human eyes.

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Cite: GA 93a/1905-10-31/p007 · edition English