Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and ThoughtLehrs, Ernst
Religion
Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought
Lehrs, Ernst
Anthroposophy; Cosmology; Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832
The assurance we want will be found in two characteristics of the
communications made by Rudolf Steiner from his researches. The content
of these communications was acquired by way of a 'reading' which is
nothing but a higher metamorphosis of the reading first employed by
Goethe; and the acceptance of this content by another mind is itself
nothing but another act of reading, save that the direction of the
reading gaze differs from the usual one.
In order to understand this we must go back to what we learnt in the
course of our optical studies as to the two forms of vision arising
from the activity of the eye's inner light - the dream-vision and the
seeing of after-images. Of these two, seeing in dream is in a certain
sense the purer form of inner seeing in that it arises without any
outer stimulus exercised upon the physical organ of sight. On the other
hand, it lacks that objective conformity to law characteristic of the
after-images which mirror the order of the external world. There is an
arbitrary, enigmatic element in dream-pictures, and their logic often
seems to run counter to that of waking consciousness. A further
characteristic of dream-perception is that we are tied to the level of
consciousness prevailing in the dream. While we are dreaming we cannot
awaken to the extent of being able to make the pictures the object of
conscious observation.
With the after-images it is different. Although to begin with they are
present in our consciousness with a clarity no greater than that of the
dream-pictures, nevertheless we are able so to enhance our
consciousness of them as to bring them under observation like any
external phenomenon. As previously shown, it is possible, even while
the eye is riveted on an impression from outside, to develop such
awareness in the activity of the inner light called forth by this
impression, that together with the results of the deeds and sufferings
of the light we can perceive something of these deeds and sufferings
themselves. Perception of the after-images thus turns into what we may
call perception of simultaneous images. (This activity of the eye
corresponds with what Goethe, in a different connexion, called an
'alliance of the eyes of spirit with the eyes of the body'.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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