Light

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Light (Latin: lux; cf. also Greek: λευκός leukós "light, white, shining"; derived from Indo-European: *leuk- "to shine, radiate, sparkle", from which the outdated German word lohe "blaze, flame" also derives; Hebrew: אוֹר or or aur, related to אוֹרָה aura) is the necessary real condition for us to be able to see external objects by means of our sense of sight. The place from which the light emanates is called the light source.

The light is just as little visible to the senses as the absolute darkness, which is polar opposite to the light. We only perceive the effects of light on objects - and these effects are the colours in which the outer sensual world shines for us (Lit.:GA 110, p. 33ff). That is why space, which is almost empty of air but illuminated by billions of stars, appears deep black to us.

Light and Colours

According to Goethe's theory of colours, colours arise from the interplay of light and darkness; they are deeds and sufferings of light. If the light is darkened, yellow and red hues emerge; if the darkness is lightened, blue and violet colours appear. These are the two primal phenomena of chromatics.

„For we actually undertake in vain to express the essence of a thing. We become aware of effects, and a complete history of these effects would at best comprise the essence of that thing. In vain do we endeavour to describe the character of a man; but put together his actions, his deeds, and a picture of character will meet us.

The colours are deeds of light, deeds and sufferings. In this sense, we can expect them to give us information about light. Colours and light stand in the most exact relation to each other, but we must think of both as belonging to the whole of nature: for she it is entirely that thereby wishes to reveal herself especially to the sense of the eye.“

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: On the Theory of Colours, Preface

The fact that light in itself is of a supersensible nature and only reveals itself in its effects on matter was already described by Johannes Scotus Eriugena in the middle of the 9th century:

„For the philosophers say that the ray of the sun is incomprehensible to the creaturely senses, because they are unable to feel the subtlety of its nature. However, as soon as it gradually descends from the solar body to the lower elements, it gradually begins to become visible. At first it hardly begins to shine in the purest ether, because the nature of the ether itself is very similar to it. However, as it progresses to the upper parts of the aerial circle, it generally becomes clearer, and the more it penetrates downwards into denser natures, the more clearly it shines and presents itself as tangible to the bodily senses. But from the radiance itself the most glorious radiance fills the whole world and shows itself on the surface of all bodies in a manifold play of colours. It itself would also escape the bodily senses through its natural delicacy if it did not mix with the bodily elements.“

– Johannes Scotus Eriugena: On the Classification of Nature[1]

The Supersensible Nature of Light

Light in itself is neither sensual nor material, but of a purely supersensible nature. In the etheric world it reveals itself to the spiritual observer as light ether and in the fifth region of the astral world as soul light. Of the two basic forces of the soul world, sympathy and antipathy, antipathy has already been completely overcome. The soul light shines freely and widely through the "soul space". An even higher form of light is the creative spiritual light, which Rudolf Steiner very rarely also referred to with the theosophical or gnostic expression aeon light.

„As the eye distinguishes light and darkness, as the eye distinguishes different colours, so the spiritual, the developed, open eye of the occultist distinguishes the higher, shining light of the spirit, which is not sensual light, which is a brighter shining light in higher worlds, in higher spheres, and this shining light of the spirit, that is reality for the occultist just as our sunlight is reality for our observation. And we see in individual things that the sunlight is reflected back. Thus the occultist distinguishes the radiant self-lighting of the spirit from the peculiar glimmering of light which is reflected back from the world of forms, as a soul flame. Soul means reflecting spiritual light, spirit means radiating creative light. These three realms are spirit-world, soul-world and form-world, for so they appear to the occultist.“ (Lit.:GA 52, p. 348)

„The mystic lives into what lives and weaves around him and in him. He feels the creative light that works outside and creates inside. He is himself shining and sounding in a shining and sounding world. When he lives in the creative light, lives in the creative sound, then he has mystical life. Then something comes over a person that is different from the light from outside and the sound from outside. Once you have experienced this, you feel it to be the truth. The Gnostics, the Egyptian mystics, the mystics of the Middle Ages speak of the creating light. They call it the aeon light. It is a light which from the mystic awakens the objects around him to living life. This is the pleroma of the Gnostics. Thus the mystic feels blessed in the world-light. He feels blissfully interwoven with this aeon light. There he is not separate from the essence of things; there he is partaker of the immediate creative power. This is what the mystic calls his beatification in the creative light.“ (Lit.:GA 51, p. 214f)

In Kabbalistic mysticism, the undefinable and indeterminate boundless primordial light that emerged from nothing, from which, according to the teachings of Isaac Luria, creation arose, is called Ain Soph Aur (Hebrew: אין סוף אוֹר), literally "the non-finite light", from אין ain "nothing", סוֹף soph "finite" and אור or resp. aur "light". In the beginning, everything was filled with the hidden essence of God, the boundless, featureless primordial being. Through God's self-limitation (Hebrew: צמצום Zimzum), an empty space came into being into which the primordial light shone as a flash of creation and brought forth the created world.

What is described in physics as a photon or light particle, and which in principle represents a quantised electromagnetic wave packet, is only a Luciferian-Ahrimanic reflection of the supersensible light in the sub-sensible world. Electricity arises, according to Rudolf Steiner, when the forces of the light ether are thrust into the sub-sensible reflection of the astral world, which is the realm of Lucifer. Magnetism appears when the sound ether forces are pushed down into the subphysical lower Devachan, which is ruled by Ahriman. Ahriman, the Spirit of Darkness, forms here, as it were, the dark material mirror coating which throws back the light, and Lucifer produces the light glow of the sensual colours.

The Origin of Light on the Old Sun

Light originated on the Old Sun as a result of what Rudolf Steiner called the "giving virtue" of the Spirits of Wisdom. At that time space did not yet exist, but time did, which had already arisen together with warmth on the previous planetary stage of development, the Old Saturn. From the giving virtue of the Spirits of Wisdom, the air element first arose through the condensation of a part of this warmth. The air was thus added as an outer element to the continuing heat of Saturn. Now giving is always twofold, a giving and a taking. So the Archangels joined as the takers - but they do so in a very special way. They do not simply keep what they have received for themselves, but they radiate it back to the spirits of wisdom as an image, but not immediately, but with a time delay at a later time. They are messengers of what was before, messengers of the beginning they are - Archangeloi. And that is why, beholding the effects of the light, we always look into the past.

„This gives rise to something quite special, which you can only imagine correctly if you think of the picture of an internally closed sphere, where something is radiated from the centre, which is given; this radiates to the periphery and from there radiates back to the centre. On the surface, inside the sphere, are the archangels, who radiate it back. You don't need to imagine anything on the outside. - So we have to think of what comes from the spirits of wisdom starting from a centre: it is radiated out on all sides, is caught by the archangels and radiated back. What is that which radiates back into space, this radiated gift of the spirits of wisdom? What is the wisdom radiated back into itself? - That is the light. And thus the archangels are at the same time the creators of light.“ (Lit.:GA 132, p. 34)

In this way, when the Spirits of Wisdom have their inner being reflected back to them in the light as an outer being with a time delay, space comes into being, although not yet in the three dimensions we are accustomed to, but two-dimensionally as "inner" and "outer". Thus space is born from time; space and time are not independent of each other.

„Inner and outer are the two opposites that now confront us. The former and the later transform and become in such a way that they are transformed into the inner and the outer. The "space" is born! Through the bestowing virtue of the Spirits of Wisdom, space arises on the Old Sun. Before, "space" could only have a figurative meaning. Now we have space, but at first only in two dimensions: not yet above and below, not yet right and left, but only outer and inner. - In reality, these two opposites already appear towards the end of the Old Saturn, but they repeat themselves in their actual meaning, as creating space on the Old Sun.“ (Lit.:GA 132, p. 35)

See also

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

  1. ↑ Johannes Scotus Erigena, Ludwig Noack (Übers.): Über die Eintheilung der Natur, Verlag von L. Heimann, Berlin 1870, Erste Abtheilung, S. 230 [1]
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