Ether

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The violet south window of the first Goetheanum, showing the initiation into the cosmic etheric world.

Aether (also spelled æther, aither, or ether; from Greek: Αἰθήρ Aither "the clear (blue) sky") was the original name given by the Greeks to the blue sky, illuminated by sunlight and starlight, in which they saw the transition to a higher, non-material etheric world or to the world ether. In the Orphic hymns, the Aither is the soul of the world and the primordial element of all life.[1] Until the Archaic period, the Greeks were convinced that the soul ascends into the Aither after death and that only the dead body sinks down into the womb of Gaia (the personified Earth).[2] For the nomadic Mongols and Turkic peoples of Central Asia, it is the supra-personal sky god Tengri who represents the "eternal blue sky" (Mongolian: Mönkh khökh Tengeri), the upper world, the heavenly world. In it, the same power is revealed that was already called Tao on ancient Atlantis. In the Whitsun lecture held in Dornach on 4 June 1924, Rudolf Steiner described in detail how the ether is directly revealed through the blue of the sky (Lit.:GA 236, p. 238ff).

Later, Aristotle added the ether as the 5th element (quintessence) to the four-element doctrine. It is not to be confused with the hypothetical ether of classical physics, which was finally discarded at the beginning of the 20th century and which had been postulated as a medium for the propagation of light from the late 17th century onwards.

In the blue of the sky the ether becomes visible

The blue of the sky reveals one of the two primordial phenomena of colour formation: if you look at a dark background through a bright opacity, i.e. in this case through the sun-drenched Earth's atmosphere, the background is brightened to violet and blue hues depending on the intensity of the opacity. At the same time, this reveals the world ether.

„Adjacent to this earth which we inhabit, which has its physical substances and its physical powers, is the general world ether. This general ether of the world becomes visible to us through the fact that, if we simply look into the ether, our visual space is limited; it then appears to be blue. But to believe that there are physical substances in the cosmos, as one imagines in materialistic thinking, is a childish idea.“ (Lit.:GA 239, p. 144)

Etheric forces

Rudolf Steiner also refers to the etheric forces as universal forces, which - unlike the physical forces - act without potential and therefore also without energy expenditure from the cosmic periphery, shaping the living world, which is why Steiner also calls them peripheral forces. In their essence they are space-emptying suction forces; they do not work through space, but through the negative counter-space that can only be grasped by turning it upside down. The physical central forces act in exactly the opposite way as space-filling pressure forces.

„The ether has actually been a strange thing for science over the last 40 to 50 years. If one were to recite all the ether theories that have been put forward about the nature of the ether, then we would not soon be finished - until it is already the case today that quite a number of people claim that the ether is basically only the mathematics and mechanics that exist in space, which are actually only there as lines. Yes, basically, for many people the ether consists of differential quotients flying around; that is, calculated things at any rate. Well, at least a lot of thought has been given to this ether. That is very laudable, but this way nothing comes out about the ether. One must know that the ether has the opposite property to that of pressure. It sucks, the ether is the sucker. Through its own being it always wants to destroy spatial matter out of space. That is the essence of the ether. Where physical matter presses, the ether sucks. Physical matter fills space; the ether creates matter out of space. It is negative matter, but qualitatively negative, not quantitatively negative.“ (Lit.:GA 306, p. 102f)

Matter filling space forms centres from which gravity acts. In contrast, the space-emptying etheric forces - the "negative" matter - work through lightness, which radiates in from the cosmic periphery and is particularly significant for plant growth. Plants are formed in the interplay of heaviness and lightness. The plant world is etherically stimulated from all sides by the world thoughts that weave in the world ether.

The different types of ether

More precisely, the ether is differentiated into various coarser and finer types of ether, which have arisen in the course of the world evolution. Rudolf Steiner distinguishes the following etheric states:

„We have the ether of light, we have the ether of heat, but it actually has two parts, two layers; one is the earthly layer of heat, the other is the cosmic layer of heat, and they continually play into each other. In fact, we have not one but two kinds of heat, the heat that is actually of earthly, telluric origin, and that which is of cosmic origin. They constantly play into each other. Then we have air adjacent to the heat ether. Then would come water and earth, and above would come chemical ether, life ether.“ (Lit.:GA 230, p. 81)

Warmth with its physical and etheric or earthly and cosmic side forms the gateway between the sensual and the supersensual world. Every change of state in the physical world is connected with such a transition of heat from the physical to the etheric or vice versa. No matter whether it is a change in the state of aggregation of a physical substance, whether the human being tenses his muscles through an impulse of will, or whether he only grasps a thought inwardly in a concentrated way, or whether a chemical reaction or a nuclear reaction takes place, such a transfer of heat always takes place. The I of man, the spiritual core of his being, lives in the warmth of the blood and can thereby directly intervene in the physical organism.

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. ↑ Orphic Hymn 5
  2. ↑ Radcliffe Guest Edmonds: Myths of the underworld journey, p. 211.
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