Sympathetic Vibratory Physics

"We have the physical world, the astral world, the Lower Devachan, and the Higher Devachan. If one thrusts the body down lower even than the physical world, one comes into the sub-physical world, the lower astral world, the lower or evil Lower Devachan, and the lower or evil Higher Devachan. The evil astral world is the province of Ahriman and the evil Higher Devachan the province of the Asuras. If one drives chemical action down beneath the physical plane, into the evil Devachanic world, magnetism arises. If one thrusts light down into the sub-material - that is to say, a stage deeper than the material world - electricity arises. Electricity is light in the sub-material state. (Rudolf Steiner, The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric'', lectures by Rudolf Steiner, The Anthroposophic Press, p. 137-138)

"The greatest contrast to electricity is LIGHT. If we look upon light as electricity we confuse good and evil." (Rudolf Steiner, from a lecture in 1923, GA 220)

"By far the greater part of that which works in modern civilisation through technical Science and Industry - wherein the life of man is so intensely interwoven - is not Nature at all, but Sub-Nature. It is a world which emancipates itself from Nature - emancipates itself in a downward direction.

He [man] must understand Sub-Nature for what it really is. This he can only do if he rises, in spiritual knowledge, at least as far into extra-earthly Super-Nature as he has descended, in technical Sciences, into Sub-Nature. The age requires a knowledge transcending Nature, because in its inner life it must come to grips with a life-content which has sunk far beneath Nature - a life-content whose influence is perilous.

Electricity, for instance, must be recognised in its true character in its peculiar power of leading down from Nature to Sub Nature. Only man himself must beware lest he slide downward with it." [Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, From Nature to Sub-nature, lecture in 1925]

According to Steiner, lightning is not electricity, even though it stimulates an electric process in the air:

"Lightning is the heat generated in the air itself that makes its way to where there is a kind of hole in the surrounding air, because at that spot the air is thinnest. So we must say: Lightning is not caused by electricity, but by the fact that the air is getting rid of, emptying away, its own heat.

Just because of this intensely violent movement, the electric currents that are always present in the air receive a stimulus. It is the lightning that stimulates electricity; lightning itself is not electricity." (Rudolf Steiner, The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars, lecture XI)

(Steiner's lectures have been published from stenographic notes unrevised by him.)

“Electricity is light in the sub-material state. Light is there compressed to the utmost degree. An inward quality too must be ascribed to light; light is itself at every point in space. Warmth can expand in the three dimensions of space. In light there is a fourth; it is of fourfold extensions – it has the quality of inwardness as a fourth dimension.” [Steiner]

Bridging Science and Spirituality

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What Electricity Is - Steiner