Light Is Consciousness

In the Goetheanum Weekly 2/2025, Martin Rozumek and Hans-Christian Zehnter developed their view of how sensory phenomena invite us to read them as a Book of Nature. The central question was: What is “matter” from a spiritual scientific perspective? Now, they turn their attention to light and develop guidelines for observing it in accordance with its nature.

---

We love light: sunshine, beautiful weather. The rising of the light, whether in the morning or in spring, fills us with gratitude and joy. We need light to read in the dark and to lift our spirits in difficult times. Light is essential to life. Without the miracle that the plant world performs, creating bodily form out of air and light, we could not exist. The history of the visual arts sings a song to light: Rembrandt, the Impressionists, William Turner, Ólafur Elíasson, and James Turrell. Quantum physics, which so strongly influences our current conceptions of matter, began one hundred years ago with the aim of identifying the building blocks of matter by focusing research on light. During this same time, Rudolf Steiner wrote in his autobiography, “I said to myself, light is not perceived by the senses at all; ‘colors’ are perceived through light, which manifests itself all around in the perception of color, but is not itself perceived with the senses. ‘White’ light is not light but is already a color. Thus, light became an actual being for me in the sensory world, but one that is itself suprasensory.”¹ In other words, when we experience light, we don’t perceive it with our senses: light is a being that is present in the sensory world, but is itself suprasensory.² “Light” is therefore one of the most significant and mysterious experiences we are privileged to have.

Starting Points

How are we to fathom this great riddle? In the preface to his Theory of Colors, Goethe asks, “When speaking of colors, should we not first and foremost mention light?” He then answers his own question: “so much has been said in the past about light, and in such varied forms, that it would seem ill-advised to reiterate these statements or duplicate what has often been done before. In reality, any attempt to express the inner nature of a thing is fruitless. What we perceive are effects, and a complete record of these effects ought to encompass this inner nature.”³ Goethe did not comment directly on what light itself is. Instead, he took a phenomenological approach based on color in order to arrive at a characterization of light that exhibits itself across the whole of color phenomena. Our attempt follows this approach. But we don’t use colors as our guiding principle. Instead, we focus on the phenomenon of coming-into-appearance. This ties in with the starting points of a spiritual approach to the world, which we elaborated in our earlier essay in the Goetheanum Weekly:⁴

1. Earthly reality is maya, but one that is worth giving our attention to as a readable book. This includes two foundational ideas: sensory appearances are not underpinned by atomistic conceptions, and the inner life of humanity expresses the inner life of nature.

2. Thus, earthly reality takes place within human beings. Our ‘I’ is the place where the world unfolds, where consciousness and self-knowledge can arise. “Out there” appears to us as a material world, the content of which can reveal itself within us as a co-existence of spiritual beings.

3. To complete the reversal of perspective, the physical world as a sensory phenomenon is the outermost emanation of a “world innerspace,” or, in classical anthroposophical terms, a spiritual world. This world innerspace consists exclusively of spiritual beings.⁵ Our earthly reality is an image of this spiritual inner world. Everything that appears sensory has its origin (its home) in this world innerspace.

Light in the World Innerspace

Just as only a fraction of our individual inner world of spirit and soul comes up to the surface, so too with the world innerspace: only a fraction of this spiritual world innerspace is perceptible to the senses, and this fraction is the physical aspect of the world. “Perceptible to the senses” means that something can be perceived by at least one of our twelve senses.

A further part of the world innerspace enters earthly reality but is not perceptible to the senses; it is present and effective here, but not graspable by the senses. This is the etheric aspect of the world. Finally, some things remain soul and spirit in the innerspace of the world, i.e., the astral aspect of the world, and are therefore neither perceptible to the senses nor directly present and effective in the sensory realm.

Light was also originally an astral being. A translation of Genesis 1:1–5 by Rudolf Steiner reads:

“In the primal beginning, the gods condensed the etheric and the astral. And the etheric was unordered; it was dark (for the light was only in the astral), and above the etheric was the divine spirit. And the astral revealed itself in the etheric as light, and those who could not come to the light came to the astral. The spirits of light made the day; the spirits of darkness, the night. Upper [and] lower beings separated themselves in the etheric.”⁶

What we are accustomed to calling light, therefore, has its origin in the spiritual (astral) world and not in a non-spiritual, point-like conception of matter or quanta. But how can we gain access to this true essence and being of light in the spiritual world?

Light of Thought

One approach to this question arises when Steiner equates the inner experience of light with our thoughts. For example, in a note referring to his lectures that Marie Steiner wrote, “Light experienced inwardly is thought, representation [Vorstellung].”⁷ Or in a lecture on December 5, 1920, he says, “The same experience that human beings have through the sensory perception of light in the outer world, they have in relation to the thought element of the head for the imagination. So that one can say: the thought element, beheld objectively, is beheld as light, or rather, experienced as light. As thinking human beings, we live in the light.”⁸

Light of Consciousness

Although mostly overlooked because it is so obvious, the first thing we encounter is “light”—in the form of our waking consciousness. Our waking consciousness is borne by light.⁹ Light makes it possible for the awake human being to perceive the world with their senses, and vice versa: the visibility of the world awakens human beings. What is revealed in this process is a spiritual world that uses sensory phenomena to make itself known; a world that we would otherwise sleep through. The awake, earthly human being is presented with a sensory image of a world that is imbued with light or spirit or even thought, a world that is to be understood spiritually and is not comprised of matter or objects. Light is a sensorial insight into the spiritual innerspace that would otherwise remain dark to us.

The experience that we refer to as “light” in the earthly realm is thus linked with the fact of something becoming visible. Goethe wrote at the beginning of his Theory of Colors, “None will dispute a direct relationship between light and the eye, but it is more difficult to think of the two as being simultaneously one and the same.”¹⁰

Rudolf Steiner points out in a notebook entry, “The eye is light in its self-perception; behind our seeing there is no further essence of light; light, as it appears to us, is the light in its entire essence.”¹¹

When, in the morning, the colors and shapes emerge from the night, the world becomes visible, just as when we return home late and flip the light switch. The experience of light means that something else (something that I am not, initially) enters into the sensory experience and (only) then becomes conscious to me. Light thus allows something else to appear to us and makes itself noticeable within us as a brightening of our consciousness.

In accordance with its inner astral origin, we experience light as an illumination of consciousness, as an awakening.¹² This (inner) experience of light is to be regarded as the primary experience. The everyday experience of “seeing” and the associated “believing to be true” of an objective world of things is to be classified as secondary in relation to the phenomenon of “light.” This secondary experience only came about with the seduction by Lucifer (the opening of the senses through seduction in Paradise)¹³ and thus is not true and primary. What is primary and true is the inner, consciousness-illuminating experience of light. Light is thus not something that illuminates a world of things-in-themselves (irradiating it like a shower), but rather something that awakens my consciousness to a concrete spiritual world that belongs to me and appears to me in sensory experience. Sensory experiences, for example, in daylight, are an expression of this luminous illumination of consciousness (and not the converse).

My Light and the Light of the World

This illumination of consciousness has two paths: one from within, one from without—just as there is a spark of life within the seed in autumn that eventually opens up and joins the life coming from without in spring. Similarly, we humans possess an inner light: I can remain conscious even in complete darkness.¹⁴ Beyond this inner light, there is the “world light” of the sun, coming from outside, which illuminates the otherwise dark, not-conscious world, and to which I can connect with my inner spark of light. In other words, I turn my consciousness, my attention, to the world that appears to me. The world light, which is itself invisible, makes itself known in three ways: as the sensory appearance of the world, as shining brilliance (reflection), and as a blinding glare.¹⁵

Each of these is associated with a particular quality of consciousness. The appearance of the world allows me and the world to enter into a free and awake relationship with one another (it is day). When we see a shiny reflection or brilliance, we see the effects of a connection with the light source.¹⁶ With the brilliance, that which appears and I, the observer and awakened one, are brought into a higher state of consciousness. What appears shines out beyond itself; indeed, it appears “transfigured” or “glorified” (the green of a leaf appears white, and a shiny, white spot on the green appears as a highlight). I, too, am then transfigured as the observer, lifted beyond everyday waking consciousness into a suprasensory experience: green and white are sensory, but the light (its brilliance) is suprasensory. Thirdly, when blinded by a glare, the overpowering, superior quality of light becomes all too clear. My consciousness is not (yet) able to withstand this superior power.

Etheric Appearance of Light

The ability to be present and absent in the here and now belongs to this power of light. By showing itself to us as absent and present, light tells us about its otherworldliness or its presence here and now. The invisible light is present when the candle is burning (it is here); it is absent when the candle is extinguished (the light is then beyond, “in the otherworld”). It is absent on the Earth at night and present on the Earth during the day. Its presence on the Earth diminishes in autumn and winter, and the light shines out again in spring and summer.

We call this property of light “etheric”; it is suprasensory (a being of a non-sensory nature) that can still be effective in the sensory world but is not itself perceptible through our senses. Its realm is not of this world,¹⁷ and yet it is effective, present, and active here, which brings us back to the quote from Rudolf Steiner’s autobiography mentioned at the beginning.

Soul and Spirit Manifestation of Light

Light is originally an illumination of consciousness. So far, we’ve considered this illumination in terms of the etheric effectivity of light in the sensory world. In addition to this etheric manifestation of light, there is also a soul and a spiritual manifestation.

When Rembrandt paints a reflection of light on a golden helmet, or when we see a candle flame glowing in a painting by Gerhard Richter, these are (thoroughly convincing) soul experiences of light, but they do not enter sensory reality in an etheric way—they remain within us. Neither the reflection from the painted golden helmet nor the painted candle flame illuminates my outstretched hand. However, this is very much the case with the etheric light of a candle flame or the shine of a metal surface.

Finally, we can have an experience of spiritual light, for example, in meditation, when our inner world becomes bright, while everything in the sensory world around us remains unchanged.

In contrast to these two “inner” encounters with light, the encounter with the etheric light that is active (though invisible) in the sensory world can be described as “external.” We refer to these external experiences of light as “earthly.”

Light is a suprasensory being that cannot itself be perceived by the senses. It announces its presence in the etheric, soul, and spiritual realm, but is always the same light. So, there is only “one” light that manifests itself in a variety of ways and seeks out different “places” for its work (in me or in the world, in the sensory or in the soul and spirit). So, there isn’t really an external light and an inner light, but only “one” light that approaches us in different ways, from different directions. Neither is there any such thing as “physical” light. Light always remains supraphysical, that is, above or beyond the senses. “Thus, light became an actual being for me in the sensory world, but one that is itself suprasensory.”¹⁸

The Sensory and Suprasensory Aspects of Experiencing Light

Sight is inextricably bound to the earthly experience of light. Seeing is initially pure sensory perception (light and dark, colors) and the experience of form and shape. This includes both the conscious experience of pure perception and the “intervention” of astral form and shaping forces within this pure perception. “Wisdom lives in the light.”¹⁹ Without this wisdom in the light, pure visual perception (without form or shape) appears to us as brightness and color, and at the same time as a riddle. When the intervention of form or formative forces is added to pure sensory perception, our perception is clarified into a visual cognition; it becomes light. Classic experiences of this kind are conveyed by picture puzzles, where first only black and white spots are seen, but soon take on visible meaning through the gradual intervention or sudden illumination of formative forces. Just as the wisdom-filled light “lights up” in the encounter with the pure sensory perception, bringing it to reality and cognition, so the invisible light of a candle flame “lights up” in the encounter with something that we can capture as a dark material (soot) by holding a piece of white chalk in the flame.

With the emergence of light, earthly reality arises,²⁰ as expressed in the following three statements by Rudolf Steiner:

“What is within the human being is ideal appearance; what is in the perceptible world is sensory appearance; the cognitive interworking of both in one another is the real reality.”²¹

“Perception is . . . not something finished or complete, but rather one side of total reality. The other side is the concept. The act of cognition is the synthesis of perception and concept. But it is the perception and concept of a thing that together constitute the whole thing.”²²

“From the depths of the world / The mysterious, rich abundance of matter / Imposes itself on the human senses. / From the heights of the world / The content-rich, clarifying Word of the spirit / Streams into the ground of the soul. / They meet in the inner being of the human being/ to form a wisdom-filled reality.”²³

With the astral forming or shaping forces that illuminate sensory perception, the spirit or essence of reality (emerging from the world innerspace) is simultaneously given as the content of thought, as its light; this brings the essence with which we are relating into sensory appearance. The being becomes the sensory image of itself; it shines forth in the sensory realm. As we developed in our earlier article, we are dealing with revelations of spiritual beings both in the sensory (pure perception; “the rich abundance of matter”) and in the suprasensory (form or shape; “clarifying Word of the spirit”). The latter appears in a spirit-like manner, the former in a veiled manner.

Free of Conception

It is only possible to grasp the spirit on its own when one is free from pre-conceptions; this means that any auxiliary concept (e.g., force, energy, or the like) that still wants to connect itself to earthly standards distracts us from the actual essence of the spirit. Steiner repeatedly draws attention to this:

In the suprasensory world, humans want “to perceive forms . . . if not in coarse matter, then at least forms that appear to them in a kind of veil of light; they believe that they must hear sounds similar to those of the physical world. . . . Now, this should not really need to be said, because the beings of the suprasensible worlds are, after all, above all that is sensory; they do not present themselves in their true form, in sensory characteristics, because sensory characteristics presuppose the eye, the ear, the sensory organs in general. In the higher worlds, however, perception does not take place with the sensory organs, but rather with the soul organs . . . . And the misunderstanding that so often arises is that what the higher soul forces depict, and what one is able to describe in words, is sensorialized, whereby it is taken for the being and essence of the thing. That is not the being or essence of the thing, but rather through this, the essence and being of the thing must first be intuited and more and more beheld.”²⁴

One is dealing with Creators, with Willers, Feelers, and Thinkers, to which the concept “beings” is applied. Light consists of creative beings, both in terms of their senses (or material aspects) and their form, in the speech of Rudolf Steiner’s translation of Genesis quoted at the beginning, “upper and lower beings.”

Light is Weaving Being²⁵

The earthly experience of light is thus an etheric testimony to the spirit beings bearing the world innerspace in and with our consciousness. In the illumination of our consciousness, we participate spiritually and soulfully in the world innerspace borne by spirit beings. “Light” is thus a far more comprehensive world of beings than the conceptions of a spotlight-like outpouring of light or quantum-like emanations of a materialistically conceived matter. In view of sensory, soul, and spiritual experiences of light, it’s important to lift the presence and activity of light or world innerspace beings into our experiential awareness in order to bring forth a concrete and being-filled experience of light and thereby begin to do justice to the being of light, to experience it according to its own nature.

On April 8, 1911, at the Philosophers’ Congress in Bologna, Steiner explained that the ‘I’ should not be conceived of as within the bodily organization, but rather that the ‘I’ is “in the lawfulness of things themselves,” and that we ought to see “the bodily organization [as] something like a mirror that reflects, through its organic activity, what lies outside the body in the transcendent [or the true world being].”²⁶ Exactly twelve years later, on April 8, 1923, Steiner gave lectures in Dornach on the mysteries of the cycle of the year. There, he describes how the people of ancient times tried to draw the divine self into their midst for a few moments through song and dance. “Back then, there was a verse for midsummer: ‘Receive the light.’ The light was used to describe the spiritual wisdom: that within which one’s own human ‘I’ shone.”²⁷

In this respect, light is a witness to the presence of the spiritual world, of the world innerspace in earthly existence or in the seeing of human beings.²⁸ Light is the seeing of the gods or God in our seeing. This is the content of what permeates our soul when we experience light, and for which we must awaken. Aurelius Augustinus wrote that God sees created things differently than humans do. “That is why we see the things you have made, because they are; but they are there because you see them.”²⁹

---

Previous article Martin Rozumek and Hans-Christian Zehnter, “Matter Isn’t Made of Matter,” Goetheanum Weekly (Feb. 26, 2025).

Translation Joshua Kelberman

1. Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life, CW 28 (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2006), p. 67f.
2. Hans-Christian Zehnter, Lichtmess: Essay zum Wesen des Lichtes [Candlemas: Essay on the nature of light] (Münchenstein: Sentovision GmbH, 2017); see also Hans-Christian Zehnter, Anschauungen: Vom Vertrauen in die Phänomene [Viewpoints: On our trust in phenomena] (Dornach: Verlag am Goetheanum, 2020), ch. “Sieht man Licht, dann schaut man Licht” [When you see light, you behold light] and “Vorblick” [Preview].
3. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Color in Scientific Studies, edited by Douglas Miller (New York: Suhrkamp, 1988), “Preface,” p. 158;  first published 1810.
4. Martin Rozumek and Hans-Christian Zehnter, “Matter Isn’t Made of Matter,” Goetheanum Weekly (Feb. 26, 2025).
5. Ibid.
6. Rudolf Steiner, Übersetzungen und freie Übertragungen aus dem Alten und Neuen Testament [Translations and free renderings from the Old and New Testaments], GA 41, (Basel: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 2018), p. 25. In the last line, an “und” [and] is inserted by the authors between “obere” [upper] and “untere” [lower].
7. [Vorstellung can also be translated here as “conception,” “mental picture,” “imagination,” etc.—Trans. note.] As noted by Marie Steiner (in her notebook no. 2, Rudolf Steiner Archive, Dornach, p. 42). Thinking is a connection-creating activity. For this reason, Jochen Bockemühl and Georg Maier chose, for example, the concept “connection of phenomena” [Erscheinungszusammenhang] for the light ether and the concept “connection of transformations” [Verwandlungszusammengang] for the sound ether or chemical ether. See: Jochen Bockemühl, ed., Toward a Phenomenology of the Etheric World (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1985).
8. Rudolf Steiner, Universal Spirituality and Human Physicality: Bridging the Divide, CW 202 (Forest Row, East Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2014). We understand the phrase “sensory perception of light in the external world” to mean that Steiner contrasts light as an etheric phenomenon with the light of thought as a spiritual phenomenon. Although light as an etheric phenomenon is invisible, it still has an effect upon the senses, so that we can have the same experience of “light” through the senses as we do through thought.
9. In the Prologue to John, the ancient Greek uses the word “zoe,” meaning an animated, conscious life, rather than “bios,” [referring more to simply organic organisms] in the sentence “And the life was the light of men”; see Mechtild Oltmann-Wendenburg, “Living with the Earth,” Goetheanum Weekly (Apr. 10, 2025).
10. See footnote 2 and 3.
11. Rudolf Steiner, NB 206; eGA, p. 149, exact date unknown, 1895–1910.
12. With this in mind, we also read the line “day bright light streamed into the hearts of human beings” from Rudolf Steiner’s “Foundation Stone Meditation.”
13. See, for example, esoteric lesson of December 17, 1911, in Rudolf Steiner, Lehrstunden für Teilnehmende der erkenntniskultischen Arbeit 1906–1924 [Esoteric lessons for participants in the cognitive cultic work], GA 265a (Basel: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 2024).
14. Jacques Lusseyran wrote about this inner light; see Raymond Burlotte, “Jacques Lusseyran and the Economy of Light,” Goetheanum Weekly (Jan. 30, 2025).
15. See footnote 2.
16. Since the term “light source” is associated with the conceptions of a “shower of light,” it is better to speak of self-luminous and co-luminous phenomena, or of self-illuminating and co-illuminating phenomena. See Georg Maier, An Optics of Visual Experience (New York: Adonis Press, 2013); see also footnote 2.
17. See John 13:36–37.
18. See footnote 1. The concepts of light in modern physics are sub-physical or sub-nature; cf. Raymond Burlotte on the nature of light in “Jacques Lusseyran and the Economy of Light,” Goetheanum Weekly (Jan. 30, 2025).
19. A verse for meditation, varied many times by Steiner. See Rudolf Steiner, Approaching the Mystery of Golgotha, CW 152 (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2006), lecture in London, May 1, 1913.
20. At this point, it becomes clear that “light” is an experience that relates to all twelve sensory fields. Light also lives in hearing, smelling, tasting, etc.
21. Rudolf Steiner, Goethe’s Theory of Knowledge: An Outline of the Epistemology of His Worldview, CW 2 (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2008).
22. Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom, CW 4 (Forest Row, East Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2011).
23. Rudolf Steiner, Antworten der Geisteswissenschaft auf die großen Fragen des Daseins [The answers of spiritual science to the great questions of existence], GA 60 (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1983), lecture in Berlin, Oct. 20, 1910, p. 38.
24. Rudolf Steiner, The Bhagavad Gita and the West: The Esoteric Significance of the Bhagavad Gita and Its Relation to the Epistles of Paul, CW 142/146 (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2006), lecture in Helsinki, June 2, 1913.
25. Based on the line “Weaving beings of light,” in Rudolf Steiner, Four Modern Mystery Dramas (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2014), The Doorway of Initiation, scene 3.
26. Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Development: Selected Lectures and Writings (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2006), “The Psychological Foundations of Anthroposophy: Its Standpoint in Relation to the Theory of Knowledge,” lecture in Bologna, Apr. 8, 1911.
27. Rudolf Steiner, The Cycle of the Year as Breathing Process of the Earth, CW 223 (Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press, 1984), lecture in Dornach, Apr. 8, 1923.
28. See footnote 20.
29. Saint Augustine, The Confessions, vol. II: Books 9–13, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), bk 13, ch. 38.