Another example for the action of the etheric forces: Any process of building up is preceded by a process of breaking down. Within this polarity no line may touch the other.
It could be said that this activity of thinking can have either an edifying or a destructive effect. However, on closer examination, it cannot really work destructively, as any acts of violence or misconduct which originate from a person can only occur in a state in which the so-called I is no longer able to guide the consciousness and therefore the activity of thinking degenerates into mere intellectualism or into a kind of instinctive driving-force. A real activity of thinking leads quite naturally to a heightened moral conscience and social responsibility in human existence.
Water, now, is the element which no longer appears as secure and stable as solid matter. It is already a more agile, flexible, connecting, gliding substantiality, which is able to dissolve into steam on the one hand, and solidify into crystallisation, on the other. Were there, however, no sun forces, then there would exist no being of water either, for this flexible gliding and streaming describes that state which no longer belongs entirely to the pure solidity of matter, but which already contains a kind of state of dissolving and solidifying. Water is therefore the mobile being, which was cast out from the sun onto the earth, and has to carry out the work to enable the sun forces to achieve that transformation of decomposing and newly forming matter.
The etheric forces, however, have to perform their task not only in the aqueous medium. They can most certainly be found in the airy atmosphere, as well. Quite particularly, however, they live wherever human thought is brought into effectiveness. All activity of thinking, which is not to be confused with intellectualism, but which is a creative activity connected with true thought work, contributes to transformation in life and consequently has to make use of the most varied kinds of ether. By forming a calm idea in a concentrated and conscious way, or by bringing about a mental comparison, an individual becomes active in a similar way to the sun and begins, in an elegant way, to transform himself as well as his environment.
According to Rudolf Steiner, there are four kinds of ether; the fire ether, the light ether and the chemical ether, and finally also the life ether. The four ethers can be subdivided into two upper and two lower dimensions. The fire- and light-force in world-creation radiates in from above onto earthly existence, while forces such as normal life and all chemical-alchemical processes contained therein are seemingly already present in the earth’s existence. All four kinds of ether, however, are sun-like and therefore do not bear only a purely earthly character in their inner being. The difference between fire ether, the uppermost one, and life ether, the lowermost, is only that the fire ether actually remains more in the outer sphere of the cosmic zone, while the life ether has actually descended right into the innermost centring of the earth. The ethers belong, in this sense, to various specific regions. They describe however, in their sum, all life processes which live in a most subtle way not just in the plant alone but in the entire solar sphere.
Someone who wants so see the ether, must, as a first discipline, devote himself to an idea like the one presented here. If someone were only to speak of life forces, and define them entirely from a material origin, hei would actually base his perception on an erroneous idea. The etheric forces only have their home in matter or in world-creation, but they do not originate from matter.