“On earth the sun shines on us; as human beings we perceive things around us because they reflect the sunlight. But the moment we ascend to inspired cognition, when for us the heart becomes a sense organ, we suddenly experience ourselves within the sun. We no longer look up and see the sun move in its orbit — I am taking into account only the sun’s apparent movement — rather do we feel that with our heart we are within the sun and moving with it. For us the heart is in the sun and the sun becomes our eye with which we behold what begins to appear around us. The sun now becomes our eye and our ear and our organ of warmth. We no longer feel that we are outside the sun; rather do we feel transported into the sun and existing within the light. Formerly we were always outside the light, but now that we have plunged with our being into the heart we have the feeling that our relation to the world is such that we are within the light, that our being is light. Within the undulating, weaving light we touch the spiritual beings with the organs of light which we now possess. We are now, in our soul being, akin not to the world outside the sun, but to the world within it. And I want to emphasize that our being becomes linear, so much so, that we feel we are within the sun’s linear path. When we advance just a little further in higher cognition we feel ourselves to be not only within the sun but also to a certain extent beyond it. Formerly we were tiny human beings there below and we looked up at the sun. But now that we have come into the sun we feel we are, with our soul being, within the sun and the world which was formerly around us is now within us.” ~ Rudolf Steiner

From Lecture V in the Rudolf Steiner’s lecture series The Human Soul in Relation to World Evolution

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“The old world waned; the flowers of the first Paradise faded away; and the race of men, casting off their early innocence, strayed into a wild, uncultivated desert. The Gods and their retinues vanished from earth. Nature stood lonely and lifeless, bound in the iron chains of custom and laws. The bloom was brushed from life. Faith took flight from the dreary scene; and with her fled her heavenly companion Fancy, who could cast over all things her magic vesture. A cruel north wind swept over the barren waste, and the devastated wonder-home was blown into space. Heaven’s blue ocean showed new dazzling spheres, and the Spirit of the World withdrew to higher regions to await the dawn of a renewed earth. Light ceased to be the abode and the symbol of the Gods; they covered themselves with the veil of Night. Night was the cradle of the coming age; in it the Gods took refuge, and sleep came upon them, until a new era should call them forth in new and more glorious forms.” ~ Novalis