The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Changes in the Dream Life of the Occult Disciple

[ 1 ] An announcement that the secret disciple has reached or will soon reach the stage of development described in the previous chapter is the change that takes place in his dream life. Before, the dreams were confused and random. Now they begin to take on a regular character. Their images become meaningfully coherent like the ideas of everyday life. You can recognize law, cause and effect in them. And the content of the dreams also changes. Whereas before you only perceived echoes of everyday life, transformed impressions of your surroundings or your own bodily states, images from a world with which you were previously unfamiliar now appear. At first, however, the general character of dream life remains, insofar as the dream differs from the waking imagination in that it sensuously expresses what it wants to express. An attentive observer of dream life cannot fail to notice this symbolism. One dreams, for example, that one has caught an ugly animal and has an unpleasant feeling in one's hand. You wake up and realize that you are holding a corner of the blanket in your hand. The perception is therefore not expressed unadorned, but through the labeled symbol. -Or you dream that you are fleeing from a pursuer; you feel fear. On waking, it becomes apparent that one was afflicted by palpitations during sleep. The stomach, which is filled with indigestible food, causes frightening dream images. Events in the sleeping person's surroundings are also reflected in dreams as symbols. The striking of a clock can evoke the image of a troop of soldiers marching past to the beat of a drum. A chair falling over can be the cause of a whole dream drama in which the blow is reflected as a shot and so on. - This symbolic kind of expression is now also found in the regulated dream of the human being whose etheric body is beginning to develop. But it ceases to reflect mere facts of the physical environment or of one's own sensual body. Just as those dreams become regular which owe their origin to these things, so also those dream images interfere which are the expression of things and relationships of another world. Here experiences are first made which are inaccessible to ordinary day-consciousness. - Now one must by no means believe that any true mystic makes the things which he experiences in such a dreamlike manner the basis of any authoritative communications from a higher world. Such dream experiences are only to be regarded as the first signs of a higher development. - Soon, as a further consequence, the fact occurs that the images of the dreaming secret disciple are no longer, as in former times, withdrawn from the guidance of the prudent mind, but are regulated and properly surveyed by it like the ideas and sensations of the waking consciousness. The difference between the dream consciousness and this waking state disappears more and more. The dreamer is awake in the full sense of the word during dream life; that is, he feels himself to be the master and leader of his pictorial representations.

[ 2 ] During dreaming, man is actually in a world that is different from that of his physical senses. However, a person with undeveloped mental organs is unable to form any other ideas of this world than the confused ones described above. It exists for him only as the sensory world would exist for a being who has at most the most rudimentary faculties of eyes. That is why man can see nothing in this world but the afterimages and reflections of ordinary life. But he can see these in dreams for the reason that his soul itself paints its daily perceptions as images into the material of which that other world consists. For it must be clearly understood that man leads a second, unconscious life in the indicated other world in addition to his ordinary conscious daily life. Everything he perceives and thinks, he engraves in imprints in this world. These imprints can only be seen when the lotus flowers are developed. Now, in every human being, certain sparse lotus flower predispositions are always present. During daytime consciousness he cannot perceive anything with them because the impressions on him are quite weak. It is for a similar reason that one does not see the stars during the day. They are not able to perceive the powerful sunlight. Thus the weak spiritual impressions do not come into play against the powerful impressions of the physical senses. When the doors of the outer senses are closed during sleep, these impressions light up in confusion. And the dreamer then becomes aware of experiences made in another world. But, as I said, at first these experiences are nothing more than what the imagination itself, bound to the physical senses, has engraved in the spiritual world. - Only the developed lotus flowers make it possible for manifestations that do not belong to the physical world to be recorded there. And through the developed etheric body a full knowledge of these inscriptions from other worlds then arises. - Thus man's intercourse in a new world has begun. And the human being must now - through the instructions of the secret training - first achieve two things. First of all, he must be able to realize completely, as in waking life, the observations made in dreams. Once he has achieved this, he will be led to make the same observations during the ordinary waking state. His attention to mental impressions is then simply regulated in such a way that these impressions no longer need to disappear in relation to the physical ones, but that he can have them alongside and with them all the time.

[ 3 ] Once the secret disciple has attained this ability, something of the picture described in the previous chapter appears before his mental eyes. He can now perceive what is present in the spiritual world as the cause of the physical world. And, above all, he can recognize his higher self within this world. - His next task is now to grow into this higher self, that is, to really see it as his true essence and to behave accordingly. More and more he now gets the idea and the living feeling that his physical body and what he previously called his "I" is only a tool of the higher self. He acquires a feeling towards the lower self, just as a person limited to the sense world has towards a tool or vehicle which he uses. Just as the latter does not count the car in which he drives as his "I", even when he says: "I drive" as "I walk", so the developed man, when he says: "I go in at the door", actually has the idea: "I carry my body in at the door". Only this must be such a natural concept for him that he does not for a moment lose the solid ground of the physical world, so that a feeling of alienation from the sense world never arises. If the secret disciple is not to become an enthusiast or a fantasist, he must not impoverish his life in the physical world through the higher consciousness, but enrich it, just as he who uses a train instead of his legs to make a journey enriches it.

[ 4 ] Once the secret disciple has attained such a life in his higher self, then - or rather already during the acquisition of the higher consciousness - it becomes clear to him how he can awaken the spiritual power of perception in the organ generated in the region of the heart and guide it through the currents characterized in the previous chapters. This power of perception is an element of higher materiality that emanates from the organ mentioned and flows in luminous beauty through the moving lotus flowers and also through the other channels of the developed etheric body. From there it radiates outwards into the surrounding spiritual world and makes it spiritually visible, just as the sunlight falling on the objects from outside makes them physically visible.

[ 5 ] How this power of perception is generated in the heart organ can only be understood gradually in the process of formation itself.

[ 6 ] The spiritual world only becomes clearly perceptible as objects and beings for a person who can send the characterized organ of perception through his etheric body and to the outside world in order to illuminate the objects. - It can be seen from this that a perfect consciousness of an object of the spiritual world can only arise under the condition that man himself throws the spiritual light upon it. In truth, the "I" which produces this organ of perception does not dwell in the physical human body at all, but, as has been shown, outside it. The heart organ is only the place where the human being ignites this spiritual organ of light from the outside. If he did not kindle it here, but in another place, the spiritual perceptions brought about by it would have no connection with the physical world. But man is supposed to relate everything of a higher spiritual nature to the physical world and let it work through him into the latter. The heart organ is precisely that through which the higher ego makes the sensual self its tool and from which the latter is handled.

[ 7 ] Now the feeling which the developed human being has towards the things of the spiritual world is different from that which the sensual human being has towards the physical world. The latter feels himself in a certain place in the sense world, and the perceived objects are "outside" for him. The spiritually developed person, on the other hand, feels united with the spiritual object of his perception, as if "inside" it. In fact, he wanders from place to place in spiritual space. This is why he is also called the "wanderer" in the language of secret science. At first he is not at home anywhere. - If it remained in this mere wandering, then it could not really determine any object in spiritual space. Just as one determines an object or place in physical space by starting from a certain point, so this must also be the case in the other world reached. There, too, one must look for a place somewhere, which one first investigates very thoroughly and spiritually takes possession of. In this place one must establish a spiritual home and then relate everything else to this home. The person living in the physical world also sees everything in the way that the ideas of his physical home entail. A Berliner automatically describes London differently from a Parisian. But the spiritual home is different from the physical one. One is born into the latter without doing anything; during one's youth, one has instinctively absorbed a series of ideas from which everything from then on is involuntarily illuminated. However, one has formed one's spiritual home with full awareness. Therefore, one judges from it in full freedom. In the language of secret science, this forming of a spiritual home is called "building a hut".

[ 8 ] Spiritual vision at this level initially extends to the spiritual counter-images of the physical world, insofar as these counter-images lie in the so-called astral world. In this world there is everything that is similar in nature to human drives, feelings, desires and passions. For all the sensory things that surround man also include forces that are related to these human ones. A crystal, for example, is molded into its form by forces that appear to the higher mind like an instinct at work in man. By similar forces the sap is conducted through the vessels of the plant, the blossoms are made to unfold, the seed capsules to burst open. All these forces acquire form and color for the developed spiritual organs of perception, just as the objects of the physical world have form and color for the physical eye. At the stage of his development described above, the secret disciple sees not only the crystal and the plant, but also the marked spiritual forces. And he sees the animal and human instincts not only through the physical life expressions of their bearers, but also directly as objects, just as he sees tables and chairs in the physical world. The entire world of instinct, drive, desire and passion of an animal or human becomes the astral cloud in which the being is enveloped, the aura.

[ 9 ] Furthermore, at this stage of his development, the clairvoyant also perceives things that almost or completely elude sensory perception. For example, he can notice the astral difference between a room that is largely filled with low-minded people and one in which high-minded people are present. In a hospital not only the physical but also the spiritual atmosphere is different from that of a dance hall. A commercial city has a different astral air than a university town. At first, the clairvoyant's ability to perceive such things will only be weakly developed. It will relate to the objects first mentioned in the same way as the dream-consciousness of the sensory man to his waking consciousness. But gradually he will also fully awaken at this level.

[ 10 ] The highest attainment of the clairvoyant who has reached the characterized degree of seeing is that on which the astral counter-effects of the animal and human instincts and passions show themselves to him. A loving action has a different astral accompaniment than one that emanates from hatred. Senseless desire represents an ugly astral counter-image in addition to itself, whereas a feeling directed towards higher things represents a beautiful one. These counter-images can only be seen weakly during the physical life of man. This is because their strength is impaired by life in the physical world. A desire for an object, for example, produces such a mirror image apart from that as which this desire itself appears in the astral world. But if the desire is satisfied by the attainment of the physical object, or if at least the possibility of such satisfaction exists, the counter-image will only be a very faint appearance. It only attains its full validity after the death of man, when the soul must still, according to its nature, harbor such a desire, but can no longer satisfy it because the object and also the physical organ for it are missing. The sensually inclined person will still have a craving for the pleasures of the palate after his death, for example. But now he lacks the possibility of satisfaction, since he no longer has a palate. As a result, the desire creates a particularly strong counter-image, which then torments the soul. These experiences through the counter-images of the lower soul nature after death are called experiences in the realm of the soul, especially in the place of desires. They only disappear when the soul has purified itself of all desires directed towards the physical world. Only then does this soul ascend to the higher realm (spiritual world). - Even if these counter-images are weak in the still physically living human being, they are nevertheless present and accompany him as his desire system, just as the comet is accompanied by its tail. And the clairvoyant can see them when he has reached the appropriate stage of development.

[ 11 ] In such experiences and in all those that are related to them, the secret disciple lives in the stage that has been described. At this stage of development he cannot yet reach even higher spiritual experiences. From then on he must ascend still higher.