The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Attainment of Continuity of Consciousness

[ 1 ] Human life alternates between three states. These are: Wakefulness, dream-filled sleep and dreamless deep sleep. One can understand how to attain the higher realizations of the spiritual worlds by forming an idea of what changes must take place in relation to these three states in the person who wishes to seek such realization. Before the human being has undergone training for this knowledge, his consciousness is continually interrupted by the pauses of sleep. During these pauses the soul knows nothing of the outside world and also nothing of itself. Only for certain periods do dreams emerge from the general sea of unconsciousness, which are linked to events in the outside world or to states of the soul's own body. At first one sees in dreams only a special manifestation of the life of sleep, and one therefore speaks of only two states: Sleeping and waking. For secret science, however, dreams have an independent meaning alongside the other two states. It has been described in the previous chapter what change takes place in the dream-life of man who undertakes the ascent to higher knowledge. His dreams lose their meaningless, irregular and incoherent character and become more and more a coherent world filled with rules. With further development, this new world born of the dream world not only yields nothing to the outer sensory reality in terms of inner truth, but facts are revealed in it that represent a higher reality in the full sense of the word. In the sensual world, secrets and mysteries are hidden everywhere. This world certainly shows the effects of certain higher facts; but man, who limits his perception merely to his senses, cannot penetrate to the causes. These causes are partially revealed to the student of the secret in the state described, which has developed out of the dream life, but by no means remains with him. - He must not, however, regard these revelations as real realizations as long as the same things do not show themselves to him during ordinary waking life. But he also comes to this. He develops in such a way that the state which he has first created for himself from dream life is brought over into waking consciousness. Then the world of the senses is enriched for him by something quite new. Just as a person who, born blind and operated on, recognizes the things in his surroundings enriched by all the perceptions of the eye, so the person who has become clairvoyant in the above way sees the whole world around him with new qualities, things, beings and so on. He does not need to wait for the dream in order to live in another world, but can always, when appropriate, place himself in the described state for higher perception. This state then has a similar meaning for him as the perception of things with active senses has in ordinary life as opposed to non-active senses. In a true sense, one can say that the secret disciple opens the senses of his soul and sees things that must remain hidden from the bodily senses.

[ 2 ] This state now forms only a transition to still higher levels of the secret disciple's knowledge. If he continues the exercises that serve him in his secret training, he will find after a reasonable time that not only his dream life undergoes the radical change described, but that the transformation also extends to the previously dreamless deep sleep. He realizes that the complete unconsciousness in which he used to be during this sleep is interrupted by isolated conscious experiences. Out of the general darkness of sleep emerge perceptions of a kind he had not known before. It is of course not easy to describe these perceptions, for our language is only created for the sense world, and we can therefore only find approximate words for what does not belong to this sense world at all. But we must first use words to describe the higher worlds. This can only be done by saying many things in parables. But since everything in the world is related to something else, this can also be done. The things and beings of the higher worlds are related to those of the sensory world at least to such an extent that, with good will, an idea of these higher worlds can also be achieved through the words commonly used for the sensory world. One must only always remain conscious of the fact that much in such descriptions of supersensible worlds must be parable and symbol. - The secret training itself is therefore only partly carried out in the words of ordinary language; in addition, the pupil learns a naturally arising symbolic form of expression for his ascent. He must acquire it himself during the secret training. However, this does not prevent one from learning something about the nature of the higher worlds through ordinary descriptions such as those given here.

[ 3 ] If one wants to give an idea of the above-mentioned experiences that first emerge from the sea of unconsciousness during deep sleep, they can best be compared to a kind of hearing. One can speak of perceived sounds and words. Just as the experiences of dream sleep can be appropriately described as a kind of seeing in comparison with the perceptions of the senses, so the facts of deep sleep can be compared with the impressions of the ear. (As an interim remark it should only be said that looking is also the higher for the spiritual worlds. Colors are also in this world something higher than sounds and words. But what the secret disciple of this world perceives first in his training are not yet the higher colors, but the lower sounds. It is only because man, after his general development, is already more suitable for the world that reveals itself in dream-sleep that he immediately perceives the colors. For the higher world, which reveals itself in deep sleep, he is even less suited. This is why it first reveals itself to him in sounds and words; later, he can also ascend to colors and forms.

[ 4 ] When the secret disciple realizes that he has such experiences in deep sleep, his first task is to make them as clear and distinct as possible. At first this is very difficult, because the perception of what is experienced in this state is at first extremely limited. After awakening one knows that one has experienced something, but what it was remains completely unclear. The most important thing during this initial state is to remain calm and composed and not to fall into any kind of restlessness or impatience for a moment. These would only have a harmful effect under any circumstances. Above all, they can never accelerate further development, but must delay it. One must calmly abandon oneself, so to speak, to what is given or bestowed upon one; anything violent must be avoided. If you cannot become aware of sleep experiences at a certain time, wait patiently until this is possible. For this moment will certainly come. And if one was patient and calm beforehand, then the ability to perceive remains a secure possession, while it may occur once with a violent approach, but then completely disappear again for a long time.

[ 5 ] Once the ability to perceive has occurred and the sleep experiences are completely clear and distinct before one's consciousness, then one must pay attention to the following. Among these experiences, two types are to be distinguished. One kind will be quite alien to anything you have ever known before. At first you may take pleasure in these experiences; you may be edified by them; but for the time being let them rest. They are the first harbingers of the higher spiritual world, in which you will only find your way later. The other kind of experiences, however, will show the attentive observer a certain kinship with the ordinary world in which he lives. What he thinks about during life, what he would like to understand about the things in his surroundings but cannot grasp with the ordinary mind, these sleep experiences give him information about. During everyday life, man thinks about what surrounds him. He forms ideas in order to understand the connection between things. He tries to understand through concepts what his senses perceive. Sleep experiences relate to such ideas and concepts. What used to be a dark, shadowy concept becomes something sonorous and vivid that can only be compared with the sounds and words of the sensory world. It becomes more and more as if the solution to the riddles he has to think about were whispered to him in sounds and words from a higher world. And he is then able to connect that which comes to him from another world with ordinary life. What previously only his thought could achieve is now an experience for him, as vivid and full of content as only any experience of the sense world can be. The things and beings of this sensory world are not merely what they appear to the sensory perception. They are the expression and outflow of a spiritual world. This previously hidden spiritual world now emerges for the secret disciple from his entire environment.

[ 6 ] It is easy to see that this higher faculty of perception can only be a blessing for man if everything is in order in the spiritual senses that have opened up to him, just as man can only use his ordinary sensory instruments for the true observation of the world if they are set up according to law. Now man himself forms these higher senses through the exercises which the secret training instructs him to do. - These exercises include concentration, i.e. directing attention to very specific ideas and concepts connected with the mysteries of the world. It also includes meditation, which is living in such ideas, completely immersing oneself in them in a prescribed manner. By concentrating and meditating, man works on his soul. He thereby develops the soul's organs of perception. While he is engaged in the tasks of concentration and meditation, his soul grows within his body, just as a child's germ grows in its mother's womb. And when the individual experiences described above occur during sleep, the moment of birth approaches for the released soul, which has literally become a different being that the person brings to germination and maturation within himself. - The efforts for concentrating and meditating must therefore be careful, and they must be strictly observed, because they are the laws for the germination and maturation of the marked higher human soul being. And this must be a harmonious, correctly structured organism at birth. If, however, something is missed in the regulations, the result is not such a lawful living being, but a miscarriage in the spiritual realm that is not viable.

[ 7 ] The fact that the birth of this higher soul being initially takes place in deep sleep will appear understandable if one considers that the delicate, still not very resistant organism could not come into its own through the strong, hard processes of this life if it were to appear during sensual everyday life. Its activity would not be considered in relation to the activity of the body. In sleep, when the body rests, as far as its activity depends on sensory perception, the activity of the higher soul, so delicate and inconspicuous in the beginning, can come to light. -Again, however, it must be noted that the secret disciple must not regard the visual sleep experiences as fully valid realizations as long as he is not able to take the awakened higher soul into the day consciousness. If he is able to do so, he is also able to perceive the spiritual world according to its character between and within the daytime experiences, that is, he can grasp the secrets of his surroundings psychically as sounds and words.

[ 8 ] Now, at this stage of development, one must realize that one is initially dealing with individual, more or less unconnected spiritual experiences. One must therefore be careful not to try to construct any kind of complete or even coherent body of knowledge from them. All kinds of fantastic notions and ideas would have to interfere with the world of the soul; and one could very easily construct a world that has nothing to do with the real spiritual world. The strictest self-control must be constantly practiced by the secret disciple. The most correct thing is to become more and more clear about the individual real experiences one has and to wait until new ones arise in a completely unconstrained way, which combine with the existing ones as if by themselves. - Through the power of the spiritual world, into which he has now come, and through the application of the corresponding exercises, the secret disciple experiences an ever-increasing expansion of consciousness in deep sleep. More and more experiences emerge from unconsciousness and smaller and smaller stretches of the sleeping life will be unconscious. In this way, the individual experiences of sleep come together more and more by themselves, without this true connection being disturbed by all kinds of combinations and conclusions, which would only come from the mind accustomed to the sensory world. The less, however, of the habits of thought of this sensory world is unjustifiably interfered with in the higher experiences, the better it is. If one behaves in this way, then one approaches more and more that stage on the path to higher knowledge at which states that were previously only unconsciously present in the life of sleep are transformed into fully conscious ones. When the body is at rest, we live in a reality just as we do when we are awake. It will be superfluous to remark that during sleep itself one is at first dealing with a reality other than the sensory environment in which the body is located. One learns and must learn - in order to remain firmly on the ground of the sensory world and not become a fantasist - to link the higher sleep experiences to the sensory environment. But first of all, the world experienced in sleep is a completely new revelation. - In the secret science, the important stage that consists in the awareness of the life of sleep is called the continuity (uninterruptedness) of consciousness.^{1What is indicated here is a kind of "ideal" for a certain stage of development that lies at the end of a long path. What the secret disciple first gets to know are the two states: consciousness in a mental state in which previously only irregular dreams were possible, and in one in which only unconscious, dreamless sleep was possible.}

[ 9 ] In a person who has reached this stage, experiencing and experiencing does not cease at times when the physical body is at rest and the soul is not supplied with impressions by the sensory organs.