The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Sleep Experiences of the Soul

[ 1 ] Today we speak of the "unconscious" or "subconscious" when we want to suggest that the soul experiences of ordinary consciousness - perceiving, imagining, feeling and willing - are dependent on an existence that is not encompassed by this consciousness. The knowledge that wants to rely only on these experiences can certainly point to such a "subconscious" through logical conclusions; but it must be content with this indication. It can contribute nothing to a characterization of the unconscious.

[ 2 ] The imaginative, inspired and intuitive cognition described in the previous considerations is capable of providing such a characterization. This time we will attempt to do so for the experiences of the soul that a person undergoes during sleep.

[ 3 ] The soul's sleep experiences do not enter into ordinary consciousness, because this arises on the basis of bodily organization. During sleep, however, the soul's experience is an out-of-body experience. When, on awakening, the soul begins to imagine, to feel, to will with the help of the body, it takes up in its memory those experiences which took place before falling asleep on the basis of the bodily organization. Sleep experiences occur before imagination, inspiration and intuition. They do not present themselves as if in a memory, but as if in a soulful looking at them.

[ 4 ] I will now have to describe what is revealed in this gazing. Because this is hidden from the ordinary consciousness, if it approaches such a description unprepared, it must naturally appear grotesque. But the preceding descriptions have shown that such a description is possible, and how it is to be understood. I will therefore, despite the fact that it can even be mocked from one side or the other, simply give it as it flows from the characterized states of consciousness.

[ 5 ] First of all, when falling asleep, the human being is in an inwardly indeterminate, undifferentiated state of being. No difference is experienced between one's own being and the being of the world, nor between individual things or entities. Man is in a general, nebulous existence. Lifted up into imaginative consciousness, this experience presents itself as a feeling of oneself in which the feeling of the world is also contained. The human being has left the realm of the senses and has not yet been clearly transported into another world.

[ 6 ] Further on, expressions such as "feeling", "longing" etc. will have to be used, which in ordinary life also refer to a conscious being. And yet they are intended to refer to processes that remain unconscious to the ordinary life of the soul. But the soul experiences them as real facts during sleep. Think of how in everyday life, for example, joy is experienced in consciousness. In the body there is an expansion of the fine blood vessels and other things. This dilation is a real fact. Joy is experienced in the consciousness when it takes place. Thus the soul experiences something real during sleep; in the following this will be described by the expressions that refer to the corresponding experience of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive consciousness. For example, when we speak of "longing", we are referring to an actual soul process that reveals itself imaginatively as longing. The unconscious states of the soul and soul experiences are thus described as if they were conscious.

[ 7 ] Simultaneously with the feeling of the indeterminate, undifferentiated, a longing arises in the soul for a resting in a spiritual-divine. The human soul develops this longing as the counterforce against being lost in the indeterminate. It has lost its sensuality and longs for a being that carries it out of the spiritual world.

[ 8 ] Dreams have an effect on the state of the soul just described. They intersperse the unconscious with semi-conscious experiences. The true form of sleep experiences does not become clearer through ordinary dreams, but even more indistinct. This indistinctness also occurs for the imaginative consciousness when its purity is disturbed by involuntary dreams. One sees the truth beyond the waking and also beyond the dream life through that state of soul which is brought about in free will through the soul exercises described in the previous descriptions.

[ 9 ] The next state that the soul experiences is like a division of its self into differentiated inner events. In this sleep period, the soul does not experience itself as a unity, but as an inner multiplicity. This state is interspersed with anxiety. If it were experienced consciously, it would be fear of the soul. But the human soul experiences the real counterpart of this anxiety every night. It only remains unconscious.

[ 10 ] For the human being of the present, the soul-healing effect of what he experiences in the waking state as his surrender to Christ occurs in this moment of the sleeping state. Before the events of Golgotha, this was different for people. They received the means from their religious confessions in the waking state, which then worked into the sleeping state and were the medicine against anxiety. For the person who lives after the events of Golgotha, the religious experiences that he has in contemplating the life and death and nature of Christ are used for this purpose. This prevents, as long as it is present, the inner contemplation of that which is to be experienced by the soul in sleep in the same way as the body in waking. The guidance of Christ unites the inner fragmentation, the multiplicity into a unity. And the soul now comes to have a different inner being than during the waking state. Its outer world now also includes its own physical and etheric organism. In contrast, it experiences a replica of the planetary movements in its present inner world. In the soul, a cosmic experience takes the place of the individual experience caused by the physical and etheric organism. The soul lives outside the body; and its inner life is an inner replica of the planetary movement. As such, the inspired consciousness recognizes the corresponding inner processes in the way described in the previous observations. This consciousness also sees how that which the soul has through the planetary experience is present in its after-effects in the waking consciousness. In the rhythm of breathing and blood circulation this planetary experience continues to act as a stimulus during waking. During sleep, the physical and etheric organism are under the after-effect of the planetary stimulus, which prevails in them during waking daytime life in the manner described as an after-effect of the previous night.

[ 11 ] There are others parallel to these experiences. In this sphere of its sleeping existence, the soul experiences its kinship with all human souls with whom it has ever been in relationship in an earthly life. What stands before the soul, intuitively grasped, becomes certainty about the repeated earth lives. For in the relationship with souls these earth lives reveal themselves. The connection with other spiritual beings who live in the world without ever taking on a human body also becomes a soul experience.

[ 12 ] But in this stage of sleep there is also an experience of what good and bad inclinations, good and bad experiences mean in the context of the destiny of earthly existence. What older worldviews called karma stands before the soul.

[ 13 ] All these sleep events have an effect on daytime life in such a way that the general feeling of self, the mood of the soul, the feeling of happiness or unhappiness are also affected.

[ 14 ] In the further course of sleep, the described state of the soul is joined by another. It experiences in itself the fixed star existence in the image. As in the waking state the body organs, so now replicas of the fixed star constellations are experienced. The cosmic experience of the soul expands. It is now a spirit being among spirit beings. Intuition recognizes the sun and the other fixed stars as the physical formations of spirit beings in the way described in the previous observations. What the soul experiences there continues to have an effect in daily life as its religious disposition, its religious feeling and volition. One must indeed say that what stirs in the depths of the soul as religious longing is for the waking world the after-effect of the experience of the stars during the state of sleep.

[ 15 ] But above all it is significant that in this state the soul has before it the facts of birth and death. It experiences itself as a spiritual being that moves into a physical body through conception and germ life, and it sees (unconsciously) the process of death as a passage into a purely spiritual-soul world. The fact that the soul in its waking state cannot believe in the reality of that which outwardly presents itself to the senses as the events of birth and death is not merely a fanciful expression of a longing, but the dully felt after-lament of that which stands before the soul in the sleeping state. If man could make present in his consciousness all that which is unconsciously lived through from falling asleep to waking up, he would have in the first experience, in which the sense phenomena dissolve into a general inner experience of the world and in which a kind of pantheistic consciousness of God appears, a content of consciousness which would give his philosophical ideas the experience of reality. If he could consciously carry the planetary and fixed star life of sleep within himself, he would have a cosmology full of content. And the conclusion could be formed by what emerges in the experience of the stars, which is an experience of man as a spirit among spirits. In fact, from the moment he falls asleep, through further states of sleep, man becomes an unconscious philosopher, cosmologist and God-inspired being. Imagination, inspiration and intuition lift out of the dark depths of what is otherwise only experienced in sleep that which shows what a being man is in himself, how he is a member of the cosmos, how he is permeated by God.

[ 16 ] The latter occurs for man in the deepest state of sleep. From there, the soul returns to the sensory world. In the impulse that leads to this return journey, the intuitive consciousness recognizes an effect of those entities which, as spiritual, have their sensory counterpart in the moon. It is the spiritual effects of the moon that call man back to earthly existence in every sleep. Of course, these lunar effects are also present at the new moon. But the transformation of what changes in the lunar image in sensual visibility has a meaning for what lunar effects are for the retention of man in earthly existence from birth (conception) to death.

[ 17 ] After the deepest stage of sleep, man returns to waking life through the same states. Before awakening, he again goes through the experience of the general world existence with the longing for God, into which dreams can play a part.