The Michael Mystery
GA 26
XX. Sleep and Waking, in the Light of the previous Observations
[ 1 ] Sleep and Waking has been a theme frequently discussed in our anthroposophical studies, and from various points of view. But with the facts of life such as these, the understanding of them requires to be carried to a new depth every time, after studying a different aspect of the world. All that has been said about the Earth as life-seed of a new rising Macrocosm, makes it possible now to bring a deepened understanding to our views of sleeping and waking.
[ 2 ] In this waking state, Man lives in the thought-shadows cast by a dead and dying world, and in will-impulses into whose inner being he as little sees in ordinary consciousness, as he sees what is going on in deep dreamless sleep.
[ 3] With the inflow of the sub-conscious will-impulses into the thought-shadows arises the free, self-directed consciousness of the individual Self. In this Self-consciousness lives the I.
[ 4 ] Whilst Man is in this state, awake to the life of the world around him, through all the feelings that inwardly arise in him there run non-earthly, cosmic impulses that reach from a far distant cosmic Past into the Present. He is not conscious of this. A being can be conscious of that alone, in which it takes part through its own dying forces, not through the forces of growth which feed its life. Thus Man comes to Self-realization through the loss from his mind's eye of that which is the very basis of his own inner being. This however is precisely what enables him, whilst in the waking state, to feel himself utterly immersed in the thought-shadows. No flicker of life disturbs the inner state of participation in the world of the dead and dying. This ‘life amid the dead and dying’ conceals however the essential characteristic of the Earth-world, namely that it is the life-seed of a new Universe. Man in his waking state does not perceive the Earth as the Earth truly is; her first beginnings of new cosmic life escape him.
[ 5 ] So Man lives in that which the Earth gives him as basis for his Self-consciousness. He loses sight in his mind's eye of the true form of his own inner impulses, during this age of self-conscious Ego-development; and loses sight, too, of the true form of his surroundings. But it is just in this hovering above the stable reality of the World that Man realizes the stable reality of his I, realizes himself as a self-conscious being. Above him is the non-earthly, extra-terrestrial Cosmos; beneath him, in the Earth-region, is a world whose real being remains concealed; between the two the free being of the I becomes revealed, radiant in the fullness of perceptive knowledge and free will.
[ 6 ] In sleep it is otherwise. Here Man lives in his astral body and I amid the young seed-life of Earth. The most intense ‘will to life’ is all about Man during his dreamless sleep. Through his dreams also runs this stir of life; though not so strongly but that the man can be aware of them in a sort of half-consciousness. And in this half-conscious dream-panorama are seen the forces by whose means the human being is woven out of the Cosmos. In the passing flash of the dream can be seen the astral power as it flows into the ether-body and quickens the man to life. In the surging life and light of dreams, Thought is living still. Only after awakening, is Thought hemmed in by those forces which bring about its death—reduce it to a shadow.
[ 7 ] This connection between the dream-picture and the waking thought is of great significance. Man thinks with the same forces as those which enable him to grow and to live; only, for Man to become a Thinker these forces must be every dying.
[ 8 ] Here is the point where true understanding may dawn upon the mind, of why it is that Man in his Thinking grasps reality. He has in this thoughts the dead likeness of that by which he himself is formed and created out of a living, life-giving reality.
[ 9 ] The dead likeness! But this dead likeness is the life-work of the greatest of all painters, the Cosmos itself. From the likeness the life indeed is gone. Were the life not gone, Man's I could not evolve. Nevertheless this likeness contains the whole content of the Universe in all its glory.
[ 10 ] So far as was possible at the time, within the general lines of the book, I pointed out this inner relation between Thinking and World-Reality long ago, in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom;’ {Published in English under the title ‘The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’} it is indicated in the place where I speak of a bridge leading from the depths of the thinking I to the depths of Nature's reality.
[ 11 ] The reason why sleep acts upon the ordinary consciousness as an extinguisher, is because it leads into the teeming life of Earth, shooting and sprouting up into the new, growing Macrocosm. When the Imaginative consciousness puts an end to this extinguishing action of sleep, the Earth which then presents itself to the human soul is not one of sharp outlines, in mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms; it is rather a living process that the soul has then before her—a living process kindled in the Earth and flaming out into the Macrocosm.
[ 12 ] Thus Man has to raise himself with the reality of his own ‘I am’ out of the world's reality in his waking state, in order to arrive at free and independent self-consciousness. In his sleeping state he unites himself once more with world-reality.
[ 13 ] Such, at the present cosmic moment, is the rhythm of Man's earthly life; outside the inner being of the world, but with the conscious experience of his own being; and within the inner being of the World, whilst the consciousness of his own being is extinguished.
[ 14 ] In the state between death and a new birth, the I of Man is living within the beings of the spirit-world. There, everything comes to consciousness, that escaped consciousness during the waking life of earth. There the macrocosmic forces pass across the scene, from all their fullness of life in the far distant Past, down to their dead and dying existence in the Present. But the Earthly forces too display themselves, which are the life-seed of the growing Macrocosm that is to be. And Man looks there into his sleeping states, as during Earth-life he looks at the Earth shining in the sunlight.
[ 15 ] Only because the Macrocosm, such as it is in the present, has become a thing of the dead, is it possible for the human being between death and new birth to lead a life which, compared to the waking life on Earth, signifies a higher awakening—an awakening which enables man completely to master the forces of which but a transitory flicker is seen in dreams. These are forces filling the whole Cosmos. They permeate everything. From them the human being draws the impulses with which, on his descent to Earth, he fashions his own body—the masterpiece of the macrocosmic artist.
[ 16 ] What in dreams is but a brief sun-abandoned glimmer, lives in the spirit-world transfused with spiritual sunlight, waiting until the beings of the higher Hierarchies, or Man himself, shall call it forth in creative work to the moulding of new life and being.
Leading Thoughts
[ 17 ] In the waking state, in order to gain living knowledge of himself in full and free Self-consciousness, Man is obliged to forgo the living knowledge of Reality, in its true form, both in his own existence and in Nature's. He lifts himself out of his sea of Reality, so that in his Thought-shadows he may make his own I his own real experience.
[ 18 ] In the sleeping state, Man lives with the life of the Earth around him, but this life extinguishes his consciousness of Self.
[ 19 ] In dreams, there flickers up in half-consciousness that forceful World-Reality of which Man's being is woven, and from which he fashions his body when he comes down out of the Spirit-world. In Earth-life this forceful World-Reality is reduced to death in shadow-thoughts, since only thus can it give the basis for Self-conscious Man.
Schlaf und Wachen im Lichte der vorangegangenen Betrachtungen
[ 1 ] Schlaf und Wachen wurde innerhalb der anthroposophischen Auseinandersetzungen oftmals von den verschiedensten Gesichtspunkten aus betrachtet. Aber das Verständnis solcher Lebenstatsachen muß immer von neuem vertieft werden, wenn anderes aus dem Weltbestande betrachtet worden ist. Die Auseinandersetzungen darüber, daß die Erde ein Keim für den neu erstehenden Makrokosmos ist, ergeben für die Anschauungen von Schlafen und Wachen solche Möglichkeiten eines vertieften Verständnisses.
[ 2 ] Im Wachzustande lebt der Mensch in den Gedankenschatten, die von einer erstorbenen Welt geworfen werden, und in den Willensimpulsen, in deren inneres Wesen er mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein ebensowenig hineinsieht wie in die Vorgänge des tiefen, traumlosen Schlafes.
[ 3 ] In dem Einströmen dieser unterbewußten Willensimpulse in die Gedankenschatten ersteht das freiwaltende Selbstbewußtsein. In diesem Selbstbewußtsein lebt das «Ich».
[ 4 ] Indem der Mensch in diesem Zustande die Umwelt erlebt, ist sein inneres Erfühlen durchdrungen von außerirdischen, von kosmischen Impulsen, die aus urferner kosmischer Vergangenheit in die Gegenwart hereinragen. Er wird sich dessen nicht bewußt. Ein Wesen kann sich nur dessen bewußt werden, an dem es mit eigenen ersterbenden Kräften teilnimmt, nicht mit wachsenden Kräften, die das Wesen selbst beleben. So erlebt sich der Mensch, indem er das seinem innern Wesen zugrunde Liegende aus dem Geistesauge verliert. Gerade dadurch aber ist er in der Lage, während des Wachzustandes ganz in den Gedankenschatten sich zu fühlen. Kein Aufleben hindert das innere Dasein an der Teilnahme am Erstorbenen. Aber diesem «Leben in dem Erstorbenen» verschließt sich das Wesenhafte des Irdischen, daß es Keim eines neuen Weltalls ist. Der Mensch nimmt im Wachzustande die Erde nicht wahr, wie sie ist; es entgeht ihm ihr beginnendes kosmisches Leben.
[ 5 ] So lebt der Mensch in dem, was ihm als Grundlage seines Selbstbewußtseins die Erde gibt. Er verliert im Zeitalter der selbstbewußten Ich-Entfaltung die wahre Gestalt seiner inneren Impulse wie auch diejenige seiner Umgebung aus dem Geistesauge. Aber gerade in diesem Schweben über dem Sein der Welt erlebt der Mensch das Sein des Ich, erlebt er sich als selbstbewußtes Wesen. Über ihm der außerirdische Kosmos, unter ihm im Irdischen eine Welt, deren Wesenhaftigkeit verborgen bleibt; dazwischen die Offenbarung des freien «Ich», dessen Wesenhaftigkeit in vollem Glänze der Erkenntnis und des freien Wollens erstrahlt.
[ 6 ] Anders im Schlafzustande. Da lebt der Mensch in seinem Astralleibe und in seinem Ich im Keimesleben der Erde. Intensivstes «Ins-Leben-Wollen» wirkt in des Menschen Umgebung, wenn er im traumlosen Schlafe ist. Und die Träume sind durchsetzt von diesem Leben, aber nicht so stark, daß der Mensch sie nicht in einer Art Halbbewußtheit erleben könnte. In diesem halbbewußten Hinschauen auf die Träume sieht man die Kräfte, durch die die menschliche Wesenheit aus dem Kosmos heraus gewoben wird. Im Aufleuchten des Traumes wird sichtbar, wie das Astralische menschenbelebend in den Ätherleib einströmt. Indiesem Aufleuchten lebt der Gedanke noch. Nach dem Aufwachen wird er erst umfangen von denjenigen Kräften, durch die er erstirbt, zum Schatten wird.
[ 7 ] Bedeutsam ist dieser Zusammenhang zwischen Traumvorstellung und Wachgedanken. Der Mensch denkt in denselben Kräften, durch die er wächst und lebt. Nur müssen diese Kräfte, damit der Mensch zum Denker wird, ersterben.
[ 8 ] Da ist der Punkt, wo ein rechtes Verständnis darüber aufgehen kann, warum der Mensch denkend die Wirklichkeit erfaßt. Er hat in seinen Gedanken das tote Bild dessen, was ihn aus der lebensvollen Wirklichkeit heraus selber bildet.
[ 9 ] Das tote Bild: dieses tote Bild ist aber das Ergebnis der Tätigkeit des größten Malers, des Kosmos selbst. Aus dem Bilde bleibt zwar das Leben weg. Bliebe es nicht weg, so könnte das Ich sich nicht entfalten. Aber es ist in ihm aller Inhalt des Weltenalls in seiner Herrlichkeit.
[ 10 ] So weit als es damals im Zusammenhange der Darstellung möglich war, wies ich schon in meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit» auf dieses innere Verhältnis zwischen Denken und Weltwirklichkeit hin. Es ist an der Stelle geschehen, wo ich davon spreche, daß von den Tiefen des denkenden Ich zu den Tiefen der Natur-Wirklichkeit eine Brücke führt.
[ 11 ] Für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein wirkt der Schlaf deshalb auslöschend, weil er in das in den werdenden Makrokosmos hineinsprießende, keimende Leben der Erde führt. Wird dieses Auslöschen behoben durch das imaginative Bewußtsein, so steht vor der menschlichen Seele nicht eine Erde mit scharfen Konturen im Mineral-, Pflanzen- und Tierreiche. Es steht vielmehr da ein lebendiger Vorgang, der sich innerhalb der Erde entzündet und der in den Makrokosmos hinaus flammt.
[ 12 ] Es ist so, daß sich der Mensch mit dem eigenen Ich-Sein aus dem Sein der Welt im Wachzustande herausheben muß, um zum freien Selbstbewußtsein zu kommen. Im Schlafzustande vereinigt er sich dann wieder mit dem Welt-Sein.
[ 13 ] Das ist im gegenwärtigen kosmischen Weltenaugenblicke der Rhythmus des irdischen Menschen-Daseins außer dem «Innern» der Welt mit Erleben des Eigenwesens; und des Daseins in dem «Innern» der Welt mit Auslöschung des Bewußtseins vom Eigenwesen.
[ 14 ] In dem Zustande zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt lebt das Menschen-Ich innerhalb der Wesen der Geist-Welt. Da tritt in das Bewußtsein alles, was sich während des irdischen Wachlebens diesem entzieht. Es treten die makrokosmischen Kräfte auf von ihrem Voll-Leben in urferner Vergangenheit bis zu dem Erstorben-Sein in der Gegenwart. Es treten aber auch die irdischen Kräfte auf, die der Keim sind des werdenden Makrokosmos. Und in seine Schlafzustände sieht der Mensch hinein, wie er während des Erdenlebens auf die in der Sonne erglänzende Erde sieht.
[ 15 ] Nur dadurch, daß der Makrokosmos, so wie er gegenwärtig ist, ein Erstorbenes wurde, kann das Menschenwesen in dem Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt ein Leben durchmachen, das gegenüber dem wachen Erdenleben ein höheres Aufwachen bedeutet. Ein Aufwachen, durch das der Mensch fähig wird, die Kräfte voll zu meistern, die im Traume ein flüchtiges Aufflackern zeigen. Diese Kräfte erfüllen den ganzen Kosmos. Sie sind alles durchdringend. Ihnen entnimmt das Menschenwesen die Impulse, aus denen es sich beim Heruntersteigen auf die Erde seinen Leib, das große Kunstwerk des Makrokosmos formt.
[ 16 ] Was im Traume wie sonnenverlassen aufdämmert, das lebt in der Geistwelt geistes-sonnenhaft durchströmt, wartend, bis die Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien oder der Mensch es wesenbildend im Schaffen aufrufen.
Goetheanum, Januar 1925.
Leitsätze Nr. 156 bis 158
(8. Februar 1925)
[ 17 ] 156.Im Wachzustande muß der Mensch, um sich im vollen, freien Selbstbewußtsein zu erleben, auf das Erleben der wahren Gestalt der Wirklichkeit im eigenen und im Naturdasein verzichten. Er erhebt sich aus dem Meere dieser Wirklichkeit, um in den Gedankenschatten das eigene Ich zum wirklich eigenen Erleben zu machen.
[ 18 ] 157. Im Schlafzustande lebt der Mensch mit dem Leben der Erden-Umgebung; aber dieses Leben löscht sein Selbstbewußtsein aus.
[ 19 ] 158. Im Träumen flackert im Halbbewußtsein das kraftvolle Weltensein auf, aus dem des Menschen Wesen gewoben ist und aus dem er beim Niedersteigen aus der Geistwelt seinen Leib bildet. Im Erdenleben wird dieses kraftvolle Weltensein im Menschen bis in die Gedankenschatten zum Ersterben gebracht, da es nur so dem selbstbewußten Menschen die Grundlage sein kann.
Sleep and waking in the light of previous considerations
[ 1 ] Sleep and waking have often been considered from the most diverse points of view within the anthroposophical discussions. But the understanding of such facts of life must always be deepened anew when other aspects of the world's existence have been considered. The arguments about the earth being a seed for the newly emerging macrocosm provide such opportunities for a deeper understanding of the views of sleeping and waking.
[ 2 ] In the waking state, man lives in the shadows of thought cast by a dead world and in the impulses of will, into whose inner being he sees as little with ordinary consciousness as into the processes of deep, dreamless sleep.
[ 3 ] In the influx of these subconscious impulses of will into the shadows of thought, the free self-consciousness arises. The "I" lives in this self-consciousness.
[ 4 ] When man experiences the environment in this state, his inner feeling is permeated by extraterrestrial, cosmic impulses that project into the present from the distant cosmic past. He is not aware of this. A being can only become conscious of that in which it participates with its own dying forces, not with growing forces that animate the being itself. Thus man experiences himself by losing sight of that which underlies his inner being. Precisely because of this, however, he is able to feel himself completely in the shadow of thought during the waking state. No resurrection prevents the inner being from participating in the first-dead. But the essential nature of the earthly, that it is the germ of a new universe, is closed to this "life in the first-dead". In the waking state, man does not perceive the earth as it is; its incipient cosmic life escapes him.
[ 5 ] So man lives in what the earth gives him as the basis of his self-consciousness. In the age of self-conscious self-development, he loses sight of the true form of his inner impulses as well as that of his surroundings. But it is precisely in this hovering above the being of the world that man experiences the being of the ego, that he experiences himself as a self-conscious being. Above him the extraterrestrial cosmos, below him in the earthly a world whose beingness remains hidden; in between the revelation of the free "I", whose beingness shines in the full splendor of knowledge and free will.
[ 6 ] Otherwise in the state of sleep. There man lives in his astral body and in his ego in the seed life of the earth. The most intense "will-to-live" is at work in man's environment when he is in dreamless sleep. And the dreams are permeated by this life, but not so strongly that the human being could not experience them in a kind of semi-consciousness. In this semi-conscious contemplation of dreams one sees the forces by which the human being is woven out of the cosmos. In the illumination of the dream it becomes visible how the astral flows into the etheric body, animating the human being. In this lightening the thought is still alive. After awakening, it is only embraced by those forces through which it dies, becomes a shadow.
[ 7 ] This connection between dream imagination and waking thoughts is significant. Man thinks in the same forces by which he grows and lives. But in order for man to become a thinker, these forces must die out.
[ 8 ] There is the point where a proper understanding can emerge as to why man grasps reality by thinking. In his thoughts he has the dead image of that which forms him out of the living reality itself.
[ 9 ] The dead image: this dead image, however, is the result of the activity of the greatest painter, the cosmos itself. Life remains out of the picture. If it did not remain, the ego could not unfold. But in it is all the content of the universe in its glory.
[ 10 ] In my "Philosophy of Freedom" I already referred to this inner relationship between thinking and the reality of the world as far as it was possible in the context of the presentation at the time. It happened at the point where I speak of a bridge leading from the depths of the thinking ego to the depths of the reality of nature.
[ 11 ] For the ordinary consciousness, sleep has an extinguishing effect because it leads into the germinating life of the earth that is sprouting into the nascent macrocosm. If this obliteration is removed by the imaginative consciousness, the human soul is not confronted with an earth with sharp contours in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. Rather, there is a living process that ignites within the earth and flames out into the macrocosm.
[ 12 ] It is so that man must lift himself with his own I-being out of the being of the world in the waking state in order to come to free self-consciousness. In the sleeping state, he then reunites with the being of the world.
[ 13 ] In the present cosmic moment of the world, this is the rhythm of the earthly human existence outside the "interior" of the world with the experience of selfhood; and of the existence in the "interior" of the world with the extinction of the consciousness of selfhood.
[ 14 ] In the state between death and a new birth, the human ego lives within the beings of the spirit world. Everything that eludes consciousness during earthly waking life enters it. The macrocosmic forces emerge from their full life in the distant past to their first death in the present. But the earthly forces also emerge, which are the germ of the becoming macrocosm. And man looks into his sleeping states just as he looks at the earth shining in the sun during his life on earth.
[ 15 ] Only through the fact that the macrocosm, as it is at present, became a first dead, can the human being in the life between death and new birth undergo a life that signifies a higher awakening compared to the waking life on earth. An awakening through which the human being becomes capable of fully mastering the powers that show a fleeting flare-up in dreams. These forces fill the whole cosmos. They are all-pervading. The human being takes from them the impulses from which it forms its body, the great work of art of the macrocosm, as it descends to earth.
[ 16 ] What dawns in dreams as if abandoned by the sun, lives in the spirit world, spiritually and sun-like, waiting until the beings of the higher hierarchies or the human being call it up in creation, forming its being.
Goetheanum, January 1925.
Guiding Principles No. 156 to 158
(February 8, 1925)
[ 17 ] 156.In the waking state, man, in order to experience himself in full, free self-consciousness, must renounce the experience of the true form of reality in his own and in nature's existence. He rises out of the sea of this reality in order to make the own self a truly own experience in the shadows of thought.
[ 18 ] 157 In the state of sleep man lives with the life of the earthly environment; but this life extinguishes his self-consciousness.
[ 19 ] 158 In dreams the powerful worldliness flares up in the semi-consciousness, from which man's being is woven and from which he forms his body when he descends from the spirit world. In earthly life this powerful worldliness in man is brought to extinction right into the shadows of thought, since only in this way can it be the basis of the self-conscious man.