Philosophy, Cosmology & Religion
GA 215
10 September 1922, Dornach
5. The Soul's Experiences in Sleep
In recent times, the question of the unconscious has come to the fore and is often spoken of in psychology. Everything in human soul life that cannot be reached, observed or explained by ordinary consciousness is relegated to the region of the unconscious. When this unconscious realm is mentioned, it is always supposed—notwithstanding the assumption that it must remain unknown—that it contains forces that do work into the conscious soul life. The emergence of this idea of the unconscious is due wholly to the fact that a certain skepticism, indeed a feeling of impotence, has arisen in recent times in regard to solving specific problems of philosophy, cosmology and religion. The insight that we have described here as imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge has the task now of probing into this undefined reservoir, which figures in so many ways in recent science as “the unconscious.” It is just by means of this supersensible knowledge—by reaching other levels of consciousness in which a different soul condition exists, hence a different perceptual capacity—that the concrete facts, which are not accessible to ordinary consciousness, must be investigated. Today I would like to give you an example of such research in an unconscious region of the soul, namely the experiences the human soul undergoes between going to sleep and waking.
Ordinary consciousness remains quite unconscious of what happens to the human soul in sleep. But we should not believe that these experiences have less meaning or are less decisive in a man's life than experiences of waking consciousness. Certainly, for external life, for our work and activities, for humanity's outer progress, the waking hours are of primary consideration. But for the configuration and the development of man's inner being, the rich experiences of the state of sleep are of the first importance. Even though man remains unconscious of them, these experiences are real, and their after-effects play into waking life. Man's general mood of soul during his waking hours is permeated by the after-effects of sleep. His physical and etheric organizations, which are worked upon by his astral organization and his actual spiritual organization, that is to say his ego organism, are permeated also. They too are influenced during waking life by the after-effects of sleep.
For ordinary consciousness the phenomena of sleep appear as follows: sense perception begins to dim down, in the end it is entirely extinguished; the same also happens in the case of thinking, feeling and willing. Except for the transitional state when we are dreaming, man sinks into an unconscious condition. But what happens to the soul then—and this must be strongly emphasized—is something absolutely real. What remains unconscious to ordinary consciousness in this respect can be illuminated by imaginative, inspired and intuitive cognition. Therefore, I will describe for you
the soul's experiences during sleep. At least sketchily, I will describe how imagination, inspiration and intuition can perceive what, for ordinary consciousness, is unconscious. I will outline the soul's experiences as if they were lived through consciously, for they are experienced consciously through higher cognition. It is not as if the soul were unconscious throughout the night, but what would otherwise have remained unconscious can be seen by means of imagination, inspiration and intuition. Light can in this way be cast upon it so that it becomes visible. The following then comes into view.
When man first enters into the state of sleep, the sense world around him ceases to exist for the soul. He goes into an inner experience that is undifferentiated, in a certain sense indefinite. The soul feels—I say feels but it does not feel; if it were conscious, it would feel—it feels enlarged as in a widespread fog. In this inward feeling and experiencing during this first stage of sleep subject and object cannot at first be distinguished. No separate phenomena and facts are distinguishable; it is a general sensing of a nebulous universality, which is sensed as one's own existence. But simultaneously there appears in the sleeping person what may be called a deep need to rest in the divine essence of the cosmos. With this outflowing of experience into an undifferentiated condition is mixed an indefinite longing—one must use such a word after all—“to rest in God. “ As I said, I describe it as if the events, experienced unconsciously, were passed through consciously. Thus, the external world of daytime, everything the soul receives through the senses, is swallowed up. All the stimuli through which the soul feels in the body are gone and, likewise, all the impulses by means of which the soul sends its will through the body are gone. The soul has at first a general, universal sensation accompanied by a longing for God.
In this condition, which arises initially after falling asleep, dreams can intervene. They are either symbolic pictures of outer experiences, memory pictures, symbolic images of inner bodily conditions, and so on, or they are dreams in which certain true facts of the spiritual world can be intermingled without the ordinary dreamer being able to acquire a definite knowledge of what the dreams really contain. Even for one who views this condition of soul with imaginative cognition—for by means of it one can do this already—dreams do not throw light upon the inner facts, rather do they veil the real truth. For this truth, in relation to what is meant here, can only be perceived by a person, if, out of his own free will, he prepares himself in an appropriate manner through soul exercises such as have been described here. Only as a result of these soul exercises can a clear view of this first stage of sleep be attained.
If you look with such cognitional faculties into this first stage of sleep, when you can divine it, it shows itself to be similar to, but not exactly the same as the unconscious experiences of earliest childhood. Indeed, if man were in a position to bring these experiences to consciousness and pour them into the concepts and ideas of ordinary consciousness, such as philosophy is occupied with, then these philosophical ideas would attain reality. The philosophy to which we should thus attain would be something real. So it can also be said that in the first stage of every sleep man becomes an unconscious philosopher. He attains to what in waking consciousness is cultivated in his soul as ideas, as dialectics and logical laws. If the flowing into the cosmic mists of the etheric world and the soul's longing to rest in God could be permeated with the experience of actuality, if man could bring these two soul experiences to consciousness and pour them into abstract philosophical ideas, then these ideas would come alive. Philosophy would then be as it was in Greece before Socrates, and in still earlier epochs of humanity. It would be an inwardly experienced reality.
We have now learned to know two stages of man's unfolding: that of his earliest childhood, which, if brought to consciousness, would represent the reality of philosophical ideas and the experience of the first stage of sleep, which, as we have noted, is quite similar to the unconscious experience of childhood, and which, when brought to consciousness, could in the same way give a living experience of reality to a philosophy worked out during waking life. That describes the first, somewhat brief stages that a human being undergoes from the time of falling asleep to waking up.
After the soul has been for a time in the state of sleep described above, another condition sets in. This second stage of sleep is such that instead of the experience of his own physical and etheric bodies, which he has when awake, man has a form of experience through which he feels inside himself the cosmos that in daytime surrounds him. While in the first stage the soul experiences no clear distinction between subject and object, this difference now becomes increasingly meaningful except that during sleep man has come into the reverse condition from that of being awake. He now feels and experiences himself in the cosmos and looks back on his physical and etheric organisms as upon an object. Just as he vaguely feels his organs—lungs, liver, heart, and so on—in day consciousness, now, in sleep, he experiences the cosmic content within himself; he himself becomes, as it were, cosmos in his soul. Not as if he extended out into the whole cosmos; rather, he experiences something like a reflection of the cosmos within him.
The first unconscious experience—which even so is wholly real—is, I might say, a fragmentation of this inner soul experience. The soul feels as if it were divided up into many separate parts of a manifoldness. It feels itself not as a unity but as a multiplicity; as if, when awake, we were to experience ourselves in the brain not as a homogeneous being but as a multiplicity of eyes, ears, lungs, liver and so on, and we were missing the sense of unity. Thus, during sleep, we experience, so to say, the cosmic ingredients without at first experiencing their unity. That brings about a condition of soul which, if we were conscious of it, we should have to describe as permeated by anxiety, even fear. The soul, however, really experiences the objective processes that cause this nightly anxiety, just as the organic processes of the physical and etheric organisms underlie what might be experienced here or there by the soul as anxiety coming from within. They are, in fact, fear-inspiring occurrences that the soul has to live through.
In this stage of sleep, occurrences of waking life now reveal their effects. For modern man living after the Mystery of Golgotha there appear the after-effects of what he experiences in waking life as inner religious devotion to Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha. The attention man gives to it, all reverence and worship that he develops for the Christ and that Mystery during his waking life, have after-effects in this second stage of sleep. It was otherwise for those who lived on earth before the Mystery of Golgotha. They received from their religious leaders appropriate measures, religious functions to carry out, whose effects they could carry over into sleep and that worked there in such a way that this anxiety could gradually be overcome. For a person living after the Mystery of Golgotha his inner bond with Christ, his feeling of belonging to Him, the religious rituals directed to Christ Jesus, his whole relation to Him and his actual conduct in reference to this relationship, all this now works into the life of sleep and helps to overcome that anxiety which oppresses the soul.
As I said, I describe things as they appear to inspired consciousness, but they certainly are experienced by the soul as reality. So, while I present concepts taken from conscious life, the actual corresponding processes are really present in the life of the soul. If, in daytime, we have developed a relation to the Christ, we actually meet His guiding power during this second stage of sleep. It is this guiding power of Christ through which we overcome the anxiety that oppresses the soul. Out of this anxiety there develops a cosmic relationship of the soul to the world. As a result of the development of this relationship, but in such a way that the soul experiences it as its inner life, the movements of the planetary system in our solar cosmos stand before the soul. It does not expand out into the planetary world during sleep, but an inner replica of it lives in the soul. It actually experiences the planetary cosmos in a replica. Even if what the soul experiences every night as a small, inner globe, a celestial globe, does not illuminate day consciousness, it does stream into the reality of daily life and continues on in the physical and etheric organizations in the systems of breathing and blood circulation, the whole rhythmic system, we find that these processes are accompanied by impulses and stimuli that live in the physical and the etheric body and work into waking life out of the inner planetary experience which the soul has in sleep. While we are awake, therefore, the planetary movements of our solar system pulse through our breathing and circulation as after-effects of sleep.
During sleep—supersensible vision shows us that astral and ego organizations are outside the physical and etheric bodies—the planetary movements do not work directly. They are experienced by the soul outside the physical and etheric organisms. But within the sleeping physical body the impulses from the previous night echo and reverberate, the same impulses that have pulsated through breathing and circulation during the day. During the following night an after-effect of these impulses is present, and they are renewed the next morning as a consequence of what the soul experienced in the night as an inner replica of the planetary cosmos.
Now in addition to this cosmic experience during the second stage of sleep something else happens. The soul receives distinct impressions of all the relationships it has ever entertained with human souls in its various lives on earth. We actually have within us, I might say, “markings” of all the relationships we have had with other human souls in successive earth lives. They now appear before the soul in a certain pictorial form. Although unconsciously, the soul really experiences everything that has been good or bad in its dealings with other people. Likewise, it experiences its developing relationships with spiritual beings who dwell in the cosmos and never live in a physical body, who always live in a super-sensible existence as opposed to the physical life of man. The human soul in sleep thus lives in a rich network of relations with those human souls with whom it has established such connections. These connections reappear, as does everything that has remained from them as after-effects of the right and wrong a person has done to others, the good and evil he may have caused. In short, the existing destiny of a person confronts his soul in this stage of sleep.
What an older philosophy has called karma appears at this stage every night before man's soul. Since the planetary experiences continue to work as stimuli in the breathing and blood circulation, and thus in man's physical and etheric organizations, it is possible for someone capable of perceiving such things through inspired cognition to observe that this experience of repeated earth lives also plays over into day consciousness, even though it is not directly present. It is clearly evident to inspired cognition, which perceives what the soul experiences, that repeated earth lives are a fact, for to the view of inspiration they present themselves directly together with the relationships established at any time with other people. Man's development through repeated earth lives presents itself because these relationships are beheld. One relationship points back to one certain earth life, another points to another life, and so on. In this way, karma appears before man's eyes as an established fact.
The experiences of the soul during sleep work in such a manner into day consciousness that man's general mood, making itself felt during the day in the form of a dull awareness of himself, depends on what we undergo in this second stage of sleep. Whether we feel happy or unhappy in our dimly perceived inner self, whether we feel lively or languid, is to a great extent the result of what is experienced in this stage of sleep. So, during this stage we find ourselves actually outside in the cosmos, even though what we experience within the soul is a copy of the cosmos; and what we experience of repeated earth lives and karma appears before the soul as images and reflections. These replicas of the cosmos and our destiny that stand before our soul contain what can be called man's inner existence in the cosmos. If you are able to formulate in concepts and ideas what has been attained through inspired cognition by letting it stream back into ordinary consciousness, you arrive at a true cosmology that encompasses the whole of man. Such a cosmology then is an experienced cosmology. We can say that when this stage of sleep is consciously reflected back, man learns to recognize himself as a member of the cosmic order—a cosmic order that is expressed in a planetary sense, as a cosmic ordering of nature.
But now, within this cosmic order, the moral world order arises. This is not as it is in earth life, where on the one side we find the order of nature with its own systems of laws but lacking morality, and on the other side a moral world order experienced as far as earthly existence is concerned only in the soul. Instead, we have a unified world before us. What we experience as a planetary cosmos is permeated and spiritually impregnated by a continuous stream of moral impulses. We live simultaneously in a natural and a moral cosmos.
You realize the full significance of these nightly events for waking life. So, we can say that what the soul experiences in the cosmos between going to sleep and waking is more real and full of meaning for man's outward configuration than what confronts him by day, for the life functions of the physical and etheric bodies, as well as our own moral condition, are results of our cosmic experience during sleep.
The third stage of sleep is characterized by a gradual transition from experiences within the planetary cosmos to an experience of the world of the fixed stars, so that this world is experienced by the soul as a kind of reflection. Yet these are not reflections of those outer sense pictures of the constellations such as we have in waking life. Instead, the soul becomes familiar with those beings of whom it was said in earlier lectures that intuition recognizes as the spiritual beings corresponding to the stars. Here in the sense world in our physical consciousness we experience the physical sense pictures of the stars. When, as I have described, we penetrate the spiritual world with intuition, we recognize that the sun and other fixed stars as perceived by ordinary sense perception are merely the reflected physical images of certain spiritual beings. The soul lives within these spiritual beings of the stars during the third stage of sleep. It feels after-images of the star constellations, that is to say, it feels the relationships that exist between the activities of the spiritual star-beings. The soul experiences such constellations.
Ancient dreamlike science specifically described how the life of the fixed star constellations and zodiac streamed into the soul. This is, after all, the main part of the soul's experience in sleep. In the sense world you arrive at a better correspondence to the single spiritual beings if you look at the constellations as a whole instead of gazing at single stars. In sleep, the soul, being free of the physical and etheric bodies, becomes so liberated that it confronts them both as objects, just as we usually have around us the objects of the external world as perceived by the senses. The soul really finds its way as a spiritual being into a cosmos consisting of other spiritual beings. What it unconsciously goes through there can be illuminated by intuitive knowledge. But the experiences there also have their after-effects in waking life; the general well-being, health and vigor of the human body—not of the soul as in the first stage of sleep—are after-effects of what the soul experiences during the night among star-beings. Especially there comes before the soul, even if unconsciously, the whole event of birth in its broadest sense; that is, the way the soul enters a physical body through conception and embryonic life. Again, there comes before the soul how the body is abandoned in death and how man's spirit being passes into the soul-spiritual world. Every night, the truth concerning the events of birth and death really confront the soul. It is also an after-effect of the night-time experiences that man has a dim feeling during the day that birth and death by no means signify for human life only what they appear to be to sense observation. It is simply not true that a man with sound common sense could believe that birth and death are nothing but the events they appear to be in outer material life. Man in fact does not believe this, but it is not true to say that the reason for his disbelief is only because in his fantasy he imagines that he is an eternal being whose existence persists beyond death. No, man cannot believe it because of the picture experienced every night by the soul of how man enters earth life from the spiritual world and withdraws again into the world of spirit. This picture streams into the soul by day and is experienced by it as a vague feeling about the world and human life.
What appears during waking life as religious longing, as religious awareness, is an after-effect of the soul's experience among the stars. What I have just described is the stage of man's deepest sleep. In actual fact, it is out of his sleep that man derives the religious feelings of his waking life.
Just as religious life can be founded today in knowledge by means of the experience resembling that of primordial humanity but permeated and formulated in intuitions by the fully developed consciousness, it can also be said that man can attain this religious knowledge if, through super-sensible intuition, he is able to perceive and illuminate the condition of deepest sleep. For what rests in the depths of sleep was also the source of what preserved man's knowledge of the divine. Our day-consciousness is only a reflection of the potentialities for consciousness open to man. Likewise, what man bears within him as a natural religious feeling appears as a reflection of the glory and sublimity experienced by his soul, even if unconsciously, in the third stage of sleep. Man sinks into the life of sleep not only to renew his tired body, or to gain the stimuli from sleep that his breathing and circulation need, or to acquire from the spiritual world the other impulses he needs. What permeates him with religious feeling penetrates to the soul's surface, to the region of day-consciousness from the profound depths through which human soul life streams during sleep.
One might say that as man lives a philosophical life during the first stage of sleep, similar to that of earliest childhood—however paradoxical that sounds to present-day consciousness—and as in the second stage he lives a cosmological life, so, in the third stage, he lives a life of being permeated with divinity. From this third stage of sleep, man must then return to daytime consciousness.
Having retraced the above-mentioned stages in backward sequence during the last stage of sleep, man returns again to waking consciousness. Since man's soul and spirit are outside his physical and etheric organizations in sleep, if this phenomenon of sleep is to be comprehended fully, intuitive knowledge must answer the question: Why is man drawn back into his physical and etheric bodies again? What impulse is at work there? If the intuitive perception of sleep is extended far enough, it is possible to recognize this impulse. As man cognizes these spiritual beings who correspond to the sun or the constellations of the other fixed stars, he then recognizes that the impulse comes from the spiritual beings whose reflection in our physical world is the moon. Indeed, the forces of the moon permeate our whole cosmos, and when, through intuition, we recognize not only the physical existence of the moon but also her spiritual correlations, we find that these spiritual beings, who correspond to the physical moon, are the entities who, in their working together, produce the impulses to bring us back into our physical and etheric bodies after we have reached the deepest stage of sleep. It is above all the moon forces that connect man's astral and ego organization with his physical and etheric organisms.
Every night, when out of the spiritual world the soul desires to re-enter its physical and etheric bodies, it must place itself within the streams of the moon forces. It is of no concern here—that will be obvious to you—whether it be new or full moon. For even when, as new moon, the moon is not visible to the senses, those forces are nevertheless active throughout the cosmos that bring the soul back into the etheric and physical bodies from the spiritual worlds. They are active even though the moon's phases appearing to the senses as half-moon, full moon, etc., are metamorphosed sense pictures that correspond to events in the soul being of the moon; these, to be sure, have something to do with man's spirit and soul in the physical and etheric bodies. Indeed, the particular configuration in which man's soul-spiritual and physical-etheric natures are linked is determined by those forces that rule and interweave in the cosmos and come to physical expression in the moon, the sense object, with her various phases that we perceive.
Thus, we can also look into the concealed aspects of man's life of waking and sleeping and inform ourselves concerning what it is that brings him back each morning into his daytime life. He returns through the same stages in reverse order, and while he passes through the last stage, which is permeated by a longing for God, the dreams mix again into his sleep life and he gradually submerges into his physical and etheric organizations.
Why is it that when man goes through the gate of death he is no longer subject to the moon forces? How does he withdraw from them when he spends a long time in the spiritual world? These questions as well as the secrets of birth, death and repeated earth lives will be considered in the next two lectures.
Schlaferlebnisse der Seele
[ 1 ] In der neuesten Zeit ist die Idee des Unbewußten aufgetaucht und es wird von ihr in der Psychologie sehr viel gesprochen. Man verweist in die Region des Unbewußten alles das im menschlichen Seelenleben, das von dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein nicht erreicht, nicht beobachtet, nicht erklärt werden kann. Und wenn man von diesem Unbewußten spricht, dann setzt man doch voraus, daß dasjenige, wovon man eigentlich meint, es müsse ein Unbekanntes bleiben, Kräfte in sich enthält, die hereinwirken in das bewußte Seelenleben. Das Auftauchen dieser Idee des Unbewußten verdankt man allein dem Umstande, daß in der neueren Zeit eine gewisse Skepsis, ja ein Gefühl der Ohnmacht eingetreten ist gegenüber der Bewältigung der eigentlichen philosophischen, kosmologischen und Religionsprobleme. Die Erkenntnis, welche hier als imaginative, inspirierte und intuitive Erkenntnis geschildert worden ist, hat nun aber die Aufgabe, einzudringen in dieses unbestimmte Reservoir, das als «Unbewußtes» in der neueren Wissenschaft so vielfach figuriert. Durch diese übersinnliche Erkenntnis sollen ja gerade die konkreten Tatsachen, welche dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein nicht zugänglich sind, durch das Erreichen anderer Bewußtseinszustände, in denen eine andere Seelenverfassung und deshalb auch eine andere Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit da sind, erforscht werden. Ich möchte Ihnen heute ein Beispiel solcher Erforschung eines unbewußten Seelengebietes darstellen, nämlich die Erlebnisse, welche die Menschenseele durchmacht zwischen Einschlafen und Aufwachen.
[ 2 ] Was mit der Menschenseele im Schlafzustande vorgeht, bleibt für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein ein richtiges Unbewußstes. Allein man soll nur nicht glauben, daß die Erlebnisse der Seele während des Schlafzustandes weniger bedeutungsvoll, weniger einschneidend in das Leben des Menschen seien als die Zustände, die Erlebnisse während des Wachbewußtseins. Gewiß, für das äußere Erdenleben, für unser Schaffen und Arbeiten, für den äußeren Fortschritt der Menschheit kommt vor allen Dingen das wache Tagesleben in Betracht. Für die Konfiguration, für das Werden des eigenen menschlichen Inneren kommen aber vor allem die reichen Erlebnisse des Schlafzustandes in Betracht. Diese reichen Erlebnisse des Schlafzustandes, wenn sie auch unbewußt bleiben, sind deshalb doch real, und sie spielen in ihren Nachwirkungen herein in das wache Tagesleben. Nicht nur ist die allgemeine Seelenstimmung des Menschen vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen durchsetzt und durchzogen von den Nachwirkungen des Schlaflebens, sondern auch der physische und der ätherische Organismus, die ja durchkraftet sind von dem astralischen Organismus und von dem eigentlichen Geistesorganismus, dem Ich-Organismus, auch sie werden während des Wachlebens beeinflußt von den Nachwirkungen des Schlaflebens.
[ 3 ] Die Erscheinungen stellen sich für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein zunächst so dar, daß die äußere Sinneswahrnehmung abdämmert, daß sie zuletzt ganz erlöscht, daß ein solches Erlöschen auch stattfindet für das Denken, Fühlen und Wollen, und daß, mit Ausnahme jenes Übergangszustandes, in welchem sich die Träume ereignen, der Mensch in einen bewußtlosen Zustand versinkt. Aber was während dieses bewußtlosen Zustandes mit der Seele vor sich geht, das ist - das muß ja wohl betont werden — etwas durchaus Reales, und was dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein in dieser Beziehung unbewußt bleibt, das kann die imaginative, die inspirierte, die intuitive Erkenntnis beleuchten. So will ich Ihnen denn heute die Erlebnisse der Seele während des Schlafzustandes, die unbewußt bleiben, zunächst wenigstens skizzenhaft so schildern, wie Imagination, Inspiration und Intuition das dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein Unbewußte schauen können. Ich werde Ihnen also die Erlebnisse der Seele vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen so schildern, als ob sie bewußt erlebt werden, denn sie werden von der höheren Erkenntnis bewußt erlebt. Nicht, als ob die Seele die ganze Nacht unbewußt wäre, aber auch auf das, was sonst unbewußt bleibt, kann eben in dem Zustande der Imagination, Inspiration und Intuition hingeschaut werden, so daß es beleuchtet werden kann und offenbar wird. Da zeigt sich dann das Folgende.
[ 4 ] Indem der Mensch zunächst in den Schlafzustand eintritt, hört die Sinneswelt um ihn herum auf, für die Seele da zu sein. Der Mensch dringt ein in ein solches inneres Erleben, das in sich undifferenziert ist, in einem gewissen Sinne unbestimmt ist. Die Seele fühlt sich - ich sage: sie fühlt sich; sie fühlt sich nicht, aber wenn sie sich bewußt wäre, würde sie sich fühlen -, sie fühlt sich vergrößert wie in einem weitausgebreiteten Nebel. Es ist in diesem innerlichen Erfühlen und Erleben zunächst für den ersten Zustand des Schlafes nicht Subjekt und nicht Objekt zu unterscheiden. Es sind auch nicht einzelne Erscheinungen und Tatsachen zu unterscheiden, es ist ein allgemeines Erfühlen eines, wie gesagt, nebelhaften Weltempfindens. Und man fühlt dieses nebelhafte Weltempfinden wie sein eigenes Dasein. Nun tritt aber zugleich in dem schlafenden Menschen das auf, was man nennen könnte ein tiefes Bedürfnis, in der göttlichen Wesenheit der Welt zu ruhen. In dieses Ausfließen des Erlebens in einem allgemeinen undifferenzierten Zustande mischt sich hinein eine unbestimmte Sehnsucht — man muß das Wort doch gebrauchen -, in Gott zu ruhen. Wie gesagt schildere ich so, als ob die unbewußt erlebten Ereignisse bewußt durchgemacht würden. So ist für die Seele gewissermaßen versunken die äußere Tageswelt, alles, was sie durch die Sinne bekommt. Versunken sind auch alle die Antriebe, durch welche die Seele im Körper fühlt, alle die Antriebe, durch welche die Seele ihre Willensimpule durch den Körper durchsendet. Vorhanden ist zunächst ein allgemeines Welterfühlen mit einer Gottessehnsucht.
[ 5 ] In diesen Zustand, der als der erste nach dem Einschlafen eintritt, können sich die Träume hineinmischen, Träume, welche entweder Bilder, symbolische Bilder äußeren Erlebens sind, Erinnerungsvorstellungen, symbolische Bilder innerer körperlicher Zustände und so weiter, oder Träume, in die sich auch hineinmischen können gewisse wahre Tatsachen der geistigen Welt, ohne daß der nur mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein behaftete Träumer eine deutliche Erkenntnis von dem erwerben könnte, was diese Träume eigentlich enthalten. Auch für denjenigen, der durch imaginative Erkenntnis — denn durch diese kann man es schon - in diesen Seelenzustand hineinschaut, sind die Träume nicht etwa eine Aufhellung des inneren Tatbestandes, sondern eher eine Art Verhüllung der reinen Wahrheit. Denn diese reine Wahrheit in bezug auf das, was hier gemeint ist, kann von dem Menschen doch nur erkannt werden, wenn er durch Seelenübungen, wie sie geschildert worden sind, in der entsprechenden Weise sich in freiem Willen darauf vorbereitet. Nur als Erfolg dieser Seelenübungen kann das reine Anschauen auch dieses ersten Schlafzustandes auftreten.
[ 6 ] Wenn man nun durch eine solche entsprechende Erkenntnis auf diesen ersten Schlafzustand hinblickt, wenn man ihn durchschaut, dann stellt er sich heraus, nicht ganz gleich, aber sehr ähnlich den unbewußten Erlebnissen in der allerersten Kindheit. Geradeso wie wenn der Mensch imstande wäre, die Erlebnisse der ersten Kindheit, die aber unbewußt bleiben, sich zum Bewußtsein zu bringen und sie hineinzugießen in diejenigen Begriffe und Ideen des gewöhnlichen Bewußtseins, welche die Philosophie bearbeitet — dann würden diese Ideen der Philosophie ja Realität gewinnen, man würde sich in der Philosophie als in etwas Reales erheben -, so kann man auch sagen, daß in dem ersten Stadium eines jeden Schlafzustandes der Mensch zum unbewußten Philosophen wird, zu dem wird, was er im wachen Tagesbewußtsein an Ideen, dialektischen und logischen Gesetzen in seiner Seele verarbeitet. Könnte man das mit Wirklichkeitserleben durchsetzen, das in den Weltennebel der ätherischen Welt Ausgeflossensein und die Sehnsucht der Seele, in Gott zu ruhen, könnte man diese beiden Seelenerlebnisse sich zum Bewußtsein bringen und hineingießen in die abstrakten philosophischen Ideen, so würden diese lebendig werden, und die Philosophie würde etwa das sein, was sie in Griechenland vor Sokrates war, und was sie in älteren Menschheitszeiten war, nämlich inneres Wirklichkeitserleben.
[ 7 ] Wir haben nun zwei Stadien der Menschheitsentfaltung kennengelernt: das Stadium der allerersten Kindheit, das, wenn es zum Bewußtsein gebracht wird, darstellen würde die Realität der philosophischen Ideen; und wir haben jetzt verzeichnen können das Erlebnis des ersten Schlafzustandes, das sehr ähnlich ist dem unbewußten Kindheitserlebnis und das ebenfalls, wenn es zum Bewußtsein gebracht wird, der im Wachzustande errungenen Philosophie Wirklichkeitserleben gibt.
[ 8 ] Das ist die Schilderung der ersten, nicht sehr lange dauernden Zustände, wie sie der Mensch durchmacht vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen.
[ 9 ] Nachdem die Menschenseele eine Zeitlang in dem geschilderten Zustande während ihres Schlafes war, setzt sich dieser Zustand in einen anderen hinein fort. Diese zweite Etappe des Schlafes stellt sich so dar, daß der Mensch statt des Erlebens im eigenen physischen und ätherischen Organismus, wie er es bei Tage hat, eine Art Erleben hat, so daß er den Kosmos, den er sonst bei Tage um sich hat, in sich fühlt. Und während in der ersten Etappe des Schlafes kein deutliches Unterscheiden im Erleben der Seele da ist zwischen Subjekt und Objekt, wird jetzt immer mehr und mehr diese Unterscheidung bedeutungsvoll, nur daß der Mensch während des Schlafes gewissermaßen in den umgekehrten Zustand gekommen ist als während des Wachens. Er fühlt sich jetzt, erlebt sich im Kosmos und schaut zurück als auf ein Objektives auf seinen physischen und seinen ätherischen Organismus. So, wie er im Tagesbewußtsein seine Organe — Lunge, Leber, Herz und so weiter — in sich dumpf erlebt, so erlebt er jetzt während des Schlafzustandes den kosmischen Inhalt in sich; er wird gewissermaßen seelisch selber Kosmos. Nicht, als ob er sich zum ganzen Kosmos ausdehnte, sondern er erlebt etwas wie eine Nachbildung des Kosmos in sich. Aber die erste unbewußte Erfahrung, die jedoch durchaus real ist, ist ein, ich möchte sagen, Zersplittertsein dieses inneren Erlebens der Seele, ein Verteiltsein der Seele auf viele Einzelheiten einer Mannigfaltigkeit. Die Seele erlebt sich nicht als Einheit, sie erlebt sich als eine Vielheit. So wie wir, wenn wir uns während des Tages erlebten, uns nicht als dieser einheitliche Mensch, sondern als eine Vielheit von Augen, Ohren, Lunge, Leber und so weiter im Gehirn erleben würden und vermissen würden die Einheit, so erlebt man gewissermaßen die kosmischen Ingredienzien, ohne während des Schlafes ihre Einheit zunächst zu erleben. Das bewirkt einen Zustand der Seele, den man, wenn er bewußt wäre, bezeichnen müßte als eine die Seele durchsetzende Ängstlichkeit, als Angst. Wie gesagt, wenn man ihn im bewußten Erleben darstellen will, so stellt sich dieser Zustand als Angstzustand dar. Aber die Seele erlebt real das, was so an objektiven Vorgängen dieser nächtlichen Angst zugrunde liegt, wie etwa im Tagesleben die organischen Vorgänge des physischen und ätherischen Organismus demjenigen zugrunde liegen, was die Seele als von innen kommende Ängstlichkeit da oder dort erleben könnte. Es sind in der Tat die Ereignisse, die, man möchte sagen, angstmachende Ereignisse sind, durch die sich da die Seele durchzuleben hat.
[ 10 ] In diesem Stadium des Schlafes zeigt sich nun das Hineinwirken von Vorkommnissen des Tageslebens in das Schlafleben. Für den modernen Menschen, der nach dem Mysterium von Golgatha lebt, zeigen sich da die Nachwirkungen dessen, was er während des Tageslebens durchmacht an religiöser innerer Hingabe zu dem Christus und zu dem Mysterium von Golgatha. Alles Hinblicken und Hinschauen, alle Verehrung und Anbetung, die man für den Christus und für das Mysterium von Golgatha im wachen Tagesleben entwickelt, sind von einer Nachwirkung in diese zweite Etappe des Schlaflebens hinein. Für diejenigen Menschen, die im Erdendasein vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha lebten, war das anders. Sie bekamen von ihren religiösen Führern entsprechende Mittel, religiöse Verrichtungen, deren Wirkungen sie hineinnehmen konnten in das Schlafleben und die so wirkten, daß diese Ängstlichkeit im Schlafzustande nach und nach überwunden wurde. Für den Menschen, der nach dem Mysterium von Golgatha lebt, ist es so, daß seine innere Verbindung mit dem Christus Jesus, sein Gefühl der Zugehörigkeit zu dem Christus Jesus, die religiösen Verrichtungen, die er an den Christus Jesus richtet, überhaupt sein ganzes Verhältnis zu dem Christus Jesus und das tatsächliche Ausleben dieses Verhältnisses, daß dies alles nun hineinwirkt in das Schlafleben und gewissermaßen jene Ängstlichkeit überwinden hilft, welche die Seele bedrückt.
[ 11 ] Wie gesagt, schildere ich so, wie sich die Dinge vor dem inspirierten Bewußtsein ausnehmen, wie sie aber als real durchaus von der Seele erlebt werden. Daher stelle ich Begriffe auf, die eigentlich Begriffe des bewußten Lebens sind, aber die realen korrespondierenden Prozesse sind durchaus im Leben der Seele da. Wir begegnen in der Tat, wenn wir bei Tage ein Verhältnis zu dem Christus entwickelt haben, während dieser zweiten Etappe des Schlaflebens der führenden Macht des Christus. Diese führende Macht des Christus ist es, durch welche wir jene die Seele bedrückende Ängstlichkeit überwinden. Und es entwickelt sich heraus aus dieser Ängstlichkeit ein kosmisches Verhältnis zur Welt. Es stehen infolge der Entwickelung dieses Verhältnisses vor der Seele, aber eigentlich so, daß die Seele dies als ihr Innenleben erlebt, die Bewegungen des Planetensystems unseres Sonnenkosmos. Nicht, als ob die Seele sich während dieses Schlaflebens in die planetarische Welt hinaus ausdehnte, aber eine innere Nachbildung der planetarischen Welt lebt sich in der Seele aus. Sie erlebt tatsächlich den planetarischen Kosmos in einer Nachbildung. Wenn auch dasjenige, was die Seele also in jeder Nacht wie einen inneren kleinen Globus, Himmelsglobus, erlebt, nicht in das Bewußtsein des Tageslebens hereinstrahlt, so strahlt es doch in die Wirklichkeit des Tageslebens hinüber, und es lebt weiter vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen im physischen und im ätherischen Organismus. Wenn wir nämlich den physischen und den ätherischen Organismus in dem Atmungssystem, in dem Blutzirkulationssystem, in dem ganzen rhythmischen System durchschauen, so leben darin, begleitend die Atmungsströmungen, begleitend die Blutzirkulation, Reize, Impulse, welche in das wache Leben hereinwirken aus demjenigen, was als planetarisches inneres Erleben zwischen Einschlafen und Aufwachen von der Seele erlebt wird, so daß in der Tat während des Wachens in unserem Atmen, in unserer Blutzirkulation als nachwirkender Reiz die Planetenbewegungen unseres Sonnensystems pulsieren. Und während des Schlafzustandes — wo der astralische und der Ich-Organismus außerhalb des physischen und des ätherischen Organismus sind, das erweist sich ja durch eine solche Beobachtung — da wirken die Planetenbewegungen nicht unmittelbar, da werden sie von der Seele außerhalb des physischen und des ätherischen Organismus erlebt. Aber im Innern des schlafenden physischen Organismus zittern nach, vibrieren nach diese Reize, die von der vorhergehenden Nacht kommen, die während des Tages Atmungsprozesse und Blutzirkulation durchpulsiert haben. Während der folgenden Nacht ist dann eine Nachwirkung von ihnen da, und am nächsten Morgen erneuern sich diese Reize wiederum als die Folge dessen, was die Seele in der Nacht als innere Nachbildung des planetarischen Kosmos erlebt hat.
[ 12 ] Neben diesem kosmischen Erleben tritt aber noch etwas anderes in dieser zweiten Etappe des Schlaflebens auf. Die Seele bekommt ein deutliches Erleben von allen den Beziehungen zu Menschenseelen, die sie jemals in den verschiedenen Erdenleben gehabt hat. Wir haben ja in unserem Inneren, ich möchte sagen, die «Zeichen» von allen den Beziehungen, die wir jemals in den aufeinanderfolgenden Erdenleben zu Menschenseelen gehabt haben. Diese alle treten in einer gewissen bildhaften Weise jetzt vor die Seele. Die Seele erlebt, wenn auch unbewußt, aber real alles, was sie einmal im Rechten oder Unrechten mit anderen Menschen zu tun gehabt hat. Und ebenso erlebt sie werdend ihre Beziehungen zu geistigen Wesenheiten, die den Kosmos bewohnen und die niemals in einem physischen Körper leben, die also gegenüber dem physischen Menschenleben immer ein übersinnliches Dasein leben. Die Menschenseele lebt sich also während des Schlafes auch hinein in ein reiches Netz von Beziehungen zu den Menschenseelen, zu denen sie solche Beziehungen angeknüpft hat. Diese Beziehungen erscheinen wiederum, und ebenso erscheint alles das, was in diesen Beziehungen geblieben ist als die Nachwirkung von Recht oder Unrecht, das man Menschen getan hat, Gutes und Böses, was man ihnen zugefügt hat. Kurz, was gewordenes Schicksal des Menschen ist, stellt sich in diesem Stadium des Schlafes vor die Seele hin.
[ 13 ] Was eine ältere Philosophie Karma genannt hat, tritt in diesem Schlafzustande jede Nacht vor die Menschenseele. Und wenn die planetarischen Erlebnisse als Reize fortwirken in Atmung und Blutzirkulation, also im physischen und ätherischen Organismus des Menschen, dann zeigt sich für den, der durch die inspirierte Erkenntnis solches zu beobachten vermag, daß dieses Erleben der wiederholten Erdenleben auch hinüberspielt in das Tagesbewußtsein, wenn es auch in diesem nicht unmittelbar gegenwärtig ist. Für die inspirierte Erkenntnis, die das anschaut, was da die Seele erlebt, ist dann die Tatsache der wiederholten Erdenleben einfach gegeben, denn die wiederholten Erdenleben stellen sich in der Anschauung der Inspiration unmittelbar im Zusammenhange mit demjenigen dar, was man schaut an Beziehungen zu Menschen, die man je gehabt hat. Indem man diese Beziehungen überschaut, stellt sich einem die Entwickelung durch die wiederholten Erdenleben dar. Die eine Beziehung schaut man, die in ein bestimmtes Erdenleben zurückweist, die andere, die in ein anderes weist und so weiter. Ebenso stellt sich das Karma als eine Tatsache vor den Menschen hin.
[ 14 ] Was so während des Schlafes von der Seele erlebt wird, das wirkt in das Tagesbewußtsein in der Weise herein, daß die allgemeine Seelenstimmung des Menschen, die als dumpfes Erfühlen seiner selbst während des Tages spielt, abhängig ist von dem, was wir in dieser Etappe des Schlaflebens durchmachen. Ob wir uns glücklich oder unglücklich im dumpfen Innendasein fühlen, ob wir uns frisch oder ermattet fühlen, das ist im weiten Umfange eine Folge dessen, was in diesen geschilderten Zuständen während des Schlafes erlebt wird. Und so befinden wir uns während dieser Etappe des Schlafzustandes tatsächlich in dem Kosmos draußen, wenn auch das, was wir als Innenleben in der Seele erleben, eine Nachbildung des Kosmos ist, und wenn auch das, was wir über die wiederholten Erdenleben und über das Karma erleben, in Bildern, in Nachbildern vor die Seele tritt. In dem, was wir da als solche Nachbilder, kosmische und schicksalgemäße Nachbilder vor der Seele stehend haben, ist das enthalten, was des Menschen Innensein im Kosmos genannt werden kann. Und wenn man das, was man auf diese Weise durch die inspirierte Erkenntnis erringen kann, nun, indem man es zurückstrahlen läßt ins gewöhnliche Bewußtsein, in Begriffe und Ideen faßt, dann hat man damit die wirkliche, auch den ganzen Menschen umfassende Kosmologie. Diese Kosmologie ist dann eine erlebte Kosmologie. Wir können sagen: Der Mensch lernt, wenn er mit Bewußtsein diese Etappe des Schlaflebens zurückstrahlt, sich selber erkennen als ein Glied der kosmischen Ordnung, wobei diese kosmische Ordnung sich planetarisch auslebt, also gewissermaßen als kosmische Naturordnung.
[ 15 ] Aber jetzt tritt innerhalb der kosmischen Ordnung auch die moralische Weltordnung auf. Es ist nicht so wie hier im Erdendasein, daß wir auf der einen Seite die Naturordnung haben, die ihre eigene GesetzmäBigkeit hat und moralfrei ist, und auf der anderen Seite die moralische Weltenordnung, die nur in der Seele erlebt wird für das Erdendasein, sondern wir haben eine einheitliche Welt vor uns. Was wir als planetarischen Kosmos erleben, ist durchlebt und durchgeistigt von moralischen Impulsen in fortströmender Entwickelung. Wir leben zugleich in einem natürlichen und in einem moralischen Kosmos.
[ 16 ] Sie erkennen die volle Bedeutung dieser Nachtereignisse auch für das Tagesleben. So können wir sagen, daß für die äußere Konfiguration des Menschen das, was die Seele zwischen Einschlafen und Aufwachen im Kosmos erlebt, wesentlicher und bedeutungsvoller ist als das, was sie während des wachen Tageslebens vor sich hat, denn sowohl die physischen und ätherischen Lebensfunktionen wie das moralische Sich-Befinden sind Ergebnisse des kosmischen Erlebens zwischen Einschlafen und Aufwachen.
[ 17 ] Die dritte Etappe des Schlaflebens ist dadurch zu charakterisieren, daß das Erleben innerhalb des planetarischen Kosmos allmählich übergeht in ein Erleben der Fixsternwelt, so daß im Innenleben der Seele die Fixsternwelt in einer Art Nachbildung erlebt wird, aber so, daß nicht etwa Nachbildungen jener äußeren Sinnesbilder der Fixsternkonstellationen vorhanden sind, wie wir sie vor uns haben im wachen Tagesleben, sondern die Seele lebt sich ein in diejenigen Wesenheiten, von denen in den früheren Betrachtungen gesagt worden ist, daß die Intuition sie als die entsprechenden geistigen Wesenheiten für die Sterne erkennt. Wir erleben hier in der Sinneswelt die sinnlichen Bilder der Sterne im physischen Bewußtsein. Wenn die Intuition, wie ich es geschildert habe, übergeht in die geistige Welt, so erkennt sie wiederum in gewissen geistigen Wesenheiten dasjenige, wofür die Sonne und die anderen Fixsterne nur die physischen Nachbilder für unsere Tages-Sinneserkenntnisse sind. Innerhalb dieser geistigen Wesenheiten der Sterne lebt die Seele in der dritten Etappe des Schlafzustandes. Sie fühlt Nachbilder der Sternkonstellationen, das heißt aber eigentlich der Verhältnisse, welche zwischen den Betätigungen der geistigen Sternwesen bestehen. Sie erlebt solche Konstellationen.
[ 18 ] In älterer traumhafter Wissenschaft hat man insbesondere das Hereinleben der Fixsternkonstellationen und des Tierkreises geschildert. Um diese handelt es sich ja hauptsächlich im seelischen Erleben des Schlafzustandes. Man bekommt in der Sinneswelt viel mehr ein Entsprechendes, ein Korrespondierendes für die entsprechenden einzelnen geistigen Wesenheiten, wenn man die Sternbilder ins Auge faßt statt der einzelnen Sterne. So lebt sich die Seele zwischen Einschlafen und Aufwachen, wenn sie frei vom physischen und ätherischen Leib ist, so frei, daß sie diese beiden als Objekte vor sich hat, wie wir sonst die äußeren Sinnesdinge als Objekte vor uns haben. $o lebt sich die Seele tatsächlich als eine geistige Wesenheit in einen Kosmos von geistigen Wesenheiten hinein. Was sie da unbewußt durchmacht, das kann die intuitive Erkenntnis beleuchten. Aber was da durchgemacht wird, hat auch seine Nachwirkung in das wache Tagesleben herein, indem im wesentlichen die Konstitutionsart der menschlichen Gesundheit, der Gesamtheit der Gesundheit und der Frische des menschlichen Leibes — nicht der Seele wie im ersten Stadium des Schlafes - eine Nachwirkung desjenigen ist, was die Seele jeweilig während der Nacht unter den Sternenwesen durchmacht.
[ 19 ] Aber insbesondere stellt sich vor die Seele hin, sobald es erlebt wird, wenn auch nicht bewußt, das ganze Ereignis der Geburt im weitesten Sinne, das heißt das Hereinziehen der Seele durch die Empfängnis und durch das Keimesleben in einen physischen Menschenleib. Und wiederum stellt sich vor die Seele das Verlassen des Leibes im Tode, der Übergang in die geistig-seelische Welt von seiten des Geisteswesens des Menschen. Dasjenige also, was die Wahrheit ist über die Ereignisse Geburt und Tod, das stellt sich wirklich jede Nacht vor die Menschenseele hin. Und auch das ist eine Nachwirkung dieser Nachterlebnisse, daß der Mensch während des Tageslebens ein inneres dumpfes Gefühl hat: Geburt und Tod bedeuten im menschlichen Leben nimmermehr das, als was sie sich nur für die Sinnesbeobachtung darstellen. Es ist einfach nicht richtig, daß der Mensch, wenn er ein gesundes Bewußtsein hat, glauben könnte, Geburt und Tod seien in Wirklichkeit nur diejenigen Ereignisse, als die sie sich im äußeren Sinnesleben darstellen. Es ist nicht wahr, daß der Mensch diesen Glauben nur deswegen nicht hat, weil er sich in seiner Phantasie ausmalt, ein ewiges Wesen zu sein, ein Dasein zu haben über den Tod hinaus. Nein, daß der Mensch dies nicht glauben kann, das rührt davon her, weil in das Tagesleben herein in der Form eines dumpfen Gefühls über die Welt und das Menschenleben dasjenige hereinstrahlt, was die Seele allnächtlich erlebt als Bild des Hereinziehens des Menschen aus einer geistigen Welt in das Erdenleben und des Wiederhinausziehens des Menschen in die geistige Welt.
[ 20 ] Es ist also, was während des wachen Tageslebens als religiöse Sehnsucht, als religiöses Bewußtsein auftritt, eine Nachwirkung des Sternenerlebens der Seele während der Nacht. Und es ist dieses, was ich eben geschildert habe, die Etappe des tiefsten menschlichen Schlafes. Der Mensch lebt also eigentlich aus seinem Schlafe heraus sein religiöses Tageserfühlen. Ebenso, wie durch ein aus einem voll entwickelten Bewußtsein in Intuitionen gefaßtes, durchzogenes Urmenschheitserleben erkenntnismäßig das religiöse Leben heute begründet werden kann, ebenso kann gesagt werden, daß diese religiöse Erkenntnis gewonnen werden kann, wenn die menschliche übersinnliche Intuition das Stadium des tiefsten Schlafes erkenntnismäßig beleuchtet. Denn das, was in den Tiefen des Schlafes ruht, war zugleich auch die das Göttliche bewahrende Quelle. Und da unser Tagesbewußtsein nur ein Abglanz ist von den Bewußtseinsmöglichkeiten, die es für den Menschen gibt, so erscheint eben auch das, was der Mensch als natürliches religiöses Gefühl in sich trägt, als ein solcher Abglanz dessen, was in Glorie und Großartigkeit, wenn auch unbewußt, im dritten Stadium des Schlaflebens von der Seele durchgemacht wird. Der Mensch taucht ins Schlafleben unter nicht nur, um seinen ermüdeten Körper zu erholen, nicht nur, um sich die Reize aus dem Schlafe zu holen, die seine Atmung und seine Blutzirkulation brauchen, nicht nur, um die anderen Anregungen, die er braucht, sich aus der geistigen Welt zu erwerben, sondern auch das, was den Menschen religiös durchzieht, dringt hinauf an die Oberfläche der Seele, an die bewußte Tagesregion aus den tiefen Unterschichten, durch welche das menschliche Seelenleben zwischen dem Einschlafen und Aufwachen hindurchströmt.
[ 21 ] Man möchte sagen: So wie der Mensch während des ersten Stadiums des Schlafes, ähnlich wie in der ersten Kindheit, ein philosophisches Leben lebt - so paradox dies für das Bewußtsein der Gegenwart klingen mag -, so wie er im zweiten Stadium des Schlafes ein kosmologisches Leben lebt, so lebt er im dritten Stadium des Schlafes ein gottdurchtränktes Leben. Der Mensch muß dann aus diesem dritten Stadium des Schlafzustandes wieder zurückkehren zum Tagesbewußtsein.
[ 22 ] Aus dem letzten Stadium des Schlafes kehrt der Mensch, indem er die angeführten Stadien in umgekehrter Reihenfolge durchmacht, wieder zum wachen Tagesbewußtsein zurück. Zunächst ist der Mensch ja als Seele, als Geist außerhalb seines physischen und seines ätherischen Organismus, und man muß, indem man das Phänomen des Schlafes vollständig erkennen will, in intuitiver Erkenntnis sich die Frage beantworten: Warum wird der Mensch wiederum zu seinem physischen und ätherischen Organismus zurückgezogen? Welcher Impuls waltet da? Man erkennt diesen Impuls, wenn man genügend weit die intuitive Erkenntnis des Schlafes fortsetzt. Man erkennt dann — so wie man jene Geistwesenheiten erkennt, welche dem Sonnenfixstern und den Konstellationen der anderen Fixsterne entsprechen - als Impuls dafür diejenigen Geistwesenheiten, deren Nachbildung in unserer physischen Sinneswelt der Mond ist. Die Kräfte des Mondes durchsetzen ja unseren ganzen Kosmos. Und wenn wir durch die Intuition nicht nur das physische Dasein des Mondes, sondern auch das geistige Korrelat dieses physischen Daseins erkennen, dann finden wir in diesen geistigen Wesenheiten, die dem physischen Mondendasein entsprechen, eben jene Wesen, welche in ihrem Zusammenwirken die Impulse abgeben, die uns, wenn wir das tiefste Stadium des Schlafes erreicht haben, wieder zurückbringen in unseren physischen und in unseren ätherischen Leib. Es sind überhaupt die Mondenkräfte, welche den astralischen und den Ich-Organismus des Menschen binden an den physischen und den ätherischen Organismus.
[ 23 ] In jeder Nacht, in der die Seele aus der geistigen Welt einziehen will in einen physischen und ätherischen Organismus, muß sie sich einfügen in die Strömungen der Mondenkräfte. Es kommt dabei — das wird Ihnen ja natürlich erscheinen — nicht in Betracht, ob Neumond oder Vollmond ist. Denn auch dann, wenn der Mond als Neumond sinnlich nicht sichtbar ist, wirken dennoch durch den Kosmos diejenigen Kräfte, welche die Seele aus den geistigen Welten zurückbringen in den physischen und ätherischen Organismus, obwohl den Verwandlungen, die das sinnliche Mondenbild durchmacht und die als Halbmond, Vollmond und so weiter gesehen werden, obwohl diesen sinnlichen Meramorphosenbildern Vorgänge in dem seelischen Wesen des Mondes entsprechen, die allerdings etwas zu tun haben mit dem Geist des Menschen und der Menschenseele im physischen und ätherischen Organismus. Man möchte sagen, die besondere Konfiguration des Zusammenhanges zwischen dem Seelisch-Geistigen und dem Physisch-Ätherischen des Menschen ist bedingt durch diejenigen Kräfte, die im Kosmos walten und weben und die ihren sinnlichen Ausdruck bekommen in jenem Sinneswesen, das wir in dem Mondenwesen in seinen verschiedenen Metamorphosen vor uns haben.
[ 24 ] So können wir auch in die verborgenen Seiten des menschlichen Wachlebens und Schlaflebens hineinblicken und uns darüber unterrichten, was den Menschen am Morgen wieder zurückbringt in das wache Tagesleben. Er kehrt durch die selben Stadien in umgekehrter Folge wieder zurück. Und indem er durch das letzte Stadium durchgeht, das von Gottessehnsucht durchtränkt ist, mischen sich wiederum die Träume in das Schlafleben hinein, und der Mensch taucht allmählich wieder in seinen physischen und ätherischen Organismus unter.
[ 25 ] Warum der Mensch, wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes geht, diesen Mondenkräften nicht mehr unterliegt, inwiefern er sich ihnen entzieht, indem er dann für lange Zeit in die geistige Welt eintritt, dieses, sowie überhaupt die Geheimnisse der Geburt, des Todes und der wiederholten Erdenleben zu betrachten, wird dann im wesentlichen der Inhalt des nächsten und des übernächsten Vortrages sein.
Sleep Experiences of the Soul
[ 1 ] Recently, the idea of the unconscious has emerged and is widely discussed in psychology. Everything in human soul life that cannot be reached, observed, or explained by ordinary consciousness is referred to the realm of the unconscious. And when we speak of this unconscious, we assume that what we actually believe must remain unknown contains forces that influence conscious soul life. The emergence of this idea of the unconscious is due solely to the fact that in recent times a certain skepticism, even a feeling of powerlessness, has arisen with regard to the solution of the actual philosophical, cosmological, and religious problems. The knowledge that has been described here as imaginative, inspired, and intuitive now has the task of penetrating this undefined reservoir that has so often appeared in modern science as the “unconscious.” Through this supersensible knowledge, it is precisely the concrete facts that are not accessible to ordinary consciousness that are to be explored by reaching other states of consciousness in which a different state of mind and therefore also a different faculty of perception are present. Today I would like to present an example of such an exploration of an unconscious realm of the soul, namely the experiences that the human soul undergoes between falling asleep and waking up.
[ 2 ] What happens to the human soul in the state of sleep remains a true unconscious for ordinary consciousness. However, one should not believe that the experiences of the soul during the state of sleep are less significant or less decisive for human life than the states and experiences of waking consciousness. Certainly, for our external life on earth, for our creative work and for the external progress of humanity, it is above all our waking life that is important. But for the configuration, for the development of one's own inner being, it is above all the rich experiences of the sleeping state that come into consideration. These rich experiences of the sleeping state, even if they remain unconscious, are nevertheless real, and they play a role in their after-effects in waking life. Not only is the general mood of the human soul from waking to falling asleep permeated and interwoven with the after-effects of sleep, but also the physical and etheric organisms, which are themselves permeated by the astral organism and by the actual spiritual organism, the ego organism, are also influenced during waking life by the after-effects of sleep.
[ 3 ] To ordinary consciousness, the phenomena initially appear as if the external sense perception dims, finally extinguishing completely, and that this extinction also occurs for thinking, feeling, and willing, and that, with the exception of that transitional state in which dreams occur, the human being sinks into an unconscious state. But what happens to the soul during this unconscious state is — and this must be emphasized — something entirely real, and what remains unconscious to ordinary consciousness in this regard can be illuminated by imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge. So today I will describe to you, at least in outline, the experiences of the soul during the state of sleep that remain unconscious, as imagination, inspiration, and intuition can perceive what is unconscious to ordinary consciousness. I will therefore describe to you the experiences of the soul from falling asleep to waking up as if they were consciously experienced, for they are consciously experienced by higher knowledge. Not as if the soul were unconscious all night, but because what otherwise remains unconscious can be seen in the state of imagination, inspiration, and intuition, so that it can be illuminated and revealed. The following then becomes apparent.
[ 4 ] When a person first enters the state of sleep, the sensory world around them ceases to exist for the soul. The person enters into an inner experience that is undifferentiated and, in a certain sense, indeterminate. The soul feels—I say it feels; it does not feel itself, but if it were conscious, it would feel itself—it feels enlarged, as if in a vast mist. In this inner feeling and experience, there is initially no distinction between subject and object in the first state of sleep. Nor can individual phenomena and facts be distinguished; it is a general feeling of, as I said, a misty sense of the world. And one feels this misty sense of the world as one's own existence. But at the same time, what one might call a deep need to rest in the divine essence of the world arises in the sleeping person. Into this outpouring of experience in a general, undifferentiated state is mixed an indefinite longing—one must use the word—to rest in God. As I have said, I am describing this as if the unconsciously experienced events were being consciously undergone. Thus, the outer world of the day, everything that the soul receives through the senses, is, in a sense, submerged. Also submerged are all the impulses through which the soul feels in the body, all the impulses through which the soul transmits its volitional impulses through the body. What exists at first is a general feeling of the world with a longing for God.
[ 5 ] Dreams can intrude into this state, which is the first to occur after falling asleep. These dreams are either images, symbolic images of external experiences, memories, symbolic images of inner physical states, and so on, or dreams in which certain true facts of the spiritual world can also interfere, without the dreamer, who is only endowed with ordinary consciousness, being able to gain a clear understanding of what these dreams actually contain. Even for those who, through imaginative knowledge—for this is what makes it possible—can look into this state of the soul, dreams are not so much a clarification of the inner state of affairs as a kind of veiling of the pure truth. For this pure truth, in relation to what is meant here, can only be recognized by human beings if they prepare themselves for it in the appropriate manner through soul exercises, as they have been described, and of their own free will. Only as a result of these soul exercises can the pure contemplation of this first state of sleep occur.
[ 6 ] When one now looks at this first state of sleep through such a corresponding insight, when one sees through it, it turns out to be not quite the same, but very similar to the unconscious experiences of early childhood. Just as if a person were able to bring the experiences of early childhood, which remain unconscious, into consciousness and pour them into the concepts and ideas of ordinary consciousness that philosophy deals with — then these ideas of philosophy would indeed become reality, one would rise in philosophy as in something real — so one can also say that in the first stage of every state of sleep, man becomes an unconscious philosopher, becomes what he processes in his soul in his waking daytime consciousness in the form of ideas, dialectical and logical laws. If one could enforce this with the experience of reality, which in the world mist of the ethereal world is outflowing and the longing of the soul to rest in God, if one could bring these two soul experiences to consciousness and pour them into abstract philosophical ideas, then these would become alive, and philosophy would be what it was in Greece before Socrates and what it was in earlier times of humanity, namely, an inner experience of reality.
[ 7 ] We have now become acquainted with two stages of human development: the stage of earliest childhood, which, when brought to consciousness, would represent the reality of philosophical ideas; and we have now been able to record the experience of the first state of sleep, which is very similar to the unconscious experience of childhood and which, when brought to consciousness, also gives the philosophy attained in the waking state an experience of reality.
[ 8 ] This is a description of the first, not very long-lasting states that humans go through from falling asleep to waking up.
[ 9 ] After the human soul has been in the state described above for a while during sleep, this state continues into another. This second stage of sleep is such that instead of experiencing things in their own physical and etheric organism, as they do during the day, human beings have a kind of experience in which they feel the cosmos that surrounds them during the day within themselves. And while in the first stage of sleep there is no clear distinction in the soul's experience between subject and object, this distinction now becomes more and more meaningful, except that during sleep the human being has, as it were, entered into the opposite state to that of waking life. He now feels himself, experiences himself in the cosmos, and looks back as if on an objective entity upon his physical and etheric organism. Just as in daytime consciousness he experiences his organs—lungs, liver, heart, and so on—dull within himself, so now, during the state of sleep, he experiences the cosmic content within himself; he becomes, in a sense, the cosmos itself in his soul. Not as if he expands into the whole cosmos, but he experiences something like a replica of the cosmos within himself. But the first unconscious experience, which is nevertheless quite real, is, I would say, a fragmentation of this inner experience of the soul, a distribution of the soul into many details of a multiplicity. The soul does not experience itself as a unity, it experiences itself as a multiplicity. Just as we, when we experience ourselves during the day, do not experience ourselves as this unified human being, but as a multiplicity of eyes, ears, lungs, liver, and so on in the brain, and we would miss the unity, so one experiences, in a sense, the cosmic ingredients without initially experiencing their unity during sleep. This causes a state of the soul which, if it were conscious, would have to be described as an anxiety pervading the soul, as fear. As I said, if one wants to represent it in conscious experience, this state presents itself as a state of fear. But the soul actually experiences what underlies the objective processes of this nocturnal fear, just as in daily life the organic processes of the physical and etheric organism underlie what the soul might experience here and there as anxiety coming from within. It is indeed the events, one might say frightening events, through which the soul has to live.
[ 10 ] At this stage of sleep, the influence of events in daily life on sleep life becomes apparent. For modern human beings who live according to the mystery of Golgotha, the after-effects of what they experience during their waking life in terms of religious inner devotion to Christ and to the mystery of Golgotha become apparent. All the gazing and looking, all the veneration and worship that one develops for Christ and for the mystery of Golgotha in waking daily life have an after-effect in this second stage of sleep life. For those people who lived on earth before the mystery of Golgotha, it was different. They were given appropriate means by their religious leaders, religious practices whose effects they could take into their sleep life and which worked in such a way that this anxiety in the sleep state was gradually overcome. For people living after the mystery of Golgotha, it is so that their inner connection with Christ Jesus, their sense of belonging to Christ Jesus, the religious practices they direct toward Christ Jesus, their entire relationship to Christ Jesus and the actual living out of this relationship—that all of this now works into their sleep life and, in a sense, helps to overcome the anxiety that oppresses the soul.
[ 11 ] As I have said, I am describing how things appear to the inspired consciousness, but how they are actually experienced by the soul. I am therefore using terms that are actually terms of conscious life, but the real corresponding processes are definitely present in the life of the soul. In fact, when we have developed a relationship with Christ during the day, we encounter the guiding power of Christ during this second stage of sleep. It is through this guiding power of Christ that we overcome the anxiety that oppresses the soul. And out of this anxiety develops a cosmic relationship to the world. As a result of the development of this relationship, the movements of the planetary system of our solar cosmos appear before the soul, but in such a way that the soul experiences this as its inner life. It is not as if the soul expands into the planetary world during this sleep life, but rather an inner reproduction of the planetary world lives out in the soul. It actually experiences the planetary cosmos in a reproduction. Even if what the soul experiences every night as an inner little globe, a celestial globe, does not shine into the consciousness of daily life, it nevertheless shines over into the reality of daily life and lives on from awakening to falling asleep in the physical and etheric organism. For when we look through the physical and etheric organisms in the respiratory system, in the blood circulation system, in the whole rhythmic system, we see that there live, accompanying the respiratory currents, accompanying the blood circulation, stimuli and impulses that affect our waking life from what the soul experiences as planetary inner experience between falling asleep and waking up, so that during waking life, the planetary movements of our solar system pulsate in our breathing and blood circulation as an after-effect. And during the state of sleep — when the astral and ego organisms are outside the physical and etheric organisms, as is proven by observation — the planetary movements do not act directly, but are experienced by the soul outside the physical and etheric organisms. But within the sleeping physical organism, these stimuli, which come from the previous night and have pulsed through the respiratory processes and blood circulation during the day, continue to vibrate and resonate. During the following night, their after-effects are present, and the next morning these stimuli are renewed as a result of what the soul has experienced during the night as an inner reproduction of the planetary cosmos.
[ 12 ] In addition to this cosmic experience, something else occurs in this second stage of sleep. The soul gains a clear experience of all the relationships it has ever had with human souls in its various earthly lives. We have within us, I would say, the “signs” of all the relationships we have ever had with human souls in successive earthly lives. All of these now appear before the soul in a certain pictorial form. The soul experiences, albeit unconsciously but nevertheless real, everything it has ever done, rightly or wrongly, in relation to other human beings. And in the same way, it experiences its relationships with spiritual beings who inhabit the cosmos and who never live in a physical body, who therefore always live a supersensible existence in relation to physical human life. During sleep, the human soul therefore also lives itself into a rich network of relationships with the human souls with whom it has established such relationships. These relationships reappear, and everything that has remained in these relationships also reappears as the after-effect of right or wrong done to people, of good and evil inflicted upon them. In short, what has become the destiny of human beings presents itself to the soul in this stage of sleep.
[ 13 ] What an older philosophy called karma appears before the human soul every night in this state of sleep. And when the planetary experiences continue to act as stimuli in breathing and blood circulation, that is, in the physical and etheric organism of the human being, then it becomes apparent to those who are able to observe this through inspired knowledge that this experience of repeated earthly lives also carries over into daytime consciousness, even if it is not immediately present there. For inspired knowledge, which sees what the soul experiences, the fact of repeated earthly lives is simply a given, for in the vision of inspiration, repeated earthly lives appear directly in connection with what one sees in relation to people one has ever known. By surveying these relationships, the development through repeated earthly lives becomes apparent. One sees the relationship that points back to a particular earthly life, another that points to another, and so on. In the same way, karma presents itself to human beings as a fact.
[ 14 ] What is experienced by the soul during sleep has an effect on daytime consciousness in such a way that the general mood of the human soul, which plays out as a dull feeling of oneself during the day, depends on what we go through in this stage of sleep life. Whether we feel happy or unhappy in our dull inner existence, whether we feel fresh or weary, is to a large extent a consequence of what is experienced in these states during sleep. And so, during this stage of the sleep state, we actually find ourselves in the cosmos outside, even if what we experience as inner life in the soul is a reproduction of the cosmos, and even if what we experience about repeated earthly lives and about karma appears before the soul in images, in afterimages. What we have before the soul as such afterimages, cosmic and fateful afterimages, contains what can be called the inner being of the human being in the cosmos. And when we take what we have gained in this way through inspired knowledge and let it flow back into our ordinary consciousness, forming concepts and ideas, we have a real cosmology that encompasses the whole human being. This cosmology is then a cosmology that has been experienced. We can say: When human beings consciously reflect back this stage of their sleep life, they learn to recognize themselves as a member of the cosmic order, whereby this cosmic order lives out its existence in planetary form, that is, in a sense as the cosmic natural order.
[ 15 ] But now the moral world order also appears within the cosmic order. It is not like here in earthly existence, where on the one hand we have the natural order, which has its own laws and is free of morality, and on the other hand the moral world order, which is only experienced in the soul for earthly existence, but rather we have a unified world before us. What we experience as the planetary cosmos is permeated and imbued with moral impulses in a continuous process of development. We live simultaneously in a natural and a moral cosmos.
[ 16 ] You can also recognize the full significance of these nighttime events for daily life. We can therefore say that what the soul experiences in the cosmos between falling asleep and waking up is more essential and meaningful for the outer configuration of the human being than what happens during waking life, because both the physical and etheric life functions and the moral state of being are the results of the cosmic experience between falling asleep and waking up.
[ 17 ] The third stage of sleep life is characterized by the fact that the experience within the planetary cosmos gradually merges into an experience of the fixed star world, so that in the inner life of the soul, the fixed star world is experienced in a kind of replica, but in such a way that there are not replicas of those external sensory images of the fixed star constellations as we have them before us in waking daytime life, but rather the soul lives itself into those entities which, in earlier considerations, were said to be recognized by intuition as the corresponding spiritual entities for the stars. Here in the sensory world we experience the sensory images of the stars in physical consciousness. When intuition, as I have described, passes over into the spiritual world, it again recognizes in certain spiritual beings that for which the sun and the other fixed stars are only physical afterimages for our daytime sensory perceptions. Within these spiritual beings of the stars, the soul lives in the third stage of the sleep state. It feels afterimages of the constellations, which are actually the relationships that exist between the activities of the spiritual star beings. It experiences such constellations.
[ 18 ] In older dream-like science, the experience of living within the constellations of fixed stars and the zodiac was described in particular. These are the main focus of the soul's experience in the state of sleep. In the sensory world, one finds much more of a counterpart, a correspondence to the corresponding individual spiritual beings, when one looks at the constellations instead of the individual stars. This is how the soul lives between falling asleep and waking up, when it is free from the physical and etheric bodies, so free that it has these two before it as objects, just as we otherwise have the external sense objects before us. Thus, the soul actually lives as a spiritual being in a cosmos of spiritual beings. What it unconsciously experiences there can be illuminated by intuitive knowledge. But what is experienced there also has an after-effect in waking daily life, in that the constitutional type of human health, the totality of the health and freshness of the human body—not the soul as in the first stage of sleep—is an after-effect of what the soul experiences during the night among the star beings.
[ 19 ] But in particular, as soon as it is experienced, even if not consciously, the whole event of birth in the broadest sense, that is, the drawing of the soul into a physical human body through conception and through the embryonic life, presents itself to the soul. And again, the soul is confronted with leaving the body in death, the transition into the spiritual-soul world on the part of the human spirit. So what is true about the events of birth and death is really presented to the human soul every night. And it is also an after-effect of these night experiences that human beings have a dull inner feeling during their daytime lives: birth and death in human life never mean what they appear to be when observed by the senses alone. It is simply not right that human beings, if they have a healthy consciousness, could believe that birth and death are in reality only those events as they appear in the outer sensory life. It is not true that human beings do not have this belief simply because they imagine themselves to be eternal beings, to have an existence beyond death. No, the reason why human beings cannot believe this is because what the soul experiences every night as an image of the human being entering earthly life from a spiritual world and then leaving it again shines into daily life in the form of a vague feeling about the world and human life.
[ 20 ] So what appears during waking life as religious longing, as religious consciousness, is an aftereffect of the soul's experience of the stars during the night. And it is this, what I have just described, that is the stage of deepest human sleep. Human beings actually live their religious feelings during the day out of their sleep. Just as the religious life of today can be cognitively founded through the primal experience of humanity, which is grasped in intuitions arising from a fully developed consciousness, so too can it be said that this religious knowledge can be gained when human supersensible intuition cognitively illuminates the stage of deepest sleep. For what rests in the depths of sleep was at the same time the source that preserved the divine. And since our daytime consciousness is only a reflection of the possibilities of consciousness that exist for human beings, what human beings carry within themselves as a natural religious feeling also appears as such a reflection of what the soul experiences in glory and grandeur, albeit unconsciously, in the third stage of sleep life. Human beings do not immerse themselves in sleep merely to rest their tired bodies, nor merely to obtain from sleep the stimuli that their respiration and blood circulation require. not only to obtain the other stimuli it needs from the spiritual world, but also that which pervades man religiously rises to the surface of the soul, to the conscious region of the day, from the deep lower layers through which human soul life flows between falling asleep and waking up.
[ 21 ] One might say: Just as human beings live a philosophical life during the first stage of sleep, similar to early childhood – however paradoxical this may sound to the consciousness of the present – and just as they live a cosmological life in the second stage of sleep, so they live a life imbued with God in the third stage of sleep. Humans must then return from this third stage of sleep to daytime consciousness.
[ 22 ] From the last stage of sleep, humans return to waking daytime consciousness by going through the stages mentioned above in reverse order. At first, humans exist as souls, as spirits outside their physical and etheric organisms, and in order to fully understand the phenomenon of sleep, one must intuitively answer the question: Why are humans drawn back to their physical and etheric organisms? What impulse is at work here? This impulse can be recognized if one pursues the intuitive understanding of sleep far enough. One then recognizes—just as one recognizes those spiritual beings that correspond to the sun and the constellations of the other fixed stars—as the impulse behind this those spiritual beings whose counterpart in our physical sense world is the moon. The forces of the moon permeate our entire cosmos. And when we recognize through intuition not only the physical existence of the moon, but also the spiritual correlate of this physical existence, then we find in these spiritual beings, which correspond to the physical existence of the moon, the very beings which, in their interaction, give forth the impulses that bring us back to our physical and etheric bodies when we have reached the deepest stage of sleep. It is the forces of the moon that bind the astral and ego organisms of human beings to the physical and etheric organisms.
[ 23 ] Every night, when the soul wants to enter a physical and etheric organism from the spiritual world, it must fit into the currents of the lunar forces. It does not matter, of course, whether it is a new moon or a full moon. For even when the moon is not visible as a new moon, the forces that bring the soul back from the spiritual worlds into the physical and etheric organisms are still at work through the cosmos, although the transformations that the sensory image of the moon undergoes and that can be seen as a crescent moon, full moon, and so on, and although these sensory images of metamorphosis correspond to processes in the soul nature of the moon, which do indeed have something to do with the spirit of the human being and the human soul in the physical and etheric organism. One might say that the special configuration of the connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-etheric in human beings is conditioned by those forces that rule and weave in the cosmos and find their sensory expression in that sensory being that we have before us in the moon in its various metamorphoses.
[ 24 ] In this way, we can also look into the hidden aspects of human waking and sleeping life and learn what brings human beings back to their waking daily life in the morning. They return through the same stages in reverse order. And as he passes through the last stage, which is saturated with longing for God, dreams again mingle with his sleep life, and the human being gradually submerges back into his physical and etheric organism.
[ 25 ] Why human beings, when they pass through the gate of death, are no longer subject to these lunar forces, how they withdraw from them when they enter the spiritual world for a long time, and the mysteries of birth, death, and repeated earthly lives in general will be the main content of the next and the following lectures.