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The Experiences of Sleep and their Spiritual Background
GA 218

9 October 1922, Stuttgart

Translator Unknown

In speaking of the life of the soul, a certain expression in common use today is made to cover a great deal. I refer to the expression: the ‘unconscious.’ On the one hand it admits that in respect of the soul we are obliged to speak of forces or the like which do not play into the ordinary consciousness; but on the other hand, by the very word itself we confess our inability to say anything about these forces. We merely label them the ‘unconscious.’

In setting out to describe what is the essential nature of human knowledge, we have to say that man's search for knowledge has to be pursued in the external world by means of observation and experiment, aided by the understanding with its power of combination. But then we can go on to show that when we investigate our consciousness, we find in it all manner of manifestations—thoughts, feelings, impulses of will, etc.—of which we are aware that they cannot be fathomed in their true nature by following the method of external scientific investigation and working with experiment, observation and the combining power of thought. Neither does such vision as we can gain by practising self-observation enable us to penetrate to the nature and being of what thus reveals itself in the life of the soul, so long as our self-observation is carried out purely with the ordinary forces of consciousness. We speak accordingly of the ‘unconscious,’ but while we do so, at the same time we renounce all claim to be able to penetrate into its world. This renunciation is entirely justified if we want to restrict ourselves to those means of attaining knowledge which are in common acceptance today. For as a matter of fact, no one who relies on these methods alone can ever carry his observation of the life of the soul any further than that during waking life, ideas, feelings, impulses of will-expressions, that is, of the inner nature and being of man—surge up from the depths; they are obviously closely bound up with the external bodily nature, and it is quite impossible to demonstrate conclusively that what shows itself to begin with in such close dependence on bodily conditions can have any existence of its own beyond these bodily conditions.

Now as you know very well, in Anthroposophy we take this as our starting-point. We fully accept the fact that with such means of acquiring knowledge as are recognised today, the depths of man's soul-nature can never be fathomed. We fully accept the fact that as far as these means go we can do no other than refer simply to an ‘unconscious.’ We do not even need to consider birth and death—the two boundaries of physical life on earth; we need look only at the condition of ordinary sleep as it occurs every day of a man's life, and we shall be obliged to admit that, taking what can be learned about the experiences of the soul with the ordinary means of attaining knowledge, it is impossible to raise any objection when a conclusion such as the following is reached. It is asserted, for example, from the point of view of ordinary knowledge, that all thinking, feeling and willing, as they are present in consciousness in ordinary day-to-day life, show so great a dependence upon bodily conditions that it may well be inferred that experiences of soul emerge out of the bodily conditions as out of a subconscious region, and that what happens during sleep is simply that the purely organic life predominates as such and during such time allows no ideas or feelings or acts of will to flow forth from it. When such a statement is made there is nothing to be said. At the most we can point to the dream and suggest how dreams appear to come out of the life of sleep and to be simply remembered in the waking life. From the way the dream plays through the life of sleep the conclusion might be drawn that the soul-nature does in some way or other persist during sleep. Here, however, we are on uncertain ground; and the fact is, no serious and open-minded person can, with no more than the ordinary means of knowledge at his disposal, be expected to speak in any other way about the soul than to say it exhibits phenomena which are to all appearances absolutely dependent on bodily conditions.

Anthroposophical knowledge, however, just because it accepts in all seriousness this capacity—or rather incapacity—of the ordinary means of knowledge, must, on the other hand, endeavour to find other means of knowing the world. And, as you are aware, such have been attained; they have often been explained and described here Imaginative, Inspired, Intuitive Knowledge. By means of these special ways of knowing—ways of knowing that by dint of strenuous effort have to be developed as new faculties from out of the ordinary life of the soul we are then in a position to bring clarity into a realm where with the ordinary means of knowledge clarity can never be attained.

And now, on the basis of these three stages of higher knowledge, I should like to give you a picture of a very important region of the subconscious or unconscious in man, namely the region of soul-life between going to sleep and waking. I have already described this region to you many times from various standpoints. Today I will do so again from one particular aspect.

Let me begin by picturing to you quite simply the condition of sleep as seen by Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive Knowledge. For ordinary consciousness all that we can say is that whereas from waking to going to sleep consciousness is filled with a content, on going to sleep this content first of all grows dim, is then gradually extinguished and a condition of unconsciousness ensues. During the consciousness of daytime man cannot, with ordinary means of knowledge, tell what his soul does during the time between going to sleep and waking. If the soul has any experience of this condition, the experience does not enter into ordinary consciousness. For ordinary consciousness darkness spreads over all that the soul undergoes—assuming, that is, that it undergoes any experience at all in sleep. But now, with the advent of Imaginative Knowledge, the condition of sleep begins to be lit up, the darkness begins to change into light, and it is possible to judge clearly of what is experienced by the soul during, at any rate, the early stages of sleep. And in Inspired and Intuitive Knowledge one can penetrate still farther into these experiences. Do not suppose that we can by this means look into sleep somewhat in the way we look into a peepshow; but through Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive Knowledge we can experience conditions of soul that resemble sleep inasmuch as our relation to our body at such times is similar to the relation during sleep; only it is experienced, not unconsciously, but in full consciousness. And through being able thus consciously during waking life to experience in a similar manner to the way one experiences in sleep, the possibility is opened for us to behold what the soul of man undergoes during sleep, and to describe it.

When a man goes to sleep, you know how in the moment of doing so the consciousness, already growing vague and indistinct, is often confused by dreams. This dream-world can, to begin with, help us very little indeed towards a knowledge of the life of the soul. For all we can know about dreams in daytime consciousness with the ordinary means of knowledge remains something that is quite external. Dreams are obviously not things upon which we can build in a sure and well-defined way, until we have a knowledge about sleep itself by some other means. He who truly acquires a knowledge of the condition of sleep knows very well that dreams are in reality misleading rather than enlightening. What the soul experiences in sleep it experiences unconsciously. But now, since I am going to place a picture of it before you arising from Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive Knowledge, I must portray it as if it were experienced consciously. I shall have to describe to you the experiences of the soul from going to sleep to waking as if they were experienced in consciousness. They are not; nevertheless, what I describe is truly experienced by the soul, although without knowing anything of it. It is present as an actual fact, and the effect of the experience is not limited to the time between going to sleep and waking. For it works into the physical organism of the human being, and it does so most of all during waking life. We carry within us during the day, from waking until going to sleep, the after-effects of the experiences of the night; and if it is true that for the civilization in which we live what we do with the instrumentality of consciousness is of great significance, it is no less true that all that goes on with our own selves depends very little indeed upon our consciousness, and very much upon what we experience unconsciously between going to sleep and waking.

When we have gone to sleep, and the sense-perceptions have been gradually paralysed and the will-impulses have ceased to work, we experience in the first place an undifferentiated condition of soul. In this undefined experience a strong sense of time is present, but all feeling of space is almost completely wiped out. It is an experience that is comparable with swimming; we are, so to speak, moving about in a general, indefinite world-substance. One has really to coin words to express what the soul goes through at this stage. One might say, the soul feels as if it were like a wave in a great sea, a wave that is organised within itself and yet feels itself surrounded on every hand by the sea and affected by the influences of the sea much as during the life of day the soul is affected by impressions of colour, tone or warmth, perceiving them in a quite definite and differentiated manner. In the life of day you feel yourself as a human being enclosed within your skin, and having a definite position in space. in the moment that follows the going to sleep, you feel—I say you ‘feel,’ I describe it all as if it were consciousness; the fact is there, it is only the consciousness of the fact that is lacking—you feel like a wave in a universal sea; you feel yourself now here, now there; as I said, the definite sense of space ceases. A general sense of time, however, persists.

But now this experience is united with another, namely, an experience of being forsaken and alone. It is like sinking into an abyss. If a man were to experience consciously this first stage of sleep without right preparation, he would in truth be exposed to great risk, for he would find it quite unbearable to lose in this way almost all sense of space and live merely in a general, universal feeling of time, to feel himself in this vague way merely a part of a universal sea of substance, where scarcely anything is distinguishable—where indeed the only thing one can distinguish is that one is a self within a universal world-existence. If consciousness were present, one would actually have the sensation of hovering over an abyss.

And now a still further experience is united with this one. A tremendous need for the support of the spiritual makes itself felt in the soul, a great need and longing to be united with the spiritual. In the universal sea in which one is swimming, one has, as it were, lost that feeling of security which comes from being in contact with the material things of the world of our waking hours. Hence one feels—one would feel, that is, if the condition were conscious—a deep yearning to be united with the divine and spiritual. And one may say too that this experience of movement in an undifferentiated world-substance carries with it the sense of being concealed and protected within divine-spiritual reality. Please observe the way I am describing all this. To repeat once more, I am describing it to you as if the soul experienced it consciously. It does not do so; but let me remind you that when you experience something consciously in waking life, a great deal is going on at the same time unconsciously in your organism. This is a simple fact. Let us say, for example, you feel joy. When you feel joy, your blood beats differently from the way it beats when you are sad. You experience the joy or sorrow in your consciousness, but not the difference in the pulsation of the blood. The pulsation of the blood is, notwithstanding, a fact. And it is the same here too. What I describe as swimming in an undifferentiated world-substance, and again what I describe as a need of God—there is a reality in the life of soul answering to each one of these descriptions. And Imaginative Knowledge does nothing else than lift this reality into consciousness, just as ordinary waking consciousness can lift into consciousness the pulsation of the blood which lies behind joy or sorrow. The facts are there, and they work on into our life of day; so that when we wake in the morning our whole organism is refreshed. The refreshment is due to the experience we have undergone during the night in our life of soul. What takes place in the soul when it is separated from the body during the time between going to sleep and waking is of great significance in its after-effects during waking life on the following day. We should not be able rightly to make use of our body on the following day if we had not raised ourselves up out of our connection with the external world of the physical senses and been immersed in this undefined experience which I have described. Nor would there rise up from the depths of our will during waking life something like a need and longing to relate all the differentiated world around us to a universal existence. The fact that we feel a need to relate the world of the senses to a divine existence is a direct result of this first stage of sleep.

The question may well be asked: Why is man not content merely to place the several objects of the world side by side? Why is he not content to go through the world accepting the existence of plants, animals, etc., without question? Why does he want to try to philosophize about it all? For the very simplest people do so; and incidentally, I may say they do it with far more understanding than the philosophers themselves! Why does man want to build up a philosophy of how the things hang together? Why does he relate the single example that meets his eye to a universal whole, and ask how the individual is rooted and grounded in the cosmos? He would not do so, if it were not that during sleep he enters in an intensely real and living way into the undefined existence I have described; nor would he ever in the waking state come to a feeling of God, were it not that he has experienced the corresponding fact in the first stage of sleep. We owe to sleep something that has untold significance for our deep inner nature as human beings.

As man continues asleep, he comes into other stages which are not accessible to Imaginative Knowledge, but require Inspired Knowledge for their perception. Something else now shows itself as a fact of the life of soul and is reflected for Inspired Knowledge in the way that the pulsation of the blood is reflected in joy and sorrow. To begin with, we find a disintegration of the soul into the greatest possible number of individual entities. The soul literally splits up its life into many parts, and this process is united with an experience which, when it lights up into consciousness, is felt as an experience of anxiety and fear. After the soul has passed through what we have described as a hovering over the abyss or as a swimming in a universal world-substance, and has experienced at the same time a longing for the divine-spiritual, it comes into this condition of anxiety—that is to say, into a condition that would be anxiety, if it were consciously experienced. The experience is due to the fact that the soul is no longer merely swimming in a general world-substance, but has, as it were, immersed itself in individual beings of soul-and-spirit. The soul comes into a certain relationship with these beings, and doing so severally, is now itself not one but manifold.

The anxiety of this stage of sleep has to be somehow met and overcome. In the time of the Earth's evolution that preceded the Mystery of Golgotha, teachings were given in the places of the Mysteries and found their way to the individual human beings; these teachings enabled the soul to experience other feelings in addition to those aroused by contact with the outer world of the senses. Such teachings were given in connection with the most varied religious practices, but they all awakened these feelings in the souls of men by giving them ideas and conceptions of God in such a way as was right for those ancient times. Men were then so constituted that even during waking life the spiritual world still shone into their consciousness. The farther we go back in the evolution of mankind on Earth, the more evident does it become that man had a kind of clairvoyance in very ancient times, traces of which remained on into later epochs; through this clairvoyance he perceived inwardly how he himself, before he began his life on Earth, had lived in pre-earthly existence as a being of soul-and-spirit. It was not something that he merely believed; it was for him a certainty; he experienced within himself something left over from a pre-earthly existence.

If I may be allowed to use a trivial comparison, I would remind you of how when someone has inherited a certain faculty from his parents, he is aware that this faculty has inserted itself into the course of his life through its own immediate existence; he has not acquired it, it has come over to him from his ancestors. In a similar way the men of an older time knew that certain experiences they had in their soul did not come to them from what they had seen with their eyes, but were an inheritance from a pre-earthly existence. They knew it from the experiences themselves. We have again and again to call attention to the fact that in the course of evolution man has grown free from such experiences, and that we live in an age when the ordinary consciousness has no experiences that are explicable as an inheritance from a pre-earthly existence. It was accordingly easier for the men of olden times to be taught by their spiritual leaders in the Mystery-centres how they should relate themselves in their feelings to what they already had in their soul as spiritual experience. Power came to them with the impulses they received from the Mystery-centres, and they were able to carry out of ordinary day life into the life of night, into the life of sleep, the strength to hold their own against the anxiety described above. The anxiety rose up out of the depths of the life of sleep. If a man was to have power to bring away with him out of this anxiety not general fatigue or exhaustion or the like, but instead a freshness of his whole organism, then he had to acquire that power on the previous day during the waking life.

Such is the connection between day and night. Night brings, at a certain stage of sleep, anxiety. Into this anxiety must flow power man has gained from religious or similar experience on the day before; and when these two things come together and unite—the power remaining over from the day before and the new and original experience of the night—then a reviving and refreshing force streams into the organism for the new day that follows.

A true spiritual science is not concerned to speak in general, abstract phrases and affirm the presence of a universal divine ordering in the world. It is not satisfied to describe the single objects of the world in their sense-aspect and then add: And now within this sense-appearance a general world-ordering holds sway. Spiritual science has to show in concrete detail how this divine ordering of the world works. If we would be adequate to the tasks of human evolution in the future, we cannot be content merely to say: I feel refreshed after a sound and healthy sleep; God has granted me refreshment. We should have to despair of science if we must insist upon a strict science for the world of the senses, and could not at the same time extend this strictness to what relates to the supersensible, but there had to remain content with phrases, such as the general statement that a divine ordering lies at the foundation of the world. No, on the contrary, we learn to be more and more definite; and we can show how the anxiety which occurs in the second stage of sleep, is as it were blended and intermingled with the power drawn from the religious experience of the previous day that works on into the night, and how these then give rise in their union to the power with which the physical organism is refreshed for the next day.

In this way we come to see more and more clearly how the spiritual lives in the physical. The means of knowledge that hold good today admit only a physical content of the world, supplemented by a way of speaking in general terms of how in, or above, this physical content lives something spiritual. Humanity will, however, sink lower and lower in civilization and culture if men will not learn to extend to the spiritual world the strict exactitude practised in the study of the external world.

When, with Inspired Consciousness, we follow up further the stages of sleep and pass from the first to the second stage, the inner experience of the soul becomes altogether different from what it is in the life of day.

Now it is quite possible to recognise by means of ordinary natural science—if we will only follow it out to the consequences—that our life of soul is intimately attached to the processes of breathing and of blood-circulation, and to the process of nutrition that permeates the circulation; we can feel that something is taking place when, for example, we exert ourselves strongly in movement. We feel how the soul-and-spirit within us is united with the activities of our body, and when we try to form a picture of the breathing process or of the circulatory process, we know that we are picturing something in which, during waking life, dwells the experience of the soul, in which it is, as it were, embedded. The experience of the soul during sleep is not attached in any way to the senses, nevertheless it too is a well-defined inner life that can also be referred to something, in the same way that the inner life of day can be referred to the life of breathing and the life of circulation. Inspired Knowledge leads us to see how this inner life of night-time is connected with an unfolding of inner forces, comparable with the unfolding of the forces of breathing and of circulation, and is in fact a copy of the planetary movements of our system. Note well, I do not say that every night from going to sleep until waking we are ourselves within, or united with, the movements of the planets, but that we are inserted into something which is a copy, so to speak in miniature, of our planetary cosmos or rather of its movements. As our life of soul by day has its dwelling-place in the circulation of the blood, so our life of soul by night is inserted into something which is a copy of the planetary movements of our solar system. If we must say for the day-time: the white corpuscles, the red corpuscles circulate in us, the breathing power revolves in us, enabling us to breathe in and breathe out—then we must say for the night-time: there revolves in us a copy of the movement of Mercury, of the movement of Venus, of the movement of Jupiter. Our life of soul from going to sleep to waking is, so to say, in a little planetary cosmos. From being personal and human our life becomes cosmic during sleep. And Inspired Knowledge can then discover how when we are tired in the evening, the forces which have held our blood in pulsation during the day are able to keep vitality going during the night through their own faculty of persistence, but that in order to be turned again into the day life of soul, these forces require the fresh impulse that comes from the experience of a copy of the planetary cosmos during the night. In the moment of waking the after-effects are implanted into us of the experience we have received from the copies of the planetary movements.

This it is which unites the cosmos with our individual life. When we wake in the morning, the forces we need would not be able to stream into us in the right way so that consciousness is properly present, if we had not this after-working of the experiences of the night.

You will be able to see from this how little justification there often is when people complain bitterly of sleeplessness. As a general rule, they are deeply self-deceived. I will not, however, enter into this subject now. Naturally, those who labour under the delusion have themselves no idea of it. They think they are not asleep, whereas in reality they are in an abnormal sleep. They think that their soul is not outside the body and cannot experience this planetary existence. The fact is, they are in a condition which is certainly dull, but which yet admits of their experiencing the very same that another human being experiences when he is in a healthy sleep. But as I have said, I will not at the present moment enter further into these exceptional cases.

Speaking generally, the description I am now giving is true for man, namely that in the second stage of sleep he lives a cosmic life. I have indicated to you how in olden times before the Mystery of Golgotha, impulses went forth from the places of the Mysteries which gave man the power to come out of this anxiety, the power to withstand the tendency to dispersion and pass through in a sound and healthy way what he had to pass through at this time. That is to say, he was imbued with a power that enabled him to enter into the experience of the planets and not stop short at the experience of being dismembered and scattered. The anxiety was due to this latter experience, while the experience of being in the planets came as a result of taking with one out of the experience of the previous day the power I have described. Since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha it has been possible for men to possess themselves of the same power that was formerly given from the Mysteries, by directing their souls to the events of the Mystery of Golgotha. Whoever enters in a right and living way into an experience of the Mystery of Golgotha will have Christ for his strong guide in the moment when his soul comes into the realm of anxiety during the time between going to sleep and waking. Thus the humanity of modern times has through the Christ-experience what an older humanity had from the Mysteries.

Passing onward from the stage of sleep just described, man enters upon a stage which I may be permitted to name in plain terms; for after I have taken time to explain more fully the planetary experience, you will not take offence when I say at once that following on the planetary experience man has an experience of the fixed stars. Having lived during the second stage of sleep in the copy of the planetary movements, he now lives in the constellations, or rather in copies of the constellations, of the fixed stars of the zodiac. This experience is a very real fact during the third stage of the life of man by night. He begins then also to experience the difference between the Sun as a planet and as a fixed star. It is not at all clear to a man of the present day why in ancient astronomies the Sun counted at the same time as a planet and also in a sense as a fixed star. During the second stage of sleep the Sun has actually, in this experience, planetary qualities; we learn to know the conspicuous and distinct relation in which it stands to the whole life of man on Earth. In the third stage we learn to know the Sun in its constellation in relation to the other constellations of the stars, for example, of the zodiac.

In short, we live our way into the cosmos with far greater intensity than was the case in the previous stage of sleep. We have this experience of the fixed stars, and we retain from it deeper and still more important impulses for the life of the following day than we should be able to have from the planetary experiences alone. We owe it to the experience of the planets that our breathing process and circulatory process are, if I may so express it, ‘enfired;’ but in order for these processes to be permeated, as they need to be, with substance, in order that they may be continually carrying the means of nourishment to the whole of the organism, they require the stimulation that is given by the experience of the fixed stars. The activity that results is apparently a most material one; nevertheless it owes its origin to the working of higher forces than the mere movement of the blood in circulation. As physical human beings we are dependent in our soul-and-spirit on the way in which this or that substance circulates in us, and this dependence is connected, if I may so express it, with the highest heavens; it is connected with the fact that we, as beings of soul-and-spirit, feel within us during the third stage of sleep pictures of the constellations of the fixed stars, just as by day when we are awake we feel within us our stomach or our lung. We have already heard that, as by day our body is in movement inwardly, is filled with the movements of breathing and circulation, so by night our soul, the substance of our soul, is something that has within it copies of the planetary movements. And now we learn that as by day we have in us stomach and lung and heart, so by night we have in us the constellations of the fixed stars. They constitute our inner being. Thus during sleep man becomes in very truth a cosmic being. This third stage of sleep is the deepest of all. Out of it man emerges to return little by little to the waking life of day. Why does he return? He would not return into waking life, did not forces take hold in his soul which lead him again into his physical organism.

We have already approached these forces from many and varying points of view and described how they may be named. Today I want to describe them to you from their cosmic aspect. When through intuition we attain to a knowledge of the experience of the fixed stars, then we learn at the same time that the forces which lead man back again into the physical organism are Moon forces; that is to say, they are what corresponds in the realm of spirit to what appears in a physical picture as the Moon. The action of the forces does not, of course, depend on whether it is full Moon at the time or some other phase, for the Moon can shine through the Earth in a spiritual sense. The metamorphoses which come to expression in the visibility of the Moon do, it is true, enter into the working, but to explain how they enter in would take us to the consideration of much finer and subtler distinctions than we want to describe today. It is in general the forces of the Moon that lead man back.

We may express it in this way. Just as the soul of man is permeated from going to sleep to waking by the planetary forces and by the forces that reveal themselves in the constellations of the fixed stars, just as these forces permeate him through and through and remain with him—for the effects work on in the waking life of day—so is man permeated unceasingly with those spiritual forces which correspond in the cosmos to the physical Moon. It is in reality a marvellously complicated process, but if we want to find some way of expressing it, we might say it is like stretching out a piece of elastic. You know how if you stretch a piece of elastic, it goes a certain distance and then springs back. In a somewhat similar way we, as it were, stretch the Moon forces to a certain point and then are obliged to return. The point is reached in the third stage of sleep, and we are then led back stage by stage by the Moon forces, which are always intimately connected with the bringing into the physical world of soul-and-spirit. From the third, through the second and the first stage we are gradually led back.

It is a fact that the initiative man is able to carry in his powers of ideation and of feeling and thought during day-waking life, is an after-effect of the experience of the fixed stars during the night, whilst the powers of combination he is able to carry in them, the powers of wisdom and cleverness, are an after-effect of the planetary experience. That which rays into the life of day from the cosmos, coming from the experience of the night, is obliged however to enter by way of the body. The experience of the fixed stars shoots into our life of day by way of the metabolism of food. Our food would not enter our head in such a way as to enable us to unfold powers of initiative, were it not that the whole process of metabolism is fired by what we experience at night in connection with the stars. Nor would we be able to think intelligently unless we received into our breathing and blood-circulation during the day the after-effects of the planetary experience of the night.

Things like this are always correct only in a broad and general way; and when the facts appear to be contradictory, as in the case of people who suffer from sleeplessness, then it rests with us to explain the corresponding abnormalities. If such cases are looked into with real thoroughness, they will not be found to tell against these truths. On the contrary, these truths, which are correct in the main, open up for the first time the possibility of explaining the single instance in its real and essential nature.

A true understanding of the human being is alone possible when we become conscious in the widest sense of the fact that man lives not only in his physical body within his skin, but in the whole world. This life in the whole world is concealed from ordinary consciousness only because it is very much dulled and dimmed for the waking life of day. At most we can say that in the general sensation and experience of light we have something of an after-working of our share in the being of a universal cosmos. And there are perhaps other feelings, very dull and dim, wherein man has something left between waking and going to sleep of that sense of being within the cosmos. All such feelings, however, that are given to man remain silent within him by day in order that he may unfold his individual consciousness, in order that he may not be disturbed by whatever plays into his experience from the Cosmos. During the night the case is reversed. There man has a cosmic experience. True, it is a copy only, but it is a faithful copy, as I have indicated. By night man has in reality a cosmic experience and because he must pass through this cosmic experience, therefore is his day-consciousness darkened and paralysed.

The future evolution of mankind will consist in this, that man will more and more live his way into the Cosmos, and that the time will come when he will feel himself with his consciousness in Sun and Moon and Stars, in the same way as now he feels himself with his consciousness upon Earth. Then he will look from the Cosmos upon the Earth, just as now he gazes from the Earth into the Cosmos in his present waking condition. The looking, however, will be essentially different in kind.

If we want to take our stand for evolution in all sincerity and in a wide and comprehensive sense, we must recognise that human consciousness too is subject to evolution, that the body-consciousness man has today is a transition stage that leads over to another consciousness, which will also be a reflection in the soul of facts. Man already now experiences the facts every night. He has need of them; for through them alone in their after-effects can his life be maintained by day. Man's further evolution will consist in this, that he will be conscious in normal life of that which today constitutes for him the unconscious. For this, however, it is essential that he should find his way into Spiritual Science; for just as we need to bend our course in some direction or other when we are swimming, so do we need to give a direction to present-day ordinary consciousness. We cannot merely let ourselves be carried along, as is the case in the customary methods of obtaining knowledge. We need a clear direction. This guidance anthroposophical Spiritual Science alone is able to give, because it unveils, in so far as is necessary for present times, that which is living in man and of which he is not yet conscious. He must receive it into his consciousness, otherwise he can make no cosmic progress.

I have here portrayed for you one section of all that is commonly gathered up from the rubbish heap of modern knowledge and labelled the ‘unconscious.’ Having thus described man’s unconscious experiences during sleep, I will try in the next lecture to describe for you the experiences that lie beyond birth and death.

Die Schlaferlebnisse Des Menschen Ihre Geistigen Hintergründe Und Ihre Bedeutung Für Das Tagesleben

[ 1 ] Es wird heute, wenn vom Seelenleben gesprochen wird, sehr vieles zusammengefaßt in einem gewissen Ausdruck, der auf der einen Seite zugibt, daß man in bezug auf das Seelische von Kräften oder dergleichen sprechen muß, die in das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein nicht hereinspielen. Auf der anderen Seite aber wird zugleich die Ohnmacht eingestanden, über solche Kräfte zu sprechen. Der Ausdruck, in dem man zusammenfaßt dasjenige, was einer solchen Hindeutung entsprechen soll, ist der: das Unbewußte; man spricht vom Unbewußten. Man deutet ja, indem man auf die besondere Wesenheit der menschlichen Erkenntnisse heute zu sprechen kommt, an, wie man als Mensch zunächst angewiesen ist, seine Erkenntnisse zu suchen aus der äußeren Welt durch Beobachtung, Experiment und den kombinierenden Verstand. Und man deutet dann auch an, daß man, wenn man das eigene Bewußtsein durchsucht, allerlei in diesem Bewußtsein findet: Gedanken, Gefühle, Willensregungen und so weiter. Man wird sich dann weiter bewußt, daß man im Seelenleben Regungen, Offenbarungen hat, die auftreten, und die weder dadurch in ihrem tieferen Wesen gefunden werden können, daß man verfährt nach der Methode der äußeren wissenschaftlichen Anschauung im Sinne des Experimentes, der Beobachtung, des kombinierenden Denkens, noch auch dadurch, daß man durch dasjenige, was man eben überblickt, wenn man Selbstbeobachtung mit den gewöhnlichen Kräften des Bewußtseins übt, irgendwie vordringen könne zum Wesen dessen, was sich immerhin offenbart im Seelenleben des Menschen. Und man spricht daher vom Unbewußten, verzichtet aber zugleich darauf, irgendwie in die Welt dieses Unbewußten einzudringen. Dieser Verzicht ist eigentlich vollberechtigt, wenn man sich beschränken will auf jene Erkenntnismittel, die heute allgemein anerkannt sind. Denn in der Tat, es wird niemand gerade in bezug auf das Seelenleben weiterkommen können mit diesen Erkenntnismitteln als zu der Anschauung, daß eben während des Wachtaglebens aus den Tiefen des Menschenwesens heraufsteigen Vorstellungen, Gefühle, Willensimpulse, Äußerungen des menschlichen Wesens, von denen man gut sieht, wie sie an die äußere Körperlichkeit gebunden sind, und man wird durchaus kein irgendwie unwiderlegbares Mittel finden, zu sagen, daß dasjenige, was einem doch in einer zunächst so starken Abhängigkeit von körperlichen Zuständen erscheint, über diese körperlichen Zustände hinaus ein besonderes Dasein habe.

[ 2 ] Nun wissen Sie ja alle, daß gerade von diesem Punkte ausgeht unsere anthroposophische Betrachtung, daß diese anthroposophische Betrachtung Ernst macht damit, daß man wirklich mit den Mitteln der Erkenntnis, die heute anerkannt sind, die Tiefen des Seelischen nicht ergründen kann, daß diese anthroposophische Betrachtung Ernst damit macht, daß für diese gewöhnlichen Mittel eben auf ein Unbewußtes hingewiesen werden müsse. Im Grunde genommen brauchen wir nicht einmal — wir werden das beim nächsten Vortrag machen; aber man braucht es nicht einmal — auf die beiden Grenzpunkte des physischen Erdenlebens zu schauen, Geburt und Tod, man braucht nur auf den gewöhnlichen, alltäglich eintretenden menschlichen Schlafzustand zu schauen und man wird sich sagen müssen, daß es für eine wirkliche Seelenerkenntnis eigentlich unmöglich ist, daß dasjenige, was die gewöhnlichen Erkenntnismittel aussagen können über die Seelenerlebnisse, irgendwie gesichert werden könne gegen einen Einwand wie etwa den folgenden: Es zeigt sich für diese gewöhnlichen Erkenntnismittel eine so große Abhängigkeit alles Vorstellens, Fühlens und Wollens, wie sie im gewöhnlichen Alltagsleben im Bewußtsein vorhanden sind, von den leiblichen Zuständen, daß man ganz gut sagen kann, aus den leiblichen Zuständen tauchen eben auf wie aus einem Unterbewußten herauf die Seelenerlebnisse, und während des Schlafzustandes überwuchert das bloße Organleben, es läßt aus sich heraus nicht Vorstellungen, Fühlungen und Wollungen fließen; man kann eigentlich weiter nichts darüber sagen. Man kann höchstens aus dem Hereinspielen der Träume, die so erscheinen, als ob sie aus dem Schlafleben kämen und im Wachleben einfach erinnert würden, aus dem Durchspieltsein des Schlaflebens von Träumen vielleicht erschließen, daß das Seelische irgendwie als solches fortdauert während des Schlaflebens; aber das sind alles unsichere Dinge. - Im Grunde genommen kann kein ernster unbefangener Mensch mit den gewöhnlichen Erkenntnismitteln irgendwie über die Seele anders reden als so, daß er sagt: Sie bietet eben Erscheinungen dar, die durchaus abhängig erscheinen von den körperlichen Zuständen.

[ 3 ] Gerade weil anthroposophische Erkenntnis Ernst macht mit diesem Vermögen oder Unvermögen der gewöhnlichen Erkenntnismittel, muß sie auf der anderen Seite sich bestreben, eben zu anderen Erkenntnismitteln zu greifen. Und Sie wissen ja, daß zu solchen Erkenntnismitteln in der oftmals hier dargestellten imaginativen, inspirierten und intuitiven Erkenntnis gegriffen wird. Durch diese besondere Art der Erkenntnis, die erst als Fähigkeit entwickelt wird aus dem gewöhnlichen Seelenleben heraus, die erst entwickelt werden kann, wenn man sich zu dieser Entwickelung auch wirklich anstrengt, soll dann gestrebt werden, erst über dasjenige zur Klarheit zu kommen, worüber eben mit den gewöhnlichen Erkenntnismitteln keine Klarheit zu gewinnen ist.

[ 4 ] Und nun möchte ich heute, ohne mich wieder einzulassen auf die Darstellung, die ich so oft gegeben habe von dem Wesen der imaginativen, inspirierten und intuitiven Erkenntnis, auf Grundlage eben dieser drei Erkenntnisstufen, ein Gebiet, ein wichtigstes des Unterbewußten oder Unbewußten des Menschen, eben einfach schildern, nämlich das Gebiet des seelischen Lebens zwischen dem Einschlafen und dem Aufwachen. Ich habe zwar diese Schilderung von gewissen Gesichtspunkten aus schon öfters gegeben, möchte sie aber heute von einem besonderen Gesichtspunkte aus wiederum geben. Ich möchte also zunächst heute einfach schildern, was sich der imaginativen, inspirierten und intuitiven Erkenntnis für den Schlafzustand ergibt. Für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein liegt ja eigentlich nur das vor, daß jenes Erfülltsein des Bewußtseins mit einem gewissen Inhalte, wie wir ihn vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen haben, mit dem Einschlafen zuerst herabgedämpft wird, und dann erlischt, und daß ein unbewußter Zustand zwischen dem Einschlafen und Aufwachen eintritt. Während des Tagesbewußtseins kann der Mensch zunächst mit den gewöhnlichen Erkenntnismitteln nicht sagen, was seine Seele eigentlich macht in der Zeit zwischen dem Einschlafen und dem Aufwachen. Denn dasjenige, was da, wenn überhaupt ein Seelisches als solches erlebt wird in diesem Zustande, sich abspielt, das tritt ja eben nicht herein in das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein. Für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein ist Finsternis ausgebreitet über dasjenige, was die Seele erlebt, wenn sie überhaupt erlebt im Schlafzustande. Nun aber beginnt der Schlafzustand dann, wenn zunächst die imaginative Erkenntnis eintritt, aufgehellt zu werden, die Finsternis beginnt sich in eine Helligkeit umzuwandeln, und man kann schon mit der imaginativen Erkenntnis Urteile gewinnen über dasjenige, was wenigstens für die ersten Stadien des Schlafzustandes von der Seele erlebt wird. Man kann dann weiter in inspirierter und intuitiver Erkenntnis in diese Erlebnisse weiter eindringen. Es ist das nicht so, daß Sie sich vorstellen sollten, man sieht in den Schlaf so hinein, wie etwa in einen Guckkasten, sondern es ist so, daß man durch imaginative, inspirierte und intuitive Erkenntnis Seelenzustände erlebt, die dem Schlafen dadurch ähnlich sind, daß man in ihnen zu seinem Leibe, zu seinem Körper in einem ähnlichen Verhältnisse ist wie während des Schlafens, daß man aber durchaus nicht bewußtlos dieses Verhältnis erlebt, sondern eben im vollbewußten Zustande. Und daher, weil man während des Wachlebens vollbewußt in ähnlicher Art erlebt wie während des Schlafes, kann man dann auch hineinschauen in dasjenige, was sich mit der Menschenseele während des Schlafes vollzieht, und man kann es dann schildern.

[ 5 ] Wenn der Mensch nun einschläft, so wissen Sie ja: im Einschlafen kann sich durchsetzen das undeutlich verschwommen auftretende Bewußtsein mit Träumen. Diese Traumwelt kann zunächst zu einer Erkenntnis des Seelenlebens eigentlich gar nicht viel helfen. Denn dasjenige, was man mit den gewöhnlichen Erkenntnismitteln im Tagesbewußtsein über die Träume wissen kann, bleibt doch etwas höchst Äußerliches, und die Träume selber zeigen sich ja nicht so, daß man auf sie in einer ganz bestimmten Art bauen könnte, bevor man in anderer Art eine Erkenntnis hat über den Schlaf. Derjenige, der dann wirklich in eine Erkenntnis der Schlafzustände eindringt, der weiß, daß eigentlich die Träume eher beirrend sind für eine wirkliche Erkenntnis dieses Schlafzustandes als aufhellend. Dasjenige, was erlebt wird von der Seele, wird von ihr unbewußt erlebt. Ich muß es nun, weil ich es aus imaginativer, inspirierter und intuitiver Erkenntnis heraus schildere, Ihnen so schildern, wie wenn es von der Seele bewußt erlebt würde; ich werde Ihnen also zu schildern haben die Erlebnisse der Seele vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen so, wie wenn sie bewußt erlebt würden; sie werden nicht bewußt erlebt, aber dasjenige was ich so schildern werde, wie wenn es bewußt erlebt würde, das wird eben schon von der Seele erlebt, wenn sie auch nichts davon weiß. Es ist eben doch als Tatsache vorhanden, und als Tatsache wirkt es nicht nur vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen, sondern es wirkt herein vor allen Dingen auch in den menschlichen physischen Organismus und in diesen sogar am meisten während des Wachens. Wir tragen immer während des Tages vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen die Nachwirkungen der Nachterlebnisse in uns, und wenn auch für die äußere Kultur alles dasjenige von einer großen Bedeutung ist, was der Mensch durch sein Bewußtsein vollzieht, dasjenige, was im Menschen selber vorgeht, das ist zum allergeringsten Teile abhängig von seinem Bewußtsein, aber im höchsten Grade abhängig von demjenigen, was er unbewußt erlebt vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen.

[ 6 ] Da erleben wir zunächst, wenn die Sinneswahrnehmungen allmählich ganz abgelähmt sind, wenn die Willensimpulse aufhören zu wirken, einen undifferenzierten Zustand der Seele. Es ist ein allgemeines, unbestimmtes Erleben, ein Erleben, in dem zwar ein deutliches Zeitgefühl vorhanden ist, aber das Raumgefühl fast ganz erloschen ist. So daß wirklich dieses Erleben verglichen werden kann mit einer Art Schwimmen, mit einer Art Sich-Bewegen in einer allgemeinen, unbestimmten Weltensubstanz. Man muß eigentlich erst Worte bilden, um dasjenige auszudrücken, was die Seele da erlebt. Man möchte sagen, die Seele erlebt sich wie eine Welle in einem großen Meer, wie eine Welle, die aber sich in sich organisiert fühlt, die sich allseitig von dem übrigen Meer umgeben fühlt, und die die Wirkungen dieses Meeres so auf sich fühlt, wie man beim Tagesleben in einer bestimmten differenzierten Weise die Eindrücke der Farben oder Töne oder der Wärmeverhältnisse fühlt, wahrnimmt und über sie denkt. Aber wie man sich bei dem Tagesleben als einen in seiner Haut abgeschlossenen Menschen fühlt, sich an einem gewissen Standorte fühlt, so fühlt man sich in diesem Augenblick, der auf das Einschlafen folgt - ich sage, man fühlt sich, man erlebt das; ich schildere, wie wenn es bewußt wäre; die Tatsache ist vorhanden, nur das Bewußtsein davon ist nicht vorhanden -, man fühlt sich wie eine Welle in einem allgemeinen Meer, man fühlt sich bald da, bald dort, wie gesagt, das bestimmte Raumempfinden hört eigentlich auf. Aber ein allgemeines Zeitempfinden ist da. Dieses Erleben ist aber verbunden mit dem anderen des Verlassenseins. Es ist etwas wie ein Versinken in einen Abgrund. Der Mensch wäre tatsächlich, wenn er nicht vorbereitet dazu ist, manchem ausgesetzt, indem er schon dieses erste Stadium des Schlafes bewußt erleben würde, denn er würde es eben schier unerträglich finden, die Raumesempfindung fast ganz zu verlieren, nur in einem allgemeinen Zeitgefühle zu leben, sich so ganz unbestimmt nur eingegliedert zu fühlen wie in einem allgemeinen substantiellen Meer, in dem außerordentlich wenig zu unterscheiden ist, nur zu unterscheiden ist, daß man ein Selbst ist in einem allgemeinen Weltensein drinnen. Man fühlte sich — eben wenn Bewußtsein vorhanden wäre - wirklich wie über dem Abgrund schwebend. Und wiederum verbunden ist mit diesem etwas, was in der Seele auftritt wie ein ungeheueres Bedürfnis nach der Anlehnung an Geistiges, ein ungeheueres Bedürfnis, mit einem Geistigen verbunden zu sein. Man hat gewissermaßen in dem allgemeinen Meer, in dem man schwimmt, jenes Sicherheitsgefühl der Verbundenheit mit den materiellen Dingen der Wachenswelt verloren. Daher fühlt man — man fühlte, wenn der Zustand bewußt wäre — eine tiefe Sehnsucht nach dem Verbundensein mit dem Göttlich-Geistigen. Man kann auch sagen: Man erlebt eigentlich dieses allgemeine Sich-Bewegen in einer undifferenzierten Weltensubstanz wie ein Geborgensein in einem GöttlichGeistigen. — Ich bitte, beachten Sie die Art, wie ich hier schildern muß: ich schildere Ihnen die Sache so, um es noch einmal zu sagen, wie wenn dieSeele bewußt erlebte. Sie erlebt so nicht bewußt, aber Sie können sich ja vorstellen, wie, während Sie im wachen Tagesleben bewußt erleben, manches unbewußt in Ihrem Organismus vor sich geht, was eben einfach Tatsache ist. Sagen wir zum Beispiel, Sie erleben eine Freude; ja, während der Freude pulsiert das Blut anders als während der Traurigkeit. Sie erleben die Freude oder die Traurigkeit in Ihrem Bewußtsein, aber Sie erleben nicht das Pulsieren des Blutes in dem einen oder dem anderen Zustande. Dennoch ist dieses Pulsieren des Blutes Tatsache. Und so entspricht dem, was ich hier schildere auf der einen Seite, dem, was ich schildere als ein allgemeines Schwimmen in einer undifferenzierten Weltensubstanz und andererseits dem, was ich schildere als ein Gottesbedürfnis, dem entspricht ein Tatsächliches im Seelenleben. Und die imaginative Erkenntnis tut ja nichts anderes, als dieses Tatsächliche ebenso ins Bewußtsein heraufheben, wie das gewöhnliche Tagesbewußtsein der Menschen eben ins Bewußtsein heraufhebt die Blutpulsation, die zugrunde liegt der Freude oder dem Kummer. Die Tatsachen sind vorhanden, und die Tatsachen wirken in das wache Tagesleben herein, so daß in der Tat, wenn wir des Morgens aufwachen, wir unseren Organismus dadurch in einer erfrischten Verfassung haben, daß dieses nächtliche Erlebnis sich für unser Seelenleben abgespielt hat. Dasjenige, was in der vom Körper getrennten Seele zwischen dem Einschlafen und dem Aufwachen vor sich geht, das hat eben seine große Bedeutung als Nachwirkung dann während des Wachlebens am folgenden Tage. Und wir würden nicht am folgenden Tage unseren Körper in der richtigen Weise gebrauchen können, wenn wir nicht uns herausgehoben hätten aus der Verbindung mit den äußerlich physischsinnlichen Dingen und untergetaucht wären in dieses unbestimmte Erleben, welches ich geschildert habe. Und daß wir im wachen Tagesleben aus der Tiefe unseres Willens so etwas herauftauchen haben wie ein Bedürfnis, dasjenige, was so differenziert um uns herum ist, auf ein Allgemeines zu beziehen, und daß wir das Bedürfnis haben, die Welt des Sinnlichen auf ein Göttliches zu beziehen, das ist eine Nachwirkung dieses ersten Stadiums des Schlafzustandes. Wir können uns fragen: Warum ist denn der Mensch nicht zufrieden damit, daß er einfach die einzelnen Dinge der Welt nebeneinander ansieht während des Wachzustandes, warum ist er denn nicht zufrieden, einfach durch die Welt zu gehen und hinzunehmen Pflanzen, Tiere und so weiter? Warum fängt er an — und das tut ja auch der einfachste Mensch, nicht nur der Philosoph; nebenbei versteht es der einfachste Mensch viel besser als der Philosoph -, warum fängt er an zu philosophieren, wie die Dinge zusammenhängen, warum bezieht er das Einzelne, was er sieht, auf ein Allgemeines, warum frägt er, wie das Einzelne in einem allgemeinen Kosmos begründet ist? Er würde es nicht tun, wenn er nicht während des Schlaflebens wirklich lebensvoll in ein solch Unbestimmtes hinein sich lebte. Und er würde auch nicht zu einem Gottgefühle in seinem wachen Zustande kommen, wenn er nicht die entsprechende Tatsache, dieses Gottgefühl, im ersten Stadium seines Schlafzustandes durchmachte. Wir verdanken dem Schlafe gerade für das Innere unseres Menschentums außerordentlich Bedeutsames.

[ 7 ] Wenn dann der Mensch seinen Schlaf fortsetzt, so kommt er in andere Stadien hinein, die nicht mehr mit der imaginativen Erkenntnis zu durchschauen sind, sondern zu deren Durchschauung eben inspirierte Erkenntnis notwendig ist. Dasjenige, was da wiederum als Tatsache des seelischen Erlebens auftritt, und was sich im inspirierten Bewußtsein so spiegelt, wie, sagen wir, Blutpulsation in Freude und Kummer, das ist zunächst eine gewisse Zerteiltheit der Seele an möglichst viele Einzelheiten, einzelne Wesenhaftigkeiten. Die Seele zersplittert wirklich ihr Leben in Teile, und diese Zersplitterung ist in Verbindung mit etwas, was, wenn es ins Bewußtsein heraufleuchtet, als Ängstlichkeit erscheint. Nachdem die Seele das durchgemacht hat, was man ein Schweben über dem Abgrunde oder ein Schwimmen in einer allgemeinen Weltensubstanz und eine Sehnsucht nach einem Göttlich-Geistigen nennen kann, gerät sie in eine gewisse Ängstlichkeit, das heißt in etwas, was für das Bewußtsein Ängstlichkeit wäre, wenn es eben bewußt erlebt würde, was im wesentlichen darauf beruht, daß die Seele nicht nur in einer allgemeinen Weltsubstanz schwimmt, sondern gewissermaßen untertaucht in geistig-seelische Einzelwesen, die ein Dasein für sich haben, mit denen die Seele jetzt in eine gewisse Verwandtschaft kommt; so daß sie jetzt eigentlich nicht eine Einheit ist, sondern vieles ist. Dieses Vielessein wird aber eben als Ängstlichkeit erlebt. Und über diese Ängstlichkeit muß der Mensch in einer gewissen Weise hinauskommen.

[ 8 ] In der Zeit, die sich abgespielt hat in der Erdenentwickelung vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha, da gingen von den Mysterienstätten in den verschiedensten Religionsübungen Anweisungen für die Menschheit aus, die schon ihren Weg zu den einzelnen Menschen fanden, wodurch die Seelen zu dem, was sie an Gefühlen erleben konnten an der sinnlichen Außenwelt, noch andere eben hinzuerlebten, dadurch, daß sie eben ihre für diese alten Zeiten passenden Gottesvorstellungen hatten. Nun waren in diesen alten Zeiten die Menschen so, daß sie auch während des wachen Tageslebens etwas von einem Hereinscheinen der geistigen Welt in das Bewußtsein hatten. Je mehr wir in der Erdenentwickelung der Menschheit zurückgehen, desto mehr kommen wir darauf, einzusehen, daß die Menschen eine Art Hellsehen gehabt haben in sehr alten Zeiten und dann Nachklänge dieses Hellsehens in späteren Zeiten, daß es für die damaligen Menschen eine innere Anschauung war, daß der Mensch selber, bevor er sein Erdenleben begonnen hat, als seelisch-geistiges Wesen in einem vorirdischen Dasein weilte. Es war nicht etwas, was die Menschen erschlossen hatten, nicht etwas, woran sie bloß glaubten, sondern was für sie eine Gewißheit war, weil sie in ihrem Inneren erlebten etwas, was ihnen geblieben war aus einem vorirdischen Dasein.

[ 9 ] Wenn ich mit einem recht trivialen Vergleich kommen darf, so möchte ich sagen: wenn jemand von seinen Eltern geerbt hat ein gewisses Vermögen, so erkennt er auch, wie dieses Vermögen durch sein unmittelbares Dasein in den Lebenslauf eingreift, erkennt er, daß er sich das nicht selbst erworben hat, sondern daß ihm das überkommen ist von seinen Vorfahren. So wußten die Menschen einer älteren Zeit, daß gewisse Erlebnisse in ihrer Seele nicht herkamen von dem, was ihre Augen gesehen hatten, sondern sie erkannten, daß diese Seelenerlebnisse eine Erbschaft sind aus einem vorirdischen Dasein. An diesen Seelenerlebnissen selbst erkannten sie das. Es muß ja immer wiederum betont werden, daß die Menschen im Verlaufe ihrer Entwickelung frei geworden sind von solchen Seelenerlebnissen, daß unser heutiges Zeitalter ein solches ist, wo das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein eben keine derartigen Seelenerlebnisse hat, die sich als Erbschaft erklären ließen aus einem vorirdischen Dasein. Es war also leichter für diese Menschen der älteren Zeit, hingewiesen zu werden von ihren geistigen Führern in den Mysterienstätten darauf, wie sie in der Seele sich in ihren Gefühlen stellen sollten zu dem, was sie so als geistiges Erlebnis in der Seele hatten. Und aus der Kraft, die ihnen dann wurde durch die Impulse, die die Menschen bekamen aus den Mysterienstätten heraus, trugen sie nun aus dem gewöhnlichen Tagesleben heraus in das Nachtleben, in das Schlafesleben hinein die Kraft, gegenüber der eben geschilderten Ängstlichkeit Sieger zu bleiben. Die Ängstlichkeit tritt also aus den Tiefen des Schlaflebens heraus auf. Die Kraft, aus dieser Ängstlichkeit heraus sich für den nächsten Tag nicht etwas mitzubringen wie eine allgemeine Abmattung des Organismus, sondern etwas mitzubringen, was eine Frische des Organismus ist, mußte man sich erst ansammeln während des Tageslebens am vorhergehenden Tag; so hängen Tage und Nächte miteinander zusammen. Die Nacht bringt in einem gewissen Stadium des Schlafzustandes die Ängstlichkeit; in diese Ängstlichkeit muß sich hineinergiefßen die Kraft, die man aus dem religiösen oder religiös gearteten Erleben des Vortages gewonnen hat, und wenn sich dann diese beiden Dinge, dieser Rest aus dem vorigen Tag mit dem ursprünglichen Erlebnis der Nacht vereinigen, dann strahlt in das neue Tagesleben des nächsten Tages die erfrischende Kraft in den Organismus hinein.

[ 10 ] Es geht eben für eine wirkliche Geisteswissenschaft nicht mehr an, nur in allgemeinen abstrakten Phrasen davon zu sprechen, daß eine allgemeine göttliche Weltenregierung da ist. Es geht nicht an, die einzelnen Dinge der Welt nur nach ihrem Sinnenschein zu schildern und zu sagen: Nun ja, in diesem Sinnenschein ist eben eine allgemeine Weltenregierung. — Geisteswissenschaft muß ganz im konkreten darauf hinweisen, wie diese göttliche Weltenregierung wirkt. Man kann nicht mehr, wenn man den Aufgaben der Menschheitsentwickelung in die Zukunft hinein gewachsen sein will, bloß sagen, man fühlt sich nach einem gesunden Schlaf erfrischt, Gott habe einem die Erfrischung geschenkt. Man würde an allem Wissenschaftlichen verzweifeln müssen, wenn man auf der einen Seite für die sinnliche Welt eine strenge Wissenschaft suchen müßte, und die Strenge dieser Wissenschaft nicht ausdehnen könnte auf dasjenige, was sich auf das Übersinnliche bezieht; wenn man im Übersinnlichen bloß mit der allgemeinen Phrase drinnen bleiben müßte: nun ja, es liegt eben so etwas wie eine göttliche Weltenregierung zugrunde. Man kommt immer mehr und mehr in das Bestimmte hinein, man kann hinweisen darauf, wie diese Ängstlichkeit, die in diesem zweiten Stadium des Schlafes auftritt, gewissermaßen durchmischt wird mit der aus dem religiösen Fühlen des Vortages geschöpften, in die Nacht hinein nachwirkenden Kraft, und daraus wiederum die Erfrischungskraft für den physischen Organismus des nächsten Tages wird. Dadurch bekommt man immer mehr und mehr eine Einsicht, wie das wirklich Geistige in dem wirklich Physischen drinnen lebt, während man für die heute geltenden Erkenntnismittel nur einen physischen Inhalt hat und allgemeine Redensarten, daß in diesem physischen Inhalt oder über diesem physischen Inhalt auch etwas Geistiges lebt. Die Menschheit wird aber in ihrer Kultur immer mehr und mehr herunterkommen, wenn sie sich nicht bequemt, die Strenge, die man für das Anschauen der äußeren Welt und Erkenntnis hat, auch auszudehnen auf die geistige Welt. Und nun merkt man, wenn man mit dem inspirierten Bewußtsein diese Stadien des Schlafes von dem ersten in das zweite Stadium weiter verfolgt, daß dann das innere Erleben der Seele etwas ganz anderes wird, als es im Tagesleben war.

[ 11 ] Nun, man kann es auch durch die gewöhnliche Naturwissenschaft erkennen, wenn man sie nur konsequent durchführt, wie man im Seelischen drinnensteckt im Atmungsvorgang, im Blutzirkulationsvorgang, in dem den Blutzirkulationsvorgang durchziehenden Ernährungsprozeß, man kann fühlen, daß etwas vorgeht, wenn man sich bewegend anstrengt und so weiter. Man fühlt das Seelisch-Geistige verbunden mit körperlichen Verrichtungen, und wenn man den Atmungsvorgang etwa schildert oder den Blutzirkulationsvorgang, dann weiß man: man schildert etwas, in dem während des wachen Tageslebens das seelische Erleben drinnensteckt. Das seelische Erleben vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen steckt nicht im Sinnlichen drinnen, aber es ist auch ein ganz bestimmtes Innenleben, ein solches Innenleben, das ebenso bezogen werden kann auf etwas, wie das Tagesinnenleben bezogen werden kann auf das Atmungsleben oder Blutzirkulationsleben. Und da stellt sich heraus, daß dieses nächtliche Innenleben zusammenhängt mit einer inneren Kräfteentwickelung, die vergleichbar ist mit der Kräfteentwickelung des Atmens und der Blutzirkulation, mit einer Kräfteentwickelung, die ein Nachbild ist der Planetenbewegungen unseres Planetensystems. Merken Sie wohl, ich sage nicht, daß wir jede Nacht vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen in den Planetenbewegungen drinnenstecken oder mit ihnen verbunden sind, sondern wir stecken in etwas drinnen, was eine Nachbildung ist, gewissermaßen eine Miniatur von unserem planetarischen Kosmos respektive seinen Bewegungen. Wie man also beim Tagesseelenleben in der Blutzirkulation drinnensteckt, so steckt man beim Nachtseelenleben in etwas drinnen, was eine Nachbildung ist unserer Planetenbewegungen unseres Sonnensystems. Wenn man sagt für den Tag: Es zirkulieren in einem die weißen Blutkörperchen, es zirkulieren in einem die roten Blutkörperchen, es kreist in uns die Atmungskraft, durch die wir einatmen, ausatmen -, so muß man für das nächtliche Seelenleben sagen: Es kreist in uns ein Nachbild der Merkur-, ein Nachbild der Venus-, ein Nachbild der Jupiterbewegung. — Ein kleiner planetarischer Kosmos ist gewissermaßen unser Seelenleben vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen. Unser Leben wird aus dem Persönlich-Menschlichen ein Kosmisches vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen. Und die inspirierte Erkenntnis kann dann finden, wie, wenn wir abends ermüdet sind, zunächst dasjenige, was am Vortage die Kräfte waren, die das Blut in Pulsation erhalten haben, durch sein eigenes Beharrungsvermögen die Vitalität in der Nacht aufrechterhalten kann, wie es aber braucht, damit es wiederum Tagesseelenleben werden kann, den Anstoß, der aus dem Erleben eines Nachbildes des planetarischen Kosmos in der Nacht kommt. Mit dem Aufwachen wird in uns eingepflanzt, eingeimpft die Nachwirkung desjenigen, was wir an den Nachbildungen der Planetenbewegungen vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen erlebt haben. Das ist es, was den Kosmos verbindet mit unserem individuellen Leben. Beim Aufwachen morgens könnte nicht in uns einstrahlen in einer richtigen Weise, so daß das Bewußtsein richtig vorhanden ist, dasjenige, was wir als Kräfte brauchen, wenn wir nicht diese Nachwirkung der nächtlichen Erlebnisse hätten.

[ 12 ] Sie können schon daraus ersehen, wie wenig es richtig ist, wenn manche Leute über Schlaflosigkeit in einer unerhörten Weise klagen. Das ist nämlich gewöhnlich eine außerordentlich starke Selbsttäuschung. Aber darauf will ich jetzt nicht eingehen, denn diejenigen, die dieser Selbsttäuschung unterliegen, glauben ja das doch nicht; sie glauben, sie sind wirklich nicht in einem Schlafe, während sie eben nur in einem abnormen Schlafe sind, durch den sie glauben, daß ihre Seele nicht außerhalb ihres Leibes ist und das planetarische Dasein erlebt. Sie sind in einem Zustande, der allerdings dumpf ist, der aber doch gestattet, dasselbe zu erleben, was ein anderer erlebt bei einem gesunden Schlaf. Doch, wie gesagt, auf diese Ausnahmen will ich jetzt nicht eingehen.

[ 13 ] Im allgemeinen ist es für den Menschen so, wie ich es jetzt schildere, daß also der Mensch ein kosmisches Leben durchlebt im zweiten Stadium seines Schlafes. Ich habe Ihnen angedeutet, daß in alten Zeiten vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha aus den Mysterienstätten die Impulse hervorgingen, wodurch der Mensch die Kraft bekam, aus der Ängstlichkeit herauszukommen, gewissermaßen der Zersplitterung zu widerstehen und nun in einer gesunden Weise das durchzumachen, was er eben durchmachen muß. Diese Kraft bewirkte nämlich, daß man in das Planetenerlebnis hineinkam und nicht bei dem Zersplitterungserlebnis blieb. Die Ängstlichkeit kam aus dem Zersplitterungserlebnis; das Erlebnis, in den Planeten zu sein, das wurde einem dadurch, daß man eben die geschilderte Kraft aus dem Erleben des vorangehenden Tages mitnahm. Seit dem Mysterium von Golgatha haben die Menschen die Möglichkeit, durch Hinlenkung ihrer Seele auf die Ereignisse dieses Mysteriums von Golgatha die Kraft zu gewinnen, die vorher in der geschilderten Weise durch die Mysterien gegeben worden ist. Wer in der Tat das Mysterium von Golgatha seelisch-innerlich in der richtigen Weise durchlebt, dem wird der Christus ein starker Führer im Momente, wo die Seele in das Gebiet der Ängstlichkeit in der Zeit vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen eintritt, so daß die neuere Menschheit durch das Christus-Erlebnis dasjenige hat, was eine ältere Menschheit aus den Mysterien heraus hatte.

[ 14 ] Aus diesem Stadium des Schlafes, das ich eben geschildert habe, tritt dann der Mensch in dasjenige ein, was ich Ihnen jetzt wohl in einfacherer Weise benennen darf gewissermaßen als die früheren, weil Sie es mir sehen nicht übelnehmen werden, wenn ich von solchen Dingen spreche, nachdem ich etwas mehr haltgemacht habe bei dem planetarischen Erlebnis: der Mensch hat nach dem planetarischen Erlebnis das Fixsternerlebnis. Nachdem er im zweiten Stadium des Schlafes im Nachbilden der Planetenbewegungen gelebt hat, lebt er jetzt in den Konstellationen der Fixsterne, vorzugsweise in Nachbildungen der Konstellationen der Fixsterne des Tierkreises. Dieses Erleben der Konstellationen der Fixsterne des Tierkreises ist eine sehr reale Tatsache während des dritten Stadiums des Nachtlebens. Da beginnt dann der Mensch auch zu erleben den Unterschied zwischen der Sonne als einem Planeten und einem Fixsterne. Den Menschen ist heute gar nicht klar, warum in älteren Astronomien die Sonne zugleich als ein Planet gegolten hat und doch auch in gewissem Sinn als ein Fixstern. Während des zweiten Stadiums des Schlafes hat die Sonne wirklich für dieses Erleben planetarische Eigenschaften. Man lernt kennen ihre ganz besonders ausgezeichnete Stellung zum Erleben des Menschen auf der Erde. Man lernt also die Sonne kennen auch in ihrer Konstellation zu den anderen Konstellationen der Sternbilder, sagen wir also des Tierkreises. Kurz, man lebt sich hinein in den Kosmos noch in einer intensiveren Weise, als das für das vorhergehende Stadium des Schlafes der Fall war. Man bekommt das Fixsternerlebnis, und aus diesem Fixsternerlebnis erhält der Mensch eben noch tiefere, bedeutsamere Impulse für das Erleben des nächsten Tages, als er aus dem bloßen Planetenerlebnis haben kann. Aus dem Planetenerlebnis bekommt man, wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf, die Durchfeuerung des Atmungsprozesses und des Blutzirkulationsprozesses; daß aber diese Prozesse substantiell sind, daß sie durchsetzt werden von dem, was sie brauchen, von Substanz, daß also diese Prozesse fortwährend Ernährungsprozesse des Organismus auch sind, dieses Forttreiben der Nahrungsmittel durch den Organismus, das ja scheinbar das Materiellste ist, das aber aus höheren Kräften heraus ist als die bloße Bewegung der Blutzirkulation, dieses Erlebnis beruht in seiner Anfeuerung für das Tagesleben auf einem Nachwirken des Fixsternerlebnisses. Wie wir als physische Menschen abhängig sind in unserem Geistig-Seelischen von der Art und Weise, wie diese oder jene Stoffe in uns zirkulieren, das hängt, wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf, mit höchsten Himmeln zusammen, das hängt damit zusammen, daß wir als geistig-seelische Wesen im dritten Stadium des Schlafes in uns fühlen Nachbilder der Fixsternkonstellationen, wie wir bei Tag im Wachen in uns fühlen den Magen oder die Lunge. Wie bei Tag unser Körper ist auf der einen Seite ein innerlich bewegter, erfüllt von ‚Atmungsbewegungen, Zirkulationsbewegungen, so ist in der Nacht unsere Seele, unser Substantielles in der Seele etwas, was innerlich Nachbilder der Planetenbewegungen hat. Und so wie wir bei Tag in uns den Magen, Lunge, Herz haben, so haben wir bei Nacht die Konstellationen der Fixsterne; die sind unser Inneres dann. So wird der Mensch wirklich während des Schlafzustandes zum kosmischen Wesen. Dieses dritte Stadium des Schlafes ist das tiefste; aus ihm kehrt der Mensch allmählich wieder zurück in das Tageswachen. Warum kehrt er zurück? Der Mensch würde in das Tageswachen nicht zurückkehren, wenn nicht Kräfte in seiner Seele Platz greifen würden, die ihn wieder hereinführen in seinen physischen Organismus.

[ 15 ] Nun, ich habe Ihnen von den verschiedensten Aspekten aus geschildert, wie man diese Kräfte ansprechen kann; ich will sie Ihnen heute vom kosmischen Aspekt aus schildern. Lernt man durch Intuition kennen das Fixsternerlebnis, dann lernt man auch kennen, wie die Kräfte, die den Menschen wiederum hereinführen in den physischen Organismus, die Mondenkräfte sind, das heißt dasjenige, was im Geistigen dem entspricht, was als physisches Abbild als Mond erscheint. Das hängt natürlich nicht davon ab, ob jetzt Vollmond ist oder so etwas, sondern der Mond kann auch durch die Erde durchscheinen in geistiger Beziehung. Es hat zwar etwas zu tun mit den Metamorphosen, die in der Sichtbarkeit des Mondes sich äußern, aber das würde auf viel feinere Unterscheidungen führen, die wir heute nicht besprechen wollen. Es sind im allgemeinen die Mondenkräfte, die den Menschen wiederum zurückführen. Man könnte sagen, der Mensch ist immer durchdrungen, so wie er durchdrungen ist als Seele vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen von den planetarischen Kräften, von den Kräften, die in den Konstellationen der Fixsterne sich offenbaren, wie er da durchdrungen ist und durchdrungen bleibt, weil diese Dinge nachwirken im Tagwachen, so ist der Mensch immerfort durchdrungen von dem, was im Kosmos als geistige Kräfte dem physischen Monde entspricht. Diese Mondenkräfte sind es, die uns zurückführen. Es ist ein außerordentlich komplizierter Vorgang in Wirklichkeit; wenn wir ihn auf irgendeine Weise ausdrücken wollen, möchte ich so sagen: Nicht wahr, wenn wir ein Elastikum ausdehnen, dann geht das bis zu einem gewissen Punkte, dann geht es wieder zusammen; so dehnen wir gewissermaßen die Mondenkräfte aus bis zu einem gewissen Punkte, wo wir wiederum zurück müssen. Das ist erreicht im dritten Stadium des Schlafes, und wir werden durch die Mondenkräfte, die überhaupt mit dem Hereinführen des Geistig-Seelischen in die physische Welt innig zusammenhängen, wiederum Stadium für Stadium zurückgeführt; vom dritten Stadium durch das zweite Stadium, durch das erste Stadium wiederum zurückgeführt.

[ 16 ] Sehen Sie, alles dasjenige, was der Mensch in seinen Vorstellungs- und Empfindungskräften während des Tagwachens als Initiativkräfte tragen kann, alles das ist Nachwirkung des Fixsternerlebnisses während der Nacht. Alles dasjenige, was der Mensch in seinen Vorstellungs- und Empfindungskräften tragen kann als Kombinationskräfte, als Weisheitskräfte, als Klugheitskräfte, das ist Nachwirkung des planetarischen Erlebnisses. Aber dasjenige, was da aus dem Kosmos vom nächtlichen Erleben hereinstrahlt in das Tagesleben, das muß durchaus auf dem Umweg des Körpers kommen. Das Fixsternerlebnis zuckt in unser Tagesleben herein auf dem Umwege durch die Umwandlung der Nahrungsmittel. Unsere Nahrungsmittel würden nicht so in das Gehirn kommen, daß sie uns befähigen würden Initiativkräfte zu entwickeln, wenn nicht dieser ganze Prozeß angefeuert würde durch dasjenige, was wir nächtlich erleben durch das Fixsternerlebnis. Und wir würden nicht vernünftig denken können, wenn wir nicht in unsere Atmungszirkulation, in unsere Blutzirkulation während des Tages die Nachwirkungen hereinbekämen von dem planetarischen Erleben während der Nacht.

[ 17 ] Richtig sind solche Dinge immer nur im großen und ganzen, und wenn bei Leuten, die sehr stark an Schlaflosigkeit leiden, scheinbar solche Tatsachen durchkreuzt werden, so hat man dann die Aufgabe, die entsprechenden Abnormitäten zu erklären. Sie sprechen nicht, wenn man sie wirklich durchschaut, gegen diese Wahrheiten. Aber diese Wahrheiten, die im großen und ganzen richtig sind, geben erst eine Möglichkeit, das einzelne wirklich wesenhaft zu erklären. Ein wirkliches Erkennen der menschlichen Wesenheit ist nur möglich, wenn man sich im weitesten Umfange bewußt wird der Tatsache, daß der Mensch nicht nur in seinem physischen Körper innerhalb seiner Haut lebt, sondern daß er in der ganzen Welt lebt. Das Leben in der ganzen Welt verhüllt sich nur dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein, weil es für das Tagwachen sehr abgedämpft ist. Wir erleben höchstens in der allgemeinen Lichtempfindung etwas nach von dem, was unsere Teilnahme ist an dem Sein eines allgemeinen Kosmos. Vielleicht noch in anderen, aber sehr dumpfen Gefühlen hat der Mensch zwischen dem Aufwachen und dem Einschlafen etwas von einem Sich-drinnen-Fühlen im Kosmos. Aber alles das so Gegebene schweigt, damit der Mensch sein individuelles Bewußtsein vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen entwickeln kann, damit er da nicht gestört werden kann von alledem, was in sein Erleben hereinspielt von dem Kosmos. Während der Nacht ist es gerade umgekehrt. Da hat der Mensch als sein Erleben ein kosmisches Erleben, allerdings das Nachbild eines kosmischen Erlebens, aber eben das getreue Nachbild, so wie ich es ja angedeuter habe. Da hat der Mensch eben wirklich ein kosmisches Erleben, und weil der Mensch dieses kosmische Leben durchmachen muß, deshalb wird sein Tagesbewußtsein abgedämpft und abgelähmt.

[ 18 ] Die Zukunftsentwickelung der Menschheit wird darin bestehen, daß der Mensch immer mehr und mehr sich in den Kosmos einlebt, und daß einstmals er die Zeit herbeiführen wird, in der er mit seinem Bewußtsein sich fühlt in Sonne, Mond und Sternen, so wie er sich jetzt mit seinem Bewußtsein auf der Erde fühlt. Dann wird er aus dem Kosmos auf die Erde sehen, wie er jetzt schaut von der Erde in den Kosmos hinein in seinem jetzigen Wachzustande. Aber das Anschauen wird eben ein wesentlich anderes sein.

[ 19 ] Wenn jemand ehrlich im ganzen Umfange an Entwickelung festhalten will, so muß er sich auch bewußt werden, daß das Bewußtsein des Menschen selber einer Entwickelung unterliegt, daß das Körperbewußtsein, das der Mensch im gegenwärtigen Stadium hat, ein Durchgangsstadium ist zu einem anderen Bewußtsein, das ja auch nichts anderes ist als die seelische Spiegelung von Tatsachen, aber die Tatsachen, die erlebt der Mensch schon heute jede Nacht; er braucht sie, weil sie in ihrer Nachwirkung allein sein Tagesleben wirklich tragen können. Die Weiterentwickelung wird darin bestehen, daß der Mensch dasjenige, was heute sein Unbewußstes ist, auch während des normalen Lebens als ein Bewußtes haben wird; aber notwendig ist dazu, daß der Mensch allerdings in die Geisteswissenschaft sich hineinfindet, denn geradeso wie man in einem gewissen Sinne doch eine Richtung haben muß, wenn man irgendwohin schwimmt, so braucht man auch für das heutige gewöhnliche Bewußtsein eine Richtung. Man kann nicht einfach sich tragen lassen, wie es für die Mittel der gewöhnlichen Erkenntnis der Fall ist. Man braucht eine Richtung. Diese Richtung kann einzig und allein nur die anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft selber geben, weil sie, soweit es für heute notwendig ist, enthüllt dasjenige, was im Menschen heute schon lebt, was dem Menschen heute nur noch nicht bewußt ist. Er muß es ins Bewußtsein hereinbekommen, er würde sonst keinen wirklich kosmischen Fortschritt erleben.

[ 20 ] Damit habe ich Ihnen heute einen Teil von demjenigen geschildert, was heute in dem Müllkasten der Erkenntnis hineingeworfen wird in den Begriff des Unbewußten. Bei meinem nächsten Vortrag werde ich ebenso zu schildern versuchen die Erlebnisse des Menschen, die hinter Geburt und Tod liegen, wie ich Ihnen heute die unbewußten Zustände während des Schlafzustandes geschildert habe.

Human Sleep Experiences: Their Spiritual Background and Significance for Everyday Life

[ 1 ] Today, when we speak of the life of the soul, we tend to summarize a great deal in a certain expression which, on the one hand, admits that, in relation to the soul, we must speak of forces or the like which do not play a part in ordinary consciousness. On the other hand, however, it is also admitted that we are powerless to speak about such forces. The expression used to summarize what is meant by such an indication is: the unconscious; we speak of the unconscious. When we speak of the special nature of human knowledge today, we imply that, as human beings, we are initially dependent on seeking our knowledge from the external world through observation, experiment, and the combining faculty of the mind. And we also imply that when we search our own consciousness, we find all kinds of things in it: thoughts, feelings, volitions, and so on. We then become further aware that we have impulses and revelations in our soul life that cannot be found in their deeper essence by proceeding according to the method of external scientific observation in the sense of experiment, observation, and combinatory thinking, nor by somehow penetrating through what one surveys when practicing self-observation with the ordinary powers of consciousness to the essence of what nevertheless reveals itself in the soul life of human beings. And so we speak of the unconscious, but at the same time we refrain from trying to penetrate the world of the unconscious in any way. This renunciation is actually fully justified if one wants to limit oneself to those means of knowledge that are generally recognized today. For in fact, no one will be able to make any progress with these means of knowledge in relation to the life of the soul beyond the view that during waking life, ideas, feelings, impulses of the will, expressions of the human being, rise up from the depths of the human being, and one will find absolutely no irrefutable means of saying that what appears to be so strongly dependent on physical conditions has a special existence beyond these physical conditions.

[ 2 ] Now you all know that it is precisely from this point that our anthroposophical view proceeds, that this anthroposophical view takes seriously the fact that it is not possible to fathom the depths of the soul with the means of knowledge that are recognized today, that this anthroposophical view takes seriously the fact that these ordinary means must point to something unconscious. Basically, we do not even need to look at the two limits of physical life on earth, birth and death — we will do that in the next lecture, but it is not even necessary — one need only look at the ordinary, everyday human state of sleep, and one will have to say that it is actually impossible for real knowledge of the soul to be gained, that what the ordinary means of knowledge can say about soul experiences can somehow be secured against an objection such as the following: These ordinary means of knowledge reveal such a great dependence of all thinking, feeling, and willing, as they exist in everyday consciousness, on physical conditions that one can quite well say that soul experiences arise from physical conditions as if from a subconscious, and during the state of sleep, mere organic life overgrows them, not allowing representations, feelings, and volitions to flow out of themselves; one can actually say nothing more about this. At most, one can perhaps infer from the interplay of dreams, which appear as if they came from sleep and are simply remembered in waking life, from the interplay of sleep and dreams, that the soul somehow continues as such during sleep; but these are all uncertain things. - Basically, no serious, unbiased person can use ordinary means of knowledge to talk about the soul in any other way than to say that it presents phenomena that appear to be entirely dependent on physical conditions.

[ 3 ] Precisely because anthroposophical knowledge takes this ability or inability of the ordinary means of knowledge seriously, it must, on the other hand, strive to find other means of knowledge. And you know that such means of knowledge are found in the imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge often described here. Through this special kind of knowledge, which is first developed as a capacity out of the ordinary soul life, which can only be developed if one really makes an effort to develop it, one should then strive to attain clarity about that which cannot be attained with the ordinary means of knowledge.

[ 4 ] And now, without going back into the explanation I have given so often of the nature of imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge, I would like to describe, on the basis of these three stages of knowledge, one of the most important areas of the human subconscious or unconscious, namely the area of soul life between falling asleep and waking up. I have already given this description from certain points of view on several occasions, but today I would like to give it again from a special point of view. So today I would first like to simply describe what imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge reveals about the state of sleep. For ordinary consciousness, all that is actually present is that the consciousness, which is filled with a certain content, as we have it from waking up to falling asleep, is first dampened when we fall asleep and then disappears, and that an unconscious state occurs between falling asleep and waking up. During daytime consciousness, human beings cannot initially say, using the ordinary means of cognition, what their soul actually does in the time between falling asleep and waking up. For whatever happens in this state, if anything spiritual is experienced as such, does not enter into ordinary consciousness. For ordinary consciousness, darkness spreads over what the soul experiences, if it experiences anything at all in the state of sleep. But then the state of sleep begins to be illuminated when imaginative knowledge first enters, the darkness begins to transform into light, and one can already gain judgments through imaginative knowledge about what is experienced by the soul, at least in the first stages of the state of sleep. One can then penetrate further into these experiences through inspired and intuitive knowledge. It is not that you should imagine you are looking into sleep as if into a peep box, but rather that through imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge you experience states of the soul that are similar to sleep in that you are in a similar relationship to your body as during sleep, but you do not experience this relationship unconsciously, but rather in a fully conscious state. And because during waking life you experience in a similar way as during sleep, you can then also look into what happens to the human soul during sleep, and you can then describe it.

[ 5 ] When a person falls asleep, you know that the indistinct, hazy consciousness with dreams can prevail. This dream world cannot really help us to understand the soul life. For what can be known about dreams by the ordinary means of knowledge in daytime consciousness remains something highly external, and dreams themselves do not present themselves in such a way that one can rely on them in any definite way before one has gained knowledge of sleep in another way. Those who really penetrate into an understanding of the states of sleep know that dreams are actually more confusing than illuminating for a real understanding of this state of sleep. What is experienced by the soul is experienced unconsciously. Because I am describing it from imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge, I must now describe it to you as if it were consciously experienced by the soul; I will therefore have to describe to you the experiences of the soul from falling asleep to waking up as if they were consciously experienced; they are not consciously experienced, but what I will describe as if they were consciously experienced is already experienced by the soul, even if it is unaware of it. It is nevertheless a fact, and as a fact it has an effect not only from falling asleep to waking up, but above all it also has an effect on the human physical organism, and even most strongly during waking hours. Throughout the day, from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, we carry within us the after-effects of our nighttime experiences, and even though everything that a person accomplishes through their consciousness is of great importance to external culture, what goes on within the person themselves depends only to a very small extent on their consciousness, but to the highest degree on what they experience unconsciously from falling asleep to waking up.

[ 6 ] First, when the senses gradually become completely numb and the impulses of the will cease to have any effect, we experience an undifferentiated state of the soul. It is a general, indefinite experience, an experience in which there is a distinct sense of time, but the sense of space has almost completely disappeared. So that this experience can really be compared to a kind of swimming, a kind of moving in a general, indefinite world substance. One must actually first form words to express what the soul experiences there. One might say that the soul experiences itself like a wave in a great sea, like a wave that feels organized within itself, that feels surrounded on all sides by the rest of the sea, and that feels the effects of this sea on itself in the same way that one feels, perceives, and thinks about the impressions of colors or sounds or temperature conditions in a certain differentiated way in daily life. But just as in daily life one feels oneself to be a person enclosed in one's own skin, feeling oneself to be in a certain location, so one feels oneself in that moment following falling asleep — I say one feels oneself, one experiences this; I describe it as if it were conscious; the fact is there, only the consciousness of it is not there — one feels oneself like a wave in a general sea, you feel yourself now here, now there, as I said, the definite sense of space actually ceases. But there is a general sense of time. This experience is connected with the other experience of being abandoned. It is something like sinking into an abyss. If a person were not prepared for it, he would indeed be exposed to many things if he were to consciously experience this first stage of sleep, because they would find it almost unbearable to lose their sense of space almost entirely, to live only in a general sense of time, to feel so completely undefined and integrated as if in a general substantial sea in which very little can be distinguished, except that one is a self within a general world existence. One would feel—if consciousness were present—as if one were really hovering over an abyss. And this is connected with something that arises in the soul like an immense need for spiritual support, an immense need to be connected with something spiritual. In the general sea in which one floats, one has, in a sense, lost that feeling of security that comes from being connected to the material things of the waking world. Therefore, one feels—one felt, if the state were conscious—a deep longing to be connected to the divine-spiritual. One could also say that one actually experiences this general movement in an undifferentiated world substance as a feeling of security in something divine and spiritual. — Please note the way I have to describe this: I am describing it to you, to repeat, as if the soul were consciously experiencing it. It does not experience it consciously, but you can imagine how, while you are consciously experiencing everyday life, many things are going on unconsciously in your organism, which is simply a fact. Let us say, for example, that you experience joy; yes, during joy, the blood pulsates differently than during sadness. You experience the joy or sadness in your consciousness, but you do not experience the pulsation of the blood in either state. Nevertheless, this pulsation of the blood is a fact. And so what I am describing here corresponds, on the one hand, to what I describe as a general floating in an undifferentiated world substance and, on the other hand, to what I describe as a need for God, which corresponds to something actual in the life of the soul. And imaginative knowledge does nothing other than bring this reality into consciousness, just as the ordinary everyday consciousness of human beings brings into consciousness the pulsation of the blood that underlies joy or sorrow. The facts are there, and the facts have an effect on our waking daily life, so that when we wake up in the morning, our organism is refreshed because this nighttime experience has taken place in our soul life. What happens in the soul separated from the body between falling asleep and waking up has great significance as an aftereffect during waking life the following day. And we would not be able to use our bodies properly the following day if we had not detached ourselves from our connection with external physical and sensory things and immersed ourselves in this indefinable experience that I have described. And the fact that in our waking daily life we emerge from the depths of our will with something like a need to relate the differentiated things around us to something general, and that we have a need to relate the world of the senses to something divine, is an after-effect of this first stage of the sleep state. We may ask ourselves: Why is man not satisfied with simply looking at the individual things of the world side by side during the waking state, why is he not satisfied with simply going through the world and accepting plants, animals, and so on? Why do they begin — and this is true even of the simplest human beings, not just philosophers; incidentally, the simplest human beings understand this much better than philosophers — why do they begin to philosophize about how things are connected, why do they relate the individual things they see to something general, why do they ask how the individual is grounded in a general cosmos? He would not do so if he did not truly live in such uncertainty during his waking life. Nor would he arrive at a sense of God in his waking state if he did not experience the corresponding fact, this sense of God, in the first stage of his sleeping state. We owe sleep something extraordinarily significant for the inner life of our humanity.

[ 7 ] When a person continues to sleep, they enter other stages that can no longer be perceived through imaginative knowledge, but require inspired knowledge in order to be understood. What then appears as a fact of soul experience and is reflected in inspired consciousness, like, say, the pulsation of blood in joy and sorrow, is initially a certain fragmentation of the soul into as many individual details, individual essences, as possible. The soul really fragments its life into parts, and this fragmentation is connected with something that, when it flashes up into consciousness, appears as anxiety. After the soul has gone through what can be called hovering over the abyss or swimming in a general world substance and a longing for something divine and spiritual, it falls into a certain anxiety, that is, into something that would be anxiety for consciousness if it were consciously experienced, which is essentially based on the fact that the soul not only floats in a general world substance, but also, in a sense, submerges itself in individual spiritual-soul beings that have an existence of their own, with which the soul now enters into a certain relationship; so that it is now not really a unity, but many things. This multiplicity is experienced as anxiety. And human beings must overcome this anxiety in a certain way.

[ 8 ] During the period of Earth's development before the Mystery of Golgotha, instructions for humanity emanated from the mystery centers in various religious practices, which already found their way to individual human beings, whereby the souls added to what they could experience in feelings in the sensory outer world, because they had conceptions of God that were appropriate for those ancient times. Now, in those ancient times, human beings were such that even during their waking hours they had some awareness of the spiritual world shining into their consciousness. The further back we go in the earthly evolution of humanity, the more we come to realize that people had a kind of clairvoyance in very ancient times and then echoes of this clairvoyance in later times, that it was an inner view for the people of that time that the human being himself, before he began his earthly life, dwelt as a soul-spiritual being in a pre-earthly existence. This was not something that people had discovered, nor was it something they merely believed in, but rather something that was a certainty for them because they experienced something within themselves that had remained from a pre-earthly existence.

[ 9 ] If I may make a rather trivial comparison, I would say that if someone has inherited a certain amount of wealth from their parents, they also recognize how this wealth affects their immediate existence in the course of their life; they recognize that they have not acquired it themselves, but that it has been passed on to them by their ancestors. Thus, people in earlier times knew that certain experiences in their souls did not come from what their eyes had seen, but they recognized that these soul experiences were an inheritance from a pre-earthly existence. They recognized this from these soul experiences themselves. It must always be emphasized that in the course of their development, people have become free from such soul experiences, that our present age is one in which ordinary consciousness has no such soul experiences that could be explained as a legacy from a pre-earthly existence. It was therefore easier for these people of earlier times to be instructed by their spiritual guides in the mystery centers on how they should feel in their souls toward what they experienced as spiritual experiences in their souls. And from the strength they gained through the impulses they received from the mystery centers, they carried into their night life, into their sleep life, the power to remain victorious over the anxiety just described. Anxiety thus arises from the depths of the night life. The strength to emerge from this anxiety the next day not with a general exhaustion of the organism, but with a freshness of the organism, had to be accumulated during the previous day's life; thus, days and nights are connected with each other. At a certain stage of sleep, the night brings anxiety; into this anxiety must pour the strength gained from the religious or religiously oriented experience of the previous day, and when these two things, this remnant from the previous day and the original experience of the night, unite, then the refreshing strength radiates into the organism in the new day of the next day.

[ 10 ] For a true spiritual science, it is no longer sufficient to speak in general abstract phrases about the existence of a general divine world government. It is not enough to describe the individual things of the world only according to their apparent meaning and say: Well, yes, in this apparent meaning there is a general world government. Spiritual science must point out in concrete terms how this divine world government works. If we want to grow into the tasks of human development in the future, we can no longer simply say that we feel refreshed after a healthy sleep, that God has given us this refreshment. One would have to despair of all science if, on the one hand, one had to seek a rigorous science for the sensory world and could not extend the rigor of this science to that which relates to the supersensible; if, in the supersensible, one had to remain within the realm of general phrases: well, there is something like a divine world government underlying everything. One comes more and more into the specific, one can point out how this anxiety that arises in this second stage of sleep is, as it were, mixed with the power drawn from the religious feeling of the previous day, which continues to have an effect into the night, and from this, in turn, becomes the refreshing power for the physical organism of the next day. In this way, one gains more and more insight into how the truly spiritual lives within the truly physical, whereas the means of knowledge available today provide only physical content and general expressions that something spiritual also lives in or above this physical content. However, humanity will decline more and more in its culture if it does not take the trouble to extend the rigor it applies to observing the external world and to knowledge to the spiritual world as well. And now, when one follows these stages of sleep from the first to the second with inspired consciousness, one notices that the inner experience of the soul becomes something completely different from what it was in daily life.

[ 11 ] Well, you can also recognize this through ordinary natural science, if you pursue it consistently, how you are involved in the soul within the breathing process, in the blood circulation process, in the nutritional process that runs through the blood circulation process; you can feel that something is going on when you exert yourself physically and so on. One feels the soul-spiritual connected with physical activities, and when one describes the breathing process or the blood circulation process, for example, one knows that one is describing something in which the soul experience is embedded during waking life. The soul experience from falling asleep to waking up is not contained in the sensory world, but it is also a very specific inner life, an inner life that can be related to something in the same way that the daytime inner life can be related to the life of breathing or blood circulation. And it turns out that this nightly inner life is connected with an inner development of forces that is comparable to the development of forces in breathing and blood circulation, with a development of forces that is a reflection of the planetary movements of our planetary system. Please note that I am not saying that every night, from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we are inside the planetary movements or connected to them, but rather that we are inside something that is a replica, a miniature, so to speak, of our planetary cosmos and its movements. Just as we are immersed in the blood circulation during our daytime soul life, so during our nighttime soul life we are immersed in something that is a replica of the planetary movements of our solar system. If we say for the day: the white blood cells circulate within us, the red blood cells circulate within us, the power of respiration circulates within us, through which we breathe in and breathe out — then we must say for the nightly soul life: a replica of the movement of Mercury, a replica of the movement of Venus, a replica of the movement of Jupiter circulates within us. — A small planetary cosmos is, in a sense, our soul life from falling asleep to waking up. Our life becomes cosmic from the personal-human from falling asleep to waking up. And inspired insight can then discover how, when we are tired in the evening, that which was the force that kept the blood pulsating the day before can maintain vitality during the night through its own perseverance, but how it needs the impetus that comes from experiencing an afterimage of the planetary cosmos during the night in order to become the soul life of the day again. When we wake up, the after-effect of what we have experienced in the re-enactments of the planetary movements from falling asleep to waking up is implanted, inoculated into us. This is what connects the cosmos with our individual lives. When we wake up in the morning, what we need as forces would not be able to shine into us in the right way so that consciousness is properly present if we did not have this after-effect of our nighttime experiences.

[ 12 ] You can already see from this how wrong it is when some people complain about insomnia in an outrageous way. This is usually an extremely strong self-deception. But I do not want to go into that now, because those who are subject to this self-deception do not believe it anyway; they believe that they are really not asleep, when in fact they are only in an abnormal state of sleep, which makes them believe that their soul is not outside their body and is experiencing planetary existence. They are in a state that is certainly dull, but which nevertheless allows them to experience the same things that another person experiences during healthy sleep. But, as I said, I do not want to go into these exceptions now.

[ 13 ] In general, it is as I am now describing, that human beings live a cosmic life in the second stage of their sleep. I have indicated to you that in ancient times, before the Mystery of Golgotha, impulses emanated from the mystery centers, giving human beings the strength to emerge from their anxiety, to resist fragmentation, so to speak, and to go through what they must go through in a healthy way. This power enabled people to enter into the planetary experience and not remain in the experience of fragmentation. Anxiety arose from the experience of fragmentation; the experience of being in the planets came about through taking with them the power described above from the experience of the previous day. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, human beings have had the opportunity to gain the strength that was previously given in the manner described through the mysteries by directing their souls to the events of this Mystery of Golgotha. Those who truly experience the mystery of Golgotha in the right way, soulfully and inwardly, will find Christ to be a strong guide at the moment when the soul enters the realm of fearfulness in the time between falling asleep and waking up, so that the newer humanity has through the Christ experience what an older humanity had through the mysteries.

[ 14 ] From this stage of sleep, which I have just described, the human being then enters into what I may now describe to you in simpler terms as the earlier stage, because you will not hold it against me if I speak of such things after dwelling a little longer on the planetary experience: after the planetary experience, the human being has the fixed star experience. After living in the second stage of sleep in imitation of the movements of the planets, he now lives in the constellations of the fixed stars, preferably in imitations of the constellations of the fixed stars of the zodiac. This experience of the constellations of the fixed stars of the zodiac is a very real fact during the third stage of night life. Then human beings also begin to experience the difference between the sun as a planet and a fixed star. People today do not understand why in older astronomy the sun was considered both a planet and, in a certain sense, a fixed star. During the second stage of sleep, the sun really has planetary characteristics for this experience. One becomes aware of its particularly distinguished position in relation to human experience on Earth. One also becomes aware of the sun in its constellation in relation to the other constellations of the zodiac. In short, one lives one's way into the cosmos in an even more intense way than was the case in the previous stage of sleep. One experiences the fixed stars, and from this experience of the fixed stars, human beings receive even deeper, more meaningful impulses for the experience of the next day than they can obtain from the mere planetary experience. From the planetary experience, one receives, if I may express it this way, the firing of the respiratory process and the blood circulation process; but these processes are substantial, they are permeated by what they need, by substance, so that these processes are also continuous nourishment processes of the organism, this propelling of food through the organism, which is apparently the most material thing, but which comes from higher forces than the mere movement of blood circulation. this experience is based in its stimulation for daily life on an after-effect of the fixed star experience. Just as we, as physical human beings, are dependent in our mental and spiritual life on the way in which this or that substance circulates within us, this is connected, if I may express it thus, with the highest heavens, it is connected with the fact that we, as spiritual-soul beings, feel in the third stage of sleep the afterimages of the fixed star constellations within us, just as we feel our stomach or lungs within us when we are awake during the day. Just as during the day our body is, on the one hand, internally animated, filled with ‘breathing movements’ and ‘circulatory movements’, so at night our soul, our substantial being in the soul, is something that has internal afterimages of the movements of the planets. And just as we have our stomach, lungs, and heart within us during the day, so at night we have the constellations of the fixed stars; these are then our inner being. Thus, during sleep, the human being truly becomes a cosmic being. This third stage of sleep is the deepest; from it, the human being gradually returns to waking life. Why does he return? The human being would not return to waking life if forces did not take hold in his soul that lead him back into his physical organism.

[ 15 ] Now, I have described to you from various aspects how these forces can be addressed; today I want to describe them to you from the cosmic aspect. If you learn about the fixed stars through intuition, you also learn that the forces that bring people back into the physical organism are the forces of the moon, that is, what corresponds in the spiritual realm to what appears as a physical image in the form of the moon. Of course, this does not depend on whether it is a full moon or something like that, but the moon can also shine through the earth in a spiritual sense. It does have something to do with the metamorphoses that manifest themselves in the visibility of the moon, but that would lead to much finer distinctions that we do not want to discuss today. In general, it is the forces of the moon that lead human beings back again. One could say that human beings are always permeated, just as they are permeated as souls from falling asleep to waking up, by the planetary forces, by the forces that reveal themselves in the constellations of the fixed stars, just as they are permeated and remain permeated because these things continue to have an effect during the waking day. so human beings are constantly permeated by what corresponds in the cosmos as spiritual forces to the physical moon. It is these lunar forces that lead us back. It is an extraordinarily complicated process in reality; if we want to express it in some way, I would say this: When we stretch an elastic band, it stretches to a certain point and then springs back; in the same way, we stretch the lunar forces, as it were, to a certain point, where we must return again. This is achieved in the third stage of sleep, and we are led back again, stage by stage, by the lunar forces, which are intimately connected with the introduction of the spiritual-soul element into the physical world; from the third stage through the second stage, through the first stage, and back again.

[ 16 ] You see, everything that human beings can carry in their powers of imagination and feeling during waking life as powers of initiative is the after-effect of the experience of the fixed stars during the night. Everything that human beings can carry in their powers of imagination and feeling as powers of combination, as powers of wisdom, as powers of intelligence, is the after-effect of the planetary experience. But that which shines into daytime life from the cosmos through the nighttime experience must come via the detour of the body. The fixed star experience flashes into our daily life via the detour of the transformation of food. Our food would not enter the brain in such a way as to enable us to develop initiative if this whole process were not fired by what we experience at night through the fixed star experience. And we would not be able to think rationally if we did not receive the after-effects of the planetary experience during the night in our respiratory circulation and blood circulation during the day.

[ 17 ] Such things are always true only in the broadest sense, and when people who suffer greatly from insomnia seem to contradict these facts, it is then our task to explain the corresponding abnormalities. When truly understood, they do not contradict these truths. But these truths, which are correct in the broadest sense, are what make it possible to explain the individual in a truly essential way. A real understanding of human nature is only possible if one becomes aware, to the fullest extent, of the fact that human beings do not live only in their physical bodies within their skin, but that they live in the whole world. Life in the whole world is only veiled from ordinary consciousness because it is very muted during waking hours. At most, we experience something of our participation in the existence of a universal cosmos in our general perception of light. Perhaps in other, but very dull feelings, between waking and falling asleep, human beings have something of a feeling of being inside the cosmos. But all that is given in this way remains silent so that human beings can develop their individual consciousness from waking to falling asleep, so that they cannot be disturbed by everything that comes into their experience from the cosmos. During the night, it is just the opposite. Then human beings have a cosmic experience as their experience, albeit the afterimage of a cosmic experience, but precisely the faithful afterimage, as I have indicated. Then human beings really have a cosmic experience, and because human beings must go through this cosmic life, their daytime consciousness is dampened and paralyzed.

[ 18 ] The future development of humanity will consist in human beings becoming more and more attuned to the cosmos, and in their eventually bringing about a time when they will feel themselves with their consciousness in the sun, moon, and stars, just as they now feel themselves with their consciousness on the earth. Then they will look down from the cosmos onto the earth, as they now look up from the earth into the cosmos in their present waking state. But the view will be essentially different.

[ 19 ] If someone wants to honestly hold fast to the whole scope of development, they must also become aware that human consciousness itself is subject to development, that the body consciousness that humans have in the present stage is a transitional stage to another consciousness, which is nothing other than the soul's reflection of facts, but these facts are already experienced by human beings every night; they need them because their after-effects alone can truly sustain their daily life. Further development will consist in human beings having what is now unconscious as conscious during normal life; But for this to happen, it is necessary that human beings find their way into spiritual science, for just as one must have a direction in a certain sense when swimming somewhere, so too does today's ordinary consciousness need a direction. One cannot simply let oneself be carried along, as is the case with the means of ordinary knowledge. One needs a direction. This direction can only be provided by anthroposophical spiritual science itself, because it reveals, to the extent necessary for today, what already lives in human beings today but is not yet conscious to them. They must bring it into consciousness, otherwise they would not experience any real cosmic progress.

[ 20 ] I have thus described to you today a part of what is being thrown into the dustbin of knowledge under the concept of the unconscious. In my next lecture, I will try to describe the experiences of human beings that lie behind birth and death, just as I have described to you today the unconscious states during sleep.