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The Evolution of Consciousness
GA 227

24 August 1923, Penmaenmawr

6. The Ruling of Spirit in Nature

Yesterday I tried to show how the confusion in dreams arises from the fact that during sleep a man crosses the so-called Threshold unconsciously or half-consciously. Leaving the physical world of the senses, he enters the spiritual world and there encounters three worlds—a memory of the ordinary physical world, the soul world, and the real world of spirit. Events both inward and outward, experienced in our ordinary earthly life, are gathered together from what these three worlds reveal. But they are split apart when in sleep we enter the super-sensible world, and what we experience is not then related to the world where it belongs. That is why, for the usual memory-consciousness, deceptions and illusions arise in dreams. Imaginative consciousness does not see the dream merely in this way, but makes it an object of observation, just as we look towards a distant point in physical space—though now, with Imagination, we look towards something distant in time. We do not simply remember what is dreamt; we look at it, and so for the first time we arrive at a true conception of what a dream is. Thus we find how a dream is interpreted rightly only when we do not relate it to the physical, naturalistic world, but to the spiritual—above all, in most cases, to the moral world. The dream will never tell what it is expressing if its content is given a physical interpretation, but only when the interpretation is in accordance with the spiritually moral.

To illustrate this, let us turn to the confusion of the dream I told you about yesterday—the dream in which someone going for a walk is suddenly overcome with shame at finding himself without clothes in a crowded street. I remarked how the whole mood of soul in dream-consciousness is due to our confronting three different worlds. Looking at a dream of this kind in the right way, however, we see that although its content appears to belong to the realm of the senses, yet through this medium the spiritual-moral is seeking to reveal itself. Hence, anyone having such a dream ought not to look at the immediate, symbolical course it takes, but should ask himself: Haven't I sometimes had a tendency in daytime consciousness not to be completely truthful about myself with others? Haven't I perhaps been too fond of following the fashion in what I wear—altogether too apt to take refuge in convention? Is it not a characteristic of mine to give people a false impression of what I really am?

When anyone lets his thoughts take this course, he gradually arrives at the moral, spiritual interpretation of the dream. He says to himself: When during sleep I was in the super-sensible world, I met with spiritual beings there—they told me that I should not be present in a cloak of falsehood, but as I really am inwardly, in soul and spirit.

When we interpret dreams in this way, we come to their moral, spiritual truth. A whole host of dreams can be interpreted thus.

People of an older chapter in history, who even in the dreamy symbolism of sleep were conscious of the Guardian of the Threshold, took to heart his warning not to carry with them what belongs to the physical world of the senses when they enter the spiritual world. Had these men dreamt they had no clothes on in the street, it would never have occurred to them that they ought to have been ashamed; this is something that holds good for the physical world, for a man's physical body. They would have given heed to the warning that what holds good for the physical does not hold good in the spiritual world, and that what appears in the spiritual world is being said to human beings by the Gods. A dream, therefore, had to be interpreted as an utterance of the Gods. Only during the course of human evolution have dreams come to be interpreted in a naturalistic sense.

Or let us take another common dream. The dreamer is going along a path that leads him into a wood. After a while he realises that he has lost his way and cannot go any further. He tries to do so, but the path comes to an end and trees block the way. He begins to feel uneasy.

Now in ordinary consciousness this dream is easily taken at its face value. But if on thinking over it we forget all naturalistic associations, the spiritual world will say to us: This confusion you have met with is in your own thoughts. In waking consciousness, however, people are often loath to admit how confused their thinking is and how easily they reach a point where they can make no progress but only go round in a circle. This inclination is particularly characteristic of our present civilisation. People consider themselves enlightened thinkers, but in reality they dance around in a circle with their thoughts—either about conventional trivialities or about atoms, which are intellectual constructions of their own. In ordinary consciousness, naturally, they are not disposed to admit this.

In a series of symbolical pictures the dream brings out a man's true nature, and it is spiritual beings who are speaking through it. When anyone takes his dream experience in the right way, his self-knowledge will be greatly enhanced.

Another common human characteristic is that people allow themselves to be led by their instincts and impulses to do what is most congenial to them. For example, they find pleasure in doing something or other, but they are not ready to admit that they are doing it for their own satisfaction. They invent some way of interpreting it differently for their ordinary consciousness—they say perhaps that they are doing it for anthroposophical or occult or esoteric reasons, connected with a high mission or something of that sort. With this kind of self-justification they cover up—and this occurs with extraordinary frequency—an endless amount of all that rules and rages in the depths of our animal life. A dream—which wishes to reveal through symbolical pictures the forces which really hold sway even in the soul and spirit of the dreamer—may present a picture of the man pursued by wild beasts and trying vainly to escape. We shall interpret truly the moral significance of such a dream, not by looking at its outward events, but by accepting the self-knowledge it offers us. We have to recognise it as a warning to search for the inner truth about our own nature and to consider whether this does not resemble—if only slightly—animal instinct rather than what we ideally conjure up.

Hence it is possible for dreams to warn people in countless ways and to set them right. When a dream is related in the true way to the higher world, it can have a guiding influence on a man's life, and then, when the stage of conscious Imagination is reached, one can see how the dream, which at first naturally offers even to Imaginative knowledge pictures drawn from the sense-world, is metamorphosed entirely into moral-spiritual happenings.

Thus we see how the dream can be said to lead ordinary consciousness into the spiritual world, if only it is taken in the right way. But I have said also that on raising ourselves through Imagination to the spiritual world, we are not in the same state of soul as during our life here on Earth. In this life, I stand here, the table is there outside me; there is a physical gap between me and the table. The moment I enter the spiritual world, this separation ceases. I no longer stand here with the table over there; it is as if my whole being were spreading out over the table and the table were taking me into itself. In the spiritual world we sink right into whatever we perceive. Hence our experience, either in dreams or consciously in Imagination, should not be related merely to our inner life, but we can speak in a spiritual-scientific sense if we say with the poet that the whole world is woven out of dreams. It is certainly not woven out of the play of atoms, which is a dream of the scientists, but out of what I have described as the “chaos” of the Greeks, out of the weaving of our dreams and of our conscious Imagination. I have called it both subjective and objective, for the world is not woven purely subjectively; but we have to explain certain aspects of the world as being woven out of dreams.

For example, if we are looking at a seed, we should not be content to explain it by the laws of physics and chemistry. A scientist who sees nothing more than those laws in a seed, or in an embryo, cannot possibly explain them; for nature is dreaming in seed and embryo—their very essence is the weaving life of a dream. Take the seed of a plant—in it a dream is living and weaving. You can never enter into this with the intellect, for that is limited to nature's laws; you must approach it with the human faculty which lives otherwise in a dream or in conscious Imagination.

The same kind of dreaming that lives thus in the seed is active also in our whole organism throughout our life on Earth. Hence we should not look in our organism merely for the working of chemical and physical forces. When a man is there before us physically, we have to look upon him in his external physical form as a being who is living just for a time in the physical world of the senses. Behind him lives something else, invisible to the eye, inaudible to the ear, in so far as these are physical. But it can be perceived in Imagination, and also in what can be experienced in the unconscious Imagination of a dream. In the whole of a man's body nature is dreaming. Nature's way of thinking is not like man's intellectual thinking—it is a dreaming. Out of this dreaming the forces of our digestion and of our growth are guided, and everything is given form.

When we look back in earthly existence we generally start from this age—what shall we call this age of ours? We could take one of its symptoms and call it the age of the typewriter. Thus we go back from this age of the typewriter to the time when printing was first introduced; and going still further back we come perhaps to the time of the Romans, to the time of the Greeks, and then we arrive at the age in the East from which the Vedic records come. We are then left with no external documents. Many treasures have been excavated from the tombs of the Egyptian kings, but we still come at last to a time with no records, where we have to rely on Imaginative and Inspired spiritual knowledge. There we meet with a frontier beyond which, for ordinary consciousness, the past is vague, very much as sleep lies beyond the dream. By going back in this way through the temporal evolution of the world, we come in fact to that dream-veil we can experience every night.

If we reach that point with conscious Imagination, the further past lights up in a spiritual way. But it appears different from the world we learn about intellectually and from ancient records. This remote past in world-evolution, lying behind a veil of dreams, reveals man in direct connection with divine Spirits. He is himself still a divine soul-being; and the divine-spiritual Beings, whose destiny does not include entering an earthly body, meet together with him while he awaits his incarnation on earth.

When, therefore, we look back through history to this veil of chaos, to the dream-veil of which we have been speaking during the last few days, we see the divine Spirits foregathering with the still spiritual souls of men destined to dwell on Earth.

Moreover, we shall see how these things, connected as they are with human evolution, are at the same time connected with cosmic evolution. Where in a remote past this veil appears to Inspired Imagination, we see, too, how within cosmic evolution—of which we shall have to speak more precisely—the Moon, previously united with the Earth, detaches itself and goes out into cosmic space, there to circle the Earth. Thus we gaze back on a dream-veil, a veil of Imagination, and looking through it we find the Earth united with the Moon, and human beings in direct contact with divine-spiritual Beings. When this dream-veil appears to the retrospective gaze of Imagination, we perceive the momentous cosmic event of the Moon, in a quite different form, sliding out of the Earth and going forth into cosmic space as a separate body. So we look further back to the evolution of the Earth, of mankind, and of the world, when these were all united with the Moon. Man was already there, but as a being of soul and spirit only.

As we gaze further and further back, we find no epoch in cosmic evolution when man was not there, at least in some primal form. So that, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, we cannot say that for millions of years the Earth was evolving merely inorganically or with creatures of a lower order, with man emerging only after that. We find man in a different form connected at every stage with that cosmic evolution to which we look back when, behind the veil of chaos and the dream, we can rise through conscious Imagination to that which appears to us as the divine-spiritual essence of the world.


As I have said, when we look at a seed or anything in an embryonic state, Imaginative cognition reveals in it the weaving of a dream. We see how something real, though expressed in dream-pictures, holds sway over the material part of the seed. Anyone able to perceive the spiritual in the world will find it everywhere, though in a great variety of forms. It is precisely the spiritual that goes through the most varied metamorphoses. And when we have thoroughly grasped how in the seed of a plant, in the embryo of an animal, this real dream-weaving prevails, we are justified in asking: How is it, then, with the apparently dead world of the minerals? If here we look out of the window or go along the street, we see the bare hills, a world that seems entirely lifeless, and the question at once arises: If in any plant seed we pick up there is a dream-picture ruling, how is it with these rocky mountainous masses, and with all the lifeless substance that forms the ground we tread on in the physical world? If in the plants we see the ruling of spirit, which in the weaving of a dream seizes with comparative ease upon the material element, so in the same way through Imaginative cognition we find the spiritual in these rocky masses, but here the spiritual consists of individual spiritual beings.

These spiritual beings, however, are in a state not of dreaming but of deep sleep. When you look at these rocks and hills you must not think of them as permeated by a slumbering amorphous mist; you should think of individual spiritual beings sleeping there. Presently we shall see how these spiritual beings have come into existence through having been split off from higher beings with a higher consciousness. We shall see how they themselves, having in their present state only a sleep-consciousness, are the result of that separation, and how these elemental beings are asleep everywhere out there in the inanimate world. When we walk over this mountainous mass of rock, we should be aware that all around us there slumbers the creative weaving of the spirit in concrete form. And when we enter further into the sleeping of the spirit-weaving forms in the lifeless world, we become aware in these elemental beings of a certain mood. Imagination shows us these beings, but it is Inspiration that teaches us about their mood. In these elementals of the mountains, the rocks, and the soil, there lives what we can discover in ourselves when we are waiting for something with justified expectation. The weaving and creating of soul and spirit in the seemingly lifeless rocks is permeated by this same expectant mood.

In fact, these beings are waiting to awake from deep sleep into a state of dreaming. We learn this through Inspiration, and more particularly when we enter right into these beings through Intuition. All that confronts us out there, in those hills, is expecting that one day it will be able to dream, and so with dream-consciousness to take hold of earthly substance that is ground down into lifeless matter, and from these rocks and hills to conjure forth once more as embryos, as seeds, living plants. It is indeed these beings who bring before our souls a wonderful magic of nature, a creating from out of the spirit.

And so, as we go about here among these rocks and look at them in the physical light they reflect, they can reveal to us, not in any symbolical sense but as real knowledge, how they are now sleeping, how in the future they will be dreaming, and how, later still, they will come to the fully awake life of elemental nature-beings, who will one day become beings of pure spirit.

The physical material in a plant is still in a condition accessible to the dream-weaving of the spirit. In the rocks, matter is crumbling away. Looking back with Imagination and Inspiration, we realise how everything lifeless has arisen from the living. It is when the living becomes lifeless that the sleeping spirituality can sink into it. This sleeping spirit waits in the lifeless until it can wake into dreams and lead over the lifeless into cosmic embryonic life.

Now the various parts of the Earth show in different ways this sleep of spiritual beings in the mountains, in the firm crust of the Earth. It might be said: The sleep of beings awaiting their future is different in regions such as this from their sleep in other parts of the Earth. Here in Penmaenmawr we find that the particular configuration of the Earth, and the historical character of the rocks, enable these sleeping beings to rise to the aeriform, to interweave even with the light, while in other parts of the Earth this has long ceased to be so. Thus it is that here, if we look on the weaving as due not to the aerial atmosphere alone, but to the prevailing soul-atmosphere, which permeates the air just as the human soul permeates a man's body, then in Penmaenmawr we find that this soul-element in the atmosphere is different from elsewhere. I will give just one example to make this clear.

Suppose that in a certain region Imaginative cognition exerts itself to call up an Imagination of what is really going on there. This Imagination may be more or less easy or difficult to hold on to, for the possibility of retaining an Imagination in consciousness varies in different regions. Here we are in a region where Imaginations continue for a remarkably long time and so are able to become very vivid.

The wise men of the Druids, or others of that kind, sought out regions for their temples and sanctuaries where the conditions were such as to allow Imaginations to remain and not immediately to vanish away like clouds. Hence we can understand how it was that such centres for the holy places of the Druids were still sought for up to comparatively recent times. In this region it has always been felt that the difficulty of holding an Imagination is not so great as in other places. Everything, of course, has a light side and a shadow side. When an Imagination remains, Inspiration is made harder, though it gains in strength. Because of that, whatever the spiritual world has to say in this place streams down with—one might say—greater intensity, but in words which are weightier and more difficult.

Therefore, even where the spiritual is in question, differentiations are to be found throughout the Earth. A map might be drawn indicating the places where, for Imaginative consciousness, there is no difficulty in holding Imaginations. Those regions where they soon pass away could be given a different colour, and we should get an extraordinarily interesting map of the Earth. For the prevailing character of soul-atmosphere here, we should need a particularly strong colour—a sparkling, shining colour, full of life.

Hence I fully believe that those taking part in this lecture-course will be able to perceive here something of what I would call the esoteric mood of the elementals. It looks in at the windows, meets us on our walks, in fact is present everywhere in a quite special way. I am particularly grateful to the organisers of the course for having thus chosen a spot where the esoteric may be said to meet one at every turn. It does so indeed in other places, but not with the same ease and directness. So I am especially thankful for the choice of this place, out of many possible for the holding of a course such as this. From the point of view of the subjects discussed, this course may be said to take its place, in a wonderfully beautiful way, in the whole evolution of the Anthroposophical Movement.

It will be clear from the descriptions I have been giving you that between the physical world of the senses and the spiritual, super-sensible world, there is a barrier which with a certain rightness we call the Threshold of the spiritual world.

I have already pointed out in various ways how necessary it is that we should be able to cross this Threshold, and we have still to speak about it in greater detail. But you will have gathered already from my lectures that in older periods of human evolution this crossing of the Threshold was a rather different matter from what it is at the present day. In those ancient times people were able to cross in another way because even by day their consciousness was dreamlike, but for that very reason more alive to the super-sensible. Thus, in the way I have pictured, they passed the Guardian of the Threshold half-consciously, dreamily, both on going to sleep and on waking.

Here we can see a transition from men of an older type, with little freedom, to those who were becoming increasingly free. This former determinism was bound up with the fact that on going to sleep, and on awaking, men had some perception of the Guardian of the Threshold, who stood there giving warning. Now, in place of this unfree situation, we have the incapacity of present-day consciousness to see into the spiritual world, which signifies an increasing freedom: herein lies a principle of human progress.

Hence we can say that, looked at from the spiritual world, people have lost a great deal precisely because in the course of their evolution they have had to be led towards freedom. What has been lost, however, must be regained, in the way that Anthroposophy, for example, would show. And now is the historical point of time when a striving to regain what has been lost must begin.

But everywhere, among people of very various kinds, there still rises up something inherited from an earlier age, when man's relation to the spiritual world was different. So that to-day, in the consciousness of those given up to intellectualism, there is a strict frontier set up, as a rule, between what they experience in the world of the senses and what lies beyond in the spiritual world. The frontier is in fact so rigorously maintained that even enlightened spirits are unwilling to admit the possibility of crossing it.

In my brief sketch of the way into the super-sensible world, I have indicated that it is possible to cross the frontier and to enter that world in full consciousness. But as a relic from the time when a man entered the spiritual world in a more instinctive, unconscious way, and even in his day-consciousness had more in him of the spiritual world, there still rises up into his evolution to-day a certain heritage from the past. And this is something we must imperatively understand through conscious spiritual cognition. For, if not rightly understood, it manifests itself in many deceptive ways, and in these matters such errors can become very dangerous. Hence in the course of these lectures, intended to describe the evolution of man and of the world, I must speak about this question of a boundary, where what was natural and taken for granted among the people of former epochs re-appears to-day, and can lead to dangerous illusions in those who have not the requisite clear knowledge for dealing with it.

Among these phenomena, situated for ordinary consciousness at the frontier between the sense-world and the super-sensible, are visions. I mean the visions where, in a state of hallucination more or less controlled by the person concerned, pictures arise which have quite definite forms and colours—they may even seem to speak—but correspond to nothing external. For normal perception, the object is outside; the image, in a shadowy way within; and a person is perfectly conscious of how the shadowy, conceptual image is related to the external world. The vision arises of itself, claiming to be a reality on its own account. A person subject to such visions becomes incapable of estimating rightly what reality there is in the pictures which appear before him without his initiative.

How, then do visions come about? They come about because the human being still possesses the capacity for carrying over into his waking world what he experiences during sleep, and of bringing it into conceptual form just as he does with his sense-perceptions. Whether, after perceiving a clock that exists physically for the senses, I make an inner picture of it, or whether, after experiencing in a dream the form and inner reality of an external object, I wake up and make a picture of my experience, the only difference between the two processes is that I am in control of one of them—hence the image of it is more shadowy and flat—while the other process is outside my control. In the latter case I carry nothing of the real present into my conceptual life, but something experienced when the soul was outside in a past—perhaps long past—sleep, and out of this dream-experience I build up a vision.

In an earlier age of human evolution, when the relation of people both to the physical world and to the spiritual world was ruled by instinct, such visions were perfectly natural; it is human progress that has made them the uncontrolled, illusory things they are to-day. We must therefore be quite clear that modern man lacks something: when he has some experience in the spiritual world during sleep and is returning to the physical world, he no longer hears the warning of the Guardian of the Threshold: “All that you have experienced in the spiritual world you should note well and carry back to the physical world.” If he does carry it back, he will know what is contained in the vision. But if the vision appears to him only in the physical world, without his realising that he has brought it back from the spiritual world, so that he fails to understand what it really is, then he is without guidance, and at the mercy of illusion where his visionary experience is concerned. So we can say: Visions come about because a man carries over unawares his sleep-experience into his waking life, and in his waking life he then forms conceptions of the experiences—conceptions which are much richer in content than the ordinary shadowy ones, and these he builds up into vivid visions complete with colour and sound.

Another thing that comes about is this. A man carries over into his life of sleep the feelings and perceptions of the kind he has in physical life. Then, when he is in the act of carrying this over into the open sea of sleep-life, he is warned to be careful not to do anything foolish. If the sleep is very light—a far more common condition in ordinary life than is realised, for we are often just a little asleep when walking about quite normally, and we ought to be more aware of this—we may then, without noticing it, carry over the Threshold our everyday faculty of perception. Then arise those obscure feelings, as if one were inwardly watching something happening in the future, either to oneself or to someone else, and we have a premonition. Thus, whereas a vision comes about when experience during sleep is carried down into waking life and the threshold is crossed unconsciously, premonition comes about when we are in a light sleep without realising it and, thinking we are awake, carry over the Threshold, again ignoring the Guardian, our daytime experience. This, however, lies so deep down in the subconscious that it is not noticed. We are, of course, at all times connected with the whole world; and if we could draw this knowledge up out of the subconscious, we should be able to draw up much else also.

You will now see how, because these legacies from the evolutionary past can still be experienced, visions arise on one side of the Threshold, premonitions on the other. But a man may also halt at the Threshold and still not notice the Guardian. There may then be moments when inwardly, in his soul, he is as if he were enchanted. But the word “enchanted” does not quite meet the case, for he is not enchanted in the sense we generally associate with the term—it is rather that his attitude of soul undergoes a change. When he comes to the Threshold in such a way that he still perceives what is in the physical world while already perceiving what is in the super-sensible, he experiences something which is widespread in certain regions of the Earth—second sight, a half-conscious experience at the Threshold. Hence to sum up these legacies from the past, these phenomena in a man's life when his consciousness is dimmed, we have those appearing on this side of the Threshold as visions; those appearing beyond the Threshold as premonitions; those actually at the Threshold as second sight.

To-morrow I shall have to speak in greater detail of the characteristics of these three regions, going on from these to describe the worlds dimly indicated by vision, premonition and second sight—worlds which new knowledge will have to bring into the full clarity of enhanced consciousness.

Das Geistwalten in der Natur

Gestern versuchte ich zu zeigen, wie die Verwirrung des Traumes dadurch entsteht, daß der Mensch unbewußt oder halbbewußt aus der physisch-sinnlichen Welt mit Überschreiten der sogenannten Schwelle durch den Schlaf einzieht in die übersinnliche, in die geistige Welt, und daß er, indem er in diese geistige Welt einzieht, drei Welten gegenübersteht: der Erinnerung an die gewöhnliche physische Welt, der seelischen Welt und der eigentlich geistigen, der spirituellen Welt. Die inneren und äußeren Ereignisse, die wir im gewöhnlichen Dasein, im Erdendasein erleben, sind zusammengezogen aus den Offenbarungen aller drei Welten. Aber sie spalten sich, wenn wir durch den Schlaf in die übersinnliche Welt einziehen, und dann bezieht man dasjenige, was man erlebt, nicht auf die richtige Welt. Dadurch entsteht für das gewöhnliche Erinnerungsbewußtsein die Täuschung, die Illusion im Traume. Das imaginative Bewußtsein sieht den Traum nicht bloß so, sondern es sieht den Traum, indem es auf ihn hinschaut, wie man im physischen Raum auf einen entfernten Punkt hinschaut. So schaut man in der Zeit durch die Imagination auf ein anderes hin. Man erinnert sich also nicht bloß an dasjenige, was geträumt ist, sondern man schaut auf dasjenige, was geträumt ist, hin. Dadurch bekommt man erst die wahre Vorstellung des Traumes. Und dadurch erkennt man, daß der Traum nur dann richtig interpretiert wird, wenn man ihn nicht auf die naturalistisch-physische Welt bezieht, sondern wenn man seine Zusammenhänge auf die geistige, und vor allen Dingen in den meisten Fällen auf die moralische Welt bezieht. Der Traum will nicht dasjenige sagen, was er ausdrückt, wenn man seinen Inhalt physisch interpretiert. Er will dasjenige sagen, wozu man kommt, wenn man seinen Inhalt moralisch-geistig interpretiert.

Nehmen wir zum Beispiel den Traum, an dem ich gestern die Verwirrung gezeigt habe, den Traum, wo man sich unbekleidet in furchtbarem Schamgefühl auf einem Spaziergang vor vielen Leuten befindet. Ich habe Sie darauf aufmerksam gemacht, wie durch die Tatsache, daß man drei Welten gegenübersteht, die ganze Seelenverfassung innerhalb des Traumbewußtseins zustande kommt. Aber sehen wir einen solchen Traum einmal richtig an, dann müssen wir sagen, es offenbart sich uns ein Inhalt, der sinnlich ausschaut, aber in dem Sinnlichen will sich uns Geistig-Moralisches offenbaren. Und so sollte derjenige, der einen solchen Traum hat, nicht auf den unmittelbaren, in Sinnesbildern erfolgenden Verlauf hinschauen, sondern er sollte sich fragen: Habe ich vielleicht zuweilen in meinem Tagesbewußtsein die Eigenschaft, mich nicht mit voller innerer Wahrheit den anderen Menschen zu geben? Habe ich nicht vielleicht im Gebrauche, mich zu sehr den konventionellen Bekleidungsstücken zu fügen und mich eigentlich einzuhüllen in allerlei, nun, was man so in der Außenwelt konventionell tut? Und habe ich nicht die Eigentümlichkeit, dadurch gerade manchmal mich nicht ehrlich zu geben im tiefen Innersten, sondern etwas unwahr zu geben?

Wenn der Mensch nach einer solchen Richtung seine Gedanken bewegt, dann kommt er allmählich zu der moralisch-geistigen Interpretation des Traumes. Er bezieht dasjenige, was ihm erschienen ist, nicht auf die naturalistische Welt, sondern auf die geistige Welt, und er sagt sich: Indem ich hinübergegangen bin in die übersinnliche Welt während des Schlafes, traten geistige Wesenheiten aus der übersinnlichen Welt an mich heran und sagten mir, ich solle mich nicht in einer falschen, unwahren Bekleidung geben, sondern ich solle mich so geben, wie ich seelisch- geistig als Mensch innerlich bin.

Dann, wenn man in dieser Weise den Traum interpretiert, kommt man auf seine moralisch-geistige Wahrheit. Und so sind eine ganze Anzahl von Träumen zu interpretieren.

Die Menschen einer älteren Menschheitsgeschichte, die auch in ihrer traumhaften Bildlichkeit beim Einschlafen des Hüters der Schwelle gewahr wurden, die nahmen von ihm die Mahnung auf, nicht dasjenige in die geistige Welt hineinzutragen, was in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt lebt. Würden also die älteren Menschen davon geträumt haben, daß sie unbekleidet auf der Straße herumgehen, so würde es ihnen gar nicht eingefallen sein, die Interpretation zu wählen, daß man sich da schämen muß, denn das gilt für die physische Welt und für den physischen Menschenleib, sondern sie hätten die Mahnung berücksichtigt: Dasjenige, was in der physischen Welt gilt, gilt nicht in der geistigen Welt; dasjenige, was in der geistigen Welt erscheint, das sagen Götter zu dem Menschen. Daher muß man es als Aussage, als Offenbarung der Götter interpretieren. Es ist also das Naturalistisch-Nehmen des Traumes erst im Verlauf der Menschheitsentwickelung eingetreten.

Oder nehmen wir einen anderen Traum, der sehr häufig vorkommt. Da träumt der Mensch, er gehe einen Weg dahin. Er geht in einen Wald hinein. Nach einiger Zeit merkt er, jetzt hat er sich verirrt, jetzt kann er nicht weiter. Er versucht weiterzugehen, kommt dahin, wo nun kein Weg mehr ist, wo nur Bäume sind. Er ist in einer gewissen inneren Unruhe.

Nun nimmt der Mensch mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein einen solchen Traum sehr leicht so, wie er sich einfach seinem Inhalte nach gibt. Aber ein solcher Traum, wenn man ihn so nimmt, daß man die naturalistischen Zusammenhänge vergißt, der zeigt einem gerade aus der geistigen Welt heraus: Die Verwirrung, in die du da hineingekommen bist, die liegt in deinen Gedanken. Nur gesteht man sich im Wachbewußtsein oftmals nicht gerne, wie verworren die Gedanken sind, wie sie sehr leicht auf Stellen auftreffen, wo man nicht mehr weiter kann, wo man immer im Kreise herumgeht. Das ist die Eigentümlichkeit, die insbesondere heute in unserer gegenwärtigen Zivilisation sehr viele Menschen haben. Sie glauben aufgeklärt zu denken, aber sie tanzen im Kreise mit ihren Gedanken herum, entweder um konventionell Äußerliches oder um die Atome herum, die sie sich gedanklich konstruieren, oder um irgend etwas. Der Mensch ist natürlich nicht geneigt in seinem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein, sich das wirklich zu gestehen.

Der Traum ist eine in sinnlichen Bildern erfolgende Offenbarung für dasjenige, was der Mensch so eigentlich ist. Die geistigen Wesenheiten sagen dem Menschen im Traume das. Und wenn er dasjenige, was er auf solche Weise im Traum erlebt, in richtiger Selbsterkenntnis aufnimmt, so wird seine Selbsterkenntnis durch den Traum ganz besonders gefördert.

Eine Eigentümlichkeit vieler Menschen ist auch diese: sie überlassen sich demjenigen, was ihrem Instinkt, ihren Trieben gemäß ihnen sympathisch ist. Sie finden zum Beispiel es sehr angenehm, dies oder jenes zu tun; dann gestehen sie sich nicht, daß ihnen das für ihr Gefühl, für ihr sinnliches Wohlsein angenehm ist. Da erfinden sie irgend etwas, und sie interpretieren im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein dasjenige, was eigentlich nur ihrer Annehmlichkeit, ihrem Wohlbefinden entspricht, so, daß sie das, nun, ich will sagen, aus anthroposophischen, aus okkulten, aus esoterischen Gründen unternehmen müssen, daß darinnen eine hohe Mission liege oder dergleichen. Dann deckt man - das geschieht ja im Leben außerordentlich häufig — mit einer solchen Selbstrechtfertigung unendlich vieles zu, was da in den Untergründen des animalischen Lebens wühlt und waltet. Der Traum, der seine sinnlichen Bilder drüben wählt, aber in diesen sinnlichen Bildern eine Offenbarung desjenigen sein will, was eigentlich in Wirklichkeit auch geistig-seelisch im Menschen waltet, der zeigt das Bild, wie der Mensch von wilden Tieren verfolgt wird und davonläuft und ihnen nicht entkommen kann. Wir werden seelisch-moralisch einen solchen Traum richtig interpretieren, nicht wenn wir seinen sinnlich-physischen Inhalt nehmen, sondern wenn wir ihn als Selbsterkenntnis nehmen; wenn wir in ihm eine Mahnung sehen, einmal auf die inneren Wahrheiten unseres Wesens zu schauen, ob diese nicht, wenn auch in schwacher Weise, den Trieben des Animalischen mehr gleichen als demjenigen, was wir uns in unseren Idealen vorzaubern.

So kann der Traum in der mannigfaltigsten Weise ein Mahner, ein Zurechtweiser sein. Und er kann, wenn er richtig nicht auf die untere, sondern auf die höhere Welt bezogen wird, durchaus richtunggebend in das menschliche Leben eingreifen, und dann kann man sehen, wie der Mensch in der Tat durch die bewußte Imagination darauf kommt, wie der Traum, der sich ja natürlich auch dem imaginativen Erkennen zunächst in seinen sinnlichen Bildern zeigt, sich metamorphosiert und sich ganz in moralisch-geistiges Geschehen verwandelt.

So sehen wir, daß der Traum etwas ist, das, ich möchte sagen, schon das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein hineinführt in die geistige Welt. Er muß nur richtig genommen werden, dieser Traum. Aber ich habe ja auch gesagt, daß, wenn wir uns imaginativ in die geistige Welt erheben, wir da nicht in derselben Seelenverfassung sind wie hier im physischen Erdendasein. Im physischen Erdendasein stehe ich hier, und der Tisch steht da, ist außer mir. Es ist eine physische Trennung zwischen mir und dem Tische. In dem Augenblicke, wo ich hinaufkomme in die geistigen Welten, ist eine solche Trennung nicht da. Da bin ich in dem geistigen Wesen drinnen. Es ist nicht so, wie wenn ich hier stehen würde und der Tisch dort stehen würde, sondern so, wie wenn ich mein ganzes Wesen über den Tisch ausdehnen würde und der Tisch mich aufnehmen würde. In der geistigen Welt ist es also so, daß wir durchaus in die Dinge untertauchen, die wir wahrnehmen. Daher dürfen wir auch nicht dasjenige, was wir im Traume erleben, oder dann bewußt in der Imagination erleben, bloß beziehen auf unser Inneres, sondern wenn wir von dem, was im Traume webt und lebt, sprechen, können wir auch geisteswissenschaftlich mit dem Dichter sprechen: Aus Träumen ist die Welt gewoben -, und nicht aus dem Atomspiel, von dem die Wissenschaft träumt, sondern aus dem, was ich als das griechische «Chaos», als unser Traumesweben, als unser Weben in bewußter Imagination bezeichnet habe als ein SubjektivObjektives; nicht bloß subjektiv ist die Welt daraus gewoben. So daß wir gewisse Zustände der Welt durchaus aus diesem Traumesweben heraus erklären müssen.

Daher dürfen wir nicht, wenn wir zum Beispiel einen Keim vor uns haben, diesen Keim erklären wollen aus physischen und chemischen Gesetzen. Kein Wissenschafter, der nur physische und chemische Gesetze in einem Keim oder Embryo erblickt, kann den Keim oder den Embryo erklären, denn in dem Keim und in dem Embryo träumt die Natur. Da liegt das zugrunde, was im Traume webt und lebt. Legen Sie daher einen Pflanzenkeim hierher, so webt und lebt in diesem Pflanzenkeim ein Träumen. Da gelangen Sie mit dem Intellekt nicht hinein, der nur Naturgesetze überblickt, da müssen Sie mit dem an Menschenkraft hineinkommen, was sonst im Traume oder in der bewußten Imagination lebt.

Aber so etwas, wie es im Keime lebt, lebt während unseres ganzen Erdendaseins in unserem gesamten Organismus. Und in unserem menschlichen Organismus müssen wir daher nicht bloß die Wirkung von chemischen und physischen Kräften suchen, sondern wir müssen, wenn wir den Menschen haben als physische Wesenheit, diesen Menschen mit seinen äußeren physischen Konturen ansehen als dasjenige, was eben in der irdisch-physischen Sinneswelt lebt. Aber hinter dem lebt ein anderes, was nicht ein Auge sehen kann, nicht ein Ohr hören kann, insofern sie physisch sind, was aber die Imagination schauen kann, und was auch im Traume als unbewußte Imagination erlebt wird. Im ganzen Menschenleibe träumt die Natur. Sie denkt nicht nur so, wie der Mensch mit seinem Intellekt denkt, sondern es träumt die Natur. Und aus dem Traume heraus werden unsere Verdauungskräfte geleitet, werden unsere Wachstumskräfte geleitet. Alles wird aus dem Traume heraus gebildet. Wenn wir zurückblicken im Erdendasein, da gehen wir zumeist von unserer Zeit aus, von der Zeit - ja, wie sollen wir unsere Zeit nennen? Wir können sie von einem einzelnen Symptom nennen, sagen wir, wir gehen aus von unserer Zeit der Schreibmaschine. Also gehen wir aus von der Schreibmaschinenzeit, kommen dann, indem wir zurückgehen, zu der Zeit, als zuerst gedruckt worden ist, gehen dann weiter in der Evolution zurück, kommen meinetwillen in die Römerzeit, in die Griechenzeit zurück, kommen in die orientalische Zeit zurück, aus der die Veden sind. Dann aber verlassen uns die äußeren Urkunden. Wenn noch so viele Schätze aus ägyptischen Königsgräbern ausgegraben werden, es kommt die Zeit, wo uns die äußeren Urkunden verlassen, wo wir zurückgehen müssen durch bloße imaginative und inspirierte Geist-Erkenntnis. Und dann kommen wir an eine Grenze, hinter welcher weiter in der Vergangenheit ein Unbestimmtes für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein liegt, so wie hinter dem Traum der Schlaf liegt. Ja, wir kommen in der Tat, indem wir zurückgehen in der Zeit- und Weltentwickelung, auf diesen Schleier des Traumes, wie wir ihn jede Nacht erfahren können.

Und kommen wir dann dahin mit bewußter Imagination, so leuchtet dahinter auf geistige Art die fernere Vergangenheit auf. Aber diese sieht auch anders aus als diejenige Welt, die wir mit unserem Intellekt und durch Urkunden erkennen können. Diese fernere Vergangenheit, die hinter einem Traumesschleier liegt in der Weltenevolution, zeigt uns den Menschen in einer unmittelbaren Verbindung mit den göttlichen Geistern. Da ist der Mensch selbst noch göttlich-seelisches Wesen, und die göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten, die zu anderem bestimmt sind, als sich auf Erden zu verkörpern, verkehren mit ihm, der seine Verkörperung auf Erden erwartet.

Wenn man also historisch zurückblickt bis zu diesem Chaosschleier, bis zu diesem Traumschleier in ferner Vergangenheit hinter den Jahrtausenden, von denen ich in den letzten Tagen gesprochen habe, dann sieht man den unmittelbaren Verkehr der göttlichen Geister mit der damals noch geistigen Seele im Menschen, mit dem Menschen, der dann auf der Erde voll wohnen sollte.

Und dann werden wir sehen, .wie diese Dinge, die mit der Menschheitsentwickelung zusammenhängen, wiederum mit der kosmischen Entwickelung auf der anderen Seite in einem Verhältnisse stehen. Da wo dieser Schleier erscheint für die inspirierte Imagination in einer fernen Vergangenheit, da sehen wir, wie auch innerhalb der kosmischen Entwickelung - wir werden genauer darüber zu sprechen haben - von der Erde, die vorher mit dem Monde vereint war, der Mond sich abspaltet und in den Weltenraum hinausgeht, um dann die Erde zu umkreisen. Wir blicken also zurück zu einem Traumesschleier, bis zu einem imaginativen Schleier, schauen durch und finden hinter ihm die Erde noch mit dem Monde vereint, die Menschen unmittelbar im Verkehre mit den göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten. Wir finden, wie in der Zeit, als dieser Traumesschleier erscheint für die retrospektive Beobachtung in der Imagination, wir sehen da, wie in diesem Punkte das wichtige kosmische Ereignis liegt, daß sich der Mond in ganz anderer Gestalt aus der Erde herausschiebt und in den Weltenraum hineingeht als eigener Weltenkörper. So daß wir zurückblicken auf eine Erden- und Menschheits- und Weltenentwickelung, in der diese noch mit dem Monde vereinigt war; aber es war bereits der Mensch da, nur in einem geistig-seelischeren Zustande.

Wir finden überhaupt, indem wir weiter und weiter zurückblikken, keine Epoche in der Weltenentwickelung, in der wir nicht auch die Anfänge des Menschen finden würden. So daß wir nicht vom Standpunkte einer geistigen Wissenschaft aus sagen können, die Erde habe sich durch Jahrmillionen rein unorganisch oder mit niederen Wesen nur entwickelt, und dann sei der Mensch entstanden; sondern wir finden den Menschen, indem wir zurückgehen, in anderen Formen immer mit jener Weltenevolution vereint, zu der wir aber zurücksehen können, wenn wir in dieser Weise aufsteigen zu dem, was uns hinter dem Chaosschleier des Traumes, hinter dem Schleier der bewußten Imagination auch als göttlich-geistige Wesenhaftigkeit der Welt erscheinen kann.


Wenn wir, wie ich oben gesagt habe, auf einen Keim, auf etwas Embryonales hinsehen, so sehen wir für die imaginative Erkenntnis eine Art Traumesweben in diesem Embryonalen, in diesem Keimhaften. Und wir sehen, wie etwas Reales, das aber ist wie Traumbilder, die Materie in dem Keim, in den Embryonen beherrscht. So wird derjenige, welcher imstande ist, das Geistige der Welt zu schauen, dieses Geistige überall finden, aber in mannigfaltigster Gestalt. Gerade das Geistige geht die verschiedensten Metamorphosen ein. Und man kann dann, wenn man einmal so recht begriffen hat, wie im Keime der Pflanzen, in den Embryonen der Tiere ein Traumesweben und -wesen waltet, man kann dann ganz berechtigt die Frage aufwerfen: Wie ist das nun mit der scheinbar ganz toten mineralischen Welt? Wenn wir von hier aus zu unseren Fenstern hinausblicken oder auf die Straße gehen, sehen wir die kahlen Berge, die scheinbar ganz leblose Welt, und wir müssen uns fragen: Wenn in dem Pflanzenkeim, den wir hinlegen vor uns, ein Traumesbild waltet, wie ist es mit den ausgebreiteten Gesteins- und Bergesmassen? Wie ist es mit allem Leblosen, das den Boden bildet, auf den unsere Füße treten in der physischen Welt? Wenn wir in den Pflanzen ein Geistwalten finden, das verhältnismäßig leicht in die Materie eingreift im träumenden Weben, so finden wir mit imaginativer Erkenntnis in den Gesteinsmassen auch ein Geistiges, ein Geistiges, das aus konkreten einzelnen Wesen besteht.

Aber dieses Geistige, wir finden es nun nicht in einem träumenden, wir finden es in einem voll schlafenden Zustande. Sie müssen sich nicht einen allgemeinen schlafenden Nebel durch die Gesteinsmassen und Berge denken, wenn Sie hinausschauen auf die Berge hier, sondern konkrete einzelne Wesen, geistige Wesen, welche in den Gesteinsmassen schlafen. Wir werden später sehen, wie diese geistigen Wesenheiten entstanden sind durch Abspaltung von höheren geistigen Wesenheiten, von Wesenheiten mit einem hohen Bewußtsein, die aber diese andern Wesen, die in ihrem gegenwärtigen Lebenszustande ein nur schlafendes Bewußtsein haben, von sich abgespalten haben, und wie diese Elementarwesen in der leblosen Welt überall draußen eben schlafen. Wir gehen also über das Gesteinsmassiv der Berge und sollten uns bewußt sein: da in dem Boden schläft überall geistiges Weben und Wesen in einzelnen konkreten Geistgestalten. Und wir werden gewahr, wenn wir dieses Schlafen der geistwebenden Gestalten in der leblosen Welt verfolgen, daß in diesem Schlaf der Elementarwesen eine gewisse Stimmung lebt. Die Imagination zeigt uns diese Wesen. Die Inspiration belehrt uns, daß in diesen Wesen eine gewisse Stimmung lebt. Dasjenige an Stimmung lebt in diesen Wesen der Berge, der Felsen, des Erdbodens, auf dem wir herumgehen, dasjenige lebt in der Stimmung dieser Wesen, was wir in uns finden, wenn wir richtig auf etwas warten, erwartungsvolle Stimmung haben. Und so durchsetzt dieses seelischgeistige Weben und Wesen, das in den scheinbar leblosen Gesteinsmassen ist, eine Stimmung der Erwartung.

Diese Wesen erwarten nämlich — das lehrt uns die Inspiration, insbesondere die Intuition, wenn wir uns in das Innere dieser Wesen versetzen - ihr Aufwachen in Träumen. Alles dasjenige, was uns da als Gebirge anschaut, das erwartet, daß es später träumen werde, und daß es die Erdenmaterie, die zerpulvert ist zu lebloser Materie, einstmals wird ergreifen können im träumenden Bewußtsein, embryonisch keimhaft wird machen können, aus den Felsen, aus den Bergen, die wir sehen, wiederum Pflanzliches wird herauszaubern können. Gerade diese Wesenheiten bringen uns vor das Seelenleben eine wunderbare Magie der Natur, ein Schaffen aus der Geistigkeit heraus.

Und so kann uns werden, nicht vor irgendeiner Bildhaftigkeit, sondern vor wahrer wirklicher Erkenntnis, das Herumgehen unter solchen Felsen oder über solchen Felsen, dasjenige selbst, was solche Felsen in ihrem physischen Lichte zurückwerfen, das kann uns werden zu einer Offenbarung schlafender, in der Zukunft zum Träumen, später zum vollen Wachleben aufwachender elementarischer Naturwesen, die einstmals eben reine Geistwesen sein werden.

Die physische Materie in der Pflanze ist noch so, daß das geistige Traumweben diese Materie durchdringen kann. Diese Materie [der Felsen] zerbröckelt. Alles Leblose - wenn wir zurückblicken in der Imagination und Inspiration, merken wir das - ist aus Lebendigem entstanden. Aber indem das Lebendige eben leblos wird, wird hineinversenkt diese schlafende Geistigkeit. Und diese schlafende Geistigkeit wartet in dem Leblosen so lange, bis sie zum Träumen erwachen und dieses Leblose in ein kosmisches Embryonalleben überführen kann.

Und die verschiedenen Orte, die verschiedenen Lokalitäten der Erde, zeigen in verschiedener Art dieses Schlafen dieser geistigen Wesenheiten in den Bergen, in der festen Erdrinde. Und da darf man sagen: in andrer Art schlafen diese ihre Zukunft erwartenden Wesen in solchen Gegenden der Erde, wie zum Beispiel hier eine ist, als in anderen Gegenden der Erde.

Hier gerade in Penmaenmawr ist eine Gegend, wo durch besondere Erdenkonfiguration, durch die Art und Weise, wie das Gesteinsmaterial geworden ist, diese schlafenden Wesen bis zum Luftförmigen vordringen können, ja bis in das Licht sich hineinverweben können, während das in anderen Erdengegenden lange nicht so der Fall ist. So daß man, wenn man hier das Weben nicht bloß der äußeren materialistischen Luftatmosphäre nimmt, sondern das Walten der seelischen Atmosphäre, die die Luft durchdringt wie die Menschenseele den menschlichen Körper, dann gerade hier in Penmaenmawr findet, daß dieses Seelische der Atmosphäre anders ist als sonstwo. Ich will Ihnen dieses an einem einzelnen Beispiel veranschaulichen.

Nehmen Sie an, die imaginative Erkenntnis bemüht sich, in einer bestimmten Gegend der Erde die Imagination, so wie das eben geschieht, vor sich hinzustellen. Das bleibt mehr oder weniger schwer oder leicht stehen im Bewußtsein. Man hat in verschiedenen Gegenden verschiedene Möglichkeit, daß die Imaginationen stehenbleiben vor dem Bewußtsein oder sich schnell auflösen. Hier ist eine Gegend, wo die Imaginationen merkwürdig lange stehenbleiben, so daß sie zu einer intensiven Bildlichkeit erwachsen.

Druidenweise oder ähnliche Leute haben sich gerade solche Gegenden ausgesucht für ihre Tempel, für ihre Heiligtümer, in denen diese Eigentümlichkeit vorhanden war, daß die Imaginationen nicht sogleich zerrinnen, den Wolken gleich, die gleich auseinandergehen, sondern daß die Imaginationen stehenbleiben können. Und daher ist es in einer begreiflichen Weise geschehen, daß besonders solche Stätten für Druidenheiligtümer in verhältnismäßig späten Zeiten wohl noch aufgesucht worden sind.

Man hat hier eben immer gefühlt, man habe nicht so große Schwierigkeiten mit dem Stehenbleiben der Imaginationen. Natürlich hat alles seine Licht- und Schattenseiten. Die Inspiration ist gerade durch die stehenbleibende Imagination wiederum schwieriger, aber dadurch auch kraftvoller. Dadurch auch ergießt sich hier dasjenige, was aus der geistigen Welt zu sagen ist, ich möchte sagen, mit großer Intensität, aber auch schwerer und auch gewichtiger in die Worte hinein.

So kann man durchaus auch in geistiger Beziehung Differenzierungen merken über die Erde hin. Man könnte eine Landkarte zeichnen und könnte diejenigen Stätten aufmalen, an denen die Imaginationen besonders leicht stehenbleiben vor dem imaginativen Bewußtsein. Diejenigen Stätten der Erde, wo sie leicht vorüber gehen, könnte man mit einer anderen Farbe bestreichen. Man würde dadurch eine außerordentlich interessante Landkarte der Erde bekommen. Hier würde man eine besonders intensive Farbe für dasjenige auftragen müssen, was in der seelischen Atmosphäre waltet, eine glänzende, eine leuchtende, eine lebhafte Farbe.

Daher glaube ich wirklich, daß hier etwas empfunden werden kann von den Menschen, die an diesem Kurse teilnehmen, von einer, ich möchte sagen, elementar gegebenen esoterischen Stimmung. Die schaut zu den Fenstern herein, die begegnet uns hier auf den Spaziergängen, die ist da in einer ganz anderen Weise als woanders.

Daher bin ich den Veranstaltern dieses Kursus außerordentlich dankbar, daß wir auch einmal in einer solchen Gegend, wo einem sozusagen das Esoterische auf der Straße begegnet - sonst begegnet es einem ja auch, aber nicht so leicht im unmittelbaren Entgegentreten —, ich bin außerordentlich dankbar, daß unter mancherlei Stätten, an denen schon solche Kurse abgehalten werden konnten, auch diese ist, denn es stellt sich gerade dieser Kurs von dem Gesichtspunkte aus, den ich jetzt erörtert habe, in einer wunderschönen Weise auch in die Gesamtevolution der anthroposophischen Bewegung hinein.


Durch Schilderungen, wie ich sie gegeben habe, zeigt sich, wie zwischen der physisch-sinnlichen und der geistig-übersinnlichen Welt eine Grenze liegt, eine Grenze, die man mit einem gewissen Recht die Schwelle der geistigen Welt nennt (siehe Zeichnung S. 164). Und ich habe ja schon in der verschiedensten Art darauf aufmerksam gemacht, wie es geschehen muß, daß diese Schwelle überschritten werden kann. Nun, wir werden darüber noch im Genaueren zu sprechen haben. Aber Sie werden schon aus meinen Vorträgen ersehen haben, daß das Überschreiten dieser Schwelle in älteren Zeiten der Menschheitsentwickelung doch etwas anderes war als heute im gegenwärtigen historischen Augenblicke. Die Menschen konnten in älteren Epochen der Menschheitsentwickelung diese Schwelle deshalb in anderer Weise überschreiten, weil sie ein traumhaftes Bewußtsein auch während des Tages hatten, dadurch aber auch ein intensiveres Bewußtsein für das Übersinnliche, und so in der Art, wie ich es gekennzeichnet habe, beim Einschlafen und Aufwachen in einer halbbewußten, traumhaften Weise den Hüter der Schwelle passierten.

Darinnen besteht ein Übergang, den ich später noch zu schildern haben werde, von der älteren, mehr unfreien Menschheit zu der immer freier und freier werdenden Menschheit: daß die Determiniertheit, die für die Menschen damit verbunden war, daß sie bei jedem Einschlafen und Aufwachen etwas von dem Hüter der Schwelle wahrnahmen, der ihnen als Mahner dastand, daß diese Unfreiheit der Menschen, in der sie damals waren, übergegangen ist in ein Nichthineinschauen in die geistige Welt für das Gegenwartsbewußtsein, dadurch aber in ein Freier- und Freierwerden; darinnen liegt ein Prinzip des menschlichen Fortschrittes.

Man kann also sagen, daß die Menschen von der geistigen Welt aus gesehen manches verloren haben, gerade deshalb, weil sie in ihrer Evolution zur Freiheit geführt werden mußten. Nun, das Verlorene muß in der Art, wie es zum Beispiel auch die Anthroposophie zeigen will, wieder gewonnen werden. Und es ist heute der historische Zeitpunkt, wo das Streben nach dieser Wiedergewinnung einsetzen muß.

Aber überall ragen noch bei den verschiedensten Menschen Erbschaften aus der alten Zeit, in der die Menschen eben ein anderes Verhältnis zu der übersinnlichen Welt hatten, in unsere Gegenwart herein. So daß bei dem Menschen, der heute von den intellektualistischen Kräften ganz ergriffen worden ist, in der Regel im Bewußtsein eine scharfe Grenze dasteht zwischen demjenigen, was er in der sinnlichen Welt erlebt, und demjenigen, was drüben in der geistigen Welt liegt. Die Grenze ist so scharf, daß ja gerade aufgeklärte Geister der Gegenwart überhaupt nicht zugeben wollen, daß der Mensch diese Grenze überschreiten könne.

Ich habe ja schon angedeutet, indem ich wenigstens skizzenhaft die Wege hinein in diese übersinnliche Welt charakterisiert habe, daß diese Grenze überschritten werden kann, daß in vollbewußter Art der Mensch hineinkommen kann in diese Welt. Aber es ragen eben noch aus derjenigen Zeit, wo der Mensch in instinktiverer, unbewußterer Art hinübergekommen ist in die geistige Welt, wo er auch im Tagesbewußtsein noch mehr von dieser geistigen Welt in sich getragen hat, alte Erbgüter in die gegenwärtige Menschheitsentwickelung hinein. Und wir finden sie so, daß wir sie vor allen Dingen durch bewußte Geisteserkenntnis verstehen müssen. Denn versteht man sie nicht in der richtigen Weise, so zeigen sie sich in der mannigfaltigsten Weise den Menschen irrtümlich. Und dann kann der Irrtum gerade diesen Dingen gegenüber sehr gefährlich werden. Ich muß daher auf dem Wege dieser Vorträge, die die Menschheits- und Weltentwickelung zeigen wollen, auch diese Grenzfragen besprechen, in denen dasjenige, was einer älteren Menschheit das Selbstverständlich-Natürliche war, hereinragt in die Gegenwart, aber hier, wenn es nicht mit der entsprechenden klaren Erkenntnis behandelt wird, in gefährliche Illusionen hineinführen kann. |

Zu diesen Dingen, die durchaus für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein schon an der Grenze zwischen sinnlicher und übersinnlicher Welt stehen, gehören zum Beispiel die menschlichen Visionen, Visionen, wo in einer Art Halluzination, die mehr oder weniger aber von dem Menschen noch beherrscht wird, Bilder auftreten, die sich in einer ganz bestimmten Weise gestalten, die sogar farbig, hörbar werden können, die auch inhaltlich anderes in sich schließen können, denen aber zunächst so, wie sie sich vor das Bewußtsein hinstellen, nicht so äußere Dinge entsprechen, daß das Ding draußen wäre in derselben Art und Weise wie die Vision, die im Innern lebt. Für dasjenige, was man im Alltag wahrnimmt, ist draußen der Gegenstand; das Bild, sehr schattenhaft aber, im Innern. Und der Mensch ist sich vollbewußt, wie sich sein schattenhaftes Vorstellungsbild im Innern bezieht auf die äußere Welt. Die Vision tritt auf zunächst für sich, macht den Anspruch, in sich eine Realität zu tragen. Der Mensch kommt auch in eine Seelenlage, in der er nicht mehr fähig ist, nun den Realitätswert des Bildes, das auftritt, auftritt ohne sein Zutun, in der richtigen Weise zu beurteilen. Die erste Frage, die hier nun auftritt, gerade an dem Punkte der Vorträge, bei dem wir jetzt stehen, ist diese: Wie kommen Visionen zustande? Nun, Visionen kommen dadurch zustande, daß der Mensch noch in sich die Fähigkeit trägt, dasjenige, was er im Schlafe erlebt, hinüberzutragen in die wachende Welt, in der wachenden Welt es zur Vorstellung zu erheben, wie er sonst das zur Vorstellung erheben kann, was er von außen durch die Sinne wahrnimmt. Ob ich eine Uhr anschaue, die physisch-sinnliches Dasein hat, und mir ein inneres Bild mache, oder ob ich im Schlafe erlebt habe die Konfiguration, die innere Realität eines Außendinges und mir dann nach dem Erwachen ein Bild mache von dem, was ich erlebt habe, das sind in einer Beziehung zwei Vorgänge, die gar keinen anderen Unterschied haben, als daß ich den einen Vorgang beherrsche, daher das Bild abschatte, matt mache; in dem anderen Falle beherrsche ich den Vorgang nicht, ich trage nicht etwas Gegenwärtiges in mein Vorstellungsleben herein, sondern etwas, was ich im vorigen oder vorvorigen oder noch weiter zurückliegenden Schlaf erlebt habe, als die Seele draußen war; und ich bilde mir die Vision. Solche Visionen waren für eine ältere Zeit der Menschheitsentwickelung, die instinktiv das Verhältnis zu der physischen, zu der geistigen Welt beherrscht hat, etwas ganz Natürliches, und sie sind durch den Fortschritt der Menschheit das geworden, was sie heute sind: etwas Unbeherrschtes, etwas Illusionäres. Daher muß man dem ganzen verständnisvoll gegenüberstehen, denn der heutige Mensch hat etwas nicht: wenn er in der geistigen Welt schlafend etwas erlebt und zurückgeht durch das Wachen in die physische Welt, so hört er nicht den Mahner, den Hüter der Schwelle: Du sollst alles dasjenige, was du in der geistigen Welt erlebt hast, dir merken und in die physische Welt hinübertragen. — Trägt man es hinüber, dann weiß man, was in der Vision enthalten ist. Tritt die Vision nur in der physischen Welt auf, ohne daß man weiß, wie man sie herübergetragen und was man herübergetragen hat aus der geistigen Welt, so ist man zunächst unbeherrscht und dadurch leicht in Illusionen befangen gegenüber dem visionären Erleben. So daß man sagen kann: Visionen entstehen dadurch, daß der Mensch unbewußt Erlebnisse des Schlafes herüberträgt in das Tagleben und daß ihm das Tagleben diese Schlaferlebnisse zu Vorstellungen gestaltet, die dann innerlich viel gesättigter, viel inhaltsvoller sind als die gewöhnlichen Vorstellungen, die schattenhaft sind; indem der Mensch solche Vorstellungen herüberträgt, macht er sie zu solchen lebhaften, farbtönenden Vorstellungen.

Eine andere Art ist diese, daß der Mensch dasjenige, was er hier im physischen Leben fühlt und empfindet, die Art und Weise, wie er hier fühlt und empfindet, herüberträgt in das Schlafesleben. Dann wird er ja, wenn er es sozusagen in das offene Meer des Schlafeslebens hinüberträgt, drüben schon ermahnt werden, daß er keinen Unfug treibt. Wenn aber der Schlaf ein ganz leiser ist, wie man ihn viel mehr hat, als man glaubt - wenn man durchs gewöhnliche Leben geht, schläft man manchmal ein bißchen, ganz ein bißchen; dies sollte man überhaupt mehr beachten, dieses Ein-bißchen-Schlafen -, wenn man so ein bißchen schläft, dann trägt man, auch ohne daß man es bemerkt, über die Schwelle das alltägliche Empfinden. Und dann entstehen jene dunklen Gefühle, als ob man irgend etwas, was in der Zukunft mit einem selbst oder mit einem anderen Menschen geschieht, innerlich merkte. Die Ahnung, sie entsteht auf diesem Wege. Während also die Vision dann entsteht, wenn man herüberträgt in das wache Tagesleben das Schlaferlebnis, indem man unbewußt herüber über die Schwelle geht mit dem Schlaferleben, so entsteht die Ahnung, wenn man im ganz leisen, unbemerkten Schlaf ist, so daß man glaubt, man sei wach, und, wiederum ignorierend den Hüter der Schwelle, dasjenige hinüberträgt, was man eigentlich schon im gewöhnlichen Tageserleben trägt. Aber es liegt das so tief unter dem Bewußtsein, daß man es nicht merkt. Man steht nämlich immer mit der ganzen Welt in Verbindung. Und würde man das heraufholen können, daß man mit der ganzen Welt in Verbindung steht, so würde man manches heraufholen können.

Wenn man hier dasjenige hinüberträgt, was drüben über der Schwelle liegt, ignorierend den Hüter der Schwelle, so entsteht die Vision:

So kann man also sagen: Wenn hier [durch eine gelbe Linie angedeutet] die Schwelle ist, an der der Hüter steht, dann kommt die Vision zustande, wenn man herüberträgt aus dem Übersinnlichen dasjenige, was man drüben erlebt hat. Und wenn man dasjenige, was man hier erlebt in der Sinneswelt, hinüberträgt in die geistige Welt in diesem leisen Schlafe, dann entsteht das, was man im Deut sehen Ahnung nennt.

Und nun sehen Sie, daß mit diesen Erbgütern, die der Mensch erleben kann, herüberkommend aus der alten Evolution, er dasteht hier herüben mit der Vision, und hier drüben mit der Ahnung. Er kann aber auch gerade an der Grenze stehen, an der Schwelle, und nicht bemerken den Hüter der Schwelle. Diese Momente, die können auch auftreten, wo der Mensch innerlich seelisch, ich möchte sagen, wie gebannt ist; aber «gebannt» ist hier nicht ein sehr glücklicher Ausdruck, weil man nicht so gebannt ist, wie man sich das Bannen gewöhnlich vorstellt, sondern man ist nur mit der Seele in einer bestimmten Seelenlage drinnen. Wenn man hier an der Schwelle steht, so daß man gewissermaßen noch dasjenige empfindet, was in der physischen Welt ist, schon dasjenige empfindet, was in der übersinnlichen Welt ist, dann lebt man in dem, was ja auch in gewissen Lokalitäten der Erde sehr verbreitet ist, was man nennen kann die Deuteroskopie oder das zweite Gesicht: second sight. Das wird gerade an der Schwelle erlebt in einem halbbewußten Zustande. So daß man sagen kann: Diese alten Erbgüter sind entweder solche Erscheinungen im Menschenleben im herabgedämpften Bewußtsein, die auftreten diesseits der Schwelle als Vision, jenseits der Schwelle als Ahnung, gerade an der Schwelle als zweites. Gesicht.

Über die genauere Charakteristik dieser drei Gebiete werde ich dann noch morgen zu sprechen haben, um von da aus zu einer Charakteristik derjenigen Welten zu kommen, auf welche in einer dunklen Weise gerade durch Vision, Ahnung, zweites Gesicht hingedeutet wird, die aber durch eine neuere Erkenntnis zu voller Klarheit eines erhöhten Bewußtseins gebracht werden müssen.

The workings of the spirit in nature

Yesterday I tried to show how the confusion of dreams arises from the fact that man unconsciously or semi-consciously moves from the physical-sensual world into the supersensible, into the spiritual world by crossing the so-called threshold through sleep, and that by moving into this spiritual world he is confronted with three worlds: the memory of the ordinary physical world, the soul world and the actual spiritual world. The inner and outer events that we experience in ordinary existence, in earthly existence, are drawn together from the revelations of all three worlds. But they split when we enter the supersensible world through sleep, and then we do not relate what we experience to the real world. This creates the deception, the illusion in dreams for the ordinary memory consciousness. The imaginative consciousness does not merely see the dream in this way, but sees the dream by looking at it, just as one looks at a distant point in physical space. Thus one looks at another in time through the imagination. So one does not merely remember that which is dreamed, but one looks at that which is dreamed. This is what gives you the true idea of the dream. And thus one recognizes that the dream is only interpreted correctly if one does not relate it to the naturalistic-physical world, but if one relates its connections to the spiritual, and above all, in most cases, to the moral world. The dream does not want to say what it expresses when its content is interpreted physically. It wants to say what one comes to when one interprets its content morally and spiritually.

Take, for example, the dream I used yesterday to show the confusion, the dream in which you find yourself unclothed in a terrible sense of shame on a walk in front of many people. I drew your attention to how the fact that one is confronted with three worlds gives rise to the whole constitution of the soul within the dream consciousness. But if we look at such a dream correctly, then we must say that a content is revealed to us which looks sensual, but in the sensual something spiritual and moral wants to reveal itself to us. And so the person who has such a dream should not look at the immediate course of events, which takes place in sensory images, but should ask himself: Do I perhaps sometimes have the quality in my daytime consciousness of not giving myself to other people with full inner truth? Am I not perhaps in the habit of conforming too much to conventional garments and actually wrapping myself in all sorts of, well, conventional things in the outside world? And don't I have the peculiarity of sometimes not being honest in my innermost being, but rather giving something untrue?

When a person moves his thoughts in such a direction, he gradually arrives at the moral-spiritual interpretation of the dream. He does not relate what has appeared to him to the naturalistic world, but to the spiritual world, and he says to himself: As I passed over into the supersensible world during sleep, spiritual beings from the supersensible world approached me and told me that I should not present myself in a false, untrue garment, but that I should present myself as I am inwardly as a human being in soul and spirit.

Then, if you interpret the dream in this way, you arrive at its moral-spiritual truth. And this is how a whole number of dreams can be interpreted.

The people of an older human history, who were also aware of the Guardian of the Threshold in their dreamlike imagery when they fell asleep, took from him the admonition not to carry into the spiritual world that which lives in the physical-sensual world. So if the older people had dreamed that they were walking unclothed on the street, it would not have occurred to them to choose the interpretation that one must be ashamed, for that applies to the physical world and to the physical human body, but they would have heeded the admonition: That which applies in the physical world does not apply in the spiritual world; that which appears in the spiritual world is what gods say to man. Therefore it must be interpreted as a statement, as a revelation of the gods. The naturalistic interpretation of the dream therefore only occurred in the course of human development.

Or let us take another dream that occurs very frequently. A person dreams that he is walking along a path. He walks into a forest. After a while he realizes that he has lost his way, that he can't go any further. He tries to go on, comes to a place where there is no path, where there are only trees. He is in a certain inner turmoil.

Now a person with ordinary consciousness takes such a dream very easily, as it simply appears according to its content. But such a dream, if one takes it in such a way that one forgets the naturalistic connections, shows one precisely from the spiritual world: The confusion into which you have entered lies in your thoughts. But in waking consciousness we often do not like to admit to ourselves how confused our thoughts are, how easily they come to places where we can go no further, where we are always going round in circles. This is the peculiarity that many people have, especially today in our present civilization. They believe they are thinking in an enlightened way, but they dance around in circles with their thoughts, either around conventionally external things or around the atoms they mentally construct, or around something else. Man, of course, is not inclined in his ordinary consciousness to really admit this to himself.

The dream is a revelation in sensual images of what man actually is. The spiritual beings tell man this in dreams. And if he accepts what he experiences in such a way in the dream in correct self-knowledge, then his self-knowledge is particularly promoted by the dream.

A peculiarity of many people is also this: they abandon themselves to that which is congenial to their instincts, their drives. For example, they find it very pleasant to do this or that; then they do not admit to themselves that this is pleasant for their feelings, for their sensual well-being. Then they invent something or other, and they interpret in their ordinary consciousness that which actually only corresponds to their pleasantness, their well-being, in such a way that they must undertake it, well, I want to say, for anthroposophical, occult, esoteric reasons, that there is a high mission in it or the like. Then one covers up - and this happens extraordinarily often in life - with such self-justification an infinite number of things that rummage and roam in the subsoil of animal life. The dream, which chooses its sensual images over there, but in these sensual images wants to be a revelation of that which is actually also spiritually and mentally active in man, shows the image of man being pursued by wild animals and running away and not being able to escape them. We will interpret such a dream correctly from a spiritual and moral point of view, not if we take its sensual-physical content, but if we take it as self-knowledge; if we see in it a reminder to look at the inner truths of our being to see whether these are not, albeit in a weak way, more similar to the drives of the animal than to what we conjure up in our ideals.

So the dream can be a reminder, a rebuke, in the most diverse ways. And if it is correctly related not to the lower, but to the higher world, it can certainly intervene in human life in a directional way, and then we can see how the human being actually comes to it through conscious imagination, how the dream, which of course also shows itself to imaginative cognition first in its sensual images, metamorphoses and transforms itself completely into moral-spiritual events.

So we see that the dream is something that, I would like to say, already leads the ordinary consciousness into the spiritual world. It only has to be taken correctly, this dream. But I have also said that when we rise imaginatively into the spiritual world, we are not in the same state of soul there as we are here in physical earthly existence. In the physical earthly existence I stand here, and the table stands there, is outside of me. There is a physical separation between me and the table. At the moment when I come up into the spiritual worlds, there is no such separation. There I am inside the spiritual being. It is not as if I were standing here and the table were standing there, but as if I were to extend my whole being over the table and the table were to receive me. In the spiritual world it is therefore the case that we are completely immersed in the things we perceive. Therefore we must not merely relate what we experience in dreams, or then consciously experience in the imagination, to our inner being, but when we speak of what weaves and lives in dreams, we can also speak spiritually and scientifically with the poet: The world is woven from dreams - and not from the atomic play of which science dreams, but from what I have called the Greek “chaos”, as our dream-weaving, as our weaving in conscious imagination as a subjective-objective; the world is not merely subjectively woven from it. So that we must certainly explain certain states of the world from this dream-weaving.

Therefore we must not, for example, when we have a germ before us, want to explain this germ from physical and chemical laws. No scientist who sees only physical and chemical laws in a germ or embryo can explain the germ or the embryo, because nature dreams in the germ and in the embryo. That which weaves and lives in the dream is the basis. Therefore, if you place a plant germ here, a dream weaves and lives in this plant germ. You cannot get into it with the intellect, which only overlooks the laws of nature, you must get into it with that human power which otherwise lives in dreams or in the conscious imagination.

But something like that which lives in the germ lives in our entire organism during our entire earthly existence. And in our human organism we must therefore not merely seek the effect of chemical and physical forces, but, if we have the human being as a physical entity, we must regard this human being with his outer physical contours as that which lives in the earthly-physical sense world. But behind this lives something else, which an eye cannot see, an ear cannot hear, insofar as they are physical, but which the imagination can see, and which is also experienced in dreams as unconscious imagination. Nature dreams throughout the human body. It not only thinks as man thinks with his intellect, but nature dreams. And out of dreams our digestive powers are guided, our powers of growth are guided. Everything is formed out of dreams. When we look back in our earthly existence, we usually start from our time, from the time - yes, what should we call our time? We can name it from a single symptom, let's say we start from our time of the typewriter. So we start from the time of the typewriter, then, by going back, we come to the time when printing was first done, then we go further back in evolution, we come back, for my sake, to Roman times, to Greek times, we come back to the Oriental times from which the Vedas are. But then the external documents leave us. No matter how many treasures are unearthed from Egyptian royal tombs, there comes a time when the external documents leave us, when we have to go back through mere imaginative and inspired spiritual knowledge. And then we come to a boundary beyond which, further into the past, lies an indeterminacy for ordinary consciousness, just as sleep lies beyond the dream. Indeed, by going back in the development of time and the world, we come to this veil of the dream, as we can experience it every night.

And if we then go there with conscious imagination, the distant past lights up behind it in a spiritual way. But this also looks different from the world that we can recognize with our intellect and through documents. This distant past, which lies behind a veil of dreams in the evolution of the world, shows us man in a direct connection with the divine spirits. There man himself is still a divine-soul being, and the divine-spiritual beings, who are destined to do other things than embody themselves on earth, associate with him, who awaits his embodiment on earth.

So when one looks back historically to this veil of chaos, to this veil of dreams in the distant past behind the millennia of which I have spoken in the last days, then one sees the direct intercourse of the divine spirits with the then still spiritual soul in man, with the man who was then to dwell fully on earth.

And then we will see how these things, which are connected with the development of mankind, are again in a relationship with the cosmic development on the other side. Where this veil appears for the inspired imagination in a distant past, we see how within the cosmic development - we will have to talk about this in more detail - the moon splits off from the earth, which was previously united with the moon, and goes out into space in order to orbit the earth. So we look back to a veil of dreams, to an imaginative veil, look through it and find behind it the earth still united with the moon, human beings in direct contact with the divine-spiritual beings. We find, as in the time when this dream veil appears for retrospective observation in the imagination, we see there how in this point lies the important cosmic event that the moon pushes itself out of the earth in a completely different form and enters the world space as a separate world body. So that we look back to an earth and human and world development in which it was still united with the moon; but the human being was already there, only in a more spiritual-mental state.

By looking further and further back, we find no epoch in the development of the world in which we would not also find the beginnings of man. So that we cannot say from the standpoint of a spiritual science that the earth has developed through millions of years purely inorganically or with lower beings only, and then man came into being; but we find man, by going back, always united in other forms with that world evolution to which we can look back, however, when we ascend in this way to that which can also appear to us behind the chaos veil of the dream, behind the veil of the conscious imagination, as the divine-spiritual beingness of the world.


When we look, as I said above, at a germ, at something embryonic, we see for the imaginative cognition a kind of dream-weaving in this embryonic, in this germinal. And we see how something real, but which is like dream images, dominates the matter in the germ, in the embryos. Thus he who is able to see the spiritual of the world will find this spiritual everywhere, but in the most diverse forms. It is precisely the spiritual that undergoes the most diverse metamorphoses. And once you have really understood how a dream weaving and being takes place in the germ of plants, in the embryos of animals, you can then quite justifiably raise the question: What about the seemingly completely dead mineral world? When we look out of our windows or out onto the street, we see the barren mountains, the seemingly lifeless world, and we have to ask ourselves: If a dream image is at work in the plant germ that we lay down in front of us, what about the spread-out masses of rock and mountains? What about everything inanimate that forms the ground on which our feet tread in the physical world? If in the plants we find a spiritual being that intervenes relatively easily in matter in the dreaming weaving, then with imaginative cognition we also find a spiritual being in the masses of rock, a spiritual being that consists of concrete individual beings.

But this spiritual, we do not find it now in a dreaming, we find it in a fully sleeping state. You do not have to imagine a general sleeping mist through the masses of rock and mountains when you look out over the mountains here, but concrete individual beings, spiritual beings, which sleep in the masses of rock. We shall see later how these spiritual beings have come into being by splitting off from higher spiritual beings, from beings with a high consciousness, but who have split off from themselves these other beings, who in their present state of life have only a sleeping consciousness, and how these elemental beings sleep everywhere outside in the lifeless world. So we walk over the rocky massif of the mountains and should be aware that spiritual weaving and beings in individual concrete spirit forms sleep everywhere in the ground. And we become aware, when we follow this sleeping of the spirit-weaving forms in the lifeless world, that a certain mood lives in this sleep of the elemental beings. Imagination shows us these beings. Inspiration teaches us that a certain mood lives in these beings. That mood lives in these beings of the mountains, the rocks, the ground on which we walk, that mood lives in the mood of these beings which we find in us when we are really waiting for something, when we are in an expectant mood. And so this soul-spiritual weaving and being that is in the seemingly lifeless masses of rock is permeated by a mood of expectation.

These beings await their awakening in dreams - this is what inspiration, especially intuition, teaches us when we place ourselves within these beings. All that which looks at us as mountains expects that it will later dream, and that it will one day be able to seize the earth matter, which is pulverized into lifeless matter, in the dreaming consciousness, to make it embryonically germinative, to be able to conjure plant life out of the rocks, out of the mountains that we see. It is precisely these entities that bring a wonderful magic of nature before the life of the soul, a creation out of spirituality.

And so, not before any imagery, but before true real knowledge, walking under such rocks or over such rocks, that which such rocks reflect in their physical light, can become for us a revelation of sleeping, in the future to dreaming, later to full waking life awakening elemental nature beings, which will one day be pure spirit beings.

The physical matter in the plant is still such that the spiritual dream-weaving can penetrate this matter. This matter [the rock] crumbles. Everything inanimate - when we look back in imagination and inspiration, we realize this - has arisen from the living. But as the living becomes lifeless, this sleeping spirituality is immersed in it. And this sleeping spirituality waits in the inanimate until it can awaken to dream and transform this inanimate into a cosmic embryonic life.

And the different places, the different localities of the earth, show in different ways this sleeping of these spiritual entities in the mountains, in the solid crust of the earth. And here one may say: these beings awaiting their future sleep in a different way in such regions of the earth, such as here, than in other regions of the earth.

Here in Penmaenmawr is an area where, due to the special configuration of the earth, due to the way the rock material has become, these sleeping beings can penetrate as far as the aerial form, indeed they can weave themselves into the light, whereas in other areas of the earth this is not the case for a long time. So that if we take here the weaving not only of the outer materialistic atmosphere of the air, but the weaving of the spiritual atmosphere, which permeates the air as the human soul permeates the human body, then we find here in Penmaenmawr that this spiritual aspect of the atmosphere is different from anywhere else. I will illustrate this with a single example.

Suppose that the imaginative cognition endeavors to place the imagination in front of itself in a certain region of the earth, just as it happens. This remains more or less difficult or easy in the consciousness. In different regions there are different possibilities for the imaginations to stand still before the consciousness or to dissolve quickly. Here is a region where the imaginations remain strangely long, so that they grow into an intense imagery.

Druids or similar people have chosen just such regions for their temples, for their sanctuaries, in which this peculiarity was present, that the imaginations do not immediately melt away, like clouds that immediately disperse, but that the imaginations can remain. And that is why it is understandable that especially such places for Druid sanctuaries were still visited in relatively late times.

It has always been felt here that it is not so difficult for the imagination to stand still. Of course, everything has its light and dark sides. Inspiration is more difficult precisely because of the stagnant imagination, but it is also more powerful as a result. As a result, what is to be said from the spiritual world pours into the words with great intensity, I would say, but also more heavily and also more weightily.

So you can certainly also notice differentiations in spiritual terms across the earth. One could draw a map and draw those places where the imagination stops particularly easily before the imaginative consciousness. Those places on earth where they pass by easily could be painted in a different color. This would produce an extraordinarily interesting map of the earth. Here one would have to apply a particularly intense color for that which prevails in the spiritual atmosphere, a brilliant, a luminous, a vivid color.

Therefore I really believe that something can be felt here by the people who take part in this course, something of an esoteric mood, I would say, which is elementary. It looks in through the windows, we encounter it here on the walks, it is there in a completely different way to anywhere else.

Therefore I am extremely grateful to the organizers of this course that we are also in such an area, where one encounters the esoteric on the street, so to speak - otherwise one also encounters it, but not so easily in the direct encounter - I am extremely grateful, that this is one of the many places where such courses have already been held, for it is precisely this course which, from the point of view I have just discussed, fits in beautifully with the overall evolution of the anthroposophical movement.


Descriptions such as I have given show how there is a boundary between the physical-sensible and the spiritual-supersensible world, a boundary which is rightly called the threshold of the spiritual world (see drawing p. 164). And I have already pointed out in various ways how it must happen that this threshold can be crossed. Well, we will have to talk about this in more detail. But you will already have seen from my lectures that the crossing of this threshold was something different in older times of human development than it is today in the present historical moment. In older epochs of human development, people were able to cross this threshold in a different way because they had a dreamlike consciousness even during the day, but therefore also a more intense awareness of the supersensible, and thus, in the way I have described, passed the guardian of the threshold in a semi-conscious, dreamlike way when falling asleep and waking up.

In this there is a transition, which I will have to describe later, from the older, more unfree humanity to the ever freer and freer humanity: That the determinacy which was connected with the fact that every time they fell asleep and woke up they perceived something of the Guardian of the Threshold, who stood there as a reminder, has passed over into a non-insight into the spiritual world for the present consciousness, but thereby into a becoming freer and freer; therein lies a principle of human progress.

It can therefore be said that, seen from the spiritual world, people have lost many things precisely because they had to be led to freedom in their evolution. Now, what has been lost must be regained in the way that anthroposophy, for example, wants to show. And today is the historical moment when the striving for this recovery must begin.

But everywhere the legacies of the old times, when people had a different relationship to the supersensible world, still reach into our present. So that the person who has been completely seized by the intellectualistic forces today generally has a sharp boundary in his consciousness between that which he experiences in the sensory world and that which lies over there in the spiritual world. The boundary is so sharp that enlightened spirits of the present day do not want to admit that man can cross this boundary.

I have already indicated, by at least sketchily characterizing the ways into this supersensible world, that this boundary can be crossed, that man can enter this world in a fully conscious way. But from that time when man came over into the spiritual world in a more instinctive, more unconscious way, when he also carried more of this spiritual world in his day-consciousness, old heritages still protrude into the present development of mankind. And we find them in such a way that we must above all understand them through conscious spiritual knowledge. For if they are not understood in the right way, they show themselves to man in the most varied ways erroneously. And then the error can become very dangerous, especially with regard to these things. Therefore, in the course of these lectures, which are intended to show the development of mankind and the world, I must also discuss these borderline questions, in which that which was natural to an older mankind projects into the present, but here, if it is not treated with the appropriate clear knowledge, can lead into dangerous illusions. |

Among these things, which for ordinary consciousness are already on the borderline between the sensual and supersensible world, are, for example, human visions, visions where images appear in a kind of hallucination that is more or less controlled by the human being, which can even become colorful, audible, which can also include other things in their content, but which do not initially correspond to external things in the way they present themselves to the consciousness, so that the thing outside would be in the same way as the vision that lives inside. For that which one perceives in everyday life, the object is outside; the image, very shadowy however, is inside. And man is fully aware of how his shadowy inner image relates to the outer world. The vision first appears for itself, claims to carry a reality within itself. The human being also comes into a state of mind in which he is no longer able to judge in the right way the reality value of the image that appears without his intervention. The first question that arises here, precisely at the point in the lectures where we now stand, is this: How do visions come about? Well, visions come about because man still carries within him the ability to carry over into the waking world that which he experiences in sleep, to raise it to a conception in the waking world, just as he can otherwise raise to a conception that which he perceives from outside through the senses. Whether I look at a clock, which has a physical-sensory existence, and form an inner picture, or whether I have experienced in sleep the configuration, the inner reality of an external thing, and then after awakening form a picture of what I have experienced, these are in one respect two processes which have no other difference than that I control the one process, and therefore shade the picture, make it dull; in the other case I do not control the process, I do not carry something present into my imaginative life, but something that I experienced in the previous sleep, or the sleep before that, or even further back, when the soul was outside; and I form the vision. Such visions were something quite natural for an older period of human development, which instinctively controlled the relationship to the physical, to the spiritual world, and through the progress of humanity they have become what they are today: something uncontrolled, something illusory. Therefore one must face the whole thing with understanding, for today's man does not have something: if he experiences something while asleep in the spiritual world and goes back through waking into the physical world, he does not hear the admonisher, the guardian of the threshold: You should remember everything that you have experienced in the spiritual world and carry it over into the physical world. - If you carry it over, then you know what is contained in the vision. If the vision only occurs in the physical world without knowing how it was carried over and what was carried over from the spiritual world, then one is initially uncontrolled and thus easily caught up in illusions about the visionary experience. So that one can say: Visions arise from the fact that man unconsciously carries over experiences of sleep into day life and that day life forms these sleep experiences into ideas which are then inwardly much more saturated, much more substantial than the usual ideas, which are shadowy; by carrying over such ideas, man makes them into such vivid, colorful ideas.

Another way is that the human being transfers what he feels and senses here in physical life, the way he feels and senses here, into the life of sleep. Then, when he carries it over, so to speak, into the open sea of sleep life, he will already be admonished over there that he is not doing any mischief. But if the sleep is a very quiet one, as one has it much more than one believes - when one goes through ordinary life, one sometimes sleeps a little, very little; one should pay more attention to this, this little bit of sleep - if one sleeps a little in this way, then, even without realizing it, one carries the everyday feeling over the threshold. And then those dark feelings arise, as if one inwardly senses something that will happen to oneself or to another person in the future. The premonition arises in this way. So while the vision arises when one carries over the sleep experience into the waking daytime life by unconsciously crossing over the threshold with the sleep experience, the premonition arises when one is in a very quiet, unnoticed sleep, so that one believes oneself to be awake and, again ignoring the guardian of the threshold, carries over that which one actually already carries in the ordinary daytime experience. But it lies so deep under the consciousness that one does not notice it. For one is always in contact with the whole world. And if one could bring up the fact that one is in contact with the whole world, one would be able to bring up many things.

If one carries over here that which lies over the threshold, ignoring the guardian of the threshold, then the vision arises:

So one can say: if here [indicated by a yellow line] is the threshold where the guardian stands, then the vision comes about when one carries over from the supersensible that which one has experienced over there. And if you transfer what you experience here in the sensory world into the spiritual world in this quiet sleep, then what is called a premonition arises.

And now you see that with these hereditary goods, which man can experience, coming over from the old evolution, he stands over here with the vision, and over here with the presentiment. But he can also stand right on the border, on the threshold, and not notice the guardian of the threshold. These moments can also occur when a person is inwardly, I would like to say, spiritually spellbound; but “spellbound” is not a very happy expression here, because one is not spellbound in the way one usually imagines being spellbound, but one is only inside with the soul in a certain state of mind. If one stands here on the threshold, so that one still feels, so to speak, that which is in the physical world, but already feels that which is in the supersensible world, then one lives in that which is also very widespread in certain localities of the earth, which one can call deuteroscopy or the second sight. This is experienced just on the threshold in a semi-conscious state. So that one can say: These old hereditary goods are either such phenomena in human life in the subdued consciousness, which appear on this side of the threshold as a vision, on the other side of the threshold as a presentiment, just on the threshold as a second sight. Face.

I shall have to speak tomorrow about the more exact characteristics of these three areas, in order to come from there to a characterization of those worlds which are indicated in a dark way precisely by vision, presentiment, second sight, but which must be brought to the full clarity of a heightened consciousness through a newer insight.