Answers of Spiritual Science to the Great Questions of Existence
GA 60
24 November 1910, Berlin
Translated by Antje Heymanns
The Nature of Sleep
It lies in the nature of current scientific observations that the phenomena we want to dedicate today’s lecture to are basically not much talked about by current natural science. Yet every human being should feel that sleep is something how is placed among the phenomena of our life as if life’s greatest riddles are presented to us through it. Surely people always must have felt the mysteriousness and significance of sleep when they spoke of sleep as the ‘brother of death.’ Today, we have to limit ourselves to speaking of sleep as such, because the coming lectures will repeatedly lead us back to the contemplation of death in many ways.
All that man in a direct sense counts as belonging to his soul experiences, all imaginations that from morning to evening surge up and down, all emotions and feelings which constitute man’s soul drama, all pain and suffering, and the will impulses as well—all of it sinks down, as it were, into an indeterminate darkness when the human being falls asleep.
Some philosophers might doubt themselves, so to speak, when they talk about the nature of the soul, about the nature of the spirit that reveals itself in human nature. Yet, they have to admit that even if it had been firmly nailed down by definitions and ideas and showed itself to be well researched, it basically seems to disappear into nothing within the course of each day.
If we look at the manifestations of our soul life in the way one usually does so scientifically and also amateurishly, then we basically must say that these are extinguished during the state of sleep; they are gone. For someone who only wants to observe the physical expressions of the soul, the human being becomes on deeper reflection, so to say, all the more a riddle. Because the actual bodily functions, the bodily activities, continue during sleep. Only what we usually call the ‘soul’ discontinues.
The question then arises as to whether one is speaking about bodily and soul matters in the right sense when one includes what appears to be extinguished on falling asleep, when actually the soul aspect is included to the full extent. Or, if already the ordinary observation of life, apart from Spiritual Science or anthroposophical observations, could show us that the soul is active and proves to be effective even when it is enveloped by sleep. However, if one wants to gain some clarity about those concepts, or one could say, if one wants to observe the manifestations of life in this field in the right sense, one must place exact terms before one’s soul.
By way of introduction, I would like to mention in advance that on this topic as well, Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy is not in a position to make generalisations of the kind that people love to make today. If today we talk about the nature of sleep, then we will only talk about the nature of human sleep. In the last lecture, with regard to other fields, we have touched on this many times—Spiritual Science knows very well that which outwardly manifests itself in the same way, as this or that other appearance by different beings, can have quite different causes in the respective beings. We have indicated that this applies to death, to the whole spiritual life and to the formation of the spiritual life of animals and human beings. Today, it would go too far to also talk about the sleep of animals. Therefore, we want to say in advance that all we talk about today applies only to the sleep of human beings.
Through our consciousness, we can speak about soul manifestations within ourselves—anyone can feel this—because we are conscious of what we imagine, want, and feel. Now the question must arise—and this is extremely important particularly for today’s observations—whether we may readily combine the definition of consciousness as we use it for the ordinary consciousness of a human being in the present with the concept of the soul or the spirit in a human being? First, to express myself more clearly about these concepts, I like to draw a comparison. A man might walk around in a room and cannot see his own face in any spot in that room. The only place he can see his face is where he can look into a mirror. His own face appears as an image in front of him. Isn’t there an enormous difference for man whether he just walks around in a room and lives within himself or whether he sees what he expresses of this living also in a mirror image? It could probably be so with human consciousness in a somewhat extended way. The human being could, so to speak, experience his soul life—and he would only become knowledgeable or conscious of this soul-life itself, the way he lives it, when it confronts him like a mirror. This could very well be. Thus, we could say, for example, that it is quite possible that the human soul life continues regardless of whether the human being is awake or asleep. But that the waking state consists of the fact that the human being perceives his soul life through a mirroring, let’s say first of all, through a mirroring within his physicality and that he cannot perceive it in the state of sleep because it cannot be mirrored in his physical body.
Although we have not yet proven anything with this, at least we would have gained two concepts. We could differentiate between the soul life as such and becoming conscious of the soul life. We can think that for our consciousness, for our knowledge of the soul life, as we currently stand in our everyday human life, everything depends on us receiving the mirror image of our soul life through our physicality because if we do not receive this, we cannot know anything about it. We would then be wholly in a sleeping state. Now that we have gained these concepts, let us try to place the phenomena of waking and sleeping life a little before our soul.
Someone who is really able to observe life, will feel very clearly, and one would like to say, will ‘behold’ how the moment of falling asleep truly proceeds. He can perceive how the imaginations, the feelings weaken in their brightness, diminish in their intensity. But this is not the most essential. When a human being is awake, he lives in such a way that he creates order through his self-conscious Ego in his whole imaginative life, whereby he summarises, as it were, all ideas with his Ego. For at the moment when we in our waking life would not summarise all our ideas with our Ego, we would not be able to lead a normal soul life. We would have one group of ideas that we would relate to ourselves and call our concepts and another group we would look at as something foreign, like an external world. Only people who experience a split in their Ego, which for people today would be a state of sickness, could have such a tearing apart of their imaginative lives into different areas. For a normal person it is essential that all his ideas are in perspective related to a single point: the self-conscious Ego.
The moment we fall asleep, we feel distinctly that, at first, the Ego will be, so to speak, overwhelmed by imaginations despite these growing dimmer. The ideas assert their independence; they live an independent life. Single clouds of ideas, as it were, form within the horizon of consciousness, and the Ego loses itself in imaginations. Then man feels how the sense perceptions like seeing and hearing and so on become blunter and blunter, and finally, he feels how the will impulses are paralysed. Now, we must point out something clearly observed by just a few people. The human being feels furthermore, as he sees things with defined borders in his daily life, that at the moment of falling asleep, something asserts itself like a feeling of being locked up in a vague fog, which occasionally makes itself felt as cooling, or with other sensations in certain parts of the body: on the hands, on the joints, on the temples, on the spine etc. These are feelings that someone falling asleep can very well observe. They are, one would like to say, the kind of trivial experiences that one can have every evening when falling asleep if one wants to.
Better experiences are had by people who, through a finer developed soul life, more precisely observe the moment of falling asleep. They can then feel something like an awakening despite falling asleep. What I am about to tell you now, can be told by anyone who has acquired certain methods of really observing these things, because it is a common human phenomenon. The moment people feel like an awakening when they are slipping into sleep can really be described as follows: something like an expanding conscience, like morality, wakes up in the soul. This is indeed the case. This is particularly shown when people observe their soul concerning what they have experienced the previous day and with which they are satisfied in their conscience. In the moment of moral awakening, they feel this especially clearly. At the same time, this feeling is quite the opposite of the feeling during the day. While the feeling during the day shows itself by things approaching us, one who falls asleep feels as if his soul is pouring itself out over a world that is now awakening. This mainly includes a relaxation, a pouring out of feeling over that which the soul, through itself can experience in relation to its moral inner being as if through an expanding conscience. Then it is a moment of inner bliss, which appears to be much longer for the one falling asleep, when it is about dwelling on things with which the soul can agree. There is often a deep conflict when the soul has to reproach itself. In short, the moral human being who, during the day, is repressed through the strong sensory impressions, relaxes and feels himself very distinctly when falling asleep.
Everyone who has acquired a particular method, or maybe even only a feeling concerning such observations, knows that at this moment a certain longing awakens, which we could describe like this: One really wants this moment to extend into the indefinite, that it would never end. But then comes something like a ‘jolt’, a kind of inner movement. For most people, this is very difficult to describe. Of course, Spiritual Science can describe this inner movement quite precisely. It is, as it were, like a demand that the soul makes on itself: You must now relax even further; you must pour yourself out further. But by making this demand of itself, the soul loses itself for the moral life in its surroundings. This is like throwing a small drop of colour into water and dissolving it: the colour can still be seen at first. But once the drop distributes itself throughout the water, it pales more and more and finally, the colour display as such stops. So it is when the soul is just beginning to swell and live in its moral mirror image where it can still feel itself, but the feeling stops once the jolt, the inner movement, occurs, as the drop of colour loses itself in the water.
This is not a theory; it can be observed and is accessible to everyone, just like a natural scientific observation is exactly accessible to everyone. If we thus observe the process of falling asleep, we can certainly say that the human being intercepts, as it were, something when falling asleep that, afterwards, he somehow can no longer be conscious of. If I may be allowed to use both of my earlier constructed ideas—the human being has, as it were, a moment of parting from the mirror of the body in which the manifestations of life appear to him as mirror images and because he has no other means to mirror what otherwise is mirrored by the body, the possibility to perceive himself, ceases.
Again, it is possible to perceive in a certain sense the day’s happenings—if one does not want to be altogether stubborn and obstinate regarding what relates to the soul and the effect of what moves into an vague darkness. I have already pointed out in another context that someone forced to memorise this or that, i.e., learn things by heart, can do this much more easily if he sleeps on it more often, and that depriving oneself of sleep is the greatest enemy of memorisation. The possibility and the ability to memorise more easily even returns once we have slept on an issue and not want to learn something by heart in one go. This is also the case with other activities of the soul. However, we could convince ourselves very easily that it would be impossible to learn anything at all, to acquire anything when the soul is involved, if it weren’t for the inclusion of sleep states among our life states. The natural conclusion that has to be drawn from such phenomena is that our soul needs to withdraw from time to time from our physical body, in order to gain strength from an area that is not within our body, because the respective strengths within the body are being worn out. We must imagine that when we wake up in the morning from sleep, that from the state in which we were then, we have brought along strength to develop abilities, that we could not develop if we were constantly shackled to our bodies. This is how the effect of sleep shows itself in our ordinary nature, when one wants to think straight and not be obstinate.
What shows itself in general when one pauses in ordinary life, and for which one needs some good will to hold one’s life phenomena together, is shown very clearly and precisely when man goes through developments that are able to lead him to a real beholding of the spiritual life. Here I would like to elaborate on what occurs when a human being has developed the forces that lie dormant within his soul in order to reach a state in which he can neither perceive with the senses nor comprehend with the mind. This will be followed up in more detail in the lecture How does one Attain Knowledge of the Spiritual World,1GA 60 Lecture 7. How Does one Attain Knowledge of the Spiritual World?, 15 December 1910, Berlin. where the methods will be quite comprehensively covered. Right now though, we will highlight some of the experiences that a person, truly practising such exercises is able to have that endow his soul, as it were, with spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, and through which he can look into the spiritual world, which is not an object of speculation, but for someone who perceives with his senses, it is just as much an object as colours and forms, warmth and coldness, and sounds. How to attain true clairvoyance has already come to light in previous lectures. This spiritual development, these exercises, actually consist of a person bringing out of himself something that he has within himself, gains other organs of perception, jolting upwards, as it were, over the soul, as it is in its ordinary state, and thus perceives a world that is always around him but which cannot be perceived in the normal state. When a person undergoes such exercises, the first thing that changes is his sleep life. Anyone, who has done their own real spiritual research knows this. I would now like to talk about the very first stage of change in the sleep life of a person who is actually clairvoyant and engaged in spiritual research. The first beginnings of this possibility of spiritual research do not make the person appear very different from the normal ordinary state of consciousness because a person who performs these exercises, as we shall discuss later, will at first sleep like any other human being and is just as unconscious as anyone else. But the moment of waking up will show something very special to the one who has performed spiritual exercises. I will now describe to you some very concrete phenomena that are based on facts.
Let’s assume that a person who is practising these exercises is thinking very hard about something that another person could also be thinking about. He tries, maybe because he has a very difficult problem in front of him, to exert all his mental power to get to the bottom of it.
Perhaps he’ll be like a schoolboy: his mental power just isn’t sufficient to solve the problem. This could definitely happen. If he has now already obtained through his exercises more possibilities to experience the inner states of the soul in connection with the physical state, he will certainly feel something quite peculiar when he finds himself incapable to do something. Unlike usual, he perceives a resistance in his physical organs, for example in his brain. He properly senses that the brain puts up resistance against him, just as we feel resistance when we try to drive in a nail with a hammer that is too heavy. The brain then begins to gain a reality. The way man normally uses his brain, he would not feel it as if he were using an instrument, as is the case with a hammer, for example. A spiritual researcher feels his brain, he feels himself independent in relation to his thinking. That is an experience. But if he can’t solve a task, he feels that he is no longer able to carry out certain activities that he must perform when thinking. He feels very clearly that he is losing power over the instrument. This fact can be experienced very precisely.
If the spiritual researcher sleeps on the problem and then awakens, it will often happen that he feels up to the task without any further ado. But at the same time he also feels precisely that prior to waking up he has done something, that he has worked on something. He feels that he had been able to set something within him in motion during his sleep, that he had caused an activity. During the waking state he was forced to use his brain. He knows that. He can do nothing but use his brain when he is awake. But he was no longer able to use it properly, because—as I have described—it resisted him. During sleep, he feels, he is not dependent on using his brain. He was able to create a degree of flexibility without using the brain that was too tired or otherwise too heavily occupied. Now he feels something very peculiar: he perceives the activity that he has performed during sleep, albeit not directly. The Lord gives to his own, but not in their sleep. The spiritual researcher is not saved from having to solve his problem now in the waking state. It may come easily to him, but normally it is not so, and particularly not with things that simply must be solved by the brain.
Hence, the human being feels something that he has not known before in the sensory world—he senses his own activity, which presents itself to him in vivid pictures, in strange pictures that are in motion. It is just as if the thoughts he needs were living beings who would enter into all kinds of relationships with each other. Thus he senses his own, let’s call it, ‘mental activity’ that he undertook during sleep, like a series of pictures. This feeling is difficult to describe, as one is stuck in it in a quite peculiar way and has to tell oneself, ‘This is you yourself!’ But, on the other hand, one can distinguish this feeling very clearly from oneself, in the same way as one is able to distinguish a physical movement one makes from oneself. Thus one has pictures, imaginations of an activity performed before waking up. And now one can notice, if one has learned to watch oneself, that these pictures of an activity that was performed prior to waking up, connect themselves with our brain and turn it into a more flexible, more useful instrument, so that one will be able to complete something, which one could not do before because of a resistance, for example, to think certain thoughts. These are subtle things, but without them one won’t really get behind the secret of sleep. Thus, one feels that one has not performed an activity as in the awake state, but one that served the restoration of certain things in the brain which were worn out. The instrument has been restored in a way that was not possible before. One feels like a master builder of his own instruments.
The feeling during such an activity is significantly different from that during a daytime activity. The feeling one has about the day activities is comparable to copying something from a template or a model. There I am forced to follow the picture in front of me with every stroke or dot of colour. In regard to the things that appear as pictures at the moment of waking and that are, as it were, an illustration of an activity during sleep, one has the feeling of inventing the strokes, of creating the figures out of oneself, without being tied to a model. With such an occurrence one will have, as it were, intercepted what the soul did prior to waking up: one has intercepted the activity of brain regeneration. Because sooner or later one realises that what feels like a kind of coating the brain organs with what one remembers as figures is nothing other than a restoration of what has been damaged in the course of the day. One really has the feeling of being a master builder working on oneself.
Basically the difference between a spiritual researcher who perceives such things and an ordinary person is only that a spiritual researcher just perceives these things, whereas an ordinary person cannot pay attention to them and does not perceive them. The same activity that the spiritual researcher undertakes is performed by every human being, but the normal person doesn’t catch the moment when the organs are restored by the activity that takes place during sleep.
Let’s take such an experience and compare it to what was previously said about an increase in bluntness and dullness, and a reduction in brightness of the daily imaginative life at the moment of falling asleep. This latter phenomenon can only be viewed in the right light if one either frees oneself from today’s highly suggestive concepts of the world view that believes itself to be firmly based on natural science, or by actually accepting the available results of contemporary natural research. For example, in brain research, and according to the results of natural research, people who think more precisely can do nothing but acknowledge the independence of the spiritual from the physical. And it is very interesting that recently a popular book was published in which basically everything that has to do with spiritual life and the sources of spiritual life was presented wrongly and completely without any insight. But in this book, The Brain and the Human Being, by William Hanna Thomson,2William Hanna Thomson, Brain and Personality, 1907, published in Germany under the title Das Gehirn und der Mensch, Verlag K R Langewiesche, Düsseldorf, 1910. a lot of smart things are said. It deals in particular with modern brain research and with many other things that are presented—for example, as I also have more often pointed out—with symptoms of fatigue, which are quite instructive. But I have already explained that muscles and nerves cannot get tired in any other way than through conscious activity. As long as our muscles only serve an organic activity they cannot become tired. It would be bad if, for example, the heart muscle and other muscles needed rest. We only become fatigued when we perform an activity that is not innate to the organism—such as an activity that belongs to the conscious life of the soul. Thus one has to say; if the soul life was born out of the human being like the heart activity, then the immense difference between fatigue and non-fatigue could not be explained. The author of the book therefore feels compelled to acknowledge that the soul relates to the physical no differently than a rider relates to his horse, i.e., that it is completely independent from the physical. This is an enormous concession from a person who thinks like a natural scientist. One could get very strange feelings if, forced by contemporary natural research, one has to confess to oneself that the relationship between the soul life and the body life must be imagined as being roughly the same as that of a rider to a horse. That is, according to the image that people had of a centaur in earlier times, when they still looked deeper into the spiritual realm.
It is not apparent that the author of the book would have thought of this, but again this thought comes to mind from the natural scientific conception, and one gets the feeling that such ideas stem from times when a certain clairvoyance still existed for many people. Today, however, certain imaginations about centaurs seem to be more compatible with what a gentleman once told me: He said:
‘The Greeks watched the Scythes, who came from the North, and other rider clans, perhaps when they emerged from a fog. They could not distinguish the shapes clearly, and so they thought that these had grown out of the horse.’ A materialist might be satisfied with such an explanation. But it is just contemporary natural scientific research that pushes for an acknowledgment of the independence of the soul from the physical.
One thing we can hereby definitely notice, and we can follow such things best if we recall certain occurrences before our soul that are not commonplace, but still exist and cannot be denied. The spiritual researcher knows how that common man in the country, at the hour of his death, suddenly began to speak in Latin, a language he had never really used and which one could prove he had only heard once in Church when he was a little boy. This is not a fable, but a reality. Of course he did not understand anything of it, when he had heard or recited it. And yet it is true. From this, the idea should be formed in every human being that what affects us in our environment contains something in addition to what we absorb into our normal consciousness. Because what we absorb into our ordinary consciousness is often dependent on our education, on what we comprehend and the like. But not only what we can comprehend unites itself with us, but we have in us the possibility to absorb endlessly more than what we take up consciously. We can even observe in every human being how at certain times he has ideas, that were not strongly noticed at the time he experienced them here or there, so that he may not remember them at all. But through certain things they re-appear, and may even place themselves into the centre of his soul life. We really have to acknowledge that what constitutes the extent of our soul life is endlessly more than what we can receive and embrace with our day consciousness. This is extraordinarily important. Because in this way our attention is steered towards something inside of us that can really only make a slight impression on our corporeality because it has hardly been noticed, and then again it lives on in us. In this way, we are pointed to the foundations of our soul life, which should actually exist for every reasonable person. Every rational person should tell himself that, what is in the world around him for his consciousness while he is consciously looking at the world, is basically dependent on the organisation of his sensory organs and on what he can understand. And no one is entitled to want to limit reality by what they can perceive. It would be completely illogical to want to deny the spiritual researcher that behind the physical world a spiritual world exists, simply for the reason that man is only allowed to speak about what he sees and hears and what he can think about, and he is never allowed to judge what he cannot perceive. Because the world of reality is not the world of the perceptible. The world of the perceptible is limited by the sensory organs. For this reason one should never —in the Kantian sense—speak of the limits of knowledge; or about what a human being may or may not know, but only about that what he has before of him in accordance with his organs of perception.
Considering this, one must say to oneself: Behind the colourful carpet of the sensory world, behind that which the warmth sense perceives as warmth or cold and so on, lies an infinite reality. Should therefore only what we perceive, or only the reality we perceive exert an influence on us? If we think that we are only shown a part or a section of the entire reality through our perception, then it is only logically tenable that there lies an infinite reality behind what can be given to us through our perception. However, this is also real for us, as we have been placed in it, so that what surges and lives outside and influences us, lives on for us. But what is our actual waking life like during the day? There really is no other way than to imagine the waking day life in this way, and to say; ‘We open our senses, our capacity to realise something immense and confront this immensity. Because each person has particular eyes, particular ears, and a certain sense of warmth, and so on, we are placing a particular section of reality in front of us. Anything else we reject, almost, as it were, fend it off, exclude it from us. So what does our conscious activity consist of? It consists of a defence against, or an exclusion of something different. And by straining our sensory organs, we are holding back something that we have not perceived. What we perceive is the remainder, are the remains of what is spreading itself around us, and what we, for the most part reject. In this way, we feel actively placed in this world, feel connected with it. Likewise, we defend ourselves through our sensory activity against a multitude of impressions, because, figuratively speaking, we are not able to bear the entire immeasurable infinity and take in only a section of it. If we think like this, then we must imagine quite different relationships between our whole organism, our entire bodily nature and between the external world, than those which we can perceive or comprehend with our intellect. Then it will not seem so unusual to think that the relationships, which we have with the outside world, live in us and that also the invisible, super-sensible or extra-sensible is active within us—and that the extra-sensible by being active in us, uses our senses to fabricate a section out of the entire immeasurable reality. Then our relationship to reality is completely different from how we are able to perceive it through our senses. Then there lies something of relationships with the outside world in our soul that does not exhaust itself through sensory perception, that eludes our waking daytime consciousness. Then it is with us as if we are stepping in front of a mirror with our inner being and have to say to ourselves:
‘Basically you are something completely different. The mirror only shows you the forms, maybe also the colours; but within you you are thinking. You are feeling within you. All of this the mirror cannot show you. It only shows you what is dependent on its laws. As a soul facing its organism, you are something completely different from what your senses show you; they limit you to what is according to their laws. When you face the world, as with a mirror—you are actually facing a world that is only made possible by the organisation of your senses!’
If you think this idea through to the end, then you will not be surprised to find that basically all life of our awake day consciousness depends very much on the organisation of our sensory organs and on our brain, just as what we see in a mirror depends on the quality of the mirror. Anyone who looks into a garden mirror and sees a caricature of their face looking towards them, will happily agree that the picture in the mirror is not dependent on them, but on the mirror. In the same way, what we perceive depends on the set-up of our mirroring apparatus, and our soul activity is limited, as it were, reflected back into itself by mirroring itself in our body life. Then it is no longer astonishing that the detail—and this can also be physiologically proven—is dependent on the physical body, whereby this or that happens one way or another in our consciousness. Because everything that the soul does in order for something to become conscious, to become knowledge for us, depends on the organisation of our body. Observation shows us that the concepts that we initially only constructed, actually correspond to the facts. The only difference is that our corporeality is a living mirror. We let the mirror in which we look be as it is. However, there is one way in which we can influence the reflection: if we breathe on the mirror, then it can no longer reflect properly. But the reflection in our physicality, which experiences the activity of our soul, is connected with the fact that when we reflect ourselves in our corporeality, the reflection itself is an activity, a process within our bodily nature, and that which appears as a reflection, we place as an activity before ourselves.
Thus the bodily life actually presents itself as if, in a certain sense, we would write down what we think and then would have the characters in front of us. This is how we write the activity of our soul into our physicality. What an anatomist can verify are only the characters, the external apparatus, because we do not completely observe our soul life if we only observe it within our physical life. We only observe it completely, if we do this independently from our physical life. This, however, can only be done by the spiritual researcher who observes the soul life as it shows itself mirrored into the waking day life at the moment of awakening. It shows that the soul life is like an architect, who builds something during the night, and acts as a dismantler during the day.
Now we have the soul life in the waking state and in the state of sleep before us. In the state of sleep we have to imagine it as independent from body life, like a rider is independent from the horse. But just like the rider uses the horse and uses up its strength, the soul consumes the activity of the body so that chemical processes run like letters of the soul’s life. With this we reach a point where the physical life, as it is limited in the senses, in the brain, is so diminished by us that we have exhausted it for the time being. Then we must begin the other activity, initiate the reverse process and again build up what has declined. This is the life during sleep—so that we, starting from the soul, perform two opposite activities on our body. So, during the awake state we have around us our world of flowing and ebbing concepts, joy and sorrow, feelings and so on. But while we have them in front of us, we wear out our physical life, we basically destroy it constantly. During sleep, we are the architects, we can restore what we have destroyed during our waking life.
So what does a spiritual researcher perceive? He perceives the architectural activity of rebuilding in curious pictures like a circular movement twisting around itself: a real process, that is the reverse of normal awake day life. It is really no fantasy when one speaks about recognising in these self-entwining movements the mysterious activity that the soul performs during sleep, which consists of reconstituting what we have destroyed during our day life—hence the recuperation through and necessity of the sleep life. So why is the sleep life such that it doesn’t enter into our consciousness? Yes, and why is it that we become conscious of our waking life? The reason for this is that for the processes we perform in our waking day life, we have got something like mirror images. However, when we are performing the other activity of rebuilding what has been worn out, we have nothing wherein this could be reflected. We are lacking a mirror for this. Only a spiritual researcher is able to show the underlying reasons for this. From a certain point onwards, the spiritual researcher experiences not only the soul activity, as I have described it, like a dream memory from sleep, but as if he was not dependent on the instrument of the body, so that he then can perceive an activity which only happens in the spirit. He can then tell himself: ‘Now you are not thinking with your brain, but you are now thinking in a completely different manner; now you are thinking in pictures, independent of your brain.’
The spiritual researcher can only experience something like what has been described earlier, when he experiences that everything that envelops him as something nebulous when he falls asleep does not disappear. Instead, if he is able to limit and withdraw his inner activity, then the mist that is perceptible at his temples, at his joints, at his spine, becomes something that reflects what he is doing—similar to the reflection of what we experience during our physical life.
The whole difference between true clairvoyance and ordinary waking day life consciousness is that the waking day life requires a different mirror for the soul activity to come to consciousness and uses our bodily nature for this purpose. However, the activity of the clairvoyant, when it radiates as an activity of the soul, is so strong that the emitted ray will be withdrawn into itself. In this way, as it were, a mirroring on one’s own inner experience, on a spirit organism, takes place. Basically, our soul is within this spirit organism during the night, even if we are not spiritual researchers. It pours itself into it. And we will not be able to cope with our whole sleep life, when it is not clear to us that indeed our physical processes—all that anatomy, physiology is able to research—cannot bring about anything but a reflection of our soul processes; and that these soul processes always, from falling asleep until waking up, live a spiritual existence. If we think differently we won’t be able to cope at all. We must therefore speak, as it were, of a secret soul life that cannot enter at all into the consciousness conveyed through our body. Thus, when one notices in a person that ideas appear in his consciousness that he has ignored for a long time, one has to say: There is something else in a human being, apart from the conceptions of his conscious soul life, to which he has paid attention when he took them in.
I have already suggested once, that it is child’s play to refute things that are a reality for a spiritual researcher. And yet they are true. Spiritual research has to say that in regard to the human being we have to deal with a human physical body that we can see with eyes, grasp with hands, and that is also known to anatomy and physiology. In addition, we have an inner member of the human being, the astral body, the carrier of everything that the human being consciously absorbs, what he really experiences during the day life, so that he can receive it reflected by the body. Between the astral body and the physical body lies the carrier of ideas that remain ignored for years, and are then brought up into the astral body to be realised. In short, between the astral body, the carrier of consciousness, and the physical body, the etheric body of man is active. This etheric body is not only the carrier of conceptions that have gone unnoticed, but in general the builder of the entire physical body.
What actually happens during sleep? The astral body, the carrier of consciousness, lifts itself together with the Ego out of the physical body and the etheric body, so that a split in the human nature occurs. During day life when man is awake, the astral body and the Ego are within the physical body and the etheric body. And the processes of the physical body work like mirroring processes, through which all that happens in the astral body comes to consciousness. Consciousness is a reflection of the experiences through the physical body, and we should not confuse consciousness with the experiences themselves. When, during sleep, the astral body of an ordinary human being leaves, it is at first not able to perceive anything in the world of the astral. The human being is unconscious there.
What ability does the spiritual researcher now acquire when things during sleep become conscious to him, even though he does not rely on his brain? He attains the ability to perceive and to mirror his soul activity in something that for him weaves and lives between things, so that during the awake day consciousness this something can be perceived in the same way as his own etheric body. The human etheric body is woven from that through which the clairvoyant person perceives; so that for a clairvoyant person the outer world becomes reflective, just as for the soul life of a normal person the physical body becomes reflective.
Now there are intermediate states between waking and sleeping. One such intermediate state is the dream. With regard to its origin, spiritual research shows that indeed dreaming is based on something similar to clairvoyance, whereby the latter is something trained, while dreaming is always imaginary. When a person leaves with the astral body, he loses the ability to obtain a reflection of his soul life through the physical body. However, under certain abnormal circumstances, which occur for everyone, he can obtain the capability to receive his soul experiences reflected through the etheric body. Indeed we must consider not only the physical body as a mirroring device, but also the etheric body. As long as the outer world makes an impression on us, it is indeed the physical body which acts as mirroring device. However, if we become still within ourselves and digest the impressions the outer world has made on us, then we work within ourselves and yet our thoughts are still real. We live our thoughts, and also feel that we are dependent on something more subtle than our physical body, namely on the etheric body. Then the etheric body is that what reflects itself in us in solitary pondering, which is not initially based on external impressions. But we are within our etheric body during our awake day consciousness; we perceive what is mirrored, but we do not perceive directly the activity of the astral body. In the intermediate state between waking and sleeping, we do not have the ability to receive external sensory impressions. But because we can still receive something that is connected to our etheric body in some way, the etheric body can mirror what we experience in our soul with our astral body. This then are the dreams that show irregularity because the human being is in a completely unusual situation during this process.
If we contemplate this, then much in our dream-world will become clear that would otherwise remain mysterious about it. We must therefore imagine the foundations of the soul life as being closely connected with the dream life. While the physical body is the mirror of the soul life and our daily interests have an impact on this, we are often connected in the remotest way through the etheric body to experiences, which we have long since left behind, and of which we become only dimly aware because the day life has a strong impact on us. Thus they remain something extremely unknown to us. However, if we are examine dreams that are based on really good observation, many peculiar things can be shown to us. For example, a good composer experiences an image, where a somewhat diabolical figure plays a sonata to him. He wakes up and is able to write down the sonata. Something became active in him that has worked like something foreign. And this was possible, because there was something in him for which the composer’s soul was ready, but which could not become effective during the awake day life, because physical life was only an obstruction and not suited as a mirror. Here we can see that the bodily life is an inhibitor and in this lies its significance. In our daily life we are only able to experience that for which the bodily life, figuratively speaking, is ‘oiled like a machine.’
The physical life is always a hindrance to us, but we manage to use it to a certain extent. After all, one does need ‘inhibitions’ everywhere. When a locomotive rides over the tracks, it is the hampering, the friction, through which it can drive, because the wheels could not turn without friction. In reality, our bodily processes are what confronts our soul life in a hampering way, and these frictional processes are at the same time mirroring processes. When we are ready in our soul for something but have not yet managed to oil our machine well, then the awake day life is a good ‘brake shoe’. But when we leave our physical body, then our etheric body is able to bring what lives in our soul life to expression—and this will appear to us as something quite foreign as it is of a more subtle nature. Then, once it is strong enough, it forces itself into the dream life, as was the case with the composer. This has less to do with the daily interests than with the hidden interests, that lie more remote in the subtle foundations. For example, in the following—note, that I am just telling you something that has actually been observed—A woman dreams, and although she has children whom she loves very much, and a husband, who loves her extraordinarily, she experiences with great joy that she gets engaged for a second time and all related events she goes through. What does she dream? She dreams experiences that are very far from her current life, that she has once gone through but cannot recognise, because the normal interests of the day are only connected with the physical body. And, what has continued to live on in her etheric body will now, perhaps because a joyful emotion has triggered the dream, be mirrored by the etheric body through another event.
A man dreams that he goes through childhood experiences, and these childhood experiences are wonderfully mirrored. One of these, especially important to him because it went close to his heart, causes him to wake up. At first the dream is very dear to him, but soon he falls asleep again and dreams on. A whole sum of unpleasant experiences now pass through his soul, and a particularly painful event wakes him up. All of this is extremely far from his present experiences. He gets up, and because he feels very shaken by the dream, walks around in the room for a while, but then he lies down again and now he has dream experiences, which he has not yet had. All events that he went through get muddled up, and he now experiences something completely new. The whole turns into a poem, which he can even write down and set to music afterwards. That is a very real fact. Now it shouldn’t be too difficult, with the concepts we have already gained, to imagine what has happened there. For a spiritual researcher it is thus; at a very specific moment in his life the man suffered a kind of break in his development—he had to give up something that lay in his soul. But even if he had to give it up, it did not disappear from his etheric body as a result of that. It was just that his ordinary interests were so strong that they pushed it back. And, where it was strong enough through inner elasticity, it forced itself out through the dream, because there the human being is freed from the hindrances of the awake day life. This means, that the respective man was truly once very close to reach what was expressed in the poem; but then it had been deadened.
Thus we can see illustrated in our dreams the independence of our soul life from our outer bodily life. We must realise that this is proof that the idea of the mirroring of the soul life in the physical life is entirely justified. In particular, the circumstance that the interests in which we are involved do not engrave themselves in a straight line in our direct experience, shows us that apart from the life, as it is lived on a daily basis, there is another life running alongside, that I have called, for a more conscious, finer observation, a kind of awakening. In it lives everything that for our spiritual life is already abstract, immaterial like our conscience that is independent of physical life—everyone can feel this. Yet during our day life this other life turns out to be very limited by our daily interests. During sleep, our soul also reveals itself as being completely filled with its moral quality. There is a real living into the spiritual, what we can describe as a jolt, as an inner movement. What we call Spiritual Science research will result in something for us through which we can consciously settle into the world that the normal human being unconsciously settles into every time he falls asleep.
People must gradually familiarise themselves with the fact that the world is far wider than what we can grasp with our senses and follow with our intellect; and that the sleep life is an area that we need because just our noblest organs, which serve our imaginative life, are worn out by our daily life. During sleep we restore them, so that they can face the world strong and vigorously and are able to mirror our soul life for us in the waking day life. Everything that is characteristic of the soul life could become clear to us through this. Who wouldn’t know that one feels wearied and tired after a good, deep sleep? People often complain about this; but it is not a symptom of an illness at all and is actually quite understandable. After all, the complete recovery through sleep only occurs an hour or an hour and a half later. Why? Because we have worked well on our organs, so that they are not only able to cope for a few more hours but for the whole day. And immediately after waking up we are not yet ready to use them, we first have to “grind them in.” Only after a while we can use them well. One should speak about a particular type of weariness in a certain way, saying that one could be happy that one can settle back into the reconditioned organs in an hour and a half. Because from sleep comes to us what we need—the architectural forces for the organs that have been worn out and used up during the day.
So we may now say that our soul life is a life of independence, a life of which we have something like a reflection through our consciousness during our waking day life. Consciousness is a reflection of the interactions of the soul with its environment. During the waking day life we are lost to our surroundings, to something foreign, are devoted to something that is not ourselves. But during sleep—and this is the nature of sleep—we withdraw from all outer activity to work on ourselves. The comparison is apt; the ship which has served shipping while it was at sea will be rebuilt and repaired when it arrives in port.
Someone who believes that during sleep nothing happens to us, could also think, that nothing needs to be done to the ship when it returns to port from a voyage. But when the ship sails again, he will see what happens, if it has not been repaired. This is how it would be if our soul did not work on us during sleep. We are brought back to ourselves when we sleep, while during the day life we are lost to the outside world. A normal human being is just not able to perceive what the soul is doing during sleep in the same way as he perceives the outside world during the day.
In the lecture How to attain Knowledge of the Higher World? we will see that also in the spirit a mirror image can be attained as a realisation, through which man can then come to perception in the higher worlds. All this illustrates that the soul, just when it is not conscious of itself and knows nothing of its own activity, but is busy with itself, works on itself, and independently of the physicality, obtains those forces which serve precisely to build up the body.
Thus we may summarise what we have said, and characterise the nature of the soul with words that from the knowledge of the nature of sleep can build a kind of foundation for many things in Spiritual Science:
The soul itself restores
Enveloped still in sleep
Flees into spirit worlds
When senses constrictions
Oppress it! 3Verses translated by Norbert Mulholland.
Das Wesen des Schlafes
Es liegt in der Natur der gegenwärtigen wissenschaftlichen Betrachtungen, daß von solchen Erscheinungen, wie diejenige ist, der wir heute diese Stunde widmen wollen, im Grunde genommen recht wenig innerhalb der gebräuchlichen Wissenschaft die Rede ist. Und dennoch sollte jeder Mensch fühlen, wie der Schlaf etwas ist, was sich in unsere Lebenserscheinungen so hineinstellt, wie wenn uns gerade durch ihn die größten Lebensrätsel aufgegeben werden sollen. Man hat wohl dieses Geheimnisvolle und das Bedeutungsvolle des Schlafes immer gefühlt, wenn man gesprochen hat von dem Schlaf als dem «Bruder des Todes». Nun werden wir uns heute auf die Besprechung des Schlafes als solchen zu beschränken haben, denn auf die Betrachtung des Todes werden uns die folgenden Vorträge noch in mancher Beziehung zurückführen.
Alles, was der Mensch zu seinem Seelenerleben in unmittelbarem Sinne rechnen muß, alle vom Morgen bis zum Abend auf- und abwogenden Vorstellungen, alle Empfindungen und Gefühle, welche das Seelendrama des Menschen ausmachen, alle Schmerzen und Leiden, auch die Willensimpulse, sie sinken gleichsam in ein unbestimmtes Dunkel hinunter, wenn der Mensch in den Schlaf versinkt. Und es könnten sozusagen manche Philosophen an sich selber irre werden, wenn sie sprechen von dem Wesen des Seelischen, von dem Wesen des Geistigen, das sich offenbart in der Menschennatur, und von dem sie doch zugeben müssen, daß es innerhalb eines jeden Tageslaufes — auch wenn es sich noch so gut in Begriffe und Ideen hat einspannen lassen und noch so gut erforscht zeigt — im Grunde genommen in nichts sich zu verlieren scheint. Wenn wir die Erscheinungen des Seelenlebens so betrachten, wie man sie eigentlich sowohl wissenschaftlich als auch laienhaft zu betrachten gewohnt ist, so müssen wir im Grunde genommen sagen, sie sind während des Schlafzustandes ausgelöscht, sind fort. Für den, der bloß das betrachten will, was sich von dem Seelischen im Leiblichen äußert, ist gewissermaßen der Mensch erst recht ein Rätsel, wenn er tiefer nachdenkt. Denn die eigentlichen leiblichen Funktionen, leiblichen Tätigkeiten, dauern während des Schlafes fort. Nur was wir gewöhnlich als das Seelische bezeichnen, hört auf. Es fragt sich nun nur, ob man in ganz richtigem Sinne über Leibliches und Seelisches spricht, wenn man in das, was wie ausgelöscht erscheint mit dem Einschlafen, wirklich dieses Seelische in seinem ganzen Umfange einschließt. Oder ob schon die gewöhnliche Beobachtung des Lebens, wenn wir jetzt ganz absehen von geisteswissenschaftlichen oder anthroposophischen Betrachtungen, uns doch zeigen kann, daß dieses Seelische auch tätig ist, seine Wirksamkeit auch erweist dann, wenn es vom Schlaf umfangen ist. Will man allerdings über diese Begriffe einige Klarheit gewinnen, man könnte auch sagen, will man die Erscheinungen des Lebens im richtigen Sinne auf diesem Gebiete beobachten, so muß man sich genaue Begriffe vor die Seele stellen.
Einleitungsweise möchte ich von vornherein erwähnen, daß auch in bezug auf dieses Thema die Geisteswissenschaft oder Anthroposophie nicht in der Lage ist, so allgemein zu sprechen, wie man es heute liebt. Wenn wir heute vom Wesen des Schlafes sprechen, werden wir nur vom Schlaf des Menschen sprechen. Denn die Geisteswissenschaft weiß sehr wohl - das ist in dem letzten Vortrage in bezug auf andere Gebiete mannigfach gestreift worden —, daß das, was in dieser oder jener Erscheinung bei verschiedenartigen Wesen äußerlich sich scheinbar gleich ausdrückt, auf ganz verschiedenen Ursachen innerhalb der betreffenden Wesen beruhen kann. Das haben wir angedeutet für den Tod, für das ganze geistige Leben und für die Ausgestaltung des geistigen Lebens bei Tier und Mensch. Es würde heute zu weit führen, über den Schlaf der Tiere noch zu sprechen. Wir wollen deshalb vorausschicken, daß alles, was heute gesagt wird, nur für den Schlaf des Menschen gesagt werden soll. Von seelischen Erscheinungen innerhalb unserer selbst zu sprechen, dazu sind wir Menschen in der Lage — das fühlt ein jeder — durch unser Bewußtsein, dadurch, daß wir ein Bewußtsein haben von dem, was wir vorstellen, was wir wollen, was wir fühlen. Es muß nun die Frage entstehen — und sie ist gerade für unsere heutigen Beobachtungen außerordentlich wichtig —: Dürfen wir den Begriff des Bewußtseins, wie wir ihn für das normale Bewußtsein des Menschen in der Gegenwart kennen, ohne weiteres mit dem Begriff des Seelischen oder des Geistigen im Menschen zusammenwerfen? Um mich über diese Begriffe zunächst klarer auszusprechen, möchte ich zu einem Vergleich greifen. Ein Mensch kann in einem Zimmer herumgehen und kann nirgends an den verschiedenen Orten, wo er sich im Zimmer befindet, etwas sehen von seinem eigenen Antlitz. Nur an einem einzigen Orte, wo er in den Spiegel hineinschauen kann, kann er etwas von seinem eigenen Antlitz sehen. Da tritt ihm die Gestalt seines Antlitzes im Bilde entgegen. Ist es nun nicht für den Menschen doch ein gewaltiger Unterschied, ob er nur im Zimmer herumgeht und in sich lebt, oder ob er das, was er so darlebt, auch im Spiegelbilde sieht? So könnte es vielleicht mit dem menschlichen Bewußtsein in einer etwas erweiterten Art sein. Der Mensch könnte sozusagen sein Seelenleben leben, und dieses Seelenleben selber — wie er es darlebt — müßte ihm erst dadurch, daß es sich in einer Art Spiegel ihm entgegenstellt, zum Wissen, zum Bewußtsein kommen. Das könnte sehr wohl sein. Wir könnten also zum Beispiel sagen: Es ist durchaus denkbar, daß das menschliche Seelenleben fortdauert, gleichgültig ob der Mensch wacht oder schläft, daß aber der Wachzustand darin besteht, daß der Mensch durch eine Spiegelung — sagen wir zunächst durch eine Spiegelung innerhalb seiner Leiblichkeit — sein Seelenleben wahrnimmt, und daß er es im Schlafzustand deshalb nicht wahrnehmen kann, weil es sich nicht in seiner Leiblichkeit spiegelt.
Damit hätten wir zwar zunächst nichts bewiesen, zum mindesten aber hätten wir zwei Begriffe gewonnen. Wir könnten unterscheiden zwischen dem Seelenleben als solchem und zwischen dem Bewußtwerden des Seelenlebens. Und wir könnten uns denken, daß für unser Bewußtsein, für unser Wissen um das Seelenleben, wie wir im normalen Menschenleben gegenwärtig stehen, alles davon abhängt, daß wir das Seelenleben durch unsere Leiblichkeit gespiegelt erhalten, weil wir, wenn wir es nicht gespiegelt erhalten, nichts von ihm wissen könnten. Wir wären dann ganz in einem Zustande wie im Schlafe. Versuchen wir jetzt, nachdem wir diese Begriffe gewonnen haben, die Erscheinung des Wach- und Schlaflebens uns ein wenig vor die Seele zu führen.
Wer das Leben wirklich zu beobachten vermag, kann sehr deutlich fühlen, man möchte sagen schauen, wie der Moment des Einschlafens wirklich verläuft. Er kann wahrnehmen, wie die Vorstellungen, die Gefühle schwächer werden, in ihrer Helligkeit, in ihrer Intensität abnehmen.
Das ist aber nicht das ganz Wesentliche. Während der Mensch wacht, lebt er so, daß er in seinem ganzen Vorstellungsleben von seinem selbstbewußten Ich aus Ordnung schafft, gleichsam alle Vorstellungen zusammenfaßt mit seinem Ich. Denn in dem Augenblick, wo wir im Wachleben unsere Vorstellungen nicht mit unserm Ich zusammenfassen würden, würden wir kein normales Seelenleben führen können. Wir würden eine Gruppe von Vorstellungen haben, die wir auf uns beziehen würden, die wir unsere Vorstellungen nennen würden, und eine andere Gruppe, die wir wie etwas Fremdes anschauen würden, wie eine Außenwelt. Nur Menschen, die eine Spaltung ihres Ich erleben, was für den gegenwärtigen Menschen ein krankhafter Zustand ist, könnten eine solche Auseinanderzerrung ihres Vorstellungslebens in verschiedene Gebiete haben. Beim normalen Menschen ist es das Wesentliche, daß alle Vorstellungen wie auf einen Punkt perspektivisch bezogen sind: auf das selbstbewußte Ich. Im Moment des Einschlafens fühlen wir deutlich, wie sozusagen das Ich zunächst von den Vorstellungen überwältigt wird, trotzdem sie dunkler werden. Die Vorstellungen machen ihre Selbständigkeit geltend, leben ein Eigenleben, gleichsam einzelne Vorstellungswolken bilden sich innerhalb des Horizontes des Bewußtseins, und das Ich verliert sich an die Vorstellungen. Dann fühlt der Mensch, wie die Sinnesempfindungen Sehen, Hören und so weiter immer stumpfer und stumpfer werden, und er fühlt endlich, wie die Willensimpulse gelähmt sind. Nun müssen wir auf etwas hinweisen, was im Grunde genommen von wenigen Menschen schon klar beobachter wird. Weiter fühlt der Mensch, während er im Tagesleben die Dinge mit bestimmten Umrissen sieht, daß sich im Moment des Einschlafens etwas geltend macht wie ein Eingeschlossensein in einen unbestimmten Nebel, der sich zuweilen kühlend, zuweilen mit anderen Gefühlen geltend macht an gewissen Körperstellen: an den Händen, an den Gelenken, an den Schläfen, am Rückgrat und so weiter. Das sind Gefühle, die der Einschlafende recht wohl beobachten kann. Das sind — man möchte sagen — solche trivialen Erfahrungen, wie man sie jeden Abend beim Einschlafen machen kann, wenn man will.
Bessere Erfahrungen machen schon die Menschen, die durch eine feinere Ausbildung ihres Seelenlebens den Moment des Einschlafens genauer beobachten. Sie können dann trotz des Einschlafens etwas wie ein Aufwachen fühlen. Was ich Ihnen jetzt erzähle, kann ein jeder sagen, der sich einige Methoden angewöhnt hat , um diese Dinge wirklich zu beobachten, denn es ist eine allgemein menschliche Erscheinung. In dem Moment, wo die Menschen beim Hinüberschlummern etwas wie Aufwachen fühlen, ist es so, daß man wirklich sagen kann: Es wacht etwas auf wie ein sich ausbreitendes Gewissen, etwas wie die Moral der Seele wacht auf. Das ist tatsächlich der Fall. Und es zeigt sich insbesondere dadurch, daß solche Menschen an dem Seelischen die mit Bezug auf das im vorhergehenden Tagesleben Erlebte Beobachtung machen, womit sie in ihrem Gewissen selber befriedigt sind. Das fühlen sie in diesem Moment des moralischen Aufwachens ganz besonders. Zugleich ist dieses Fühlen ganz entgegengesetzt dem Fühlen des Tages. Während das Fühlen des Tages sich in der Weise zeigt, daß die Dinge an uns herankommen, fühlt der Einschlafende, wie wenn seine Seele sich ausgießen würde über eine Welt, die jetzt erwacht und die hauptsächlich umschließt ein Sichausspannen, ein Sichausgießen des Gefühls über das, was die Seele durch sich selber wie durch ein sich ausbreitendes Gewissen in bezug auf ihre moralische Innerlichkeit erleben kann. Da ist es dann ein Moment, der aber für den Einschlafenden viel länger erscheint, von einer inneren Seligkeit, wenn es sich um ein Sichausbreiten über die Dinge handelt, mit welchen die Seele einverstanden sein kann, und es ist oft ein Gefühl von tiefem Zerrissensein, wenn sie sich Vorwürfe zu machen hat. Kurz, der moralische Mensch, der während des Tages durch die stärkeren Sinneseindrücke niedergedrückt wird, spannt sich aus und fühlt sich ganz besonders im Moment des Einschlafens. Und jeder, der sich eine gewisse Methode oder vielleicht auch nur eine Empfindung in bezug auf solche Beobachtungen angeeignet hat, weiß, daß eine gewisse Sehnsucht in diesem Moment erwacht, die wir etwa so beschreiben können: Man will, daß dieser Moment eigentlich sich ins Unbestimmte ausdehnen möge, daß er nicht ein Ende finde. Dann aber kommt etwas wie ein Ruck, eine Art innere Bewegung. Das ist nun für die meisten Menschen schon außerordentlich schwer zu beschreiben. Die Geistesforschung kann diese innere Bewegung natürlich ganz genau beschreiben. Es ist gleichsam eine Forderung, die sich die Seele selber macht: Du mußt dich jetzt noch weiter ausspannen, dich noch weiter ergießen! Aber indem sie sich diese Forderung stellt, verliert sich die Seele für das moralische Leben in der Umgebung. Es ist, wie wenn Sie einen kleinen Farbentropfen ins Wasser werfen und zur Auflösung bringen: zunächst sieht man die Farbe noch, wenn sich aber der Tropfen über das ganze Wasser ergießt, verblaßt er immer mehr und mehr, und endlich hört die Farbenerscheinung als solche auf. So ist es, wenn die Seele eben anfängt aufzuquellen, in ihrer moralischen Spiegelung zu leben, da fühlt sie sich noch; aber das Fühlen hört dann auf, wenn der Ruck, die innere Bewegung eintritt, wie sich der Tropfen mit seiner Farbe in dem Wasser verliert. Das ist keine Theorie, das ist zu beobachten und jedem zugänglich, wie eine naturwissenschaftliche Beobachtung exakt jedem zugänglich ist. Wenn wir so das Einschlafen beobachten, können wir allerdings sagen: Der Mensch fängt mit dem Einschlafen gleichsam etwas ab, was gewissermaßen nicht mehr nachher in seinem Bewußtsein sein kann. Der Mensch hat — wenn ich mich jetzt der früher konstruierten beiden Ideen bedienen darf — gleichsam einen Moment des Abschiednehmens von dem Spiegel des Leiblichen, worin ihm die Erscheinungen des Lebens gespiegelt erscheinen. Und weil er noch keine Möglichkeit hat, das, was sich im Leibe spiegeln soll, an etwas anderem sich spiegeln zu lassen, so hört die Möglichkeit auf, wahrzunehmen, was er ist.
Nun kann man aber auch wieder — wenn man nicht durchaus eigensinnig und halsstarrig sein will in bezug auf das, was sich auf die Seele bezieht und auf die Wirkung dessen, was da in ein unbestimmtes Dunkel hineingeht — die Erscheinungen des Tages in einem gewissen Sinn wahrnehmen. In anderem Zusammenhang habe ich schon darauf aufmerksam gemacht, wie der Mensch, der genötigt ist dieses oder jenes zu memorieren, also Dinge auswendig zu lernen, dies viel leichter zustandebringt, wenn er es öfter überschläft, und wie der größte Feind des Auswendiglernens das Sichabstehlen des Schlafes ist. Es ist sogar wieder die Möglichkeit und die Fähigkeit da, leichter zu memorieren, wenn wir die Sache überschlafen haben, als wenn wir in einem Zuge etwas auswendig lernen wollen. So ist es aber auch bei anderen Tätigkeiten der Seele.
Wir würden uns aber ganz leicht überzeugen können, daß es unmöglich wäre, überhaupt etwas zu lernen, uns etwas anzueignen, wo die Seele etwas mitzutun hat, wenn wir nicht immer die Zustände des Schlafes in unsere Lebenszustände einfügen könnten. Der natürliche Schluß, der aus solchen Erscheinungen gezogen werden muß, ist der, daß unsere Seele es nötig hat, sich von Zeit zu Zeit dem Leibe zu entziehen, um sich Kraft aus einem Gebiete zu holen, das nicht innerhalb des Leibes ist, weil innerhalb des Leiblichen die entsprechenden Kräfte gerade abgenutzt werden. Wir müssen uns vorstellen: wenn wir morgens aus dem Schlafe aufwachen, so haben wir uns aus dem Zustande, in dem wir waren, Stärkung mitgebracht, um Fähigkeiten zu entwickeln, die wir nicht entwickeln könnten, wenn wir immer nur an unseren Leib gefesselt wären. So zeigt sich in unserem gewöhnlichen Wesen die Wirkung des Schlafes, wenn man geradlinig denken will und nicht halststarrig sein will.
Was sich so im allgemeinen zeigt und wozu man, wenn man im gewöhnlichen Leben stehenbleibt, schon etwas guten Willen braucht, um die einzelnen Erscheinungen zusammenzuhalten, das zeigt sich ganz klar und deutlich, wenn der Mensch Entwickelungen durchmacht, die ihn zum wirklichen Hineinschauen in das geistige Leben führen können. Ich möchte hier etwas darüber ausführen, was eintritt, wenn der Mensch die in der Seele schlummernden Kräfte entwickelt hat, um jenen Zustand zu erreichen, wo er nicht durch die Sinne wahrnehmen und durch den Verstand begreifen kann. — Genaueres darüber folgt in dem Vortrag «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnis der geistigen Welt?», wo.die Methoden in ziemlich umfassender Weise besprochen werden sollen. — Jetzt aber sollen einige von den Erfahrungen hervorgehoben werden, die ein Mensch machen kann, der wirklich solche Übungen durchmacht, die seine Seele gleichsam mit geistigen Augen, mit geistigen Ohren begaben, wodurch er in die geistige Welt hineinschauen kann, die nicht ein Gegenstand der Spekulation ist, sondern ebenso ein Gegenstand, wie es die Farben und Formen, Wärme und Kälte und Töne sind für den Menschen, der sinnlich wahrnimmt. Es ist ja schon durch die früheren Vorträge zutage getreten, wie man zu wahrer Hellsichtigkeit kommt. Diese geistige Entwickelung, diese Übungen bestehen ja tatsächlich darin, daß der Mensch etwas, was er in sich hat, aus sich herausholt, andere Erkenntnisorgane gewinnt, gleichsam einen Ruck über die Seele, wie sie im normalen Zustande ist, hinaufmacht und dadurch eine Welt wahrnimmt, die immer um ihn ist, die aber im normalen Zustande nicht wahrgenommen werden kann. Wenn der Mensch solche Übungen durchmacht, ändert sich allerdings zunächst sein Schlafleben. Das weiß jeder, der zu wirklichen eigenen geistigen Forschungen gekommen ist. Ich will nun von dem allerersten Zustand der Anderung des Schlaflebens bei dem eigentlich hellsichtigen, geistesforscherischen Menschen sprechen.
Die ersten Anfänge dieser Möglichkeit des geistigen Forschens lassen den Menschen eigentlich nicht sehr verschieden erscheinen von dem gewöhnlichen, normalen Bewußtseinszustand. Denn wenn der Mensch solche Übungen vornimmt, wie wir sie später besprechen werden, schläft er zunächst ganz so wie ein anderer Mensch und ist geradeso bewußtlos wie irgendein anderer Mensch. Aber der Moment des Aufwachens zeigt doch dem, der geistig-seelische Übungen durchgemacht hat, etwas ganz Besonderes. Und ich will einige ganz konkrete Erscheinungen vor Sie hinmalen, die Tatsachen sind.
Nehmen Sie an, ein Mensch, der solche Übungen macht, denkt sehr scharf über etwas nach, worüber auch ein anderer Mensch nachdenken könnte, er versucht, weil er vielleicht ein sehr schweres Problem vor sich hat, alle Geisteskräfte anzuspannen, um hinter die Sache zu kommen. Es kann ihm da geradeso gehen, wie es einem Schulbuben geht: es reicht die geistige Kraft nicht aus, um die Aufgabe zu lösen. Das kann durchaus passieren. Wenn er nun durch seine Übungen schon mehr Erfahrungsmöglichkeiten über innere seelische Zustände im Zusammenhang mit leiblichen hat, dann fühlt er allerdings etwas ganz Besonderes, wenn er etwas nicht kann. Er fühlt dann in einer anderen Weise als sonst, wie er einen Widerstand an seinen physischen Organen hat, zum Beispiel am Gehirn. Er fühlt richtig, wie wenn das Gehirn ihm Widerstand entgegensetzen würde, wie wir zum Beispiel den Widerstand fühlen, wenn wir einen Nagel mit einem zu schweren Hammer einschlagen wollten. Da fängt das Gehirn an, eine Realität zu gewinnen. Wie der Mensch gewöhnlich sein Gehirn benutzt, fühlt er es nicht so, wie wenn er ein Instrument benutzte, wie es zum Beispiel bei einem Hammer der Fall ist. Der Geistesforscher fühlt sein Gehirn, er fühlt sich selbständig gegenüber seinem Denken. Das ist eine Erfahrung. Aber wo er eine Aufgabe nicht lösen kann, da fühlt er, daß er für gewisse Tätigkeiten, die er beim Denken ausführen muß, nicht mehr die Möglichkeit hat sie auszuführen. Er verliert die Macht über das Instrument und fühlt das ganz deutlich. Das ist eine ganz genau zu erlebende Tatsache.
Wenn nun der Geistesforscher das Problem überschläft und aufwacht, dann kann es sehr häufig vorkommen, daß er sich ohne weiteres jetzt der Aufgabe gewachsen fühlt. Aber er empfindet zu gleicher Zeit ganz präzise, daß er vor dem Aufwachen etwas getan hat, daß er etwas gearbeitet hat. Er fühlt, daß er imstande war, während des Schlafes in sich etwas zur Beweglichkeit, zur Tätigkeit zu bringen. Für den Wachzustand war er gezwungen, das Gehirn zu benutzen. Das weiß er. Er kann gar nicht anders, als das Gehirn im Wachzustand zu benutzen. Aber er konnte es nicht mehr recht benutzen, weil es ihm — wie ich beschrieben habe — Widerstand geboten hat. Im Schlafzustand — das fühlt er—ist er nicht angewiesen gewesen auf die Benutzung des Gehirns. Er konnte eine gewisse Beweglichkeit schaffen ohne das sonst zu stark ermüdete oder sonst zu stark in Anspruch genommene Gehirn. Nun fühlt er etwas ganz Eigenartiges: er nimmt wahr seine Tätigkeit, die er im Schlafe ausgeübt hat, aber nicht direkt. Den Seinen gibt es der Herr doch nicht im Schlafe. Erspart wird es ihm nicht, daß er das Problem nun im Wachzustand lösen muß. Es kann ihm zufallen; aber gewöhnlich ist es nicht so, und namentlich nicht bei Dingen, die nun schon durch das Gehirn gelöst werden müssen.
Dann also fühlt der Mensch etwas, was er vorher in der Sinnenwelt gar nicht gekannt hat, er fühlt seine eigene Tätigkeit wie in Bildern sich ihm darlebend, in merkwürdigen Bildern, die in Bewegung sind — gleichsam wie wenn die Gedanken, die er nötig hätte, lebendige Wesen wären, die allerlei Beziehungen zueinander eingehen. Er fühlt also seine eigene — nennen Sie es Gedankentätigkeit, die er im Schlafe ausgeübt hat, — wie eine Reihe von Bildern. Dieses Gefühl ist schwierig zu schildern, weil man in ganz eigenartiger Weise darinnensteckt und sich sagen muß: Das bist du selber! Aber dieses Gefühl kann man auf der andern Seite wieder ganz genau von sich unterscheiden, wie man eine äußere Bewegung, die man macht, von sich unterscheiden kann. Also man hat Bilder, Imaginationen von einer Tätigkeit, die vor dem Aufwachen ausgeführt worden ist. Und jetzt kann man merken, wenn man auf sich achtzugeben gelernt hat, daß diese Bilder einer Tätigkeit, die vor dem Aufwachen lag, sich mit unserem Gehirn verbinden und es zu einem beweglicheren, brauchbareren Instrument machen, so daß man imstande ist, etwas zu Ende zu führen, was man vorher nicht konnte, weil ein Widerstand da war, zum Beispiel gewisse Gedanken zu denken. Es sind dies feine Dinge, aber ohne sie kann man nicht recht hinter das Geheimnis des Schlafes kommen. Man fühlt also, daß man nicht eine Tätigkeit ausgeübt hat wie im Wachen, sondern eine Tätigkeit, die zur Wiederherstellung gewisser Dinge im Gehirn, die abgebraucht waren, gedient hat, und daß man das Instrument wieder aufgebaut hat, wie man es vorher nicht aufbauen konnte. Man fühlt sich wie ein Baumeister an seinen eigenen Instrumenten.
Es ist ein beträchtlicher Unterschied, was man bei einer solchen Tätigkeit für eine Empfindung hat gegenüber einer Tätigkeit des Tages. Für die Tätigkeit des Tages hat man so ein Gefühl, das man vergleichen kann damit, wie wenn man irgend etwas nach einer Vorlage oder einem Modell abzeichnet. Da bin ich gezwungen, in jedem Strich oder Farbenfleck mich nach dem Bilde zu richten, das vor mir steht. Bei jenen Dingen, die da als Bilder im Moment des Aufwachens auftreten, und die gleichsam eine Tätigkeit während des Schlafes verbildlichen, hat man das Gefühl, wie wenn man die Striche selber erfinden würde und aus sich selber, ohne an ein Modell gebunden zu sein, die Figuren schaffen würde. Mit einer solchen Erscheinung hat man gleichsam abgefangen, was die Seele getan hat, bevor sie aufgewacht ist: man hat die Tätigkeit der Regeneration des Gehirns abgefangen. Denn man kommt nach und nach wirklich dahinter, daß das, was man empfindet wie eine Art von Überziehen der Gehirnorgane mit dem, was man da als Figuren erinnert, nichts anderes ist als ein Wiederaufbauen dessen, was während des Tages daran zerstört worden ist. Man kommt sich wirklich wie ein Baumeister an sich selber vor.
Nun besteht im Grunde genommen der Unterschied zwischen einem Geistesforscher, der solches wahrnimmt, und einem gewöhnlichen Menschen nur darin, daß der Geistesforscher dies eben wahrnimmt, während der gewöhnliche Mensch darauf nicht achtgeben kann und es nicht wahrnimmt. Denn dieselbe Tätigkeit, die da vom Geistesforscher ausgeführt wird, wird von jedem Menschen ausgeführt, nur fängt der gewöhnliche Mensch den Moment nicht ab, wo aus der Tätigkeit während des Schlafes die Organe neu aufgebaut werden.
Nehmen wir einmal eine solche Erfahrung und vergleichen wir sie jetzt mit dem, was wir vorher gesagt haben, mit dem Stumpferwerden und Dumpferwerden, mit dem Abnehmen der Helligkeit des täglichen Vorstellungslebens beim Einschlafen. Diese letztere Erscheinung läßt sich wirklich nur im rechten Lichte betrachten, wenn man sich entweder frei macht von den heute sehr suggestiv wirkenden Vorstellungen jener Weltanschauung, die glauben auf dem festen Boden der Naturwissenschaft zu stehen, oder wenn man sich wirklich einläßt auf die vorliegenden Ergebnisseder Naturforschung der Gegenwart. Da werden — zum Beispiel bei der Gehirnforschung — die genauer denkenden Menschen gar nicht mehr anders können, als nach den Ergebnissen der Naturforschung die Unabhängigkeit des Seelischen von dem Leiblichen zuzugeben. Und es ist sehr interessant, daß vor kurzem ein populäres Buch erschienen ist, wo im Grunde genommen alles von dem, was über das Geistesleben und über die Quellen des Geisteslebens handelt, verkehrt, vollständig ohne Einsicht dargestellt ist. Aber es ist in diesem Buche «Das Gehirn und der Mensch» von William Hanna Thomson manches sehr Gescheite gesagt. Vor allem ist auf die Gehirnforschung der Gegenwart eingegangen worden und auf manche Dinge, welche sich sonst darbieten, zum Beispiel — worauf ich schon öfter aufmerksam gemacht habe — auf die Ermüdungserscheinungen, die so lehrreich sind. Aber ich habe schon ausgeführt, daß die Muskeln oder Nerven nicht anders ermüden als durch bewußte Tätigkeit. So lange unsere Muskeln nur der organischen Tätigkeit dienen, können sie nicht ermüden, denn es wäre schlimm, wenn zum Beispiel der Herzmuskel und andere Muskeln sich ausruhen müßten. Wir ermüden nur, wenn wir eine Tätigkeit ausüben, die dem Organismus nicht eingeboren ist, wenn wir also eine Tätigkeit ausüben, die zum bewußten Seelenleben gehört. Deshalb muß man sagen: Wäre das Seelenleben so aus dem Menschen herausgeboren wie die Herztätigkeit, dann wäre dieser gewaltige Unterschied zwischen dem Ermüdetwerden und dem NichtErmüdetwerden gar nicht erklärlich. Daher fühlt sich der Autor jenes Buches gerade genötigt zuzugestehen, daß das Seelische zum Körperlichen sich wie nichts anderes verhält als der Reiter zum Pferde, das heißt also vom Körperlichen ganz unabhängig ist. Das ist von einem naturwissenschaftlich denkenden Menschen ein ganz gewaltiges Zugeständnis. Und man könnte ganz eigentümliche Gefühle erhalten, wenn ein Mensch, genötigt durch die Naturforschung der Gegenwart, dazu kommt sich zu gestehen, daß die Beziehung des seelischen Lebens zum körperlichen ungefähr so gedacht werden muß wie die Beziehung des Reiters zum Pferde, das heißt nach dem Bilde, das man in früheren Zeiten, als man noch mehr in das Geistige hineingesehen hat, sich im Kentauren vorgestellt hat. Es ist durch nichts ersichtlich, daß der Autor dieses Buches sich das gedacht hat, aber dieser Gedanke springt durch die naturwissenschaftliche Vorstellung wieder hervor, und man bekommt da Gefühle von solchen Vorstellungen, die aus Zeiten herrühren, wo ein gewisses Hellsehen für viele Menschen noch vorhanden war. Allerdings, gewisse heutige Vorstellungen über den Kentauren scheinen ja besser dem zu entsprechen, was mir einmal ein Herr sagte. Der Betreffende meinte: Da haben die Griechen die aus dem Norden herkommenden Skythen oder andere Reitervölker gesehen, aber sie haben sie vielleicht aus dem Nebel hervorkommen sehen, da haben sie jene Gestalten dann nicht genau unterscheiden können und haben sich dann gedacht, daß sie aus dem Pferde hervorgewachsen wären. Mit einer solchen Erklärung mag sich vielleicht der Materialist zufrieden geben. Aber gerade die naturwissenschaftlichen Forschungen der Gegenwart drängen dazu, die Unabhängigkeit des Seelischen von dem Körperlichen zugeben zu müssen.
Es wird uns dabei ganz gewiß eines auffallen können, und wir können solche Dinge am besten verfolgen, wenn wir gewisse Erscheinungen uns vor die Seele rufen, die nicht alltäglich sind, aber solche Erscheinungen sind ja deshalb doch vorhanden und lassen sich nicht ableugnen. Der Geistesforscher kennt es, wie jener einfache Mensch auf dem Lande plötzlich anfing in seiner Todesstunde in lateinischer Sprache zu reden, die er niemals eigentlich gebraucht hat, und von dem man nachweisen konnte, daß er sie nur als kleiner Knabe in der Kirche einmal gehört hatte. Das ist keine Fabel, sondern eine Realität. Er hat natürlich nichts davon verstanden, als er sie gehört oder rezitiert hat. Aber wahr ist es doch. Daraus müßte sich jeder Mensch die Vorstellung bilden, daß das, was von der Umgebung auf uns wirkt, noch ganz anderes in sich enthält als das, was wir in unser gewöhnliches Bewußtsein aufnehmen. Denn was wir in unser gewöhnliches Bewußtsein aufnehmen, hängt vielfach von dem ab, was wir für eine Bildung haben, wofür wir Verständnis haben und dergleichen. Aber nicht allein das, wofür wir Verständnis haben, vereinigt sich mit uns, sondern wir haben in uns die Möglichkeit, unendlich viel mehr aufzunehmen als das, was wir bewußt aufnehmen. Wir können es sogar bei jedem Menschen beobachten, wie zu gewissen Zeiten Vorstellungen bei ihm auftreten, die damals, als er sie da oder dort erfahren hat, gar nicht so stark beachtet wurden, so daß er sich vielleicht an gar nichts mehr erinnern kann. Aber durch gewisse Dinge treten sie wieder auf, stellen sich vielleicht sogar in den Mittelpunkt des Seelenlebens. Wir müssen durchaus zugeben, daß das, was den Umfang unseres Seelenlebens ausmacht, unendlich viel mehr ist als das, was wir in unser Tagesbewußtsein aufnehmen und mit demselben umfassen können. Das ist außerordentlich wichtig. Denn dadurch wird sozusagen unser Blick auf ein Inneres in uns hingelenkt, das ja wahrhaftig auf unsere Leiblichkeit aus dem Grunde nur geringen Eindruck machen kann, weil es kaum beachtet worden ist, und das andererseits dennoch fortlebt in uns. Wir werden dadurch auf Untergründe unseres Seelenlebens hingewiesen, die eigentlich für jeden vernünftigen Menschen da sein müßten. Denn jeder vernünftige Mensch müßte sich sagen: Was für sein Bewußtsein um ihn herum in der Welt ist, während er die Welt bewußt anschaut, das ist im Grunde genommen von der Einrichtung seiner Sinnesorgane abhängig und von dem, was er verstehen kann. Und niemand ist berechtigt, etwa das Wirkliche begrenzen zu wollen durch das, was er wahrnehmen kann. Ganz unlogisch wäre es, dem Geistesforscher abstreiten zu wollen, daß es hinter der physischen Welt eine geistige Welt gibt, aus dem einfachen Grunde, weil doch der Mensch nur sagen darf, was er sieht und hört und worüber er denken kann, und niemals über das urteilen darf, was er nicht wahrnehmen kann. Denn die Welt des Wirklichen ist nicht die Welt des Wahrnehmbaren. Die Welt des Wahrnehmbaren ist begrenzt durch die Sinnesorgane. Deshalb sollte man niemals — wie im kantischen Sinne — von Grenzen der Erkenntnis sprechen, oder davon, was der Mensch wissen oder nicht wissen könnte, sondern nur von dem, was man in Gemäßheit seiner Wahrnehmungsorgane vor sich hat.
Wenn man das bedenkt, muß man sich sagen: Dann liegt hinter dem Farbenteppich der Sinneswelt, hinter dem, was der Wärmesinn wahrnimmt als Wärme oder Kälte und so weiter, eine unbegrenzte Wirklichkeit. Sollte daher nur das auf uns Einfluß haben, was wir wahrnehmen, oder nur diejenige Wirklichkeit, die wir wahrnehmen? Logisch haltbar ist nur, wenn wir uns denken, daß durch unsere Wahrnehmung uns ein Teil, ein Ausschnitt der ganzen Wirklichkeit gegeben ist, daß hinter dem, was uns durch unsere Wahrnehmung gegeben werden kann, eine unbegrenzte Wirklichkeit liegt, die aber auch für uns wirklich ist, denn wir sind in sie hineingestellt, so daß für uns weiterlebt, was da draußen wogt und lebt und auf uns Einfluß hat. Wie stellt sich dann aber eigentlich unser waches Tagesleben dar? Dann müßten wir uns ja das wache Tagesleben so vorstelJlen — und es gibt gar keine andere Möglichkeit —, daß wir sagen: Wir öffnen unsere Sinne, unser Erkenntnisvermögen einer Unermeßlichkeit und stellen uns dieser Unermeßlichkeit entgegen. Dadurch, daß wir so geartete Augen, so geartete Ohren, einen solchen Wärmesinn und so weiter haben, stellen wir einen bestimmten Ausschnitt der Wirklichkeit vor uns hin; das andere weisen wir zurück, wehren uns gleichsam dagegen, schließen es von uns aus. Worin besteht also dann unsere bewußte Tätigkeit? Sie besteht in einem Sich-Wehren, in einem Ausschließen von etwas anderem. Und indem wir unsere Sinnesorgane anstrengen, ist es ein Zurückhalten eines Nicht- Wahrgenommenen. Was wir wahrnehmen, ist der Rest, der bleibt von dem, was sich um uns ausbreitet, und das wir zum größten Teil zurückstoßen. So fühlen wir uns aktiv in die Welt hineingestellt, fühlen uns mit ihr verbunden. Wir wehren uns gleichsam durch unsere Sinnestätigkeit gegen die Menge der Eindrücke, indem wir — bildlich gesprochen — die ganze unermeßliche Unendlichkeit nicht ertragen können und nur einen Ausschnitt von ihr aufnehmen. Wenn wir so denken, müssen wir zwischen unserem ganzen Organismus, zwischen unserer ganzen Leiblichkeit und zwischen der Außenwelt noch ganz andere Beziehungen denken als die, welche wir wahrnehmen oder mit dem Verstande begreifen können. Dann liegt es uns nicht mehr so fern, daran zu denken, daß diese Beziehungen, die wir zur Außenwelt haben, in uns leben, daß auch das Unsichtbare, Übersinnliche oder Außersinnliche in uns tätig ist, daß das Außersinnliche, indem es in uns tätig ist, sich der Sinne bedient, um einen Ausschnitt zu fabrizieren aus dem gesamten Unermeßlichen der Wirklichkeit. Dann ist aber unser Verhältnis zur Wirklichkeit ein ganz anderes, als wir es durch unsere Sinne wahrnehmen können. Dann liegt in unserer Seele etwas an Beziehungen zur Außenwelt, was sich gar nicht erschöpft in der Sinneswahrnehmung, was sich dem wachen Tagesbewußtsein entzieht, — dann ist es mit uns so, wie wenn wir mit unserm Wesen vor einen Spiegel hintreten und uns sagen müssen: Du bist im Grunde genommen etwas ganz anderes; der Spiegel zeigt dir nur die Form, vielleicht auch die Farben; aber da denkst du drinnen, da fühlst du drinnen, das alles kann dir der Spiegel nicht zeigen, er zeigt dir nur, was von seinen Gesetzen abhängig ist. Wie du aber als Seele gegenüber deinem Organismus bist, so bist du etwas ganz anderes, als deine Sinne dir zeigen; die beschränken dich darauf, was ihren Gesetzen angemessen ist. Also tatsächlich stehst du, wenn du der Welt entgegentrittst — in ähnlicher Weise wie das auch beim Spiegel der Fall ist —, einer Welt gegenüber, die nur durch die Einrichtung deiner Sinne möglich wird!
Wenn Sie diese Vorstellung zu Ende denken, werden Sie nicht mehr verwundert sein, daß im Grunde genommen alles Leben unseres wachen Tagesbewußtseins sehr abhängt von der Einrichtung unserer Sinnesorgane und unseres Gehirns, geradeso wie das, was wir von uns im Spiegel sehen, von der Beschaffenheit des Spiegels abhängt. Wer in einen Gartenspiegel hineinsieht und das karikierte Gesicht sieht, das ihm da entgegenscheint, wird gern zugeben, daß das Bild darin nicht von ihm, sondern von dem Spiegel abhängt. So hängt das, was wir wahrnehmen, von der Einrichtung unseres Spiegelungsapparates ab, und unsere seelische Tätigkeit wird begrenzt, gleichsam in sich selber zurück reflektiert, indem sie sich im Leibesleben spiegelt. Dann ist es nicht weiter wunderbar, daß der Ausschnitt — was man auch physiologisch nachweisen kann — abhängt von dem Leiblichen, indem dieses oder jenes im Bewußtsein so oder so sich vollzieht, denn alles, was die Seele tut, hängt von der Einrichtung unseres Leibes ab, wenn es uns zum Bewußtsein, zum Wissen werden soll. Die Beobachtung zeigt uns, daß die Begriffe, die wir anfangs nur konstruiert haben, durchaus den Tatsachen entsprechen. Der Unterschied ist nur der, daß unsere Leiblichkeit ein lebendiger Spiegel ist. Den Spiegel, in den wir hineinschauen, lassen wir so, wie er ist. Allerdings durch eines können wir auch die Spiegelung beeinträchtigen: wenn wir den Spiegel anhauchen, dann spiegelt er auch nicht mehr ordentlich. Aber die Spiegelung in unserer Leiblichkeit, welche die Tätigkeit unserer Seele erlebt, ist verbunden damit, daß, während wir uns in unserer Leiblichkeit spiegeln, die Spiegelung selbst eine Tätigkeit, ein Vorgang ist in unserer Leiblichkeit, und daß wir das, was da als Spiegelung auftritt, als eine Tätigkeit vor uns selber hinstellen.
So stellt sich uns das Leibesleben tatsächlich so dar, wie wenn wir in einer gewissen Beziehung das, was wir denken, aufschreiben und dann die Buchstaben vor uns haben. So schreiben wir die Tätigkeit der Seele in unser Leibesleben hinein. Was der Anatom nachweist, das sind nur die Buchstaben, der äußere Apparat, denn unser Seelenleben beobachten wir nicht vollständig, wenn wir es nur im Leibesleben beobachten, wir beobachten es nur dann vollständig, wenn wir es unabhängig von dem Leibesleben beobachten. Das kann aber nur der Geistesforscher, wenn er das Seelenleben beobachtet, wie es sich hineinspiegelnd zeigt beim Aufwachen in das wache Tagesleben. Es zeigt sich, daß das Seelenleben wie ein Architekt ist, der etwas aufbaut während der Nacht, und im Tagesleben der Abbauer ist.
Nun haben wir also das Seelenleben im Wach- und im Schlafzustand vor uns, und wir haben es uns im Schlafzustand unabhängig zu denken vom Leibesleben, wie der Reiter unabhängig ist vom Pferde. Aber wie der Reiter das Pferd benützt und seine Kräfte verbraucht, so verbraucht die Seele die Tätigkeit des Leibes, so daß chemische Prozesse sich abspielen als die Buchstaben des Seelenlebens. Damit kommen wir an einen Punkt, wo wir das Leibesleben, wie es in den Sinnen, im Gehirn begrenzt wird, so abgenutzt haben, daß wir es zunächst erschöpft haben. Dann müssen wir die andere Tätigkeit beginnen, den umgekehrten Prozeß einleiten und das Abgebaute wieder aufbauen. Das ist das Schlafesleben, so daß wir von der Seele aus zwei entgegengesetzte Tätigkeiten an unserm Leibe verrichten. Während des Wachens haben wir zwar um uns herum unsere Welt der auf- und abwogenden Vorstellungen, Freud und Leid, Gefühle und so weiter. Während wir aber diese vor uns haben, nutzen wir unser Leibesleben ab, zerstören es im Grunde genommen fortwährend. Während wir schlafen, sind wir die Architekten, wo wir wieder aufbauen, was wir während des wachen Lebens zerstört haben.
Was nimmt nun der Geistesforscher wahr? Er nimmt die architektonische Tätigkeit in eigentümlichen Bildern wie sich in sich schlingende Bewegungen wahr, dieses Wiederaufbauen: ein wirklicher Prozeß, der umgekehrt ist dem gewöhnlichen wachen Tagesleben. Das ist wirklich keine Phantasterei, wenn man davon spricht, daß man in diesen sich verschlingenden Bewegungen jene geheimnisvolle Tätigkeit wiedererkennt, welche die Seele im Schlafe ausführt, und die darinnen besteht, daß wir wiederherstellen, was wir im Tagesleben zerstört haben. Daher das Gesundende und das Notwendige des Schlaflebens.
Warum ist nun das Schlafleben ein solches, daß es nicht zum Bewußtsein kommt? Ja, woran liegt es, daß das wache Leben uns zum Bewußtsein kommt? Das liegt daran, daß wir bei den Prozessen, die wir im Tagesleben vollziehen, etwas wie Spiegelbilder haben; indem wir aber die andere Tätigkeit ausüben, das Wiederherstellen des Abgenutzten, haben wir nichts, worin sie sich spiegeln kann. Der Spiegel fehlt uns dafür. Was dem zugrunde liegt, das kann wieder nur der Geistesforscher zeigen. Von einem bestimmten Punkte an erlebt der Geistesforscher nicht nur die seelische Tätigkeit, wie ich sie beschrieben habe, wie eine TraumErinnerung aus dem Schlafe, sondern so, wie wenn er gar nicht angewiesen ist auf das Instrument des Leibes, so daß er dann eine Tätigkeit wahrnehmen kann, die sich nur im Geistigen abspielt. Da kann er sich sagen: Jetzt denkst du nicht mit deinem Gehirn, sondern jetzt denkst du in ganz anderen Formen, jetzt denkst du Bilder, unabhängig von - deinem Gehirn. Der Geistesforscher kann aber erst dazu kommen, so etwas zu erleben, wie es beschrieben wurde, wenn er erlebt, daß das Ganze, was sich beim Einschlafen als ein Nebuloses um ihn herumlegt, nicht verschwindet, sondern wenn der Nebel, der an den Schläfen, an den GeJenken, am Rückgrat wahrnehmbar ist, etwas wird, aus dem sich reflektiert, was er tut — geradeso wie sich zurückreflektiert, was wir im groben Leibesleben erleben —, wenn er in sich selber seine Tätigkeit begrenzen und zurücknehmen kann. Der ganze Unterschied der wirklichen Hellsichtigkeit von dem gewöhnlichen wachen Tagesleben besteht darin, daß das wache Tagesleben, um zum Bewußtsein der seelischen Tätigkeit zu kommen, eines andern Spiegels bedarf, indem es sich der Leiblichkeit dazu bedient, während die Tätigkeit des Hellsehers, wenn sie als Seelentätigkeit ausstrahlt, so stark ist, daß der ausfallende Strahl in sich selber zurückgezogen wird. So findet gleichsam eine Spiegelung an dem eigenen inneren Erleben, an einem Geistesorganismus statt. In diesem Geistesorganismus ist im Grunde genommen unsere Seele auch dann, wenn wir keine Geistesforscher sind, in der Nacht. Da hinein ergießt sie sich. Und wir kommen mit dem ganzen Schlafleben nicht zurecht, wenn wir uns nicht klar sind, daß in der Tat unsere Leibesvorgänge — alles, was die Anatomie, die Physiologie, erforschen kann — nichts anderes bewirken als die Spiegelung der Seelenvorgänge, und daß diese Seelenvorgänge immer vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen in einem geistigen Dasein leben. Wenn wir anders denken, können wir gar nicht zurechtkommen. Wir müssen also gleichsam von einem geheimnisvollen Seelenleben sprechen, das gar nicht in das Bewußtsein, das durch den Leib vermittelt ist, hineinkommen kann. Wenn man also bei einem Menschen VorstelJungen, die er lange nicht beachtet hat, in seinem Bewußtsein auftreten sieht, so muß man doch sagen: Es ist noch etwas anderes im Menschen vorhanden als die Vorstellungen des bewußten Seelenlebens, die in Aufmerksamkeit aufgenommen sind.
Nun habe ich schon einmal angedeutet, daß es kinderleicht ist, die Dinge, welche für den Geistesforscher eine Realität sind, zu widerlegen. Wahr sind sie aber doch. Die Geistesforschung muß davon sprechen, daß wir es beim Menschen einmal mit dem menschlichen physischen Leibe zu tun haben, den wir mit Augen sehen, mit Händen greifen können, und den auch die Anatomie und die Physiologie kennt. Weiter haben wir als ein inneres Glied der menschlichen Wesenheit den Astralleib, den Träger alles dessen, was der Mensch mit Bewußtsein aufnimmt, was er wirklich während des Tageslebens so erlebt, daß er es aus dem Leib gespiegelt erhalten kann. Zwischen dem Astralleib und dem physischen Leib liegt der Träger dessen, was Vorstellungen sind, die unbeachtet bleiben, jahrelang, die dann in den Astralleib heraufgeholt werden und sich dann ausleben. Kurz, wir sprechen davon, daß zwischen dem Astralleib, dem Träger des Bewußtseins, und dem physischen Leib der Ätherleib des Menschen tätig ist. Dieser Ätherleib ist nicht nur der Träger von solchen unbeachtet gebliebenen Vorstellungen, sondern überhaupt der Aufbauer des ganzen physischen Leibes.
Was tritt nun eigentlich im Schlafe ein? Es tritt ein, daß der Astralleib, der Träger des Bewußtseins, mit dem Ich aus dem physischen Leib und Ätherleib herausgeht, so daß eine Spaltung der menschlichen Natur eintritt. Wenn der Mensch im wachen Tagesleben ist, steckt der Astralleib mit dem Ich im physischen Leib und Ätherleib drinnen, und die Vorgänge des physischen Leibes wirken wieSpiegelungsvorgänge, durch die alles, was im Astralleib vorgeht, zum Bewußtsein kommt. Bewußtsein ist die Spiegelung der ErJebnisse durch den physischen Leib, und wir dürfen daher Bewußtsein nicht verwechseln mit den Erlebnissen selbst. Wenn der Astralleib im Schlafe herausgeht, ist er zunächst beim gewöhnlichen Menschen nicht imstande, in der Welt des Astralischen erwas wahrzunehmen. Der Mensch ist da bewußtlos.
Welche Fähigkeit erlangt nun der Geistesforscher, indem ihm im Schlafe auch Dinge bewußt werden, wenn er sich auch nicht auf sein Gehirn stützt? Da erlangt er die Fähigkeit, in etwas wahrzunehmen und seine Seelentätigkeit spiegeln zu können, was so für ihn zwischen den Dingen webt und lebt, daß es im wachen Tagesbewußtsein ebenso wahrzunehmen ist wie der eigene Ätherleib. Der Ätherleib desMenschen ist aus dem gewoben, wodurch der hellsichtige Mensch wahrnimmt; so daß für den hellsichtigen Menschen die äußere Welt spiegelnd wird, wie für das Seelenleben des normalen Menschen die physische Leiblichkeit spiegelnd wird.
Nun gibt es Zwischenzustände zwischen Wachen und Schlafen. Ein solcher Zwischenzustand ist der Traum. In bezug auf seine Entstehung zeigt die Geistesforschung, daß in der Tat das Träumen auf etwas Ähnlichem beruht wie Hellsehen, nur ist das Letztere etwas Geschultes, während das Träumen immer phantastisch ist. Der Mensch verliert die Möglichkeit, wenn er mit dem Astralleib herausgeht, durch den physischen Leib sein Seelenleben gespiegelt zu erhalten. Aber er kann unter gewissen abnormen Verhältnissen, die für jeden Menschen eintreten, die Fähigkeit erhalten, durch den Ätherleib die seelischen Erlebnisse gespiegelt zu erhalten. Denn in der Tat müssen wir nicht nur den physischen Leib als einen Spiegelungsapparat betrachten, sondern auch den Ätherleib, denn solange die äußere Welt auf uns Eindruck macht, ist es in der Tat der physische Leib, der wie ein Spiegelungsapparat wirkt. Wenn wir aber still in uns selber werden und das, was die äußere Welt an Eindrücken auf uns gemacht hat, verarbeiten, dann arbeiten wir in uns selber, unsere Gedanken aber sind trotzdem real. Wir leben unsere Gedanken, und wir fühlen auch, daß wir von etwas Feinerem abhängig sind, als unser physischer Leib ist, nämlich von dem Ätherleib. Dann ist der Ätherleib dasjenige, was im einsamen Sinnen, dem keine äußeren Eindrücke zunächst zugrunde liegen, in uns sich abspiegelt. Aber wir stecken in unserm Ätherleib im wachen Tagesbewußtsein; wir nehmen das wahr, was sich spiegelt, aber wir nehmen nicht die Tätigkeit des Astralleibes direkt wahr. Indem wir in einem Zwischenzustand zwischen Wachen und Schlafen nicht die Fähigkeit haben, äußere Sinneseindrücke zu empfangen, wohl aber noch in gewisser Weise etwas, was mit unserm Ätherleib zusammenhängt, kann uns der Ätherleib das spiegeln, was wir in unserm Seelischen mit unserm Astralleibe erleben. Das sind dann die Träume, die deshalb, weil der Mensch dabei in einer ganz ungewohnten Lage ist, jene Regellosigkeit zeigen.
Wenn wir dies bedenken, wird sich uns manches an der Traumwelt aufklären, was sonst an ihr recht rätselhaft ist. Wir werden daher die Untergründe des Seelenlebens eng mit dem Traumleben verknüpft denken müssen. Während der physische Leib der Spiegler des Seelenlebens ist und unsere Tagesinteressen sich daran auswirken, hängen wir durch den Ätherleib oft in der abgelegensten Art mit Erlebnissen zusammen, die lange hinter uns sind und die uns, weil das Tagesleben stark auf uns wirkt, nur schwach zum Bewußtsein kommen. Daher bleiben sie uns etwas höchst Unbekanntes. Wenn wir aber nun Träume betrachten, die wirklich auf guter Beobachtung beruhen, kann sich uns mancherlei Merkwürdiges zeigen. Zum Beispiel ein guter Komponist erlebt das Bild, daß eine etwas teuflische Gestalt ihm eine Sonate vorspielt. Er wacht auf — und kann die Sonate hinschreiben. Da ist etwas in ihm tätig geworden, was wie ein Fremdes gewirkt hat. Und das ist möglich gewesen, weil etwas in ihm war, wozu die Seele des Komponisten reif war, was aber im wachen Tagesleben sich nicht wirksam erweisen konnte, weil das Leibesleben nur ein Hemmnis und nicht geeignet zu spiegeln war. Da sehen wir, daß das Leibesleben ein Hemmnis ist und darin seine Bedeutung hat. Wir können im Tagesleben nur das erleben, wofür das Leibesleben — bildlich gesprochen — eingeschmiert ist als Maschine. Das Leibesleben ist uns immer ein Hemmnis. Aber wir bringen es bis zu einem gewissen Grade dahin, das Leibesleben zu gebrauchen. Man braucht ja überall «Hemmungen». Wenn eine Lokomotive über die Schienen fährt, sind es auch die Hemmungen, die Reibungen, wodurch sie fahren kann, denn ohne Reibung könnten sich die Räder nicht umdrehen. Unsere Leibesvorgänge sind in Wahrheit das, was unserem Seelenleben hemmend entgegentritt, und diese Hemmungsvorgänge sind zu gleicher Zeit die Spiegelungsvorgänge. Wenn wir in unserer Seele für etwas reif sind und es noch nicht dazu gebracht haben, unsere Maschine gut zu schmieren, so ist das wache Tagesleben ein guter Hemmschuh. Wenn wir aber herausgehen aus unserm physischen Leib, dann kann unser Ätherleib — was uns als etwas ganz Fremdes erscheinen muß, weil es feinerer Natur ist — dasjenige, was im Seelenleben lebt, zum Ausdruck bringen. Wenn es dann stark genug ist, drängt es sich in das Traumleben herein wie in diesem Falle bei dem Komponisten. Das hängt mit den Tagesinteressen weniger zusammen als mit verborgenen Interessen, die weiter abliegen in den feinen Untergründen. So zum Beispiel auch in dem Folgenden. Ich bemerke, ich erzähle nur etwas wirklich Beobachtetes. Eine Frau träumt — trotzdem sie Kinder hat, die sie sehr liebt, und einen Mann hat, der sie außerordentlich liebt —, daß sie sich zum zweiten Male verlobt und alle Ereignisse, die sie dabei durchmacht, mit großer Freude erlebt. Was träumt sie? Sie träumt Erlebnisse, die ihrem jetzigen Leben sehr fern liegen, die sie einmal durchgemacht hat, die sie aber nicht wiedererkennt, weil das gewöhnliche Tagesinteresse nur mit dem physischen Leibe zusammenhängt. Und was in ihr noch fortlebt in ihrem Ätherleibe, das wird durch ein anderes Ereignis, weil vielleicht irgendeine freudige Empfindung den Traum ausgelöst hat, nun vom Ätherleib her gespiegelt.
Ein Mann träumt, daß er Kindheitserlebnisse durchmacht. Und diese Kindheitserlebnisse spiegeln sich ganz wunderbar ab. Ein ihm besonders wichtiges, weil ihm sehr zu Herzen gehendes Ereignis bewirkt, daß er aufwacht. Zunächst ist ihm der Traum etwas sehr Liebes, er schläft aber bald wieder ein und träumt weiter. Eine ganze Summe von unangenehmen Erlebnissen gehen jetzt durch seine Seele, und ein besonders schmerzliches Ereignis weckt ihn auf. Alles das liegt höchst fern seinen gegenwärtigen Erlebnissen. Erstehtauf, weil er von dem Traum sehr erschüttertist, geht eine Weile im Zimmer herum, legt sich dann aber wieder hin und erlebt jetzt im Traum Ereignisse, die er nicht erlebt hat. Alle Ereignisse, die er durchgemacht hat, verwirren sich, und er erlebt nun etwas ganz Neues. Das Ganze wird zu einem Gedicht, das er sogar nachher niederschreiben und in Musik setzen kann. Das ist eine durchaus reale Tatsache. Nun wird es nicht schwer sein, mit den Begriffen, die wir schon gewonnen haben, uns vorzustellen, was da geschehen ist. Für den Geistesforscher stellt es sich so dar: Der Mann hat in einem ganz bestimmten Augenblick seines Lebens gewissermaßen in seiner Entwickelung einen Bruch erlitten. Er mußte etwas, was in seiner Seele lag, aufgeben. Aber wenn er es auch hat aufgeben müssen, so ist es darum nicht aus seinem Ätherleib gewichen. Die gewöhnlichen Interessen waren nur so stark, daß sie es zurückdrängten. Und wo es durch innere Elastizität stark genug war, drängte es sich im Traum heraus, weil der Mensch da von den Hemmungen des wachen Tageslebens befreit ist. Das heißt, der betreffende Mensch war tatsächlich nahe daran, einmal zu dem zu kommen, was in dem Gedicht sich ausdrückte; aber dann ist es übertäubt worden.
So sehen wir im Traume anschaulich die Unabhängigkeit des Seelenlebens vom äußeren Leibesleben. Und das muß uns zur Evidenz klar machen, daß der Gedanke der Spiegelung des Seelenlebens im Leibesleben eine große Berechtigung haben muß. Gerade der Umstand, daß die Interessen, in die wir verstrickt sind, nicht geradlinig in unser unmittelbares Erleben sich hineinprägen, zeigt uns, daß neben dem Leben, wie es sich im Alltag darlebt, ein anderes nebenherläuft, das ich für ein bewußtes feineres Beobachten wie eine Art von Aufwachen bezeichnet habe. Darin lebt alles, was für unser geistiges Leben — auch schon begrifflich, ideell — wie zum Beispiel das Gewissen, unabhängig ist vom Leibesleben, das fühlt ein jeder. Aber im Tagesleben erweist sich dieses andere Leben doch als etwas, was sehr begrenzt ist durch unsere Tagesinteressen. Im Schlafe zeigt sich unsere Seele ganz erfüllt auch von dieser ihrer moralischen Qualität. Es ist wirklich ein Hineinleben in das Geistige, was wir als einen Ruck, als eine innere Bewegung bezeichnen können. Was wir geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung nennen, wird sich uns ergeben als etwas, wodurch wir bewußt hineinleben in die Welt, in die der normale Mensch unbewußt jedesmal beim Einschlafen hineinlebt. Die Menschen werden sich schon nach und nach damit bekannt machen müssen, daß die Welt viel weiter ist als das, was wir mit den Sinnen begreifen und mit dem Verstande verfolgen können, und daß das Schlafesleben ein Gebiet ist, das wir brauchen, weil wir im Tagesleben eine Abnutzung gerade der edelsten Organe haben, die zum Vorstellungsleben dienen. Im Schlafe stellen wir sie wieder her, so daß sie sich stark und kräftig der Welt gegenüberstellen können und unser Seelenleben im wachen Tagesleben uns spiegeln können. Alles Charakteristische des Seelenlebens könnte uns dadurch klar werden. Wer wüßte nicht, daß er sich nach einem guten, tiefen Schlaf abgespannt, ermüdet fühlt? Da klagen oft die Menschen darüber; aber das ist gar keine Krankheitserscheinung, sondern durchaus begreiflich. Denn im Grunde genommen tritt die vollständige Erholung durch den Schlaf erst eine oder anderhalb Stunden nachher ein. Warum? Weil wir gut gearbeitet haben an unseren Organen, daß sie nicht bloß für ein paar Stunden wieder aushalten, sondern für den ganzen Tag. Und da sind wir unmittelbar nach dem Aufwachen noch nicht eingeschult, um sie zu gebrauchen, wir müssen sie erst einschleifen, und erst nach einiger Zeit können wir sie gut gebrauchen. Man müßte in einer gewissen Weise bei einer bestimmten Art von Abgespanntheit davon sprechen, daß man sich freuen könnte nach anderhalb Stunden, wie man sich hineinfühlen kann in die wieder gut gemachten Organe. Denn aus dem Schlaf kommt uns, was wir brauchen: die architektonischen Kräfte für die Organe, die abgenutzt und abgebraucht sind während des Tages.
So dürfen wir nun sagen: Unser Seelenleben ist ein Leben in Selbständigkeit, ein Leben, von dem wir im wachen Tagesleben durch unser Bewußtsein etwas haben, was eine Spiegelung ist. Bewußtsein ist Spiegelung des Verkehrs der Seele mit der Umgebung. Da sind wir im wachen TagesJeben verloren an unsere Umgebung, an ein Fremdes, sind hingegeben an etwas, was wir nicht selber sind. Während des Schlafes aber — und das ist das Wesen des Schlafes — ziehen wir uns von aller äußeren Tätigkeit zurück, um an uns selber zu arbeiten. Der Vergleich dafür ist treffend: An dem Schiff, das der Schiffahrt gedient hat, während es auf hoher See war, wird gezimmert und ausgebessert, wenn es in den Hafen einfährt.
Wer da glaubt, daß nichts mit uns geschieht während des Schlafes, der könnte auch glauben, daß nichts mit dem Schiff zu geschehen braucht, wenn es nach einer Fahrt im Hafen ist. Es wird aber wieder ausfahren, und da wird er schon sehen, was geschieht, wenn es nicht ausgebessert wird. So würde es sein, wenn nicht an uns selber von der Seele aus während des Schlafes gearbeitet würde. Wir sind uns selbst zurückgegeben im Schlafe, während wir im Tagesleben an die Außenwelt verloren sind. Der normale Mensch ist nur nicht fähig, was die Seele im Schlafe macht, so wahrzunehmen, wie er die Außenwelt am Tage wahrnimmt.
In dem Vortrag «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnis der geistigen Welt?» werden wir sehen, daß auch im Geistigen eine Spiegelung als Erkenntnis erreicht werden kann, wodurch dann der Mensch zur Wahrnehmung in den höheren Welten kommen kann. Das alles zeigt uns, daß gerade die Seele, wenn sie ihrer selbst nicht bewußt ist, nichts weiß von ihrer eigenen Tätigkeit, daß sie aber mit sich selbst beschäftigt ist, in sich selber arbeitet und unabhängig von aller Leiblichkeit die Kräfte holt, die gerade dem Aufbau des Leiblichen dienen sollen.
So dürfen wir zusammenfassen, was wir ausgesprochen haben, und das Wesen der Seele mit den Worten bezeichnen, die aus der Erkenntnis des Wesens des Schlafes eine Art Grundlegung bilden für manches in der Geisteswissenschaft:
Es gibt sich selbst zurück
Die Seele, die schlafumfangen
In Geistesweiten flieht,
Wenn Sinnesenge sie bedrückt!
The Nature of Sleep
It is in the nature of current scientific thinking that phenomena such as the one we wish to devote this hour to are, in fact, rarely discussed within conventional science. And yet every human being should feel how sleep is something that intervenes in our lives as if it were meant to present us with the greatest mysteries of life. People have always sensed the mystery and significance of sleep when they have spoken of sleep as the “brother of death.” Today, we will have to limit ourselves to discussing sleep as such, for the following lectures will bring us back to the consideration of death in many respects.
Everything that human beings must reckon with in their soul experience in the immediate sense, all the ideas that ebb and flow from morning to night, all the sensations and feelings that make up the drama of the human soul, all the pains and sufferings, even the impulses of the will, sink, as it were, into an indeterminate darkness when human beings sink into sleep. And some philosophers, so to speak, could lose their way when they speak of the nature of the soul, of the nature of the spirit that reveals itself in human nature, and yet they must admit that within the course of each day — even if it can be so well harnessed in concepts and ideas and appears to be so well researched — it seems to lose itself in nothingness. If we consider the phenomena of soul life as they are usually considered, both scientifically and by laypeople, we must basically say that they are extinguished during the state of sleep, that they are gone. For those who want to consider only what is expressed by the soul in the physical body, the human being is, in a sense, even more of a mystery when they think about it more deeply. For the actual bodily functions, bodily activities, continue during sleep. Only what we usually call the soul ceases. The question now is whether it is entirely correct to speak of the physical and the soul when we include the soul in its entirety in what appears to be extinguished when we fall asleep. Or whether the ordinary observation of life, if we now disregard spiritual scientific or anthroposophical considerations, can show us that the soul is also active and effective when it is enveloped by sleep. However, if one wants to gain some clarity about these concepts, or rather, if one wants to observe the phenomena of life in this area in the right sense, one must have precise concepts in mind.
By way of introduction, I would like to mention from the outset that, even with regard to this topic, spiritual science or anthroposophy is not in a position to speak in such general terms as is popular today. When we speak today about the nature of sleep, we will only speak about human sleep. For spiritual science knows very well — as was touched upon many times in the last lecture in relation to other areas — that what appears to be expressed in the same way in this or that phenomenon in different beings can be based on very different causes within the beings concerned. We have indicated this in relation to death, to the whole of spiritual life, and to the formation of spiritual life in animals and humans. It would go too far today to talk about the sleep of animals. We would therefore like to state in advance that everything that will be said today applies only to human sleep. We humans are able to speak of mental phenomena within ourselves — everyone feels this — through our consciousness, through the fact that we are conscious of what we imagine, what we want, what we feel. The question must now arise — and it is extremely important for our observations today —: Can we simply equate the concept of consciousness, as we know it for normal human consciousness in the present, with the concept of the soul or spirit in humans? In order to express myself more clearly about these concepts, I would like to resort to a comparison. A person can walk around a room and nowhere in the various places where they are in the room can they see anything of their own face. Only in one place, where they can look into a mirror, can they see something of their own face. There, the image of their face confronts them. Isn't it a huge difference for a person whether they just walk around the room and live within themselves, or whether they also see what they are experiencing in the mirror image? This could perhaps be the case with human consciousness in a somewhat expanded form. Man could, so to speak, live his soul life, and this soul life itself — as he lives it — would only have to come to his knowledge, to his consciousness, by confronting him in a kind of mirror. That could very well be the case. We could say, for example: It is entirely conceivable that human soul life continues regardless of whether a person is awake or asleep, but that the waking state consists in a person perceiving their soul life through a reflection — let us say, initially, through a reflection within their physicality — and that they cannot perceive it in the sleeping state because it is not reflected in their physicality.
This would not prove anything at first, but at least we would have gained two concepts. We could distinguish between the life of the soul as such and between the awareness of the life of the soul. And we could imagine that for our consciousness, for our knowledge of the life of the soul, as we currently stand in normal human life, everything depends on our receiving the life of the soul reflected through our physicality, because if we did not receive it reflected, we could know nothing about it. We would then be in a state similar to sleep. Now that we have gained these concepts, let us try to bring the phenomenon of waking and sleeping life a little closer to our soul.
Those who are truly able to observe life can feel very clearly, one might say see, how the moment of falling asleep really proceeds. They can perceive how their ideas and feelings become weaker, decreasing in brightness and intensity.
But that is not the most important thing. While a person is awake, they live in such a way that they create order in their entire imaginative life from their self-conscious ego, summarizing all their ideas with their ego, as it were. For at the moment when we would not summarize our ideas with our ego in waking life, we would not be able to lead a normal soul life. We would have one group of ideas that we would relate to ourselves, that we would call our ideas, and another group that we would regard as something foreign, like an outside world. Only people who experience a division of their ego, which is a pathological condition for modern humans, could have such a fragmentation of their imaginative life into different areas. For normal humans, it is essential that all ideas are perspectively related to one point: the self-aware ego. At the moment of falling asleep, we clearly feel how the ego is initially overwhelmed by the ideas, even though they become darker. The ideas assert their independence, live a life of their own, as it were, individual clouds of ideas form within the horizon of consciousness, and the ego loses itself to the ideas. Then the person feels how the sensory perceptions of seeing, hearing, and so on become duller and duller, and finally feels how the impulses of the will are paralyzed. Now we must point out something that, in fact, few people have clearly observed. Furthermore, while in daily life a person sees things with definite outlines, at the moment of falling asleep they feel something like being enclosed in an indefinite fog, which sometimes has a cooling effect and sometimes manifests itself with other sensations in certain parts of the body: in the hands, the joints, the temples, the spine, and so on. These are feelings that the person falling asleep can observe quite well. These are—one might say—such trivial experiences as one can have every evening when falling asleep, if one wants to.
People who observe the moment of falling asleep more closely through a more refined training of their soul life have better experiences. They can then feel something like waking up despite falling asleep. What I am about to tell you can be said by anyone who has acquired certain methods for truly observing these things, for it is a universal human phenomenon. At the moment when people feel something like waking up as they fall asleep, one can truly say that something is awakening, like an expanding conscience, something like the morality of the soul. This is indeed the case. And it shows itself in particular in the fact that such people make observations about their soul in relation to what they have experienced in the previous day's life, with which they are satisfied in their conscience. They feel this particularly strongly in this moment of moral awakening. At the same time, this feeling is completely opposite to the feeling of the day. While the feeling of the day manifests itself in such a way that things come to us, the person falling asleep feels as if their soul were pouring out over a world that is now awakening and which mainly encompasses a spreading out, a pouring out of feeling over what the soul can experience through itself, as if through an expanding conscience in relation to its moral inner life. There is then a moment, which seems much longer to the person falling asleep, of inner bliss when it is a spreading out over things with which the soul can agree, and there is often a feeling of deep turmoil when it has to reproach itself. In short, the moral person, who is oppressed during the day by stronger sensory impressions, expands and feels particularly special at the moment of falling asleep. And anyone who has acquired a certain method or perhaps just a feeling in relation to such observations knows that a certain longing awakens at this moment, which we can describe something like this: one wants this moment to actually extend indefinitely, that it should not come to an end. But then something like a jolt comes, a kind of inner movement. This is extremely difficult for most people to describe. Spiritual research can, of course, describe this inner movement very precisely. It is, as it were, a demand that the soul makes on itself: You must now relax even further, pour yourself out even more! But in making this demand on itself, the soul loses itself to the moral life of its surroundings. It is like throwing a small drop of paint into water and causing it to dissolve: at first you can still see the color, but as the drop spreads over the whole water, it fades more and more, and finally the color phenomenon as such ceases. So it is when the soul begins to swell, to live in its moral reflection; then it still feels itself, but the feeling ceases when the jolt, the inner movement, occurs, just as the drop loses its color in the water. This is not a theory; it can be observed and is accessible to everyone, just as a scientific observation is accessible to everyone. When we observe falling asleep in this way, we can indeed say that when a person falls asleep, they intercept something that can no longer be in their consciousness afterwards. Human beings have — if I may now use the two ideas I constructed earlier — a moment of saying goodbye to the mirror of the physical, in which the phenomena of life are reflected. And because they do not yet have the possibility of reflecting what is to be reflected in the body in something else, the possibility of perceiving what they are ceases.
However, if one does not want to be completely stubborn and obstinate with regard to what relates to the soul and the effect of what enters into an indeterminate darkness, one can also perceive the phenomena of the day in a certain sense. In another context, I have already pointed out how people who are forced to memorize this or that, i.e., to learn things by heart, find it much easier to do so if they sleep on it, and how the greatest enemy of memorization is the theft of sleep. In fact, it is easier to memorize something after we have slept on it than when we try to learn something by heart in one go. The same is true of other activities of the soul.
We could easily convince ourselves that it would be impossible to learn anything at all, to acquire anything that involves the soul, if we could not always incorporate the state of sleep into our lives. The natural conclusion that must be drawn from such phenomena is that our soul needs to withdraw from the body from time to time in order to draw strength from a realm that is not within the body, because within the physical realm the corresponding forces are being worn down. We must imagine that when we wake up in the morning, we have brought strength with us from the state we were in, in order to develop abilities that we could not develop if we were always bound to our body. Thus, the effect of sleep is evident in our ordinary being, if we want to think straight and not be stubborn.
What manifests itself in this way in general, and for which one needs a certain amount of good will in ordinary life in order to hold the individual phenomena together, becomes very clear when a person undergoes developments that can lead them to truly look into spiritual life. I would like to elaborate here on what happens when a person has developed the powers slumbering in the soul in order to reach that state where they cannot perceive through the senses and comprehend through the intellect. More details on this follow in the lecture “How does one attain knowledge of the spiritual world?”, where the methods are to be discussed in a fairly comprehensive manner. But now I would like to highlight some of the experiences that a person can have who truly undergoes such exercises, which endow their soul, as it were, with spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, enabling them to look into the spiritual world, which is not an object of speculation, but just as much an object as colors and shapes, warmth and cold, and sounds are for people who perceive with their senses. It has already become clear from the earlier lectures how one can attain true clairvoyance. This spiritual development, these exercises, actually consist in the person bringing out something that is within them, gaining other organs of perception, as it were, giving their soul a jolt out of its normal state and thereby perceiving a world that is always around them but cannot be perceived in the normal state. When a person undergoes such exercises, the first thing that changes is their sleep life. Everyone who has engaged in genuine spiritual research knows this. I would now like to talk about the very first stage of change in the sleep life of a truly clairvoyant, spiritually research-oriented person.
The first beginnings of this possibility of spiritual research do not actually make people appear very different from the ordinary, normal state of consciousness. For when people undertake such exercises, as we will discuss later, they initially sleep just like any other person and are just as unconscious as any other person. But the moment of awakening reveals something very special to those who have undergone spiritual and mental exercises. And I want to paint a picture of some very concrete phenomena that are facts.
Suppose a person who does such exercises thinks very sharply about something that another person might also think about. Because he may be facing a very difficult problem, he tries to strain all his mental powers to get to the bottom of the matter. He may feel just like a schoolboy: his mental power is not sufficient to solve the problem. This can certainly happen. If, through his exercises, he already has more experience of inner mental states in connection with physical ones, then he feels something very special when he cannot do something. He then feels in a different way than usual how he has resistance in his physical organs, for example in his brain. He feels as if his brain is resisting him, just as we feel resistance when we try to hammer a nail with a hammer that is too heavy. This is where the brain begins to take on a reality of its own. When people use their brains in the usual way, they do not feel it in the same way as when they use an instrument, such as a hammer. The spiritual researcher feels his brain; he feels independent of his thinking. That is an experience. But when he cannot solve a problem, he feels that he no longer has the ability to perform certain activities that he must carry out in his thinking. He loses control over the instrument and feels this very clearly. This is a fact that can be experienced very precisely.
If the mental researcher sleeps on the problem and wakes up, it can very often happen that he now feels quite capable of solving the task. But at the same time, he feels very precisely that he did something before waking up, that he worked on something. He feels that during sleep he was able to bring about something within himself in terms of mobility and activity. In the waking state, he was forced to use his brain. He knows that. He cannot help but use his brain in the waking state. But he could no longer use it properly because, as I have described, it offered him resistance. In the state of sleep, he feels that he has not been dependent on the use of his brain. He was able to create a certain mobility without the brain, which is otherwise too tired or overworked. Now he feels something very strange: he perceives the activity he has performed in his sleep, but not directly. The Lord does not give it to his own in sleep. He is not spared from having to solve the problem now in the waking state. It may happen to him, but usually it does not, and especially not with things that now have to be solved by the brain.
So then the person feels something that he did not know before in the sensory world; he feels his own activity as if it were coming to life in images, in strange images that are in motion — as if the thoughts he needed were living beings that enter into all kinds of relationships with each other. So they feel their own — call it mental activity, which they have exercised in their sleep — as a series of images. This feeling is difficult to describe, because one is caught up in it in a very peculiar way and has to say to oneself: That is you yourself! But on the other hand, one can distinguish this feeling quite precisely from oneself, just as one can distinguish an external movement one makes from oneself. So one has images, imaginations of an activity that was carried out before waking up. And now, if you have learned to pay attention to yourself, you can notice that these images of an activity that took place before you woke up connect with your brain and make it a more flexible, more useful instrument, so that you are able to complete something that you could not do before because there was resistance, for example, to think certain thoughts. These are subtle things, but without them one cannot really get to the bottom of the mystery of sleep. So one feels that one has not performed an activity as in waking life, but an activity that has served to restore certain things in the brain that were worn out, and that one has rebuilt the instrument in a way that one could not do before. One feels like a builder working on one's own instruments.
There is a considerable difference between the sensation one has during such an activity and that of an activity during the day. For the activity of the day, one has a feeling that can be compared to tracing something from a template or model. I am forced to orient myself to the image in front of me in every stroke or splash of color. With those things that appear as images at the moment of waking up, and which, as it were, illustrate an activity during sleep, one has the feeling of inventing the lines oneself and creating the figures from within oneself, without being bound to a model. With such an appearance, one has, as it were, intercepted what the soul did before it woke up: one has intercepted the activity of regeneration of the brain. For one gradually realizes that what one perceives as a kind of covering of the brain organs with what one remembers as figures is nothing other than a reconstruction of what has been destroyed during the day. One really feels like a builder of oneself.
Now, basically, the difference between a spiritual researcher who perceives such things and an ordinary person is only that the spiritual researcher perceives this, while the ordinary person cannot pay attention to it and does not perceive it. For the same activity that is carried out by the spiritual researcher is carried out by every human being, only the ordinary person does not catch the moment when the organs are rebuilt during sleep.
Let us take such an experience and compare it with what we said earlier, with the dulling and dulling, with the decrease in the brightness of daily imagination when falling asleep. This latter phenomenon can really only be viewed in the right light if one either frees oneself from the ideas of that worldview, which today seem very suggestive and believe they stand on the firm ground of natural science, or if one really engages with the available results of contemporary natural science. In brain research, for example, people who think more precisely can no longer do anything other than admit, based on the results of natural science, that the soul is independent of the body. And it is very interesting that a popular book has recently been published in which, basically, everything that deals with spiritual life and the sources of spiritual life is presented in a completely wrong and incomprehensible way. But there are some very clever things said in this book, “The Brain and Man” by William Hanna Thomson. Above all, it deals with contemporary brain research and with some other things that present themselves, for example — as I have often pointed out — the symptoms of fatigue, which are so instructive. But I have already explained that muscles or nerves do not tire except through conscious activity. As long as our muscles serve only organic activity, they cannot tire, for it would be bad if, for example, the heart muscle and other muscles had to rest. We only tire when we perform an activity that is not innate to the organism, that is, when we perform an activity that belongs to conscious soul life. Therefore, it must be said: if soul life were as innate to human beings as the activity of the heart, then this enormous difference between becoming tired and not becoming tired would be completely inexplicable. This is why the author of that book feels compelled to concede that the soul relates to the body like nothing else but a rider to a horse, that is, it is completely independent of the body. This is a tremendous concession for a person who thinks in scientific terms. And one could have very peculiar feelings when a person, compelled by contemporary natural science, comes to admit that the relationship of spiritual life to physical life must be thought of in much the same way as the relationship of the rider to the horse, that is, according to the image that was imagined in earlier times, when people still looked more into the spiritual, in the form of the centaur. There is no evidence that the author of this book thought this, but this idea springs to mind again through scientific thinking, and one gets feelings of such ideas that originate from times when a certain clairvoyance was still present in many people. However, certain current ideas about centaurs seem to correspond better to what a gentleman once told me. The person in question said: The Greeks saw the Scythians or other horsemen coming from the north, but they may have seen them emerging from the fog, so they could not distinguish their figures clearly and then thought that they had grown out of the horses. The materialist may be satisfied with such an explanation. But contemporary scientific research urges us to admit the independence of the soul from the body.
One thing will certainly strike us, and we can best pursue such things if we call to mind certain phenomena that are not commonplace, but such phenomena do exist and cannot be denied. The spiritual researcher knows how that simple man in the country suddenly began to speak Latin at the hour of his death, a language he had never actually used and which he had only heard once as a small boy in church. This is not a fable, but reality. Of course, he did not understand any of it when he heard or recited it. But it is true nonetheless. From this, every human being should form the idea that what affects us from our surroundings contains something quite different from what we take in with our ordinary consciousness. For what we take in with our ordinary consciousness depends in many ways on our education, our understanding, and the like. But it is not only what we understand that unites with us; we also have the capacity to take in infinitely more than what we consciously take in. We can even observe in every person how, at certain times, ideas arise in them that were not given much attention when they experienced them here or there, so that they may not be able to remember anything at all. But through certain things they reappear, perhaps even taking center stage in the life of the soul. We must admit that what constitutes the scope of our soul life is infinitely more than what we can take in and comprehend with our daily consciousness. This is extremely important. For it directs our gaze, so to speak, to an inner life within us, which can only make a slight impression on our physical being because it has hardly been noticed, and which nevertheless lives on within us. This draws our attention to the foundations of our soul life, which should actually be there for every reasonable person. For every reasonable person should say to themselves: what is around them in the world in terms of their consciousness, while they consciously observe the world, is basically dependent on the structure of their sensory organs and on what they are able to understand. And no one has the right to want to limit reality by what they can perceive. It would be completely illogical to deny the spiritual researcher that there is a spiritual world behind the physical world, for the simple reason that human beings can only say what they see and hear and what they can think about, and can never judge what they cannot perceive. For the world of reality is not the world of perception. The world of perception is limited by the sensory organs. Therefore, one should never speak—as in the Kantian sense—of the limits of knowledge, or of what man could or could not know, but only of what one has before one in accordance with one's organs of perception.
When we consider this, we must say to ourselves: then behind the colorful tapestry of the sensory world, behind what the sense of warmth perceives as warmth or cold and so on, there lies an unlimited reality. Should therefore only that which we perceive have an influence on us, or only that reality which we perceive? It is only logically tenable if we think that our perception gives us a part, a section of the whole reality, that behind what can be given to us through our perception lies an unlimited reality, which is also real for us, because we are placed in it, so that what surges and lives out there and influences us continues to live for us. But how, then, does our waking daily life actually present itself? Then we would have to imagine our waking daily life—and there is no other possibility—in such a way that we say: we open our senses, our cognitive faculties, to an immensity and confront ourselves with this immensity. By having eyes of a certain kind, ears of a certain kind, a certain sense of warmth, and so on, we place a certain section of reality before us; we reject the rest, defend ourselves against it, as it were, and exclude it from ourselves. What, then, does our conscious activity consist of? It consists of defending ourselves, of excluding something else. And by straining our sensory organs, we hold back what we do not perceive. What we perceive is what remains of what surrounds us, most of which we reject. In this way, we feel actively placed in the world, feel connected to it. Through our sensory activity, we defend ourselves, as it were, against the multitude of impressions by—figuratively speaking—being unable to bear the whole immeasurable infinity and only taking in a part of it. When we think in this way, we must conceive of relationships between our entire organism, our entire physicality, and the outside world that are quite different from those we can perceive or comprehend with our minds. Then it is no longer so far-fetched to think that these relationships we have with the outside world live within us, that the invisible, the supersensible or extrasensory is also active within us, that the extrasensory, in being active within us, makes use of the senses to fabricate a section of the entire immeasurability of reality. But then our relationship to reality is completely different from what we can perceive through our senses. Then there is something in our soul that relates to the outside world, something that is not exhausted by sensory perception, something that eludes our waking consciousness — then it is as if we were to stand before a mirror with our being and say to ourselves: You are, in essence, something completely different; the mirror only shows you the form, perhaps also the colors; but what you think inside, what you feel inside, the mirror cannot show you; it only shows you what is dependent on its laws. But as you are as a soul in relation to your organism, you are something completely different from what your senses show you; they limit you to what is appropriate to their laws. So in fact, when you face the world — in a similar way to what happens with the mirror — you face a world that is only possible through the structure of your senses!
If you think this idea through to its conclusion, you will no longer be surprised that, basically, all the life of our waking consciousness depends very much on the structure of our sense organs and our brain, just as what we see of ourselves in the mirror depends on the nature of the mirror. Anyone who looks into a garden mirror and sees the caricatured face staring back at them will readily admit that the image depends not on them, but on the mirror. In the same way, what we perceive depends on the structure of our mirroring apparatus, and our mental activity is limited, reflected back on itself, as it were, by being mirrored in our physical life. Then it is not surprising that the excerpt — which can also be proven physiologically — depends on the physical, in that this or that takes place in consciousness in this or that way, because everything the soul does depends on the structure of our body if it is to become consciousness, knowledge. Observation shows us that the concepts we initially constructed correspond entirely to the facts. The only difference is that our physicality is a living mirror. We leave the mirror we look into as it is. However, there is one thing that can impair the reflection: if we breathe on the mirror, it will no longer reflect properly. But the reflection in our physicality, which experiences the activity of our soul, is connected with the fact that, while we reflect ourselves in our physicality, the reflection itself is an activity, a process in our physicality, and that we present what appears there as a reflection as an activity before ourselves.
Thus, physical life actually presents itself to us as if, in a certain sense, we were writing down what we think and then had the letters in front of us. In this way, we write the activity of the soul into our physical life. What the anatomist proves are only the letters, the outer apparatus, for we do not observe our soul life completely when we observe it only in physical life; we observe it completely only when we observe it independently of physical life. But only the spiritual researcher can do this when he observes the soul life as it is reflected in waking up into waking daily life. It becomes apparent that the soul life is like an architect who builds something during the night and dismantles it during the day.
So now we have the soul life in the waking and sleeping states before us, and we have to think of it in the sleeping state as independent of the physical life, just as the rider is independent of the horse. But just as the rider uses the horse and consumes its strength, so the soul consumes the activity of the body, so that chemical processes take place as the letters of the soul life. This brings us to a point where we have worn out the life of the body, as it is limited in the senses and in the brain, to such an extent that we have exhausted it for the time being. Then we must begin the other activity, initiate the reverse process, and rebuild what has been broken down. This is the life of sleep, so that we perform two opposite activities on our body from the soul. While awake, we have around us our world of fluctuating ideas, joys and sorrows, feelings, and so on. But while we have these before us, we use up our physical life, basically destroying it continuously. While we sleep, we are the architects, rebuilding what we have destroyed during our waking life.
What does the spiritual researcher perceive? He perceives the architectural activity in peculiar images, such as intertwining movements, this rebuilding: a real process that is the reverse of ordinary waking life. It is really no fantasy to say that in these intertwining movements we recognize the mysterious activity that the soul performs in sleep, which consists in restoring what we have destroyed in our waking life. Hence the healing and necessary nature of sleep.
Why is sleep life such that it does not come to consciousness? Yes, why is it that waking life comes to our consciousness? It is because we have something like mirror images in the processes we carry out in daily life; but when we perform the other activity, the restoration of what has been worn away, we have nothing in which it can be reflected. We lack the mirror for this. Only the spiritual researcher can show what lies behind this. From a certain point on, the spiritual researcher experiences not only the soul activity I have described as a dream memory from sleep, but as if he were not at all dependent on the instrument of the body, so that he can then perceive an activity that takes place only in the spiritual realm. Then they can say to themselves: Now you are not thinking with your brain, but in completely different forms; now you are thinking in images, independently of your brain. However, the spiritual researcher can only come to experience something like this, as described, when he experiences that the whole thing that surrounds him like a nebula as he falls asleep does not disappear, but when the fog that is perceptible at the temples, at the joints, on the spine, becomes something that reflects what he is doing — just as what we experience in our gross physical life is reflected back — when he can limit and withdraw his activity within himself. The whole difference between real clairvoyance and ordinary waking life consists in the fact that waking life, in order to become conscious of soul activity, needs another mirror, making use of the physical body for this purpose, while the activity of the clairvoyant, when it radiates as soul activity, is so strong that the outgoing ray is withdrawn into itself. Thus, a reflection takes place, as it were, on one's own inner experience, on a spiritual organism. In this spiritual organism, our soul is basically also present at night, even if we are not spiritual researchers. It pours itself into it. And we cannot cope with the whole of our sleeping life unless we realize that our bodily processes — everything that anatomy and physiology can investigate — have no other effect than to reflect the processes of the soul, and that these soul processes always live in a spiritual existence from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. If we think otherwise, we cannot cope at all. We must therefore speak, as it were, of a mysterious soul life that cannot enter into the consciousness mediated by the body. So when we see ideas that a person has not paid attention to for a long time appearing in their consciousness, we must say: there is something else present in the human being besides the ideas of conscious soul life that are taken up in attention.I have already indicated that it is child's play to refute the things that are reality for the spiritual researcher. But they are true nonetheless. Spiritual research must speak of the fact that in human beings we are dealing with the human physical body, which we can see with our eyes, touch with our hands, and which is also known to anatomy and physiology. Furthermore, as an inner member of the human being, we have the astral body, the bearer of everything that the human being takes in with consciousness, everything that he actually experiences during daily life in such a way that he can receive it reflected from the body. Between the astral body and the physical body lies the bearer of what are ideas that remain unnoticed for years, which are then brought up into the astral body and then lived out. In short, we are talking about the fact that between the astral body, the bearer of consciousness, and the physical body, the etheric body of the human being is active. This etheric body is not only the bearer of such unheeded ideas, but also the builder of the entire physical body.
What actually happens during sleep? What happens is that the astral body, the bearer of consciousness, leaves the physical body and etheric body with the I, so that a division of human nature occurs. When a person is awake during the day, the astral body with the ego is inside the physical body and etheric body, and the processes of the physical body act as mirroring processes through which everything that happens in the astral body comes to consciousness. Consciousness is the reflection of experiences through the physical body, and we must therefore not confuse consciousness with the experiences themselves. When the astral body leaves during sleep, it is initially unable to perceive anything in the astral world in the ordinary human being. The human being is unconscious there.
What ability does the spiritual researcher acquire when he becomes aware of things during sleep, even though he is not relying on his brain? He acquires the ability to perceive and reflect in his soul activity that which weaves and lives between things in such a way that it can be perceived in waking daytime consciousness just as much as one's own etheric body. The etheric body of the human being is woven from that through which the clairvoyant human being perceives; so that for the clairvoyant human being, the outer world becomes reflective, just as physical corporeality becomes reflective for the soul life of the normal human being.
Now there are intermediate states between waking and sleeping. One such intermediate state is dreaming. With regard to its origin, spiritual research shows that dreaming is indeed based on something similar to clairvoyance, only the latter is something that can be trained, while dreaming is always fantastical. When a person goes out with their astral body, they lose the ability to have their soul life reflected through their physical body. But under certain abnormal circumstances that occur for every person, they can retain the ability to have their soul experiences reflected through their etheric body. For in fact, we must regard not only the physical body as a mirroring apparatus, but also the etheric body, because as long as the outer world makes an impression on us, it is indeed the physical body that acts as a mirroring apparatus. But when we become still within ourselves and process the impressions that the outer world has made on us, then we work within ourselves, but our thoughts are nevertheless real. We live our thoughts, and we also feel that we are dependent on something more subtle than our physical body, namely the etheric body. Then the etheric body is what is reflected in us in solitary thinking, which is not initially based on external impressions. But we are stuck in our etheric body in our waking daytime consciousness; we perceive what is reflected, but we do not directly perceive the activity of the astral body. In an intermediate state between waking and sleeping, we do not have the ability to receive external sensory impressions, but we can still perceive in a certain way something that is connected with our etheric body. The etheric body can then reflect to us what we experience in our soul with our astral body. These are then the dreams that, because the human being is in a completely unfamiliar situation, show that irregularity.
When we consider this, many things about the dream world that are otherwise quite mysterious will become clear to us. We will therefore have to think of the foundations of soul life as closely linked to dream life. While the physical body is the mirror of soul life and our daily interests affect it, through the etheric body we are often connected in the most remote way with experiences that are long behind us and which, because daily life has such a strong effect on us, only come weakly to our consciousness. Therefore, they remain something highly unknown to us. But when we look at dreams that are really based on good observation, we may see many strange things. For example, a good composer experiences the image of a somewhat devilish figure playing a sonata to him. He wakes up — and can write down the sonata. Something has been activated in him that seemed like something foreign. And this was possible because there was something in him for which the composer's soul was ready, but which could not be effective in waking daily life because physical life was only an obstacle and not suitable for reflection. Here we see that physical life is an obstacle and that this is its significance. In daily life, we can only experience what physical life — figuratively speaking — is lubricated for as a machine. Physical life is always an obstacle to us. But we manage to use physical life to a certain extent. After all, “obstacles” are needed everywhere. When a locomotive travels along the rails, it is also the obstacles, the friction, that enable it to travel, because without friction the wheels could not turn. Our bodily processes are in truth what hinders our soul life, and these hindering processes are at the same time the mirroring processes. When we are ready for something in our soul and have not yet managed to lubricate our machine properly, our waking daily life is a good stumbling block. But when we leave our physical body, our etheric body — which must seem completely foreign to us because it is of a more subtle nature — can express what lives in our soul life. When it is strong enough, it pushes its way into dream life, as in this case with the composer. This has less to do with daytime interests than with hidden interests that lie further away in the subtle underpinnings. This is also the case in the following example. I should note that I am only recounting something I have actually observed. A woman dreams — even though she has children whom she loves very much and a husband who loves her extraordinarily — that she is getting engaged for the second time and experiences all the events that she goes through with great joy. What is she dreaming? She dreams of experiences that are very distant from her current life, experiences she once went through but does not recognize because her everyday interests are only connected to her physical body. And what still lives on in her etheric body is now reflected by the etheric body through another event, perhaps because some joyful sensation triggered the dream.
A man dreams that he is going through childhood experiences. And these childhood experiences are reflected in a wonderful way. An event that is particularly important to him because it touches his heart causes him to wake up. At first, the dream is something very dear to him, but he soon falls asleep again and continues dreaming. A whole series of unpleasant experiences now pass through his soul, and a particularly painful event wakes him up. All of this is very far removed from his present experiences. He wakes up because he is very shaken by the dream, walks around the room for a while, but then lies down again and now experiences events in his dream that he has not experienced. All the events he has gone through become confused, and he now experiences something completely new. The whole thing becomes a poem, which he can even write down afterwards and set to music. This is a completely real fact. Now it will not be difficult, with the concepts we have already gained, to imagine what happened there. For the spiritual researcher, it appears as follows: at a very specific moment in his life, the man suffered a kind of break in his development. He had to give up something that lay in his soul. But even though he had to give it up, it did not disappear from his etheric body. His ordinary interests were simply so strong that they pushed it back. And where it was strong enough through inner elasticity, it pushed its way out in dreams, because there the person is freed from the inhibitions of waking life. This means that the person in question was actually close to achieving what was expressed in the poem, but then it was drowned out.
Thus, in dreams we see clearly the independence of the soul life from the outer life of the body. And this must make it clear to us that the idea of the reflection of the soul life in the life of the body must have great justification. The very fact that the interests in which we are entangled do not directly impress themselves upon our immediate experience shows us that, alongside the life we live in everyday life, there is another life running parallel to it, which I have described as a kind of awakening to conscious, more subtle observation. In this life, everything that is independent of physical life for our spiritual life — even conceptually, ideologically — such as conscience, for example — lives, as everyone feels. But in daily life, this other life proves to be something that is very limited by our daily interests. In sleep, our soul is also completely filled with this moral quality. It is truly a living into the spiritual, which we can describe as a jolt, an inner movement. What we call spiritual scientific research will reveal itself to us as something through which we consciously live into the world that normal people unconsciously live into every time they fall asleep. People will gradually have to become familiar with the fact that the world is much wider than what we can comprehend with our senses and follow with our minds, and that sleep life is an area we need because in our daily lives we wear down precisely those organs that serve our imaginative life. In sleep we restore them so that they can stand strong and powerful before the world and reflect our soul life in our waking daily life. Everything characteristic of soul life could thus become clear to us. Who does not know that after a good, deep sleep they feel exhausted and tired? People often complain about this, but it is not a symptom of illness at all, but perfectly understandable. For, basically, complete recovery through sleep only occurs an hour or an hour and a half later. Why? Because we have worked hard on our organs so that they can endure not just for a few hours, but for the whole day. And immediately after waking up, we are not yet trained to use them; we first have to break them in, and only after some time can we use them well. In a certain way, with a certain kind of exhaustion, one could say that after an hour and a half, one could rejoice in how one can empathize with the organs that have been restored to good working order. For sleep gives us what we need: the architectural forces for the organs that are worn out and exhausted during the day.
So we can now say: Our soul life is a life of independence, a life of which we have something in our waking daily life through our consciousness, which is a reflection. Consciousness is a reflection of the soul's interaction with its surroundings. In our waking daily life, we are lost in our surroundings, in something foreign, devoted to something that is not ourselves. During sleep, however — and this is the essence of sleep — we withdraw from all external activity in order to work on ourselves. The comparison is apt: a ship that has served its purpose while at sea is repaired and refurbished when it enters the harbor.
Anyone who believes that nothing happens to us during sleep might also believe that nothing needs to happen to a ship when it is in port after a voyage. But it will set sail again, and then he will see what happens if it is not repaired. This is how it would be if our souls did not work on us during sleep. We are returned to ourselves in sleep, while in daily life we are lost to the outside world. The normal person is simply not able to perceive what the soul does in sleep in the same way that he perceives the outside world during the day.
In the lecture “How does one attain knowledge of the spiritual world?” we will see that reflection as knowledge can also be attained in the spiritual realm, whereby the human being can then attain perception in the higher worlds. All this shows us that when the soul is not conscious of itself, it knows nothing of its own activity, but that it is occupied with itself, working within itself and drawing from itself, independently of all physicality, the forces that are needed to build up the physical body.
We can thus summarize what we have said and describe the nature of the soul with words that, based on the knowledge of the nature of sleep, form a kind of foundation for many aspects of spiritual science:
It gives itself back
The soul, enveloped in sleep
Flees into spiritual realms,
When sensory bonds oppress it!