The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] This series of lectures aims to provide an overview of research in the humanities that enables us to gain insight into the most significant mysteries of human life, to the extent possible given the conditions and limitations that currently constrain our understanding of the higher worlds. Specifically, this overview will be presented in such a way that we begin with the more immediate aspects and, from there, attempt to ascend into ever higher realms of existence and into the ever more hidden mysteries of human life. This time, the presentation will not so much proceed from any fixed concepts or ideas that appear dogmatic, but will instead, in the simplest possible way, first refer to that which every human being must perceive as something familiar even in ordinary life. Spiritual research, spiritual science in general, is based on the assumption that underlying the world in which we initially live—the one initially familiar to us—lies another, let us say, the spiritual world, and in this spiritual world, which underlies our sensory world and, to a certain extent, our soul world as well, we must seek the actual causes and conditions for what actually takes place in the sensory and soul worlds. Now, it is surely known to everyone here present, and it was touched upon in the introductory public lectures, that there are certain methods which a person can apply to their soul life and through which they can awaken certain capacities of their soul that lie dormant in ordinary, normal life, so that they experience the moment of initiation, through which they have around them a new world, namely the world of spiritual causes, the spiritual conditions for the sensory and soul world, just as the previously blind person, after an operation, has the world of colors and the world of light around them. From this world—which is, in fact, the one we seek to explore more and more with each passing hour in this series of lectures—from this world of spiritual facts and spiritual beings, human beings are, after all, separated in today’s ordinary life. Indeed, human beings are separated from this spiritual world in two respects: on the one hand, in what we might call the outer aspect, and on the other hand, in what we might call the inner aspect.

[ 2 ] When a person turns their gaze to the outside world, they see in that world whatever first presents itself to their senses. They see colors and light; they hear sounds; they perceive heat and cold, smells, tastes, and so on. This is the world that initially surrounds them. If we imagine this world around us as it unfolds before our senses, we can say: in it we initially have a kind of boundary, for through immediate perception, through immediate experience, a person cannot see beyond this boundary, which is given to them by the world of colors and light spreading out before them, by the world of sounds, smells, and so on. They cannot perceive beyond this boundary. We can, I would say, illustrate this quite trivially to see how we have a boundary there on the outside. Let us look at a surface painted blue, for the sake of argument. What lies initially behind this blue-painted surface, human beings do not see under ordinary circumstances. Well, certainly! A trivial person might object that one need only look behind it. But that is not how it is with regard to the world that spreads out around us. It is precisely through what we perceive that an outer spiritual world is veiled from us, and we can at most sense that we have, in color and light, in sounds, in warmth and cold, and so on, outer manifestations of a world lying behind them. But at any given moment, we cannot perceive or experience what lies behind them by looking through the colors, the lights, or the sounds. We must perceive the entire outer spiritual world precisely through these manifestations of it. For if you just think about it a little, you will be able to tell yourself, even through the simplest logic: Even if, for example, our current physics or other scientific endeavors see moving etheric matter behind color, it takes only a little thought to realize that what is assumed to be there behind the color is merely something added in thought, something deduced solely through thinking. No one can directly perceive what, for example, physics explains as vibrations or movements of which color is an effect. No one can say at first whether what is supposed to lie behind the sensory impressions corresponds to any reality. It is, at first, merely a figment of the imagination. Like a carpet, this outer sensory world spreads out, and we then have the sensation that behind this carpet of the outer sensory world there is something into which we cannot initially penetrate with our external perception.

[ 3 ] There we have one boundary. We find the other when we look within ourselves. Within ourselves we find a world of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of passions, drives, desires, and so on; we find within ourselves everything that we call, in other words, our inner life. We usually summarize this inner life by saying: I feel this pleasure, I feel this pain, I have these drives, I have these passions. But we also have the sense that something lies hidden behind this inner life, that there is something behind it that is just as obscured by our inner experiences as something external is obscured by sensory perceptions. For who could be under any illusion that pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, and all the other experiences of the soul rise up as if from an unknown source each morning upon waking, that human beings are, in a certain sense, at their mercy. And who could deny, when he sets all this before himself in a certain self-reflection, that there must be something deeper within him, something initially hidden from him, which allows our pleasure and our suffering, joy and pain, and all our inner experiences to flow forth as if from itself—experiences that are initially just as much revelations of the unknown as external sensory perceptions are revelations of the unknown.

[ 4 ] Now let us ask ourselves: If such boundaries exist—or at least might exist, hypothetically speaking—do we as human beings not have certain possibilities for penetrating these boundaries in some way? Is there anything in human experience through which we can, so to speak, penetrate the outer veil of perceptions, as if we were piercing a thin membrane that covers us, and is there something that leads deeper into the human interior, beyond our desire, beyond our pain, beyond our joy, beyond our passion, and so on? Can we, so to speak, take a step further into the outer world, and can we take a step further into the inner world?

[ 5 ] Now there are, in fact, two experiences through which something is brought about that enables a person, so to speak, to overcome the skin on the outside and the resistance on the inside in a certain way. How can it become apparent to us that something like the outer skin, like the outer tapestry of the senses, is in a certain sense torn away from us, and that we penetrate into a world that is veiled by this outer tapestry of the senses? How can this become apparent to us? This can reveal itself to us when, in certain life events, we have something that we must describe as new experiences in contrast to the ordinary experiences of daily life. If there is such a thing as entirely new experiences—ones that a person cannot ordinarily perceive—and if, during such experiences, a person can also have the feeling that the external perceptions reaching us through the senses are fading away, that is, that the outer sensory tapestry is, as it were, torn apart—if that were somehow the case—then we could say we are penetrating somewhat into this world lying beyond our sensory perceptions.

[ 6 ] Now, there is indeed such an experience. However, this experience has a very significant drawback for human life as a whole. This experience is what is usually called—and here the term is meant in the literal sense of the word—ecstasy, which for a moment causes a person, if we may put it that way, to forget the sensory impressions of the world around us, leading the person to a state where, for moments of existence, they see nothing of the colors, light, sounds, smells, and so on around them, and makes them impervious to ordinary sensory impressions. Under certain circumstances, however, this experience of ecstasy can indeed lead a person to the point where they have new experiences—experiences that do not fall within the realm of ordinary daily life. Mind you, this ecstasy is by no means to be presented here as something desirable, but is merely to be described as something that is possible. Nor should every ordinary state of being beside oneself be called ecstasy. For two things are possible. One is that when a person loses their receptivity to external sensory impressions, they simply find themselves in a kind of state of unconsciousness, in which black darkness spreads around them in place of sensory impressions. This is actually, in a fundamental sense, the best thing for the normal person at first. But there is a form of ecstasy, and in the course of these lectures we will hear what significance such an ecstasy holds—one through which not merely black darkness spreads around the person, but through which this field of black darkness is, so to speak, populated by a world that the person previously did not know at all. Do not say that this might be a world of illusion, a world of deception. Fine, let it be, for the moment, a world of illusion, a world of deception. Call it, for my sake, a sum of mist formations or whatever; that is not what matters now, but what matters—whether they be illusions, whether they be images, whatever—is that it can indeed be a world that human beings have not known until now. Human beings must then ask themselves: Am I capable, after all the abilities I have acquired so far, of constructing such things myself from my ordinary consciousness? — If the world of images that he sees there is such that a person can say to himself: I am incapable, with my current abilities, of constructing such a world — then it is clear to him that this world must be given to him from somewhere. Whether some mighty world-magician conjures an illusion for them within it, or whether it is a reality, let us not decide that here; we will make that decision later. What matters now is simply that there are states in which a person sees worlds that were previously unknown to them.

[ 7 ] However, this ecstatic state comes with a very particular drawback for the average person. For a person cannot naturally enter this ecstatic state except by having what he otherwise calls his “I”—his strong inner self, through which he always holds all his individual experiences together—effectively wiped out. A person in ecstasy is truly beside themselves; their ego is as if suppressed. They are as if poured out and flowing into the new world, which is now filled with black darkness. So, first of all, we must describe this one experience—an experience that countless people have already had and can have; how they can have it and have had it will be discussed further in the course of these lectures. And we have a twofold aspect in this experience of ecstasy. The first is: the impressions of the senses fade away; everything that a person is accustomed to perceiving through the senses is extinguished; extinguished are the experiences that a person otherwise has in relation to the sensory world, where they feel: I hear sounds, I see colors. — The ego is also extinguished. A person never experiences their ego in a state of ecstasy; in ecstasy, they do not distinguish themselves from objects. Consequently, it remains initially unclear whether one is dealing with an external reality or with an illusion. For, fundamentally, it is only the ego that can decide whether one is dealing with a trick or with reality.

[ 8 ] These two experiences thus run parallel in ecstasy: the loss, or at least the diminishing, of the sense of self on the one hand, and on the other, the fading of external sensory perception. Ecstasy thus truly reveals how the fabric of the sensory world dissolves, crumbles away, and our sense of self—which we otherwise feel as if it were touching the skin, the fabric of the external sensory world—now flows through sensory perceptions and lives in a world of images that is new to it. For this is the characteristic feature: that in ecstasy, the human being comes to know beings and events that were previously unknown to him, which he would find nowhere, no matter how far he might go with his sensory observation and with his reasoning about sensory facts; this, then, is the essential point: that the human being comes to know something new. We shall learn in later lectures what relationship this has to reality.

[ 9 ] In ecstasy, we see something like a breaking through of the outer boundary that is imposed on human beings. Whether we enter a true world in ecstasy, and whether this world is the one we suspect underlies our sensory world as a spiritual reality, remains to be seen.

[ 10 ] Now let us ask about the other side: can we also go beyond our inner world, beyond the world of our pleasure, our suffering, our joy, our pain, our passions, instincts, and desires? There is a path there as well. There are experiences that lead us out of the realm of the soul’s life as we delve deeper and deeper into it. The path taken here is the one you are also familiar with; it is the path of so-called mysticism, the path of many mystics. Mystical deepening consists in the person first diverting their attention from external impressions, but in return devoting themselves all the more to their own inner soul experiences, attempting to pay particular attention to what they experience within themselves. Such mystics, who have the strength not to inquire into the external causes of their interest, their sympathy and antipathy, not to inquire into the external causes of their pain and pleasure, but who look solely at the experiences that ebb and flow within the soul—such mystics do indeed penetrate more deeply into the life of the soul. They then have very specific experiences that differ from ordinary psychological experiences.

[ 11 ] I will now describe something that countless people have experienced and may still experience. To begin with, I will describe only the experiences a person has when they step just a little beyond ordinary experience. Such experiences consist, for example, in the mystic, as they immerse themselves, reshaping certain feelings and sensations within themselves, transforming them into something entirely different. Let us say, for example, that when an ordinary, normal person, who is living their life and is very far removed from any kind of mystical experience, receives a blow from another person that hurts them, their feelings are usually directed against that other person. That is, after all, the natural course of life. Now, the person who immerses themselves mystically within themselves develops a different feeling toward such a blow through this very immersion. So, mind you, I am describing an experience; I am not saying it should be this way; I am describing what certain people—and there are many of them—experience. They feel within themselves: You would never have received this blow if you hadn’t yourself, at some point, brought it upon yourself through an action in your life. That person simply would not have been brought into your path if you hadn’t done something that was the cause of this blow. You cannot therefore justifiably direct your resentment toward this person, who was actually only led into your path by world events so that you might feel the blow you deserve. — Such people, when they deeply immerse themselves in all their various soul experiences, also develop a certain overall sense of the entire soul life, and this overall sense can be characterized something like this. They say to themselves: I have much suffering, much pain within me, but I caused it myself at some point. I must have done certain things; I must have behaved in a certain way; if I cannot recall having done it in this life, well, then it is quite clear that there must have been another life in which I did the things that I am now balancing out through my suffering, through my pain.

[ 12 ] What happens, then, is that through this descent of the soul into itself, the soul alters its previous perceptions and, so to speak, now turns its attention more inward, seeking within itself what it once sought in the world. For one looks more within oneself when one says: The person who struck me was placed in my path because I myself provided the cause for it—rather than directing one’s feelings outward. And so it comes to pass that such people unload more and more into their own inner being, as it were, condensing their inner soul life more and more. Just as the ecstatic penetrates through the veil of the outer sensory world and gazes into a world of beings and realities hitherto unknown to him, so the mystic penetrates beneath his ordinary ego. For this ordinary ego turns against the blow that comes from without; but the mystic penetrates through to something that underlies this impact, to that which was the actual cause of the impact. In this way, the mystic does indeed reach a point where he gradually loses sight of the external world entirely. He loses the very concept of the external world little by little, and his own ego—that which is within him—expands, as it were, into a whole world. Just as we do not wish to decide today whether the world of the ecstatic is a reality or a fantasy, some sort of illusion, so too do we not wish to decide today whether what the mystic finds in his soul beneath the veil of ordinary soul experiences is something that is real or not, or whether it is he himself who has caused what brings him pain. Perhaps this is merely a daydream, but it is an experience that a human being can actually have. That is what matters. In any case, on the other side, the human being enters a world that was previously unknown to him. That is the essential point. Thus, the human being enters a world that was previously unknown to him on both sides, outwardly and inwardly.

[ 13 ] If we now consider what has just been said—that a person loses their sense of self when they become ecstatic—we must conclude that this ecstatic state is therefore not something particularly desirable for the average person. For all human orientation in the world, all possibility of fulfilling our mission in the world, rests on the fact that we have in our ego a fixed center of our being. If ecstasy takes away our ability to feel this “I,” to experience this “I,” then we have, through ecstasy, first and foremost lost ourselves. If, on the other hand, the mystic pushes everything into the “I,” if he makes the “I,” so to speak, the culprit for everything we feel, then this has another disadvantage. It has the disadvantage that we would ultimately seek all causes of what happens in the world within ourselves, and that we would thereby also lose our healthy orientation in the world. For if we were to put this into practice, we would never do anything other than burden ourselves with nothing but guilt and be unable to establish the right relationship with the outside world.

[ 14 ] Thus, in both directions—through ordinary ecstasy and as ordinary mystics—we lose our ability to orient ourselves in the world. Therefore, we may say that human beings are, so to speak, constantly thrust in two directions. When he unfolds outwardly with his ego, he comes up against sensory perceptions, which do not let him through to what lies behind the veil of the sensory tapestry, and this is initially good for the human being, for through it he can maintain his ego in normal behavior. And on the other hand, the experiences of the soul also do not allow him, in normal behavior, to pass beneath the ego, beneath those feelings of the ego that lead precisely to normal orientation. Human beings are enclosed between two boundaries: they go out into the world for a while and are limited there; they enter into the life of the soul and experience what we call pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, and so on, but in normal life they do not penetrate any further than to that which makes orientation in life possible for them.

[ 15 ] Now, what has been described here is, so to speak, a comparison of the ordinary state with the abnormal states found in ecstasy or in a form of mysticism that involves losing oneself. Ecstasy and mysticism are abnormal states. But there is something in ordinary human life where we can observe these states much, much more clearly, and that is the ordinary states of transition we go through in a twenty-four-hour period—the states of transition between waking and sleeping.

[ 16 ] What do we actually do when we sleep? Well, in a certain sense, what we do when we sleep is exactly the same as what we have just described as an abnormal state in ecstasy: we project our true inner life outward; we spread the inner self into the outer world. That is indeed the case. Just as we pour out our ego, so to speak, into the outside world in ecstasy, just as we lose our ego in ecstasy, so do we lose our sense of self in sleep. But we lose more in sleep, and that is the good part. In ecstasy we lose only the ego, but we retain a world around us, a world that we did not know before, a world of images hitherto unknown to us, of spiritual facts and beings. In sleep, this world is also missing; in sleep, this world does not exist either. Thus, sleep differs from ecstasy in that, in order to extinguish the ego, the human being also extinguishes what is called the faculty of perception. Whether it is physical or spiritual, in sleep the human being completely extinguishes the ability to perceive anything at all. While in ecstasy they merely extinguish the ego, in sleep they also extinguish the capacity for perception—or, as we rightly say, they extinguish consciousness. Consciousness has departed from their human experience. They have poured into the world not merely the ego, but have also surrendered their consciousness to this world. So what remains for the human being in sleep is something from which consciousness and the ego have departed. Thus, in the sleeping human being whom we encounter in ordinary life, we have before us something that has divested itself of its consciousness and its ego. And where have consciousness and the ego gone? We can even answer this question after describing ecstasy. If only ecstasy sets in and not sleep, then a world of spiritual beings and realities surrounds us. Now let us suppose that we also peel away our consciousness to the ego; we also relinquish our consciousness; at that very moment, black darkness descends around us—we are asleep. Thus, in sleep we have surrendered our ego, as in ecstasy, and also—and this characterizes sleep—our consciousness. Therefore, we can say: Human sleep is a kind of ecstasy in which the human being is not merely outside the body with the ego, but in which the human being is also outside the body with consciousness. What we call the ego, we have surrendered in ecstasy. That is a member of the human being. In sleep, another aspect now departs as well: the bearer of our conscious phenomena, which is the astral body. There you have a concept, derived entirely from ordinary life, of what is called the astral body in spiritual science. The ego is that which leaves the physical body in this ecstasy; when, in sleep, that which is called the astral body also leaves, the possibility of having consciousness is thereby extinguished.

[ 17 ] Thus, we must first depict the sleeping person as a connection to that which remains in bed; we will not examine this further at present. Something remains in bed that can be perceived externally. But something exists outside this sleeping person; something is surrendered to a world that is, for the time being, a world of the unknown. Surrendered is one aspect of the human being that is also surrendered in ecstasy: this is the ego. But a second aspect of the human being is also surrendered, one that is not yet surrendered in ecstasy, and that is the human being’s astral body.

[ 18 ] Sleep thus reveals a kind of division within the human being. The inner human being, human consciousness, and the human ego separate themselves from the outer human being, and what occurs during sleep is that the human being enters a state in which they no longer have any awareness of the day’s experiences, in which they no longer have in their consciousness anything of what enters that consciousness through external impressions. In sleep, the human being, as the inner human being, is surrendered to a world of which he has no consciousness; he is poured out into a world of which he knows nothing. Now, for a certain reason—which we shall come to know well enough—the world in which the inner human being is, that is, the world that has taken in his ego and his astral body, in which the human being is such that he has forgotten all the impressions of the day, is called the macrocosm, the great world. So we say—and this is just a hint for now; we will come to understand the justification for this expression: While he sleeps, the human being is surrendered to the macrocosm, poured out into the macrocosm, only he knows nothing of it.

[ 19 ] Even during ecstasy, a person is already immersed in this macrocosm; only, in that state, they are somewhat aware of it. This is what is peculiar about ecstasy: that a person experiences something—be it images or realities—that is spread out all around them, something that, so to speak, occupies an immense space and into which they feel as if they have been lost. This is what they experience in ecstasy. With their ego, they experience something like a loss of that ego, but in return a pouring out into a realm they have not known before. This pouring into a world that differs from the ordinary everyday world, where one feels confined only to one’s body—this surrender to such a world justifies speaking from the outset of a great world, of a macrocosm, in contrast to the small world in which we live with our ordinary daily experience. There we feel enclosed within our own skin. This is, at first, only the most superficial characteristic of this bodily world. When we are in ecstasy, we are as if grown into the great world, into the macrocosm, where at every turn some fantastic figures rise up before us—fantastic figures because they are not like the things in the physical world. We cannot distinguish ourselves from them; we do not know whether it is not ourselves who live within these figures; we feel expanded into a vast world, into the macrocosm. And when we grasp ecstasy in this way, then we can also, at least comparatively, form a concept of why we lose our sense of self in ecstasy.

[ 20 ] Imagine this human ego as a drop of some colored liquid. Now suppose we have a very small vessel, just large enough to hold this drop; then this colored drop will be visible. If we now take this drop and perhaps spread it out in a large basin filled entirely with water, the same drop is there in the water, but nothing of it can be perceived anymore. If you apply this comparison to the ego that expands into the great world, into the macrocosm, simply pouring itself out in ecstasy over the macrocosm, you can imagine that it feels weaker and weaker as it becomes larger and larger. As it pours itself out over the macrocosm, it loses the ability to perceive itself, just as the drop is lost in the large basin. Thus we understand that as the human being passes into a vast world, the ego is lost. It is there, of course; it is merely poured out over this vast world, and therefore knows nothing of itself.

[ 21 ] But something else important happens to a person during sleep. It is this: as long as a person is conscious, they act. Now, in a state of ecstasy, they are conscious, but they do not have the self that orients itself. They therefore act outside of their self. They do not control their actions; they are, as it were, surrendered to whatever impressions their consciousness receives. This is the essence of ecstasy: that a person engages in some kind of activity, and that if one observes such a person acting in ecstasy from the outside, one finds them as if transformed. One finds that he is not really himself; he acts as if under entirely different impressions, and because what he sees there is usually a multiplicity—for many events occur in ecstasy—he is devoted now to this, now to that entity, and gives the impression of a torn-apart being. This is the characteristic of the ecstatic person, and this is the danger of ecstasy. In ecstasy, the human being is indeed devoted to a spiritual world, but to a spiritual world of multiplicity that tears him apart in relation to his inner being.

[ 22 ] Now, however, when we consider sleep, we must surely have already gathered from the description—without needing to list every possible reason we could cite—that this world into which we enter does possess a certain reality. One can deny the existence of a world as long as one feels no effects from it. You might be standing with someone in front of a wall. That person claims: There is someone standing behind the wall. — You cannot believe this for yourself as long as the person behind the wall does not knock; but as soon as they knock, you are not acting with sound reason if you deny that someone is standing behind the wall. As soon as you perceive effects from a world, the possibility of viewing that world as mere fantasy ceases. Are there now effects emanating from that world which we still see in ecstasy, but which is extinguished in sleep for the ordinary, normal person? Well, anyone can convince themselves of the effects emanating from this world when they wake up in the morning. When one falls asleep in the evening, one is tired; one has, so to speak, exhausted one’s strength. This must be replenished. One wakes up in the morning with energies that were not present when falling asleep in the evening. During what period, then, has one acquired them? Well, one has acquired them during the time that has elapsed from falling asleep until waking up. So while one is surrendered in sleep, with one’s astral body and ego, to that world which one still sees in ecstasy but which is extinguished in sleep for the ordinary, normal person, one draws from this world itself the very forces one needs for daily life. They come from this world. One needs sleep because one must draw from this very world—which one sees in ecstasy but not in sleep—the forces one needs for daily life. What precise ideas you form about this is, for our present purpose, of no consequence; but what is important is that this world, which we see in ecstasy but which is obliterated for ordinary consciousness during sleep, presents itself as the world from which the forces flow that enable us to dispel the fatigue present in the evening. So this is just like the person knocking in our example, who stands behind the wall—whom we do not see, but whose effects we perceive. Every morning we perceive the effects of that world which we see in ecstasy but do not see in sleep. But where there is a world that manifests effects, we can no longer speak of its unreality. The world we see in ecstasy, but which is erased from ordinary consciousness during sleep, reveals its effects to us in ordinary daily life. Thus, we can no longer speak of its unreality.

[ 23 ] So we speak of drawing out the forces that sustain our daily life from the very same world that we glimpse in ecstasy—a world that is obliterated for ordinary consciousness during sleep. But we do this under very special circumstances. We do it under circumstances in which we do not, if we may put it that way, observe ourselves while drawing out these forces, while pouring out these forces from a spiritual world. That is the essence of sleep: that we accomplish something in sleep, and that we do not observe ourselves during this activity. If we were to watch ourselves during this activity, we would realize that we would do it much worse than we do when our consciousness is not present. Even in ordinary everyday life, there are things about which one must say: “Hands off!”—for some people only make things worse when they touch them. Human beings are in the same situation when the forces expended the previous day must be replenished through nightly sleep. If the person were present, they could watch themselves during that difficult operation that takes place as the expended forces are replenished; they could participate themselves—well, then something beautiful would come of it; but he would thoroughly ruin the entire procedure, because he is simply not yet capable of it today. Thus, the blessing actually comes about in that, at the very moment when he—if he were present—might do some harm to his own further development, consciousness is snatched away from him, so that he forgets his own existence.

[ 24 ] And so, as we fall asleep, by forgetting our own existence, we step into this vast world, into the macrocosm. Every evening, as we fall asleep, we step out of our small world, out of our microcosm, into the great world, into the macrocosm, and unite with this macrocosm, with the great world, by pouring our astral body and our ego into the macrocosm. But because, in the course of his present life, he is capable of acting only in the world of daily life, his consciousness ceases at the moment he enters the macrocosm. Esoteric science has always expressed this by saying: Between life in the microcosm and life in the macrocosm lies the stream of forgetfulness. Human beings enter the macrocosm, the greater world, via the stream of forgetfulness by passing from the microcosm into the macrocosm as they fall asleep. Thus we can say that when a person falls asleep in the evening, they pass over into another world, into the macrocosm, into the great world, and that this passing over is characterized by the fact that every night the person surrenders two parts of their being to this great world, to the macrocosm: the astral body and the ego.

[ 25 ] Now let us consider, by contrast, the moment of waking. This moment of waking consists in the fact that the person once again begins to experience, first of all, his pleasure, his suffering, his joy, his pain—all that which he has experienced in the past days in terms of drives, desires, and so on. They experience this again little by little today; that is the first thing. The second thing, however, that returns to them upon waking, is their sense of self. Out of the indeterminate darkness of human experience during sleep, the soul experiences and the self emerge upon waking. Now, when a person wakes up, we must first say to ourselves: Yes, if a person had only that which remained in bed at night while he slept, then he would not suffer pain, nor would he be able to experience joy, pleasure, and all that which constitutes his soul experiences. They could not, the human being. For what lies there in bed is, in the true sense of the word, like a plant: it lives like a plant; it does not experience such things as joy and pain and so on. But that which is the inner human being does not experience such things at night either, and yet this inner human being is the bearer of the soul’s experiences. It is not that which lies in bed that experiences suffering and pain, pleasure and joy, but that which, upon falling asleep, has gone out into the great world, into the macrocosm. From this we can see that, in addition to the astral body, something else is necessary for the experience of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of drives, desires, passions, of sympathy and antipathy: namely, that it must submerge into what the outer human being is, what has remained lying in bed. If the human being does not immerse themselves in what has remained in bed, they do not feel their inner soul experiences. We can therefore say: That which we have poured out into the macrocosm, into the great world, during the night becomes perceptible to us in normal human life only through our morning immersion in what has remained in bed.

[ 26 ] Now, this is in turn a twofold reality into which we immerse ourselves. The first aspect into which we immerse ourselves when we wake up in the morning is that which we experience, so to speak, solely as inner life. During the day, we experience the ebb and flow of sensations and feelings, our interests, our sympathies and antipathies; we experience the inner workings of the soul. We cannot experience them during the night, but we can only experience them when we, as it were, encounter them, when we immerse ourselves in what has remained in bed during sleep.

[ 27 ] But when we immerse ourselves in it, we experience not only our inner spiritual experiences, but also the external world of sensory impressions. We experience not only the joy of the rose, for example, but also the red color of the rose. The joy of the rose is an inner experience; the red color of the rose is something that exists outside of us. This is true of everything we experience during our ordinary waking hours. Everywhere we experience a duality: we immerse ourselves in our physicality, and as we immerse ourselves, our inner soul experiences are reflected back to us, coming toward us like an echo; but an outer world also emerges when, upon waking, we immerse ourselves in what has remained in bed during sleep. Therefore, what remains in bed during sleep must consist of two parts: one part must, as it were, reflect what we experience inwardly, and one part must enable us, as it were, to penetrate ourselves and see the external world as a reality. Thus, what has remained in bed during sleep cannot be a unity; it must be a duality. If there were only one, then when we slip into it upon waking, we would experience only an inner world, or we would experience only an outer world. There would be only a panorama spread out before us, or else we would have only inner fluctuations of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, and so on. But we have both, not just one or the other. We immerse ourselves in the outer person who remains in bed during sleep, and we do so in such a way that we find an inner world conjured up before us and an outer world. We do not, therefore, immerse ourselves in a unity, but in a duality. Just as it was a duality that we poured out into the macrocosm when we fell asleep, so, upon waking, we enter the microcosm, and this, too, is a duality. What enables us to experience an inner soul life, we call the etheric or life body; and that which enables us to have an outer tableau of the sensory world is the physical body. Thus, that which lies in bed during sleep consists of two parts: the physical body and the etheric or life body. If we were to enter only the physical body when we wake up in the morning, we would face an external scene, but we would be inwardly empty and desolate; we would have no pleasure, no pain, no interest in all that is around us and taking place; we would stand cold and soulless before the scene of the sensory world. That is how it would be if we were to enter merely into our physical body. If we were to enter merely into our etheric or life body, then we would not have an external world before us, but rather we would have a world of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, and so on, which would ebb and flow; we would not be able to attribute it to any external world; we would simply have a world of feelings that bubbled up and down.

[ 28 ] From this we see that when we wake up in the morning and immerse ourselves in our outer being, we immerse ourselves in a two-part entity—one that we describe as a mirror of our inner world, the etheric or life body— and into that which we call the cause of the outer tapestry of the senses, the outer tableau—that is, the physical body.

[ 29 ] We have thus demonstrated, based on actual experiences, that we are justified in speaking of a fourfold human being, of four aspects of the human being, two of which—the ego and the astral body—belong to the macrocosm, the greater world, during sleep. In wakefulness, these two members of the human being—the I and the astral body—belong to the microcosm, the small world enclosed within the human skin. Thus, human life unfolds in such a way that the human being lives alternately in the microcosm and in the macrocosm. Every morning, they enter the microcosm. This small world, the microcosm, is the source of our daily experiences from morning, when we wake up, until evening, when we fall asleep. And the fact that, in sleep, we are poured out with our astral body and the I into the entire great world, into the macrocosm, just as a drop is poured into the contents of a large basin—this is the reason why, at the moment we step out of the microcosm, out of the small world, we must pass through the stream of forgetfulness.

[ 30 ] Now we may ask ourselves: How can a person, when engaging in mystical contemplation, bring about in a certain way that state we described at the beginning of our lecture? — We have understood ecstasy as the ego pouring out into the macrocosm while the astral body remains within the microcosm, that is, within the physical body. When we grasp the matter in this way, we understand ecstasy. Ecstasy is simply the pouring out of the ego into the macrocosm, while the astral body remains within the microcosm. What, then, is the nature of what we described at the beginning of today’s reflection as a mystical state? This mystical state consists of the following: Our life in the physical and in the etheric or life body, in the microcosm, in the small world, from morning upon waking until evening upon falling asleep, is a most peculiar one. We do not descend into our etheric or life body and our physical body in the morning upon waking in such a way that we would perceive the etheric body and the physical body; we do not perceive the innermost part of our physical and etheric bodies, even though we enter them. Our physical and etheric bodies make our soul life and our external perception possible; these two members of the human being make this possible for us. Why, then, do we perceive our soul life when we wake up in the morning? We perceive our soul life precisely because the etheric or life body does not allow us to truly perceive its interior. Just as a mirror does not allow us to see what is behind it—and it is precisely for this reason that it enables us to see ourselves in it—so it is with our etheric or life body. Our etheric body reflects our soul life back to us. It does not allow us to perceive what is inside it, but rather reflects our soul life back to us. Because it reflects it back to us, it appears to us as the actual cause of our soul life. It proves impenetrable to us; we cannot see through its inner workings. This is precisely what is peculiar about the human etheric or life body: that we do not penetrate it, but rather that it reflects our own soul life back to us. But this is the case with the mystic due to that intense development of the soul life. Through what he experiences in inner contemplation, he succeeds to a certain degree in penetrating this etheric or life body, not merely seeing the reflection, but actually drilling into the microcosm. By burrowing into this small world, into this microcosm, he experiences within himself what a person in a normal state otherwise experiences externally, what is otherwise poured out over the external world. He experiences, whereas otherwise a person might, for example, ward off a blow, that he burrows, as it were, into himself and seeks the cause of the blow within himself. The mystic, then, penetrates to a certain degree into his etheric body; he passes through that threshold through which the life of the soul is otherwise reflected and penetrates into the interior of his etheric or life body. And these are processes within his own etheric body that the mystic experiences when he crosses that threshold through which the life of the soul is otherwise reflected. But then, when he crosses this threshold, the mystic indeed experiences something that is, in a certain sense, similar to the loss of the ego through ecstasy. The ego has, as it were, been diluted, in that the human being has poured it out into the macrocosm, into the whole vast world, during ecstasy. Now, during mystical contemplation, the human being drills his own inner self into the etheric body. Through this, the ego now becomes condensed. And indeed, the person experiences this condensation of their ego through the fact that what is dominant in the ordinary ego—namely, the ability to orient oneself through the intellect and senses bound to the brain—ceases, and that they receive the impulses for their actions through certain inner feelings. For the mystic, everything that arises is a deepest inner experience, because these things emerge directly from his etheric or life body, which other people receive only as reflected through the etheric body. These are the reasons why the mystic has such powerful inner experiences: because he penetrates into the innermost depths of his etheric or life body.

[ 31 ] So while the ecstatic person expands into the macrocosm, the mystic, with his inner being, draws inward into the microcosm. And now something most remarkable becomes apparent. Both experiences—that of the ecstatic, when he perceives certain events and beings externally, and that of the mystic, when he experiences certain feelings internally that cannot otherwise be experienced—stand in a certain relationship that can be characterized as follows: Our world, which we see with our eyes and hear with our ears, arouses in us certain feelings of pleasure and pain and so on—we feel that these belong together in normal life. One person may take greater joy in the things and events of the external world, another less; but these are merely differences of degree; they are not differences of the kind found in the terrible, vehement pain and, conversely, in the raptures of the mystic compared to ordinary experience. There are, however, enormous differences between what the ordinary person can experience and what the mystic experiences in terms of inner bliss, rapture, and torment. This is an enormous difference in quality. Likewise, there is a vast difference between what the ordinary person can see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and what the ecstatic perceives when they are absorbed in a world that is unlike the sensory world. But if one were to let the ecstatic person describe his world and then listen to the mystic and let him describe his bliss, raptures, and torments, then one could say: Yes, through such entities and facts as the ecstatic person sees, that which the mystic experiences can be brought about. If, on the other hand, one were to listen to the mystic, one would say: Such a thing would also be possible if one had the experiences of the ecstatic; one might believe that the ecstatic is describing this world.

[ 32 ] Just as the mystic’s world is real—subjectively real, that is, in the sense that he truly sees it—so too are the entities of the ecstatic. Whether or not they are objectively real, we will leave that question open for now. But one thing we can say today: illusion or reality, it matters not; the ecstatic sees a world, a world that is different from what can be perceived in the sensory world, and the mystic experiences feelings, bliss, rapture, and torments that cannot be compared to anything the ordinary person experiences. Both worlds exist only for certain people. However, the mystic does not see the world of the ecstatic, and the ecstatic does not experience the world of the mystic. Both worlds are independent of one another. A third person, however, can comprehend one of the two worlds through the other. This is a most peculiar relationship, that one world is explained through the other, that the two worlds are in harmony.

[ 33 ] In this way, we have pointed out a certain connection between the world of the mystic and that of the ecstatic, and have shown how human beings, so to speak, encounter the world of the spirit outwardly and encounter the world of the spirit inwardly.

[ 34 ] What we have just described will still be hanging in the air for you. It will now be our task to answer the following questions: To what extent can we actually enter a real world once we penetrate the veil of the external sensory world? To what extent is it possible to go beyond the world of the ecstatic and penetrate outward into a true spiritual world? And to what extent is it possible to descend into the inner world of the mystic and find a true spiritual world there? — The paths that lead into the spiritual world through the macrocosm and microcosm—we will have to describe these in ever greater detail over the next few days.