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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 511 through 520 of 1752

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54. Two Essays on Haeckel: Haeckel, “The Riddle of the Universe,” Theosophy 05 Oct 1905, Berlin
Translated by Bertram Keightley

Those who desire to remain within the boundary of the senses will, of course, say, “But they are only dreams!” Yet, if they, by such means, obtain an insight into the loftiest secrets of creation, it may surely be a matter of indifference to them whether they gain this through the medium of a dream or by means of the senses. Let us, for instance, suppose that Graham Bell had invented the telephone in a state of dream-consciousness. That would have been of no moment whatever to-day, for the telephone itself in any case is an important and useful invention. Clear and regular dreaming is therefore the beginning, and if in the stillness of the night hours you have come to “live in your dreams,” if, after a time, you have habituated yourself to a cognisance of worlds quite other than this, then will soon come a time when you will learn, by these new experiences, to step forth into actuality.
34. Essays on Anthroposophy from Lucifer and Lucifer-Gnosis 1903-1908: Haeckel's “The Riddle of the Universe” and Theosophy 01 Jan 1906,

Those who desire to remain within the boundary of the senses will, of course, say, “But they are only dreams!” Yet, if they, by such means, obtain an insight into the loftiest secrets of creation, it may surely be a matter of indifference to them whether they gain this through the medium of a dream or by means of the senses. Let us, for instance, suppose that Graham Bell had invented the telephone in a state of dream-consciousness. That would have been of no moment whatever to-day, for the telephone itself in any case is an important and useful invention. Clear and regular dreaming is therefore the beginning, and if in the stillness of the night hours you have come to “live in your dreams,” if, after a time, you have habituated yourself to a cognisance of worlds quite other than this, then will soon come a time when you will learn, by these new experiences, to step forth into actuality.
63. The Spiritual World and Spiritual Science. Views and Aims of the Present 30 Oct 1913, Berlin

However, it can also penetrate as for example a dream if you awake from sleep what is, however, again endlessly more than a dream about which you say to yourself: what happens now?
Those who believe to stand firmly in the scientific habitual ways of thinking very easily regard all these matters as daydreams and fantasies. One shows by the researches about dream, hypnosis, suggestion, autosuggestion and so on how from the depths of the subconscious soul life a number of things can appear that can cause a deceptive consciousness in the human being.
One may even say, if the spiritual researcher describes these matters, it is real in such a way, as if a dreamer describes his dreams. In the dreams, memories of the outer world express themselves. Hence, one can say in a certain sense, what the spiritual researcher separates as his mental-spiritual from the bodily and puts as beings of an imagery before his soul is taken from the qualities of the pictures of the beings of the outer world.
164. The Value of Thinking for Satisfying our Quest for Knowledge: The Relationship Between Spiritual Science and Natural Science II 27 Sep 1915, Dornach

Why, forehead burning with fever, Do you so sleep-robbing And dream-scaring only yourself Through the tormenting host of thoughts? Calm change draws The stars in the sky above, And motionless lies the city, The wide, wide city - for behold, It is midnight and poor as rich, happy Without distinction of the dream god's enticing cup, The heavy, poppy-wreathed...
What treacherous hellish delusion It is to tremble longingly and foolishly To crave and thirst for divine bliss, To an infinite Consume itself in feverish heat And over the seething swamp The most enticing fairytale realm of dreams Build – alas! plaintively and unresolved This anxious question fades away into eternity...
Demystified and shivering, the heart and the sober everyday soul, She smiles at the dream that once intoxicated her... The shining star of divinity, Not proud and titanic could She tear it from heaven – no, she reached And, more foolish than a foolish child, Reached for its murky reflection In the puddle of its own kind...
174a. Central Europe Between East and West: Eighth Lecture 20 May 1917, Munich

I esteem him, as I do many of those I criticize. In this little book he also deals with dreams and asserts that in dreams a subdued, paralyzed brain life takes place, that brain life is only partially active. If someone were to tap a pin against a windowpane, Verworn says, we may dream that cannon shots are going off one after the other. That is a well-known dream. Verworn says this at the top; then he says something in between, and at the end he says further down on the same page: The dream has its peculiar character because the brain is tuned down in its activity.
Until then, until the Mystery of Golgotha, the Kingdoms of Heaven approached man as in a dream. Before the Atlantean catastrophe, they were even assimilated through digestion. But now they had to come down.
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Sixth Lecture 24 Nov 1915, Stuttgart

These materialists are prophets, only false prophets! They dream of a world that, if it were up to them, could be created in their image. The materialists are dreamers, but mari must work against their dreams. When people realize that the materialists are dreamers, that they should be told: You go through the world and do not see reality, you dream of an existence that could at best be brought about by your lack of insight into the world, you are false prophets, you make all kinds of fantasies!
So the opposite judgment of what the materialists, well, let's say, dream of themselves, that's what you'll have to have. Then the time will have come when one can really understand spiritual science.
159. The Mystery of Death: Post-mortal Experiences of the Human Being 17 Jun 1915, Düsseldorf
Translator Unknown

Indeed, we have a clue of sorts, while also in the everyday life, which we spend between birth and death, something analogous, something similar of the experiences in the spiritual world projects. These are the dream experiences projecting into the everyday life. The dream experience does not come into being to us through our senses; our senses have really nothing to do with the dream experience. Nevertheless, it is in the pictures that sometimes remind of the sensory life. We have in these dream pictures, even if a weak reflection, just a reflection of that type, as the spiritual existence faces us as an Imaginative world between death and a new birth.
There said the father: this is quite strange, I dream very seldom. However, I dreamt this night, this same night of my son that he appeared to me and that he wanted to say something to me; however, I have not understood it.
46. Posthumous Essays and Fragments 1879-1924: Imagining, Feeling and Wanting

Only the inside of the spirit. The breathing process is only conscious in dreams; but so is the process of imagination by the spirit. The metabolism remains completely unconscious: only its soul correlate in disposition, hunger, thirst, etc. becomes conscious; likewise, the emotional and volitional process from the spirit.
148. The Fifth Gospel III: Second Munich Lecture 10 Dec 1913, Munich

One night it happened. And just when I had fallen asleep, a dream came over me that I brought into the dream the feeling that I was ashamed of myself for dreaming something like that.
I was ashamed that such a question could be addressed to me in a dream, because it was so clear to me that I was a rare person and that I had naturally come to these honors through my great virtues. And when the being had spoken to me in this way, I was seized in my dream by an ever-increasing sense of shame before myself, in my dream – so said this despairing man. Then I fled, but no sooner had I escaped than the apparition stood before me again in a changed form and said: I have exalted you, brought you to honor.
103. The Gospel of St. John: The Mission of the Earth 20 May 1908, Hamburg
Translated by Maud B. Monges

We should not simply compare this perceiving in the spiritual world with the present dreaming. The present dream-state is only like a last stunted remnant of this ancient clairvoyance. However, the same images were perceived at that time as are perceived today in dreams, but they had a very real meaning.
At that time there was around him a world, in comparison with which, the most vivid dream-world of today is only a weak, dim echo. These images signified something psychic and spiritual in his environment.
But love streamed into human beings in the dull clairvoyant dream-consciousness of those ancient times. Now, let us glance behind existence at a great significant cosmic mystery.

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