The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When approaching the mystery of death, one must always bear in mind, as was emphasized again yesterday, that in order to characterize the spiritual worlds, it is necessary to change the meaning of our ordinary words, which are tailored for the physical world. For the dead, the so-called dead, enter the spiritual world, and as we have already repeatedly indicated, it is fundamentally different in the spiritual world than in the physical world.

Not only according to spiritual scientific insights, but also in accordance with ordinary physical reason, it can be thought that when entering the spiritual world through the gate of death, the first thing for the dead person is: the loosening of the physical body from what is within this physical body his other human existence. This is, of course, a very trivial truth. Today, we want to look at the processes that come into play when describing the gate of death and the further pursuit of the path between death and a new birth, in terms of the inner experiences of the dead person, in the sense in which this can be explored in spiritual science.

For the person who remains behind here in physical life, it is indeed the case that he has the sensation that what is enclosed in the physical body shell leaves the one or ones remaining behind, that the dead person goes away into another world. The first perception that the dead person has – as I said, according to what can be researched for spiritual science – is that he, in turn, is abandoned by the inhabitants of the earth and also by his physical body, by that which was the tool for his perception, for his thinking and feeling and his ability to will between birth and death. So these, who were around him, who were connected with him, go away from him: that is his first perception. This perception is initially linked to the processes that we have often described: that the earth itself, in a sense, moves away, so that it takes away the physical shell of the body of the one passing through the gateway of death. It is absolutely as if the dead person, so to speak, were to feel that he is lagging behind a movement that he did not actually perceive here on earth, that he is lagging behind the earth's own movement; the earth is leaving him and with the earth everything that surrounded him on earth. And now he is incorporated into a completely different world, but one through which he now perceives something that was previously completely hidden from him, through which he perceives that what was given to him as a physical shell is bound to the earth, and also to the movements of the earth. He has a feeling, although that is a rather inaccurate expression, that he can no longer follow the path that the earth and its spirits take; so they leave him. He remains in a certain greater state of rest, he integrates himself, as it were, into a quieter world.

For the dead person, many things are now based on this perception of being abandoned, namely also by the physical shell of the body, by everything that one has experienced with people between birth and death, everything that one has learned from people. During his life on earth, the possession of his physical body was something he took for granted. Therefore, what he now perceives is something completely new, and we will see how different these perceptions are depending on whether one dies a so-called natural death from illness or old age or a violent death, for example, the kind of 'death that many thousands now have to die.'

This realization that one is being abandoned by that which was naturally one's own, gives rise to something completely new in the life of the soul. It means that something arises in the life of the soul that one could not have become acquainted with while dwelling in the body. The first thing that arises in the life of the soul is, I would say, the opposite feeling towards life. Here on earth one has the feeling that life is given from outside, that one lives through the life forces that are given to one from the outside of the earth. Now, so to speak, the earth leaves with what it has given one, and immediately, through this leaving, the feeling arises that the power of enlivenment is now bubbling up from within. So the first thing is the perception of being enlivened. It is the transition to a certain activity, whereas before you remained in passivity: You are invigorating that which you now are. You are within yourself. What you previously called the world has gone away from you. That in which you now live, but by completely filling it, that generates in itself the power of invigoration, that is invigorated. And in concrete terms, this results in what I have often called the panorama of life, the flooding life in all that one has experienced between birth and death. The images of this life arise before the soul. It rises, as it were, from the point where one is, like a powerful, self-generating “dream, the whole of one's past life between birth and death. But this image needs strength so that it is not a dream. It would be like a dream flowing by if one had not gained the power of animation by having attained this consciousness: one's own physical shell detaches itself from the spiritual-soul. The dream comes to life. What would otherwise be only a world of dark, floating dream images is animated from the same point; it becomes a living world, a living panorama of life. One is oneself the source of the animation of what thus emerges as a dream. This is the direct experience after death.

All this happens while the person is hardly aware that he has emerged from his previous consciousness, but only feels that something has stirred within him, as if from the center of his being, spreading out and escaping that life to which he has so far passively surrendered. What one did not know between birth and death: that thoughts, which otherwise merely undulated like a dream of the ego, are alive, one now knows that. And one now lives one's self out of the formerly alien life into this inner life. One experiences what it means that what was previously more externally connected to one, now seizes the innermost. What was previously not life, but an image of life, seizes the imagination, the thinking. And while one is finding one's way into this conception, gradually a further one arises. This is this, which one could call: a living into a sounding through of the panorama of life with the universe. I have already described these things more generally. But one must always look at them more closely in order to penetrate the secrets of the world.

At first, one's innermost life dream comes to life, so to speak, and becomes a living universe, a living cosmos. Then, as it were, it is filled with what one can call: the music of the spheres of the universe resonates through this life dream. One experiences how what one was oneself between birth and death as a part of the cosmos is now absorbed by the cosmos, how this integrates with that which is now not earthly. For one has gone through the earthly between birth and death. And then the next thing is that one feels how intimately the cosmos permeates what one was as a part. One has the feeling of an inner light coming on and illuminating what one was. But all this streams and resounds, so to speak, into the panorama of life. Then the etheric body detaches itself – because these processes all happen while the person is connected to the etheric body – and what is called the detachment of the etheric body occurs.

Now this experience, this perception of the panorama of life, this clothing of the panorama of life with the sounding and luminous substances of the cosmos, is similar to the way the physical body integrates into the human being when one enters into existence through birth. Just as the human substance given to one by the earth, so to speak, integrates into the human soul, so the cosmic, the universal, integrates after passing through the gate of death. This experience, which has been described, is necessary. And when one really follows the spiritual side of life between death and a new birth, then one notices the significance for this whole life between death and a new birth of this first experience after passing through the gate of death. Here in physical life on earth — we must be quite clear about this, I have emphasized it often — we have our sense of self-consciousness because we live in the physical body. I emphasize: the sense of self, not the self. Our self is assigned to us by the Spirits of Form, that is something else. But we have our sense of self because we are immersed in the physical body. We only have to be quite clear about the nature of this sense of self in the waking state. The best way to understand it is to imagine you are moving through a room. At first you feel nothing; now you are touching something. The outside world touches you, but you become aware of yourself. You become aware of the impact that the outside world has on you, you become aware of the outside world, you feel yourself touching the outside world.

In fact, we have our sense of self in the physical world by bumping into the outside world everywhere. Of course, not only with the sense of touch, but when we open our eyes, we also bump into the outside world; when sounds reach our ears, we become aware of it when our hearing bumps into the sounds.

But we also become aware of ourselves by emerging from the spiritual world every morning and immersing ourselves in the physical world. This immersion in our physical body, that is, this collision of our ego and astral body with the etheric body and physical body, that is what creates our sense of self. This is why there is usually a lack of self-awareness in the dream world: because we need this collision with the physical body and the etheric body to have self-awareness.

For a clear, distinct, waking self-awareness, we need this collision. Now, the outer physical body has been taken from the one who has passed through the gate of death. In the same way as between birth and death, he cannot produce self-awareness. Without consciousness of self, he would have to tread the path between death and a new birth if this consciousness of self were not now generated by another path. This other path is that everything we now experience directly in the etheric body after we have passed through the gate of death remains in existence all the time between death and a new birth.

In this respect, too, the experience in the spiritual world between death and a new birth is the opposite of the physical experience here between birth and death. Here in the physical world, no one can consciously remember the moment of their birth; remembrance only sets in later. Man does not remember his birth, it is, so to speak, too far in the past for the memory process to go backwards. But what the person experiences inwardly from the other side of death remains throughout life between 'death and a new birth for the soul. The experience of death remains just as surely as the experience of birth disappears when the person enters the physical world. The physical person does not look back on his birth in the physical world, but he looks back on death in the whole time between death and a new birth. This looking back, this encounter with the experience of death, is what creates the sense of self between death and a new birth, and we owe it to that.

The sight of death is only from the side of physical experience, if at all, something terrible. Only there it has horror and terror, if one sees it from this side. But the dead see it from the other side. And seen from this side, there is really nothing terrible about the fact that the moment of death remains, so to speak, for the whole of life between death and a new birth. For even if it is annihilation, seen from this physical side of life, it is the most glorious, the greatest, the most beautiful, the most sublime, which can be seen continually from the other side of life. There he constantly testifies to the victory of spirit over matter, to the self-creative power of spirit. In this intuitive perception of the self-creative power of spirit, the consciousness of self exists in the spiritual worlds.

In the spiritual worlds, one has this self-awareness precisely because one is constantly creating oneself inwardly, never appealing to an existing being, but always creating oneself, and in this self-creation, one touches back to the moment of death. So we can also indicate how the sense of self-awareness is generated in the time between death and rebirth. The birth of self-awareness is of great significance in this experience in the first period after death. And of course, this first experience is also different depending on whether the person, let us say, reaches an advanced age, then passes through the gate of death in a natural way, or is perhaps carried off in the tenderest childhood or in the prime of life. And of quite particular significance in relation to the difference in this area is approximately — not pedantically exact, of course — the age of thirty-five. What now takes place in a thousand different ways, that young people in the prime of their lives pass through the portal of death: tomorrow it will show us how this is further modified by death approaching them from outside. But if a person does pass through the portal of death young, then the view of this described tableau of life with its invigorating events is already different than if one passes through the portal of death after the age of thirty-five.

You can say, although it is of course difficult to find the right words for these circumstances, that someone who dies at a young age has the feeling that the dream image of their life appears and they bring it to life from the center of their life. But as you pour your own vitalizing powers over this tableau of life, something still stands behind this tableau of life like a remnant from the world from which you have stepped out by going through birth.

When a child dies, the tableau of life is extremely short. If, for example, a six-year-old child dies, the tableau of life is still not very substantial. But behind this tableau, so to speak, entering from behind and casting a shadow over it, there is still much of what was lived through in the spiritual world before birth, or, as one also said in the German language in the past – Goethe used the expression – before one “came into the world”. A beautiful expression that has now been lost. And when a child dies who has not yet any memory of the past, for whom the time has not yet come when one remembers back, then such a tableau of life does not actually exist for him, in which he feels himself in it so directly as a human being feels himself in it when he dies later; but what he had around him before birth emerges through the whole tableau of life, only a little modified. One could say that this glimpse of certain remnants of the spiritual world that one has experienced before birth is only lost after death, when one has passed the age of thirty-five.

One should never – and this is said in parenthesis – be tempted, I emphasize this expressly, to indulge in the not-at-all-harmless thought of what might be better for a person: to die before the age of thirty-five, or to die after the age of thirty-five and to live through what we will describe. These thoughts should not be pursued, they should not be entertained, but they should be considered: when one passes through the gate of death, one should, in the strictest sense of the word, leave it solely and entirely to karma.

But it is important to understand these things. If one dies after the age of thirty-five, there is no possibility of seeing anything of the remainder of the spiritual life preceding birth. That is obscured. But the tableau of life still appears. One has a strong feeling that one is creating it from within, that one is weaving it oneself, as it were; but this web is brought to life. In this way, dying before the age of thirty-five and dying after the age of thirty-five differ quite significantly in terms of the tableau of life. The life tableau before the age of thirty-five has much more the character of something that comes to you from outside, as if from a spiritual world, and you only push towards it what you yourself have experienced. The tableau of life after thirty-five years is such that at first more of an emptiness, a darkness, comes towards you from the outside, and you bring what you have acquired in life towards this darkness. But it is no less vividly ignited by this. Our inner experience is modified by the fact that one moment it is like the approach of a mirage that we approach, while the other moment we carry our world into the world of the cosmos. All this has great significance for life, as we shall see tomorrow. This karmic process, whereby our physical body is snatched from us at a certain age of physical life, has a great significance for the nature of life after death. But this is intimately connected with our entire karma.

Then comes the time when we feel: Now you are actually out of the earthly. If you want to be very rough, you could say that as soon as you pass through the gate of death, you have the feeling that the earthly body is leaving you. The friends, the people you were with, are leaving you. The experiences you had with them are leaving you. You are alone with yourself for a while, alone with what you have experienced. Of course, everything you have experienced with people is included in the dream of your life; you look at it as what people have engraved in you, but in such a way that you live within yourself during the day and bring the dream of your life to life within yourself. You get the impression that the earth is also leaving you, but that you are still living in the same sphere as the earth, in the sphere that still belongs to the earth. And the laying down of the etheric body is actually also experienced in such a way that one has the feeling: now you are not only out of the earth and its substance, but also out of what is the most immediate environment of the earth, out of the light; you are also out of what, on earth, as dense substantiality, makes the music of the spheres inaudible. You are – this is perhaps the last impression, which is very significant, which is then something lasting – you are no longer in the habit of having external light illuminate you and your surroundings, so to speak. I note, as if to interject, that the most foolish idea is held by those who believe that if one were to fly away from the Earth toward the Sun, one would fly continually through light. This fantastic notion is currently held by materialistic physicists. The belief that the sun spreads light in the way it is described in physics, that light passes through space and falls on the earth, is one of the worst superstitions. After death, one realizes this by realizing, when one is free of the etheric body, that only in the area that belongs to the earth, that is what we have as sunlight here in physical life. One has the perception: Now this light no longer disturbs you. Now it is the inner generation of the light that spreads out in the first sounding through. The inner light can now become effective because the outer light no longer disturbs the inner.

And now, with the shedding of the etheric body, the entry into that world begins, which is so often called the world of kamala. We will call it the soul world, because after the inner life-giving power has first emerged, one then experiences something like an inner resounding of what one is, since one is now alone with oneself. And after the inner illumination, what appears to be an inner warming occurs. Here on earth, one is warmed by receiving warmth from outside and feels dependent on it in the physical body. And now the inner warming occurs, and this warming is such that one now feels again: You are now able, in the element in which you live, to evoke in yourself the sensation that you also had earlier, but in the form: warmth affects you. — This permeates the tableau of life with warmth. As a result, one enters a completely new element. One has the feeling that the etheric body is now leaving one. And that is precisely the entrance into the world that in my book “Theosophy” was called the world of the blaze of desire, because the warmth that arises from within is at the same time desire, generating, flowing desire, feeling of the element of will. And into this, there already mingles that which remains with us for a certain length of time: the experience of the soul world, which I have often described. We can only describe these things more precisely bit by bit, as a reliving of life. One proceeds from the experience of death back towards birth. And now one relives from the other side everything that one has gone through in physical life. But you do not experience it in the same way as you experienced it here in the physical world, but you experience it in a moral way. If, let us say, at some point between birth and death you have harmed someone, you felt at the time what you did, but not the suffering that the other person felt. Now you experience the same thing again, but not what you yourself experienced in terms of anger or antipathy, but rather how the other person experienced it. You extend your own experience, if I may put it this way, to the effects of his actions that occurred between birth and death. You live yourself into all the effects of the actions.

This is, in a sense, the basis of life between death and a new birth: that one gradually immerses oneself in what one has done between birth and death during the experience in the soul world, that one gradually submerges oneself in it. Just as one gradually lived into nature here from childhood, learning to perceive nature and understand nature, so in the time after death one lives into the effects of one's own deeds, into the effect of one's own thoughts and words, in short, into the entire world of effects; one pours oneself into the world of effects. Of course, spiritual beings gradually emerge from this background: the beings of the higher hierarchies, the beings of the elemental world. Just as we do not merely experience nature here, but animals, plants and minerals emerge from the soil of nature, so within this reliving, where we live into the effects of our deeds - for that is actually the basic soil of our world - the spiritual beings in the spiritual world emerge. And there, as in the physical world, physical beings come to meet us among the spiritual beings of the elemental realms and the higher hierarchies, the souls that have been connected to us, the souls that have already died and are in the spiritual world, or the souls that are still embodied in the physical body, with whom we have had contact here. With all this, this basic ground of the after-mortal being, this dissolving into the world of one's own deeds, comes to life.

And in a certain way, it can be perceived that there is a difference between perceiving a soul that is still on earth and a soul that has already passed through the gate of death. The dead person naturally knows whether he is dealing with one soul or the other. When he is dealing with a soul that still dwells in the earthly body, then the dead person has the feeling that this soul is approaching him more from the outside, that the image, the imagination, forms itself. With a soul that already belongs to the disembodied, there is a much more active experience. You have the feeling that the soul is approaching you, but that you have to form the image for this soul. The dead person comes to you with his being, you have to form his image yourself; the person who is still alive brings you his image when you look down on him.

And so now, in a certain way, one experiences with moral emphasis what one can call one's deeds, that is, the effects of what one has done, thought, wanted. There one plunges in, there one lives oneself into it. And one plunges in in a very specific way, namely in such a way that one experiences, for example, that one has hurt someone, and now one experiences what the other has experienced through the injury! This is really your own experience of what the other person experienced here in the physical world. You go through it. And by going through it, the strength arises in you, as if by inner, elementary necessity: You have to make up for that, you have to make amends for that! It is really the case that you can use the comparison: A mosquito flies towards you, you close your eyes. You carry out an activity under an impression. After death you experience the effect of something you have done; then you respond by generating the strength to make amends, that is, to compensate for what you have done to the other person. This means that by reliving this experience in your soul, you take upon yourself the strength to make amends for what you have done to this person. This creates the desire to be with him in earthly life in order to balance out what was done to him. During this reliving, all the forces for karma are created, for balancing karma. One takes them on.

So already in these first years or decades after passing through the gate of death, one creates the living out of karma. And as true as there is a growing power in the germ, which only later realizes itself in the blossom, it is as true that already now, in the time after passing through the gate of death, the power exists in the dead as root power, which then remains for the whole life between death and a new birth, and which realizes itself in the new earth life or in later earth lives as karmic compensation for what one has done. Thus the will is generated, which then becomes unconscious will for karma.

And now we can take a closer look at something that is important for the understanding of this picture of life between death and a new birth. We can see this if we cast our eyes once more on the reciprocal action between the conditions of earthly life here, which are well known to us in their outer appearance and on which we have reflected many a time, and their inner secrets, when we look at the reciprocal action between the waking life of the day and the sleeping life of the night.

Today, we want to look at this waking and sleeping again from a certain point of view. From an external point of view, sleep consists of our I and astral body being outside the physical and etheric bodies. The life of sleep initially remains unconscious if it is not interspersed with a certain type of dream life. However, this does not mean inactivity. On the contrary, this life in sleep is a soul life that is much more active within than the waking soul life, even though it remains unconscious during normal life on earth. The waking life of the soul is only so intense because the activity of the ego and the astral body experiences resistance from the aetheric body and the physical body. In this mutual pushing and shoving between the ego and the astral body on the one hand, and the physical and etheric bodies on the other, something develops that resembles continuous pushes and counter-pushes. This is what appears to us as an alert day-life, while in normal life on earth we are not yet able to bring the continuous but intense activity of the night-life to consciousness. This does not push against the physical and etheric bodies, so it does not become conscious. But in itself the day-life is weaker; it only becomes conscious through the fact that it continually beats against the etheric body and physical body. This beating is perceived, while the more intense activity of the life during sleep goes into the indefinite, cannot beat against anything and thus remains unconscious.

But what is a person actually doing during this 'dream life'? When dreams occur in normal life, these dreams are not the actual activity during sleep, but are actually a visualization of the activity through the memories of ordinary life. The images of dream life arise because life spreads its tapestry over the actual inner activity; and in this way many things are perceived in 'dream life'. There the I and the astral body are in a living activity; when this touches the etheric body and the human being touches the etheric body, the dream arises. But the dream uses the physical life memories from the etheric body to make visible the invisible activity of the ego and the astral body. Therefore, one can only understand the dream if one takes these images in terms of their character sequence, that is, if one learns to understand these images. “Dreams must first be read in the right way, the right art of interpretation must first be added. Then, however, they point to this most significant reality, which is carried out by the ego and the astral body during sleep. This activity, then, which the human being carries out, is revealed to serious and dignified spiritual research.

What exactly is this activity that takes place from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up? It consists of reliving the experiences of the day in a much more intense way, so that one becomes, as it were, one's own judge of the day's experiences. It is a trite expression, but deeply true: during the day, one lives into the normal consciousness, letting the events that take place around one wash over one. But at night, in the astral body, one takes the events of the day much more seriously, much more meaningfully, both intellectually and emotionally. One weighs them, examines them in terms of their cosmic value. One concerns oneself with what they mean in the context of the whole world. An immense inner thoroughness in the contemplation of life is poured out upon the activity from falling asleep to waking up; only in normal life it remains unconscious. All this, what man goes through every night like a reliving of the day's life, has a great significance as preparation for life after passing through the gate of death.

Consider, then, with the means of ordinary physical consideration, this continuous life between birth and death. Of course, one only says that one remembers back to a certain point in time in this life. In truth, one does not remember the whole life back, but one remembers in the evening what goes on until the morning. Then the memory breaks off. Then comes the previous 'day', and then the night, which one does not remember. So one remembers back, but it is, as it were, chain link on chain link, a white and a black link. One does not remember the night in the life between birth and death. The strange thing is that in this time when you are in the realm of the soul, you remember the way you relived your daytime experiences night after night during the nights. Here in physical life you remember your days; in the realm of the soul you remember the same, but you remember how you worked through and lived through the days in the nights. You retrace your nights. In this way you can see the whole nature of the experiences in the soul realm.

If you realize this in detail, it is like this: you met a person on a certain day of your life, you experienced something with him. You relive it not only with him during the day, but also at night, and in the following nights; then it is a kind of reminiscence. You experience it inwardly in the ego and astral body. Everything you have experienced here in your waking consciousness, you experience again in your night consciousness. And the way you have experienced it in your night consciousness gives you the handle for how you need it in the soul world. You relive your nights. This is a very significant truth of spiritual research, and one can always remember through such a thing the fact that spiritual research is not as many believe. Many believe that once one has entered the spiritual world, then the spiritual researcher suddenly knows the whole spiritual world and is informed about everything. This belief is just as naive as it is naive to believe that someone who has walked across one part of the earth knows the whole earth. He knows parts of the earth quite well, but he knows nothing about other parts of the earth. Equally, someone who knows the spiritual world at some point does not need to know everything about the spiritual world. That is the subject of a slow research. That is why it is so difficult to talk about spiritual science, because you keep running into this prejudice. When lectures on spiritual science are given, people demand in the question and answer session that information be given about all things. Such questions are to be judged in the same way as if, for example, someone had become acquainted with a certain number of minerals or plants and one would then ask him about the secrets of the animal world and say: He knows one thing, so he must know the other too!

It is quite the case that all the details of the spiritual world must first be worked out. And above all, one must be able to wait until one thing or another arises. Now you have been able to see that in my “Occult Science” and “Theosophy” I have spoken about the approximate length of the so-called Kamalokalebens, the life in the soul world. From a certain point of view, one can say that, as it has happened. But now the spiritual researcher comes to a certain context that can really be compared to traveling from country to country. One comes from one place to another, and so one comes here from one area to another. Thus, the spiritual researcher can come to a different point of view; and this point of view answers the question: What does the activity of the ego and the astral body during the night involve? The experiences of the night can be seen as a reprocessing of the day's experiences. The question may arise: How does life turn out in the soul world when we know that the nights are lived through in the soul world? I have stated that life in the soul world makes up about a third of the last life on earth. If you live through the nights, how long will life in the soul world last? Well, you sleep through about a third of your life here on earth; some people sleep more, others less, but you sleep through about a third of your life on earth.

So are the tremendously significant impressions one can have regarding the truth of spiritual science. Because that is how it is in spiritual science: something is given to you from a certain point of view, from which you look into the spiritual world. A truth arises. One could doubt this truth. Now one starts from a different point of view and comes to the same truth, as is the case now with the experience of the Nights. This is the result of the truth. This is an important criterion, this inner agreement. And you will find this everywhere in spiritual science, where it is seriously and worthily pursued: that the same thing is sought from different points of view, and that the same truth emerges from these different points of view. Once people develop a feeling for the truth value inherent in this way of approaching spiritual truth and then finding this spiritual truth, they will also sense how much more true it is than anything that can be investigated in the physical world. The important thing is that we have a memory here in physical life for what we have experienced in our waking consciousness, and that we have a memory in the time when we pass through the soul world for what is further worked on during the nights on the basis of what the waking consciousness experiences.

In order to approach the meaningful truths that we will discuss tomorrow with the right attitude, let us recall something that I have already mentioned here in a different context with reference to the great events of our time: When a person passes through the portal of death in such a way that their life is, as it were, torn away from the outside, especially if they die at a young age, then after they have passed through the portal of death, after a short time, the separation of the etheric body also occurs. But this etheric body would have the power to supply the rest of life with external life forces. Normally, the person receives the powers of the etheric body that can supply them with life forces into old age. If life is suddenly interrupted, then these powers remain. These powers are also present in the discarded etheric body. And just as nothing of the forces is lost in the physical world, but only transformed, so these forces are not lost either, but remain present. Apply this specifically, then you will say to yourself: When a person dies in his youth, in his prime, he leaves the world what he still has of vital forces in his ether body, which he could have used up himself. Imagine it even more concretely. Suppose a person, let us say in the twenty-fifth year of life, is struck by a bullet: he leaves to the world in terms of etheric forces of life that which he would have been able to use up from the twenty-sixth year of life onwards for the rest of a long life. That remains, that is a gift that the dead leave to the spiritual atmosphere of life in which we find ourselves. We remain surrounded by these forces. And in these forces lie the sacrificial attitudes with which the departed person permeated his etheric forces. That remains. And future generations have no idea how they actually live in the forces left by their ancestors in this way, how they are surrounded by them, and how our spiritual life air is imbued with them. They pay no attention to what is left behind by the departed in such a time, when so many etheric bodies that can still be used in life are given back to the spiritual atmosphere of the earth in a relatively short period of time. We will continue from there tomorrow.

We will now direct our attention to what can be revealed to us from such profound connections, through which we can see into the spiritual world, and no longer see the spirit in a merely abstract, trivial way, even hazily in the world of the senses, but see the spiritual essence in a concrete way. In addition to the fates of those who have passed through the gate of death, we see beings of the higher hierarchies and of the elemental world. But we also see what remains inwardly connected to the earth: that which is left in the etheric bodies. What the souls who meet their death in the great fields of battle leave behind in the way of unused etheric forces will have a definite effect. These will combine with the understanding that the children of the earth will show for the future. And looking at this, we say what we have often said at the end of our meditation:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

The so-called “Traumlied” (Dream Song), which will be performed today, requires a few remarks to be made beforehand.

I already referred to this Dream Song in my Christmas address to you a few days ago. There I was able to say that the establishment of Christmas is by no means an imaginary one, one that has arisen from thought, but that the establishment of Christmas arises during the course of the year from very specific inner processes that can take place in the human soul when this soul comes to clairvoyant visions as the highest fruits of the soul, either through certain powers inherent in the natural course of things or through trained clairvoyance. We can best understand what may actually lie at the root of the human soul by visualizing the following thought.

All the plants, all the sprouting and sprouted growth that sunlight and solar warmth conjure up in spring and allow to flourish throughout the summer, all this, as it were, enters into a winter sleep, into winter darkness, on a kind of winter path at the time when Christmas was moved from the historical consciousness of humanity. The time in which Christmas is celebrated seems to us like sleep, like the darkness of the natural world. It is the opposite with the human soul as it is with the natural world. While the beings of nature descend into darkness and accompany the human soul into this realm of outer eclipse, it becomes, or can become, lighter in the human soul. She can, through the natural course of things, which we have often hinted at as a certain inherited clairvoyance, or through trained clairvoyance, dive straight into the brightest spiritual world, where the secrets of the spirit, hidden behind the outer sensual things, then dawn on her. And just as this descent of the plant world around the time of the winter solstice is subject to a regular law, so too the spiritual blossoming of human beings is subject to such a law, so that it coincides in its luminous brightness with the natural darkness into which the Christmas festival is placed.

It might seem as though such things are only being expressed out of today's schooled clairvoyance, or, as our opponents say, out of mere fantasy. But there will always be a living, fully valid proof of what people and nations experience outwardly. Therefore, it was extremely interesting for me that, after I had spoken about this Christmas clairvoyance within our movement for several years, which introduces us to the meaning of the Christ-being, to the arising of the Christ-being precisely when the human soul is most strongly immersed in clairvoyance , and I once again came to Norway, which is spiritually related to us, for a lecture cycle — that a remarkable vision was brought to me up there, of which, however, anyone who is familiar with such things must immediately say: Yes, it is reminiscent of many similar visions that have always been experienced by Germanic peoples, visions that many people have seen with their clairvoyant vision during the period of the thirteen nights from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, January 6. There the human soul can look into the spiritual world and see the fate of the human soul in the disembodied state, when it goes through Kamaloka and it then becomes clear to it how a relationship is established between the higher spiritual worlds and the deeds of people here on earth. And it is interesting that the person of whom we are told in this dream song and to whom these visions in this Nordic region are attributed through this dream song is a person who bears the name Olaf Åsteson. It is said of him that during these thirteen nights he underwent in a kind of clairvoyant experience what the Nordic man can feel as a vision in his way. He first learned how human deeds continue to unfold after the human being has passed through the gate of death, but he also learned how that which we call the Christ-being , how the office of judge of Jesus, the Christ, enters into the Nordic spiritual order of life after death, as the old world judge, the so-called face of Jehovah, the archangel Michael. So that, in addition to everything else that appears to the clairvoyance of Olaf Åsteson, the penetration of Christianity into the north can be heard, and that everything becomes clairvoyantly clear to him during the period of the Jesus birthday festival in the thirteen nights that he sleeps through.

Which consciousness becomes clear? It is now strange that this is already hinted at in the name, which quite obviously originally meant in the north such a human consciousness, which is inherited from the forefathers, from the ancestors. Olaf is truly himself in those times when the ancient, clairvoyant ancestral consciousness arises again in him. He who has inherited his consciousness, his inner being, from his ancestors: that is contained in the name Olaf. And Äste means love, the love that is passed down in the blood from generation to generation. Olaf is the son of this love, Åsteson, is the consciousness that has been passed down from generation to generation from the old clairvoyant times, is like resurrected ancestry. Olaf, who is born with this clairvoyant consciousness, recognizes the destiny of the human soul, and at the same time sees the intervention of the being we celebrate in Jesus' birthday festival as his entry into earthly existence. And strangely, while such visions have certainly always been experienced, especially in Germanic countries, this dream song seems to have been forgotten. In 1850, the preacher Landstad set out to collect folk songs in Telemarken, a lonely mountain valley where few people lived at the time. And among the many folk songs, he did not know since when, he did not know for how long, the song of Olaf Åsteson was alive in the vernacular – the song of Olaf Åsteson, who in the thirteen nights saw the destiny of the human soul after it had passed through the gate of death, and the coming into the world of Christ Jesus. He did not know when this song of initiation of the human soul came into being, for it was always recited in the vernacular, leaning on a musical mood. The few people in the lonely mountain valley enjoyed it, and there it was read by the preacher Landstad, in that it spoke to him of the secrets that had been uncovered – as if from the folk mind itself – about initiation in ancient times. And so it came to be that Landstad found it in the vernacular. Many people naturally believe that it alludes to Saint Olaf, who introduced Christianity in 1030 AD and whose mother was called Love. This is the case with many things that have both a historical and a spiritual significance.

Furthermore, it is interesting that this dream song has now quickly penetrated a large part of the Nordic people and lives in the hearts of the Norwegian people. There is, after all, a great movement in Norway to bring the old days back to life, and with that to revive the old language, which is very close to the ancient Germanic language, the Nordic language, in contrast to the Danish language, which was introduced later. Now this song is in a language that echoes the oldest language that has been preserved there, and the people who want to revive their antiquity in the first place, to whom this song spoke to the heart, and in the last ten to fifteen years it has not only penetrated into the hearts of the people, but also into the schools. It is sung and recited everywhere, and everywhere you hear, so to speak, where the soul awakens to the old folkways, the dream song of Olaf Åsteson, who in the thirteen nights from Christmas to January 6, so to speak, was naturally initiated into the sacred secrets of humanity. And for this reason, we would like to present this dream song of Olaf Åsteson to you today. Miss von Sivers will recite it. I tried to make a provisional arrangement so that it could be recited in German. Mrs. Lindholm helped me to make the peculiar language in which the song lives and now lives more and more and has become an aria of folk song possible in German. So we will now hear it in this provisional arrangement, which I was able to create in a few days.

The Dream Song

I.

So listen to my song!
I will sing to you
of a nimble youth:

It was of Olaf Åsteson,
Who once so long slept.

Of him I will sing.

II.

He went to rest on Christmas Eve.
A heavy sleep soon fell on him,
And he could not awaken
Before on the thirteenth day
The people went to church.

It was Olaf Åsteson,
Who once slept so long.
Of him I will sing.

He went to rest on Christmas Eve.
He slept for so long!
He could not wake
Before the thirteenth day
The bird spread its wings!

It was Olaf Åsteson,
Who once slept so long.
I will sing of him.

Olaf could not awaken
Before on the thirteenth day
The sun shone over the mountains.
Then he saddled his nimble horse
And rode hastily to the church.

It was Olaf Åsteson,
Who once slept so long.
I will sing of him.

The priest was already standing
At the altar reading the mass,
When at the church door
Olaf sat down to tell
The content of many dreams,
Which in the long sleep
Filled his soul.

It was Olaf Åsteson,
Who once slept so long.
Of him I will sing to you.

And young and old alike
Listened attentively to the words,
Which spoke of his dreams of Olaf.

It was Olaf Åsteson,
Who once slept so long.
Of him I will sing to you.

III.

“I went to rest on Christmas Eve.
A strong sleep soon embraced me;
And I could not awaken
Before on the thirteenth day
The people went to church.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I was raised up in the clouds
And thrown into the bottom of the sea,
And anyone who wants to follow me
Cannot be overcome by serenity.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I was raised up to the height of the clouds
Then plunged into gloomy swamps,
Beholding the terrors of hell
And also the light of heaven.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

And I had to travel in the depths of the earth,
Where the streams of the gods rush terribly.
I was unable to see them,
But I could hear the rushing.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

My black horse neighed not,
And my hounds did not bark,
Nor sang the morn's bird,
There was a single miracle everywhere.

The moon shone bright
And far the paths extended.

I must have traveled in the ghost land
er Dornenheide weites Feld,
My scarlet cloak was torn from me
And also the nails of my feet.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I came to the Gjallarbridge.
In highest wind heights this hangs,
With red gold it is studded
And nails with sharp points it has.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far.

The ghostly snake struck me,
The ghostly dog bit me,
The bull stood in the middle of the road.
These are the three creatures of the bridge.
They are of a terribly evil nature.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched out wide.

The dog is snappy,
And the snake wants to sting,
The bull, he threatens mightily!
They let no one cross the bridge
Who does not want to honor the truth!

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I crossed the bridge,
Which is narrow and dizzying.
I had to wade through the mire....
They are now behind me!

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I had to wade through swamps,
They seemed bottomless to my feet.
When I crossed the bridge,
I felt earth in my mouth
Like dead people lying in graves.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched out far and wide.

Then I came to water,
In which the ice masses shone brightly like blue flames
...
And God, he directed my mind
So that I avoided the area.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I turned my steps to the winter path.
On the right I could see it:
I looked as if into paradise,
Which shone brightly in the distance.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched out wide.

And God's high Mother,
I saw her there in the splendor!
To Brooksvalin to go,
So she called me, announcing,
That souls are judged there!

The moon shone bright
And the paths stretched far and wide.

IV.

"In other worlds I dwelt
Through many a night's length;
And God only can know
How much of soul-afflict I saw —

In Brooksvalin, where souls
To the world's judgment are subject.

I could see a young man
who had murdered a boy:
Now he had to carry him forever
on his own arms!
He stood in the mud so deep

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the judgment of the world.

I also saw an old man,
He wore a cloak of lead;
Thus he was punished for Living in greed on the earth,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the judgment of the world.

And men appeared,
Who carried fiery substances;
Dishonesty weighs
On their poor souls

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the judgment of the world.

I could also see children
Who had glowing coals beneath their feet;
They did evil to their parents in life,
Which weighed very heavily on their spirits

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the Last Judgment.

And to approach that house,
It was laid upon me,
Where witches were to work
In the blood they had angered in life,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the Last Judgment.

From the north, in wild hordes,
There came riding evil spirits,
Led by the prince of darkness,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the Last Judgment.

What came from the north
Seemed evil above all else;
He rode in front, the prince of darkness,
On his black steed.

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the world's judgment.

But from the south came
Other hosts in lofty calm.
Saint Michael rode ahead
At Jesus Christ's side

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the world's judgment.

The souls, laden with sins,
They had to tremble in fear!
The tears ran in streams
As evil deeds follow

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the Last Judgment.

In majesty stood Michael
And weighed the human souls
On his scales of sin,
And standing by in judgment
The Judge of the world, Jesus Christ.

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the Last Judgment.

V.

"Blessed is he who in life
Gives shoes to the poor;
He need not walk with bare feet
In the field of thorns.

Then speaks the tongue of the scales,
And world truth
Sounds in the spiritual state.

How blessed is he who in earthly life
Gives bread to the poor!
He cannot be hurt
By the dogs in the other world.

Thus the tongue of Libra speaks,
And world truth
Resounds in the spiritual state.

How blessed is he who in earthly life
Gives grain to the poor!
He cannot be threatened
By the sharp horn of the bull
When he must cross the Gjallar bridge.

Then the tongue of Libra speaks,
And world truth
Sounds in the mind.

How blessed is he who in earthly life
Clothes to the poor gives!
He cannot freeze to death
The ice masses in Brooksvalin.

Then speaks the tongue of Libra,
And world truth
Sounds in the mind.

VI.

And young and old alike
Listened intently to the words,
Which told of the dreams of Olaf. You have slept for so long... Wake up now, O Olaf Åsteson!

Within Western culture, the development must start primarily from so-called thought control. Although all of the disorderly, highly arbitrary Western thinking is not at all suited to develop controlled thoughts, thoughts of strict sequence, this is nevertheless necessary first. And with this I would like to come back to what I have already mentioned: that we must develop sensitivity for the perception of illogical, poorly controlled sequences of thoughts. The ordinary person will feel a kind of pain at every opportunity when his senses are strongly stimulated; but people who are receptive to the pain of uncontrolled, illogical thoughts are very rare. And yet this is a stage that everyone has to go through at some point, and not only in terms of thinking, but also in terms of reading in our Western literature. I am not excluding a large number of books of Theosophical literature. There, too, you come across many uncontrolled thoughts.

Most people today think in an uncontrolled way. And every uncontrolled thought means an unfulfilled balancing, an inability to relate to the phenomenon. It is like slipping, and slipping in the physical world is also an inability to relate to the physical world. We have to develop such a strong sense of right, complete thoughts within us that we feel a kind of physical pain when an incorrect thought occurs to us or to someone else.

In ordinary life, it is not possible to control one's thoughts in this way. Consider that if you are in the professional world, you are forced to think illogically all the time. Because illogical thinking is everywhere. In daily life, in business, in the higher professions, in natural science, in history, everywhere you encounter illogical thoughts; and you find the most illogical thoughts in jurisprudence, where you would expect the most logical thinking.

So anyone who wants to come to higher realizations themselves and not just hear about them from others who have them must begin to live from within. To do this, one must, at least for a very short time during the day, shut oneself off from all the rest of life. Even if it is only for five or ten minutes, or just three or four, you must devote yourself entirely to your own inner life and to thoughts that do not come from our immediate culture, from our daily lives, but that you know have a higher origin and are thoughts in which you can trust.

This retreat, this living and weaving in a world of thoughts that is strictly ordered, this devotion to such a world of thoughts, even if only for a short time, is what compensates us for all the distractions and disruptions in the external culture. Then we go strengthened through the everyday world with an inner center and lead ourselves through the everyday world by bringing a thought, if it does not belong to our ordered life, out of our field of vision again. Do not think that you are always capable of doing this! Just remember that when you cross the street, you are not the master of your thoughts; that from all sides, without you doing anything about it, thoughts from the environment rush in on you, affect your consciousness and play through it, so that you are a plaything of your consciousness. As long as you do not have the power to roll up your thoughts as if on a string, you cannot expect the inner self to reveal itself. We can only expect to gain control over our world of thoughts if we succeed in detaching ourselves from everyday life for a short time and rising to our ideals. When we become attached to an ideal thought, we achieve inner strength. It is not important to have grasped a thought with the mind.

Take the first thought in “Light on the Path”: “Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears.” Take it today, tomorrow, and again and again — then it will begin to come to life. And if you dismiss everything else that tries to intrude, it will become the center of your being. It lives and moves within you. It will show you that it gives rise to other thoughts, that it is infinitely fruitful. And you will overcome whatever you have to overcome from within. You must develop a sensitivity to wrong thoughts. It must be as if you are pricked with needles by wrong thoughts. You must also feel this when you read books. If you cannot feel pain when you encounter illogical thinking, then you cannot develop right thinking.

You must not only understand right thinking, but also love it. You must love a thought as you love a child. You have seen your child today, yesterday and the day before yesterday, and you still love it. That is how you must treat the world of thought. When you think you have understood a thought, you must not push it out of your consciousness, but keep dealing with it. When you can do that, then you are provided with a kind of thought armor, then what was there as a transitional stage stops: the fight against what was illogical; it stops when a thought is as much a fact to you as a chair, a table and so on. You become positive. He who lives in the spiritual world knows that. He also knows that he is always surrounded by thoughts as by powers and forces that affect us. Those who are receptive to it see what thoughts of hatred or goodwill people send to each other. He sees how they draw into them, and he sees how they rebound. There are people who stand strangely before us; they stand as if surrounded by a crystal body, in the center of which they live. And all unsuitable thoughts rebound from this crystal shell. These are people who know how to live in such a meditative way, who know how to regulate their lives from within.

You can test whether your thought control is successful. But not by saying to yourself: I am now thinking correctly – but by acquiring a barometer that can show you how your thoughts are controlled from within. And for those who are on the path of knowledge, that is the life of dreams. For the one who recognizes things in reality, it is not valued in the same way as it is by other superstitious people. For him, it has a completely different significance than for the one who has not yet mastered the control of his thought life.

For most people, the dream life is a wild, chaotic surge. But this completely stops when we have devoted ourselves to meditative life for a while. Then dreams take on a deep, symbolic meaning. The regularity and beauty of dreams is a barometer of our control over our thoughts.

As long as we stagger about in the external world, our dreams are a wild reflection of our outer life. But in the moment when we withdraw for at least a short time to become strong and powerful against everything that rushes upon us, our dreams take on a symbolic meaning. Then we must make a conscious effort to ask ourselves: What might this dream, which presents itself in this way, represent to me?

This is also the difference between the higher dreams and the lower ones. It is not true that dreams and dreams can be written on the same sheet. The life that a person unfolds in a state of sleep is completely different for someone who develops his spiritual body and for someone who does not. This is known by anyone who has had spiritual experiences. Anyone who knows nothing but what the eyes, the ears, the tongue say to him, anyone who is completely absorbed in this world of the senses, can experience nothing during sleep but a wild reminiscence of sensory impressions. But what you work on spiritually in those five minutes is something that arouses the spirit and sets it in motion; something that you take with you everywhere, whether your body is there or not. When our dreams begin to become regular, to become little dramas with a development and regular actions, then what we call our true inner spiritual life is active.

But this is only the lowest level. What must follow from this is this: If you use the moments that you set aside – but which you must not withdraw from your professional life, because a theosophist must not withdraw anything from their professional life – and use them for your inner progress, then you will notice something that occurs very soon in those who spend some time meditating, in their inner spiritual life. You will notice that you remember your dreams in a completely different way than was previously the case. This is the continuity of consciousness that occurs more and more the further a person develops, and it occurs in such a way that you become aware of yourself in a concrete way. As long as you identify yourself completely with the body, as long as it is not the spirit with which you have become one, you cannot develop consciousness when you are disembodied, that is, in a state of sleep. Hence the unconscious state of the majority of humanity during sleep. Only very slowly does such continuity of consciousness occur that you are just awake in your sleep, as you are awake in your physical body, and that you bring this waking consciousness back into your everyday waking consciousness.

This gives you a yardstick, something by which you can gain a barometer against the physical life. The resistance to ordinary life is increased. The body must become like a tool. You can then look at the body lying beside you, outside yourself. But you live in the spirit when you begin to withdraw from what is connected with the body. This does not make you less capable, but more capable for life, because he who knows the spirit is always more capable.

It is therefore important that you set aside part of the day to devote yourself to lofty thoughts that have nothing to do with everyday selfishness, with ambition, with ordinary sensual comfort, and that you let the light of such thoughts shine into everyday life.

This is how we understand the very first teachings in “Light on the Path”. They do not want to lead people to asceticism, to make them strangers in this world. It is not the one who comes to asceticism who corresponds to the theosophical ideal, but the one who comes to the spirit from ordinary life.

So when “Light on the Path” says:

1. Kill ambition.

2. Kill the love of life.

3. Kill the desire for comfort.

it says immediately afterwards:

4. Act like those who are ambitious. Value life like those who love it. Be happy like those who live only for happiness.

And further:

Seek out the root of evil in the heart and tear it out.

The theosophist must feel that we are a part of the whole, that we are jointly responsible for everything that exists. He who is not capable of feeling that he is partly to blame when someone steals tomorrow is also incapable of knowing how he is connected to the whole; he is incapable of seeking the root of evil. Because we do not have the possibility and ability to start with other people, it is said:

Seek in your heart the root of evil and tear it out. For it thrives and proliferates in the heart of the zealous disciple as it does in the hearts of the children of the world.

No one should imagine that they are good – as if we could do that, as if we could do that for even a moment – or much better than others. The thought that we cannot be much better than anyone else must fill us completely. What have we done, for example, if we make people happy while, because of the way we live, we make many people unhappy? Ignorance is the root of suffering in life. Ignorant, as we often are, it is we who have sharpened the knife for the one who uses it for evil.

Only the strong can kill it. The weak, however, must expect its growth, its ripening, its dying.

Through the ages this herb grows in man. It proliferates, but it only comes into flower when it has gone through the myriad lives of many.

There are things that only appear in very late incarnations: that someone who had already risen high later fell low. It has not been uncommon for those who recognized the depths to become the lowest of the fallen. Those adventurer natures could not be distinguished from the great.

Whoever wants to enter the path of mastery must tear this herb from his heart. Then the heart's blood will flow abundantly, and the whole life will seem destroyed.

Take this saying almost literally, but in a spiritual sense. Take what is worth in the highest sense and style of life. Say to yourself: How infinitely much of value have I contemplated, and how infinitely much, for the sake of which I have lived, is perhaps completely worthless. I must begin a new life if I do not want to live as I am accustomed to living; if I do not want to shape it from foreign influence, but through my own inner life. We will then seemingly be no different on the outside, but we will lead life under different impulses. We will not live out of vanity, not out of ambition, not for the sake of sensual pleasure, for we will no longer be able to do so, but out of duty, because it must be done out of the highest insight.

But the test must be passed. Perhaps it will approach you at the very first step of the daring climb up the path of life, perhaps at the last. Remember well: it must be passed, and put all your strength into accomplishing it. Not in the moment may you live, not in the future, only in the eternal.

The seer can perceive that the thoughts of the outside world pierce the one who lives in the moment like spears. Thoughts that may be unfavorable to him rebound from the one who lives in the eternal. It is not external success, not what we can achieve, that brings us forward, but that we live in the eternal in every moment. We will achieve nothing if we strive for it with greed. We should not live in the future, only in the eternal.

There this giant weed cannot flourish: the breath of even one thought of eternity wipes this stain out of your existence.

Then comes the training of the astral body. Just as we work on the mental body through mind control, so we must work on the astral body by ordering the memory. It must also be controlled, must be made the subject of examination. This has a great and significant influence on your whole life. You must get out of the habit of feeling selfish remorse when you look back on your actions. The things you remember must be there for you to learn from and do better. We must learn from the past and use our memory to make our soul more capable. If we regulate our memory in such a way that we do not look back in an arbitrary way, but look back even at the seemingly most insignificant thing so that it becomes a school of learning for us, then we strengthen our soul's backbone.

When we control our memory in this way, we develop astral vision. This turns the astral body into an organ of will that we can use. We have to get over tears, overcome antipathy and sympathy, so that we can have the right attitude towards our memories.

If we are the master of our memory and imagination, then we have achieved our preliminary goal. We recognize that the one who does not practice this must continually feel within himself that he is dependent on every spiritual breath in his environment, like a swaying reed that is blown this way and that by every thought. There is no other way to enter the astral and mental worlds than to train oneself from within. In the one who organizes his memory, who in the evenings forms the cloud-like structures into regular ray formations, especially in the upper sections that emanate from the heart and head, it will be seen that this person lives from the inside out. When a person has reached this stage, nothing can harm him anymore. In his presence, we can send him thoughts of the worst kind, but they recede as if they had not touched him. Through his meditation work, he has formed a spiritual shell around himself.

[ 1 ] The life of man is passed in three states, which are as follows: waking, dreaming sleep, and dreamless deep sleep. One may comprehend how to attain to a higher knowledge of the spiritual worlds by forming an idea of the changes in the conditions that have to be undergone by the aspirant to such knowledge. Before a person has passed through the necessary training, his consciousness is continually broken by the periods of rest which accompany sleep. During these periods the soul knows nothing of the outer world and nothing either of itself. Only at certain times above the wide ocean of unconsciousness there will arise dreams which are related to events in the outside world or to the conditions of the physical body. At first one recognizes in dreams only a special manifestation of the sleep-existence, and commonly men speak of two states only—waking and sleeping. From the occult standpoint, however, dreams have a special significance, apart from both the other two states. It has already been shown in a previous chapter how changes occur in the dream-existence of the person who undertakes the ascent to higher knowledge. His dreams lose their meaningless, disorderly, and illogical character, and begin gradually to form a regulated, correlated world. With continued development this new world, born of one's dreams, will yield nothing to outer and phenomenal realities, not only as regards its inner truth, but also in the facts which it reveals, for these in the fullest sense of the word present a higher reality. In the phenomenal world especially there are secrets and riddles hidden everywhere. This world reveals admirably the effects of certain higher facts, but he who limits his perceptions to the senses alone cannot penetrate into causes. To the occult student such causes are partly revealed in the state already described as being evolved out of his dream-existence. To be sure, he ought not to regard these revelations as actual knowledge so long as the same things do not reveal themselves to him during ordinary waking life as well. But to that he also attains. He acquires the power to enter the state which he had first evolved from his dream-life during the hours of waking consciousness. Then the phenomenal world is enriched for him by something quite new. Just as a person who, though born blind, undergoes an Operation an his sight and finds everything in his environment enriched by the new testimony of visual perception, so does the person who has become clairvoyant in the above manner, regard the entire world around him, perceiving in it new characteristics, new beings, and new things. No longer is it necessary that he should wait for a dream in order that he may live in another world, for he can transport himself into the state of higher perception at any suitable time. This condition or state has an importance for him comparable to that of perception with open eyes as opposed to a blindfold state. One can say quite literally that the occult student opens the eyes of his soul and sees things which must ever remain veiled from the bodily senses.

[ 2 ] This state (which has previously been described in detail) only forms the bridge to a still higher stage of occult knowledge. If the exercises which are assigned to him should be continued, the student will discover at the appropriate time that the vigorous changes hitherto mentioned affect not only his dream-life, but that the transformation extends even to what was before a deep and dreamless sleep. He notices that the utter unconsciousness in which he has always found himself during this sleep is now broken by conscious isolated experiences. Out of the great darkness of sleep arise perceptions of a kind which he had never known before. Naturally it is no easy matter to describe these perceptions, for our language is only adapted to the phenomenal world, and in consequence it is only possible to find approximate words to describe what does not appertain to that world at all. Still, one has to make use of these words in describing the higher worlds, and this can only be done by the free use of simile; yet, seeing that everything in the world is interrelated, such an attempt can be made. The things and beings of the higher worlds are anyway so distantly connected with those of the phenomenal world that though in good faith a portrayal of these higher worlds in the words usually descriptive of the phenomenal world may be attempted, one must always retain the idea that very much in descriptions of this kind must obviously partake of the nature of simile and imagery. Occult education itself is only partially carried an by the use of ordinary language; for the rest, the student learns in his ascent a special symbolical language, an emblematical method of expression; but nothing concerning this can at present, and for very good reasons, be openly imparted. The student must acquire it for himself in the occult school. This, however, need form no obstacle to the acquisition of some knowledge concerning the nature of the higher worlds by means of an ordinary description, such as will here be given.

[ 3 ] If we wish to give some suggestion of the experiences mentioned above as appearing from out of the sea of unconsciousness during the period of deep sleep, we may best liken them to those of hearing. We can speak of perceptible sounds and words. If we may liken the experiences of dreaming sleep to a certain kind of seeing comparable to the perceptions of the eyes, the experiences of deep sleep allow of similar comparison with oral impressions. It may be remarked in passing that of these two faculties that of sight remains the higher even in the spiritual worlds. Colors are there still higher than sounds or words, but the student at the beginning of his development does not perceive these higher colors, but merely the inferior sounds. Only because the individual, after his general development, is already qualified for the world which reveals itself to him in dreaming sleep, does he straightway perceive its colors, but he is still unqualified for the higher world which is kindled in deep sleep, and in consequence this world reveals itself to him at first as sounds and words ; later an he can mount up, here as elsewhere, to the perception of colors and forms.

[ 4 ] If the student now realizes that he passes through such experiences in deep sleep, his next task is to make them as clear and vivid as possible. In the beginning this is very difficult, for remembrance during the waking state is at first extraordinarily scanty. You know well on waking that you have experienced something; but as to its nature you remain completely in obscurity. The most important thing during the beginning of this state is that you should remain peaceful and composed, and should not allow yourself, even for a moment, to lapse into any unrest or impatience. Under all circumstances the latter condition is injurious. It can never accelerate any further development, but in every case must delay it. You must abandon yourself calmly, as it were, to what is given to you: all violence must be repressed. If at any period you cannot recall these experiences during the deep sleep, you should wait patiently until it becomes possible to do so, for such a moment will certainly some day arrive. If you have previously been patient and calm, the faculty of remembrance, when it comes, will be a securer possession; while, should it for once appear, perhaps in answer to forcible methods, it would only mean that for a much longer period it would afterwards remain entirely lost.

[ 5 ] If the power of remembrance has once appeared and the experiences of sleep emerge complete, vivid, and clear before the waking consciousness, attention should then be directed to what here follows. Among these experiences, we can clearly distinguish two kinds. The first kind is totally foreign to everything that one has ever experienced. At first one may take pleasure in these, may let oneself be exalted by them; but after a while they are put aside. They are the first harbingers of a higher spiritual world to which one only becomes accustomed at a later period. The other kind of experiences, however, will reveal to the attentive observer a peculiar relationship to the ordinary world in which he lives. Concerning those elements of life on which he ponders, those things in his environment which he would like to understand, but is unable to understand with the ordinary intellect, these experiences during sleep can give him information. During his daily life man reflects on that which surrounds him and he arrives at conceptions which make comprehensible to him the interrelation of things. He tries to understand in thought what he perceives with sense. It is with such ideas and conceptions that the sleep-experiences are concerned. That which was hitherto merely a dark and crepuscular conception now assumes a sonorous and vital character which can only be compared to the sounds and words of the phenomenal world. It seems to the student ever more and more that the solution of the riddle upon which he ponders is whispered in sounds and words that proceed from a finer world. Then ought he to relate what has come to him in this way with the matters of ordinary life. What was hitherto only accessible to his thought has now become an actual experience for him, living and significant as can seldom, if ever, be the case with an experience in the world of sense. The things and beings of the phenomenal world are shown thereby to be more than merely what they seem to the perceptions of the senses. They are the expression and the efflux of a spiritual world. This spiritual world which lay hitherto obscure now reveals itself to the occult student in the whole of his environment.

[ 6 ] It is easy to see that the possession of this perceptive faculty can only prove itself to be a blessing if the soul-senses of the person in whom they have been opened are in perfect order, just as we can only use our ordinary senses for the accurate observation of the world if they are in a well-regulated condition. Now these higher senses are formed by the individual himself in accordance with exercises which are given to him in the course of his occult training. As much concerning these exercises as may be openly said has been already given in The Way of Initiation. The rest is imparted by word of mouth in the occult schools. Among these exercises we find concentration, or the directing of attention upon certain definite ideas and conceptions that are connected with the secrets of the universe ; and meditation, or the living within such ideas, the complete submerging of oneself within them in the manner already explained. By concentration and meditation a person works upon his own soul and develops within it the soul-organs of perception. While he applies himself to the practice of meditation and concentration his soul evolves within his body as the embryo child grows in the body of the mother. When, during sleep, the specific experiences above described begin to occur, the moment of birth has arrived for the full-grown soul, who has thereby become literally a new being brought by the individual from seed to fruit. Instructions concerning the subject of meditation and concentration must therefore be very carefully prepared and equally carefully followed out, since they are the very laws which determine the germination and evolution of the higher soul-nature of the individual; and this must appear at its birth as a harmonious and well-formed organism. If, an the contrary, there were something lacking in these instructions, no such being would appear, but in its place one that was misborn from the standpoint of spiritual matters, and incapable of life.

[ 7 ] That the birth of this higher soul-nature should occur during deep sleep will not seem hard of comprehension if we consider that the tender organism, still unable to withstand much opposition, could hardly make itself noticed by a chance apparition among the powerful, harsh events of workaday life. Its activity cannot be observed when opposed by the activity of the body. In sleep, however, when the body is at rest, the activity of the higher soul, at first so faint and unapparent, can come into sight in so far as it depends upon the perception of sense. A warning must here again be given that the occult student should not regard these sleep-experiences as entirely reliable sources of knowledge so long as he is not in a position to transport himself to the plane of the awakened higher soul during waking-consciousness as well. If he has acquired this power he is able to perceive the spiritual world between and within the experiences of the day, or, in other words, can comprehend as sounds and words the hidden secrets of his surroundings.

[ 8 ] At this period of development we must clearly understand that we are dealing, at first, with separate, more or less unconnected, spiritual experiences. We must be on our guard against the erection of any system of knowledge, whether complete or only interdependent. By so doing we should merely confuse the soul-world with all manner of fantastical ideas and conceptions ; and thus we could very easily weave a world which has really no connection what ever with the true spiritual world. The occult student must practise continually the strictest self-control. The right method is to grow clearer and clearer in one's realization of the separate and veritable experiences which occur, and then to wait for the arrival of new experiences, full and unforced in their nature, which will connect themselves, as if on their own account, with those that have already occurred. By virtue of the power of the spiritual world in which he has now once found his way, and by virtue, also, of practising the prescribed exercises, the student now experiences an ever-enlarging, ever more comprehensive, outspreading of consciousness in deep sleep. Out of what was erstwhile mere unconsciousness, more and more experiences emerge, and ever fewer and fewer become those periods in the sleep-existence that remain unconscious. Thus, then, do the separate experiences of sleep continually close in upon each other without this actual interlocking being disturbed by a multitude of combinations and inferences which would still arise from the meddling of the intellect accustomed to the phenomenal world. The less one's ordinary habits of thought are mixed up in some unauthorized manner with these higher experiences, the better it is.

If you conduct yourself rightly, you now approach nearer and nearer to that stage of the way at which the entire sleep-life is passed in complete consciousness. Then you exist, when the body is at rest, in a reality as actual as is the case while you are awake. It is superfluous to remark that during sleep we are dealing, at first, with a reality entirely different from the phenomenal environment in which the body finds itself. Indeed we learn—nay, must learn if we are to keep our footing an firm ground and avoid becoming a fantastic—to relate the higher experiences of sleep to the phenomenal environment. At first, however, the world which is entered in sleep is a completely new revelation. In occult science the important stage at which consciousness is retained interiorly through the entire sleep-life is known as the “continuity of consciousness.”¹

[ 9 ] In the case of a person who has arrived at this point, experiences and events do not cease during the intervals when the physical body rests, and no impressions are conveyed to the soul through the medium of the senses.

• 1. That which is here referred to is, at a certain stage of development, a kind of “ideal,” the goal which lies at the end of a long road. The next things that the student learns are two extensions of consciousness—first, into a soul-state wherein hitherto nothing but unregulated dreams were possible, and, secondly, into another state wherein hitherto nothing was possible except unconscious and dreamless sleep. He then knows the three states, even if it remains impossible for him to refuse entirely all tribute to the ordinary state of sleep.

I would like to briefly sketch again what we started last time, in order to build on it further. You will recall that I tried to explain the various degrees of higher vision to you, and to break them down into the activities that lead us up into the higher realms, into the realms of the higher beings, which we must consider if we really want to go through the entire human history of development through the various planets. I ask you to bear in mind that such a consideration must necessarily remain quite sketchy, that one has to discuss many things that are really quite difficult to express in ordinary everyday terms, because one is dealing with things for which ordinary language is not really created. Ordinary language is there to describe what is real to the senses, what surrounds us. It is therefore quite inadequate for all the things for which we want to evoke an idea today.

In schools in Europe where, for centuries – or more precisely, since the fourteenth century – ideas such as we are now allowed to discuss publicly in elementary terms have been developed in the same way, it was certainly not the case – especially in the higher grades – that the words of ordinary language were spoken, but rather in a so-called symbolic language. First, a certain language was acquired. First one acquired a certain way of expressing oneself, which then offered the possibility of characterizing in that peculiar way that is necessary if one wants to penetrate into such supersensible realms.

Now let me briefly repeat what I hinted at last time. I told you that at first our ordinary, everyday way of looking at things - and that is also the one that our science has - is the so-called material knowledge. This has its object outside of ourselves. It has its object in the sense world, and it then builds up knowledge with the help of the image, then goes from the image to the concept and from the concept to the I. So in our material knowledge we are dealing with: object, image, concept and I. These four things are to be considered.

When we now have to move on to the first stage of higher knowledge, the object must remain away, the external sensual object must fall away. So of what we have within our ordinary knowledge, only image, concept, I remain. The fact that external objects no longer stimulate us, that external objects no longer affect our sensuality, that the sensation is no longer there, is replaced by illumination, which forms images from within for our ordinary images, so that they are not visions, not illusions, but become what mystics of all times have called imaginations. If one wants to form a correct concept of what is meant here by imagination, then one must already be able to see, to see correctly, everything that still demands a connection to an external object. I think I mentioned last time that this often causes great disappointment to students who are to be trained in this kind of knowledge. Man expects that when a higher knowledge is to present itself, which appears to be the case in ordinary life, that it will approach him from the outside. That was also the mistake with spiritualism. I do not want to say anything against spiritualism. The mistake lay only in the method. The mistake is that the spiritualist has the things in front of him like an earthly object that stimulates his senses. That is why it is basically not a good preparation for a higher desire for knowledge if one goes through spiritualism, although I know very well that many of our best Theosophists have gone through spiritualism. But in the times before the Theosophical Society popularized these higher insights in their elementary stages, there were no schools. They did not build on the spiritualist method at all. They set out directly to reeducate people so that they would be able to truly rise into the supersensible world without external inducement. The spiritist tries to bring the supersensible world down to his ordinary capacity for perception. He says to himself: I can recognize that external objects stimulate me; if the higher world is to have reality, then the essence of a higher world must appear to me in the same way as ordinary things. They have to adapt to my capacity for perception. But the occultist says: No, the objects and beings of a higher world do not descend here, not where one sees with the eyes and reaches with the hands, but one must ascend to them, one must develop within oneself the organs necessary to see in the higher world. Therefore, for today's humanity, a much better training than any external event to come to the higher vision is the passage - as strange as it may seem to those who expect something different - the passage through the arts. What man should make use of, if he does not go directly through the school of clairvoyance, in order to come again to a deeper vision, to an imagination, that is the deepening in what art can give him, and that is art in all fields. We must be clear about the role that art has played for a long time in the development of our humanity. Through such things, many things also become clear to us that would otherwise be extremely difficult to understand.

Follow the advice for the purpose of getting a vivid idea of what I have to say. Follow me into what are called the Greek mysteries, the Greek mysteries, in the time before Homer wrote his poems. Those times when this Greek spirit and seer performed long primal dramas that the best minds sought. But because they were not able to look back clairvoyantly, did not find any positive science in it, what they achieved appears more like a hunch than real knowledge. But if we go back to these earlier times, into which Nietzsche, for example, wanted to look when he conceptually grasped the Dionysian in contrast to the Apollonian, if we go back to these times, we see how teachers led their students to hidden cultural sites and prepared them to see the primal drama there. What did they see there? They saw the secret of the existence and development of the world. What we endeavor to explain in many words, these pupils experienced in astral vision, in real vision: the descending deity that descended into the material, that has descended into the material before time began. And then the transformation of this original formation of matter into the forms that surround us today — into minerals, plants and animals. It was shown how the invisible, supersensible Deity was once creative in the universe, and how it formed and condensed those fruits from which our creation proceeded, how, as it were, the physical emerged from the spiritual as from cloud formations, and how the initial formations gradually developed into the complicated and ultimately into the microcosmic human being. The entire process of the evolution of the world was presented to the student. This was called “the great world tragedy.” First, the great living divinity that descended into matter, was buried in it, and then resurrected in man. And now it was made clear to the student: this process takes place within yourself, it has taken place within you and continues to take place within you. You were already involved in those formations that took place before time began. In those formations you were in the beginning of becoming, and they changed and changed until your present form was reached. Today you feel how that which lives in you as soul, as spirit, rises up again, how that which has sunk into matter, the divinity, rises again as if from a grave, from which the divinity rises, and that when you then say 'I', the divinity speaks within you. All this was explained in complete vividness. And in this way, things were united that have long since been lost to today's humanity. This was possible by placing these students in a completely different state of consciousness than the one in which people find themselves in everyday life, so that they were surrounded by the living images of the whole process of world-becoming. It is therefore a matter of the students, so to speak, feeling the consciousness shining within them, making the objects of everyday life visible to them. The external objects passed around them, but what they were trying to show them appeared in them in much more vivid colors than the objects of nature would ever be able to present themselves. The fire of the deity stood before their soul. And the fire that metamorphosed so that everything else emerged from it, that was there in a way similar to how the dreamer has a superficial knowledge of the dream.

If you translate this dream into something that has regularity and harmony and largely as what surrounds us in the outside world, then you have a weak idea of what was going on in the soul of such a student of the primal drama. It was said of such a student that he had seen the world in the twilight. The world event, this whole world becoming, then sounded into these images. The visible arts are an imprint of such imagination, of such images around us. They relate to this imagination, to this vision, as a silhouette relates to the real object. They are thus related to clairvoyant imagination, while our material vision has no relation to clairvoyant imagination.

The artistic imagination is a shadow of the true imagination. This is not to say that I consider artistic imagination to be of lesser value than clairvoyance. Back in the days when people could still awaken their clairvoyant abilities, when they could see into ancient times, there was no art. What was experienced was religion and art and science at the same time. Everything that led people to the higher worlds was offered in it. Later these three separated. Mankind had to go through this state. And since that time, art has been an external shadow image. External art is an internal imaginative vision. It is part of the process of development that humanity has lost this original vision for a while. What was awakened as a result is another state of consciousness. And in a later present, this introduces art in a tangible, visible form. That is why artistic vision is so beneficial for imaginative vision. That is the first stage: illumination.

The second stage was the one where the image also disappears, where we are only dealing with concepts and the ego, and where inspiration occurs [in place of the image]. Inspiration is there for the person when the so-called continuity of consciousness occurs. Continuity of consciousness means: the person not only has consciousness during everyday life, but also continues this consciousness into sleep. As you know, one partial brightening of sleep is the dream consciousness. The ordinary person has this dream consciousness only in a chaotic way. In the one who develops to clairvoyance, to illumination, the dream images begin to become regular, lawful. He sees truths in dreams that he would not see without developing this dream life into regularity. In such undeveloped people, there is always the dreamless sleep as a state of consciousness. So there are clairvoyant individuals who have developed to the point where they have filled part of their sleep with regular dreams that reveal new worlds. This is the beginning of this stage of illuminative clairvoyance, of imagination. Then you also see how other people, in whom they do not have this, live in their dreams.

Now the person who guides such a person must bring them to the point where they, the student, can bring their dream visions into everyday reality; that is, that they can perceive in everyday life what they perceive in their dream vision. Let's be clear about this. The ordinary dreamer: what do they see? He has experienced something during the day. This appears to him in his dream as a reminiscence. It is an echo of the experiences of the day. Or, he perceives his surroundings in some way. He hears a train rushing by. He wakes up and realizes that he has symbolically perceived the ticking clock next to him as a train. Or the moods in which a person finds himself can also be expressed symbolically in a dream. For example: a person becomes feverish and dreams of a boiling stove. I am telling you facts here that really happened once. I ask you to bear in mind that I am only giving examples of events that really happened. Now let's assume that a person dreams of ugly animals. The chaotic then ceases under the guidance of the secret teacher, and the student perceives things that do not come from everyday life. Things are revealed to him that he does not know from our world. Only when the student is able to transfer this into everyday life, then we make what he experiences the subject of occult wisdom.

So how do we regularize what I have characterized as chaotic? We start at the very beginning. You dream, for example, under the guidance of the teacher. The exercises are done as meditations, and they have the effect that you actually see a person suffering in your dreams. The person is in front of you in a certain situation. You are very soon convinced that you were not dreaming, nor that it is not real, but you convince yourself that you were with a friend who is suffering or has suffered. You have not seen anything sensual, but you have experienced the soul, the real soul life. You then experience not only one such individual soul life, but soon soul life in abundance. You have to familiarize yourself with the diversity of stories. You have to learn to grasp them in an orderly fashion. This is a long and patient task, but we have to do it. Then we dream this into our everyday life.

You will then be able to see the same thing in everyday life with a fully alert consciousness. You will not see what is sensual, but what is spiritual. You must imagine that you will be surrounded by the soul. When you, as a clairvoyant, are confronted with a person, you will at first see nothing differently than any other person sees. But when you turn your attention to his soul, he becomes spiritually transparent to you. But the right dream state must have preceded this. Then the other will follow, because there are very definite stages.

The next stage is where consciousness no longer fades, or at least does not need to fade, where you are therefore aware during dreamless sleep, where you are able to wake up in the morning knowing that you have had experiences, have really lived, throughout the night. This experience of dreamless sleep is not in such images. It cannot be compared with the world of images that are around us in dream-filled sleep. What occurs first in dreamless sleep is a world of sounds and speech, a world of tones and words. Dreamless sleep is first filled with words. You see, in the first stages of this clairvoyant development, you experience this quite sporadically and individually. You simply know in the morning that something has been said to me. You remember what was said to you. You know quite well that something like this could not be said to you in your present life, in ordinary life. It is perhaps a great truth that you could not experience in ordinary life. This calling and hearing was something spiritual. This is spread more and more until finally the whole life of dreamless sleep is a continuous conversation with other entities.

However, a prerequisite for not indulging in illusions in this world is that one has already attained a certain higher degree of inner selflessness. Someone who criticizes a lot, who likes to say a lot of derogatory things about the world and its phenomena, may very often be exposed to the most terrible, deceptive ideas at this stage of development. Therefore, the teacher will, above all, impress upon the students again and again. He will tell the student: Try, over and over again, to ask only questions and to let the answers be given to you from this state. This is quite different from what one actually does in ordinary life. In life, one is quickly finished with an answer. Try to look at life from this point of view. Today, everyone says, “I think so,” or “That is my opinion.” That is what people say today. But the occultist who wants to rise to this level should never speak that way. But when he has prepared himself, he should be able to speak differently within. He should ask questions of the world and learn to refrain entirely from giving an answer himself. This is a mood that Goethe, who knew it, describes in simple words. He says: We are not made to answer the problem, but to pose the problem, to pose it quite clearly, and then to await the further development in reverence. Creating this mood is extremely important for the student at this stage of development. Therefore, it is very useful at this level if he has the self-control and selflessness to set himself a very important task and to refrain from forming any opinion. After all, what he can say is usually only what corresponds to his ordinary level of intelligence. He already has this point of view. But he wants to go beyond this, and so he should completely refrain from answering and wait to be given the answer. In this state of dreamless sleep, it will be whispered to him. From this state, an ever deeper and deeper world arises, which is a world of conversation.

I would like to draw attention to a passage of this kind, to the profound saying of one of our exquisite minds, Goethe. Those who have read or heard Goethe's fairy tales will remember a passage that goes:

“What is more glorious than gold?” asked the king. “Light,” replied the snake.

“What is more refreshing than light?” asked the king. “Conversation,” replied the snake.

At this point, Goethe points out that he knew everything we have discussed here. This conversation, which is about light, is what he is referring to. Then one brings what one has experienced in this way in a dreamless state into everyday life. Some will be tempted to believe that the clairvoyant no longer sleeps without dreams at all, but sees all the time. That is not necessarily so. It does not depend on how much of the night is filled with such experiences. There can be long periods of dreamless sleep in between.

It is true – I think I have already hinted at it: anyone who can experience something in dreamless sleep in this way hears all the objects around him. He hears the glass of water, he hears every little thing that whispers something to him. This is the third stage of knowing, inspiration.

In this way, the scriptures that are called inspired were created. Today, theologians and scholars dispute the method of inspiration in the writings of initiates. Imagine what has been written about whether or not the gospel is inspired – by teachers who have no idea that there is such a thing as revelation. Inspired writings are for those who one day will be made to disappear as painlessly as possible. The greatest parts of the three synoptic gospels and the gospel of John were written in a state of clairvoyance. They are inspired. We are not dealing with a miracle, not with a dictation from a god, but with this state. Therefore, only those who know something about how truths come in such states can understand them.

The next stage is intuition. It expresses itself clearly to you through feeling: you are now inside things, no longer outside them. You now crawl into every thing. This is the state of intuition. The ordinary person only has the state of intuition with his ego. When a person is developed enough, he is inside every thing.

The human being perceives the spirits of twilight at the first level, at the level of imagination. At the level of inspiration, the human being perceives the spirits of fire or of fire nebula. At the level of intuition, he perceives the spirits of personality, the spirits that lie hidden everywhere as the basis of the world-Iche. When he has reached that point, he can truly immerse himself in the depths.

But there is also a raising above this state. This consists in the fact that man no longer merely perceives, but that he participates with humanity. This is even something where understanding itself easily ends with those who still go along to the level of intuition. They will no longer go along so easily from there. It is only through comparison that one can get closer to what I am saying now.

It is also a passive state in intuition. The person submerges, but in a certain respect remains passive. They only begin to become inwardly active when they rise higher inwardly. They now participate in the world. The state that I am now describing can only be reached if one has already reached the state of intuition. When someone has reached the point where they can completely immerse themselves in the object, where they feel that it is themselves, and where they feel as if they have entered the body of a dog or a tulip, so that they not only hear it but also feel what it is inside themselves, then they can move on to something else. He can first rise to the animal kingdom. When he does this, he initially has the task of selflessly observing the animal world around him, and he has to focus his attention on the different animal species. Then, while he has been in individual animals through intuition, a stage will now arise for him where he steps out of the individual animal again, but remains within the animal being itself. Let us say, for example, he has been observing a dog. Through intuition, he is able to completely immerse himself in the dog, to experience all its sensations, and to empathize with all the pleasure and pain that it feels.

Now there is a higher level. Here the person goes beyond things without losing all of this. But the special existence is lost in the process. He rises above the individual being, but in the animal nature he remains in it. He loses interest in the individual being, the special characteristics of this individual being disappear. As he gradually rises above it, but the essence of this being remains present, forms appear in his mind that he has not seen before. He first grasps the ego of the individual being and then takes this ego out of the being like an extract. It takes shape and forms itself, and now he gets what Plato called “ideas”. These are Plato's ideas. You no longer have a single dog, but you have a spiritual, living form before you. This gives you more than the individual being. You have the model for all these beings. You have what is called the soul of the species, and not as an abstract concept, but as a living reality. You are surrounded by the souls of the animal species. You now live with these as you previously lived with the merely sensual animals. Space is not empty around you. But the beings you see there do not look like the beings that walk around us. They are completely new beings, and they do not fit the individual being, the individual dog, but they do fit all of the same species. It is something much more abstract and much more alive than the physical. What you see there are the spirits of form. They belong to a higher spiritual world. One of these form spirits was Jehovah. He was the form spirit that constituted the generic soul of humanity. The generic archetype of humanity was the god Jehovah. It is at this level of the spiritual world that one can reach him, that one can rise to that which in the Jewish mystery teaching is called Jehovah, to the spirit of the human form.

Another spirit had to join this spirit of the human form if a new, different one was to develop. This spirit of the human form had only made man such that he was like the soul of the species. Individual life would not have emerged. Individual life emerged when man struggled to recognize good and evil. This is powerfully and impressively depicted in the Fall of Man. Jehovah did not want to go further than the form. Until then, he guided man. In connection with other entities, man then took over his guidance through the Jehovah principle. So you see him sinking with man's arrogance over the animal world into what is called the world of forms.

When man has reached the point where he begins to sense this entity, then he can rise to the next level. This consists in the fact that he now learns to recognize in these beings that which he has learned to see and recognize at a lower level, in the natural beings, when he goes beyond the form to the life. The first thing you perceive, and why I have to call it that, is that you first see this generic soul in the form. But you have to rise to a higher level of insight if you want to see this world of forms in motion, in action. You cannot do that by merely immersing yourself in the animal world. This gift will only be granted to you when you immerse yourself in the plant world with devotion and do the same with it as I have described with the animal world. When you immerse yourself in the plant world with intuition, but do not lose the essence of the plant, so that the essence of the plant remains and you know how to merge with the whole nature of the plant, when you succeed in experiencing the suffering and rejoicing of the great natural world through the plant world.

When these things are spoken of to a modern man – and the more scientific he is, the more – he laughs at you. But it is nevertheless true that in the plant world, joy and suffering can be perceived by those who can live with the plant world, not as a mere comparison, not as a symbol, but in such a way that they know how to perceive the expression of the inner feeling, just as a person perceives a feeling when a tear comes out of the eye. There is therefore a real level of perception where the dew beading on a plant announces real life to you, a life like that in a tear welling up from an eye. When you are able to see in the sap flowing out of the tree when you cut it, a manifestation of life in nature, just as you cut yourself and know that it then hurts, then you are where you can ascend into the world of activity, into the world of movement. Then you can perceive that the beings, which you previously only saw in form, are alive inside. That's when the beings start to talk. The generic souls say something to you.

The next stage is reached when a person is able to feel the same way about the mineral kingdom as I said for plants, about inanimate nature. Kant said: two things fill him with a sense of awe, the starry sky above him and the moral law within him. But that remains abstract as long as the abstract sky fills us with awe, so that it is still enough for us that the inanimate starry sky speaks to us. But the materialistic view already shows us that the dead crystal is not just dead and mute, but that it also speaks to us the secrets of nature. These secrets can be reached by lovingly immersing ourselves in nature.

Anyone who has done what I have described, who has suffered and rejoiced with the plant world, will also find it easy to understand the dull language of inanimate nature – although there is also a gulf there. It is relatively easier to understand the language of plants than the language of stones. Even at these higher levels, it remains true that we understand best that which is akin to us. We are akin to human feeling, human pain and human joy. Even though the joy and pain that appear in the plant world are very different from human joy and

human pain, they still have something faintly related about them that we do not recognize in the mute world of stone. But the new thing that we recognize in the mute world of stone is precisely what would elevate us so highly [above] what makes us so weak. The mute stone world has no more desires. The world of desire is silent there, it ceases, before we pass from the plant world to the stone world. The plant and animal worlds end here. The plants still have something analogous to desire, which increases in animals and is strongly evident in humans. This is what makes them unchaste, while the stone is chaste. Those who understand stone come to know beings that are chaste and desireless. One comes to know a life without desire or longing in the stone kingdom. When we can feel and perceive something similar in the stone kingdom, as I have described in the plant world, we come to recognize what it means to be a being that is chaste by nature. The chaste, mute world of stone, of which we no longer say that, as with the dewdrop, as with the dripping pitch of the tree, it expresses joy and pain, but must say that it, in discreet, completely restrained silence, faithfully preserves itself within itself and does not, if I may express myself trivially, flaunt what it experiences internally. That is the tremendous thing that we recognize in the interior of the stone world. The stone world reached perfection so many years ago. In truth, the stone world is the greatest. What we see today as rock crystal once went through its time of unchastity when we look back billions of years. The greatest wisdom of nature appears to us when we examine it in the soundless world of the stars, the stones and crystals.

The stage of form leads us to the spirit of form. The second stage, which starts from the plant world, leads us to the spirits of movement and activity, and the same stage of observation leads us to the spirits of wisdom. We do not reach them until we bring to life within ourselves the mute, chaste, self-contained entity, the living entity of the stone kingdom.

If you would like a brief description of what happens in a person, the following may be said. The person must first let the outer light around him disappear; he must first stand before inanimate nature and disregard everything that his senses tell him. Then there is darkness at first. When he now rises to the contemplation that I have described, then all beings shine from within. An inner light shines through and radiates through all these beings and radiates from them. And this is the light of wisdom. These are the stages of contemplation that lead us up to what I have described as the spirits of wisdom.

Now, as you know, at the very beginning of Saturn's development there are the spirits of will. If you want to learn to recognize these, you do not have to turn to animals, plants and minerals in general. Rather, to grasp the spirits of will, you must have something very special. No matter how fantastic you may consider what I am about to say, I hope that will not be the case. If you want to rise even higher - after you have more or less mastered the other levels - you have to approach something - it seems paradoxical - such as an anthill, in which not only animals of the same species are united, but also live in wise connection, and delve into the spirited interaction of these little creatures. The rational scientist does not do that. But the clairvoyant lives with the males and females and workers, all organized in their own way, and they interact in a wonderful way, so that he is inwardly identical with them.

This is the method for getting to know the will. Schopenhauer wrote a lot about the will. But he could have written this chapter if, as a clairvoyant, he had stuck his head into an anthill. There you learn to recognize what the will is by its very nature. There you learn to recognize what it means when you yourself pronounce the word 'I will'. This word lives deep within your own nature. Many things in your own nature come together there. But you only perceive the result. The natural scientist gives you a completely different view. What I am describing to you is taken from life. If, on the other hand, you choose a beehive instead of an anthill, you are doing something completely wrong. What lives in the beehive is quite different from what lives in the anthill.

We have spoken of the spirits of will, of wisdom, of form, of motion, of personality, of fire, of twilight, then of humans, animals, plants and minerals. These entities are not plucked out of thin air, they are not inventions, they are not speculations that are presented to you in elementary occultism, which passes itself off as theosophy, but they are things that are acquired through experience.

I could only make suggestions as to how something like this comes about, what is referred to as elementary theosophy or elementary occultism. In this way, one acquires the higher abilities that grant insight into the higher worlds.

This, you see, is something of what must be revived in the future. There is really a lot around us today that can cause concern, and I believe that what can really worry someone who is enthusiastic about real human progress is also the fact that many do not keep their eyes open. Man should be a pioneer in keeping his eyes open. What matters is not that individuals call themselves Theosophists, but that we find the means and ways in the great development of humanity to give a new foundation to what would otherwise really have to collapse.

Let me conclude the reflections of the old year with this reference, which I have made before. Much destruction is being wrought around us, much that might indicate to the attentive observer, even if he is not clairvoyant, that we are at the beginning of a great work of destruction in terms of external material things, which has developed over the past century, for material development only goes so far.

Supplement from notes of unknown authorship

But what is most worrying is that so many of our fellow human beings do not keep their eyes open for what is needed by humanity. The theosophist, however, should be a pioneer in this work of keeping their eyes open. It is not important that individuals sit down and develop, but to work together in the great development of humanity, to find ways and means to give new content to what would otherwise really have to collapse. Much destruction is being wrought around us today. Much that will alert the attentive observer to the fact that we are at the beginning of a work of destruction, of the material culture of the nineteenth century; for this has not been accompanied by a corresponding spiritual development. We are capable of wireless telegraphy; now imagine this ability of man developed just a little further, so that here in Berlin you could take a cab and drive through Friedrichstrasse with a wave generator, in order to destroy the entire Louvre in Paris by means of the corresponding wave excitations. No one would be able to prove the assassin in such a case. All our legal concepts will be completely powerless in a time that can easily be imagined; a time will come when purely material culture will, by and large, lead itself ad absurdum, where it has a destructive and devastating effect.

Only by the inner soul culture now moving up, so that people no longer depend on the external, and although the worst is done, but only the right thing happens, only by this can help. The path of development of today's humanity shows the first beginnings already. Only the path of inner, spiritual development can lead out again, and Theosophy is a necessary new beginning of a cultural direction, to which, so to speak, the necessary inner morality can be found to counteract the overwhelming external culture, which can only lead out, because man has the soul, the spirit, in addition to the material. That is why the renewed spiritual movements of today are so necessary, so that the forces that would otherwise wither away can be practised and cultivated again.

The fact we have so repeatedly set forth from different points of view: that the alternation of waking and sleeping has a more profound significance in human life than appears to outer observation—should form a subject for a comprehensive study of the universe and a practical grasp of the world in the ideal sense. To ordinary observation the apparent fact is that man with his consciousness alternates between the conditions of waking and sleeping. We know that this is only apparent, for we have often agreed from various points of view that the so-called sleep-condition lasts not only from falling asleep to waking, but that in a certain part of our being it also continues from waking to sleeping. We must really say that we are never completely, thoroughly ‘awake’ with our whole being. Sleep extends into our waking hours. With one part of our being we are always asleep. We might ask ourselves: With what part of our being do we really keep awake during the so-called ‘waking’ time?

In the world of sense we are awake as regards our perceptions, as regards all that we perceive by means of our senses from waking to falling asleep. The characteristic of ordinary perception is precisely that from a condition of detachment from the external sense-world we pass over on waking to one of amalgamation with it; then our senses soon begin to be active and this wrests us from that dull condition which we know in ordinary life as ‘sleep.’ Thus with our sense-perception we are awake in the true sense of the word. We are already less awake in respect of our life of ideas, as accurate self-observation will prove, but sufficiently so to call it being awake. We must distinguish the life of perception from that of actual thought and ideas. When withdrawn from sense-perception, that is, not outwardly related to it, we meditate, we are thereby awake, both in the ordinary sense of the word and the higher; although this ‘being awake’ purely in the life of ideas has always a shade of dreaming—in the case of one man, more, of another, less. Although with many people dreaming may well be intermixed with the life of ideas, yet, taken as a whole, we can say that, when we form concepts, we are awake.

We are not ‘awake’ when we feel. Certainly, feeling wells up from an undefined, undifferentiated soul-life, and because we ‘realise’ feeling, because ideas, that is, waking activities, are mingled with it, we suppose that we are awake in our feeling; yet this is not really the case. In reality, the activity of our feeling is exactly the same as in ordinary dreaming. There is a profound relation between the dream-condition and the actual condition of feeling. If we were always able to illumine with ideas what we dream (the greater part of our dream-life is lost to us), we should be as well acquainted with the dream-life as with the life of feeling; for, indeed, feelings and passions are actually present in the soul in the same manner as the dream. No one can tell by his waking life what actually takes place when he feels, or in that which he feels. It surges up, as I said, from the undefined, undifferentiated life of the soul and is illumined by the light of the concepts, but it is a dream-life. This relationship of emotion and feeling to dreaming is well known even to those who are not occultists; for example, the prominent philosopher, Frederick Theodor Vischer, has often emphasised the profound relationship between dreaming and feeling in the soul-life of man.

Still ‘deeper down’ in the soul-life is the real life of will. What does man know about what actually takes place in his inner being when he says, ‘I will take up a book,’ and, stretching out his arm, does so? Of what takes place between muscle and nerve, of what goes on in the organism and even in the soul, by which an impulse of will passes into movement, into action, man is even less conscious than he is of the events of deep, dreamless sleep. It is a fact that the actual essence of our life of will is, in its turn, illumined by the life of ideas; thus it appears to us as though we were conscious of it, but the real entity of the will remains, even from waking to falling asleep, in a condition of profound sleep.

Thus we see that, in the true sense of the word, we are really ‘awake’ only as regards our perception in the world of sense and in our life of ideas; even in the waking condition, as regards the life of feeling, we are actually asleep, we really dream; and as regards the life of will we are always fast asleep. Thus the sleep-condition extends into that of waking. Let us picture to ourselves how we pass through the world: what we experience with our waking consciousness is but the perception of the sense-world and our world of ideas; and, imbedded in this experience, is a world in which our impulses of feeling and will float, a world which surrounds us like the air, but does not enter the ordinary consciousness at all. Anyone who thus approaches the matter will, indeed, not be very far from recognising a so-called super-sensible world around him.

Now all this has more pregnant consequences. Behind what has been related are significant facts of life as a whole. Anyone who knows the life of the human soul between death and rebirth (made known in a more abstract form by the lectures on ‘The Inner Nature of Man, and Life Between Death and Rebirth,’ given in Vienna in the spring of 1914) will see that in this world through which we wander in a sleeping condition, we are living together with the so-called dead. The dead are always present. They move and have their being in a super-sensible world. We are not separated from them by our ‘real being,’ only by our condition of consciousness. We are only separated from them as in sleep we are separated from the things around us; we sleep in a room and do not see the chairs and other things. Though we do not describe it thus, yet as regards our feeling and will, we ‘sleep’ in the so-called waking condition among the dead, just as we do not perceive the physical objects around us when we sleep. Thus we do not live separated from the world ruled by the forces of the dead, we are together with them in one common world. In our ordinary consciousness we are only separated from them by the state of that consciousness.

This knowledge of our common life with the dead will be one of the most important elements which Spiritual Science is to implant in the general human consciousness, in the general civilisation of mankind for the future; for those who believe that what takes place around them occurs only through the forces perceived in the life of the senses, know nothing of the reality; they do not know that the forces of the dead are always at work, always present. Bearing in mind what I said in the first lecture—that, in this material age, man has really quite a false view of historical life because history in its actual impulses is only dreamt or slept away,—we shall be able to form an idea that the forces of the dead may live in what we dream or sleep away of historical life. In a future time a study of history will come which will reckon with the forces of those who have passed through the gate of death, whose souls live in the world between death and rebirth. A consciousness of the unity of all mankind, including the so-called ‘dead,’ will have to give human civilisation quite a new colouring.

The method of observation employed by the spiritual investigator, who can make a practical application of what has been said, will disclose many concrete details of this joint life of the living and the so-called dead. If by his thoughts a man could throw light upon the nature of his feeling and impulses of will, he would have a continuously living consciousness of the existence of the dead. This he does not at present possess. The ordinary consciousness does not possess it because these things are remarkably distributed within our conscious life. We might say that for the ‘conception’ of a higher cosmic relationship, there is a third consciousness, much more important than the perception of the waking condition or the sleep condition. What is this?

It is something lying between these, and for the man of to-day is only momentary and passes him by; it is the moment of waking and that of falling asleep. To-day, man does not pay attention to his waking and falling asleep; yet in the general human consciousness they are extremely important. How important they are is disclosed when the unconscious experiences of the ordinary consciousness are illumined by the experiences of clairvoyant consciousness. Having studied in this way though many years of preparation, we can quite impartially illumine such things by super-sensible facts.

It is quite possible for clairvoyant consciousness not only to become acquainted ‘in general’ with the facts of the super-sensible world, in which, for instance, we abide between death and rebirth, but also to come in contact, into correspondence with individual souls of the dead (although this is not so easy as the former). This we know. I shall only add that this observation is more difficult (to the ordinary scientific understanding of super-sensible relations), merely because there are more obstacles to overcome. Although few to-day succeed in attaining general scientific results of the super-sensible world, it cannot be said that it is extremely difficult to do so, for it is not beyond the ordinary capacities of the human soul. It is more difficult to come into individual relations with souls of the dead because those who strive for it overlook the fact that in the spiritual world the lower impulses of man can be wakened. I have often described the reason. The higher faculties of the super-sensible beings are connected with the lower human impulses (not with the higher impulses of incarnate beings), as the lower impulses of super-sensible beings are related to the higher spiritual qualities of man. I described this as a significant mystery in the intercourse with the spiritual world, a mystery by contact with which a man may easily be shipwrecked; but if he can steer safely past this rock, if he is able to have intercourse with the super-sensible without being diverted from the world of spiritual experiences, such intercourse is quite possible. It proves, however, to be very, very different from what is usually regarded as ‘intercourse’ here in the world of sense. Speaking quite in the concrete: if we talk to one another here in the world of sense, we speak and the other answers. We know that we produce our words through the vocal organs, the words come from our thoughts. We feel that we are the creator of our words; we know that we hear ourselves speaking, and when some one answers we hear him; we listen and we hear him. We are profoundly accustomed to such a connection because we are only conscious of having intercourse in the physical world with other human beings. Intercourse with discarnate souls is not like this. Strange as it may sound, intercourse with discarnate souls is exactly reversed. If we impart our own thoughts to the discarnate, we do not speak, but he speaks. It is exactly as though when talking with some one, he were to say what we were about to communicate; we do not say it, but he does. The reply of the so-called dead does not come to us from outside, but arises from our inner being, we experience it as inner life. Clairvoyant consciousness has to get accustomed to this. We have to get accustomed to the idea that we ourselves are in the other as the questioner, and the one who replies is in us. This complete reversal of the entities is necessary.

Anyone acquainted with such things knows that this reversal is not easy; it contradicts everything to which man is accustomed; for habits are formed in course of life. Not only that;—it contradicts all that is inborn in man, for it is inborn in us to believe that we ourselves speak when we ask a question, and that the other is silent when we answer him. Yet what has been said is the case in intercourse with super-sensible beings. From this reversal of one's being which clairvoyant consciousness experiences, we shall be able to observe that a good proportion of the non-perceptibility of the dead rests upon the fact that they have intercourse with the living in a way which appears to the living as quite impossible, but to which they are only unaccustomed. The living simply do not hear what the dead say to them from the depths of their own beings and they do not pay attention when another being says what they themselves are thinking, what they themselves desire.

Now, it is a fact that of the two conditions of consciousness which rush so quickly past the man of to-day—those of waking and of falling asleep—the one is adapted for the question only, the other only for the reply. The peculiarity is that the moment of falling asleep is specially favourable for putting the question to the dead; that is, for the hearing of the question which we put to him. As we fall asleep, we are in a receptive condition to put the question to the dead, that is, to hear from him the question we wish to ask. We specifically disposed for this on falling asleep. In our ordinary consciousness we fall asleep immediately after, the consequence of which is, that we ask the dead hundreds of questions and talk with them of hundreds of things, but know nothing of it, because we immediately fall asleep. This fleeting moment of falling asleep is of tremendous consequence for our intercourse with the dead. So, too, the moment of waking especially disposes us to receive the answers of the dead. If we did not immediately pass over into sense-perception, but were able to linger through the moment of waking, we should be specially adapted to receive their messages. These messages would appear as though arising from our own inner being.

Thus, there are two reasons why in both cases the ordinary consciousness does not pay attention to intercourse with the dead. The first is that immediately on awaking or falling asleep we meet a condition which is calculated to obliterate what we have experienced; the second, that when we fall asleep, let us say, unusual, really ‘impossible’ things occur. The hundred questions we can put to the dead—and do put—vanish in sleep-life because we are quite unaccustomed to ‘hear’ what we ask instead of ‘uttering’ it. Again, what the dead say to us on awaking, we do not judge as coming from them, because we do not recognise it; we take it as something arising within ourselves. This is the second reason why people are not familiar with intercourse with the dead.

These general phenomena are, however, sometimes broken through in the following way. What a man experiences on falling asleep, as putting the question to the dead from himself, continues, in a sense, during sleep. During sleep we look back unconsciously to the moment of falling asleep, and through this fact, dreams can be regulated. Such dreams can really be a reproduction of the questions we put to the dead. Far closer than we suppose do we approach the dead in our dreams, although what was experienced in the dream was said at the moment of falling asleep. The dream draws it up from the undifferentiated depths of the soul. A man may, however, easily misconstrue this; he does not take the dreams—if later he recollects them as dreams—for what they really are. Dreams are really always a previous companionship with the dead springing from our life of feeling. We have moved towards them and the dream often gives us the questions we have put to them. True, it gives us our subjective experience, but as though coming from outside. The dead speak to us, but we really utter what they say ourselves. It only appears as though they spoke. As a rule, it is not messages from the dead that come to us in our dreams, but the expression of our need of being with them, of our need of coming to them at the moment of falling asleep.

The moment of waking conveys to us messages from the dead. This moment is obliterated by the subsequent life of the senses; but the fact does occur that, in waking, we have something rising, as it were, from the inner being of the soul, of which we could well be aware if our self-observation were more accurate; it does not come from our ordinary ego, it is often a message from the dead.

We shall succeed in understanding these ideas if we do not form wrong thoughts about a connection I shall now bring before your soul. You will say: The moment of falling asleep is adapted for putting the question, that of waking for receiving the answer from the dead; they lie far apart! We can only judge rightly of this when we keep in view the relations of time in the super-sensible world. There the saying is true, spoken with remarkable intuition by Richard Wagner: ‘Time becomes space.’ In the super-sensible world, time really does become space, one point of space here, another there. Time is not past, but only a point of space, near or far; time actually becomes supersensibly space. The dead only gives his answer when he stands somewhat further from us. That, again, is an unaccustomed thought; but the past is not ‘past’ in the super-sensible world. It is there, it remains, and with respect to the present, it is only a question of placing oneself in another place as regards the past. In the super-sensible world, the past is just as little done away with as the house we left to come here to-night. It is in its place; so, too, in the super-sensible world, the past is not gone but is in its place. It depends upon ourselves, and upon how far we got with them, how near or far we are from the dead. We can be very far or very near.

Thus, because we not only sleep and wake, but wake up and fall asleep, we are in a continuous correspondence and contact with the dead. They are always among us, and we do not only act under the influence of those living around us as physical men, but under that of those connected with us who have passed through the gate of death. I shall to-day bring forward facts which from a certain point of view, may lead us farther and farther, into the spiritual world.

We can distinguish between various souls who have passed through the portal of death, as soon as we have understood that there is such continuous contact with them. Since, really, we always pass through the field of the dead, either on falling asleep, when we ask them questions, or on awaking, when we receive answers from them, our connection with them must also be affected according as they died young or old. The facts underlying the following are only evident to clairvoyant consciousness. That, however, is only the ‘knowledge’ of it, the reality always takes place. Every man is related to the dead, as shown by clairvoyant consciousness. When the young—children or juveniles—pass through the gate of death, it is seen that the connection between the living and the dead is different from that of older people, those dying in the twilight of their life. There is a decisive difference. When we lose children, when the young are apparently taken from us, they do not really leave us at all, but remain with us. This is seen by clairvoyant consciousness by the fact that the messages we receive on awakening are forceful and vivid when the dead concerned died as children or young people. The connection between those remaining behind and the dead is then such that we can only say that a child or young person is not lost at all; he really remains present. The young remain above all, because after death they show a forceful need to work into our waking moments and to send us messages. It is very remarkable, yet true, that human people who died young have a very great deal to do with all connected with waking. To clairvoyant consciousness it is specially interesting that it is due to those who died in youth that a man in outer life feels a certain devoutness, a certain religious inclination. A tremendous amount in respect of devoutness is effected by the messages of those who died early.

It is different with the souls of the old, those advanced in physical years. What clairvoyance shows us concerning these can be described differently. We may say that they do not lose us; our souls remain with them. Observe the contrast. The souls of the young we do not lose, they remain with us; the souls of the old do not lose us, they take something of our souls with them, as it were;—if we may use such a comparison. The souls of the old draw us more to themselves, whereas the souls of the young draw, rather, to us. Therefore at the moment of falling asleep we have much to say to the souls of those who died old, and we can weave a special bond with the spiritual world by adapting ourselves to address the souls of the old. We can really do something with regard to these things.

Thus we see that we stand in continuous relation to the dead; we have a sort of ‘interrogation and reply,’ a mutual intercourse with the dead. To qualify ourselves for questioning and, as it were, to approach the dead, the following is the right course: Ordinary abstract thoughts, those taken from materialistic life, bring us but little in relation to the dead. The dead, if they belong to us in any way, even suffer through our distraction in purely material life. If we stand firm against it and cultivate what will bring us in relation to them in conformity with our life of will and feeling, we prepare ourselves well to put the appropriate questions at the moment of falling asleep. These connections are particularly available in so far as the dead were related to us in life. The relationship in life forms and establishes what follows as relationship after death. There is, of course, a difference whether I speak with another with apathy or with sympathy, whether I speak as one who loves him or as one who does not care. There is a great difference whether I talk with someone as at a five o'clock tea, or whether I am specially interested in what I know of him. When intimate relations are formed between soul and soul, based on impulses of feeling and will, and if one can retain such interest after the one has passed through the gate of death, such eagerness to know what answer he will give, or if one has the impulse to be something to that soul, if one can live in these reminiscences of the other soul, reminiscences which do not flow to it from the content of the life of ideas but from the relations between one soul and another, then one is specially fitted for putting questions to that soul at the moment of falling asleep.

On the other hand, for the reception of answers, messages, at the moment of waking, we are specially adapted if we were capable and inclined to enter consciously into the being of the dead person during his life. Let us reflect how, especially at the present time, one man passes another by without really learning to know him. What do we know of one another? There are striking examples of marriages lasting for ten years, without either knowing the other. This is so; yet it is possible (not depending on talent but on love) to enter the being of another with understanding, and thereby to bear within one a real world of ideas from the other. This is a specially good preparation for receiving answers from the dead themselves at the moment of waking. That is why we are even sooner able to receive answers from a child or young person, because we more easily learn to know a young person than those who have become more individualised and grown old.

Thus we can do something towards establishing a right relation between the living and the dead. Our whole life is, in reality, permeated with this relation. We, as souls, are imbedded in the same sphere in which the dead live. The degree to which we are religious is very strongly connected, as I have said, with the influence of those who have died young; and were it not that such work into life, there would probably be no religious feeling at all. The best relation to the souls of those who died young is to keep our thoughts of them more on what is general than individual. Funeral services for children or young people should have a ritualistic, universal character. The Roman Church, which colours everything with the youthful, the child-life, and which, generally speaking, would have liked to have only to do with children, to guide child-souls, therefore, does not, as a rule, give ‘individual’ addresses for the young life closing with death. This is specially good. We mourn for children in a different way than we do for older people. Our grief for a child I should prefer to call a sympathetic sorrow, for the sorrow that we feel for a child that has passed from us by death is really in many respects the reflection of the attitude of our own soul towards the being of the child, which remains near us. We share in the life of the child, the child itself takes part with his entity in our sorrow; it feels a sympathetic sorrow. Our grief for an older person is different, it cannot be called a sympathetic grief, it is ‘egoistic;’ it is best borne by the reflection that an older dead person really ‘takes us with him;’ he does not lose us if we try to prepare ourselves to join him. Hence we form more ‘individualised’ memories of our older dead, we bear them rather in thought, we can remain united with them in thought, in the thoughts we shared with them if we try not to behave as an uncomfortable companion. When we have thoughts which he cannot accept, our dead friend retains us, but in a peculiar way. We remain with him, but we can be a burden to him if he has to drag us along without our entertaining any thoughts in which he can unite with us, which he can perceive spiritually.

Let us reflect how concrete our relations to the dead appear in the light of Spiritual Science, if we are able to have in view the whole relationship of the living to the dead. This will become very important to the humanity of the future. Trivial as it may sound, for every age is a ‘time of transition,’ yet our own age really is a period of transition. It must pass into a more spiritual age. It must know what comes from the kingdom of the dead, it must know that we are surrounded by the dead as by the air. In time to come there will he a real perception that when an older person dies we must not become an incubus to him, as we shall be if we have thoughts which he cannot entertain. Just think how rich our times may become, if we accept this life with the dead as real. I have often said that Spiritual Science does not wish to found a new religion, or to introduce anything sectarian into the world; to think otherwise is entirely to misconstrue it. On the other hand, I have often emphasised that the religious life can be deepened by it, because it provides real foundations. Certainly, remembrance of the dead, the service for the dead, has a religious side. On this side a foundation for the religious life will be created, if that life is illuminated by Spiritual Science. When seen in the right light, these things will be lifted out of the abstract. For instance, it is not a matter of indifference to life whether a funeral service held is the right one for a young person, or whether it is more suited for an old one. It is of far greater importance for the general life of man whether right or wrong funeral services are held than all the regulations of town councils or parliament—strange as that may sound,—for the impulses working in life come from the human individuals themselves when they are in right relation to the dead. To-day people wish to regulate everything by an abstract structure of the social order. They are pleased when they do not need to think much over what they are to do. Many, even, are glad if they are not obliged to reflect upon what they ought to think. It is quite different when one has a living consciousness, not merely of a vaguely pantheistic connection, but of a concrete one with the spiritual world. One can foresee a permeation of the religious life with concrete ideas when it is deepened by Spiritual Science. ‘Spirit’ was eliminated (as I have often related) from Western humanity in the year 869 at the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople. The dogma was then drawn up that Christians must not regard man as consisting of body, soul and spirit, but of body and soul only, though certain spiritual qualities were to be ascribed to the soul. This abolition of the spirit is of tremendous significance. It was dogma,—that in the year 869 in Constantinople, it was decided that man must not be regarded as endowed with ‘anima’ and ‘spiritus,’ but only ‘unam animam rationalem et intellectualem.’ The dogma that ‘The soul has spiritual qualities’ was spread over the spiritual life of the West in the twilight of the ninth century. This must be overcome. Spirit must again be recognised. Trichotomy—body, soul and spirit,—regarded as heresy in the Middle Ages, must again be recognised as the true and exact view of man's nature. Several things will be necessary to this end for those who to-day naturally challenge all ‘authority,’ yet swear that man consists of body and soul alone. Such are not only to be found in particular religious persuasions, but also among the ranks of those who listen to professors, philosophers, and others. Philosophers, as can everywhere be read, distinguish only body and soul, omitting the spirit. This is their ‘unprejudiced’ philosophy of life; but it rests upon the decision of the Church Council in the year 869 not to recognise spirit;—that, however, they do not realise. A well-known philosopher, Wilhelm Wundt—a great philosopher by favour of his publisher, but at the same time renowned,—of course divides man into body and soul, because he regards it as ‘unprejudiced’ science to do so—and does not know that he is simply following the decision of the Council of 869. We must look into the actual facts if we wish to see what takes place in the world of reality. If a man looks at the actual facts in the domain especially mentioned to-day, his consciousness will be opened concerning a connection with that world only dreamed of and slept away in history. History, historical life, will only be seen in the right light when a true consciousness of the connection of the so-called living with the so-called dead can be developed.

We will now consider the series of incarnations passed through by our planet, and realise that these were embodiments, that is to say, conditions of our Earth when it was once Saturn, Sun, Moon. We must be fully aware that these incarnations were necessary for the development of every living thing, especially of man, and that man's own evolution is intimately connected with the Earth.

We shall, however, only understand in the right way what took place then, if we realise how the man of today—we ourselves—has changed in respect of certain characteristics in the course of evolution. And first we will consider the changes which have come about in man's conditions of consciousness. Everything in the world has evolved, even our consciousness. The consciousness that a man has today he has not always possessed, it has only gradually become what it is now.

We call our present consciousness the objective consciousness or the waking day-consciousness. You all know it as that which you have from morning when you awake, to evening when you fall asleep. Let us be clear as to its nature. It consists in man's turning his senses towards the outer world and perceiving objects-and hence we call it objective consciousness.

Man looks into the surroundings and sees with his eyes certain objects in space which are bounded by colours. He listens with the ear and perceives that there are objects in space which produce a tone, which resound. With his sense of touch he feels objects, finds them warm and cold, he Smells, tastes objects. What he thus perceives with his senses he reflects upon; he employs his reason to understand these different objects, and it is from these facts of sense perception and their comprehension in the mind that the present waking day consciousness has arisen. Man has not always had this consciousness, it had first to develop, and he will not always have it as it is, but will ascend to higher stages. Now with the means supplied by occult science we can survey seven states of consciousness of which our present consciousness is the middle one: we can survey three preceding ones and three following after.

Many will wonder why we are just standing so nicely in the centre. This comes from the fact that other stages, preceding the first, are beyond our sight, others follow the seventh which are again beyond our sight. We see just far behind us as we do in front; if we took one step back, we should see one more behind us and one fewer before us-just as when you go into the fields you can see as far to the left as to the right.

These seven states of consciousness are the following: At first a very dull deep condition of consciousness which humanity hardly knows today. Only persons with a special mediumistic tendency can still have this consciousness today which once upon Saturn was possessed by all men. Mediumistic persons can come into such a consciousness, which is known to the modern psychologist. All the other states of consciousness have been deadened in them and they appear practically lifeless. But then, if from memory or even in this condition they sketch or describe what they have experienced, they bring to light quite extraordinary experiences, which do not take place around us. They make all sorts of drawings which, although they are grotesque and distorted, yet agree with what we call in theosophy cosmic conditions. They are often entirely incorrect, but nevertheless they have something by which we can recognise that such people during this lowered condition have a dull but a universal consciousness; they see cosmic bodies and therefore their sketches are of that nature.

A consciousness that is dull like this but in compensation represents a universal knowledge in our cosmos, was once possessed by man on the first incarnation of our Earth, and is called “deep trance consciousness.” There are beings in our surroundings who still have such a consciousness—the minerals. If you could talk with them, they would tell you what goes on in Saturn—but this consciousness is entirely dull and insensible.

The second condition of consciousness which we know, or much rather, do not know, since we are then asleep, is that of ordinary sleep. This condition is not so comprehensive, but in spite of its still being very dull, it is clear in comparison with the first. This “sleep-consciousness” was once the permanent state of all human beings when the Earth was “Sun”; at that time the human ancestor was in a continuous sleep.

Even today this state of consciousness still exists; the plants have it, they are beings who uninterruptedly sleep, and if they could speak they could tell us how things are on the Sun, for they have Sun-consciousness.

The third condition, which is still dim and dull in relation to our day-consciousness, is that of “picture-consciousness”, and of this we have a clear idea since we experience an echo of it in our dream-filled sleep, though it is but a reminiscence of what on the Moon was the consciousness of all human beings. It will be well to start from the dream in order to get a picture of the Moon-consciousness.

In the dream-life we find indeed something confusing, chaotic, but on closer observation this confusion nevertheless displays an inner law. The dream is a remarkable symbolist. In my lectures I have often brought forward the following examples, which are all taken from life. You dream that you are running after a tree-frog to catch it, you feel the soft, smooth body; you wake up and have the corner of the sheet in your hand. Had you used your waking consciousness you would have seen how your hand was holding the bed-cover. The dream-consciousness gives you a symbol of the external act, it forms a symbol out of what our day-consciousness sees as a fact.

Another example: a student dreams that he is standing at the door in the lecture hall. There he is roughly jostled, and from this ensues a challenge. He now experiences every detail, until, accompanied by his second and a doctor, he goes to the duel, and the first shot is fired. At this moment he wakes up, and sees that he has overturned the chair at his bedside. In waking consciousness he would simply have heard the fall; the dream symbolises this prosaic event through the drama of the duel. And you see too, that the conditions of time are quite changed, for the whole drama flashed through his mind in the single instant in which the chair fell. The entire preparation took place in one moment, the dream has reversed time, it does not conform to the circumstances of the ordinary world, it is a creator in time.

Not only can external events be symbolised in this way, but also inner processes of the body. A man dreams he is in an air hole of a cellar, obnoxious spiders creep about him; he wakes up and feels a headache; the skull has taken on the symbol of the cellar hole, the pain, that of the hideous spiders!

The dream of the present-day man symbolises events which are both external and within. But it was not so when this third state of consciousness was that of the Moon humanity. At that time man lived entirely in such pictures as he has in the modern dream, but they expressed realities. They signified precisely such a reality as today the blue colour signifies a reality, only at that time colour hovered freely in space, it was not resting upon the objects. In that former consciousness man could not have set out on the street, as today, have seen a man in the distance, looked at him, approached him; for forms of beings with a coloured surface could not have been perceived at that time by man, quite apart from the fact that he could not then walk as he does today. But let us suppose that one man on the Moon had met another, then a freely hovering picture of form and colour would have risen up before him. Let us say, an ugly one, then the man would have turned aside in order not to meet it; or a beautiful one, then he would have drawn near it. The ugly colour-picture would have shown him that the other had an unsympathetic feeling towards him, the beautiful, that the other liked him.

Let us suppose there had been salt on the Moon; when salt stands on the table today, you see it as it is in space, as object, granular, with definite colouring. At that time it would not have been so. On the Moon you would not have been able to see the salt. But from the place where the salt would be, a picture of colour and form would have proceeded, floating free; and this picture would have shown you that the salt was something useful. Thus the whole consciousness was filled with pictures, with floating colours and forms. In an ocean of such form and colour pictures the human being lived; but the pictures of colour and form denoted what was going on around him, above all, things of a soul character and those which affected the soul nature—what was advantageous to it or harmful. In this way the human being orientated himself rightly with regard to the things around him. When the Moon passed over into the Earth incarnation this consciousness changed into our day-consciousness, and only a relic of it has remained in the dream as one has it now—a rudiment, as there are rudiments of other things. You know, for instance, that there are certain muscles near the ear which nowadays seem purposeless. Earlier they had their significance; they served to move the ears at will; there are very few persons who can do this today.

So conditions are to be found in man which have remained as a last relic of a former significance. Although these pictures no longer have a meaning, at that time they signified the outer world. Even today you still have this consciousness among all those animals—note this carefully—which cannot utter sounds from their inner being. There is in fact a far truer division of animals in occultism than in external Nature Science, namely in to those which can utter sounds from within and those which are dumb. It is true that you can find among certain lower creatures the power of producing sounds, but then this happens in a mechanical way, through friction, etc., not from their inner being. Even the frogs do not create sounds so. Only the higher animals, which arose at the time when the human being could express his suffering and joy in tones, only these, together with man, have gained the power of bringing to expression their pain and pleasure through sounds and cries. All animals which do not utter sounds from within still have such a picture-consciousness. It is not a fact that lower animals see the pictures in such outlines as we do. If some lower animal, the crab, for example, perceives a picture that makes a distinctly unpleasant impression, it gets out of the way, it does not see the objects, but sees the harmfulness in a repelling picture.

The fourth state of consciousness is that which all men now have. The pictures which man formerly perceived as colour pictures floating freely in space, wrap themselves, so to speak, round the objects. One might say they are laid over them, they form the surface and seem to be upon the objects, whereas formerly they seemed to float in freedom. In consequence, they have become the expression of the form; what man earlier had within himself has come out and fastened itself on the objects and through this he has come to his present waking day-consciousness.

We will now consider something else. We have already said that man's physical body was prepared on Saturn; on the Sun was added the Etheric or Life-body, which interpenetrated and worked on it. It took what the physical body had already become by itself, and worked on it further. On the Moon was added the Astral-body; this still further altered the form of the body. On Saturn the physical body was very simple, on the Sun it was much more complicated, for then the etheric body worked on it and made it more perfect. On the Moon the Astral body was added, and on the Earth the Ego, which brought it to a still greater completion. At the time when the physical body existed on Saturn, when as yet no etheric body had interpenetrated it, all the organs it contains today were not yet within, for it lacked blood and nerves, nor had it as yet any glands. The human being at that time had merely the organs-and these only in their rudiments-which today are the most perfect, and which have had time to arrive at their present perfection, namely, the marvelously constructed sense organs.

The wonderful construction of the human eye, the wonderful apparatus of the human ear, all this has only attained its perfection today because it was formed out of the general substance of Saturn, and the etheric body, astral body and ego have worked on it. So too the larynx; it was already laid down on Saturn, but man could not as yet speak. On the Moon he began to send out inarticulate tones and cries, but only through the continuous activity described, the larynx became the perfected apparatus it is on the Earth today. On the Sun, where the etheric body was inserted, the sense organs were further elaborated and all those organs were added which are primarily organs of secretion and life, which discharge functions of nutrition and growth. They were first laid down during the Sun stage of existence. Then the astral body worked further during the Moon existence, the Ego during the Earth existence and thus the glands, the organs of growth and so on have matured to their present perfection. Then on the Moon the nervous system originated through the incorporation of the astral body. The principle, however, which enabled the human being to evolve an objective consciousness and at the same time gave him the power to sound forth his pleasure and pain from within—the ego—this formed in man his blood.

Thus the whole universe is the builder of the sense organs. Thus have all the glands, organs of reproduction and nutrition been formed by the life-body; thus the astral body is the builder of the nervous system and the ego the incorporator of the blood. There is a phenomenon described as “chlorosis”—anæmia or green-sickness. There the blood comes into a state where it cannot sustain the waking consciousness; such persons often lapse into a dim consciousness like that on the Moon.

Now let us consider the three states of consciousness which are still to come. One can ask how it is possible to know something about them already. It can be done through Initiation. The initiate can have these states of consciousness even today in anticipation. The next known to the initiate is the so-called psychic, *[Later called by Dr. Steiner Imagination.] a consciousness in which one has both together, the picture-consciousness and the waking day-consciousness. With this psychic consciousness you see a man in outline and forms as in day-waking consciousness. But you see at the same time what lives in his soul, streaming out as coloured clouds and pictures into what we call the “Aura.” Nor do you go about the world in a dreamy state like the Moon-human being, but in complete self-control, as modern man of the waking consciousness. On the planet that replaces our Earth the whole of humanity will have this psychic or soul-consciousness, the Jupiter consciousness.

Then there is still a sixth state of consciousness which man will also one day possess. This will unite the present day-consciousness, the psychic consciousness only known to the initiate and in addition all that man sleeps away today. Man will look deep, deep into the nature of beings when he lives in this consciousness, the consciousness of Inspiration. He will not only perceive in pictures and forms of colour, he will hear the being of the other give forth sounds and tones. Each human individuality will have a certain note and the whole will sound together in a symphony. This will be the consciousness of man when our planet will have passed into the Venus condition. There he will experience the sphere-harmony which Goethe describes in his Prologue to Faust:

The Sun-orb sings, in emulation
Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round;
His path predestined through Creation
He ends with step of thunder-sound.

(Bayard Taylor's translation)

When the Earth was Sun the human being was aware in a dim way of this ringing and resounding, and on Venus he will again hear it ringing and resounding “auf alter Weise” (as of old). To this very phrase Goethe has retained the picture.

The seventh state of consciousness is the Spiritual consciousness,* [Since called Intuition] the very highest, when man has a universal consciousness, when he will see not only what proceeds on his own planet, but in the whole cosmos around him. It is the consciousness that the human being had on Saturn, a kind of universal consciousness, although then quite dim and dull. This he will have in addition to all the other states of consciousness when he will have reached Vulcan.

These are the seven states of human consciousness which man must go through in his journey through the cosmos. And each incarnation of the Earth produces the conditions through which such states of consciousness are possible. Only because the system of nerves was laid down on the Moon, and further developed to the present brain, has the modern waking day-consciousness been possible. Organs must be created by which the higher states of consciousness may also have a physical basis of experience, as the initiate already experiences these states spiritually.

That the human being can pass through seven such planetary conditions is the meaning of evolution. Each planetary stage is bound up with the development of one of the seven states of human consciousness, and through what takes place on each planet the physical organs for such a state of consciousness are perfected. You will have a more highly developed organ, a psychic organ, on Jupiter; on Venus there will be an organ through which man will be able to develop physically the consciousness possessed by the initiate today on the Devachanic plane. And on Vulcan the Spiritual consciousness will prevail, which the initiate possesses today when he is in Higher Devachan, the World of Reason.

To-morrow we will examine these planets separately, for, just as our Earth earlier, in the Atlantean and Lemurian Ages, for instance, had a different appearance from that of today, and as later it will again look different, so too have Moon, Sun and Saturn passed through various conditions, and so will Jupiter and Venus pass through still others.

We have learnt today the broad, comprehensive cycle of the planets, tomorrow we will occupy ourselves with the changes under one by these planets while they were the theatre of human evolution.

[ 1 ] Sleep and Waking has been a theme frequently discussed in our anthroposophical studies, and from various points of view. But with the facts of life such as these, the understanding of them requires to be carried to a new depth every time, after studying a different aspect of the world. All that has been said about the Earth as life-seed of a new rising Macrocosm, makes it possible now to bring a deepened understanding to our views of sleeping and waking.

[ 2 ] In this waking state, Man lives in the thought-shadows cast by a dead and dying world, and in will-impulses into whose inner being he as little sees in ordinary consciousness, as he sees what is going on in deep dreamless sleep.

[ 3] With the inflow of the sub-conscious will-impulses into the thought-shadows arises the free, self-directed consciousness of the individual Self. In this Self-consciousness lives the I.

[ 4 ] Whilst Man is in this state, awake to the life of the world around him, through all the feelings that inwardly arise in him there run non-earthly, cosmic impulses that reach from a far distant cosmic Past into the Present. He is not conscious of this. A being can be conscious of that alone, in which it takes part through its own dying forces, not through the forces of growth which feed its life. Thus Man comes to Self-realization through the loss from his mind's eye of that which is the very basis of his own inner being. This however is precisely what enables him, whilst in the waking state, to feel himself utterly immersed in the thought-shadows. No flicker of life disturbs the inner state of participation in the world of the dead and dying. This ‘life amid the dead and dying’ conceals however the essential characteristic of the Earth-world, namely that it is the life-seed of a new Universe. Man in his waking state does not perceive the Earth as the Earth truly is; her first beginnings of new cosmic life escape him.

[ 5 ] So Man lives in that which the Earth gives him as basis for his Self-consciousness. He loses sight in his mind's eye of the true form of his own inner impulses, during this age of self-conscious Ego-development; and loses sight, too, of the true form of his surroundings. But it is just in this hovering above the stable reality of the World that Man realizes the stable reality of his I, realizes himself as a self-conscious being. Above him is the non-earthly, extra-terrestrial Cosmos; beneath him, in the Earth-region, is a world whose real being remains concealed; between the two the free being of the I becomes revealed, radiant in the fullness of perceptive knowledge and free will.

[ 6 ] In sleep it is otherwise. Here Man lives in his astral body and I amid the young seed-life of Earth. The most intense ‘will to life’ is all about Man during his dreamless sleep. Through his dreams also runs this stir of life; though not so strongly but that the man can be aware of them in a sort of half-consciousness. And in this half-conscious dream-panorama are seen the forces by whose means the human being is woven out of the Cosmos. In the passing flash of the dream can be seen the astral power as it flows into the ether-body and quickens the man to life. In the surging life and light of dreams, Thought is living still. Only after awakening, is Thought hemmed in by those forces which bring about its death—reduce it to a shadow.

[ 7 ] This connection between the dream-picture and the waking thought is of great significance. Man thinks with the same forces as those which enable him to grow and to live; only, for Man to become a Thinker these forces must be every dying.

[ 8 ] Here is the point where true understanding may dawn upon the mind, of why it is that Man in his Thinking grasps reality. He has in this thoughts the dead likeness of that by which he himself is formed and created out of a living, life-giving reality.

[ 9 ] The dead likeness! But this dead likeness is the life-work of the greatest of all painters, the Cosmos itself. From the likeness the life indeed is gone. Were the life not gone, Man's I could not evolve. Nevertheless this likeness contains the whole content of the Universe in all its glory.

[ 10 ] So far as was possible at the time, within the general lines of the book, I pointed out this inner relation between Thinking and World-Reality long ago, in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom;’ {Published in English under the title ‘The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’} it is indicated in the place where I speak of a bridge leading from the depths of the thinking I to the depths of Nature's reality.

[ 11 ] The reason why sleep acts upon the ordinary consciousness as an extinguisher, is because it leads into the teeming life of Earth, shooting and sprouting up into the new, growing Macrocosm. When the Imaginative consciousness puts an end to this extinguishing action of sleep, the Earth which then presents itself to the human soul is not one of sharp outlines, in mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms; it is rather a living process that the soul has then before her—a living process kindled in the Earth and flaming out into the Macrocosm.

[ 12 ] Thus Man has to raise himself with the reality of his own ‘I am’ out of the world's reality in his waking state, in order to arrive at free and independent self-consciousness. In his sleeping state he unites himself once more with world-reality.

[ 13 ] Such, at the present cosmic moment, is the rhythm of Man's earthly life; outside the inner being of the world, but with the conscious experience of his own being; and within the inner being of the World, whilst the consciousness of his own being is extinguished.

[ 14 ] In the state between death and a new birth, the I of Man is living within the beings of the spirit-world. There, everything comes to consciousness, that escaped consciousness during the waking life of earth. There the macrocosmic forces pass across the scene, from all their fullness of life in the far distant Past, down to their dead and dying existence in the Present. But the Earthly forces too display themselves, which are the life-seed of the growing Macrocosm that is to be. And Man looks there into his sleeping states, as during Earth-life he looks at the Earth shining in the sunlight.

[ 15 ] Only because the Macrocosm, such as it is in the present, has become a thing of the dead, is it possible for the human being between death and new birth to lead a life which, compared to the waking life on Earth, signifies a higher awakening—an awakening which enables man completely to master the forces of which but a transitory flicker is seen in dreams. These are forces filling the whole Cosmos. They permeate everything. From them the human being draws the impulses with which, on his descent to Earth, he fashions his own body—the masterpiece of the macrocosmic artist.

[ 16 ] What in dreams is but a brief sun-abandoned glimmer, lives in the spirit-world transfused with spiritual sunlight, waiting until the beings of the higher Hierarchies, or Man himself, shall call it forth in creative work to the moulding of new life and being.

Leading Thoughts

[ 17 ] In the waking state, in order to gain living knowledge of himself in full and free Self-consciousness, Man is obliged to forgo the living knowledge of Reality, in its true form, both in his own existence and in Nature's. He lifts himself out of his sea of Reality, so that in his Thought-shadows he may make his own I his own real experience.

[ 18 ] In the sleeping state, Man lives with the life of the Earth around him, but this life extinguishes his consciousness of Self.

[ 19 ] In dreams, there flickers up in half-consciousness that forceful World-Reality of which Man's being is woven, and from which he fashions his body when he comes down out of the Spirit-world. In Earth-life this forceful World-Reality is reduced to death in shadow-thoughts, since only thus can it give the basis for Self-conscious Man.

The relation between man's waking and sleeping states has been broadly described, and it was said that he draws from the latter the forces he needs during waking life in order to sustain his life of soul. These things are much more complicated than is generally supposed and today, as the result of spiritual research, there will be something more detailed to say about the difference between man's waking life and the state of sleep. Let me mention in parenthesis that there is no need to speak of all the hypotheses, some more interesting than others, that are advanced by present-day physiology in order to explain the difference between the two states. It would be easy to speak of these theories but this would only divert us from genuinely spiritual-scientific study of the two states. All that need be said is that modern science concerns itself only with the part of man which, during sleep, remains behind in the physical world. The fact that the Ego and astral body emerge from the physical and etheric bodies when man goes to sleep can be reality only to spiritual investigation, to the eyes of a seer. The whole process is completely foreign to modern physical science—which need not, however, be severely criticised on that account; in a certain respect it is justified in asserting a one-sided point of view. Man's Ego and astral body are in a spiritual world while he is asleep and in the physical world when he wakes and comes down into the physical and etheric bodies.

Let us now consider the sleeping human being. Quite naturally, normal human consciousness regards sleep as an undifferentiated state that is not a subject for further investigation. The question is rarely asked whether, during the time man spends at night in a spiritual world, an influence on his body-free soul is exerted by several forces, or by a single force only which permeates the spiritual world. Are we able to distinguish various forces to which he is exposed in that world during sleep? Yes, several quite different influences can be distinguished. The influences do not, of course, primarily affect the members that remain lying in bed, but they affect man as a being of soul when his astral body and Ego have emerged from his physical and etheric bodies.

By considering certain familiar experiences and facts we will now explore the different influences which are exerted upon the sleeping human being. A man has only to be more attentive to what happens to him when he goes to sleep and he will notice how the inner activity through which, during the day, he moves his limbs and brings his body into movement with the help of his soul, begins to flag. Anyone who practises a little self-observation at the time when he is about to go to sleep will feel that he can now no longer exercise the same control over his body. A kind of lethargy begins to overpower him. First of all he will feel incapable of directing the movement of his limbs by the will; control of speech is then lost. Then he feels that the possibility of entering into any connection with the outer world is slipping away from him, and all the impressions of the day gradually disappear. What disappears first is the ability to use the limbs and especially the instruments of speech, then the faculties of taste and smell, and finally of hearing. In this gradual cessation of the inner activity of the soul, man experiences the emergence from his bodily sheaths.

In saying this we have already indicated the first influence that is exerted upon man as a preliminary to sleep; it is the influence that drives him out of his physical and etheric bodies. Anyone who practises self-observation will notice how a power seems to be overcoming him, for in normal life he does not order himself to go to sleep, to stop speaking, tasting, hearing, and so forth. A power is now asserting itself in him. This is the first of the influences to be exerted from the world into which man passes at night; it is the influence which drives him out of his physical and etheric bodies. But if this were the only influence to be exerted, the outcome would be absolutely calm, unbroken sleep. This is of course known in normal life; it is the state induced by the first influence connected with sleep. But there are other kinds of sleep.

We all know the state of dream, when chaotic or clear pictures obtrude themselves into sleep. Were only the first influence at work, the influence that draws man into a spiritual world, sleep unbroken by any dream would be the result; but another influence becomes evident when sleep is broken by dreams. Two influences can be distinguished: the one extinguishes consciousness inasmuch as it drives us out of our bodily sheaths, and the second conjures the world of dreams before the soul, thrusts this dream-world into our sleep.

But some people have yet a third kind of sleep. Although this third kind occurs only rarely, everyone knows that it does occur; it is when a man begins to talk or act in sleep without the consciousness that is his in waking life. Usually he knows nothing the next day of the impulses which have driven him to such actions during sleep. The condition can be enhanced to the point of what is usually called sleepwalking. While he is walking in his sleep a man may also have certain dreams; but it is not so in the majority of cases; in a certain sense he acts like an automaton, impelled by obscure urges of which he need not have even the consciousness of dream. Through this third influence he enters into contact with the outer world as he does by day, only now he is unconscious. Such actions in sleep are therefore subject to a third influence.

Three influences, then, to which the human being is exposed during sleep can be clearly distinguished; they are always present, and spiritual investigation confirms this. In the great majority of people, however, the first influence predominates; most of their sleep is unbroken by dreams. The second influence, giving rise to the state of dream, takes effects at intervals in nearly everybody. But in by far the greater number of people these two states are so predominant that speaking and acting during sleep rarely occur. The influence that takes effect in a sleep-walker is present in every human being but in a sleep-walker this third influence is so strong in comparison with the other two that it gets the upper hand. Nevertheless every human being is liable to be exposed to all three influences.

These three influences have always been recognised in Spiritual Science as distinct from each other. In man's soul-life there are three domains, the first being mainly subject to the first influence, the second more to the second influence and the third more to the third influence. The human soul has a threefold nature, and it can be subject to influences of three distinct kinds. The part of the soul that is subject to the first influence which drives the soul out of the bodily sheaths, is known in Spiritual Science as the Sentient Soul; the part affected by the second influence which drives the pictures of dream into man's life of soul during sleep is known as the Intellectual or Mind-Soul; the third part, which in the case of most people does not assert its unique character during sleep because the other two influences predominate, is called the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul. Thus three influences are to be distinguished during the state of sleep; the three members of the soul which are subject to these three influences, are: Sentient Soul, Intellectual or Mind-Soul, Consciousness-or Spiritual Soul. When man is transported by one force into dreamless sleep, an influence from the world into which he passes is being exerted on his Sentient Soul; when his sleep is pervaded by dream-pictures, an influence is being exerted on his Intellectual or Mind-Soul; when he begins to speak or to act in his sleep, an influence is being exerted upon his Consciousness-Soul.

So far, however, we have considered only one aspect of man's life of soul during sleep. We must now describe the aspect of soul-life that is the opposite of the sleeping state. Let us think of a man who is returning from sleep to waking life in the physical world. What is happening to him when he wakes? At night a certain force is able to drive him out of his physical and etheric bodies because he succumbs to it. In later stages of sleep he succumbs to the other two influences—those that are exerted on the Mind-Soul and on the Consciousness-Soul. But when these influences have been exerted, the man is different; he undergoes a change during sleep. The evidence of the change is that at night he was fatigued but in the morning has become able to cope with his life in the physical world. What has happened to him during sleep has made this possible.

The same influence which makes itself felt in certain abnormal conditions in the dream-world is present through the whole of sleep, even when there are no dreams. The third influence, which takes effect in a sleep-walker but in other cases does not operate, is the one that is exerted on the Consciousness-Soul. When the influences on the Mind-Soul and Consciousness-Soul have taken effect, man is strengthened and energised; he has drawn from the spiritual world the forces he needs for his life during the next day in order to recognise and enjoy the physical world. It is primarily the influences exerted on the Mind-Soul and on the Consciousness-Soul which strengthen man during sleep. But when he is thus strengthened, the same influence which drove him out of his physical and etheric bodies brings him back again into them when he wakes in the morning. The same influence is being exerted then in the opposite direction, and it is exerted on the Sentient Soul. Everything connected with the Sentient Soul has become exhausted by the previous evening. But in the morning, when we are fresh again, we take renewed interest in the impressions of the physical world—colours, lights, objects—which will become causes of interest, pain or pleasure, inspire sympathy or antipathy in us. We are given up to pleasure, to pain, in short to the external world. What is it that is kindled in us when we are thus given up to the external world? What is it that feels pleasure and pain? What is it that has interests? It is the Sentient Soul. In the evening we feel the need of sleep, we feel that our lively participation in the outer world is exhausted; but in the morning it is refreshed again. We feel that the same manifestations of the Sentient Soul which flag at night, revive and reassert themselves in the morning. From this we can recognise that the same force which bore us out of ourselves brings the waking soul back again into the body. What at night seemed to be dying away is as if reborn. The same force is operating, but now in the one, now in the opposite, direction.

If we wished to make a diagrammatic sketch of what happens, it might be done in the following way, but I emphasise that it is meant only as an indication.

I have indicated by a dot the moment of going to sleep, when man is drawn into the subconscious; and by drawing loops I have indicated his surrender to the state of sleep and his awakening from that state. The lower loop indicates the course of life during the waking state and the upper loop the sleeping state. We can therefore say of the moment of going to sleep that a force, working on the Sentient Soul from the spiritual world, is drawing us into that world. This is indicated by the first section of the upper loop in the diagram. The second section of the same loop indicates the influence that is exerted upon the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, causing dreams. And the third section of the loop indicates the influence or force that is exerted on the Consciousness-Soul. In the morning, the same force that has drawn us into the sleeping state drives us out of it and into the life of day. This is the force that works upon the Sentient Soul. The same applies to the influences exerted on the Mind-Soul and on the Consciousness-Soul. During the night man moves around a kind of circle. On going to sleep he moves towards the region where the influence upon the Consciousness-Soul is strongest. From that point he moves again towards the force that works upon his Sentient Soul and brings him back into the waking state.

Thus there are three forces which work upon man during sleep. Since early times these three forces have been given definite names in spiritual science. These names are familiar to you, but I beg you now not to think of anything in connection with them except that they stand for the three forces which during sleep work upon these three parts of the human soul. It we were to go back to ancient times we should find that these designations were used originally for these three forces; and if the designations are now used in other ways, they have simply been borrowed. The force which works upon the Sentient Soul and at the times of going to sleep and waking drives man out of his bodily sheaths and eventually into them again, was designated in one of the ancient languages by a name that would correspond with the word “Mars”. The force which works upon the Mind-Soul after the man has gone to sleep and again before waking, that is to say, in two different periods, was designated by the word “Jupiter.” It is the force which drives the world of dreams into the Mind-Soul. The force which works upon the Consciousness-Soul during sleep and under special circumstances would make a man into a sleep-walker, was designated by the name “Saturn.”

We may therefore say, using the terminology of ancient spiritual science: “Mars” sends man to sleep and wakes him; “Jupiter” sends dreams into his sleep; and dark “Saturn” stirs into unconscious action during sleep a man who cannot withstand its influence. For the time being we will think of the original, spiritual significance of these names as denoting forces that work upon the human being during sleep, when he is outside his physical and etheric bodies in the spiritual world, not of their significance in astronomy.

Now what happens when man wakes in the morning? He actually enters a quite different world which he normally regards today as the only one belonging to him. Impressions from outside are made upon his senses, but he is unable to look behind these impressions. When he wakes from sleep, the whole tapestry of the sense-world lies outspread before him. But not only does he perceive this external world with his senses; together with every perception he feels something. However slight the pleasurable sensation may be on perceiving, for example, some colour, nevertheless a certain inner process is always present. All external sense-perceptions work in such a way that they give rise to certain inner states; everyone will realise that the effect of violet is different from that of green. It is the Sentient Body that enables the sense-impressions to be received; it causes men to see yellow, for example; but what we experience and feel inwardly as a result of the impressions made upon us by the red, violet or yellow colour—that is caused by the Sentient Soul. A fine distinction must be made between these functions of the Sentient Body and the Sentient Soul.

In the morning the Sentient Soul begins to be given up to the impressions of the outer world brought to it by the Sentient Body. The part of us (Sentient Soul) which during sleep was exposed to the Mars influence is given over on waking to the external world of the senses. Spiritual science again gives a special name to the whole of the external sense-world in so far as it arouses certain feelings of pleasure or pain, joy or sadness in our souls. But under that name we must think only of the influence working upon our Sentient Soul from the tapestry of the outer world of the senses; this force does not let us remain cold and impassive but fills us with certain feelings. So that just as the first influence exerted on the Sentient Soul after we go to sleep is given the name of Mars, the influence which takes effect on waking is called the force of “Venus”.

Similarly, an influence from the physical world is exerted during waking life upon the Intellectual or Mind-Soul when it is within the bodily sheaths. This is a different influence; it is the influence which enables us to withdraw from external impressions and to work upon them inwardly, to reflect upon them. Notice the difference there is between the experiences of the Sentient Soul and those of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. The Sentient Soul has experiences only as long as a man is given up to the outer world; it receives the impressions of the outer world. But if for a time in waking life he pays no attention to the actual impressions of the outer world, if he ponders over them and lets the feelings of pleasure, pain, and so forth, merely echo on within him, then he is given over to his Mind-Soul. Compared with the Sentient Soul it has rather more independence. There are influences which enable a man during waking life not merely to stand gazing at the tapestry of the sense-world but to turn his attention away from all that, to form thoughts whereby he combines external impressions in his mind and enable him to make himself independent of the influences of the outer world. These are the influences of “Mercury.”

The influence of Mercury works during the day upon man's Intellectual or Mind-Soul just as the influence of Jupiter works upon it during sleep at night. You will notice that there is a certain correspondence between the influences of “Mercury” and of “Jupiter”. [* See, Human Questions and Cosmic Answers, lecture 2.] In the case of a normal person today the Jupiter influences penetrate into his life of soul as dream-pictures. The corresponding influences during waking life, the Mercury influences, work in a man's thoughts, in his inner, reflective experiences. When the Jupiter influences are working in a man's dreams, he does not know whence his experiences come; during waking consciousness, however, when the Mercury influences are working, he knows the source of them. In both cases, inner processes are being pictured in the soul.—Such is the correspondence between the influences of Jupiter and those of Mercury.

In the waking life of day there are also influences which work upon the Consciousness-Soul. What are the differences between Sentient Soul, Intellectual or Mind-Soul, and Consciousness-Soul? The Sentient Soul operates when we are merely gazing at the things of the external world. If we withdraw our attention for a time from the impressions of this outer world and work over them inwardly, then we are given over to the Mind-Soul. But if we now take what has been worked over in thought, turn again to the outer world and relate ourselves to it by passing over to deeds, then we are given over to the Consciousness-Soul. For example: As long as I am simply looking at these flowers in front of me and my feelings are moved by the pure whiteness of the rose, I am given up to my Sentient Soul. If, however, I avert my gaze and no longer see the flowers but only think about them, then I am given over to my Intellectual or Mind-Soul. I am working in thought upon the impressions I have received. If now I say to myself that because the flowers have given me pleasure I will gladden someone else by presenting them to him and then pick them up in order to hand them over, I am performing a deed; I am passing out of the realm of the Mind-Soul into that of the Consciousness-Soul and relating myself again to the outer world. Here is a third force which operates in man and enables him not only to work over in thought the impressions of the outer world, but to relate himself to that world again.

You will notice that there is again a correspondence between the activity of the Consciousness Soul in the waking state and in sleep. You have heard that when this influence is being exerted in sleep a man becomes a sleep-walker; he speaks and acts in his sleep. In the waking state, however, he acts consciously. At night, in sleep-walking he is impelled by the force of dark “Saturn.” The influence which during waking life works upon man's Consciousness-Soul in such a way that independence can be achieved in conditions of ordinary life, is called in Spiritual Science the force of the “Moon”. Here again, please forget whatever mental pictures you have hitherto connected with this word. You will presently understand the reason for these designations.

Thus we have found that man's soul in waking life and in sleep has three different members, that it is subject to three different influences. During the night when man is in the spiritual world he is subject to the forces designated in Spiritual Science as those of “Mars”, “Jupiter” and “Saturn”; his threefold life of soul by day is given over to the forces designated as those of “Venus”, “Mercury” and “Moon”.

This is the course traversed by man in the 24 hours of day and night. And now we will think of a series of phenomena which belong to a quite different domain but which for certain reasons can be studied in connection with what has been said. These reasons will be made clear as the lectures proceed. Please remember that many things said at the beginning of this Course will be explained only at a later stage.

You are all familiar with the ideas held by modern astronomical science of the course of the Earth around the Sun and also of the other planets belonging to the solar system. What is said in treatises of the usual kind represents, in the view of Spiritual Science, only the most elementary beginning. What takes place in the physical world is for Spiritual Science a symbol, an external picture, of inner, spiritual processes and what we are accustomed to learn about our planetary system from elementary astronomy can be compared, as regards what really underlies it, with what is learnt by a child about the movements of a clock. We explain to him what the twelve conventional figures stand for, and what the rotation of the two hands—one slow and the other quicker—means. The child will eventually be able to tell us from the position of the hands when, let us say, the time is half-past nine. But that would not mean very much. The child must learn a great deal more, for example, to relate the movement of the hands to what is happening in the world. When the hour-hand stands at six and the minute-hand at twelve, he must know what time of the day this signifies—namely that at a certain season of the year, if it is early morning, the Sun will be rising then. He must learn to relate what is presented on the face of the clock to conditions in the world and to regard what the clock expresses as a picture of them.

We are taught as children that the Sun is at the centre of the solar system and that the planets revolve around it-first the planet now called Mercury, then the planet now called Venus, [*In former times the names of these two planets came to be reversed. See later paragraphs of this lecture.] then the Earth plus Moon, then Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Astronomical maps of the heavens show us where Saturn or Jupiter or Mars are to be found in certain months of the year. When we have learnt to know the relative positions of the planets at definite times of the year, we have learnt as much about the heavens as a child has learnt about the clock when from the position of the hands he is able to say that the time is half-past nine.

But then we can go on to learn something else. Just as a child learns to recognise what conditions are indicated by the position of the hands of a clock, we can learn to recognise macrocosmic forces penetrating invisibly into space behind a great cosmic timepiece. We realise then that our solar system, with the planets in their different positions and mutual relationships, gives expression to certain macrocosmic powers. From this timepiece of our planetary system we can pass on to contemplate the great spiritual relationships. The position of every planet will become the expression of something lying behind and we shall be able to say that there are reasons for the various relationships in which, for example, Venus stands to Jupiter, and so on. There are actual reasons for saying that these conditions are brought about by divine-spiritual Powers, just as there are reasons for saying that the cosmic timepiece is constructed according to a definite plan. The idea of the planetary movements in the solar system then becomes full of significance. Otherwise the cosmic timepiece would seem to have been constructed haphazardly. The planetary system becomes for us a kind of cosmic clock, a means of expression for what lies behind the heavenly bodies and their movements in the solar system.

Let us first of all consider this cosmic clock itself. The idea of the planetary system having formed itself is easily refuted. You will all have been taught in school about the formation of the planetary system. You will have been told, in effect, that a gigantic nebula in the universe once began to rotate and then the Sun, with the planets around it, were formed by a process of separation from the nebula itself. This will probably have been demonstrated by an experiment. It is easy to rotate a drop of oil on the surface of water in a bowl. Tiny drops separate off and rotate around a larger drop which remains at the centre. The teacher will point out that this represents, on a minute scale, the formation of a planetary system and nobody will question it. But a sharp-witted pupil might say to the teacher: “You have forgotten something that in other circumstances it might be convenient to forget, but not in this case. You have forgotten your own part in the experiment because it is you who have rotated the drop of oil!”—For the sake of logic the most important factor of all should not be forgotten. It should at least be assumed that a colossal power in cosmic space brought the whole solar system into existence through rotation. The experiment in itself points to the fact that there must be something behind what is rotating; it points to the existence of forces which cause the movement that is perceptible to the eye. In the same way there are forces and Powers behind the great cosmic edifice of our solar system.

And now we will think of the outer aspect of this solar system. (See diagram). The Earth revolves around the Sun

at the centre. I will leave out details. At a certain time of the year the Earth stands at one point and at another time somewhere else. The Moon revolves around the Earth and the planets usually called Mercury and Venus are nearer to the Sun and revolve around it. I emphasise here that in the course of time a change has taken place in the names of these two planets. [* This change of names must be kept closely in mind when references are made to the two planets.] The planet that is called Mercury today was formerly called Venus, and the planet called Venus today was formerly called Mercury. Venus, (formerly Mercury) is nearer the Sun than the planet now called Mercury (formerly Venus). Then, farther away than the Earth, the diagram indicates Mars, Jupiter and Saturn revolving around the Sun. The relative positions are not strictly correct but that does not matter here. We will leave the other planets out of consideration today.

Now let us assume that as it revolves the Earth comes to a position between Mars and the Sun. This will very seldom be the case but we will assume for the moment that it is so. Then, in the space between Earth and Sun there will be the planets Mercury and Venus, and on the other side of the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Leaving aside the Earth, the sequence will be: Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, on one side; Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, on the other. A looped line (see diagram) drawn around the heavenly bodies is a lemniscate,

with the Sun at the centre of the loops-it is the same line as the one indicating the cycle of man's waking and sleeping life.

Thus it is possible—though not generally the case—for the planets to be arranged in the solar system in an order similar to that followed by man in completing the cycle of waking and sleeping. Taking the moment of going to sleep and that of waking as the centre, the same spatial order can be indicated for the planetary system as for the daily life of man.

The perspective here revealed is one of mighty forces underlying the order of our planetary system, regulating the great cosmic timepiece as our own lives are regulated through the course of 24 hours. The thought will then not seem absurd that mighty forces are operating in the Macrocosm—forces analogous to those which guide our lives during the day and night. As the outcome of such thoughts the same names came into use in ancient science for the forces of the universe as for the forces which work upon our own lives. The force which in the Macrocosm drives Mars around the Sun is similar to the one that sends us to sleep. The force in the Macrocosm which drives Venus around the Sun is similar to the one which regulates the Sentient Soul by day. Far-off Saturn, with its slight influence, seeing to resemble those weak forces that work, in special cases only, upon the Consciousness-Soul in people who are sleep-walkers. And the rotation of the Moon around the Earth is due to a force similar to that which regulates our conscious deeds in waking life. The spatial distances signify something that comes to expression in a certain respect in our own time-regulated life.—We shall go into these things more deeply and it is only a matter today of calling attention to them.—If we consider, quite superficially, that Saturn is the most remote planet and has accordingly the weakest effect upon our Earth, this can be compared with the fact that the forces of dark Saturn have only a slight effect upon the sleeping human being. And similarly, the force which drives Jupiter around the Sun can be likened to that which penetrates comparatively seldom into our lives, namely, the dream-world.

Thus we find a remarkable correlation between human life, the Microcosm, and the forces working in the great cosmic clock, driving the several planets round the Sun in the Macrocosm.

In very truth the world is infinitely more complicated than is supposed. Our human nature is comprehensible only if we take account of its kinship with the Macrocosm. Knowing this, spiritual researchers in all epochs have chosen corresponding designations for the Great World and the Little World—the latter being the seemingly insignificant bodily man enclosed within the skin.

I have only been able today to give a faint indication of correspondences between the Microcosm (man) and the Macrocosm (the solar system). But it will now be evident to you that such correspondences do indeed exist. As though from afar I have alluded to Beings whose forces work through space and regulate the movements of our planetary system just as the movements of the hands of a clock in the physical world are regulated. We have only so much as glanced at the frontier of the region where we may hope that spiritual worlds will reveal themselves to us. In the coming lectures we shall learn to recognise not only the planets as the hands of the great cosmic clock but also the actual Beings who have brought the whole solar system into movement, who guide the planets round the Sun and prove to be akin to what goes on in the human being himself. And so we shall come to understand how man is born as a Little World, a Microcosm, out of the Great World, the Macrocosm.

In a dream the soul comprehends itself in a fleeting form, which is really a mask. In dreamless sleep it apparently loses itself entirely. In spiritual self-contemplation [Anschaung], which is achieved through circumspect reconstruction [besonnen] of the dream-state, the soul comes into its own as a creative being, of which the physical body is the reflected image.

A dream, however, arises out of sleep. Whoever undertakes to raise the dream up into the clear light of consciousness must also feel the incentive to go still further. He does this when he tries consciously to experience dreamless sleep.

That seems to be impossible, precisely because in sleep consciousness ceases. The desire consciously to experience unconsciousness seems like folly.

The folly, however, takes on another light when one confronts the memories one can follow from a given point of time backward to one's last awakening. To do so one must proceed in such a way as to connect the memory pictures vividly with that which they recall. Then, if one tries—working backward—to proceed to the next conscious memory picture before that, this will be found before the last falling asleep. If one has really made the connection vivid with what is recalled, there arises an inner difficulty. One cannot join up the memory picture after awaking with the one before falling asleep.

Ordinary consciousness gets one over this difficulty by not vividly connecting what is recalled, but simply placing the waking image next to the image one has on falling asleep. The person who has raised his consciousness to a high degree of sensitiveness, however, through conscious imitation of the dream, finds that the two images fall apart from one another [fallen ausenander]. For him an abyss lies between them, but because he notices this abyss it already begins to fill itself up. For his self-awareness the dreamless sleep ceases to be an empty passage of time. Out of it there emerges like a memory a spiritual content of the “empty time,” like a memory, it is true, of something that ordinary consciousness had not contained before. Even so this memory points to an experience of one's own soul like an ordinary memory. The soul, however, really looks thereby into that which in ordinary experience—in dreamless sleep—occurred unconsciously.

On this path the soul looks still more deeply within than it does in the condition that arises as a result of the conscious dream imitation. In this condition the soul beholds its own body-forming being. Through the conscious penetration of dreamless sleep, the soul perceives itself in its own being, completely detached from the body.

Now, however, the soul beholds not only the forming of the body but also, beyond that, the formation of its own willing [Wollen].

The inner nature of the will remains as unknown to ordinary consciousness as the events of dreamless sleep. One experiences a thought that contains the intention of the will. This thought sinks into the obscure world of the feelings and disappears into the darkness of the bodily processes. It emerges again as the external bodily process of an arm movement that is comprehended anew through a thought. Between the two thought contents there lies something like the sleep between the thoughts before falling asleep and those after waking.

Now as the inner working of the soul upon the body becomes comprehensible to the first level of vision, so does the will over and above the body to the second. The soul can follow the path to behold its inner working upon the body's organic development; and it can take the other path by which it learns to comprehend how the soul works on the body in such a way as to extract the will from it.

And just as dreaming lies between sleeping and waking, so feeling lies between willing and thinking. On the same path that leads to the illumination of the will process lies the illumination of the world of feeling also.

In the first kind of vision the soul's inner working on the organism is revealed. In the second the soul penetrates to the will. But an inner activity must precede the outward manifestation of the will. Before the arm can be raised, the creative current must flow into it so that in its metabolic processes, which run on quietly, processes are inserted that are clearly the result of feeling. Feeling is a willing that remains enclosed within the human being, a willing that is arrested at its inception.

The processes inserted into the body for feeling and willing reveal themselves for the second stage of vision as processes that are in opposition to those that support life. They are destructive processes. In the constructive processes life prospers; but the soul withers in them. The life of the body, which itself is built up by the soul, must be broken down so that the nature and activity of the soul can unfold out of the body.

To spiritual vision the working of the soul on the body is like a memory of something that the soul had first to accomplish before it could exist in its own activity.

Thereby, however, the soul experiences itself as a purely spiritual being that has let the forming of the body take precedence to the soul's own activity in order to have the body become the basis for the soul's inherent, purely spiritual development. The soul first devotes its creative effort to the body so that, after this has been done sufficiently, the soul can manifest itself in free spirituality.

And this development of the soul begins already with thinking that results from the perception of the senses. When one perceives an object, the soul commences its activity. It shapes the corresponding part of the body in such a way that it becomes adapted for developing, in the form of thought, a mirror image of the object. In experiencing this mirror image, the soul beholds the result of its own activity.

One will never find the spiritual nature of the soul by philosophizing about the thoughts that arise before ordinary consciousness. The spiritual activity of the soul does not lie in these thoughts but behind them. It is true that the thoughts which the soul experiences are the result of the brain's activity. The brain's activity, however, is first the result of the spiritual activity of the soul. In misunderstanding this fact lies what is unsound in the materialistic world view. This view is right when it demonstrates from every possible scientific presupposition that thoughts are the result of the brain's activity. Any other view that seeks to contradict this will always run up against the claims of materialism. The activity of the brain, however, is the product of the activity of the spirit. To realize this it is not sufficient to look back into the inner being of man. In doing so one encounters thoughts. And these contain only a pictorial reality. This pictorial reality is the product of the physical body. In observing retrospectively one must bring to life reinforced and strengthened soul capacities. One must wrest the dreaming soul from the twilight of the dream; then it will not evaporate into fantasies, but rather lay its mask aside so as to appear as a being active spiritually in the body. One must wrest the sleeping soul from the darkness of sleep; then the soul does not lose sight of itself but faces itself as an actual spiritual entity, which in the act of willing, by means of the bodily organism, creates above and beyond this body.