Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts
GA 26
20. Sleeping and Waking in the Light of Recent Studies
[ 1 ] In the study of Anthroposophy, sleeping and waking have been dealt with often and from varied points of view. But our understanding of these facts of life must be deepened and refreshed again and again, when other points in the constitution of the world have been considered by us. Our previous explanation, showing how the Earth is the seed of a newly arising macrocosm, will give us fresh possibilities for a deeper understanding of sleeping and waking.
[ 2 ] In the waking state, man lives in the Thought-shadows cast by a dead and dying world, and in the Will-impulses into the inner nature of which, with his ordinary consciousness, he can no more penetrate than into the processes of deep, dreamless sleep.
[ 3 ] Where sub-conscious impulses of Will flow into the shadows of Thought, the free dominion of self-consciousness arises. In this self-consciousness, the human ‘Ego’ lives.
[ 4 ] While man experiences his environment in this condition, his inner feeling is permeated by extra-earthly, cosmic impulses, entering from a remote and cosmic past into the present time. He does not become conscious of this fact. For a being can only become conscious of things in which it partakes with its own, dying forces, and not with the growing forces that are the creative kindlers of its life. Thus man experiences himself in consciousness while that which lies at the basis of his inner being is lost to the eye of his mind. And by this very fact he is able, during the waking state, to feel himself so entirely within his shadowed Thoughts. There is no glimmer of life to hinder the full absorption of his inner being in the dead and dying. But from this his ‘life in the dead and dying,’ the essential being of the earthly sphere conceals the fact that it is in reality the seed of a new Universe. Man in the waking state does not perceive the Earth in its true nature. The cosmic life that is germinating in the Earth escapes him.
[ 5 ] Thus man lives in what the Earth gives to him as the basis of his self-consciousness. In the age of unfolding of the self-conscious Ego, the true form both of his inner impulses and of his outer environment is lost to his mind's eye. But as he thus hovers over the true being of the world, he experiences in consciousness the being of the ‘I’: he experiences himself as a self-conscious being. Above him is the extra-earthly Cosmos; beneath him, in the earthly realm, a world whose true essence is hidden from him. But in between, the free ‘I’ manifests itself, its essence radiating out in the full light of knowledge and of free volition.
[ 6 ] It is different in the sleeping state. In sleep, man lives in his astral body and Ego in the germinating life of the Earth. The strongest ‘urge into new life’ is there in the environment of man in dreamless sleep. His dreams too are permeated by this life, though not so intensely as to prevent him from experiencing them in a kind of semi-consciousness. Gazing half consciously upon his dreams, man witnesses the creative forces whereby he himself is woven out of the Cosmos. Even while the dream lights up, the Astral—kindling man to life—becomes visible as it flows into the etheric body. In this lighting-up of dreams, Thought is still alive. It is only after man wakens that Thought is gathered up into the forces whereby it dies and becomes a shadow.
[ 7 ] This connection between our dream-conceptions and our waking thoughts is of the greatest significance. Man thinks within the sphere of those very forces whereby he grows and lives. Yet he cannot become a thinker until these forces die.
[ 8 ] At this point there dawns in us a true understanding of why it is that man takes hold of the reality of things in Thought. For in his thoughts he possesses the dead picture of that which, working from the fully living reality of the world, builds and creates him.
[ 9 ] It is the dead picture. But this dead picture proceeds from the work of the greatest painter—from the very Cosmos. It is true that the life remains out of it. If it did not, the Ego of man could not unfold. Nevertheless, the full content of the Universe, in all its greatness, is contained within this picture.
[ 10 ] So far as was possible at that time and in that context, I indicated this inner relation of Thought and World-reality in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom.’ It is in the passage of that book where I say that there is indeed a bridge leading from the thinking Ego's depths to the depths of Nature's reality.
[ 11 ] Sleep extinguishes the ordinary consciousness because it carries us into the germinating life of Earth—the Earth as it springs forth into the new, living Macrocosm. When the extinction is overcome by Imaginative consciousness, there stands before the human soul—not a sharply outlined Earth in mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of Nature—but a vital process, kindled to life within this Earth and flaming forth into the Macrocosm.
[ 12 ] It is thus: In the waking state man must lift himself with his own Ego-being out of the being of the world, in order to attain to free self-consciousness. And in sleep he unites with the being of the world once more.
[ 13 ] Such is the rhythm in the present moment of cosmic time the rhythm of man's earthly existence outside the inner being of the world while he experiences his own being in consciousness, and of his existence within the inner being of the world where the consciousness of his own being is extinguished.
[ 14 ] In the condition between death and a new birth, the human Ego lives within the Beings of the Spirit-world. Then, everything that was withdrawn from man's consciousness during his waking life on Earth comes into it again. The macrocosmic forces emerge from their full state of life in a far distant past to their dead and dying nature in the present. And there emerge the earthly forces—the seed of the new living macrocosm. Then the human being looks into his sleeping states as clearly as in his earthly life he looks forth upon the Earth that glistens in the sunlight.
[ 15 ] The Macrocosm, as it is today, has indeed become a thing of death. Yet it is through this alone that between death and a new birth man can undergo a life which signifies, compared to the waking life on Earth, a loftier awakening. For it is indeed an awakening, whereby he becomes able fully to control the forces that light up so dimly and fleetingly in dreams. These forces fill the Cosmos, they are all-pervading. From them the human being derives the impulses through which, as he descends on to the Earth, he forms this body—the greatest work-of-art of the Macrocosm.
[ 16 ] That which lights up so dimly in the dream—deserted, as it were, by the clear light of the sun—lives in the Spirit-world where the spiritual Sun flows through and through it, and where it waits until the Beings of the Hierarchies or man himself shall summon it to the creation of a new existence.
Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society
[ 17 ] 156. In Waking life, to experience himself in full and free Self-consciousness, man must forego the conscious experience of Reality in its true form, both in his existence and in that of Nature. Out of the ocean of Reality he lifts himself, that in his shadowed Thoughts he may make his own ‘I’ his very own in consciousness.
[ 18 ] 157. In Sleep, man lives with the life of his environment of Earth, but this very life extinguishes his consciousness of Self.
[ 19 ] 158. In Dreaming, there flickers up into half-consciousness the potent World-existence out of which the being of man is woven and from which, in his descent from Spirit-world, he builds his body. In earthly life this World-existence with its potent forces is put to death in man; it dies into the shadows of his Thought. For only so can it become the basis of self-conscious Manhood.
Schlaf und Wachen im Lichte der vorangegangenen Betrachtungen
[ 1 ] Schlaf und Wachen wurde innerhalb der anthroposophischen Auseinandersetzungen oftmals von den verschiedensten Gesichtspunkten aus betrachtet. Aber das Verständnis solcher Lebenstatsachen muß immer von neuem vertieft werden, wenn anderes aus dem Weltbestande betrachtet worden ist. Die Auseinandersetzungen darüber, daß die Erde ein Keim für den neu erstehenden Makrokosmos ist, ergeben für die Anschauungen von Schlafen und Wachen solche Möglichkeiten eines vertieften Verständnisses.
[ 2 ] Im Wachzustande lebt der Mensch in den Gedankenschatten, die von einer erstorbenen Welt geworfen werden, und in den Willensimpulsen, in deren inneres Wesen er mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein ebensowenig hineinsieht wie in die Vorgänge des tiefen, traumlosen Schlafes.
[ 3 ] In dem Einströmen dieser unterbewußten Willensimpulse in die Gedankenschatten ersteht das freiwaltende Selbstbewußtsein. In diesem Selbstbewußtsein lebt das «Ich».
[ 4 ] Indem der Mensch in diesem Zustande die Umwelt erlebt, ist sein inneres Erfühlen durchdrungen von außerirdischen, von kosmischen Impulsen, die aus urferner kosmischer Vergangenheit in die Gegenwart hereinragen. Er wird sich dessen nicht bewußt. Ein Wesen kann sich nur dessen bewußt werden, an dem es mit eigenen ersterbenden Kräften teilnimmt, nicht mit wachsenden Kräften, die das Wesen selbst beleben. So erlebt sich der Mensch, indem er das seinem innern Wesen zugrunde Liegende aus dem Geistesauge verliert. Gerade dadurch aber ist er in der Lage, während des Wachzustandes ganz in den Gedankenschatten sich zu fühlen. Kein Aufleben hindert das innere Dasein an der Teilnahme am Erstorbenen. Aber diesem «Leben in dem Erstorbenen» verschließt sich das Wesenhafte des Irdischen, daß es Keim eines neuen Weltalls ist. Der Mensch nimmt im Wachzustande die Erde nicht wahr, wie sie ist; es entgeht ihm ihr beginnendes kosmisches Leben.
[ 5 ] So lebt der Mensch in dem, was ihm als Grundlage seines Selbstbewußtseins die Erde gibt. Er verliert im Zeitalter der selbstbewußten Ich-Entfaltung die wahre Gestalt seiner inneren Impulse wie auch diejenige seiner Umgebung aus dem Geistesauge. Aber gerade in diesem Schweben über dem Sein der Welt erlebt der Mensch das Sein des Ich, erlebt er sich als selbstbewußtes Wesen. Über ihm der außerirdische Kosmos, unter ihm im Irdischen eine Welt, deren Wesenhaftigkeit verborgen bleibt; dazwischen die Offenbarung des freien «Ich», dessen Wesenhaftigkeit in vollem Glänze der Erkenntnis und des freien Wollens erstrahlt.
[ 6 ] Anders im Schlafzustande. Da lebt der Mensch in seinem Astralleibe und in seinem Ich im Keimesleben der Erde. Intensivstes «Ins-Leben-Wollen» wirkt in des Menschen Umgebung, wenn er im traumlosen Schlafe ist. Und die Träume sind durchsetzt von diesem Leben, aber nicht so stark, daß der Mensch sie nicht in einer Art Halbbewußtheit erleben könnte. In diesem halbbewußten Hinschauen auf die Träume sieht man die Kräfte, durch die die menschliche Wesenheit aus dem Kosmos heraus gewoben wird. Im Aufleuchten des Traumes wird sichtbar, wie das Astralische menschenbelebend in den Ätherleib einströmt. Indiesem Aufleuchten lebt der Gedanke noch. Nach dem Aufwachen wird er erst umfangen von denjenigen Kräften, durch die er erstirbt, zum Schatten wird.
[ 7 ] Bedeutsam ist dieser Zusammenhang zwischen Traumvorstellung und Wachgedanken. Der Mensch denkt in denselben Kräften, durch die er wächst und lebt. Nur müssen diese Kräfte, damit der Mensch zum Denker wird, ersterben.
[ 8 ] Da ist der Punkt, wo ein rechtes Verständnis darüber aufgehen kann, warum der Mensch denkend die Wirklichkeit erfaßt. Er hat in seinen Gedanken das tote Bild dessen, was ihn aus der lebensvollen Wirklichkeit heraus selber bildet.
[ 9 ] Das tote Bild: dieses tote Bild ist aber das Ergebnis der Tätigkeit des größten Malers, des Kosmos selbst. Aus dem Bilde bleibt zwar das Leben weg. Bliebe es nicht weg, so könnte das Ich sich nicht entfalten. Aber es ist in ihm aller Inhalt des Weltenalls in seiner Herrlichkeit.
[ 10 ] So weit als es damals im Zusammenhange der Darstellung möglich war, wies ich schon in meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit» auf dieses innere Verhältnis zwischen Denken und Weltwirklichkeit hin. Es ist an der Stelle geschehen, wo ich davon spreche, daß von den Tiefen des denkenden Ich zu den Tiefen der Natur-Wirklichkeit eine Brücke führt.
[ 11 ] Für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein wirkt der Schlaf deshalb auslöschend, weil er in das in den werdenden Makrokosmos hineinsprießende, keimende Leben der Erde führt. Wird dieses Auslöschen behoben durch das imaginative Bewußtsein, so steht vor der menschlichen Seele nicht eine Erde mit scharfen Konturen im Mineral-, Pflanzen- und Tierreiche. Es steht vielmehr da ein lebendiger Vorgang, der sich innerhalb der Erde entzündet und der in den Makrokosmos hinaus flammt.
[ 12 ] Es ist so, daß sich der Mensch mit dem eigenen Ich-Sein aus dem Sein der Welt im Wachzustande herausheben muß, um zum freien Selbstbewußtsein zu kommen. Im Schlafzustande vereinigt er sich dann wieder mit dem Welt-Sein.
[ 13 ] Das ist im gegenwärtigen kosmischen Weltenaugenblicke der Rhythmus des irdischen Menschen-Daseins außer dem «Innern» der Welt mit Erleben des Eigenwesens; und des Daseins in dem «Innern» der Welt mit Auslöschung des Bewußtseins vom Eigenwesen.
[ 14 ] In dem Zustande zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt lebt das Menschen-Ich innerhalb der Wesen der Geist-Welt. Da tritt in das Bewußtsein alles, was sich während des irdischen Wachlebens diesem entzieht. Es treten die makrokosmischen Kräfte auf von ihrem Voll-Leben in urferner Vergangenheit bis zu dem Erstorben-Sein in der Gegenwart. Es treten aber auch die irdischen Kräfte auf, die der Keim sind des werdenden Makrokosmos. Und in seine Schlafzustände sieht der Mensch hinein, wie er während des Erdenlebens auf die in der Sonne erglänzende Erde sieht.
[ 15 ] Nur dadurch, daß der Makrokosmos, so wie er gegenwärtig ist, ein Erstorbenes wurde, kann das Menschenwesen in dem Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt ein Leben durchmachen, das gegenüber dem wachen Erdenleben ein höheres Aufwachen bedeutet. Ein Aufwachen, durch das der Mensch fähig wird, die Kräfte voll zu meistern, die im Traume ein flüchtiges Aufflackern zeigen. Diese Kräfte erfüllen den ganzen Kosmos. Sie sind alles durchdringend. Ihnen entnimmt das Menschenwesen die Impulse, aus denen es sich beim Heruntersteigen auf die Erde seinen Leib, das große Kunstwerk des Makrokosmos formt.
[ 16 ] Was im Traume wie sonnenverlassen aufdämmert, das lebt in der Geistwelt geistes-sonnenhaft durchströmt, wartend, bis die Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien oder der Mensch es wesenbildend im Schaffen aufrufen.
Goetheanum, Januar 1925.
Leitsätze Nr. 156 bis 158
(8. Februar 1925)
[ 17 ] 156.Im Wachzustande muß der Mensch, um sich im vollen, freien Selbstbewußtsein zu erleben, auf das Erleben der wahren Gestalt der Wirklichkeit im eigenen und im Naturdasein verzichten. Er erhebt sich aus dem Meere dieser Wirklichkeit, um in den Gedankenschatten das eigene Ich zum wirklich eigenen Erleben zu machen.
[ 18 ] 157. Im Schlafzustande lebt der Mensch mit dem Leben der Erden-Umgebung; aber dieses Leben löscht sein Selbstbewußtsein aus.
[ 19 ] 158. Im Träumen flackert im Halbbewußtsein das kraftvolle Weltensein auf, aus dem des Menschen Wesen gewoben ist und aus dem er beim Niedersteigen aus der Geistwelt seinen Leib bildet. Im Erdenleben wird dieses kraftvolle Weltensein im Menschen bis in die Gedankenschatten zum Ersterben gebracht, da es nur so dem selbstbewußten Menschen die Grundlage sein kann.
Sleep and waking in the light of previous considerations
[ 1 ] Sleep and waking have often been considered from the most diverse points of view within the anthroposophical discussions. But the understanding of such facts of life must always be deepened anew when other aspects of the world's existence have been considered. The arguments about the earth being a seed for the newly emerging macrocosm provide such opportunities for a deeper understanding of the views of sleeping and waking.
[ 2 ] In the waking state, man lives in the shadows of thought cast by a dead world and in the impulses of will, into whose inner being he sees as little with ordinary consciousness as into the processes of deep, dreamless sleep.
[ 3 ] In the influx of these subconscious impulses of will into the shadows of thought, the free self-consciousness arises. The "I" lives in this self-consciousness.
[ 4 ] When man experiences the environment in this state, his inner feeling is permeated by extraterrestrial, cosmic impulses that project into the present from the distant cosmic past. He is not aware of this. A being can only become conscious of that in which it participates with its own dying forces, not with growing forces that animate the being itself. Thus man experiences himself by losing sight of that which underlies his inner being. Precisely because of this, however, he is able to feel himself completely in the shadow of thought during the waking state. No resurrection prevents the inner being from participating in the first-dead. But the essential nature of the earthly, that it is the germ of a new universe, is closed to this "life in the first-dead". In the waking state, man does not perceive the earth as it is; its incipient cosmic life escapes him.
[ 5 ] So man lives in what the earth gives him as the basis of his self-consciousness. In the age of self-conscious self-development, he loses sight of the true form of his inner impulses as well as that of his surroundings. But it is precisely in this hovering above the being of the world that man experiences the being of the ego, that he experiences himself as a self-conscious being. Above him the extraterrestrial cosmos, below him in the earthly a world whose beingness remains hidden; in between the revelation of the free "I", whose beingness shines in the full splendor of knowledge and free will.
[ 6 ] Otherwise in the state of sleep. There man lives in his astral body and in his ego in the seed life of the earth. The most intense "will-to-live" is at work in man's environment when he is in dreamless sleep. And the dreams are permeated by this life, but not so strongly that the human being could not experience them in a kind of semi-consciousness. In this semi-conscious contemplation of dreams one sees the forces by which the human being is woven out of the cosmos. In the illumination of the dream it becomes visible how the astral flows into the etheric body, animating the human being. In this lightening the thought is still alive. After awakening, it is only embraced by those forces through which it dies, becomes a shadow.
[ 7 ] This connection between dream imagination and waking thoughts is significant. Man thinks in the same forces by which he grows and lives. But in order for man to become a thinker, these forces must die out.
[ 8 ] There is the point where a proper understanding can emerge as to why man grasps reality by thinking. In his thoughts he has the dead image of that which forms him out of the living reality itself.
[ 9 ] The dead image: this dead image, however, is the result of the activity of the greatest painter, the cosmos itself. Life remains out of the picture. If it did not remain, the ego could not unfold. But in it is all the content of the universe in its glory.
[ 10 ] In my "Philosophy of Freedom" I already referred to this inner relationship between thinking and the reality of the world as far as it was possible in the context of the presentation at the time. It happened at the point where I speak of a bridge leading from the depths of the thinking ego to the depths of the reality of nature.
[ 11 ] For the ordinary consciousness, sleep has an extinguishing effect because it leads into the germinating life of the earth that is sprouting into the nascent macrocosm. If this obliteration is removed by the imaginative consciousness, the human soul is not confronted with an earth with sharp contours in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. Rather, there is a living process that ignites within the earth and flames out into the macrocosm.
[ 12 ] It is so that man must lift himself with his own I-being out of the being of the world in the waking state in order to come to free self-consciousness. In the sleeping state, he then reunites with the being of the world.
[ 13 ] In the present cosmic moment of the world, this is the rhythm of the earthly human existence outside the "interior" of the world with the experience of selfhood; and of the existence in the "interior" of the world with the extinction of the consciousness of selfhood.
[ 14 ] In the state between death and a new birth, the human ego lives within the beings of the spirit world. Everything that eludes consciousness during earthly waking life enters it. The macrocosmic forces emerge from their full life in the distant past to their first death in the present. But the earthly forces also emerge, which are the germ of the becoming macrocosm. And man looks into his sleeping states just as he looks at the earth shining in the sun during his life on earth.
[ 15 ] Only through the fact that the macrocosm, as it is at present, became a first dead, can the human being in the life between death and new birth undergo a life that signifies a higher awakening compared to the waking life on earth. An awakening through which the human being becomes capable of fully mastering the powers that show a fleeting flare-up in dreams. These forces fill the whole cosmos. They are all-pervading. The human being takes from them the impulses from which it forms its body, the great work of art of the macrocosm, as it descends to earth.
[ 16 ] What dawns in dreams as if abandoned by the sun, lives in the spirit world, spiritually and sun-like, waiting until the beings of the higher hierarchies or the human being call it up in creation, forming its being.
Goetheanum, January 1925.
Guiding Principles No. 156 to 158
(February 8, 1925)
[ 17 ] 156.In the waking state, man, in order to experience himself in full, free self-consciousness, must renounce the experience of the true form of reality in his own and in nature's existence. He rises out of the sea of this reality in order to make the own self a truly own experience in the shadows of thought.
[ 18 ] 157 In the state of sleep man lives with the life of the earthly environment; but this life extinguishes his self-consciousness.
[ 19 ] 158 In dreams the powerful worldliness flares up in the semi-consciousness, from which man's being is woven and from which he forms his body when he descends from the spirit world. In earthly life this powerful worldliness in man is brought to extinction right into the shadows of thought, since only in this way can it be the basis of the self-conscious man.