The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. Theosophy and Somnambulism

[ 1 ] The topic of today’s lecture is intended to be a sort of supplement to what I spoke about here four weeks ago, a supplement to the topic: “Theosophy and Spiritualism.” Today I would like to elaborate on some points that I could only touch upon briefly at that time. Specifically, I would like to speak about the phenomena of somnambulism, which lead into mysterious realms of human nature and into realms that are subject to the most diverse interpretations from various quarters.

[ 2 ] You are all probably familiar with the term: somnambulism. This word refers to certain mental states that occur in humans when a certain change has taken place in their ordinary states of consciousness, especially when ordinary everyday consciousness—the consciousness with which we perform our daily actions and navigate our way through the world—is not fully active, when it is suppressed, as it were, switched off, and yet the person acts psychologically, remaining within certain psychological states. By somnambulism, or sleepwalking, or waking in a sleep-like state—whatever these states may be called—we mean all soul activity that takes place without the full activity of ordinary waking consciousness, as it were from the depths of the soul, which are not illuminated by the ego-consciousness of the day. From this dark depth, the human soul then acts, and it brings forth actions from these depths that differ very significantly from what a person otherwise accomplishes in the course of their life. We also know that not every individual is readily capable of performing psychological actions with such an extinction and suspension of ordinary daytime consciousness. We know that only those individuals whom we call somnambulists—who can be induced into a kind of trance or dream state—are capable of exhibiting such psychic phenomena. These individuals themselves, while such phenomena arise from their nature, are in a kind of unconscious state, and these states have been interpreted in the most diverse ways throughout the ages.

[ 3 ] If we transport ourselves to ancient Greece, we can see what interpretations were given in ancient Greece—during the period that Greek history usually describes—to the actions of such somnambulistic individuals. There we encounter the priestesses, the so-called oracle priestesses, who, from the depths of their souls and by suspending their ordinary state of consciousness, sought to reveal all manner of things that went beyond ordinary human knowledge. Events of the future were to be drawn from such deep soul-knowledge; whether important state affairs or significant legislation were justified or not, these oracle priestesses were to decide; in short, what they proclaimed was attributed to divine inspiration. It was believed that when ordinary daily consciousness was extinguished, the soul stood under divine influence and conveyed the utterances of the deity itself. Divine veneration was accorded not only to those who could be placed in such a somnambulistic state, but above all to the revelations they were able to make.

[ 4 ] If we move from this period of ancient Greece to the end of the Middle Ages, we find a completely different view and interpretation of such somnambulistic figures. We see how such individuals were regarded as being in league with all manner of evil, diabolical, and demonic forces. We see that what they revealed was viewed as something reprehensible, as something that could only bring harmful, evil influences into human life. We see how these individuals were persecuted as witches, how they were persecuted because of their pacts with the devil. Some of the terrible cruelties of the late Middle Ages can be traced back to this interpretation of the somnambulistic state.

[ 5 ] More recently, however, when people began to study human states of mind in the early 19th century and the last third of the 18th century, there were some who believed that by studying these states one could gain deeper insights into the human soul; that because our ordinary brain consciousness is suspended and the senses are not receptive to the external world, human beings are capable of experiencing something about spiritual processes and beings that cannot be perceived with the ordinary senses. Others, on the other hand, regarded these states as nothing more than pathological and viewed them solely as something that must be excluded from everything that can be considered legitimate for the normal person. In particular, it was initially science, in its materialistic belief, that rejected any interpretation or explanation of these phenomena and saw them as symptoms of illness, related in some way to madness, and nothing other than entirely abnormal occurrences. These are some of the interpretations that have been offered regarding these phenomena.

[ 6 ] For us, the question must first be: How can such phenomena be brought about? — We know that some people enter such a state entirely of their own accord, where their ordinary waking consciousness is extinguished, where they behave toward the outside world completely as if asleep, where they perceive nothing of what is happening in their surroundings with their ordinary senses, where they do not hear a bell ringing nearby, where they do not see a light burning nearby, but where they are, in a strange way, receptive to very specific other influences—let us say, for example, to the words of a single specific person. They see and hear nothing around them; they are only receptive to what a single person says to them or to impressions of a certain kind. Indeed, they are often even more receptive to what a very specific person in the room where they are located is thinking—to the thoughts that person has. These are phenomena that occur quite spontaneously from time to time in certain people. We then say: such people are somnambulists; they think, act, feel, sense, and perceive in a kind of waking dream, in a kind of sleep state, which is, however, a very special sleep state, in no way comparable to the ordinary sleep to which a person gives themselves from time to time in order to recover from the fatigue of the day.

[ 7 ] We also know, however, that in such somnambulists not only can the capacity for perception and sensitivity to certain states arise, but that such somnambulists can also proceed to perform very specific actions—actions that a person could never carry out in their ordinary waking consciousness. We observe that they perform actions that appear entirely rational, yet which require more than the sense of orientation of ordinary waking consciousness. We see them climbing onto rooftops, leaping over chasms without the slightest inkling of the danger they are in—chasms they would otherwise never leap over; we see them performing actions that they would be entirely incapable of performing if they were in their ordinary waking state. These are, for the time being, merely hints regarding such states. Such states can occur without any particular reason, but they can also occur when one person exerts a very specific influence on another; they can occur when, through certain manipulations of one personality by another, ordinary daytime consciousness is extinguished, so that the personality in question is then placed into an artificial somnambulistic state. Then such artificial somnambulists exhibit the same phenomena as natural somnambulists. We call—though we should not regard these terms as particularly binding—the person who can induce a somnambulistic state in another a magnetizer, if the somnambulistic state is a light one, and the individual is called magnetized; it is said that they have been placed into a magnetic sleep state.

[ 8 ] The question for us now is this: What do such phenomena mean for spiritual life? What role do they play in the overall context of spiritual life? What can we learn from such phenomena, and what do they reveal to us about the essence and nature of the human soul and the human spirit? We must ask ourselves: Are such phenomena truly something so entirely abnormal that they bear no resemblance whatsoever to the other phenomena of ordinary life? If so, then perhaps the view that sees such phenomena simply as abnormalities might gain ground; then the view of our doctors might gain ground, and we would be unable to gain any special insight from them.

[ 9 ] But we can, so to speak, find a gradual transition from our ordinary life to these abnormal phenomena, and we find it most easily when we try to take a closer look at what each of us experiences constantly. These are the phenomena of ordinary dreaming, which every person experiences almost every night, for there are very few people who do not dream at all. These phenomena will show us, so to speak, in a very elementary way, how we are to understand these higher phenomena that I alluded to in my introduction.

[ 10 ] Dreams are often interpreted as something that merely flits fantastically through the dream consciousness, as a kind of empty fantasy, and people are therefore hardly inclined to truly study the strange phenomena of the dream world. But more refined minds have always been inclined to subject these fleeting images of the dream consciousness to closer study, and then one thing becomes clear above all else: It is true, for the vast majority of the dreams people have, that an immense disorder and arbitrariness reign in the dream; that in the dream we are dealing mostly only with fragments of waking consciousness—memories and images that have passed through our consciousness during the day—and perhaps with other things arising from our physical condition during sleep, or even from certain symptoms of illness and the like. This is the lowest form of dreams, these fleeting images subject to complete arbitrariness, which pass through the dream consciousness in disorder.

[ 11 ] But the attentive observer cannot fail to notice that even the most ordinary personal consciousness, when in a state of sleep, experiences not only these completely irregular and arbitrary dreams but also other dreams—dreams that exhibit a very specific regularity. I wish only to draw attention to a few examples that shed deep light on this regularity, which we already encounter within ordinary dream consciousness. You have a clock lying next to you while you sleep. You do not perceive the ticking of the clock while you sleep; you dream that a regiment of soldiers is marching past your window and hear the hoofbeats very clearly. You wake up and realize that you heard the ticking of the clock at that very moment; for it continues in your consciousness. But you did not hear it as a ticking, as your ordinary ear hears it, but it has been transformed, metamorphosed, symbolized into the clatter of the horses of a passing cavalry regiment. — Or a dream that actually took place: A peasant woman dreams that she is going into town with another woman on a Sunday morning. They go to church and see the clergyman ascend the pulpit, how he begins to preach. They listen for quite some time. Then something quite strange soon becomes apparent: the clergyman transforms, he grows wings, he turns into a rooster, he crows! — This is a real dream that actually happened. The peasant woman who dreamed it wakes up, and she hears the rooster crowing outside for real. — You see again what has happened: the ear heard the crowing rooster, but at first it did not hear the actual crowing; rather, the dream consciousness created a symbol out of what it heard; it symbolically transformed the crowing into this entire story that I have told you. The dream consciousness spins such stories out in a very dramatic way. You see, sensory impressions are not perceived directly by the dream consciousness, but are transformed into symbols and allegories, and what is particularly characteristic is that this dream consciousness truly dramatizes them. To mention another example—a dream that actually took place; I want to mention only real examples today that have actually been experienced: A student dreams that he is at the door of the lecture hall. He is, as they say in student life, bumped into by another person. An exchange of words ensues, which ultimately leads to a duel. The student experiences everything in the dream—all the preparations for the duel—a long story! The duel actually takes place at the agreed-upon location; everyone is there, the seconds are there, the first shot is fired, and the dreaming student awakens. He has knocked over a chair that had been standing next to his bed; he heard the chair fall, but not as it actually happened—instead, this event was instantly transformed into a highly dramatic scene. This is the sleeping dream consciousness, a symbolizing dream consciousness, which could be illuminated by countless examples in its peculiar symbolic activity.

[ 12 ] Now let us ask ourselves: How does this ordinary, everyday consciousness relate to what is going on in the human soul while it is dreaming? Our ordinary, everyday consciousness has no direct part in these dream activities; for when consciousness appears in a dream, a kind of other self appears, a kind of dream self; for the dreamer can, so to speak, see himself; he can face himself in the dream. Let us first note that a kind of split can occur between the dream-self and the real self, that the dreaming personality can indeed view itself quite objectively amidst the various perceptions it has in the dream. The situations in which this dream occurs are determined by the dream consciousness and are fully immersed in the symbolic-dramatic action that is unfolding.

[ 13 ] I would say that a higher level of this dream consciousness occurs when we symbolically experience states of our own physical inner life in a dream. Once again, I will mention some very specific examples. Someone dreams that they are in a dim, musty basement. There are cobwebs on the ceiling and eerie creatures crawling around. He wakes up with a headache. The headache has expressed itself symbolically in this dungeon. Or another example: Someone finds himself in a dream in an overheated room; he sees a red-hot stove, wakes up, and has a violent pounding in his heart. All these dreams I am telling you about are actually documented. Very specific organs within us, specific feelings about our inner selves, symbolize themselves during dreaming as specific events. Yes, one can say: For one and the same person—anyone who knows how to observe in this field knows this—a very specific organ takes on a stereotypical, always consistent manifestation. Anyone who suffers from palpitations will always have the same dream when they experience them, namely the dream they once had while doing so; let’s say they will see an overheated stove and the like. So it is not only events and facts of the external world, but also our own physical body that expresses itself symbolically in dreams.

[ 14 ] This is merely a step toward that remarkable phenomenon in which dreamers—though this occurs only in very specific individuals who, in a certain sense, belong to the category of somnambulists—encounter in their dreams, in some symbolic form, the illnesses afflicting them, or even illnesses that will not afflict them for another few days. They perceive their own conditions during dream consciousness. From there to the other phenomenon is again only a step: that a peculiar kind of human instinct points the full somnambulists, through dream consciousness, in some way toward remedies or certain measures they need for their illnesses. Thus, the dream can indeed act as a doctor; it can point to the illness and simultaneously to the remedy. This, however, occurs only in certain individuals who already possess somnambulistic tendencies to some degree.

[ 15 ] So you see that we are dealing with a sequence of states: from random dreams to dream perceptions that are entirely regular and occur according to very specific laws. Everything I have described so far consists more or less of dream perceptions; but from there, it is just one more step to dream actions.

[ 16 ] The most common type of dream activity is talking in one’s sleep. We know that it is a very common occurrence for sleepers to speak. Indeed, we know that they sometimes give accurate answers to specific questions, sometimes they also give answers from which we can see that they have not fully understood what we said to them, or that—and this is an observation one will make if one knows how to observe systematically—they in turn transform what was said to them more or less allegorically or symbolically, and that the answer arises from this. — From speaking in dreams, a further step then leads us to the dream actions I mentioned in the introduction. The dreamer, especially if he has a somnambulistic disposition, proceeds to actions; he gets out of bed, sits down—let us say, if he is a student—at his desk, and opens his textbooks. But it also happens that those with a stronger predisposition sit down and actually continue writing what they wrote the night before, or at least copy something down and the like. These things show us that a transition has taken place from mere perception to actual action, from mere feeling to volition. There are individuals who, even though they can be put into a very strong somnambulistic state, only manage to perceive, and there are those who make relatively little progress in terms of perceptions but are instead capable of performing daring actions of the kind I mentioned at the beginning.

[ 17 ] Well, such sleep-related actions performed by somnambulists are carried out with a sense of necessity that has an automatic character. We need only recall that we often perform such automatic-like actions in everyday life. A certain bright light catches our eye, and we automatically close our eyes. Our habitual life provides numerous other actions of this kind, which we do not give further thought to. Ultimately, everything we accomplish within our so-called vegetative physical life—our digestion, our breathing, our heartbeat—are actions we perform without being conscious of them. In a similar way, we perform rational actions during the somnambulistic state, and such actions follow specific external stimuli with an unconditional necessity.

[ 18 ] Now we must ask ourselves: How are we to interpret such phenomena? You may know that there are many who are of the view that in such actions we can catch a glimpse of the soul independent of the body, that in such actions we must see proof that the soul can perceive through the eyes and ears independently of its physical organs, and can act independently of conscious deliberation. Thus, many believe that in such actions we have a much more direct expression of the soul, which is, as it were, detached from the physical and acts and perceives directly from the spiritual. Let us ask ourselves how such phenomena are to be viewed in the light of our theosophical understanding.

[ 19 ] Theosophy shows us that human beings are not the individual, isolated beings they usually appear to be, but that, just as they appear to us, they are connected to the rest of the universe by countless threads. Above all, Theosophy shows us that human beings share various things in common with the rest of nature, that they also share various things in common with other worlds that our everyday senses do not perceive, and we will be able to best understand the actions we have spoken of if we view the essence of the human being in the light of Theosophy. Let me therefore briefly outline what theosophy teaches us about the nature of the human being.

[ 20 ] According to its observations, Theosophy can regard the physical body, with all its organs—including the nervous system, the brain, and all the sense organs—as merely one of the components of which the whole, complete human being is composed. This physical body contains substances and forces that human beings share with the rest of the physical world. What takes place within us in chemical and physical processes is nothing other than what also takes place outside our body in the physical world, in chemical processes. But we must ask ourselves: Why do these physical and chemical processes take place within our body in such a way that they are united into a physical organism? No physical science can provide us with an answer to this. Physical science can only teach us about the physical and chemical processes taking place within us, and it would certainly be inappropriate for the natural scientist to call a human being a walking corpse simply because, as an anatomist, he can discover only physical phenomena in the human body. There must be something that holds the chemical and physical processes together, grouping them, as it were, in the form in which they take place within the human body. In Theosophy, we call this next link in the human being the so-called etheric double. This etheric double is within all of us. Anyone who develops a certain clairvoyant ability can train themselves to see this etheric double; it is the thing that is easiest for the clairvoyant to see. If a person is standing before you and you are a clairvoyant, you are able to “suggest away” the ordinary physical body. Just as you can do in ordinary life with things that are in front of you but to which you do not direct your attention, so too, as a clairvoyant, you are able to refrain from directing your attention to the physical body. However, the entire physical appearance remains in the space that the physical body has occupied, in the form of a double body that is very similar in outward form to the external physical body, with a very beautiful, luminous color, roughly the color of a peach blossom. This etheric double body is what holds the physical processes together. At death, the etheric double, along with other higher members that we will come to know, leaves the physical body; and thus the physical body is handed over to the earth and carries out only physical processes. The fact that it does not do so during life is the fault of the etheric double.

[ 21 ] Within this etheric double body—indeed, even extending beyond it in various directions—lies the third member of the human being, namely the so-called astral body. This astral body is a kind of reflection of our instincts, our desires, our passions, and our emotions. In this astral body, the human being lives as if in a cloud, and it is very clearly perceptible to the clairvoyant, whose spiritual eye is open to such a phenomenon, as a luminous cloud within which the physical body and the etheric double are situated. This astral body is different in a person who always follows their animal instincts and sensual inclinations; there it displays entirely different colors and cloud-like formations than in a person who has always lived a spiritual life; it is different in a person who indulges in selfishness than in a person who devotes themselves to their fellow human beings in selfless love. In short, the life of the soul finds expression in this astral body. But it is also the mediator of actual sensory perceptions. You can never seek sensory perceptions in the sense organs themselves. What happens when the light from a flame strikes my eye? This light consists, after all, of the following in external space: the so-called ether waves move from the light source into my eye; they penetrate my eye; they cause certain chemical processes in the back of my eyeball; they transform the so-called visual purple; and then these chemical processes are transmitted to my brain. My brain perceives the flame; it receives the impression of light. If someone else could see the processes taking place in my brain, what would they perceive? They would perceive nothing other than physical processes; they would perceive something taking place in space and time; but they could not perceive my impression of light within the physical processes in my brain. This impression of light is something other than a physical impression underlying these processes. The impression of light, the image that I must first create in order to perceive the flame, is a process within my astral body. Anyone who possesses a visual organ capable of perceiving such an astral process can see very clearly how the physical phenomena within the brain are transformed in the astral body into the image of the flame that we perceive.

[ 22 ] It is within these bodies I have mentioned to you—the physical body, the etheric double, and the astral body—that our true Self resides; that which we call our Self, in which we become conscious of ourselves, in which we say: “We are it.” This “I” in turn has higher aspects, which I do not wish to discuss today. This “I” makes use of the other members of the human being that I have mentioned as its instruments.

[ 23 ] If we understand this composition of the human being, it will also give us a very specific perspective on the phenomena we observe in somnambulists. What happens when we are in our ordinary waking consciousness? A visual impression is produced, as I have already said, by etheric vibrations entering my eye, being transformed by the astral body into a light image, and this light image being perceived as a mental image; through this, I become conscious of this light image. Now, however, let us suppose that my ego were switched off; in ordinary sleep, such a switching off of the ego does indeed occur. I do not wish to speak today of where this ego is to be found during sleep; but when we have a sleeping person before us, what do we have before us? In the true sense of the word, only the one whose spiritual eye is open can provide information about this; he sees quite clearly how the ego, together with the astral body, has, as it were, lifted itself out of the physical body and out of the etheric double. But everyone has this as a phenomenon before them; everyone knows that during sleep the ordinary daytime ego, the ego of reality, is switched off, that, so to speak, the physical body and the etheric double that holds it together are left to their own devices. During our ordinary daily life, our ego, our consciousness, is always present when we receive impressions from the external world; we do not live with the external world without this daytime ego controlling these impressions from the external world. If this ego is switched off, we still continuously receive these impressions from the external world. Or do you believe that when a bell rings next to you while you are sleeping, that this bell does not produce vibrations in the air that penetrate your ear? Do you believe that your ear is constructed differently at night than during the day? That is not the case. Everything that takes place in the physical body during the day also takes place in the sleeping person. But what is missing? The permeation of this personal human being with ego-consciousness—that is what is missing.

[ 24 ] We can, so to speak, demonstrate experimentally and naturally the conditions that exist between the individual parts of the human being that I have mentioned. I would like to describe a simple experiment that can easily be performed with any somnambulist. Imagine a somnambulist getting up at night, sitting down at his desk, lighting a candle, and trying to write by its light. Now do the following: illuminate the room very brightly with, say, ten lamps that you set up—the experiment has been done—and the person in question will calmly continue writing. Now extinguish the single flame, the small candle flame he has placed beside him, and he will not continue writing; he perceives it as dark; he takes a match, lights the candle, and then he perceives it as light again and can continue working. All the other lighting around him is not there for him; only the flame he has taken into his dream-consciousness is there for him alone. The whole remaining sea of light is not there for him; you see, it is necessary for a person to permeate their sensory organs from within in a certain way, to interweave with them, so to speak, so that external sensory perceptions can enter. It is not only necessary that we have eyes and ears, but it is necessary that we animate from within what the eye and ear convey to us, that we oppose from within that which transforms it into images and ideas for us, which then causes it to be there for us.

[ 25 ] Now, in ordinary life, it is our “I,” our bright, alert daytime consciousness, that of its own accord—as it were, from within—contrasts the external world with what we need in order to extract the impressions and make them into impressions of our consciousness. Now imagine this consciousness extinguished. What is still active then? Then the physical body, the etheric double, and the astral body are still active. This astral body can indeed always transform what it receives from the outside into images, but it is not transformed into ideas; it is not taken up into the conscious, bright daytime consciousness. Thus—this is one possibility—the human astral body transforms such impressions into images that surround it, either in a confused, irregular manner or in a regular manner, if the ego, so to speak, is present during this entire process.

[ 26 ] In such contact with the outside world, the astral body—the soul of the human being—is in a somnambulistic state; indeed, the soul of a dreamer is already in a similar state. We must, however, distinguish between the two types of dreams I have mentioned. Between the chaotic, confused dreams that usually pass through people’s dream consciousness, and the beautiful, dramatic, symbolic dreams I have mentioned. In the case of the chaotic, confused dreams, it is the etheric double that is primarily active and establishes contact with the outside world; but in the case of dreams that unfold in a symbolic, dramatic manner, it is the human astral body that symbolizes, transforms, and expresses the external impressions allegorically, and translates them into a fully dramatic dream. It is only because, at the present stage of development, our waking ego is more realistically inclined, and because in our waking consciousness we currently rely above all on our combining, calculating intellect, that every single sensory perception appears to us to be connected to the others and combined with them by the intellect, just as is the case in waking consciousness. But we can imagine other states of consciousness; we can imagine that human beings look deeper into nature. Then this purely intellectual view also ceases. This is precisely the case again with the higher forms of soul life. We need not concern ourselves with these today; but what must occupy us above all else today is: How is it possible that through the somnambulistic state—which is, after all, an intensification of the ordinary dream state—regular actions and certain phenomena of a spiritual nature occur in human beings? One can understand this only by viewing the human being, in the spirit of the theosophical worldview, not in isolation but in connection with the rest of the world; by being clear above all that, apart from us, the rest of the world does not consist solely of that which is dead—visible and audible only to the eye and ear—but that higher forces are at work in the external world.

[ 27 ] People do not usually ask themselves this question: When we look out into the external world, how is it that we find in that world the laws, concepts, and ideas that we have conceived in our minds during a solitary moment of quiet reflection? People usually do not grasp the most significant phenomena and occurrences that shed the clearest light on the nature of humanity. But just think for a moment about the mathematician sitting in his study, pondering what a circle or an ellipse is, that without observing anything outside himself, he sets forth and studies the law of the ellipse on paper, so that he knows what a circle is, what an ellipse is, and that then, having generated this law purely from within himself, he finds this law of the ellipse and the circle in the planetary orbits and in other phenomena of the external world. So it is at every turn in our spiritual life. The laws that our spirit devises in solitude are the very same laws that out there in the world also govern this world. If we call that which the human being devises “wisdom,” then we must say: Wisdom arises within the human ego, and out in the world we find that things are constructed in the same wise manner in which the human being can perceive them through his thinking. But we find, when we look more closely at the world, that this wisdom of the world even surpasses much of what the human being can conceive and devise.

[ 28 ] Let us cite a few striking examples: Take—I am always happy to cite this example time and again—the activities of beavers. The activities of beavers are truly astonishing; not only do they create structures in their lodges that are true examples of instinctive architecture, which could not be more perfect even if they were built according to all the rules of mechanics and engineering. No, they provide something else as well: they protect themselves in their hiding places with dams, through which they hold back the water and accelerate or slow it down in a specific way. These dams are constructed against the force of the water’s current in such a way that an engineer who has studied long and hard to master the mechanical principles by which such a structure must be built in the best possible way could not have designed them better. Indeed, they are constructed in such a way that one can calculate, from the slope of these dams and through the angles, the speed of the current and the force of the flowing water. They are constructed so that an engineer, in his study, could not calculate them any better using his science, which has been achieved through much human thought and effort.

[ 29 ] And now another example: Consider a perfectly ordinary human femur. When you look at this femur through a microscope, it is not a compact structure like a lump of mortar; rather, the bone appears brittle under the microscope, as a composition of fine structures that are built up like a very fine framework and scaffolding. A network of fine bone fibers forms; these intertwine and support one another, and when one studies this entire network of bone fibers, one perceives a remarkable wisdom of nature in the construction of such an organism. If, for example, one wanted to build a framework that would support the individual parts of a truss in such a way that it achieves the greatest possible effect with the least expenditure of force, one could not do it better than nature, in its wisdom, has constructed such a femur from countless small bone fibers that hold and support one another. Wisdom that humans can conceive of only after much mental effort can be found in every single part of nature. And if we could study nature, if we could literally pour our minds out over nature so that we could perceive it out there in the world, then we would perceive nature not as a product of chance, but as the result of infinite wisdom. Imagine, instead of the calculating mind perceiving the impressions of the external world through the gates of the senses and being able to reflect only on what it perceives from the outside, imagine, instead, you had no senses, but rather that the mind were, as it were, poured out over all of nature; you would not perceive the effects of things on our senses, but the essence of things themselves—then you would stand in the wisdom of nature, then you would be a part of wise nature.

[ 30 ] This is actually achieved when our everyday consciousness, our waking consciousness, is switched off. This is what happens in somnambulists, as I have just hinted at. I said that one might imagine that our intellect, our consciousness, pushes out from our brain and permeates the wisdom of nature in all its activities and in all its facts. The fact that we have such a bright, alert waking consciousness means that we are separated from the rest of nature; it means that we must receive the impressions of nature through the gates of our senses. Here is the flame; it makes an impression on my eye; the eye is the gateway through which the impression reaches my consciousness. My consciousness evokes the images from within. Because I have sensory gates, I am separated from the external world, and this external world must first enter my consciousness through the sensory gates. In my consciousness, I am, as it were, in the same position vis-à-vis the rest of the world as someone who stands in a meadow with a view in all directions, and who now enters a small house and perceives everything in that meadow only through the windows of the small house. Such is the wisdom of all nature, which we perceive in every bone, in every plant, and which manifests itself from the starry sky down to the microscopically smallest particle of matter. This wise nature has, as it were, entered our consciousness as a single point and has erected around us the shell of our organs with their sensory gates. Our consciousness is separated from this external reality and can only perceive it through the gates of the senses.

[ 31 ] But if you switch off your consciousness, then contact is established, and you actually live once again in this connection with the outside world; for the astral body is not, like your ego, separated from the rest of the world by your immediate consciousness. No, astral threads extend in all directions, so that you experience the life of the entire external world—not only physical nature, but also those astral processes that are constantly around us, the spiritual processes that are around us. We perceive these when our consciousness is switched off. What we remember, conceive, and combine appears directly in the somnambulistic state as a phenomenon that is brought in by external nature, by what lives outside of us. Just as, so to speak, during the day in bright sunlight you do not see a single star in the sky, even though the entire sky is covered with stars, because the light of the stars cannot compete with the bright sunlight, so it is with our bright daytime consciousness. What occurs within our bodies, whether in the physical or the astral body, is, as it were, a faint light; these are faint processes that are drowned out by the bright consciousness of the day. If we extinguish that, what takes place in the lower bodies becomes visible, just as the stars become visible when the sun no longer shines. Somnambulic personalities find themselves in such circumstances, and we must therefore be clear that when a somnambulic state sets in, the human being is, as it were, in a closer, more immediate connection with the rest of nature. It is so, to use a beautiful expression by the German thinker Stilling, who at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries characterized this relationship in a wonderful way: “When the sun of bright daytime consciousness sets, then the stars shine in somnambulistic consciousness!”

[ 32 ] But now we must ask ourselves: Can we rely on these phenomena that occur during the somnambulistic state? They are true phenomena; it is a reality we are dealing with; but this reality approaches us by excluding the organ that human beings have gradually developed in order to orient themselves in the world—by excluding their clear daytime consciousness. This truly induces a state in the human being that reveals to them something that otherwise remains hidden, but which also pushes them down from a level they once attained. For we know as Theosophists that the states which human beings attain in this way and which are supposed to be “higher” are in truth states which they have already passed through before attaining their present full human consciousness. I cannot explain this to you today; but just as the scientific theory of evolution shows us the purely physical processes of development, so Theosophy shows us that human beings have gradually reached the stage they have climbed to today. This consciousness that we possess today, through which we orient ourselves in our environment, only emerged after we had passed through other states of consciousness over millions of years of slow evolution. Before developing this clear waking consciousness within themselves, human beings possessed a kind of dream-like consciousness. At that time, they were truly beings who did not perceive the events around them in the way we perceive them today in our clear waking consciousness; rather, everything around us was symbolized, just as dreams still symbolize things today. A large number of legends that have been preserved date back to such times, when people were still close to this dream-like consciousness and formed these symbolic legends. You can find more detailed information on this in a very interesting book by my late friend Ludwig Laistner, who collected the various mythological structures of the Earth and demonstrated in it how these mythological structures were developed from a human consciousness that was still symbolic and had not yet awakened to daytime consciousness. Indeed, many a legend is traced back to such states of somnambulistic consciousness.

[ 33 ] If we go back even further, we encounter states that are increasingly deeper and more subtle, yet at the same time closer to nature and to the starting point of physical development. When humanity first began as a desire of the divine being, it was in a kind of deep trance. All of humanity was then in a kind of deep trance state, a state similar to that in which somnambulists can find themselves today when, through the suppression of clear daytime consciousness, they are brought into the deepest, so-called magnetic states of sleep. Humanity has passed through all these states in the past, and now we are in the stage of development of clear daytime consciousness. This, too, is merely a transitional stage; it is the transitional stage that leads us, within this clear, waking daytime consciousness, to reacquire the very ability that humanity once possessed, though not at that time within clear daytime consciousness. For this had not yet been developed at all.

[ 34 ] This is the future course of human development: once again to pour the spirit directly over nature, to become clairvoyant while fully conscious in broad daylight. Some among us, who have trained their inner faculties through certain methods prescribed by Theosophy, have already gone ahead of the general development and are now able, while fully conscious in the light of day, to truly look into this world of beings and spiritual life that surrounds us. Even today there are certain individuals among us who are, so to speak, free from the gates of the senses, who are in direct contact with the spiritual environment, and who, through this clairvoyant observation while fully conscious, pass through the higher realities that are closed to ordinary consciousness just as we pass between tables and chairs, perceiving around them the spiritual world that surrounds us at every moment. Theosophical teachings have flowed from such insights. Somnambulistic consciousness provides, in a certain sense, similar teachings, and what a somnambulist can see with the daytime consciousness turned off is often the same as what the clairvoyant sees while fully conscious. But the somnambulist can never verify what she sees; the somnambulist can never verify what she tells you about spiritual processes in the environment, what she tells you about perceptions that are not seen through the gates of the senses. She cannot even verify whether what she perceives is truly the truth, just as she perceives it.

[ 35 ] The most strange illusions can occur to somnambulists. You can stand before a somnambulist as a certain person and tell her that you are, say, someone living in a completely different place. The somnambulist will believe this completely, will have the genuine sensory impression that you are who you claim to be. The somnambulist believes you, and that becomes a danger. For if the somnambulist not only tells us such easily verifiable things, but if the somnambulist gives us messages about the higher world that we cannot perceive with our senses, about the so-called astral world or about the higher spiritual world, when the sun of our waking consciousness is extinguished and the starry sky of the spiritual world rises, it may happen that the somnambulist tells you she perceives some deceased person. Certainly, the somnambulist perceives a spiritual reality; she perceives a being; but it need not be true that this being is the deceased person in question. It may be another being, a being that has absolutely nothing to do with an ordinary earthly being. It may be an entity that lives in the astral world and has never entered the earthly world. In short, because she lacks the controlling consciousness, the somnambulist can never be certain whether the impression she had is the correct one.

[ 36 ] This poses a danger to the somnambulist—above all, a danger that the astral world presents the moment one enters it. For this astral world has—and I can only hint at this—concepts of good and evil, for example, that are quite different from those of our ordinary earthly world. Our earthly world has concepts of good and evil that are purely adapted to our sensory states. The astral world has a different conception of good and evil. When the somnambulist makes perceptions in the astral world, her concepts of good and evil are very easily shaken, and that is the reason why somnambulist mediums, who at first truly communicate only true things from this somnambulist state of consciousness, can become thoroughly corrupted over time, so that later they are unable to distinguish deception from reality.

[ 37 ] For anyone familiar with these higher realms, it goes without saying that when examining a specific case involving a medium, one does not automatically assume that the medium has cheated, even if the facts at hand are not correct. For example, the medium might go to the nearest grocery store—this is a case whose veracity I have personally verified—while in a somnambulistic state, that is, with their ego-consciousness, their waking consciousness, completely suspended; there they purchase a small holy image, which they pocket. Then it emerges from this somnambulistic state and has no idea where it got the image. Later—since somnambulistic states are, after all, of a very complex nature—it enters the trance state again and presents the image to you as something it has brought from that supernatural world into this one. The somnambulist personality, the medium, never has any idea that they themselves bought this holy card or how they came to possess it. They are entirely honest in the ordinary sense, even though the fact is an illusion. Thus, through the influences exerted on such a somnambulist when the bright consciousness of the day is shut out, a situation may arise that can be described as follows: the event unfolding before us may be a deception; yet the medium need not be a deceiver, but may be completely intact and honest.

[ 38 ] This shows you that, when considering the question of somnambulism, we have no choice but to adopt the theosophical standpoint. Theosophy and the Theosophical Movement hold the firm view that entering the higher spiritual world—that is, the world which can also be made accessible to us through somnambulists— should never take place without the presence of a clairvoyant who is fully conscious, one who knows his way around the spiritual world, who is just as thoroughly familiar with the spiritual world as he is with the physical. That is why Theosophy requires that when experiments are to be conducted with mediums—and there can certainly be situations where this is advisable— they take place only in the presence of a fully knowledgeable clairvoyant working with clear daytime consciousness, who can oversee everything that is actually happening, whereas the medium and usually also those conducting experiments with the medium are unable to oversee this. Such mediumistic phenomena do not necessarily entail a danger in all circumstances; but we have seen that this danger can arise because the ability to orient oneself is lacking. Anyone who is a clairvoyant working with full waking consciousness knows at every single moment what is happening, and knows at every single moment what a somnambulist is actually seeing, even though she pretends to see something entirely different; he knows which influences are actually taking place, even though the somnambulist claims that this or that influence is taking place. That is precisely the difference between spiritual science and similar other endeavors. I do not wish to doubt the truth of these other endeavors in any way; rather, their reality is of course just as valid as it is for other endeavors. Since such experiences cannot all be attained at once, since it is impossible for a complete ideal to be realized at every moment, Theosophy does not regard it as its task to oppose other spiritual endeavors, such as experiments with somnambulous personalities, for one knows that these experiments will ultimately yield the same results: the conviction of a spiritual world around us.

[ 39 ] But the Theosophical Movement itself will only attempt to accomplish what is incumbent upon it in harmony with other spiritual movements under the ideal of conscious clairvoyance. It wishes to work in harmony with other spiritual movements; it wishes to regard the other spiritual movements as its sister movements. It is always ready, wherever it is asked for advice as to whether this or that is a reality and truth in this or that sense, to give such advice. It itself, however, will allow all spiritual endeavors to be undertaken only under the aegis of expert clairvoyance. This applies equally to spiritualist and other spiritual endeavors. In the spirit of Theosophy, occult research may not be conducted except under the influence of individuals who can survey the matter at hand with complete precision and full awareness. Furthermore, spiritual healing may only be performed in the same way as physical healing: with a full and conscious understanding of the circumstances involved.

[ 40 ] This is how Theosophy views somnambulic phenomena. You see, theosophy’s view differs somewhat from the superficial, external view, which sees somnambulic phenomena as nothing more than pathological, repulsive, and abnormal phenomena, and it also holds somewhat different views on these phenomena than those who believe they are gaining insight into the higher spiritual life solely through them. Theosophy knows where these phenomena come from. Through its clairvoyance, it can shed light on these phenomena. But with all others who regard these phenomena in the sense that they see in them manifestations of spiritual life, with all of them it relates in such a way that it sees in them kindred movements with which it strives toward a common goal, a great goal: to bring to today’s materialistic humanity once again a spiritual, a truly idealistic worldview, a true knowledge of the spiritual world. This is a profound truth expressed by a German seer—one whom people do not usually recognize as a seer—namely Goethe, who stated that we cannot unveil the mysteries of nature through our instruments, not through mechanical, physical tools, but that it is the spirit that must seek the spirit everywhere:

Mysterious in broad daylight,
Nature cannot be stripped of its veil,
And what it chooses not to reveal to your mind,
You cannot force from it with levers and screws.

[ 41 ] But Goethe did not doubt the revelations of the spirit all around us; for what he expressed in *Faust* was clear to him in those beautiful words, which he said were spoken by the sage:

The spirit world is not closed off;
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead!
Arise! Bathe, disciple, undaunted
Your earthly breast in the morning glow!