The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. The Revelations of the Unconscious from the Perspective of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] In fact, anyone who has awakened to a certain degree of understanding and has come to realize the service that a true understanding of reality can render to human life desires to gain insight into those aspects of human life that are addressed in the spiritual science advocated here. On the other hand, it is precisely the nature of the quest for knowledge pursued within this spiritual science that is uncomfortable for some, because—by the very nature of its inquiry—it must repeatedly point out that the ordinary powers of cognition, including those customary in conventional science, cannot lead into this realm of spiritual life; for people simply find it uncomfortable to turn to other sources of knowledge. Admittedly, it can become increasingly clear to anyone—provided their consideration is free of prejudice—precisely through the study of this spiritual science that ordinary, sound common sense, when it truly engages with life, is capable of immediately grasping everything that is presented by spiritual science. Nevertheless, it is precisely in the face of this spiritual science that people refuse to apply this common sense and ordinary life experience, because they do not wish to turn to that which must first be brought about through the development of the human soul. The facts of spiritual science can be investigated only through the spiritual-scientific methods already described here and to be described further; but once the facts have been investigated, they can certainly be grasped by common sense and ordinary life experience. However, because a certain reluctance to approach this spiritual science stems from a desire for intellectual ease, even those individuals today who feel an urge to learn about these matters often turn to other sources—sources that, by their very nature, are closer to the methods used in the laboratory, the dissection room, or elsewhere in modern science. Thus it happens that those who cannot bring themselves to approach spiritual science directly often turn precisely to the abnormal phenomena of human life—those observable in the realm of the external sensory world—in order to gain certain insights into spiritual life. For they believe that through what manifests itself in an abnormal way in human beings, they can gain insight into certain mysteries of existence. For this reason, spiritual science has time and again been confused in the broadest circles with those endeavors that approach all manner of abnormal borderlands of human life in order to recognize the spiritual.

[ 2 ] That is why it is necessary for me to address, in one of these lectures, a consideration of such borderline areas which, while pointing to certain mysteries of existence through their abnormality, can only be truly understood through spiritual science, and which are bound to lead to countless errors regarding the true reality of spiritual life if they are considered without the aid of spiritual science. The borderland I wish to consider today is, in all its breadth, interest, and mystery, more or less familiar to everyone, since it points to certain connections between outer life and the hidden depths of this existence. I am referring to the human life of dreams. Taking this “dream life” as my starting point, it will then be my task today to also consider other borderlands of human existence—namely, the phenomena through which, in abnormal experiences, the belief might arise that one is somehow particularly close to the underlying foundations of life: the phenomena of hallucination, the phenomena of visionary life, and, related to these, the phenomena of somnambulism, mediumship—as far as this is possible within the scope of a short lecture.

[ 3 ] Anyone who wishes to gain insight into these borderlands of human life from a humanities perspective must focus specifically on those characteristics of genuine spiritual research that can shed light on them in some way. Therefore, I would like to draw out a few points from the scope of what I have already characterized from various perspectives in my previous lectures—points that may then serve as a foundation for discussing the phenomena just mentioned. Spiritual research must be based on a genuine unfolding of the powers of the human soul that are hidden within ordinary consciousness and also within the consciousness with which ordinary science works. I have pointed out that the human soul is capable, through certain exercises—certain activities of a purely spiritual nature that have nothing at all to do with anything physical—of drawing forth from within itself powers that would otherwise lie dormant, thereby enabling it to gain insight into the true spiritual life. Today I must characterize what is, above all, a prerequisite for the human soul to become independent of the physical realm in such supersensory knowledge. Above all, it is necessary to take into account what I have already explained in an earlier lecture and wish to briefly repeat today.

[ 4 ] I have said that, admittedly, the way one approaches spiritual reality must be different from the way one approaches external, physical-sensory reality. Above all, it is necessary to bear in mind that what is experienced in the spiritual world by the bodyless soul cannot be transferred directly—as it is experienced—into human memory in the same way as an ordinary idea. What one experiences in the spirit must be experienced again and again anew, just as one must confront an external physical reality again and again anew if one wishes not merely to remember it but to have it before oneself. Anyone who believes they have genuine spiritual experience through such impressions—which they can recall just as they would ordinary impressions of everyday life—does not know the truly spiritual. If, as is of course possible, one later recalls spiritual experiences, this stems from the fact that one is able to bring such experiences into ordinary consciousness, just as one can bring perceptions of an external physical reality into it. Then one can recall the images. But one must learn to distinguish between this recollection of self-formed ideas and the immediate experience of a spiritual process—the immediate encounter with a spiritual being. This, then, is a distinctive characteristic of disembodied experience: that this experience does not directly enter into memory.

[ 5 ] Another characteristic—one I have already mentioned here—is that when a person practices something in life in order to master it, progressive practice gradually enables them to perform what they are practicing more easily and skillfully. Strangely enough, the opposite is true when it comes to spiritual cognition. The more often one has the same spiritual experience, the more difficult it becomes for the soul to put itself in a position to have that very same spiritual experience again. One must also learn the method by which a spiritual experience can be repeated, because it cannot be renewed in exactly the same way.

[ 6 ] The third point I mentioned is that actual spiritual experiences flit past the soul so quickly that one needs presence of mind to grasp them. Otherwise, the event passes so quickly that it is already over by the time one turns one’s attention to it. I said that one must practice mastering those situations in life where one cannot dawdle and ponder for long about whether to decide on this or that, but where a decision is needed quickly—where one must act swiftly and with certainty. Such presence of mind is necessary to truly bring spiritual experiences into the realm of one’s attention. I mention these peculiarities of spiritual experience for the reason because they already show how very different spiritual experience is from experience in the outer physical sensory world, and how little justification there actually is for the repeated claims made by those unfamiliar with it—namely, that it is only the ideas and concepts derived from the outer sensory world that the spiritual researcher carries as reminiscences into some spiritual world of his own dreaming. Anyone who truly knows anything about the peculiar nature of this spiritual world also knows that it differs so greatly from the ordinary sensory world that nothing can be carried over from it; rather, the soul needs to develop special abilities in order to be able to encounter the spiritual as spirit.

[ 7 ] But there are also other things that are necessary—things that must be fulfilled in the soul of anyone who wishes to engage in spiritual inquiry as described here. The first condition is that the soul be as little as possible subject to that trait which can be described as passivity of the soul’s life. Those who particularly love to surrender themselves to life in a dreamlike state—to make themselves passive, as it is called—in order to allow the revelations of spiritual reality to flow into them within a certain dreamlike, mystical mood, are ill-suited to truly enter the spiritual world. For this much must be established: In the realm of true spiritual life, the Lord does not grant His gifts to His own while they are asleep! On the contrary, what makes one particularly suited to penetrate the true spiritual world is mental alertness, mental activity, a certain zeal in pursuing genuine thoughts, in practicing the establishment of connections between distant thoughts, and a certain alertness in quickly grasping the interrelationships of thoughts; that is a certain love for inner spiritual activity. The difference between a mediumistic predisposition and the predisposition for true spiritual knowledge is like the difference between day and night. This is the one condition that must be fulfilled in particular if true spiritual research is to be possible.

[ 8 ] Another condition is that the soul of a true spiritual researcher must be as resistant as possible to suggestibility—to allowing anything to be suggested to it—and must remain as skeptical and critical as possible even toward the matters of external life. Anyone who prefers to let others tell them what to do in life, anyone who prefers not to organize their life based on their own free judgment and free will, is not well-suited to be a spiritual researcher. Anyone who realizes what a major role suggestibility plays even in normal, everyday life also knows how difficult it is to combat this widespread tendency toward suggestibility. One need only consider how much people allow themselves to be influenced, especially in public life, and how little they are inclined to try to create within their own souls the conditions for independent judgment and for organizing the affairs of life based on their own impulses of will. People who turn to spiritual research because they wish to establish a relationship with the spiritual world based on their common sense are very often accused of blindly believing in the spiritual researcher. It must be said that such blind followers are the very last thing a spiritual researcher—who truly strives to penetrate the spiritual world through intuitive awareness—could wish for. And a community of people who were thus attached to such a spiritual researcher would be a caricature of a community capable of cultivating such spiritual knowledge. On the contrary, the true spiritual researcher must experience—and will experience with joy—that it is precisely those who are close to him who, sooner or later, will also arrive at an independent judgment and a certain inner freedom in their relationship to him, and that they remain with him not out of blind devotion or suggestibility, but because of their shared interests in the spiritual world.

[ 9 ] Today I would like to mention one more distinctive feature that can shed light on the relationship between spiritual reality and physical reality—one more distinctive feature in the human soul’s attitude toward this spiritual world. It is often said, after all, that these are prejudices which the spiritual researcher brings with him from the sensory world and through which he then seeks to characterize some imagined spiritual world. I have already hinted at this in this lecture: If one truly enters the spiritual world, things always turn out differently. One can convince oneself that what carries one into the spiritual world—what allows one to experience and live within the spiritual world—always turns out to be different from what one had previously believed. Precisely because it turns out differently, one sees that one is dealing with a world that one can only gain access to by making the soul suitable for it—by not carrying reminiscences from the physical world into an imagined world. But there is something else to consider—something that sounds very paradoxical, yet which someone speaking from decades of experience with matters of the spiritual world can certainly affirm. It is this: no matter how well-trained one may be in out-of-body perception, no matter how skilled one may be at looking into the spiritual world: When one again focuses on a particular being or a particular process—especially one that represents a relationship between the spiritual world and external physical reality—one will very often have the following experience: One initially has a kind of spiritual experience; one believes one has recognized a truth about something in the spiritual world; but one will generally find that this first experience one has is false. For this reason, the spiritual researcher cultivates a caution that leads him to assume from the outset that the first experience is false. As he then delves deeper and deeper, it becomes clear to him why he was on the wrong path, and by comparing the later correct understanding with the previous false one, he gains insight that enables him to recognize all the more clearly what really matters. For this reason, the spiritual researcher will generally not share his findings with others until long after he has conducted research in a particular field, because he knows how necessary it is—especially in the realm of spiritual life—to recognize the truth by first working through deception and error. This deception, this error, stems from the fact that, when exploring spiritual life, we start from the sensory world. We bring our powers of judgment and our way of perceiving from the sensory world into the spiritual world. At first, we are always inclined to apply what we bring into the spiritual world in this way. This is when the distorted judgments and errors arise. But precisely because we are compelled to convince ourselves anew each time that we must relate differently to spiritual things than to physical ones, we begin to perceive the various intimate characteristics of spiritual experience. Thus—and various other examples could be cited in this regard—spiritual experience does indeed present itself, in a certain sense, as something paradoxical when contrasted with ordinary, everyday experience. But what the person who can look into the spiritual world recognizes, first of all, is that the eternal, the imperishable aspect of the human soul cannot express itself to consciousness in ordinary experience—which takes place through the body—but remains hidden, because here in physical life, through the organization of the body, human beings can gain knowledge only of the physical. That is why it is so necessary for the spiritual researcher to strictly emphasize that the acquisition of knowledge of the spiritual takes place outside the body. The moment the body is involved in any way in the acquisition of such knowledge, that knowledge is distorted; it is distorted even when memory—which is stored solely in the body—is involved.

[ 10 ] Another point that arises from a direct grasp of spiritual life is this: one knows that the person who is immersed in spiritual life completely cuts himself off from the spiritual world—to which the eternal aspect of the human soul belongs— whenever he in any way relinquishes his free will and, under any compulsion or suggested influence, allows what he holds in his soul to be expressed through his body in actions or the like—or even merely through speech—unless everything that is expressed through his body is mediated by his will. Thus, a fundamental condition for experiencing the spiritual world is the recognition that the physical must not be involved in this realization. The other fundamental condition is that a person must strive to ensure that everything he accomplishes through his body flows from his power of judgment and from his free volitional decision.

[ 11 ] I had to establish these conditions in advance because they provide the foundation for the abnormal realms of the life of the soul that we are now to examine. In true spiritual knowledge, we see the revelation of what would otherwise remain unconscious—a revelation that can enlighten human beings about their eternal, truly free nature in the soul—and we can compare what is thus revealed precisely with what comes to light through the abnormal phenomena of the soul’s life. One cannot yet fully classify as abnormal phenomena that which, in the ebbing and flowing world of dreams, strikes at human consciousness more than it actually reaches it. This world of dreams has already become the subject of external scientific and philosophical investigations, though one cannot say that the very methods that are so highly regarded in modern natural science today are particularly suited to penetrating this borderland of human life. But even with regard to borderline areas such as those we wish to mention today, a mindset that seeks to think solely in terms of modern natural science—and surrenders entirely to the prejudices arising from it—is ill-suited to penetrating the truth of the matter. After all, although modern humanity understandably considers itself to be rather skeptical of authority, it often has a certain tendency to accept everything on the basis of authority under certain conditions. If someone who is universally regarded in public life as a great mind were to publish a thick book—even one dealing with the study of abnormal mental phenomena—there would be many who, while not understanding much about these matters, would praise the book; and our society, which prides itself on being free of authority, would then naturally conclude that this book is something one can rely on.

[ 12 ] Among the philosophical treatises on the life of dreams, I would like to highlight a book on dream fantasy written in 1875 by Johannes Volkelt, a brilliant German scholar who is currently a professor of philosophy and pedagogy in Leipzig, at a time when he was not yet a professor. This highly valuable book continues to dog him to this day, and it is likely partly due to it that he remains only an associate professor even now. The exceptionally important Swabian aesthetician Friedrich Theodor Vischer wrote a very fine essay on this book. Yet it is the academic prejudices—which in recent decades have led to a certain conception of so-called scientific rigor—that are to blame for the fact that what this book managed to inaugurate, however modestly, has not been taken up, but has instead been obscured once again by the prevailing prejudices that prevent a true penetration into the life of dreams.

[ 13 ] Of course, in the context of a short lecture, I will not be able to provide much more than a rough outline, but I would still like to point out a few specific aspects so that these matters can be examined from a spiritual scientific perspective. Everyone is familiar with the dream life—this ebbing and flowing, imaginative life that emerges from sleep—and everyone knows what the external characteristics of the dream life are. I will characterize only a few of them in detail. Dreams arise in response to a specific stimulus—this can be observed in the dream life itself. Initially, we are dealing with what are known as sensory-stimulus dreams. One need only recall how a dream can arise from having a pendulum clock nearby. Under certain conditions, the ticking of the pendulum becomes the trampling of horses or something else entirely. Thus, one forms certain symbolic images in the dream. I would like to emphasize this point in particular, for the dream experience is based on numerous impressions from the external senses. But what acts upon the external senses never has the same effect in a dream as it does in ordinary waking life. There is always a transformation of the sensory impression in a symbolic, allegorical sense—into something that is a transformation brought about by the life of the soul.

[ 14 ] It is well known how such dreams keep recurring. Johannes Volkelt recounts in his aforementioned book: A schoolteacher is teaching in a dream; he expects a student to answer “yes” to a question the teacher has asked. But the student does not answer “yes,” but rather “jo,” which can sometimes be quite disruptive and unpleasant for the teacher. The teacher asks the question again, and this time the student answers not just “jo,” but “i-o,” and then the whole class starts shouting, “Feurio!” The teacher wakes up, and outside, the fire truck drives by, and people are shouting “Feurio.” This sensory impression has been symbolized in this entire complicated dream sequence.

[ 15 ] Another example, also from Volkelt—whenever possible, I will cite nothing other than what has already been recorded in the literature—is this: A Swabian woman visits her sister in a larger city. The sister is a pastor’s wife. The two sisters listen to the sermon, and lo and behold, the pastor begins quite dignifiedly at first. But then he suddenly seems to grow wings and starts crowing like a rooster. So one sister says to the other, “That’s certainly a peculiar way of preaching.” The sister replies to her in the dream: “Yes, that’s what the consistory decreed; now sermons must be preached that way.” Then the woman wakes up, and outside she hears a rooster crowing. So, the rooster’s crow—which, of course, would otherwise have entered her consciousness as a dry, sober rooster’s crow—has been transformed in this way within her soul. Everything else has been organized around the crowing of the rooster. You see, these are sensory-stimulus dreams.

[ 16 ] But dreams can also arise from internal stimuli, and here again it is not the stimuli themselves that come to the fore, but rather the sensory image that has been transformed and symbolized by the soul. For example, someone dreams of a hot, blazing oven: they wake up with a pounding heart. Dreams of flying, which are very common, usually stem from some kind of abnormal experience taking place in the lungs during sleep, and so on. Hundreds of such examples could be cited. The mere enumeration of the various categories of dreams could go on for a long time. Although we cannot fully delve into the “deeper aspects of the matter,” I would like to mention a few more things.

[ 17 ] One cannot say that literature has been particularly successful in identifying those elements of the human soul that might reveal what is actually going on within it as it transforms external stimuli into dreams. But this question must be of primary interest: What is it, actually, in the soul that, in response to an external stimulus—or even to a memory that emerges from the darkness of sleep—causes it to link such dissimilar images together? To this we must say: What causes people in ordinary daily life to link one idea to another based on their experiences is not what actually operates in dreams. I could list hundreds of examples that would prove to you what I can only illustrate by way of comparison. Take the following example: A woman dreams that she has to cook for her husband—sometimes a difficult task for a housewife. Well, she dreams that she has already suggested all sorts of things to him. First suggestion: “I don’t like that!” Second suggestion: “I don’t like that either!” Third suggestion: “I certainly don’t like that! You can just stay home with that!” And so on. The woman is already quite unhappy about this in her dream. Then it occurs to her: “We do have a salted grandmother on the floor; she’s a bit tough, but shouldn’t I cook her for you tomorrow?” This is also a dream you can find in literature. Anyone familiar with dreams will have no doubt that the dream unfolded exactly this way. I could multiply this example by hundreds of similar ones. You’ll have to admit right away: The underlying mood is one of anxiety. Something has happened that has put the woman in a state of anxiety. This mood—which needn’t have anything to do with the idea of cooking or the like—translates into such a dream image. This is merely a disguise for the anxious mood. But the soul needs this during sleep in order to escape the anxiety; it seeks to overcome the anxiety, and just as you laughed at the “salty grandmother,” so the soul invents this image—which joins the rest of the dream content in a grotesquely comical way—in order to internally overcome the anxiety and enter into an ironic, humorous mood. This is what you can always observe in dreams: an oscillation, a back-and-forth swing of moods and—just as a clock pendulum swings back and forth—a back-and-forth oscillation between tension and relaxation, between anxiety and merriment, and so on. What is of paramount importance in a person’s emotional life is always decisive for the structure of dream imagery. From this perspective—that of overcoming certain tensions in the soul—the dream takes shape. It is precisely from this necessity to transform tension into relaxation, and relaxation into tension, that what is not particularly significant as an image is born. The soul conjures up something that can serve as an imaginative representation of what actually matters.

[ 18 ] If one examines the world of dreams in its entirety, one finds two peculiarities that deserve special attention. The first is that in the world of dreams, what we usually refer to as logic is absent. Dreams follow a completely different set of rules regarding how they transition from one object to another than ordinary logic does. Now, of course, you might object: “Yes, but some dreams do proceed quite logically.” However, this is only an illusion. Anyone who can truly observe these things closely knows that it is only an illusion. If you have dream images that follow one another in a logical sequence, this does not stem from your bringing about this logical sequence during the dream itself, but rather from the fact that you are stringing together images that you have already logically organized in your waking life, or that are otherwise logically connected by something in your waking life. Here, logic is reminiscence; logic is carried into the dream; the dream plot itself does not proceed according to the rules of ordinary logic. One can always see that a deeper, more intimate element of the soul underlies the dream’s plot. For example, someone dreams—I’m recounting a real dream—that he has to go to an acquaintance’s place, and he knows that this acquaintance is going to give him a dressing-down about something. He dreams that he actually arrives at the door of this acquaintance’s apartment. But at that very moment, the entire situation is transformed. As he steps through the acquaintance’s door, he enters a cellar filled with wild animals that want to devour him. Then it occurs to him that he has a whole collection of pins at home, and these pins squirt a liquid that can kill the wild animals. The pins are already there, and he shoots them at the wild animals. Then they turn into a whole litter of puppies, which he now wants to gently pet. From this dream—which represents a typical dream sequence—you can see that it is once again a matter of relieving the tension caused by a fear directed toward a friend, a fear expressed through the wild animals, by having the soul conjure up the transformation of the wild, cruel animals into lovely young dogs. You see, this is something different from what is logical. However, there is an important objection here. Anyone familiar with the world of dreams knows that the following has often happened: You’ve struggled to find the solution to some problem before going to bed, but couldn’t find it; then you dream and find the solution to the problem in your dream, so that you can actually write it down in the morning. This is rightly recounted. Anyone who cannot properly examine such things will always misunderstand them. One must not, however, believe that one has found the real solution in a dream. What one has actually found in a dream—what one believes one remembers—is something entirely different. It is something that need not unfold in a very logical manner, but which has that beneficial effect on the human mind that occurs when tension is transformed into relaxation. Before falling asleep, the person was in such a state of mental tension that he could not solve the problem. He brooded and brooded; something was missing. He was healed by the way he dreamed, and as a result, he was able to solve the problem upon waking.

[ 19 ] Moral judgment, too, is silent in dreams. We know, of course, that in dreams we commit all sorts of crimes and other acts of which we would be ashamed in waking life. One might object that it is precisely in dreams that the conscience stirs—indeed, that the conscience often makes itself felt in a most peculiar way in dreams. One need only recall the dreams that appear in Shakespeare’s works, and one will find—poets generally do such things with good reason—that one can point to the appearance that moral reproaches come to the fore particularly through dreams. Again, this is merely an inaccurate observation. Rather, it is entirely correct that in dreams we are torn away from the ordinary moral judgment that we must acquire and can internalize in our external lives in relation to other people. If, nevertheless, the dream seems to present moral prejudices and moral reproaches vividly before our minds, this does not stem from the fact that we, as dreamers, make moral judgments, but rather from the fact that when we behave morally, we experience a certain sense of satisfaction in our souls—we are satisfied with something to which we can morally can say “yes” to. This sense of satisfaction—not the moral judgment—is what presents itself to our soul in the dream. Just as logic is absent in dreams, so too is moral judgment. If one is truly seeking truth, it is necessary to proceed much more precisely and intimately than is usually attempted in life and even in science. Such things do not readily yield to the crude methods that are commonly applied. It is therefore extremely important that neither logic nor moral judgment be allowed into the world of dreams. We will hear shortly why this is the case.

[ 20 ] Now I would like to highlight another peculiarity of the “dream,” which—even when considered solely from an external perspective—can reveal the soul’s relationship to the world as it dreams. However, this relationship can only be fully elucidated when viewed from the perspective of spiritual science. Anyone observing a sleeping person will already be able to say, based on outward appearances: In sleep, the human being is cut off both from what can be experienced from their own life and from what can be experienced from their surroundings. Now, spiritual science does indeed show that when a person falls asleep, as a spiritual-soul being, they truly enter the spiritual world, and upon waking, they reconnect with their body. However, one need not even take this into account; one need only clearly bring to mind what is already accessible to ordinary consciousness. A person is cut off from their surroundings, and even what becomes conscious to ordinary consciousness from the body falls silent during sleep. In dreams, images do indeed ebb and flow, but their relationship to the external world does not change; the images are shaped precisely so that this relationship remains the same. The relationship to the external world—that which approaches the human being as a sober environment, as the sober delineation of external impressions, when he opens his senses to the external world while awake—does not enter into the dream. Impressions can indeed, as we have seen, be made on a person. Yet precisely that which is characteristic of what the senses make of these impressions is absent. The psyche substitutes a symbol for the ordinary, sober impression. Thus, the relationship to the external world does not change. This could be corroborated by countless examples. In the normal “dream of the external world,” a person remains just as cut off as they are in normal sleep, and likewise from their own physicality. Even that which arises from one’s own physicality is not expressed in a direct way, as it is when one is normally connected to one’s body. For example, if one’s feet become too warm because of a blanket that is too warm, one would normally feel in the ordinary waking state that one’s feet are getting too warm. One does not feel this in the same way in a dream; rather, one believes, for example, that one is walking over glowing coals or something similar. Once again, it is the transformation accomplished by the soul that is of the essence.

[ 21 ] No matter how hard one tries to approach the dream using only the methods and sources of external science, it is impossible—for the simple reason that the dream cannot be compared to anything else. The dream truly enters the ordinary world like a kind of miracle; it cannot be compared to anything else. That is the essential point. Only the spiritual researcher gains the ability to compare the dream with something else. Why? He gains this ability because he himself comes to know what unfolds before him when he is able to enter the spiritual world. There he perceives that he can no longer rely on ordinary logic—as we mentioned again today—which applies to the explanation of external sensory life. Anyone who ascends into the spiritual world must acquire the free capacity to express the experiences of the spiritual world in symbols. That is why, in my last lecture, I also called the first stage of knowing the spiritual world “imaginative knowledge.” One knows, of course, that the symbols are not reality itself, but one knows that through the symbols one is expressing reality. These symbols must, of course, be formed according to the true laws arising from the spiritual world; they must not arise from arbitrary fantasy. The spiritual researcher learns to recognize how—apart from the physical-sensory world—one links ideas together and learns to recognize how to create symbols. This first stage of perceiving the spiritual world can then be compared to the unconscious activity that takes place in dream actions. A comparison arises here, and something else emerges as well.

[ 22 ] Those who truly make progress in their understanding of the spiritual world gradually experience a transformation in their dreams as well. They become more and more regular; the confused images—such as the salted grandmother and the like—gradually give way to things that meaningfully express something, and the entire ‘dream life’ becomes permeated with meaning. In this way, the spiritual researcher comes to recognize the peculiar kinship between the dream life and the life he must seek for the sake of spiritual research. This enables him to truly say what it is that the soul actually dreams, what is in reality the dreaming entity. For he comes to recognize something else in addition to what I have just mentioned, namely, what that state of mind is like in which one finds oneself while having imaginative visions. One knows that one stands there with one’s soul immersed in the spiritual world. When one is familiar with this state of the soul—this particular mood of the soul’s life—one can also compare this mood, this state, with how the soul is disposed in a dream, how the soul lives in a specific state during a dream. From this careful comparison, it indeed becomes clear that what dreams within the soul—what is truly active in the soul while a person allows the chaotic dream actions to unfold—is the spiritual, eternal core of the human being. As a dreamer, a person exists in the world to which they belong as a spiritual-soul being.

[ 23 ] That is one result. I would like to illustrate the other with a personal experience. Not long ago, when I gave a lecture in Zurich on the life of dreams and related fields, I heard that various members of the audience—who claimed to have become particularly knowledgeable in the current scientific discipline known as analytical psychology or psychoanalysis—said after my lecture: “Yes, this man is still caught up in prejudices that we in psychoanalysis have long since moved beyond. He believes that the dream life should be taken as something real, whereas we know that the ‘dream life’ must be taken only as a symbolic representation of the life of the soul.” I do not wish to delve into psychoanalysis here, but merely to mention that this “wisdom” is based solely on a gross misunderstanding. For it would never occur to the true researcher of the mind to take what presents itself in a dream—just as it presents itself—as immediately real. He does not even regard the dream, in its unfolding, as the psychoanalyst does—as an immediate symbolic act—but rather, he is concerned with something entirely different. Anyone familiar with the dream life knows: Ten people—or even more—can recount dreams with vastly different content, and yet they may all be based on the same underlying event. One person recounts having climbed a mountain and then been surprised by something particularly joyful at the summit; another recounts having walked through a dark corridor to a door that then opened unexpectedly; a third recounts something else entirely. Outwardly, the dreams do not resemble one another in the slightest in their course; yet they stem from a very similar, real experience—namely, the same tension and release, symbolized in some images one way and in others another. So it is not the reality of the dream—nor even, as psychoanalysts believe, the symbols—that matters, but rather the inner drama of the dream. One must be able to recognize, from the meaningless images in their sequence, this inner drama—the reality in which the soul lives with its spiritual and psychological essence while it dreams. This reality is entirely different from what is expressed in the dream images. That is what matters. Thus, the dream already points deep down into the subconscious and unconscious depths of the soul. But what it portrays is merely a disguise for what is actually being experienced while one is dreaming.

[ 24 ] I must emphasize again and again that I truly have no interest in reviving any old prejudices in any field. I am not speaking, for example, on the basis of assumptions drawn from all sorts of medieval or Eastern so-called “esoteric sciences,” as found in the works of Blavatsky and others who draw from all manner of obscure sources; rather, my approach is firmly grounded in the awareness that everything said here can stand up to any scientific scrutiny; and should the opportunity arise, it can be utilized. Spiritual science is presented with the full awareness that we live in the age of natural science, with full knowledge of what natural science has to say about existence and its mysteries, but also with full knowledge of what it has nothing to say about the realms of spiritual life.

[ 25 ] Where, then, do the images that make up the course of a dream come from? Well, it is like this: While the person who is truly free from the body and immersed in spiritual experience has the spiritual world with its realities and beings before them, the dreamer has not yet awakened their consciousness to the point where they could have this full spiritual world before them. As a result, his soul attunes itself to the reminiscences of ordinary life, and the dream arises when the soul comes into contact with the physical. The dream is not experienced in the body, but it is caused by the soul’s contact with the physical. Therefore, the things that underlie the dreamer’s life course appear before him, but grouped in such a way that they express those inner tendencies I have described. So, if one wishes to characterize what a dream actually is, it is an experience of the human being’s soul-spiritual essence. But what is experienced is not the eternal; it is the temporal. It is the eternal that is consciously at work in the dream. But what mediates this activity is the transient, the ephemeral. This is the essential point: that in the dream, the eternal takes on as an experience precisely the temporal, the ephemeral—that which is otherwise the content of life.

[ 26 ] I have thus outlined—albeit in a sketchy manner—what the nature of the dream is in the light of spiritual science, and why the content of the dream does not at all express what is actually taking place in the soul, as relaxation follows tension and tension follows relaxation. There the soul is within the world of the eternal; there the soul is in a bodyless element. But what becomes conscious as the outer form of this experience stems from the connection with ordinary life circumstances.

[ 27 ] I will now turn to the second realm, which can arise as an unconscious phenomenon at the boundary of human spiritual life—that which enters into this spiritual life in the form of hallucinations, visions, and the like. Even philosophers capable of sound judgment—such as Eduard von Hartmann, for example, whom I hold in exceptionally high regard for the acuity of his judgment— have been led to believe—precisely because they were unable to truly penetrate the nature of dreams from the standpoint of spiritual science—that what appears as an image before the soul in a “dream” is essentially the same as what appears as an image before the soul through a hallucination or a vision. But these realms are fundamentally different from one another. Because the true spiritual researcher knows what state of mind prevails when one is immersed in the spiritual world and can compare this to the state of mind of the dreamer, he is able to appreciate certain peculiarities of the dream life, such as the fact that dreams do not follow logic. For the spiritual researcher knows that this sensory experience is not meaningless, but that—just like the disembodied experience between death and rebirth—it has its purpose in the totality of human life. This includes, for example, the fact that it is precisely through our interaction with the external sensory world that we can acquire the logic which flows from that world into our soul. Likewise, the spiritual researcher knows that moral judgment, too, finds its direct expression in physical experience—in our active participation in human culture. True spiritual science can never arise from an escape from life or from false asceticism, but rather from a full acceptance of this life, because logic, moral judgment, and the moral impulses of the soul are internalized through the soul’s contact with the external world in sensory life.

[ 28 ] The point is that, in fact, the dream—I would say—merely sheds some light on the abnormal life of the soul. Spiritual science shows how the soul is free from the body in the dream, and how dream experiences are independent of bodily experiences, just as they are separate from the connection to the external world that exists in waking life. A person is truly free from the body in a dream. Is this also the case in a hallucination or a vision? No, it is not! For hallucinations and visions arise precisely because of abnormalities in the physical body. True visionary or hallucinatory life in the soul can never manifest itself in an experience independent of the body. There must always be something in the body that is disturbed, diseased, functioning improperly, or too weak, so that a person cannot establish with their body the full connection that exists when they use their nervous and sensory systems in such a way that they truly experience the external world by experiencing themselves. It is peculiar that when any organ related in some way to cognition becomes diseased or is too weak, a phenomenon such as a hallucination or a vision can indeed occur, which is similar to spiritual experience but nevertheless fundamentally different from it. While spiritual experience is based on a state of freedom from the body, this hallucinatory or visionary life arises because something in the body is diseased or too weak. What, specifically, underlies the hallucinatory, visionary life? Well, ordinary imagination, as it normally takes place in sensory life, leads to independence from those forces in the human organism that bring about normal growth in childhood and that govern the body’s internal functions—metabolism, digestion, and so on. I cannot go into detail today about how the bodily organization that underlies normal imaginative life arises from the fact that a part of the bodily organization is lifted out of the sphere of mere animal life—mere growth, digestion, metabolism, and so on. Normal nervous life is based on the fact that, in a sense, a soul organism develops—like a parasite—out of what constitutes digestion, metabolism, and the like. Now, if—through particular abnormal conditions—any of a person’s organs of cognition is affected in such a way that not only the psychological organism acts through it, but also the rest of the organism with its animal nature—precisely because of the pathological condition or weakness of an organ— the result is that the human being does not devote himself to the imaginative life of the external world independently of the forces of growth, digestion, and metabolism, but rather hallucinations and visions occur. That which is organically active in the human being during a vision should either be present in the growth forces, should—forgive the harsh expression, but that is how it is—bring about digestion within the person, or should bring about metabolism in its finer structure. What comes to light in this state is an upsurge of animal life into the soul organism.

[ 29 ] Hallucinations and visions are therefore not an elevation of life; rather, they are an intrusion of the animalistic into life—an aspect that would otherwise not extend into the soul organism. That which should serve entirely different processes is carried up into cognition, into the processes of perception. Therefore, hallucination and vision are always an expression of the fact that something is not right within the human being. Admittedly, what comes to light there is spiritual, but it is a spirituality that spiritual science cannot use; for spiritual science can only make use of what is experienced independently of the body. You can see how unfounded it is whenever the misunderstanding arises that spiritual science somehow gains its knowledge through visions, hallucinations, and the like. On the contrary, spiritual science shows that these states are somehow connected with abnormalities in the physical constitution, and that they must never be incorporated into the findings of spiritual science. Hallucinations and visions are never the same as what appears as a dream image. What appears as a dream image arises outside the body and is merely reflected in the body; what appears as a hallucination or vision arises because something in the body is, so to speak, missing. If it were functioning normally, a person with healthy senses would be fully immersed in the sensory world. Because this part is missing, the spiritual-eternal—which should remain invisible within the bodily organization—comes to light precisely through the bodily organization. This is not merely a physical illness; it is a psychological abnormality, something that could only cloud or distort the images from the spiritual world. It is no wonder that when something in the body is out of balance, images appear. For how do these symbolic images arise? Precisely because that which normally serves metabolism and digestion is out of balance, and this manifests itself in the soul organism as something else. If, then, a person’s bodily life is more impaired than it ought to be, abnormal consciousness comes to the fore. What we experience as symbolic images in normal consciousness is conditioned by a lowered physical life—but a normally lowered physical life. If it is lowered to a greater extent, then something appears that stems solely from this lowering, which should not actually be present. Thus, one can say that the hallucinatory and visionary life represents a blocked striving within the human being. As a person develops from childhood into adulthood, they are actually striving toward their physical organization. They strive to develop their spiritual-soul aspect more and more so that the body can be used as a complete instrument of soul activity. This is inhibited by the fact that something in the body is not healthy. When a person grows up to the point where they can make use of their body, they grow into what constitutes their physical independence, their physical sense of self here in the sensory world; they grow into that degree of egoism that is necessary for a person to truly be a self-reliant being, so that they can fulfill their human destiny. This degree of egoism must, of course, be linked to the appropriate degree of selflessness. What is at stake is that a person permeates their life with the powers of their “I.” If they are unable to do so due to any inhibitions, they seek the degree of egoism they need in a pathological way. This then manifests itself in a life of hallucinations and visions, which always stems from the fact that the person, due to his physical constitution, cannot attain the egoism necessary for life.

[ 30 ] Furthermore, among the borderline areas of mental life is that which, through states of catalepsy and lethargy, leads to somnambulism, which is related to mediumistic phenomena. Just as the human organism of imagination—I say explicitly “organism of imagination” and not “mechanism of imagination” — must be constituted in a certain way so that the disturbance I have just characterized as a hallucinatory and visionary life cannot manifest itself, so too must the mechanism of the will—I say mechanism of the will—be constituted in a certain way for life to proceed normally in the sensory world. Just as the organism of imagination, in the manner I have described, can give rise to hallucinations and visions as a pathological state of the soul, so too, when the mechanism of the will is disturbed, suspended, or paralyzed—as in catalepsy, lethargy, or mediumship—the will can thereby be undermined. Although the body is not capable of directly bringing about the will unless the spirit acts upon it, but the body is capable—when certain organs are shut down, when the mechanism of the will is suppressed—of weakening the will, whereas the spiritual researcher—as I said today in the introduction—can remain in the reality of the spiritual world by having his will act upon his body with full consciousness. If the body is paralyzed with regard to the will, then the body becomes a suppressor, a nullifier of that will; then the human being is lifted out of the world to which he belongs as a spiritual-soul being, as an eternal being, and is drawn into the physical environment, which is, after all, permeated everywhere by spiritual forces and entities. The human being is then cast out of the real world and drawn into that spiritual realm which constantly interweaves with and permeates the physical world. This is the case with somnambulism; it is the case with mediumship.

[ 31 ] Well, those who are comfortable with spiritual science in the sense I mentioned at the beginning of today’s lecture would still like to explore the spiritual world in this way. However, they cannot explore the true spiritual world—the one that guarantees the soul its eternal, immortal life—but can only bring people into contact with what permeates the physical environment. What is at work in the somnambulist, what is at work in the medium—that is also at work in the normal person, only in a different way. It may sound strange, but spiritual science arrives at this conclusion. What actually operates within the medium? What actually operates within the somnambulist? When we are living our ordinary lives, we are connected to other people through a certain moral bond. We act out of moral impulses. I said that these moral impulses are generated precisely through the outer physical body. We act in outer cultural life; we learn to write and read; we learn what the human will otherwise incorporates into the outer physical world as something spiritual. Now, the soul of the somnambulist—the medium—interacts in an abnormal way with everything we draw upon in our soul for our activities: as we learn to read, as we acquire other cultural achievements, and as we enter into moral relationships with the world. This activity, which otherwise manifests only in the moral realm and in the realm of cultural life, expresses itself directly into the physicality of the medium or the somnambulist through the lowering of consciousness and the disengagement of the soul. Whereas in normal life a person comes into contact with the environment solely through the senses, in the case of the somnambulist and the medium, the whole person enters into a relationship with the environment through the mechanism of the will. As a result, remote effects can occur; thought can act at a distance; visions extending across space and time can also arise, and so on. However, only that which is contained as spiritual in the physical world—to which we, as physical human beings, belong—and for the most part only that which pertains to cultural and moral life—can enter the human organism. But it enters in such a way that this human organism has suspended its soul life. Consequently, what manifests through the medium or the somnambulist does not reach the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being, but rather results in an imitation of the effects of the spiritual upon the human body. Whereas in normal life the soul must act as a mediator between the truly spiritual and the physical, here the spiritual acts directly upon the body—but only in the manner I have described. The result is that, with consciousness suspended, the human being becomes like an automaton, and that, in reality, only what belongs externally to cultural or moral life finds expression in this person who has become automatic. You will see that, although concealed in the most varied ways and masked by mediumship and somnambulism, seemingly spiritual elements also find expression—but only through very specific combinations and connections that cannot be discussed here now, as that would lead too far afield. The most significant elements expressed in this way originate from the physical environment. It is precisely those who stand firmly on scientific ground but cannot transcend the scientific prejudices characterized here who, by resorting to somnambulism and mediumship, seek to penetrate the spiritual world to which human beings belong with their Eternal Self and the core of their being—their soul. This is where the most diverse errors can arise.

[ 32 ] I would like to cite one such error from recent years that is quite interesting because, I would say, it characterizes the entire field. We are dealing here with a naturalist who is highly regarded in his country—a naturalist who is well versed in all the intricacies of scientific methods and who, therefore, when approaching this subject, by no means proceeds lightly. I am referring to the famous English naturalist Sir Oliver Lodge. It is a very curious case, one that is also connected to the current catastrophic events. Lodge had always been inclined, in a way, to build a bridge between the external, natural world and the world to which a person belongs once they have passed through the gate of death. But he wanted to remain on scientific ground—which is characteristic of those individuals who have absolutely no desire to delve into the methods of the spiritual sciences. Lodge had been forced to send his son to war, where he served on the French front. Lo and behold, one day he received a strange letter from America. In it, Lodge was informed that his son was facing great danger, but that the spirit of the late Myers—who had died ten years earlier—would hold his protective hand over his son as he faced this danger. F. Myers had, after all, been president of the “Society for Psychological Research,” a man who had dealt with psychic matters and who had known Lodge and his family well; one could therefore assume—if one assumes at all that anything in the psychic realm occurs in connection with human life—that he would extend his protective hand over the young Lodge, who was in danger. But the letter was worded quite ambiguously, as such letters tend to be. After all, the son could be in danger of being shot, yet still be saved; in that case, the letter writer could say: “Yes, didn’t I receive a message through a medium that Myers is watching over Lodge’s son? Thanks to Myers’s help, he has been saved from mortal danger.” But if he is shot, the writer of the letter might just as well say: “Well, Myers is holding his hand over him in the afterlife.” If a third scenario were possible, that scenario would also be covered by this letter. One simply must not be unskeptical if one truly wishes to seek the truth in this realm. One must examine everything thoroughly with a critical eye. Of course, Lodge did not attach any particular importance to this, for he already knew that such things are open to interpretation. Lo and behold, the son fell. Then he received a second message stating that Myers was indeed keeping his hand over his son in the afterlife, and that there were people in England who would provide proof of this. Well, such things are, after all, already being organized. Several mediums even gained access to Oliver Lodge’s family, which consisted largely of skeptics. There, a wide variety of manifestations took place. Lodge described all of this in detail in a thick book that is very interesting for a number of reasons. The events described there do not differ much from other spiritualist records, and there was no need to make a big fuss about them. Nor did people do so. Lodge, too, would not have described the manifestations had it not been for something else that came into play. Because Lodge is familiar with all the intricacies of the scientific method, he proceeded in this case just as a chemist conducting experiments in a laboratory would, and took every conceivable precaution to establish the facts of the case beyond a doubt. One therefore gets the impression throughout the book that one can truly assess the case based on it, for Lodge describes it just as a natural scientist would.

[ 33 ] Among all sorts of other things, he describes a case that can be regarded as an “experimentum crucis”—a case that caused a tremendous stir. Even the most skeptical journalists—and they tend to be skeptical, though I don’t know if that’s always based on sound judgment—found themselves somehow impressed by this experimentum crucis. It consisted of the following: A medium who claimed to be in contact with the souls of both Myers and Lodge’s son stated that, fourteen days before Lodge’s son was killed on the French front, he had had his photograph taken with a number of colleagues. The photograph looked like this and that. It is described in detail how the comrades were arranged in the row, how Lodge’s son was seated in the lower row, how he held his hands, and so on. It was then reported that several photographs exist, explaining why the photographer took several shots in succession, slightly altering the grouping each time. The other grouping was described just as precisely, including how Lodge changed the position of his hands and arms, how he leaned toward his neighbor, and so on. This photograph, too, was described in detail. The photographs were not in England; no one had seen them—neither the medium nor anyone from the family, nor Lodge himself. One could only assume that the medium was somehow fantasizing when she described the photographs. But lo and behold, after fourteen days these photographs arrived, and it was seen that they corresponded exactly with the medium’s descriptions. It is no wonder that this was a cross-examination for Lodge and for those involved. This is also what makes the book interesting. However, the true parapsychologist will not fall into the same trap as Lodge himself did in a certain respect, because it is precisely because of Lodge’s conscientious account that he can form an independent, objective judgment about the case.

[ 34 ] Why is it that something occurs here through which a person who does not wish to enter the spiritual world through true spiritual research nevertheless finds, in this way, something that leads him to the conviction that a spiritual world extends into the physical world? This could not lead the true spiritual researcher to the same conviction, because he knows what is at stake here. He must even be very surprised that a man like Lodge, despite being such a seasoned natural scientist, is nevertheless so amateurish in this field. Anyone even superficially familiar with these phenomena—perhaps not even through personal experience, but only from the literature—knows that in somnambulists and mediums there is a relationship to their surroundings of the kind I have described, in which, so to speak, the entire human being is transformed into sensory organs, giving rise to automatic and temporal remote visions. Their basis is always a diseased or weakened spiritual life. They have nothing to do with the world to which human beings belong with their immortal part, but they do have to do with that which, within the physical, sensory environment, is spiritual—namely, what takes place within it through human will. Precisely because Lodge describes this so conscientiously, it can be established that the medium experienced nothing other than a remote vision—that she had seen the photographs fourteen days before their arrival in London. This may seem wondrous enough to some, but these are ordinary phenomena. In any case, this does not, as Lodge believes, provide proof that Myers actually laid his hand upon Lodge’s son. That may well be the case, but it would have to be investigated through astral projection. One can see how great the temptations and enticements are—even for those who are conscientious researchers and approach such phenomena with caution and a critical eye—if one does not truly wish to embark on the path of spiritual science. That which can be experienced through these abnormal phenomena—through which human beings are turned into automatons—must never become the subject matter of a science of the truly supersensible, to which human beings belong with their eternal aspect.

[ 35 ] Much more could be added. It would likewise show how these border regions of human soul life point to something that, while otherwise remaining unconscious, is by no means capable of revealing what is actually most significant for human beings in the unconscious: the spiritual world to which human beings belong with their free, immortal part. Of all these phenomena, only the life of dreams remains, as it is, so to speak, still within the realm of the normal, because there the human being experiences not through the physical body but through the spiritual and soul aspects, and thus comes into contact with the physical body and physical experience. Therefore, even with regard to the dream life, human beings are able to exercise correction in the proper way and to orient it correctly within the rest of reality, whereas they are unable to critically integrate into the rest of their lives, in a normal way, what they experience through their physical body in the form of hallucinations, visions, and manifestations of somnambulism and mediumship.

[ 36 ] In the next lecture, we will examine in greater detail that which, throughout the course of cultural development, continually brings joy and inspiration into human life: art. In dreams, human beings experience the spiritual world in such a way that symbols take shape through contact with the physical body. What the true artist experiences, and what takes place within those who appreciate and receive art, also unfolds in the unconscious realms of the soul—realms that lie beyond mere physical experience. What is truly artistic is carried from the supersensible into the sensory realms of life, except that in art, the process of clothing the experience in images does not take place unconsciously. Just as, in the case of the dreamer, the actual psychological experience remains in the unconscious but reveals itself through what the soul, in turn, unconsciously adds as a form to the actual experience, so the supersensory experience of the artist and the art lover is carried into the sensory world through the work of art. But the process of clothing the experience in an image—clothing it in what is drawn from external life as imagination in order to imaginatively place the supersensory experience into the sensory world—is carried out in consciousness. That this is so—that art is indeed a message from a supersensible world, that the enjoyment of art is indeed an elevation of the soul to the supersensible world, through the medium of sensory form and imagery—will be the subject of the next lecture.

[ 37 ] To summarize what has been discussed today, one must say: Certainly, when a person encounters these abnormal phenomena in life, they are led into the spiritual realm. For it is the spiritual world that shines into human life, even if one experiences it in an abnormal way. But one should not artificially induce these abnormal phenomena any more than one artificially induces symptoms of illness in order to gain insight into something. What remains of all these phenomena, standing there as a living reminder? That a person may find the path into the true experience of the spiritual. The remarkable result is that it is precisely through spiritual science that we can protect the “world of dreams” from the suspicion that it has anything to do with pathological experiences, although there can, of course, be easy transitions from dreams into such experiences. But when one sees how human beings are thus “reminded” through dreams to find the path into the true spiritual world, then the contemplation of this seemingly chaotic world of dreams reveals itself to be quite significant. Then an important cosmic mystery knocks at the door of human life: the dream, with its strange images that are neither logical nor imbued with morality, yet which are a clear indication of the spiritual world itself. Thus, one can agree with a review of the aforementioned book by Volkelt written by the brilliant aesthetician and philosopher Vischer, in which he states: When one considers the ‘dream’ with its rich poverty, its poor wealth, its ingenious stupidity, its stupid genius, and observes it at work in its unconscious creation, one will recognize how it does indeed point to that which is spiritually active within the human being and which can be sought. And Vischer is right when he goes on to say: “Anyone who believes that this spiritual realm of the dream is not worthy of being made the subject of true research thereby shows only that he himself possesses little spirit.” But if the realm of dreams serves as a call to approach the spiritual world, then spiritual science seeks to heed this call. While the dream can only produce images of transience—even though the soul is active in the process with its eternal core—through spiritual scientific knowledge, this soul, which lives in the eternal world, can also be filled with images that express the spiritual reality corresponding to its very essence, and thereby assign it—just as the senses assign it a place in the sensory world—its place as a spiritual-soul being in spiritual-soul reality.