The Rudolf Steiner Archive

15. The Nature of Sleep and Death

[ 1 ] Human life alternates between waking and sleeping. At night, a person sinks into a state of unconsciousness or the subconscious. If they wish to experience this consciously, they must first become capable of suppressing external sensory impressions. To do this, the soul must be artificially emptied of all external impressions. Then, through the will, powerful, intense thoughts must be evoked in the soul. They must course through the soul. Without a third element, the experience would be something like an earthquake, a violent tremor. Through the will, a state of complete stillness—like the stillness of the wind or the sea—must now be established in the soul. Then the spiritual researcher experiences something similar to what the person born blind experiences at a lower level when he undergoes surgery and regains his sight. Color and light pour in. The spiritual researcher experiences this as a direct experience. This marks his awakening or initiation. Now he can judge what lies behind the sensory impressions. These are not the dreams of feverish souls. Thus the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear are opened to him. This is easily misjudged, much like a seashell when first seen in the shell limestone. It did not grow out of the rock, but was formed by a freshwater mollusk.

[ 2 ] What do sleep and death mean to the spiritual researcher? He first considers the nature of the human being, which consists of four members. The lowest member is the physical body. The etheric or life body constantly prevents the body from succumbing to physical-chemical forces, as it does in death. It halts this decay; it is a faithful friend between birth and death. No science prevents us from accepting the higher members of the human being. Even if positive research were to prove that carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen could be combined to form living protein substance, this result could not refute the existence of the higher members; it would not be a reason to deny the etheric body. Within the space that the human being fills with his or her being, there are not only the physical body and the etheric body, but also pleasure and suffering, perceptions, ideas, instincts, and so on. They, too, fill this space. And as the fourth member, the “I”—that name which cannot be called out from the outside to the one to whom it belongs, and which is at the same time the unpronounceable name of God: Jehovah-Yahweh.

[ 3 ] We feel fatigue as soon as the astral body withdraws. Who raises the hand? The astral body, at the behest of the “I.” We see with the astral eye through the instrument of the body. Fatigue sets in when we want to use the astral body but the physical body cannot keep up.

[ 4 ] The first sense to fail as one falls asleep is the sense of speech. It can no longer move the external organ of the tongue from within. Then the senses of sight, taste, and smell fail; lastly, hearing, the most spiritual of the senses. The astral body, which governs everything, gradually slips away. As a person falls asleep, they can sense how external impressions cease. Then a sense of their own being as a whole sets in. Flaws, shortcomings, and so on—the spiritual world holds up the external world to them like a mirror. Then a feeling of bliss; then a twitch as a sign of entering the spiritual world. Then unconsciousness. Then something can be perceived like a fine rain from the spiritual world into the physical and etheric bodies. This is regeneration—the restoration of that which manifested as fatigue.

[ 5 ] There are certain hypotheses that attribute fatigue to so-called fatigue-inducing substances. But this is like two people who see one person slap the other. One says, “I saw how he was seething inside”; the other describes it this way: “I saw him raise his hand and slap him.” The validity of the study of external nature is acknowledged, but behind all external phenomena there is still that which directs and guides them.

[ 6 ] In order to rebuild our entire inner life, the astral body draws strength from the spiritual world at night. Time and again, it returns to the spiritual world, carrying with it from our daytime consciousness whatever can enrich us.

[ 7 ] Between 1770 and 1815, events took place that left some people unmoved, while others were able to process them. However, experiences cannot be processed if they are merely lived through. They must, as it were, be buried in the ground like seeds and sprout from there like plants. Sleep must intervene here, just as it does between memorization and true mastery. Experiences must be planted in the soil during sleep and then harvested as lessons while awake; otherwise, they remain chaotic, like erratic boulders—experiences devoid of wisdom. If one sleeps too long, too many of the invisible forces are poured into one. Such late sleepers become spiritually complacent. In spiritual and mental terms, this means trying to process too much without actually having anything to work with. This results in dullness and sluggishness of thought.

[ 8 ] Dreams arise when the astral body and the “I” have united with the etheric body but not yet with the physical body. This cannot be conceived in spatial terms. In the same way, clairvoyance arises as a kind of reflection, as a vision, when the physical and etheric bodies are not united. Here, the etheric and astral bodies work together. The ego loosens its grip, and the astral body plunges into its own world. It is an abnormal intermediate state. If the astral body’s immersion into the field of vision is incomplete, then deceptive premonitions arise. If the astral body does not plunge in—that is, if the connection between the astral body and the etheric body is not in order—then visions occur.

[ 9 ] Thus, there is an untrained, unordered connection between the members. In the development between birth and death, almost everything relates to the inner soul capacities. Similar to Francesco Redi’s statement, “Life can only come from life,” we can formulate the statement, “The spiritual-soul aspect can only come from the spiritual-soul aspect.” Thus, the human spiritual-soul aspect between birth and death originates from a spiritual-soul aspect that was already active before birth. Before birth, the human being worked on the physical and etheric bodies—which were still malleable and formable—just as they do on the soul body between birth and death. At death, the human being takes an extract from the etheric body as malleable material into the spiritual world. There, freed from physical existence, the human being accomplishes what they were unable to achieve between birth and death. There they can work everything into the spiritual archetype of a new physical body—into spiritual material. The fruit of the previous life can be woven into the etheric body and physical body of the new earthly life.

[ 10 ] Death is something we must desire. We must be grateful for death. It destroys the scaffolding that would only hinder our ascent. Goethe said:

Nature invented death in order to have plenty of life.

[ 11 ] The spiritual being invented death to make the perfection of human life possible. A great poet said:

Man is, at first, the shadow of a dream.

[ 12 ] Of the dream he has only the shadow; of the shadow, only the dream. Such is the human being of the external sensory world. But if he possesses a ray of insight and light, it becomes as bright for him as daylight, and joy radiates through his entire life.