The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] In my previous lecture, my aim was to show how contemporary human thinking, which tends toward the abstract, is not actually a gift from the external physical world, but rather a gift from the spiritual world; how, fundamentally, this abstract human thinking enters the human soul in exactly the same way as the revelations of the beings of higher hierarchies. The essential point, then, is that we truly carry within us, in our everyday, ordinary lives, something that already possesses the very nature of clairvoyant knowledge.

[ 2 ] But as human beings, we also carry within us something else that, in essence, is even more akin to clairvoyant perception, albeit in a way that is, one might say, even more hidden. This is that aspect of human consciousness which arises between the ordinary, everyday waking state and the state of sleep: it is the consciousness of dreaming. One cannot truly come to know, in a practical sense, the ascent of the human soul into the higher worlds unless one attempts to gain insight into that strange life of the human soul in the twilight state of dreaming. What, then, is this dream? Let us first consider it as it presents itself to us in ordinary life.

[ 3 ] People have images around them or even before them—images that are, so to speak, more fleeting and lack the same distinct contours as the perceptions of ordinary everyday life. Dream images flit past the soul, as it were, and when one then engages in what one might call a sober examination of these dream images, one may notice that in most cases these dream images are in some way connected to external life, as we experience it on the physical plane. Certainly, there are people who, with a light heart, wish to see in dreams something lofty, something wonderful—indeed, revelations from higher worlds. There are people who, with a light heart, believe that when this or that dream occurs, it gives them something they have not yet experienced in ordinary life; they believe it calls into the soul something that, in contrast to this ordinary life, is new, something never before seen. In many cases, indeed perhaps in the vast majority of cases, one will be mistaken in this regard if one interprets such a dream in this way; one will simply fail to notice—out of a kind of carelessness, so to speak—how certain experiences we have had externally on the physical plane, whether more or less recently or even many years ago, nevertheless intrude into the fabric and flow of the dream. For this reason, the materialistic understanding of our time finds it so easy to simply dismiss the revelations of dreams as something special, and instead to point out how these dreams are, after all, nothing other than afterimages of what has been experienced externally in physical life. Anyone familiar with contemporary materialistic dream science knows that this materialistic dream science always strives to demonstrate precisely how the dream is actually nothing other than the afterimages of the external physical world that the human brain carries within itself.

[ 4 ] One must admit that this external, materialistic science of dreams really has it quite easy in this area when it comes to rejecting any higher significance of the dream life. After all, it is so easy to demonstrate that the higher revelations people believe they experience in dreams are seen in images characteristic of a certain era, and that in another era they could not have seen these images. For example, people today often dream in images derived from inventions and discoveries that were not made until the 19th century. It is, after all, very easy to demonstrate that images from external life creep into the fabric and flow of dreams. Anyone who wishes to gain insight into dream experiences—so that this insight may provide a means of penetrating the occult worlds—must exercise the utmost care in this very area. They must accustom themselves to carefully tracing all hidden paths, and it will become clear to them that in most cases the dream offers nothing other than what has been experienced in the outer world. But precisely the person who becomes more and more careful in the exploration of his dream life—and this should essentially be every aspiring occultist—will nevertheless gradually notice that things spring forth from the fabric of the dream of which he could not possibly have experienced anything externally in his life up to now, in the life of this incarnation. And whoever follows the instructions given in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* will notice how their dream life gradually transforms, how the dreams indeed take on a different character. One of the first experiences they will be able to have is the following:

[ 5 ] He may have pondered at length, for a very long time, something that seemed mysterious to him, and may have come to the conclusion: “Yes, as you are now, your intelligence is not sufficient to solve this mystery from within your own soul, and what you have learned from the outside so far is not enough either.” Then this person may—and this will be the more common case—not have the awareness: ‘You are dreaming, and in the dream this mystery will be solved for you.’ He will not have this awareness immediately. But he will be able to attain a higher level of consciousness at a relatively early stage. He will feel, as it were, as if waking from a dream, as if recalling a dream. His consciousness will take such a form that he says to himself, or at least could say: Yes, now I am not dreaming about the very thing in question. I was also unaware of some dream I might have had earlier. But now it surfaces like a memory that something like a being approached me, which solved this riddle for me by, as it were, giving me the solution or bestowing it upon me. — Such a fact will be experienced relatively easily by those who accustom themselves to gradually expanding their consciousness through the aforementioned instructions. One will know, recalling what was experienced as in a dream, that one did not know at the time that one was experiencing it. As if shining up from the dark depths of one’s own soul, something like this will appear, in the face of which one says to oneself: When you yourself, with your cleverness, with your intelligence, were not present; when you, as it were, guarded your soul against being guided by your intelligence; when you guarded your soul from your own intelligence—then your soul was capable of more; then it could come into contact with the solution to the riddle, against which you are powerless with your intelligence. — Certainly, it will often be easy for the materialistic scholar to find a materialistic explanation for such an experience, but the one who has this experience himself knows in fact that what confronts him there, what then turns out to be like a remembered dream experience, reveals something quite different from merely a reminiscence of ordinary life. Above all, the entire mood of the soul one has in the face of such experiences is such that one says to oneself: Yes, you have not actually had this mood of the soul at all before. — It is the mood of a wondrous bliss at the fact that one carries more within the depths of the soul than in ordinary daily consciousness. But this recognition of the soul’s life, this surging up like a memory of something one could not grasp when it occurred in the soul, can be even clearer, much clearer. Something can rise much more clearly into the conscious recognition of the soul’s life. This happens in the following case.

[ 6 ] If a person continues such exercises with energy and perseverance—perhaps often over quite long periods of time, perhaps even over decades—as described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, then, in a manner very similar to what has been described, a soul experience will emerge into their consciousness. This can be, for example, the following: Let us suppose that mixed into this soul experience is the memory of an ordinary experience from daily life that happened to us years ago—perhaps a rather unpleasant, fateful experience that we call a severe blow of fate, of which we have always known that we could only think of it with bitterness throughout the entire time. In the face of such an experience, one can truly have a clear awareness of how bitterly one has experienced it so far, how one has always had a bitter feeling whenever it surfaced in memory. Now, however, something like the memory of a dream surfaces again, but of a very strange dream that tells us: In your soul there are feelings that have drawn you with all their might to this bitter experience as something extraordinarily welcome; there is something living in your soul that has felt a kind of delight in bringing about all the circumstances so that this fate could befall you. — And now, when one has such a memory, one also knows: In the ordinary consciousness one carries within oneself regarding the order of external affairs, there was not a single moment in which you did not feel this stroke of fate painfully and bitterly. There was not a single moment in your present incarnation when you did not feel it painfully and bitterly. But there is something within you that behaves quite differently toward this stroke of fate, something that sought with all its might to bring about the circumstances that brought you this bitter stroke of fate. You did not know at the time that there is something within you that felt drawn to this stroke of fate as if by a magnetic force; you did not know that. — But now one realizes that behind everyday consciousness, another, deeper layer of the soul life reigns with wisdom. Whoever has such an experience and who energetically follows the exercises as given in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* can truly have such an experience—and from then on knows: Yes, you live a soul life that relates to the outer world in a certain way, that has sympathies and antipathies toward what stands before you as fate, and it was with this awareness that you felt toward that stroke of fate at the time. You perceived it as bitter, repulsive. But you did not know that within you there was another soul life which, with the highest sympathy, was striving at that time to experience and live through what your ordinary everyday consciousness finds so repulsive.

[ 7 ] When one has such an experience, any materialistic researcher may come along and claim that such experiences are merely reminiscences of everyday life; we know how such mere reminiscences differ from what one actually experiences. For these reminiscences would surely be tinged with the bitterness with which one has always thought of them. But what one actually experiences unfolds quite differently, appears quite different from any mere reminiscence. For deep down, one is a completely different person than one suspects. This comes before one’s soul. And it comes before one’s soul in such a way that one knows: one has received revelations from regions into which our everyday consciousness cannot penetrate.

[ 8 ] When one has such an experience, one’s entire mental image of the life of the soul expands; one then knows from experience that this life of the soul is indeed something quite different from what is encompassed from birth to death. Unless one delves into the deeper regions of the soul described above, one’s ordinary consciousness has no inkling that, beneath the threshold of consciousness, one is a completely different person than one believes oneself to be in everyday life. And when a significantly different feeling and perception of life arises in the soul, the sphere of what we call the world expands to include a new region for this perception and experience. Then we truly enter a new region of life. A completely different, new region opens up before us, and we then know why, in ordinary life, we can enter this region only—one might say—under certain conditions.

[ 9 ] In essence, by attempting to describe to you, as it were, the occult development of the dream life, I have already presented two very different things. On the one hand, there is the everyday dream life that occurs time and again for the vast majority of people on the border between waking and sleeping. I have pointed out that this everyday dream life feeds on the afterimages of everyday life. But on the other hand, I have shown you that through a similar kind of inner experience, as occurs with ordinary dream images, under certain conditions, through training, a whole new world can open up before us—a world of which we certainly knew nothing before we entered it, and of which we can say: We are able to descend into the realms of dream life in a different way as well, so that we find a new world opening up to us within them. — Thus, on the one hand, we have the dream world permeated by the reminiscences of ordinary life, by the afterimages of everyday life, and on the other hand, we have a world similar to the dream realm, in which, however, we have new experiences—real, genuine experiences—of which we can only say that they are experiences of a real nature from the other, spiritual worlds. But one condition must be met if we wish to have these new experiences in the half-sleep of the night. The condition must be met that we are able to shut out the reminiscences of everyday life, the images of everyday life. As long as these intrude into the dream realm, they make themselves important there, I would say, and prevent the real experiences of the higher worlds from entering. Why is this so? Why do we carry the afterimages of everyday life into a realm of experience where we could experience higher worlds? Why do we carry these afterimages of everyday life into this realm, where they make themselves so important?

[ 10 ] We do this because, in everyday life—whether we admit it or not—we are most interested in what concerns us directly, in our own external experiences. It does not matter at all that some people pretend their lives no longer interest them particularly. Only those who do not know how people in this realm succumb to the most grievous illusions can be misled by such pretences. Human beings are, in fact, deeply attached to the likes and dislikes of everyday life. If you now truly go through what is given as guidance in the book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* is given as a guide for the development of the human soul, you will see that, fundamentally, it all boils down to weaning us off our interest in everyday life. People, of course, carry out the instructions there in very different ways. This book is read by this or that person; it is read for a wide variety of reasons, and from these varied reasons, a person’s attitude toward this book will emerge. Someone hears, perhaps with the most beautiful feelings: If one follows these instructions, one can develop in such a way as to gain insight into the higher worlds. — That is true, but we do not wish to speak of that. Curiosity then arises—and why should one not be curious about other, higher worlds— curiosity is often aroused, even if one initially approached the book with beautiful feelings. Then someone begins to do these exercises, but really only out of curiosity. This will only last for a certain time, however, because all sorts of inner feelings—especially feelings one usually does not want to become quite clear about—will later, after a certain time, hold one back: one lets the matter lie. But the feelings one does not want to come to terms with—which one sometimes interprets quite differently—are nothing other than the fact that, if one truly wants to perform these exercises, one must then break oneself of certain habits in a completely different way—in truth, one simply does not break them—habits related to sympathy and antipathy. One does not readily break these habits. One may say that one is happy to break these habits, but one does not do so. And the real success that such exercises can have becomes apparent quite soon in those who are genuinely serious about them; it is evident precisely in the fact that one’s sympathies and antipathies toward life undergo a certain change. It must be said, however, that it is quite rare to have the experience of someone surrendering so completely to the influence of the exercises that their feelings of sympathy and antipathy actually change. But when the exercises are taken seriously and energetically, this does happen. Sympathy and antipathy toward everyday life change in an energetic way.

[ 11 ] This means a great deal, indeed a great deal; it means, in fact, that we are fighting precisely those forces that cause everyday experiences to creep into our dreams as afterimages, as reminiscences. For they no longer do so once we have succeeded, in any field whatsoever, in changing our sympathies and antipathies to that extent. One does, after all, have quite striking experiences in this regard. This change in the forces of sympathy need not even take place in a particularly lofty sphere. It must simply be energetically carried out in some area so that sympathies and antipathies are altered. It can be in the most everyday things, but such a change must take place somewhere. There are people who say: I practice daily, morning and evening, and for hours at other times as well, but I cannot take a single step into the spiritual worlds. — It is really quite difficult at times to make such people understand how easy it is to grasp that they cannot do this. Often, people need only consider that today, perhaps after twenty, twenty-five, or even thirty years of practice, they are still grumbling about the same things they grumbled about twenty-five years ago. Yes, they still grumble in exactly the same way as they did back then.

[ 12 ] But here is something even more common: there are, after all, people who strive to use external means that have certain effects in occultism. For example, they become vegetarians. But lo and behold, there are people who, in all seriousness, resolve to truly break a habit and who initially approach it with the utmost earnestness, yet despite having practiced for decades, achieve nothing. Such a person says to himself: If only I could experience just a tiny, tiny bit of the spiritual worlds! — They need only consider that perhaps they have returned again and again to the meat pots of Egypt because they have simply been unable to overcome their old affinity for meat. They themselves think of entirely different reasons, believing that they need meat. They say, for example: “My brain demands it.”

[ 13 ] Let us therefore not form a mental image of the matter relating to the transformation of sympathy and antipathy too lightly. It is easy, yet—as one might say, recalling a quote from *Faust*—“It is easy, yet what is easy is hard.” It is precisely with this paradox that one must often describe the evolving state of mind of the person who wishes to ascend into the higher worlds. It does not matter whether one changes this or that sympathy or antipathy; what matters is simply to seriously change any sympathy or antipathy at all. Then, after certain exercises, one enters the realm of the dream life in such a way that one brings in, as it were, nothing from everyday life, from sensory experiences. Through this, however, the new experiences have, so to speak, a place within it.

[ 14 ] Now, anyone who has actually gone through such an experience as a result of occult development knows that, in a sense, there is still another layer of consciousness present within the human being. Every human being is familiar with everyday consciousness: it is the waking daytime consciousness through which one thinks, feels, and wills, which one has been accustomed to knowing since becoming self-aware in childhood, and from that moment on, one leads, as it were, a conscious soul life until death. At least, this is the case for most people. Behind this waking consciousness lies another layer of consciousness. Within this other layer lie the dreams that constitute our everyday experience. Therefore, we can say: this is the dream consciousness. — But we have also seen that it is not merely dream consciousness. It becomes dream consciousness only because we carry into it from our daily consciousness that which we experience in that daily consciousness. If we do not do this, if we empty it of these experiences, then experiences from the higher worlds can enter into this region of our soul life, experiences that are indeed present in the world around us but cannot be perceived by ordinary consciousness, nor even by dream consciousness, because the reminiscences of daily life would first have to be driven out of it so that it becomes empty and can make room for these experiences.

[ 15 ] When experiences such as those I have described—as elementary, so to speak—occur, then we know, however, that we would no longer be speaking in the proper sense if we were to refer to this consciousness as a dream consciousness; rather, we know that, in fact, our everyday consciousness itself gradually comes to relate to what we can experience there in the same way that a dream relates to reality. It then becomes true for us, in the context of higher experience, that everyday consciousness is precisely a kind of dream consciousness, and that reality begins only here.

[ 16 ] Let us take the second example and try to understand how a person, in their feelings, comes to truly tell themselves that a higher consciousness is beginning for them. We tell ourselves: We have lived through a stroke of fate that we found bitter, but we have noticed that there was something in our soul that sought this stroke of fate. And now we also feel that we needed this stroke of fate for our soul; now, for the first time, we truly feel what karma is. We feel that we had to seek this stroke of fate. We entered this incarnation of ours with an imperfection in our soul, and because we felt this imperfection—not in our consciousness, but in the depths of our soul—we were magnetically drawn to truly experience this stroke of fate. Through this, we have overcome and abolished an imperfection in our soul; through this, we have done something important and real. How superficial, by contrast, is the judgment of everyday life, which finds this or that to be unpleasant. The higher reality is this: our soul progresses from incarnation to incarnation; only for a brief time can it feel the unpleasantness of this stroke of fate. But when it looks beyond the horizon of this incarnation, then it feels its imperfections, then it feels the necessity—yes, it feels it more strongly than with ordinary consciousness—then it feels that it is necessary to become more perfect and ever more perfect. Ordinary consciousness, had it been placed before this stroke of fate, would have cowardly slipped past this blow, would not have chosen necessity. If it could choose, it would cowardly slip past the stroke of fate it finds repulsive. But the deeper consciousness, of which we know nothing, does not cowardly slip past; it draws it right toward itself; it allows fate, which it perceives as a process of perfection, to work in such a way that it says to itself: I have entered this life, I have been aware that from my birth I have been afflicted with an imperfection of the soul. If I wish to develop the soul, it must be prepared. But then I must rush into this fate. — This is the stronger element in the soul; this is the element against which the web of ordinary consciousness, with its antipathies and sympathies, appears like a dream. Over there, one enters into the feeling and experience of the soul, which slumbers deep in its depths, hidden from everyday consciousness—of which one says here that it knows more about us, that it is stronger within us than our ordinary consciousness.

[ 17 ] And now we notice something else as well. If one truly has this—what has just been discussed—as a personal experience of the soul, if one does not merely know it theoretically but has actually experienced such a feeling, then one necessarily has another experience alongside it. One has the experience: Yes, you can indeed enter these regions where everything becomes different from ordinary consciousness. — But at the same time one feels, and one feels it deeply: I do not want to. — As a rule, for most people, the curiosity to enter there is not so great that they could overcome this dreadful: I do not want to. This unwillingness that arises—it arises with tremendous power in this realm we are just now touching upon. The most manifold misunderstandings can arise there. Let’s suppose someone has even received very personal instructions. They go to the one who gave them and say: “I’m not getting anywhere with this; your instructions are worthless.” — That can be an honest belief, a completely honest belief. But what ought to be given as an answer may be completely incomprehensible to the one who holds this honest belief. For the answer would have to be: “You can go in, but you don’t want to.” That is truly the answer. But the other person doesn’t know that; he honestly believes that he has the will, for this very lack of will remains in the subconscious. So he doesn’t understand that he actually doesn’t want to. For the moment he actually tries to make this clear to himself, he already suppresses this will. The will not to enter affects him so terribly that he immediately suppresses it when it arises. For this will is quite fatal, terrible, very fatal. Namely, that which one notices there, but as soon as one notices it, wants to erase—that is: With the ego, with the self that you have drawn upon, you cannot enter there.

[ 18 ] If a person wants to develop spiritually, they feel very strongly: You must leave this self behind. — But that is something very difficult, for people would never have developed this self if they did not have their everyday consciousness. It is there so that we have our ordinary self; it came into the world so that human beings might develop their lower self. — So when a person wants to enter the real world, they feel that they must leave behind what they have been able to develop out there. There is only one thing that helps, a single thing: that this self has developed more strongly in daily consciousness than is necessary for daily consciousness. Usually, people have developed it only as far as is necessary. If you consider the second point of the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, you will find that this second point is to make the self stronger, more powerful, than is needed for daily life, so that one can step out of one’s physical body at night and still have something that, in a sense, one has not needed. Only then, therefore, will one not have the will to shrink back from this higher world—when, through one’s exercises, one has strengthened and invigorated the ordinary self, when one has a surplus of self-confidence.

[ 19 ] But this gives rise to a new danger, a very significant one. One may not now bring up memories of everyday life in one’s dreams, but one does bring up an expanded, strengthened sense of self; one fills this region, as it were, with one’s strengthened consciousness, with one’s higher, powerfully developed self. Anyone who, through exercises such as those described in the book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* — whether one strengthens and expands one’s self through training, so to speak, by artificial means, or is destined by fate to expand one’s self at a certain time, the result is the same — whoever has such experiences enters the realm of the dream life with their expanded, strengthened Self. This is the case with Arjuna; he stands, so to speak, on the border between the everyday world and the world of the dream life. He immerses himself in this higher region in such a way that, through his destiny—and I will elaborate on this point further—he possesses a more powerful Self in this region than he otherwise needs in everyday life, in everyday consciousness. We will hear why Arjuna, in particular, possesses this more powerful consciousness. But lo and behold, as he enters there, Krishna immediately takes him in. Krishna lifts Arjuna above the self that was predisposed within him, and thus Arjuna does not become the person he would have had to become had he not encountered Krishna with his expanded self. What would have happened then if Arjuna had not encountered Krishna? Then he would have said to himself: Here blood relatives are fighting against blood relatives; here events are occurring that shatter the old, salutary caste system, that ruin women, that shatter the service of the ancestors; circumstances arise that forbid us from offering sacrificial fires to our ancestors. — To revere the beneficial caste system, to light sacrificial fires for the ancestors, to be a faithful descendant of the ancestors—these were part of Arjuna’s everyday consciousness. He has been torn from this daily consciousness by his fate; he must stand on the ground where he must break with his sacred feeling of kindling sacrificial fires for the ancestors, of valuing the caste system, and of venerating the bond of blood. Now he had to say to himself: Away with all that is sacred to me in my daily consciousness, away with all that has been handed down to me; I will throw myself into the battle. — No, that does not happen; instead, Krishna steps before Arjuna, and Krishna speaks, as it were, what must appear to Arjuna as the utmost recklessness, as egoism taken to the extreme. Krishna puts a stop to this, makes it impossible, by revealing himself to Arjuna, by using what Arjuna would otherwise have experienced, what Arjuna would otherwise have needed to live within himself—Krishna uses this excess in Arjuna as a force to make himself visible to Arjuna. We can also say, to bring this thought even more clearly before our souls: If Arjuna were simply to face Krishna, and Krishna were truly to come to Arjuna, Arjuna would know nothing of Krishna, just as we would know nothing of the sensory world if we had not extracted something from the sensory world itself to form our senses for that world. Thus Krishna must also extract from Arjuna his expanded, empowered self-awareness. He must, so to speak, tear it from him if he wishes to reveal himself to Arjuna with the help of what he has wrested from him. In this way, he makes of what he has wrested a mirror, as it were, in order to be able to reveal himself to Arjuna.

[ 20 ] We have identified the point in Arjuna’s consciousness where Krishna was able to meet him. The only thing that remains unexplained in these discussions is how Arjuna managed to reach that point in the first place. For nowhere do we find any indication that Arjuna had practiced occult disciplines, nor did he. How is it that he is able to encounter Krishna? What, then, actually gave Arjuna an elevated, empowered self-awareness? We shall take this question as our starting point in the next lecture.