The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] In the course of my recent lectures, I have pointed out that there is still much to be said about a particular problem or question, even though this very problem has already been addressed here from a wide variety of perspectives. It is the question of the alternating states of wakefulness and sleep in human beings. Now, whenever I have spoken publicly about this problem, I have repeatedly pointed out how this problem of sleep exists and is addressed even from the standpoint of our more materialistic science. I have also cited some of the various attempts at a solution on one occasion or another. I have cited the so-called fatigue theory. It is just one of the many theories that have been put forward over the course of the last few decades to explain the interrelationship between sleep and wakefulness—the theory that through one’s daily work, and indeed through one’s behavior during the state of wakeful consciousness, secrete fatigue-inducing substances, and that the state of sleep is suitable for eliminating these substances through various processes, so that humans can produce new fatigue-inducing substances during a subsequent cycle of wakefulness.

[ 2 ] Now we must always take the position that, as far as Spiritual Science is concerned, such a theory—which is purely materialistic in nature—need not be wrong; I am referring to what is described in the theory. I do not wish to discuss the validity—the materialistic validity—of this theory any further at this point. As I said, other theories have also been put forward regarding this matter. But Spiritual Science should not, for the time being, cast doubt on the possibility that such a process can take place—that is, that fatigue-inducing substances are indeed secreted during waking consciousness and are then consumed again during the night. This actual process should by no means be denied, nor should it be discussed further. In Spiritual Science, the primary concern must be to approach the problems and mysteries of life in such a way that the perspective from which they are approached is truly the one to which one is initially able to rise, based on the insights that humanity can gain in any given age. Then, too, facts such as the secretion of fatigue substances or the like can be placed in the proper light through the correct perspective that one finds. With most questions of life—indeed, with all questions of life—it is a matter of knowing how to ask in the right way, of not asking the wrong questions from the outset.

[ 3 ] Now, when considering the relationship between sleeping and waking, we must first and foremost consider how to gain a proper perspective on these two states of human existence: waking daytime consciousness and sleeping consciousness. And the point is that certain phenomena within our lives cannot be properly understood unless we take into account what was asserted at a very, very early stage of our efforts in Spiritual Science. I pointed out very early on that if one wishes to survey the evolution of the world, one must first and foremost take into account seven states of consciousness—I listed them at the time—then seven states of life and seven states of form. Now there are questions of life that can be answered simply by considering the change in forms; there are questions that can be answered by considering the metamorphosis of life. But certain phenomena in life, certain facts of life, cannot be explained in any other way than by rising to the level of considering the various states of consciousness that come into play.

[ 4 ] When considering the problem of waking and sleeping, it is only natural to address the question of the difference between states of consciousness during sleep and during wakefulness. For it has already become clear to us from a wide variety of considerations: sleep and wakefulness are different states of human consciousness. Therefore, we must approach the question primarily from the perspective of consciousness. We must be clear that this is the most important aspect of the matter: to approach the question from the perspective of consciousness. We will have to ask ourselves: How do the states of consciousness of waking and sleeping actually differ? And this is what emerges.

[ 5 ] When we are awake—and at first we need only take note of the things that anyone can easily bring to consciousness—we look at the world around us; we perceive the world around us. And everyone will be able to say that they are unable to perceive themselves or the human, the inner human, during waking consciousness in the same way as the outer world. I have often pointed out that it would indeed be a gross delusion to view the study of anatomy, for example, as leading to an examination of the human being from within; material anatomy, of course, only examines the exterior, that which lies beneath the skin. The inner being of the human being cannot be observed during ordinary waking consciousness. Even what a person comes to know about themselves during the waking state is the exterior of the world, or rather, it is that aspect of themselves through which they belong to the external world.

[ 6 ] If, on the other hand, we consider the state of sleep, the essential nature of that state—as you will have gathered from the various discussions that have taken place so far—is that during sleep, a person observes themselves. The object of observation during sleep is the person. Consciousness is initially directed back toward the human being itself. If you view the most everyday phenomena from this perspective, they will become comprehensible and understandable to you.

[ 7 ] Isn't it true that if one were to speak of sleeping and waking solely in the way that materialistic science does, this would be in complete contradiction to the fact that, as I have said before, a reindeer that does not exert itself particularly hard often falls asleep much more easily during a lecture than one that has exerted itself. So if fatigue were the real cause of sleep, that would not be consistent with this phenomenon. The perspective to which we must rise is this: the reindeer listening to a lecture does not focus the interest of his daytime consciousness very strongly on the lecture; the lecture does not particularly interest him, and perhaps cannot interest him, because he may not understand it and for this reason has a justified lack of interest in the lecture. What interests him far more, however, is himself. He therefore moves from contemplating what is being said in the lecture to contemplating himself. One might, of course, now raise the question: Well, why precisely to the contemplation of himself? — That is also very easily explained. The person in question is not interested in the lecture for certain reasons. The reasons usually lie in the fact that he has more interest in other things in life than in precisely what is being discussed in this lecture, or at least in the nature of the context in this lecture. But the lecture prevents him from taking an interest in what he is otherwise interested in. The person who has no interest in listening to a lecture might, in fact, have a great interest in using the time he spends listening to the lecture to eat oysters instead. Perhaps he would have a stronger interest in obtaining the sensory experience he gets from eating oysters rather than in the experience of the lecture. But the lecture disturbs him. After all, he cannot eat oysters if he wants to listen to a lecture. He pretends he wants to listen to a lecture, but that interferes with his oyster-eating. He can’t eat oysters right now, so he takes what is the only thing accessible to him besides the lecture, which is disturbing him in every way. The hour is already filled with what can be endured, and that doesn’t interest him; so he turns his attention to what is accessible to him: his own inner self, his own being! He enjoys himself! For this falling asleep is a form of self-enjoyment.

[ 8 ] From what we have considered, you can see that sleep consciousness still remains today at the same level of consciousness that human consciousness had already reached during the ancient Sun Age. It is a consciousness of the kind that plants also possess. We are, of course, very familiar with both of these things, both of these facts, from the lectures. — Certainly, the good man does not then attain the same consciousness that he attains when he enjoys the external world. He, as it were, winds himself back to solar consciousness. But that doesn’t matter; he is enjoying himself nonetheless. And this now also springs from an interest in himself. Thus we must understand that sleep sets in not out of inner fatigue, but out of a shift in interest away from what is currently present as the external world—the lecture or the piece of music or whatever it may be—toward that which the interest then turns to. But this is, in fact—if one thoroughly and inwardly observes the alternating states between sleeping and waking—precisely what is at stake.

[ 9 ] When we are awake, we can understand this to mean that, during our waking consciousness, we direct our attention toward the external world—that is, toward what I am now indicating in a vague way with these lines here (he draws them)—and that, in contrast, we turn our interest away from that in which we are currently immersed. So, if I want to draw this symbolically, I can draw it so that the person diverts their interest away from themselves and toward the external world in the direction of these arrows.

[ 10 ] During sleep, the opposite is true. A person directs their attention toward themselves in this way and diverts it from what is around them. Since they now step outside of themselves, they actually see their own body while sleeping. Thus, during sleep, a person first looks at their own body.

[ 11 ] Now, as you can see, we can trace the alternation between sleeping and waking back to something else. We can attribute it to the fact that we say: human beings live in successive cycles, such that in one cycle there is an interest in observing the external world, and in the other cycle there is an interest in observing one’s own inner self. And this alternation in the direction of interest—sometimes outward, sometimes inward—is the alternation that belongs to life, just as it belongs to the life of the Earth that the Earth is sometimes illuminated by the sun, and then the sun sets and it is not illuminated by the sun. Here it is purely the spatial constellation that causes the Earth to be illuminated at one time and not at another. This gives rise to the two cycles of day and night.

[ 12 ] Now you can easily see that it would be quite wrong to say that day is the cause of night, or that night is the cause of day. As I have explained to you, that would be a “worm philosophy.” I did, after all, speak of this worm philosophy in my previous lectures, didn’t I? It simply makes no sense to say that day is the cause of night or that night is the cause of day; rather, both are brought about by the regular alternation, by the spatial positions of the Earth and the Sun. Nor does it really make any sense to say that sleep is the cause of waking, or that waking is the cause of sleep. It only makes sense to say: Just as the Earth is spatially and extensively brought into a state of alternation between day and night—that is, brought into this alternation by spatially extensive conditions—so, intensively, life is internally brought into an alternation between outward interest and inward interest. These states must alternate; they must follow one another. It cannot be any other way. It is simply grounded in life that a person directs their interest outward for a time, and, after having directed it outward, must direct it inward, just as the sun cannot decide, when it sets in the west, whether it wants to return. But we are now entering a realm in which, if we wish to enter it, we must always bear the following in mind.

[ 13 ] The sun must create day for certain hours and night for certain hours. But humans can quite easily break this pattern by either, like the reindeer that falls asleep even when it is not exactly tired—but should, in fact, be the opposite—simply turning their attention to themselves at will, enjoying themselves, truly savors his body, or, like the student who is about to take an exam and has a great deal to study, can, again out of his own volition, overcome various obstacles to sleep. Many a student sometimes sleeps very little before the exam. But this is connected, in general, with the great questions that will now occupy us again and again, with the questions of necessity, as we find it in external nature, of chance, of which we often speak, both in external nature and in human life, and of providence, of which we must speak to the whole world. — As soon as we enter human life, we see something entering the realm of necessity, something that is “necessary” if human beings are to have any existence at all in the world. We will now have much to say about this.

[ 14 ] Now, I have told you what I have said not only to point this out—not only, I say, though of course also for this reason—that one must seek the correct perspective regarding the transitional states between sleep and wakefulness. This correct perspective is to ask: What is the nature of consciousness in wakefulness? — and to answer: Consciousness is such that the object is not initially the person themselves, but the external world; that the person forgets themselves and takes in the external world; whereas the nature of consciousness during sleep is such that they forget the external world and observe themselves. But in sleep, with his state of consciousness, he has only reached the stage of solar consciousness. It is merely a subordinate state of enjoying oneself. — But I have taken up this point of view not merely for this reason, but to draw attention to the fact that it is important to direct one’s attention at all to how consciousness relates to the world in various ways, and how certain things can be recognized—especially in their essential nature—only by inquiring into the nature of consciousness. Thus, it will be quite impossible to know anything specific about the structure of the hierarchical order of the higher spiritual beings unless one considers the consciousness of these higher spiritual beings. Go through the various lecture series and you will see the effort that has been made there to explain what the consciousness of the Angeloi and Archangeloi and so on is like. For what matters is to really pay attention to the starting point from which a matter is understood. Someone might come along and say: I can understand quite well how the hierarchies are arranged: First there is the human being, then higher up are the Angeloi, even higher the Archangeloi, even higher the Archai, and so on. He can write them down one after another: Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi, and say: I understand this quite well; each of these is always higher. — Yes, if one only knows that each of the items listed here is higher, then one knows just as much about the sequence of the hierarchy as one knows about the sequence of floors in a house; for one also knows that the floors in a house are stacked one on top of the other. One could draw exactly the same diagram. It really comes down to paying attention to what matters in every matter. One truly knows something about these higher beings when one knows the state of consciousness in which each of these beings lives, when one attempts to describe it. That is what one must keep in mind.

[ 15 ] And the same is true of human beings themselves. One really knows very little about the inner nature of human beings if, for example, one has nothing more to say about sleep than that the ego and the astral body are then separated from the physical and etheric bodies. That is certainly true, but it is the most abstract statement of all. For one actually knows no more about the difference between sleeping and waking in human beings than one knows about a full and an empty beer glass; in one, the beer is inside, and in the other, the beer is outside! Certainly, it is true that in the sleeping human being the ego and the astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies, but one must have the will to ascend to ever broader and more concrete definitions. And this ascent to concrete concepts is what we are attempting, for example, by having now clarified once again how the shift in focus differs in one case and the other. I once drew the human being schematically for you in a reddish-bright color; another time in a bluish one. This is connected to what I told you: The human being is there in the hollow. And when one now falls asleep and acquires a higher consciousness—this consciousness can first hint at itself; one really does see it then, for one begins by observing oneself—then one also sees the hollow, one already sees the hollow. Then one already sees the untruth of the judgment that we consist of compact matter. One then already sees that what appears as material in waking consciousness are actually hollow spaces. But one must note that the human being is truly outside of themselves during sleep. That is why they see the hollow space surrounded by the aura. Isn’t it true that the human being is not within themselves, but is outside and looks in this way? They thus see what is more or less hollow in the center. It is naturally configured, more or less hollow. It is not simply a hollow space. Other cavities, after all, appear filled when viewed from the outside. So that the human being naturally appears configured as he is when viewed from the outside, just as everyday consciousness perceives him. But one also sees him surrounded by an auric mist. The human being then does not appear to one as he usually does when looked at, but is surrounded by a kind of auric mist. One does not look at them quite clearly, but rather in such a way that one must first penetrate this auric mist. So one looks at an auric mist, and within this auric mist something takes shape like a figure; but this mist again lies over it. It is therefore truly as if one were seeing the person within a more or less bright aura. From the outside, he appears to be outlined against it. I’ll use a simple comparison to illustrate the phenomenon we’re discussing here—when a person becomes conscious during sleep: Who hasn’t walked through a city shrouded in fog? There, the lights aren’t seen with sharp edges, but rather as if within a kind of rainbow-like aura. Everyone has seen that. There you do not see the lights, but rather the lights set off against the surrounding fog. It really bears a great resemblance to the process mentioned. You actually see the imaginative field of vision as if in fog, and within it, set off like shadows, are the human beings.

[ 16 ] When one considers this, one can say: To become sighted in sleep means to see a person through an aura. And it was through this that humanity became materialistic—by learning not to see the aura, but to see itself directly. This could only be brought about by Luciferic processes, which created the possibility that human beings would now begin to see themselves through their waking consciousness. And here we touch upon an important passage at the beginning of the Old Testament. The Old Testament tells us that, up until the Luciferic temptation, human beings walked about naked. This walking around naked is not to be understood in the sense that they walked around like that in their consciousness, as you would now walk around naked, but rather that they had previously seen the aura all around them. And because of this, they did not see at all what one would now see in a human being if he were to walk around naked, but rather they saw the human being in spiritual clothing. For the aura was the clothing. And when the state of innocence was taken from humans, when they were condemned to a materialistic way of life—in other words, when they could no longer see the aura—they saw what they had not seen as long as the aura was there; and so they began to replace the aura with garments. That is the origin of clothing: the replacement of the aura with the garment. And it is indeed good to know in our materialistic age that people initially dressed not for other reasons, but for the reason of imitating the aura through clothing. In religious customs, this is certainly the case in the most literal sense, for there every garment signifies the imitation of some part of the human aura. And as you can see for yourselves in Raphael’s paintings, Mary, Joseph, and Mary Magdalene wear different garments; one figure has a red undergarment and a blue outer garment; the other has a blue undergarment and a red outer garment. You will very often see Mary Magdalene depicted in a yellow robe by those who were well acquainted with the tradition or still possessed some clairvoyance, and so on. There has always been an attempt to correspond to the aura of the individual in question; for there was an awareness of imitating the aura through clothing, of creating an expression of the aura through clothing. And it is characteristic of our materialistic age that in certain circles there is a misconception in which the ideal is seen as abolishing clothing—for materialism goes to its logical conclusion everywhere—and presenting what is often called “nudist culture” as something extraordinarily healthy. There is even a magazine that advocates such a thing and calls itself “Die Schönheit” (Beauty). This is based on a misunderstanding. It believes, in fact, that by doing so it is approaching something other than the crudest, the coarsest materialism. One can approach only this if one wishes to see the real merely in what is presented as real by the external, sensually perceptible nature. But clothing originated from the desire to maintain, so to speak, a state of consciousness in normal life that perceives the human being in his aura. Therefore, one must ask: What is the origin of that tendency in our time that strives for the elimination of clothing? A lack of any imagination regarding clothing! This is not to be understood as an ideal purpose, but rather as a lack of imagination regarding any principle of beauty. For clothing is actually based on the idea of making the human being beautiful. And to see only beauty in the unclothed human being would, in our time, signify an instinct toward materialism. — I will have more to say about how this relates to Greek culture. But it is precisely in Greek culture that you can study the question in the sense in which it has been stated today.

[ 17 ] Now it is becoming increasingly important for people to learn how different states of consciousness shape certain aspects of their worldview. Changes in states of consciousness include sleeping and waking. But while sleeping and waking constitute very, very significant changes in a person’s states of consciousness, there are also smaller nuances of changes in consciousness that occur in life. I would like to say: Daytime consciousness, too, is nuanced in such a way that a person experiences certain nuances of consciousness that lean more toward sleeping, and other nuances of consciousness that lean more toward waking. We all know, after all, that there are people who love—not to sleep directly, but to go through a large part of life in a daze. People then say that they are sleeping, even if it is not real sleep; they are said to be sleeping through life, going through life as if in a dream; if you say anything to them, they soon forget it. It’s not a dream, but it passes them by as quickly as a dream, and it’s already forgotten. Isn’t that so? This drowsiness, this haziness—whatever you call it—is more of a nuance close to sleep. —When one person thoroughly beats up another, that is a nuance that goes beyond the ordinary state of sleep; it is not a mental image. It is more than a mental image when one person beats up another. So there are such nuances of consciousness in life. One could draw up a whole scale for these states. But these states have their good reason for being. A great deal depends on a person acquiring a certain sense of them. At times, this sense is already inherent in him, if he is at all a person born healthy and raised healthily. It is important that a person has a certain sense of how strongly they can take in certain things in life, how much attention they should pay to them, and how little attention they can pay to them, and also in what way they represent certain things to the outside world, or conceal them within themselves. These are also nuances in the expression of consciousness. Such nuances in the expression of consciousness do exist. And it is very important to know that, as we go through human life, this life imparts a rhythm: To what extent do I direct my consciousness toward a particular matter? Or: To what extent do I emphasize a particular matter from within my consciousness? — And there we can truly acquire something important, both in the healing of life and in the ability to bring about orderly conditions in our surroundings, if we pay attention to how strongly we must connect our consciousness with this or that. You see, if we distinguish between the possible state of consciousness in which we move among people and talk about the things of life with them, and the state in which we do not speak of certain things out of a certain sense of shame, then the state we are in during ordinary life, where we speak, does indeed have a different nuance in consciousness than when we avoid certain topics out of a sense of shame, as we say. But this presence of a sense of shame is simply another state of consciousness, and an infinite amount depends on having an understanding of such things in life. And I would like to use an example to first clarify for you that there are, after all, people who have a certain understanding of such nuances of consciousness in life.

[ 18 ] Today is August 27; that is Hegel’s birthday. Tomorrow, August 28, is Goethe’s birthday. The two have birthdays right one after the other. Among other things, Hegel wrote a work titled Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline. When you read this work, it has a peculiar characteristic. Namely, it makes absolutely no sense to open it at random and start reading. You might as well be reading Chinese. A statement taken out of context from the middle of Hegel’s Encyclopedia would make no sense at all. During a lecture in Berlin this winter, I specifically emphasized how pointless it would be to pluck a sentence out of context from Hegel’s Encyclopedia. For a sentence from Hegel’s Encyclopedia only makes sense if one begins reading there—after first setting aside everything that raises mystery upon mystery in the human mind—where Hegel says: “Being is the concept in itself” and so on. If one begins there and then allows the whole to sink in, then every sentence only acquires its meaning at the place where it stands. And the fact that it stands there is part of the sentence. And this is how Hegel published the first edition of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. In the preface to the first edition, he says nothing special; he merely explains why he structured this Encyclopedia in this particular way. When a second edition became necessary, Hegel wrote a preface to this second edition. Now, one sometimes gains life experience between the first and second editions of a book. For even if one has already come to know people, one still feels inwardly obliged not to regard them yet as what they sometimes turn out to be; and one also learns many things about people from the way a book is received. And that was also the case with Hegel. So he wrote a preface to the second edition, and it contains important passages. I would like to read two of these important passages, namely the very first sentence and a sentence on the second page. The preface to the second edition begins: “The kind reader will find in this new edition several sections revised and developed into more detailed specifications; in doing so, I have endeavored to soften and reduce the formal aspects of the exposition, and also, through more extensive exoteric notes, to bring abstract concepts closer to the common understanding and to more concrete mental images of them.” Thus, he endeavored to explain the esoteric in exoteric terms. “The condensed brevity necessitated by an outline of matters that are abstruse in any case, however, leaves this second edition with the same purpose as the first: to serve as a reader, which must receive its necessary explanation through oral presentation. The title of an encyclopedia should indeed initially allow room for a lesser rigor of the scientific method and an external compilation; yet the nature of the matter itself implies that the logical connection must remain the foundation.

[ 19 ] There were simply too many occasions and incentives that seemed to make it necessary for me to explain the external position of my philosophy in relation to the intellectual and non-intellectual endeavors of our time, which can only be done in an exoteric manner, as in a preface; for these endeavors, even if they claim a connection to philosophy, cannot be treated scientifically, and thus not at all within it, but conduct their discourse from the outside and outside of it. It is disagreeable and even awkward to venture onto such ground foreign to science; for such explanation and discussion does not promote the kind of understanding that is the sole concern of true knowledge. But discussing certain phenomena may be useful or necessary.”

[ 20 ] This proves to us, however, that Hegel attempted to structure the first edition in a manner that was esoteric to him, and that he added what appeared exoteric to him only in the second edition, including the preface, which is purely exoteric. In our time, people often lack an understanding of this distinction between the exoteric and the esoteric. For in our time, one does not so readily proceed as Hegel did, who at first wanted to keep to himself everything that was his own subjective interpretation of the matter, and only when he had built up the organism, when the matter had become detached from his subjectivity, did he wish to present in his book that which was detached from his subjectivity, while he was of the opinion: One does not speak of how one arrives at the matter oneself! — In this, he demonstrated a certain tact regarding the difference between two states of consciousness: the consciousness into which he wished to place himself when he stood before people and spoke to them, and the consciousness he unfolded when he spoke to himself. — And now the world compels him afterward—as so often the world is the cause of this or that happening that ought not to happen—the world compels him to overcome this sense of shame for a time. For what was it, after all? It was a sense of shame in Hegel not to speak of the manner in which he arrived at his concepts! In ordinary human shame, people blush. That is how one might put it, even if it is to be understood intellectually: for Hegel, it was a certain intellectual blushing when he had to write something like the preface to the second edition. There you see a nuance of consciousness over which the feeling of shame spreads.

[ 21 ] I wanted to use an example to show you how these nuances of consciousness come to light in life, including in the exercise of the will and in what one does. And it is necessary to gradually realize that life must truly consist of such nuances of consciousness; that one must, so to speak, connect differences in consciousness with everything one experiences. Sleeping and waking are precisely such strong differences in consciousness. But one can also consider the difference in consciousness that comes from knowing: This is a matter that concerns not only you alone, but you and the world; the other is a matter where, when you face the world, you must somewhat tone down the way you assert yourself; and yet other things you must settle with yourself or within your most intimate circle.

[ 22 ] Thus, what we can gain in terms of concepts and ideas from Spiritual Science truly intervenes in life, teaching us to recognize subtle, subjective differences in life—provided we do not seek to understand these differences in the usual way we do in everyday life, but rather realize that a serious engagement with Spiritual Science, as it were, gives us this rhythm of life. But there must then be a serious engagement with Spiritual Science. This is, of course, not present if one carries the feelings, drives, and instincts that one otherwise had out in life into Spiritual Science as well. Then it happens that one, I would say, gains no more from Spiritual Science than from any other indifferent communication of knowledge. And so it can happen—I have said, after all, that there are nuances of consciousness and that within wakefulness there are nuances that approach sleep—that one takes in Spiritual Science but has no real inclination to delve into certain details or subtleties, because one approaches it with the kind of interest I mentioned earlier regarding the reindeer in connection with the lecture. One may enjoy reading cycles or books, but one reads in such a way that at certain points this consciousness sinks, that it dozes off, drifts off. One does not really feel the personal commitment to rise above such things.

[ 23 ] That is why I have repeatedly insisted that we should not make it too easy for people who want to approach Spiritual Science. Time and again, people say that one ought to write popular books; “Theosophy,” for example, is not popular enough! All I ever hear is: one ought to write books that allow one to doze off more easily than “Theosophy” does. Now it is truly necessary that, precisely through this interest in the objective, one dispel whatever remains of certain feelings and sensations one had previously; otherwise, it can happen that, if one dozes off too much in the face of this or that aspect of Spiritual Science — which one is actually supposed to be interested in—one remains awake only in the face of what is easiest to retain. And then, of course, a process ensues that is inevitable if one does not develop sufficient objective interest: Isn’t it true that the pensioner who listens to the lecture feels obligated to do so? One attends a lecture because it is part of the proper way of life; but it is actually dreadful to him—he has not the slightest interest in it. Now his lack of interest is somewhat distracted, and he sometimes even drifts off to sleep, which need not be noticed at first, provided it doesn’t turn into snoring, doesn’t it, but that is a perfectly natural process.

[ 24 ] Now imagine this process applied—I would say—to another consciousness. Then you have the following: Someone does not develop the necessary, full interest in the specific details of Spiritual Science, but instead feels that one actually listens best when one does not pay so much attention to the details. I have even heard people say: Oh, what he says isn’t what’s important, but “the vibrations,” the “way” he says it! — Such a drowsy, dreamy way of listening is something you can already see in the way some people listen. But this is the same with regard to the soul as it is with regard to the outer life of the reindeer. For if attention turns to the “vibrations” instead of to what is offered by Spiritual Science, then interest turns inward, just as when the reindeer enjoys itself. And in the time between two lectures, one may pretend to be interested in what is said in the lecture, asserting an interest in this or that, but in reality one says: He had this incarnation in the past, I myself had this incarnation. — That is to say, one has diverted everything to one’s own person. This is exactly the same process. So that this very process, which is present in the reindeer with regard to external life—the one that falls asleep during every lecture—also manifests itself in people who, while pretending to be interested in Spiritual Science, are in reality not interested, but in a certain sense always find: the details don’t matter! And then they fall asleep when it comes to the details; and then their interest shifts to their own personality. — One really must make such things quite clear to oneself! If one were to make them clear to oneself, many things that happen would not happen.

[ 25 ] I would like you to consider, so to speak, the nuances of consciousness as a whole, as I have attempted to describe them. The last example, the last discussion I gave, should perhaps not be taken amiss these days, nor should it be taken amiss in general. For there is no doubt that there is a great deal of complacency toward the Spiritual Science movement, and that a strong tendency toward self-indulgence is gaining the upper hand, and that Spiritual Science is then used solely to indulge this self-indulgence. But let us take a close look at the nuance of consciousness. For without taking a close look at the nuance of consciousness, one cannot come to an understanding of the concepts of necessity, chance, and providence.