Spiritual Teachings Concerning the Soul

GA 52 — 7 March 1904, Berlin

XII. Theosophy and Somnambulism

The topic of today's lecture is intended to be a kind of supplement to what I spoke about here four weeks ago, a supplement to the topic: “Theosophy and Spiritualism.” Today I would like to elaborate on some things that I could only touch upon briefly at that time. Specifically, I would like to talk about the phenomena of somnambulism, which lead into mysterious areas of human nature and into areas that are interpreted in very different ways by different people.

You all know what somnambulism is. This word refers to certain mental states that occur in humans when a certain change has taken place in their normal states of consciousness, especially when the normal everyday consciousness, the consciousness with which we perform our everyday actions and find our way in nature, is not fully active, when it is suppressed, switched off, as it were, and the person nevertheless acts psychologically, nevertheless exists within certain states of mind. By somnambulism, or sleepwalking, sleep-walking, or whatever these states are called, we mean all spiritual activity without the full activity of ordinary daytime consciousness, as it were from the depths of the soul, which are not illuminated by the ego-consciousness of the day. From these dark depths, the human soul then acts, bringing forth actions from these depths that differ very significantly from what people otherwise accomplish in the course of their lives. We also know that not every personality is automatically suited to performing spiritual actions with such an extinction and elimination of ordinary daytime consciousness. We know that only those persons whom we call somnambulists, who can be put into a kind of trance or dream state, are capable of displaying such psychic phenomena. These persons themselves, while such phenomena arise from their nature, are in a kind of unconscious state, and these states have been interpreted in various ways at different times.

Let us transport ourselves to ancient Greece and see how such actions of somnambulistic personalities were interpreted in ancient Greece at the time usually described in Greek history. There we encounter the priestesses, the so-called oracle priestesses, who, from the depths of their souls and with their normal state of consciousness extinguished, wanted to reveal all kinds of things that went beyond ordinary human knowledge. Events of the future were to be drawn from such deep soul knowledge; whether important state actions or important legislation were justified or not was to be decided by these oracle priestesses; in short, what they proclaimed was attributed to divine inspiration. It was believed that when the normal daily consciousness was extinguished, the soul was under divine influence and conveyed the messages of the deity itself. Not only did those who could be put into such a somnambulistic state enjoy divine worship, but above all, the revelations they were able to make enjoyed divine worship.

If we move from this period of ancient Greece to the end of the Middle Ages, we find a completely different conception and interpretation of such somnambulistic personalities. We see how such personalities were regarded as being in league with all kinds of evil, devilish, demonic powers. We see that what they proclaimed was regarded as something reprehensible, as something that could only bring harmful, evil influences into human life. We see how these individuals were persecuted as witches, how they were persecuted for their alliances with the devil. Some of the terrible cruelties of the late Middle Ages can be traced back to this interpretation of the somnambulistic state.

In more recent times, when people began to study human states of mind at the beginning of the 19th century and in the last third of the 18th century, there were some who believed that by studying these states, one could gain higher insights into the human soul; that because our ordinary brain consciousness is switched off and the senses are not receptive to the outside world, human beings are able to experience something about spiritual processes and beings that cannot be perceived with the ordinary senses. Others, on the other hand, regarded these states as merely pathological and considered them to be something that had to be excluded from everything that could be regarded as legitimate for normal human beings. In particular, it was science in the beginning that, in its materialistic belief, rejected any interpretation or explanation of these phenomena and saw them as symptoms of illness, related in some way to madness, and nothing other than completely abnormal things. These are some of the interpretations that have been given of these phenomena.

For us, the first question must be: How can such phenomena be brought about? — We know that some people come into such a state quite naturally, where their normal everyday consciousness is extinguished, where they behave completely like a kind of sleeper towards the outside world, where they do not perceive anything that is going on around them with their normal senses, where they do not hear when a bell rings nearby, where they do not see when a light is burning nearby, but where they are strangely receptive to very specific other influences, for example, to the words of a single specific person. They see and hear nothing around them; they are only receptive to what a single person says to them or to impressions of a certain kind. Indeed, they are often even more receptive to what a specific person in the room in which they find themselves is thinking, to the thoughts that this person has. These are phenomena that occur quite naturally from time to time in certain people. We then say that such people are somnambulists; they think, act, feel, perceive, and sense in a kind of waking dream, in a kind of sleep state, but one that is a very special sleep state, in no way comparable to the ordinary sleep that people indulge in from time to time to recover from the fatigue of the day.

But we also know that such somnambulists not only have the ability to perceive and feel certain states, but that they can also perform very specific actions, actions that people in their normal daytime consciousness would never be able to perform. We see them performing actions that appear completely reasonable, but which require more than the orientation skills of ordinary daytime consciousness. We see them climbing onto roofs, jumping over precipices without any inkling of the danger they are in, over precipices that they would never otherwise jump over; we see them performing actions that they would not be capable of performing if they were in their normal waking state. These are only hints of such states. Such states can occur without any reason, but they can also occur when one person exerts a very specific influence on another; they can occur when certain manipulations of one personality in another erase normal daytime consciousness, causing the personality in question to be placed in an artificial somnambulistic state. Then such artificial somnambulists display the same phenomena as natural somnambulists. We do not want to regard expressions as particularly binding, but we call the person who can put another into a somnambulistic state a magnetizer, if the somnambulistic state is a light one, and we call the personality magnetized; we say that it has been put into a magnetic sleep state.

Now the question for us is this: What do such phenomena mean for spiritual life, what role do they play in the whole context of spiritual life, what can we learn from such phenomena, and what do they tell us about the essence and nature of the human soul and the human spirit? We must ask ourselves: Are such phenomena really so abnormal that they bear no resemblance to other phenomena of ordinary life? If so, then perhaps the view that sees such phenomena as simply abnormalities could take hold; then the view of our doctors could take hold, and we would not be able to obtain any special insight from them.

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

Dreams are often interpreted as something that flits fantastically through dream consciousness, as a kind of empty imagination, and so people are hardly inclined to really study the strange phenomena of the dream world. But more refined minds have always been inclined to subject these fleeting images of dream consciousness to closer study, and then one thing above all becomes apparent: It is true for the vast majority of dreams that people have that there is tremendous irregularity and arbitrariness in dreams, that in dreams we are mostly dealing only with fragments of daytime consciousness, memories and images that have passed through our consciousness during the day, and perhaps other things that originate from our physical condition during sleep, or even from certain symptoms of illness and the like. This is the lowest type of dream, these fleeting images subject to complete arbitrariness, which pass through the dream consciousness in a state of irregularity.

But it cannot escape the attentive observer that even the most ordinary personal consciousness, when in the state of sleep, has other dreams besides these completely irregular and arbitrary dreams, dreams that show a very definite regularity. I would like to draw your attention to a few examples that shed light on this regularity, which we already encounter within ordinary dream consciousness. You have a clock next to you while you sleep. You do not perceive the ticking of the clock during your sleep; you dream that a regiment of soldiers is marching past your window and you can hear the hoofbeats very clearly. You wake up and realize that you heard the ticking of the clock at that moment, because it continues in your consciousness. However, you did not hear it as ticking, as your ordinary ear hears it, but it has been transformed, symbolized into the clatter of horses of a passing cavalry regiment. — Or a dream that really happened: A farmer's wife dreams that she is going into town with another woman on Sunday morning. They go to church and see the clergyman climbing into the pulpit and beginning to preach. They listen for a long time. Then something very strange happens: the clergyman transforms, he grows wings, he turns into a rooster, he crows! — This is a real dream that actually happened. The farmer's wife who had the dream wakes up and hears the rooster crowing outside. — You see again what happened: the ear heard the crowing rooster, but at first it did not hear the real crowing, but the dream consciousness made a symbol out of what it heard; it symbolically transformed the crowing into this whole story that I have told you. The dream consciousness spins such stories in a very dramatic way. You see, sensory impressions are not perceived directly by the dream consciousness, but are transformed into symbols, and what is particularly characteristic is that this dream consciousness really dramatizes them. To mention another example — a dream that really took place; Today I only want to mention real examples that have been experienced: A student dreams that he is at the door of the lecture hall. He is jostled by another student, as is common in student life. An exchange of words ensues, which ultimately leads to a duel. The student experiences everything in his dream, including the preparations for the duel—a long story! The duel actually takes place at the agreed location, everyone is there, the seconds are there, the first shot is fired, and the dreaming student wakes up. Next to him is a chair that was standing by the bed, now overturned; he heard the chair fall, but not as it was, rather this event was symbolized in a flash into a very dramatic action. This is the sleeping dream consciousness, a symbolizing dream consciousness, which could be illuminated in its peculiar symbolic activity by countless examples.

Now we ask ourselves: How does this ordinary everyday consciousness relate to what goes on in the human soul while it dreams? Our ordinary everyday consciousness has no direct part in these dream activities; for when consciousness appears in a dream, a kind of different self appears, a kind of dream self; for the dreamer can, so to speak, see himself, he can face himself in the dream. Let us first note that a kind of split can occur between the dream self and the real self, that the dreaming personality can actually observe itself quite objectively among the various perceptions it has in the dream. The situations in which this dream occurs are, determined by dream consciousness, completely immersed in the symbolic-dramatic action that is taking place.

A higher level, I would say, of this dream consciousness occurs when we symbolically experience states of our own physical inner life in dreams. Again, I will mention some specific examples. Someone dreams that they are in a damp basement. There are cobwebs on the ceiling and scary animals crawling around. They wake up with a headache. The headache has symbolically expressed itself in this basement. Or another example: someone finds themselves in an overheated room in their dream; they see a red-hot stove, wake up, and have a violent heartbeat. All of these dreams that I am telling you about are actually documented. Certain organs within our bodies and certain feelings within our inner selves are symbolized during dreaming in relation to certain events. Yes, one can say that for one and the same person—those who know how to observe in this field know this—a very specific organ takes on a stereotypical, consistently unchanging appearance. Those who suffer from palpitations will always have the same dream when they experience palpitations, namely the dream they once had; let's say they will see an overheated oven and the like. So it is not only events and facts of the outside world, but also our own physical body that expresses itself symbolically in dreams.

This is only one step away from that strange phenomenon where dreamers — although this only occurs in very specific personalities who already have a certain connection to somnambulists — see the illnesses they are suffering from, or even illnesses they will suffer from in a few days' time, symbolically in some form in their dreams. They perceive their own conditions during dream consciousness. From there to the other phenomenon, it is only one step again that a peculiar kind of human instinct points the full somnambulists through dream consciousness in some way to remedies or events that they need for their illnesses. So the dream can actually act as a doctor, pointing to the illness and at the same time to the remedy. However, this only occurs in certain personalities who already have somnambulistic tendencies in a certain sense.

So you see that we are dealing with a sequence of states: from arbitrary dreams to those very regular dream perceptions that occur under very specific laws. Everything I have described so far are more or less dream perceptions; but from there, it is only a step to dream actions.

The most common dream action is talking in one's sleep. We know that it is a very frequent occurrence for sleeping people to talk. Indeed, we know that they sometimes give accurate answers to specific questions, sometimes even answers that show us that they have not understood exactly what we have said to them, or that they have—and this is an observation that can be made if one knows how to observe systematically—more or less symbolically transformed what we have said to them, and that this is what has resulted in their answer. — From talking in dreams, we then take another step to the dream actions that I already mentioned in my introduction. The dreamer, especially if he has a somnambulistic disposition, moves on to actions; he gets out of bed, sits down, say, if he is a student, at his desk and opens his schoolbooks. But it also happens that those with a stronger predisposition sit down and actually continue writing what they wrote in the evening, or at least copy something down, and so on. These things show us that a transition has taken place from mere perception to real action, from mere feeling to willing. There are personalities who, even though they can be put into a very strong somnambulistic state, only manage to perceive, and there are those who make relatively little progress in terms of perception, but can perform daring actions of the kind I mentioned at the beginning.

Now, such sleep actions of somnambulistic personalities are performed with a necessity that has an automatic character. We need only remember that we often perform such automatic actions in everyday life. Some special light impression appears before our eyes, and we automatically close our eyes. Our habitual life provides numerous other actions of this kind, which we do not think about further. Ultimately, everything we do within our so-called vegetative physical life—our digestion, our breathing, our heartbeat—are actions we perform without being conscious of them. In a similar way, we perform rational actions during the somnambulistic state, and such actions follow certain external stimuli with unconditional necessity.

Now we must ask ourselves: How are we to understand such phenomena? You may know that there are many who believe that in such actions we can observe the soul independent of the body, that in such actions we can see proof that the soul can perceive independently of its physical organs of sight and hearing, that it can act independently of conscious thought. Many therefore believe that in such actions we have a much more direct expression of the soul, which is, as it were, detached from the physical and acts and perceives directly from the spiritual. Let us ask ourselves how such phenomena should be viewed in the light of our theosophical understanding.

Theosophy shows us that human beings are not the isolated, individual beings they usually appear to be, but that, as they appear to us, they are connected to the rest of the universe by countless threads. Theosophy shows us above all that human beings have much in common with the rest of nature, that they also have much in common with other worlds that our everyday senses cannot perceive, and we will be able to understand the actions we have spoken of best if we consider the essence of human beings in the light of theosophy. Let me therefore briefly outline what Theosophy teaches us about the essence of man.

According to its observations, theosophy can only regard the physical body with all its organs, including the nervous system, the brain, and all the sense organs, as one of the members of which the whole, complete human being consists. This physical body contains substances and forces that humans share with the rest of the physical world. What takes place within us in chemical and physical processes is nothing other than what also takes place outside our body in the physical world, in chemical processes. But we must ask ourselves: Why do these physical and chemical processes take place within our body in such a way that they are united into a physical organism? No physical science can give us any information about this. Physical science can only teach us about the physical and chemical processes that take place within us, and it would certainly be inappropriate for the natural scientist to call human beings walking corpses because, as anatomists, they can only discover physical phenomena in the human body. There must be something that holds the chemical and physical processes together, grouping them, as it were, in the form in which they take place within the human body. In Theosophy, we call this next link in the human being the so-called etheric double. This etheric double is within all of us. Those who develop a certain clairvoyant ability can learn to see this etheric double body; it is the easiest thing for clairvoyants to see. If a person is standing in front of you and you are a clairvoyant, you are able to ignore the ordinary physical body. Just as you can do in ordinary life with things that are in front of you and on which you do not focus your attention, so too, as a clairvoyant, you are able not to focus your attention on the physical body. However, the entire physical appearance remains in the space that the physical body occupied, in the form of a double body that is very similar to the outer physical body in its outer form, with a very beautiful, luminous color, similar to the color of peach blossoms. This etheric double body is what holds the physical processes together. At death, the etheric double body, together with other higher members that we will learn about, leaves the physical body, and therefore the physical body is handed over to the earth and only carries out physical processes. The fact that it does not do this during life is due to the etheric double body.

Within this etheric double body, even towering above it on various sides, is the third member of the human being, the so-called astral body. This astral body is a kind of reflection of our instincts, our desires, our passions, our feelings. In this astral body, the human being lives as if in a cloud, and for the clairvoyant, whose spiritual eye is open to such phenomena, it is clearly perceptible as a luminous cloud within which the physical body and the etheric double body are located. This astral body is different in a person who always follows their animalistic instincts and sensual inclinations; it shows completely different colors and cloud-like formations than in a person who has always lived a spiritual life. It is different in a person who indulges in selfishness than in a person who devotes themselves to their fellow human beings in selfless love. In short, the life of the soul is expressed in this astral body. But it is also the mediator of actual sensory perceptions. You can never seek sensory perceptions in the sensory organs themselves. What happens when the light from a flame hits my eye? This light consists of the following in external space: the so-called ether waves move from the light source into my eye, they penetrate my eye, they cause certain chemical processes in the back wall of my eyeball, they transform the so-called visual purple, and then these chemical processes propagate into my brain. My brain perceives the flame, it receives the impression of light. If someone else could see the processes taking place in my brain, what would they perceive? They would perceive nothing other than physical processes; they would perceive something taking place in space and time; but they would not be able to perceive my impression of light within the physical processes in my brain. This impression of light is something other than a physical impression underlying these processes. The impression of light, the image that I must first create in order to perceive the flame, is a process within my astral body. Those who have a visual organ capable of perceiving such an astral process can see exactly how the physical phenomena within the brain are transformed in the astral body into the image of the flame that we perceive.

Within these bodies that I have mentioned to you, within the physical, the etheric double body, and the astral body, is our actual self; that which we call our self, in which we become conscious, in which we say: we are it. This self, in turn, has higher parts, which I do not want to talk about today. This I uses the other members of the human being that I have mentioned as its tools.

If we understand this composition of the human being, then this will also give us a very specific view of the phenomena we encounter in somnambulists. What happens when we are in our normal everyday consciousness? As I have already said, a light impression is produced when etheric vibrations enter my eye, are transformed by the astral body into a light image, and this light image is perceived as a mental image; this makes me aware of this light image. But now let us assume that my I is switched off; in ordinary sleep, such a switching off of the I can be observed. I do not want to talk today about where this ego can be found during sleep; but when we have a sleeping person in front of us, what do we have in front of us? In the true sense of the word, only those whose spiritual eyes are open can provide information about this; they see very clearly how the ego, together with the astral body, has lifted itself out of the physical body and the etheric double body, as it were. But everyone has this as a phenomenon before them, everyone knows that during sleep the ordinary daytime self, the reality self, is switched off, that the physical body and the etheric double body that holds it together are, so to speak, left to themselves. During our ordinary daily life, our ego, our consciousness, is always present when we receive impressions from the outside world; we do not live with the outside world without this daytime ego controlling these impressions of the outside world. When this ego is switched off, we still receive these impressions from the outside world continuously. Or do you believe that when a bell rings next to you while you are sleeping, this bell does not cause vibrations in the air that penetrate your ear? Do you believe that your ear is constructed differently at night than during the day? That is not the case. Everything that happens in the physical body during the day also happens to the sleeping person. But what is missing? The penetration of this personal human being with the I-consciousness is missing.

We can, so to speak, experimentally demonstrate in a natural way the conditions that prevail between the individual members of the human being that I have mentioned. I would like to describe a simple experiment that can easily be done with any somnambulist. Imagine a somnambulist getting up at night, sitting down at his desk, lighting a candle, and trying to write. Now do the following: illuminate the room very brightly with, say, ten lamps that you set up — the experiment is done — and the person in question will calmly continue writing. Now extinguish the one flame, the small candle flame that he has placed next to him, and he will not continue writing; he will find it too dark. He will take a match, light the candle, and then he will feel that there is light again and can continue working. All the other lighting around him is not there for him; only the flame that he has taken into his dream consciousness is there for him alone. The whole rest of the sea of light is not there for him. You see, it is necessary for the human being to penetrate his organs of perception in a certain way from within, to permeate them, so to speak, so that the external sensory perceptions can enter. It is not only necessary that we have eyes and ears, but it is also necessary that we enliven from within what our eyes and ears convey to us, that we counter it from within with something that transforms it into images and mental images, which then causes it to be there for us.

Now, in ordinary life, it is our ego, our bright, alert daytime consciousness, which, as it were, from within, opposes the outside world with what we need in order to extract impressions and make them into impressions of our consciousness. Now imagine this consciousness being extinguished. What is still active then? The physical body, the etheric double body, and the astral body are still active. This astral body can always transform what it receives from outside into images, but it is not transformed into mental images, it is not absorbed into conscious, bright daytime consciousness. Thus, the astral body of the human being transforms such impressions into images that surround it, either in a confused, irregular manner or in a regular manner, if the ego is, so to speak, present during this whole process.

In such contact with the outside world is the astral body, the soul of the human being, which is in a somnambulistic state; indeed, the soul of a dreamer is already in a similar connection. But we must distinguish between the two types of dreams I have mentioned. Between the irregular, confused dreams that mostly pass through people's dream consciousness, and the beautiful, dramatic, symbolic dreams that I have mentioned. In the case of the irregular, confused dreams, it is the etheric double body that is primarily active and establishes contact with the outside world; but in the case of dreams that unfold in a symbolic, dramatic way, it is the human astral body that symbolizes, transforms, and expressively expresses external impressions and translates them into a very dramatic dream. It is only because, at the present stage of development, our daytime ego is more realistic, because in our daytime consciousness we currently rely above all on our combining, calculating mind, that each individual sensory perception appears to us to be connected with the others, combined with the others by the mind, as is the case in daytime consciousness. But we can imagine other states of consciousness; we can imagine that human beings see more deeply into nature. Then this purely intellectual view ceases. This is again the case with the higher types of soul life. These should concern us less today; but what must occupy us above all today is: How is it possible that through the somnambulistic state, which is an intensification of the ordinary dream state, regular actions, certain phenomena of a spiritual character, occur in human beings? This can only be understood if, in accordance with the theosophical worldview, we do not view human beings in isolation, but in connection with the rest of the world; if we are clear above all that, apart from ourselves, the rest of the world does not consist solely of that which is dead and visible and audible to the eye and ear, but that higher forces are at work in the external world.

Usually, people do not ask themselves the question: How is it that when we look into the outside world, we find in this outside world the laws, concepts, and mental images that we have thought up in our minds in a lonely twilight hour? Human beings usually do not understand the most significant phenomena and appearances that shed the brightest light on the nature of human beings. But just think about the mathematician sitting in his room, thinking about what a circle or an ellipse is, that without observing anything outside himself, he presents and studies the law of the ellipse on paper, so that he knows what a circle is, what an ellipse is, and that then, when he has produced this law purely from within himself, he finds this law of the ellipse, of the circle, in the planetary orbits and in other phenomena of the outside world. This is how it is at every turn in our spiritual life. The laws that our spirit conceives in solitude are the same laws that govern the outside world. If we call what man conceives wisdom, then we must say: wisdom arises in the human ego, and out in the world we find that things are constructed in the same wise way in which man can see them through his thinking. But when we look at the world more closely, we find that this wisdom of the world even surpasses much of what man can conceive and imagine.

Let us cite a few striking examples: Take — I like to cite this example again and again — the activities of beavers. The activities of beavers are truly astonishing, not only because their structures are examples of instinctive architecture that could not be more perfect if they had been built according to all the rules of mechanics and engineering. No, they provide something else as well: they protect themselves in their hiding places with dams, through which they hold back the water and accelerate or slow it down in a certain way. These dams are constructed in such a way against the force of the water that an engineer who has studied long and hard to learn the mechanical rules according to which such a structure must be built in the best possible way could not do better. Yes, they are constructed in such a way that one can calculate from the inclination of these dams and the angles the rapids and the force of the flowing water. They are constructed in such a way that an engineer could not calculate them better in his study using his science, which has been achieved through many human thoughts and efforts.

And now another example: consider a very ordinary human thigh bone. When you look at this thigh bone through a microscope, it is not a compact structure like a piece of mortar, but rather the bone appears fragile through the microscope, as a composition of fine structures that are built like a very fine framework and scaffolding. A network of fine bone threads builds itself up; it intertwines, supports each other, and when you study this whole network of bone threads, you perceive a remarkable wisdom of nature in the construction of such an organism. If, for example, you wanted to build a framework that would support the individual parts of a truss in such a way that it would achieve the greatest possible effect with the least amount of force, you could not do better than nature in its wisdom has done in constructing such a thigh bone from countless small bone filaments that hold and support each other. Wisdom that humans can conceive after much mental effort can be found in every single part of nature. And if we could study nature, if we could literally pour our minds out over nature so that we could perceive nature outside, then we would perceive nature not as a product of chance, but as the result of infinite wisdom. Imagine, instead of the calculating mind perceiving the impressions of the outside world through the gates of the senses and only being able to reflect on what it perceives from the outside, imagine instead that you had no senses, but that your mind was, as it were, poured out over the whole of nature. you would not perceive the effects of things on our senses, but the essence of things themselves, then you would stand in the wisdom of nature, then you would be part of wise nature.

This is actually achieved when our daily consciousness, when our waking consciousness is switched off. This is achieved in somnambulists, as I have just indicated. I said that one might think that our mind, our consciousness, pushes out of our brain and permeates the wisdom of nature in all its activities and in all its facts. The fact that we have such a bright, alert daytime consciousness causes us to be cut off from the rest of nature; it causes us to have to receive the impressions of nature through the gates of our senses. Here is the flame, it makes an impression on my eye; the eye is the gate through which the impression reaches my consciousness. My consciousness evokes the mental images from within. Because I have sensory gates, I am cut off from the outside world, and this outside world must first enter my consciousness through the sensory gates. In my consciousness, I am, as it were, in the same position in relation to the rest of the world as someone who stands in a meadow and has a view in all directions, and then enters a small house and perceives everything in the meadow only through the windows of the small house. Such is the wisdom of all nature, which we perceive in every bone, in every plant, which appears from the starry sky to the smallest microscopic particle of the body. This wise nature has entered our consciousness as if into a single point and has erected around us the shell of our organs with their sensory gates. Our consciousness is closed off from this entity outside and can only perceive the entity outside through the sensory gates.

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

But now we must ask ourselves: Can we rely on these phenomena that occur during the somnambulistic state? They are true phenomena, they are a reality; but this reality approaches us with the exclusion of the organ that humans have gradually developed in order to orient themselves in the world, with the exclusion of their bright daytime consciousness. This truly brings about a state in humans that reveals something to them that otherwise remains hidden, but which pushes them down from a level they have once reached. For we know as theosophists that the states which human beings attain in this way and which are supposed to be “higher” are in truth states which they went through before they attained their present full human consciousness. I cannot explain this to you today, but just as the scientific theory of evolution shows us the purely physical processes of development, so theosophy shows us that human beings have gradually reached the level they have attained today. The consciousness we have today, which enables us to orient ourselves in our environment, only emerged after we had gone through other states of consciousness in millions of years of slow development. Before developing this clear daytime consciousness, humans had a kind of dream consciousness. At that time, they were truly beings who did not perceive the processes around them in the way we perceive them today in our clear daytime consciousness, but rather everything around them was symbolized, just as dreams are still symbolized today. A large number of legends that have been preserved originate from such times, when humans were still close to this dream consciousness and developed these symbolic legends. You can find more detailed information on this in a very interesting book by my late friend Ludwig Laistner, who collected the various legends of the earth and showed how these legends were developed from a symbolic human consciousness that had not yet awakened to daytime consciousness. Some legends can indeed be traced back to such states of somnambulistic consciousness.

If we go back even further, we come to states that are even deeper and deeper, but at the same time closer to nature and to the starting point of physical development. When man first began as a desire of the divine being, he was in a kind of deep trance. At that time, the whole of humanity was in a kind of deep trance state, similar to the trance state that somnambulists can be in today, who, when their bright daytime consciousness is switched off, can be transported into the deepest, so-called magnetic sleep states. Humanity has gone through all these states in the past, and now we are in the period of development of bright daytime consciousness. This is also only a transition point; it is the transition point that leads us to reacquire, within this bright, awake daytime consciousness, the ability that humans once had, only at that time not in bright daytime consciousness. For this was not yet developed at all.

This is the future course of human development: to pour the spirit directly over nature again, to become clairvoyant in full daytime consciousness. Some among us who have trained their inner organs through certain methods indicated by theosophy have already advanced in their development and are now able, in full daytime consciousness, to truly see into this world of beings and spiritual life that surrounds us. Today there are already certain individuals among us who are, so to speak, free from the gates of the senses, who are in direct contact with the spiritual environment, and from this clairvoyant observation, with full daytime consciousness, pass through the higher realities that are closed to ordinary consciousness, just as we pass between tables and chairs, where they perceive the spiritual world around them, which surrounds us at every moment. Theosophical teachings have flowed from such views. Somnambulistic consciousness provides similar teachings in a certain respect, and what a somnambulistic personality can see with the elimination of clear daytime consciousness is often the same as what the clairvoyant sees with his clear daytime consciousness. But the somnambulist can never control what they see; the somnambulist can never control what they tell you about spiritual processes in the environment, what they tell you about perceptions that cannot be seen through the gates of the senses. They cannot even control whether what they perceive is really true, as they perceive it.

The strangest deceptions can happen to somnambulists. You can stand in front of this somnambulist as a personality and tell her that you are, say, some personality living in a completely different place. The somnambulist will believe this completely and will have the true impression that you are who you claim to be. The somnambulist believes you, and that becomes dangerous. For if the somnambulist not only tells us such easily controllable things, but if the somnambulist gives us messages about the higher world that we cannot perceive with our senses, about the so-called astral world or about the higher spiritual world, when the sun of our daytime consciousness is extinguished and the starry sky of the spiritual world rises, it can happen that the somnambulist tells you that she perceives a deceased person. Certainly, the somnambulist perceives a spiritual fact, she perceives a being; but it is not necessarily true that this being is the deceased person in question. It may be another being, a being that has nothing at all to do with an ordinary earthly being. It may be a being that lives in the astral world and has never entered the earthly world. In short, because the somnambulist does not have the controlling consciousness, she can never be sure whether the impression she had is the right one.

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

It is simply a matter of course for those who are familiar with these higher realms that, when examining an individual case of a medium, they do not automatically assume that the medium has committed fraud, even if the facts at hand are not correct. The medium may, for example, go to the nearest grocery store—this is a case of which I have convinced myself—and be in such a somnambulistic state that his ego consciousness, his waking consciousness, is extinguished; he buys a holy picture there and puts it in his pocket. Then it comes out of this somnambulistic state and has no idea where it got the picture. Later — somnambulistic states are very complicated — it returns to the trance state and presents the picture to you as something it has brought into this world from the supersensible world. The somnambulistic personality, the medium, never has any idea that it bought this holy image itself or how it came to have it. It is completely honest in the ordinary sense, even though the fact is a pretense. Thus, through the influences exerted on such a somnambulist when clear daytime consciousness is eliminated, a situation can arise that can be described in the following words: the fact that is unfolding before us may be deception; however, the medium does not need to be a deceiver, but can be completely intact and honest.

This shows you that when we consider this question of somnambulism, we cannot help but take the theosophical point of view. Theosophy and the theosophical movement are of the definite opinion that entering the higher spiritual world, entering that world which can also be made accessible to us through somnambulists, should never take place without the presence of a fully conscious clairvoyant, one who knows his way around the spiritual world, who is as familiar with the spiritual world as he is with the physical. Therefore, Theosophy requires that when experiments with mediums are to be conducted—and there may certainly be circumstances where this is advisable— they should only take place in the presence of a fully knowledgeable clairvoyant who works with clear daytime consciousness and who can oversee everything that is really happening, while the medium and usually also those who are conducting their experiments with the medium are unable to do so. Such mediumistic phenomena do not necessarily involve danger in all circumstances, but we have seen that this danger can arise because of a lack of orientation. Anyone who is a clairvoyant working with full daytime consciousness knows what is happening at every single moment and knows at every single moment what a somnambulist really sees, even though she pretends to see something completely different; he knows what influences are really taking place, even though the somnambulist pretends that this or that influence is taking place. That is precisely the difference between spiritual science and other similar endeavors. I do not wish to doubt the truth of the other endeavors in any way, but their reality applies just as much as it does to other endeavors. Since such experiences cannot all be achieved at once, since it is impossible for a complete ideal to be realized at any given moment, Theosophy does not consider it its task to combat other spiritual endeavors, such as experiments with somnambulistic personalities, because we know that these experiments will ultimately yield the same results: the conviction of a spiritual world around us.

But the Theosophical Movement itself will only attempt to accomplish what is incumbent upon it in harmony with other spiritual movements under the ideal of conscious clairvoyance. It wants to work in harmony with other spiritual movements and regard them as its sister movements. It is always ready to give advice when asked whether this or that is real and true in this or that sense. However, it will only undertake all spiritual endeavors under the aegis of knowledgeable clairvoyance. This applies to both spiritualist and other spiritual endeavors. In the spirit of theosophy, occult research may only be undertaken under the influence of individuals who are able to understand exactly and consciously what is involved. Spiritual healing may also only be carried out in the same way as physical healing: with full conscious understanding of the circumstances involved.

This is how Theosophy views somnambulistic phenomena. You see, the view of theosophy differs somewhat from the superficial external view, which sees nothing in somnambulistic phenomena other than pathological, reprehensible, abnormal phenomena, and it also has somewhat different views on these phenomena than those who believe that they can only learn about the higher spiritual life through them. Theosophy knows where these phenomena come from. Through its clairvoyance, it can explain these phenomena. But with all others who relate to these phenomena in the sense that they see in them manifestations of spiritual life, it relates in such a way that it sees in them brother movements with which it strives toward the same goal, toward a great goal: to bring back to today's materialistic humanity a spiritual, a genuinely idealistic worldview, a true knowledge of the spiritual world. This is a profound truth expressed by a German seer, one who is not usually known to be a seer, namely Goethe, who said that we cannot unveil the secrets of nature through our instruments, through mechanical, physical tools, but that it is the spirit that must seek the spirit everywhere:

Mysterious in the light of day,
Nature cannot be robbed of its veil,
And what it may not reveal to your spirit,
You cannot force it out with levers and screws.

But Goethe did not doubt the revelations of the spirit around us, for he was clear about what he expressed in “Faust” in the beautiful words that he said the wise man would speak:

The spirit world is not closed;
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead!
Arise, student, undaunted,
Bathe your earthly breast in the dawn!