Lecture V

Something else, however, is mixed with this mood, this basic feeling; something else accompanies it. It is only by means of a concept that I can try to picture what is here experienced in words because one must always have recourse to words in physical life. What is experienced is something of this nature. So far as you feel anything at all of a world, you feel yourself poured out into it. At first you do not really feel anything external anywhere, you only feel the one point in the world in which you were beforehand. That is the only external thing you feel. You find whatever harm you have done and whatever good you have done crowded into that one point. That is external. For the rest, you feel yourself with all that you have achieved in the world poured out over the whole world. You have indeed the feeling that it would be nonsense to apply certain words natural in sensory existence to this experience of your connection with the world. For instance, the words before and after cease to have meaning because as you go to sleep you do not feel that it is before, and that waking comes after. You only feel certain experiences that begin as you go to sleep, and continue to happen. After living through a number of experiences, in a certain respect you are at the same point again, but not in the same way as before going to sleep.