10. Individual Spirit Beings and the Undivided Foundation of the World: Part 1

GA 178/1917-11-18/p040 ·1917-11-18 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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I would like to add one more picture to these things. First, you have seen from the discussion what a tremendous distinction there is between East and West in the evolution of humanity. Second, I ask you to consider the following. You see, the psychoanalyst speaks about the subconscious, about the subconscious life of the soul, and so on. It is not so important to speak about such an indefinite concept of these things, but it is necessary to grasp what is truly beyond the threshold of consciousness. What is there? Much is certainly to be found down there under the threshold of consciousness. For itself, however, what lies down there is extremely conscious. One must come to understand what kind of conscious spirituality exists beyond the threshold of consciousness. One must speak of conscious spirituality beyond the threshold of consciousness, not unconscious spirituality. We must become clear that man has much about which he knows nothing in his ordinary consciousness. It would put the human being in a terrible position if he had to know in his ordinary consciousness all that goes on within him. Just consider how he would be able to go about eating and drinking if he were to acquaint himself exactly with all the physiological and biological processes that take place from the ingesting of food onward, and so on. All this takes place in the unconscious. There are spiritual forces at work everywhere, even in the purely physiological. Man cannot wait with eating and drinking, however, until he has learned what is really going on within him. So much goes on within man! For man, a large portion, by far the largest portion, of his being is unconscious, or to say it better, subconscious.

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Cite: GA 178/1917-11-18/p040 · edition English