The Dead are with Us

And now we will consider how intercourse with the dead takes place in individual cases. When someone has died and we are left behind, we may ask: How do I approach the dead so that he experiences me in himself? How does the dead come near me again so that I can live in him? These questions may well be asked but they cannot be answered if we have recourse to concepts familiar to us on the physical plane. On the physical plane ordinary consciousness functions only from the time of waking until the time of falling asleep; but the other part of consciousness which remains dim in ordinary life between falling asleep and awaking is just as important. In the real sense, the human being is not unconscious when he is asleep; his consciousness is merely so dim that he experiences nothing of it. It is a dim consciousness. But the whole man—in waking and sleeping life—must be held in mind when we are studying the connections of the human being with the spiritual world. Think of your own biography. You consider the course of your life always with interruptions; you describe only what has happened in your waking life. Life is thus broken: waking-sleeping; waking-sleeping. But you are also there while you sleep; and in studying the whole human being, waking life and sleeping life must be taken into consideration. A third thing must also be considered in connection with man's intercourse with the spiritual world. For besides waking life and sleeping life there is a third state, even more important for intercourse with the spiritual world than waking and sleeping life as such. I mean the actual act of waking and the actual act of going to sleep, which last only a moment, for we immediately pass on into other conditions. If we develop delicate, sensitive feelings for these moments of waking and going to sleep, we shall find they shed great light on the spiritual world. In remote country places—such customs are gradually disappearing, but in the time when we who are older were still young—people were wont to say: When you wake up it is not good immediately to go to the window through which light is pouring; you should remain a little while in the dark. Country folk used to have some knowledge about intercourse with the spiritual world, and they preferred in this moment of waking not immediately to come into the bright daylight but to remain inwardly collected in order to preserve something of what sweeps with such power through the human soul at the moment of waking. The sudden brightness of daylight is disturbing. In the cities, of course, this is hardly to be avoided; there we are disturbed not only by the daylight but also even before waking by the noise of the streets, the clanging of tramcar bells and so forth. The whole of civilised life seems to conspire to hinder man's intercourse with the spiritual world. This is not said in order to decry material civilisation, but the fact must be borne in mind. Again at the moment of falling asleep the spiritual world approaches us with power; but we immediately fall asleep, losing consciousness of what has passed through the soul. Exceptions can, however, occur.