New Perspectives

What Johann Gottlieb Fichte brings to expression lies in the direction of a knowledge relating to the world in the way characterized here. This is clear from the way he has to use the image of human dreaming in order to characterize the world of ordinary consciousness. He says: “Pictures exist: they are all that there is, and they know about themselves in the manner of pictures—Pictures that float past; without anything there for them to float past; pictures that relate to each other through pictures of pictures ... All reality transforms itself into a strange dream, without a life that is dreamed about, and without a spirit who is dreaming; transforms itself into a dream that is connected with a dream about itself.” That is a description of the world of ordinary consciousness; and it is the starting point for a recognition of the seeing consciousness which brings an awakening out of the dream of the physical world into the reality of the spiritual world.