Lecture VII

What is it that puts us to sleep over and over again, pushing our will intent and much of our feeling life into the night-time darkness of the conscious mind? It is the need to develop organic activity in the exercise of the will. In the last lecture we noted that when human beings exercise the will they let their soul principle influence even the life of the muscles. The soul immerses itself in the life of the muscles, as it were, and we become unconscious of it, just as we become unconscious of the soul when it leaves the body and enters into a different state during going to sleep and waking up. We are therefore able to say that it is due to the needs and conditions of the living body that we are consciously aware of our I in ordinary life. It is due to the fact that we have a body which lays claim to the soul when will is to be exercised, and chases the soul down into the unconsciousness of sleep because it wants to balance the energies it develops in will activity. This enables it to mediate full awareness of the I at all times, even though the I exists at an unconscious level.