III. Man's Life in Sleep and After Death

This then is how it is with us, my dear friends, in the first sphere into which we come after falling asleep. Two fundamental feelings live in our soul; I am in the Mist of the Worlds,—I would fain rest in the bosom of the Godhead, that I be safe and protected and dissolve not away in the Mist of the Worlds. This is moreover an experience which the heart-perception must needs carry over into waking life in the morning, when the soul dives down again into the physical and ether bodies. For if this experience were not brought over, then the substances we take as nourishment during the day would assume within us their own completely earthly character and throw our whole organism into disorder. And this applies not only to what we eat but to all the substances that undergo within us the process of metabolism. For even if we go hungry, substances are nevertheless continually being taken—in this case, from our own body—and worked upon through metabolism.