III. Man's Life in Sleep and After Death

Such then is the experience man undergoes every night between falling asleep and awaking,—an experience he owes to the fact that his soul and spirit have kinship with the Cosmos. For, even as he is related to the Earth with his physical and etheric bodies, so with his soul arid spirit, with his astral body and Ego, is man related to the Cosmos. And when he has come away from his physical and etheric bodies and has grown out into the cosmic world, and the experiences he undergoes there shine back to him, in a kind of inner picture, from the part of him that remains in bed, he feels very deeply connected with the Cosmos and would, in fact, be strongly drawn to go still further out, to go out beyond the Zodiac,—were it not for the presence of another force that draws him back. On account of this other element that enters into all the experiences that befall man during sleep, it, is not possible for him, between birth and death, to go out beyond the Zodiac, We have here to do with an influence of an entirely different kind and quality, the influence, namely, of the Moon.