43. Consciousness – Life – Form

How is this source opened? Through nothing other than the fact that the sense activity on which day consciousness depends has ceased during sleep. The silence of this sense activity is expressed by the fact that the self-consciousness of the person disappears. This self-consciousness is bound to the activity of the external senses; when these are silent, it sinks into an abyss. In occult science this fact is expressed by saying: the human soul has withdrawn from the physical world. If one does not want to assert that a person ceases to exist when falling asleep and is reborn when waking up, it is not difficult to recognize that during sleep a person exists in a world other than the physical one. This world is called the astral world. The reader may accept this term for the time being as a name for that world of which man gets a presentiment through his dreams. The justification of this term will appear from other chapters of this book.