4. The Spirit, Soul, and Body of Man

Let us first turn our attention to the life of imagination. People generally view it in such a way that they know: I am awake from the moment I wake up until I fall asleep. My thoughts, arising from perceptions or also arising internally, enter into my ordinary waking life. Ordinary consciousness cannot come to any other conclusion. It is different when the human soul life is prepared for spiritual observation through such exercises. Then one is able to observe this whole inner world of expansion, the waking consciousness itself, from waking up to falling asleep. It is remarkable how here, as in so many other areas, serious natural scientists today encounter what spiritual science brings to light from a completely different perspective. But natural science can only build a bridge to the life of the soul on the basis of physical examination. It still refuses to talk about what is being discussed here. That is why natural scientists today, when they talk about these things, use a completely different language than spiritual scientists. But things will come together, as surely as the drilling through a mountain undertaken according to correct geological and geometric methods for the construction of a tunnel comes together in the middle. For example, interesting studies have recently appeared in the field of natural science by the researcher Julius Pikler, who views human waking consciousness in a completely different way than has been customary in biology up to now. Of course, he does not think to examine this from a spiritual scientific perspective. He therefore bases his work on something that is little more than a word. Pikler speaks of a waking instinct that simply keeps humans awake from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep, that is present even when there are no particular thoughts or ideas, and that is said to manifest itself particularly in boredom. I just wanted to point this out to show how boring it can be from the other side as well.