2. The Human Soul, Destiny and Death from the Point of View of Spiritual Science

But now the spiritual researcher, by means of experiential knowledge, can recognize what is actually outside the body during sleep. He can also see from this spiritual-soul that has been illuminated, from this spiritual-soul that is, as it were, revealed before the spiritual eyes, he can recognize why the soul is unconscious from falling asleep to waking up, why darkness and gloom spread around it. From the moment of falling asleep until waking up, something lives in the soul that, as already mentioned, can be perceived by the spiritual researcher. It can be called the desire, ever present in the soul during the entire physical experience between birth and death, to return to the physical body. This life of desire always fills the soul in the ordinary experience between falling asleep and waking up. The soul always wants to return to its body and, through this will, feels itself with this will, and this experience, this development of this desire, clouds what would otherwise be there in the spiritual-soul experience between falling asleep and waking up. And only when the soul submerges into the physical body, when this desire is fulfilled, can it develop its supersensible activity and then it stimulates the physical body so that it becomes a mirror of external expression.