Revelations of the Unconscious in the Life of the Soul from the Spiritual Scientific Point of View

He who believes that he is viewing such experiences from the dream life from a scientific perspective, which relate to all kinds of superstitious hopes, will not be able to come into his own in the face of a scientific consideration of the dream life. But on the other hand, one need only look at this dream life and one will find that the surging dreams of human sleep or half-sleep interpose themselves in a remarkable way into the existence of man, into the entire human life. On the one hand, we see how dreams can be influenced by sensory stimuli that are only partially effective. Everyone is familiar with something like, say, falling asleep near a light. If they were awake, they would see the light near the light. They fall asleep. The light makes an impression on his eye that is not processed in the usual way, and he may dream, as a result of the incomplete impression of the light, of a conflagration, to which he then attaches all kinds of dream images! He can attach a whole inner drama to these sensory stimuli. And one could tell many stories if one wanted to tell all the kinds of dreams that are connected to sensory stimuli.