5. Natural Death and Spiritual Life

Is not that to which ordinary knowledge surrenders also something turned away from life when we surrender to life in the usual robust way, when we live our existence in the world only by exerting our physical bodies from morning till night? What we call knowledge, even in ordinary life, cannot come about through this. The finer concepts, the more intimate connections with the world that are sought through knowledge, depend – initially in a formal way – on the external, robust way of life. In a sense, one has to retreat to a place of existence in knowledge that lies apart from the external life. And yet, one must admit that through that which one intimately explores in this remote place, by observing, experimenting, and thereby going beyond the ordinary course of existence with observation and experiment, that precisely through this light comes into life; that light comes into life from something that withdraws from life. Could it not also be the case that the mysterious world of dreams is initially meaningless for the external, robust life, but that it is precisely in its remoteness, and in a remoteness in a higher sense than ordinary knowledge, that it points to the essence of life?