The Enhancement of Human Cognitive Ability to Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition

GA 84/1923-04-14/p029 ·1923-04-14 · English LowLow alignmentMost translators re-paragraphed Steiner substantially. The locus identifies the same chapter or section, but paragraph-N to paragraph-N mapping is loose. For exact-quotation precision, compare with the German.
Record: unknown. How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.

Only if you look closely at the dream, you will have to say to yourself: Yes, what I experience in dreams is actually the opposite of what I experience when I am awake. It is the other way around. When I am awake, I know that I am receiving sensory impressions, I control them through my thoughts. When I am not dreaming, the sensory impressions assail me first, and then a kind of connection lives within the sensory impressions, as it otherwise lives through the thoughts. Just as if the context were behind the sensory images, so it is in dreams. And if you think about these things properly, you will find that this dreaming is actually the other way round. It is as if you first encountered the sensory perceptions and then could not quite grasp the thinking. That is why the sensory images are so inconsistent, so illogical. You cannot grasp thinking. When you are awake, you have more or less, depending on whether you are more philistine or more imaginative, the sensory images in your power, in your strength. You know that thinking is within you, and with thinking you control the sensory images that are somewhat further away from you. In dreams, you encounter the sensory images. Thinking is now further away, you cannot catch it. In short, if you look at the matter rationally, you get the impression that when you are awake, you live from the inside out, the sensory images are on the outside (yellow arrows), and thinking is on the inside (violet arrows). This makes itself felt.

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Cite: GA 84/1923-04-14/p029 · edition English