III
DREAM-LIFE
AN intimation
that the student has arrived at the stage of evolution
described in the foregoing chapter is the change which comes
over his dream-life. Hitherto his dreams were confused and
haphazard, but now they begin to assume a more regular
character. Their pictures begin to arrange themselves in an
orderly way, like the phenomena of daily life. He can discern
in them laws, causes, and effects. The contents of his dreams
will likewise change. While hitherto he discerned only the
reverberations of daily life, mixed impressions of his
surroundings or of his physical condition, there now appear
before him pictures of a world with which he had no
acquaintance. At first, indeed, the general nature of his
dreams will remain as of old in so far as the dream
differentiates itself from waking phenomena by presenting in
emblematical form whatever it wishes to express. This
dramatization cannot have escaped the notice of any attentive
observer of dream-life. For instance, you may dream that you
are catching some horrible creature and experiencing an
unpleasant sensation in your hand. You wake up to discover
that you are tightly holding a piece of the bed-clothes. The
perception does not express itself plainly, but only through
the allegorical image. Or you may dream that you are flying
from some pursuer and in consequence you experience fear. On
waking up you find that during sleep you had been suffering
from palpitation of the heart. The stomach which is replete
with indigestible food will cause uneasy dream-pictures.
Occurrences in the neighborhood of the sleeping person may
also reflect themselves allegorically in dreams. The striking
of a clock may evoke the picture of soldiers marching by to
the sound of their drums. Or a falling chair can become the
origin of a complete dream-drama in which the sound of
falling is translated into a gun report, and so forth. The
more regulated dreams of the person whose etheric body has
begun its development have also this allegorical method of
expression, but they will cease to repeat merely the facts of
the physical environment or of the sense-body. As these
dreams which owe their origin to such things become orderly
they are mixed up with similar dream-pictures which are the
expression of things and events in another world. Here one
has experiences that lie beyond the range of one's waking
consciousness. Now it must never be fancied that any true
mystic will then make the things which in this manner he
experiences in dreams the basis of any authoritative account
of the higher world. One must only consider such
dream-experiences as hints of a higher development. Very
soon, as a further result of this, we find that the pictures
of the dreaming student are no longer, as hitherto, withdrawn
by the guidance of a careful intellect, but are regulated
thereby, and methodically considered like the conceptions and
impressions of the waking consciousness. The difference
between this dream-consciousness and the waking state grows
ever smaller and smaller. The dreamer becomes, in the fullest
meaning of the word, awake in his dream-life : that is to
say, he can feel himself to be the master and leader of the
pictures which then appear.
During his
dreams the individual actually finds himself in a world which
is other than that of his physical senses. But if he
possesses only unevolved spiritual organs, he can receive
from that world only the confused dramatizations already
mentioned. It would only be as much at his disposal as would
be the sense-world to a being equipped with nothing but the
most rudimentary of eyes. In consequence he could only
discern in this world the reflections and reverberations of
ordinary life. Yet in dreams he can see these, because his
soul interweaves its daily perceptions as pictures into the
stuff of which that other world consists. It must here be
clearly understood that in addition to the workaday conscious
life, one leads in this world a second and unconscious
existence. Everything that one perceives or thinks becomes
impressed upon this other world. Only if the lotus-flowers
are evolved can one perceive these impressions. Now certain
minute beginnings of the lotus-flowers are always at the
disposal of anyone. During daily consciousness he cannot
perceive with them, because the impressions made on him are
very faint. It is for similar reasons that during the daytime
one cannot see the stars. They cannot strike our perceptions
when opposed by the fierce and active sunlight, and it is
just in this way that faint spiritual impressions cannot make
themselves felt in opposition to the masterful impressions of
the physical senses. When the door of outward sense is closed
in sleep, these impressions can emerge confusedly, and then
the dreamer remembers what he has experienced in another
world. Yet, as already remarked, at first these experiences
are nothing more than that which conceptions related to the
physical senses have impressed on the spiritual world. Only
the developed lotus-flowers make it possible for
manifestations which are unconnected with the physical world
to show themselves. Out of the development of the etheric
body arises a full knowledge concerning the impressions that
are conveyed from one world to another. With this the
student's communication with a new world has begun. He must
now — by means of the instructions given in his occult
training — first of all acquire a twofold nature. It must
become possible for him during waking hours to recall quite
consciously the beings he has observed in dreams. If he has
acquired this faculty he will then become able to make these
observations during his ordinary waking state. His attention
will have become so concentrated upon spiritual impressions
that these impressions need no longer vanish in the light of
those which come through the senses, but are, as it were,
always at hand.
If the student
is able to do this, there then arises before his spiritual
eyes something of the picture which has been described in a
former chapter. He can now discern that what exists in the
spiritual world is the origin of that which corresponds to it
in the physical world, and, above all things, can he learn in
this world to know his own higher self. The task that now
confronts him is to grow, as it were, into this higher self,
or, in other words, to regard it as his only true self, and
also to conduct himself accordingly. He now retains, more and
more, the conception and the vital realization that his
physical body and what hitherto he designated “himself
” is only an instrument of the higher self. He takes an
attitude toward his lower self, such as might be taken by
some one limited to the world of sense with regard to some
instrument or vehicle which serves him. Just as such a person
would not consider the carriage in which he travelled to be
himself, though he says “I travel,” or “I
go,” so, too, the developed person, when he says
“I go through the door,” retains in his mind the
conception, “I take my body through the door.”
This must become for him such an habitual idea that he never
for a moment loses the firm ground of the physical world,
that never a feeling of estrangement in the world of sense
arises. If the student does not wish to become a mere
fantastic or vain enthusiast, he must work with the higher
consciousness, so that he does not impoverish his life in the
physical world, but enriches it, even as the person who makes
use of a railway instead of his own legs may enrich himself
by going for a journey.
If the student
has raised himself to such a life in the higher Ego,
then — or still more probably during the acquisition of
the higher consciousness — it will be revealed to him how
he may stir into life what is called the fire of Kundalini
which lies in the organ at the heart, and, further, how he
may direct the currents described in a previous chapter.
This fire of
Kundalini is an element of finer material which flows outward
from this organ and streams in luminous loveliness through
the self-moving lotus-flowers and the other canals of the
evolved etheric body. Thence it radiates outward an the
surrounding spiritual world and makes it spiritually visible,
just as the sunshine falling upon the surrounding objects
makes visible the physical world.
How this fire
of Kundalini in the organ at the heart is fanned into life
may only form the subject of actual occult training. Nothing
can be said of it openly.
The spiritual
world becomes plainly perceptible as composed of objects and
beings only for the individual who in such a way can send the
fire of Kundalini through his etheric body and into the outer
world, so that its objects are illumined by it. From this it
will be seen that a complete consciousness of an object in
the spiritual world is entirely dependent upon the condition
that the person himself has cast upon it the spiritual light.
In reality the Ego, who has drawn forth this fire, no longer
dwells in the physical human body at all, but (as has been
already shown) apart from it. The organ at the heart is only
the spot where the individual from without enkindles that
fire. If he wished to do this, not here but elsewhere, then
the spiritual perceptions produced by means of the fire would
have no connection with the physical world. Yet one should
relate all the higher spiritual things to the physical world
itself, and through oneself should let them work in the
latter. The organ at the heart is precisely the one through
which the higher self makes use of the lower self as his
instrument and whence the latter is directed.
The feeling
which the developed person now bears toward the things of the
spiritual world is quite other than that which is
characteristic of ordinary people in relation to the physical
world. The latter feel themselves to be in a certain part of
the world of sense, and the objects they perceive are
external to them. The spiritually evolved person feels
himself to be united with the spiritual objects that he
perceives, as if, indeed, he were within them. In spiritual
space he veritably moves from place to place, and is
therefore spoken of in the language of occult science as
“the wanderer.” He is practically without a home.
Should he continue in this mere wandering, he would be unable
to define clearly any object in spiritual space. Just as one
defines an object or a locality in physical space by starting
from a certain point, so must it also be in regard to the
other world. He must seek for a place there which
Dream-Life
he practically
completely explores — a place of which he spiritually
takes possession. This he must make his spiritual home and
set everything in relation to it. The person who is living in
the physical world sees everything in a like manner, as if he
carried the ideas of his physical home wherever he went.
Involuntarily a man from Berlin will describe London quite
otherwise than a Parisian. Only there is a difference between
the spiritual and the physical home. Into the latter you are
born without your own cooperation, and from it in youth you
have acquired a number of ideas which will henceforth
involuntarily give color to everything. The spiritual home,
an the contrary, you have formed for yourself with full
consciousness. You therefore shape your opinions when going
out from it in the full, unprejudiced light of freedom. This
formation of a spiritual home is known in the speech of
occult science as “the building of the hut.”
The spiritual
outlook at this point extends at first to the spiritual
counterparts of the physical world, so far as these lie in
what we call the astral world. In this world is found
everything which in its nature is akin to human impulse,
feeling, desire, or passion. For in every sense-object that
surrounds a person there are forces which are related to
these human forces. A crystal, for instance, is formed by
powers which, when seen from the higher standpoint, are
perceptible as akin to the impulse which acts in the human
being. By similar forces the sap is drawn through the vessels
of the plant, the blossoms unfold, the seed-cases are made to
burst. All these powers acquire form and color for the
developed spiritual perceptions, just as the objects of the
physical world have color and form for physical eyes. At the
stage of development here described the student no longer
sees merely the crystal or the plant, but likewise the
spiritual forces behind them, even as he does not now see the
impulses of animal or human being only through their external
manifestations, but also directly as veritable objects, as in
the physical world he can see chairs and tables. The entire
world of instinct, impulse, wish or passion, whether of a
person or of an animal, is there in the astral cloud, in the
aura with which the subject is enwrapt.
Besides this,
the clairvoyant at this stage of his evolution perceives
things that are almost or entirely withdrawn from the
perceptions of sense. For example, he can observe the astral
difference between a place which is for the most part filled
with persons of low development and another which is
inhabited by high-minded people. In a hospital it is not only
the physical but also the astral atmosphere which is other
than that of the ball-room. A commercial town has a different
astral air from that of a university town. At first the
powers of perceiving such things will be but weak in the
person who has become clairvoyant. At first it will seem to
be connected with the objects concerned, very much as is the
dream-consciousness of the ordinary person in relation to his
waking consciousness, but gradually he will completely awaken
on this plane also.
The highest
acquisition that comes to the clairvoyant, when he has
reached this degree of sight, is that by which the astral
reaction of animal or human impulses or passions is revealed
to him. A loving action has quite a different astral
appearance from one which proceeds out of hatred. The sensual
appetite gives rise to a horrible astral image, and the
feeling that is based on lofty things to one that is
beautiful. These correspondences or astral pictures are only
to be seen faintly during physical human life, for their
strength is much lessened by existence in the physical world.
A wish for any object displays itself, for instance, as a
reflection of the object itself, in addition to that which
the wish appears to be in the astral world. If, however, that
wish is satisfied by the attainment of the physical object,
or if at least the possibility of such satisfaction is
present, the corresponding image would only make a very faint
appearance. It first comes into its full power after the
death of a person, when the soul, according to its nature,
continues to foster such desires, but cannot any longer
satisfy them because the object and its own physical organs
are both lacking. Thus the gourmet will still have the desire
to tickle his palate; but the possibility of satisfaction is
absent, since he no longer possesses a palate. As a result of
this the desire is displayed as an exceptionally powerful
image by which the soul is tormented. These experiences after
death among the images of the lower soul-nature are known as
the period in “Kamaloka,” that is to say, in the
region of desire. They only vanish away when the soul has
cleansed itself from all appetites which are directed towards
the physical world. Then does the soul mount up into a
loftier region which is called “Devachan.”
Although these images are thus weak in the person who is yet
alive, they still exist and follow him as his own environment
in Kamaloka, just as the comet is followed by its tail, and
they can be seen by the clairvoyant who has arrived at this
stage of development.
Among such
experiences and all that are akin to them the occult student
lives in the world that has been described. He cannot as yet
bring himself into touch with still loftier spiritual
adventures. From this point he must climb upward still higher.
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