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Rudolf Steiner — March, 1923

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The Three Stages of Sleep

A lecture by
Rudolf Steiner
Dornach, March 24, 1922
GA 211

A lecture, hitherto untranslated given at Dornach on March 24, 1922. Published in

Anthroposophy Today, No. 4, Winter 1975. It is the second of twelve lectures in the
volume The Sun Mystery ... Death, Resurrection, and is also known as Mystery of
Golgotha and its Relation to the Sleep of Man.
In the collected edition of Rudolf Steiner's works, the volume containing the German
texts is entitled, Das Sonnenmysterium und das Mysterium von Tod und Auferstehung.
Exoterisches und esoterisches Christentum, (Vol. 211 in the Bibliographic Survey,
1961). The translator is unknown.
Copyright © 1987
This e.Text edition is provided through the wonderful work of:
Anthroposophy Today
http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Covers/anthrotoday41987_cov.html

Spiritual Science cannot hand people something which, once assimilated, is enough for
the rest of life. I have often pointed out that there exists no short summary of a world
view which can be kept at hand in one's pocket. In place of ready formulas, science of
the spirit provides something with which the human soul must repeatedly unite itself,
which must be repeatedly inwardly assimilated and digested. External truths such as
those provided by natural science we can, if we have a good memory, take in and then
possess them once and for all. That is not possible with spiritual-scientific truths, the
reason being that the truths of natural science are lifeless concepts. The laws of nature
are dead once they have been formulated into concepts, whereas spiritual-scientific
truths are living concepts; if we condemn them to lifelessness because we accept them
as if they were external truths, then they provide no nourishment; then they are stones
the soul cannot digest.

Rudolf Steiner

‘Aspects of Human Evolution’, lecture VIII, Berlin 24 July 1917

The Three Stages of Sleep
Rudolf Steiner

A lecture given in Dornach, 24 March 1922

Published in Anthroposophy Today

Winter 1987 No 4

WAKING LIFE is the state of consciousness that is most familiar to mankind, but
within this sphere the problems of existence are not unveiled. If this waking
consciousness, as it serves us for ordinary life and knowledge, could solve the problems
of life without further ado, such problems would no longer exist. Their solution would
be a matter of course. Human beings would never come to the point of questioning. The
fact that someone asks about the deeper foundations of life and, while not perhaps
coming to the point of definitely formulating questions as to the problems of life yet
retains the longing to know something that ordinary consciousness cannot yield, proves
that from the deepest foundations of the human soul, though in a more or less
unconscious way, something arises which indeed belongs to the human being, but
which must first be sought if it is to rise up into the light of consciousness.

This leads those who do not observe life sufficiently closely into .speculation and into
the forming of all kinds of philosophies which eventually prove to be unsatisfying. But
anyone who observes the phenomena of life with a certain impartiality will soon realise
that, in the sleeping condition, as opposed to the waking condition of consciousness,
something is concealed, and that an understanding of life may result from an
understanding of the sleeping condition.

We have often spoken of these things, but it is necessary to return to them again and
again, for Anthroposophy can only be understood when the attempt is made to approach
facts from the most varied points of view.

Out of the state of sleep there emerges first the life of dreams. This dream life consists
of pictures, and if one pays attention to this life of dreams, it is easy to observe that its
pictures are related to ordinary life and consciousness. Even if it can often be said that
things are dreamed of in a way in which the dreamer has never experienced them, I
would answer: the parts out of which the dream is made up, the details of the pictures,
are all the same taken from ordinary consciousness.

It is different with regard to the dramatic element of the dream, to the way in which the
dream, as it grows in intensity, evokes feelings of anxiety, of joy, of compulsion. The
meaning of the course taken by these dream pictures lies more deeply within human
nature, and we can understand this when we consider the following example. A man
may dream, for instance, that he is walking along a road and comes to a mountain. He
passes into a cave in the mountain. At first it is dusk, and then it gets darker. An
unknown impulse urges him to go farther; he has a sense of uneasiness and this
increases till he stands there in a state of terror, let us say, of falling into some inner
chasm or the like. He may then wake up in this feeling of terror, for it has lasted until
the time of waking.

Again, we may dream that we are standing somewhere and a man is approaching us
from a distance. He comes nearer and nearer, and when he is quite close it appears that
he is preparing to make an attack. There is an experience of increasing anxiety. The
other man comes still nearer and the harmless instrument which he had shown us from
afar changes into a murderous weapon. The dream transforms things in this way.
Anxiety becomes terror, and once more we awake full of this terror which continues
into waking life.

Here we have two entirely different pictures. In the first dream we have a series of
pictures which led us into the mountain cavern, and in the second a series of pictures
connected with an approaching enemy. The soul-experience has been the same although
the picture sequence has been quite different. What the soul has lived through is
something entirely different from what is consciously experienced on waking. The
pictures in themselves are not the essential thing. The point is the inner drama through
which the soul passes; how there was first an impulse — or something that approached
the soul in the place of an impulse — how this passed over into feelings of anxiety and
terror, and how at last the dreamer came to the point of rousing himself out of sleep and
returning to ordinary consciousness. Forces that increase in intensity are there behind
the dream and these forces clothe themselves in pictures. The forces are not perceptible
but they are the essential factor.

I might multiply these two picture sequences many times, for the same soul content
may be clothed in 10, 20 or a hundred different pictures. Thus we must say that here is
something that takes place in the soul which the human being does not observe and of
which the person knows nothing. Only the pictures are known. These pictures are
experienced in dream consciousness, but the essential thing is the process of
intensification: first anxiety, then greater anxiety, and lastly actual terror. The dream
pictures are more or less taken from ordinary life — the mountain, the cavern, the
approaching enemy, his weapon — all these are borrowed from life. The pictures derive
their content from life, but this is only the clothing.

But now when, through what I have often described as Imaginative consciousness, we
have the power to remain behind this clothing, building no pictures of this kind, but
remaining with Imaginative consciousness within the forces of the soul which have
given rise to the anxiety, fear and terror, then something quite different happens.

When a person sleeps, the astral body and Ego are outside the physical and etheric
bodies. In normal circumstances when human beings awake, they re-enter the etheric
and physical bodies very rapidly; but when, in somewhat abnormal circumstances,
someone does not immediately penetrate into the physical body, but before entering it
penetrates more intensely into the etheric body, then these pictures are formed out of
life. For in ordinary consciousness there is no conceptual activity in actual sleep. The
dream pictures arise only at the moment when someone is penetrating into the body and
passing through the etheric body, or at the moment of falling asleep when, on leaving
the physical body, the sleeper lingers in the etheric body. These dream pictures taken
from ordinary life are formed only in the intermediate conditions. Imaginative
consciousness, however, enables human beings to live in those forces of the soul which
stand behind the dream while the person is wholly outside the body. The individual
lives then in a different world of reality, a world which is passed through between
falling asleep and awaking. Between falling asleep and awaking human beings live in
this world without consciousness. You can picture this to yourselves as though a man
sank under water, and there, losing all consciousness, can only regain it when the waters
bear him to the surface and make him free again. The same thing that there takes place
in a physical sense takes place in the soul when people sleep. They dive down into the
spiritual world and there lose consciousness. They pass out of the body with their soul
and lose consciousness. On waking they rise up again and regain consciousness, and
this re ascent is the entrance into the body. When, as has been said, someone does not
enter the body immediately, but becomes aware of the passage through the etheric body,
there arise the pictures of the dream. But when we reach a stage where the appearance
of such dream pictures is no longer allowed and, existing wholly outside the physical
body in the spiritual world, we perceive pictures, these are no longer arbitrary pictures
but are such as you will find in the description of world-evolution in my Occult
Science. All such descriptions as those given in Occult Science originate in the way just
characterised.

If it is asked what is to be found in Occult Science, the answer must be: ‘Thoughts are
there’. These thoughts can be studied. I have emphasised again and again that the
healthy human intellect can reflect upon these thoughts. Thoughts are there, but they are
not ordinary thoughts: they are thoughts which are creatively active in the cosmos.
Human beings can live in these thoughts when they stand on the other side of the
threshold leading into the spiritual world. They can live in these thoughts which are
active in the cosmos. This is the first thing that they will find when they enter the
supersensible world.

Picture to yourselves someone asleep. During sleep, processes of the greatest intensity
and far-reaching effect take place in the soul. Nothing is known of all this because in
sleep the person is without consciousness. In the morning the person re-enters the
physical body, diving down instantaneously into it. The eyes are used to perceive light
and colour, the ears to hear sounds, and so on. The person becomes conscious. But there
is this intermediate state where, before entering directly into the physical body, the
person enters the etheric body. Then the dream arises. But should that person become
conscious before penetrating into the etheric body, he or she would then be conscious in
the outer ether which fills the whole cosmos; there would be consciousness of what is
described in Occult Science.

If, for example, you were to become conscious in the middle of the night without
returning to your physical body, so that this physical body rose up before you and you
were to look upon it — for it would then be visible — you would become conscious of
this cosmology, of what I have described in Occult Science. What is there described
may be called the formative forces of the cosmos, or cosmic thoughts. Just as people
have their own thoughts in waking life, they can now say: ‘The Earth has originated in
such and such a way; it has passed through a Moon condition, a Sun condition and a
Saturn condition’ — as I have described in Occult Science.

This kind of perception in the spiritual world is only one of three existing kinds. When
human beings consider their waking condition of consciousness, they know that in this
consciousness they can distinguish between thinking, feeling and willing. But just as the
waking consciousness has these three states, so also the night consciousness, which in
an ordinary way is an unconscious condition so far as the human being is concerned,
has its three states. In the period between falling asleep and awaking people are not
always in the same condition any more than they are during the period of waking
consciousness. A person is awake when thinking or feeling or willing; consciousness
can also function in three conditions during sleep. Imaginative consciousness is only
able to behold the cosmic formative forces if we have first acquired consciousness and
knowledge of them. In sleep we all live within these formative forces of the cosmos,
within the cosmic thoughts; just as man is immersed when he jumps into water, so is
everyone immersed, in sleep, in the formative forces of the cosmos.

Besides this life within the formative forces of the cosmos there are two other
conditions of the life of sleep, just as in waking life the human being not only thinks,
but feels and wills. Thinking, the possession of thoughts, corresponds in sleep to the life
of the cosmic formative forces. This means that, when we become conscious in the
lightest sleep, we are living in the formative forces of the cosmos. It is as though we
were swimming through the cosmos from one end to the other, floating through
thoughts — thoughts which are, however, forces. In this lightest sleep we float through
the thought-forces of the cosmos. But there is also a deeper sleep — a sleep from which
nothing can be brought into the waking life of the day unless we have practised special
exercises of the soul. A person can bring back something into the waking life through
the dream only from the lightest sleep, but, as I have already said, these dream-pictures
are not authoritative, for the same dream can be clothed in the most varied pictures. In
very light sleep we can always dream, that is, we can always bring something over into
consciousness; we can feel that we have had at least some experiences in sleep. This is,
however, only the case with the very lightest kind of sleep. Of deeper sleep nothing can
be known until we can enter it with Inspirational consciousness, and then we become
aware of more than is described in Occult Science. In that work I have, of course,
described something of what sounds forth from Inspirational consciousness, but let us
make it quite clear — and this is a matter which can only be explained through
Anthroposophy — in what way the human being experiences this transition from light
sleep to that sleep from which no dreams can be brought back into the ordinary
conscious life.

When sleep is so light that dreams can be brought back into ordinary life, then one who
is able to look into these worlds perceives the surging, weaving thought-pictures, the
cosmic Imaginations which reveal cosmic mysteries showing that human beings indeed
belong to a cosmic world just as they belong to the world in which they live consciously
from awakening to falling asleep. For what I have described in Occult Science is not as
though one merely painted something on a surface, but everything is in perpetual
movement, in perpetual activity. At a definite moment, however, pictures begin to
appear in this world through which human beings pass in light sleep, though they know
nothing of it. The pictures become distinct; their light is enhanced; they reveal certain
realities lying behind them. The pictures fade away again, and nothing remains in the
consciousness but a kind of feeling that they have died down. Then they rise up again,
and in this alternation of activity and withdrawal, something appears which can be
called the harmony of the spheres, cosmic music. Thus cosmic music does not reveal
itself only as melody and harmony but as the deeds and activities of those beings who
dwell in the spiritual world, as the deeds of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and so
on.
 The spiritual beings who guide and direct the world out of the spirit are seen, moving
as it were through the surging sea of pictures. It is the world that is perceived through
Inspiration, the second world. Let me call it the revelations of spiritual cosmic beings.
And this world of the revelation of spiritual cosmic beings is the second element of
sleep, as feeling is the second element of waking consciousness. Thus during sleep not
only does the human being enter the realm of cosmic thoughts, but within these flowing
cosmic thoughts there are revealed the deeds of cosmic beings who belong to the
spiritual world.

In addition to these two conditions of sleep there is yet a third of which human beings
have as a rule no sort of awareness. They usually know that they can sleep lightly, and
they know also that dreams emerge from this light sleep. They know that there is a
dreamless sleep. But the utmost that they can know of this third condition of sleep is
that on awakening they may be conscious of the fact that, during sleep, they had been
faced with some difficulty, with something which they must conquer in the first hours
after awaking. I am sure that many of you are familiar with this feeling in the morning,
where one knows that one has not slept quite in the ordinary way, but that something
was there which has left a certain sense of difficulty, that will take some time to
overcome when one regains consciousness in the morning. This is an indication of that
third condition of sleep, the content of which can be apprehended only through
Intuition. It is a condition which is of great significance to the human being.

When they are in the lightest sleep human beings are still actually concerned with a
great deal that belongs to the experiences of waking consciousness. In a certain sense
they still participate in their breathing processes; they also participate, although not
from within but from without, in the blood circulation and the other processes of the
body. In the second condition of sleep they do not actually participate in the processes
of their bodily life; they are concerned with a world that is common both to the body
and to the soul. Some element connected with the body plays over into the soul, just as
something passes over from the light into the plant when it is developing in the light of
day. But when they are in the third condition of sleep, there is something within them
which — if I may so express it — has become mineral, for in this state the salts of the
body are especially strongly deposited. During this third state of sleep a very strong
storing up of salts takes place in the physical body — with their souls human beings live
in the inner being of the mineral world.

Now let us imagine that the following experiment may be made. You lie down in bed
and fall into a light sleep from which dreams may emerge into ordinary consciousness.
You pass over into a deeper sleep from which no dreams proceed, but in which the soul
is still connected with the physical body. You then enter into a sleep in which strong
accumulations of salts take place in the physical body. The soul can have no relation to
what is thus taking place in the body. However, if you had placed beside your bed a
mountain crystal, it would be possible for you to enter with your soul right into the inner
being of the crystal; you would perceive it from within outwards. This is not possible
either in the first or in the second condition of sleep. In the first state of sleep, the
content of which can enter into the dream, you would, had you dreamed of the crystal,
still perceive it as some kind of crystal — it would certainly be a shadowy experience,
but something of the nature of a crystal would be there. In the second state of sleep the
crystal would be experienced in a less definite sense; and if you could then still dream
— that is not possible in the ordinary way but we will imagine it to be so — then you
would have the experience that the crystal becomes indefinite and forms itself into a
kind of sphere or ellipsoid, and then recedes again. But if you could dream in the
deepest sleep — that is, if you could bring into it the consciousness of Intuition — then
out of this deepest sleep, this third condition of sleep, you would so experience the
crystal that it would seem as though inwardly you followed these lines of form to the
apex, and back again. You would experience the inner being of the crystal; you would
be living within it. And so also in the case of other minerals. Not only would you
experience the form, but also the inner forces. In short, the third condition of sleep is
one which lifts human beings wholly out of their bodies and places them within the
spiritual world. In this third stage of sleep we live with the essential being of the
spiritual world itself. That is, we stand within the essence, within the being, of Angeloi,
Archangeloi and of all those beings whom we otherwise perceive outwardly, in their
manifestations. Between waking and sleeping we see with our sense consciousness, as it
were, the external manifestations of the Gods in nature. During sleep we enter either the
world of pictures, in the first condition, or into the world of manifestation, the revelation
of spiritual beings, in the second condition. And when we reach the third condition we
live within the divine spiritual beings themselves.

Thus, just as in our waking consciousness we live the life of thinking, feeling and
willing, so during sleep we either flow with the cosmic thoughts, or out of these cosmic
thoughts the deeds of divine spiritual beings are revealed, or these spiritual beings so
take us up into themselves that we rest within them with our souls. Just as thoughts and
ideas are for the waking consciousness the clearest and most definite things of all, while
feeling is darker and really a kind of dreaming, and willing the condition of the greatest
insensibility — as it were a kind of sleep — so we have these three degrees of the
sleeping consciousness. We have the sleep in which ordinary consciousness experiences
the dream and a higher clairvoyant consciousness the cosmic thoughts; we have the
second state of sleep which for the ordinary consciousness remains hidden, but so
appears to the consciousness of Inspiration that everywhere the deeds of divine, spiritual
beings are revealed; and we have the third state of sleep, which to intuitional
consciousness is life within the divine, spiritual beings themselves. This can be
expressed by saying that we dive down, for instance, into the inner being of the
minerals. This third state of sleep has, however, yet another element of great
significance for the human being.

In the second stage of sleep, as I have said, we find in the surging pictures, alternately
appearing and disappearing, the cosmic being of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and so on.
But we find ourselves as well. We find ourselves as beings of soul; not, however, as we
now are, but as we were before birth, before conception. We learn to know how we
have lived between death and a new birth. This belongs to this second world. And every
time we pass through dreamless sleep, we live in this same world in which we lived
before we descended into our physical body. But when we pass over into the third
condition of sleep and are able to awake there, when the consciousness of Intuition
awakes, then we experience our destiny — our karma. We know then why certain
capacities are ours in this life as the results of a previous one. We know why in this life
we have been led into connection with this or that personality; we learn to know our
destiny, our karma. We can learn to know this destiny — and I speak now from another
point of view — only when we are able to penetrate into the inner being of the minerals.
If we are able to see the crystal not only from without but from within — naturally we
must not break it up, for that would still be to see it only outwardly, but we must feel
fully within it, in the way I have described — when we thus see the crystal from within,
we can understand why this or that blow of destiny has befallen us in life. Take any
kind of crystal — take an ordinary salt-cube. We look at it from without. That is how it
is perceived in ordinary consciousness. Life then remains impenetrable. But if we are
able to penetrate within it — the size in space has nothing to do with it — when we look
at it from within, looking around in every direction, we are in that world in which we
can understand our destiny. We live in this world every night when we pass into the
third condition of sleep.

Before the Mystery of Golgotha, in the period of evolution before the appearance of
Christ on Earth, human beings — we ourselves in earlier incarnations — entered very
often into this third condition of sleep. But before they sank down into this sleep their
Angel appeared and raised them out of it again. This is the significant thing: we can
always raise ourselves out of the first state, and out of the second state of sleep, but not
out of the third. Before the appearance of Christ on Earth we must have died in this
third condition of sleep if Angels, or some other beings, had not raised us out of it.
Since the appearance of Christ, the Christ-force has been united with the Earth. Every
time that we must awaken out of this third state of sleep, the Christ-force which came to
be united with the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha must come to our aid. The
human being can enter into the inner being of the crystal but cannot emerge again
without the Christ-Force. When we gaze behind the veils of existence, we see the
significance of the Christ Impulse for the earthly life. Once again, then, I emphasise that
the human being could enter into the crystal, but could not emerge again.

After the appearance of Christ on Earth, after the Mystery of Golgotha, these things
were strongly felt in certain regions, for example in Central Europe, where there was
still a vivid, ancient, pagan consciousness but where, nevertheless, the Christ revelation
was known. It was realised that many people had died because they had fallen into this
deep sleep, and that they need not have died had Christ come to their aid. This was felt,
for instance, with regard to Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa. In spite of the fact
that so far as the outer physical world was concerned Frederick Barbarossa was
drowned, this feeling was there, and it was very definitely there with regard to
Charlemagne.

What happened to such a soul according to the consciousness of the Middle Ages? It
passed into the interior of the crystal, thence into the mountain, and there it must wait
until Christ should come to raise it out of its deep sleep. All such legends were
connected with this consciousness. The deep connection of the Christ Impulse with the
Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha has brought it about that the world of Angeloi,
Archangeloi and other spiritual beings is still able to raise human beings from this deep
sleep; otherwise, when they sank into this third condition of sleep, they could not be
brought back out of it. This is connected with the Christ-force itself, not with belief in
the Christ-force. No matter whether a man belongs to this or that religious confession,
what Christ accomplished on Earth was an objective fact, and what I am here describing
as an objective fact is wholly independent of belief. I will speak of the significance of
belief on another occasion, but what I am now stating is an objective fact having
nothing to do with belief.

How did these things come about? Into the spiritual world itself there entered a
different destiny, a destiny which I will describe in the following way. Human beings
here in the physical world are born and they die; the characteristic of the divine,
spiritual beings who belong to the higher hierarchies is that they are not born, neither do
they die, but only undergo a transformation. Christ, Who until the time of the Mystery
of Golgotha lived with the other divine, spiritual beings, resolved to know death, to
descend to Earth, to become man, and within the nature of man to pass through death,
thereafter to return to consciousness through the Resurrection. In the divine-spiritual
world it was an event of the deepest significance that a God should experience death.
We can thus say that, in the history of the evolution of the Earth, there came about the
mighty event that God became man, and that through this His power manifests as I have
described. The God Who became man has such power in earthly life that He is able to
raise our souls out of the interior of the crystal when they have passed into it. When we
speak of Christ we are speaking of the cosmic Being, the God Who became man. What,
then, would constitute the antitype? The antitype would be the man who has become
god. This would not, however, be an absolutely good god but, just as Christ descended
into the world of men and took death upon Himself, that is, assumed a human form in
order to be able to participate in human destiny, so we are led to the opposite pole — to
the man who, having freed himself from death, having liberated himself from human
bodily conditions, within earthly conditions becomes a god. Such a man would then
cease to be mortal. He would wander about the Earth — not, of course, under the same
conditions as an ordinary mortal human being who must pass from birth to death, and
from death to a new birth. A man who had thus become a god would exist on Earth as a
man who had unlawfully become god-like. As the Christ is a God Who has lawfully
become man, we must seek His antitype in the man who has become god, who, mortal
no longer, has unlawfully assumed the god-nature. Just as in the Christian tradition we
have in Christ Jesus the God Who has become man in righteousness, so are we also
directed to Ahasueris, the man who has become god in unrighteousness, who has laid
aside the mortality of human nature. We have the polar antithesis of Christ Jesus in
Ahasueris. That is the deeper foundation, the deeper significance of the Ahasueris
legend. This legend narrates something that is a reality, speaking of a man who wanders
over the Earth. The figure of Ahasueris is actually there, wandering over the Earth from
people to people. This Ahasueris figure exists — the man who has unlawfully become
god.

If we wish to gain knowledge of historical truth we must turn our attention to such
matters; we should observe how beings and forces from the supersensible world work
down into the physical world; how Christ came from the spiritual world into the
physical world; and further how again the sensible world works back into the
supersensible. We must recognise in Ahasueris a real cosmic force, a real cosmic being.
A consciousness of this wandering of Ahasueris has always existed, though of course he
can be perceived only with clairvoyant vision and not with physical eyes. The legends
of Ahasueris have a true objective foundation. We cannot understand human life if we
only observe it externally, as it is described in history books.

Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ has dwelt in our inner being. Just as when we
look inwards with quickened sight we can perceive Him there, so also when we look at
human life and the eye of vision is opened there appears this figure of Ahasueris — and
this is the case in most of those in whom clairvoyance arises, as it may happen unawares
to the person who steps across the threshold of consciousness. People may not perhaps
always recognise him; he may be taken for something different. It is nevertheless
possible for Ahasueris to appear to us, as it is also possible when we look into our inner
being for the Christ-figure to shine forth.

These things belong to World Mysteries which now, in this age when many Mysteries
are destined to be revealed, must be made known.

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