Three Different States of Our Inner Soul Life
“When we reflect upon the nature of the life of soul even with more or less
superficial self-knowledge, we realise that sense-impressions and the
thoughts
we form about them are the only clear and definite experiences in the life of
soul in which, with ordinary consciousness, we are completely awake. As well as
these thoughts and sense-impressions, sense-perceptions, we also have, of course,
the life of feeling. But just think how vaguely our feelings surge
through us, how little we can speak of inner, wide-awake clarity in connection
with our life of feeling. Anyone who faces these facts with an open mind will
certainly admit that as compared with thoughts,
our feelings are vague,
lacking in definition.
True, the life of feeling concerns us in a more intimate, personal
way than does the life of thought, but for all that there is something
undefined in it and also in the way it functions. We shall not so
readily allow our thoughts to deviate from those of other people when it
is a question of reflecting about something that is supposed to be true.
We shall feel that our thoughts and our sense-impressions must somehow
correspond with those of others.
With
our feelings it is different. We allow ourselves the right to feel in a more
intimate, more personal way. And if we compare feelings with dreams, we shall
say: dreams arise from the night-life, feelings from the depths of soul into the
light of day-consciousness. But again, in respect of their pictures,
feelings
are as indeterminate as dreams. Anyone who makes the comparison, even with such
dreams as enter quite distinctly into his consciousness, will realise that their
lack of definition is just as great as that of feelings.
Therefore we can say:
it is only in our sense-impressions and thoughts that we are really awake; in
our feelings we dream – even during waking life. In ordinary waking life, too,
our feelings make us into dreamers.
And still more so the Will! [1] When we say:
‘Now I am going to do this, or that’ – how much of
the subsequent process is actually in our consciousness? Suppose I want
to take hold of something. The mental picture comes first, then this
picture completely fades away and in my ordinary consciousness I know
nothing of how the impulse contained in the ‘I want’ finds its way into
my nerves, into my muscles, into my bones. When I conceive the idea, ‘I
want to get hold of the clock’, does my ordinary consciousness know
anything at all of how this impulse penetrates into my arm which then
reaches out for the clock? It is only through another sense-impression,
another mental picture, that I perceive what has actually happened. With
my ordinary consciousness I sleep through what has happened
in-between, just as in the night I sleep through and am unaware of
what is happening to my whole being. I am as unconscious of the one as of the other.
In waking life, therefore, there are three different and distinct states of
consciousness. In the activity of thinking we are
awake, completely
awake; in the activity of feeling we dream; in the activity of willing
we are asleep. We are in a state of perpetual sleep as far as the
essential core of the Will is concerned, for it lies deep, deep down in
the region of the subconscious.” [2]
If we now relate this to the
THREEFOLD HUMAN BEING, we can summarize
our inner soul life in following manner:
- The system of nerves and senses provides the bodily
foundations for the waking life of cognition which includes
perceiving and thinking.
- The rhythmic system (the breathing system and the system of blood
circulation) provides the bodily foundations for the
dreaming life of feelings – that is, inner sensations of comfort
or discomfort with the state of our being, and of sympathies or antipathies
towards that which is continually entering us from the outside world.
- The system of metabolism and limbs provides the bodily foundations for the
sleeping life of Will which is active below our
level of ordinary consciousness.
This distinction of various states of human consciousness is an essential
part of any attempt to understand the problems of nutrition from a holistic
perspective, for in nutrition we are dealing to a large extent with the
processes of digestion and metabolism which are happening inside our organism
below the threshold of
our consciousness.
Cognition, Feeling and Willing from the Spiritual Perspective
“If you want to examine the human being effectively from any point of
view you must return again and again to the separation of man’s soul
activities into cognition which takes place in thought and into feeling
and willing. From the spiritual point of view you will find a difference
between willing, feeling and thinking-knowing.
When you have knowledge through thought you must feel that in a
certain way you are living in the light. You cognise, and you feel
yourself with your ego right in the midst of this activity of
cognition.
It is as though every part, every bit of the activity which we call
cognition, were there within all that your ego does; and again what your
ego does is there within the activity of cognition. You are entirely in
the light; you live in a fully conscious activity. And it would be bad
indeed if you were not in a fully conscious activity in cognising.
Suppose for a moment that you had the feeling that while you were
forming a judgment something happened to your ego somewhere in the
subconscious and that your judgment was the result of this process.
For instance you say: ‘That man is a good man’, thus forming a
judgment. You must be conscious that what you need in order to form this
judgment – the subject ‘man’ and the
predicate ‘is good’ – are parts of
a process which is clearly before you and which is permeated by the
light of consciousness. If you had to assume that some demon or some
mechanism of nature had tied up the ‘man’ with the ‘being good’ while
you were forming the judgment, then you would not be fully, consciously
present in this act of thought, of cognition: in some part of the
judgment you would be unconscious. That is the essential thing about
thinking cognition, that you are present in complete consciousness in
the whole foundation of its activity.
That is not the case in willing. You know that when you perform the
simplest kind of willing, for instance walking, you are only really
fully conscious in your mental picture of the walking. You know nothing
of what takes place in your muscles whilst one leg moves forward after
the other; nothing of what takes place in the mechanism and organism of
your body. Just think of what you would have to learn of the world if
you had to perform consciously all the arrangements involved when you
want to walk. You would have to know exactly how much of the activity
produced by your food in the muscles of your legs and other parts of
your body is used up in the effort of walking. You have never reckoned
out how much you use up of what your food brings to you. You know quite
well that all this happens unconsciously in your bodily nature. When we
Will there is always something deeply, unconsciously present in the
activity.” [3]
And our life of “feeling stands midway between willing and thinking-cognition.
Feeling is partly permeated by consciousness and partly by an
unconscious element. In this way feeling on the one hand shares the
character of cognition-thinking, and on the other hand the character of
feeling or felt will. What is this then really from a spiritual point of
view?
You will only arrive at a true answer to this question if you can
grasp the facts characterised above in the following way. In our
ordinary life we speak of being awake, of the waking condition of
consciousness. But we only have this waking condition of consciousness
in the activity of our knowing-thinking. If therefore you want to say
absolutely correctly how far a human being is awake you will be obliged
to say: A human being is really only awake as long and in so far as he
thinks of or knows something.
What then is the position with regard to the Will? You all know the
sleep condition of consciousness – you can also call it, if you like,
the condition of unconsciousness – you know that what we experience
while we sleep, from falling asleep until we wake, is not in our
consciousness. Now it is just the same with all that passes through our
Will as an unconscious element. In so far as we as human beings are
beings of Will, we are ‘asleep’ even when we are awake. We are always
carrying about with us a sleeping human being – that is, the willing man
– and he is accompanied by the waking man, by the man of cognition and
thought. In so far as we are beings of Will we are asleep even from the
time we wake up until we fall asleep. There is always something asleep
in us, namely: the inner being of Will. We are no more conscious of that
than we are of the processes which go on during sleep. We do not
understand the human being completely unless we know that sleep plays
into his waking life, in so far as he is a being of Will.
Feeling stands between thinking and willing, and we may now ask: How
is it with regard to consciousness in feeling? That too is midway
between waking and sleeping. You know the feelings in your soul just as
you know your dreams – with the only difference that you remember your
dreams and have a direct experience of your feelings. But the inner mood
and condition of soul which you have with regard to your feelings is
just the same as you have with regard to your dreams. Whilst you are
awake you are not only a waking man in that you think and know, and a
sleeping man in that you Will: you are also a ‘dreamer’ in that you
feel. Thus we are really immersed in three conditions of consciousness
during our waking life:
- the waking condition in its real sense
in thinking and knowing
- the dreaming condition in
feeling
- and the sleeping condition in
willing.
Seen from the spiritual point of view ordinary dreamless sleep is a condition
in which a man gives himself up in his whole soul being to that to which he is
given up in his willing nature during his daily life. The only difference is
that in real sleep we ‘sleep’ with the whole soul being, and when we are awake
we only sleep with our Will. In dreaming as it is called in ordinary life we are
given up with our whole being to the condition of soul which we call the ‘dream’
and in waking life we only give ourselves up in our feeling nature to this
dreaming soul condition.” [4]
