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, sense-impressions, sense-perceptions, we also have, of course,
the life of feeling. But just think how indeterminately 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 indeterminate,
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 alleged to be true. We shall feel that our
thoughts, our sense-impressions must somehow tally 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
intermediately, 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.
