§ 9. The Transformation of Waking Consciousness in the Dream

Second Section

The Dream-Life According to Its Inner Organization.

§ 9. The Transformation of Waking Consciousness in the Dream.

In two principal streams the life of the soul flows at every moment: it weaves bodily, in the shaping of natural matter for the service of the soul, and it weaves spiritually, in the creation of thought and of the ideal for its own sake in general. Both principal streams of life merge into one, because they spring from one and the same being of the soul, which gave birth to them; and all the structure and organization of the body forms itself according to the purpose of the spiritual, and all the higher striving of the spirit finds, in the powers of the body, the helping energy of the spiritual and the effective means of its assertion within the All. Yet, throughout all the weaving of the body, the soul preserves the nature of the ideal; for she creates, forming, within the body, and she creates forms out of an ideal, or form-giving, self-principle upon serviceable material, and she creates the forms for the sake of the ideal principle and as its own end; but in the dynamic capability of natural matter, the soul finds the means of living connection with it. The bodily and the spiritual life of the soul interpenetrate one another at every moment; but because, in both at once, the oppositeness of their particular natures holds sway, they strive at the same time away from one another, and each stream of life seeks to assert itself for itself in particular, to win precedence over the other, to raise itself up to sole dominion, and to overpower the other. This succeeds, in steady alternation, for each of the two in turn, and in the regular alternations of waking and sleep, there asserts itself both the specific power of each of the two and, at the same time, the eternal equilibrium of both, whose common center of gravity the substance of the soul, as the common primal source of both, bears and sustains. Waking is the dominion of the spirit, or of the conscious life of the soul; sleep, that of the life-force, or of the body-forming current of the soul. While the conscious force rules, the unconscious takes on, pliantly and supplely, all the forms of movement that the waking force prescribes to it, and the nerve-force, musculature, and whole shape and movement of the body place themselves at its command and carry out the countless commissions of its never-ending thought and striving. Conversely, then, when the body-forming energy attains to dominion, the spiritual must sink down from the proud throne of its autonomy, submit itself to the life-force, and take on such a shape of movement, within and without, in whole and in particular, as accords with this now-ruling power; and hence, too, in the luxuriant free shoots of the dream, must be permeated and determined by it. Now the life-force of the soul is a plastic force, and creation in the fusion of the many is essential to it; the subjective force of the soul, on the other hand, is a polarly effective power, whose essence is creation by means of strict sifting, dissecting, and dividing, that is, in general, through sharp differentiating distinction. If, then, the conscious life of the soul is to submit itself to the life-force in the time of sleep, it must first take on within itself such a shape as befriends the plastic nature of that force. And this comes about through the polar life of subjectivity deriving and unnerving itself in its central power, which is the ego, that is, losing the spontaneity of selfhood, in consequence of which its receptivity remains behind in all the greater softness and pliancy. But together with the spontaneous power of the ego, its radiation of activity, too, must withdraw and weaken, that is, bring about the falling-back of the whole peripheral sphere of intercourse of selfhood, whereby the conscious life is driven back upon itself. But with the derivation of spontaneous energy out of center and periphery, there vanished from the polar essence of conscious life not only its independence as such, but also the force, expression, hardness, and sharpness of its separateness; mingling becomes dominant, approach and fusion seize hold of particularity, and the whole compass of conscious life wraps itself in the shaping of the plastic. The peculiar organization of conscious life thus arising is that which underlies the whole life of the dream together, and which we understand by the ‘inner,’ that is, essential, side of dream-life. To trace its nearer outlines is now the task of this Section.