§ 11. The Life-Substance in the Dream-Sphere

§ 11. The Life-Substance in the Dream-Sphere.

The substance of life is that upon which the vibration of life spins and exerts itself; the substance of dream-life is that which grants to the condensed vibration of the dream-sphere occasion and substance for its exertion. In the waking state of subjectivity (subjectivity = conscious life in general), it was the real world of nature and of spirit itself, insofar as its deed stepped forth livingly toward the world, which gave to the centripetally and centrifugally out-streaming energy of the spirit both its living impulse and the objective content of its exertion; but the living exertion outward brought the whole workings of the spiritual being into motion within itself, and, together with real nature, there became, for the realized inner being of the spiritual, its own ennobled substance and impulse of movement. In the dream, by contrast, where the movement-toward-reality of the spiritual rests, neither the real world of nature nor the spirit's own deed of realization can furnish it with the substance of life. With the closing-off of movement outward, the spiritual life shuts itself up within the operative depths of its own force, and that which, prior to sleep, was already realized by day, and, as a finished result, had already undergone its own discharge, becomes the stirring nourishing substance of conscious life in the dream. The after-resounding images of the real, of whatever kind they may be, insofar as they remained behind in memory as finished perceptions, visions, feelings, thoughts, volitions, and as lived experience in general, are, therefore, that upon which the spiritual thread of dream-life vibrates and exerts itself. Besides this, there also fall to this world of shadows those unfinished movements of the spirit, together with their content, in which the real life of subjectivity was just in the act of creating or vibrating when it was overtaken by the onset of sleep, so that, through this, rudiments of the real pass over into dream-consciousness. Hence half-finished works of thought, plans of will, intentions not yet grasped in their realization, moods of feeling not yet fully sounded out within themselves, surgings of affect, still-unresolved emotional shocks, together with their corresponding representational material, become directly the life-substance and the problems of the dream; and it is in these alone, insofar as they possess only half the nature of the discharged or the finished, while in their other half still containing, unstilled, the living throb of the spirit, that movements of the spirit's realization steal over out of daytime life into the realms of shadow, out of which further parasitic growths of reflection develop in the dream. Finally, however, there are also, by virtue of the dominance of bodily-plastic life in sleep, and the all-pervasion of the subjective with plastic breaths, the nerve-stimuli and altered states which the very bodily life of night itself brings forth, and, with these, the outline-forms of the organs, the limbs, of the particular locality of the body in which they arose: these, too, form the life-substance of the dream-sphere. To all of this, moreover, there join themselves, like meteors amid the reaches of the sky, the far-off impressions of presentiment.

A great change, then, did life itself undergo through this change of substance. As in the fairy-tales of childhood, where the heart so gladly sways up and down with whatever charms it offers, without its being true, so now moves the conscious life of the spirit; it is only a fragrance of images, full of lovely charms, yet without substance or force of being, wherein it fuses and itself smiles and beams like a blossom. In flitting shadows the will now moves; its doing and working has become less than a boy's game; and just as the boy is captivated by the colorful plumage of the bird, so that he chases after it and seeks to catch it with all the delight of a childish breast, so does the fragrant, colorful formation of the dream draw the drive and striving of the will after it; the spirit itself has become a fable. But the world of shadows falls into discord with itself, for, with the sap and force of real life, the fixed movements of the spirit which the onset of sleep interrupted break forth once more into life, and seek to fulfill and complete themselves into a whole. A new kind of thinking arises, and the dream invents splendidly cast ideas, solutions to problems, results sought in vain by day, and the waking that afterward sets in gazes in astonishment upon these magical works; but the creation of the dream welled forth out of the seeds of the unfulfilled real, which became substance for the dream-life. Just as mysteriously, and inaccessibly to waking, does the dream form, out of the nerve-stimuli from within the body, immediate intuitions of the inner configuration of the body; the plastic formation enters the knowing soul soberly and clearly, or painted with symbolic ornamentation, and the life of consciousness unfolds itself therein into spheres wholly opposed to the polar life of the spirit; new substance became new life for the soul, and the spirit enriches itself with knowledge immediately within the bounds of the dream-sphere. Finally, however, through the overflowing force of its own condensed life, there opened to it an immeasurable field of vision beyond itself, in which presentiment, in the domain of the outer world, gives birth to entirely new kinds of knowledge impossible to normal waking, just as immediately as in that of the inner body and of nerve-stimulus, knowledge whose remoteness in space, time, and possibility presents insurmountable obstacles to the polar spirit, but through which the dream hastens as though in play; for, with the barring-off of the universe before its own sphere, there was given to it, at the same time, a weapon to open itself up, and ever does the spirit punish whoever presses upon it. Thus, within the dream-sphere, just as the flitting image-work serves for the occupation of life, so too does the sharper incident-shining of the real serve as a seasoning force to its energy, and the fairy-tale-like charms of the images vie with the magical impressions of divination in delighting the spirit.