§ 17. The Re-Emergence of Reason in the Dream-Sphere, in Plastic Transformation

§ 17. The Re-Emergence of Reason in the Dream-Sphere, in Plastic Transformation.

With the onset of sleep, the spontaneity of the ego was abolished, but its receptivity remained, and continually proves itself receptively alive in the beholding of the dream-formations proceeding before it. But if the receptivity of the ego remained at all, there remained with it, too, the capacity to behold, in general, just as this lies in the very nature of the ego; there thus remained to it the mode of universal vision which we call the idea, or reason, and that of differentiated vision, or the understanding, or, taken together, there remained to it the vision of universality as such, and in its specific shape. There thus lies within the dream-sphere a rational power of cognition, insofar as receptivity alone is meant by it. In general, however, the receptive side of reason had all the more to be spared by the now-dominant bodily-plastic power, and to remain unchanged, since receptivity in itself expresses the most pliant essence of inclination and susceptibility, and hence contains in itself the very docility demanded by plastic life; and if, with the onset of sleep, the spontaneous side of reason's power vanished, that side in which the irreconcilable opposition of polarization against the life of fusion expressed itself, then cognitive reason was thereby already placed into the plastic state of sleep, and rational receptivity, bereft of all spontaneity, not self-arousing but only arousable and aroused, is the plastic form of rationality in the dream. If, then, reason thus resurfaces to life in the dream, it is without self-determination, immovable from within the spirit through the lack of all spontaneity of the ego, unable to assert itself in any kind of will, and is simply and utterly will-less and powerless. As pure receptivity, however, reason becomes a power very similar to passive feeling, fuses with it, resembles it in immediate sensory power, but distinguishes itself from it through the distinctness of its apprehension, whereby it preserves itself as having sprung from cognition. But if reason has still remained reason, there clings to it, as such, the universality of vision, and, at the same time, the inner gathering-point of receptivity within itself, that is, an itself-receptive, and hence merely accompanying, not governing, egoic activity, without either of which it would no longer be rational knowledge at all. But the universality of vision proper to reason cannot express itself here in the form of inner conceptual thought, since reason, in the absence of the spontaneity of the ego, lacks the capacity to direct and deepen itself into the inner essence of things; rather, it must assert itself upon that essence which has already stepped, or is stepping, forth outwardly, upon the life-evolutions and processes already forming or pre-forming themselves. The universality of emergent life-evolutions, however, expresses itself through the magnitude of the circles of time or of space; the magnitude of the circles of time manifests itself, more nearly, in the universal compass of past and future from the mid-point of the present; the magnitude of the circles of space, in the breadth of distance in every dimension of the side-by-side. Rational receptivity, then, in becoming active, universally, upon universal life-processes, must extend itself, in beholding, into the breadth of space and of time. But since reason, as mere receptivity, lacks the faculty to move itself hither or thither in the direction of that breadth of universality, it must, in each and every exertion of universal reception, be swung and borne toward the object of its reception by some supporting moment which is, or takes the place of, its active movement. For such a bearing energy, however, bodily-plastic life in general appears at once fitted, since, on the one hand, it contains within itself a grand process of gathering and fusing all its own realms, and hence a mighty vividness within itself; on the other hand, as the very principle that determines the whole of subjectivity during sleep after itself, and possesses the power of transformation, it likewise possesses a living power of influence upon rational receptivity, which it is to carry along with it. Further, psychical feeling, or the emotions, present the capacity for just such a motor force; for not only does feeling possess, in itself, a nature ever gathered within itself, and hence ever inclined toward an electric, springing activity beyond itself, but it also drives its waves of vibration, in the form of constant longing and affection, that is, in every kind of warm and heartfelt love, ever densely and far before it, following after the object of love, whether near or far, so that these very waves of its vibration grant, of themselves, the bearing power into the distance; for the rest, moreover, the pure receptivity of rational receptivity, brought near to feeling, effects a close connection between the two.

Finally, however, the whole objectivity of the spirit, at the time of the dream, since it yields to the gravity of plastic life and, from the tendency to run apart in endless particularization, withdrew and entered into fusion within itself, becomes a universally fused process of conscious life, and a mighty upswing of a spiritual life become plastic, wherefore receptive reason, in this its subjective total basis, receives a new motor bearing-power. But if rational receptivity, in order to take conscious possession of the object of its vision, is not borne toward it by itself, but by the motor agency that joins itself to it, then the goal of the movement, too, that is, the object to be beheld, must necessarily be determined, not by reason, but by the moving force, that is, according to whither this bears it, and whither it is itself compelled, out of itself, to bear. Reason, then, according as it falls to this or that bearing-power, will be borne to a correspondingly different object, according as the various motor force holds and determines that object within itself. In this manner, three great directions will develop in the receptive movement of dream-reason, corresponding to those three motor forces named. First, reason will be granted, at the leading hand of bodily-plastic life, an involuntary and immediate insight into the summary developmental processes of bodily life; and, indeed, quite generally, in whatever direction of it, insofar as this expresses within itself only some summary evolution, of greater or lesser kind. Further, however, viewed from the mid-point of the present of vision, the processes to be beheld present themselves as lying behind the present, or as lying before it, that is, as past or as future; hence receptive reason moves, in the beholding of its own life, both according to the traversed past and according to the future still to be traversed; and there spring from this, on the side of the past, those dream-formations in which the dreamer, be he already an old man, surveys, as though by magic power, and hence to his great astonishment, the whole traversed life together with its particular moments, already forgotten by waking, or only the greater circles, carried out in individual directions, of the thread already traversed. But if receptivity moves, instead, toward the future evolutions of bodily life, whose present state already contains, in general, the roots of the future, and, in particular, already the determinate markings of its further emergence, and, again, the new impulses of what is still further to come, forming themselves within that moment already pre-figured, there arise from this the visionary dreams into the future of the dreamer's bodily life, of which psychological observation presents us a great number. These resolve themselves, more particularly, into direct or indirect determinate foreseeings of this or that local indisposition, or of a greater, or of a fatal, illness; often the dream-form painted by imagination pronounces, with precise determinateness, the number of days still remaining until the onset of death, and hence the very time of death's occurrence, and so forth. But if, in its direction toward the past, the process of vision had to pass, in particular, through the marked moments of what had gone by, because in these the resounding energy of the past reality had concentrated itself the most, then, in visions into the future, where the stream of life still has its highest center of gravity in some distant goal, rational receptivity, too, must direct itself preeminently toward what lies far, or farther, in the future, and, as a rule, it is already-determinate, more or less mighty, crises of bodily life impending, that is, decisive struggles of it in the future, that fall to vision as its goal-points. But if rational receptivity falls to the bearing-power of the feeling of love, or of the emotions, then the visions thus awakened extend far, following the vibrations of feeling, to friends, loved ones, or relatives, near or far distant, and from this spring those very numerously represented dream-visions in which one directly perceives, quite unexpectedly to waking, those persons bound to one's heart in significant, mostly dangerous or distressing situations of life; and it seems, therefore, that only significant shocks at the target-pole of the dreamer's own vibration of feeling possess sufficient force of impression upon the receptivity of reason. These visions become still more interesting when the distant states seen by one dreamer communicate themselves directly, by means of the rays of sympathetic vibration which several mutually loving relatives or siblings keep in connection with one another, so that one and the same, wholly or essentially like-natured, dream of distant presentiment is dreamed at the same time by several persons. But if, finally, rational receptivity sinks itself into the very life-movement of the summary subjectivity, become plastic, that underlies it, in this or that direction, there grows out of this the foreseeing of free actions of the future to be brought about by oneself, or, rather, less into these themselves than, in particular, into future collateral actions of others running counter to them, that is, harmfully intervening in them, wholly unsuspected by waking, or into accidentally intervening events of nature, out of which harm and danger grow for undertakings impending in the future. Now, if intended actions of one's own, even when the intention of the day was still only in its beginning or transitional stage of development, are easily gauged by the most delicately pliant and sensitive nature of dream-reason, since plans of the day once conceived, or merely hoped for, or merely surmised, must already have brought about, in some measure, determinate expansion-preforms of the spiritual life-force, along which rational receptivity has then only to hasten, beholding, however delicately ideal these preliminary developmental lines may be: then, by contrast, those influences of nature, or acts of will of strange persons, wholly incalculable to the waking spirit-life, occurring only after days, and especially in a distant place, disturbingly intervening in the dreamer's future, which the dream-presentiment foresees in advance together with the dreamer's own fate, seem more difficult to explain. Nevertheless, the dream-facts very numerously represented on this side, too, must have their natural origin; and since the endangered or anxiety-provoking future object of such a dream-presentiment is, in these cases, the dreamer himself, so that the direction of activity or striving, already more or less clearly marked beforehand in his own volitional subjectivity, forms the substantial, or chief, forward-moving line of the future, into which the joining events of nature or influences of the will of others flow, as it were, accessorily, so that, out of the reciprocal connection of both, the danger-constellations arise: then these co-visions, too, of the sideways-intervening collateral-future, seem to arise only through the forward movement of reason along the line of intention more or less potentially marked out in advance by the waking will, which, hastening through it, rational receptivity at the same time grasps all the potential side-tangents radiating in with it, and hence the dreamer's own potential line of will, in the nearer determinations thereby called forth. Still more complicated are those dream-presentiments in which someone dreams in advance not of a misfortune befalling himself, but one befalling his friend, where the same receptive process of reason then takes place along the line of intention of the other, by means of the vibrating waves of loving feeling that bind friend and dreamer together. Finally, however, that kind of receptive rational activity is to be noted in which it is not the dreamer himself who makes, with his own apprehension, a forward movement toward some distant individual, but rather where the earnestly held waking will, or the inexpressible longing, of someone distant, or of someone distant who is already drawing near, calls forth a spontaneous, or spontaneous-like, operative impression upon the dream-reason opened into the distance, according to which the content of the presentiment then forms itself correspondingly. Here, too, the facts appear in great number; indeed, even the wish and will of the deceased, most intimately bound to the feeling of the dreamer, are able to call forth similar spiritual impressions, or immediate dream-visions, upon precise examination of which one can easily decide whether they possess the same essential constitution as the rest, and hence can be upheld by science as really possible, or not.