Object consciousness

From AnthroWiki

The object consciousness (also called waking consciousness, daytime consciousness or sensual consciousness) is the brightest consciousness that humans generally have today. It is balanced in the daily sleep-wake rhythm by deep sleep at night. Object consciousness only formed during earth evolution and is also a purely earthly consciousness in that it has lost all cosmic expanse. Earlier states of consciousness were duller than the awake daytime consciousness, but through them the human being subliminally experienced cosmic events at least in part. These earlier states of consciousness have certainly survived in a modified form, but today they are completely overshadowed by the bright daytime consciousness and thus pushed into the realm of the subconscious. This consciousness, which man has today on the physical plane, is at the same time a kind of sleep in relation to the co-experience of the higher worlds.

Object consciousness has a high degree of alertness through which man perceives the objects of the sensual world and attempts to comprehend them in their lawful context through the sensual mind. For the first time, an inside and an outside are distinguished through this state of consciousness. By being able to separate oneself from the world in consciousness, self-consciousness becomes possible, which did not yet exist on earlier embodiments of our Earth. With object consciousness, I-consciousness necessarily arises in counter-attack.

Of all earthly beings, only man has developed object consciousness to the greatest possible extent. In the higher animals it appears at most in rudimentary form.

The first illumination of I-consciousness occurred when the sense organs opened outwards. The Egyptian initiates called this the scorpion sting, which pierced the sense organs (Lit.:GA 105, p. 77). The object consciousness of man could only develop when the Moon separated from the Earth during the earth evolution in the Lemurian period.

Awakening

In dreams, every human being lives in his own dream world, with which he is intimately interwoven. He cannot distinguish himself from it to such an extent that a clear self-awareness arises. Only when he awakens does he see himself confronted with an external world that is independent of him, the sensually experienceable nature, which he shares with other people. He also experiences other people in this way at first. They face him in their outer, sensually visible and touchable form, they communicate through their language, and so on:

„Take the two states of consciousness that are well known to every human being: the dreaming man and the man in ordinary waking daytime consciousness. What is it like in the dreaming human being? It is the same with the sleeping man who does not dream, for dreamless sleep only means that the dreams are so much damped down that one does not notice them. So how is it with the dreaming person? He lives in his dream-image world. He lives in it because it is often much more vivid for him, much deeper into the heart - one can already say that - than what one experiences in everyday life in the waking consciousness of the day. But it is experienced in isolation. It is experienced as the individual human personality. Two people can sleep in the same room and have two completely different worlds in their dream consciousness. They do not experience these worlds together. They each experience them for themselves; at most they can tell each other afterwards what they contain.

When man awakes from his dream-consciousness into his ordinary day-consciousness, he perceives through his senses the same things as the person who stands before him. A communal world enters. Man awakens to a common world by passing from dream-consciousness into waking day-consciousness. Yes, what is it that awakens man from dream consciousness into waking day consciousness? He awakens by the light, by the sound, by his natural surroundings - in this respect other people make no exception - to awake day-consciousness, to ordinary awake day-consciousness. Out of the dream one awakes by the naturalness of the other person, by his speech, by what he says to one, and so on, by the way in which his thoughts and feelings are clothed in speech. One awakens by the way in which the ordinary person, the other person, naturally lives himself out. So one awakens to the ordinary consciousness of the day by the natural environment. In all earlier ages, man awoke from dream consciousness into awake day consciousness in the natural surroundings. And then he had at his natural surroundings at the same time the gate through which, if he did so, he penetrated into a supersensible.“ (Lit.:GA 257, p. 175f)

Today, in the age of the consciousness soul, a second awakening is possible, the awakening to community, the awakening to the other person. But not only on the sensual outside, but on his soul and spirit.

„With the awakening of the consciousness soul, with the unfolding of the consciousness soul, a new element has entered into human life. For there must be a second awakening, and this second awakening will appear more and more as a need of humanity: This is the awakening on the soul and spirit of other human beings. In ordinary waking day-life one awakens only to the nature of another human being; but on the soul and spirit of another human being man wants to awaken who has become independent, who has become personal through the consciousness age. He wants to awaken to the soul and spirit of the other human being, he wants to confront the other human being in such a way that the other human being produces such a jolt in his own soul as the outer light, the outer sound and so on produces in relation to the dream life.

This need has been quite elementary since the beginning of the 20th century and will become ever stronger. Throughout the 20th century, in spite of all its chaotic, tumultuous nature, which will permeate the whole of civilisation, this will show itself as a need: the need will arise for human beings to want to awaken to the other human being to a greater degree than one can awaken to the mere natural environment. Dream life, it awakens in the natural environment to awake day life. Waking daily life awakens to a higher consciousness in the other human being, in the soul and spirit of the other human being. Man must become more than he has always been to man. He must become an awakening being for him. People must come closer to each other than they have been up to now: every person who meets another must become an awakening being. The modern people who have now entered life have stored up far too much karma for them not to feel that their destiny is bound up with that of the other person they meet in life. If you go back to earlier ages, the souls were younger, they had fewer karmic connections. Now the necessity arises that one is awakened not only by nature, but by the people who are karmically connected with one and whom one wants to seek.“ (Lit.:GA 257, p. 176f)

This awakening to other human beings will become increasingly important in the future for spiritual community building, especially also for anthroposophical community building.

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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