ing his life to destruction; and in the same way a view of the
world which is not fertilized by a knowledge of the unseen, must lead to a
feeling of desolation.

It is similarly so with regard to death. Living creatures fall a prey to
death in order that new life may arise. It is occult science which throws
light on Goethe's beautiful phrase: "Nature invented Death in order to
have much Life." Just as in the ordinary sense there could be no life
without death, so can there be no real knowledge of the visible world
without insight into the invisible. All discernment of the visible must
plunge again and again into the invisible in order to develop. Thus it is
evident that occult science alone makes the life of revealed knowledge
possible. When it emerges in its true form it never enfeebles life, but
strengthens it and ever renews its freshness and health, when, left to its
own resources, it has become weak and diseased.

When a man sinks into sleep the connection between his principles changes,
as described earlier in this work. The part of the sleeping man which lies
upon his couch comprises the physical and etheric bodies, but not the
astral body and not the ego. It is because the etheric body remains bound
to the physical body in sleep that the life-activities continue. For the
moment the physical body is left to itself, it must of necessity fall into
decay. The things that are extinguished in sleep are ideas, pain,
pleasure, joy, grief, the ability to express conscious will, and similar
facts of existence. But the astral body is the vehicle of all these
things. That the astral body, with all its joy and sorrow, its realm of
thought and will, is annihilated in sleep is an opinion that cannot be
entertained by an unbiased judgment; it exists still, but in another
condition. In order that the human ego and the astral body may not only be
endowed with pleasure and pain and all the other things we have named, but
also have a conscious perception of them, it is necessary that the astral
body should be united with the physical and etheric bodies. This is the
case during waking life, but not in sleep. The astral body has withdrawn
itself from the other bodies. It has adopted another kind of existence
than that which it possesses while united with the physical and etheric
bodies. Now it is the task of occult science to study this other kind of
existence in the astral body. During sleep, the astral body withdraws from
the possi