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Clara or On Nature’s Connection to the Spirit World – F W J Schelling

But, I continued, so many credible men and doctors in particular assure us that through the influence of other people, human beings, acting as if dead toward everything apart from the influencer, and with their external senses completely deadened, can pass over into an internal clarity of the highest kind and to a consciousness of themselves that bears no distant comparison to that in waking life [im Wachen).

lf this is true, then I believe that here we would have the experience of a condition that we could justifiably call a higher one and that we could consider to be a wakeful sleep or a sleeping wakefulness. And I would thereby compare it not to death, but to the condition that follows death, and one which I believe will be the highest and which will be a clairvoyance uninterrupted by a waking up (Erwachen).

At any rate, the doctor said, approaching that higher sleep is very similar to approaching death.

This is necessary, I said, for even here a kind of dying must precede the heightened condition…….

lf one asks those who have been put to sleep (jene Entschlafenen) about their condition, the doctor continued, they attest that it is a most spiritual one, that they do not feel their body at all or the pain they previously had, and that a divine clarity, a warm light flows through their inner being.

Yes, even before death, Clara said, the ravages of illness subside, the pain stops, and many, predominantly the best, depart in a heavenly delight.

And yet, the doctor continued, this condition is still merely an approximation to the highest one; they are still affected by external things. Although they have their eyes closed, they see everything that is externally perceptible; indeed, many of their senses seem to be a lot sharper.

So what is that highest condition, then? Clara asked.

When they are completely released from the sensible world and are connected to things that are external to them through the influencer alone, only then are they quite dead to the external world. For although previously they were sensitive to the slightest noise-indeed, to sounds that no other ear could perceive at that distance-they are now wakened neither by the rattle of coaches nor by the firing of cannons, and the only human voice that gets through to them is that of him alone to whom they are connected.

And only then, Clara asked, does the highest clairvoyance come about?

Of course, the doctor said. At just this point the highest, inner life is revealed. Everything heralds their most profound consciousness; it is as if their whole essence were pressed into One focal point that unites past, present, and future within itself. Far from their memory being lost, the past from far back becomes clear to them, as does the future, and often the remote future at that.