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How to Know Higher Worlds – Rudolf Steiner

We cannot perceive anything in our waking state because the [spiritual] impressions made upon us in that state are weak.  The reason for this is similar to why we do not see the stars by day.  Namely, their light is too weak when compared with the powerful light of the sun.  In the same way, the weaker impressions of the spiritual world count for very little when compared to the powerful impressions of the physical senses.

When the doors of the outer senses are closed during sleep, these impressions from the spiritual world light up at random.  As they do, so we then become, as dreamers, aware of experiences in the other world. 

At first, of course, these experiences consist of no more than what the sense bound mind imprints on the spiritual world….. But our dreams [after some time] lose their meaningless, disorderly and disconnected character and begin to form an increasingly regular, lawful and coherent world.  As we evolve further, this new dream born world not only becomes equal of outer sensory reality with regard to inner truth, but also reveals facts depicting, in the full sense of the word, a higher reality.