345. Our investigations of night-consciousness have thus brought us in touch with a living being's dream-state. This state is, indeed, the only experience-material terrestrial man has from his condition of night-consciousness. As he does not have "cosmic consciousness", he retains not the smallest trace of any recollection of this area of his being while in his awake physical existence – except for dreams. Night-consciousness, then, appears for this being to be just a sleeping or unconscious condition.
      But here we have the first irrefutable proofs that behind this sleep or state of unconsciousness there is an "awake existence" analogous to the physical "awake existence". We saw that the reason for people's wrong conception of night-consciousness is a lack of fundamental transference of memory. Dreams are actually memories which have slipped into his awake physical day-consciousness in an abnormal way and there – with the exception of a few isolated cases – present themselves in such an imperfect and distorted fashion that they are not considered to have any particular importance.
      But why is memory transference so weak in this respect? Had it been more fundamental, people's knowledge about themselves, their mental and spiritual state, their immortality etc. would certainly have been of quite another kind. Ignorance would not have been so dominant as is now the case. All this is certainly true enough, but if it had been so terrestrial man would be in a completely different kingdom, just as he would be an entirely different living being from the one he is now. That knowledge he would be able to obtain through a fundamental transference of memories met with the "awake state" in night-consciousness, over to the "awake state" in day-consciousness, is precisely the kind of knowledge and experience which in a certain section of the evolutionary spiral has to be taken away from living beings. In what other way could the zone of ignorance have come about and with it that contrast which makes it possible to experience life?
      Life on Earth, as we know, is about just one particular – to turn ignorance into knowledge. But actually the I is master of all matter. And "ignorance" therefore, is something that must be created, in the same way as "knowledge". Both phenomena constitute "created things" to an equally high degree. Their appearance is due solely to various constellations of abilities in the consciousness, and by these constellations all knowledge can be regulated. From a cosmic viewpoint every living being in existence possesses equal knowledge, but they do not have it simultaneously, not do they posses it permanently. If life is to be a real enjoyment, they must experience contrasts. All pleasure and all happiness lies simply in experiencing the contrast to what one has had enough of, or has outlived. In this way all experience of life takes place rhythmically. We already know that the beings in one half of the evolutionary spiral experience "involution", which in reality is the same as the "creation of ignorance". In this section of the spiral beings go from a more highly developed level towards a lower one, that is to say, from a higher intellectual level to a more primitive, unintellectual one. The entire transformation is brought about upon a basis of cosmic combinations of matter, or upon specifically determined constellations of the six basic energies. These may be divided into the "intellectual" ones and the "unintellectual" ones. And in accordance with the combination of these energies the consciousness of living beings can be made "intellectual" or "unintellectual". It is upon this regulation of knowledge that all creation rests. If human beings did not have to proceed from knowledge to ignorance, if an intellectual existence in the highest sphere did not finally become tedious, and if, in the "divine world", ignorance did not become a longed for goal, such creative processes of beauty resulting in our present physical abode could never have come about. There would not be anything called minerals, nor would there be anything called plants or animals. That ocean of wondrously beautiful creatures, which in multiple varieties of colouring, shape and nature, surround our earthly life, could not possibly exist, or would not have come into being. But all that which now constitutes the physical world and, as we shall see later, is mainly based upon "gravity-energy" (fire or solar energy), could not possibly be experienced in pure form if it were normal to experience memories of night-consciousness, the state of sleep, during awake, physical day-consciousness. If it were so, terrestrial people's physical nerves, which are subject to severe strain due to their nature as tools for the explosive gravity-energy, would be doubly strained.
      If memories from the awake state of night-consciousness had unhindered entry into the awake state of day-consciousness, this would be a considerable obstacle for the individual in making full use of the access to physical experience through his physical day-consciousness. On account of the time it would take him to deal with his experiences from the awake state in night-consciousness, he could not possibly occupy himself with his physical experiences. No living being can be conscious of more than one experience at a time. The state of mind we generally call being "preoccupied" would become exceptionally dominant in such a person. To a great extent the individual would go about on the physical plane fully engrossed in the experiences of night-consciousness. All physical people would walk about like "dreamers" or "sleep-walkers". This condition in people would be absolutely universal. Imagine what this would mean in this drastic physical world, in the zone of the killing principle where deadly dangers lurk in every corner and where the least carelessness can bring about immeasurable catastrophes!
      How would this present brilliant technological world look if "sleep-walkers" were driving the trains and were behind the wheels of cars and planes or watching the compasses of the great ocean liners? And could one believe that the government of all mankind would have been better if it had been placed in the hands of "dreamers'? No, certainly not. It will become evident in time that terrestrial man is best served by his memory just as it is.
      This does not mean, of course, that the terrestrial individual will continue to live with the two awake states under discussion separate from each other; on the contrary, that individual is definitely evolving away from "gravity-energy" and working more and more in the direction of a state in which those two forms of being awake unite to form one permanent, clear state of day-consciousness. This state will be dealt with in greater detail later in "Livets Bog". But even so far we have gained an initial glimpse into the I and its required conditions for connecting itself to matter. We have seen that these conditions rest entirely on the special structure of the I and its identity as a "triune principle" which at the same time determines its manifestation as a "living being".
      Thus we have realized that the "Something" which is the "cosmic chemist", the "Something" behind the all-dominating cosmic-chemical process we call "life", "Nature" or "existence" is the I in the living being. We have not, of course, been able to give in detail a comprehensive description of this, the greatest of life's problems, but neither has this been the purpose here. A detailed description will certainly be available in a special analysis, including the related symbols, later in "Livets Bog". The problem has actually been mentioned at this point only as a necessary, supporting subsidiary analysis for provisional aid in describing the I's eternal sources of power.