The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] When the subject of today’s discussion is called “Death and Immortality,” it might seem at first that the impetus for such a discussion lies in the personal needs of the human soul, which have little to do with knowledge or science. However, if you look at the series of lectures to be held in this cycle as part of spiritual science, you will see that, simply through the choice of titles and the like, a scientific standard—albeit one of spiritual science—is to be applied to the subjects under consideration. Therefore, this evening’s discussion will not so much proceed from what we find within our mere emotional life, within our longings and desires for a life that transcends physical bodily existence. Rather, the focus will be on this: How must human knowledge—in the very sense in which this knowledge approaches other objects of our knowledge—address the questions of death and immortality? For if we set aside the longing for a life that transcends the physical, if we set aside what might be understood in terms of concepts such as the fear of death and the like, what remains for human knowledge regarding death and immortality is nothing less than the question of the nature of our human life, of our entire human individuality in general.

[ 2 ] In our present age, however, it might seem as though these important questions about death and immortality must be excluded from all considerations of spiritual life. For if one picks up one of the official theories of the soul from so-called psychology today, one will indeed find a comprehensive treatment of the phenomena of mental life as they present themselves to us in everyday life—for example, the question of concept formation, the question of memory, perception, attention, and the like— but one will search in vain for a discussion of the very essence of our inner life. Indeed, in most scientific circles, one will encounter the prejudice toward this inner life that anyone who even attempts to raise these questions as scientific ones must be an amateur.

[ 3 ] Now, however, thinking—scientific observation—must be directed along different lines than is usually the case when considering the subjects encompassed by words such as “death” and “immortality.” It is not enough to rely on what is so readily pursued today: a “theory of the soul”—as it is called—without a soul, that is, a theory of the soul in which only the phenomena of soul life are to be considered, without any possibility of gaining insight into the actual essence of that which resides in our own individuality and whose expression is the phenomena of soul experiences. Spiritual Science, or Anthroposophy, offers an unconventional perspective on these and other questions. Indeed, what it has to say specifically regarding the questions of death and immortality has, one might say, emerged—as if from dark spiritual depths—from Western cultural life for more than a century now. Yet it has always been regarded as the dream of individual people—perhaps even of quite outstanding individuals—when it appeared in the mind of a thinker who had otherwise accomplished such monumental and magnificent things for German intellectual culture, as was the case, for example, with Lessing. But it has also been regarded as a meaningless dream when it appeared in the work of those whose names have been less prominently mentioned in the intellectual life of recent decades.

[ 4 ] The humanities are also concerned with addressing such abstract concepts as those encompassed by the words “death” and “immortality,” and are in no way at odds with the remarkable achievements of modern natural science. Yet the belief is widespread that the natural sciences must reject what the humanities have to say. Thus we see that every time something new emerges—as has happened, for example, in the last decade with regard to the problems of life—it is pointed out that the assumption of an actual spiritual life that transcends mere physical, material life must gradually be completely overcome. Spiritual science is by no means compelled to deny anything that arises, for example, in debates such as those led by Jacques Loeb in the final days of the Monist Congress on the problem of life; yet spiritual science is told time and again—as was the case then—that a spiritual-scientific perspective is now definitively over if one may hope that it will finally be possible in the laboratory to to produce life—living becoming—from the external conditions of material processes.

[ 5 ] In the face of all such things, one need only recall one thing. There have been times in human history and human thought when people truly had no doubt that one day it would be possible to create life in a laboratory. And all those who reflected on the depiction of the homunculus in the second part of Goethe’s Faust and recalled that this depiction of the homunculus was truly a kind of dream of early natural science—that is, not merely the depiction of a lower form of life, but a dream of natural scientists to one day create the highest being, the human being, in the laboratory— — all those who cherished this dream did not for a moment think that the spirit must now be abolished from all contemplation of humanity and the world. There is no contradiction here with regard to all spiritual contemplations of life in the hope that living being might be produced by the combination of external substances. No, it lies solely in the direction of thought, in the direction that habits of thought take. And the habits of thought that develop in those who immerse themselves more and more deeply in what is called here “spiritual science”—these habits of thought reveal a conception of a certain factor in human becoming, in the entire course of human development, that transcends the material.

[ 6 ] The purely materialistic view of human life states: We see a human being enter into existence, and we observe how, let us say, from birth or conception onward, material processes unfold in such and such a way, and we see how the human being gradually transforms from an awkward being into a person who finds their way in life and is able to fulfill life’s tasks. Furthermore, after what might be called ascending processes, we see descending ones that gradually lead to the dissolution of the physical body—or to death. — This materialistic view of life focuses solely on what can be seen with the eyes or achieved through the “armed eye” and through methods of thought and research based on sensory perception. One is thus compelled to go beyond what is given at the moment of birth or conception, for not everything that will manifest in a human being can be explained by considering only those factors that operate between birth or conception and death. This leads one to speak of inherited predispositions—that is, of what a person is said to have incorporated into their own being through the characteristics carried by their parents or even more distant ancestors. But as long as one remains within a purely materialistic perspective, one believes that all factors, all elements intended to explain human life, are limited to what can be observed between birth and death, or to what is incorporated into human life through the inherited traits of parents or other ancestors.

[ 7 ] However, as soon as people begin to seriously investigate this concept of heredity in humans, they soon realize how fundamentally superstitious it is—and how it is no less superstitious than the beliefs of earlier times—to attribute everything a person experiences in life to inherited traits. Just in the last decade, a very insightful historian and researcher—Ottokar Lorenz—undertook to examine families whose genealogy was known, to determine to what extent the characteristics of parents, grandparents, and so on influence the lives of their descendants. However, through this method of purely empirical observation, he could come to no other conclusion than to say: If one looks back up the ancestral line of human beings, one finds that among the twenty to thirty ancestors that each person can count back, there are always people who were either geniuses or fools, wise men or fools, musicians or other artists, so that as one goes up the ancestral line, one can find all the characteristics found in any given person, and that, if one clings to the preconceptions of scientific theories, one does not actually get very far in explaining this or that predisposition, this or that manifestation of human character, or this or that trait.

[ 8 ] Spiritual science now adds to all that which can actually be found within the hereditary line as conditions for human life—and when it is found through experience, it does not deny the connection—a spiritual core that we cannot find in all that we seek in parents, ancestors, and so on, but which we must seek within a supersensible, spiritual world. Thus, in the course of the process that takes place when a human being enters existence through birth or conception, something that cannot be demonstrated physically—something of a spiritual nature—becomes connected with the physical factors. And this spiritual element, which certainly cannot be seen with physical eyes, is that entity we carry within us as the result of our previous earthly lives, as it is said. Just as we trace our physical lineage back to our ancestors, we must trace our spiritual lineage back to a spiritual ancestry—that is, to ourselves. Spiritual science is compelled to speak not merely of a single earthly life of the human being, but of repeated earthly lives. However, for reasons that will become clear in the course of these lectures, we must go back very, very far if we wish to seek our essence in our previous lives, so that, in the spiritual-scientific sense, with regard to the human being’s entry into earthly life, we say: We bring our core being up from a previous life; we have lived through that previous life, passed through death, and undergone a life between death and our reappearance in our present life. — Spiritual science is further compelled to conceive of this core of our being—which is not a product of material existence but rather, as it were, gathers and shapes matter so that we become this physical form—as passing through the gateway of death once again when the body dissolves, only to then undergo a supersensible, spiritual life between death and a subsequent life. Therefore, on the basis of spiritual science, we speak of repeated earthly lives.

[ 9 ] Thus, within the Western world, this idea of repeated earthly lives—emerging from the constraints of thought—first appears in Lessing’s work, which he left behind as his testament, The Education of the Human Race, where he says of this doctrine: “Even if it is the oldest doctrine to which people have professed belief, should it not therefore be one that must reappear at the pinnacle of human development?” — And Lessing also addresses many of the objections that might be raised regarding repeated earthly lives in his The Education of the Human Race. However, it is indeed the case that when such ideas arise in an outstanding individual, those who judge this outstanding mind usually say: “He certainly accomplished great things, but later fell prey to this peculiar dream of repeated earthly lives”—and one must certainly give the great Lessing the benefit of the doubt, since even he was capable of committing this peculiar error at one time. - This is how every small spirit feels called upon to condemn the great spirits for their so-called “grave errors.”

[ 10 ] Yet this idea continued to haunt certain individuals in the nineteenth century, and even before the rise of modern Darwinian science, the notion of repeated earthly lives reemerged as a necessity of human thought. Thus, it appears to us in a book by Droßbach on human rebirth—a book that, from our perspective, is confusing, but an attempt that, precisely in contrast to scientific thinking, nevertheless dares to cherish this idea. Soon afterward, a small community came together and offered a prize for the best treatise on the “immortality of the soul,” and this prize-winning work by Widenmann, published in 1851, addressed the question of immortality from the standpoint of repeated earthly lives. I could cite many other examples that would show, if one were to examine them, how human thought has gradually led many people to consider this idea of repeated earthly lives.

[ 11 ] Then came the scientific view of humanity, which was based on Darwin. At first, it led to a materialistic view of humanity, and it will continue to view humanity in this way for a long time to come. But if you take my book Theosophy or others written in the spirit of both spiritual science and natural science, you will see that scientific thinking, taken to its logical conclusion, now compels humanity to consider the idea of repeated earthly lives. But that is not all. It is not merely a logical consequence that I wish to present to you today, but rather to show that, in fact, on the basis of the very same principle that governs natural science—namely, the experimental principle, the principle of experience—humanity must arrive at the idea of repeated earthly lives. This naturally raises the question: Is there a way to gather experiences regarding what is supersensory—what comes over from another life, what is said to enter from supersensory worlds, what is said to result in the human body as it is, and what is said to leave this human body again at death?

[ 12 ] Even without the foundations of the humanities, one can still see—albeit only in broad terms—how an inner, spiritual aspect works within a person’s outer physicality; yet such observations are not particularly popular today. But if one were to direct one’s gaze more closely toward what is called the human physiognomy in its various plastic forms, if one were to perceive in this physiognomy—as well as in a person’s facial expressions and gestures, which are unique to each individual—the creative spirit, the creative power of the soul, one would soon gain a sense, a feeling, of how inwardly the spirit shapes the physical form. Just try, for a moment, to observe a person who has spent perhaps ten years working on problems of knowledge, on the great questions of life—but who has approached them in the manner typical of an external science or philosophy, where one reflects on these things without them really speaking to one. Or try observing a person who has engaged with these questions in such a way that they have become inner matters of the soul’s life, so that they have led him into states of the highest bliss, but also of the greatest pain and deepest tragedy—to heavenly vistas of existence that can make him happy, and again into realms that can make him supremely unhappy. Consider a person whose mind is stirred by questions of knowledge, and observe him after he has been guided through such a spiritual life—one that traverses the deepest and highest regions—for ten years, and one will see how this process is expressed in his physiognomy, how the person’s face has changed, how, in fact, the human soul works its way into the physical body, into its form and structure. Could one now, through specific methods, continue to trace such a process of shaping the human being’s outer physical form to the point where not only are certain features of our face reshaped so that the imprint of the soul life is imprinted upon them, but where the indeterminate form that the human being initially possesses in earthly existence becomes entirely what the human being has as his or her fully developed form? Could one, beyond birth and death, seek out that which works within a human being and shapes itself more and more into the physical form of that person?

[ 13 ] To achieve this, it is necessary for human beings to take their inner life beyond the point at which it currently stands in everyday life. Human beings must learn to grasp within themselves the supersensible—that which is not accessible to external observation. Now, through mere reflection, every person can, so to speak, find the two points where our life directly touches the supersensible. These two points are the transition from the waking state to the sleeping state and back again from the sleeping state to the waking state. For no one should succumb to the illogical notion that human soul life ceases when we fall asleep and arises again when we wake up. Whatever human soul life is—whatever flows from morning to evening in the form of our drives, desires, emotions, passions, ideas, and so on—must exist in some state of being during sleep; in other words, it must be somewhere. This raises the big question—one that a child might ask, but which is by no means unjustified for anyone who engages with questions of knowledge—namely: Where does the human soul go when a person sleeps? After all, we also see other processes come to an end; for example, we see a burning candle go out. Might one then also ask: Where does the fire go? To that we would say: The fire is a process that ceases when the candle goes out, and that begins again when it is relit. — Could one now compare the physical process of a human being to the candle and say: Is the life of the human soul a process that goes out when a person falls asleep in the evening, and is relit in the morning when they wake up again? It may seem as though one could use this comparison. But this comparison becomes impossible if one could in fact demonstrate that—though not to ordinary perception or sensation—there is a sensation attainable through careful spiritual preparation through which we can perceive what leaves our body when we fall asleep and returns to it when we wake up. If it is the case that falling asleep involves not merely a process like that of a flame dying out, but if we can trace what leaves the body in the evening as we fall asleep and returns to it in the morning—if we can demonstrate this process in its reality—then we have established a supersensible inner life of the human being, in relation to which we are then faced with the question: How does it work within the physical body?

[ 14 ] Even the famous naturalist Du Bois-Reymond has expressed the idea: The sleeping human being, as he lies before us, can be understood from the standpoint of natural science, but not the waking human being, within whom drives, instincts, passions, and so on ebb and flow. Now, what I have outlined today only briefly—though more precisely than in the first lecture—can be found described in greater detail in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. There, the methods are described—which we shall now briefly touch upon—through which a person can indeed come to know the reality of what moves out of the body during sleep and what returns to it upon waking. Let us first turn to attentive observers of the soul who do not pass by the human processes of falling asleep and waking up without paying attention, but who have acquired a certain ability to listen intently to these important moments, such as falling asleep and waking up.

[ 15 ] Here we hear what spiritual science can certainly confirm regarding the process of falling asleep: First, what is present in the surroundings as clear and distinct, with sharp contours, transforms—as if into a nebula—into a form with blurred outlines. Then the person falling asleep feels as if their entire inner being were expanding and were no longer bound by the contours of their physical body; this is accompanied by a certain feeling of bliss. Then comes a strange moment in which a person can feel, as in a fleeting dream image, all the morally satisfying deeds they have accomplished during the day; these stand vividly before them, and they know they are part of their soul—they feel themselves within them. Then, as it were, a jolt occurs, and the person feels: Oh, if only this moment could last forever! — Precisely this feeling: Oh, if only this moment could last forever, if only it could never end! — is felt by many who pay attention to the moment of falling asleep. Then consciousness has faded away.

[ 16 ] It can certainly be said that, at such a moment, a person transitions into an inner essence within which the outer physical body plays no role, since, weary from the day’s exertions, it no longer makes its strength available to us. At such a moment, one feels the reality of the soul flit by. And all the methods of spiritual science—which we might call “experimental” in the field of spiritual research—consist of nothing other than the human being acquiring the inner strength, the inner power, to maintain in full presence that which is otherwise fading away, so that he can pass through the moment of falling asleep in full consciousness—so that consciousness does not fade but is preserved. For why does consciousness fade when we fall asleep? It fades because, in ordinary life, a person cannot develop that inner strength and that will to continue experiencing something even after the external senses have failed. Let us ask ourselves how much we experience within our souls in ordinary life that is not stimulated by external impressions, that does not at least form memories of what the senses have stimulated? For most people, very little remains. No wonder there is no inner strength capable of permeating—with inner currents of power—what constitutes inner soul life, which, at the moment it emerges as we fall asleep, is cut off from all external experience. All spiritual development rests upon the permeation of our soul with the strength it needs to maintain consciousness when it does not receive it mediated through the body. What we call meditation, concentration, and contemplation are experiential means of advancing further in the life of the soul than is possible in ordinary life. I will cite just a single example of this.

[ 17 ] Let us suppose that a person manages to place a thought—for example, one of goodwill, or some other thought—at the center of their experience and to exclude all other thoughts, including those that might enter through the eyes, ears, and so on, holding fast to only this one thought; for in such moments, thoughts flock to a person just as bees flock to flowers when one is living an ordinary life. But if one can muster the strength to return to such exercises again and again, to practice concentration of thought, to immerse oneself meditatively as soon as one can free oneself from mere external impressions, and to delve again and again into pictorial thoughts that express something symbolically, then such a thought can stir a person’s soul life, so that it becomes a stronger force than the person usually possesses. Then such a person achieves a conscious falling asleep—that is, remaining conscious of what is leaving the physical body; they consciously experience how they grow into a spiritual world through their soul life. And this is not a dream, nor is it what one might call self-deception or self-suggestion, but rather something that, while accessible to every human being, can be attained only through diligence and energy. In this way, a person can completely free themselves from physicality. Just as one otherwise unconsciously frees oneself from it in the state of sleep, and just as every human being is outside the physical body while asleep, so too, through such exercises, one comes to live consciously within that which otherwise exists unconsciously outside the human being. In short, through inner soul exercises, a human being can experience the liberation of their soul-being from physicality.

[ 18 ] Certainly, one can always object to such a description, which is based on inner experience: “That is based on delusion!” But whether it is based on delusion or on reality can only be determined through experience. That is why I must say again and again: What a person believes they are experiencing in this way may well be self-suggestion, for how far can a person go in terms of self-deception! — They can go so far that, for example, merely by thinking of a lemonade, they already taste it on their tongue. Thus, something may very well give the impression of being a perception of a spiritual world, yet it may still be self-deception. Therefore, anyone who undertakes such exercises and makes their own soul the experimenter must use every means at their disposal to rule out delusions. But in the end, only experience can decide. Certainly, someone can suggest to themselves the taste of a lemonade, but whether they can quench their thirst with it is another matter entirely.

[ 19 ] So there is the possibility of experiencing as reality that which exists outside the physical body during sleep. How is this experienced? In such a way that, as a person progresses further and further in the independence of their soul, they come to know a completely new world—a world of the supersensible. And in fact, they begin by getting to know a world that can only be called a world of spiritual light. There, something very special becomes apparent. What people otherwise call their thoughts and ideas—and about which they are inclined to say, “These are just thoughts, not realities”—is something they take with them when they truly step out of their physical body with their soul. They detach their mental life from all materiality, and this mental life undergoes a metamorphosis the very moment a person is freed from their physical body. What I am saying now may seem to those grounded in materialism like something fanciful, like a daydream; yet it is a reality. What we carry within us as mere thoughts transforms into a world that we can compare—though only compare, for it is not the same—to a spreading light that leads us to the very core of things. Thus one enters a world in which one detaches one’s thinking—which one has otherwise bound to the instrument of the brain—and, with one’s thinking, immerses oneself in a world that appears anew. This is expressed in the way that one feels oneself becoming ever more expanded and enlarged. There one comes to know a world of which the outer, physical-sensory world is merely a revelation. Spiritual beings, not atoms, underlie the entire outer sensory world, and we, as human beings, can penetrate this spiritual world. Thus, when we carry out this self-experiment within our soul, we see ourselves, as it were, absorbed and embraced by such a spiritual world.

[ 20 ] We can only gain a complete understanding of the relationship between this spiritual world and us humans if we are also able to spiritually relive the moment of waking up. That, too, is possible. It becomes possible when a person engages in deep reflection on their inner life through meditation and concentration—for example, when every evening or every morning they review, as if in a picture, what they experienced during the day or the previous day, relating it to their actions or considering it in connection with their actions, or when they reflect on their moral impulses and thus truly look within themselves. Then a person is able, through such exercises, to consciously experience the reverse moment—when we reunite with life out there in order to submerge ourselves into our physicality—that moment which we otherwise go through unconsciously every time we wake up.

[ 21 ] There he experiences something that can only be described in the following way. You may all know how a person’s sleep—that healthy, peaceful sleep—depends on what we call his emotional states. If a person has been thinking a great deal, if he has exerted himself so much in his thinking, he will fall asleep easily. But if states of agitation, emotional stirrings, shame, remorse—especially a troubled conscience—gnaw at them, they will easily toss and turn in bed and find that sleep eludes them. It is not the thinking that we can carry over into the great spiritual world, but rather our emotional stirrings that can rob us of sleep. Our emotional stirrings, however, are connected to what we might call our innermost soul life. We share our thoughts with the whole world. The way in which our emotional stirrings affect us specifically—how they bring us anger, remorse, pain, and happiness—is something intimately connected to who we are. Anyone who has learned in this way to consciously bring their soul out of their body is also clearly aware, through direct perception, of how they carry their emotions out into the world they enter once they have become free of the body. And as blissful as it makes us, on the one hand, to ascend, freed from the body, into a world of spiritual light, we also feel, in this world, as if we were bound to ourselves—to all that constitutes our emotional states, to what has been laid upon us, to what gnaws at us. We then enter the spiritual world with this, and must also carry it back into our body. But through the exercises described, we come to find our inner world of feelings as we immerse ourselves in our physical body. It then appears to us as something foreign. We get to know ourselves by immersing ourselves in our inner world of feelings, and through this—by now consciously observing it—we come to understand what has a consuming, indeed deadly, effect on our organism. I would like to note here that a later lecture will address how dying and death take on a completely different meaning when we observe them in plants or animals as opposed to in human beings. Spiritual science does not take the easy way out in seeking to find these phenomena as identical across the three kingdoms. In the case of human beings, if we consciously trace what has become part of our soul, we find that it lives itself into our physicality and can have a destructive effect within it. We then come to understand how it is the inner soul core of the human being that actually shapes the body and acts upon it by connecting with the physical factors inherited from the father, mother, and other ancestors. There we see the human being entering physical life, see how he first enters in a clumsy manner, how he cannot yet speak; then we see the forms gradually becoming more and more defined and see how he gradually becomes an active human being.

[ 22 ] When we view the entire development of the human being from a spiritual-scientific perspective, we see how an inner core of being takes shape and forms the human being, working from the spiritual into the physical body from the moment of birth or conception. We find this same core of being, which works creatively upon the body, again when we are able to trace how it leaves the body and enters a spiritual world. There we find two things: an element that enables us to pour out our own being, as it were, into a spiritual world of light; but we also find within this core of being something that we must carry into this spiritual world of light—namely, the fabric of our joys and sorrows, our emotional life—that is, everything we have experienced in life. In these two things we have, on the one hand, that which is creative in the human being—that which, as the spiritual core of our being, leaves the body, passes through death, and, after an interim period, reappears in a new body— and that which we initially know only as our emotional stirrings, but which we come to recognize through the spiritual-scientific perspective as a real entity—that which destroys our body and leads it toward death.

[ 23 ] Thus we see how the core of our spiritual being enters into existence, gradually building up the body, and we see this core of being at work most intensely in the first days, weeks, and months, when we do not yet lead an inner soul life, when we cannot yet stir this soul life into thought. There we see how the human being enters into existence, as it were, in a state of sleep. And when we try to recall our own lives, we can go back only to a certain point—no further. We have, as it were, slept our way into existence. It is only from the third or fourth year onward that a human being can feel themselves as an “I”; not before. This is because, prior to that, the human being’s spiritual core is occupied with shaping and developing our body. Then it reaches a point where the body merely needs to grow, and from that point on, the human being can use what previously flowed into their body for their soul life, their life of consciousness, that is, for what constitutes their emotional life—what a person carries from birth to death, but which, within the physical body, continually works in such a way that, from the moment we begin to call ourselves “I” until the point we can later recall as the beginning of our inner life, we take within ourselves the necessity of dying.

[ 24 ] But what do we gain through this necessity to die? We thereby gain the ability to take in the external world as it surrounds us, . to continually enrich our inner being, so that in the life between birth and death we become richer with each passing day. In that part of our being which we take with us into the spiritual world during sleep—the part that constitutes our inner soul—lies everything we acquire in terms of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain. By living and developing consciousness, we provide our inner core with the opportunity to continually enrich itself. We carry this enrichment with us when we pass through death, but we can attain it only by having worked throughout our entire life at the dissolution of the body. Our body is structured as it has taken shape from the previous body. Yet we continually take in new elements; this enriches our soul life. Yet this newness can no longer penetrate our physicality entirely, but only to a certain degree—which is expressed by the fact that we feel the fatigue from the previous day being dispelled within us; yet it cannot penetrate our body completely. Thus, with regard to what enters our body, a limit is established for the further development of the physical.

[ 25 ] Let us take once again the earlier example, in which a person spends ten years working on questions of knowledge within his soul. If this pursuit is an inner matter of the soul for him, his physiognomy will have changed accordingly after ten years. Yet a limit is set by the physical nature of this transformation. The urge to develop further inwardly may still exist; but what is taken up later can no longer work its way into the body. Therefore, since the body sets a limit, we see the richer inner life begin only when the soul has poured itself into the body. First we see the physiognomy of such a person—a thinker, poet, or profound artist—undergo a transformation; only then do we see the rich inner spiritual life develop. Only when a limit is set for us by our external world do we truly develop; yet we can no longer carry what we develop within ourselves into our physicality, because our body is structured according to what we acquired in a previous earthly life. That is why we must carry what we then acquire inwardly through death. This helps us build our next physical form, so that only then, in a future life, will we have incorporated into a physical form what must have a destructive effect on our present physical form.

[ 26 ] This opens up a perspective for us that fits perfectly within all scientific thinking—a perspective on what death and immortality are, and what repeated earthly lives are. There we see—as we reshape our physiognomy, as we observe what first enters existence in an indeterminate form becoming increasingly distinct—how the human being has incorporated into his physical body what he has acquired through experience in the soul during earlier earthly lives. In the unfolding body, we see the results of our past lives, and in what we now acquire—which, so to speak, stands as the spiritual counterpart to our physical being—we see the unfolding predispositions for our future life. Thus spiritual science regards the life we lead between birth and death as standing right in the middle between what has gone before and what follows. And later considerations will reveal how, with regard to the time when a human being lives without a physical body for a long period—as is also the case during sleep—our perspective broadens to encompass the periods of our existence that the human being spends in the supersensible worlds. But to ensure that such things do not remain mere figments of the imagination, it is necessary to direct our attention to the methods by which the soul is enabled to perceive even when it does not have the external physical brain. Only by enabling the soul to perceive in the supersensible realm does what would otherwise have to remain a mere assertion become a proven reality.

[ 27 ] Today, we are essentially only at the very beginning of a science that deals with such matters. And even among those who consider themselves the most knowledgeable and the most enlightened, these matters will be viewed precisely as flights of fancy. The speaker before you would not be surprised if someone were to say: “This is something that is nothing but daydreaming and fantasy, something that completely contradicts every scientific truth of the present!” — No one will find it more understandable than I myself if someone were to make such a statement tomorrow or after the lecture. But as people delve deeper and deeper into this kind of spiritual science, they will come to realize that through inner contemplation we can prepare our soul so that it becomes capable of knowing itself from within and of developing inner forces through which it can still know and perceive even when it leaves the body and can no longer perceive through the body’s organs. It must be established experimentally—one might say, spiritually-experimentally—that the soul, when it no longer makes use of the physical organs, is something that can be experienced. It is that which passes through births and deaths, which acts in such a way that it helps build up its own body, which passes through death, and which gathers new forces during earthly existence for the building up of the new body. Thus, by asking questions about the nature of the human being, one simultaneously finds answers to the questions of death and immortality. When Goethe once said in a very beautiful essay that nature invented death in order to have abundant life, spiritual scientific research confirms this intuition of Goethe’s by stating: In every life, a human being enriches his or her soul life, his or her inner being; he or she must die because his or her present body is built up as an effect of his or her earlier earthly lives, and by killing his or her body, he or she creates the possibility of building into a new body what he or she cannot currently build into the world and into his or her body.

[ 28 ] Such a worldview has a profound influence on our entire lives. And when it permeates our very being—when it is not merely a theory—only then do we experience such truth as a genuine truth of life. For then, once we have passed the midpoint of life, when our hair begins to turn gray and wrinkles begin to fill our faces, we say to ourselves: It’s all going downhill! — Why is it going downhill? Because what the soul has attained can no longer be carried into the body. But what we have attained inwardly—and what must now destroy the body—will be built into a new body. The objection is obvious, and we know it is often raised, but the very purpose of these lectures is to anticipate such objections—that someone might say: “You spiritual researchers are telling us how a person grows weak in old age, how their thinking fades, how their brain weakens—so you are saying that the spirit fades away just as the physical body does!” — As natural as this objection is, and as naturally as anyone who has not yet delved deeply into spiritual science must raise it, it merely admits that such a person does not reflect on the question: What, then, is our present brain built upon? — It is built from our past lives! And we must use our thoughts to destroy our physicality—insofar as we have a brain within us. But the thoughts that cause the body to die are precisely those that make use of the brain. It is entirely natural that something bound to an instrument like the brain must come to an end. Yet our spiritual being does not cease to exist. That is why, when a person moves in a downward direction, we no longer find within ourselves the appropriate tools to live out what we have acquired in this present life. This, however, continues to work within us in a soul life that is not bound to the brain and therefore cannot be expressed through cerebral thoughts. This process prepares the way for us to have a formative influence in the next life. So it is not merely in Goethe’s sense that we say: “Nature invented death in order to have abundant life”—rather, we must say: “Death exists so that what we acquire inwardly in life can be developed into new forms!”

[ 29 ] In this sense, we can therefore say, as we see old age approaching: Thank God that life can decline, that death is possible!—For if it did not unfold in this way, we could never absorb what flows to us from the glorious world in such a way that it shapes us. In order to make what we can experience the substance of our own being, we as human beings need death; we must have death. Therefore, we look to death as that through which life itself can take shape in an inner, higher form. Thus, in the most natural sense, there is a better guide in spiritual science; it is not only a source of comfort in the face of the fear of death, but it is something that gives us strength as we face death and see the outer world fade away; for we know that the inner world then grows. Spiritual science will raise the whole of life to a higher level, where life presents itself to human beings in a meaningful and rational way.

[ 30 ] The following lectures will show that life does not proceed endlessly forward and backward, but that even repeated earthly lives have a beginning and an end. For now, we will merely hint at this. From what spiritual science has to say about death and immortality, it follows—when we look at our present life—that we will experience its effects in a subsequent life. Thus, for spiritual science, the entirety of human existence is divided into certain forms of being: into the existence between birth and death and into that between death and a new birth. Here we see what Goethe felt with regard to the simple life, expanded to encompass the full life, as we look back not merely on the small “yesterday,” but on the great “yesterday,” where we fashioned our present life. We look upon life’s joys and sufferings and realize: joy is what strengthens us for what is to come; suffering is what we must muster in overcoming obstacles in order to strengthen ourselves just as much for what is to come. There we see a great contrast in life extending into the future, and in doing so we are reminded of Goethe’s verse:

If yesterday is clear and open to you,
You’ll act with strength and freedom today,
And you can hope for a tomorrow
That will be no less happy.

[ 31 ] Happiness in life and the courage to face life flow to us from a spiritual science understood from within, as it shows us: It is indeed the Spirit that shapes the material world and sustains itself through the destruction of material life in order to reveal itself anew again and again, applying what it has newly attained in the process. In the spirit of this evening, this can be summarized as follows:

While alive, the Spirit reveals
Only its power,
But as it dies, the Spirit shows
How, through all death,
It preserves itself only for a higher life.