The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Findings from Spiritual Research on Questions of Life and the Mystery of Death

[ 1 ] The greatest mysteries of life, which have universal human significance, are not presented to us through specific scientific research, but rather we encounter them at every turn in life. And the greatest questioner is, after all, life itself, which continually approaches us—a questioner whose questions not only arouse our curiosity and thirst for knowledge, but whose questions can also bring joy and sorrow, satisfaction, or even despair to our souls. Spiritual science, as represented here in these lectures, is intended primarily to resolve these questions posed by life itself, to the extent that human cognitive capacity allows us to glimpse into the mysteries of existence. Even if, in contrast to the science commonly practiced today, this spiritual science appears as something new, as something unfamiliar, this is understandable to anyone who takes even a brief look at those branches of conventional science that deal specifically with questions of the soul and questions of spiritual life. What is today called psychology or the science of the soul can, to the extent that it presents itself, be thoroughly investigated, and one will find that it is precisely the great questions of existence, the great mysteries of life, that are sorely neglected in this conventional science.

[ 2 ] One of the greatest contemporary scholars of the soul, Franz Brentano, put it this way in his *Psychology*: How questions are actually answered in contemporary psychology—or at least how attempts are made to answer them—how one idea follows another, how one sensation evokes another in the soul, how perhaps those mental faculties we call “memory” take shape within our consciousness—all of this, Franz Brentano also believes, — could never be a substitute for what psychological research once sought to explore as a certain solution to the mystery associated with the concept of the immortality of the human being. — One will search in vain today in the current science of the mind or soul for questions such as that of the immortality of the soul, and for other questions as well. They cannot, so to speak, even be raised within the framework of this current science of the soul.

[ 3 ] One might say that the most commonplace yet profound mysteries of the inner life can be raised using a simple phrase, namely: How is a person supposed to come to terms with themselves and the world at all, when they experience firsthand how they change with every stage of life, how each stage presents new challenges even within the span of life between birth and death? How is a person supposed to answer the great mystery of existence, which confronts them every day and which, as everyone can see, is intimately connected with the very essence of being human? The great mystery: how does it come about—and what significance does it hold—that everything that ebbs and flows within us from morning to night while we are awake—ideas, drives, desires, passions, emotions, and so on—sinks into an indeterminate darkness with the onset of sleep, only to be roused again from this indeterminate darkness when we begin the new day? — Sleep and wakefulness, which are so intimately connected with the mystery of human existence—science itself must admit, and is increasingly admitting, that it has hardly anything to say in answer to these enigmatic questions. And then there is the mystery of death, which has just been alluded to—that mystery about which, as has already been indicated here, a prominent researcher of recent times has nothing more to say than what, so to speak, the observation of external physicality reveals. Huxley cites them right at the beginning of his *Principles of Physiology*—the words of the melancholic Danish prince Hamlet:

The great Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Plugs a hole, perhaps, against the harsh north wind;
Oh, that the earth, before which the world trembled,
Might form a wall against wind and weather!

[ 4 ] He goes on to elaborate on his point by showing that the individual material parts that make up a human being, when he passes through the gate of death, gradually scatter to the four winds, so to speak, and merge into the other matter that surrounds us, and how we would have to piece together what a human being once was if we were to search for the material atoms in the vastness of the universe, where they can be found after some time.

[ 5 ] The fact that what has become of the atoms of the great Caesar is not at all the question that truly touches the human soul—this, so to speak, is something that the external, scientific perspective no longer perceives at all. The question is: Where are the soul forces that were at work in Caesar? What has become of them? How do they continue to work in the world? — that this is the great question is something even an external science can no longer sense. And then there is that question contained within the meaningful word “fate”—the question of fate—which truly confronts us at every turn in life, presenting us with the great mystery that reveals itself to us everywhere. We see a person enter existence, born into hardship and misery, so that we can predict at his cradle that he will be granted little favorable fortune; or we see him enter life with seemingly insignificant aptitudes, so that we can again predict that he will be of little benefit to himself or to others. With yet another, we see how he enters life, born into happiness and abundance, surrounded by caring hands from the cradle onward, endowed with talents that show from the very beginning that he could become a useful member of the world order for himself and his fellow human beings. How much of all that we call happiness and suffering—and which comes upon us daily, hourly—is encompassed in this question of destiny! One might say that the great questions of existence begin only where science, so to speak, must come to an end. And anyone today who attempts to familiarize themselves with such a worldview—one shaped by purely scientific evidence—will say to themselves: What is presented to me here as a summary—however beautiful a summary of scientific truths it may be—shows me only the beginning of the question, that question of how I must pose the great enigmatic questions of existence; there are not yet many answers to be found there.

[ 6 ] In light of all this, however, it must be emphasized that, for the most part, modern education does not offer the opportunity to address the fundamental questions of the human soul, for the simple reason that—due to phenomena and events that have unfolded over the course of the last few centuries — and which will be discussed in the upcoming lectures — human patterns of thought, the very faculties of human thinking, have been directed more toward the external material world and, in fact, only feel at ease when they can begin to judge or investigate something that is visible to the eye or accessible to the intellect bound to the brain. These habits of thought are often deprived of the opportunity to look solely at what constitutes soul life, to look at those events within which what does not find its fulfillment in the physical but is specifically soul-related takes place.

[ 7 ] It is probably evident from the lectures already given this winter that answering these questions is not so much a matter of whether human beings can, for example, through the paths into the supersensible life—which were hinted at in the last lecture here—gain insight into those realms where answers to the questions raised can be found. It has been emphasized repeatedly that certain things must be investigated in this way, but that an unbiased human intellect and an unbiased judgment are then fully capable of understanding what supersensible research can provide. If this is the case, then it will also be understandable that the path to supersensible knowledge described in the last lecture always offers the possibility of viewing in the right way that which is present in life anyway—that which presents itself everywhere in life—and of obtaining answers to the great enigmatic questions of existence through this correct perception.

[ 8 ] The spiritual aspect of the human being is present everywhere, is always there, and for it to reveal its immortality to us, what is required is not so much a direct insight into the supersensible world as a correct observation—which, admittedly, can be cultivated and purified—a correct observation of the immediate events of our own soul life. This is where the main focus should lie when assessing what is here called spiritual science: in what way life is viewed, and in what way the phenomena of immediate soul life present themselves through the distinctive mode of thinking brought about by spiritual science. Anyone who looks closely at this will find that spiritual science views the phenomena of immediate inner life in connection with the outer material life in such a way that the great mystery of existence, as indicated, can be answered through the direct observation of life.

[ 9 ] It has already been suggested here on several occasions that spiritual science today finds itself in a situation similar to that of the natural sciences during the dawn of modern education, when, for example, Francesco Redi articulated the great truth that is now commonplace and universally accepted: Life can only arise from life. This initially combated a powerful prejudice—a prejudice that at the time was by no means limited to lay circles, but dominated the entire scientific community of that era—and this period lies only a few centuries in the past: As recently as three centuries ago, at the time of Francesco Redi, it was still believed that lower animals, such as fish, earthworms, and the like, could arise from river mud through the mere combination of external material elements. Francesco Redi demonstrated that this was an inaccurate observation. He showed that nothing living can arise without a seed of life, derived from a similar living organism, being introduced into inorganic matter, and formulated the principle: Life can arise only from life. Within the limits in which this principle is to be discussed here, everyone acknowledges it, from Haeckel to Du Bois-Reymond. It was not recognized in Francesco Redi’s time. He first had to demonstrate that the belief that inanimate matter could coalesce into living matter was based solely on an inaccurate observation.

[ 10 ] Spiritual science today stands in the same relationship to the spiritual realm as Francesco Redi did to living organisms. Through the way it is able to observe soul phenomena, spiritual science today demonstrates that it is a result of imprecise observation to believe that what comes into being in a person’s inner soul life could, for example, stem from heredity, from parents or grandparents, etc. or could stem solely from what the human soul takes in through external experience, through the external perception of the environment. Spiritual science must demonstrate that the belief that this could be the case is based on just as imprecise an observation as the belief that a formed, living being could coalesce from inanimate substance. Just as inorganic matter can, so to speak, be brought together only by a living seed, so everything that shapes the human soul in the form of inherited traits and characteristics everything it takes in from the external world through the senses and the intellect, can be woven together into that which lives and weaves within us as an immediately living soul being only if a living spiritual germ is present—a spiritual germ that unites within itself both the inherited characteristics and everything taken in from the external environment.

[ 11 ] Spiritual science focuses on this seed of the spirit or soul, and in doing so, it certainly faces a very, very widespread prejudice of our time. When people today speak of the character of the human soul, or of everything that a person experiences in life, they tend—and this has been the result of the most conscientious research, which certainly deserves recognition in its own right—to point to this or that which has been “inherited” from ancestors. One will always be tempted to attribute what lives in the human soul and what a person develops, so to speak, to this or that cause lying within the line of heredity—a line to which one wishes to allow only external influences to contribute to the overall formation of the human soul.

[ 12 ] A certain harmony between the natural sciences and the humanities will eventually emerge in this field once we take into account a question that must always be at the forefront of the humanities when discussing the core of the human soul and inherited dispositions—the question tied to the preservation of the entire human race. Within the life of the species—within the generational process by which traits are passed down from grandfather to father to son and so on—we do indeed see characteristics being transmitted from one generation to the next. But one thing presents itself as a question when we consider this succession of human existence over the course of generations: that human beings, at a certain point in time, attain, so to speak, manhood or sexual maturity, and at the time when they have attained this, they are in a position, so to speak, to bring a complete human being into existence again in terms of the species. In other words, once a human being has attained sexual maturity, they are capable of producing their own kind; they therefore possess the abilities that must be present in order for them to produce their own kind.

[ 13 ] Human development, then, proceeds up to sexual maturity in such a way that, by that point, a person has developed within themselves all the abilities that make it possible for them to bring forth a being like themselves. But human development continues after sexual maturity. New forms and new content of the soul also emerge after sexual maturity, and it is impossible to relate what the soul undergoes in its development after sexual maturity to the entire development of the human species in the same way as what a human being undergoes up to sexual maturity for the purpose of perpetuating the human species. A sharp distinction must be made between the human being’s entire relationship to the world with regard to his development up to sexual maturity, and with regard to the period thereafter. This is a question which, as we shall soon see, can only be properly addressed by spiritual science.

[ 14 ] This raises another significant question, one that illustrates how to understand what is meant by the term “heredity,” as opposed to what actually takes place in the human soul and is part of human development. We can grasp what occurs in human beings and is clearly a product of heredity within the human species by considering a radical case in which heredity occurs under all circumstances, simply because a human being is human and descends from a being of the same kind, a fellow human being. One such example is the change of teeth around the age of seven. This is something that lies within the forces a person has inherited, forces that occur under all circumstances—even if we were to remove a person from human society and place them on a deserted island, where they would grow up in the wild.

[ 15 ] This is true of all characteristics that are, in fact, rooted solely within the line of inheritance. But let’s take something as intimately connected to the human soul as language, and we immediately find that the concepts of heredity fail us. Where it is justified to speak of heredity, the inherited traits will appear, as in the case of tooth replacement. But if we take a person to a deserted island and let them grow up in the wild, so that they hear no human sounds, then language does not develop. This means we have evidence here that there is something in the human soul that is not bound to heredity in the same way as the faculties that we, in the strictest sense, must refer to as inherited.

[ 16 ] We could cite many examples that would show us how inadequate hereditary forces are for explaining the totality of the human being. But when it comes to the spiritual science’s examination of the spiritual realm, those who approach the matter with prejudice make mistake after mistake—mistakes that simply turn out to be logical fallacies. For example, people repeatedly believe that spiritual science seeks to rebel against something that natural science has to say, whereas in fact it holds the achievements of natural science in the highest regard.

[ 17 ] For example, this is what people believe when spiritual science asserts that what we call the core of the human soul does not merely descend from parents, grandparents, and so on, but rather, as a spiritual-soul core, goes back to a previous, long-past life of the human being—so far back, in fact, that spiritual science must say: A person’s earthly life is not a one-time event, but a repeated one. When we enter earthly existence through birth, a soul core comes into being that has absorbed certain characteristics and certain forces from previous lifetimes. Because it has absorbed these forces—and, so to speak, concentrated them within itself—during previous lifetimes, it enters, in a certain sense, into a new body and a new physical environment. Just as the living seed in physical life places itself within its inorganic environment and absorbs the inorganic forces and substances from there, so this human soul core, coming from previous earthly lives, approaches the inherited characteristics, binds them, concentrates them, takes what the external world can offer, and thus shapes and forms the new life that we then live through from birth to death. The present life is once again such a synthesis—partly of inherited characteristics, partly of what external life offers us. And when we pass through the gate of death, this soul core is at its most concentrated. Then, in the time between death and the next birth, it undergoes a purely spiritual existence and, if it has matured sufficiently during this time, enters a new earthly life through a new birth or conception.

[ 18 ] The idea that anything among today’s conscientious and well-researched scientific findings must be challenged or even merely touched upon by such views of spiritual science is, unfortunately, nothing more than a common prejudice. Spiritual science fully understands—as has already been mentioned—when the natural scientist comes and shows how, through the mixing of the paternal and maternal germ in each individual case, a kind of special individualization of the child’s germ takes place, so to speak, and how the individualities of the individual children can differ simply as a result of this mixing of the paternal and maternal elements. Spiritual science, in its depth, does not subscribe to the trivial assertion that the fact that children within one and the same family are individual and differ from one another is in itself proof of a distinct human individuality, for this individualization can certainly be understood as resulting from the varying combination of the paternal and maternal elements. Rather, when the natural scientist points out how what a person experiences in life might indicate this or that organic constitution, this or that structure of the brain, and so on, spiritual science is in complete agreement with this, and it remains dilettantism in spiritual science to refuse to engage with such insights. But if what natural science has to say in this field—and it is fully justified in doing so—is to be used as an objection to the findings of spiritual science—namely, that despite all the results of natural scientific research, the core of the human soul first draws upon inherited characteristics to shape a life—then one commits a logical error that can be characterized roughly as follows:

[ 19 ] Let us suppose that a person sees another person standing before him who is breathing normally, and he says: The fact that this person is alive and now stands before me as a living being stems from the air and the lungs that are present. — Who would dispute that this is the absolute truth! Just as this cannot be disputed by any spiritual science, neither can it be disputed when the natural scientist comes along and considers the material conditions derived from the hereditary line in order to explain the individual form of the soul life. It is true, just as true as when the natural scientist says: Here stands a human being before me who is alive at this very moment because, outside of him, there is air, and within him, there are lungs.

[ 20 ] May the natural scientist therefore consider the spiritual scientist to have been refuted when spiritual science states: “Despite everything that has been cited, what happens to your soul is determined—spiritually and psychologically determined in a purely spiritual sense—by what the soul has experienced in past lives; despite all this, a person’s entire destiny is determined by the fact that the person himself has prepared this destiny in past lives”? No, the natural scientist must not consider the spiritual scientist who makes such a claim to have been refuted. Nor may the natural scientist—who says, “The person standing before me is alive at this very moment because there is air outside him and lungs within him”—consider the spiritual scientist to have been refuted any more than he may consider refuted the one who tells him: “No, that is not why he lives; rather, he lives at this very moment through something entirely different. This man once tried to hang himself, and he would most certainly have died during that attempt had I not arrived in time. But I cut the rope, and that is why he is alive now.

[ 21 ] Here, then, we see how the objective truth—that the other person lives only because there is air outside him and lungs within him—does not contradict the fact that, at this very moment, he lives only because the other person has cut him off! Just as this latter irrefutable truth does not contradict the natural scientist’s insight that a human being lives because air and lungs are present, so too does what natural science has to say not contradict what spiritual science has to offer: that the ultimate, spiritual reasons for human existence lie in repeated earthly lives.

[ 22 ] The point here is that our attention should be properly directed toward what is right, and language itself serves as an excellent example of this. Any researcher of the spirit who delves into the depths of things and understands the natural sciences can appreciate that one might easily be tempted to say: Human beings can speak because they have a speech center in their brain. That is certainly true. But it is equally true that this speech center in the brain is only shaped into a living speech center by the very fact that language exists in the world at all. Language has created the speech center. Likewise, everything that exists in terms of the structures of the brain and the entire organic apparatus of the human being has been created by the spiritual-soul aspect. It is this that has imprinted upon the undifferentiated human matter what spiritual life is. Therefore, we must seek the truly creative element in the core of the human soul, in the spiritual-soul aspect. We must not regard the spiritual-soul as a product of the brain, but rather the reverse: the brain, with its subtle structure, as a product of the spiritual-soul.

[ 23 ] When we consider human life, we find that in every respect it confirms what has just been said, provided we view it from a healthy perspective. Let us consider for a moment what we might call human development beyond the species-specific level—that which continues to develop within the human being even after, so to speak, the forces within heredity have been fully developed, after he has reached maturity and is fully capable of bearing within himself the forces that can bring forth a being like himself. The soul forces that constitute human development reveal themselves to us in an entirely different way when we contrast them with those forces that are present throughout the entire human life—forces that manifest, for example, in the preservation of the species and in procreation. Within what lies in the forces of reproduction, we see how, so to speak, everything unfolds from the inside out; how, through the forces at work in this realm, a human being brings forth beings like himself alongside him—that is, how what is within him finds its way outward. The forces belonging to inner human development take the exact opposite path. One need only be able to regard the spiritual as real. Then one will accept the consideration that is now to be undertaken as legitimate from the outset.

[ 24 ] How do we live our lives when we focus on our inner spiritual life? We live it in a manner that is exactly the opposite of how we live life within the species: within the species, all development occurs outwardly; in individual life, all development occurs inwardly. This takes place in such a way that we take in what approaches us from the outside, process it within ourselves, and do not push it outward as in reproduction; rather, we concentrate what we experience in this way more and more intensely within ourselves, stripping it—so to speak—of its character as the external world and making it the content of our own “I.”

[ 25 ] Anyone who looks at human life with an open mind will see how it would be impossible, for example, for our inner life to ever truly have, in a single moment, everything the soul has experienced—everything it can remember—actually present in its memory. Let us imagine that any one of the people sitting here at this very moment were to have everything alive within their soul—all the concepts, ideas, sensations, emotions, and so on that have ever existed there. That would be a sheer impossibility. But is what we have experienced in the past, what we have inwardly absorbed into our souls, therefore lost simply because we cannot recall it at this moment? It is not lost. If we compare our inner life at successive moments in time, we will find that perhaps more important than what we remember is that which we seem to have forgotten—yet which has worked within us and made us into different people.

[ 26 ] After all, in the course of our development, we are always a different person; we feel imbued with ever-changing experiences. If we take a moment to observe who we are now and compare ourselves to who we were, say, ten years ago, we cannot deny that we are different people, and that what has brought this about are the experiences we have processed—what has flowed into us, been absorbed by us, and taken precisely the opposite path from the forces that serve reproduction. Through our perception and our imaginative recollection, we destroy, as it were, what we experience, yet in doing so we take it into our “I.” Our “I” is constantly changing. Therefore, we can say: A close examination of life shows us how this “I” changes throughout our entire life, and how the experiences we have absorbed are what have brought about this change. We feel how the “I” becomes fuller within, gains more and more strength, and becomes ever richer than it was when we first entered life as young people. Underlying this is a very significant phenomenon of life that is usually not given enough attention.

[ 27 ] Goethe, the profound connoisseur of life, who above all else viewed life as it presented itself to him through his own personality, once said: “In old age, we become mystics.” What did he mean by this? What does “becoming a mystic” mean in Goethe’s sense? We must strip this statement of the unclear, nebulous notions attached to it. Goethe meant that as a person becomes more and more mature, they rely less and less on what the world offers them externally, but instead draw the powers of experience from the depths of their own soul, into which they have allowed themselves to plunge. “Man becomes a mystic” means: his soul has become fuller and fuller, and has gathered more and more powers within itself.

[ 28 ] If we take a closer look at what it is that has united the core of our soul within us, how it has absorbed what it has experienced, and what it has made of it, then it is precisely those who have become mystics regardless of their age who can put us on the right track to understanding what is actually going on in the human soul. Let’s ask the mystics! What do mystics talk about most of all? About a “second self,” about a “higher human being” within the human being, about the fact that within this human self—which grows with us from youth onward—a second self can take root, which many mystics interpret as a “divine” one. But that is not the point; rather, the point is how they sensed that, as a person grows up, something matures like a second human being whom they hold onto, who becomes concentrated within them. We see the exact opposite of what happens in procreation—where a second human being is born alongside the first, and the second is rejected: what becomes the “second self” is not something that a person rejects, but rather something that he concentrates more and more within himself.

[ 29 ] Thus we can indeed say: As a human being lives out his or her life, he or she shapes within his or her individuality something that takes the opposite direction from that of procreation. They do not give birth to anything from within themselves; they concentrate something within themselves, do not allow anything to emerge from their “I,” but rather imbue something within themselves—which the mystic quite aptly describes as a second human being who, as it were, takes shape within the skin of the first human being and attains ever greater spiritual and soulful definition. This is more evident in some people than in others; but the meaning of the human being in the making lies in the fact that we undergo an opposite process of germination, in which we do not unfold, but rather, on the contrary, concentrate something within ourselves. If we call the direction of reproduction an “evolution,” a “development,” then we can call what the “I” undergoes an “involution,” a “wrapping in,” an inner shaping of experiences. And it goes without saying that the inner vitality which the mature ego carries within itself as a second ego is at its greatest when we are at the end of our physical life—that is, when we pass through the gate of death.

[ 30 ] If we examine this and take a closer look at what has developed into a sort of second self, then we must admit: Human beings are not always inclined to examine this more closely. Life absorbs them, and they do not direct sufficient attention to this second being they have developed. But if they do devote sufficient attention to it, they will find that this second being possesses very specific qualities—above all, a significant urge to be independent and free from what we may take in during the course of our lives. In the course of our lives, we exist within a certain linguistic context. As a result, our concepts are always tinged to some degree by this linguistic context. But what we have developed within ourselves strives to free itself from what a specific linguistic context alone can provide, and to shape a worldview that is free and independent of any linguistic context whatsoever. We want to grow beyond what a specific linguistic context can provide, and in doing so, we also grow beyond the environment in which we were raised from youth onward. For example, we must develop a certain sensitivity of the ear from our youth onward. We realize that what we develop within our “I” is something that seeks to become ever freer and freer from external physicality. We nurture a new human seed that is independent of the one that has taken shape from our outer physicality once the person has reached adulthood.

[ 31 ] This is what spiritual science seeks to direct the soul toward: that, in the course of life, a second self should develop from the human “I,” the very essence of which consists in the fact that the more independent it can feel from what has grown up since youth, the fuller and more intensely it feels. And if we take a closer look at this second “I” formed within our “I,” we will see that it is so endowed with power that we can characterize its entire nature by saying: This “I” carries within itself the powers to shape a new, different human being than the one through whom it itself was formed.

[ 32 ] It is not an analogy, but simply a way of illustrating the point when we say: The “I” that we have within us can be compared to a plant seedling that has developed from the root through the stem and the green leaves all the way to the flower. That is when it is most full of life and can provide the foundation for a new plant. The entire plant organism has concentrated itself in the seed, and when the seed is ripe, the stem, green leaves, and flower that have grown from it die off. In the same way, a spiritual-soul core matures within us. Just as the plant’s germ grows more and more as the leaves wither and the plant’s outer physical form approaches death, so the spiritual-soul core within the human being matures as the outer form dies off more and more, as the sheaths of the organs gradually wither and approach death. Therefore, when it comes to proper observation of the soul, we are confronted with the peculiar fact that the inner forces of a new “I” are at their strongest when we pass through the gate of death. There we carry the systems of forces, the interrelationships of forces, through the gate of death into a world that can have nothing to do with the world within our body.

[ 33 ] Even if we do not wish to pursue this further—as the following lectures will show us—and even if the spiritual researcher cannot show us what happens to this spiritual-soul core formed within the “I” in a purely spiritual world that a human being experiences during the period between death and the next birth, we can still say: In the same way that the natural scientist goes about his work when he wants to understand a plant, we can go about our work when we want to understand the human being. The natural scientist turns his gaze to the seed of the plant and sees how the seed can bring forth a new plant life. Thus he seeks to understand the new plant from the seed, seeing how the remaining seed reappears in a new plant. In the same way, the spiritual researcher can observe the human being as he enters life through birth or conception. There we see how, at first, the human being shows nothing outwardly other than that his organs are developing in a certain way. Then that soul life emerges, which we have already characterized by saying: when it emerges, that is also the moment for the human being up to which he can later recall his past. For he will say to himself: Quite obviously, I was already here before this point in time, but I can only recall back to a certain point in time. — This is the very moment when a human being becomes capable of feeling themselves as an “I”; but there is no doubt that they already existed as a spiritual-soul being before that. Why, spiritual science might ask, does the possibility of being able to recall the past only arise from a certain point in time onward? Were the inner forces that bring about recollection not present before that? It would be completely illogical to assume that the spiritual-psychic realm begins only at the point in time up to which a person can later recall events. Everyday sleep can teach us how the spiritual-psychic forces live within us before the ability to recall awakens.

[ 34 ] People today have all sorts of strange ideas about sleep. The correct understanding of it has already been brought to light, in part, in the lectures on waking and sleeping. For example, people today believe that sleep is merely what one might call a state brought about by fatigue. I ask those who attended the earlier lectures to note that spiritual science seeks to be precise. If someone were to say that spiritual science itself has stated that sleep results from fatigue, that would not be entirely correct, for it was said: sleep exists to dispel fatigue. In spiritual science, it is always essential to understand things very precisely, because the aim must also be to present things accurately.

[ 35 ] Can fatigue be the cause of sleep? Anyone who claims this is contradicted by life itself. Anyone who claims that people sleep only because they are tired is contradicted simply by observing—or by considering—how a retiree, who is often not at all tired, falls asleep in his chair in the afternoon, even though he is not tired at all. And they are especially refuted when they consider when people sleep the most: not when they are most tired, but during childhood, when people sleep the most. Things simply need to be viewed correctly.

[ 36 ] Spiritual science now shows that, both during the ordinary state of sleep and during the child’s drowsy state of consciousness, the forces that are used for conscious experience are directed into the organism, where they are at work. The forces we use from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep to form ideas, sensations, and so on—these same forces work on us during sleep, but in such a way that our depleted physical forces are replenished and restored. There they regenerate us, repairing what has been worn down and depleted; that is, they shape and form. While in waking daily life these forces deform and dissolve form—and while waking daily life consists precisely in our dissolving form—sleep serves to restore form, that is, to work directly on the human constitution. Because during sleep we frequently use our powers of consciousness to rebuild certain depleted forces, these forces elude us, and we sink into unconsciousness. Because at the beginning of life, before the moment arrives that we can later recall, we use the very same forces that live within us and fill our consciousness—during the early years of childhood—to refine and shape the organization of the brain and blood circulation, these forces therefore elude the conscious “I.” The “I” is present during childhood, and it is strange today that the way the “I” first appears is considered decisive for our view of the human being. Yet another monumental logical error! |

[ 37 ] Today, one can find entire works that state: “We see how self-consciousness arises, how it develops in human beings.” — One cannot imagine anything more misguided, and in any other field one would strictly reject such a line of reasoning—just as one would, for example, reject someone who sought to gain knowledge of a clock solely by observing how it is made. This is not the case in any field. Similarly, when it comes to self-consciousness, one should point out—if one wishes to trace how ideas emerge—the monumental errors that are made in this regard. Only someone who engages more closely with these matters from a spiritual-scientific perspective can do this. Otherwise, one does not notice it. Self-awareness is such that the gradual knowledge of the self—as it develops—has nothing to do with the reality of the self itself. Rather, because the “I”—the human being—continually develops from the time when it is not yet conscious in the child until the time when it is then consciously experienced, we cannot say: “It is not there!” It is there; it shapes the human being in its finer structure. Indeed, even more than that: it shapes the human being in its connection to the whole of human life—something we only realize when we engage with human life in a more or less selfless way.

[ 38 ] The way people usually view life, they might say of their fate: “This or that happens to me. I like one thing, I dislike the other; I regard one as good fortune, the other as misfortune; one as an acceleration, the other as a deceleration of my life.” — But that is only a superficial view, for a person could convince themselves that at every moment of their life, they are nothing other than their concentrated fate. That I am speaking to you now—what is it? It is my concentrated fate. It is my life experiences speaking to you, and I am nothing other than my life experiences, nothing other than my destiny; and if I were to extract my destiny, I would have to cut out a piece of myself. A person is what he has made of himself, what his destiny is, what he is at any given moment. We cannot at all separate our self from ourselves, from our destiny, and regard the self as something different in content from destiny.

[ 39 ] But now we see that, as children placed within a specific life context, we are not only shaped by our predispositions and by our “I”—even when we are not yet conscious of it, as our “I” works through our blood circulation, and by continuing to develop very specific predispositions and so on later on—but we also see that we are placed within a specific national context, that we are the children of a specific pair of parents, that we grow up in a specific climate, and that we must live together with these or those people. Through this, we see ourselves as fated for our entire lives. When we examine what we can consciously pursue and refer to as our destiny, it goes without saying that we must regard this as the destiny connected to our “I”—how, through our circumstances, we are placed into a life that is either arduous and burdensome or surrounded by caring hands. Not only are our future fates connected to what we ourselves have done, but so too are the blows of fate that come to us from the unconscious and that we cannot consciously track.

[ 40 ] In this way, we are led to the spiritual-soul core of the human being, which contains within itself all the systems of forces that shaped the brain, formed the circulatory system, and so on, and thereby determined us. But we are also fatefully determined by the very same “I” that places itself within a specific life context. In the realm of nature observation, everyone acknowledges this when, for example, they say: When I look at an Alpine plant, I know that the entire Alpine environment is part of it, and therefore the Alpine plant cannot grow on the plain. What everyone admits in nature observation simply needs to be applied to a spiritual-soul core. Then one will see that the spiritual-soul core, which endows its physicality with very specific dispositions, is, on the one hand, adapted to its physicality—seeking out this physicality and entering into it—but, on the other hand, also seeks out its own destiny.

[ 41 ] If this fate is perceived as harsh and a person is then told: ‘You have brought this upon yourself; you have brought it with you through the core of your spiritual and soul nature’—if one attributes the blame for this fate, which is perceived as harsh, entirely to the person, then this perception is based on a short-sighted view. A deeper principle judges differently, and we can understand how it judges by drawing an analogy from real life. Let’s imagine a young man who, because his father was wealthy, had lived in such a way that he relied on his father’s money and didn’t have to worry much. Then, for some reason, the father loses his entire fortune, and the son can no longer live as he did before. He might say: What a bitter fate has befallen me! How unfortunate I am! — But if he has learned something in the meantime, if he has been tested by life and has become a capable person, will he say the same thing when he is fifty years old? No; rather, he might now say: “For my personal life, that turn of fate was actually quite good, for otherwise I might have become a good-for-nothing; my father’s misfortune contributed to my good fortune.”

[ 42 ] What can be said from the perspective of an eighteen-year-old is not particularly far-sighted; at fifty, we see further. That which is the deeper principle of life within us seeks out misfortune; it seeks out hardship and misery, because it is only by overcoming the obstacles in hardship and misery that we have evolved toward happiness and thus become something we otherwise would not have become. Viewed from a higher vantage point—and as soon as we simply acknowledge that a deeper core of being lives within a person, one that passes from life to life and necessitates that we view life from a higher vantage point—much of it immediately becomes understandable to us.

[ 43 ] If we can view human beings in such a way that, as they approach old age, they develop within themselves a system of forces that leads toward a new human being who is virtually independent of what the person has developed externally from their earlier life or from the circumstances of their present life, and if we see how they carry an inner tension of forces through the gateway of death, then we can say: It is impossible for this person to re-enter existence immediately after death. Why not? What would happen if they were to re-enter existence immediately? They would find the external environment still similar to the one from which they had just emerged and from which they had sought to free themselves through the development of the inner soul core. Just as the inner soul core does not have a direct relationship to itself in such a way that it immediately wants to be “itself” again, so too can a human being not reincarnate immediately after death, for he would grow into himself. This means, however, that the inner soul core can reincarnate only after a certain period of time. During this time, it lives in a purely spiritual atmosphere, not in the physical world. What has developed as a spiritual core—just as one sees the plant seed develop within the stem, leaves, and flower—lives in a spiritual world and will only feel drawn once more to embody externally what it has developed when different conditions have arisen; that is, when the Earth has changed in such a way that human beings grow into different conditions, enabling them to continue their development.

[ 44 ] That is why so much time will pass between death and the next birth that, for example, we will not be reborn into the same linguistic region, and the other circumstances around us will also have changed. We know that, on the outer Earth, circumstances change over the course of centuries and millennia. But what has taken place in the meantime—purely externally in terms of culture—we learn through schooling and upbringing. Thus, we emerge from a particular epoch with the core of our spiritual and soul nature and with the forces we sought to liberate, and we wait until new conditions on Earth have been brought about. But what we were unable to experience in the meantime, we must make up for through education and instruction. That is why education and instruction must complement what we possess in our particular aptitudes and abilities, which we bring with us as the fruit of previous lives.

[ 45 ] In the relatively short time available, I could develop nothing other than what might be called a way of viewing the state of the human soul in such a way that, on the one hand, this view is strictly scientific, but on the other hand, something real is perceived in these spiritual and psychological experiences, and that it is recognized how, in fact, within the human being as he lives before us, that which will reappear in a future life is already developing—a seed that draws upon both hereditary forces and the forces of the environment to develop further.

[ 46 ] A worldview such as that which emerges from spiritual science can have an eminently healing influence not only on theoretical questions of life, but also on strength, security, and the vitality of life. Of course, anyone who does not wish to familiarize themselves with spiritual science will not realize that a healthy external life is in many essential ways conditioned by a healthy inner life, that a healthy inner life radiates its powers into the physical body, and that when the soul is barren and cannot draw from within itself what fills its consciousness with satisfaction, then the dissatisfaction, the disjointedness, and the sense of being adrift in a mystery within the soul life will imprint themselves on the physical body as nervousness and so on—as something that is not healing. Those who do not realize this may yet experience it. Life poses the greatest riddles, and in situations that are significant for everyone, what unfolds can be expressed by asking: Where else do certain symptoms of illness in a life that is dissatisfied with itself originate, if not from the fact that the life of the soul is not wholesome, not rich in content, and therefore does not radiate health into the physical body? — But anyone who is willing to consider the wholesome influence of a healthy life of the soul on the physical body will also be able to say the following. When, in our time, people point again and again to inherited traits and, in one case or another—for example, with regard to what we sense within ourselves as predispositions to illness—repeatedly say: “We have inherited this from our ancestors; we cannot change it”— then this thought implies something that must weigh heavily upon us in the deepest inner life of the soul and leads to a depression of the soul life, which very soon exerts an unfavorable influence on the outer physical life and must be experienced by the person concerned as something demoralizing that cannot be changed because it lies within the purely physical line of inheritance. But anyone who, through spiritual science, can gain the conviction that what lives within them is not merely a combination of inherited traits and inherited powers, but something that passes from life to life as a spiritual-soul core, can—if spiritual science is not merely a theory for them but something that permeates their life—constantly reflect on the fact that, in contrast to all inherited traits and powers, their spiritual-soul core lives on, from which they can draw the powers that enable them to triumph, even if the hereditary line should point so strongly toward decadence.

[ 47 ] The consciousness that can be gained through spiritual science not only answers the theoretical mysteries of life, but also answers all the questions that press upon our entire being as mysteries—questions we must resolve in order to live within our own souls. If we know nothing of that spiritual-soul core that rushes from life to life, then we feel bent under the yoke of heredity, which oppresses us and makes us weak. We feel strong and vigorous—and live as spiritual-soul human beings—only when we stand upright in the constitution of our spiritual-soul core and can say to ourselves: The powers of our spiritual-soul core are inexhaustible, for it is they alone that synthesize what is given to us through our hereditary lineage, and through them we can bring what seems doomed to decline back to ascent from the very center of our soul. Thus the solutions of spiritual science are inscribed into life itself. Only then will spiritual science bear its true fruits—when it can integrate itself in this way into the whole of our soul’s disposition and mood, and when we become strong, not merely intelligent, through spiritual science. But we also become more capable in our thinking, particularly with regard to certain finer distinctions in life, and gain strength and discernment for a more refined understanding of life.

[ 48 ] Just one example of this! When those who like to attribute everything to heredity examine any significant person in terms of their ancestral line, they are likely to say: “Here one can see that, of the traits this person exhibits, this particular trait is found in one ancestor and that trait in another.” — And people then say: “These traits have accumulated and been passed down, and the inherited characteristics have merged into a single soul.” — They then coin the phrase: “Thus we see that genius stands at the end of a line of inheritance and has been passed down from the ancestors.”

[ 49 ] Put this way, the argument has, so to speak, gone too far. For who would have proven anything with this line of reasoning? One would have proven something only if one could show that genius stands at the beginning of a line of descent, but not if it appears at the end of that line. For if it appears at the end of a line of ancestors, this proves nothing more than—if I may say so—that when a person falls into water and comes out, he is wet. It merely proves that he has passed through a certain element and absorbed something from it, just as a person is wet when pulled out of the water. If one wanted to prove something through the line of descent, one would have to show that genius stands at the beginning—and not at the end—of a lineage. But one had better leave that alone, for the world speaks against it.

[ 50 ] Asking and answering the right questions in every area—that is what follows from spiritual science. Then one will come to realize that spiritual science does not contradict natural science, but also that a natural-scientific answer to life’s great mysteries is not sufficient. The greatest wisdom about life will likely be drawn from spiritual science once the entire process of human education can be placed in the light of spiritual science—when a person grows up in such a way that this process of growing up signifies a becoming aware of the spiritual-soul core.

[ 51 ] Then, between birth and death, the spiritual-soul core within the human being will develop in such a way that not only will the soul attain, in reality, that fullness of content mentioned earlier, but the soul will also become aware of the second “I”—that seed which is becoming more and more concentrated. Then consciousness will transition into a different form of life. Then the human being will indeed see the time approaching when the hair turns gray, the face becomes wrinkled, and the powers contained within the external organs begin to wane. But they will then look upon what they have seen grow from youth onward—what is for them the remnant and legacy of a former life—and will feel, as one feels with a plant seed, when the falling leaves herald the end of the plant’s form, yet the seed grows ever stronger. Thus will the human being feel himself to be the seed of a new life and say to himself: What falls away from you must pass through death, for you cannot remain in it; for it must be something else that can serve as your shell—you must build yourself another body, for you have already prepared it within yourself. Within himself, the human being will feel the life maturing that he must live through again in times to come.

[ 52 ] The fact that the cycles of reincarnation are not without a beginning or an end, and how the question of whether these incarnations of the human core have a beginning and an end will be answered, will be addressed later.

[ 53 ] If a person views life in this way—as the seed of a subsequent life—then he will also see how this, in turn, forms a new seed. Then they do not cling to a doctrine of immortality that they examine, as it were, philosophically; rather, they link one life to another, which they see blossoming and flourishing, and are imbued with the awareness of immortality, because they know that from every life a new seed of life must arise. In this ever-growing and hope-inspiring spiritual and soul-life seed, human beings find answers to the mysteries of life and death. They do not answer these questions merely theoretically; rather, through living inner experience, they grasp, comprehend, and experience immortality—and do not merely say: “I have grasped immortality”—but rather grasps the soul in its very essence as a being that cannot be anything other than immortal, because it develops a new seed of life from every life, and the human being beholds inwardly the maturing of this new seed of life. Therefore, we may say: Spiritual science not only answers the question of the mystery of life and death theoretically, nor does it merely provide theoretical certainty; rather, it can transform our lives inwardly in such a way that, by grasping immortality, we gather strength and feel what passes from life to life, and thus through all lives.

[ 54 ] In this way, theory is transformed into practical living, and the mystery of immortality into an understanding of the question of immortality itself. This is always the best fruit of spiritual science: when it transforms from mere contemplation into something that then lives within us. And one may say: When spiritual science is grasped by a person in this sense, it is not merely something that makes something comprehensible to them, but something that sinks into their own soul like a life force and lives within them.

[ 55 ] Therefore, we may conclude today’s reflection by saying: Spiritual science teaches us—by vividly confirming for the human soul what a glance at the rest of the world teaches us—the great insight into the ever-lasting transformation of life, but at the same time also into the permanence that reveals itself to us again and again amid all change; it teaches us the eternal in all that is temporal. The great experience of life is inscribed in our souls as if on bronze tablets: Everything that lives in the universe lives only by creating within itself the seed of new life. And the soul surrenders itself to aging and death only in order to mature toward immortal, ever-renewed life!