The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Between Death and Rebirth of the Human Being

[ 1 ] Today’s topic is certainly the most daring in this series of lectures, and yet I would like to offer a few remarks on this very special subject of research in the humanities, which is to be discussed here today. I may assume, with regard to this esteemed audience—some of whom have attended these lectures for many years—that even such a specialized subject of spiritual scientific research will be accepted, given that I have so often endeavored to present here, in a more general manner, the possible evidence and proof supporting the validity of this spiritual science. Naturally, we must set aside all such evidence and documentation today. For what will be said about human life between death and rebirth will essentially consist of presenting the relevant findings of spiritual science—as they appear to the researcher—in a narrative form, as it were. Nevertheless, although what is to be said will present certain conceptual difficulties for contemporary consciousness, and although it is clear that today’s sense of the times must still, in the most comprehensive sense, remain hostile toward such so-called “alleged” results of spiritual scientific research, I would nevertheless like to make the following remark by way of introduction. I am well aware that I am speaking in an age that has, for more than sixty years, had Julius Robert Mayer’s great discovery regarding the transformation of natural forces behind it; that has, for more than half a century, had the great discoveries brought about by Darwin behind it; and that has witnessed the great achievements of natural science—for example, through spectral analysis, the achievements of astrophysics, and, more recently, those of experimental biology. Standing firmly on the ground of recognition of these scientific findings, I would nevertheless like to speak about the subject of today’s topic, despite the contradiction this is bound to provoke among those who believe they can stand on the solid ground of natural science only by rejecting spiritual scientific research and spiritual scientific convictions. And I would like to make a second remark by way of introduction. If I did not know with certainty that, within the strictest spiritual scientific methodology and the strictest scientific standards, what is to be said about human life between death and rebirth is just as sound as the findings of the aforementioned branches of natural science, I would, in a certain sense, regard it as recklessness—not to say frivolity—to speak before this assembly about the results of spiritual scientific research. For I am fully aware of the responsibility involved in speaking about precisely these areas in a contemporary scientific sense. However, even the very attitude the soul must adopt toward truth and truthfulness in research—if it is to approach spiritual scientific research with an open mind—even this spiritual disposition remains largely unpopular today. I would like to begin by briefly addressing this state of mind, this inner disposition, which must be present in the spiritual researcher and, in a certain sense, also in those who are to recognize and wish to acknowledge the results of spiritual scientific research in their truth.

[ 2 ] A completely different approach to truth and truthfulness, and to human knowledge, is necessary than that which prevails in our time. Anyone who wishes to arrive at results in the spiritual sciences using the methods discussed in these lectures must, above all, approach what can be called truth and knowledge with a sacred reverence and boundless awe. How easily, in our time, do we adopt as our spiritual attitude toward truth one that seeks to make a decision from the outset about everything that presents itself in human life—a decision that presupposes: I can, with the soul’s faculties given to me in the state of mind and spiritual disposition in which I currently find myself, allow myself to pass judgment on what can be said about the realms of existence and reality. The spiritual researcher—and the one who wishes to receive his findings—needs a different state of mind; he needs the state of mind that says to itself: In order to receive the truth, to partake of the truth, my soul requires, above all, preparation; it requires immersing itself in a state that transcends everyday life. And when one is immersed in spiritual science—though I ask you not to misunderstand this expression in an ascetic or any other sense—one feels very keenly, I might say, how unsuitable the everyday state of mind is for truly living with the truth, with knowledge. One feels knowledge as something hovering above one, which one can approach when one, as it were, transcends one’s ordinary self, when one exerts all the powers lying within oneself to prepare to receive the truth worthily. One feels unworthy when, based on one’s everyday state of mind, one attempts to form a judgment about the truth—this is something one can know from spiritual science— and one then strives to wait until the soul has advanced a little further in its preparation, until it has cultivated within itself that strength and worthy receptivity that is appropriate in the face of truth and knowledge. And often one feels in such a way that one says to oneself: I would rather wait a little longer, I would rather be patient and let the truth hover above me; I must not enter into it; for if I were to enter into it now, I might spoil it for myself by not yet being ripe for it.

[ 3 ] With these and many other words I could add to characterize the matter, I would like to draw attention to the spiritual attitude of holy reverence, of boundless awe toward truth, sincerity, and knowledge, which must be inherent in spiritual scientific research. It becomes increasingly clear from this how the soul must rise above itself, how it must be less and less concerned with passing definitive judgments based on its ordinary daily state of mind, and how it must devote ever greater care to preparing the powers necessary to attain a standpoint worthy of the truth. In short: the seeker of truth acting in the spiritual-scientific sense comes to devote more and more care to preparing the soul, to cultivating the faculties necessary for truth, and more and more he moves away from attempting to approach this truth with ordinary mental faculties and ordinary criticism. — With these introductory remarks, I merely wished to indicate the attitude with which spiritual science itself approaches such matters as are now to be discussed. I shall now proceed directly to the subject, which I believe has been sufficiently prepared for through the lectures of this winter.

[ 4 ] When a person passes through the gate of death, they belong to a world that is, however, accessible only to spiritual research—spiritual research in the sense in which it has been presented in the lectures given here so far. This spiritual research can gain insights that can only be attained by the soul that is aware of itself as free from the body. We have often discussed the methods by which the human soul truly comes to gain insights not only by using its body and senses to come into contact with the external world, but by truly stepping out of the body, so that this body stands outside of it, just as an external object otherwise stands outside of it, and so that, in separation from its body, it experiences itself as being aware within a spiritual environment. How the soul of the spiritual researcher comes to achieve this has been explained on several occasions; and through this, it enters that world which a person enters when they pass through the gate of death. And now, without further introduction, I will recount what the spiritual researcher has to say—based on the methods discussed here at length—about human life between death and rebirth.

[ 5 ] The first thing the human soul experiences when, after death, it has become disembodied through natural means—just as a spiritual researcher can become disembodied for brief moments during his or her life—is a change in its relationship to what we otherwise call the world of thought. We have often emphasized that the human soul carries within itself the powers of thinking, feeling, and willing. This division of the human soul’s powers is, in essence, only valid for the soul’s life within the body, between birth and death; and today, in addition to the general challenges of the topic, I will also have to grapple with the difficulty of finding suitable expressions for a completely different world—the one that a human being must experience between death and the next birth. For the expressions of language are shaped by the sensory life we experience in the physical body; and only by attempting to characterize the entirely different soul experiences after death from a certain perspective—one that makes approximate use of words—will I be able to come to terms with this realm, which lies beyond ordinary cognition. After all, we must bear in mind that we are speaking of a realm for which we actually lack the words.

[ 6 ] So once a person has passed through the gate of death, they undergo an experience related to what we call their thinking and their thoughts. In life between birth and death, we experience our thought life in such a way that we say: thoughts are in our soul; we think. And between birth and death, these thoughts are, at most, images of an external reality. Once a person has shed their physical body, thoughts become an external reality in a peculiar way. This is the first experience the deceased has in the spiritual world: they perceive their thoughts as detached from themselves, as if they were outside, so to speak, beyond their soul—just as, in the life between birth and death, sensory objects are outside, beyond us. It is as if the thoughts were wandering out into an outer world of the soul. One might say that the thoughts travel a certain path; they travel this path in such a way that they detach themselves from immediate soul experience in a manner similar to the thoughts that become our memories in ordinary life; only that with our memories we have the feeling that they sink into an unconscious experience from which they can be retrieved again at the appropriate moment; they tear themselves away from present-day life, but in such a way that we have the sensation that they are within us. After death, thoughts also break away, but in such a way that the entire world of thought which a person has accumulated in the life between birth and death becomes an objective world. They do not break away in such a way that we are conscious of them descending into an indeterminate darkness; rather, they become independent in such a way that they then form a spiritual, external world of thought outside of us. In this world, everything we have gained in the form of life experiences during our last life span between birth and death exists as thoughts, so that we can say to ourselves: we have lived a life, have experienced this or that, and have thereby become richer in life experiences. This is, as it were, detached, as if it had become a kind of tableau of life, about which we say to ourselves: you experienced this in your last life in such a way that it becomes a mental life experience; this surrounds the soul after death. But it does not surround us in such a way that it appears like fleeting thoughts; rather, it appears as if, at the very moment these thoughts tear themselves away from the soul and gain an independent existence, they become denser, more vivid, and more dynamic in themselves, forming a world of entities. This world, in which we then live, is the world of our thoughts that have wandered out from us and have an independent existence.

[ 7 ] This world is also often described as a kind of tableau of memories from one’s past life. Indeed, it is like a tableau of memories, but one that has taken on a life of its own, and about which we know: You have earned this, but it exists there in the external world, objectified; it is alive!

[ 8 ] Now, this experience of the soul in the world of thought—which has become objective—lasts for varying lengths of time, differing from person to person, but still only for a few days. For after a few days—I have pointed out in my Outline of Esoteric Science how this relates to human life— after a few days, the person who has passed through the gate of death experiences how this entire world—which has, as it were, become their world—draws away, receding from them as if in a spiritual perspective, as if it were moving far, far away from them into the spiritual sphere. It takes days until the moment arrives when this receding, this becoming ever thinner and thinner, this becoming ever more misty and misty, ever more twilight-like and twilight-like, of the world of thought—which is receding into the distance—begins. In my Occult Science, I pointed out that spiritual scientific research reveals that this process takes longer for those people who, in their life before death, are better able—that is to say, without losing their strength—to spend days without sleeping. As long as one is roughly capable of spending days without sleeping in life, that is how long this tableau of memories lasts. This can be determined through spiritual scientific research. Therefore, for those who tire more quickly—though what matters most here is the individual’s inherent strength—that is, for those who simply cannot go without sleep if they were ever required to stay awake for a longer period, the tableau of memories fades sooner than for someone who can exert themselves to sustain their strength for longer without sleep. However, one need not strive in this direction; it is simply a matter of what a person is capable of achieving in this regard.

[ 9 ] This is also connected to what appears as the new consciousness. What we experience as our ordinary consciousness—our ordinary waking consciousness between birth and death—is stimulated by our interaction with objects in the external world. We do not do this while sleeping; at that time, we do not have our ordinary consciousness. But we do interact with the external world through our hearing and our eyes, and this is how we experience our everyday consciousness. Just as consciousness in ordinary life is stimulated by interaction with the external world, so our consciousness after death is unfolded by the fact that the human being knows itself to be connected to what I have described as the experience of thought after death—an experience that is receding. And this, too, is what stirs consciousness after death: the soul is left with the sensation that “Your thoughts have gone far away; you must seek them out!” This is how I might characterize the impression the soul then experiences—an impression that provides the force to stir spiritual consciousness after death: “You must seek out your thoughts that have gone far away!” This awareness of the thoughts that have gone forth forms part of self-consciousness after death. We will see shortly what further role this kind of self-consciousness plays.

[ 10 ] In a different way than the world of thought, what we might call the world of the will and the world of feeling changes after death. In fact, after death one cannot speak of such a separation between the life of feeling and the life of the will as one can during the life between birth and death; therefore, I must use the following expressions: After death, there is something present in the soul akin to a feeling of volition or desire, or to a will entirely permeated by feeling. The terms we use for feeling and will do not apply to the time after death. During this time, feeling is much more akin to what is experienced in the will; and the will is much more permeated by feeling than it is in the life between birth and death. While thoughts after death become, as it were, a world outside the soul, one must say of the willful feeling and the felt will that they are bound much more closely and intimately to the soul. And now, in addition to the part of self-consciousness already mentioned, the soul begins to experience itself in a strengthened and invigorated, felt will and a willful feeling. This constitutes an infinitely more intense inner life than that of the soul when it dwells in the body. Once thoughts have departed, a person initially experiences—for a long time, a period that can last for decades—his inner self as his primary world. This inner world becomes so powerful that—if I may use the word, though it does not quite fit the postmortem life—the person must direct their attention to what arises within as this felt will and willed feeling. And it takes years for this felt will or willed feeling to look back, as it were, on the past earthly life. After death, the human soul feels something like a longing, a yearning for this “felt will” and “willed feeling”—and thus for what the last life had to offer. Every life is such that one can say: it offers us many things, but the possibilities for experience are far greater than what a person actually takes in. When a person passes through the gate of death, they feel a desire—or, feeling a desire—to live through everything that they—I cannot say “know,” but rather feel—that they could still have experienced. All those undefined emotions, all the possible experiences that life could have brought us but did not—all of this enters into the context of the previous life, into what the soul is going through. In particular, what the soul feels it should have done appears as strong, intense inner experiences. Whatever the soul has done wrong toward other people, whatever transgressions it has committed against others—all of this manifests as a feeling of lacking love, of which we are completely unaware in the life between birth and death; this is felt intensely.

[ 11 ] Therefore, we can say: After death, years pass during which the soul is occupied with gradually detaching itself from its last life and weaning itself away from its connection to that life. These years pass in such a way that we are not, as it were, torn away from the experiences of our last life. We remain connected to the people we have left behind, the people we have loved; but we are connected through the fact that we have developed certain feelings and bonds with them during our lives; and through the detours of what life has offered or denied us, we remain connected to them. One must, of course, always express this in figurative terms. It is certainly possible to remain connected after death with those to whom one was close in life, but only through the emotional bonds one formed with them during one’s lifetime. Through this, an intense connection with them develops. After death, one lives together with the living, but also with those who have already passed away, with whom one had a connection in life. This, then, is how one must imagine life after death—that it continues in this way for years on end. It is, above all, a life in which the soul experiences everything it wants, desires, and longs for, as it were, within the emotional and intentional context of memories from its previous life.

[ 12 ] If one attempts to investigate, from a spiritual-scientific perspective, how long this period lasts, one comes to the conclusion that—apart from the years following death, the nature of which has just been described—life consists of the early childhood years. Life from birth up to the point—which we later recall—when we begin to experience our self-consciousness inwardly; this period is initially irrelevant to those years, and likewise, the life that follows the mid-twenties is, for individual people, more or less irrelevant to the duration of that state of the soul I have just described; so that one must assume the period between the third, fourth, and fifth years of life and the mid-twenties—the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth years—to be the average number of years during which the soul experiences life as just described, such that the soul possesses self-consciousness through the knowledge that: Your world of thoughts, along with your life experiences, has passed away; it is now in the distance. You have a connection, a kinship to this experience of thought, and you must find it again, for it is through this that you became who you are in earthly life; but it has receded. Just as one faces an external life that one knows to be there, so does one face these life experiences transformed into thoughts. And the other world that one experiences after death, once this world of thought has departed, is experienced through the will and feeling that have grown stronger within oneself.

[ 13 ] Then comes the time when one breaks free from a mere intensified inner life, as if beings were gradually emerging from the spiritual realm that are as adapted to the spiritual world as the beings of the physical world—minerals, plants, animals, and physical human beings—are adapted to this sensory-physical world. That is to say, one lives out of oneself and into a spiritual world. One lives into a spiritual environment in such a way that one now has a completely different sensation toward it than one does toward the physical world of the senses. I would have to cite many examples to characterize this entirely different sensation; but I would like to cite just one, which is particularly apt.

[ 14 ] When we see objects in the external world through our eyes, we say that we see them when light from some source falls upon them; thus, we are aware of them because they are illuminated by this light when we see them. As we now move from the state of reflecting on our last earthly life into the objective state of the spiritual world, we have the experience: You have allowed something from the time of your last earthly life to mature within you—like an inner light, like an inner soul force—and this now increasingly enables you to behold and perceive the outer world of spiritual beings and processes, and to live within it. If one can perceive the duration of this described state of the soul as a kind of weaning away from the connection with the earthly life one has lived through—as a tearing oneself away from it, as a freeing oneself from it— then one now experiences that, in the deepest innermost core of this feeling-willing and willing-feeling, that inner world—which is, in essence, the inner world of many years—has matured within oneself—just as the flower of a plant has matured the seed within itself—this inner light that one radiates from oneself like a force and through which the processes and beings of the outer spiritual world become visible to one. One then knows: had one not developed this inner light within oneself, it would be dark around one in the spiritual world, and one would perceive nothing. The force one must apply to overcome the connection with one’s last earthly life is at the same time the very force that must be expended and that is like an inner radiance. A soul force awakens here for which there are truly no words in the ordinary world, for such a thing exists in ordinary sensory life only for those who, through spiritual research, actually penetrate the spiritual world. If I were to use a word to describe what a person experiences as a force of illumination emanating from within themselves and illuminating the spiritual environment, I would say: It is something like a creative unfolding of the will, which is at the same time permeated by intense feeling. There is something creative within it; one feels like a part of the universe, but one that is creative in this very aspect we have just discussed—the aspect that overflows into the spiritual world. And one has the sensation that this awareness of oneself as a part of the universe is what first makes the spiritual world tangible and knowable through experience—by experiencing what one might call the “soul-ness” after death and a living-into of that which approaches one with ever-increasing visibility and experiential reality.

[ 15 ] Today I am describing this world between death and the next birth; I would say, more from the perspective of an inner experience, from an inner state. In my Theosophy or in my Occult Science, I described this world more from the perspective of spiritual science, viewed from the outside. But since I do not at all like to repeat myself, I am choosing a different approach today. However, anyone who knows how many different perspectives from which one can describe a realm of the sensory world will realize that this is exactly the same thing I have characterized in other words in the aforementioned books.

[ 16 ] The soul perceives itself as becoming spiritually attuned to the world of spiritual processes and spiritual beings. And it must be explicitly stated: Among these spiritual processes and spiritual beings, into which the soul immerses itself through its own radiant power, are also those human souls with whom one has established a connection in life—though only these, and not those with whom one has not established a connection. Thus one can say: Whereas up to now, over the course of many years, one has experienced one’s inner life more through volitional desire and feeling-based will, one now begins more and more to experience the spiritual outer world objectively; one begins to be able to work within it, just as one works in the sensory world according to one’s respective tasks and experiences. Only one thing must be mentioned: What one experiences as an inner luminous power develops little by little, gradually, and—to use an expression familiar to the spiritual researcher—cyclically, in life cycles. It develops in such a way that one feels: The luminous power has awakened within you; it enables you to experience certain other beings and processes of the spiritual world; but in a certain sense it wanes again, fades away. After one has drawn upon it for a time, it fades away. Just as—to use a comparison from ordinary sensory life—as evening approaches, one feels the sun setting outwardly, so in the life between death and rebirth one feels more and more how the inner radiance is waning. But then, when this light has waned, another state sets in. In this state, the soul feels all the more strongly within itself, which it now relives repeatedly; but again—if I may use the expression—it experiences inwardly what it has brought over from the other state, where it had developed that inner radiance. Thus, one must say that the states in which we are wholly absorbed in all spiritual processes and beings alternate with those in which the inner light dims again and finally goes out entirely, but in which our felt volition and volitional feeling awaken once more, but now awakens in such a way that everything we have experienced in the spiritual world—that is, everything coming from outside—lives within it as if in remembrance. In this way, we experience alternating states, as if we had once lived in the outer world, then taken the outer world entirely within ourselves, so that it emerged in the form of inner experiences, living, as it were, entirely within us—as if what we had previously experienced externally now lived within us, enclosed by the shell of our soul. It is an alternation between these two states. We can also describe it by saying: At times we experience ourselves as if in expansive fellowship with the entire spiritual world; then this state alternates with inner solitude, with a sense of self-awareness in the soul, with holding within ourselves the entire spiritual cosmos we have experienced. But at the same time we know: Now you are living within yourself; what is being experienced there is what your soul has retained, and you are now in no connection with anything else. — Just as sleep and waking alternate in life, so these states in the spiritual world alternate between death and new birth: the state of the soul expanding into an outer spiritual world—with the state of inner self-enjoyment and self-knowledge, where one feels: now you are alone within yourself, cut off from all external processes and beings; now you experience within yourself. These two states must alternate, for the inner radiance is preserved only by the fact that the human being is repeatedly drawn back to himself. — These processes are explained in greater detail in my work The Threshold of the Spiritual World. — This cyclical self-experience—first in solitude, then again in a social life—is necessary, for it is through this that the inner radiance is sustained. And this continues as one becomes attuned to ever richer and richer spiritual worlds, for which one requires ever more and more inner radiance. This process extends over a long period of time. Then one senses how, by having become attuned to these spiritual worlds, one is subject to a certain limit that is related to the abilities one has acquired in life. One soul creates a smaller horizon for itself, another a larger one—a horizon encompassing a larger or smaller spiritual world.

[ 17 ] But then there comes a time when one feels one’s inner radiance diminishing. This happens as one approaches the midpoint between death and the next birth. At that point, one experiences a sense that one’s inner radiance is growing weaker and weaker; one is able to illuminate less and less of what surrounds one. It grows dimmer and dimmer, and the time approaches when those moments become increasingly significant—moments in which inner experience grows more and more intense, and in which the inner experiences one has already had ebb and flow. Inner experience grows richer and richer, while the broader perspective grows darker and darker, until it approaches the midpoint of the time between death and rebirth, where one experiences what I have called “spiritual midnight” in my mystery drama The Awakening of the Soul. For there one experiences a time when one is filled with the spiritual world, when one awakens—but awakens into the “night”—where one feels as though one is enclosed within the spiritual world. It is a feeling of the most intense inward experience at the midpoint between death and rebirth. This inward experience gives rise to a state of which one must say: in the long run, it is unbearable for the soul. It is a knowledge of a knowledge that is unbearable, that one does not want to have, because it is merely knowledge. One feels within oneself: You carry a world within you that you experience only through knowing—by knowing that, in reality, you are cut off from it; you have lost the power of light over it. Night falls in the spiritual world. But in this state, we have experiences that are otherwise only passively soul-related within the body of earthly life. These now become something active. And as one thus lives more and more into the twilight and finally into the night of the spiritual world, the longing for an outer world grows ever greater; and while the longing, the desire for the world of earthly life is something that must find its fulfillment from outside, what one experiences in this way during spiritual midnight as longing is a force that develops, just as electrical or magnetic force develops within us under appropriate conditions. It is a longing in the soul that gives birth to a new force—a force capable of conjuring up an outer world before the soul once more. After all, the soul has increasingly immersed itself in a spiritual inner world; this world has become ever larger and larger, ever more vast and more vast. But within it lives the longing to once again have an outer world around itself. This longing is an active force, and what this longing brings about is an outer world—but one of a very peculiar kind.

[ 18 ] The first thing we experience after reaching the midpoint between death and rebirth is that an external world appears before us—yet it is not really one. For when we awaken from solitude, we find ourselves facing images that emerge from our previous earthly life. Thus, an external world—which is, after all, our past external world—surrounds us, and it is longing, which is an active force, that has led us to it. Thus, for a time, we face our past earthly experiences in such a way that they constitute an external world for us, and we stand before them as if judging them. While we were experiencing them, we were immersed within them; now we stand opposite them.

[ 19 ] And now, in addition to the longing that has already developed, another arises. A longing arises to make up, in a renewed earthly life, for the shortcomings and imperfections of past earthly lives in light of the newly awakened consciousness. Now comes the time when the soul senses what it must do regarding the thoughts that have rushed ahead of it. It now receives the certain knowledge that awakens in the second half of the life between death and rebirth: Your thought experiences have rushed ahead of you; you can only rediscover them through the detour of a new earthly life. And from this second experience—in contrast to the old earthly life—and from the knowledge that “you can only find your thoughts that have gone ahead of you if you recall them in a new earthly life”—arises the instinctive urge toward a new earthly life. This cannot be judged on the basis of the last earthly life. At the moment indicated, the soul naturally finds it fitting to reunite with those thoughts that have departed from it—thoughts it can find only through the detour of a new earthly life, where it also finds the opportunity to correct the imperfections and shortcomings it has encountered in the light of its past earthly lives.

[ 20 ] And now, more and more new experiences are emerging from the twilight of the spiritual world. What is occurring is what one might call: a connection with those closest to us. We had this connection before we experienced the time prior to the designated midpoint; but we lived with those closest to us in such a way that we worked with them in the spiritual world, that we were connected to them in spirit. Now they are reappearing; now those from our own earthly life are emerging—those with whom we had an unbalanced relationship; those with whom we were related by blood, those who were close to us in life, are reappearing. They reappear in such a way that, through their reappearance, we can assess what remains unresolved within us, what we still owe them, and what we still need to make amends for in relation to them. We feel as connected to these souls who appear as we must feel connected, based on the outcome of our coexistence with them in previous earthly lives. This is the first thing we experience after our own earthly life: how we wish to live together in a new earthly life with the souls with whom we previously lived in a closer way. And as this period progresses, the souls who are more distant from us appear—those with whom we had a connection in life in such a way that, for example, we shared the same religious faith with them, that we formed a people with them, and in a certain sense formed a whole with them. Thus, the souls who were placed within our earthly development appear in such a way that their appearance can reveal how our soul must shape its new earthly incarnation in order to seek what must result as an effect from our previous earthly lives in our life with the souls who appear there. — Finally, out of the twilight of the spiritual realm, the connection with souls—or with other spiritual beings in earthly life—that can be called an “ideal” connection emerges. After one has experienced the overview of one’s past earthly life, after one has experienced the overview of the people who were close to one in that past earthly life and the communities with which one was closely connected, one is now vividly confronted with those people who shone forth as ideal figures in one’s life, even if one was personally distant from them. That which one calls one’s personal ideals and one’s spiritual world during one’s earthly life is the last thing to come to meet one.

[ 21 ] From these experiences, the soul itself develops the strength to reconnect with earthly life. I must also mention, however, that even in the second half of existence—between death and rebirth—life again unfolds in a cyclical, circular pattern. Here we must again distinguish between the time of life in that outer world, where we behold our former friends and relatives, our ideals, and so on—experiencing them, as it were, externally and objectively—and then that other time when we are separated from them, when we have them only within ourselves. This alternates inevitably for the soul, just as waking and sleeping, day and night, alternate in ordinary life. And from the forces that develop within the soul through the contemplation of all that I have just described, the soul’s ability arises to first form, in a spiritual-soul manner, the archetype of the new earthly life. What we have had to send on ahead—the life experiences transformed into thoughts—we do not yet perceive immediately when we enter the second half of life between death and rebirth. But it is through creative will and creative feeling that the soul perceives this life as an increase in strength; and this increase in strength causes something like the archetype of a new life to crystallize out of the surrounding spiritual substance. For in the spiritual world, the relationship between perception and soul experience is different from that in the physical world. In the physical world, we perceive the external world; it is then present within our thoughts, but the thoughts are passive. When we experience the spiritual world in the manner described—when we behold in the spiritual world the soul remnants of our past life, of our loved ones, of our former friends, and of our ideals—this generates a force that permeates and interweaves our being; this is what causes us to be filled with strength. And this filling with strength is the very thing that drives us toward a new earthly life. — You will surely excuse the fact that certain expressions must be chosen in such a way that they are unusual; but after all, circumstances that are unusual even for ordinary life are being described here.

[ 22 ] For the person who seeks to shed light on the outer spiritual world around them, the forces—which were at first only vaguely sensed—that are connected to past life experiences are now becoming increasingly apparent. The archetype of a new life is becoming ever more distinct, and this causes the human being, through the forces placed within him, to feel drawn down into physical earthly life—drawn down in such a way that he feels attracted to the particular pair of parents who can provide him with the physical body that most closely corresponds to the archetype of his coming earthly life, as created in the spiritual world. Thus, a threefold union takes place at the time of a person’s rebirth: the masculine, the feminine, and the spiritual. One might say: Long before a human being enters their new earthly life through birth, this developed force is drawn toward the specific pair of parents; for the human being is, inwardly and substantially, this force—which, one might say, grows out of them—as the force that drives them first toward the archetype and then toward the new earthly life. But it is precisely in this process that the most varied circumstances can unfold. What comes into play here, first and foremost, is that the human being looks back on his or her previous earthly lives. Through this, he or she quite naturally arrives at an inner longing for a new earthly life. But now it may happen that the human being feels very clearly within: “You must incarnate on Earth; but you cannot reach the point where you can incarnate in a new earthly body in such a way that you can grasp the life experiences that have gone before you.”

[ 23 ] Let us consider this case, which certainly arises from spiritual experience. While we are living on Earth, we by no means have all the earthly experiences we could have. One does not need spiritual science to realize this; for if much already passes our attention by during our earthly life, it must be said all the more that much comes to us that we do not bring to consciousness. In other words: if we pay attention, we must admit that we do not have the experiences we could have. But the experiences, the events, do come to us. If we regard ourselves as students in the face of life, we must say: all of this comes to us. This experience is also part of our experiences in the life between death and rebirth. But when we enter the second half of this life, we have come to realize: You cannot now, with everything you have acquired, reach the point where you can fully connect with a new earthly life. This is when the necessity arises to connect with a new earthly life sooner than would be necessary based on the thoughts that have rushed ahead—and in doing so, to remind oneself: Only in a subsequent earthly life, perhaps even only after two or three earthly lives, will you reach the point where you experience the thoughts that have now rushed ahead. This will result in such a person not having the intense longing for earthly life that they would otherwise have, and thus failing to fully embrace life. There is a possibility that the person does not connect intensely enough with earthly life; they may well have attained the strength to reincarnate, but not the strength to have experienced everything that was to be experienced. Consequently, in such a case, they do not have enough of the “joy of earthly life lying in the depths of the soul.” Everything that leads a person to regard earthly life as not important enough or not to embrace it fully stems from this aspect. And here the spiritual researcher encounters something that often weighs heavily on their soul.

[ 24 ] As a spiritual researcher, one approaches all life with compassion. Let us suppose that, as a spiritual researcher, one examines the life of a criminal, a life that is, in the broadest sense, directed against the human order. Even if one does not wish to deny the guilt, one can feel the deepest compassion for such a life and seek to explain it within the context of that person’s life. When one strives to find an answer to such a question, the answer turns out to be that people who are unable, due to the circumstances described, to take life in its full weight actually end up committing wrongdoing and crime. By investigating these matters down to what is known as “criminal language,” I have become convinced that even there lies an element of not taking life seriously—of underestimating and despising it. Such a failure to take life seriously need not be fully conscious. Full consciousness often knows little of what lies in the depths of the soul. The criminal often develops a strong sense of self; he wants life; but in the depths of the soul, where consciousness does not penetrate, there lies a contempt for life. The fact that he has not reached the place to which his wandering thoughts have gone is the reason why he does not take life fully seriously. Look into the lives of criminals, and you will find that a contemptuous attitude toward life is present, even in the expressions of criminal slang. Enormous mysteries are revealed there to the attentive observer of life. I would say: these are spiritual premature births that are developing there. That is why, having come too early, they lacked the strength to take life fully seriously—to develop, in the fullest sense of the word, the sense of responsibility that must be cultivated in life. A life that has at least come close to the point to which thoughts, transformed into objective entities, have rushed ahead—such a life grows most intimately together with earthly existence; it grows together with the forces that can only be developed on Earth: conscience, love of the Earth, responsibility; it grows together with everything that Earth life holds dear, so that morality and ethical character develop. For one must have the feeling toward Earth life that one must connect with it completely if true morality and ethical character are to grow in the soul. This, for example, is something that becomes clear to us when we view human life in the light that spiritual science can provide, and it truly enriches our feelings and sensibilities toward both life and other people, because when we understand them, we can cope more easily and find our bearings in life more readily.

[ 25 ] For example, the spiritual researcher finds a life that, in the period between birth and death, comes to an end earlier than normal, either due to illness or misfortune. Essentially, this has the effect on the other life—the period between death and rebirth—that the premature entry into the spiritual world, whether brought about by misfortune or illness, creates forces for the soul that would otherwise not have been available to it. As strange as it sounds, as paradoxical as it may seem: whatever we may lack from our previous earthly life to develop all the powers that might in turn be our own through other circumstances—this may perhaps come to us only by bringing our life to an end earlier than is normal for a human being. However, spiritual science will never in any way grant a person justification for an artificial termination of life that might be initiated by the person themselves before the normal end of life or the end brought about by other circumstances.

[ 26 ] It must be said: It is precisely when one tries to look into the spiritual life between death and rebirth in this way that one becomes aware that forces are at work there that are entirely different from those in the life between birth and death—forces that, one might say, are naturally linked to everything that external life in the body offers us. I openly admit: I could never have arrived at what I have dared to express before you today through mere philosophical thoughts or intellectual efforts; these things can only emerge through the path of spiritual research, which has been described here so often. But once one has these insights and asks: Do they fit in with earthly life, with what we experience between birth and death? — then a complete harmony with life indeed becomes apparent. And even if the question were to arise: Why does a person not remember their previous earthly lives? — the answer is: The spiritual researcher observes that as a human being descends from the life between death and rebirth into an earthly life, they must first direct the forces—which could recall everything I have just described—toward the inner shaping, the plastic formation of their sensory-physical body, which is, after all, shaped and maintained by the human being themselves. The forces that a person expends to transform the twilight of early childhood into an alert consciousness for later earthly life—the forces expended to transform the body so that the twilight of childhood can be transformed into an alert life—are drawn from the very forces that a person could otherwise use to recall their past earthly lives. These forces flow into the body, strengthening the human being in relation to the life between birth and death. And only when the spiritual researcher detaches his soul from the physical body—when he attains an experience outside the physical body—when, in other words, he once again frees the forces that human beings otherwise use to make their eyes see, their ears hear, and their limbs move—when he applies these forces to experience purely within the soul— then his gaze extends across the purely spiritual horizon, where what I have described today is experienced. Thus, the powers of recollection—which one might suppose exist in human beings—are observed by the spiritual researcher in their transformed state.

[ 27 ] One might say: Within the human being lies the eternal, immortal core of the soul. But in the life between birth and death, it is initially employed in such a way that it is absorbed in the activities of the physical body. However, with regard to the present day, one can say: We are in a transitional period in which human beings will develop a new relationship to the body, a period in which they are also moving toward an intensified inner life of the body. That is why spiritual science feels it is its task to communicate what it explores, because the soul unfolds from life to life in such a way that it takes on an ever more inner form, and, as it moves toward the future, it will come to see what has been said today as necessary knowledge, without which it will not be able to live in its entire constitution; and then, through the reemergence of a natural clairvoyant state, what has now been brought to attention will reveal itself as explicable.

[ 28 ] Thus, when spiritual science speaks of the immortality of the soul, it takes a different path than that which a mere philosophy of concepts can take. Spiritual science does not approach the question of immortality with the aim of proving immortality; rather, it proceeds by first seeking the paths by which one can find the soul itself—by seeking the paths to the soul, to the essence of the soul. And once one has found the soul—once one knows how it is experienced inwardly—there is no need to devise external philosophical proofs for the immortality of the soul. For one then realizes: What leads beyond death, what passes through a life between death and rebirth and leads to an ever-renewed earthly life—that is already within us in the life between birth and death, and by recognizing it within ourselves, we simultaneously recognize its immortality. This is just as certainly contained within life here as we know of the plant seed: it will develop by bringing forth a new plant being. In the same way, we can know that the soul is immortal. But we know that the plant seed can be used for human nourishment. No such external extraction can be perceived in the core of the human soul; rather, it is certain that what lives in the soul is at the same time the foundation for future earthly lives—and thus the foundation for the soul’s immortality—and is not put to use for anything else, as may be the case with a plant seed. Therefore, one may speak of the immortality of every soul.

[ 29 ] I already mentioned at the beginning of today’s lecture that what has just been said is still very much at odds with the contemporary sense of time. But how could the contemporary sense of time view what has been discussed in today’s and other lectures in a favorable light? On the one hand, this contemporary mindset is filled with a longing to know something about the soul; on the other hand, however, it is eager to restrict the powers of cognition whenever one seeks to know something. Spiritual science is often criticized for being illogical and superstitious. Well, spiritual science can withstand that. For when it looks at the “logic” that is believed to be opposed to it, it knows why spiritual science can take root so slowly in people’s minds. And again—I have had to mention many a book and many a contemporary phenomenon here in these lectures—I can point to a book that offers reflections on death. There is a curious statement in it, which I cite only for formal reasons: Immortality cannot be proven. Even Plato and Mendelssohn, who built upon his work, were unable to substantiate the immortality and the simplicity of the soul; for even if one is willing to concede the simplicity of the soul, the soul is nonetheless an object of inner conviction that is unproven and unprovable. There is no need to delve into the further explanations; for anyone capable of writing the sentence: “Plato and even Mendelssohn were unable to prove the immortality of the soul from its indestructibility,” should just as well write: “One cannot prove the immortality of a rose from its red color.” For when one speaks of the immortality of the soul, one cannot—unless one is thoughtless—say that it is not immortal simply because it cannot be proven. — Such things are jotted down today and appear in a work that will have—and indeed does have—a large readership, because such books appeal to our contemporaries, and because passages like the ones just described are simply skimmed over. Thus, many points of principle are overlooked, particularly in those arguments that most strongly present themselves as opposition to spiritual science. If one accuses spiritual science of being illogical, one should first and foremost examine one’s own logic. All other objections to spiritual science have often been discussed here; I therefore do not wish to return to them, but only to cite what I have already presented in other lectures as a concluding thought:

[ 30 ] One finds oneself time and again in agreement with the most enlightened minds in the history of human development on the findings of spiritual science; even though they did not have spiritual science—for it is only in our time that it has become possible in the form we know today—they nevertheless sensed the direction in which spiritual science is moving. And while, on the one hand, some monists or others speak of the unprovability of immortality, as a researcher of spiritual science one would nevertheless like to point to a great figure among the intuitive minds in this regard, with whom one feels in agreement. — What, then, does spiritual science—when taken in its true spirit—say about what I have attempted to explain? It shows us that which within us develops even between birth and death in such a way that, when freed from the body, it must pass through all the states that have been described today. One cannot come to know the human soul that dwells within the human body—even between birth and death—unless one knows what it is capable of between death and rebirth. If certain religious denominations, for example, feel that spiritual science is at odds with their beliefs because it creates a broader conception of God, then one can only say to these religious denominations: How narrow-minded you are with your conception of God, with your religious sensibility! It seems as if someone had said to Columbus: “Do not discover America, for why should you discover this unknown land?” In our country, the sun shines so beautifully; can one know whether it shines just as beautifully in another country? — A reasonable person would have said: “Oh, it will shine just as beautifully everywhere as it does here!” — The spiritual scientist sees what his conception of God is. And that conception is such that he perceives God as great, like a radiant spiritual sun! And he knows that the conception of God must be feeble, the religious sentiment feeble, and the faith of those who say, “The God we worship in our religious life will not reign in the worlds of the spiritual scientist,” must be feeble. But if religious feeling is strong enough, it will perceive the radiance in the spiritual worlds through this conception of God held by the spiritual scientist, and the conception of God will suffer no harm from spiritual science, just as it was not harmed by Copernicus and Galileo. But spiritual science knows that the soul prepares itself for the life between death and rebirth while still in the body; and the life between birth and death gains meaning and significance as we look toward the existence between death and the next birth. Through this, we feel in harmony with the spirits who are among the most enlightened, one of whom intuitively foresaw what we have now set before our souls. Goethe once said: “I would like to say, with Lorenzo de’ Medici, that those who do not hope for another life are already dead in this one.” Spiritual science feels so much in harmony with these words that it knows: The soul must take in what it can become by looking toward what it can become outside and beyond life in the body. Just as the plant seed is justified only insofar as it lives toward a new plant life, so too is that toward which we live with our soul not what we already have within us, but what we can hope for. The strongest proof of immortality lies in the fact that we need only look at the forces from which we live; for we live from the forces that we can hope for as immortal forces. Indeed, spiritual science leads us to the fundamental feeling that illuminates and permeates our entire life, which Goethe so beautifully expressed in the words just quoted. Spiritual science tells us, proves to us, and confirms for us the feeling that anyone who cannot hope for life in the spirit—and for what the soul, in terms of the spirit, is to the whole world—is already dead to life in the body!