The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Life After Death: A Fact of Reality

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Less than 300 years ago, not only laypeople but also learned naturalists believed that lower animals, worms, and even fish could arise from lifeless river mud. And it was a great leap forward in human thought when the Italian naturalist Redi first stated that, under our present conditions, living things could arise only from a living seed. Today, anyone who still claimed that earthworms or fish could simply form from ordinary sand or mud would, in a sense, be considered a fool or an ignorant person. Indeed, the vast majority of today’s thinking people are hardly aware that it was only three hundred years ago that people still believed such a thing was possible! What is taken for granted today by both the layperson and science—that under our present conditions, life can arise only from life—was something humanity had to win for itself through the course of centuries; and so it is, ladies and gentlemen, with many achievements of human knowledge. Today, spiritual science—or theosophy—must establish a very similar truth and introduce it into human consciousness. Whether this truth becomes second nature to human consciousness in the future depends solely on people coming to regard as equally self-evident what many today still consider folly, daydreaming, or fantasy—namely, that the spiritual-soul aspect can arise only from the spiritual-soul aspect. Essentially, all that is needed to understand all the things that will form the subject of today’s discussion is a thorough living through of this simple statement. Nevertheless, much, much water will still flow down the Elbe before the advocates of this statement are no longer regarded as fools, dreamers, or fantasists.

[ 2 ] Even the idea that living things can arise only from living matter was not readily accepted, and Redi narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. Today, those who propose something similar are no longer condemned to death by fire—that has gone out of style. But they are condemned to another kind of death, one that burns less, yet is nonetheless equivalent to the way in which inconvenient seekers of truth were once eliminated. Today they are denounced as dreamers, fantasists, fools, or the like. But the time will come—and it is not far off—when it will seem self-evident that the spiritual-soul realm can arise only from the spiritual-soul realm. And the entire question at stake today hinges on the understanding of this statement—that question of immeasurable significance for humanity, the question concerning the supersensible worlds and the destiny of the human soul in those worlds, the question concerning the mysteries of death and human life, that question which is not merely theoretical but practical in the most eminent sense, because whoever is able to resolve it for his own soul draws from the answer security and strength for life, hope and confidence for his work—in short, everything that enables human beings to stand firm in the hardest struggles of fate, in all that life brings.

[ 3 ] Today we will have to address the question of man’s fate in death and in life from two perspectives. One approach will bring this question before the court of facts; the other, before the court of common sense. If we wish to speak of facts, then we must form a concept of what we actually mean by “facts.” The word “proof” is often used so casually. We shall see that these matters are, after all, taken very superficially by a broad segment of humanity. The subject at hand will be the destiny of the human soul in the supersensible world.

[ 4 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, when I was still a little boy, I very often listened to conversations among very simple people about that mysterious land where people go after death. There were devout people who, based on their faith, offered certain answers about the afterlife, but even among the common folk there were free-thinkers and nonbelievers. There was one phrase that was always used to silence the others. It was this: “No one can know anything about that land from which no traveler has ever returned.” People put it more simply: “Have you ever seen anyone who’s told you about what happens after death?”

[ 5 ] That was something many people perceived as quite striking. Well, ladies and gentlemen, people would not attach so much importance to such words if they were to reflect more deeply on the ordinary events of the day that every person encounters in a 24-hour period. In ordinary daily life, people clearly experience various states. In 24 hours, you all go through two states of consciousness: that of wakefulness and that of sleep. Of course, the most ordinary and everyday things are given the least thought; yet it is in the everyday that the mysteries of the world lie. It must seem mysterious to a person that what they experience within themselves from morning to evening—this entire world of ebbing and flowing sensations, images, and thoughts; pleasure and suffering; joy and pain; drives, desires, and passions—that they see this entire world sink into an indefinite darkness by evening. Everything that a person perceives through their eyes from morning to evening—everything that stirs up cravings, pleasure, and suffering, and so on—sinks, like the setting sun, into the darkness of consciousness. In the morning, the person awakens again; what they left behind in their consciousness yesterday dawns anew from the darkness. All the familiar ideas, thoughts, and impressions rise up into consciousness just as the sun rises above the horizon. All the pains and sufferings that had been forgotten resurface, like the sun rising above the horizon.

[ 6 ] Wouldn’t it be sheer folly to claim that every evening the sum total of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions—pleasure and suffering, pain and joy—disappears into an indeterminate nothingness, only to be reborn anew tomorrow? Anyone who thinks deeply will say: It would be the greatest folly to assert such a disappearance of the soul’s life and a rebirth. The soul is there; it is there; it exists—anything else contradicts common sense. What distinguishes the sleeping soul from the waking soul? Solely the fact that the sleeping soul cannot perceive—that it has no awareness of what fills its field of vision as its experiences during the day. States of consciousness change in every person over the course of 24 hours.

[ 7 ] Here, ladies and gentlemen, is where—when the world of facts is to be explored—what might be called “clairvoyant human consciousness” comes into play. Now, by using this term, I have expressed something that may, from the outset, appear—especially to the fully enlightened people of the present—as something fantastical or foolish. What is this clairvoyant human consciousness? First, let us clarify this concept through a comparison. Imagine, ladies and gentlemen, that you are leading a person who was born blind into this hall. To you, these lamps are shining; to you, these doors appear brown. To the person born blind, this hall does not appear in this way; the lights and colors do not exist for him. If you were able to perform an operation on this person born blind here, what was there all along—but which he had not seen—would enter his field of vision. What was there before has now become perceptible to him as well.

[ 8 ] What this man, who was born blind, can experience through surgery can also be experienced in relation to the soul’s spiritual faculties. Just as the ability to see lay dormant in this man whom you operated on, so too do higher faculties lie dormant in every human soul—faculties that can likewise be “operated on” to emerge from the human soul. What Goethe, for example, referred to as “spiritual eyes” lies dormant in the soul of every human being. And when these spiritual eyes are awakened in the human soul, it is on a higher level—just as it is for the man born blind, on a lower level, whose physical eye has been operated on. A new world breaks in upon him—the world that is always around us, the spiritual world. But it is also in this world that the human soul resides during sleep, during the night.

[ 9 ] Why doesn’t the human soul perceive this spiritual world under normal circumstances? It’s very easy to imagine why. Imagine that you were standing here, alive and well, and suddenly lost your sight—you would see nothing. If you were also to lose your hearing and other senses, the world would be imperceptible to you. What, then, determines whether a world exists for us? It depends solely on the fact that we have organs for this world. When a person is in the spiritual world at night while asleep, they do not have organs for this world in their current normal state; they do not have spiritual eyes. But when a person develops what are called these spiritual eyes, it is no longer dark and gloomy around them; rather, they transition into the sleeping state in such a way that they perceive: There is a world; I have stepped out of the physical world; I have entered another world. Now another world has become visible—a reality just as tangible as the world of physical colors and lights for a person who was born blind and has undergone eye surgery.

[ 10 ] What is described here as the opening of the spiritual eyes is called awakening or initiation. Such initiated people, who had developed their spiritual abilities, have always existed. Because they had developed these spiritual abilities, they were able to look into the spiritual world—the world about which they now had to say: When a person falls asleep, what we call his outer physical body remains in bed, and a spiritual-soul entity emerges from this physical body. This being truly steps out of the physical body when a person falls asleep. It is in another world during sleep. In the morning, this soul re-enters the physical body. There it once again makes use of the eyes and ears and perceives the physical world. What, then, is the difference between the unawakened and the awakened person? The difference is that in the part of his being that leaves the body at night, there are no spiritual eyes; in the awakened person, however, spiritual eyes are developed. Those who wish to explore these questions more deeply and thoroughly will see that what has just been said is not merely something pulled out of thin air, but something definite and real. Certainly, you may ask: “Yes, but how does one attain this awakening?” The answer to this question is also provided. There are specific methods and specific practices that a person must apply to their soul, and through them they draw forth from within themselves the sleeping spiritual eyes and the slumbering soul capacities. It can only be hinted at that by allowing very specific inner soul experiences—established over millennia—in what is called concentration, meditation, and inner contemplation to take effect upon one’s soul, the soul is transformed and the spiritual eyes are thereby developed. Then a person becomes clairvoyant in a world that is otherwise closed to them.

[ 11 ] If you look through the little booklet on Initiation and Mysteries, you will see that, just as there are specific methods for making microscopes, there are also specific methods for making the soul clairvoyant. Certain mental images act upon this soul, and then it is transformed; at first, abilities emerge that you might call—if you like—hallucinations or visions, but these very soon change so that they become the mediators of the spiritual worlds that surround us. In the course of this development, one very soon learns to distinguish between what is a vision and what corresponds to reality in the spiritual world. Just as in the physical world you can only learn to distinguish between ideas and reality through experience, so the same applies to the spiritual world.

[ 12 ] Someone might say: I believe, like Schopenhauer, that the world is my idea. — To that we say: Fine, try imagining a piece of burning iron or glowing steel. It doesn’t burn you, but now touch it, and you’ll very soon realize the difference between your imagination and reality; the imagined glowing steel doesn’t burn, but the real one does. You have this same experience when developing your mental powers and abilities.

[ 13 ] When I once said this in southern Germany, someone replied: “But one can evoke images in the mind so vividly that they even have a physical effect; so through contemplation and other exercises, a person might simply be experiencing hallucinations that he mistakes for reality.” After all, he said, you can make your mouth water just by imagining lemon juice. — To that I replied that he should try quenching his thirst with imagined lemon juice. You can only do that with real lemon juice; that’s when you notice the difference. It’s the same in the spiritual world. Someone who is spiritually awakened, who has developed their spiritual senses, knows from experience where the boundary lies between imagination and spiritual reality.

[ 14 ] So these are the facts that underlie spiritual research. If someone comes along and says: “Yes, these people claim to have not only the physical body, but also what they—oh, these fantasists and fools—call the astral body; that is what these enlightened ones claim.” ‘Let them just prove it once and record all the facts.’ Well, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, anyone who makes such a statement has not thoroughly educated themselves about the nature of proof. I would advise them to reflect on the proof that a horse has its head in front and its tail behind. It is only because people always see normal horses that they take such things for granted. Evidence based on facts must be grounded in those facts. The spiritual researcher stands on no different ground than the natural scientist. If someone comes along and says, “There are natural scientists who say that plants consist of cells. I haven’t seen any cells yet—only leaves and flowers. I don’t believe what I haven’t seen,” — Then the natural scientist will say to him: “You must get a microscope and learn to work scientifically; then you will see the cells as facts. Only when you take the appropriate steps will you see them.”

[ 15 ] However, the methods by which the invisible, supersensible aspects of human nature can be perceived are accessible to everyone. When a person undergoes the methods that an initiate must undergo—when he develops clairvoyance—he experiences something in spiritual life similar to what a person working with a microscope experiences in physical life. The analogy between the two is complete; at most, the process is more inconvenient in spiritual life. It is more difficult in spiritual life because a microscope can be manufactured. But what constitutes the spiritual microscope, each person must develop within their own soul; they must transform themselves if they wish to see for themselves. Yet there have always been such initiates who knew how to bring messages from these spiritual worlds.

[ 16 ] And now let us consider what these initiates have to say about the human cycle through the various worlds. Let us consider it in much the same way as if someone were telling you that they had seen this or that through a microscope. The spiritual researcher tells you, based on his research: What you call a human being is by no means as simple a being as you imagine. This human being consists of many, many parts; he has visible, tangible parts, but alongside them, invisible, supersensible parts. The first component is the physical human body. This physical human body is something he shares with all other inanimate beings—with crystals, rocks, and mineral beings. Beyond that, he has an invisible component that is a faithful warrior within the physical body. This second component, which only a clairvoyant can see, is the etheric or life body. It permeates the human being. If it did not exist, the human body would be, at every moment, what it becomes upon death: a corpse. A crystal follows its own physical and chemical laws. The human body cannot follow its own chemical and physical laws during its lifetime. If it were to follow them, it would reveal itself as a corpse and disintegrate. The etheric body, however, is a faithful fighter against decay. Human beings share the etheric or life body with all plants.

[ 17 ] The third component of the human being is the astral body; it is the vehicle of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, and of all the emotions and passions that ebb and flow in waking consciousness, and so on. For the spiritual researcher, this astral body is just as real and genuine as the physical body—indeed, even more so. If someone objects, “Surely you don’t imagine that such astral bodies can float around in the air,” the spiritual researcher replies, “I can very well imagine it; not only that, but to the spiritual researcher, the astral body reveals itself as an independent component of the human being.”

[ 18 ] Today, people would consider such an awareness to be mere fantasy; but the true fantasy lies on the other side. Common sense would say: Here I see a person; a tear is rolling down his cheek. Therefore, I assume he is sad. Sadness is an experience of the soul or the astral body. This experience has a physical effect; it forces tears from the eyes. Here we see how physical effects arise from soul experiences. Some philosophical schools now say: That is a mistake. The reality is that when a person cries, a secret process takes place, mediated by material things, and this secret process forces tears from the eyes; and when the person notices this, then he becomes sad. So the person does not cry because he is sad, but rather he is sad because he cries.

[ 19 ] The third part of human nature, the astral body, is shared by human beings and all animals. Then there is a fourth element, which is the bearer of self-consciousness, the bearer of our “I.” Through this element, the human being rises above all the beings that surround him in the sensory world. Human beings rise above their fellow creatures; they are the greatest of earthly creation. In spiritual science, we speak of the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body in animals. In humans, we speak of four members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the bearer of the “I.”

[ 20 ] What, then, does sleep mean for spiritual research? When a person falls asleep, their physical body and etheric body remain in bed, while—as the clairvoyant perceives—the astral body and the ego-bearer detach themselves. In the sleeping human being, we have a separation of the four bodies, and because in today’s normal consciousness the I and the astral body have no organs of their own—but possess these organs only in clairvoyant consciousness—darkness and gloom surround the human being. In the morning, the person merges back into his physical and etheric bodies. Throughout the entire life between birth and death—barring exceptional circumstances—the physical body remains firmly connected to the etheric body. The astral body leaves the body at night.

[ 21 ] After death, something very special occurs. The mere physical body remains behind, and the union of these three invisible components—the etheric body, the astral body, and the I—departs. And from that moment on, the physical body becomes merely a physical body; that is, it follows its physical and chemical laws; it disintegrates; it becomes part of the mineral world.

[ 22 ] But then, when spiritual research traces what emerges from the physical body, it becomes apparent that the human being remains connected to his etheric body for a time. After death, there is a period during which what might be called a review of the entire past life takes place. You may have heard that people who are close to death under abnormal circumstances—for example, while drowning—survey their entire life as if it were a panorama. This comes as a shock to the person because the entire etheric body has become detached from the physical body. The entire life is inscribed in the etheric body; it is the bearer of memory, and only the physical body prevents it from revealing this memory. But as soon as it is freed from the physical body for a moment, it immediately reveals this memory of the past life.

[ 23 ] The same process is evident after death as well. The human being then looks back on their past life. Then the second formation of the corpse takes place. After a few days, the etheric body detaches itself from the actual inner core of the being, just as the physical body detached itself earlier. What remains is an extract of this etheric body, and the etheric body dissolves into the general etheric matter just as the physical body dissolves into physical matter. Now that the human being has also freed himself from his etheric body, he consists of the “I,” the astral body, and an extract of the etheric body. This essence represents the fruit of the last life—that which we experienced in our last life. You can say to yourself: As you have grown older, you have experienced more than before. Your entire life consists of becoming more skilled; this is not lost—it is inscribed in your etheric body, and you take it with you as its fruit.

[ 24 ] After death, something quite special occurs. What I am about to say is a fact established by clairvoyant research, but common sense can also grasp it. We have seen: The physical body has been shed; we will leave the etheric body aside for the moment. But what lived within the human being—desire and suffering, joy and pain—did not merely exist as an effect within the physical body; rather, we must regard it as a reality. And then we can ask: When the physical body is shed, what is the reason that desires should immediately cease as well? There is no reason for this. Spiritual research now shows that the astral body remains after death, along with the desires.

[ 25 ] An example: In life, a person was a gourmet; he had cravings for this or that delicious food. This craving is not attached to the physical body—minerals have no cravings—but rather to the astral body. Now the physical body is dead, the craving remains, and the person finds himself in a peculiar situation: In life, he satisfied it by eating the food in question, but this required the palate and tongue—organs of the physical body. After death, he still has the craving, but he lacks the organs to satisfy it. The human being is in the same situation as someone who suffers from thirst in the wilderness and cannot find water or beer anywhere. So it is also after death with everything that lives in the human being’s astral body and that can be satisfied only through connection with the physical body. Then, after death, what spiritual research can establish bit by bit, step by step, is that the human being enters a state of weaning away from everything that can only be satisfied through the organs of the physical body. This state lasts until the human being has weaned himself from all the impulses of his life that require physical organs. This period—which varies in length from person to person—is referred to in spiritual science as the time the human being spends passing through the soul world, or Kamaloka; what is meant is a state. The human being must therefore pass through this state after death. Certain religions call it purgatory, a time of trial, purification, or cleansing. Then the parts of the astral body that contain only what can be satisfied through the physical body fall away from the person like scales. Then the soul is in a position to make something out of what it has taken with it as an extract—to make something out of what it has taken with it as the fruit of life.

[ 26 ] And now the time of true spiritual life begins—the time in which human beings live in increasingly spiritual worlds, a time that begins, first of all, when human beings turn their activities away from the physical world. What does that mean? We can understand what a person does first, among many other things, distinguished guests, if we consider light through the lens of common sense. It is true that if a person had no eyes, they would not see the light. But for those who insist that without eyes there would be no world of light, the other side of the coin—the reverse side—must also be considered. Where does the eye come from? Goethe offers this beautiful statement, spoken from a deep understanding of the world: “The eye is formed by the light for the light”; that is to say: if there were no light, if the sun gave off no light, there would be no eye either. Light has formed the eye out of indifferent organs, shaping it from them.

[ 27 ] What humans possess as an organ has been formed gradually, after passing through a series of very imperfect stages. How, then, could an eye have come into being? Because there was light around humans. If you observe certain animals that live out in the world, they have eyes to begin with. When such animals change their way of life and move into dark caves, their eyes atrophy; they recede, and they lose their sight because there is no light in their environment. Just as the absence of light takes away the eyes, so too did the light give them. Likewise, however, what we encounter as the human soul—with these or those abilities—can only be formed by the surrounding spiritual world. In this world, however, the human being is in Kamaloka, and in this spiritual world, he reaps the fruit of his last life. From this spiritual world, he begins to build up his spiritual organs based on what he learned and experienced in his last life. Piece by piece, he now builds up his spiritual organism using the experiences he had in his last life. It is true that a person builds up this spiritual organism little by little. Just as, when in the physical world, they shape their destiny based on their experiences in that world, so too do they direct their actions in the spiritual world according to the spiritual experiences surrounding them. And, along with many others in the spiritual world, they are engaged in creating a kind of archetype—a spiritual model—for their spiritual organs.

[ 28 ] If this spiritual organism is created from the materials of the spiritual world, then a longing arises in the human being to re-realize in the physical world what he has built up spiritually—to descend once more into the physical world. Thus, the bodies that the human being has previously shed are gradually rebuilt around this spiritual organism, in accordance with the conditions of the physical world. For what the human being has to draw from the physical world has been prepared for him by the physical world. What is contained in the physical and etheric bodies must be restored to him from a world to which he had returned it; this is given to him by his parents. His parents bring the physical and etheric bodies up to him from a world from which he had just departed, and this is united with what has emerged as an archetype in the spiritual world. And we can see how this archetype works to shape the physical body.

[ 29 ] Physical science does not, by any means, serve as counterevidence to this. Once the facts of natural science are properly examined, natural science will correctly recognize the reality of spiritual life. Look at a child after it is born. The child has developed certain parts of its brain that can be described as sensory centers and nerve pathways; these are already formed in the first week after birth. In contrast, if you examine the brain at the end of the first month, you will see that nearly two-thirds of the brain is formed only during the last four weeks after birth. Gradually, the inner two-thirds of the cerebral cortex become permeated with nerve tissue that transmits one sensory impression to another. The child sees colors and hears sounds, but cannot connect them. The nerve tracts that transmit sensory impressions are gradually developed. Anyone who insists that “well, these nerve tracts develop on their own” may cling to their superstition; but let them also claim that some complex machine has assembled itself.

[ 30 ] We take on board what the natural sciences tell us. We see the physical body and its mechanisms, but we also draw the comparison: No mechanism can be constructed without intelligence. No machine in the world is created on its own. What is formed within the human brain does not come about by itself. What is at work here? The archetype—which, for the clairvoyant consciousness, originates from that spiritual organism—is at work on this brain. And as this brain is continually refined, the fruits of life are woven into it. After all, human beings had taken the fruits of life into the spiritual world. They reshape the brain according to this archetype. Depending on how they have used this life, this archetype now reshapes their brain accordingly. For those who have lived in dullness, this archetype works in such a way that, for example, when they see a burning, swinging church lamp, they do not think anything of it at all. But for the one who has used life in a different way, it works in such a way that he discovers the influential laws of the pendulum in it and bestows them upon humanity—like Galileo, who first saw the laws of pendulum oscillations in the church lamp in the Cathedral of Pisa. Truly, in his case the archetype worked differently than it did in the thousands upon thousands who also saw this lamp and noticed nothing. Here one can tangibly see how the spiritual works through the physical.

[ 31 ] Anyone who does not admit this can be said to be beyond help; he does not acknowledge obvious facts. Nor can he demand, “Prove your point”; rather, the issue is that the other party sets conditions for providing evidence. Those who look more deeply will realize that even the best evidence requires recognition.

[ 32 ] Thus we see how, by passing through the gate of death, a human being enters other worlds: first into a preparatory world, then into the world of spiritual creation, where he or she prepares for a new life. Then, through conception and birth, he or she enters a new life. After birth, a person continues to develop their brain. Either say: “All of this happens on its own”—or there is no other possibility than that a person is received with such a spiritual life.

[ 33 ] Now one might say: Certainly, I am willing to admit the existence of a soul that is present before conception; but as for the idea that the soul owes its vitality and form to a previous life—I want nothing to do with that; rather, it descends anew from the spiritual world each time. — Under today’s circumstances, such a soul, descending anew, would fit poorly into the present world. This is precisely another necessary assumption of common sense: that one must consider the harmony and compatibility between what descends and what is received through the hereditary line. Only a soul that has, in a previous life, acquired the prerequisites for a life under present conditions can bring itself into harmony with the circumstances of the physical world.

[ 34 ] Thus, we trace back from this present life to a previous one. When the soul descends [once more] and continues to develop within the body in this life, the process is exactly the same as in the previous one, except that the human being has woven into it the fruits of their previous existence. Enriched in this way, the human being lives once more between birth and death, and so it continues.

[ 35 ] Thus, human beings pass through the cycle from the sensory world, through the world of the purely soul-life—the world of purification—to the spiritual world, and then ascend once more into the sensory world, and so on. Human beings go through this cycle again and again, and therein, dear friends, lies the assurance of an ever-ascending development of the human being. This teaching, which shows us the causes of our present life in our past lives, is not a bleak one. One can only say: If you shape this life in an inadequate way, then the cause lies in a past life. But one can also look to the future and say: Use your life well, and you will carry the fruits of this life over into the next; then confidence and energy follow from such a realization.

[ 36 ] For those of you here today, distinguished guests, who approach this statement with common sense, the facts of clairvoyant consciousness cannot, of course, be proven objectively, but you can understand them. You can say to yourselves: If I accept these facts, then life becomes understandable to me. Facts cannot be proven; I would like to see someone prove that a whale exists if no one had ever seen one. However, by developing the appropriate faculties, one can come to see and perceive the facts of spiritual life. Only connections can be proven, never facts.

[ 37 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, common sense might raise some objections and say: If you tell me that a human being descends from spiritual heights and unites with the physical, I don’t believe it, because I don’t see it.

[ 38 ] Today, people attribute certain abilities entirely to heredity. In the extreme case of genius, people today try to single out a genius and say: Now let’s go searching and see if we can find the traits that the genius possesses in the father or the mother or even in distant female ancestors, and thus the genius is then supposed to stand as the last scion in the line of inheritance. The fact that the genius always appears at the end of the hereditary line is cited as proof that genius arises through heredity. To those who wish to think strictly in materialistic terms, this sounds plausible; but there is no logic to it at all. For the theory would truly be proven if the ancestor had been a genius and had passed on those traits to their descendants. But that is not the case. Anyone who truly examines human life more closely will know that certain traits are inherited; we know that there are 29 musicians of varying degrees of talent in the Bach family. There is nothing miraculous about this. To become a skilled musician, one needs not only intellectual and spiritual qualities; but if the soul descends and finds no parents who can give it an ear suited to this purpose, then it cannot become a musician either. Just as spiritual qualities stem from past lives, so the inner constitution of the ear depends on the ancestors. But when a person becomes a more careful observer of life, when, as a thinking educator, they see this human soul taking shape in its manifold individualities, then they realize that spiritual abilities do not develop from the physical human being at all; rather, they sense how something that previously lived in the spiritual world works its way into the person. One can see from this that a person has often existed in this world, that he has adapted to this world in his various stages of existence.

[ 39 ] Today we know that an earthworm can arise only from an earthworm embryo and cannot develop from river mud, contrary to what all natural scientists believed 300 years ago. Today, people think that the wondrous human soul can come into being without being derived from the spiritual-soul realm. Living beings can only arise from living beings, and the spiritual-soul realm can only arise from the spiritual-soul realm. If we trace the spiritual-psychic, which works its way in from a dark background, back to earlier spiritual-psychic states, and if we realize that the consequence of the spiritual-psychic lies in turn in the spiritual-psychic, that it extends beyond our present life, and that these various lives have nothing to do with what is called the hereditary line.

[ 40 ] Such a worldview will provide courage and strength. The more materialistic people have become, the more fearful they have become. What is more widespread today than the fear of hereditary predisposition? This view has changed, and the result of this view—which stems from materialistic ideas—is fear of others, and this has an immensely paralyzing effect on life. If, of course, people allow their souls to lie dormant and do not seek to enrich themselves with spiritual content, then what they pass on is indeed something fatal for them. For they are weak in their souls.

[ 41 ] Just as the body needs nourishment, so does the soul. It needs to be nourished with truths and insights. If a person cultivates insights into the soul, he becomes strong and gains mastery and victory over the laws of heredity. Of course, materialists today do not believe this. When the soul becomes desolate, life remains unfulfilled, and what is called heredity comes to play a major role. It is therefore up to the individual to make his or her soul vigorous and strong. A worldview is not without practical consequences. Those who have no inkling that the soul truly exists allow their souls to become desolate. The materialistic worldview brings with it a desolation of the soul’s sensibility and emotional life. And it is true that such a soul has more to fear than a soul that strengthens itself with spiritual substance. Here we see how the spiritual worldview provides enlightenment and security for life. At all times, so to speak, these two things intertwine: the facts that reveal themselves to clairvoyant consciousness regarding the destiny of the soul, and common sense, which can say to itself: I can understand life. And so the soul works its way through its individual lifetimes toward ever greater perfection. In addition to the sensory life, there is a soul life and a spiritual life for the human soul. The soul passes through these lives in order to then undergo a new one.

[ 42 ] Even though life in the sensory world sometimes appears as if humanity were, so to speak, in decline—in general, the entire earthly life, together with the intervening lives in the spiritual worlds, is an ascent, and this worldview opens up a wonderful perspective on the goal of earthly existence. This goal is, more and more: the spiritualization of physical and soul life. Indeed, we can speak of “spiritualization,” for human beings will come to recognize the foundations of physical life more and more. They will increasingly work from within the spiritual world. Ultimately, liberation from the sensory world will be their own achievement.

[ 43 ] Thus does humankind advance toward perfection in a way that is entirely comprehensible to us. Anyone who extends the law of cause and effect—which is regarded as a scientific fact in the physical world—to the spiritual world will say to himself: People may call you a dreamer and a fantasist—but the time will come when the statement “The spiritual-soul realm can only arise from the spiritual-soul realm” will gain recognition; when this insight will arise from humanity’s passage through all worlds, through many lifetimes, and from the perfection of the human being. When one understands the course of human development in this way, one has specific concepts not only for the physical, sensory world, but also for the soul and spiritual worlds. These are not fanciful notions, but concepts to which one attaches meaning, just as human beings attach this or that concept to ordinary sensory objects.

[ 44 ] And so we can say today: Yes, certainly, the things that are facts for the initiate—such as the cycle of life through the various worlds—are still little recognized; but they will be recognized, and they will become a reality of inner spiritual life for human beings. Humanity is moving from one stage of progress to the next; it will have to accept this progress as well. And those, in particular, who are still unwilling to acknowledge these facts today will have to acknowledge this progress—which unravels the mysteries of life—out of the mystery of death.

[ 45 ] Then one will understand that, at first, one can believe just as much that what the initiates say is reality as one believes when a microscopist says that a plant consists of cells. If one is willing to think through this analogy properly, one will find the courage to realize that human beings themselves must come to develop their spiritual faculties—their spiritual eyes and ears, as Goethe says— and to learn to recognize what can give us a truly new religious consciousness in the future—a religious consciousness that already lies within what we know as the truth of Christianity, which shows us that life in the sensory world also has value for eternal, heavenly, and spiritual life. With Christianity, a religious consciousness has taken root in human beings that sees salvation not merely in the spiritual world, but also in the carrying over of the fruits of physical life—that which has been learned here.

[ 46 ] Finally, let us conjure up two images in our minds. Progress in our religious life leads from Buddha through Christ. Only those who are able to comprehend the depth of the Buddha’s soul can express true admiration for the magnificent figure of the Buddha. How infinitely profound are the great truths of life that the Buddha articulates. It seems almost legendary how the Buddha, stepping out of his wealth and the king’s court, finds a corpse outside—a poor man, a sick person reduced to misery. He looks deep into the very foundations of life and proclaims his great truths: Life is suffering, death is suffering, illness is suffering, old age is suffering; being separated from what one loves is suffering; being bound to what one does not love is suffering. Desiring what one cannot obtain is suffering. —The Buddha’s teaching is that the thirst for existence, for reincarnation, and for new life must be quenched, and that humanity must be redeemed into an existence free from the sensual, which is called Nirvana. The Buddha proclaims the Four Noble Truths. Liberation from the suffering of this world means ascending to the Buddha’s teaching. And then Christ entered the world—that was a remarkable step forward. Those who understand the essence of Christianity—those, for example, who understood it in the first century—had a different feeling when they heard the name Christ. They sensed how spiritual life is clothed in sensory existence, the substance of which is provided by the physical, sensory world—but we do not say, as Buddha did: “We want only liberation and salvation from the sensory world.” We say: This earth is, after all, valuable and worthy, for the body of Christ, too, is taken from the material of this earth. The earth upon which Christ walked bears fruit for eternal life. And so, for those who recognized him, the existence of Christ became a certainty that from life to life, human beings carry the fruits of their existence into the spiritual world. And now the teaching of the Buddha has changed. In the schools of spiritual science, it has always been stated that the truth about life has been transformed through Christ. Birth—that is, entering into life—is not merely suffering, for we enter into a life in which Christ lived. Illness is not merely suffering, for through our connection with Christ’s powers, we become masters over illnesses. In the future, people will learn how to act externally upon physical illnesses; the conqueror of illnesses is Christ within the human heart. And old age is not suffering, for as a person grows older and the physical body decays, he will carry over into the spiritual world the fruits he has received in the physical body. And death is certainly not suffering, for it is a wonderful image of contrast: Buddha goes out of his royal palace and sees the corpse, and there the great truth dawns upon him: death is suffering. And in the early Christian centuries, we gradually see how people turn their eyes to the wood of the cross and behold the corpse. And this is the guarantee of eternal life—of the glorious eternal life, of the victory of eternal life. This corpse is not proof that life is suffering, but that life is victory over all suffering.

[ 47 ] Those who understand Christianity know that they cannot be separated from what they love, because the spiritual bond is woven from soul to soul; it is impossible for them not to be connected, in a spiritual sense, to what they love, because they learn to embrace the entire universe and to purify their desires.

[ 48 ] The full meaning of Christianity will be revealed only by the research we call spiritual science—not from any documents, but from clairvoyant consciousness, independent of all records. Then Christianity will reveal itself as something that is still far from having brought its deepest impulses to the surface. But it is not merely a passive contemplation of the course of Christianity’s development, but rather a deepening into the spiritual world and a drawing out of these living seeds from within Christianity that will signify the progress of Christianity. Spiritual science does not seek the Christ where he walked upon the earth, but is a faithful follower of the words:

I am with you always, even to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:20)

[ 49 ] That is why we rediscover Christ every day, and if we wish to seek him today, we find him through spiritual science, which looks into the spiritual world independently of any historical records and sees Christ there as a guide to ever greater progress. This is how the cycle presents itself, and this is how it will always present itself to those who come to understand the spiritual human being.

[ 50 ] Goethe, drawing on a deep insight, stated even in his youth that everyone would experience this at some point; he confirmed that he recognized the existence of a spiritual world to which human beings belong just as they now belong to the physical world. Indeed, it was spoken from the depths of his discerning soul when he pointed to what can be continually renewed in the human soul—what constitutes the happiness, blessing, and bliss of the human soul that recognizes this spiritual world, which Goethe himself recognized when he said:

The spiritual world is not closed off,
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead.
Come, bathe, disciple, undaunted,
Your earthly breast in the morning glow!