The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. The Mystery of Death as the Key to the Enigma of Life

Article in: “Dagens Nyheter,” January 3, 1910

[ 1 ] Life and Death. A Theosophical Lecture at the [Royal Swedish] Academy of Sciences. At the invitation of the Theosophical Society in Scandinavia, Stockholm, the well-known Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture on Sunday in the lecture hall of the Academy of Sciences before an audience that filled only half the room,

[ 2 ] Even those who do not hold theosophical views must have been swept away by the power, warmth, and deep conviction with which the lecture was delivered. In clear and precise German—though occasionally marred by the tendency toward endlessly long German sentences—Dr. Steiner delivered his lecture off the cuff, presenting the human states of sleep and wakefulness, life, and death from a theosophical perspective.

[ 3 ] Dr. Steiner, a thin, clean-shaven man with an almost ascetic appearance, began his speech calmly, solemnly, and composedly. His left hand fiddled with his pince-nez, which hung from a string, while his right hand occasionally pointed out into the room. But as the lecture progressed, his voice grew warmer and louder. His right hand alone was not enough for his gestures; he spread both arms wide, and both hands helped to symbolically shape for the audience what the speaker wished to illustrate. His voice rose and the speech gained more and more momentum, flowing without interruption in perfect, beautiful movements, as only a natural orator can produce. And when the final words—a quote from Goethe—were delivered with great pathos, the audience sat in silence for a moment, completely captivated, before the applause began.

[ 4 ] “Human beings must learn to see death as something other than annihilation,” said the speaker; “they must work to see death as an opportunity for higher development.” There is nothing that justifies our belief that life consists solely of the visible world. When a person falls asleep, it is their invisible part—their spirit, their self, the astral being—that leaves the physical body of life in order to gather new strength for further development in the spiritual world. When death occurs, the body has outlived its usefulness as a medium for spiritual activities; it can no longer be trained toward anything higher. Just as in childhood the human spiritual self can develop all the potential of the physical body only gradually, so old age gradually drives the astral body out of a physical instrument that can no longer be developed. A person’s corpse is the physical body as it exists without the life-giving, formative spirit. And after death, this spirit returns to the invisible world from which it came for the purpose of development and to which it returns for further development in other forms of existence. Just as life can arise only from life, the spirit-soul (the spiritual-soul aspect) can arise only from something spiritual that existed previously. When death comes in this way, a person should be glad that it exists as an opportunity for further and richer development.

[ 5 ] Dr. Steiner will give two more lectures here, covering closely related topics and illustrative questions that arise from the views he developed in the first one.