The Rudolf Steiner Archive

25. Death and Immortality

“Svenska Dagbladet” (?), Stockholm, April 19, 1912. Translation

[ 1 ] Dr. Rudolf Steiner. A renowned lecturer before a Stockholm audience. [...] Yesterday’s lecture: “Death and Immortality.” Dr. Steiner’s lecture on Thursday evening was delivered in German and dealt with death and immortality. The hall was well attended, with an audience that included many members of the Theosophical Society. Dr. Steiner is, as is well known, a prominent theosophist. With the power of his eloquence, Dr. Steiner captivated his audience for nearly two hours. There is something commanding about his bearing and his art of presentation, and his dark, ascetic face, with its rapid changes of expression, has a commanding air. An excess of gestures, however, detracts to some extent from the harmonious impression of the speaker’s personality.

[ 2 ] Just as in Giordano Bruno’s time, the speaker said, the new worldview was based on facts that had been discovered and were at odds with the contemporary perception of nature—which was based on sensory impressions—so too today, theosophy, or the science of the life of the soul, points beyond the limits of experience. In life, one feels equipped to work and become a useful individual. One has a certain emotional perception of fate, and the external world of the senses appeals to one or repels one. Through experience, a person becomes better and more mature. Will this maturity then dissolve into nothingness? That is the anxious question. Materialism speaks of the personality’s usefulness to culture, but the human soul is not satisfied with this answer. The science of the soul, which is as rigorous in its methods as science itself, asserts that immortality is a characteristic of our soul and also seeks to prove it. There is a core to the human soul that, under normal circumstances, is obscured by what the soul experiences. In the liminal state between sleep and wakefulness, one can sense the innermost soul, and dreams reveal its existence. The soul works to transform our outer organism, and this work finds expression in dreams. Not everyone is naturally inclined to be a researcher in the spirit world, but there are scientists who are highly advanced in this field. The one who has found the center of their soul is armed against all worries and is the master of their own destiny. This is difficult, but necessary. For such a person, it is not difficult to trace the life of their soul from birth and beyond. The forces connected to our life lie as a power of growth within the seed; life is a time of growth and blossoming, and when death comes, these forces have grown and matured and are ready to give new life. The teaching about the soul’s entry into a new body explains the continuity of its forces. The fact that a person has no memory of a previous life stems from the fact that they do not focus their thoughts on the memory of that existence. However, there are people who have memories of past reincarnations, although it is still not possible to scientifically prove that things are as they say. A time will come when education will focus on the science of the soul, and many problems will then be solved. The soul encompasses the worlds within itself and is distinguished by its compassion and love in connection with the worlds.

[ 3 ] The lecture, which more than anything else resembled a sermon on eternity, was listened to with reverence by those present. In the evening, Dr. Steiner will speak on Christ in the Twentieth Century.

Unknown Stockholm newspaper, April 19, 1912 [?], translation

[ 4 ] A Lecture by Dr. Steiner on Spiritual Science Last night, at the invitation of the Theosophical Central Office, Dr. Rudolf Steiner delivered a lecture in German on the topic “Death and Immortality.” The lecture, which took place in the auditorium of the Academy of Sciences, was attended by a very large audience. The audience showed great interest and was clearly completely engrossed.

[ 5 ] The speaker began by emphasizing that those who are now engaged in research in the spiritual realm are met with the same lack of understanding as the pioneering natural scientists of Copernicus’s time. Just as it was difficult for people back then to believe that there was anything beyond the celestial vault that we see with our own eyes, so too do they now find it difficult to imagine an existence that is not limited by birth and death. But, said the speaker, the most beautiful and noble things that an individual experiences in the course of his or her life cannot be passed on to others; they remain a personal possession. Is that then to be destroyed and wasted by death? Physics teaches us that everything is indestructible and is subject only to transformation. This law, which applies to material things, also applies to spiritual ones.

[ 6 ] We realize, for example, in dreams that it is possible to connect with the spiritual world. There, the subconscious comes to the fore, and we experience things we would never learn in real life. But even while awake, one can gain insight into the spiritual world by strictly abstracting oneself from the external world and concentrating all thoughts, feelings, and the will on penetrating the center of the soul. Just as a natural scientist conducts experiments with natural objects in his laboratory, so must one conduct spiritual field experiments using the instrument of the soul. The lecture concluded with some outlooks on the future, in which the speaker expressed his belief that every person would, in this way, gain a glimpse into experiences from their past lives.