The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. The Mystery of Death

[ 1 ] The [mystery of death] belongs to a field of science that is not only unpopular but can also be described as unwelcome. Many an inner, seemingly justified contradiction becomes clear here and appears fully understandable to those within this field of research. In addition to this, there is another reason why it is difficult to make oneself understood. It is commonly believed that anyone who presents this subject in a brief discussion is trying to persuade someone to adopt a certain opinion. The recently founded Anthroposophical Society has a field of research that is broader and more comprehensive than that of other research societies. Therefore, the intention cannot be to convince or persuade, but only to indicate the direction and nature of the investigations and [how] the solution to life’s mysteries can be attained.

[ 2 ] Many factors stand in the way of an unbiased judgment. The human soul, with all its interests and concerns, is engaged in nothing as deeply as in the mystery of death. But nothing can cloud the search for truth as much as a very specific desire and interest in seeing this or that solution to the mystery emerge. Does what we call life continue after death? One can approach the answer to this question in a strictly scientific manner, though quite differently from what is commonly referred to as science. Only those who, with regard to the question of death, are connected to interests beyond their own can proceed with true objectivity. The mystery of life must also be linked to the mystery of death. If the question is posed out of even the most understandable curiosity or out of an interest inherent to human nature, it cannot be resolved.

[ 3 ] Investigations into the question of death are also investigations into immortality. To discuss these questions, a certain transformation of the human being is necessary—a “spiritual chemistry.” People are reluctant to admit that a spiritual science exists. But this evening, attention should be drawn to this fact. When the chemist sets out to analyze water, he breaks it down into hydrogen and oxygen. But if he merely fantasizes about it—and he knows this—he will not succeed in breaking it down. If he accepts the dualism that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen, he does not contradict monism. Through ordinary science, even he can gain nothing about what his destiny is. What can survive the physical body is not at all [visible] in ordinary life. Just as hydrogen and oxygen are not visible in water, so too is there nothing in ordinary life that is immortal in human beings. Through a kind of spiritual chemistry, what is divine and spiritual must first be separated out. For centuries, human beings have received a kind of scientific education—not only in schools and universities, but [through] general education—which makes it impossible for people today to move beyond the immediate concerns of life not merely through faith, but through knowledge. There are not merely curious individuals but serious and honest researchers in this field. Yet the way the problem is approached today shows that, in many cases, the right paths have not been found. This is not the time to point out the significant contributions made in this regard by natural scientists such as Colonel Rochas, who conducted experiments using laboratory methods. It is interesting how Rochas, in a certain respect, comes close to what is being proposed today, but he takes an impossible, fruitless path. Spiritual science must not and cannot proceed in this way. Rochas uses a test subject, as other sciences do, but instead of external substances, he uses a medium. In the process, the soul’s external activity is lulled to sleep and suppressed, so that everything connected to the physical body is excluded. He assumes that now only the soul, only the spirit, is active. Through certain procedures, the [female] medium, who was thirty years old, is placed into a kind of sleep-like state; then he stimulates her consciousness in such a way that she lives as if she were eighteen years old. She experiences the pains of that time or learns what she learned back then, and is able to do only what she could do at that age. Then she is transported back to childhood; there she makes unskilled scribbles, as she would at the age of five or six. Rochas is also able to transport this personality to the time before her birth. Such souls then stammer forth information from a spiritual realm, which—despite all its imperfections—would be highly interesting if it were consistent with spiritual research. The journey goes further and further back; finally, he believes she is where she had lived another life. Rochas believes he has obtained several life histories in this way. These are experiments by one of the serious researchers who wish to stand firmly on the ground of science. They believe that the only valid method is one in which the object is physically present before them.

[ 4 ] Spiritual science cannot stand on this ground. Its methods are entirely of a spiritual nature, purely inner; [they are] purely spiritual-psychic processes. The spiritual researcher never makes use of a purely external object in space. But within this spiritual research, the same methods are applied as in science. One might think: How can this be so simple, so primitive? How can anything be researched in this way? But it is not that simple; “though it is easy, yet the easy is difficult.” It arises from processes that are entirely psychological. For years, one must work solely within one’s own soul in order to achieve reasonably satisfactory results—to enter into destiny through years of practice. Through years of self-sacrificing work, one first learns to direct one’s attention toward something, and second, to attain what can be described as “devotion.” What devotion means in everyday life is only the very first step toward the soul’s ability to acclimate itself to the spiritual world.

[ 5 ] Attention must be directed solely toward an object in which the entire life of the soul is concentrated. This attention also exists in everyday life, for without it, a person could not attain self-awareness, and memory is intimately connected with the capacity for attention. A thought may be weak, but one forgets less and less when one repeatedly directs one’s attention to something. Thought is the result of attention and concentration. It is through memory that a person, with a certain sense of self, immerses themselves in the physical world. This enables us to elevate our inner life. In everyday life, a person develops attention by allowing themselves to be stimulated by something external. This is the beginning of the soul’s activity known as attention. Self-observation is necessary; it is supported by very specific soul exercises. In order to learn what these consist of, one must become independent of any external stimulation of attention, divert one’s inner life from everything else, and direct it toward a subject of one’s own choosing. It is not what one concentrates on that matters, but what one does—that is what matters. Again and again, over a long period of time, again and again, [one concentrates] on the content one has chosen for oneself. Then, little by little, one has an inner experience; then one discovers what the soul does when it is attentive. And then it is attentive without content, attentive without paying attention to anything at all; this is what one develops as inner activity. To eradicate the content, to suppress it entirely, to think of nothing at all, and yet to have the same state within the soul—then one knows what attention is. The true clairvoyant method, which leads into spiritual research, is based on enhancing those soul capacities that are present in every soul. Attention grows ever stronger. As a result, the entire life of the soul is transformed. Then a person senses how the life of the soul exists within the central nervous system and the other nervous system. Then one senses an entity that is present within the human being apart from the body. In this way, one gradually separates the life of the soul inwardly from the body. Finally, one feels: one is a duality. At first, one thought it was a product of the body. The human etheric body is then what can be observed. One separates it from the physical body. Only then can one make observations of the etheric body. One experiences something like the following. It can happen in everyday life or upon waking from sleep. This experience can occur in a hundred different ways, but essentially it is like this: one can experience it in the midst of daily life or right out of sleep. Ordinary words to describe it are merely stammering. It is as if something were happening at that very moment, as if lightning were striking and destroying the body. When the body is separated, the life of the soul becomes independent. At that moment, one realizes what spiritual researchers of all times have described: on the path of spiritual research, one comes close to death. One comes to know the independence of the soul life, and now one has reached that stage where one lives spiritually in the etheric body. What one then experiences can only be described as a pathological state of the soul, as a hallucination, and so on, if one is unfamiliar with it. My book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* discusses this. It cannot be compared to mere imagination. What flows into one’s soul life there is like images, a kind of dream imagery. But what matters is not that one calls them that, but that one learns to read the world into which one is now entering. It is like a letter in which, although all the letters are familiar, what one comes to know through the writing can be something new. The spiritual researcher has a world of images before him, but he learns to read the spiritual world that lies behind it. It can only be said with a semblance of justification by today’s dream researchers that one might be confronted with realities from the past and mistake them for new images. But the state of the soul, the soul’s mood, is different. It knows what the entirety of ordinary life’s memory consists of: a panoramic view of earthly life up to the moment when one stands face to face with all earthly life or personal life. Then one recognizes: Life has the urge to dissolve upward into the general etheric life.

[ 6 ] If one continues to heighten one’s awareness, observing how life dissolves and feels the urge to dissolve into the universal, then one recognizes what is initially unique to the human being when he passes through the gate of death. Through further inner development, one not only recognizes one’s own etheric life but also learns to discern the surroundings. This path leads—albeit for only a short time and with varying duration for each individual—to a view of this life as a panorama. To progress further, one must continue to explore spiritual chemistry.

[ 7 ] But it is not only attention that must be cultivated, but also the complete surrender of the soul’s life. This surrender consists in a person renouncing everything. What naturally ceases during sleep: One must bring [it] about voluntarily—the surrender of all muscular activity, speech, thought, and judgment, which also occurs during sleep. This surrender can be intensified if it is practiced for years, if everything that is voluntary is suppressed for years. Even what is not voluntary can be suppressed: the activity of the heart, the activity of breathing—which are otherwise beyond the reach of consciousness. One can bring the physical body into a state of absolute inactivity. Then one does not feel transported into an external world, into something that seeks to draw one in or pull one out, but rather one feels that one has descended into the depths of one’s own soul life. What one then comes to know is the human astral body. Self-awareness—all thinking, feeling, and willing—then appears as mirror images. Now one penetrates to what they reflect; one enters the astral body. What one experiences on this path has nothing to do with ordinary desires and the like; one realizes this. The path leads one, in full self-observation, beyond birth and death, revealing to us—like an emerging world of imagination—memory as something that was not there before. Linked to this is a weaning away from the desires associated with earthly life: satisfaction, joy, and the lust for life derived from what is attached to the physical body. These desires remain for some time. But through the experience of realizing that desire can only be satisfied through the body—for example, culinary desires—one learns what tasks the astral body has after death. Then one gains the ability to survey the span of time—decades, varying from person to person—and comes to recognize not only what lies ahead but also what lies behind. In life, there are many things that cause us pain; one would want to spare oneself this pain. Yet the spiritual researcher does not dream when he looks into the world before conception and sees that the human being has brought this pain upon himself—what is called “creating one’s own karma”—that we have brought this evil fate and these painful disappointments upon ourselves. This does not correspond to our present desires. One could be critical and even overly critical and still not be satisfied with the ordinary until one goes back to a period when a previous earthly life occurred—when we were in a different language, a different environment, and entirely different circumstances. As improbable and unpopular as it may be, one also comes to gain insight into what a previous earthly life was like. This claim can be made only under two conditions: Either the person making such a claim has no sense of truth, or they must possess a sense of truth akin to that found in the most rigorous mathematics. Much nonsense has been perpetrated in this way. One often hears that a person was this or that in a past life. But when true recollection occurs, it is impossible to form a conception of past earthly lives based on mere wishes. An image may emerge: “That was you”—but in such a way that no one could raise any objections. This is how the mysteries of life are solved: “That was you; this is what you looked like; this is what you were capable of.”

[ 8 ] But it happens at an age when there’s nothing one can do about it. There’s nothing to be gained from it except the realization. There’s no such thing as that comforting “That was you.” One knows then: A certain form of retribution is necessary, but at that moment, it’s impossible to make amends.

[ 9 ] An attempt has been made here to outline the paths and findings of spiritual research in a form that must be brief. Not in a sensational way to convince, but simply to inspire. These experiences reveal that human beings recognize they have a spiritual-soul core that undergoes repeated earthly lives as a consequence of previous earthly lives; and thus their destiny is the result of past earthly lives. The present life is guided by this, so that through certain actions one may make amends for what one has inflicted upon this or that person. The spiritual researcher first seeks what is immortal within the human being, and finds it when he applies the appropriate methods. He recognizes this within a thoroughly significant context; he perceives earthly life as something that envelops the deeper core life like a shell. To do this, one must train one’s memory to recall, for example, what one has experienced since birth. Human beings come from a purely spiritual state and return to a purely spiritual state. We exist in an intermediate state within the physical body. One should not ask, “Is the human being immortal?”—but rather seek out immortality. What the materialistic thinker perceives of the soul is not immortal. Thus, spiritual research [should be viewed] as the path into human immortality; it draws attention to the results of feeling and mood, to the bliss found in religious inner life. But it is also what makes life strong and powerful for the outer world.

[ 10 ] It would be indecent to speak of the effects of the life of the soul; but the path must be proclaimed. It is precisely those people who are completely imbued with the Spirit who often fail to recognize the path.

[ 11 ] What the natural sciences say about heredity is the same as what the spiritual sciences say about repeated earthly lives.