The Rudolf Steiner Archive

17. The Inner Nature of Human Beings and Life Between Death and Rebirth

Question: What should you do if you've lost God?

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: One cannot actually lose God, but only one’s conception of God. One should strive to deepen one’s conception of God—one could also say: to elevate it. Every conception of God merely approaches God; none can encompass Him. People speak, for example, of pantheism and theism as if one were mutually exclusive with the other; in reality, however, one is both, for by day a person is a pantheist, and by night more of a theist. Pantheism means experiencing the deity as active in the world. [In] theism, one experiences—as in a clairvoyant slumber—how the deity watches over the world. One cannot rely on proof, but “whomever strives with all their might, we can redeem.” One must simply not wish to remain stagnant, but [must] strive to transcend every point of view. Although there is only one truth, it is manifold in its manifestations. Above all, one needs inner peace, security, and vitality, which are acquired through spiritual science. So the answer is essentially this: deepening one’s understanding of spiritual science, not an abstract answer.

Question: Is the practice of table turning acceptable, and can messages from the spirit world be conveyed through it?

[ 2 ] Rudolf Steiner: It must be said that the spirit world is a realm of the spirit. Anyone who wants to learn about the spirit world through table-turning is like someone who wants to learn mathematics but goes to a parrot instead of a mathematician.

Question: Must a person experience spiritual-divine rebirth in every life?

[ 3 ] Rudolf Steiner: The rebirth one has experienced in one lifetime bears fruit for subsequent earthly lives, but need not be the same as its seed. What mystics call “spiritual rebirth” may be transformed into poetic or [other] artistic abilities in the next life.

Question: Do both spirit and matter originate from a spiritual source?

[ 4 ] Rudolf Steiner: Read my books on this subject, such as *Truth and Science*, *The Philosophy of Freedom*, and so on. Question: Do Neptune and Uranus belong to our planetary system or to another one?

[ 5 ] Rudolf Steiner: They do not belong to our planetary system in the same sense as the other planets, but have, as it were, migrated here.

Question: Where are the dead?

[ 6 ] Rudolf Steiner: In my lecture, I deliberately avoided speaking about space and time in this context, for these [categories] belong solely to the sensory world; in the spiritual world, time is experienced in an entirely different way. In the nineteenth century, even the materialists said: If all souls are transported into space after death, the world will soon be overcrowded. But that is nonsense, for the law of impenetrability belongs only to the physical world.

Question: How does what was said in the lecture relate to the doctrine of the Resurrection and the Last Judgment?

[ 7 ] Rudolf Steiner: Some people believe that a passage in the Bible says this or that, but that is not the point here; rather, [the point is] direct spiritual research.

Question: Can souls be helped after death? What about people who have committed suicide?

[ 8 ] Rudolf Steiner: This is something that can only be discussed in more oral [in-person] conversations.

Question: My brother Theodor Schmidt left on [gap in the transcript] 1898. Within fourteen days, he had gone mad.

[ 9 ] Rudolf Steiner: The “I” is not dead between falling asleep and waking up during the night. [In] Leave It Alone, Institutional Treatment.

Question: If a man and a woman love each other very much, will one of them soon follow the other?

[ 10 ] Rudolf Steiner: In [such] a case, even before incarnation, one has already asked for an incarnation that does not last longer than that of the other. Nor will you dispute that some men and women live on for a long time after the death of their partner. I don’t want to speak of Bluebeard at all, but there are indeed people who have quickly found comfort in another love. Inner connections exist between all people—in both a good and an evil sense, in love and hate, in an understanding and an un understanding sense. Our aim should be to establish spiritual bonds within the physical body—bonds that are spiritual forces. Our strength grows, our power becomes greater, when we unite with another person in physical life through love, friendship, or other forms of togetherness. If one strips away the forms that belong solely to the earthly realm, what remains are the forces that live on here and in the spiritual world. Consciousness after death is much stronger, with the exception of the period when consciousness, as it were, rejects the outer world; in return, the inner world is all the more powerful. The experience during the “midnight hour of existence” is also much more intense than consciousness can be within the body, even when it is an inner one. All fruits reveal themselves in eternity: what we experience in solitude, and [what we experience] in communion with others.