The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. The Mysteries of Life

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! I deeply regret that I cannot deliver these remarks in the local language; it is simply not possible for me to do so, but the friends for whom I am giving a few private lectures felt that I should be allowed to deliver this lecture in German.

[ 2 ] The mysteries of life! The approach to contemplating [these mysteries] is still relatively new. [It is, for the most part, still unknown outside] the circle of anthroposophical friends here in the city. What I have to say is also still unknown and relatively unpopular. … [I am aware] of how many, many objections can be raised against what I have to say. … In such a short time, I can only offer hints regarding the important questions, and I ask that you listen to the lecture from this perspective. …

[ 3 ] That life is full of riddles within riddles is something every soul comes to realize upon reflection … The most important riddles of life are those we encounter every day, indeed every hour. [I would like to begin] by approaching the most important mysteries—those which, if they [find] an answer, will also answer the others… Two are among the most important mysteries of life: … One is called “death”… The human soul senses that if the veil over it can be lifted even slightly… people associate the word “immortality” with it. Thus, everything of the greatest significance—everything [important] … [lies] before our soul.

[ 4 ] Another mystery is the fate of human beings. A person is born, surrounded by caring hands, with innate abilities and talents, and one gets the impression that these talents and abilities can develop. … Another enters life in such a way that one can see he will accomplish little in life. Faced with both, people ask themselves: Why? Ever since human souls have been capable of thought, attempts have been made to find answers in manifold ways to the questions of fate and death …

[ 5 ] A scientific education spanning up to three centuries [has led to the following]. What the humanities have to offer today is not yet understood, because they are considered to be in opposition to the natural sciences. – One might believe that when hearing what I am about to say today, but not upon deeper reflection. – The scholar of the humanities senses that questions of the soul, too, demand a new answer through the natural sciences. He will realize that, through the natural sciences, humanity has transformed these mysteries into higher, greater [mysteries]. – [The same is true of religion.] What [once] was a source of spiritual joy [becomes just as much of a mystery through natural science].

[ 6 ] I would like to compare what science has brought us; I would like to compare [it] to the fruits we use for sowing. [We grow most fruits for consumption.] But we must use some of our fruits in a completely different way than the fruits we eat; we must nurture and care for them for sowing. – Some of the [spiritual and soul-related] fruits that are nurtured and cared for [serve] as seeds for a new soul life.

[ 7 ] Spiritual science is not meant to conflict with any of the views mentioned—… [It is like the] Copernican worldview: [People] believed their world would come to an end if they admitted [that it is not the sun that revolves around the Earth, but the Earth that revolves around the sun] … If what is to be said here is [interpreted in a similar way], then it has been confused with other movements. [But religious people will come to terms with the new teaching, just as they did with Copernicus’s teaching.] … How spiritual research presents itself today: … [Let us illustrate this with the example of a plant.] If we place a plant [before us] and observe what connects its beginning with its end, [then we can say]: … We have seen it grow and flourish, and how a new plant emerges from it the following year. We understand the beginning by looking at the end. … In a similar way, the spiritual researcher applies this to human beings. However, he must not seek his research in people’s outward appearance, but rather within their inner being … Here he encounters misunderstandings.

[ 8 ] Lodge, the famous physicist, … [and others,] who are conducting similar research … like researchers of the—the stars … In some cases, they have already moved on to [questioning]. – I need only point to the ominous term “spiritism.” [They seek to] objectively [capture] [the spiritual]. It shows how people seek the eternal in the temporal. Experiments involving the spirit and the soul. [Spiritualism reveals the urge to explore the eternal world of the spirit, but it does so through external experiments, which is why it errs.] … That which spiritual science recognizes, however, takes place within an experiment that is purely spiritual and soul-related. This leads to the much-discussed question: What is the soul? What is the spirit? …

[ 9 ] [The conclusion of spiritual science is that human life is not confined to birth and death; far-reaching forces accumulate and take effect within this physical life. At death, the soul breaks through the barriers of physical life and attains a spiritual life. This is the solution to the great mysteries of death, immortality, and destiny. Through this solution, light is shed on the whole of human life. Hidden within every soul, in relation to these mysteries, lies the question: Why?]

[ 10 ] If one relies on experiencing [this solution] … [and] only by acknowledging this does one arrive at an insight; one only then advances to a new experience of these questions. Thus one learns that it—[the soul]—has nothing to do with coming into being or passing away [to do with] coming into being or passing away. Just as we direct our gaze to a plant’s growth, to how it forms a new plant—… [so] the spiritual researcher directs his spiritual gaze to the course of human life, and he sees how spiritual forces act within matter, how they are already present in the spiritual realm even before birth. … Just as human life unfolds and its spiritual forces concentrate toward death—as with the plant—so do we concentrate the germinative forces that remain beyond the threshold of death. … [After the soul] has spent [a time] in the purely spiritual life between death and a new birth, … [it returns].

[ 11 ] When we consider the mystery of the child and what develops within the growing child from the inside out—[we recognize] what transforms the clumsy limbs into skillful ones. … [This reveals that it] has been transformed into a core within the spiritual life. In the spiritual realm, it gathers the seed forces, and when the time of maturity has come for it, it draws toward its father and mother—toward being born. When we have reflected on the human being, we say to ourselves: That which has taken shape within us as a core has remained with us from a previous life. … [And when life draws to a close], when the skin wrinkles and the hair turns gray, we see not only aging but also the concentration of the spiritual, which continues to work through the gateway of life toward a new life.

[ 12 ] [These are apparently] assertions that may seem nonsensical to someone immersed in today’s educational system. … [But they arise in spiritual science through the] intensification of the soul’s life. – In order to make myself understood, I would like to mention a third point. – In life, we accept what is familiar as not so mysterious. – Death, fate; what fate brings is unfamiliar to us. – The mystery of waking and sleeping. … Just as the mystery [of life and death] is [waking and sleeping]. Waking [and sleeping]—these are compared to [life and] death. We must content ourselves, due to the limited time, with only hinting at what the mystery of sleep is—how we feel the darkness and lose consciousness. … [We know] that the instincts can cease, and with them [consciousness], when darkness spreads over the soul. [But life does not continue during sleep.] – Spiritual research shows that it is important [and correct] for the soul and the spiritual to leave the body during sleep. It concludes that the soul is independent of the body. – What sleep accomplishes in human beings, the spiritual researcher seeks to achieve through work. The spiritual researcher must learn to live consciously in what a person does unconsciously during sleep. The things I have to list are simple. … [One might well say]: Others may believe that this is how one enters the spiritual world, and yet it is true: Meditation … concentration … [contemplation], [that is the path]. What the spiritual researcher strives for [through this] is to influence his will in such a way that he does voluntarily what a person does involuntarily. Likewise, [he] must be able to put a stop to every impression from the sense organs. How to achieve such devotion and strengthening of the will—you will find it in my book: “How Does One Attain …”; that one devotes oneself [for example] to certain symbolic images. Everything we experience in ordinary life does not lead us to spiritual research. It leads us to transform our lives [through careful exercise of the spiritual powers]. One forms an image; one should place an image that one can fully grasp within one’s field of vision. For example, if one imagines the light and meditates on the thought “Wisdom lives in the light,” this is so that [the image] does not master us, but rather that we master it. Patience is part of this, holding onto the image for a long time—and then thinking of nothing at all. When, in a life of self-denial and inner devotion, one practices detaching the power of thought from all that has happened, and [the human being] lives solely in the power of thought, then one engages in something like spiritual chemistry. [Just as] water consists of hydrogen and oxygen, [so the human being consists of the physical and the spiritual-psychic]. He then extracts the spiritual-soul aspect. — When one lives oneself out, one knows that one did not bring this about [alone]—one knows that the spirit first gave life to the body, that the spirit detaches itself from life in order to use the body again upon awakening. It may be that we perform this spiritual chemistry without feeling it. At the moment of falling asleep, one may notice that at times a kind of mist spreads, as the limbs grow heavy; then comes something like a jolt that courses through one like a feeling of inner bliss over what one has done that is morally good. For the spiritual researcher, this feeling can emerge just as a thought does when falling asleep. He feels himself surrendering the body and all its functions to itself. He feels his inner experience outside his body—the beating of the heart. The person looks back and realizes, “That was [me]…” [I would like to point out an] experience that can occur in a hundred different ways. It is the essence of what a person experiences—a shattering moment—whether in the middle of the day or even in sleep. The [situation] matters little. [One can put it in words]: “It is as if lightning had struck my body.” – Then one has experienced [the] independence of the body… From that moment on, one knows what spiritual researchers meant when they said that one approaches the gateway of death. One has come to know what lives within oneself—the soul. As the researcher places the soul before himself, the soul demonstrates the power that prevents it from perishing.

[ 13 ] The power of speech … [that is] what our organs of speech create for us—one can detach oneself from this power. … If [through silence] one can examine this inner process—such as gestures and body language—if one detaches the power of speech while retaining everything that language produces, [then one reaches a further stage of spiritual research]. Science has proven that humans do not think without language. [We] then experience this outside our bodies. Whoever experiences this inwardly [discovers how their consciousness expands to encompass previous earthly lives]. … Bit by bit, through spiritual chemistry, that which passes from life to life is burned away. What a person experiences in their dreams is connected to their life of desire.

[ 14 ] For example: In life, we encounter fate. Fate brings us things that cause us great suffering; but if we examine our fate from a purely spiritual standpoint, we see something different. We see that these were pre-birth desires that fate brings to us. We prepare our destiny by telling ourselves that our soul had to experience this hardship. – We are the smiths of our own lives. Some skill has not yet been developed in our previous life; let us nurture our soul so that it can make up for this in the new life … The awareness of an immoral act is transformed into the impulse to make amends for it.

[ 15 ] Anyone who truly perceives a past earthly life in their soul is conscientious. When one looks back on such a life: At the age of 40, one learns to recognize what one can use, but can no longer make use of that insight. Least of all can one use this insight to seek fame. In a life filled with gain, one has often greatly sinned against abilities one already possessed.

[ 16 ] Eternity does not appear to us as if it were an infinite line, but rather as one life following another. … When misfortune befalls us, we answer the question [of “why”] by saying to ourselves: We sought misfortune during death and a new birth. As a young man, the son perceives his father’s death as misfortune, but in old age he views it from a different perspective and says: Thank God—otherwise I would not have become the person [I am now]. … Spiritual science solves these mysteries for us by giving us, as it were, an elixir of life … We will grow into life. The concepts that spiritual science gives us come alive within us. Immortality is given to us not merely as a theory, but as an elixir of life. … From the perspective of spiritual contemplation, pain can still be transformed into inner strength and inner bliss. Spiritual science gradually leads to the experience of the spiritual-soul life. [Life becomes a preparation for a new life. In summary, we can say]:

They speak to the human senses
The things in the vastness of space
[They change as time passes.
Through experience, the human soul
Penetrates the boundless expanse of space,
and, undeterred by the passage of time
Enters the realm of eternity.]