The Rudolf Steiner Archive

17. On Communicating with the Dead

[ 1 ] (Lecture notes)

[ 2 ] The relationship between life and death is often misunderstood. One frequently finds in theosophical writings the observation that the human soul and spirit can disappear completely. For example, it is said that due to a certain amount of evil that the human soul accumulates, that soul may disappear in the course of evolution. In particular, it is often emphasized as if black magicians who have committed much evil were virtually wiped out in this very existence.

[ 3 ] Those who have long been involved in our endeavors know that I have always opposed such claims. For we must, above all, firmly hold fast to the fact that everything we call “death” here in the physical world has no significance whatsoever for the supersensible world; certainly not for the world that, as the nearest supersensible world, borders on our own. I would also like to draw attention to this fact from a certain point of view.

[ 4 ] The science that deals here in the physical world with physical things arrives at all sorts of laws, at all sorts of interrelationships within this physical world. What one can discover through these laws regarding the entities and phenomena that surround us is, after all, nothing other than the regularity of external sensory reality. If, for example, we examine a flower using ordinary scientific methods, we come to recognize the physical-chemical laws at work within the plant. But there is always something left over that eludes science, and that is life itself. Certainly, in recent times, a few particularly imaginative scientists have devoted themselves to formulating all sorts of hypotheses about how plant life might be understood in terms of mere inanimate substances. But all of this will very soon be recognized as a mistake, for in physical science, grasping life remains merely an ideal. We are learning more and more about the laws of chemistry and so on, but not about life itself. Thus, for the physical powers of cognition, the exploration of life is indeed an ideal, but with these powers of cognition, life cannot be explored, because it is something that flows in from the superphysical world into the physical world and cannot reveal its own laws within this world.

[ 5 ] Just as life relates to the physical world, so does death relate to the supersensible world—only there in relation to the will. No act of will, no impulse of will can ever lead in the supersensible worlds to what we know here in the physical world as death. In all supersensible worlds, at most a longing for death may arise, but death can never occur in the supersensible worlds. There is no death in the supersensible world. This is particularly poignant for the human soul when one immediately grasps: Yes, then, in essence, all beings of the higher hierarchies can never know death, if death is something that can only be experienced on Earth. And just as the biblical text rightly states that the angels veil their faces from the mysteries of physical birth, so it is also correct to say that the angels veil their faces from the mysteries of death. And the being we know as the most significant impeller of Earth’s development, the Christ-being, should be the only being in the divine worlds to come to know death. All other divine-spiritual beings do not know death; they know it only as a transition from one form to another. For this, the Christ had to descend to Earth to undergo death. Thus, of all the superphysical beings above the human being, the Christ is the only being who has become acquainted with death through his own experience. As I said, when one considers this problem of the experience of death in connection with the Christ, it has a particularly profound effect.

[ 6 ] In fact, it is true that human beings themselves live in this supersensible world, where there is no death, once they have passed through the gate of death. They can pass through here, but they cannot be annihilated, for they are then received into worlds where annihilation cannot exist.

[ 7 ] What can be regarded as analogous to death in the supraphysical world is something entirely different from death. It is what, if one wishes to use human terms, must be described with the word “loneliness.” And death can never be the annihilation of anything that occurs in the superphysical world, but loneliness does occur. — Solitude in the supersensible world is like death here; it is not annihilation, but it is worse than solitude here. It is a looking back upon one’s own being. And what that means, one realizes only when it occurs—this state of knowing nothing but oneself.

[ 8 ] Take, for example, a human being who, while here on Earth, has developed little of what might be called sympathy for other people, and who has essentially lived only for himself. Once such a being has passed through the gate of death, he finds it difficult, above all, to get to know other human beings. Such a being can live together with other beings in the supersensible world, but notice nothing of these other beings. It is filled only with the contents of its own soul; it sees only what it experiences within itself. It may happen that a person who, out of excessive selfishness, has kept aloof from all human love here on earth, passes through the gate of death and then has nothing to live on after death but the memory of their last earthly life; that they cannot have new experiences because they know no other beings, come into contact with no other beings, and are entirely dependent on themselves. For through our very nature as human beings, we are in fact preparing ourselves to have a very special world of our own after death.

[ 9 ] Here on Earth, since we are not taught by science—for science can only teach us about what a human being is no longer, since it knows only the corpse—here, so to speak, a human being does not actually know himself. The brain thinks, but it cannot think of itself. We see a part of ourselves; a little more of it when we look in the mirror; but that is, after all, only the outer side. Here, human beings do not live within themselves; they live with the outer world, which acts upon their senses. Through ourselves, through what we can experience here, we prepare ourselves to expand into the macrocosm, to become the macrocosm ourselves, to become what we see here. Here we see the moon. Then, in the life after death, we expand in such a way that we are the moon, just as we are now our brain. We expand to become Saturn in such a way that we are Saturn, just as we are now our spleen. The human being becomes the macrocosm. When the soul has left the body, it spreads out over the entire planetary system, so that all human beings simultaneously fill the same space; they are intertwined, but they know nothing of one another. It is the spiritual relationships alone that make it possible for us to know one another. We are already preparing for this through our life here on Earth, so that we may expand across the entire world, which we see here in its sensory reflection. But what, then, is our world?

[ 10 ] Just as our world is now during the day—with mountains and rivers, trees, animals, and minerals—just as this world surrounds us and we live within it, so too are we then immersed in our own world, and this world is our organism. These are our individual organs. And our world is ourselves. We observe ourselves from the perspective of our surroundings. This begins immediately after death in the etheric body. There we have the tableau of our own life before us. If the human being were not to establish connections here with other beings—above all with other human beings, and, as is now increasingly to be achieved through Spiritual Science, with the beings of the higher hierarchies—then what would happen is that between death and new birth he would have nothing to do but constantly look at himself. And I say this not to state a triviality, but because the apparent triviality here is something deeply unsettling: it is not exactly a desirable sight to spend many centuries merely gazing at oneself. For we ourselves then become a world unto ourselves. But what expands this self of ours into a wider world are the relationships we have established here on earth. That is what earthly life is for: to develop relationships and connections that then continue beyond death. For everything that makes us a social being in the spiritual world, we must establish here. In the spiritual world, human beings experience the fear of loneliness as a torment. And this fear can, in a certain sense, always befall us again, for between death and a new birth we pass through various stages, so to speak, within which—even if we have acquired a certain sociability in the preceding state—we can fall back into loneliness in the next state. The period immediately following death is indeed such that we can actually only have good relationships with those who have remained here on Earth or who have died at a time not far removed from our own time of death. The closest relationships extend across death. And in this regard, much can indeed be accomplished by those who have remained here, by the so-called living; for the one who remains behind, because relationships exist between him and the deceased, can convey news to this deceased from the physical world, convey news of his own insights into the spiritual world. This is possible above all through reading aloud to the dead. We can render the greatest service to a deceased person when we sit down, with the mental image of the deceased before our soul, and quietly read a book from Spiritual Science to them, instructing them. One can also convey to them one’s own thoughts, which one has taken in, always vividly imagining the mental image of the deceased. We must not be stingy with this; in doing so, we bridge the chasm that separates us from our dead. Not only in the most extreme cases, but in every case, we can do good for the dead. This is a comforting feeling that can ease the pain of the passing of a loved one.

[ 11 ] Well, my dear friends, the more we enter the supersensible world, the more the individual details cease to exist. In the astral world, we still find individual relationships; but the higher we ascend, the more we find that what exists between individual beings ceases to exist. There are only beings; the relationships between them are spiritual relationships, and we must also have these relationships if we are not to be lonely. But that is the mission of Earth: that human beings may form these relationships here; otherwise, they remain lonely in the spiritual world. For the immediate time after death, it is the kinship and friendship relationships that we have established here in our coexistence with other human beings that continue beyond death and constitute our world. For example, if one explores the world where the dead dwell with clairvoyant vision, one can find such a deceased person together with those whom he can follow here on Earth. In the case of many people today, one can see how they live with those who have recently died, or with those who died ten years before or after them. One can see how many live together with a number of ancestors with whom they were blood relatives. This is a sight that often presents itself to the seer. The deceased joins ancestors who have been dead for centuries. But this is only for a certain time. Afterward, however, the person would feel immensely lonely again if other relationships did not prevail—relationships that are indeed more distant, but which nevertheless prepare the person to be a social being in the spiritual world. Within our movement, we have a principle in this regard that arises from a cosmic task: to shape human relationships with one another as diversely as possible. That is why we do not practice anthroposophy merely by having individuals give lectures. We strive to bring people together in the Society in such a way that personal relationships also form, and these relationships are also valid for the supersensible world. So that by belonging to a certain current within the Society here, a person creates connections for the other side. But a time comes when much more general relationships are necessary. There comes a time when souls feel lonely—those who have passed through the gate of death without a moral state of mind, without moral concepts, who here in physical existence have denied the moral state of mind. People with a moral state of mind are, in fact, here on our Earth simply by virtue of being moral people, of greater value than immoral people. For all of humanity on Earth, a moral person is of greater value than an immoral person, just as a healthy stomach cell, for example, is of greater value to the whole person than a diseased one. One cannot explain in detail exactly what the value of a moral person consists of for all of humanity, or what the harm of an immoral person consists of, but you will understand me. A person without a moral disposition is a diseased member of humanity. This means, however, that through this immoral disposition, they make themselves increasingly alien to other people. To be moral is at the same time to recognize that one has relationships with all people. Therefore, universal love for humanity is a matter of course for all moral people. Immoral people reach a point some time after death where they feel lonely as a result of their immorality. So there is a phase where only our moral state of mind can relieve us of the torments of loneliness.

[ 12 ] And so, when we observe people spread out in the macrocosm after death, we find that it is indeed the immoral people who feel lonely, while the moral people find connection with others who, in a certain sense, share their moral mental images. Just as people here on earth come together in nations or other groups, so we find among those living between death and a new birth—when we observe them with the eye of a seer—that they too form groups there, but that they are divided according to shared moral concepts and feelings. People with the same moral sentiments come together in groups and then live sociably between death and a new birth.

[ 13 ] Then comes a phase of development in which everyone feels lonely, even if they possess moral concepts and feelings, when they lack religious mental images. Religious mental images are the preparation for social life in the supersensible world during a specific phase of life between death and a new birth. And here we find once again that people who separate themselves from religious contexts and sentiments find themselves condemned to loneliness. We find people with similar religious beliefs coming together in groups. But then there comes a time when it is no longer enough to have lived in a religious community; there comes a time when one can feel lonely again. This is a time when important things are taking place between death and a new birth. It is the time when we either feel lonely, despite religious fellowship with like-minded people, or when we gain understanding for every human soul in its expression. We can only prepare ourselves for this fellowship by acquiring an understanding of all religious creeds. In the past, before the Mystery of Golgotha, this was not necessary, because the experiences of the spiritual world were different then. But it has now become necessary. The proper understanding of Christianity is a preparation for this. For what constitutes the essence of Christianity is not to be found in other religious creeds. It is not correct to place Christianity alongside other religious creeds. Certainly, individual Christian creeds may appear more narrow-minded. But Christianity, properly understood, already contains within itself the impulse toward understanding every religious direction. For how did Westerners receive Christianity? Take Hinduism. Only the Hindu race can profess to this. If we here in Europe had developed a racial religion, we would still have the cult of Wotan today; that would be the Western racial religion. The West has adopted a creed that does not spring from its own national substance, but which came from the East. Something was accepted that could only take effect through its spiritual content. For no racial or folk religion could absorb the Christ impulse. The people who saw the Christ among themselves did not profess it. That is what is peculiar about Christianity: the seed lies within it to be a universal religion. One need not be intolerant toward other religions, and yet one can say: the Christian mission does not consist in teaching dogmas to people. Of course, the Buddhist laughs at a creed that does not even include the doctrine of reincarnation. He regards such a creed as something not quite right. But Christianity, properly understood, presupposes that every human being is a Christian in his inner being. If you go to a Hindu and say: You are a Hindu and I am a Christian—then you have not understood Christianity. Only when one can say of the Hindu: “In his innermost being, this Hindu is as good a Christian as I am myself; he has simply had no other opportunity yet to familiarize himself with a preparatory creed, and he has not yet moved beyond that; I must make it clear to him where his religion coincides with mine”—only then has one understood Christianity. The best thing would be for Christians to teach the Hindu Hinduism and then try to advance Hinduism so that the Hindu might find a connection to the general course of evolution. Only then do we understand Christianity, when we regard every human being as a Christian in the innermost heart; only then is Christianity the religion that transcends all races, all colors, all social classes. That is Christianity.

[ 14 ] Today we are entering a new era. The way Christianity has functioned over the past centuries no longer works. And the new understanding of Christianity that we need is yet to be achieved through the anthroposophical worldview. In this regard, the anthroposophical worldview is an instrument for Christianity. Among the religions that have appeared on earth, Christianity is the last to emerge. No new religions can be founded anymore. Those foundations, too, had their time. They followed one another and, as their final flowering, brought forth Christianity. Today, however, the mission is to increasingly develop Christianity in its impulses. That is why we are striving, more consciously than has been the case so far, to engage lovingly with all the religions of the earth through our Spiritual Science movement. For in this way we also prepare ourselves for the period between death and new birth, when we feel lonely because we cannot perceive souls that are there but to whom we have no access. If we misunderstand Hinduism here, we sense the Hindu over there—we sense his existence—but we find no access to him.

[ 15 ] You see, this moment is also the one in which we have expanded our astral body to such an extent that, between death and rebirth, we have become inhabitants of the Sun. We enter the Sun there. For in fact, we expand out into the entire macrocosm, and we have then reached the point where we touch the solar being at the time when we need universal love for humanity. And this encounter with the Sun manifests itself in the following ways: First, it manifests itself in the fact that we lose the ability to show understanding toward all people if we have not established a connection with the impulse: “Wherever two are united in my name, there I am in their midst.” Christ did not mean: Wherever two Hindus or a Hindu and a Christian are together, there I am in their midst, but rather: Wherever two are together who have a true understanding of my impulses, there I am in their midst. — This being was on the Sun up to a certain point. There was, as it were, his throne. Then it united with the Earth. That is why we must experience the Christ impulse here on Earth; then we will also take it with us up into the spiritual world. For if we arrive at the Sun without the Christ impulse, there is nothing there for us but an incomprehensible entry in the Akashic Records. Since Christ united with the Earth, one must gain an understanding of Christ here on Earth. One must bring this understanding of Christ with us; otherwise, we cannot find Christ over there. When we develop toward the Sun, then—if we have gained an understanding of Christ here—we will understand what is recorded in the Akashic Records. For that is what he left behind on the Sun. This is the crucial point: that an understanding of Christ must be awakened here on Earth; only then can one retain it in the higher worlds. Some things only become clear when one can grasp certain connections.

[ 16 ] There are theosophical currents that cannot grasp that the Christ impulse lies like a center of gravity at the heart of Earth’s evolution, from which the path leads ever upward. Therefore, when people come along who say that Christ could appear on Earth multiple times, it is as if one were to say: A balance beam must be suspended at two points. — Yet one cannot weigh anything with such a balance. Just as absurd as that would be in the physical world, so absurd is the claim of certain occultists regarding the repeated earthly lives of the Christ. One demonstrates an understanding of the Christ impulse only when one is able to grasp that the Christ is the only God who has passed through death and who therefore had to come down to Earth.

[ 17 ] For those who have come to understand Christ in this way, a throne on the sun does not stand empty. Then they can also recognize another encounter that is now taking place in this time: then Lucifer also approaches the human being, not now as a tempter, but as a legitimate power that must be at their side if they are to find their further progress in the spiritual world. The same qualities are only destructive in the wrong place. Here in the physical world, Lucifer weaves a relationship that is destructive. But after death, from the Sun onward, Lucifer must stand by the human being. The human being must encounter Lucifer. Between Lucifer and Christ, he must make his way forward. Christ preserves his soul, sustaining his soul with all that the soul has already acquired in previous incarnations. The task of the Luciferic force is to support the human being so that he may learn to utilize, in a justified manner, the forces of the other beings of the hierarchies for his new incarnation. No matter when the point in time mentioned has been reached: the necessity eventually arises for the human being to first determine at which point on Earth his next incarnation is to take place and in which country. This must already take place in the middle of the period between death and a new birth. Indeed, this is the very first thing that must happen: the place and country in which the human soul will reincarnate must be determined well in advance.

[ 18 ] To this end, human beings prepare themselves by establishing connections with higher worlds while still here on earth. But they must be supported by Lucifer. They then draw upon certain kinds of beings from the higher hierarchies, whose powers guide them to the specific place and at the specific time.

[ 19 ] You see, if we want to choose an excellent example: When Luther had to appear, his appearance had to be prepared in the eighth and ninth centuries. The forces had to be directed into the people among whom he was to work. For this, Lucifer must cooperate so that the time and place of our rebirth can be determined. Because the human being carries the Christ within his soul, he preserves what he has earned. But the human being is not yet mature enough to know where his karma can best be worked out: for this, Lucifer must help him.

[ 20 ] Then some time passes again. And the next step is that a decision must be made regarding the question—and this is a profound undertaking; one cannot help but describe these things in ordinary terms—the question must be decided: What must the parents’ own character traits actually be like, since they are the ones who must bring forth the human being who is now to be brought to Earth at a specific place and time? All of this must be determined long beforehand. But from this follows something else: that now, by higher hierarchies, and again with the support of Lucifer, preparations are already being made through all the generations long, long before the person in question is born. It had to be determined for Luther as early as the tenth or eleventh century which ancestors he would be born into, so that the right parents for Luther could be there. Physical science believes that a person takes on the characteristics of their ancestors. In reality, a person acts from the supersensible world upon the characteristics of their ancestors. In a certain sense, we are responsible for what our great-great-great-grandfather was like. Of course, a person cannot bring about all characteristics; but among others, the characteristics we will then need must also be present. What one inherits from one’s fathers is what one first allowed to flow into one’s fathers.

[ 21 ] First, the place and time of birth are determined. Then the ancestral lineage is chosen. Essentially, what is called love for one’s child is nothing other than the manifestation of the connection one forms with what has been cultivated over centuries from the supersensible world. And what occurs as conception is that the human being then receives the forces that work upon their own body, specifically on the head and the general form of the body. Therefore, we must create a mental image of the situation in which the work is done most intensively in the deeper structure of the head, less so on the hands and feet, and also less on the torso, but on the head toward the torso. We carve that out. Then we continue the work after birth. But first we incorporate everything into the astral body. We prepare the head shape astral-ly. This goes so far that we can say: last of all, what gives the skull its shape is formed into the astral model, which then connects with the physical form. The shape of the skull is individual for every human being. The shape of the brain is the last thing to be chiseled out. And what is then given to us on Earth through heredity is, in essence, that which is capable, through its substance, of uniting with what we bring with us from the supersensible world. — Imagine that what comes from the supersensible world is a shell; the water that fills it is provided by the substance of heredity. Through pure heredity alone, only that which is, so to speak, the peculiarity of our bodily system—which is more independent of the nervous and circulatory systems—is given. Whether we have large, strong bones or weak, delicate ones depends less on the forces we receive through the preparatory powers than on heredity. The individuality that is to be born at this time and in this place to work out its karma is born through people with strong bones or people with blond hair and so on; this is made possible by the hereditary line. — If the physical theories of heredity were correct, people would be born with an atrophied nervous system and only the rudiments of hands and feet.

[ 22 ] It is the clairvoyant gaze that leads us to the things that are truly significant. Let me tell you the following story: I met a person with hydrocephalus. He differed very significantly from the rest of his family. Why did he have hydrocephalus? Because the council of the higher beings “with Lucifer went something like this: Yes, this person must be born there; these are the best parents. But he cannot act upon the ancestral lineage in the right way, so as to create what can give him the proper substance for his head to harden properly. He must first adapt his brain to the structure during his lifetime. — It was not possible to find a way for this human being to prepare the ancestral lineage in such a way that the head would harden accordingly.

[ 23 ] All of these are very important matters, and in them we can see, as it were, the method by which we work our way into the world. Once science has properly examined this, we will sense the influence of the higher world.

[ 24 ] As we proceed with Lucifer and Christ, we come to understand the true nature of evolution.

[ 25 ] First, then, in the afterlife, one must overcome the dangers of isolation through connections with other people, through moral bonds, and through religious bonds. Then one works on the new human being who is to be incarnated. Now one has a task when, instead of the world around oneself, one has oneself before oneself.

[ 26 ] When a person goes through the stages in which they could have been a sociable person but instead withdrew into solitude, a kind of longing for death arises within them. What is this longing for death? It is a longing for unconsciousness. But one does not become unconscious; one merely becomes lonely. In the higher worlds, we are no longer dealing with questions of substance, but with questions of consciousness. Loneliness therefore means: longing for a temporary extinction of consciousness. This is the case for souls who have no relationship with other souls. But death does not exist over there.

[ 27 ] Just as human beings live here in a rhythmic pattern, alternating between waking and sleeping, so do they live in the other world, withdrawing into themselves and socializing with other souls; life in the higher world consists of a rhythmic alternation between social interaction and solitude. And how we live in the higher world depends on how we have prepared ourselves here, just as I explained earlier.

[ 28 ] When asked whether one could also read aloud to children who had died at birth or at a young age, Rudolf Steiner replied:

[ 29 ] One is a child only here on Earth. Sometimes it appears to the clairvoyant eye that a person who died as a small child is an individual who is less of a child in the spiritual world than someone who died at the age of eighty. One cannot, therefore, apply the same standard.

[ 30 ] I have already described how the painting commonly known as “The School of Athens” is to be understood from an occult perspective. Recently, I became acquainted with a human being who died young. Through my interaction with him, he was able to draw my attention specifically to what has been preserved in Raphael’s thoughts regarding this painting. And this human being describes how, in fact, something has been painted over in the group at the front left of the painting. What has been painted over is the spot where something is being written down. There is now a Pythagorean theorem there. Originally, there was a passage from the Gospel! — So you see that such a “child” can be a highly developed human being who guides one to things that are very difficult to find.

[ 31 ] I would like to point out that reading aloud can also be done for children who have died young.