The Rudolf Steiner Archive

18. Life After Death

[ 1 ] The full significance and purpose of the spiritual worldview becomes clear to us when we consider human life in the period between death and a new birth. There are people—especially in our materialistic age, there are many such people—who say: Why should a person actually concern themselves with the life between death and a new birth, or—if they do not wish to speak of repeated earthly lives—with the life that lies beyond death, for we can simply wait until death has occurred, and then we will see what follows. This is what people today say who have not yet completely lost their sense of the spiritual world, but who lack the necessary strength of soul to form concepts and impressions of the supersensible world. Such people say: We do our duty here on earth, and then we will be able to experience in an appropriate way what awaits us after death.

[ 2 ] However, a genuine understanding of the life between death and a new birth clearly shows us just how mistaken such a view is, and how important it is for people in their physical, sensory existence to already have a connection in this life with the forms of life that a human being must experience between death and a new birth.

[ 3 ] It is very difficult to speak about this life using words drawn from our everyday language, for these words were created for the world that exists between birth and death and refer to the things of this world. That is why, as a rule, we can only more or less indirectly hint at what takes place between death and a new birth—which is, in its very nature, so different from everything we can experience here between birth and death. One must create a mental image of a world in which everything a person perceives here in the sensory world—which is, in a sense, their world—cannot be their world after death, for they will then lack the organs of physical-sensory existence. The intellect, too, which is bound to the human brain, ceases with death. Only in a somewhat tentative way can we venture to describe a life that is so entirely different from life here on earth, and in a certain sense, the words of ordinary life can only be used comparatively. But Spiritual Science teaches us to apply these words to the spiritual realm as well, and through these words captures something that can also shed light on our understanding of the supersensible world.

[ 4 ] Here in the physical world, we refer to the physical aspect enclosed within the skin as the human being; we regard everything else as our surroundings. What a person experiences depends on the functions of the sense organs, as well as the heart, lungs, and so on. However, all of this disappears on the path we take between death and rebirth. During our earthly life, our soul-spiritual part is, as it were, embedded in our physical body, and that body lives through the activities of the aforementioned organs. After death, that which leaves the physical and etheric bodies expands more and more, and a time comes when what is otherwise bound to the boundary of our skin spreads so far that it fills the entire orbit of the Moon. Then the spiritual-soul aspect gradually grows to the sphere of Mercury and Venus, then to the sphere of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and even beyond into outer space. Afterward, it contracts again and connects as a small spiritual germ with the stream of hereditary forces that prepare the physical body for it through the father and mother. This description corresponds to what is written in “Theosophy”; the realm of the spirits begins at the sphere of Mars.

[ 5 ] It follows from what has been said that all people who pass through the gate of death enter the same cosmic space, so that after death we are, in a sense, all intertwined. Nevertheless, the dead are not all together, for being together after death depends on something quite different than it does here on Earth. In the spiritual world, we are indeed all together spatially, but in reality we can only be together if we have spiritual relationships with other people. Let us take as an extreme case a person who, on earth, completely denied the spiritual world in both their thoughts and their feelings. Now, there are indeed many theoretical materialists who deny the spiritual world, yet whose feelings are somehow connected to it. Such people who completely deny the spiritual world hardly exist in reality, and the terrible scenario that is about to be described therefore never fully comes to pass. Let us suppose that two such people die who knew each other well here on Earth. Then, after death, they will be in the same space there, but will know nothing of one another, for in the world after death, the sense of the spiritual corresponds to what, for example, the eyes are here. Without eyes, no light—without a sense of the spiritual, no perception of the spiritual world. An even more terrible fate than the failure to perceive the spiritual world would await such people, for since the souls that pass through the gate of death are themselves of a spiritual nature, such a soul would be unable to perceive anything at all of human souls; it would spread out around such human souls like a yawning abyss. One might ask: What does such a person perceive at all after death? Nor can he perceive himself as he is after death, for he lacks clear self-awareness. What remains for him will become clear to us from what follows.

[ 6 ] Here on Earth, we stand, so to speak, at a single point on the Earth’s surface and have our organs within us, while the celestial bodies are outside of us. After death, it is exactly the opposite. The human being then grows to a cosmic magnitude. When he has grown to the sphere of the Moon, the Moon—the spiritual aspect that belongs to the Moon—becomes an organ within him and becomes for him after death what the brain is for us here on Earth as physical human beings. Thus, every planetary body becomes an organ for us after death, depending on how we grow toward it. The Sun becomes our heart. Just as we carry the physical heart within us here, we then carry the spiritual part of the Sun within us. The only difference is that here, as physical human beings, we are only fully human once we have already developed all our organs following embryonic development; they are all present, so to speak, at the same time. After death, we receive these organs gradually, one after the other. In this respect, viewed from the outside, we are then quite similar to a plant being, which also develops its organs one after the other. An organ, for example, that can be compared to our lungs and our larynx, we receive on Mars, and so on.

[ 7 ] After death, we grow into that which we have shed here in its physical aspect, and the spiritual aspect of the cosmic organs is then within us. What, then, is the external world for us? That which is now our inner world, that which we experience with the help of our organs—which make us physical human beings on Earth—and what we have done with the help of these organs.

[ 8 ] Let us consider once again that extreme case of a person who has established absolutely no connection with the spiritual world. For such a person, the external world after death is what they experienced on earth through their physical senses. For such a radical atheist, the world after death remains entirely devoid of human souls, and they must look back on their earthly life—on what constituted their world, on what they encompassed through their deeds and experiences. That is then his external world: nothing other than what remains to him as a memory of the life between birth and death, and that is not a sufficient world for the experiences that a person needs in the life between death and new birth. In the life between death and new birth, when a person is outside their own body, the life between birth and death looks quite different. Here on earth, for example, we face a person toward whom we feel antipathy, with whom we have quarreled, whom we have caused to suffer insults and pain. We are caught up in emotion regarding such a person; we would not do this if, in a certain sense, we did not actually feel a sense of satisfaction from such an act. Perhaps one feels some remorse about it, then forgets it again. After death, one meets this person again, but one then derives the opposite of satisfaction from the experience. One then feels this: Had we not done that, we would have been more perfect human beings; thus, our soul is imperfect in this regard. — This imperfection has remained with the soul and must remain with it until the deed is balanced out. We look less at the deed than at the blemish in our soul: that must be erased. We feel this as a force within us that guides us to seek an opportunity to erase the deed once more. In the case of an anti-spiritual soul, this would be compounded by the feeling: I am separated from the soul to whom I have done wrong; I must wait until I meet it again to wipe away the stain.” — As a sense of necessary karma, the recollection of the previous life arises. The Akashic Record image of the other soul stands before us as a warning; we then live amidst such Akashic Record images.

[ 9 ] However, such extreme cases do not actually exist. The seer who communicates with the souls of the deceased may have the following experience. He encounters a soul he knows who has passed away from a male body, leaving behind a wife and child. The soul tells him: I have left behind a wife and children with whom I lived. Now I have only the images of what we experienced together. My loved ones are on Earth, but I cannot see them there. I feel separated from them—yes, perhaps one of them has already died, and I cannot find that one either. —This is the sorrow of the soul who lived in an environment that had no connection with spiritual life. That is why these souls remain in darkness with regard to the spiritual world, and they cannot be seen from the spiritual world.

[ 10 ] When, on the other hand, the seer seeks out souls who have left behind other souls in the physical world—souls who here on earth cultivate spiritual life, such as through Spiritual Science—he finds that these souls are able to perceive such other souls after death and interact with them in the life after death. — The so-called dead need the living, for otherwise they would be able to see nothing on earth but themselves—that is, their own past lives. This is the basis of the benefit we can bestow upon departed souls when we read to them spiritually—not aloud, but in thought, while at the same time keeping the dead in mind before us. In this way, we can read to various deceased individuals at the same time, whether with or without a book, and thereby do them a great service. But the thoughts must relate to something spiritual; nothing else has any meaning for the deceased. Through these thoughts, we create an external world for the deceased, something they can perceive. Thinking about chemical laws and the like makes no sense at all, since these laws have no meaning for the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] One cannot study Spiritual Science in the spiritual world after death, as one might perhaps believe, simply because Spiritual Science does indeed contain spiritual thoughts. We can be of great service to souls who have already heard something about Spiritual Science here by reading cycles to them. Although such souls are capable of perceiving a spiritual world, they cannot therefore form the concepts and ideas that can only be acquired here.

[ 12 ] Let us take an example. There are beings called Bodhisattvas, high, advanced human beings who incarnate on Earth time and again until they have ascended to Buddhahood. As long as a Bodhisattva is in his physical body, he lives as a human among humans, as a spiritual benefactor to humanity. But even here on Earth, he has a special task: not only to teach those living in physical bodies, but also to teach the dead, and even beings of the higher hierarchies. This stems from the fact that the content of earthly theosophy can only be attained on Earth, in a physical body. It can then be used in the spiritual world, but it must be acquired in a physical body. Only in exceptional cases can Bodhisattvas help other beings after death who have already received the spark of spiritual life here. Theosophy does not arise from the spiritual world itself; it arises only on Earth and can then be carried up into the spiritual world by human beings. This can be understood when one considers that, for example, animals see everything on Earth just as humans do, but cannot understand it. In the same way, the supersensible beings can only perceive the supersensible world, but cannot understand it. Concepts and ideas of the supersensible world can arise only on Earth and radiate from there like a light into the spiritual world. From this one truly understands the significance of the Earth. It is not merely a transitional stage or a vale of tears, but it exists so that spiritual knowledge may be developed here, which can then be carried upward into the spiritual worlds.