The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Since various circumstances prevent me from leaving until tomorrow, we can still be together here today.

[ 2 ] Once again, as is our custom, we first turn our thoughts to the souls of those who stand out in the field and must stand up for the great events of our time with their bodies, blood, and souls:

Spirits of your souls, watchful guardians,
May your wings bring
The pleading love of our souls
To the earthly people entrusted to your care,
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine forth in aid
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

[ 3 ] And with regard to those who have already passed through the gates of death:

Spirits of your souls, watchful guardians,
May your wings carry
The pleading love of our souls
To the beings of the spheres entrusted to your care,
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine forth in aid
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

[ 4 ] And may the Spirit who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha—whom we have sought throughout the years in our spiritual movement, and who through this has drawn near to our hearts—be with you and your heavy burdens!

[ 5 ] My dear friends, I would like to use this special evening to share a few scattered remarks that may be useful to us in one way or another. First, I would like to point out how, despite the materialism of our time—or perhaps precisely because of it—the souls of researchers, particularly those engaged in research in certain fields, are drawn, one might say, toward the existence of a spiritual world, even though they may not fully want to be. I would like to pick up on a specific point. Of course, from the perspective I have just indicated, one could build upon very, very many things; but I would like to refer to a pamphlet that appeared very recently, one of the pamphlets now being published in connection with the war, the twelfth issue, written by the well-known psychiatrist Professor Dr. O. Binswanger and titled: “The Psychological Effects of War.” However, I do not wish to address the specific points Binswanger has written about the psychological effects of war in the narrower sense, but rather some remarks he has also made in this brochure. A researcher like Binswanger feels, in a sense, compelled today to no longer merely hint at the existence of a spiritual life, as he feels, as it were, obliged to apologize and point out how our era is not at all inclined, on the part of enlightened people, to accept such a thing as a spiritual or psychological life. In his pamphlet, Binswanger discusses the well-known fact that nervous disorders have increased significantly in our time. He discusses various causes that have contributed to this, and then says very tellingly on page 10: “It will seem strange to some of you that I place such strong emphasis on the psychological aspect in these nervous conditions.” So, he is indeed a psychiatrist of a thoroughly materialistic bent, yet he must still cite the psychological among the causes of precisely those illnesses that are close to his heart. “What does the psychological have to do with a nervous stomach ailment, with a nervous heart, with nervous pains in the back, in the arms, and in the legs? Based on consistent medical opinions, I can only tell you that, ultimately, pathological nervous reactions in the most diverse bodily organs and areas are largely due to disturbances in mental processes.”

[ 6 ] So we see how the facts compel those who, through their research, are compelled to deal with psychological phenomena to admit that the causes of what is so often viewed solely from a materialistic perspective—nervous stomach ailments, nervous heart complaints, nervous pain in the back, and even in the limbs—lie in disturbances of the psychological life.

[ 7 ] However, today’s researcher usually stops at such an admission; he does not go any further, not at all. For what must first be acknowledged is that it is not enough to see the causes of such processes as the one mentioned solely in the physical realm; yet people do not yet have the courage and strength to truly engage with anything related to Spiritual Science. For the moment they hear anything positive from the realm of Spiritual Science, they feel, so to speak, as if they no longer had solid ground beneath their feet, as if everything that can be brought forth from the spiritual world according to the methods of spiritual research were in a state of flux. For the psychiatrist, this is, one might say, a doubly fatal fact. For if the causes of certain physical conditions lie in the processes of the soul life, then one must admit that the best means of eliminating such conditions also lie in a spiritual treatment. But how is one to treat a soul if one has no idea how the soul is connected to the body? The prescriptions for the removal of spiritual disturbances can, so to speak, only be borrowed from the spiritual world. But one can only recognize the connection between the spiritual world and the outer material world if one knows something about the spiritual world. Hence the strange, the strangely vague, illogical, and peculiar things that occur when such people actually want to speak positively about the connection between the physical and the spiritual. And we can observe this in the very same researcher. A few pages later—on page 23—the same researcher says something highly peculiar; for when he wants to speak of the confidence he himself has, based on his views regarding the constitution of the human soul, in a happy outcome for the German campaign, he says: “It is my conviction that the army whose soldiers have the stronger nerves will be victorious, or, to put it another way: possess the greater moral resilience.”

[ 8 ] Let us take this matter very seriously: The researcher who acknowledges that the causes of even physical, so-called nervous disorders lie in mental states says that those soldiers will surely prevail who “have the better nerves, or”—as he puts it—“in other words: possess greater moral resilience.” It is hard to imagine that anyone could, so to speak, come up with a greater piece of nonsense—even though both statements are, of course, absolutely true—than to say: One is simply another way of putting the other. For just imagine, for a moment, that someone forms a very clear mental image of the nervous system, is able to trace this nervous system down to its finest branches, and then refers to a person’s stronger nerves in another formulation: greater moral resilience. That is to say: purely physical-material strands are, in another formulation, supposed to be moral resilience! Of course, the reader of today skims over such things. One makes the strangest discoveries about all the things they skim over, which they often find tremendously witty; but such things are no less actual, real nonsense as long as they are not traced back to what Spiritual Science has to say about them. How, then, should one view these things from a spiritual-scientific perspective?

[ 9 ] When we consider a person’s moral power—that which animates and permeates them morally—it is, at first, something purely spiritual, something that has nothing to do with the material world. And what we call the moral power of the soul is a spiritual power insofar as this soul belongs to the spiritual world. When this soul returns to its body—as always happens upon waking—it uses the body from the moment of waking until falling asleep as a tool for the physical world. From falling asleep until waking up, the soul lives in the purely spiritual world, apart from the body as a tool, and gathers its moral strength there as well. But in the physical world, moral forces can only act through the instrument of the physical body. There they also act as spiritual forces. In the human ego and astral body, that which we call moral force is at work; there is something purely spiritual within it. But what does that which exists as purely spiritual moral force in the human astral body and ego have to do with the nervous system? Well, I will use a comparison. The moral force of the human being has just as much to do with his nervous system as I have to do with the ground on which my feet now stand. If the ground were not there, and beneath it another ground on which the first rests, I could not stand here as a physical human being. The ground must be there, but it has nothing to do, physically speaking, with what is within me. In order for me to stand, the ground must be there. Likewise, the nerves must be present in the physical body as mere support so that the moral forces of the astral body and the I may have a foundation in the physical world, may appear, and may exist. I will use another comparison, one that goes straight to the heart of the matter, although it will require careful thought to fully grasp what lies behind it. I will use a comparison that again takes its starting point in physical life.

[ 10 ] Let us consider the process of digestion. During digestion, part of the ingested food is absorbed into our body, while the other part is excreted. If a certain portion of the nutrients could not be excreted, our digestion would be impossible. This excretion must take place quite regularly. But it would never occur to anyone to say that they feed on what they excrete. The nervous processes that now take place in our organism when we develop a moral force within us relate to what is fruitful for us, to what is truly within us as actual human beings, like excretions, or rather like excretory processes. When we assert a certain moral impulse in the soul, this is connected with an excretory process. This excretory process—that which is expelled, that which we must, so to speak, produce as waste within ourselves—is the nervous process. And this nervous process relates to what we are actually doing in exactly the same way that the excretory process in digestion relates to the process of assimilating food. So those who call the spiritual process of forming moral impulses a nervous process are, in essence, doing nothing other than saying—only in a different field—that human nourishment consists in excretion, and then examining the excretory products so that they can find what is actually particularly beneficial to humans. This is actually the mistaken approach of materialistic science, in that it regards as the true essence that which the spirit must excrete in order to unfold. Modern science examines precisely that which the spirit cannot use in order to get behind the spirit. In doing so, it proceeds much as someone would who were to examine the contents of the intestines to determine which substances a person absorbs into their muscles. One must sometimes speak bluntly if one wishes to grasp the full absurdity of modern materialism, because the illusion created by modern materialism exerts such an overwhelming persuasive power in favor of the erroneous views of the present that one must use strong words to point out where the terrible error actually lies.

[ 11 ] Now I will start from something entirely different, so that I can later return to what I mentioned earlier. Let us consider the following question: What about the various religious systems that have gradually emerged in the course of human development? Throughout the course of human development, various religious teachers have appeared and communicated this or that to people regarding the conditions of the spiritual world. It really does not take much to arrive at a very clever judgment regarding these religious systems, for cleverness—as we have seen in various judgments of our time—is not particularly difficult in our time. You understand how this is to be understood and that it is not meant as a criticism of our age. A so-called intelligent person can easily point out that the various religious teachers all taught different things, and he may therefore come to the view: so it must be that none of it is the truth; for if it were to correspond to the truth, they would all have taught the same thing. And from this one could then conclude that, in fact, all talk of the higher worlds—due to the many contradictions that have emerged—cannot be traced back to anything of the truth given to humanity.

[ 12 ] However, one can only properly answer the question raised here if one forms a mental image of what one takes with oneself through the gate of death from what one has experienced here on earth. You can easily form a mental image of what one takes with them if you think about this: as soon as you close your eyes and cover your ears, you hear and see nothing of your sensory surroundings. And now ask yourself: How much of what the soul holds within itself in impressions from morning to night, and how much of the mental images it carries within, does the soul essentially owe to the eyes and ears? — If one had no eyes and ears, the vast majority of the contents of the human soul would simply cease to exist. But after death, a person certainly has no eyes and no ears. So what they take in through their eyes and ears, they can carry through the gate of death only as a memory. There should be no further reflection on the fact that what is taken in through the eyes and ears—indeed, through the senses in general—can be carried through the gate of death only as a memory. The same applies to all the mental images we form that are prompted by sensory impressions. And now you need only consider what must be left behind upon entering the spiritual world: everything that comes to a person through external impressions is left behind.

[ 13 ] What, then, must be the nature of a mental image that one is to carry through the gates of death? It certainly must not be derived from any external impression, and it certainly must possess the quality that the materialist can say: The mental image you are creating does not exist at all; for it cannot be seen with the eyes or heard with the ears. Thus, such a mental image must possess the quality that its object cannot be perceived externally, for what can be perceived externally cannot pass through the gate of death as a mental image. I would like to note here that materialism is led to such objections precisely because it constantly speaks of being or non-being and does not really know what this being and non-being is all about. It suffices for us now to remain with the German language. “Sein” is derived from “sehen”; it comes entirely from “seeing.” Thus, regarding that which is designated by the concept of being, nothing else is said at all other than: I have seen it once. And all other talk about being is nothing at all other than an understanding of what has been seen. From this one should conclude that, with regard to the things one carries through the gate of death, one should not speak of being, for that would mean: one must have seen these things with physical eyes.

[ 14 ] What exactly did the founders of religions hope to offer people through their mental images?

[ 15 ] They wanted to give people mental images that would strengthen the spirit from within, endowing it with inner radiance, so that when a person passes through the gate of death into the supersensible world, they would enter it in such a way that they are their own lamp, capable of illuminating the things there of their own accord. It is very easy for people to say: If I am told about the supersensible worlds, how can I know that all these mental images are really correct? For let us suppose that someone were to spread mental images about the supersensible world, and these mental images were accepted by a number of people—and they were false, or one-sided, or did not correspond to the truth in the same sense that one speaks of truth when speaking of the outer physical world. So let us assume these mental images were false, and a number of people had accepted them. In such a case, it would still be better if people had accepted these false mental images than if they had not accepted any mental images about the supersensible world at all. Why? It is better because our soul must make an effort when it accepts any mental images about the supersensible world. Whether one accepts correct or false mental images, one must make an effort, and this effort counts in the spiritual world when we pass through the gate of death. It is this effort that benefits us after death, or that benefits us at all when we enter the spiritual world. For suppose we had imbued ourselves with a completely mistaken view of the spiritual world; by taking it into ourselves, just as a gymnast trains his limbs, we have trained our soul forces. And what we have developed, that is what we then have, that is what we carry into the spiritual world. By carrying this into the spiritual world, we then have there something similar to what we have here through the fact that we have eyes. We are then no longer blind in the spiritual world. Even if it should turn out that everything we have taken in is false, and we have merely exerted ourselves, we have thereby trained our soul’s eye and now have the ability to see what exists in the spiritual world.

[ 16 ] The fact is that what the various religious teachers have taught is not entirely wrong; rather, the truth about the supernatural world has been presented from different perspectives and only appears to be contradictory. One must supplement one with the other. But the essential point common to all these religious systems is that they all provide the human soul with mental images through which the soul strengthens itself to enter the spiritual world, so that the soul is awakened in its spiritual depths. What the individual religious teachers then give to the souls, they give according to the souls’ capacities, according to, I might say, the conditions of the individual human races, according to the climatic conditions or other circumstances of the country and the time in which they are to appear. But what they all have in common is that they make human souls strong and vigorous—one might also say, make them innerly radiant—so that the souls are not only real in the physical world but can also be real in the spiritual world. Strengthening the soul is what has been given as a universal truth, according to the various possibilities, in all religious systems.

[ 17 ] Our age is now faced with the necessity of gradually coming to perceive the spiritual world in an ever-increasingly different way than was possible in times past.

[ 18 ] Certain mental images that have taken shape since the flourishing of modern science must be internally strengthened and invigorated in our time, so that the soul, precisely through such mental images, becomes capable of being alive—not dead—in the spiritual world. Through this, something deeper—something that is certainly more demanding on the soul, but deeper—arises of its own accord than what the various religious systems have brought about. Over the years, I have given various reasons why our time is called to Spiritual Science. But I would like to say: For those who are close to spiritual life, it is evident today at every turn—and this is precisely one of the most unsettling aspects of our time—that Spiritual Science belongs among the influences, the fermenting forces, that the life of our time must receive.

[ 19 ] Indeed, in recent months, many, many souls have passed through the gate of death—passed through the gate of death in the prime of their youth. I have already pointed out that, according to the ordinary course of things, those human beings whose souls have thus passed through the gate of death would all have been destined to live on earth for a longer time. When a human being passes through the gate of death, we know that they first shed the physical body, then, after a relatively short time, the etheric body. This etheric body then belongs to the outer etheric world, while the astral body and the I continue to belong to the human being. It is usually said that this etheric body dissolves into the spiritual world. But the time it takes for it to dissolve varies greatly. If a person has grown very old in physical life—that is, has reached a normal age, so to speak—then they have exhausted the forces of their etheric body, and it dissolves rapidly. But if a person passes through the gate of death in the prime of youth, their etheric body could have served them for decades longer. This etheric body is a coherent, self-contained organization. In the second case, it does not dissolve immediately. It separates from the astral body and the ego. These go their own ways in the spiritual world; the etheric body, however, while separating, does not dissolve immediately. It will seem only natural to you that the human being retains a certain connection with the etheric body, which has initially separated but also remains present in the spiritual etheric world. Therefore, one can say: In this spiritual etheric world, taken absolutely, in the vicinity of the Earth’s aura—there is an extraordinarily large number of unused etheric bodies, of etheric bodies with fresh powers. This is what is particularly striking in the current observation of the spiritual world: that we are confronted with such a large number of unused etheric bodies. But wherever we can approach the feelings that the dead have regarding these etheric bodies of theirs, we notice something else. Of course, these things are such that you may or may not believe them; for I can only claim credibility through the power of truth inherent in the explanations I have given you over many years. What one observes regarding the feelings of the deceased toward their etheric bodies is that, through all the people who have now made the sacrifice of death, a certain spiritual whisper is conveyed: The time has come! And humanity will make proper use of the untapped forces in our etheric bodies only when it becomes aware of how it is connected to the spiritual world! — For many, many forces radiate from these untapped etheric bodies. These enter our world, and humanity will only use these forces correctly if it directs its thoughts toward the spiritual world. Then these forces from the sacrificed etheric bodies will become forces that promote humanity. This is, in a sense, what the dead are calling out to us today: Do not use up our etheric bodies in vain; do not let the time pass in which the forces of our unused etheric bodies can serve the spiritual progress of humanity!

[ 20 ] And I would like to add one more point: I have mentioned once, or perhaps more often, how we can be of help to the deceased. Certain special circumstances make it possible for the deceased to benefit when we make accessible to them, by reading aloud, the insights we have gained through Spiritual Science. I have pointed out that it means a great deal to those who have passed through the gate of death when we read Spiritual Science to them in spirit, when we create a mental image of them as living, vibrant spiritual beings, and—of course not aloud, but as if in thought—read a chapter of Spiritual Science to them, whether it be one person or many. This seems absurd to those who believe that when a person passes through the gate of death, the entire spiritual world is all around them, so they do not need us to read to them. It is not quite that absurd. Of course, the deceased has the spiritual world around them; they are within it. But just as a person here does not understand the world—the sensory world—even though they are within it, if they lack the knowledge of it, so too does the deceased not possess the knowledge of the spiritual world merely by passing through the gate of death, even though they are within it. Rather, this knowledge must be acquired here. It is like nourishment for the deceased when we read to them; it flows into them. And humanity can gain quite a great deal of strengthening power for the times ahead in regard to the spiritual by using precisely that mantra which I now always employ at the beginning of our meditations, “Spirits of your souls, active guardians” and so on, with the modification “sphere-beings” in reference to the fallen. We can also—while this is otherwise only possible with those deceased whom we ourselves have known—direct this very Mantram to the deceased who are personally unknown to us; we can, after having used this Mantram with great devotion, read it aloud, I might say, out into the unknown; and the dead who have just passed into death as a result of our events can receive it. Then, through what they can draw from their connection with us, they will exert a return influence—indirectly, through their etheric bodies—on earthly culture and will cooperate with the people living on Earth to advance spiritual life.

[ 21 ] Through such things, however, we will achieve something else as well. It is quite true that we have, in a sense, lived in an age of the gloomiest materialism, and that these war-torn events have triggered something that bears the true mark of spiritual life. There has been a great difference in terms of the spiritual realm when, for example, one traveled through Germany in July of last year, or at some earlier time, and observed people spiritually, and when one did so in August, September, or indeed now. What stands out as a difference is that, in a sense, everyone used to have their own selfish aura that closed in tightly, that clung to the person, as it were. Now there is a collective aura into which thoughts flow as a unified whole. The fact that all thoughts are directed toward a single goal is also, in a spiritual sense, something of immense significance. This has created something spiritual during the time of the war that was not there before. That is quite undeniable. But now imagine how it must be that peace will return. Then souls would become all the more desolate if they could not find something of spiritual value within themselves; for it is necessary for human beings at all times to direct their thoughts toward something that has nothing to do with external reality. This strengthens them for the spiritual world in some form. If these are mental images of the supersensible world, it strengthens them in relation to the good forces of the supersensible world; if they are not supersensible mental images, or if it is something that is not justified in relation to the supersensible, it also strengthens them for the supersensible world, though in that case for the Luciferic or Ahrimanic world. But human beings are constituted in such a way that the spiritual within them wants to speak. One could say: human beings must have something that is not true for the outer world; and if for a long time they have not allowed themselves to take into their soul something that is not true for the outer world, then a reaction occurs—a reaction in the sense that they must believe in something that is not true for the outer world. In a strange way, such mental images can then take hold of the human soul. Certain souls overwhelmed by materialism can, after all, even appear pious on the outside. Such souls can experience this reaction in a particular way. They can, for example—one might say—form the mental image in unison that a certain people possessing a culture is a people of barbarians, and can make this an article of faith. Apart from certain other considerations, this is nothing other than the soul’s yearning for a belief, for something that has no reality in the physical world. Because people are no longer accustomed to turning their gaze toward the truly supernatural, they fill their souls with the belief that a certain people is a barbarian people. This has become a belief, a dogma, to which people cling just as fanatically as they once clung to certain religious dogmas. It is a substitute for a long-deprived faith. But now imagine that this cannot last. When peace has returned, people will no longer be able to have this real substitute, which is expressed in the belief that a certain people is a barbarian people. Then the terrible desolation will come, the utterly terrible desolation. And this is what lies in store for those regions that today create a belief for themselves, create dogmas for themselves, in such a manner that is at times truly abhorrent and mendacious. A terrible spiritual desolation will descend upon these regions. And this spiritual desolation can only be combated if, in the manner described, the unspent etheric forces of those consecrated to the death sacrifice are utilized in the right way, applied in the right way. That is why they all tell us, as it were, admonishing us regarding the proper use of their etheric forces, expressing a spontaneous discovery made now after death: The time has come! Humanity must undergo a spiritual development, and these present events must be a twilight state from which a new sun-like state will emerge.

[ 22 ] This is what must sink in for those who are suffering heavy losses: that, to the extent that our age needs to become spiritual, this is possible only through help from the spiritual world. But the means for this help must be gained through such painful events as we are now experiencing in our own time. For the spiritual researcher, it becomes quite clear of its own accord that these events must not be viewed from a purely materialistic perspective. Yet one finds almost exclusively a purely materialistic view of these events. One can observe—as we have indeed observed—that a number of people in one region of the world, feeling hostile toward one another, issue some kind of call, and that this call reaches other hostile regions; from these hostile regions, the question is posed: Who wanted this war? Or one accuses the other of having wanted the war. In doing so, one forgets time and again what must be clear for a deeper consideration of the circumstances, and from this deeper consideration of things some healing for the future may also come: that from the spiritual world all these events are truly willed, because the spiritual world needs those forces that can come as fruits from these seeds of the unconsumed etheric bodies. And if one were to accuse, one would have to accuse the spiritual world itself at the same time. But then the urge to accuse would vanish. For then one would become aware of the iron necessity that exists, of that iron necessity that must truly look down upon our earthly world from the perspective of the spiritual worlds, much as we must look upon something when it becomes necessary to consume, kill, or tear away so much in order to build something else. We cannot build a house without destroying so many rocky areas; there we cannot speak of any guilt, there we must speak of necessity. So, it is necessary for the spiritual world to demand those sacrifices that are now being demanded, because seeds are necessary. These seeds are precisely the unconsumed etheric bodies that will then permeate all of humanity’s becoming with life, and which must be present if development is to continue, because otherwise humanity would lack the forces to move forward. Alongside all that today’s events signify externally, we must fully take this into account in order to understand the events effectively from within.

[ 23 ] When we look at things this way, we say to ourselves: Even if I cannot immediately discern whether everything I receive from the spiritual world is correct, as people say, it is certainly the case that by uniting these revelations from the spiritual world with my own soul, I exert that soul, thereby infusing it with strength, and that through this my soul becomes luminous for the spiritual world, gaining eyes for the spiritual world. Only, the conditions for the spiritual world are different from those of the physical world. In the physical world, we can be satisfied once we have grasped a thought and recognized its truth. In the practical life of the physical world, it is also sufficient once we have recognized the truth of a thought. What I mean is this: If a panel of judges wants to determine whether a person is guilty in a case, then the matter is settled once a mental image is formed that this person is guilty of a crime. Then everything necessary has been done. In the spiritual world, however, it is not at all the case that everything is done once a thought has been grasped; rather, it is necessary for it to return again and again. That is why repetition is essential in spiritual matters. It is not merely a matter of knowing something about these things, but of bringing it to mind again and again in the soul. The meditative life is also based on this: that we allow the content of the meditation to remain present in the soul through repetition. In this way, what is thus always present truly exerts its power, just as when a drop falls ceaselessly upon a stone and eventually hollows it out. When the drop first falls upon the stone, it makes no impression at all; nor does it when it falls upon it ten or a hundred times; yet in the end it does hollow out the stone. When we take something like this into our soul, it might seem as though, once taken in, it means nothing at all to the soul, nor does taking it in ten times; but if we have patience, we can bring it to the point where we become aware of the eternal essence of the human being. For what matters is the power we develop in the process; and this power is often shunned by people—they do not want it. Why do they not want this strength?

[ 24 ] Why people do not want this power, why they still shy away from Spiritual Science today—we can answer that question when we look once more, from the perspective of Spiritual Science, at the significance of spiritual scientific mental images for life after death. The most important mental images after death are those that do not depict anything that exists in the external world, that do not refer to an external existence, and of which the crassly materialistic person might say: they mean nothing in life. But these mental images are the most important after death. For forming such mental images requires that strong power of contemplation, of reflection, of empathy, which strengthens the soul, making it such that it experiences itself, feels itself in the spiritual world. The soul therefore needs such mental images when it passes through the gate of death.

[ 25 ] How, then, can one arrive at such mental images? We already know: only by exerting the soul to a greater degree than it usually does. For in order to take in the mental images that today’s natural scientist takes in, one need only look—perhaps through a microscope or a telescope. There one can remain quite passive, receive impressions of the world, and register them. That is often the case: one does not like to exert oneself inwardly. For what one does not see requires greater mental effort than what one does see; and one shuns this greater mental effort, one flees from it. So one is actually—forgive the harsh expression—internally lazy, internally complacent. And the deepest characteristic of contemporary scientific endeavor is this inner laziness, this complacency, this unwillingness to draw the forces out of the soul. But if one does it, if one draws these forces out of the soul, what effect does that have after death? Yes, one has, so to speak, for life after death, something of these drawn-out forces, which one—because one usually lives in a certain illusion—generally does not like at all. But I will point out right away the reason why one usually does not like it. For when one enters the spiritual world through death or through initiation, what happens is that one must experience something beyond death that is, in a sense, a second death. It is a kind of second death. You know that one must later separate oneself from one’s astral body again, and one can either go through this consciously or one can sleep through it. But there lives in the human soul a secret longing to sleep through this, not to go through it consciously. There is a certain fear within the human being—one that is not properly interpreted—of waking up so fully after death that one then notices all the things that are around one. This fear is, however, quite similar to the one that would make it pleasant for a person here not to live this physical life quite so intensely, not to always be fully awake, but to go through life somewhat numb. Life is then more pleasant. And if one could even lie in bed all the time, spend life in a half-sleep, then it would be most comfortable. But that is not always possible. Human beings must wake up. And if they were able to remain numb to the things after death up to the point I indicated, they must not remain numb after death any longer. People must wake up. But they still fear it. That is why even those who are so close to needing Spiritual Science resist it, like a researcher who says: even the nervous disorders in the back, in the arms and legs, are based on the soul. He resists accepting Spiritual Science because he has a hopeless fear of it. He is then like someone who says: Something of mine has gone missing, been stolen; the wind surely won’t have carried it away, so it cannot have been lost through external natural forces, so a human must have taken it away! But now he stops there. He does not go further because he fears that he might then be beaten up. This is how certain researchers, such as Binswanger, behave. They say: Certain nervous disorders in the arms, legs, and so on have their cause in the soul. But then they stop there; they do not go further because they fear they might be beaten up—pardon me!—because they prefer to overlook what is happening in the spiritual world.

[ 26 ] It is a realization we must come to accept: that today’s researchers, in particular, are constantly confronted with the reality of the spiritual world, yet refuse to engage with it. But once these researchers are willing to engage with the spiritual world, they will have to realize that one cannot speak in general terms about the conditions of the spiritual world, but must approach Spiritual Science in a positive way, and that this engagement with Spiritual Science itself becomes a kind of healing process. That is how things are connected. It is not mental illnesses themselves that have increased; to believe that would be a mistake. But in fact, what can be called nervous disorders has become particularly widespread in recent times. And if things continue as they have until now, then we will find—as the course of human development shows us—that nervous disorders must become stronger and stronger if the old conditions remain in place.

[ 27 ] Some very interesting facts could be pointed out here. Let’s take a very simple fact, for example. There is an Austrian poet: Robert Hamerling—an excellent poet, some of whose works have already been recited in our circle. This man spent a large part of the second half of his life in bed. He was seriously ill; he succumbed more and more to a serious illness. But he did not become nervous. Nothing in his poetry indicates a nervous disposition. Even in times when he could lie only on one side of his body and had to write while enduring the most terrible pain, he did not write in a nervous manner, strictly speaking. Why? He simply belonged to that Central European culture which had not yet succumbed to nervousness to the same extent as the spiritual life of other European peoples. This does not diminish that intellectual life, of course, but one must be clear about the facts. I experienced how, after there was still an appreciation in the 1870s and 1880s for things such as those presented by Robert Hamerling, for example, there was suddenly an immense enthusiasm for Dostoevsky in the 1880s. I do not, of course, wish to belittle Dostoevsky, but what he presents to us above all is a very nervous, fidgety art, for all its greatness. Such nervous art would emerge if materialism—and Dostoevskian art is materialistic, even if it is “psychology”—continues to flow and spreads ever further.

[ 28 ] If this is not to happen, then the powerful forces that the human soul must summon will be required if it is to truly grasp lines of thought such as: Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon are preliminary stages of Earth’s development. For just try presenting a typical person of today with mental images like Saturn’s evolution, the Sun’s evolution, and so on, and expect them to make the mental effort required to find such things naturally necessary. One can indeed find such mental images naturally necessary; but this requires greater mental effort on the part of the soul, and the result is that nervousness is driven out! One must certainly have patience in this, but the nervousness is driven out. And what would otherwise descend upon the entire culture of humanity as a general nervousness will be healed when humanity embraces that which emanates from Spiritual Science through the spread of the spiritual current. Whereas humanity would otherwise become restless, Spiritual Science comes from the other side and brings healing at the same time. And while the psychiatrist, before delving into Spiritual Science, must admit to himself: nervous symptoms are on the rise, he may later have to admit that the best remedy for nervous symptoms is to tell the patient: Pick up a book on Spiritual Science, spend three-quarters of an hour with it every day, and try to work through it; then your nerves will grow stronger. — They will. But one will only believe this when one realizes that, according to the comparison drawn at the beginning of the lecture, the life of the soul has nothing to do with the nervous life other than that it triggers secretory processes; that one cannot cure the life of the soul by placing special emphasis on the secretory processes, but rather by strengthening from within that which has nothing to do with the secretory processes, by permeating it from the soul through the inflow of spiritual forces into the soul. The time will come when, based on Spiritual Science, prescriptions will be written that will consist of applying this or that—which can only be derived from Spiritual Science—especially to the diseases of modern times. For the time being, of course, we are still far from that point; for the time being, it will still be considered sufficiently proven that any therapy is nonsense if it can be labeled with the label of mystical methods, whereby one is all the more generous with the name “mysticism” the less one knows what mysticism actually is. For the term “mysticism” is the one we need least of all; we need it only when we wish to describe something technically; but those who have no idea what mysticism is are the ones who need it most of all.

[ 29 ] Precisely when we take stock of these things, we cannot deny that we are living in a time of profound crisis. I have often said: it is not my way to say that we are living in a transitional period; for every period has something that preceded it and something that follows it. But the point is precisely this: to recognize, in what makes a time a “transitional period,” the concrete nature of the transition. For our time, this concrete aspect consists in the fact that everything happening in our time points to this: People must find the transition to an understanding of the spiritual worlds. Then they will find peace, inner strength, and inner security in the spiritual worlds. That is what people absolutely need.

[ 30 ] If you wish to truly revitalize your soul—as a new kind of inner peace must be attained through Spiritual Science—it is good to take the following material as food for meditation: It is truly significant that over the past three to four centuries, people have gradually had to come to terms with the mental image that they are hurtling through space—literally hurtling through space. Of course, anyone can say they know this; but people usually do not reflect on the fact that they learn as early as school that they are hurtling through space at tremendous speed. In this regard, one might almost recall the man who once lay in a ditch—quite comfortably, it is true, yet terribly dissatisfied; and when asked why he was so dissatisfied, since he had nothing to do, he replied: yes, he had to go along with the Earth’s revolutions around the Sun, and he would find it more comfortable to stay behind. So this was someone who had taken the idea of rotation seriously. People don’t usually think about that, but what usually goes unthought also lives within them. So, to continue the thought: Over the last three to four centuries, people have grown accustomed to letting their mental images go along with the Earth as it races through space. This must be met with resistance from outer space. It is truly true that there was something reassuring in the old belief that the Earth stood still and that the Sun moved. Now it will be a long time before people realize the inaccuracy of the Copernican worldview; for the matter is not as it is taught today. But one can reach a point where, through the enlivenment of the mental images of Spiritual Science, one places oneself in the position of a person sitting in a train car or traveling on a ship who can now, in the face of the rumbling, make an inner effort to hear nothing of it, but to remain entirely “at one’s own center.” This is possible today only through the mental images of Spiritual Science. But one must bear in mind that constant repetition is necessary for this, because it depends on the strength that arises from it. Then one remains, as it were, within oneself, at one’s own center, calm and secure. And I would like to note this as a good meditation concept: the powers of the spiritual world can enter into us if we meet them with this calmness in the right way. Only in this way can we become aware of them, by meeting them through such a life of imagination as has been described.

[ 31 ] This characterizes the transitional period in which we live; we are truly in the midst of this transition. The longing for the spiritual world is very much present in people’s souls, even if most are not yet aware of it today. But from the events that have now gripped such a large part of the earth as something quite extraordinary, a conscious longing for the spiritual world will develop. As spiritual researchers, we can already know this today: that all the sacrificed, unspent etheric bodies will unleash the deepest longing for the spiritual world. This deepest longing will arise—a longing for a truth that must be attained not through external observation, but inwardly through the soul’s own effort. The German spirit is indeed prepared for this. It is prepared for such truth that appears true in and of itself, and not because it is verified externally. The German spirit is prepared for this. And evidence of this can be found everywhere. Those who have truly striven within the essence of the German spirit have always, in their thought forms, had a way of speaking of truth as an inner gift of the human soul. What, then, would such a person say today in response to much of what we are experiencing in our own time? In the first days of August, one could read in foreign newspapers: Hamburg is a heap of rubble; the Russians have entered Stettin, even Cologne. Quite different things were being reported. As is well known, Emperor Franz Joseph died on September 8. What would someone of the character described above say in response to this?

[ 32 ] “Brass instead of gold, counterfeit bills instead of genuine ones may be sold by some, a lost battle may be passed off to many as a won one, and other lies about sensory things and individual events may be made credible for a time; but in the knowledge of the essence in which consciousness has the immediate certainty of itself, the thought of deception falls away.”

[ 33 ] That would have been written from a place deeply rooted in what we have had to experience today. Hegel wrote it, and he died in 1831. This is what is remarkable: when someone is deeply moved by the inner nature of truth, they say things that are true for all time; then what has been spoken from the consciousness of truth can be cited at all times. This is what must be said about the peculiarity of the Central European spirit, about its very special relationship to truth, and what is undeniable to anyone who makes an effort to understand these things. Today, one has the feeling that one often has to ask: Why did people study history? Perhaps they never really studied it. It is as if souls were born only after August 1, 1914, and do not draw upon what happened in the past at all to form a judgment. But all of this ultimately serves only to make the reaction all the stronger and more intense, to generate all the more strongly and intensely in the souls the need for inner, true truth. This is the nature of the transition in our time, in which this inner connection with the truth is so often lacking and reveals itself as so lacking. A deepest longing for the truth will arise as a reaction. Then the souls incarnated here in bodies will hear what those souls speak to them who, through the sacrificial death of the present time, have prepared themselves to recognize more of the truth than is commonly recognized today.

[ 34 ] This is what I wanted to say at this moment, to reaffirm once again what I have often spoken of, especially in these times, regarding how current events speak to us. For truly: these current events speak of this. They speak to those who courageously devote themselves to them, who selflessly devote themselves to them, who, in their sorrow, are already looking toward the future; they speak to them of courage and comfort—courage and comfort that give new strength:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of battle,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruit of the spirit grows—
Guiding souls, spiritually aware,
Toward the realm of the spirit.