The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] My dear friends, we once again begin by remembering those who stand out in the vast fields of current events:

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 with help
Upon the souls it lovingly seeks.

[ 2 ] And for those who have already passed through the gates of death as a result of these events:

Spirits of your souls, active guardians,
May your wings bring
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.

[ 3 ] May the Spirit we seek through our striving for spiritual knowledge—the Spirit who brought healing to the Earth and freedom and progress to humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha—be with you and your heavy burdens!

[ 4 ] Eight days ago, we examined in detail here the souls close to us who, if they are to be found now, must be sought out in the spiritual worlds. And we have looked upon these souls close to us in such a way that we have allowed them specifically to tell us this or that which can shed light on the abode of beings in the spiritual world. Today I would like to direct our consideration more toward the path that the human soul can take while it dwells here in the body, into the spiritual worlds, in order to find precisely those spiritual realms of which we spoke last time as the abode of the so-called departed souls. It must indeed be emphasized again and again that the path into the spiritual worlds—the one befitting the soul of the present day in light of the entire development of humanity—is a path that passes through manifold preparations, some of which are indeed difficult but must be overcome. And today I would like to point out a few things regarding the path of knowledge from a perspective that might be called the perspective of imaginative knowledge.

[ 5 ] You are, of course, well aware, my dear friends, that the human soul can truly gain experiences and make observations in the spiritual world only when it does not make use of the instrument of the body. Everything we can gain through the instrument of the body can, after all, only provide us with experiences that exist in the physical world. If we wish to have experiences of the spiritual worlds, we must find a way to have them with our soul outside of our physical body. Now, this possibility is indeed open to people today, even if it is difficult to make observations of the spiritual world outside of one’s body. Moreover, it is always possible that such observations of the spiritual world, once they are made, can be judged by others who cannot make them, according to truly sound reason—not merely the reason one calls sound, but according to truly sound reason. But today we shall speak of the path itself, of the way in which the human soul, one might say on the one hand, emerges from the physical body, and on the other hand, how it enters the spiritual world. And since, as I said—eight days ago we considered this from a different perspective—I wish to view this path today from the standpoint of imaginative knowledge, there will be much to discuss in pictorial terms, which I then leave to your meditation to pursue further. If you do so, you will see that this path of knowledge is of particular significance.

[ 6 ] In a sense, one can enter the spiritual world through three gates. The first can be called the Gate of Death, the second the Gate of the Elements, and the third the Gate of the Sun. Anyone who wishes to walk the full path of knowledge must pass through all three gates on that path.

[ 7 ] Since time immemorial, the Gate of Death has always been a subject of genuine discussion wherever the truths of the mysteries have been spoken of. This Gate of Death cannot be reached unless we seek to reach it through what is well known to us as meditation—that is, devotion to certain thoughts or feelings suited specifically to our individuality, which we place at the center of our consciousness in such a way that we identify completely with them. Of course, human effort very easily flags precisely in this way, because there really is—and must be—discomfort and the overcoming of inner obstacles when one must repeatedly make these quiet, intimate efforts to surrender oneself to the given mass of thoughts and feelings in such a way that one forgets the whole world and lives only in these thoughts and feelings. But if one manages to do this again and again, one will gradually come to perceive, in the thought that one places at the center of one’s consciousness, something like a kind of independent life of that thought. One will get the feeling: until now, you have only ever thought this thought; you have placed the thought at the center of your consciousness; but now it is beginning to develop a life of its own, an inner vitality of its own. It is as if one were able to truly bring forth a being within oneself. The thought begins to become an inner entity. This is the crucial moment when one realizes that this thought, this feeling, has a life of its own, so that one feels, as it were, like the shell of this thought, of this feeling. So that one can say to oneself: your efforts have led you to provide a stage on which something is developing that is now coming to life through you.

[ 8 ] This personal awakening, this coming to life of the meditative thought, is a significant moment in the life of the meditator. Then he realizes that he is gripped by the objectivity of the spiritual realm, that, in a sense, the spiritual world is taking care of him, that it has approached him. Of course, it is not so easy to reach this experience, for before one reaches it, one must go through various sensations that, out of a natural inclination, one does not particularly like to experience. One must go through a certain feeling of isolation, for example, a feeling of loneliness, a feeling of abandonment. One cannot grasp the spiritual world without first feeling, as it were, abandoned by the physical world, without feeling that this physical world does many things that seem to wear us down, to crush us. But through such a feeling of isolation we must come to be able to endure this inner vitality to which the thought awakens—I would say, is born. Much, so much now resists the human being; within the human being itself, much resists the human being, which can lead to the right perception of this inner enlivening of thought. Specifically, it is a feeling we come to, an inner experience we come to and which we actually do not want. But at the same time we do not admit to ourselves that we do not want it; rather, we say: “Oh, you can’t possibly achieve that!” — And in doing so, you fall asleep. In doing so, your thinking abandons you; the inner tension refuses to go along with it. In short, one unconsciously chooses all sorts of excuses, for what one must experience is that the thought, in becoming so enlivened, actually becomes truly essential. It becomes substantial; it develops into a kind of being. And one then has the insight—not merely the feeling—that the thought is at first, one might say, like a small seed, roundish, and then grows into a distinctly formed being that extends from the outside into one’s head, so that the thought presents one with this task: you have identified with it; now you are inside the thought, and now you grow with the thought into your own head; but you are essentially still outside. The thought takes the form of a winged human head that fades into the indefinite and then extends into one’s own body through the head. The thought thus grows out like a winged angel’s head. This is what one must actually achieve. It is difficult to have this experience; therefore, one truly wants to believe that at this very moment, when the thought is thus growing out, one is losing all capacity for thought. One believes that one is being taken away from oneself at this very moment. But one feels this as an automaton left behind—what one has hitherto known as one’s body and into which the thought extends.

[ 9 ] Furthermore, in the objective spiritual world there are all sorts of obstacles preventing us from perceiving this. This winged angel’s head truly becomes visible within us, but there are all kinds of obstacles preventing us from perceiving it. And above all, the point one has reached there is the true threshold of the spiritual world. And if one succeeds in standing firm, as I have described, then one is at the threshold of the spiritual world, truly at the threshold of the spiritual world. But there stands, at first completely invisible to human beings, that power we have always called Ahriman. One does not see him. And the fact that one does not see what I have now described as the fully developed being of thought is the work of Ahriman. He does not want one to see it. He wants to prevent it. And since it is primarily through the path of meditation that one reaches this point, it is always easy for Ahriman to, so to speak, erase what one is meant to attain if one clings to the prejudices of the physical world. And truly, one must say: people have no idea how deeply they are actually attached to this prejudice of the physical world; how they cannot even form a mental image of a world governed by laws other than those of the physical world. I cannot discuss all the prejudices one brings with one to the threshold of the spiritual world today, but I do wish to discuss one of the most fundamental ones, a somewhat more intimate prejudice.

[ 10 ] You see, when people speak of the physical world, of a monistic worldview, of unity, they very often say to themselves: I can only understand the world if the whole world appears to me as a single entity. We have sometimes had to go through rather strange experiences in this regard. When we started our Spiritual Science movement here in Berlin with just a few members quite a number of years ago now, some people found their way here who, deep down, could not feel that they belonged. For example, there was a lady who came to us after a few months and said: None of what Spiritual Science has to offer is really suitable for her, because it requires too much thinking, and that thinking erases everything that is currently valuable to her; she always falls into a kind of slumber when she thinks. And besides, she believed that there was only one thing of value—and that was unity! Now it turned out that the unity of the world—which the monist also seeks in the most diverse fields—not merely the materialist monist—had become like a fixed idea for her: unity, unity, unity! She was determined to seek unity. — Now we have a German philosopher, Leibniz, in the development of German thought, a decidedly monadological philosopher who did not seek unity, but rather the many monads, which for him were spiritual beings—who thus knew clearly: as soon as one enters the spiritual world, it cannot be a matter of unity, but only of multiplicity. Thus there are monists and pluralists. These are viewed as worldviews. The monists oppose the pluralists, who speak of multiplicity; they speak only of unity.

[ 11 ] Yes, you see, the thing is that unity and multiplicity are, after all, concepts that apply only to the physical world. And yet people believe that these concepts must also apply in the spiritual world. But they do not apply there. There one must be prepared to perceive a unity, yet to overcome this unity in the very next moment, and to see it reveal itself as multiplicity. It is both a unity and a multiplicity. Nor can one carry ordinary arithmetic, physical mathematics, into the spiritual world. One of the strongest, yet most deeply ingrained, Ahrimanic prejudices is the desire to carry the concepts one has acquired in the physical world, just as they are, into the spiritual world. But one must truly arrive at its threshold unencumbered, without being weighed down by what one has learned in the physical world; ready to leave it behind at its threshold. All concepts—especially those for which one has struggled the most—must be left behind, and one must prepare oneself: there, in the spiritual world, new concepts will be given to you; there, something entirely new will be granted to you. This clinging to what the physical world offers is incredibly strong in human beings. One wants to carry into the spiritual world what one has conquered in the physical world. But one must have the opportunity to stand before a complete tabula rasa, before a complete emptiness, and let only the thought that begins to come to life be one’s guide. This entrance into the spiritual world has been called the gate of death for the reason that it is actually a death even more profound than physical death. In physical death, people are convinced that they are shedding their physical body; but upon entering the spiritual world, we must resolve to truly shed our concepts, our mental images, and our ideas as well, and allow our being to be rebuilt anew.

[ 12 ] Now let us step forward before this winged being of thought of which I have spoken. We will already be standing there if we truly make every effort to live in a single thought. And then we need only know that when the moment arrives and places demands on us different from the mental image we had of them, we must truly withstand them—we must not, so to speak, retreat. This retreat usually happens unconsciously. One grows weary, but this weariness is merely an expression of the fact that one does not wish to cast off one’s baggage, because, so to speak, the entire soul must die along with what it has acquired on the physical plane so that it may enter the spiritual world. That is why this gate must quite rightly be called the gate of death. And then one looks through this winged being of thought as through a new spiritual eye that one has acquired; or also through a spiritual ear, for one also hears, one also feels, one perceives precisely through this that which exists in the spiritual world.

[ 13 ] It is indeed possible, my dear friends, to speak of specific experiences one can have in order to enter the spiritual world. To have these experiences, nothing else is really necessary except perseverance in the prescribed meditation. In particular, it is necessary to realize that certain feelings one brings to the threshold of the spiritual world must truly be set aside beforehand. Feelings that arise precisely from the fact that one usually wants this spiritual world to be different from how it presents itself to us.

[ 14 ] So this is the first gate, the Gate of Death.

[ 15 ] The second gate is the Gate of the Elements. This Gate of the Elements is the second one that those who truly devote themselves to meditation will pass through. However, one may also be aided, in a sense, by one’s constitution and even reach the second gate without having passed through the first. This is not good for true understanding, but it is possible to reach it without having passed through the first gate. True understanding arises only when one has passed through the first gate and then consciously steps through the second gate. This second gate manifests itself in the following way. You see, when one has passed through the gate of death, one initially finds oneself in certain states which, as one can see, are outwardly—in their effect on the human being, in the way the human being experiences them—similar to sleep, but inwardly they are quite different. Outwardly, the human being is as if asleep during such states. Precisely when thought has begun to live, when it begins to stir, to expand, then the outer person is truly as if asleep. They need not be lying down; they may be sitting, but they are as if asleep. And just as little as one can distinguish this state from sleep outwardly, so much more must it be distinguished inwardly. For when one then passes from this state into the ordinary state of life, only then does one realize: you were not asleep, but you were in the life of thought, just as you are in it now, where you have awakened as usual in the physical world and are looking out through your eyes at what is shining. But one also knows: Now that you are awake, you think you are forming the thoughts, you are putting them together; but just before, when you were in that state, the thoughts arose of their own accord. One approached the other; they clarified one another; one stepped away from the other, and what one usually does in thinking, that had done itself there. But one knows: whereas one is usually an “I” that links one thought to another, during this state one floats, as it were, within one thought, drifts toward another, is united with it; then one is carried away into a third and drifts back again; one has the feeling: space no longer really exists.

[ 16 ] Isn't it true that in physical space, if you were drawn toward a point and looked back, and then moved away from it, and if you then wanted to approach it again, you would first have to retrace your steps; you would have to go back and forth. That is not the case in the other state. There, space is not like that; there, one leaps through space, as it were. In one moment you are at a point; in the next you are gone again. You do not pass through space. The laws of space have ceased. You now live and weave within the thought itself. You know: the self has not perished; it weaves within the life of thought, but you cannot yet, while living in thought, be master of your thoughts; the thoughts create themselves. One is drawn along. One does not swim in the streams of thought oneself, but the thoughts, as it were, take one on their backs and carry one. This state must also come to an end. And it ends when one passes through the gate of the elements. Then one brings the whole into one’s own will, then one can intentionally follow a specific path of thought. One then lives with one’s will within the entire life of thought. This, in turn, is an immensely significant moment. And: that is why I have even pointed this out exoterically in public lectures: the second is attained by identifying with one’s destiny. Through this, one gains the power to be present within the weaving of thought with one’s will.

[ 17 ] First, once one has passed through the gate of death, one reaches a point where this or that is done to one in the spiritual world. The ability to learn to act for oneself in the spiritual world is attained precisely by identifying with one’s own destiny. One attains this only gradually. Then the thoughts take on a nature that is identical with our own nature. The deeds of our nature enter into the spiritual world. But in order to do this in the right way, one must pass through the second gate. By beginning to weave thoughts with the power that comes from identifying with one’s destiny, to weave in thought in such a way that one does not merely go along with the thought as with a dream image, but that one can, under certain circumstances, erase this or that thought and bring up another—that one can, in other words, wield one’s will—when this begins, one must truly undergo this experience, which one might call passing through the second gate. And there it becomes apparent that what one now needs as willpower presents itself as a truly terrifying monster. In mysticism, for thousands and thousands of years, this has always been called the encounter with the “lion.” One must go through this encounter with the lion. In terms of feeling, it consists of the fact that before one acts in the world of thought, before this living connection with the world of thought, one actually—one might call it—feels a hopeless fear, which one must overcome just as one must overcome the loneliness at the gate of death. One does feel fear. This fear can be deceived in the most varied ways into appearing as this or that feeling that is not fear at all. But essentially, it is fear of what one is entering into. And what matters is that one truly finds the ability to master this beast one encounters, this lion. For in the imagination, it appears exactly as if it were opening its gigantic maw to devour one. That very willpower one intends to apply in the spiritual world actually threatens to devour one. One is constantly dominated by the feeling: you must will, you must do something, must seize this or that. But regarding all these elements of volition that one enters into, one has the feeling: if you seize it, it devours you, wipes you out of the world. That is being devoured by the lion. So, one must really—one can call it that figuratively—instead of succumbing to the fear that within the spiritual world the elements of will will seize and devour and strangle one, one must swing oneself onto the lion’s back and seize these elements of will, and use them of one’s own accord to act. That is what matters.

[ 18 ] Now you see what the essential point is here. Once one has passed through the gate of death, one is outside the body, and then one can only use the powers of the will from the outside. One must attune oneself to the harmony of the worlds. But such powers, which one must use from the outside, are also within oneself; they simply operate unconsciously. The forces that move our blood, that make our heart beat, originate from spiritual beings into whom one immerses oneself when one plunges into the element of will. We have these forces within us. So if someone, without having undergone the proper esoteric path, is seized by the element of will—without having passed through the gate of death—then those forces that otherwise circulate in their blood and beat in their heart take hold of them. Then they do not use the forces outside their body, but the forces within them. That would be black magic. This would cause a person to intervene in the spiritual world of their own accord with the forces with which we are not permitted to intervene in the spiritual world. And the fact that one now sees the lion, that one truly has this beast before them, that one knows: this is what it looks like, this is how the forces of will seek to seize one, and one must take hold of them outside the body—that is what matters. If one does not approach the second gate, if one does not see the lion, then one is always in danger of wanting to rule the world out of human egoism. Therefore, the correct path of knowledge is this: first out of the physical body and physical human existence, and only then to approach from the outside the relationship one must enter into with the beings that are outside. Now, this is contrasted by the tendency of most people to seek a more comfortable way of entering the spiritual world than through good meditation. For example, one can avoid the gate of death and, if one’s inner dispositions are favorable, approach the second gate. This is achieved by surrendering to particular mental images—especially fervent ones—that are meant to represent a general merging with the entire universe. Images that are recommended by this or that half-knowing mystic, recommended in good faith. In this way, one numbs oneself to the striving of thought and directly stimulates the feeling. One whips up the feeling, one stirs up enthusiasm in the feeling. Through this, one may indeed initially reach the second gate and is also handed over to the forces of the will, but one does not master the lion; rather, one is devoured by it, and the lion does with one as it pleases. That is to say: essentially, occult but fundamentally egoistic things take place. Therefore, it is truly necessary time and again—though one might also say somewhat risky—from the standpoint of true, genuine contemporary esotericism, not to refer to all that which is a mysticism that merely whips up feeling and sensation. This appeal to what whips up the human being inwardly, what whips him out of his physical body, yet leaves them connected to the forces of blood and heart—the physical forces of blood and heart—brings about a certain kind of perception of the spiritual world that cannot be denied, that may indeed contain much good, but that turns people into beings stumbling uncertainly in the spiritual world and renders them utterly incapable of distinguishing between egoism and altruism.

[ 19 ] We have now reached a difficult point—one that must be emphasized—because when it comes to actual meditation and everything related to it, the minds of people today often fall asleep. They prefer not to strain their thinking as rigorously as is necessary to identify with it. Rather, they prefer to be told: Immerse yourself in an all-loving devotion to the world spirit or the like, whereby the mind is whipped into a frenzy while bypassing thinking. Then people are truly led into spiritual perceptions; but they are not fully conscious within them and cannot distinguish whether the things they experience there, the things they experience within themselves, arise from egoism or do not arise from egoism. Certainly, the selfless meditation must go hand in hand with the arousal of all feelings, but it must go hand in hand with thought as well. Thought need not be switched off. But it is precisely in completely suppressing thought and surrendering oneself solely to the whipped-up, glowing feeling that certain mystics seek something.

[ 20 ] This is a difficult point because it does work—those who stir up their emotions in this way make much faster progress. They enter the spiritual world, experience all sorts of things there, and that is what most people want. For most people, it is not a matter of entering the spiritual world in the right way, but simply of entering it at all. The uncertainty that arises here is this: if we do not first pass through the gate of death but, so to speak, go directly to the gate of the elements, we are still prevented there by Lucifer from truly perceiving the lion; that is, we are, as it were, devoured by him before we perceive him. The difficulty is that we can no longer distinguish what pertains to us and what is out there in the world. We come to know spiritual beings, elemental spirits. One can learn to perceive a very extensive spiritual world even without passing through the gate of death, but these are mostly spiritual beings whose task is to sustain the human circulation and the activity of the human heart. Such beings are, of course, always present in the spiritual, the elemental world around us. They are spirits whose life-element lies in the air, in the warmth that surrounds us, and also in the light; whose life-element also lies in the spherical tones that are, of course, no longer physically perceptible—spiritual beings that interweave and permeate all that is living. We naturally enter this world. And the matter becomes alluring, for truly the most wonderful spiritual discoveries can be made in this world. Is it not so that when one who has not passed through the gate of death, but has approached the Lion’s Gate directly and has not seen the lion, perceives an elemental spirit whose task is to sustain the heart’s activity, then this elemental spirit, who also sustains the heart activity of other people, may under certain circumstances bring news of other people, even of people from the past, or he may bring prophetic news from the future. So the matter may be accompanied by great success, but it is nevertheless not the right path, because it does not make us free in our mobility in the spiritual world.

[ 21 ] The third gate we must pass through is the Gate of the Sun. And when we reach this gate, we must once again undergo an experience. While at the Gate of Death we must perceive a winged angel’s head, and at the Gate of the Elements a lion, at the Gate of the Sun we must perceive a dragon, a wild dragon. And we must look properly at this wild dragon. But Lucifer and Ahriman together are now striving to make it invisible, to keep it from coming into our spiritual sight. When we perceive it, however, we realize that this wild dragon has, in essence, the most to do with ourselves, for it is woven from our instincts and feelings, which essentially relate to what we call our basest nature in ordinary life. This dragon contains all the forces we need, for example—forgive the prosaic nature of the expression—for digestion and many other things. That which lies within us and provides the forces for digestion, and many other things that are bound in the strictest sense to our very lowest personality, appears to us in the form of the dragon. We must look at it as it writhes its way out of us. The dragon is not beautiful, and that is why Lucifer and Ahriman have an easy time influencing our subconscious soul life in such a way that we unconsciously want to know nothing of seeing this dragon. For woven into it are all our follies, all our vanities, our pride, and our selfishness, but also our basest instincts.

[ 22 ] If we do not look at the dragon at the Gate of the Sun—it is called the Gate of the Sun because it is precisely within the forces of the sun that the forces from which the dragon is woven dwell, for it is the forces of the sun that enable us to digest and perform our other bodily functions, it is truly through our coexistence with the sun—so if we do not behold the dragon at the Gate of the Sun, then it devours us, and we become one with it in the spiritual world. Then we are no longer distinct from the dragon; then we are, in fact, the dragon experiencing life in the spiritual world. And it can experience profound things; it can, so to speak, have magnificent experiences. Experiences which, I would say, are more alluring than those one has at the gate of death or beyond the gate of death. The experiences one has at the gate of death are at first colorless, shadowy, intimate—so light and intimate that they easily slip away from us, that we are not very inclined to focus our attention on holding onto them. And we must constantly strain to allow that which is faintly stirring in thought to expand. It eventually expands into a world. But until it appears as a reality imbued with color, sound, and life, this requires long, energetic work and striving. For one must, so to speak, allow these colorless and soundless forms to come to life from infinity itself. If, for example, one wishes to discover the simplest air or water spirit through what one might now call mental clairvoyance—meaning the clairvoyance that arises through the animation of thought—then at first this air or water spirit is something that flits so lightly and shadowy across the horizon of the spiritual world that it does not interest one at all. And if it is to become colored or sound-bearing, then the colorfulness must approach it from the entire expanse of the cosmos. But this happens only through long inner work. It happens only by waiting until one is graced. For consider: if you have—figuratively speaking—such a small air spirit, and if it is now to take on color, if it is to appear colored, then color must radiate in from a vast part of the cosmos. One must have the power to cause it to radiate in. But this power can only be attained, acquired, through devotion. The radiant forces must come in from outside through devotion. If one is at one with one’s dragon, if one is one with it, then when one sees an air or water spirit, one will be inclined to radiate outward the forces that are within one, and specifically within the organs that are called lowly in ordinary life. That is much easier. Our head is in itself a perfect organ, but in the astral body and the etheric body of the head, there is not much color within them, because the colors are used, for example, to form the brain, namely the cerebral cortex. So that when you, through head clairvoyance at the threshold of the spiritual world, lift the astral body and etheric body out of the physical body from the head, it does not have much color within it. The colors are used to form the perfect organ, the brain. But if you—we can call it abdominal clairvoyance—extract the astral body and etheric body from the organs of the stomach, the liver, the gallbladder, and so on, the colors have not yet been used to form perfect organs. These organs are only on the path to perfection. That which belongs to the astral and etheric bodies of the abdomen is beautifully colored; it shines and sparkles in all manner of sun-like colors. And if you extract the etheric and astral bodies from there, you endow the forms you see with the most wonderful colors and hues. So that it can happen that someone sees something marvelous and creates truly magnificent colored paintings. It is certainly interesting, for it is also interesting for the anatomist to examine the spleen, liver, and intestines, and from the standpoint of science, this is also necessary. But when the expert examines it, what appears in such beautiful, colorful images is what underlies the digestive process two hours after a meal. There is certainly nothing wrong with examining this. Just as the anatomist must examine these things, science will one day benefit greatly from examining them, from knowing what the etheric body does when the stomach digests. But we must be quite clear about this: If we do not consciously go to the gate of the sun, and thereby do not know: we are loading all that which is in the etheric and astral bodies of our abdomen into this dragon, we are separating that off—then we radiate it out into the clairvoyant forms, then we certainly get a wonderful world. The most beautiful and easiest to attain does not initially come from the higher powers, from head clairvoyance, but from abdominal clairvoyance. And that is certainly important to know. For in the cosmos there is nothing low in the absolute sense; there is only the relatively low. The cosmos must work with immensely significant forces to bring about what is necessary for the human digestive system. But the point is that we must not succumb to errors, must not succumb to delusions, but that we know what things are. If we know that something which presents a wondrous aspect is nothing other than the digestive process, that is extraordinarily important. But if we believe that such an image might reveal a special angelic world to us, then we are simply caught in a mistake. So the reasonable person cannot object to a science being cultivated from this knowledge, but only to such things being presented in a false light. That is what this is all about. For example, it may happen that someone, precisely through a process within the digestive system at a certain stage of digestion, consistently extracts a specific part of the etheric body; in that case, they may be a natural clairvoyant. One simply needs to know what is involved.

[ 23 ] It will therefore be difficult for human beings to use mental clairvoyance—in which all the color elements of the etheric and astral bodies are employed to create the marvelous structure of the brain—to transform the colorless and soundless into the fully colored and resonant. But it will be relatively easy for them to use abdominal clairvoyance to see the most wondrous things in the world. Of course, this abdominal clairvoyance also contains powers that human beings must learn to use. The powers employed there for our digestive process are, after all, merely transformed powers, and we truly experience them when we learn to cultivate, more and more, our identification with destiny. This is also what teaches us in this field: to what first arose as a winged angel’s head, we must add the other part, and the point here is that we must not merely add the forces that serve digestion, but also those of a higher nature; these are the ones that lie within our karma, our destiny. When we identify with this, we succeed in carrying out the spiritual beings we see around us, who now have the tendency for sounds and colors to flow in from outer space. Then, of course, the spiritual world becomes a world of full content, a concrete one, just as real and concrete as the physical world in which we find ourselves.

[ 24 ] A particular difficulty at the threshold of death is that we truly have the feeling—and this is something we must also overcome—that you are actually losing yourself there! But if you have truly made the effort and identified with the mental realm, you can immediately also have the awareness: You lose yourself, but you find yourself again. That is an experience one has. One loses oneself when entering the spiritual world, but one knows that one will also find oneself again. One must make the transition: to come to the abyss, to lose oneself in the abyss, but with the confidence that one will find oneself again on the other side. That is an experience one must go through. Everything I have described are precisely inner experiences that one must go through. And the fact that one experiences what actually happens to the soul there—that is important. It is just as if one were to see something; if one is pointed in the right direction by a friend, that is better than if one figures it out on one’s own. But one can attain all that has been described by devoting oneself wholeheartedly, time and again, to inner work and inner overcoming through meditation, as you will find described in the books *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* and in the second part of *Esoteric Science*.

[ 25 ] It is of the utmost importance that one learn to have these different kinds of experiences beyond the threshold of the spiritual world. If, as is natural for human beings, one merely feels the urge to find in the spiritual world a continuation, a mere duplication of the physical world—if one believes that everything in the spiritual world must look exactly the same as it does here in the physical world—then one cannot enter it. One must truly go through what one perceives as a reversal of everything one has experienced here in the physical world. Here in the physical world, one is accustomed, for example, to opening one’s eyes and seeing light, to being impressed by the light. If one expects this in the spiritual world—that one can open a spiritual eye in the same way to be impressed by the light—then one cannot enter it, for one is expecting something false. This weaves something like a mist that lays itself before the spiritual senses, obscuring the spiritual world from one, just as a sea of mist obscures a mountain range. In the spiritual world, for example, one cannot see objects illuminated by light; rather, one must be clear that one shines with the light itself in the spiritual world. In the physical world, when a ray of light falls on an object, one sees it; but in the spiritual world, one is within the ray of light itself and thereby touches the object. So that one knows oneself to be floating with the ray of light in the spiritual world; one knows that one is inside the radiant light. This is what can give one a hint as to how to acquire concepts that are suitable for helping one progress in the spiritual world. For example, it is immensely useful to create a mental image: What would it be like if you were in the sun right now? Because you are not in the sun, you see objects—when the sun’s rays illuminate them—through the reflected rays. One must create a mental image of oneself inside the sunbeams and touching objects with them. This touch is an experience in the spiritual world; the very essence of experiencing the spiritual world lies in knowing oneself to be alive within it. One knows oneself to be alive in the weaving of thoughts. Precisely when this state begins—when one is consciously aware of being within the weaving of thoughts—it immediately transitions into a sense of self-awareness within the radiant light. For thought is of the light. Thought weaves within the light. But one only experiences this—that one is actually submerged in the light—when one is within this weaving of thoughts.

[ 26 ] Humanity has now reached a stage where it must embrace such mental images so that it does not pass through the gate of death—where it is, after all, already in the spiritual world—and then enter into entirely unfamiliar worlds. The capital that humans received from the gods at the dawn of the Earth has gradually been depleted. People no longer carry through the gate of death what were the remnants of an ancient heritage. They must now gradually acquire concepts here in the physical world that will serve, even after they have passed through the gate of death, to make visible to them the beings that confront them after they have crossed over as tempting and seductive, as dangerous adversaries. It is connected with these great cosmic relationships that Spiritual Science must be communicated to humanity precisely now, that Spiritual Science must take its place among human beings. And one can observe how, especially in our days, in our days so full of fateful events, transitions are truly being created. People are now passing through the gate of death at a young age, demanded by the great destiny of the times, who, so to speak, have allowed death to approach them with full consciousness while still young. I am not referring so much to the moment just before death has occurred, for example on the battlefield. There may well be much enthusiasm and the like there, which do not make the experience of death as eminent, as steeped in attention, as one might otherwise believe. But when death has occurred, it is a death that leaves behind an unspent etheric body—in our time, it leaves behind an unspent etheric body—which the deceased can now look upon; so that the deceased now sees this phenomenon, this fact of death, with far greater clarity than he would see it if death were to occur through illness or old age.

[ 27 ] Death on the battlefield is a more intense, more profoundly affecting event in our time than death that occurs in other ways. This has an impact on the soul that has passed through the gate of death and serves as a lesson. Death is terrible, or at least can be terrible, for human beings as long as they dwell in the body. But when a person has passed through the gate of death and looks back upon death, death is the most beautiful experience possible in the human cosmos. For this looking back upon entering the spiritual world through death is, between death and new birth, the most wondrous, the most beautiful, the most magnificent, the most glorious event upon which the deceased can look back at all. Just as little as our birth ever truly stands out in our physical experience—for no one with ordinary, untrained faculties remembers their physical birth—so death always stands there for the soul that has passed through the gate of death, from the very emergence of consciousness. It is always present, but it stands there as the most beautiful, as the awakener into the spiritual world. And it is a teacher of the most wonderful kind, a teacher who can truly prove to the receptive soul that a spiritual world exists, because it destroys the physical through its own being and allows only that which is spiritual to emerge from this destruction. And this resurrection of the spiritual, with the complete shedding of the physical, is an event that always stands between death and new birth. This is a momentous, a wonderfully great event, and the soul gradually grows into an understanding of it; it grows into it in a quite unique way when this event is, one might say, a self-chosen event—not that the person sought this death, of course, but found it voluntarily, for example, by having, so to speak, voluntarily placed themselves in that situation. Through this, this moment gains clarity once again. And a person who has otherwise not thought much about death, who has cared little or only partially for the spiritual world, can now, especially in our time, find a wonderful teacher in death, after their death. And this is something that holds immense significance for the connection between the physical and spiritual worlds, particularly in this war. I have already emphasized this in several lectures during these difficult times: it is not enough to do what we can through mere instruction, through the spoken word; but immense instruction will come to the people of the future through the fact that so many deaths have occurred. These affect the dead, and the dead, in turn, intervene in the future cultural process of humanity.

[ 28 ] Thus, I can share words from just such a deceased person, who passed through the gates of death at a young age in our time, words that, I would say, have come through; words that are, in a sense, surprising precisely because they bear witness to how the deceased, who experienced death with particular clarity—as if on a battlefield—is now finding his way into this different experience after death; how he is working his way out of earthly mental images and into spiritual ones. I would also like to share these words with you here. They have been, if I may characterize it that way, captured, as one who died on the battlefield might have wished to convey them to those he left behind.

In the light,
There I feel
The life force.
Death has awakened me
From sleep,
From the slumber of the spirit.
I will be,
And from myself do,
What radiant power
Shines within me.

[ 29 ] In a sense, this is learned by looking upon the dead person after their death, experienced through the process of learning, as if the being were filled with what it must learn to live after death by beholding death, and of which it also wishes to give an account, to reveal.

In the light, I feel the life force.

[ 30 ] So he feels that he is more alive in terms of perceiving the spiritual world than he was here before his death. He perceives death as a kind of awakener and teacher:

Death has awakened me from sleep,
From the slumber of the spirit.

[ 31 ] And now he already feels that he is becoming an active agent in the spiritual world:

I will be, and from me will come...

[ 32 ] But he feels that this action is brought about within him by the forces of light; he feels the light coming to life within him:

I will be,
And act upon what
The light
Shines within me.

[ 33 ] One can see everywhere, truly see, how that which can be perceived in the spiritual world repeatedly and anew provides the purest confirmation of what, in turn, can become generally known through so-called imaginative knowledge derived from this spiritual world. And this is what we wish to see enlivened, truly enlivened through our Spiritual Science movement: that we are not merely dealing with knowledge of the spiritual world, but that this knowledge truly becomes so alive within us that we acquire a different way of feeling with the world, of sensing the world, as the concepts of Spiritual Science come alive within us. This inner enlivening of the ideas of Spiritual Science—that is, as I have often said, as I have said repeatedly—what is fundamentally required of us, demanded in such a way that it is to be our contribution to the further development of the world, so that the spiritual thoughts born of Spiritual Science may flow together, rising up into the spiritual world like luminous forces that are returned to the luminous universe; so that the universe may unite with what those who have passed through the gate of death incorporate into humanity’s spiritual cultural movement during these fateful days. Then what is implied in the words with which we wish to conclude our reflections once again today will come to pass:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruit of the spirit grows—
Guiding souls with spiritual awareness
Toward the realm of the spirit.