The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] During the war years, Rudolf Steiner spoke the following words of remembrance before each lecture he gave within the Anthroposophical Society in the countries affected by the war:

[ 2 ] We remember, my dear friends, the guardian spirits of those who stand outside 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.

[ 3 ] And turning to the guardian spirits of those who, as a result of these tragic events, 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 whom we have sought to draw near to through our Spiritual Science for years—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 responsibilities!

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[ 5 ] Since, after a long absence, I am once again able to be among you to my deep satisfaction, I would like to use this week’s three lectures above all to turn our gaze toward insights into the spiritual world that are connected, in a closer or more distant way, to what must so deeply concern and move us in light of the significant, profoundly transformative events of our time. Our gaze should not be directed primarily at these current events themselves, but rather at that which is connected in every soul, in every feeling, to these events—like riddles, like anxious questions regarding the fate of humanity and the world: Our gaze should be turned toward that broader destiny of the human soul to which the human soul is subject in that realm of worldly existence to which the gaze of Spiritual Science is also directed—a realm that is not limited to earthly, material existence. So close, my dear friends, is it to us at this time to knock on the gate through which the human being passes when it leaves this earthly body in whatever form. We are drawn toward that which the human being can look up to when it needs a higher comfort, a deeper source of strength, than the comfort that can come only from material life, than the sources of strength that lie only within material life. How a thousandfold does the voice of the spiritual world knock upon our hearts in our time, even upon the hearts of those people who often do not wish to enter the spiritual world with their hearts, even though these hearts are also windows for those people leading out into the spiritual world. How clearly this spiritual world is knocking a thousandfold at these windows in our time, and how natural it must be for us to once again summarize, from a particular perspective, the various things we can know about this spiritual world.

[ 6 ] Anyone who has moved beyond the narrowest prejudices of materialism will soon have to admit the existence of a spiritual world, and I would call those the narrow-minded prejudices of materialism from which the existence of a spiritual world is denied altogether. The perspective of those who do not deny this spiritual world, but merely assert that nothing can be known about it by human means, is already somewhat broader. As I said, if one does not stand on the very limited materialistic standpoint of the former type and has matured through human life to the point—and one can soon mature to that point—where one — even if one were to deny its knowability — one must at least admit it, then one will have to consider that the knowledge one can acquire and the results one can achieve through the ordinary material world are insignificant compared to the vast wealth that lies in the spiritual world beyond the physical-sensory realm.

[ 7 ] Certainly, there are narrow-minded, materialistic souls in our time who wish to confine the entire human being within such narrow limits that one must regard humans as only slightly more highly developed than animals, yet entirely in line with animal evolution. Certainly, such people exist. But their numbers will likely dwindle, for, as we have often seen, even conventional science does not allow these prejudices to take root. And once one begins to concede that there is something in the human being that transcends the outwardly natural, then one will very soon come to realize how insignificant, how narrowly limited, is that which the physical, sensory world encompasses, compared to the great and mighty that encompasses the entire world. And when one then looks at the human being himself, when one becomes aware of what lives and can live within the human being, one cannot help but say: however far the spiritual world extends, however great its richness may be, the human being is a kind of microcosm in himself. One may consider it as unknown as one likes: the entire richness of the spiritual world reaches into his being. As I said, however hidden that depth of the soul may be to sensory observation—into which the deeper regions of the spiritual world reach—they do reach into the human being. The human being is not merely, as his physical body is, an interaction of external physical forces and substances; the human being is a product of the entire world, a true microcosm. And much of what we have been doing, much of what we have sought out, was indeed intended to make clear to us in detail to what extent the human being is a product of the spiritual world, to what extent one must truly seek within him not only the forces of this earth, but those of all the heavens, one might say.

[ 8 ] But once this thought takes hold, it becomes clear that) with our ordinary knowledge of human beings, we actually know very little indeed. With this ordinary knowledge, one knows something about the laws of nature; one acquires this knowledge between birth and death. But one comes to realize—even without being a proponent of Spiritual Science, merely by delving into it just a little — not even by professing it, but simply by posing life’s riddles — one will already recognize that if one wishes to understand human beings, one must turn to something entirely different from the scant external knowledge that can be acquired between birth and death through the body’s external means, through the external senses and the intellect bound to the brain.

[ 9 ] Well, my dear friends, let us connect this idea with another—the idea that runs, so to speak, like a common thread through all our reflections: the idea of repeated earthly lives. What must strike those who have given some thought to our views most immediately about this idea of repeated earthly lives is that the time we spend here between birth and death is relatively short compared to the time we spend in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. From a wide variety of perspectives, we have discussed that, as a rule, this time that a human being must live through between death and a new birth is much, much longer than the relatively short time between birth and death here in physical life.

[ 10 ] There is a connection between the two thoughts I just expressed: the little knowledge and fruits of life we acquire here between birth and death stands in roughly the same relationship to the spiritual wealth of the worlds with which human beings are connected as the short time between birth and death does to the long time between death and a new birth. For indeed, as will become clear to you from many of the reflections we have made, it is the task of the human soul between death and a new birth to acquire insights and powers entirely different from those acquired here in physical life. Truly, my dear friends, one can say that when we enter physical life on Earth in this way—when we come from the spiritual world and are incarnated into the body that the hereditary line of our ancestors has given us—it is part of our task to possess all the powers and all the subtle ramifications of these powers that we need to organize our body throughout.

[ 11 ] You see, our physical body, as we receive it, is born to us from our parents. But our spiritual and soul being is connected to this body; this being has spent a long time in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. If one could see—assuming it were even justified to consider this hypothesis for a single moment—what this outer human being could become solely through the forces of heredity, the forces inherent in the substance handed down to us by our parents, then we would see that with these forces alone, the human being cannot become who he is. We must pour into these forces that constitute our outer physical existence—into these substances and organ structures, into the form we receive from our parents—that which we bring with us as a soul, and transform it from the abstract into this individual personality that we are. As I said, it is a foolish hypothesis, but one can pose it to clarify something: Let us imagine for a moment what would happen if you were all born solely from your parents? We are setting aside karma here, setting aside the fact that we are naturally born into specific families; we are looking only at physical heredity. Then you would all be the same as human beings; you would possess only the general physical human character! The fact that you are a very specific individual human being, that so many individual human beings are sitting here before us, stems from the fact that the general human template is chiseled down to its finest details by the spiritual individuality that comes from the spiritual world and merges into what is given by father and mother. For this, just as one must have fingers to grasp an object in the physical world, and just as one must first see the object in order to grasp it—and just as one must have the organs and have learned how to grasp something (after all, a child cannot grasp an object; it must first learn to do so)—so too must one have learned to connect with all the individual organs that physically constitute our organism.

[ 12 ] Isn't it true that, “in general,” we have ears, but we hear in our own individual way? We have “in general” eyes, but we see in our own individual way. This is least noticeable in the external organs, but it becomes much more apparent in a person's inner behavior. That is why we must infuse our spiritual-soul life into all these organs, which are so generally defined; we must shape them in a wholly individual way, must know the inner spiritual-soul forces that enable us to individually shape what we have received as ears, nose, eyes, brain—all that which we have received as organs of heredity. This means that when we enter the physical world through birth, we must possess knowledge—and not merely knowledge, but practical ways to apply this entire marvelous structure of the human being, about which we know so little through external science. We must, for example, know the entire delicate structure of the brain from within, because we must organize it internally. And all these spiritual-soul processes, everything that makes it possible for us to be human beings in a human body between birth and death—all of this we must acquire. Just as we must acquire skills in life, so must we acquire the ability to be human in physical life, between death and a new birth.

[ 13 ] We must face this fact, my dear friends; it must be perfectly clear to us. And we will then be able to grasp what we cannot recognize through mere physical knowledge of human beings, and what we must recognize through that other knowledge which we must acquire in practice between death and a new birth. But we know: what we acquire between death and a new birth is, after all, built upon everything we have acquired in our previous earthly lives. And just as our physical life here between birth and death is regulated in a certain way, so too is our life between death and a new birth regulated in a certain way. Isn’t it true that we enter physical life, one might say, half-asleep, dreaming, as a small child? At first we cannot develop a memory; we first learn to develop a memory. But if we look more closely, we find that in the time before we develop our memory, certain adaptations to the outer world are acquired. The child first crawls and only then learns to grasp. Certain things are acquired, systematically acquired. But much is learned during this time, far more than is usually observed. Then again, every single stage of life unfolds in such a way that what comes later builds upon what came before. Human life, then, is structured in this way between birth and death, not only in its physical form. Life between death and new birth is just as orderly. And if we simply bring to mind individual aspects that we have long known, we will become aware of how orderly this life is.

[ 14 ] You see, as we have often emphasized, for our spiritual life within our physical existence, we need a mental image of ourselves that does not break off once it has been established in the second, third, or fourth year of life—the point in time as far back as we can remember. In people in whom this thread of the “I” breaks, so to speak, a disturbance of the soul’s equilibrium occurs. There are such people—I have mentioned this often—but what such people suffer from is always a serious illness of the soul. It happens that a person is suddenly torn out of the context of his “I.” He does not remember the life he has lived. He goes, let’s say, to the train station, buys a ticket to some place. His mind functions quite properly. At all the stops along the way, he does everything necessary quite sensibly. But he does not remember what came before. His inner life extends only up to the point where he decided to buy a ticket and make the journey. He travels around the world; his mind is perfectly fine. Then comes a moment when he knows: he is “himself.” Before that, his inner life had been erased from his memory. The mind may be fine, but the memory is erased. Then the self is torn apart, and the person suffers from a severe mental illness.

[ 15 ] I myself knew someone who, while holding a relatively high position, was suddenly struck by such an illness. After forgetting everything about who he was, he suddenly felt the urge to travel around. He traveled, as we would say, blindly around the world from one place to another and found himself back here in Berlin in a shelter for the homeless. Then it occurred to him again: You are who you are! The intervening period had indeed been quite lucid, but it did not connect with the rest of his life. Then this illness overtook him a second time; he then voluntarily sought death, in a state of consciousness in which memory and the ego were still shut down.

[ 16 ] Now, you see, just as in this life between birth and death the “I” must be a continuous thread—and at no moment during daily life may this ability to remember everything that has transpired since the earliest point in childhood that one can recall be severed—so too must it be in the life between death and new birth. There, too, we must always have the possibility of preserving our self. Well, this possibility is given to us, and it is given to us because the first moments after death unfold exactly as we have often described. The very first moments after death unfold in such a way that one has one’s life just passed before one, as in a great tableau. One surveys it day by day, yet always in such a way that the whole is there—one’s life up to that point, as it were, all at once. One has it before one as in a vast panorama. If, however, one looks more closely, it turns out that these days, with their retrospective view of the life that has passed, are, so to speak, already imbued with a certain nuance of observation. One sees life during these days, so to speak, from the perspective of the “I”; one sees, in particular, everything in which one’s “I” was involved. I mean to say, one sees the relationships one has had with a person, but one sees these relationships with that person in such a context that one becomes aware of what fruits this relationship with that person has borne for oneself. So one does not see things entirely objectively, but rather sees everything that has borne fruit for oneself. One sees oneself at the center of everything. And this is infinitely necessary, for from these days, when one sees everything that has become fruitful for oneself, flows that inner strength and power one needs throughout the entire life between death and a new birth, in order to be able to hold fast to the ego-idea there. For one owes the power to hold onto the “I” between death and a new birth to this looking back on one’s last life; that is actually the source of this power. And in particular, my dear friends—I must emphasize this once more, even though I have already said it here—in particular, the moment of dying is of extraordinary significance.

[ 17 ] Death is something that, above all else, has two sides that are completely different from one another. Viewed from here, from the physical world, death certainly has many bleak aspects, many painful aspects. But it is truly the case that from here we see death only from one side; yet once we have died, we see it from the other. There it is the most satisfying, most perfect event one can ever experience, for there it is a living reality. While here it is proof—even to our perception, to our feeling—of how fleeting, how transient human physical life is, death, viewed from the spiritual world, is precisely proof that the spirit always triumphs over all that is non-spiritual, that the spirit is always life—the imperishable, the never-ending life. It is precisely proof that there is no death in reality, that death is a maya, an illusion. Herein lies the great difference between the life from death to a new birth and the life here from birth to death.

[ 18 ] For you see, no human being can recall their own birth using ordinary physical means of perception. No one can prove their own birth from experience, because they did not witness it. Birth is something that cannot appear before the human eye here in physical life. Birth lies before the time of which one has memories. And birth is never present. Death, however—and this is how it differs from birth in its significance after death—always stands before the spiritual eye as the greatest, most significant, most vivid, and most perfect event in the time between death and a new birth. For death is precisely that from which we derive our sense of self after death. And just as it is impossible for us here in our physical life to remember our birth, so too is it necessary and natural throughout the entire time we spend in the spiritual world, in the life between death and a new birth, that the moment when the spirit breaks free from the body always stands before our spiritual-soul vision. For it is precisely from this death, in connection with what we have experienced here, that the strength flows to us that we need to feel ourselves as an “I.” One might say: if we could not die, we could not experience a spiritual I at all. For the fact that we experience a spiritual I is due to the circumstance that we can die physically. This, then, is the nature of the matter for our I. This I is strengthened and invigorated by the fact that we experience the first days after death while we are still in the etheric body. Then this etheric body is shed, and we experience in retrospect the life that we might call the human soul’s passage through the soul world—a life that now lasts longer than the brief life, lasting only a few days, that immediately follows physical death.

[ 19 ] Now, it is a very common belief that anyone who can glimpse into the spiritual world immediately sees everything. I have corrected this misconception many times. Nothing makes one as humble as truly looking into the spiritual world. For one can look into it for a long time, but the exploration of the individual facts of the spiritual world—that is, in the spiritual world itself using the powers of the spiritual world—is truly a long, long process, and it is a prejudice to believe that anyone who looks into the spiritual world can immediately provide information about everything. And just as here in the physical world things are gradually investigated, from epoch to epoch, so it is also in spiritual life that things are gradually investigated. But precisely—and now I would like to address a point that must surely be important to one or another soul sitting here— precisely the absolute harmony of the individual spiritual facts—when one investigates them step by step, as they repeatedly emerge anew—can also serve as proof, even to those who do not yet look into the spiritual world, of the validity of what is gained through honest research from the spiritual world. In my *Secret Science*, I have already specified certain durations for the individual phases of life between death and rebirth, from various perspectives. Now, however, there is another perspective that I would like to mention here and which I have not yet mentioned in my *Secret Science*, for a simple reason that I do not wish to conceal from you, so that you may also see from this that Spiritual Science is being pursued here in an honest, sincere manner: for the simple reason that I did not know it at the time, but was only able to investigate it later. For there is a certain connection between the life that can be unfolded as spiritual life here on the physical plane and the spiritual life between death and a new birth.

[ 20 ] As you know, we spend our lives here as physical beings in a cycle of waking and sleeping; on the one hand, we are fully conscious while awake, and for the average person, an unconscious state occurs during the time between falling asleep and waking up. You also know from what has been explained in *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* that this life of sleep can be permeated by consciousness, that one can look into what happens between falling asleep and waking up. When one comes to know more and more about the life that a person spends here between birth and death in sleep, one truly comes to know an immense richness of life. An immense richness of human life flows past the normal human existence in this unconscious state between falling asleep and waking up. An immense amount is happening there. And what becomes apparent very quickly in this life of sleep is that this life of sleep is an immensely more active life than the life from waking up until falling asleep.

[ 21 ] While we sleep, we are in our ego and astral body, and our physical body and etheric body lie, so to speak, outside of us. Now, certainly, this outer life is also an active life—for some people, indeed, a very active life. It seems so active to us because we don’t really take into account all the passivity that exists in this outer life. Truly, if everything that sustains our outer life had to arise from our own initiative, we would be very surprised at how differently things would unfold. Just think: you get up every morning. You hardly make a conscious decision to get up; you do it out of habit. And you really don’t come to a deeper understanding of what it means to be so interconnected with the entire structure of the world that at certain times you must spend your life in one state or another, that this must oscillate accordingly—indeed, where would such reflection be? It all proceeds entirely out of habit. And now try to consider how much of life proceeds in such a way that we go through life, so to speak, like automatons. Then you come to realize that there is an immense amount of passivity in life between waking and falling asleep, but a great deal of activity in life between falling asleep and waking up. There is complete activity, immense activity. It is interesting that people who are relatively sluggish in their outer life between waking and sleeping are precisely the busiest between sleeping and waking. There the human being is tremendously active; only in normal life does he not know it. And if one looks more closely at what the soul—that is, the I and the astral body—is doing there, this activity is truly intimately connected with the whole of the human being’s existence. As we go through life in this way, we consciously take in extraordinarily little of this life. We do not process life, as it comes to us externally, in any way completely. I would like to take an obvious example. You see, right now you are listening to this lecture, which, let’s say, lasts an hour. Yes, truly, without wishing to offend any of the dear friends sitting here, I may say: It would be possible to hear an immense amount more in the words of this lecture than the individual esteemed friends sitting here are hearing. For it would be possible to hear much more than I myself know of what I can say. But you will—this is only said to emphasize the other point—go home, lie down in bed, and sleep, and wake up tomorrow morning. And in the time between falling asleep and waking up, you will—though completely unconsciously to your normal consciousness—process much of what you are not at all able to hear right now. You process it with tremendous precision during your next sleep, and perhaps you process it on other nights as well. One sees the soul processing what has been taken in in a completely different way between falling asleep and waking up. And even if it were to happen that someone listened very inattentively, but was only somewhat devoted, they would, through that devotion alone, connect with their soul what lies in the lecture in terms of spiritual potentials and spiritual impulses. And that would then be processed during sleep, as we need it—not only for the next life until death, but beyond death.

[ 22 ] This is how we process our entire life as it unfolds while we are awake, from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep. Everything we experience during the day, we process during the night, so that we draw lessons from it, as it were, as we need them for our entire subsequent life beyond death, right into the next incarnation. We are our own prophetic processors of our lives when we sink into sleep. This life of sleep is deeply mysterious, because it is much more intimately connected with what we experience than it can be with our outer consciousness. But we process all of this from the perspective of its fruitfulness for the life to come. What we can make of ourselves through having experienced this is the focus of our work in the time between falling asleep and waking up. Whether we become more energetic and powerful in our souls, or whether we have cause to reproach ourselves—we process what we experience in this way so that it becomes the fruit of life. You can see from this, my dear friends, that this life between falling asleep and waking up is truly immensely significant, that it cuts deeply into the whole mystery of the human being.

[ 23 ] One day, the spiritual researcher is struck by the idea—indeed, one might well say that the intention comes to the spiritual researcher one day—to compare this life of sleep with another life, with a supersensory life. And so he then takes it upon himself to compare it with the days that follow the tableau of life, in the Kamaloka. And lo and behold, my dear friends—but this only becomes apparent to the researcher’s gaze—while here in life one recalls, through memory, all that one has experienced in daily life, after death, once the moment has passed when the tableau of life ended, one acquires a memory of all one’s nights. And this is an important secret that dawns on one. One remembers all of one’s night life. This regression takes the form of actually reliving one’s life from the last night spent here in life back to the previous one, and so on. One relives one’s entire life there, but as viewed from the night side. Thus, everything one has unconsciously thought and explored about life is experienced anew in this backward-flowing memory. One truly goes through one’s life, but not from the perspective of the day.

[ 24 ] How long might that take, roughly? Well, just think about it: we spend about a third of our lives sleeping. Of course, some people sleep much longer than that, but on average, we do spend a third of our lives asleep. That is why the descent also takes about a third of one’s time spent on Earth, because one lives through the nights. Think how wonderfully this harmonizes with the other points of view that arise. We have always said that life in the Kamaloka lasts about a third of one’s lifespan. But if one takes the above into account, one realizes that it must again be a third. That is how things harmonize! All individual things harmonize time and again. That is the marvelous thing about spiritual research: one learns a fact, and if it is meant to be, one comes to know it from another perspective. It is like climbing a mountain: there one has a view from one side and then from another. Despite the differences, the essential will always align. So we can say here: In earthly life between birth and death, one lives life in such a way that it is always cut short, because it is always interrupted by night life, and one remembers day life, the things one has experienced in day life. But in the night life, one has dealt with these things in a different way; one has, as I said, merely processed them. What one cannot remember in physical life, one does remember during the Kamaloka life. This is an important connection, and from it you will understand many things that might otherwise not be so easily grasped.

[ 25 ] You see, especially in our time, a great many relatively young people are passing through the gates of death. I have already explained from many different perspectives what significance this has for the entirety of human life. But let us first consider only the two phases we have just described—we will address other aspects in the coming days—namely, the life that lasts only a few days in the etheric body, where one has the tableau of life before one’s eyes, and then the life of the soul in the soul world. As one passes through the previous earthly life in stages, one will easily be able to see why the spiritual researcher must say: Even these two phases of life between death and new birth are different for a person who has passed through the gate of death relatively early than for one who has passed through it only late. This is particularly relevant to us, because so many people now pass through the gate of death at a relatively early age.

[ 26 ] You see, the fact is that the individual stages I have outlined for physical life—for this life—are of great significance. I have identified the stages of life: from the first to the seventh year, until the teeth change; then until the fourteenth year, until sexual maturity; then until the twenty-first year, and so on, in seven-year increments. And if you take seriously what lies in these distinctions of the life that flows by, then the thirty-fifth year is indeed an important stage of life for us. Up to that point, we are, so to speak, in a kind of preparation, whereas later we have completed that preparation and build our lives more on the foundation of what was prepared up to the age of thirty-five. This thirty-fifth year of life is of very great significance. It is not so much the physical growth, but the spiritual growth in a person who is truly growing spiritually that continues up to that point. Then it must be strongly emphasized that some aspects of what constitutes the state of maturity in life can only be attained after the age of thirty-five. Now, however, if we consider this thirtieth year of life from a different perspective, it will appear even more significant to us. You see, when we consider these seven-year periods of life, we have, first of all, the development of the physical body up to the age of seven, and the development of the etheric body up to the age of fourteen. From the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, what we call the astral body takes shape; then the feeling soul develops until the twenty-eighth year, the intellectual or emotional soul until the thirty-fifth year, and then the conscious soul until the forty-second year. And then we come to the Spirit-Self, which is a kind of re-development of the astral body, and so on. The subsequent epochs of life do not proceed in seven-year periods, but irregularly. Only in the future will a regularity emerge. Apart from what education may disrupt, however, the process proceeds with considerable regularity up to the age of thirty-five.

[ 27 ] Now, one may begin to grasp the deeper meaning of this entire process of human development, especially when observing people who die at these various stages of life. Let us assume—to give an initial example—that we are following the soul of an eleven-, twelve-, or thirteen-year-old girl or boy, a soul that has thus passed through the gate of death at the age of eleven, twelve, or thirteen. According to what I have already explained, what we have in such a case is that the etheric body—which, in theory, could have sustained the soul for all the years to come—still possesses unused forces. But it is also the case that, in fact, throughout the entire life between birth and death, the human being is preparing for death. They truly prepare for death, for our entire life actually consists of being a preparation for death insofar as we are constantly working at the destruction of the body. If we could not destroy it, we could not achieve perfection at all, for we purchase this perfection, so to speak, through the destruction of the outer physical body. Now, when a person passes through the gate of death at the age of thirteen, they fail to carry out a very long process of destruction that they actually could have accomplished. They do not participate in what they could have participated in. This expresses itself in a remarkable way.

[ 28 ] When we follow such a soul, we find it in the spiritual world, at a certain point in time between death and a new birth, relatively very soon in what I would call a most remarkable company: We find it in the midst of those souls who are preparing for their next life in such a way that they must soon descend to this earth—that is, among souls who will soon incarnate. Among them live those souls who have passed through the gate of death in their eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth year; they are placed there. And if one looks more closely at these connections, it turns out, strangely enough, that these souls, who are now soon to descend into their earthly life, need what these other souls can bring up to them from the earth in order to, in turn, strengthen themselves with the power they need to incarnate. Thus, the youthful souls provide a strong support for those souls who must soon descend to Earth.

[ 29 ] The kind of help that, under normal circumstances, young children who were perfectly ordinary—that is, who did not have an exceptional spiritual life but were simply bright children—provide; that kind of help can no longer be given, for example, if one dies at an advanced age. There, too, one has a task to fulfill. Everyone must submit to their karma and should not think: I would like to die at this or that age; rather, one dies at the age at which karma allows one to die. Such help, which one can provide as a soul for those souls awaiting their incarnation, can therefore no longer be provided if one dies at a later age. This is related to the fact that in the first half of life one is, in a certain sense, still closer to the spiritual world than in the second half. In another sense, this is not the case; but in a certain sense, one is closer to the spiritual world in the first half of life. For the whole course of life proceeds in such a way that the longer one lives in the physical body, the further one moves away from the spiritual world. A one-year-old child is still very close to the spiritual world. It leaves the physical plane and quickly enters the spiritual world. This remains true until the age of fourteen; by then one is so deeply embedded in the physical body that one can easily enter the world of souls who are soon seeking their next incarnation. This means that dying at a very young age entails experiencing something different in the scene one goes through than what is experienced by someone who dies at a later age. And the thirty-fifth year of life is an important threshold.

[ 30 ] If one dies before the age of thirty-five, one first experiences the tableau of one’s life, then retraces one’s life through the nights. But during this review of one’s past life, one sees—as if from “behind the mirror,” as if looking through the tableau of life—the spiritual realm one left behind upon being born. The perspective still extends toward the spiritual world. Once one has passed the age of thirty-five, it is quite different. One no longer sees into it as one was oneself within it before being born. This is something that strikes one particularly now, when so many people die young. For this “still seeing the spiritual world behind,” it still has a certain significance up to the age of 35. After the age of fourteen to sixteen, however, it is no longer such direct seeing, but from then on until the age of thirty-five, if one dies then, it is as if the spiritual life were still reflected everywhere within the tableau of life, the look back. So if one dies as a child, one does not actually see much of a life lived; one looks almost directly into the spiritual world. If one dies as a thirteen-year-old child, one already has a retrospective view, but behind it lies the spiritual world. One still perceives it clearly, the spiritual world. If one dies even later, one does not have it immediately, but it is contained within what one sees as one’s own life. So one remains connected to the source from which one came until the age of thirty-five, so that the one who dies before the age of thirty-five truly, already in these first stages of life that one experiences in the days when one sees the tableau of life, and then again during the descent through the soul world, actually, through this experience, returns quite directly to a kind of home that they left at birth. They have the immediate experience: You are entering a world from which you have stepped out. This is of immense importance, for anyone who dies in this way is, as you can see, from a certain perspective, more easily transported into the spiritual world than one who dies later. Thus, from the retrospective view he has after death, he carries an immense amount of the spiritual, an immense amount of the spiritual into his next life between birth and death. And the many who die young in our present time will also, from this point of view, be important bearers of spiritual truths and spiritual insights when they come down to Earth again in a future incarnation.

[ 31 ] Thus we see how the immense suffering that is pouring out over the world is nevertheless necessary for the entire course of existence. For the blood that is now flowing will be the symbol of a certain renewal of spiritual life in a certain future, which is necessary for the overall development of humanity. For otherwise, the souls who now pass through the gate of death so early will descend; most of them will descend differently than they would have if they had reached the very limits of life in their material existence and then died. This, too, is the wisdom of the world: that a number of souls are now being called away so that, even in their looking back and reliving, they may perceive deep spiritual mysteries in a manner akin to the earthly. This, too, is the wisdom of the world, so that these souls may then be filled with what they perceive more clearly when they see it again, strengthened by the shorter earthly life they have lived.

[ 32 ] This is true wisdom of the world. And so we must say that much of what rightly causes us deep pain—when we can view it solely from the perspective of earthly existence—reveals its reconciling aspect to us when we can consider it from the perspective of spiritual contemplation. Well, that is how it is with all of life. Certainly, my dear friends, earthly pain cannot be alleviated by such contemplation at first. It must also be lived through. For that is precisely the condition for it to be balanced out again. Had we not experienced it in the physical world, it could not be balanced out. But even though we must suffer much in the physical world, there are still moments when we can place ourselves in the spiritual perspective. Then we will come to recognize many things that must appear painful to us from a lower perspective as a tribute that must be paid to the higher spiritual worlds with their wisdom, so that the development of the entire world and of human existence may proceed not in a one-sided, but in a comprehensive manner.

[ 33 ] For some pains, reconciliation must first be earned, and to do so, the pain must first be endured. Spiritual Science certainly cannot spare us the pain, but it can teach us to lay it upon the altar of existence and seek balance, and to acknowledge the wisdom of the world despite all the pain it must cause for the sake of higher goals. This is what Spiritual Science can give us as such an important provision for the whole of human existence. Thus, from this perspective—I would say, truly from the feelings that Spiritual Science can give us—as we look upon the often painful events of our time, we may say precisely what we have often said here:

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.