The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] We have used the days we have been able to spend together here to shed light, from various angles, on the connection between people’s lives here on the physical plane and the lives lived between death and a new birth, as well as on the connection between the individual successive earthly lives that a person goes through. You have seen that when one attempts to examine these relationships in greater detail, the investigation certainly becomes complicated, but it then becomes all the more fruitful, since only such a detailed examination can, in a sense, provide us with some insight into the details of life’s questions and mysteries. We wish to continue somewhat with such a consideration; to do so, however, we must begin today by delving a little into the structure of the human being, which we are indeed familiar with, but which we wish to discuss repeatedly with regard to those characteristics that will be important for the following consideration.

[ 2 ] Well, my dear friends, just as we live here on Earth as human beings, so too—as you know from the various cycles, lectures, and books—do we live in a very specific epoch of Earth’s evolution. And we have been able to gather from the very spirit of our reflections that there is an inner meaning, a certain inner significance, in the fact that we carry our soul through these various epochs of Earth’s development. From the descriptions that have been given, you will already have seen how not only the outer life but the entire life of the human being here on Earth naturally differs according to the various epochs. The entire life of the soul was already different—let us focus for now solely on the life of the soul—when we consider only the post-Atlantean epochs: different in the ancient Indian, different in the ancient Persian, different in the Egyptian-Chaldean, different in the Greek-Latin, and different in our own time. We carried our souls through all these epochs. In all these epochs, our souls—most people repeatedly within a single epoch—sought bodies that would enable the soul to perceive the world in the way that the world can be perceived with the powers of that particular epoch.

[ 3 ] If you recall what has been said about the characteristics of soul life in the various epochs, you will be able to gain an even clearer insight. If we look, for example, at life in the first post-Atlantean epoch, we find that the human soul is primarily occupied during earthly life with working out the interaction of its own being with the etheric body—that is, so to speak, truly experiencing what can be experienced when one, as a soul, is primarily in interaction with the etheric body here in earthly life. Then, in the second post-Atlantean epoch, the soul lived out everything that can be lived out when one is truly in interaction with the astral body. In the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the soul lived out everything that can be lived out through interaction with the feeling soul; in the fourth cultural epoch, the soul lived out the interaction with the intellectual or emotional soul, and in our time, everything that can be lived out is lived out when one is in interaction with the conscious soul. Depending on what the soul, moving through these individual epochs within these aspects of human nature, experienced in one way or another, it advanced further in the general progress of the world. What one experiences in these various epochs regarding the soul’s relationship to the whole world is fundamentally different. One must already be able to form a mental image of this based on what has been presented so far. Now, in our time we live in the conscious soul, and the whole culture of our fifth cultural epoch consists in the fact that the entire human soul, the entire human ego, establishes such relationships with the world as are given through the relationship to the conscious soul. What one can experience when one sends one’s power into the conscious soul is what one experiences in our epoch.

[ 4 ] But we can also approach the whole matter from a different perspective. How is it that, within the general cosmic context, we live in the consciousness soul? As human beings, we naturally live not only in the consciousness soul, but also in other aspects of human nature. In the narrower sense, in our time we develop the faculties that humanity is currently cultivating, primarily by living here between birth and death with our I, indirectly through the soul of consciousness, within the organization of our physical body. The Greeks of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch did not yet live as strongly in dependence on their physical body as we do. The Greek still lived within the body itself in an inner way. This meant that he worked within the intellectual or emotional soul. As a result, he was able to inhabit his physical body in a completely different way than we can. The Greeks, for example, had a much stronger inner emotional nuance in every hand movement than people today. No external science can address these things, but they exist. When the Greeks bent an arm, they felt how the individual muscles swelled, how an angle formed. This enabled the Greek sculptor to create in a completely different way. Today’s sculptor works from a model. He looks at the model and works from it. Not so the Greek. He had an inner sense of the shape of the arm, the physiognomy, and so on. For him, this was an inner experience. Now, in a certain sense, the human being has been torn away from what he can experience in the physical body when he lives in the consciousness soul. Although he has, as it were, gone deeper into his physical body—he has become more closely connected to it than the Greek could have been—he has thereby also become insensitive to all that the physical body provides. He makes use of the organs of the physical body in a higher sense than the Greek did. The Greek could not see certain color nuances as we see them today, because he was not yet as deeply immersed in the physical body as we are today. If you read Homer, you can see how few colors he mentions. So this is how things change. Human beings become more attuned to their physical bodies, but as a result, they no longer feel their inner self within the physical body. One might rather say that they no longer feel their inner self in the physical body; they reach out more toward the external world. In short, it is a struggle with the capacities of the physical body, whereas in Greek culture it was rather a struggle with form. So that we can say: We form the consciousness soul precisely by entering into a kind of inner kinship with the physical body through our ego, by really thrusting ourselves into the physical body. Through this, the time has come when one no longer knows much about spiritual processes and things—the age of materialism—because one has thrust oneself so deeply into the physical body.

[ 5 ] Now, of course, the physical body in turn contains the etheric body. The ancient Greeks knew far more about their etheric bodies. They sensed—albeit only as a faint echo—how the etheric body always resonates with the physical movements of the body. They also sensed that it is not merely the physical hand that moves, but that the etheric hand moves along with it and underlies the physical movement. That, then, has been lost. Yet during the time of the ancient Greeks, human beings experienced all of this in such a way that they felt much more intensely within their etheric bodies than they do now. That has not been lost to them. We have all gone through this as souls; it is contained within our etheric body. It is all contained there in preserved thoughts. And when we step out of the world in which we find ourselves between death and a new birth, we leave behind, as if in forgetfulness, everything that we were actually quite able to master well in our etheric body before. By now penetrating so deeply into our physical body, we leave behind what we acquired in the Greek era. You can already see from this that our etheric body actually contains a great deal of which human beings are currently unaware. Human beings now develop their consciousness mainly in the physical body. In doing so, they cover up what is in their etheric body. If human beings were conscious of all the knowledge of the inner human organization that they have enshrined within their etheric body, they would know infinitely more than they do now. For this etheric body has attained a certain perfection that is greater than human beings are currently aware of. In general, much is suppressed regarding the etheric body because we simply do not bring it to consciousness in the appropriate way; we are unaware of much concerning this etheric body.

[ 6 ] As you know, the astral body, among other things, operates within the etheric body. Everything that the etheric body does must, of course, be permeated by the astral body. If one could suddenly bring forth everything that the etheric body contains, one would be infinitely wiser than one is in the present epoch, where one struggles with one’s physical body. For this etheric body contains, for example—and of course the astral body is involved in this—infinite treasures of wisdom. These are down in our soul, in the etheric body. There are, above all, a great many skills, a great deal of knowledge. For example, regarding geometry: I have already mentioned here how much you know about geometry unconsciously. This is truly a fact; for when you learn geometry, you cannot learn it from the outside of things, but rather the human being brings it up by bringing to consciousness what is in the etheric body. When one draws figures externally, they serve only as a stimulus. When I draw a triangle that I know has 180 degrees, I know that from the etheric body. Drawing the figure is merely a concession to human laziness. In truth, you already know everything you can learn about geometry unconsciously; it lies down there in the depths of the unconscious soul life. In general, people have no idea how wise they are in the depths of their subconscious soul. If only they knew! The tragedy of human development does not lie in the fact that people have little wisdom within them, but in the fact that they cannot bring that wisdom up from their own soul. All educational development is based on bringing up this hidden wisdom from the depths of the soul. But if we did not have to bring these things up in this way, we would not be able to promote our development as we ought to. You see, if we did not develop the kind of relationship with the physical body that we have now, we would be born as terribly clever children, and it would not take much effort to draw up what is contained in the etheric body at a relatively early age. But then the human being would devote far too little effort to acquiring wisdom. As a result, it would not be sufficiently his own; he would be too much of a mere reflection of wisdom. Personal appropriation occurs because we have a relationship to the physical body such as we have now in the fifth cultural epoch. It is this personal appropriation that makes the knowledge our own, and then we possess it when we bring it up in this way. This applies with regard to the etheric body.

[ 7 ] However, something quite different applies to the astral body; the following holds true: If we could bring up all the details contained within the astral body—everything the astral body knows—it would actually be of no benefit to our present life. For we would then truly be living like automatons within humanity. Our astral body, for example, does indeed know—not our consciousness, but the astral body—how it, as an astral body, relates to all the individual people it encounters in life. Our astral body possesses such a consciousness. So that, if we could—the one who wants to cannot, and the one who can does not, because that would lead to the development of an occult egoism of the worst kind—but if one could bring everything the astral body knows into consciousness, then one would know, for example, exactly: With this or that personality, you will bring trouble upon yourself; with this or that, you will experience kindness. Such knowledge would, of course, completely change life, but not in a favorable sense for our present earthly circumstances. Now I could tell you much more about what the astral body knows, but it is already unconsciously putting its knowledge into practice—only it is a knowledge that is really given little attention in the context of human life.

[ 8 ] Suppose a person dies as a result of an accident. When we look at ordinary human life, it seems to us, doesn’t it, that this accident has befallen the person. For, given the nature of their present consciousness, a person does not seek out misfortune. If one were to examine the astral body, one would find no misfortune that the person, insofar as they are in the astral body, does not seek. What is necessary for ordinary consciousness is sought by the astral body out of free inner choice. This is willed, truly willed, by the astral body. Even if one is run over by a train, this is actually taken into account by the astral body within the context of the entire life; it is not something that has merely happened.

[ 9 ] So it is not only that we have our connection with other people in our astral body as wisdom; we also truly have our connection with the whole of external life—with what unfolds as natural phenomena or other social events in which we are involved. What is and should remain hidden from us there is good; otherwise, we would learn nothing for our further development. But in the astral body there is a real thought, that is, a kind of knowledge of everything that our being reveals in connection with the events and human elements in which we are involved. People, I say, actually pay very little attention to this in ordinary life. For when something happens to us—something of which one says, “it just happens to us”—then one generally regards what has happened to us only in terms of the fact that it has happened to us. One really does not consider what would have happened if that particular thing had not happened to us. I want to pick out a striking example. A person is wounded at a certain moment in their life. Isn’t it true that in everyday life we think: Well, they’ve been wounded. — That’s where one stops. But one does not consider what would have happened if the person had not been wounded. For, isn’t it true, a wound changes one’s entire life; everything that follows happens differently. But the astral body perceives the whole context by standing before the wound. One might say the astral body is clairvoyant.

[ 10 ] And the true Self, which lies even deeper in the subconscious, which we possess in our innermost being, is even more clairvoyant—much more so. Isn’t that right? You are surely aware, my dear friends, that we formed our physical body on ancient Saturn, that we formed our etheric body on the Sun, and that we formed our astral body on the ancient Moon. Our Self is the baby among the human members; it is the youngest. This Self will be formed on Vulcan—just as the physical body is now formed—that is, after the Jupiter and Venus stages of development have passed. But this I also rests in the bosom of the spiritual world. Then, during the Vulcan epoch, an immense knowledge of the interconnectedness of life will radiate from the I. But this knowledge is already within us, and the Jupiter and Venus epochs will consist in bringing this capacity to the fore.

[ 11 ] Thus, by looking at this foundation of soul life, we perceive in a wondrous way our connection to the spiritual world. In normal human life, we are initially given only what we receive when the ego is reflected in the physical body. But behind this lies a vast store of earthly knowledge that resides in the etheric body. Behind that, in turn, lies clairvoyant knowledge that is already present in the astral body, and an even more clairvoyant knowledge that resides in the true “I.” It is good to consider these things beforehand before delving into what I actually wish to discuss now.

[ 12 ] Let us consider the case that now speaks so deeply to our souls in so many ways: the case of a person who, in the prime of youth—as so often happens today—is led through the gates of death on the battlefield. You see, what happens here is that the deeper aspects of human nature—the etheric body, the astral body, and the I—are torn from their connection with the physical body in a very different way than when a person has grown old and dies slowly in bed. A more rapid separation from the physical body often takes place in such cases. I have already spoken of the prophetic nature of the etheric body. We have said that even in the images of the dream—which arises because the astral body inclines toward the etheric body and the etheric body reflects what the astral body experiences—if we could interpret these images in a certain way, there lies something of a prophetic nature that points to our future life.

[ 13 ] For the spiritual researcher who is now tasked with investigating these matters, such considerations give rise to an important question. One must, of course, first pose the question to oneself, but then this very act of posing the question serves as a kind of guide toward the answer that must then emerge from clairvoyant observation. One might say, for example: After all, a person is destined, here on Earth, if life proceeds normally, to reach old age, to slowly use up their life. Their etheric body, astral body, and ego are structured for this. This can happen in the normal course of life. Now, suddenly, a bullet striking the person disrupts the entire sequence. But with that, a capacity—for example, the capacity of the etheric body—I want to focus the consideration now on the individual human being—the force that could have worked prophetically throughout the whole of life, that could have guided the human being through many more life circumstances, is torn out of life; it is separated from the physical plane. Suppose the bullet had not struck—we can pose this hypothesis and set aside the fact that it is, of course, karma—then the person would have gradually used up this force in their etheric body, perhaps over many years. This power is nevertheless present within the soul; it is “not not there,” this power. That it is there can already be seen when such a person, struck by a bullet, looks back on the tableau of their life, looks back in the etheric body. I have already hinted at this: this tableau of life has a completely different character. It has the character of coming from the outer world, rather than having to be generated from the inner world. In short, this energy, this force that is cut off there, is within the human being. And observation also shows that it is there, that it alters the entire life that follows after death. The same is true of the force that is in the astral body. That, too, must have been used throughout the entire life. It is still there. In short, a person passes through the gate of death quite differently when they are violently torn from physical life—for example, when they are struck by a bullet and thereby leave life—than when they have died slowly in bed.

[ 14 ] Now the big question arises for the spiritual researcher: What does this actually mean? What does it mean for an epoch that, through what I have described, a person actually brings something entirely different into the spiritual world than what they bring when they have lived out their life? For an epoch such as the one in which we live, this is of infinite importance, for much of the nature of what has been described is carried into the spiritual world. What does that mean for the spiritual world? That is an immensely significant question. — If one considers a little the relationship of the spiritual world to the physical world, as you can read in the Vienna lectures: “ The Inner Life of the Human Being and Life Between Death and a New Birth,” then what one has long been unable to believe—but which presents itself quite clearly to spiritual research—becomes clearer: that all concepts and mental images truly change when one enters the spiritual world. And this is not only the case when one enters the spiritual world through initiation, but it is also the case during the passage through death.

[ 15 ] You see, humanity is actually developing more and more in a certain direction—one might say, toward the so-called concept of being. And today there is already a profound immersion in a preference for the concept of being. What do I actually mean by the concept of being, by the concept of existence? Well, hardly anyone today accepts anything that does not present itself as a “being.” If someone comes along who does not speak of something tangible, they are considered a fantasist. People go about talking of the “real,” and in contrast to that, a mere thought is nothing. There are countless people today who do not respect the thought simply because they cannot grasp it. “Being” means to them: one receives in full measure that which is perceived. One has nothing to do with the fact that something is, but it presents itself as being. And what does not present itself as being in this way, people are increasingly unwilling to accept.

[ 16 ] In the development of the spiritual world, the opposite is true. That which exists, that which makes an impression like physical objects, is something hostile to the human being in the spiritual realm, something disruptive, something of which he knows that it belongs to nothingness, that it is doomed to vanish into nothingness. And if one enters a spiritual realm where there are not very highly developed souls—souls who are, I might say, just as naive to the spirit as many souls are naive to the earth—then one finds the opposite judgment regarding the departed souls there. Something they value must not “be,” in the sense that we speak of “being” here on earth. That which is “being” here is not valuable to these souls. In spiritual life, it is the case that one is faced with nothing but spiritual beings. They act upon one. One must first bring them into perception. It is like this: one stands in the spiritual world; behind one stand souls of the spiritual hierarchies, angels, archangels, and so on. One knows they are there. But if they are to be there for one, one must first awaken them to what is called “being” here. That which acts upon one in the spiritual world must be brought to the level of imagination. What is unawakened being—that which one does nothing with, that which is simply there in a crude, unrefined form—is not valuable being there.

[ 17 ] Here on Earth, we stand surrounded by nature, but the spiritual world—to which we must ascend—is not simply there. It takes no special effort to have nature around us; it simply exists as a reality. That is why materialists love to have nature around them. But it is no longer there in the spiritual world. There is nothing in the spiritual world except what one continually works to attain. One must be constantly active there. What is there is the other world, the world one has left behind; one always looks upon it as a world that exists: this world, which bears transience within itself, which continually struggles with nothingness.

[ 18 ] If, for a moment, it were the case that the world beloved by materialists were to vanish, that people would know nothing of their bodies, that they would first have to create their imagination—if they knew nothing of the table until they had created it themselves through thought—but in return could see the spiritual world, then they would have in this life what they have there in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world, the world can only be brought into view through one’s own activity. The world beyond, that is, our present life, is always there. While here heaven is hidden and only the world around us is always there, there the world is actually hidden unless one actively brings it into one’s own view. The hereafter, our present life, is a world one cannot merely believe in, but one can know directly. But what makes this world of ours here—viewed from the perspective of the other world—I would say, fatal, is that it is permeated with being. It is disturbing that this world is permeated with being; truly, it is disturbing. When many say: “I would believe in a spiritual world if only I could see it here!”, one can compare this to what the souls in the spiritual world say: “Yes, this physical world that is constantly present down there—one could bear it if only it were not constantly ‘there,’ if only it did not have being so intrusively within it.” One cannot even look down upon the Earth without it possessing that terrible “being” in every aspect.

[ 19 ] And if someone here is a practical materialist and cannot believe in ideals, then he loves only existence. But to prevent this mindset from spreading beyond mere, crude existence, idealists arise from time to time to make people believe in the power of ideals and their effectiveness in historical progress. These ideals of morality, beauty, and religion are carried into the world. Certainly, the coarse, thick-headed materialists pay no heed to them; at most, they dismiss them with a few words. That which is not a blunt, material existence is brought into the physical realm precisely as the valuable aspect of life. And when one considers the development of humanity on Earth from a higher human perspective, one says to oneself: Certainly, nature is great, is significant; it is “there.” But what would all this human life be if there were only the existing nature—and however beautiful it might be—if human beings could not have ideals, if they could not be inspired, not by what is, but by what ought to be in moral, religious, artistic, and educational life? That which is not yet, I would say, that which penetrates from a spiritual world as the ideals of humanity—that which is not yet, but ought to be—is what makes life valuable in the first place. Anyone who has not completely sunk into the mire of materialism can sense this well. And so those who appear in the course of history and are, in a special sense, bearers of ideals, appear as those who make existing life valuable only through what ought to be.

[ 20 ] And for the spiritual researcher, it now becomes clear: From the spiritual world, one looks back upon earthly life in a similar way, but in such a way that, as a higher soul, one harbors a longing for the fact that not everything on this earth merely “is,” since among what has entered the earth there is also something that, in the most eminent sense, does not “is” in an earthly manner. There must be something mixed into earthly existence that is not in the ordinary earthly sense. And this turns out, I would say, to be something infinitely significant when it becomes apparent to the spiritual researcher in the case of those lives that were predisposed for a long life and have been violently cut short, so that we have a part of such a life which, viewed from the perspective of the beyond, was actually destined for existence and has not lived out that existence. Let us suppose that a person, instead of living to the age of seventy or eighty according to his life forces, lived in the world only until the age of twenty-five or twenty-six. Then he was, let us say, struck by a bullet. The members of his human nature were suddenly torn apart. The etheric body, the astral body, and the I could have continued to develop the ability to sustain the physical body for a long time. What might still have followed after the shot was destined for earthly existence; it did not come to fruition. But viewed from the beyond, this appears as follows: down there is not merely what is; down there, something is also mingled with earthly existence that is destined for being but has not lived through being—being that exists merely in potential. Also, in a certain sense, that which ought to be. Therefore, those who thus end their lives early through an external cause, by passing through the gate of death, are, in a similar sense—only in a similar sense, not in the same sense—spiritual messengers for the spiritual world, just as the idealists who come here to Earth to mix that which ought to be into what is. Thus do those who have passed through the gate of death at an early age ascend to bring tidings to heaven that down there on earth there is also what ought to be, not merely what is.

[ 21 ] It is an infinitely profound and significant discovery one can make when one comes to this chapter of spiritual research, by getting to know those idealists who turn toward heaven—idealists who become such because they pass through the gate of death here on earth in the manner described. And to truly unite such a thought with our soul—that is most fitting for us at this time.

[ 22 ] When one enters the realms of spiritual life, it is necessary that, alongside those who, so to speak, carry out their tasks in spiritual life there, there also be those who point back to the Earth—such that they have actually woven something into the Earth’s development but have withdrawn it earlier than it should have been brought forth according to its nature. Therefore, one can also say: Those who pass through the gate of death become, in many respects, for the human souls of the spiritual world, those who inspire belief in the loftiness of earthly life, who inspire belief in the hereafter that earthly life truly contains something spiritual of value within it. They occupy a position there similar to that of the idealists here on Earth.

[ 23 ] We must first come to terms with the fact that we cannot imagine people, as they continue to live in the spiritual world, as they were when they were last here. The simplistic mental image that people hold—for example, that those who die as children continue to live as children—is, of course, incorrect. The form that the dead last had may appear figuratively in the imagination; but that is not the form itself, but rather its expression. A child may die, but the human being embodied in that child may be a highly developed soul and continue to live after death as a very highly developed soul. I have mentioned this many times before.

[ 24 ] Now, however, we see that something is carried up into the spiritual world—something that is connected to earthly existence yet does not merge with it, something that is, as it were, a future existence in the beyond. This plays a part in the development that the human soul now undergoes between death and a new birth. People who have passed through the gate of death are then seen to undergo the life between death and a new birth in such a way that they, so to speak, bring the human aspect of the earth into the beyond in a much richer, much more comprehensive sense than one can form a mental image of after having lived a normal earthly life. Isn’t that so? This is not meant to determine what is predestined for a person through karma. If one grows old, it is karma. If one dies young, it is karma. But just as one cannot arbitrarily choose this or that individuality on Earth according to one’s earthly consciousness, so too can one not determine from earthly consciousness how this life between death and a new birth is to take shape. So when one ascends by force from physical existence into the spiritual world, one has a much more intense, imaginative view of all that is human than one has when one has entered the spiritual world in a different way.

[ 25 ] One might say: Those people who pass through the gate of death stand, during their lives, between death and new birth, and are particularly close to what happens on Earth in the sense of the universal human experience. One can see this when examining people who do something particularly important at some point in their lives, such that it is crucial that this person does what is in question. Let us say a person does something in their forty-ninth year—this, of course, can only be seen from an occult perspective—that is immensely significant in some direction. One looks back at this. Then one finds that in a previous incarnation, this person may have died a more or less violent death precisely in their forty-ninth year. That is to say, they have attained this very strong connection with the spiritual development here on Earth precisely by having taken in this “what ought to be” for the spiritual world. Through this, they possessed the strong power to incorporate into their entire soul being the specific task of accomplishing it in a particular year. One can also see from this—I spoke about this last time—that people who, through their will in particular, are meant to bring about various things, and who thus live more for humanity in general, have in some way taken such a “life of what ought to be” with them from a previous incarnation.

[ 26 ] It is particularly difficult, when one tries to imagine life in the spiritual realm merely as a somewhat diluted version of earthly life, to reconcile oneself with the mental image of spiritual life that one arrives at: that here, physical life is constantly known of its own accord; that in the beyond, life is unknown; and that the opposite is also true in the spiritual life. One does not immediately grasp correctly that, in fact, unless one does something about it, everything in spiritual life is dark and gloomy, since one must first bring everything up into the light; and that everything that is on this side is visible from the other side—the other side, which is, however, our this side—and that what is significant, what is mixed in, consists in a state of being-to-be. This is a mental image one must acquire if one wishes to properly understand the connection between physical life and spiritual life.

[ 27 ] I said: It is truly quite beneficial in our time to familiarize oneself with such mental images. For the sorrow-stricken soul so often asks itself today: Why must so many people be called into the spiritual world in the prime of their lives? Why can’t they live out their lives here? And as strange as it sounds—as I said, spiritual truths are sometimes something that can seem cruel—it is nevertheless true: The possibility must be brought into the spiritual world to view the Earth in such a way that this Earth itself can be permeated by the Spirit. If all people were to reach their normal lifespan, if no one were a martyr, if no one were able to sacrifice themselves at an early age, then the Earth would appear from the other side as a worthless existence. But what is mingled with the Earth here in the form of the ideal is also, at the same time, that which constantly brings forth a better future out of the past. And this is also connected to what is sacrificed there. A person who, at the age of twenty-six, sacrifices his entire remaining life—who gives this entire remaining life, which he would otherwise have devoted to his external work, to the process of human progress—lives on. In the forces of progress that exist today lives on what people have sacrificed in terms of the lives they could have lived here. Earth’s evolution needs these sacrifices of life. Here one can see how that which, in our materialistic age, is otherwise really just an abstract concept, becomes infinitely concrete.

[ 28 ] In yet another sense, as I elaborated here in July, we can say: It is not only these etheric bodies that are at work, so to speak, in the overall context of human progress, but also the work of those who have passed away at an early age. The work of these individuals is such that we can say: Who, then, are those who work primarily for the common good of humanity, who set themselves universal tasks in later incarnations? They are those who, in a previous incarnation, underwent a sacrificial death in some way. The self-sacrificing souls inclined toward the spiritual here on Earth owe this to their life in a previous incarnation, which can be called a martyrdom. The Earth could not progress if people did not sacrifice themselves.

[ 29 ] And when we consider this, my dear friends, we can look from the present into the future. So many are being sacrificed now, are sacrificing themselves. As painful as this is from a personal perspective, we can come to terms with it when viewed from the perspective of the wisdom of the world. Just as much as is being sacrificed now is being given to the future in the form of forces of progress. Humanity needs such forces of progress. People do not yet give this sufficient thought today, but they will when not even centuries, but enough decades have passed over the materialistic development of humanity. Materialism will draw its consequences at a breakneck pace. Internally, the height of materialism was in the nineteenth century, but people would sink into materialism if there were no reversal. This reversal is to be brought about by Spiritual Science. But it can only be brought about by the working of powerful forces, so that the ideal is truly woven into earthly life. Many who are now being called upon will serve to ensure that the Earth does not succumb to materialism, that materialism will not reign alone.

[ 30 ] Read about it, my dear friends, in the lecture series on the Apocalypse, where it has been touched upon only in broad strokes, and form your own understanding of how many fruits of the sacrificial death the earth will need in the future so that it may be saved from sinking into materialism and all that is associated with it—strife, hatred, and enmity—at least to the extent that they must be redeemed—so that it may continue on its path through the cosmos. It is indeed true that times such as ours call upon us more than others not only to think about what is happening, but also to think about the fruits of what is happening. And we can only recognize these fruits if we take in the two sides of worldly existence, these two sides that show us that we are truly passing through two completely different poles of life: here between birth and death, and there between death and a new birth. Here, in a certain sense, we are passive in our innermost being and must work—truly in such a way that it becomes far too much for many—if we wish to rise to the contemplation of a spiritual world. There, it is necessary that we be active, that we be at work, in order to have in our contemplation that in which we are, the immediately present world. In contrast, we always have, as a reminder, the “world of being” down below us.

[ 31 ] Here, into this earthly world, the idealists bring what ought to be, that which gives value to what is. Into the world where people pass through the gate of death, where those who have lived out their lives enter to continue their earthly existence in a regular cycle, there also enter those who die more or less early as martyrs, and there they bear witness to the fact that down below there is not merely the material, not merely that which is subject to the vain and the transitory, but that mixed in with this earth is also that which is retained by those who did not live out a life to the full, but whose lives were violently destroyed.

[ 32 ] One must not merely approach such matters intellectually, but let them penetrate deeply into one’s feelings; then many things become clear. There are certainly many mysteries in the present, but some of them become clear when one views the painful events that occur in the context of the world’s great wisdom.

[ 33 ] This, too, is a chapter that, when we apply what has just been said to our own time, can embody an important truth:

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.