The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. The Spiritual Science and the Mysteries of Death — Deeper Connections in European History

[ 1 ] What is referred to in Spiritual Science as the “mysteries of death” takes on a particularly significant meaning for us in our times. Everything is connected to them in some way, whether near or far. Above all, through Spiritual Science we receive not only a fundamental conviction but also a fundamental understanding of the world within the physical body and of the world into which we enter through the gate of death. But this world is, in essence, always alive even in sensory life and surrounds us; it is simply not perceptible to the human being bound by sensory life because they lack the necessary attention for it. When such momentous events sweep through time, demanding such manifold sacrifices from people as those that now surround us, we must be woven into them with our whole soul. It therefore stands to reason to present certain things from the perspective of Spiritual Science in an illuminating way.

[ 2 ] We want to draw attention to areas of life where it becomes clear how humanity, through materialistic thinking, has arrived at a disastrous lack of logic regarding its surroundings. For example, we hear individual nations accusing one another in the manner customary today: “I did not want the war; it is you who instigated it.” — The question is legitimate in itself and can already be answered—for the facts speak clearly—as to where the external causes lie. But for those who practice Spiritual Science, the situation is different. In this matter, they must be clear that war is, in essence, a final phase in the course of events, or at least a later phase of things that were already present beforehand. One also makes a mistake in judgment regarding disease processes, where one often still speaks of them as such, whereas they are already healing processes that must take place in order to recover. The external processes that occur to paralyze the disease, to bring about healing, have already taken place beforehand and are not noticeable. War also represents an apparent disease process. It is an effort by humanity to move beyond certain conditions that existed previously. The disease already lies in the truly unhealthy relations between peoples. When one investigates the external causes with the intellect, one overlooks the internal ones. In the realm where we are crowded together as in a fortress and encircled by a ring, it must be obvious to raise the question in particular: what are the inner causes, or what is the nature of the single cause that brought about this encirclement? People speak of such an encirclement in recent years, in recent decades, but when one considers the larger context, it began much, much earlier. It sounds strange, but one can point to the year 860—not 1860, but 860. That is how long the process has been unfolding, a process that is now manifesting in a way that can be described as the most terrible war humanity has ever known since it first inhabited the earth.

[ 3 ] In the deeper context of European history, one finds the highly remarkable fact that something of spiritual substance has been concentrated in Central Europe. If one examines this deeper context, one sees that it has been concentrated there toward a specific goal. It is not a matter of the external determinants of blood or race, but rather of something that permeates the world like a spiritual substance. As in a serpentine ring, descending from the far north, something converges in Central Europe. In a ring-like pattern, two currents flow from east and west toward the south and meet again in a ring-like formation. In the 9th century, the Norman tribes moved down from a central point; in terms of blood, they were related to so much of what later came to be in Central Europe. But they pressed into the Romanic element coming from Southern Europe; with it they merged. In 860 they stood before Paris, where the Normans were overwhelmed by the Romans. From this arose Western France. The Normans brought back to England from France more than the Angles and Saxons had been able to bring to the British Isles. To the east, the Norman people moved southward; from the north, they penetrated into Slavic territory toward the Volga and the Black Sea. Later, the Tartar tide flowed in. The Slavic peoples overpowered the Normans racially and introduced them to the Christian religion in its Eastern form. They were Slavicized as “Ros”—as they are called in Finland—and nothing remains of this except the name Russia. This name is of Germanic origin. The name Rurik has the same origin.

[ 4 ] There are some rather troubling views regarding these connections. In Western Europe, many speak of the French as being destined to revive ancient Celtic culture in a sort of renaissance. There is a mental image that Central Europe is predominantly Germanic, while the West is dominated by Celtic culture. But the opposite is true: there is much more Germanic blood in the French, and more Celtic blood in Central Europe—that is the truth. Thus, the maya stands in opposition to the truth. It is just that the inhabitants of the West are completely overwhelmed by Roman culture. In the East, Norman culture—and with it Germanic culture—is overwhelmed by the foreign racial element. There, a religion completely foreign to the Russian folk-soul still prevails today. Thus, the people of Central Europe are encircled as if in a cauldron. The Romans extend as far as Constantinople, and on the other side, the Slavicized Normans likewise extend to Constantinople. There we have the serpent, the ring.

[ 5 ] When we consider what has been spiritually condensed here, we come to see that it has a particularly important purpose. I only hinted at this yesterday, but I did speak of the fact that a certain intimate interaction between the folk-soul and the individual soul is to take place here, and that it is precisely through this that the most beautiful blossoms are brought forth in the finest members of the community. The “I” itself should be grasped, not the individual members of the soul as in the West; it should be immediately alive within the “I.” It follows from this—and this should already be clear to exoteric observation—that in Central Europe there could never really have been complete hostility toward idealism, that there was always a certain inclination toward the spiritual world to the most intense degree. When we began our spiritual movement, karma decreed that we had to do so initially in association with the British movement. But outwardly, everything that followed was merely a symptom of what had to unfold inwardly with a certain inevitability. When we consider what the Theosophical Movement is—from which we had to separate—it becomes apparent that cultural life there has split into two parts. Outer life takes a purely materialistic course, and the spiritual element is coupled to it. They are constantly drifting apart. Let us compare this with what our spiritual life must be. Just as in the organism the head cannot be conceived of without the body, so our spiritual life grows out of general cultural life. One need only begin with Tauler, Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, then with Herder, Lessing; everywhere we must develop what is to become higher spiritual culture. We cannot simply attach our spiritual view; we must have it as an organism, must elevate it to that level. We must make the inner discovery that the return of Christ is a spiritual matter. Therefore, we cannot make the slightest concession. We can approach Christ as a figure only with the spiritual eye, through inner experience. In the West, things had to be materialized and dogmatized. People could not form a mental image of him coming in a physical body. Hence the grotesque idea of passing Christ around on a platter in the flesh. This happened in connection with what was being encircled there.

[ 6 ] Therefore, we must objectively ask ourselves: How should Central European culture relate to the culture of the future? — The truth is universal, but how it arises is another matter. Central European culture contains the sources for the entire spiritual culture of the future. We must find the path from German idealism into spiritual culture. For this, it is necessary that a culture of the “I” be established here in the center. This can be easily seen in the occult realm. The human “I” must be kindled by the external world; only then does it awaken and become inwardly conscious. Thus, the culture of the “I” in Central Europe is kindled from without. One need only consider recent events, the unification of the German nation. It is characteristic that the German Empire was founded in 1871 on foreign soil. So many examples could be cited that demonstrate, even in external events, that a culture of the “I” prevails in Central Europe.

[ 7 ] It is natural to ask: What significance do the victims of death have for the spiritual world? — Countless people pass through the gate of death in the prime of their youth. First, the connection between the ego, the astral body, and the etheric body is severed from the physical body. The physical body is seemingly handed over to the earth, the etheric body to the etheric world, while the astral body and the I go on. But we must note this: Is the situation with the etheric body of people of normal age, which passes through the gate of ‘death,’ not different from that of the young people now passing over? We understand this for the physical body; for the etheric body, we will now come to understand it. It could have continued to sustain the physical body and work upon it for decades to come. It passes through the gate of death with these untapped forces, unites there with the Folk-souls, and the work of the Folk-souls will in the future be permeated by the untapped forces of these etheric bodies. It will be up to us to understand this. There will be people who will know: Folk-souls are active elements. Only when one knows that the unspent etheric bodies will act as a spiritual force in a concrete way in the spiritual world can one understand what is really happening. Awareness of this concrete connection with the spiritual world will be important. Through this—namely, through the creation of such an awareness of the spiritual world—Spiritual Science will increasingly become something alive in people’s minds and not remain merely a doctrine. Human beings will know that they are in a spiritual aura, just as they know here that the air is around them. Just as they distinguish here between fresh and stale air, so will they sense good and evil spirits, experiencing the spiritual aura.

[ 8 ] This is the true fruit of Spiritual Science. We see it when we observe events close at hand that can teach us something. One such event occurred right at the site of our building. In this case, it was a child whose etheric body was unspent. The forces are there; whoever sees them, whoever knows how to see them, can see that they have passed into the aura of our Dornach building and live within it. This is an example I would like to highlight. The etheric body, whose forces belong more to the general public, continues to work in the right way. Since then, it has been trying to do something through inspirations in the vicinity of the building. These are helping forces.

[ 9 ] Such things are close to our hearts; we can learn from them just how mysterious the connections are in the spiritual world. Especially in recent times, it has been part of our group karma that dear friends have passed away from the physical plane. What I said in the Vienna cycle about life between death and new birth became particularly clear to some of these souls. One of these souls found its way into our movement just as the physical body had already become worn out. It was a being in whom, ever since it had been in our movement, the soul had already come to meet me as if through a body that had become crystal clear. After death, the image of the soul that had already been there wove itself together with how it subsequently presented itself. I could not help but deliver the eulogy that shows how truly I was united with this soul. The following words made themselves heard about three days after death had occurred:

You walked among us.
The gentle grace of your being
Spoke of the quiet power in your eyes —
A peace that enlivens the soul,
Flowed in the waves with which your gaze
To things and to people
Carried the weaving of your inner self; —
And it permeated this being
Your voice, which eloquently
Through the nature of the word more
Than in the word itself
Revealed what lay hidden
In your beautiful soul;
Yet to those of devoted love
And sympathetic hearts
It revealed itself fully, without words —
This being, which, with noble, quiet beauty
Proclaimed the creation of the world’s soul
To receptive sensibilities.

[ 10 ] After death, a dimming of consciousness occurs, precisely because there is an overwhelming flood of consciousness. This happens through the flashback one first experiences upon death—not in the case of suicide—as it were, a moment of clarity. It is among the most beautiful and highest experiences. One takes hold of that moment, saying to oneself: There you lived—and in this way one finds one’s bearings in the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] Our friend had moved beyond the stage of ethereal recollection, so that we were speaking to a being who was present but not conscious. Then, prompted by the warmth, a moment of consciousness arose, and she saw the cremation. Time becomes space in that moment.

[ 12 ] There is a correspondence between what takes place in the physical world and what takes place in the spiritual world. In such a case, a call does not return like an echo from the spiritual world, but transforms into a meaningful response from the soul that is not yet conscious. Through such examples of the feeling that recognizes within us, in our emotional perception of the spiritual world, the result must be to experience the reality of the spiritual world. It is particularly important to acquire this concrete feeling in our time so that, out of the gravity of the present, healing may arise for all humanity in the physical and soul realms; for the great, significant events of world history have always been, even for a superficial spiritual understanding, a clear expression of the fact that in the sensory world we have not only sensory beings, but that spiritual beings are also at work.

[ 13 ] It is difficult to pierce the veil that separates the physical world from the spiritual world. This makes self-knowledge difficult in the broadest sense; people often imagine it to be too easy. Even in the purely physical sense, it is sometimes difficult. The eminent philosopher Professor Ernst Mach—not Ferdinand Maack, otherwise I would not have spoken of an eminent philosopher—provided a grotesque example of this. In one of his works, Mach describes how, as a young man, he once noticed an unpleasant, repulsive face in a shop window mirror, which, to his dismay, he immediately recognized as his own. He experienced something similar again later. Upon boarding a bus, he saw a man with an ugly face coming toward him from the other side, and only realized afterward that he had seen himself in the mirror. As for what the essence, the form of the soul is, human beings are even more in the dark. They cannot even begin to imagine all that one must go through to attain self-knowledge. In the depths of the soul, maya is often present on a grand scale. A person has a drive toward cruelty; he lives with people whom he torments from time to time, and so on. He searches for an external reason for this, often employing a brilliant inventiveness to veil the structure of the soul. I myself knew someone who spoke again and again of the great sacrifices his work had entailed. But I had to say that it was merely a psychological lust he was satisfying. When he spoke of sacrifices in this way, there was nothing but selfishness behind it all. True self-knowledge is attainable only by gradually advancing in Spiritual Science, insofar as one experiences through oneself what exists in the world.

[ 14 ] There are people in the world who love to chat and organize little get-togethers for that purpose. This is said to happen even among men who go out for an evening drink. When asked why they chat, these people have all sorts of important reasons for doing so. But when we run our hand over velvet or silk, we experience a feeling of pleasure. When one chats, the etheric body is constantly brushing against the air set in motion; it is caressed by it. There is nothing wrong with that. One can only understand what happens during a chat if one knows that human beings have an etheric body.

[ 15 ] Humanity is heading toward a time when it will have to face such things more and more directly. Spiritual Science must increasingly awaken awareness of this. It will then come to pass that people who today, in their materialistic sense, claim that everything spiritual is mere fantasy, will look as out of place as if someone were to say that where there is air, there is nothing at all. Just as one discovers that air is real, so humanity will discover that the spirit is something real. When one contemplates the greatest mystery, the Mystery of Golgotha, one might believe that Christ, after passing through the Mystery of Golgotha, would have worked upon humanity primarily through a teaching. But what people have known about Christ is the very least of it. Theologians have quarreled, but very few have understood anything correctly. Only a part of what happens in history takes place in consciousness. An example of this is the battle between Maxentius and Constantine at the Milvian Bridge on October 28, 312, which was decided not by any external circumstances but by influences of a non-physical nature. With an army far stronger than that of his opponent Constantine, Maxentius had to defend Rome. When he consulted the Sibylline Books, he was told to lead his troops out of Rome; in this way, he would destroy Rome’s enemies. He was further encouraged in this by a dream. Constantine, too, had a dream: he was instructed to have his soldiers carry banners bearing the monogram of Christ instead of the old field standards. So it came to pass, and Maxentius’s army, which had been led out of Rome against all reason, was defeated by Constantine’s weaker forces, and Maxentius himself met his death while fleeing. The Christ impulse had worked its way into the subconscious of the people here.

[ 16 ] The impulse lives in the subconscious, just as if ships were sailing on the sea, but the important events were taking place in submarines. The 15th century marks another pivotal moment. At that time, the Maid of Orleans intervened in the course of history in such a way that everything that happened later was determined by it. The entire map of Europe would be different, as would intellectual life, had the English prevailed. The Maid was a servant of Michael. Schiller was deeply moved by the figure of the Maid of Orleans: “The world loves to blacken what shines.” While Voltaire spewed venom against her, even Shakespeare could not understand her, Anatole France dragged her down into materialistic waters, and all Western minds failed to grasp her, Schiller embodied this noble figure in his drama.

[ 17 ] In order for the Maid of Orleans to fulfill her historic mission, it was necessary for her to undergo a kind of unconscious initiation. This was an initiation of the kind described to us in the legend of Olaf Åsteson. Such initiations, for which certain karmic prerequisites had to be met, could take place during the thirteen nights between December 25 and January 6. When the outer light is at its faintest, inner enlightenment is most likely to occur. Thus, during the thirteen nights, Olaf Åsteson had real spiritual experiences while asleep, which he then recounted at the church door, as depicted in the “Dream Song.” The Maid of Orleans, too, spent the thirteen nights in a state of sleep, so to speak, namely in her mother’s womb. In the final days before birth, a human being is particularly receptive to unconscious influences from the spiritual world. The Virgin of Orleans was born on January 6. On that day, the entire population of her birthplace gathered because something quite extraordinary could be sensed in the aura of the village. It was the birth of the Virgin of Orleans, into whom the Christ impulse had been implanted immediately before she beheld the physical sunlight.

[ 18 ] To grasp the living essence of the connection between the physical and spiritual worlds is the true goal of all our endeavors and what matters most to us. It will become clear that the twilight phase of this war marks a turning point in history. People should know that the souls of those who have sacrificed themselves continue to work, and that this war has the task of bringing the materialistic age to a close.

[ 19 ] It is necessary for there to be souls who, like outstretched arms, send thoughts up into the spiritual world and bring consciousness down from the spiritual world—souls who are spiritually conscious. The more such spiritually conscious souls send their thoughts upward—much depends on our spiritual atmosphere being permeated by such thoughts—the more the fruits arising from the sacrifices of death can ripen. Thus we summarize our reflection in the following words:

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.