The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. The Intervention of the Christ Impulse in Historical Events — Bridging the Gap Between the Living and the Dead

[ 1 ] If Spiritual Science is to be, above all, a kind of life force for our souls—and it can indeed be so—then it must also prove itself powerful and capable, in times such as these, when so much is in the making and which are as significant as our own, of broadening the spiritual vision of the souls who devote themselves to Spiritual Science. As a result, what is happening is seen in a somewhat broader light than the view of other contemporaries, narrowed by materialism, is often still capable of today. One has been able to see in what has been cultivated over the years within our Spiritual Science movement that one of the goals has also been to expand the soul’s sensibility, so that the human being may break free from mere thinking about his or her narrower self and about that which surrounds this narrower self, and is truly able to look a little toward the great impulses, the great manifestations of power, that run through the entire development of humanity on Earth. And if we have thus endeavored, so to speak, to expand the scope of our feelings and sensibilities, then we must also be able to make the powers we have gained through Spiritual Science suitable precisely in such times, which on the one hand crash so deeply and painfully against the soul with their waves, but on the other hand lift this soul to a very special height because they hold something so significant within them, we must be able to place ourselves in a position, in such times, to go along a little with what is not so outwardly visible in the events, what the ordinary mind is unable to perceive in these events. We must, in particular, be able to ask ourselves the question: Does that which burns above our heads as a terrible torch of war signify something of a prophetic nature for the entire development of the Earth?

[ 2 ] Only those who view current events in the most significant light possible will truly understand them. Friends among our ranks have often wondered why, in recent years, there has been talk within our circle that, in the decades of the 20th century, times will come to which we must look ahead with special attention, because the children and grandchildren of those living today will have to endure important and momentous, yet also tragic and painful events. Those who are called upon today to impart something to sustain the souls of children and grandchildren in the face of what is to come upon humanity in the 20th century must be aware that what is to be imparted must be a strong inner spiritual power. Far, far more than we can already form a mental image of today in our ordinary lives, our descendants of the 20th century will need strong inner, soul-sustaining forces to carry forward the treasures of humanity that have been accumulated over centuries and centuries of human development. And the descendants of the human race living on Earth today will be exposed to entirely different storms of life. I said that people have sometimes been surprised when this has been stated in our circles. But perhaps a sense of it can now arise when we consider that we are facing the greatest war-related events, the most terrible war-related events that have ever affected humanity since mankind began living a conscious history on this Earth.

[ 3 ] It would be entirely wrong, then, if we did not allow ourselves to be imbued as deeply and as strongly as possible with the significance of the moment and ask ourselves the question: What, in fact, does that which we strive for out of the soul’s inner longings have to do with spiritual knowledge, and what does it have to do with what is about to enter into the development of humanity? Do we not see, even if we look only superficially, a threatening storm that has been gathering from the East for a long time, now breaking out over the modern education and culture of Europe? And one must at least be aware that within the bosom of this East there are mighty forces at work, from which one can already see that, as they are now asserting themselves, they essentially amount to the fragmentation and destruction of European culture. To what extent this is the case can only be surmised at present.

[ 4 ] With what we call European culture and civilization, we are in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. It is the culture of the conscious soul, at the heart of which are souls among us who have something to give to humanity. When we look back at what the Greco-Latin culture was, this Greco-Latin culture appears to us, in essence—albeit in a completely different form—as an echo, a repetition emerging on a higher level of what had already existed in ancient Atlantis. Although it existed there in a different form, a kind of repetition of it occurred in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. The fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, in which we now find ourselves, is a new formation, something entirely new that has been added to the course of human development thus far. We should not merely grasp this as an abstract truth, as a theory, but with the deepest and most intense sense of human responsibility, and we should also be clear that long periods of time will still have to elapse in the Earth’s development before everything that the divine world order has to give to Earth humanity through the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period has emerged from the hearts and souls of human beings.

[ 5 ] In the fourth cultural epoch, the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha arose as the most significant event in the entire history of the Earth. Just as this Mystery of Golgotha worked in the fourth cultural epoch, so too will it not merely continue to work in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. It is the task of this fifth cultural epoch to gradually meet the Mystery of Golgotha with full spiritual insight, with full understanding, using all the soul’s powers of knowledge; not merely with the powers of the intellect or the powers of mere emotional piety; but gradually, through all that the soul can bring forth from within itself in terms of knowledge and powers of understanding, to grasp the Christ who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. So that the words of Paul, albeit in a new way, are true: “Not I, but Christ in me.” And fundamentally, everything we bring to bear in Spiritual Science is the preparation for ultimately grasping, with all the soul’s inner powers of knowledge, what this Christ actually is. This is a significant, great task of the fifth cultural epoch.

[ 6 ] Let us now try to understand what is actually meant when such expectations are placed on the fifth cultural epoch. Let us bring before our souls the way in which the Christ impulse has worked within humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha. If the Christ impulse had been able to work only through what people have understood about this Christ impulse over the centuries since the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished, then the Christ impulse would have been able to work only to a limited extent among human beings. But it is not an impulse that has spoken only conceptually to human understanding or to emotional understanding; rather, it is a real impulse that has flowed into the course of history itself with living forces. That for which the blood flowing on Golgotha is the outward symbol—that is precisely what brings a living force into the history of humanity.

[ 7 ] Let us try to use a historical event to illustrate how this Christ impulse worked even before people had yet understood it; how it functioned as a living, driving force in the development of humanity. The fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch is destined to bring into consciousness the entire inner nature and essence of the Christ impulse. But it had already been working as a living force within the subconscious powers of the soul before it could fully awaken to consciousness in humanity. And one of the figures the Christ impulse chose to work through—to accomplish something significant—is, for example—though one could cite others as well—the figure of the Maid of Orleans. If we trace the history of Europe back to the event that took place in connection with the personality of the Maid of Orleans, we must, even if we consider history only from an external perspective, say: It was only through what she accomplished at that time—when, rising up among the French people, she repelled the English forces—that the map of Europe was shaped as it has gradually taken form. And every other historical perspective is, in essence, a fairy tale for the past centuries, insofar as it concerns the distribution of European peoples and states; it is something that fails to recognize that with the Maid of Orleans came the Christ impulse, which at that time, as a living impulse, brought about the distribution of the European peoples and their forces. And one might say: While the learned people were arguing about all sorts of things, already beginning to argue over the question of whether the Lord’s Supper should be partaken of in this or that form, whether this or that should be interpreted by this or that formula, and while the learned people thus demonstrated that they had not yet, with their conscious understanding, come to grasp what the Christ impulse is, this impulse worked through the simple country girl, through the Maid of Orleans, shaping European history. For the effect of the Christ impulse does not depend on the understanding with which one approaches it. Through its Michaelic representative, the Christ impulse worked into the Maid of Orleans. But the Maid of Orleans had to undergo something akin to an initiation. Today we speak of initiation and provide the human consciousness with the rules we have compiled in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. But of course, there could be no question of such an initiation in the case of the Maid of Orleans. In her case, we can only speak of an initiation that was, so to speak, a remnant of the older initiation, which took place more in the subconscious soul forces of human beings. Now, it is precisely these old initiations that have propagated themselves like elemental forces right up to modern times. Much is told in ancient sagas, fairy tales, and legends: that this or that happened to this or that person, through which their inner soul power was awakened, so that they saw this or that from the spiritual world. Such things are meant to be merely a hint of how, without human intervention, through the action of divine-spiritual forces surging through the world, certain people—who are suited to it by their karma—are naturally initiated, by virtue of the place where they are placed by the karma of humanity, where this karma of humanity flows together with their own karma. A very beautiful echo of such a natural initiation, as one might call it, is given to us by a poem that speaks of how the “Son of the Sun,” Olaf Åsteson, remained in a kind of sleep-like state during the thirteen nights and days that elapse from the birth of Christ to the Epiphany, until January 6. Olaf Åsteson: the name itself suggests that he possesses inherited powers of insight of a subconscious nature, for Olaf Åsteson actually means: the one through whom the blood of his ancestors flows. Olaf Åsteson, the Son of the Sun, sleeps through and dreams through the thirteen nights, which are the darkest of the earthly year, or at least contain within them the greatest power of the earthly annual darkness, from Christmas Day until January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. Now, what is associated with these nights in such myths and legends is not merely human superstitious speculation. For in fact, there are two seasons that, cosmically speaking, relate to the life of the human soul within the body like two opposing poles. If we take the season surrounding the Feast of St. John in summer, this is the time particularly suited for the human soul, with all its passionate impulses, to rise up into the cosmos through the external physical power of the sun—which reaches its greatest energy there—and to unite with the cosmos. That is why the St. John’s Festival of ancient times was intended to instill in the human soul those divine-spiritual forces that permeate and surge through the cosmos when people, during this festival, forgot themselves and merged with the strong physical forces of the cosmos. But where the sun’s power reaches its weakest physical expression, in the middle of winter, the spiritual forces that work in the darkness attain their greatest strength. And rightly so, one might say, according to cosmic laws, the festival of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth falls at this time. Where the outer physical world is at its darkest, the soul can experience the most powerful things when it feels united with the forces that spiritually permeate the Earth’s aura. That is why it is during these days that Olaf Åsteson sleeps and sleeps, and experiences all that we call the Kamaloka, then what we call the soul world, and finally what we call the spirit realm. And the Norwegian legend tells us how Olaf Åsteson, after awakening again following the thirteen nights, is able to recount what he has experienced, how he encountered the souls in the soul world and in the spirit realm. All of these are, admittedly, images that correspond to an imaginative insight, but they point to what are truly living possibilities of the human soul when these souls feel transported during that time of physical darkness—which is, however, the time of spiritual enlightenment—when they feel transported to what surges and weaves within the Earth’s aura. And at the end of the legend we see the forces of the Christ impulse seizing hold with power—but this is the subconscious understanding of Olaf Åsteson. Such legends speak, as it were, of initiations into nature that were still possible in ancient times, of a gazing into the spiritual world. In these times, the Earth’s aura truly possesses a power that it lacks in other times, when it is, as it were, flooded and outshone by the physical power of the sun. And since Christ has been united with the Earth’s aura since the Mystery of Golgotha, the power of the Christ impulse can also work into souls in a very special way during these days, if these souls meet it with receptivity.

[ 8 ] Therefore, before examining any historical event, one might assume that, even in the case of a figure such as the Maid of Orleans, the Christ impulse would have been working subconsciously within her soul for thirteen days; that she, too, in a sense—much like what Olaf Åsteson experienced during those thirteen days and nights in a state of sleep—would have undergone something like an enlightenment through the Christ impulse within the subconscious powers of her soul. But then the Maid of Orleans would have had to be in a sort of sleep-like state at least once during the thirteen days spanning December 25 to January 6, and on January 6, after her soul had been in a sort of sleep-like state, the Christ impulse would have had to take hold of that soul. What one might assume in this way was indeed present in a peculiar manner, but only at a very specific time when a human being can indeed be in a sort of sleep-like state. Namely, before the human being takes the first breath of earthly life, before being delivered from his mother’s womb and receiving the first earthly-physical ray of light, he spends a time as a developing human being in a true state of sleep. And just as one falls into a dream-like sleep in the evening, so too is one in the mother’s womb in such a dream-like sleep. And the days during which this dream-like sleep is most receptive to the unconscious influences of the spiritual world are precisely the last days a human being spends in the mother’s womb. And so it may well be that precisely these days were used in the case of the Virgin of Orleans to implant the Christ impulse in her before she saw physical sunlight with her physical eyes and took her first breath outside her mother’s womb. This was the case, for the Virgin of Orleans was born on January 6. On January 6, the entire village gathered because there was something indefinable in the village atmosphere. This is a historical fact. The people did not know what had happened: the Virgin of Orleans had been born. Much lies hidden behind such things. And only when humanity comes to see this mysterious fact in the right light will there also be an understanding of what is truly taking place beneath the surface of the external sensory world in the process of human becoming. The divine forces seek out the most manifold paths to enter into that which is the human soul. Of course, the karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be such that something like this could happen. But because the karma of the Maid of Orleans coincided with the fact that she was born on January 6, the historical conditions were in place that made it possible for the Christ impulse to have a special effect on this figure in history and to give Europe a new form. These are things that can be examined when one observes the course of history with some understanding. These are the things to which spiritual understanding will connect in the future, when this fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch will truly draw forth all the powers of knowledge from the souls. The soul will then experience the existence of the Christ impulse more and more consciously. But it will only experience it in this way if humanity is able to regard Spiritual Science no longer as a mere theory, but to feel it as living reality, to experience it inwardly. Then Spiritual Science will be able to bring about what is actually its mission in the course of human development.

[ 9 ] In times such as ours, we must be particularly clear that the gulf—which, in a materialistic age, is opening up ever wider between the human souls who live together here in physical bodies and those who have already passed through the gate of death—must be bridged. And increasingly, we will come to regard the souls who stand in the life between death and a new birth as belonging to the whole of humanity, just as those who find themselves in physical life between birth and death do. The awareness that we are all united on this earth, including those who have passed into the supersensible realms before us—who work among us with different forces than we who are in the body—this awareness must become ever stronger, ever more intense. But this requires an understanding of the spiritually active forces. It requires that we learn to view the interrelationships of earthly phenomena in that new light which Spiritual Science can provide.

[ 10 ] Just because Spiritual Science is meant to be something that moves our hearts while at the same time leading our souls further in knowledge, I would like—in order to explain a few things about the path, which is also one that ties in with many of the issues that have occupied us in the wider context of our spiritual scientific current of knowledge in recent weeks— I would like to speak to you about something that has come to us in recent weeks. I could certainly choose other cases, but these cases are linked to our karma in a direct way, so that I can speak about them again today. And you can extend what is said here to others, both within and outside our Spiritual Science movement, who stand in a similar relationship to their fate and its connection to their death as is the case with those of whom I wish to speak.

[ 11 ] Last fall, we experienced a deeply moving incident in Dornach, near our construction site. Some dear friends had moved to Dornach with their children and settled near the site to tend the garden. And the eldest child, a seven-year-old boy, was intellectually incredibly bright, yet also possessed something quite unique in terms of his heart’s qualities; he was truly something of a child of the sun. We felt the deepest connection to this child’s soul, even if we could only catch a fleeting glimpse of him here and there. When the father was called up to do his duty as a German citizen on the battlefield, the seven-year-old boy was, I would say, already so deeply immersed in the whole situation of life that he made a special effort to replace his father as best he could, to help his mother by taking care of everything possible. He went into town to shop, the seven-year-old boy all by himself. One evening, the boy went missing. It was a lecture evening. A friend of ours came by around ten o’clock and said that the boy was missing. And in the end, it could not be unclear that the boy’s disappearance had something to do with the overturning of a furniture truck, which had overturned near the construction site at a spot where perhaps hardly any furniture truck had driven before, nor has one since, and likely none will for a long time to come. The wagon had rolled down a small embankment into a meadow in such a way that the drivers said there was no way they could lift it that evening. They unhitched the horses, for whom they were very concerned, and left the wagon where it lay, intending to lift it the next day, because they believed it would take a full day to lift the heavy wagon. It was now ten o’clock in the evening. We had to connect the boy’s disappearance with the overturning of this wagon. Every possible tool was brought in, and everyone who could work did so, and within two hours the wagon was lifted. At midnight we found the dead boy under the furniture wagon.

[ 12 ] Well, if one considers only the outward appearance and focuses on how, for some time before this happened, everything had come together in such a way that the boy—who had otherwise always taken a slightly different route, which would have led him to pass the carriage on the right— but at that time walked in such a way that he passed on the left side, where the carriage was bound to hit him, if one considers that he was delayed in the most benevolent way, so that he left about a quarter of an hour later—he had gone to the so-called canteen to get something for supper— so that he left later than he had actually intended, considering that the whole thing unfolded in such a way that it really came down to a matter of a few—indeed, barely a few—minutes, that the boy happened to be at the very spot where the cart overturned, and that the whole thing went unnoticed; people standing not far away watched as the cart overturned, but no one had seen the boy; when one considers all this, one will readily acknowledge that this is, in the most eminent sense, an example of a logical fallacy that can easily occur and to which a person can succumb.

[ 13 ] I have often, including in your presence, vividly demonstrated how people can succumb to illusions even in their external lives, to the point of confusing cause and effect. I have said: Suppose you see a person walking along the bank of a river from a distance. You see him suddenly stumble and fall into the river. Shortly thereafter, he is pulled out dead. Now, one is certainly justified in assuming, based on all external evidence, that the person fell into the water and drowned. And if one does nothing else, that will remain the human judgment. In this case, it takes only an external means to perhaps convince oneself of the opposite. A stone was also found at the spot where the man fell into the river, and this reinforces that judgment. If one examines the corpse, one will find that the man suffered a stroke, that he consequently fell into the river, and that he did not die because he fell into the river, but rather that he fell into it because he was already dead. Thus, cause and effect have been completely confused. But this happens above all in science, in many places, for those who see through things. In our case, where the boy met his death, we must say: The moving truck was summoned by this boy’s karma; his karma brought the truck precisely to that spot. It is a mistake to believe that chance was at play here. In this case, the boy was simply meant to reach the age of seven in this incarnation. And I would say that the entire event was arranged for that purpose. We must become completely accustomed to reversing cause and effect compared to the way we perceive them in ordinary life.

[ 14 ] But when we look at the life of this soul through the eyes of the seer, something significant will surely dawn on us—something deeply moving, utterly profound, yet at the same time illuminating the divine-spiritual mysteries of the world. It was not long after the boy’s death that the entire aura of the Dornach building had changed. And in saying this, I am telling you something that relates to my own experiences. When one has to work oneself for the Dornach building of the Anthroposophical Society, when one has to initiate what is to be carried out there, then one knows what one owes to the helping forces that work into the soul from such an aura. Since those days, what was the boy’s still-unspent etheric body has been truly connected, genuinely connected, to the aura of the Dornach building. For the etheric body is, after all, that which is shed by the human being. The individuality, consisting of the I and the astral body, then goes on; that is something else. But the etheric body, when shed at such a tender age, possesses forces within it that could have sustained the physical body and physical life for decades to come. Now these forces have passed through the gate of death unspent. They are shed after a few days. And these forces now interact precisely with the aura of the building. One cannot therefore say that in the case of this individuality it is the soul itself, but rather it is the unspent etheric body. Nothing is lost in the spiritual world either. The physicist knows that nothing is lost of physical forces, that the forces merely transform. In the spiritual world, too, we must look for transformed forces—unused etheric forces that ascend into the spiritual world from people who have died prematurely. We come close to understanding these things when we observe them in concrete cases. And for this reason alone, I shall speak to you today of such concrete cases.

[ 15 ] A dear anthroposophical friend died a few weeks ago in Zurich after a life that had brought her many trials, and the karma of our movement dictated that I should speak at the cremation. The time from death until the cremation lasted from 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, when death occurred, until 11:00 a.m. on Monday. This was a somewhat longer period than usual. Consequently, the separation of the individuality from the etheric body had already taken place by the time the cremation occurred. Now the peculiar thing was that during the time in which the soul had already separated from the etheric body in the days between the onset of death and the cremation, the necessity came upon me: You must speak certain words before the cremation speech and afterward. How these words were formed had very little to do with what one’s own ability or one’s own way of forming words might have done; rather, through identification with the soul of the personality that had passed through the gate of death, the necessity arose to characterize this soul—but to characterize it in such a way that the characterization was given as an inspiration, as an illumination, coming from the soul itself. The soul said, as it were: Form words through which that which characterizes my soul appears in sounding words. — But there was still unconsciousness in the soul. The words did not arise consciously from the soul, but they arose from the very essence of that soul. I had to characterize it not as it wished to reflect itself in a self-centered way, but as it appeared when another soul regarded it. And for this other soul, the necessity arose, right down to the shaping of the individual words, to speak the following at the beginning of what one might call a eulogy. As an address to the soul that had passed through the gate of death, the following words had to be spoken:

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 the devoted love
Of sympathetic people
Revealed itself fully, wordlessly —
This being, which, with noble, quiet beauty
Proclaimed to the creation of the world’s soul
A receptivity of feeling.

[ 16 ] As I said, these words had to be spoken at the beginning and end of the funeral. Now, in fact, this soul was, so to speak, as if asleep throughout the entire process, during the funeral ceremony. Then came the cremation. The remarkable thing was that the first moment of a subsequent, fleeting flash of consciousness for the soul occurred at the very moment when—one cannot say the flame, but rather the heat—took hold of the corpse. One could say: This soul has now passed through the gate of death; it had shed its etheric body, and now it became apparent how such a soul looks back. Before this soul, in this looking back, stood the entire funeral ceremony—that is, what had been spoken; it gazed upon that. And one could see there the mystery of the soul’s interaction with time after it has passed through the gate of death. One could always have seen this in such a case. When one looks here in the physical body at something standing in space and then walks away from it, that object does not go away but remains standing, and one can always look back—one sees that it remains standing. But it is not so with what we experience temporally in physical life; there we have only a memory image of the events. When, on the other hand, one looks back on past events after death, they remain stationary; one looks at the events as if through space. Thus what had been spoken remained stationary; the soul looked back upon it as upon a spatial formation through the course of time. This is the looking upon the formations of the Akashic Records. Then a kind of sleep state set in again. But especially in this case, it became quite clear how unfounded is the materialistic soul’s fear that consciousness might be diminished when the soul passes through the gate of death. After death, when we sink into a kind of sleep state, we do not have no consciousness or too little consciousness until our later awakening; rather, we have too much consciousness. At first, when we have shed the etheric body, when the life tableau has been laid aside, we are so filled with consciousness—I have spoken in more detail about this in the lecture series held in Vienna, “The Inner Being of the Human Being and Life Between Death and Rebirth”—that the consciousness is initially overwhelming, and the human being must first orient themselves. And they orient themselves by looking back on their own earthly life and on their character in that earthly life. They must orient themselves through self-knowledge; that is where the orienting force must take hold, and from there, so to speak, what is an excess of consciousness is then dampened to such an extent that the person, depending on what they have gone through in their last incarnation, can bear it. It is, in fact, a dampening of the excess of consciousness that was present, down to the degree that the human being can endure. But this can occur in stages. And under the impression of the body being seized by warmth, by heat, a first flash of true consciousness arose in the soul of this personality who is our friend.

[ 17 ] However, the fact that the soul, once it has passed through the gate of death, strives to bring together what is within it became particularly clear to me in another case. I said that these things can indeed be experienced at every death, but I will cite characteristic examples from very recent times. It became particularly clear to me in another case, where a friend of mine, having reached an advanced age, passed through the gate of death. During the last years she lived on earth, she was, in a rare way, devoted with all her feelings and sensibilities to what might be called the impulses of Spiritual Science. She was such that she felt every detail of Spiritual Science more deeply than she grasped it with her intellect; she united in her soul the kind of perception and feeling that gives a non-theoretical, but life-true understanding of Spiritual Science. Now, in the case of this personality, it was so that very shortly after the hour of death, while entering into the life tableau with the etheric body, what this soul—with which one then identified—was now seeking to grasp as its self, having cast off the body, seemed to radiate forth from the soul. And I then had to write down, very shortly after death, while the soul was still united with the etheric body, write down words that I, too, did not formulate through my human knowledge, but which are nothing other than a rendering of what the soul had worked out inwardly within itself, in order to summarize, as it were, in a kind of summary, that which it had been able to receive from Spiritual Science, so as to attain a fully developed inner self-awareness. Then the words resounded in the soul, which I then, following an inspiration, had to speak before and after the funeral address. You will immediately notice the great difference between the entire tone of these words and those I previously cited for the other personality.

Across the vastness of the world I will carry
My feeling heart, that it may grow warm
In the fire of the sacred working of forces;

In the thoughts of the world I will weave
My own thinking, that it may grow clear
In the light of eternal becoming-life;

Into the depths of the soul I will dive
With surrendered thought, that it may grow strong
For the true goals of human endeavor;

In God’s peace I strive thus
Through life’s struggles and with worries,
Preparing my self for the higher Self;

Seeking peace that delights in work,
Perceiving the world’s existence within my own being,
I wish to fulfill my duty to humanity;

Then may I live in expectation
Toward my star of destiny,
Which grants me my place in the realm of the spirit.

[ 18 ] Self-characterization of the soul in the first person! In the earlier cases, the distinct feature is that the observing soul must characterize the other soul through mutual spiritual communication with it. Here, the observing soul had nothing else to do but to put itself entirely in the place of the soul that was still seeking to grasp itself—with the forces of the etheric body—within its being enriched by Spiritual Science, in order to clarify for itself, so to speak, how it should now orient itself in the spiritual world.

[ 19 ] These, in turn, are cases in which it becomes quite clear how a person, having passed through the gate of death, is compelled to look back upon their own self in self-knowledge. And one could clearly see how it is of some help to the deceased when the one still dwelling in the physical body helps them to formulate, to put into words, that which reigns and weaves within them. Of course, there will come a time later when the human being beholds their weaknesses and their faults, their sins, in the soul world. But we must note this: however much death is sometimes feared by those still in the body, when viewed from the other side, death appears quite differently. Here in physical life, no human being can, with ordinary human powers, look back to the hour of their birth. In fact, for anyone who lacks clairvoyant powers, there is no way to observe their entry into the world; only later does the point in time arrive to which one can look back. The exact opposite is true of that birth into the spiritual world which we call death. In the life between death and new birth, the human being constantly looks back to this moment. This moment alone belongs to the most glorious, the most magnificent, the very most beautiful things one can ever behold in the spiritual world. Viewed from the other side, death is always direct proof that the spirit ceaselessly celebrates its victory over physicality. And one experiences this in oneself. Hence this striving to truly experience in the soul after death what one can be. Hence it is a help when a soul living in the body puts into words that which the soul strives for, so that what it is may stand clearly before its own spiritual gaze, with all the best it possesses, after it has passed through the gate of death. In this very case, one could truly see how such words—which relate to the self of the soul in question—come to one with an inner necessity when one is to speak at the funeral, not speaking out of caprice, but obeying the divine voice that tells one to do what one must do.

[ 20 ] In yet another instance, this became clear to me through the karmic course of recent times, when one of our friends died in his early youth—a friend who had given us great cause for hope, especially for our movement. He died at the age of thirty. On February 26, he would have turned thirty; he died shortly before that. And this friend, our dear Fritz Mitscher—he was the one who, with infinite, self-sacrificing devotion, took what he, having a natural aptitude for scholarship, was able to grasp in terms of erudition, summarized it in terms of Spiritual Science, and thus in fact stood before something that is so necessary for our movement: to take in the scope of our science in such a way that one penetrates it through Spiritual Science and renders it through Spiritual Science, so that one stands fully on the ground of the scientific present. He was well prepared for this. Even if karma now works in such a way that such souls pass through the gate of death prematurely, this has its significance in the course of the world as a whole. And just as it was in the other cases—because I was compelled by karma to speak at the funeral— so it was here as well that at the beginning and end of the funeral address I had to speak words which, in turn, had to be spoken in the same manner, by entering into the essence of the soul, so that the words were not again arbitrarily coined, but were conceived in living communion with the soul that had passed through death. There I had to say:

A hope that brings us joy:
Thus you entered the field,
Where the spirit’s blossoms of the earth,
Through the power of the soul’s being,
Wish to reveal themselves to the seeker.

Your yearning was deeply connected
To those who love truth above all;
To create from the light of the spirit,
Was the solemn goal of life,
Which you pursued tirelessly.

You cultivated your beautiful gifts,
On the bright path of spiritual knowledge
Unperturbed by the world’s contradictions
As a faithful servant of truth,
To walk with sure steps.

You trained your spiritual faculties,
So that they, brave and steadfast,
On both sides of the path
Pushed error away from you
And created space for truth.

To shape your self into a revelation
Of pure light,
So that the soul’s solar power
Might shine powerfully within you,
Was your life’s care and joy.

Other cares, other joys,
Barely touched your soul,
Because knowledge, as light,
That gives meaning to existence,
Appeared as the true value of life.

A hope that brings us joy:
Thus you entered the field,
Where the spirit-blossoms of the earth
Through the power of soul-being
Wish to reveal themselves to inquiry.

A loss that pains us deeply,
Thus you vanish from the field,
Where the spirit’s earthly seeds
In the bosom of soul-being
Matured in your spheric senses.

Feel how we gaze lovingly
Toward the heights that now
Call us onward to other work,
Extend to the departed friends
Your strength from spiritual realms.

Hear our souls’ plea,
Sent to you in trust:
Here, for our earthly work, we need
Strong power from spiritual lands,
For which we thank our departed friends.

A hope that brings us joy,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Let us hope that you, far yet near,
Shine upon our lives, never lost,
As a soul-star in the spiritual realm.

[ 21 ] As early as the very next night, I was able to experience the following resonating from this soul in the spiritual realm:

To shape my self into a revelation
Of pure light,
So that the soul’s solar power
Might shine powerfully within me,
Was my life’s concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys,
They scarcely touched my soul,
For knowledge appeared to me as light,
That gives meaning to existence,
As the true value of life.

[ 22 ] I can assure you that when I wrote these verses, it never occurred to me—not even remotely—that the two stanzas are structured in such a way that every “you” can be transformed into “me,” and every “yours” into “mine.” I only became aware of this when the two stanzas echoed back to me from the other soul like an answer the following night. So that the stanzas could remain exactly as they were, except that they were shifted from the second person to the first.

[ 23 ] I mention this because it can help us understand from the heart how, in the future development of humanity, the possibility of speaking from soul to soul will remain, even if the mouth is no longer the instrument. For just as we receive answers here in everyday life through the mouth of another soul, so too was it here in an example where the soul even gave an answer from the unconscious depths of its being, as it were saying: I have understood, for that is truly how it was for me in life; now that I have shed the body, I comprehend what I strove for in life.

[ 24 ] What really matters is not merely that we take in concepts, ideas, and mental images about the spiritual worlds, but that we immerse ourselves in a particular way of life as human beings in a specific lifetime, as members of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch moving toward the sixth and seventh cultural epochs. What matters is that the abyss separating the living from the so-called dead be truly bridged, that humanity become more and more one, not only insofar as it is incarnated in the body, but also insofar as it has taken on those forms of existence that the human being experiences between death and new birth. Spiritual Science is not here merely to bring this to humanity; rather, for the life that the Earth needs for the remainder of this post-Atlantean development, Spiritual Science is the first—I would say, still stammering—attempt, for what can be given in Spiritual Science is, after all, still merely a stammering compared to what future generations of humanity will experience in Spiritual Science.

[ 25 ] Through this description, which seeks to make comprehensible—through the power of the heart—what we can think about the relationship between life and death, I would like to direct your attention today to this aspect of Spiritual Science that is oriented toward life, so that you may gain an understanding—not merely an intellectual one, but one of the heart—of what we are actually seeking with such vitality through the deepening of Spiritual Science, which is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. For the sixth will follow it, and the seventh will follow that. But one truly grasps what needs to be defended in Central European culture only when one feels this very Central European culture intimately united with what must be achieved for humanity in the fifth cultural epoch. And then something can begin of what I mentioned at the start of today’s reflection: a broadening of our gaze beyond what our fateful times hold in their bosom.

[ 26 ] In the East, a new way of human life is taking shape that will be significant for the future. You need only read about this in the lecture series on the mission of the Folk-souls, which was once given in Kristiania. But the soul type of the Eastern European is already fundamentally different from that of the Central European—not to mention the Far East—fundamentally different. And we must, through what Spiritual Science is meant to be, come to the point of creating an open spiritual eye for such matters. What is often told—that the Varangians were once summoned by the Russian-Slavic population, that they were told: “We have a beautiful land, but we have no order; come to us and bring us order! Establish a form of government for us!”—what is so cheerfully recounted as a starting point of Russian history is nothing more than a legend without any historical basis. That never happened. In truth, these Varangians set out as conquerors and were certainly not summoned. And yet what is told in this way in history signifies even more than it would if it corresponded to historical truth. For it signifies something prophetic, something truly prophetic, something that has not yet happened but will happen in the future. For what is to develop in the East will have to develop in such a way that the abilities of the Eastern peoples are used to take in what Western culture has created and then further process it within themselves, allowing themselves to be enriched by what is created in the West. This will one day be the task of the Eastern peoples. One can characterize the very essence of the Russian Eastern people in a few words. If we look at the real people—not that hypocritical community by which the Russian people are now governed—then we must be clear that the Russian soul possesses an immense scope of talent, that it is, so to speak, gifted in everything; but precisely as it unfolds its mission in the development of the world and humanity more and more, it will become apparent that there can be something in humanity that one might call: talent without productive power. The talent will continue to grow, will become ever greater. But what, for example, distinguishes the Central European so much is that he has united his talent with spiritual power, that he brings forth that “Whoever strives with all his might...” and lives intimately with the spirit of his people; that he wishes to bring forth at the same time what he seeks to understand—which is so magnificent in Fichte’s philosophy, where the ego, in order to comprehend itself, continually seeks to bring itself forth—one will only see later what greatness this philosophy possesses—precisely that which so distinguishes Central Europe, the polar opposite of which is present in Russia, in Eastern Europe. These Russian souls are absolutely receptive: they possess the greatest gift for reception, and if one speaks of productivity in their case, one is mistaken. They are called upon to develop talent without productivity. Even the concept is difficult to grasp today, because this has not yet existed in the course of development, but must develop only gradually. And in the future, it will come to pass that a call will go out from the East to the West: We have a beautiful land, but no order—for disorder will only grow ever greater—come and bring order! — Central Europe is called upon to carry the productivity of the spirit into the East. And what is happening now is an irrational resistance against what must inevitably happen in the future. People want to trample underfoot that very thing they will eventually have to come to in order to say: Come to us and bring order! — It is a fact of human history that what is most strongly rejected and pushed back is precisely what we will ultimately have to long for and seek above all else. The greatest misfortune that could befall us if Eastern Europe, if Russia, were to achieve victory in this process—this greatest misfortune would not be for Central Europe at all, but for Russia itself; the greatest misfortune, viewed from within, for this victory would have to be reversed; this victory, with its consequences, could not endure. Thus we stand before the tragic moment in the history of human development when the East resists something it will long for in the future, will long for with all its might. For it would fall into complete decline if it did not allow itself to be enriched by the spiritual life of that which is the West for it, the West that is its immediate neighbor. And indeed, in the further course of its culture, this West must bring forth what is a living spiritual life—not merely idealism, but a living spiritual life. This living spiritual life will be like a spiritual sun that will move from West to East, in a direction opposite to the course of the outer sun. And the outer Russian person will increasingly realize how little he can accomplish on his own, how he is dependent on truly placing himself within the entire process of human development; how he commits the greatest sin by encroaching upon what is for him Western European culture. Strange flashes, I might say, we might perceive of this. For something has arisen in this East that was an impossibility in the West: the so-called “barefoot” worldview, a kind of philosophy of the barefoot, which has spread rapidly across wide circles, even though it did not exist at all a few years ago. Barefootism! The worldview of those who turn absolute disbelief in humanity and human nature into a philosophy, since they cannot believe that man is truly anything other than that which wanders about between birth and death, wanders amidst hardship and terror, wanders in such a way that the words freedom, brotherhood, mercy, compassion, and love are empty phrases, and that the only wise person is the one who wanders through the world as a pilgrim with bare feet, barefoot, who perceives the entire culture, the entire rotten Western European culture—as the barefoot man says—as a great deception, and who regards the tattered clothes and the dim room and the wide street as that through which man struggles when he has brought himself to adopt the barefoot worldview. And when a poet has one of his characters express this barefoot worldview in telling words, it must strike us as quite remarkable—us, who always try to find within the Central European worldview that which can kindle the light of the future in people. When a poet has a character articulate what is, in essence, a kind of summary of the barefoot worldview and its philosophy, how does it strike us?

[ 27 ] “Yes, what is he to you, this man? Do you understand? He grabs you by the collar, crushes you under his thumb like a flea! Then you might feel sorry for him!... Indeed! Then you might reveal all your stupidity to him. He’ll stretch you out on seven racks for your mercy, wrap your guts around his hand, and tear every vein from your body, an inch at a time... Oh, you... Mercy! Pray to God that they might simply beat you to a pulp without any mercy at all, and be done with it!... Mercy!... Ugh!”

[ 28 ] And Gorky, of whom you have no doubt heard a great deal, responds to such words with: “Cruel, but true,” thereby expressing not merely the worldview of a poetic figure as articulated by the poet, but his own worldview, which for him arises from his observation of the world. This is the worldview of a barefoot man, a worldview that can be spoken of just as one speaks of other worldviews that exist today. It is the worldview that has lost the ability to emerge from within itself, to come forth from itself into something that sends light into life; that must wait until it is fertilized by this light, and then can fulfill its mission in human evolution; but which now rebels against precisely what it must do. One has witnessed many empty phrases in the world, but I say this out of the deepest sense of tragedy: phrases such as those spoken by the most diverse parties in August 1914 at the war session of the Russian Duma—such a sum of phrases surpasses the height of all empty rhetoric. Such things are spoken only when all the soul’s living creative power has been drained. In the East, one is in reality on the eve of what is yet to come, and a force is unfolding that is opposed to what will one day make this East great. And we in Central Europe must say to ourselves: This East is waiting precisely for the spiritual wisdom that must arise in the heart of Europe. My dear friends, try to translate into feelings what I have thus indicated with heavy feelings, I would like to say, in individual words, what I have indicated to you, so that it may shed light on what we, as spiritual scientists, survey with expanded feelings and into which we must find our way in order to grasp the actual necessity—and also the historical necessity—of the worldview of Spiritual Science. Then we will imbue ourselves with thoughts that rise from our souls with understanding into the vastness of the worlds. Thoughts that will then encounter what, in the near future, when peace may once again reign over the fields of the earth, will work down from these spiritual worlds.

[ 29 ] Today I have shown you how the etheric bodies of those souls function—souls whose etheric bodies, still fresh and unspent, detach themselves from bodies that could continue to function here in the physical world for years, even decades, serving physical life. We must realize how many such unused parts of the etheric body ascend into the spiritual world—in addition to what the people passing through the gate of death on the battlefields carry into the spiritual world through their individuality. These etheric bodies, however, will constitute a vast sum of spiritual forces—those spiritual forces that are to work from the spiritual spheres toward the formation of a spiritual worldview that is to increasingly take hold of humanity. But for these forces, which have ascended into the unspent etheric bodies, to be able to work down from the spiritual spheres, they must encounter thoughts that in turn ascend from earthly human beings into the spiritual spheres—thoughts that show understanding for the secret workings of the spiritual world, into which the forces of these unspent etheric bodies will be woven. But this should be an encouragement to us to immerse ourselves in the great truths of Spiritual Science. For these truths will inspire thoughts within us that will then continue to work further and further into other people as well. And depending on what unfolds as the fateful content of our days, peaceful days will come when what the souls have implanted within themselves through Spiritual Science will rise up. It will meet with the forces that have gathered in the etheric bodies of those who have passed through the gate of death on the battlefields of events and are now streaming down. And then what I would like to summarize in a few words as a conclusion arising from Spiritual Science observation will come to pass. If we know how to place the fruits of Spiritual Science correctly within the development of our times, then what I would like to express in the following words will come to pass:

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
And souls, conscious of the spirit,
Send their thoughts into the realm of the spirit.