The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday I cited the story of Manon de Gaussin because it truly contains an accurate description of the aftereffects of the etheric organization, the etheric body, after death. Of course, one cannot cite every fictional or artistic depiction in such a context, because the author might naturally have the most unscientific mental images, and one would then be citing something incorrect. But I have chosen an example where the aftereffects of such an etheric body are described in a truly accurate manner, that is, in a way that corresponds to the objective facts.

[ 2 ] This is also, in a sense, the first thing that Spiritual Science encounters: that when a person passes through the gate of death, the connection between the etheric body, astral body, and the I detaches itself from the physical body, and that an intermediate state then sets in, so to speak, in which on the one hand the physical body remains, and on the other hand the etheric body, the astral body, and the I are still present in a connected state.

[ 3 ] We know, of course, that after a relatively short time the etheric body detaches itself, and the I, together with the astral body, must undergo the further journey through the worlds in the time between death and a new birth, as an entity connected to human individuality.

[ 4 ] Now we must be clear about this—I have emphasized it frequently in recent times—that the etheric organization, the etheric body, is something that is predestined, so to speak, to sustain human life on Earth throughout the entire span of one’s life. A person who reaches a ripe old age naturally still has exactly the same etheric body that they had as a child. If, however, a person has to leave the physical plane prematurely during an incarnation—as in the case, for example, of our dear Theo Faiss, and the etheric body has then separated from the astral body and the I, then this etheric body is in a different situation than that of a person who has reached a certain maximum age and who has been able to utilize the forces of this etheric body throughout decades of their earthly life. The forces that remain in the etheric body when a person dies prematurely would, had the person been able to remain on Earth according to their karma, have found their use in the course of their further life. This use consists, after all, in the continuous consumption of the etheric body. The etheric body that thus separates from a person who has died at an early age possesses many unused forces; these are contained within the etheric body. These are, so to speak, forces that have passed into the spiritual world, but which could have sustained a physical life for a long time to come.

[ 5 ] These forces are, of course, not destroyed when a person has passed through the gate of death. For nothing—and far less so in the spiritual world than in the physical world—is destroyed. All forces that arise are transformed into other forms. We know, of course, that this law of conservation of energy has played a major role in physical science since 1842, when it was first formulated by Julius Robert Mayer. It is effective everywhere, even in the simplest phenomena. For example, when one strokes a surface with one’s hand, one applies a force. This force is not lost; the spot becomes warm. The force of pressure, of pressing and stroking, is transformed into heat. No force is lost; the forces are transformed.

[ 6 ] Nor is any force lost in the spiritual world. So that we can say: Those forces of the etheric body that originate from those who have died prematurely pass into the spiritual world, and since they are no longer used for an earthly life, they are now, so to speak, used for everything that pertains to the human individuality, which, after all, lives on with the I and the astral body. These forces, which would otherwise be consumed by the earthly individuality, find their use in the spiritual realm; specifically, they remain in the elemental world, just as the etheric body itself dissolves into the so-called elemental world. In the elemental world, they form a genuine reservoir of power, a true source of strength. This is indeed a very significant phenomenon, for it illuminates the connection between the physical world and the spiritual world in a concrete way.

[ 7 ] For true understanding, it is not enough to have a mental image of the physical world being connected to the spiritual world and the spiritual world lying behind the physical world. The spiritual realm that lies behind the physical world is, in a sense, of a different origin. There are various things in our spiritual world, which surrounds us directly, that originate from such unspent etheric bodies. The art of clairvoyance, which is of great significance for the physical human development on Earth, owes a great deal to such unspent etheric bodies. What such etheric bodies represent in the elemental world, which lies immediately behind our physical world, constitutes significant inspiration, particularly for clairvoyant insights and for those inspired by Spiritual Science.

[ 8 ] Think about that. In a sense, we have people who died young, such as our Theo Faiss, to thank for having given their etheric bodies to our elemental world, and for the fact that many, many spiritual influences can emanate precisely from such etheric bodies.

[ 9 ] I hardly need to point out that such influences can only emanate from souls who have met their end through a truly natural course of karma, never from anyone who, through human will—such as by committing suicide—has contributed to their own death. The situation is quite different there, for one destroys the fruitful forces of the etheric body through the decisions that arise from that “maya of consciousness” of which I spoke yesterday; and from this arise all the decisions regarding death that can still be made during earthly life. As I said, this is merely a digression.

[ 10 ] It must be said that such etheric bodies, as just described, underlie in a very special way the spiritual inspirations we may receive. Thus, the spiritual movement we serve—as we can recognize—owes a great deal to what can be given to it from this perspective. Perhaps I need not point out how significantly our understanding can be enriched with regard to the love and reverence we show toward our dead, by knowing this, by learning to distinguish how we should honor those who have passed away in their youth, and how we should honor those who have passed away in their mature years, who have absorbed into their individuality what are otherwise the unspent forces of the etheric body.

[ 11 ] When someone dies at an advanced age—we have also had to experience this in recent weeks—they have incorporated into their astral body that which is otherwise still in the etheric body. They have, so to speak, made human what is otherwise cosmic. Through this, the significant inspiration I have spoken of then emanates from them themselves, from their individuality. And they are thereby particularly effective in that this inspiration is then taken up into the hearts of specific people, even those who do not approach it from Spiritual Science or clairvoyance, but who in their lives surrender to ordinary impulses, so that these people, too, receive into their souls that which — less cosmic and more human — flows into the spiritual world in which we are always embedded with our souls.

[ 12 ] But with this we have already identified something we must seek within what I would like to call the “spectrum of death”—that ethereal organization which remains when the ego and the astral body separate. I would like to call it the death spectrum. It thus contains forces such as those I have just described, but it also contains many other things. In order, so to speak, to study what else is contained within it, we must build upon what I attempted to present to your souls yesterday with the novella. |

[ 13 ] Bear in mind that—as I have told you, and as will become clear to you from the entire course of the plot in the novella—there is a karmic connection between Manon de Gaussin and the man who later shot himself, which is, of course, the result of past lives they spent together on Earth. Such a karmic connection exists in all works of poetry. They are based precisely on the fact—and the most effective ones in particular are based on this—that such karmic connections, arising from previous earthly lives, are not fully lived out. Manon de Gaussin stands opposite the man who loves her. She does not understand his love; out of her consciousness-maya, she resists the full outworking of karma. This gives rise to those conflicts that lend themselves particularly well to artistic expression, because out of consciousness-maya, human beings rebel against what is karmically predestined.

[ 14 ] Of course they can’t get rid of it! I’m not saying that karma can be eliminated: it must, after all, be lived out in a future incarnation. A person cannot, of course, escape karma—at least not in the rarest of cases—and in those cases, the karma must be transformed. But in a given incarnation, the soul may resist the full working out of karma. Then things like those that form the plot of this novella arise. Then one person departs from the physical plane, and karma has not unfolded as it should have. But this “should” of karma is inscribed in human nature. The karma simply should have been fulfilled in a certain way. In a sense, by failing to recognize our karma in a particular incarnation, by resisting it, we postpone this karma to a later incarnation. But it was still within us; it was there inside us. We then, as it were, wipe the karma away from that one life, away from the events of life that unfold between birth and death.

[ 15 ] And so, from the lives of Manon de Gaussin and the man who loved her, that which they would have experienced had they fully lived out their karma has been erased. It has been wiped away from the physical events of their lives. But what it cannot be erased from, what it cannot be wiped out of, is the death spectrum. There it remains within as will, as volition, I would say, and then it comes to pass that after the death of such a person, this death spectrum follows the will of the unlived karma. So when Manon de Gaussin seeks peace, and this is the appropriate moment, then the death spectrum comes to her, for the reason that within this death spectrum the will still lives that should have brought about the union of the two. That which should have happened but was not carried out—that is what the death spectrum carries out, to the extent that such a spectrum is capable of doing so.

[ 16 ] In this respect, too, the connection described in this novella is accurately portrayed. So we can say: in addition to what we have already mentioned, this spectrum of death also includes unlived karma; and after a person’s death, something occurs in the elemental world that is like a pictorial unfolding of this unlived karma. Consequently—and please take this to heart—we are dealing with two distinct aspects. When a person dies with unlived karma, it naturally remains necessary for them to live out this unlived karma in a subsequent incarnation. This will happen at some point in the future. But with the death spectrum, something occurs that is like a prophetic image of what must one day take place—what should have taken place but has not yet done so. Thus, one experiences unlived destiny, karma, when one observes the death spectrum clairvoyantly.

[ 17 ] One could say that something happens to the human etheric spectrum after death that could have happened during life but did not. Thus, a picture of processes that could have become life processes can be experienced in this spectrum of death. This is a very significant esoteric connection. That which constitutes human individuality—the I and the astral body—transitions almost immediately after death into a kind of cosmic existence and remains connected, even for days afterward, with the death spectrum, the etheric body, so that the unlived karmic will of the human individuality acts from the cosmos into the death spectrum. Then, after a few days, that which belongs to the spheres of the cosmos detaches itself from that which had its peculiar, unique nature through its connection with the physical human being and which had assumed the form of the physical human being only because it was enclosed within the physical human body. The ego and the astral body do not have this physical human form; but the death spectrum, the etheric body, also has, in a certain sense, the human physical form. And this death spectrum only loses this human form in the course of days, for when the soul has detached itself from the physical body, it loses this human form. The physical body has maintained this death spectre in its form through its own power; but since it is now outside of it, it assumes other forms, which are determined by the external forces of the cosmos.

[ 18 ] It is therefore understandable, in a sense, that an accurate description of the human individuality’s departure from the physical body—which occurs simultaneously with the departure of the etheric body—must depict this process as if the specter of death were emerging, in a sense, in the form that the physical body had. If, therefore, one wishes to describe the moment of death accurately, one will describe how this etheric body emerges, as it were, cloud-like, and in emerging still retains the form of the physical body with its arms and other limbs, and how it gradually dissolves into the more spiritual forces working in from the cosmos. This is a transformation, a metamorphosis, a transition.

[ 19 ] The clairvoyant mental image is fundamentally difficult for us because, in physical life, human beings are bound to time and space—specifically, to those forms of time and space that are available to us in our physical bodies: namely, ordinary three-dimensional space and what is essentially one-dimensional time, with its past, present, and future. And so many people tend to apply the concepts of three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time—with its past, present, and future—even to purely spiritual perceptions. We can certainly speak of time and space in relation to the spiritual world as well, but they are truly different there. That is indeed the difficulty: that the words created for the physical world can really only be used inadequately to describe the spiritual world.

[ 20 ] When we speak of concepts of time in the physical world, the past is simply past. The past lies behind us, and we can only hold onto it in memory; in our immediate perception, we can only have the present before us. This is not the case in the spiritual world. Even in the elemental world, it is not so; rather, the past can stand before us there just as the present stands before us in the physical world.

[ 21 ] So, one can look back upon what has passed, what has taken place, what can be retained for the mind, for physical intellectuality, only in memory—things one can no longer observe in external life; once one has crossed the threshold of death, one can look back from a later point in time to an earlier one. It is then just as if one were looking from a later time at what has physically passed, as if it were present, just as one can physically look from this spot where I stand to the corner over there. The past is truly there, stands alive before us, it surrounds us.

[ 22 ] Such a view becomes particularly vivid when something like what happened to us very recently occurs—when we had to accompany a dear friend to her funeral, and her first reorganization of her state of consciousness took place immediately at the moment when the physical body was consumed by the flames. At that moment, consciousness began to be active. But we had held the funeral service beforehand, before the physical body was consigned to the flames, and now it could be observed how the deceased had this funeral service vividly before her, just as one has something vividly before one in a room.

[ 23 ] Such things, however, belong to what we might call the most esoteric aspect of our esotericism. But over the course of many years, we have strived to gain, so to speak, the ability to speak among ourselves about such mysterious processes, just as one speaks of the ordinary events of the day. And what we can say is this: In any case, once the current difficult times of war are over, our esoteric life will have to take on a much, much more energetic and intimate character than it has ever had before. Much will then be possible, indeed demanded by the suffering through which humanity has passed—I do not mean the individual suffering that always springs from egoism, but the general suffering through which the community has passed—through this general suffering it will be possible to deepen many things in other directions as well, in directions about which we must remain silent for the time being, because we are living in a general transitional period for humanity.

[ 24 ] Let us once again take a closer look, so to speak, at this emergence of human individuality—that is, of the “I” and the astral body together with the etheric body—as the emergence of the threefold human being from the physical body. This is, after all, a process that lasts for days, but which begins when the human being passes through the gate of death. This process thus demonstrates in a particularly vivid way how cosmic forces can be present in the human etheric body, but it also reveals, as we have now seen, what might be called unlived karma. This is a process that is truly different for each individual; a process that is never the same for two people. That is why it is so difficult to describe these things, because they are truly never the same in two cases, but are different in every instance.

[ 25 ] When we consider this process, it goes without saying that there are various other elements—though I cannot describe them all at once—contained within this spectrum of death. But if we have just two characteristics that are contained within this spectrum of death, we already have a more intimate mental image than if we could only associate a single word—the word “etheric body”—with this spectrum of death. Unlived karma is contained within this spectrum of death, and this creates the possibility of deriving artistic conflicts from it—of connecting this unlived karma with such processes after death.

[ 26 ] A purely exoteric artist will have to content himself with simply presenting the conflict of life and then letting his characters die. But when, as in Shakespeare’s plays for example, esoteric connections of life are taken into account—as I have said on various occasions, pointing to what lay behind Shakespeare— if it is shown how things are connected to deeper laws of life, if the narrative takes into account what lies behind the outward events, then what we see in Hamlet, for example, comes into being. We have indeed seen a great deal of unlived, transforming karma playing out in what emanates from the spirit of Hamlet’s father. In a sense, the dramatic conflict begins there even for the drama’s main character, for Hamlet, through the intervention of his father’s unlived karma.

[ 27 ] An artist, then, who is capable of capturing the connection between the physical world and the spiritual world, will often feel compelled not simply to — as the monist and the materialist have in their mental images — but to suggest that this passing through death is a beginning of new events, of processes that are even more concrete than the concrete life processes that unfold between birth and death.

[ 28 ] To show how art can strive to be enriched by using earthly life as a starting point for the continuation that then follows in spiritual life, I spoke to you about the novella from which I also read a passage yesterday. But it is interesting in general to observe how a person can come to perceive unlived karma, how a person can depict something that, in the most profound sense, can be felt as unlived karma. And once they have depicted unlived karma, they may naturally feel compelled, at the end of their artistic depiction, to consciously point out that this is unlived karma. And then they may feel compelled to depict precisely that through which this unlived karma, as it were, plays itself out elementally, in an elementally real imagination, if we consider life in its entirety and not merely in its physical aspects.

[ 29 ] In this regard, I would like to mention another work of art, the content of which I can only touch upon very briefly—even more briefly than I did yesterday—because it is a two-volume novel. You will see that these descriptions also contain elements of unlived karma. I will explain as quickly as possible to what extent unlived karma finds expression in this work of art.

[ 30 ] A mother travels from America to Europe with her daughter. The father died in America some time ago. During their journey through Europe, they meet a descendant of an old noble family deeply rooted in formal traditions. A wide variety of events now unfold, and to anyone observing them in their spiritual context, it immediately becomes clear that karmic connections exist between the man—referred to as Arthur in the work of art—and the two women whom the man simply sees on the street as they are driving to the theater. These karmic connections then also lead to the complicated life circumstances that unfold there. They unfold in such a way that the entire contrast between the aged European culture and the still-young American culture is depicted in a grand cultural tableau. With vivid clarity and devoted love, the entire contrast between the two cultures is portrayed; whose representatives are Emmy—that is the daughter’s name—and Arthur, who runs to meet her and begins to love her deeply. Thus the entire contrast is reflected in these two souls, and much takes place that immediately appears to the reader who keeps the connections of Spiritual Science in mind as a consequence of the karma at work between the two.

[ 31 ] In a sense, the external environment one encounters in the interplay between American and European worldviews is something connected, on the one hand, to America’s fresh culture, untouched by historical traditions, and, on the other hand, to the entrenched European culture that is entirely shaped by traditions. Within this entire milieu there is something alive that is reflected in people’s souls and that brings about one life conflict after another. This then leads to the final great life conflict, which consists in the fact that Arthur’s father, who has died, owned an estate and, with all his views rooted in the old aristocratic traditions, has now, so to speak, outgrown the old aristocratic traditions with his money—or rather, with the dwindling of his money—as so often happens in Europe today—and has let the estate fall into disrepair. The estate has thus been sold, so that Arthur has been deprived of his inheritance of this estate.

[ 32 ] Now, in the most noble way—which is not always the case—the relationship between American and European circumstances brings about a slight improvement. With her money, Emmy—that is, the mother—can help out and buy back the estate for Arthur. This does happen, or at least is supposed to happen. But there is also this obscure scion who has remained there; he doesn’t quite know where he came from, but he wanders about the estate like a vagabond. It does not, of course, belong to him, but in his—one might say—delusions, he harbors the notion that he is the master there, and now the idea takes root in his mind that the estate should belong to him. From his point of view, he believes that the repurchase of this estate constitutes an infringement of his rights; yet his rights consist solely of a sort of decadent delusion: he regards himself as the master of an estate long since pledged to a wealthy banker. He wanders about as one allows such mentally disturbed people—who are not exactly dangerous—to wander about. A conflict now unfolds, manifesting itself in this man’s rage over the purchase of the estate and in the fact that, when the opportunity presents itself, he actually shoots Arthur on the estate.

[ 33 ] Emmy had already gone through terrible experiences in the past; now she has to go through this as well, and as a result, an illness that had been latent in her—she is only in her early twenties—begins to develop further. Her mother takes her to Montreux when she falls ill, and there, in Montreux, she is cared for by an American who is portrayed in an exceptionally sympathetic light, a Mr. Wilson, and a few others who are still there. The way Mr. Wilson is portrayed is a truly wonderful moment, a truly outstanding feature of this work of art. — All of North America, as it were, lives within him. This is brought to life in a truly wonderful way. But Emmy, despite being cared for in this way—even by the doctor who enters her life, who is, so to speak, a rival to Arthur but also an old friend of his—cannot be cured. She dies in Montreux, and now her death is described.

[ 34 ] Let us therefore note, from the perspective of Spiritual Science, that we are dealing here, in the truest sense, with unlived karma—with karma whose threads have been severed everywhere, which has led to conflicts everywhere, conflicts that play out mainly between America and Europe, a karma that was then simply brought to a close by a single gunshot. Anyone who senses this must feel the need—unless they are a materialistically minded person—to ask themselves: Where is reality? Where does this unlived karma go immediately after death? Where will it continue to live on? I would say that a person who is not a materialist has a sense of this way in which unlived karma continues to exist: if he is an artist, he must therefore feel the need to allude to it, and we do indeed find such an allusion at the end of the work.

[ 35 ] I only need to read a few lines. So Arthur is dead, shot. Mother and daughter travel to Montreux; Emmy is ill for a long time, and Arthur appears to her in her final dream. But it immediately becomes clear that this is not merely a dream image, a dream of reminiscence, but a genuine intervention by the real Arthur into the physical world. And now the moment of death is described as follows:

[ 36 ] “Between midnight and dawn, she thought she was waking up.

[ 37 ] Her first glance at the window, through which a dim light streamed in, was clear and unobstructed, and she knew where she was. She could also hear her mother, who was sleeping beside her, breathing. But a moment later, however, and with a pressure she had never felt before, an overwhelming fear seized her. It was no longer those individual thoughts that had tormented her in recent days, but rather as if a giant hand were holding all the mountains of the earth above her by a thin thread, and at any moment the fingers holding it might open and the mass might crash down to lie upon her for all eternity. Her gaze wandered aimlessly within and without, searching for a glimmer of light, but nothing presented itself; the glow from the window had gone out, her mother’s breathing was no longer audible, and suffocating loneliness surrounded her, as if she would never again reach anything living. She wanted to call out, but she could not; she wanted to move, but no limb obeyed her. It was completely silent, completely dark; she could no longer even form thoughts in this terribly monotonous fear: even her memory had been taken from her—when at last a thought returned: Arthur!

[ 38 ] And now, wonderfully: it was as if that single thought had transformed into a point of light that became visible to the eyes. And as the thought grew into boundless longing, this light grew, came and expanded, and suddenly, as if bursting apart, it unfolded and took shape—Arthur stood before her! She saw him; she finally recognized him. It was certainly him. He smiled and stood right beside her. She could not tell whether he was naked or clothed: but it was him, she knew him too well, he himself, not merely a phantom that had taken his form.

[ 39 ] He held out his hand to her and said, “Come.”

[ 40 ] Never had his voice sounded as sweet and alluring as it did today.

[ 41 ] With all the strength she could muster, she tried to raise her arms toward him; but she could not.

[ 42 ] He moved even closer and reached out his hand toward her: “Come,” he said again.

[ 43 ] Emmy felt as if the force with which she was trying to utter even a single word should be enough to move mountains, yet she was unable to say that one word.

[ 44 ] Arthur looked at her, and she at him. If she could have moved a single finger, she would have touched him. And now the most terrible thing: he seemed to be receding again! “Come,” he said for the third time. And she, feeling that he had spoken for the last time, that the terrible darkness would once more descend upon his heavenly sight, now filled with a fear that tore her apart as frost splits trees, made one last attempt to raise her arms toward him. But it was impossible to overcome the heaviness and cold that held her captive—yet then, like a bud bursting open to reveal a flower before our eyes, other arms grew luminously from her arms, other gleaming shoulders from her shoulders, and these arms rising to meet Arthur’s, and he, taking her hands in his, slowly floating back, drawing her toward him, and the whole magnificent form with her, rising from Emmy’s.”

[ 45 ] The moment of death is described there in a wonderful way—this emergence of the etheric body, the transition from the spectrum of death into the cosmic realm. This death spectrum, which is vividly described in spiritual terms as the departure from the body, truly contains the will to live that is taking shape; the expression of this death spectrum contains the unlived karma that remained unlived between Arthur and Emmy.

[ 46 ] I am citing this example because, in the novella I mentioned yesterday, you could see how the death spectre approaches the other person who is still alive in a one-sided manner and develops a relationship with that living personality. Here, however, we are dealing with two purely spiritual entities: Arthur’s etheric body, which has already undergone manifold transformations in the spiritual world, and Emmy’s emerging death spectrum. So what is unfolding here is an old, unlived-out relationship—unlived-out karma—between Arthur’s etheric body and Emmy’s death spectrum, which is only just passing into the spiritual world. Thus, something is taking place in the spiritual world that could not take place in life—unlived-out karma.

[ 47 ] We must, as it were, try to grasp—truly grasp—that which is present in the very first moments after the human individuality has passed through the gate of death. For, in a sense, that which exists there as unlived karma detaches itself from the individuality. The individuality can only work through this unlived karma in later incarnations. So it detaches itself and becomes part of the cosmos; from this arise cosmic events. And in much of what takes place in the clouds, on the mountains, and with the springs—but especially in the subconscious psychological processes of the people living here—what is carried over into the spiritual world as unlived karma plays itself out; it is like a fundamental source within this spectrum of death. For these cosmic events continually play a role in human life; we are completely permeated and interwoven with them.

[ 48 ] Thus, we must distinguish between what, so to speak, becomes cosmic when a person passes through the gate of death, and what remains individual. In the most eminent sense, what remains of the physical body becomes cosmic. This passes either slowly, in the case of burial, or more quickly, in the case of cremation, into the elemental, more physically-elemental world of the earth; and it is a crude materialistic mental image to believe that it simply disappears into it or plays the role that the chemical elements play. That is nonsense, and tomorrow we will see how this lives on in the planet, how it has great significance for the planet. It lives on in planetary life.

[ 49 ] What the chemist knows about what becomes of the physical body is, in fact, nothing at all. For the Earth derives its most essential substance from the fact that human beings have lived and died upon it, and these are the most important forces that remain. The Earth also consists of the physical remains of deceased human beings. So something cosmic emerges from the physical body. The other part becomes cosmic from the etheric body. And today I tried to hint at what becomes cosmic from the etheric aura. The other part that remains of the etheric body lives on as an individuality in the higher spiritual world. You will find this explained in more detail in my Theosophy or in An Outline of Esoteric Science. This now lives on as an individuality, and I will have more to say about that tomorrow. But we must be clear that what lives on individually begins to live in new conditions that differ significantly from ordinary earthly conditions.

[ 50 ] If you study the Viennese cycle of life between death and a new birth, you will be able to understand at least some of it—one can always describe only a part of it. Above all, one cannot properly assess these relationships between death and rebirth unless one has become accustomed to bringing to life within oneself the mental image that time, as it exists for our physical perception as past, past, present, and future, that this linearly flowing time is truly a physical maya, that with death we actually enter another world where the past is not merely present for remembrance but is truly present, existing in the environment where the human being lives under conditions which, in a sense, now reveal his inner self as his outer self, where the human being lives in such a way that he presents himself directly in revelation, in perception, with his inner, spiritual essence, with that essence which, in a sense, has shaped both the body and physical existence here in the physical incarnation between birth and death.

[ 51 ] The way one should relate to those who have passed through the gate of death is not through external observation, but through an inner sharing in their experiences. This individuality is already fully present once a person has passed through the gate of death, even though the person must first—as I have already indicated and as I will elaborate further tomorrow—orient themselves, so to speak, within the abundance of their consciousness. But what they are, what constitutes their essence, is already present, even if it is not yet always linked to their consciousness. It is there, and thus it can be perceived. One can, in a sense, experience what a human being is in terms of their essence.

[ 52 ] You see, during the sorrowful earthly events we have had to endure recently due to the loss of dear friends, I have tried—whenever I had to speak—to speak from the depths of their souls, from the very essence of those concerned. I would like to begin—tomorrow I will speak about something else—by offering a few remarks about the three friends who have recently passed away, insofar as I am permitted to do so here. My sole aim has been to speak from within these souls, to speak, so to speak, with these souls. And when I look back on it now, I must admit that there were good reasons—very good reasons, in fact—to speak in a completely different way in each of the three cases—precisely because people are individually different—and to speak in a truly remarkable way. I confess quite openly that this was not in my consciousness when the words were formulated. It developed entirely out of the situation at hand, and indeed the words intended for Spiritual Science—and also for what we experience in life through Spiritual Science—develop and take shape most truly and best when they are not in the least influenced by any personal desire. In order to be able to describe anything correctly and truthfully in the field of Spiritual Science, one must keep completely clear of any desire to shape this or that in a particular way. One must keep completely clear of any desire that this or that should be this way or that way.

[ 53 ] When one is compelled to speak at the funeral of a dear friend, then—as will be understandable—there is certainly no desire in one’s heart to utter the words that are spoken there. They are certainly not spoken out of any desire, but out of necessity. For it is understandable that, in every single case, one would wish for nothing more than not to have to speak these words at that particular time. This is something that, I would say, makes the impact of the words all the more profound. That is why it was truly significant to me—I would like to say this quite modestly—that in the first instance, with our dear Mrs. Grosheintz, I actually had to speak only as the organ of expression for this soul itself.

[ 54 ] A soul that has passed through a long earthly life, one that in the final years of its earthly existence had united all the powers of the soul in such an energetic, such a profoundly energetic way with the impulses of Spiritual Science, perhaps uniting them in a way that few among us do—selflessly uniting Spiritual Science with our own life impulses—such a soul passes through the gate of death in such a way that what arises for it through Spiritual Science is not theoretical but immediately practical, living impulses within the soul. It lives this out immediately. It is there, even if the soul has not yet awakened to the degree that it already perceives it. It is there; it is the characteristic feature of what is being released there. And so you will admit that in the words I had to speak there truly lies what I might call: Spiritual Science transformed, Spiritual Science that has become will and feeling, which had to emerge in this way because such a soul has gone through a long earthly life and has passed through the gate of death with mature etheric forces. It is the case that one was compelled to speak entirely from this soul. Therefore, the main words could not have been spoken any other way than as if the soul itself were speaking, and so it has become:

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 power;

In the thoughts of the world I will weave
My own thoughts, that they 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 thus strive
Through life’s struggles and with worries,
Preparing my self for the higher Self;

Seeking peace that comes from joyful work,
Perceiving the world’s being 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.

[ 55 ] The inner dynamism and vitality of the soul are revealed by the fact that, at the beginning of the ceremony, it was necessary to say, “Toward the stars of my soul,” and at the end of the ceremony, “Toward the stars of my destiny.”

[ 56 ] It is the closeness one must maintain to the one who has thus passed through the gates of death that causes such words to emerge in this manner, which is characteristic of the particular mode of existence of the individual in question after death.

[ 57 ] I would like to say what I have left to say about the other two cases tomorrow, in conjunction with the rest of what I have to report.