The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Life Between Death and Rebirth

[ 1 ] It is our aim, as far as possible, to penetrate those worlds that are closed off to ordinary sensory and intellectual perception, which is bound to the physical plane. Over the years, we have become accustomed to thinking that, during the life in which a person is confined within their physical body, they exist in a world that is only a small part of the entire real world. Since we meet so rarely, we cannot—especially at these gatherings—explain everything, I would say, from the very foundations. It must be evident from our other gatherings and from our writings that the things spoken of at these meetings—which we can hold only rarely—are well-founded. For it may well be our need, precisely at such gatherings, to learn to recognize important and essential aspects of the larger, real world just alluded to, which encompasses both the physical and the spiritual worlds.

[ 2 ] Since we last met here, many things have happened even within the circles where our Spiritual Science is cultivated. A large number of dear friends have passed through the gate of death. Even since the beginning of this difficult time of war, friends have passed through the gate of death who had to take a direct part in the great events. This means that we ourselves, even within our own circle, have been touched by the great spiritual world insofar as souls who were among our ranks have entered that spiritual world after shedding their physical bodies. It is in keeping with the spirit that flows from our Spiritual Science that, for us, the souls who have thus left the physical plane—who have been received into another world—remain connected to us just as they were connected to us while they still looked upon us with physical eyes and could speak to us through the medium of the physical body.

[ 3 ] It is precisely when one approaches the world that welcomes our dead that, in such moments—when one draws near to the souls of the so-called deceased— one comes to know all that is deeply moving—which must first unburden itself upon our soul when that soul attempts to look beyond the threshold that separates us from the spiritual world and to enter the world that can only be beheld in the disembodied state of the soul. And you may find it understandable that, out of various feelings that have passed through my own soul over the course of the year since we last saw each other, out of such feelings, many a word is spoken that we must share with one another today.

[ 4 ] Over the past year, I have often had occasion to tell our friends that the true faith of one who looks into the conditions of existence can actually only develop when one knows that those who have passed through the gate of death—and who were faithful co-workers here—remain so, so that we most certainly do not lose for our work those souls who have gained an understanding of our cause, since they were connected to us here before they passed through the gate of death. And among such souls are co-workers so faithful that we can say: Even if opposition and lack of understanding here in the physical world—especially toward our cause—are so great and growing ever greater, as we can observe, we may still believe in the integration of our cause into the course of human evolution, because we can gain this faith through our connection with the disembodied souls who have come to understand the full significance that our cause holds for this course of human evolution.

[ 5 ] However, it is precisely when a person approaches the world where the so-called dead reside through an open soul—one can speak of it this way, even though it is, of course, the entire spiritual world in which the dead reside—precisely when a person is able to approach, I would say, as a visitor, as a companion to the dead in the spiritual world—then he comes to understand more and more what has already been emphasized here: that the concepts, the mental images, and the ideas we form about the world—and which we form precisely because we are in the physical body—must in many ways be transformed and made flexible so that they can also encompass the mysteries of spiritual existence. People today are very, very accustomed to viewing their surroundings from a purely material perspective, and they have therefore formed their mental images based on this purely material view. This makes it particularly difficult for them to penetrate the spiritual worlds even in their imagination. Quite a few people believe that one cannot gain an understanding of the spiritual worlds if one cannot yet see into them. But they believe this only because they have made their ideas rigid and lifeless by becoming too accustomed to thinking only of the physical world.

[ 6 ] Having said this by way of introduction, I would now like to speak to you about some aspects of what is connected with the life of the so-called dead. We know that if we wish to consider the life between death and a new birth, we must take into account how the human being is composed of the four members we know so well—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. If we first consider the outermost fact of death, still visible from the physical plane, it is this: that the human being sheds its physical body. We need not go into the various ways in which this physical body—whether through cremation or decomposition (both of which differ, in essence, only in the time in which they occur)—is reunited with earthly existence. But even when we consider this fact—that the physical body separates from the entire being of the human being at death and, as one says, unites with the earth—even when we consider this fact solely in terms of its significance for the physical plane, it is actually viewed in a rather incomplete way. It is even often viewed in a rather incomplete way by schools of Spiritual Science that, to a certain degree, look into spiritual realms. These schools are still led astray by all sorts of moral images, which, however, are in many respects precisely unsuitable for understanding the penetration of the spiritual into the physical world in the correct manner.

[ 7 ] All physical events also have spiritual meanings. There is no physical event that does not also have a spiritual meaning. Thus, the physical event is that our physical body falls away from us, as it were, shattering into its parts, into its molecules, into its atoms, and is returned to the earth. Now, it is a major prejudice of today’s materialistic worldview—which, however, has essentially dominated humanity to a greater or lesser extent for a long time—that the human body, as we carry it from birth to death, or, let us say, from conception to death, simply disintegrates into the smallest parts, into atoms, and that these atoms are then incorporated into the earth or into the earth’s realm, where they remain as atoms and then pass on as atoms into other beings. It is easy to arrive at this prejudice through today’s materialistic way of thinking. But even this way of conceiving things is, in essence, nothing but nonsense in the light of Spiritual Science. For atoms, in the sense that chemists conceive of them, do not actually exist. What ultimately becomes of the smallest parts of our body—regardless of how we are united with the Earth as a body—is ultimately heat. In essence, our entire physical organism is ultimately transformed, in one way or another and over a shorter or longer period of time, into heat.

[ 8 ] That is why, as is well known, we in Spiritual Science also speak of heat as a fourth state of matter, whereas physics does not recognize heat as a fourth state of matter but regards it merely as a property of bodies. And it is this heat, first and foremost, that is truly given to the Earth. It is imparted to the Earth. We thus give heat to our Earth from our physical bodies. The heat present in the Earth is truly intimately connected with what human beings leave behind of themselves. Human beings do not transform into air, water, and so on. These are merely transitional states that they go through. What becomes air and water from them ultimately becomes heat. Yes, even if it takes centuries for the last remnants of the material to turn into heat, even if the skeletal system—for my sake—does not turn into heat until after millennia, it ultimately does turn into heat. And even when you go to museums and find ancient skeletons of people who walked the earth in times long past, the time will come when what is present today in those skeletons will be nothing more than heat within the Earth’s body. The very fact that our physical body remains with the Earth has great, essential significance for the one who has passed through the gate of death. They enter the spiritual world. They leave their body behind on Earth. For the so-called dead, this is an experience. They go through it: Your body is leaving you. — One must create a mental image of this. What kind of experience is it? Well, you can get an idea of this by considering experiences on the physical plane. It is an experience, let’s say, when you experience some new sensation that you have not had before and learn to understand it; there you have bestowed upon your soul something it did not previously possess—a new concept, a new mental image. But now imagine such a small experience magnified to a grand scale. It is an infinitely immense experience that a human being goes through—one that gives them the very possibility of seeing, thinking, and comprehending between death and birth: that they shed their body, that they surrender it to the planet they are leaving. It is a great, an immense experience that cannot be compared to any experience of earthly existence. The value of an experience lies in the fact that we have something in our soul that remains as a result, as a consequence of the experience. Thus we can ask the question: What remains as a result, as a consequence of this experience of the physical body departing from our entire human being?

[ 9 ] If, as we pass through the gates of death, we were unable to have this experience—which we knowingly undergo, the departure of our physical body—we would never be able to develop a sense of self after death! Self-consciousness after death is stimulated by this experience of the physical body departing. For the deceased, it is of the utmost importance: I see my physical body fading away from me. — And the other aspect: I see a feeling arise within myself from this event: I am a self. — One might utter this paradoxical statement: If we could not experience our own death from the other side, we would not be able to have a sense of self after death. — Just as the human soul, when it enters into existence through birth or even through conception, gradually adapts to the use of the physical apparatus and thereby gains a sense of self within the body, just as surely does the human being acquire “I”-consciousness after death from the other side of existence by experiencing the shedding of the physical body from the whole human being.

[ 10 ] Just think for a moment about what that actually means. When we view death from this physical aspect of existence, it appears to us as the end of this existence, as that which, from a physical perspective, is followed by nothingness. Viewed from the other side, death as such is the most glorious thing that can ever stand before the human soul. For this means that human beings can always have the sense of the victory of spiritual existence over the physical. And while here in physical life we cannot always have the mental image of our birth before us—no one has a mental image of their birth, no one can know anything about their birth from physical experience—just as little as we can look back on our birth here in physical life, so surely, when we become fully conscious after death, we always have the event of our death directly before us. But there is nothing in any way distressing about this event of death; rather, this event of death is, there, the greatest, the most glorious, the most beautiful event we can have before our soul. For it always reveals to us the full magnitude of this fact: that consciousness—self-consciousness—in the spiritual world arises from death, and that death is the catalyst for this self-consciousness in the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] Second, we must consider the second aspect of our human existence: the etheric body. We know from the elemental experiences we have all undergone in the course of our life on Earth that this etheric body remains with us for a relatively short time after death, but that it is then also shed. We also know that there is a certain significance in the fact that this etheric body, as we had it, remains united with us for days after death.

[ 12 ] As long as we retain this etheric body after shedding our physical body, we can still think of everything we were able to think during our physical existence. Therefore, we can survey all the thoughts we carry within us as if in a vast tableau. We see the thoughts we have experienced during our lives in the tableau of life that has often been described to you. We have our entire life spread out before us like a panorama during the days when we still carry the etheric body, and we see it all simultaneously—that is, we see everything at once. For what we here in the physical world call memory—though it arises in the etheric body—is bound to the physical body. We have shed this physical body. We observe the thoughts. We do not bring them up from the depths associated with the physical body; rather, we observe them and survey the life we have lived as if in a panorama.

[ 13 ] Then we shed this etheric body. But this etheric body that we shed remains visible to us throughout our entire life after death. It is outside us, but it remains visible to us. It unites with the entire universe, but what happens to it remains visible to us; we can see it. And this is one of the mysteries of death: that we behold, as a panorama, the thoughts we held within us while we were alive, as long as we carry the etheric body with us; that we unite this with the world outside ourselves, surveying it, as it were, interwoven with the world; that this belongs to our world, not to our “I” after death. It really is an experience as if what weaves and lives within us as the etheric body during life were simply to live itself into the etheric world outside.

[ 14 ] Then comes the time, as you know, when all that remains of what we carry with us here on the physical plane is the “I” and the astral body—and, of course, the opportunity to reflect on who we were. There we experience ourselves in a completely different way than here in the physical body—with a heightened consciousness that death has established within us. But we must never succumb to the mental image that this life between death and rebirth is unconscious for the soul. This life is associated with a stronger, more intense consciousness than the consciousness we have here in the physical body; it is simply that this consciousness is structured in a completely different way. And, of course, one can only come close to understanding how to conceive of the dead by taking in everything that Spiritual Science has to offer, in order to transform the mental images that, here on the physical plane, are adapted to purely physical objects and events. Thus we live in our “I” and in our astral body. We have shed our etheric body. It is connected to objective existence.

[ 15 ] My dear friends, it is indeed a deeply moving experience for those who enter the spiritual world to visit and accompany the dead with whom they may come into contact, not only to follow the individual life of the deceased between death and a new birth, but also to observe that which the deceased looks toward—that which, as their etheric body, has become interwoven with the world that is now, for them, an external world, an objective world—in other words, to observe that which the deceased has now given to the etheric world. And so it is indeed that, in a certain sense, one can experience the deceased in two ways. One can experience that part of them which they have handed over to the etheric world, and one can experience that part of them in which their consciousness resides after death.

[ 16 ] I say that the first encounter with what the deceased has left behind in the etheric world is also deeply moving; it is deeply moving even if one cannot connect with the being that lives on between death and a new birth—the being that carries the consciousness and self-consciousness of the deceased—but rather with what the deceased has left behind. Even then, such an experience carries within it all that deeply, deeply affects the soul—everything that comes from contact with the spiritual world.

[ 17 ] And among these profound experiences is, above all, the real, living experience that such spiritual elements as those just mentioned—that is, the ethereal spiritual elements that remain after the death of a person—are in fact constantly present around us. Just as surely as we live in the air that surrounds us everywhere, so surely are we surrounded by the world in which what the dead leave behind as their etheric world remains. In the world in which we stand, even with our physical bodies, this spiritual element of which I am now speaking is also present. Just as surely as there is air around us, so surely is there around us that which the dead leave behind. It is only through states of consciousness that we are separated from the spiritual worlds; we are not separated by spatial relationships, but by states of consciousness.

[ 18 ] Take, for example, a person who is trying to do spiritual exercises. I want to emphasize that such spiritual exercises must be done in complete tranquility of the soul. Anyone who becomes agitated in any way by these soul exercises is harming themselves. If soul exercises are performed in the manner described here and in our literature—so that they are truly soul exercises and the physical body does not participate in them—then they can never harm a person in the slightest, not even cause spiritual harm. But we would not be able to gain access to true spiritual knowledge at all if we could not occasionally allude to such things.

[ 19 ] Suppose a person does an exercise something like the following. He says to himself: I see colors with my eyes: red, blue, and so on. — And now he would go on to experience something that is, in a certain sense, alive through red, blue, green, and so on. One gradually comes to realize that, as a human being in the physical world—especially in our present-day materialistic age—we are immersed in it in a very crude way, without attuning ourselves to the finer aspects that we are capable of experiencing. We experience these finer aspects when we pay attention to the more spiritual impressions that colors—though other sensory impressions may also serve this purpose—make upon us. Of course, everyone knows this in a general sense: when one allows a blue surface to act upon them, it has a different effect than when one allows a red surface to act upon them. For those who perceive it without becoming nervous—and I emphasize this explicitly—a red surface has something aggressive about it, something that, as it were, emerges from its surface and attacks us. Something always comes toward us from the red. Blue evokes the opposite sensation in us. It remains calmly in its place. Nothing comes toward us from the blue. On the contrary, if we are able to perceive colors more subtly, we have the sensation that we can penetrate the blue with our soul forces, that we can pass right through it. Green is, in a sense, in a state of rhythmic equilibrium. That is why it has such a soothing effect as the earth’s vegetative cover. Green affects us in such a way that we penetrate it to some extent, and it, in turn, comes back to us. When we see a vast green field, we have the feeling that we are entering into something—and then it comes back toward us: in—and back. This is the source of the refreshing quality that a vast, green field has for us.

[ 20 ] That people have also noticed this—that one can, so to speak, live with colors—is something you can see for yourself if you read the chapter on the moral effects of colors in Goethe’s Theory of Colors—though few people understand it today—where you will find the corresponding sensations associated with each color that one might experience when encountering them. So one can live with colors, as well as with other sensory perceptions, but let us now speak of colors, to give an example. One can live with colors in such a way that, when encountering blue, something arises in the soul like a force—similar, for instance, to a longing that emanates from our soul but is graciously received by the blue. With red, something always arises that seems to come toward us, that refuses to accept us as we are, that seeks to overwhelm us in a certain subtle way. While perceiving colors, one can, in a sense, have a moral and spiritual experience. Of course, not everyone can perform such exercises in a single incarnation; but I am describing these exercises so that you can see how the individual worlds are interconnected. If a person were to undertake such exercises, they would live much more purely in the world of colors. If they were to undertake such exercises for other sensory perceptions, they would live more purely in the world of those other sensory perceptions. But then something else would soon come into play as well.

[ 21 ] Suppose a person were to experience the blue vault of the sky so vividly. They would not merely have the blue above them—and this is, moreover, a blue that is highly subjective, for in reality there is no vault there at all—but they would experience it as a benevolent inner hemispherical surface above them, one that embraces their soul life everywhere, a hemispherical surface behind whose two-dimensionality the soul experience can find its way. People who experience the world in a deeper sense therefore speak in the manner of, for example, Jakob Böhme, who does not say: “When a person sees the blue vault of the sky...”—but rather says: “When a person sees the depth.”—Therein lies the entire experience of the blue: “When a person sees the depth.”

[ 22 ] But a side effect occurs when one immerses oneself so deeply in the world of colors that one’s inner life is simultaneously kindled by their presence. It brings to life the possibility of making use of a very brief moment that one would otherwise be unable to utilize. When you encounter an external object in ordinary physical life, you see it; that is, you see a certain color. That is actually where your impression begins. Then you can reflect on it and form a mental image of the color. But your engagement with the object begins with the act of seeing the color. But that is not the beginning of what happens. Even the external laboratory psychologist knows today that a certain amount of time elapses between the stimulus reaching our eye and the emergence of the mental image of blue. So blue first acts upon our eye. Then we do not perceive it immediately; rather, a certain amount of time passes; only then does it become conscious to us.

[ 23 ] Today, you can read in standard textbooks about how experiments on this topic are conducted in laboratories. Certain devices are constructed to induce a sensation, and the student serves as the guinea pig. The student must then use another apparatus to record when he receives the impression, so that one can determine the brief interval that elapses between, so to speak, the stimulation of our sense organs and the moment of awareness. A certain interval passes. During this interval, we do not yet experience the blue color—if it is a blue impression—but we do already experience the moral impression of the color. It is already at work within us. So the way the soul pours itself into the blue, the way it is gratefully received—that is already within us. The soul aspect of the color actually takes effect earlier; it simply remains in the unconscious. The human being does not perceive it. And the human being only begins to develop consciousness when the color appears. He does not pay attention to what precedes the sensation of color.

[ 24 ] Just think: when one is compelled to pay particular attention to this moral impression of color, to this inner experience of color, something special occurs. One must pay attention to this when one is required, as it were, to first add the color oneself to a surface—that is, when one paints, or when one conveys colors that are to emerge from thought. When one is engaged in true painting, one works from the soulful impression of color. One does not proceed like the pure model painter, who merely imitates the model; rather, one knows that one must evoke this soulful impression, and so one applies red. On another surface, one applies blue because one needs to evoke this or that spiritual impression. This is the approach to all the painting in our Dornach building. There, the use of color springs entirely from the spiritual realm, which is meant to be revealed through the colors. Consequently, however, it was absolutely necessary—in the most profound sense—to first have the building within oneself as a spiritual being. Just as the building will present itself to the world, so has it grown forth as a building out of the spiritual essence. People would perceive what it has grown out of in the Dornach Building if they could make use of that brief interval that elapses between the building’s effect on the sense organs and the moment when the impression is brought into consciousness. But the one who was involved in the construction must create precisely out of this brief interval; he must create everything in the building—its colors and forms—out of this brief interval.

[ 25 ] I have, so to speak, guided you in a more scientific way into something that may seem difficult to you. But one must also overcome such difficulties. Even in our time, it may well be the case that a person—as if by divine inspiration—and in a certain sense we are always inspired simply by being in the world—can in some way capture this moment. He sees something and yet may sometimes have the impression that an interaction has actually already taken place between him and what he sees, when he brings it to consciousness. They see something and say to themselves: It seems to me as if I had seen this before.

[ 26 ] You may all have experienced this: you come face to face, as it were, with a being or an object and have the feeling that it is not merely present when it makes an impression on your consciousness, but that it has drawn near—it has already come close to us beforehand. One might say it creeps up on you; you can sometimes notice it. In ordinary life, however, what takes place in this brief moment lies entirely beyond consciousness, beyond the threshold. At the very moment when one is able to bring into consciousness that which lies just beyond the threshold of consciousness, at that very moment one makes an important spiritual discovery. I would like to illustrate this once more with a specific case. Some of you have already heard this story; I may have mentioned it here before. Last year, a little boy died near the building; he was run over by a moving truck. The etheric body of this little boy is united with the Dornach building; it forms the aura of the Dornach building and lives within the aura of the Dornach building. And when one is engaged in artistic work on the Dornach Building, forces emerge from this etheric body, which naturally appears to grow larger. One feels these forces within oneself, just as one feels the building in one’s soul.

[ 27 ] Why is that? It is because in the world I just spoke of—the world that is always around us, but which we do not perceive because it goes unnoticed before the impression reaches us—that world contains the etheric bodies of the dead, toward which the dead look. What the dead see of our world—what they look upon—is contained in the etheric world surrounding us. And we would even be looking at it all the time if we could, so to speak, see before we see in the physical world, if only we could cross that threshold just a little.

[ 28 ] However, this does not prevent the dead from continuing to exert an influence in this world through what they have left behind. We are surrounded by a world in which the etheric bodies of the dead live. In some way, they are connected to it. And only because what lives in the ether must first touch our physical body and set the apparatus of the physical body in motion do we fail to perceive this powerful interweaving of what remains of the dead in our world in an etheric form. We must, however, cultivate the awareness that our world must be enriched, for the sake of our mental images, by what is present in this entire etheric world through the etheric bodies of the dead.

[ 29 ] The dead themselves are not initially present in this world; only their etheric bodies remain behind. We cannot find the dead themselves so easily—although even this “easy” method is difficult. The dead themselves, then, continue to live—after they have shed their etheric bodies—in their astral bodies and in their I. You can appreciate how we must reshape our mental images when you consider that everything of a mental nature is separated from us along with the etheric body, which passes into the outer etheric world. The thoughts we have accumulated here in our physical body do not remain with us after death. Thoughts become an external world. After death, the deceased does not regard his thoughts in the same way he regarded, for example, the thoughts he formed during his life—thoughts he then recalls, bringing them up from his inner depths. The deceased regards his thoughts as if they were an ethereal painting; he sees his thoughts out there in the world. Thoughts are something external to the one who has passed through the gate of death. That which reveals itself to us here through feeling and will remains connected to our individuality. This then lives on in our astral body and in our “I.” Our “I” is kindled to self-consciousness through the contemplation of the moment of death. Our astral body is kindled by the fact that the thoughts, present in the painting before us, press their way into our astral body. We thereby experience them in our astral body. Here in the physical body, we experience thoughts by drawing them forth from within. After death, we experience thoughts by gazing upon them as we would upon stars, worlds, or mountains, and they make an impression upon us. We receive this impression and experience it in our astral body and in our “I.” Thus, the exact opposite is true compared to physical life. Whereas here we call thoughts something internal, after death we must call them something external. We live, absorbed into the world, poured out into the world. It is important that we realize this, that we do not succumb to the mental image that the world after death is merely a kind of subtle, faint repetition of the physical world here, as is often assumed in spiritualist circles. It is something entirely different. It is something entirely different precisely because our thoughts are beings outside of us.

[ 30 ] It is precisely when one brings such mental images to mind that one realizes that one not only, I would say one needs a certain degree of open-mindedness to accept Spiritual Science, but that one must also have a certain ability to make these concepts more flexible, to adapt them somewhat, so that one does not presume to be able to create a mental image, using the concepts one has here, of what actually exists in the spiritual world. Therefore, for someone who is able to, let’s say, visit a so-called dead person, it is necessary to learn this communication with the dead. Whereas here, when we encounter a living person, we enter—I might say—into a relationship with their inner being through the fact that they may express this inner being to us through words, facial expressions, or gestures, with the dead it is the case that when we enter into a relationship with them, they show us in the objective world what they wish to tell us. We see, as it were, in the images to which they point us, what they are experiencing, what they have to tell us. I would say that when one asks the dead person anything, they say: “Look over there; there you will find what I am experiencing now.”

[ 31 ] But all of this happens very quickly. The deceased, therefore, has the ability to perceive thoughts—which we here experience only inwardly and invisibly—through extrasensory means. Only by acquiring the ability to perceive thoughts together with him can one experience them alongside him. As a result, he possesses the very special ability to share in our thoughts even as a deceased person, as a so-called deceased person. |

[ 32 ] This is particularly evident in a phenomenon that I would also like to touch on here. When someone we have loved has passed away, we continue to carry our thoughts of them in our souls. We think about the experiences we shared with them, the feelings we shared with them, and so on. The deceased, as I said, observes thoughts. He also sees our thoughts, and he can very quickly distinguish between the thoughts he himself has as impressions of the spiritual world—which are imaginations representing what exists in the spiritual world—and those thoughts that a person thinks in their soul while still in a physical body. He can distinguish between them. He distinguishes them through his inner experience. The difference is actually a very great one. When the deceased—and for the initiate it is exactly the same—is to experience a thought of something that exists only in the spiritual world, he must actively experience that thought. He must himself—I would say—first trace every part of that thought that he experiences. The process is, of course, difficult to explain. Suppose there were a painting here, but you could only see this painting if you were to trace and paint every detail yourself. The deceased can do this. Every thought they see, they trace; they recreate it, as it were, and they experience this act of recreation. This essentially constitutes a large part of life between death and a new birth: the recreation of what exists in the spiritual world in the form of thought-images. This is how one recreates them. Then one knows that one is dealing with thought-images that belong solely to the spiritual world.

[ 33 ] The experience is different when one observes, from the spiritual world, the thoughts of the people one has left behind in the physical world. It is not as if one were recreating them; rather, the thoughts truly come to meet one in such a way that one can remain passive toward them. Just as the image of the flower stalk does not need to be reconstructed in my mind but forms itself directly as an impression, so too are the thoughts of the living. They arise in much the same way as the impressions of the physical world do here. And this is what uplifts, delights, and warms the dead through the thoughts of the living whom they loved. For it is a very special realm for the dead to look into the thoughts of those left behind who love them. This is a special world for them. One could, after all, experience the physical world here in such a way that only what arises in the mineral, animal, plant, and human kingdoms would be present. Then, for example, there would be no art. Art is a creation that goes beyond what one actually needs. Yet it is precisely that which a person—who contemplates the development of humanity from a spiritual perspective—knows must not be missing from the world, even though nature would be just as complete as it is, even if there were no art. Thus, the dead could at best live as a human being would live in the barren, lifeless, bare natural world—in a world without art—and the dead could live in this way if the strange situation were to arise that every dead person were forgotten by their loved ones immediately after their death. That which is perceived in the thoughts remaining in the souls of those who loved the dead is something that is indeed added to the world the dead person immediately needs, but which also elevates and beautifies the dead person’s existence. One might compare this to art in the physical world, but the comparison is flawed, for the deceased, it is an elevation and a beautification in a far higher sense than the beautification of the physical world for us through art.

[ 34 ] There is therefore a profound meaning in the whole of worldly existence when we unite our thoughts with the thoughts of the dead—particularly in the way that has often been discussed here, namely, that we also bring to the dead those thoughts that are expressed in the language of concepts, which is, after all, common to both the living and the dead: in the language we speak here in Spiritual Science. For the dead understand the content of Spiritual Science just as well as the living do. It will never be foreign to them, the dead.

[ 35 ] I believe that it is precisely by bringing together such mental images that we gradually gain a vivid picture of the spiritual world. We can find our way into that which lies beyond the threshold—and from which, in essence, everything that exists for us on this side of the threshold flows.

[ 36 ] In light of these phenomena, we must acknowledge that—and rightly so, since it is part of the world plan—present-day humanity is short-sighted when it comes to perceiving the world, but in fact even more short-sighted than it ought to be. For when a truly materialistically minded person in our time forms his concepts and mental images of the world, he thinks that these ideas and mental images are universally human. You know, after all, how difficult it is to convince a materialistically minded person that one can think differently from him. After all, the materialist stands on the very ground of asserting that anyone who does not think as he does is a fool. There is, in fact, no greater inner intolerance than that of the materialistically minded person. The materialistically minded person, at heart, always thinks this way: In the past, people believed that all manner of spiritual beings existed; they scarcely took a step in life without suspecting—or even seeing—spirits everywhere. But all of that was mere fantasy. Now, as a human race, we have finally progressed to the point where we have outgrown these childish mental images. — And yet people could actually notice at every turn just how nonsensical such a mental image is.

[ 37 ] I’d like to illustrate this with an example that may seem far-fetched and comes from a completely different angle than what we’ve discussed today. Let’s consider the image we’ve often examined from various angles—the image of the first stage of Earth’s creation, of humanity’s existence in Paradise, as described in the Bible. Let’s think of this image of the first humans, Adam and Eve, in Paradise: Eve biting into the apple, Adam offering her the apple, the serpent by the tree tempting Eve. This motif is still occasionally painted today, though in our time it is done in such a way that a woman is depicted as naturally as possible and a man even more naturally, because that is considered modern. Whether impressionistic or expressionistic, in any case, a woman as natural as possible and an even more natural man are depicted, along with a natural landscape and a natural serpent showing its natural, greedy teeth, and so on. But paintings have not always been done this way, for such a picture would not convey the actual facts of the matter that we are meant to see here. We know, after all, that in the snake we must see the symbol of the actual tempter, of Lucifer. But Lucifer is a being who, as we know, remained behind during the lunar existence; thus, as he appears in earthly existence, he can only have his symbol in the snake—yet the snake is not Lucifer himself; rather, he must be perceived spiritually in some way. That is to say, this Lucifer must also be perceived through soul forces. He must be perceived from within, through the exertion of inner forces. How, then, might one perceive him, my dear friends? After all, we all essentially carry within us the impressions of Lucifer, just as we carry the impressions of Ahriman. I want to show you as briefly as possible—without all the arguments and without all the detailed explanations, which you can look up for yourselves in what we already have in our literature—how one might form a mental image of Lucifer.

[ 38 ] Human beings carry within themselves the impulses of the Luciferic. They carry them in such a way that they are situated in their head, and from there they permeate the astral body, in which the Luciferic has become fixed. So while the spirits of form have otherwise shaped the head, the Luciferic impulses press their way into the head, but also into what is formed from the astral—into the spinal cord. If we were to trace the outline of a human being’s head and its extension—the spine—we would end up with a snake, a serpentine formation with a human head. Of course, the whole thing must then be conceived as astral: the head is still somewhat a replica of the human head, and the spine attached to it winds its way like this. If you imagine this projected outward objectively, it is a serpent with a human head. That is to say, anyone who sees Lucifer externally in a picture could actually say: a serpent with a human head. — Not a serpent with a serpent’s head, for that is no longer Lucifer; that is an earthly serpent upon which the spirits of form have already acted as an earthly being. So we would have to say: a serpent with a human head. This means that a painter who wanted to depict Lucifer on the tree would have to portray the serpent winding its way up the tree with a human head at the top. In doing so, he would be painting based on the insights of our Spiritual Science. We would therefore have to create a mental image of Adam and Eve standing by a tree, and coiled within the tree—resembling a serpent’s body—is simply the spinal cord that has become astral, and what resembles the human head. When the woman first sees him, he is naturally modeled after the female face.

[ 39 ] Go to the museum here, to the Kunsthalle, and take a look at the painting by Master Bertram; see how, in the middle of the Middle Ages, he still painted this snake hanging from the tree, just as I have just described. That is truly striking! It is truly astonishing, for it provides us with proof that a painter in the Middle Ages painted from real, genuine mental images of the spiritual world. This is conclusive proof that we do not need to go back many centuries to find evidence today that people back then still knew something that humanity has forgotten in today’s materialistic age.

[ 40 ] Of course, no external history of art will ever touch upon this matter that I have just discussed. Nevertheless, in our materialistic age, everyone can convince themselves of this—not only in terms of their convictions but also through direct observation: the focus on the spiritual has only disappeared in the last few centuries. Anyone who goes to the art museum and looks at Master Bertram’s painting of paradise has full and valid proof, presented on the external physical plane, that it was not so long ago that people were able to look into the spiritual world through what we call atavistic clairvoyance and knew its secrets quite differently from how they are known today. Just think how blindly people actually go through the world, since they could convince themselves of this outwardly on the physical plane—if only they wanted to—that evolution exists within the human race.

[ 41 ] The significant point is that, over the course of the last three to four centuries, the existing, more atavistically unconscious form of clairvoyance has declined. For, of course, Master Bertram could not have developed Spiritual Science. He merely observed—still within the etheric realm—what was actually happening with Lucifer, and then painted accordingly. It was unconscious, instinctive clairvoyance.

[ 42 ] In order for external perception to have become possible for human beings, this ancient perception of the spiritual world had to recede. But it must be regained by human beings. And the time must gradually come when what has been lost will be regained—though only in the realm of consciousness. Therefore, this must be prepared through the current of Spiritual Science. People can only approach the spiritual world again by studying Spiritual Science. But this Spiritual Science must truly provide insight into the spiritual world.

[ 43 ] Today, it is possible to scientifically demonstrate just how far the natural sciences can go. When someone who thinks purely in terms of the natural sciences speaks about this subject today, they are actually speaking about the soul apparatus—the physical instrument of spiritual life. Now let us examine the descriptions available today—what is called psychophysiology—which originate from the most prominent scientific thinkers of our time, and see what they have to say about the soul, that is, in their sense, about the soul apparatus. There, in a most peculiar way, you will find everywhere that these people say: “When we consider the life of sensation and mental images, the soul apparatus is involved everywhere,” and they then describe what happens in the brain and the nervous system when a person feels or creates a mental image. Everywhere, a physical, material parallel process can be found. But when these researchers come to feeling and the will, they find no trace of a physical parallel process.

[ 44 ] The fact that such things do not come to light or are ignored stems solely from the fact that natural science and its monist afterthoughts — one cannot really call it “afterthought,” because afterthought is useful, but the monistic afterthought of natural science is highly superfluous —, that is, because the monists merely crow about the fact that for every process of thought and sensation there is a certain physical process, and that thought and sensation are bound to the brain. But they do not speak of feeling and volition. At most, they speak of “emotional tones,” that is, a certain nuanced mental image. But when it comes to feeling and willing, they do not go there. And honest natural scientists say: Our science does not extend to feeling and willing. You can read in the scientific literature what I am saying now. It can be demonstrated in every respect. For example, you can most easily find confirmation of what I am saying now in the work of Dr. Theodor Ziehen, the very well-known contemporary psychiatrist and psychophysiologist. He identifies the individual processes that correspond to thinking and sensation. He goes as far as emotional nuance; but he does not reach actual feeling and will. He therefore denies feeling and will. They do not exist at all, he says. Can one actually provide clearer scientific evidence that natural scientific thinking extends only to the temporal, only to that which we shed upon death, and that that which lies beyond it—which, as I have pointed out, lives precisely in feeling and will—belongs so little to the body that the natural scientist cannot find it at all, and indeed rejects and denies it! That is why people proclaim: Feeling and will do not exist, because they cannot be found through ordinary science; natural science itself proves to us today that feeling and will are not connected to the body as such, just as thoughts and sensations are!

[ 45 ] This is because our thoughts separate from us and appear to spread out in the external world after death. Feeling and will remain with us. And from feeling and will springs the power to create the tableau of thoughts. Anyone who wishes to do so today can demonstrate rigorously through the natural sciences that feeling and will have nothing to do with anything that is nature; rather, they emerge after death as the astral body and the “I,” remain united with human individuality, and ignite into a new consciousness in the manner I have described; because the entire process of expansion is etheric, is reflected in the astral body, and is then reflected in the “I” even after the astral body has been shed.

[ 46 ] Basically, everything is fine. And modern science does not refute Spiritual Science; on the contrary, it actually proves it! If only one could muster a little understanding, one would see how, through a correct understanding, genuine natural science itself demonstrates the validity of Spiritual Science, even with regard to its individual assertions.

[ 47 ] Spiritual Science, as you can see, is something that must begin to enter into the development of humanity in our time, something that must begin to take hold of humanity; for otherwise, humanity will come to understand only the temporal and know nothing of the eternal that lives within us. The time will come when people will first recognize this, and then they will once again concern themselves more with the development of their will life and the development of their emotional life. For it is only through feeling and will that we unite ourselves with the world, which is not devoid of thought.

[ 48 ] Of course, people will object: “Well, then you’re just sensing the spiritual world—you don’t even want it!” No, we are precisely united through feeling and will with the objective world of thought—with thoughts that are alive, that we do not merely think. And just as humanity in ancient times had the ability to look into the spiritual world, so too will humanity in the future have to regain this ability to look into the spiritual world. But it will only be able to do so if it resolves to first open itself up to the ideas about the spiritual world that are rejected in our time.

[ 49 ] To this end, many, many of the concepts and mental images currently circulating in our time will have to be corrected. You wouldn’t believe how thoughtlessly—if I may use this paradox—people today actually think. They offer definitions of which they are absolutely convinced are correct, that they cannot be challenged at all. The scholar of Spiritual Science, however, has the task of examining precisely those things of which people are absolutely convinced—precisely because they seem entirely logical to them, precisely because they are convinced of them. For example, if someone were asked in today’s materialistic age, “What is a true concept?”—they would likely respond by saying something like this: A true concept is when I form an inner image of an object that actually exists out there in the world. In other words, everyone today would define truth as the correspondence between an image one forms in thought and an external reality. Now, if one examines the concept, it is very easy to demonstrate that the true concept has absolutely nothing to do with what is commonly referred to as such. It is easy to demonstrate that reality follows entirely different paths than the image one forms as a concept. If a concept is true only when it corresponds to a reality, then it would, of course, be true only as long as that reality confirms it. One could compare a concept, for example, to a painting made as a portrait of a person. The portrait is good if it resembles the person. But it has nothing to do with the person’s being. The correspondence of the image to a self has nothing to do with the inner truth of the image. For imagine that you paint a portrait of a person and he dies immediately afterward. At first, the picture corresponded to what is, and afterward to what is not. Being has absolutely no bearing on whether the picture is true or not; it has no relation to being. For anyone who truly considers the matter logically, this is entirely a figment of the imagination. What is essential is that things are experienced inwardly. And this inner experience is what humanity must reclaim for itself.

[ 50 ] Above all, however—and this is something to which we can be led especially through our difficult, painful times—humanity must once again regain a sense of true truth. After all, materialism is gradually leading us to lose sight of the truth altogether. We have lost our way through materialism, particularly with regard to the concept of truth. Try comparing—wherever you can verify it—the journalistic accounts of any event you have witnessed yourself with your own perceptions. When you reread it in the newspapers, you will find that it is described in the way the reporter in question believes will make an impression on his readers. But the sense that everything should correspond to the truth—that is becoming smaller and smaller. But that is part of the process. And as long as this does not permeate humanity, the impulse that leads from the sensory world into the spiritual world will not be able to stir within people’s souls. For under these deficient concepts of truth, the concepts themselves gradually become false. How often, for example, do we experience the following: Someone writes about Spiritual Science—let’s say about what I have published on Spiritual Science. This person writes—and naturally cannot help but, based on his materialistic concepts, claim that all of this is spun out of the imagination and that one must not do that: spin things out of the imagination. And then he comes to the point of investigating how it is that a person can be a fantasist.

[ 51 ] An article like this was actually published not too long ago! It explores how it is possible for a person to be so fanciful. It explains where the person—in this case, it was me—comes from, where he used to live, and how a certain racial mix can lead him to have such fantasies. In his materialism, he conjures up the most unbelievable things. And that is what I am saying: One simply takes the lie into one’s own hands; one twists the truth from within.

[ 52 ] Of course, this cannot be proven directly. But what hypocrisy lies in being able to accuse someone of using their imagination and then fantasizing about that person yourself! If you take a closer look at our present-day lives, you will see how incredibly widespread this lack of a sense of responsibility is today—the responsibility to ensure that everything we say actually corresponds to reality. Without internalizing this sense in the most intense way possible, we cannot find access to the spiritual world. We cannot even comprehend why what Spiritual Science brings to us from the spiritual world as truth must be true. But we are far too short-sighted to truly view our present in this way, and we are too attached to our interests in this or that to truly see, in all areas, how untruth shimmers and shatters into every single event of life.

[ 53 ] True feeling, true mental images, and truly reflecting on these—these are among the first steps in preparing for Spiritual Science. And such contemplation must be part of—I would say—a kind of conscious period of preparation for what the future of humanity must truly be; for only in the reunification of our soul with the spiritual can the future salvation of the human race lie. Spiritual Science is not something we seek merely as another sensation; rather, Spiritual Science must be something we know must emerge in the present age, because humanity needs this Spiritual Science. And in a sense, we must feel obligated to it when we look clearly and lucidly into the course of human development.

[ 54 ] But what an infinite enrichment we experience through what Spiritual Science can give us by gradually expanding our view of the world—by adding the spiritual reality to the physical reality of human development! In this materialistic age, people have become increasingly cut off from the world in which the human being exists between death and a new birth. Spiritual Science must restore to them a connection with the whole human being—including that which remains of the human being when he or she no longer possesses a physical body. Our world offers nothing in this regard.

[ 55 ] It can truly weigh heavily on one’s heart when, especially in these difficult times of ours, one encounters something like a book that has just been published, for example, by Ernst Haeckel. He calls this book Thoughts on Eternity. Now, Ernst Haeckel is one of the most distinguished minds of our time. These Thoughts on Eternity tie directly into the great war of our time. What is the main message of the book? The main message of Haeckel’s latest book is that he asks: What can this war show us? Thousands upon thousands of people are dying as a result of external violence, without any necessity whatsoever. Can’t anyone see in this war—Haeckel asks—the necessary proof that all thoughts of eternity and infinity are absurd? Doesn’t this very war—which ruins human lives through external contingencies such as bullets and so on—convince us, as Ernst Haeckel argues, that there is nothing that transcends ordinary physical life?

[ 56 ] Of course, these grave events will lead other people of the present to thoughts of eternity of a different kind—to the opposite conception of eternity, to the conception of eternity that at least gives you the feeling that those who pass through the gate of death in such times continue their human mission in other worlds, and that precisely what they offer as a sacrifice serves as the starting point in the life beyond for what they must accomplish once they no longer bear a physical body.

[ 57 ] With the sciences as we know them today, one can prove both this and that. Just as existing science can be used to create excellent devices that enhance human existence and advance human culture in a peaceful way, as well as the most terrible instruments of destruction, so too can the same external science be used to create both and to prove both.

[ 58 ] Spiritual Science is necessary in order to truly penetrate the world in which the eternal lives. And this Spiritual Science—I have spoken of it here as well; at least to some of you I have already spoken of it—shows us, among other things, that those who leave their physical body prematurely, before the normal lifespan on the physical plane has elapsed, and surrender their etheric body to the etheric world, continue to live on in their individuality. Thus, the entire meaning and spirit of Spiritual Science shows that such an etheric body—which could still sustain the physical body for a long time—when it is handed over to the etheric world, possesses life forces that could continue to sustain the physical body for decades. This is how it is in the etheric world, as I have shown you with an example.

[ 59 ] What a person earns through his sacrificial death lives on in his individuality. It lives within him especially in a time such as ours, when we can only comprehend the meaning of what is happening if we can perceive it through the soul’s eye of Spiritual Science. And it draws our attention to the spiritual counterpart of what is now happening across the European continent, as the momentous and painful events unfold on the physical plane of Europe. The spiritual correlate—the spiritual parallel process—must, because everything physical is guided from the spiritual world, flow into the physical processes of human development as they unfold into the future. But this can only bear fruit if human souls here on Earth, within their physical bodies, develop an awareness that they have, in the spiritual world, a source of strength and help—derived from the countless, thousands upon thousands of sacrificial deaths—they possess an active and helpful force under which they can, as it were, place themselves in order to work into the future here on Earth itself, united with the dead through the soul’s awareness of the reality of a spiritual world.

[ 60 ] This is what the Spiritual Science must offer people in connection with this event as well. Then they will be able, in the true sense, to make the spiritual aspect of this most momentous world event fruitful for the future, and to conceive of, feel, and perceive it in the right way:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruit of the spirit grows
Guiding souls, spiritually aware,
Toward the realm of the spirit.