The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. On the Event of Death and the Realities of the Afterlife

[ 1 ] We live in a time when we are reminded daily—or even hourly—of death, of people passing through the gates of death, and of this significant event in human life. For death becomes a life event for human beings in the true sense of the word only through spiritual science, which shows them how those eternal forces are at work within them—forces that pass through births and deaths and that, for the time between birth and death, create a particular form of existence, only to assume another form of existence after passing through the gate of death. Thus, through spiritual science, death is transformed, so to speak, from the abstract “end of life”—which is all it can be for the materialistic worldview—into an event, albeit a profoundly serious one, within the comprehensive life of the human being. And even within our own ranks—primarily due to current historical events, but also for reasons beyond them—dear friends have passed through the gate of death, so that it perhaps seems particularly appropriate at this very moment to offer some reflections in today’s discussion on the event of death and those facts of human life that follow in its wake.

[ 2 ] However, time and again, debates have arisen in our humanities-based reflections regarding life between death and a new birth, and we have already gained many insights into this very subject. However, as you are well aware from the course of spiritual science thus far, everything can only ever be presented from a certain point of view, and fundamentally, we can only come to know things more and more precisely by examining them from various perspectives. So today, building on what we already know, I will add a few thoughts on the topic at hand that may be useful for our overall view of the world.

[ 3 ] We view human beings—and this is a good starting point—from a spiritual scientific perspective as they appear before us here in the physical world as an expression of their total being. We must begin with what human beings present to us in the physical world, and that is why I have repeatedly drawn attention to how, in a sense, we gain a guiding overview of the whole human being when we view them in such a way that we take as our starting point the physical body, which we come to know from the outside through sensory observation and through the scientific analysis of what is perceived by the senses here in the physical world. We then take as our basis that body or form of organization which we call the etheric body, which already has a supersensible character and therefore cannot be perceived by the ordinary sense organs—nor even by the intellect, which is bound to the brain—and which is thus already inaccessible to ordinary science. This etheric body, however, is nonetheless a formation of which one can say that even thinkers such as Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, as well as Troxler and others, were aware of it. This etheric body is something within the human being that, although it can be grasped only through imaginative cognition because it is supersensible, can nevertheless be externally perceived by supersensible cognition, just as the physical body can be externally perceived by sensory cognition.

[ 4 ] We then turn our attention to the astral body. The astral body is not something that can be perceived externally by the senses, as the physical body is through the external senses or the etheric body through the inner sense; rather, the astral body is something that can only be experienced inwardly—one must be within it oneself to experience it—and the same is true of the fourth member, which we must first grasp here in the physical world: the “I.” From these four members of human nature, we construct the whole human being. But we also know from our previous considerations that what we actually call the human physical body is something very complex; that this physical body is built up over a long course of development through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon eras; and that the Earth’s evolution, from the very beginning of Earth’s existence to the present day, has also played a part in this. A complex process of development has built up our physical body. Of what actually lives within the physical body, only the outer aspect is accessible to the observation available to human beings in the physical world—and indeed, even to ordinary science. One could say that ordinary physical observation and physical science, as they exist here in the world, know of the physical body only as much as a person knows of a house who walks around the outside of the house and has never entered the interior, has never come to know what is inside the house and which people live there. Of course, those who stand on the ground of external science in a materialistic sense will say: “Oh, we know the interior of the physical body very well! We know it because we have often seen the brain within the skull, because we have seen the stomach and the heart during autopsies—we certainly know this interior!”

[ 5 ] But this interior—which can be seen from the outside in this way, this spatial interior—is not what is meant here when we speak of the interior. This spatial interior is, too, merely an exterior; this spatial interior is, even in the physical human body, much more external than the actual spatial exterior. It is certainly strange for me to say this. But you know from our previous descriptions of spiritual science that our sense organs were already formed during the Saturnic era, and we carry them on the outside of our body, on the spatial exterior. They are composed of far more spiritual forces than, for example, our stomach or whatever is internal in the spatial sense. That which is internal is composed of the least spiritual forces. And as strange as it sounds, it must be pointed out that human beings actually speak of themselves in the wrong way. This is, of course, because we live here on the physical plane—but we speak of ourselves in the wrong way. We should actually call what is the skin on our face the “inside” and our stomach the “outside.” That would bring us much closer to reality! We would come closer to reality if we said that we eat from the inside out, we send food from the inside out by sending it into the stomach, rather than as we do now, when we say: from the outside in; for the closer our organs are to the surface, the more they derive from spiritual forces, and the further they lie within our physical interior, the more they derive from non-spiritual forces.

[ 6 ] You can easily see this from the descriptions of spiritual science given so far. If you recall precisely what has been presented in the previous description of spiritual science, you will know that during the lunar phase of development, something splits off, and during the Earth phase of development, it splits off again and departs from the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases of development into outer space. During this separation, something remarkable happened: we were turned inside out—literally turned inside out, just as a glove is turned inside out, with the inside becoming the outside and the outside becoming the inside. That which today faces outward was in fact, during the Saturn and Sun eras—in its initial form, of course—turned inward, and remained so for part of the Lunar era as well; and the rudiments of our present-day internal organs were still formed during the Lunar era in such a way that they were shaped from the outside. Since that time, we have truly been turned inside out like a coat. Today, people don’t turn coats inside out as much anymore, but they used to do so in earlier times, when coats could still be worn for longer periods. Today, of course, that is no longer customary.

[ 7 ] When we speak of our physical body, we must therefore realize that there is much in it that is supersensible, that its entire structure is supersensible, that it is built from the supersensible, and that it presents only its outer aspect to us when we consider it as a whole. When we come to the etheric body, it is no longer visible at all to physical-sensory observation; but this etheric body becomes all the more important once a person has passed through the gate of death. In the period we enter in the first few days, this etheric body is of particular importance. But even with regard to the physical body, we must still learn to think differently—truly learn to think differently—if we are to properly grasp what awaits us after passing through the gate of death. As you know—for this can still be observed from within the physical world—when passing through the gate of death, the human being, as it were, sheds their physical body. It is surrendered to the element of earth through decomposition or cremation—the two processes differ only in duration. Now it might seem as though, for the one who has now passed through the gate of death, this physical body as such were simply discarded. But that is not the case. For we can surrender to the earth from our physical body only that which originates from the earth itself. We cannot surrender to the earth, from our physical body, that which originates from the old lunar existence, from the old solar existence, or from the old Saturnian existence. That which originates from the old Saturnian existence, from the solar existence, and from the lunar existence—indeed, even from a large part of the earthly existence—consists of supersensible forces. And these supersensible forces, which are embedded within our physical body—of which, as I have just explained, only the outer aspect is revealed to us through sensory perception—where do these supersensible forces go once we have passed through the gate of death? As for our physical body—this most wondrous structure that exists in the world at all, first and foremost as a structure—only that which the Earth has given to it is returned to the Earth, as I said. The rest—where is it when we have passed through the gate of death? — The rest withdraws from what sinks, as it were, into the earth through decay or cremation; the rest is absorbed into the entire universe. And if you imagine everything—everything you can conceive of within the sphere of the earth, including all the planets and fixed stars—and if you imagine this as spiritually as possible, then within this spiritual vision you will find the place where our spiritual essence resides. For only a part of this spiritual essence is separated—the part that lives in warmth—and that remains with the Earth. Warmth—our inner warmth, our own warmth—is separated and remains with the Earth. But everything else that is spiritual in the physical body is carried out into the entire expanse of the universe, into the entire cosmos.

[ 8 ] When we, as human beings, leave our physical body, where do we go? Into what do we actually plunge? With our death, we plunge—as if in the blink of an eye—into that which, through all the supersensible forces, forms our physical body. You can easily imagine that all the formative forces that have been at work on your physical body since the Saturnic era expand into infinity and prepare for you the place where you live between death and a new birth. All of this, I would say, is merely condensed within the space enclosed by our skin between birth and death.

[ 9 ] When we are outside the physical body, we first and foremost have an experience that is important for the entire subsequent life between death and a new birth. I have alluded to it on several occasions. This experience is of a nature opposite to the corresponding experience here in life on the physical plane. Here in life on the physical plane, we cannot look back to the hour of our birth using the ordinary sensory perception we possess. No one can remember their own birth or look back on it. They know only that they were born—first, because they may have been told so, and second, because they infer this from the fact that all people who came into the world after them were also born; but a person cannot have a real experience of their own birth.

[ 10 ] The opposite is true of the corresponding experience after death. While the immediate vision of our birth can never appear before our soul during physical life, the moment of death—if a person merely looks at it spiritually—stands before the soul throughout the entire life between death and a new birth. However, we must be clear that this moment of death is then viewed from the other side. If death can have anything frightening about it, it is only because it is seen here as a kind of dissolution, as an end. From the other side, from the spiritual side, when one looks back at the moment of death, death always appears as the victory of the spirit, as the spirit’s writhing free from the physical. There it appears as the greatest, most glorious, and most significant event. Moreover, it is through this event that what constitutes our sense of self after death is kindled. Throughout the entire period between death and a new birth, we possess a sense of self not only in a similar sense but even in a much higher sense than here in physical life. But we would not have this sense of self if we could not constantly look back—not from this side, but from the other side, the spiritual side—and see that moment in which we wrested our spiritual self free from the physical. We know that we are a “I” only because we know: We have died; we have separated our spiritual self from our physical self. At the moment when, beyond the gate of death, we do not look back at the moment of death, this sense of self after death is like the physical sense of self here during sleep. Just as one is unaware of one’s physical sense of self during sleep, so too is one unaware of oneself after death unless one has before one’s eyes that moment of dying. One has it before oneself as one of the most glorious, as one of the most sublime moments.

[ 11 ] As you can see, even in this case we must familiarize ourselves with the idea of conceiving a truly spiritual world in a completely different way than we do the sensory-physical world here. If, for the sake of convenience, one wishes to stick only to the concepts we use here for the physical-sensory world, then one cannot grasp the spiritual in any precise way at all. For the most important thing after death is that the moment of dying is viewed from the other side. It is precisely this that kindles our sense of self on the other side. In a sense, here in the physical world we have one side of the sense of self; after death, we have the other side of the sense of self. I explained earlier where, in fact, the supersensible aspect of our physical body is after death—where we must seek it. Throughout the entire world, as far as we can even imagine it, we must seek this physical realm as a balance of forces, as an organism of forces, as a cosmos of forces. This physical realm prepares for us the path we must traverse between death and a new birth.

[ 12 ] So what we have enclosed here within our physical body—this body, which is small in relation to the entire world—within our skin, is truly a microcosm, truly a whole world. It is really just rolled up—if I may put it trivially—and then it unrolls and fills the world, with the exception of a small space that always remains empty. When we live between death and a new birth, we are actually present everywhere in the world with what underlies our physical body here as supersensible forces—except in a single place, which remains empty. That is the space we occupy here in the physical world within our skin. And we are always gazing at this emptiness. We then look at ourselves from the outside and gaze into a hollow space. That into which we gaze remains empty, but it remains so empty that we have a fundamental sense of it. This gazing is not an abstract act of looking, as one might stare at things here on the physical plane, but rather it is connected to a powerful inner life experience, to a profound experience. It is connected to the fact that, through the contemplation of this emptiness, a feeling rises within us that now accompanies us throughout our entire life between death and a new birth—a feeling that constitutes much of what we call the life beyond. It is the feeling: There is something in the world that must be filled by you again and again. — And one then gains the feeling: One is here in the world for a purpose that only one’s own presence can fulfill. One senses one’s place in the world. One senses that one is a building block in the world, without which the world could not exist. This is the contemplation of this emptiness. The realization of standing within it as something that belongs to the world comes over one through gazing upon an emptiness.

[ 13 ] All of this is connected to what becomes of our physical body. Now, based on the more elementary representations, we will, so to speak, only ever be able to present schematically what the spiritual world truly needs in terms of images to represent reality. But we must first have these images in order to gradually rise to concepts that penetrate more deeply into the reality of the spiritual world.

[ 14 ] We know that we then have a kind of flashback over the course of several days. But this recollection is called a “recollection” only in a figurative sense—albeit rightly so, but in a figurative sense—because over the course of a few days we have something like a tableau, like a panorama, woven from everything we have experienced in the life that has just passed. But we do not experience it in the same way as an ordinary memory within the physical body. A memory of the physical body is such that we retrieve it from memory over time. Such memory is a force bound to the physical body, a form of thinking in which memories are retrieved in this temporal manner. This recollection after death is such that, as in a panorama, everything that has taken place in life is simultaneously present around us in images. We live through days within our—one can only say—experience. In powerful images, the events we have just experienced in the final moments before our death are present simultaneously, as are those we experienced in childhood. A panorama of life, a picture of life, which presents to us—in a fabric woven from ether—what would otherwise have followed one after another in time. Everything we see there lives in the ether.

[ 15 ] Above all, we perceive everything around us as alive. Everything within it lives and pulsates. Then we perceive it as spiritually resonant, spiritually luminous, and also spiritually warming. This tableau of life, as we know, fades after only a few days. But what actually brings it to an end, and what is this tableau of life?

[ 16 ] Yes, if one examines this tableau of life for what it actually is, one must say: Everything we have experienced in life is woven into it. But how did we experience it? — By thinking about it! So everything we experienced through thinking and imagining is contained within it. Let’s say, to give a concrete example, that we have lived together with another person in life; we have spoken with that other person. As we spoke with them, their thoughts communicated with our own. We received love from them; we allowed their entire soul to influence us; we lived through all of that inwardly. After all, we share in their life when we live with another person. They live and we live, and we experience something through them. What we experience through them now appears to us as woven into this ethereal tableau of life. It is the very same thing we remember. Just imagine the moment ten or twenty years ago when you experienced something with someone else. Imagine that you remember it—not the way we usually remember things in life, where everything blurs into a gray haze—but rather that the memory is so vivid within you that it feels just as alive as the experience itself, and that your friend stands before you exactly as he did at that moment during the experience. In this life, we are often quite dreamlike. What we experience wholeheartedly on the physical plane becomes dulled and faded. Once we have passed through the gate of death and it is part of the tableau of life, it is not so dulled; it remains present with all the freshness and intensity with which it existed during life. Thus it weaves itself into this tableau of life, and thus we ourselves experience it day after day.

[ 17 ] Just as we have the impression, with regard to the physical world, that our physical body falls away from us, so too, after a few days, we have the impression that although our etheric body has also fallen away from us, this etheric body has not actually fallen away in the same way as our physical body; rather, it is interwoven with the entire universe, the entire world. It is within it; it has made its impressions there during those days, while we experience the tableau of life. And what we have as this tableau of life has passed into the outer world; it lives around us and has been absorbed by the world.

[ 18 ] During these days, we once again have an important, a profound experience. For what we experience after death are not merely experiences that are like memories of our earthly life, but they are indeed fragments of new experiences. It is, in fact, a new experience in itself—how we come to our true self by looking back on death—for this is something we cannot experience here with our earthly senses. It is revealed only through initiated knowledge. But also, what we experience during our days—surrounded by this tableau of life, this etheric weaving that is detaching itself from us and interweaving itself into the universe—even what we experience there is something profoundly sublime, something truly immense for the human soul.

[ 19 ] Here in physical life, yes, we face the world—the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms. We experience in them what our senses can experience, what our intellect—bound to the brain—can derive from sensory experiences, and what our soul—bound to our circulatory system—can experience; we experience all of that here. And we humans, viewed from a higher perspective, are actually—between birth and death—extraordinarily large—forgive the expression—extraordinarily large “drops,” giant drops. We are terribly foolish in the face of the wisdom of the great world if we believe that it is enough simply to experience something here in the manner described, and then to carry what we experience here in our memories and, as human beings, to have made it our own. That is what we believe. But while we are experiencing, while we are forming our ideas and our emotional sensations within that experience, the entire world of the hierarchies is at work within this process of our experience, within this very process. It lives and weaves within it. When you stand before another person and look into their eyes, the spirits of the hierarchies live within your gaze and within the gaze they return to you; the hierarchies themselves live there, and the work of the hierarchies is at work. Even what we experience offers us only the outer surface, for within this experience the gods are at work. And while we believe we live only for ourselves, the gods are working through our experiences to create something through which they now have something they can weave into the world. We have formed thoughts; we have had emotional experiences—the gods take them and share them with their world. And after we have died, we know that we lived so that the gods could spin this fabric, which now emanates from us in our etheric body and is communicated to the entire universe. The gods have allowed us to live so that they might spin something for themselves, through which they can enrich their world a little more. It is a profound thought! If we take even a single step through the world, that step is the outward expression of a divine act and a piece of the fabric that the gods use in their plan for the world—a fabric they allow us to possess only until we pass through the gate of death, at which point they draw it away from us and incorporate it into the universe. Our human destinies are, at the same time, divine acts, and what they are for us humans is merely the outer appearance. That is what is significant, what is important, what is essential.

[ 20 ] Now that we have died, to whom does that which we gained inwardly in life—through our ability to think and our emotional experiences—actually belong? — After our death, it belongs to the world! But as we look back on our death, we look back—with what remains to us, with our astral body and with our “I”—on that which has become interwoven with the universe, with the world. During our life, we carry within us, as an etheric body, that which has become interwoven with the universe. Now it has been spun out and woven into the world. We gaze upon it, we look at it. Just as we experience it inwardly here, so do we look at it after death; that is how it is in the world outside. Just as we look here at stars, mountains, and rivers, so too, after death—alongside what has become, as I said, with lightning speed from our physical body—do we look at what has become interwoven with the world from our own experiences. And that which, from our own experiences, has become incorporated into the entire structure of the world—that is now reflected in what we still possess, in the astral body and the I, just as the outer world is reflected in our physical organs through our physical being here. And as this is reflected within us, we receive something we cannot have here during this Earth period, something we will later have in an external, more physical form during the Jupiter period, but which we now receive in a spiritual way because our etheric being is now outside of us and makes an impression on us. Whereas it was previously experienced by us as our inner self, it now makes an impression on us. The impression made upon us is, however, initially a spiritual one; it is pictorial, but as a pictorial image it is already a model for what we will only have on Jupiter: the spiritual self. Thus, through the interweaving of our etheric body with the universe, a spiritual self is born for us—though in a spiritual sense, not as we will later experience it on Jupiter—so that now, after we have shed our etheric body, we possess: the astral body, the “I,” and the spiritual self. What remains to us from our earthly existence is thus our astral body and our “I.”

[ 21 ] Our astral body remains with us—just as it is initially subject to us as an earthly astral body, as you know—for a long time after death. It remains with us because this astral body is permeated by everything that is purely earthly and human—and which it cannot immediately cast off. We go through a period during which we can only gradually shed what earthly life has made of our astral body. Of our experiences here on Earth—even insofar as they affect our astral body—we actually experience, at most, only half. Of what happens through us in any way, we actually experience only half. Let’s take an example: Imagine you say something to someone—this applies just as much to good thoughts and good deeds as it does to evil deeds and evil thoughts, but let’s take this example of an evil deed—you say a harsh word to someone that makes them feel hurt. We experience only the part of that harsh word that concerns us; we have within us the feeling of why we used that harsh word—that is the impression on our soul when we use it. But the other person, to whom we direct the harsh word, has a completely different impression; they have, as it were, the other half of the impression—they have the feeling of being offended. This other half of the impression truly lives within them. What we have experienced for ourselves here during physical life is one thing; what the other person has experienced is another. Now imagine: everything that has been experienced through us, but outside of us—we must relive all of that after death, as we retrace our life in reverse. We relive the effects of our thoughts and deeds as we retrace our steps. Thus, between death and a new birth, we relive our life in reverse. The shedding of the etheric body is a tableau of life in which we experience our entire life simultaneously. This reliving is a true re-experiencing of what we have wrought, as we move backward. And so, once we have traveled backward to our birth, we have become ready to shed from our astral body whatever in it is imbued with the earthly. Then that departs from us, and with this shedding of the astral body, a new state begins for us. The astral body, I would say, has always held us together in our experiences with the Earth. Because we must pass through our astral body in this way—not dreaming, but reliving earthly experiences—we are still within earthly life; we are still standing within it. Only now, when we have shed the astral body—in a sense that is not strictly accurate, but one cannot say it any other way, since language has no word for it—have we become completely free from the earthly; now we live within the truly spiritual world.

[ 22 ] And then a new experience begins. This shedding of the astral body is actually only one side of the experience; the other side is something entirely different. Once we have shed this astral body after passing through our earthly experiences, we feel as if—well, one cannot say: matter, but as if we were inwardly permeated and permeated through by spirit; only then do we truly feel ourselves to be within the spiritual world, and only then does the spiritual world open up within us. Before, it opened up to us externally, as we saw the universe and our own etheric body interwoven into the universe. Now it opens up within us; now we experience it inwardly. And as a foreshadowing of what human beings will first have in a physical form on Venus—in a foreshadowing of the life spirit—our “I” unfolds within us, so that we now consist of the spiritual self, the life spirit, and the “I.” Just as we feel, as it were, as if in a dream here—from birth until the moment when, as a child, we truly come to consciousness, up to the point we later recall—so do we live an existence that, while fully self-conscious, is more conscious and higher than earthly life. But we experience a purely spiritual life only after we have separated from our astral body and retained from it only that which fulfills us inwardly, so that from that time on we are spirit among spirits.

[ 23 ] But another experience—an important, essential one—now comes to the fore. When we live here in the physical world, we work, do this or that, and have experiences in the process—we have just spoken of this. But we do not merely have experiences in the physical world; alongside these experiences, at the same time as them, we have something else as well. And although this is, of course, only a general term for these simultaneous experiences, I would still like to use it: We become, one might say, tired and worn out while we are experiencing. That is always the case—we become tired. And even if this fatigue is compensated for by sleep in preparation for the next phase of consciousness—or rather, less by sleep itself than by the rest we experience during sleep, to be precise—this is still only a partial compensation; for we know, of course, that we wear ourselves out in life, that we grow older, that our strength gradually wanes. We also grow weary in a broader sense. And once one has grown older, one knows that not everything can be compensated for by sleep. So we do wear ourselves out here; we grow weary. Yes, we can already frame the question differently now. Having stated what we have said, we can now raise the question: Why, then, do the gods allow us to grow weary? Why do we grow weary? — The fact that we grow weary here, that we become worn out, actually gives us something; it means a great deal—indeed, a great, great deal—for our entire life. We just have to understand the concept of growing weary in a broader sense than is usually believed. We must truly bring this concept of growing weary to the forefront of our souls.

[ 24 ] The best way to get a sense of this feeling of fatigue is to imagine it this way. If I were to ask one of you right now, “Do you know anything about the inside of your head?”—then probably only the one who is suffering from a headache would answer that, at this very moment, he knows something about the inside of his head. Only he feels the inside of his head; the others go about their lives without feeling it. We only feel our organs when they are not quite right; then, through feeling, we know something about our organs. We are constituted in life in such a way that we actually know about our physical body only to the extent that it is not quite right. We really have only a general sense of our physical body. This becomes stronger when something is not right. But we know very little inwardly when we have merely a sensation. Anyone who has ever had a severe headache in life knows about the inside of their head—internally; not like the anatomist, who knows only the blood vessels. But as we grow ever more tired in life, this sense of our inner, spatially-inner self within the body emerges more and more.

[ 25 ] Just consider this: The more we tire ourselves out in life, the more the infirmities of life—the infirmities of old age, for example—become apparent to us. Our life consists in gradually learning to sense and feel this physical aspect of ourselves. As it—I would say—harden within us, pushing its way into us, we learn to feel it. For us, this is—I would say—a slight sensation, because it comes so gradually. A person would only be able to see how strong it is if he—forgive the trivial expression— but it will convey what I mean—if, for example, they could feel perfectly healthy in one moment, like a child brimming with health, and then immediately afterward, so they can compare, feel the way one does when their limbs have become frail, at eighty or eighty-five years of age. Then they would feel it more keenly. Just because it happens so slowly, you don’t realize how you’re gradually becoming entangled in the experience of the physical, in the process of growing tired. This growing tired is a real process that isn’t there at all at first—for the child is brimming with life—but then the life force is constantly drowned out by the growing tired, and eventually this growing tired breaks through. We can grow weary; and as we grow weary—even if, let’s say, it is only a faint sensation from within us—something truly arises within us. Our life here in the physical world offers us, after all, only the outer aspect of deep, significant, and sublime mysteries. The fact that we feel so gently accompanied in life by this growing weariness—and thereby sense the innermost depths of our body—is the outer aspect of something that is being woven within us, wonderfully woven from pure wisdom, an entire fabric of pure wisdom. As we grow weary in the course of life and learn to sense ourselves inwardly, a subtle knowledge of the wondrous structure of our organs—our internal organs—is woven into us. We learn to grow weary in our hearts; but this growing weary means that a knowledge is woven into us of how a heart is constructed from the vastness of the cosmos. We grow weary in our stomachs—which we usually tire by spoiling them with food—but nevertheless, as the stomach grows weary, all wisdom is woven into us: an image of wisdom from the cosmos showing how the stomach is constructed. How sublimely and wondrously our inner organism is constructed—this mighty work of art takes shape in our imagination. And this only comes to life now, once we have shed the outer, earthbound aspects of the astral body. And this is what fills us as the spirit of life, what now lives within us. The wisdom of ourselves, of the wondrous structure of our inner being, now lives within us.

[ 26 ] And now begins the time when we, so to speak, compare what is now filling us from within as the spirit of life—born of wisdom—with what was previously woven into the universe as an ethereal web. Now we work on this comparison—how one can fit with the other—and build up in our minds the image of the human being as he is to become in the next incarnation. Thus we begin by gradually living toward the midnight of the world, as you will find hinted at in one of the Mysteries, in “The Awakening of the Soul.” Thus, especially after the midnight of the world, we carry out a work that consists in participating in the creation of the world, in bringing forth that which we enjoy here. During the life between death and birth, we work; we weave along with the others; we weave at the images of the gods. We are permitted to participate in what is the goal of the gods, as the gods bring human beings into the world. We are allowed to prepare ourselves for a future incarnation. In this process, of course, not only do events take place that relate to us in a self-centered way, but all manner of other events as well. And this can be seen, in particular, from the following:

[ 27 ] This wondrous process is far greater than what takes place here on Earth when winter and summer alternate, the sun rises, the sun sets, and all that unfolds as part of earthly life: There, what ultimately leads to our earthly incarnation—what leads to human existence—takes place; but it is a mighty heavenly work that has significance not only outwardly but for the entire world. When one gradually succeeds in experiencing this wondrous process through spiritual contemplation, one is confronted with something. It will certainly seem strange to you when I say this, but the higher mysteries must always seem strange at first to the physical-sensory perception of human beings, and what appears before our soul there must shake us—the more, the better. For these things, as they are, are not meant to touch our soul in such a way that we take them in soberly, dryly, and intellectually, while remaining indifferent. It is precisely through these things that we are to receive an emotional impression of the sublimity and grandeur of the divine-spiritual world. One might say: If someone were to present spiritual science in such a dry manner that it does not simultaneously capture the whole person, and if, upon receiving this impression, one does not at the same time gain a sense of the grandeur and sublimity of that which, as the divine-spiritual, pulses through and permeates the world, then—according to what I have just described— despite all our efforts, be born headless under the current conditions of the world. For we could not bring about the structure of the head. The human head, in its structure, is such a sublime reflection of the universe that human beings themselves—even with what is woven into them as the wisdom of a lifetime—could not build it, nor could they prepare it for the next incarnation; all the divine hierarchies must be involved in this process. What exists within your head—this sphere, loosely pierced only at the back of the head, a somewhat transformed sphere—is in itself a true microcosm, a true imprint of the great celestial sphere. Within it, everything that lives out there in the universe lives together; everything that can be active in the various hierarchies works together there. As we begin to build our next incarnation out of the wisdom we have accumulated through fatigue, all the hierarchies intervene in this activity to incorporate into us that which will then become our head—as an imprint of all divine wisdom.

[ 28 ] While all this is happening, what constitutes our physical lineage is being formed on Earth over the course of generations. Just as we return to the Earth only that which comes from the Earth after our death, so too do we receive from our parents and ancestors only that which is earthly within us. And that which is earthly within us is merely the outer aspect, merely the outer expression in this earthly realm. Woven into this is everything that we ourselves can weave in the manner described, as well as that which entire hierarchies of gods weave before we, through conception, establish a relationship with that into which we envelop and clothe ourselves when we enter the physical plane.

[ 29 ] I said that the more we can take in of these sublime insights, the better it is for us. For just consider this: We use our minds, yet as human beings living in the material world, we generally have no inkling that entire hierarchies of gods devote their efforts to shaping our minds—to shaping what lies at the spiritual foundation of our minds—so that we may exist at all. When we grasp this in the light of spiritual scientific insight, it naturally fills us with a sense of gratitude and feelings of thanks toward the entire universe.

[ 30 ] That is why what we acquire through spiritual science should bring about an ever-increasing elevation of our emotional life. Our feelings should increasingly keep pace with our understanding in the realm of spiritual science. And it is not good if our feelings lag behind. As we repeatedly come to know new, higher aspects of spiritual science, we should—I would say—be able to develop more reverent feelings for the mysteries of the world, which ultimately lead, time and again, back to the mysteries of the human being. It is in this purifying spiritual warmth of our sensibilities and feelings that true progress in spiritual science actually lies.

[ 31 ] There is one more thing I must mention, because it seems to serve as a supplement to the entire line of thought we have been following. We enter into life here in the physical world by first having a vague awareness as children, recognizing only our mother and only gradually getting to know other people. As we settle into the physical world, we believe that we are constantly getting to know new and new people. The same is true of our physical consciousness. Once we have passed through the gate of death, we have a genuine, real connection to all those souls with whom we grew close during our lives. They, in turn, appear before our spiritual gaze. Those souls who drew close to us in life and who have passed through the gate of death before us—we can say that we “find” them. The word is coined for physical circumstances, but that experiential drawing near of soul to soul can be described as a “finding.” However, one must imagine this “finding” of the souls who have passed through the gate of death before us in such a way that one approaches these souls, so to speak, in the opposite manner to how one approaches people here on the physical plane. Here, one approaches people by first encountering them outwardly and physically. Then we gradually come to know their inner being; after all, their inner being only develops as we grow close to them. So what we experience inwardly in a person develops first and foremost from within ourselves. After we ourselves have passed through the gate of death and encounter the souls who have gone through the gate of death before us, the very first thing we know is: There is that particular soul. You sense it; you know it is there. — But you must now surrender your entire inner being to what is present as the first impression, as the most abstract impression. Here you must allow the person to work upon you; there you must surrender your inner being, and you must now build up the image yourself—the imagination. The imaginative, that which you can perceive, must be built up little by little. You can get some idea of what the experience of the soul after death is like if you imagine: You do not see it, but you merely grasp it, and as you gradually take it in through your grasping, you form an image. You build up the image. In this way, you must actively—innerly actively—build up the image of the soul you encounter. In a sense, you know: Now I am encountering a soul. — It doesn’t have a spiritual form yet! Whose soul is this? It is the soul toward whom I—and this now arises within your own soul—had the feeling of a son toward his mother. Now you begin to feel: With this soul, I can experience myself. — Now you construct the spiritual form. You must be active within it, and then it becomes an image. And because you must build up the spiritual form in this way, you are already together with the deceased even before you have built up the spiritual form. In this way, you are together with everyone with whom you were together in life; that is, you experience them in a world where you must find them by awakening yourself to see, so that you can look upon them. You must be active there.

[ 32 ] The souls who are still here in their physical bodies—who, therefore, continue to live when we die—have already appeared to us as images here on Earth. We look down upon them and do not need to first construct an image of them; they appear to us as images. Into this image, however, these souls can weave that which then serves as warming spiritual nourishment for the deceased—through their thoughts of him, through their enduring love for him, the memory of him, or—as we now know as spiritual scientists—through reading aloud.

[ 33 ] All of this broadens our human perspective into the real world—truly into the real world. When we allow this to sink into our souls, we begin to grasp just how little humanity actually knows about the spiritual world. It really wasn’t always this way. Only the thoroughly materialistic people of the present day talk about how far we’ve “come” today. We know, after all, that people in the past possessed clairvoyance and that they lost this original, atavistic clairvoyance solely for the sake of acquiring certain qualities associated with the entire inner life of the material world. When a truly materialistic person—a thoroughly materialistic scholar—approaches us, they will naturally say: It is mere fantasy to speak of an original clairvoyance, or of the idea that people in the past knew something special. — If people would just go through the world properly with their physical eyes, even for a little while, they would find this to be refuted. It wasn’t even that long ago that people knew more than they do today.

[ 34 ] As you know, we have often spoken of this—and I would like to mention it here as well, in conclusion—that Lucifer and Ahriman are both involved in this spiritual existence in which we live. We also know that in the Bible, Lucifer is symbolized as the serpent, the serpent on the tree. The physical serpent, as we experience it today and as a modern painter would always depict it when painting the Garden of Eden, is not the real Lucifer, but rather the outer image, the physical image. The real Lucifer is a being who has remained behind in the lunar evolution. He cannot be seen on Earth among physical things. So if a painter were to want to paint Lucifer as he really is, he would have to paint him in such a way that he could actually be perceived through a kind of clairvoyant, inner vision as an etheric form. And there he would then appear as he works upon us—upon our head, upon our organism—insofar as he has no part in what arises purely from the Earth, but rather in the continuation of the head down through the spinal cord. So that if one were to paint Lucifer according to his ethereal form, he would have to be depicted with a human head and a serpentine extension that, in us humans, physically manifests itself through the spinal cord. Thus, a painter who knows something of spiritual science would have to paint Adam and Eve, the tree, and at the top of the tree the serpent—symbolizing the serpent for us—and above it a human head. If a painter were to paint something like this, one would have to assume today that he is able to paint it based on spiritual science, of course.

[ 35 ] Perhaps there is something like that in Leipzig as well, but people don’t go about with their eyes wide open; rather, they go through life blindfolded. But in Hamburg, at the Gemäldegalerie, there really is a painting by Master Bertram, from the middle of the Middle Ages, depicting the scene in Paradise. The serpent on the tree is painted there exactly as I just described it. You can see the painting there. It has also been painted this way by other artists. What does this imply? — That even in the Middle Ages, people still knew this—knew it to the extent that they painted it. This means it wasn’t all that long ago that human beings were first forced entirely onto the physical plane. And what we are told today by the materialistic world as the course of humanity’s spiritual history is, in essence, nothing more than an external deception, because people imagine that human beings have always been the way they have only become in the very last few centuries, whereas it was not so long ago that they looked into the spiritual world with their old clairvoyance. Humanity had to withdraw from the spiritual world simply because it was unfree; and in order to attain full freedom and self-consciousness, it had to withdraw—and now it must find its way back into the spiritual world. Therefore, this spiritual science is preparing something important, something essential: this process of living one’s way back into the spiritual world. And time and again we can bring to mind how necessary it is to sense and feel that this small group of people, living today in the midst of a materialistic world and guided by their karma toward grasping humanity’s most important task for the future—that this small group of people has something important, indeed the most important thing, to accomplish through their soul life. Without being arrogant, we must simply remind ourselves, in all humility and modesty, how great the difference is between a soul that is gradually finding its way into the spiritual world and all those outwardly focused people who today have no idea—and, in particular, do not want to have any idea—about the spiritual. This must not merely become a pitifully painful feeling for us, but it must become a feeling that inspires us to work ever further and further, and to work faithfully within the current of spiritual science to which we have been led by our karma, our destiny.

[ 36 ] During our last gathering here, I also mentioned that when a person passes through the gate of death before having fully lived out their life, the force of the etheric body that has been given to them has not yet been completely exhausted. If a person passes through the gate of death at a young age, their etheric body could have continued to work on the physical body for decades to come. This energy is not lost; it is still there. I have also already mentioned how, in the present day, because death approaches humanity in such great numbers every day and every hour, many, many etheric bodies—which could have continued to work on the physical body for a long time on the physical plane—are transferred to the spiritual-etheric world and remain there in a state of suspension. And the forces within them that could have sustained the physical body for decades to come are transformed into spiritual forces that contribute to the spiritual development of humanity. Therefore, a time will come when the forces contained within these etheric bodies can be utilized for the spiritual progress of humanity, but only then, when here on Earth—after today’s terrible events have passed over this Earth and peace has returned—souls who will still be walking here on Earth in human bodies will be able to understand something of the fact that all those who have previously entered the spiritual world have their etheric bodies up there and can radiate their forces down. These souls [here on Earth] will have to comprehend this. And these souls will be able to contribute to this spiritual progress, which is made possible for the future precisely through so many sacrificial deaths.

[ 37 ] Just think what it would mean if spiritual science were to disappear now and no one had any understanding of all that is being prepared in the spiritual world through their sacrificial deaths! This entire sum of forces would fall into the hands of spiritual beings who would use it for something other than what it is intended for according to the decree of the gods, who are rightfully continuing to evolve.

[ 38 ] But this reminds us that, even amidst the events of our time, we must remain fully immersed in all that the spiritual world is. For these current events, too, have a spiritual side. What they present outwardly in blood, death, and sacrifice is the external expression of an inner spiritual process, which, however, must be understood in the proper sense.

[ 39 ] This is what I would like to emphasize again and again in the concluding remarks of our current reflection:

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.