The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. The Connection Between the Living and the Dead

[ 1 ] The goal of our spiritual scientific endeavor is to form concepts of how we, as human beings, coexist with spiritual worlds in a similar way to how we are connected to the physical world through our physical body, its experiences, and its perceptions. Now, in our reflections, we can already draw upon familiar concepts that have come to mind over the years. We know that the next world—which lies beyond the world of our sensory perceptions, toward which our volitional impulses, mediated through the physical body, and our actions in the physical world are directed—is the elemental world. One could also give it another name. We can only gain clear insights into these supersensible worlds, however, if we immerse ourselves a little in their characteristics, if we try to recognize what they are for us as human beings. Indeed, our entire life between birth and death—but also the life that then unfolds between death and a new birth—is fundamentally intertwined with our relationship to the various worlds that surround us.

[ 2 ] The elemental world is the one that can be perceived only through what we call imaginations. This elemental world can therefore also be called the imaginative world. In ordinary human life, under normal circumstances, a person cannot bring their imaginative perceptions from the elemental world into consciousness. This does not mean, however, that these imaginations do not exist or that at any moment of our sleeping or waking life we are not in contact with the elemental world and receiving imaginations from it. These imaginations truly ebb and flow within us constantly, unnoticed. And just as we have sensations of color and light—and perceptions of sound—when we open our eyes or turn our ears toward the external world, so too do we constantly receive impressions from the elemental world that now give rise to imaginations in our etheric body. These differ from ordinary thoughts in that, in essence, ordinary, everyday human thoughts involve only the human head as an instrument of processing and experiencing; in the case of imaginations, however, we are involved with almost our entire organism—specifically, our etheric organism. These imaginations—which we might call unconscious, since they come to consciousness only through trained occult perception—are constantly taking place within our etheric organism.

[ 3 ] Even if these imaginations do not enter our consciousness directly or immediately in everyday life, this does not mean they are meaningless to us; on the contrary, they are actually much more significant for our entire life than sensory perceptions, for we are connected to our imaginations much more intensely and intimately than to sensory perceptions. As physical human beings, we receive few imaginations from the mineral kingdom. We receive more imaginations through what we develop in our interaction with the plant and animal worlds; but by far the greatest part of what lives as imaginations in our etheric body comes from our relationship with our fellow human beings and from everything in our lives that arises from that relationship. Indeed, our entire relationship with our fellow human beings—the whole way we relate to them—is fundamentally based on imaginations that always arise from the way we approach another person. However, as I have already indicated, this does not manifest itself as imaginations to ordinary consciousness at all; but it does manifest itself in the sympathies and antipathies that play such a large, such a comprehensive role in our lives—which we develop to a lesser or greater degree toward those who come close to us as human beings in the world, in vague feelings, in merely hinted-at inclinations or aversions, in all that which then develops into friendship, into love—which can intensify to the point where we believe we cannot live at all without this or that person.

[ 4 ] All of this is based on the imaginations that are constantly evoked in our etheric body through our interactions with our fellow human beings. And we actually always carry within us something that it is not quite correct to call a memory, because it is something much more real than a memory; we carry within us these—let us call them heightened memories—imaginations that we have received from all the impressions of the people with whom we have been, but which we also continue to receive constantly. We carry all of these within us, and they essentially constitute a significant part of what we generally call our inner life—not the inner life that exists in distinct memories, but the inner life that manifests itself in an overall sensation, an overall mood, and an overall view of the world and of our coexistence with it. We could only pass coldly by our fellow human beings, or live alongside them, if we did not develop an imaginative life in our coexistence with other beings—namely, with other human beings.

[ 5 ] What asserts itself here—and what we must pay particular attention to as belonging specifically to the elemental world and our etheric life—is what we call our soul’s interest in the environment. What lies primarily in the forces of our etheric body manifests itself in such a way that, in certain cases, we are immediately captivated by an interest in another person. Such an interest, as it develops between one person and another, is based on very specific relationships that arise between one etheric being and another and that bring about the back-and-forth flow of imaginations. We live with these imaginations and with these interests, the effects, strength, and so on of which we often cannot account for—or can account for only in the vaguest terms—and which, because our everyday life is not awakened but rather drifts along more or less dully, we probably do not even notice at all.

[ 6 ] Through all of this, we belong to the elemental world. We belong to this elemental world in such a way that we truly derive our own etheric body from it, which serves as the instrument for interacting with this elemental world. But not only do we, through our etheric body, establish connections with other etheric bodies belonging to physical beings; through our etheric body, we are also related to spiritual beings of an elemental nature—and these are precisely the ones that can evoke imaginations, whether unconscious or conscious, in us humans. We are always in relationship with a multitude of elemental beings. This is what distinguishes one person from another: one person has relationships with a certain number of elemental beings, another with different ones; yet it is possible, for example, that one person’s relationships with certain elemental beings may coincide with another person’s relationships with the same elemental beings. We must simply note that, while we have, so to speak, a kinship with a larger number of elemental beings, we have particularly strong relationships with one elemental being that is, so to speak, the counterpart of our own etheric body. One could say that our own etheric body has intimate relationships with a particular etheric being. And just as our etheric body—what we call our etheric body from birth to death — develops its own special relationships with the physical world through its integration with the physical body, so this etheric being—which is, in a sense, the counterpart, the opposite pole to our own etheric body—mediates our relationships to the entire elemental world, to the surrounding, cosmic-elemental world.

[ 7 ] So here we are looking at an elemental world to which we ourselves belong through our etheric body, with which we are connected—specifically, through concrete relationships with particular elemental beings; and within this elemental world we thus come to know beings who are truly just as real as human beings or animals here in the physical world, but who do not progress as far as incarnation—only as far as etherization—and whose densest form of physicality is precisely the etheric body. Just as we move about here among physical human beings, so too do we constantly move about among such elemental beings. Others are more distant from us, yet they, in turn, have their own relationships with other human beings; but a certain number are particularly close to us, and one has the most intimate relationship with us and mediates our connection with the cosmic-elemental world.

[ 8 ] In the very first moments after we have passed through the gate of death, while we still retain our etheric body for a few days, we ourselves are beings just like these elemental beings. In a sense, we have become such elemental beings ourselves. We have, of course, often described this process of passing through the gate of death. Yet the more closely one examines it, the more precise the imaginative pictures it yields. For the impressions one receives immediately after a person has passed through the gate of death live on in imaginative pictures; they manifest themselves as such. Now, upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that a certain interaction takes place immediately after death between our etheric body and its etheric counterpart. The fact that our etheric body is taken from us a few days after death is essentially due to the fact that our etheric body is, so to speak, drawn to and absorbed by its etheric counterpart and now becomes one with it, so that we do indeed shed our etheric body a few days after death—we hand it over, so to speak—but to our etheric counterpart. Because our etheric body is taken from us by our cosmic image, very special relationships now emerge between what has been taken from us and the other elemental beings with whom we were connected during our life. It is truly the interrelationship that emerges between what our etheric body has become in union with its counterpart and the other elemental beings who were our companions from birth to death—a kind of interrelationship that could be compared to that between the sun and a planetary system belonging to a sun. In a sense, our etheric body, together with its cosmic counterpart, forms a kind of sun, and the other elemental beings surround this sun like a kind of planetary system. And through this interaction, forces are generated that, in the proper way and through a slow process of becoming, incorporate into the elemental world whatever our etheric body is able to carry into it. What is commonly referred to by the abstract term “dissolution” is, I would say, essentially an effect of the forces at work through this sun-planetary system that we leave behind. Gradually, what we have acquired for our etheric body in the course of our lives—what we have incorporated into this etheric body—becomes a part of the spiritual world; it weaves itself into the forces of the spiritual world, and we must be absolutely clear that every thought, every idea, every feeling we develop—no matter how hidden they may remain—has significance for the spiritual world; that when the bond with our etheric body is severed upon passing through the gate of death, these enter the spiritual world and become part of it. We do not live in vain. The fruits of our lives—as we take them in through the thoughts we form and the feelings we experience—are incorporated into the cosmos. This is something we must take to heart, into our feelings and perceptions, if we wish to participate in the spiritual science movement in the true sense. For one is not a spiritual scientist merely by knowing certain things, but rather by feeling, through this knowledge, that one is within the spiritual world; by feeling that one is a member of this spiritual world in a very specific way; by knowing, as it were: Whatever thought you are harboring right now has significance for the entire universe, for upon your death it will be handed over to this universe in the appropriate form.

[ 9 ] What is thus entrusted to the universe in the manner described may be encountered in one form or another after a person’s death. And many of the ways in which the dead are present to those left behind in life are based on the fact that the etheric human being—which is actually separated from the true human individuality—sends its imaginations back to the living. If the living person is sufficiently sensitive to this, or is in some abnormal state, or has prepared himself for it in a normal way through appropriate spiritual training, then the effects of what has been released from the deceased into the spiritual world—effects of an imaginative nature—can also manifest in the person in a conscious manner.

[ 10 ] Well, there remains, however, a connection after death between what constitutes true human individuality—that which has separated from the etheric—and the etheric itself; a connection that truly involves a reciprocal interaction. This is most clearly observed when, through spiritual training, one is able to establish genuine communication with this or that deceased person. Then a certain form of this communication may consist in the deceased first transferring to his etheric body that which he himself wishes to convey to us—who are still here in the physical world; for it is only by transferring it to his etheric body—by, so to speak, inscribing it into his etheric body—that we can have perceptions of the dead, in what are called imaginations, as long as we are here in our physical bodies. As soon as one truly has imaginations, then—let me use this trivial, all-too-realistic expression—the dead person’s etheric body acts as the switch. We must not imagine that we therefore need to have less intimate a relationship with the dead simply because a switch must be present. Just as a person we encounter in the outer world conveys their form to us through the image they evoke within us through our eyes, so too does this mediation through the etheric body signify something quite similar. In a sense, we see what the deceased wishes to convey to us by receiving it indirectly through their etheric body. This etheric body is separate from the deceased; yet they are in such an intimate relationship with it that they can inscribe what lives within them onto this etheric body, and we can read it within as images. However, if a spiritually trained person wishes to connect with a deceased person in this way through an etheric body, it is necessary that relationships have been established—either in the last life between birth and death or from previous incarnations—which have affected the soul of the one still living here to such an extent that the imaginations can make an impression on him. This can only be the case if there was a very specific, intense emotional interest in the deceased himself. Emotional interests must always serve as the mediators between the living and the dead if communication is to take place, whether it is noticed or goes unnoticed—we will speak of the latter case in a moment—emotional interests of such a nature that we truly carry something of the deceased within us, so to speak, such that the deceased has, in a certain sense, formed at least a part of our own experience. Only the spiritually trained person can, in a certain sense, create a substitute for this. He can create a substitute—which at first appears external but can be transformed into something more inner through spiritual training—by, for example, allowing a text or something else in which the individuality of the deceased lives to take effect upon him. But he must have acquired a certain practice in relating to an individuality—insofar as this individuality has imbued the text and lives within it—or he must be able to actively empathize with the feelings of the physical survivors, to share in their grief, and to share in the full range of emotions that the other survivors feel toward the deceased. By incorporating into his own experience these concrete feelings of sympathy—which flow from the deceased to their beloved relatives, endure, and remain—he can prepare his own soul to read the suggested imaginations.

[ 11 ] Now, however, we must be clear that the perception of these imaginations, which flow over from the etheric body, certainly depends on spiritual training or on some other circumstances; yet what is not perceived by human beings is no less present for that reason, and one may say: The people living here in the physical world are not only surrounded by elemental forces in the form of imaginations that originate from the physical body of a living person, but our etheric body is constantly permeated by imaginations that we take in, even if we do not notice them—imaginations that originate from those who were connected to us in some way and who have passed through the gate of death before us. Just as we are connected in physical life—as physical bodies—to the air surrounding us, so too are we related to the entire elemental world and also to all that belongs to the dead in the elemental world. We will never truly understand our human life unless we gain insight into these relationships. Admittedly, these relationships are of such an intimate and subtle nature that they likely remain quite unnoticed by most people. But who would deny that, after all, a person is not always the same between birth and death?

[ 12 ] One need only look back on one’s life once to realize—even if one seems to think one’s life has followed a consistently straight path—that one has taken many twists and turns along the way, and that this or that has happened. Even if these events did not immediately set our lives on a completely different course—which may indeed be the case to some extent—they have nonetheless enriched our lives, whether for better or for worse, in one direction or another, and led us into different circumstances in one direction or another. We know that when we move to a different region, the different composition of the air can put us in a different state of health. These various mental states that we enter into over the course of our lives stem from the influences of the elemental world, and to no small extent from the influences emanating from the deceased with whom we previously had a relationship. Many people meet a friend or some other person in life with whom they enter into this or that relationship—someone to whom they must extend this or that favor, or perhaps even offer a rebuke or criticism. The fact that they have been brought together requires the influence of certain forces. And anyone who recognizes the occult interconnections of the world knows that when two people are brought together in one way or another, sometimes one, sometimes several of those who have passed through the gate of death before us are active in bringing them together. This does not make our lives any less free. No one who does not wish to be foolish would say: How can a human being be free when he is compelled to eat? — Nor is it correct to say: We become unfree because our soul continually receives influences from the elemental world in the manner described. But truly, just as we are connected to heat and cold, to what becomes our food, and to the air around us, so too are we connected to the other elemental world—but above all to that which comes from the dead who have gone before us. And one can truly say: A person’s influence on their fellow human beings does not cease when they pass through the gate of death, and through their etheric body—with which they themselves remain connected—they send their imaginations into those with whom they have been connected. In fact, this world to which we are referring is, for our human life—even if it remains unnoticed in everyday life for good reasons—much more real than the one we usually call “real.” That is all for today regarding this elemental world.

[ 13 ] We can call the spiritual world another realm that is constantly present in our surroundings and to which we belong just as much as we belong to the elemental world. The name itself is not important. We are also always connected to the elemental world while we are awake. While asleep, our physical body lying in bed and our etheric body are connected to this elemental world—indirectly—when we are outside the physical and etheric bodies in our I and astral body. But we are in the most direct connection with that higher world I am referring to now; it is just that this connection cannot come into consciousness in ordinary life. This connection exists during sleep, when our astral body is freely around us, but also while we are awake, although even then the connection is mediated by the forces that the physical body has drawn to itself—that is, it is not a direct one. Again, in this world—let us call it the soul world; the medieval philosophers called it the heavenly world— — beings that are just as real, indeed more real, than we are during our life between birth and death; beings, however, who do not need to incarnate in a physical body, nor even in an etheric body, but who live, as in their lowest form of corporeality, in what we are accustomed to calling the astral body. We are in the closest connection with a great number of such purely astral beings throughout our lives and after our death. In turn, human beings differ from one another in that different individuals are related to different astral beings. It may be the case that two people have relationships with common astral beings—each of them, in turn, with different ones—but they both share common relationships with one or more astral beings.

[ 14 ] We humans ourselves belong to this world—a world inhabited by such astral beings—from the moment we have shed our etheric body after passing through the gate of death. With our individuality, we are then such beings in the soul world, and our immediate surroundings consist of beings of the soul world. We relate to what is contained in the elemental world in such a way that we can stir up within it that which evokes imaginations in the manner described. But the elemental world is then, in a certain sense, outside of us; we might also say it is beneath us. It is more of a medium we use to interact with the rest of the world; but we ourselves belong directly to the world we have now called the soul world. We interact with the beings of the soul world, including those human beings who have passed through the gate of death and, after a few days, have shed their etheric bodies. Just as we—even if we do not notice it—constantly receive influences from the elemental world, so too do we constantly receive influences directly into our astral body from this spiritual world that I am now describing. Only the direct influences we experience—we have already become acquainted with the indirect ones through the etheric body—only these direct influences can be sources of inspiration.

[ 15 ] Now we will come to understand what this influence of the spiritual world on us is like if I first say a few words about how this influence appears to the spiritually trained person who is capable of receiving inspirations from the spiritual world. It appears to them in such a way that they can bring these inspirations into consciousness only if they are able, as it were, to take into themselves something of the being that wishes to inspire them—something of that being’s qualities, life tendency, and life direction. If the spiritually trained person is to develop conscious relationships—not merely indirectly through the etheric body, but in this direct manner through inspirations from a deceased person—then it is necessary that they carry within their soul even more than what can be evoked by interest or sympathy. The spiritually trained person must, so to speak, at least for a short time, be able to transform himself in such a way that he takes into himself something of the habits and nature—that is, of the human nature—of the being with whom he wishes to communicate. He must be able to attune himself to such an extent that he can say to himself: You are adopting that person’s habits to such a degree that you could, in his spirit, do what he could do, feel what he could feel, sense what he could sense, and will what he could will; it is the “could” that matters! The possibility must exist. One must therefore be able to be in even closer communion with the deceased. For those spiritually trained, there are all manner of means to achieve this, provided the deceased themselves permit it; one must simply be aware that those beings who belong to what we now call the “spiritual world” truly relate to the world in a completely different way than we humans here in our physical bodies, and that there are therefore very special conditions for communion with these beings, and thus also very special conditions for communication with the dead, as long as they are in their astral bodies—that is, as astral beings only. Attention may be drawn to specific points in particular. What we humans develop here in our lives within the physical body through various relationships with other people—relationships that arise precisely through earthly life—takes on a different kind of significance for the dead. Here on Earth we develop sympathies and antipathies, and let us be very clear about this: such sympathies and antipathies, as we develop them while living in the physical body, are influenced by our existence as mediated precisely by the physical body and its circumstances. They are influenced by our vanity and our selfishness. Let us be clear about just how much of the specific relationships we develop with this or that person stem from vanity, from selfishness, or from other factors rooted precisely here in our physical earthly life. We love; we hate people. We certainly pay little attention, for the most part, to the reasons behind our love and hate, our sympathies and antipathies; indeed, we often avoid giving these sympathies and antipathies much thought, for the simple reason that something quite unpleasant would usually come to light. If we were to investigate the fact that, for example, we do not love this or that person, we would sometimes have to attribute so much prejudice, vanity, and other traits to ourselves that we are afraid to acknowledge such things about ourselves. And so we do not bring ourselves to understand clearly why we hate this or that person. But with love, after all, it is often quite similar. Through love, however, interests, sympathies, and antipathies develop that really have significance only for our earthly life. Yet it is on the basis of all that develops as interest that we act; it is from all of that that we shape our lives.

[ 16 ] It would be entirely wrong for us to believe that the dead could share in the same ephemeral interests, sympathies, and antipathies that arise under the influence of our physical earthly life here on Earth as we earthly beings do. The dead are truly compelled to view these things from an entirely different perspective. And if we then ask ourselves how our judgment of our fellow human beings is influenced by our subjective feelings—by what lies in our own interests, our vanity, our selfishness, and so on—we must not believe that a deceased person can take an interest in our relationships with others, shaped as they are by such factors, or in all the actions that flow from such interests. But on the other hand, we must not believe that the deceased does not see what lives within our soul. For it truly does live within our soul. The deceased does see it; the deceased participates in it; but the deceased sees something else as well—the deceased has an entirely different way of judging people than the living. In a sense, the deceased views people quite differently. And there is one very special and central point: how the dead view the people who are here on Earth. And let us not believe that the dead do not have a keen interest in human beings. They do, for the human world is a part of the entire cosmos; our life is part of it. And just as we take an interest in the lower kingdoms even in the physical world, so too do the dead take a keen interest in the human world, and from there they send their impulses into it; through the living, they work into the world. We ourselves cited an example of this just a moment ago, showing how the dead continue to work after they have just passed through the gate of death.

[ 17 ] But above all else, the dead person sees one thing clearly. He sees how there is a person who acts on impulses of hatred, who hates this or that person out of purely personal motives; the dead person sees that. But the dead person, according to his own way of seeing—according to what he can know—must allow this influence to take full effect upon himself, just as Ahriman, for example, influences human beings toward hatred; the dead person sees Ahriman at work in human beings. And on the other hand, when a person here is vain, he sees Lucifer at work in him. This is the essential point: that the deceased sees human beings in connection with the Ahrimanic-Luciferic world. As a result, the deceased is free from what so often completely colors our judgment of others. We tend to judge this or that person in one direction or another; we attribute to them whatever we find reprehensible in them. The deceased does not attribute this directly to the person, but rather observes how that person has been led astray by Ahriman or Lucifer. This brings about what we might call a tempering of the sharply differentiated feelings we have toward this or that person in our physical earthly life. For the deceased, a kind of general love for humanity comes to the fore much more strongly. Do not think that this means the dead person is unable to criticize—that is, to see evil in the proper way. He does see it; he is simply able to trace it back to its origins and to the underlying connections.

[ 18 ] But everything I have described to you here also means that a trained person can truly come into conscious contact with a deceased person only by genuinely freeing themselves from personal feelings of sympathy and antipathy toward individual people, by not allowing their soul to become dependent on such feelings. For just imagine: If a trained clairvoyant were to approach a deceased person—whomever that may be—so that that person’s inspirations enter his consciousness, and this living person were to harbor a very special hatred toward someone, a hatred that originates solely in personal circumstances. — Yes, just as we avoid fire with our hands, so does the deceased avoid such a person who is capable of hating in this way for personal reasons! The deceased cannot approach him because the hatred acts upon him like fire. In order to enter into conscious relationships with the deceased, one must, like them, be able to free oneself in a certain way from personal sympathies and antipathies. Therefore, you will also understand that the entire relationship between the dead and the living—insofar as it is based on inspirations that, even if unnoticed, are always present and always dwell in the human astral body, so that a person is connected to the dead in this direct way—depends on the way we are attuned to life here on Earth. If we are hostile toward others, if we take no interest in or concern for the world around us—especially if we lack an unbiased interest in and concern for our fellow human beings—then, no matter how much they may wish to, the dead cannot reach us; they cannot properly enter into our souls, or—if they must—it becomes particularly difficult for them, and they can do so only through suffering and pain. This coexistence of the dead with the living is, in general, quite complicated. But you can see from this that a person continues to exert an influence beyond time—even after passing through the gate of death—simply by inspiring the living on the physical plane after his death. And it is absolutely true that those who live on Earth at any given time—particularly with regard to their inner habitual qualities, the way they think, feel, and have inclinations— are intensely dependent on those who have died before them and who were connected to them in life, or with whom they themselves still establish some kind of connection even after death—which can happen under certain circumstances, though it is more difficult.

[ 19 ] A certain aspect of the world order and of human progress is indeed based on the fact that the dead exert an inspiring influence on the lives of people on Earth. Indeed, there is a sense of this influence in human instincts—a sense that this must be so. And this can be seen when one observes that way of life which was once widespread and is now dying out, because humanity, in the course of its development, is advancing toward ever-changing, new forms of life. In the past, when people had a greater sense of the true reality of the spiritual worlds, they had a much clearer understanding of the necessities that exist for life as a whole; they knew that the living need the dead, need the impulses of the dead to permeate even their daily habits. What was done? Think back to earlier times, when in very broad circles of human life it was customary for the father to ensure that the son took over his business, that the son carried on in the same way. When the father had long since passed away, a connecting bond was created through the physical world—by the son remaining within the father’s path—so that a kinship existed between the son’s activities and the father’s, and the father could continue to work through the son. Much in life was based on this. And when entire social classes attach great importance to the fact that this or that tangible reality is passed down within the classes or within the families of those classes, this is based on an intuition of the necessity: The habits of life of those who came before must extend into the habits of life of those who come after, if these habits of life of those who came before have matured to the point that they originate from them only after the individuals in question have passed through the gate of death; for it is only then that they reach maturity.

[ 20 ] As you know, these things will come to an end as humanity progresses, and a time is approaching when these legacies, these conservative conditions, will no longer play a role. Physical ties will no longer be able to exist in the same way as before. Instead, however, people must draw all the more from spiritual scientific insights that which brings the essence of the matter into consciousness, so that one can consciously build upon the customs of earlier times—which must be taken into account—in order for life to continue moving forward. We are now living in a transitional period since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which has more or less brought chaos in its wake. But conditions will return in the future where we will reconnect with the past in a much more conscious way through an understanding of the truths of spiritual science. People have already done this unconsciously, instinctively. But what is still instinctive today must be transformed into consciousness. People may not pay attention to this, but anyone who is capable of studying history spiritually would already notice—if they focused solely on the actual circumstances rather than on the dreadful abstractions in which the so-called humanities operate today—that what is taught in a given age bears the character of, in a sense, unconsciously, instinctively ties in with what the departed allow to flow into the present. Once one learns to truly study the great pedagogical ideas disseminated in a given era by the true pioneers of pedagogy—the genuine ones, not the charlatans— then one will see that these fundamental pedagogical ideas stem from the collective transmission of the habits of those who died some time ago, whose habits continue to flow into the present.

[ 21 ] Thus, the relationship the dead have with human beings is even more intimate; for what enters the astral body penetrates even more deeply into the inner being than what enters the etheric body. The true dead have an even more intimate connection with human beings than do the etheric bodies or any other kind of elemental beings. From this, however, you can see that the period following a person’s life is always determined by the preceding period, that the preceding period continues to live on within the subsequent period. For in fact—as strange as this may sound—it is only after our death that we become truly ready to influence other people directly by working into their innermost being. What we should not do in life—imposing our own habits on another person who has come of age—I mean spiritually, not legally—is, however, right and in accordance with the conditions for the further development of humanity once we ourselves have passed through the gate of death. Apart from everything else contained in progressive karma and the general laws of incarnation, these things take place. And if you ask about the secret causes of why people, let’s say, are doing this or that right now, you will find in many cases—though not in all—that they do so because certain impulses flow down from those who died twenty or thirty years ago, or who died even longer ago. These are the secret yet concrete connections between the physical and the spiritual worlds. For it is not only for ourselves that something matures within what we carry through the gate of death, but also for the rest of the world. Yet it only truly matures to the point of influencing others from a certain moment onward. But it also becomes more and more mature. And I ask you to note now that I am not speaking of externalities, but of inner, real spiritual activity. If anyone recalls the habits of a deceased father or grandfather and, drawing on that memory, acts out those habits again on the physical plane—that is not what I mean; that is something else. I am really referring to the inspired influences—those imperceptible to ordinary consciousness—that make themselves felt within our habits, within our most intimate character. And much in our lives depends on the fact that we even find ourselves compelled to free ourselves, here and there, from well-meaning influences coming from the dead. Yes, we win a great deal of inner freedom by having to free ourselves from one influence or another. Inner spiritual struggles, the causes of which a person often does not know, will become understandable to them when they view them in the light that comes from such insights. To use a trivial expression, one might say: The past is rumbling; the souls of the past are truly rumbling within us.

[ 22 ] These things are simply truths that we perceive through spiritual contemplation. But people—especially in today’s world (it wasn’t always this way, as anyone who can study history spiritually knows)—have a very special relationship to these truths: namely, they are afraid of them; they are afraid of recognizing these truths; they have a hopeless fear—not a conscious one, but an unconscious one. And this unconscious fear of realizing how one is situated within the world—how the mysterious connections exist not only between soul and soul here in the world, but also between soul and soul here and in the other world—is what holds people back. It is part of what instinctively keeps them from spiritual science. They are afraid to come to know reality. They simply do not realize how, by refusing to come to know reality, they are disrupting the entire course of the world—and, of course, above all, disrupting the life that must then be lived between death and a new birth, where these relationships must be understood.

[ 23 ] Even more mature—that which continues to develop becomes ever more mature—is what lives within us when it no longer needs to be merely inspiration, but can instead be intuition in the sense in which I use the word in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. But intuition can only be a being that, so to speak, possesses a “spirit body”—to use that paradoxical term. A human being can only act intuitively in this sense upon other beings—including those who are still incarnated here in physical life—once they have shed their astral body, once they themselves belong entirely to the spiritual world, that is, decades after their death. Then they can also act upon other people through intuition—and no longer merely, as I have described, through inspiration. Only then do they act in a spiritual way as an “I” that now resides in the spiritual world, influencing the “I’s” of others. Previously, they had acted inspiringly into the astral body or, indirectly through the etheric body, into the etheric body of the human being. As an “I,” even someone who has been dead for decades can act directly—and, of course, at the same time through the mediation of others. And by then, the human being’s individuality has matured to the point of not merely living within human habits, but even within human views! Perhaps this is an unpleasant, even quite unsympathetic truth for today’s prejudiced sensibilities; but it is, after all, a truth. Our views, which arise within our “I,” are constantly under the influence of those who have long since passed away. Those who have long since passed away live on in our views. Through this, however, the continuity of development from the spiritual world is maintained. This is a necessity; otherwise, the thread of our views would continually be severed.

[ 24 ] Please forgive me for introducing a personal note here; but I am doing so, I would say, for objective reasons, because only through a concrete perspective can such a truth be fully understood. No one should actually present views in such a way that they are presented as personal opinions, no matter how honestly they may have been arrived at. Therefore, no one who stands entirely honestly on the ground of occultism, who is experienced in the conditions of spiritual science, will impose his opinions on the world; rather, he will do everything to ensure that he does not directly impose his opinions on the world; for what he acquires as opinions under the influence of his personal state of mind will only be allowed to take effect thirty or forty years after his death. It then takes effect in such a way that it enters souls along the same paths through which the impulses of the time spirits, the Archai, enter the souls. By then, it has matured to the point where it can truly take effect, in accordance with the objective course of events. Therefore, it is necessary for anyone grounded in occultism to avoid personally proselytizing or recruiting followers for their own views.

[ 25 ] What is generally the custom today—that once a person has formed an opinion, they cannot promote it quickly enough—is something that a true, practicing spiritual scientist would not strive for. And here I come to a personal point: It is truly no coincidence, but rather something intrinsically connected to my life, that I did not begin by writing down my views to share them with the world, but instead wrote Goethe’s Worldview entirely in the spirit and sense of Goethe’s worldview, so as not to associate myself with a living person. Even if one were that living person oneself, that could never truly justify teaching spiritual science to the extent that I am attempting to do so; rather, it is a necessary step to immerse oneself completely in the objective course of world development. So I have not written my own theory of knowledge, but rather Goethe’s theory of knowledge—the theory of knowledge inherent in Goethe’s worldview, and so on. From this you can see, as it were, how human development continues; how the things that a person acquires here mature—not only for their own life as it progresses along the path of karma, but also how they become ever more mature for the world; and how we continue to influence the world by sending, after a certain time, our matured sending imaginations—and, after a further period, inspirations—into people’s habits. Only after an even longer period are we ready and mature enough to send intuitions into the innermost recesses of human life, into people’s views. One must by no means believe that our views spring from nothing, or that they arise anew in every age. They grow out of the soil in which our soul is rooted, which is, however, actually identical with the work of people long since deceased.

[ 26 ] I believe that knowledge of such facts about human life must truly bring about the enrichment that is needed, given the overall character and meaning of our present age and the near future. Much of the old has become decayed, and the new must develop, as I have often explained. But human beings cannot enter into this new era without the impulses provided by spiritual science. What matters are the feelings toward the universe and the other beings of the universe that we acquire through spiritual science—in other words, that our lives are attuned differently by spiritual science than they were before. Through spiritual science, that which we are always within—but which humanity will be called upon to recognize as it continues to develop through the fifth, sixth, and seventh post-Atlantean periods during the Earth era—is to become alive for us.

[ 27 ] These ideas—which are connected with enriching and enlivening a person’s sense of the world, with a deeper immersion in life—are what I wanted to convey today; that is what I wanted to inspire in your hearts now that we have once again been able to gather together after some time, and I hope that we can meet here more often to discuss similar matters, so that through our souls we may contribute to the development of humanity as envisioned by spiritual science.