The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] It is a time when the experience of death, from the perspective of the physical plane, presents itself to our souls in many ways—both in a broader and a narrower sense—in countless forms among humanity at large and also within our own close circle, from which, particularly in the course of the last few years and even months, dear friends have passed through the gate of death. Perhaps it is therefore only natural to direct this reflection—to which we here in this branch feel a connection—toward the mystery of death and various matters related to it, from certain perspectives. After all, we turn our contemplative gaze toward the mystery of death not merely because curiosity or a thirst for knowledge compels us to understand what is mysteriously connected with death, but because we have already sufficiently grasped, from the insights that spiritual science can impart to us, we have sufficiently grasped how intimately connected the mystery of death—and the knowledge of it—is with the life-strengthening forces we need, and how, fundamentally, the contemplation of death bridges the gulf between the two worlds—the world we experience in the physical realm and the world of the spiritual. After all, we have often made it clear to ourselves—and rightly so—and have repeatedly called to mind in the face of concrete deaths how those souls who were connected to us in physical life remain so even after they have passed through the gate of death. In this connection, I have already been permitted to state in this series that it is one of the strengthening, invigorating thoughts on which we can rely—that we have soul friends in the spiritual worlds who, through the way they were connected to our cause here on Earth, have become and continue to be our faithful helpers and co-workers. It must be emphasized, however, that we are now living in a time in which we feel obligated to develop spiritual science, but in which this spiritual science is still met with much misunderstanding and opposition arising from that misunderstanding and lack of understanding. And sometimes doubts may arise as to whether, in the face of opposition that is growing ever stronger—and it will truly take on even stronger forms—the strength granted to us within the physical world will be sufficient. It is precisely then that the strengthening thought arises that the souls of friends who were faithfully connected to our work and who have gone before us—who are unhindered by the obstacles that still stand in our way here on earth—will unite their forces with ours. And out of this conviction, we believe in the triumphant, if slowly approaching, success of spiritual scientific work.

[ 2 ] When a person passes through the gate of death, it is, I would say, the immediate concern of our soul to experience how, after leaving behind their physical body on the stage of earthly existence, they then ascend into the spiritual worlds, leaving these physical worlds behind, so to speak. Once we have gained spiritual-scientific convictions, we perceive a person’s passage through the gate of death as a departure from the physical world. However, when the spiritual-scientific gaze is directed toward the experience of death—that is, toward a person’s passage through the gate of death—the matter presents itself somewhat differently to that gaze. The main consideration here is, of course, what the so-called dead person himself experiences—how he feels and experiences the passage through the gate of death in his innermost being, and how things then unfold for him between death and a new birth. And here it must be said: What passes through the gate of death is, as we know, first and foremost the etheric body together with the astral body and the I. — Now, as the deceased, in this triad of his being, first enters the spiritual world, he perceives the scene of the physical world and, standing upon it, those people with whom he felt connected in life, as well as everything else to which he otherwise felt connected—he actually perceives all of this as if it were leaving him, as if it were, so to speak, receding beneath him. And then the one who has passed through the gate of death and is settling into the etheric world with his etheric body feels himself becoming one with this etheric world. And we already know this as well: before his eyes unfolds a kind of overview of the experiences on Earth during his last incarnation. These experiences can truly be compared to a kind of universal “dream experience.” In undulating, weaving images that are rich in meaning and significance, life simply unfolds for days on end. One might say that this panorama of life expands as the deceased feels: “This is as far as you can see; your life is weaving itself out, flowing away.” And beyond this flowing life, the stage on which you have stood until now leaves you.

[ 3 ] This is a completely ethereal experience. Whereas, when we experience the physical and sensory world here, we encounter the solid and the coarse with our senses and know precisely that what we experience sensually is out there and that we feel ourselves within the boundaries of our skin—the one who has passed through the gate of death experiences his existence and his connection to the world in such a way that he does not distinguish between them so sharply; in a sense, they feel what they have as a tableau of life as a part of themselves. Indeed, this tableau of life is, at first, his world. He surveys what he has lived through in a vast panorama of life, as his immediate world, in which he initially finds himself. In a sense, his earthly existence recedes from him, and from this receding earthly existence emerges what he has experienced within it since his birth, and this unfolds like a powerful, vivid—intensely vivid—panorama of images, permeated not by a dull “dream consciousness” but by clear consciousness, in which it is not merely images that are seen, but in which everything we have experienced in other ways during our lives comes alive again. Every single conversation we have ever had with people: we hear it again; everything we have experienced together with people, all the feelings we have shared with them: we experience it all anew. Because everything is a flowing life, that richness of life is possible which, condensed into a few days, provides a complete overview—which is actually always before us at the same time—of what we have gone through in what is sometimes a long earthly life. And we go through it in such a way that we then know: Before, on Earth, you lived through it in such a way that one experience followed another. You had an experience; you were immersed in a life context. It flowed by, remaining partly in your memory and partly forgotten. Then something new arose, and in this way the stream of life took shape over the years. Now all of this stands before the soul’s eye at once, and now all of this is, one might say, contained within the self that has expanded into the world.

[ 4 ] In these days following death, there is no distinction between the world and the self; rather, the two merge, and the world is simply what one has personally experienced. At first, there is nothing else but this personal experience, which also encompasses everything we have lived through with other people during our earthly existence. And then we feel as if the external, ethereal, material world—which at first appears to be the vehicle of this world of images—were slipping away from us, and as if this world of images were no longer one that we merely observe, but one that we have now completely united with our own being, one that now constitutes our innermost self entirely. And by absorbing it, as it were, into ourselves, we are then able once again to perceive and experience the rest of the spiritual world and to survey it with our consciousness.

[ 5 ] Now, little by little, human souls begin to appear in the rest of the spiritual world—those who have either passed through the “gate” of death before us and are now there as well, or those who are still down below in their physical bodies, in earthly existence. From the spiritual world, we perceive these human souls by observing them in their spiritual-soul aspect. The physical aspect, of course, is perceptible only to physical organs, but the spiritual-soul aspect, which envelops the physical, then also rises up within the human being before our soul’s gaze. We feel much more deeply connected to everything we are now experiencing than we could have felt connected where—namely on Earth—there are actually barriers created by the physical body.

[ 6 ] There is just one thing we must always keep in mind: We must choose our words carefully—words that are, after all, all shaped by the conditions of the physical plane—when we wish to describe the spiritual realm, for experience in the spiritual world is, quite simply, much more intimate than experience here on the physical plane. When we bring to mind how a thought—representing an experience long past—resurfaces as a memory of that experience, how this thought arises from within us—if we vividly imagine this and now, I might say, the reality of such a shadowy memory experience, then we gradually gain a sense of how spiritual reality actually presents itself to us after we have passed through the gate of death. As a rule, it does not approach us from the outside in the same way as the experiences of the physical-sensory world. The imaginations do indeed arise in this way, only with infinitely greater vividness than the images of memory, but in such a way that we do not distinguish between our “I” and the imaginations as we distinguish ourselves here from the external world. They arise from within us like images of memory, but in such a way that we know: what is rising on the horizon of our consciousness is reality. An imagination rises: we know it to be as closely connected to us as a memory image is here on the physical plane. It rises with all its vitality. But we know we are connected to it; our “I” is within it. Thus the soul ascends; thus we feel ourselves in union with the souls and soul beings of the higher hierarchies, who are gradually rising there. The spiritual world is already approaching our own soul—I would say—from the indeterminate twilight, just as images of memory approach it, surfacing within our soul. Except that these images of memory are quite dim and merely reflect an external reality, whereas the imaginations that arise then become speaking imaginations, announcing their essence through their language revealed in the spirit, which then becomes for us a revelation of the souls and spirits with whom we continue to be united in the most manifold ways—more warmly and intimately than we can ever be united with a human being here on the physical plane.

[ 7 ] We must now make it very clear to ourselves just how significant the very first experience is that a person undergoes when they pass through the gate of death. This looking back on the last life has a great, indeed immense, significance for the entire experience that now follows between death and a new birth, and we can grasp this significance when we consider how we actually come to our sense of self in our physical earthly life—not to our “I,” but to our sense of self. We know from our study of spiritual science how we come to the “I”: the spirits of form bestow this “I” upon us as we have progressed from lunar existence to earthly existence. But this “I” is initially subconscious. It becomes conscious through its reflection in the physical body. How does it reflect itself here on the physical plane? Well, as you know, you can see it even in an ordinary dream experience: the “I” very rarely becomes clearly conscious of itself in the dream experience; the “I” merges with the experiences, with the images of the dream that arise. Through what do we experience “I”-consciousness while awake? Consider how this sense of self is actually connected to all external perceptions and all external experiences. When we move our hand through the air like this, we feel nothing. The moment we bump into something, we feel something. But what we actually feel is our own experience—we feel what we experience through our fingers. It is in this contact with the external world that we become aware of our “I.” And in another sense, when we wake up, we actually become aware of our “I” by emerging from the consciousness of sleep and immersing ourselves in our physical body—by coming into contact with our physical body. It is in this contact with the physical body that self-consciousness is actually summoned into the soul.

[ 8 ] Let us be clear, however, that self-consciousness must not be confused with the self. The self remains, for the time being, in the subconscious—one might say, incomplete. Only during the Volcanic Age will human beings come to know what the self truly is. But the “I” attains earthly consciousness by immersing itself, together with the astral body, into the etheric body and the physical body, and by coming into contact with the etheric body and the physical body. And in this collision with the etheric body and the physical body, the “I” becomes aware of itself: thus, “I”-consciousness arises from the moment when the physical body has truly hardened to such an extent that this collision is strong enough—that is, from a certain point in early childhood, up to the point we can recall.

[ 9 ] Now, in the life between death and a new birth, the soul, too, must come into contact with something. Here in physical life, it comes into contact with the physical body—which is composed of the physical forces and substances of external nature—in order to attain self-consciousness. After death, between death and a new birth, the soul—in order to attain its now spiritual “I”-consciousness—encounters its own life, which it has just beheld in the days after passing through the gate of death and to which it looks back again and again. At first, life presents itself as a vision; then it becomes a retrospective view that is always present. As we, as spiritual beings, continue to live in the flow of time after passing through the gate of death and look back on what we experienced immediately in and with death, the soul, as it moves forward, constantly encounters in retrospect this panorama of life that we once had, but which now remains merely a spiritual memory. And just as the “I” is kindled to its sense of self here through its encounter with the physical body, so too is the sense of self kindled after death by the retrospective gaze upon our own life, which looks back upon our last earthly existence. As we look back upon it, we experience this sense of self between death and a new birth. This sense of self after death is different, but it is by no means weaker.

[ 10 ] What, then, is this sense of self actually like here in the physical world? The fact is that here in the physical world, if we wish to become aware of our self, we are dependent on it being revealed to us through something else within our physical body. Our physical “I” appears to us, as it were, as if reflected in the mirror of our physical body. We feel quite passive in the formation of our “I,” at least unless we are actually living according to a philosophy such as that of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. In contrast, after we have passed through the gate of death, we feel constantly active. We, as it were, grant ourselves this now much more intense consciousness again and again by looking back on our own life and linking this consciousness to the sense of self: We want ourselves, and we want ourselves again and again, and we are permitted to want ourselves, for we remain ourselves—unlosable—because the impression of what we once lived through remains indelible. — With these words, I would like to convey very clearly what is experienced in the “I”-consciousness between death and a new birth. And the experience of consciousness between death and a new birth is unlike the experience of consciousness here on the physical plane. Here on the physical plane, no one can actually look back on their own birth from their own experience in normal consciousness. No one can observe their own birth in their own experience with normal consciousness; the memory of it begins only later. I have also said here before: If people want to rely solely on experience, on personal experience, in life, then no one can actually believe in their own birth; at most, they experience their birth only if they look back with clairvoyance. If someone says, “I won’t believe in the spiritual world until I’ve seen it myself; I don’t want to believe what spiritual science tells me—I only believe what I’ve seen myself,” then one can essentially reply: “What about your own birth? It seems as though you do believe that it took place? But you can’t really have any direct experience of it.” — This shows how even something quite significant for human life is only consciously perceived by normal consciousness through a process of inference. In normal consciousness, we simply assume that we were born by drawing the conclusion: We look just like the people we have already observed being born, so we must have been born as well. — But this is based solely on a conclusion.

[ 11 ] The situation is quite different in the period between death and a new birth. Just as one cannot look back on one’s own birth in normal consciousness, so too does one always look toward the moment of one’s death with this panorama of remembered life. And just as surely as birth fades from earthly consciousness, so surely does the event of death always stand before the soul’s life between death and a new birth in this retrospective consciousness—but now viewed from the other side. Here on the physical plane, after all, human beings see the experience of death only from one side. There, it has many a terrifying aspect. But one must not conclude from this that it would be terrible for the one who lives on to have to look back forever on the experience of death. For, seen from that perspective, this is the most beautiful, greatest, and most significant experience a human soul can ever have, because it constantly reveals in a radiant way how the spirit triumphs over material existence. This continuous looking back on the experience of death has a quality that enlivens, uplifts, and elevates all consciousness. It is primarily through this experience of death that the soul says to itself: I live here in the spiritual world, with the spiritual world. — Because the soul has the strength to say this to itself, this experience of death holds immense significance for the life that begins after death.

[ 12 ] I said: A person feels how his body and everything that existed on Earth is leaving him, and he feels how he must now balance his consciousness through inner activity, how he must accomplish something for his consciousness that he previously had accomplished for it through the instrument of the body. I can live consciously without the body within me: the very possibility of grasping this thought creates a much stronger consciousness than one can have during earthly life. And death teaches us this conviction, which we can sense: The body departs, but now begins a time when you are not dependent on encountering your body to feel yourself as “I”; now begins a time when, so to speak, you yourself pour the spiritual forces into your soul’s shell, so that you continually call yourself into consciousness. — By recognizing how this summoning of oneself to consciousness can occur when the body is taken away, one gains an impression of inner existence. This begins with death, when one must start to experience oneself as an “I” without the body. This is the starting point for continuing to feel oneself as an “I” without the body, by looking back on the experience of death. When the spiritual researcher’s gaze—by allowing the spiritual world to come alive within—brings about a situation in which souls who have passed through the gate of death appear, as it were, within the inner field of consciousness in the form of imaginations, then one learns to recognize how the deceased experiences things. One learns to recognize the differences that arise there. Of course, one can always describe only individual cases. Let us consider one such difference.

[ 13 ] One learns to recognize how human souls appear in the realm of soul observation after death. These human souls are of two kinds: those that have already entered the spiritual world before our own death—which we thus find there as disembodied souls—and those that are still embodied on Earth. We are also able to perceive those who are still on Earth. As the scene of earthly existence fades from our view, we retain the ability to know that we are still connected to what was spiritual. Only the physical aspect fades from us; our soul expands, unites with the vast universe, and it is precisely through this—even as the physical aspect, as it were, slips away from us—that we are able to know that we are still connected to the spiritual and to experience it.

[ 14 ] But there is a difference between experiencing one type of soul and another. When we experience a human soul in the spiritual world, we naturally do not experience it—it hardly needs to be said, but those who have not yet grasped anything about seeing in the spiritual world believe this—as if we were facing it just as we face an external being; rather, we experience it in such a way that we feel the being emerge into our consciousness. And now, when we encounter a soul that has already left its body, that has already passed through the gate of death, we have the inner experience that it is there. This is where the impression begins. We know: There is a soul. But we must, as it were, live ourselves into it, feel our way into it. We must receive the image of it in such a way that we feel we are participating in the creation of that image.

[ 15 ] It is truly the case that one would like to describe the experience in the following way: One feels oneself in the spiritual world. The awareness arises: You are not alone now; a soul is approaching you. — Now it is as if, in the physical world, one were carrying a thought invisibly within one’s soul. But one wants to make it visible. So one takes a piece of chalk and sketches the thought, creating an image of it. That is truly how it is at first with experiences in the spiritual world. One knows: a real spiritual being is there. In order to see the soul, one must first come into contact with it in such a way that one, as it were, sketches it into the spiritual space as an imagination. One does this, but one is aware of being actively engaged in the creation of the imagination. And when it seeks to speak through the music of the spheres—through which it reveals its nature to our own, just as a human being here announces his soul to us in the physical world through his language—when it allows the music of the spheres to resound from within itself, then one also feels that one cannot remain passive. When you hear a person’s speech and do not wish to think about it, you do not need to understand it. You must participate if you wish to understand it. In the same way, one must participate here as well. We live together in this way, actively and engaged; we know that we must help create every aspect of the manifestation of a soul’s essence—which we can thus have before us—as a manifestation. It is the manifestation that one creates, not the essence. There will also be cases where one does not feel so strongly engaged that one knows: “Now a human soul is here.” But this soul, without our participating as strongly as in the case just described, impels us toward imagination. Imagination arises more of its own accord before us. Then we stand before a soul that is still incarnated on earth. And as the human being has passed through the gate of death and gradually continues to live in the spiritual world, he learns, through this way of relating to souls, to recognize the differences between the souls he encounters in the spiritual world and those he must imagine to be on earth.

[ 16 ] I have thus pointed out one of the differences in how experiences in the spiritual world unfold in immediate perception. And so it is also necessary to distinguish between different kinds of experiences—inner experiences—depending on whether one is experiencing human souls or the souls of beings from the higher hierarchies. Consider what I have described to you as an experience of human souls. I said: One experiences human souls either by creating or recreating the imaginations, or by allowing them to create themselves to a greater or lesser extent. But the experience can also be this: One knows that a being is there. This being must also appear as an imagination; it must also stand before us in the experience if we truly wish to be with it. But it will not be immediately possible for us to generate the imagination in the same way as in the cases just described, where in one case it even builds itself up on its own. As we have this very experience—that a being is there—we must develop something quite different within ourselves. We must develop the feeling within us that we are allowing this being to be created within us. We surrender our own powers so that the powers of this being may flow into us. — Whereas, in the case of the human soul, we feel ourselves to be the creators in the imagination, with beings of the higher hierarchies—the angeloi, the archangeloi—we feel how these beings create the imagination within us. And in this way, we gradually immerse ourselves in this shared experience of the spiritual world.

[ 17 ] We also know that, in concrete terms, this reliving takes place in such a way that, over a long series of years—we have often considered its length in relation to our last earthly life—life is retraced in reverse. First we have a few days in which we survey the panorama of our life; then we begin to relive our earthly life, but in a different way than we experienced it here between birth and death. We experience the most recent events first; then we experience what we lived through before that; and so on, in spirit, all the way back to birth. We experience it in such a way that we look at our life, but now from the other side. I can say that we view it from the perspective of the consequences. Let’s take a rough example: at some point in my life, I told someone, “You are a base person”—or I hurt them in some way. That was an experience I had during my life. What I experienced is different from what he experienced. He was the one who experienced the hurt feelings, the offense, the pain, and the suffering. Now, in the process of reliving our lives after death in the spiritual world, we ourselves experience the consequences of what we have done. The suffering that the other person endured when we insulted them—we experience that suffering and that pain within ourselves. We experience the effects of our actions on another being by reliving them in this way. We gain a certain insight into this post-death experience when we focus our attention on something that can reveal itself to the spiritual researcher as a connection between this post-death experience and our experience here in the physical world.

[ 18 ] What I am discussing now is something that can really draw our attention to how the spiritual researcher gradually arrives at his findings, and how it is a prejudice to assume that anyone who has crossed the threshold into the spiritual world now knows that world from personal experience, and that one can now ask him anything. We experience this time and again when the spiritual researcher speaks about this or that—especially in public—and one—as may indeed seem quite desirable from certain points of view—answers questions as if being asked about everything in heaven and on earth and throughout the entire infinity, assuming: Anyone who even glances into the spiritual world already knows everything—absolutely everything there is to know there. —That’s about as sensible as if someone here were to say: “You have eyes, you know Munich, so describe California to me!” — It is truly exactly the same in the spiritual world: one must acquire, step by step, what is to be grasped from the spiritual world, and it is naive to believe that there, too, everything must not first be observed step by step. Now, things are different in the spiritual world than they are here in the physical world. Here in the physical world, if—let’s say—you’ve never been to Heidelberg and now want to describe it, you go there, don’t you? You set out on the journey. In the spiritual world, things must come to us; there we must develop within our souls the power of waiting, the inner power of experiencing. Things enter our field of vision when we have made ourselves capable of receiving them. The Heidelberg of the spiritual world must come to us; we must prepare our soul for it. In a certain sense, it always depends on the gifts we are endowed with as to whether we can learn about this or that in the spiritual world. In this way, the spiritual researcher can gradually be instructed in the mysteries of the spiritual world.

[ 19 ] Now I would like to discuss, from a certain perspective, a finding from spiritual research that I have not yet discussed here from this perspective. When, after having developed certain inner—that is, spiritual—powers of observation, one observes the human soul’s experience as the person is in the spiritual world between falling asleep and waking up—when one observes the sleeping person as a soul, existing outside their physical body—one learns many things, but one must learn to look from a certain perspective if one wishes to grasp something specifically—then one realizes that during sleep, the human being is actually constantly active in his soul, much more active than during wakefulness. During wakefulness, the human being makes use of the activity developed by his body, and as a soul he immerses himself in it; that is where he lives. In sleep, on the other hand, they live within their own activity. And if one follows this, one finds that during sleep a person relives, in a different way, what they have experienced in the physical world from waking up until falling asleep. Let’s suppose I have done something, have read this or that: in sleep I relive the entire reading experience; I go through it all again. We simply do not yet have such awareness in our normal daily life that this also becomes “I”-conscious, but it nevertheless takes place in the soul—albeit only dimly—and the soul is actually actively processing what it has experienced during the day. Thoughts are transformed in such a way that they can bear fruit within the soul. We process what we have worked out during the day as the fruits of life. We are constantly actively incorporating these fruits of life, these results of life: that is what we do during sleep.

[ 20 ] Then the spiritual researcher can make a discovery. When he compares this sleep experience that a person has here with the experiences a person has in the years or decades after passing through the gate of death and thus retracing their life in reverse, it is interesting that the person retraces their life in such a way that they actually relive the nights, not the days. Just as they looked back on the day every night, they now experience this in the soul world. It is the same thing one experienced in waking consciousness, but viewed from the perspective of sleep. We experience this in a way that is very strange. One usually does not think about it, but in fact our memory here in physical life extends only to the experiences of the day. We remember what we experience in waking consciousness. Now, after death, we remember precisely what we have relived during the nights—what we had gone through in our earthly life. This is when the conscious memory of the nighttime experiences emerges. I did not express this so clearly before, simply because I did not know it. Such things become apparent to one through successive spiritual research.

[ 21 ] But one thing becomes clear to us here—something that is important, important for the consciousness we are to cultivate within ourselves through our collaborative work in the branches. I have previously—you can read about this—drawn attention, from a different perspective, to the fact that life in the soul realm accounts for about one-third of the time one has lived between birth and death. Reasons for this are given in the books. But these reasons are presented from a different perspective than the one I am now presenting. One lives through the life of the nights. How “long” does one actually sleep normally? One sleeps through a third of one’s life. It is roughly true that one sleeps for a third of one’s life. Since one now passes through the nights after death, this lasts for a third of one’s earthly life. This is connected with passing through the nights. This is tremendously interesting and important. For it has been stated thus far for entirely different reasons. I have recorded this again, for example, in *An Outline of Esoteric Science*: one-third of one’s earthly life is spent reliving it after death—the kamaloka life. Now, from an entirely different perspective—one that was not even considered before—it turns out once more: This kamaloka life constitutes one-third of earthly life—from the perspective that one lives through the nights. You see, these are the kinds of things that, when they recur time and again, serve as immensely supportive and strengthening forces of proof for what spiritual science can offer humanity. One seeks a truth from a certain starting point and arrives at the conclusion: The kamaloka life lasts one-third of earthly life. — Then, from an entirely different perspective, one arrives at the same result. These results support one another. This occurs time and again, and it provides precisely that sense of certainty that is also given to those who are not yet able to conduct their own research. I have often drawn attention to this convergence. By tracing in detail, as we do in the branch of life, how things are discovered, we gradually gain an inner certainty and power of conviction—even if we still have a long way to go in our own path of knowledge to gain our own experiences and insights.

[ 22 ] Now, to conclude, I would like to share with you a truth that is of particular interest in our time, although it can be of interest to people at any time. I have already spoken in a public lecture, from one particular perspective, about deaths that occur when a person is struck by a bullet, for example, in the prime of life—when, so to speak, their physical body is taken from them. As I said, I have shown what becomes of these unused forces. I have demonstrated this from various perspectives in the past. Today I would like to draw attention to this experience of death from yet another perspective.

[ 23 ] How does one who has not lost his physical life due to illness or old age, but who has lost his body violently through a bullet or some other injury, how does such a person enter the spiritual world? I have discussed what remains of his unused powers. But how he himself enters the spiritual world remains a mystery. Especially in a time like ours, one sees so many souls passing through the gate of death into the spiritual world. Their bodies have been taken from them by an external influence. In the spiritual world, they differ greatly from the souls whose bodies have been taken by illness or old age. To explain and understand such things, one must be able to place the right elements alongside one another in the spiritual world. One must now be able to ask: With what must one compare this phenomenon—which has become a mystery—so that the mystery is resolved? — And it becomes clear that one must compare this phenomenon with something experienced in the physical world. Now, let us characterize this experience here in the physical world by first looking at those of a crudely materialistic disposition who will accept nothing other than what can be grasped in a coarse manner through sensory experience—that which, because it makes a coarse impression, is designated as “being.” But there is something else in this world that makes this life valuable, and that something else is ideals. Certainly, the most crass materialists will say: You cannot eat ideals; they have no real existence; they are merely a figment of the imagination. — But it is actually those people who bring in ideals who work toward the proper enrichment, elevation, and enlivenment of earthly existence. That which does not exist in a crude, materialistic sense must be brought into the very course of earthly existence so that this life may become valuable. The idealists are, in a certain sense, the messengers from divine worlds to earthly existence. For ideals are something like messages from divine worlds—something that belongs in the physical world but does not originate from this physical world. Ideals cannot be observed, nor can one experiment with them to demonstrate them empirically through experience. Nevertheless, ideals are like messages from a spiritual world.

[ 24 ] When the human soul—whose body has been taken from it, for example, by a bullet in the prime of life—ascends into the spiritual world through the gate of death, it not only leaves behind unused forces that are utilized in the manner I have already indicated, but it also brings a very specific consciousness with it into the spiritual worlds. Such a soul enters the spiritual worlds through the gate of death differently than other souls who were able to complete their lives or whose bodies were taken by illness. Those souls enter the spiritual world in such a way that they bring with them the thought of something that could have been down there in the physical world—namely, their own life from the point at which they sacrificed themselves. As far as their predispositions are concerned, this was—in terms of what might have been—already destined for the physical world; it could have been their natural life for the coming years. There would have been the possibility that, say, two years after death, the body would have stood before others as a physical body. Now it is not there. It could have been something in the physical world that is now not there. This is what the soul, from whom the body has been taken away, takes with it up into the spiritual world.

[ 25 ] Now it is just as necessary for the spiritual world that it be proclaimed up there how, down here in the world, there is something that possesses the predispositions of this coarse existence but does not manifest itself as coarse material existence. This proclamation is to the spiritual worlds something similar to what the proclamation of ideals is to the physical world. These are the “reverse idealists.” Down here, life can unfold in such a way that predispositions are not fully realized, and souls return from the physical world who have met a violent death. This gives rise to a proclamation up there among those who have not experienced this, which has the same significance as the proclamation of ideals here. Here in physical existence, it is proclaimed: Not only is that which makes an impression on the senses valuable, but the ideals that originate in the spiritual world are also valuable. — In the spiritual world, those from whom the body has been taken proclaim that there is a force which, although destined for sensory existence, does not enter into that sensory existence; a force that enters the world in a different way, a force that animates the spiritual world just as ideals animate the sensory world. This is a very significant finding of spiritual research, and it points out to us that sacrificial deaths also have significance for the spiritual world—not only the significance I explained yesterday in relation to the physical world, but also for the spiritual world. Among the souls of the spiritual world are those who look upon the ordinary course of life, but among them are also those who have learned that inclinations can be severed by a sudden jolt. And these are, in a sense, the reverse idealists of the spiritual world.

[ 26 ] Thus, the phenomena of life and the mysteries of existence are gradually revealed, and it is precisely in times such as ours—when so much that is mysterious can be sensed amid blood and suffering—that one truly gains the impression of how spiritual science alone can place human beings within the whole, full reality of life. Humanity is moving forward. Today’s natural science did not exist in the past; it has emerged from the twilight of the soul’s striving. Spiritual science must emerge in the same way. In the future, human beings will not be able to do without it. Today it still has many opponents, but human beings will increasingly sense the mysteries of existence and, as a result, increasingly recognize the necessity of approaching these mysteries through spiritual science. This must arise again and again anew in our souls as the thought that binds us to our spiritual movement—a thought that, in a sense, points us toward seeking within our spiritual movement something that must spread more and more throughout humanity, and which we must persevere in despite all the opposition that, quite naturally, still exists in our present time.

[ 27 ] I would like to emphasize this particularly strongly in our time, precisely from today’s perspective, as the gravity of our times should urge us, especially in these days, to do everything in our power to truly integrate spiritual science into the development of humanity, as far as it is up to us. And I would like to specify this exhortation in the sense that we must now bring this thought to life within ourselves all the more strongly, because current circumstances may well prevent us from being together as often as we are in normal times. And so let me address this exhortation to our souls: that now, in these times of war, we work all the more faithfully and devotedly in our individual branches, even if collaboration between you and, for example, myself may now be less frequent until we return to normal times—since traveling around the world is now much more difficult than usual— and it may be that right now we must learn to stand firmly on our own two feet and work independently within the individual branches. Doing what we can in this direction will truly bear fruit for what, as spiritual striving in our sense, must flow into the development of humanity. For time and again, we must also point to the thought: The great sacrifices that so many people must make in the present—and which are so intimately connected with what death conceals as a mystery and as pain in the development of humanity—these events actually have a proper relationship to our inner life only if we can view them from the perspective of spiritual science within the broader context of human history and historical development.

[ 28 ] It is not my intention to go into all sorts of obstacles and hindrances, which may already have reached your ears in recent times, since they had to be discussed in one place. But these things have nevertheless shown how necessary it is that we allow ourselves to be wholly and objectively captivated by the fruitfulness and necessity of the spiritual science movement, and that we are able to separate from it that which appears as our personal desires and will and will repeatedly stand in the way of the proper course of our spiritual science work as an obstacle and hindrance. Spiritual science is so rich in content that it can engage us in a purely objective way. Let us try, time and again, to bring to mind how easily personal, ambitious, or vain aspirations can become intertwined with what we are actually meant to grasp—and with which we should allow ourselves to be gripped as the spiritual life pulsating through the world.

[ 29 ] Some events that have recently taken place within our society have already led our souls to ponder: Ah, blood is being shed out there; out there, a large portion of humanity is struggling for things whose significance cannot even be gauged today; and there is an intellectual movement that could truly stimulate a purely objective interest—one in which one need not focus on what is merely personal, but inside, so much that is personal prevails—especially at a time when the soul must feel compelled to live in harmony with the great events. This, too, is a source of pain: the way the personal has become intertwined with what is supposed to be impersonal.

[ 30 ] Well, time and again—and especially today—we should look beyond our isolated lives to what all of European humanity, and humanity beyond, is experiencing, and say to ourselves: The true fruits—those hard-won ones—will only come to fruition in the future if what spiritual science seeks to incorporate into human development is actually integrated into humanity. If what survives for the future as fruits born of blood and pain, of suffering and deprivation, is united with what can be attained in thought through spiritual science, then in the fields that demand so many sacrifices today, a spiritual life—a life of humanity—will one day be able to blossom that is truly worthy of these sacrifices. With this in mind, let us conclude with the words:

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,
Direct their minds toward the spirit realm.

[ 31 ] May many such souls, who direct their minds toward the spiritual realm, arise within our ranks; then what blossoms and bears fruit from their efforts will truly become not merely a personal blessing, but a blessing for all humanity. With this in mind, whatever life may bring, let us continue to work together, holding fast to our cause with great dedication!