The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] Before I turn to the subject of our discussion today, it is a matter close to my heart to express, both personally and on behalf of our cause, my deepest satisfaction that the premises in which we are gathered here today can serve a purpose, a task, and an endeavor here in Munich that promises to have such an extraordinarily beneficial impact—and has indeed already begun to do so— and which we must believe can provide significant impetus to the intellectual life of our time.

[ 2 ] Turning to the subject of our discussion, I would like—especially at this time and on this occasion—not to fail to point out that anyone who is genuinely and wholeheartedly interested in the endeavors of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must, in this time of humanity’s gravest trial, reflect on the connections that exist between the fact that, precisely at this time—from the beginning of the 20th century onward— this spiritual scientific movement sought to send its impulses into the development of humanity, and the other fact that humanity, with its other endeavors, has—as one must surely admit—now found itself embroiled in catastrophic events in many areas. Even in the broadest circles today, people do not yet have a sufficiently serious and vivid understanding of the catastrophic events in which humanity is currently embroiled. After all, people today are often accustomed to wanting to live without the spirit. But wanting to live without the spirit essentially means living superficially, and living superficially, in turn, means that one misses out on much of what makes a particular impression from the events taking place around us. And it must be said that people today are particularly predisposed to missing out on much of this. Very few seek to form a sufficient understanding of the gravity and poignancy of current events. Most live from one day to the next. And if one ever attempts to speak of a time that might come later, people—and often precisely those on whom much depends—reject this in the most vehement manner. If, among its many tasks, spiritual science fulfills the one of making the human soul a little more energetic, a little more alert, then it has, in essence, accomplished something important precisely for our present time. Concepts of spiritual science simply require a greater effort of thought, a greater intensity of feeling and perception than other concepts—namely, those that actually dominate the present.

[ 3 ] Especially in these times, it is by no means unimportant to familiarize ourselves with the concepts derived from spiritual research, which can point the way toward and guide us into an understanding of the present in the broadest sense. Today I would like to develop a few fundamental concepts upon which we can then build during our next branch meeting—concepts that are suited to shedding light on important aspects of the present. Today I would like to begin with more general ideas—ideas that touch more on the personal nature of the human being—but which, from a certain perspective, will provide the foundation for our subsequent reflections in the spirit-scientific sense.

[ 4 ] In the course of our spiritual scientific reflections, we must emphasize again and again how a shift in our states of consciousness permeates our lives between our birth or conception and our death: the shift between sleeping and waking. In a general sense, in broad terms, human beings are aware of the difference between sleeping and waking; but in a more intimate sense, only a spiritual scientific perspective can reveal the true difference between sleeping and waking to the human soul. In everyday life, people tend to think that they sleep only from the moment they fall asleep until they wake up, and that they are awake from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep. But this is only a rough outline of the matter. In truth, the boundary we draw here between sleeping and waking is entirely misplaced. For the state of dull consciousness—which in many respects is not consciousness at all—that which we experience as the state of sleep, extends into our waking life; in it, we remain with a part of our being from the moment we wake until we fall asleep. For from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, we are by no means awake with our entire human being; rather, we are awake only with a part of it, while another part continues to sleep, even when we believe ourselves to be awake. In a certain sense, we are always sleeping human beings. We are truly awake only in relation to our perception and in relation to our imagination. As we perceive the external world through our senses—as we hear, see, and so on—we are awake in this hearing, seeing, in short, in this perception; there we are fully awake. We are also awake—albeit to a lesser degree—in our imagination. When we form thoughts, when ideas unfold within us, when memories rise from the dark depths of our inner life, then we are awake with regard to the processes we are experiencing—that is, with regard to the processes of perception, of perceiving, and of imagining.

[ 5 ] But as you know, in our inner life, in addition to perception and imagination, we also have feeling and volition. As far as feeling is concerned, we are not awake, even if we think we are; rather, when it comes to feeling, we know no more about what is going on within us when we feel than we do when we dream while asleep. The degree and intensity of consciousness in which we find ourselves while feeling are exactly the same as the degree and intensity of consciousness when we dream. And just as dreams rise as images from the unconscious depths of the soul, so too do feelings rise as emotional forces. We are no less awake when we feel than when we dream; the only difference is that, after sleeping, we bring our dreams into our ordinary waking, imaginative consciousness and distinguish the dream from wakefulness by remembering it, whereas with feeling we do this simultaneously. The feeling itself is dreamed within us, but we accompany our feeling with ideas. In these mental images, we do not have the feeling within them; rather, we look at the feeling from the perspective of the mental image, just as we look at a dream after waking up; only, with feeling, we do this simultaneously, and therefore we do not become aware that, in actual consciousness, we have only the mental image of the feeling. The feeling lies down in the regions of dreams, just like the dream itself.

[ 6 ] And the will itself—you can already see this from the outside: What do you know about what actually happens when you make the decision to pick up a book and your hand then reaches for it? What do you know about what is going on there between your ideas, which exist solely in your consciousness: “I want to pick up the book”—and all the mysterious processes that then take place within the organism? We know what we think about willing, but to ordinary consciousness, we know nothing of willing itself. While we daydream about this feeling, we miss the actual, essential content of willing. Insofar as we are perceiving, imagining human beings, we are awake; but when we feel and will while awake, we dream and sleep. Thus, through feeling and willing, the state of sleep creeps into our waking consciousness. We must therefore say: The state in which we find ourselves—from falling asleep to waking up—with regard to our entire being also applies to our feeling and willing even when we are awake.

[ 7 ] Through perception and imagination, we come to recognize the world around us, which we call the physical-sensory world; through feeling and willing, we do not come to know the world in which we exist as feeling and willing human beings. We are constantly in a supersensible world. Our feeling and our willing, in relation to their powers, originate in this supersensible world, just as our perception and our imagination originate in the physical-sensory world. We have no physical organs for feeling and willing, but we do have physical organs for perception and imagination. The fact that physiologists believe there are organs for feeling and willing—though some physiologists, thoughtful physiologists, do not believe this—stems solely from the fact that they do not know what they are talking about, and yet they speak of something about which they wish to know something but know nothing.

[ 8 ] What I have just described is, in a sense, the natural state in which we live between birth and death. In that state, we are awake in terms of our perception and imagination, but asleep in terms of our feelings and our will.

[ 9 ] The situation is different between death and a new birth. In a certain sense, it is the reverse: there we begin to awaken in terms of our feelings and our will. And in a certain sense, we then—even though sleep is a different state in the world where we then live with our soul—sleep through our perception and our imagination. But you will be able to see from what I have just said that the so-called dead differ from the so-called living, fundamentally speaking, only in that the so-called living sleep through that in which the so-called dead actually dwell. The so-called living person sleeps through the feeling and willing that constantly flow through their being; the dead person is immersed in this feeling and willing. It will not be difficult for you to understand that the dead are also in the same world in which we, as so-called living beings, exist. We are separated from them only in that we do not perceive the world in which they are, in which they live and act. Those who are dead are always around us; those beings who live there without having attained a physical incarnation are always around us. We simply do not perceive them. You need only imagine a person sleeping in a room: the objects are around him, but he does not perceive them. The fact that something is not perceived is, after all, no proof that it is not there. It says absolutely nothing about whether it is present around us or not. In fact, with regard to the world of the dead, we are in exactly the same situation as we are with regard to physical beings when we are asleep. We live in the same world as the dead and as the higher realms of the higher hierarchies; they are right in the midst of us; we are separated from them only by our state of consciousness.

[ 10 ] But the fact is that human beings, so to speak, perceive only a part of that reality, grasp only a part of the reality in which they are actually immersed. If human beings were to grasp the full reality, then their knowledge would, of course, look quite different from what it does now. But within this knowledge would lie not only the forces that come from the natural realms known to us, but also the forces of higher spiritual beings and those from the realm of the so-called dead. This is still a grotesque notion for the vast majority of humanity today. This must become a matter that is thoroughly understood by broader circles of humanity, especially by those who are interested in the development and progress of human life. For right up to our own time, human beings have been guided, to a greater or lesser extent, by dark, unknown forces with regard to everything in their surroundings that they cannot perceive. This guidance by dark, unknown forces—we will speak more about this at the next branch meeting—has more or less ceased in our time. In our time, human beings must consciously connect with certain forces that extend from that realm into ours, the realm in which the so-called dead also reside. It will, of course, present some difficulties to bring such matters to the level of consciousness required of humanity if the real and the true are to replace some of the fantasy and inadequacy that pervades the present and has shaped it so catastrophically. By way of introduction, I would like to draw attention to just one point, just one thing in this regard.

[ 11 ] Among the various lines of inquiry that are considered “scientific,” there are also historical ones. History, for example, is taught and studied in schools. But what is this history? The study of history—as those in the know are aware—is not much older than a little over a hundred years. Anyone familiar with the literature of earlier times knows that what is now called the science of history is not much older. I do not wish to go into this further. But what is now considered history is understood by people and grounded by people using the same ideas and the same concepts that one has in ordinary, everyday life—the same concepts that one can apply when observing nature. And no one asks themselves whether it is actually appropriate to view historical life in the same way one views the external natural world. For that is simply not possible. For in the historical life of humanity, there are impulses at work that cannot be grasped with the concepts we hold in our waking consciousness. But anyone who can truly observe history knows that we are governed in historical life by such impulses that, for ordinary consciousness, are accessible only in the state of dreaming—at most, in the state of dreaming. What flows by as history, humanity dreams away. Just as humanity dreams away its emotional life, so too does it dream away what historical impulses are. And if one attempts to view the historical life of humanity using the ordinary concepts that are very well suited to the natural sciences, one cannot grasp it. One merely observes it on the surface. What is it that is taught and learned in schools as history? It has no more connection to real history than if you were to examine a corpse and regard what you can describe about the corpse as a description of a human being. The examination of a corpse is the entirety of history as it is commonly understood today. History must undergo the most thorough transformation. And what prevails in history will, in the future, only be grasped through inspiration, through inspired concepts. Then we will have true history. Then we will know what prevails in humanity, and we will also know what influences social life from historical life.

[ 12 ] What I’m saying here actually has a profound meaning. People believe they understand social and historical life. They don’t understand it because they try to grasp it only through the ordinary concepts of everyday life. Of course, this isn’t apparent when one writes history, because in that context it doesn’t matter much whether one gets it right. One could use obvious examples to show that it doesn’t matter much! Well, let me offer one such obvious example: I believe you usually learn in history books that America was discovered in 1492. That is, of course, the case. But based on what appears in history books—and in history in general—one forms the impression that America was completely unknown in the past, no matter how far back one goes. That is not the case. America was unknown for only a few centuries. Even in the 12th and 13th centuries, there was lively traffic from Iceland and Ireland to America. In particular, medicinal herbs and other goods were brought to Europe through this lively traffic. And for certain reasons connected with Europe’s inner karma—and with the role that Ireland played in earlier times—it came to pass that everything was done from Rome to cut Europe off from America and to make America virtually forgotten. That was actually what happened at the time from Rome—not even to the detriment of European conditions; it was well-intentioned toward Europe. I merely wish to use this example to illustrate that what is a fact does not necessarily have to be a historical fact, and that one can be completely ignorant of an important matter from a historical perspective. Now, on the other hand, however, it is significant whether one is historically knowledgeable or historically ignorant with regard to the social and societal life of humanity in general. That is significant. How often do we hear people say today: “One must think this way or that way about this event or that event, because history teaches this or that.” — Try taking a look at today’s journalistic literature—especially the more superficial kind—and you’ll see how often you come across the phrase: “History teaches this or that.” — While people may overlook some of the historical events they witness, they still form an opinion about them—or allow one to be instilled in them. Very often one hears the phrase that history teaches this or that. And very prominent men said something at the beginning of this war about what history teaches. At that time, it was the sincere conviction of so-called intelligent people that this war could last at most four to six months, given the general social and economic conditions of the world. Many predicted this; at most four to six months! This has come to pass just as what was uttered by someone far greater than a historical prophecy has come to pass—but precisely only as a historical prophecy based on the ordinary conceptions of humanity’s ordinary consciousness, which simply cannot grasp history, because history is, at best, dreamed of, partly slept through, and can only be comprehended through grand concepts. When Schiller took up his philosophical professorship at the University of Jena, he delivered his world-famous inaugural address on the study of history. He gave this address shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution. There Schiller—truly no insignificant figure—expressed his conviction, drawn from history—though it was, after all, a conviction based solely on the ordinary notions derived from history—not verbatim, but in essence: History does indeed teach us that in earlier times many disputes and wars took place among people; but from all that has happened, we can infer that in the future the European peoples will indeed still have their disagreements, yet they will always feel themselves to be members of one great family and will not tear one another apart. — So said Friedrich von Schiller! Then came the French Revolution of 1789. And everything that befell the families of nations in Europe during the 19th century, and what has happened now, so many years later—all of this has truly and thoroughly shattered Schiller’s so-called historical judgment.

[ 13 ] History will only teach us something when we are able to penetrate it with inspired concepts. For it is not only the living who play a role in the historical life of humanity, but also the souls of the so-called dead—the spirits with whom the so-called dead souls live just as we live with the beings of the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms. Today, this is often dismissed as a cliché. But humanity will have to thoroughly break the habit of accordinging that cliché the recognition it currently gives it. It will only be able to do so, however, if it appropriates concepts saturated with reality—true concepts. And a particularly important, true concept is precisely the one that conveys to us the awareness that we are not separated from the so-called dead by anything other than our consciousness—a consciousness that, in relation to the world in which the dead are all around us, and in relation to our world of feeling and will, is a sleeping consciousness, just as ordinary sleeping consciousness is in relation to the objects around us from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. Clairvoyant consciousness provides confirmation at every turn of what I have now characterized in more general terms.

[ 14 ] But the question may well arise: How is it that human beings know nothing about the world in which they actually live—the world they traverse with every step of their lives? — Yes, you see, the very way in which clairvoyant consciousness sheds light on what we might call communication with the so-called dead is living proof that, for ordinary consciousness, this world in which the dead live must initially remain unknown. I need only describe to you a few features of that communication which—albeit with a certain development of clairvoyant, intuitive consciousness—can take place with the so-called dead, and then you will see why it is that in ordinary life one knows nothing about communication with the dead. It is entirely possible—even if it has its questionable aspects in certain respects—for a person to awaken their consciousness in a particular way so that the world of the dead is open to them, so that they can perceive the world of the so-called dead, and so that they are able, if I may put it that way, to communicate with individual dead people. Then, if they truly wish to communicate with the dead, they must adopt a completely different way of behaving in their consciousness if they are to achieve reliable communication. They must adopt a completely different way of being than the state of consciousness we have here in the physical world. I would like to mention a few characteristics.

[ 15 ] You see, when you interact with another person here in the physical world, you have certain habits regarding that interaction. When I talk to someone, I am accustomed here on the physical plane to the fact that when I ask them something or tell them something, I speak, and I am aware that the speech flows from my soul through my speech organs to them. I am aware that I am speaking. I am also aware of this in relation to my external perception. And when he answers me or tells me something—this other person here on the physical plane—then I hear his words; his words reach me.

[ 16 ] This is not the case with fully conscious communication—with semi-conscious communication it is different—with the dead. There, it is exactly the opposite. And it is—if one may put it that way in such a realm—that it is, in fact, quite different from what one would expect. When I stand before the deceased, he speaks in his soul the very thing I ask him, or what I wish to convey to him; that is what I hear him say. What he tells me resounds from within my own soul.

[ 17 ] You have to get used to that. One must get used to the fact that what the other person says resonates from one’s own soul, and what one says oneself is echoed back from the spiritual world outside. This is so unlike everything a person habitually experiences here in the physical world that it doesn’t even occur to them to take a stance on such a matter. For just think about it: When you go through life and, on some occasion, something rises up from your soul, you attribute it to yourself. In a certain sense, human beings are, as some say, selfish beings, and they are not easily inclined to attribute what rises up from their soul to anything other than their own inspiration or genius—whatever one wishes to call it. That among the things that rise from our soul, there is much that is in truth being told to us by the dead—this is something one only comes to recognize through contemplative consciousness. The realm of the dead continually influences our will, continually influences our feelings, and continually rises up. We may attribute something that arises within us to a good idea; in truth, it is communication with a dead person. And this is, of course, quite unusual for a person. That is why they pay no attention at all to such things—whether, I might say, from the gray spiritual environment, it may be for them as if their own thoughts were surrounding them. If a person can be so objective toward his thoughts that they seem to swarm around him, then the dead person understands these thoughts. Even in ordinary consciousness, a person is already in connection with the dead, but he is not aware of it because he is unable to interpret the fact I have just mentioned.

[ 18 ] To understand this, however, one must consider that we have two other states of consciousness besides sleeping, waking, and dreaming. We have two other important states of consciousness—indeed, extraordinarily important ones—but we do not pay attention to them in everyday life. We do not pay attention to them for a certain reason, which will become clear to you the moment I name these two other states of consciousness: we have the state of falling asleep and the state of waking up. But they do not last long; they pass so quickly that people do not pay attention to their content. The most important things take place at the moment of falling asleep and at the moment of waking up. And if one learns to recognize the moments of falling asleep and waking up according to their true nature, then, from a certain point of view, one also gains a proper understanding of the relationship between human beings and the world in which the dead are also with us.

[ 19 ] I said: Human beings are actually in constant contact with the world of the dead, and this connection is particularly strong at the moment of falling asleep and at the moment of waking up. And indeed, as clairvoyant consciousness reveals, at the moment of falling asleep, a person is particularly well-suited to ask questions of the dead, to convey messages to the dead, and so on—in short, to turn to the dead. At the moment of waking, a person is particularly well-suited to receive messages from the dead. They receive these messages quickly; they are then immediately awake. What has flashed by in this way is immediately drowned out by the tumultuous state of wakefulness. In atavistic states, this was known and even alluded to not so long ago among more primitive peoples. But even in more primitive regions, such things are gradually disappearing under the influence of our materialistic culture. Anyone who grew up among our older generations in rural areas knows that a basic rule among the people was that that in the morning, upon waking, one should remain still for a little while if possible, not look immediately out the sunlit window, not look into the light, because people did not want the aftereffects of sleep—what touched the soul especially upon waking—to be drowned out by the stormy process of waking up. Primitive man still wanted to lie quietly for a while in the dark room; he did not want to look out the window once he had awakened.

[ 20 ] It does, however, take a certain effort—though it is not all that difficult to perceive—to realize that there is something special associated with the moments of waking up and falling asleep. To be able to pay attention to such things requires, if I may say so, a certain alertness of thought—a quality that has never been as scarce as it is in our time. One could cite grotesque examples of the state of this alertness of thought. Trivial examples that permeate everyday life—you can find them, so to speak, right on the street. I’d like to give a very banal example.

[ 21 ] A few days ago, my eye fell on an advertisement that took up about one-eighth of the space in a major newspaper—an advertisement that I’ve noticed is quite widespread. It was a promotional pitch for a widely used memory technique: Pöhlmann, or something like that. There’s a lot of advertising out there. This ad began something like this: It claimed that one cannot gain influence over other people unless one uses Mr. Pöhlmann’s method, rather than some other method. — I’m not talking now about the permissibility or impermissibility, about the right or wrong of “gaining influence” and so on; that’s none of our business here. Rather, I’m talking about what is said about the matter in the advertisement from a formal standpoint. It stated: Certain people claim to gain influence over others by cultivating personal magnetism or by strengthening—who knows what—in the human being. One could easily prove to these people that they are not telling the truth, for one of them need only say whether he has ever succeeded, through personal influence, in getting Rothschild or other wealthy people to give him a million. Since this has demonstrably not been achieved—and it certainly would have been attempted if it had been possible—this proves that one cannot gain influence over people through this method. For influence can only be gained through science and education. — Then the Pöhlmann method is described. It is now known that quite a number of people are convinced of the following: All those other guys don’t have the opportunity to cultivate the skills needed to gain influence over people, because that’s quite clear, isn’t it? They haven’t gained enough influence over Rothschild for him to hand over his millions to them. — How many people—ask yourself this—read this ad and don’t immediately raise the objection: “Well, does Pöhlmann really have so many students who’ve managed to get a million from Rothschild?” — You need only ask yourself how many people have this obvious thought!

[ 22 ] This is a trivial example, but it shows you how our thinking doesn’t really engage with what we read. I chose this example, first because of its everyday nature, and second, because it goes without saying that there is no one here who would not have thought that Pöhlmann probably didn’t succeed in getting the million either. Of course, those who would fall for such an ad are all out of the picture, and out of a certain courtesy, I won’t mention any example that any of those present might fall for! But what I want to say is that in countless situations in life, from morning to night, people are constantly reading these things. People say they don’t pay any attention to it. They don’t pay attention to it. I recently read a speech that contained the following sentence: “Our connection to a certain empire is the key point that must guide our future policy.” Imagine a line of reasoning constructed in this way: a connection is a key point that becomes a direction! Anyone who thinks this way is capable of handling and doing all sorts of things in life. But one fails to notice the connections between such crippled thinking and public life.

[ 23 ] Today, however, it is necessary to address the inattention of thought—which is precisely a hallmark of our culture—and to pay particular attention to this very inattention of thought. Thoughts that can be carried out: that is the first requirement if one is to be able to pay attention to such things as the revelations of the moment of falling asleep and waking up.

[ 24 ] I once attended a lecture by a very famous literary historian. It was his inaugural lecture, and he went to great lengths to prepare it. He had formulated all sorts of questions about literary history, and at the end he said: “Well, gentlemen, as you can see, I have led you into a forest of question marks!” — At the time, I had to picture it: a forest of question marks! Just imagine: a forest of question marks!

[ 25 ] Those who are accustomed to acting upon the ideas that form within them—that is, those who cultivate alertness in their thinking—are the ones who are prepared to pay attention to such things as the moments of waking and falling asleep. But what is not perceived is still there. And human communication with the dead exists, and it is particularly active at the moment of falling asleep and waking up. Essentially, every person asks countless questions at the moment of falling asleep and sends countless messages to beloved deceased ones, and receives messages and answers from the dead at the moment of waking up. However, in a certain way—I would say—one can cultivate this communication with the dead. We have often discussed various ways to cultivate communication with the dead, but today we would like to add the following:

[ 26 ] There is a difference between whether a thought we have in connection with a deceased person leads us to be able to turn our thoughts toward that person at the moment we fall asleep, or whether it does not. That is a certain difference. Anyone who does not approach life solely in a sensually egoistic way will, out of a healthy sense of feeling, have the need not to interrupt the connection that karma has brought them with certain individuals who have now passed through the gate of death—whether recently or some time ago—and they will likely turn their thoughts more often toward such departed individuals. It may well be that such thoughts, which we associate with the image of departed individuals, result in genuine communication with the dead, even if we do not know them, even if we cannot pay attention to what is happening at the moment of falling asleep. But certain thoughts are more conducive to such communication, while others are less so. Abstract thoughts—thoughts we harbor with a certain indifference, perhaps even merely out of a sense of duty—are ill-suited to reaching the deceased at the moment of falling asleep. In contrast, thoughts and images that arise from a sense of a special bond that united us with the deceased in life are well-suited to reaching the deceased. Let us remember the deceased in such a way that we do not merely think of him with abstract thoughts or cold images, but rather recall a moment in our soul when we felt warmth at his side, when what he said was not merely a message but something loving; let us remember precisely those moments we spent with the deceased in a communion of feelings, in a communion of the impulses of the will as well, let us remember such moments when, together with the deceased, we undertook this or that, decided on what was valuable to both of us, what led us both to a shared action—in short, anything that made our hearts resonate together; let us bring this resonance of hearts to life, and then it will color our thoughts of the deceased in such a way that the thought flows toward him at the moment we next fall asleep. Whether we have this thought at nine o’clock, at twelve o’clock, or at two o’clock—any time of day can offer us an opportunity to have this thought—it remains and, at the moment of falling asleep, goes to the deceased. At the moment of waking, we can receive answers, communications, or messages from the deceased once again. This does not necessarily have to happen precisely at the moment of waking—if one is unable to pay attention to the deceased approaching our soul—but it can somehow rise up from our soul in the course of the day in the form of some kind of insight, as we believe, if we believe in such things at all. But here, too, some circumstances are more favorable, others less so. Under certain circumstances, the dead are more likely to find access to our soul in order to speak this or that into our soul, so that it speaks within our soul itself; in other cases, the circumstances are less favorable for such a thing. The circumstances are particularly favorable when we have formed a clear and accurate conception of the nature of the dead, when we have such a strong interest in the nature of the dead that this nature has truly stood before our mind’s eye. You may ask yourselves: Why is he saying this, anyway? If someone was close to you, surely you have an idea of their nature! — I don’t believe that at all, my dear friends, especially not in our time! In our time, people pass each other by and know very, very little about one another. That may not alienate us at all from here, from the physical world; but it does alienate us greatly from the world that the deceased is experiencing. You see, here in the physical world, there are numerous unconscious or subconscious forces and impulses that bring people closer together, even if they don’t want to get to know one another. It is said to happen in life—as some of you may have read—that people can be married for decades and still know very little about one another. But there are other impulses that do not rely on mutual understanding, impulses that bring people together. Life is permeated everywhere by subconscious and unconscious impulses. But as I said, these subconscious impulses bind us here; they do not bind us to the beings who have gone before us in death. It is therefore necessary that we truly take something into our souls through which the essence of the other lives on within us. And the more vividly it lives within us, the easier it has access to our soul, and the easier it can communicate with us.

[ 27 ] This is what I would like to describe to you regarding the ongoing, ever-recurring interaction between the so-called living and the so-called dead. Each of us is in constant contact with the so-called dead, and the reason this is not recognized is simply because we are unable to pay sufficient attention to the moment of falling asleep and the moment of waking up. I said this to give you a more concrete picture of this coexistence with the supersensible world in which the dead reside. It will become even more concrete to us when we take a few other circumstances into consideration.

[ 28 ] Younger people die, older people die. And yet, when younger people pass away, their death is, in relation to those left behind, something different from the death of older people who pass away. One can really only talk about such things if one is able to consider specific, concrete circumstances in these areas. I am by no means describing this from the perspective of a general science; rather, I am merely summarizing what has actually occurred in individual, concrete cases. When one observes with an attentive consciousness what happens when children die and are taken from their parents, when young people pass through the gate of death away from their loved ones, and when one then comes to recognize how these souls continue to live, this insight presents itself in such a way that one would like to summarize it in the following words. One must say: In the consciousness of these younger people who have passed through the gate of death lives what can be characterized by saying: They are not actually lost to the living; they remain there, they remain nearby, within the being of those who survive. As younger people, they do not separate from those left behind for a long time; they remain within their sphere. Something different can be said about those who have passed away at an older age—from parents to children and so on. These matters are perhaps best expressed epigrammatically. Of those who have passed away at an older age, one can say: The souls of these people who died later in life, for their part, do not lose the souls of those who have been left behind. — So, while those left behind do not lose the younger souls, the older people, once they have passed through the gate of death, do not lose the souls of those left behind—even though these others are still here. In a sense, they take with them what they want from us; they have everything more easily from the souls who have remained here that the younger ones can only have if they stay there. And that is what they do—they remain, more or less, in the sphere of those left behind, the younger souls.

[ 29 ] One can study these conditions in a very specific way, so that what I have just said can become a certainty. Of course, one must study these things with contemplative awareness. And with contemplative awareness, one can study grief and the pain of separation. Grief and the pain of separation are actually two very different states. People do not realize this, but when one observes the grief and the pain in a person’s soul over the death of a child, it is quite different from the grief and pain one can observe when an older person has passed away. People do not realize it, but it is fundamentally different when one assesses it in the soul as an inner state.

[ 30 ] The noteworthy point is this: When, for example, parents mourn their children who died at an early age, this grief—in terms of its true substance and its deeper impulse—is in fact merely a reflex, a reflection of what the surviving child instills in the souls of those left behind. The child has remained, and by remaining, it experiences all sorts of things, which then find their way into the soul of the bereaved and stir an impulse there. It is a pain of compassion, a pain of empathy; it is, in fact, the pain or suffering of the child itself that one experiences within oneself. Of course, one attributes this pain to oneself, but it is a pain born of compassion. Please do not misunderstand me—we must, after all, use these terms in a reasonable way, without all sorts of negative connotations—one could say: When a younger relative dies, one is possessed by the pain arising from the inner life of the deceased—albeit in a normal way—so that it does no harm; the person lives on within us, and what we interpret as pain is their life within us.

[ 31 ] The situation is different when we mourn an older person who has left us. In that case, a pain arises that is not a reflection of what lives within the other person, for the other person can truly draw out what is in our soul; they do not lose us of their own accord. We cannot be consumed by their pain, nor can we be consumed by their feelings in this way at all, for they have no desire to penetrate us with their feelings—since they are, after all, drawing us along with them. They do not lose us. That is why this pain, this grief, is a selfish grief, a selfish pain. This is not a reproach; it is certainly justified, but we must distinguish between these two kinds of grief in a very fundamental way.

[ 32 ] The matter becomes significant when one shifts one’s focus from the description of grief or of living alongside the departed to the deceased themselves. If the relationship to a person who passed away at a young age is entirely different from the relationship to a person who passed away in later years, then it becomes understandable that the way we honor their memory and preserve their remembrance must also differ in each case. Toward a younger child, we will honor their memory appropriately if we take into account that the child is still with us, that the child lives on in our hearts, and that we are especially eager to embrace what we would have been able to offer the child had they remained with us. Experience shows that such children, after their death, particularly desire to find universal human values in the way they are remembered and in the way they are treated, and to find in the rites of the dead something that reflects more universal concerns—something that has little to do with specific interests. For children who have passed away, for example, the Catholic funeral service is more appropriate, as it follows a universal rite—a rite that applies equally to everyone. A child who has passed away would want a funeral service that is more universally human—one that is not intended solely for the child or tailored specifically to the child, but one that could apply to everyone.

[ 33 ] For an elderly person who has passed away, a Protestant funeral service is preferable—one that takes into account the specific circumstances of their life and includes a eulogy that refers to their particular individual circumstances. And if one wishes to honor the memory of such an elderly person who has passed away, it is particularly helpful to focus on details of their life that were unique to them—on their specific, individual life—and to draw from those memories the thoughts through which one celebrates the memory of the elderly person who has passed away.

[ 34 ] You can see from this that, viewed correctly, spiritual science cannot remain merely a theory. It reveals to us something about the conditions that exist in the world from which we are cut off only because we let our feelings drift away and our impulses of will fall asleep. It speaks of the worlds in which we are present with our feelings and will. If we grasp the concepts of spiritual science with sufficient intensity and the right energy, they do not remain mere concepts; they have an effect on feeling and will. Just think how enriching these spiritual scientific ideas can be for life! Clergy who are responsible for conducting funeral rites will find the right approach and the right rhythm for these rites in a completely different way than if they were to stick to mere abstract theology.

[ 35 ] Now, this is really no surprise, since the world of which spiritual science speaks is the real world in which our feelings and our impulses of will live, so that what it is able to give also, in turn, influences our feelings and will. It influences our feelings—but also everything else—when, for example, we develop feelings toward the dead. But it is also meant to influence our impulses of will. This should be borne in mind especially in our time. For if one were to trace the impulses of will in the people of our time, one would encounter only very shallow layers of the human soul. This is precisely what is characteristic of our time: that humanity needs to seek spiritual impulses for its will. And this is the tragedy of the present age: that people have not yet resolved to seek them. Salvation from the turmoil of our time will only come if people are willing to seek impulses for their outer life from the spirit. As I have already said this evening, people today still reject this in the broadest circles. They will have to learn to accept it, for this era will become, for the generation that must pass through it, a great teacher to an even greater extent than has already been the case.

[ 36 ] We will then build on these concepts presented today—which relate more to the individual and the personal—next Sunday morning, in order to speak specifically in relation to current circumstances, but in the true sense of spiritual science.