The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Indeed, due to the great events of our time, many of those souls who have united their aspirations with ours have already passed through the gates of death. As I have already hinted to you from this place during these times of war: it is precisely through what has been experienced with these souls that it has been confirmed that the souls who have passed through the gate of death in the midst of battle continue to live out what this great era demands of them. They live in union with the spirit of their people; they continue to fight with spiritual weapons. But this, my dear friends, is what falls to us in particular with regard to these souls: to unite our loving thoughts and our most heartfelt impulses that bind us to them in love. When the storm of events has passed—in which these souls in particular are intertwined, even though they have already passed through the gate of death, albeit in the best sense—or when the time is right, the opportunity will arise to commemorate these dear departed with precisely those thoughts and ideas that must inspire us.

[ 2 ] Even in other ways, especially during these turbulent times, the power of death has sent its warnings throughout our ranks. Just today, we entrusted the earthly remains of our dear friend Sophie Stinde to the elements of the earth. Numerous souls, including many from this city, will surely feel a deep connection—in the truest sense—to her, one of the most loyal collaborators within our ranks. When I am able to speak in Munich in the coming days, it will be among my duties—but duties performed with the deepest love—to commemorate our dear Sophie Stinde within our spiritual movement as well.

[ 3 ] In many ways, my dear friends, we have been reminded of that which—as if summarizing all the other mysteries of life—stands at the center of the many enigmas of existence: death. Death, which so often intrudes upon earthly existence in such a painful, yet always enigmatic way—especially for those who are sensitive to life’s mysteries—and which, within earthly existence itself, is something that can never be fully understood through that existence alone. It is certainly well-founded in the deepest sense to bring together these two thoughts, which were once presented in the topic of one of the public lectures, “The Mystery of Death and the Riddles of Life.” For a contemplation that addresses death does not, as many—especially in the materialist camp—believe, refer only to something remote from earthly life, something that is actually none of the earthly human being’s concern. Rather, a worldview-based contemplation of death draws from the depths of existence such insights that—precisely through the ‘mystery of death’—make life here on earth a powerful and meaningful one. And that is why one must not allow oneself to be deterred, even from a worldview perspective, from approaching the enigma and mystery of death precisely in order to explain and shed light on life.

[ 4 ] And so, especially in this time—when death has been so close to us, even within our own ranks, particularly in the past year, and when it also confronts us in so many ways through the historical events in which we find ourselves—let us weave the mystery of death into our reflections of these days on various questions of worldview. By approaching the mystery of death, we can contemplate death where it, so to speak, still fully intervenes in immediate life. The deceased himself takes leave of this sensory life; he enters a new sphere. But he remains present in the grief of those he has left behind; he remains present in the thoughts of those in whom the deceased was able to stir thoughts, sensations, and feelings while he was still among the living. And it was not merely a beautiful custom, springing from the deepest human needs, to hold festivals for the dead—festivals of remembrance—everywhere where the human heart is not cold and barren. These festivals of the dead extend into our own time as well—in the Catholic All Souls’ Day, in the Protestant festival of the dead, and many other such festivals extend into our time in more or less individual ways. Who would not feel that, in the very fact that these festivals of the dead extend into our time, even a materialistic age pays tribute to spiritual life? Even if materialism has already so corroded souls that they do so only unconsciously, even materialistic souls will shrink from approaching what is associated with the customary festivals of the dead in any way other than with a deepened soul and a deepened heart. The dead remain alive in what the living can feel, sense, and think for them. And so, even when we contemplate death in the strictest sense, we can begin this contemplation of death right in the midst of life.

[ 5 ] We know from the general reflections that have been made over many years that we must never say: Here is the physical-sensory world, and separate from it stands the spiritual world. — The physical-sensory world extends upward into the spiritual world, and the spiritual world extends downward into the physical-sensory world. And even though human beings’ external senses perceive the physical-sensory world only through sensory perception, just as air in the gross sense spreads out immediately, so too is the spirit spread out everywhere, permeating and surging through everything that human beings, in their physical life and with their normal senses, perceive merely through the senses. And those who have passed through the gate of death—those who are in the spiritual world—reach into our sensory world with their impulses and forces. So that we can say: Even though the bond that connects those living in the physical body with the dead who live in the spirit lies beyond the threshold of normal consciousness, this bond is nonetheless a real one. And for those who delve deeply into spiritual science, many a mystery must be unraveled—mysteries that must necessarily be solved in order to understand life where it must be understood, not from a theoretical standpoint, but from the standpoint of life itself—from the standpoint of life that encompasses not only thought, but the soul in its entirety and in its full scope.

[ 6 ] Let’s try to imagine what we can understand about death from our everyday lives. The deceased leaves us. What changes outwardly is that our eyes no longer see him, that we can no longer exchange a handshake with him, and that our words no longer flow from us to him or from him to us. What flowed from their emotional currents into our hearts as warmth no longer flows to us in the sensory world. During the time we were able to live with them, with the help of their physical body—the one with which they clothed themselves in the physical world—they constantly conjured up anew the image we were able to have of them. The change that has taken place consists in the fact that now, when the soul to whom we were close has passed through the gate of death, we no longer have the support for our connection with this soul that is brought about by the image of this person being created within us through the sensory impulses emanating from him—with all that this evokes in terms of sensations, feelings, impulses of will, capacity for love, sympathy, and antipathy. What continues to live within us from the moment the soul has passed beyond us through the gate of death is the image that must now exist within us, permeating us from within. If we wish to raise this image—which lives on in our etheric body, but especially in the astral body and the “I,” though this remains unconscious to us in normal consciousness—to the level of consciousness of our physical existence, we must allow it to arise from within. What we have preserved within ourselves from our relationship with the deceased, we must pour forth from the innermost depths of the soul—that is, from the “I” and the astral body—into those parts of our human being that give rise to consciousness and perception: into the etheric body and the physical body.

[ 7 ] When the soul that had passed through the gate of death was still with us, it still created the image; the image shone upon us from the outside, and we need only respond to it with what our own soul has to offer. Once the deceased has left us, we are then dependent on pouring what we have preserved of them into our outer human shell ourselves, so that the concept, the idea, the image of them can come before our soul. We are then no longer supported—as we are when remembering an acquaintance who is still living on earth—by the thought that this memory is not the only one we have, that we can also see him outwardly. This is precisely the profound turning point for us: that from now on, as long as we ourselves have not passed through the gate of death, we find ourselves dependent on memory.

[ 8 ] This memory of the unconscious forces within us can never be erased from the deepest parts of our soul—the “I” and the astral body. And when we drift off to sleep at night, when the impressions of the physical external world fade from our ordinary daytime consciousness, when all the thoughts we may have had from waking until falling asleep fade away, then, within what we carry out of our physical body into our ego and astral body, the imaginations—the luminous images—of those personalities with whom we were connected and who have passed away from us through the gate of death begin to shine. In that part of our being that lives within us from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, the dead live with us, just as the living on Earth live with us from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep. We owe our waking daytime consciousness precisely to the fact that we have passed through four stages of our earthly evolution with our physical body, which, together with the etheric body, mediates our daytime consciousness. And our nocturnal consciousness eludes us for the very reason that our “I” only took up residence within us during Earth’s evolution, and the astral body only during the Moon’s evolution. What we will be able to experience when we raise our dead into the “I” and the astral body, we will only experience in later epochs of our Earth’s evolution in the same way we now experience the lives of the living on Earth—that is, in normal, waking daytime consciousness. The “I” is the youngest link; it must first strive to attain a consciousness that can be as waking as our present-day consciousness—a consciousness achieved through the connection of our “I” and astral body with the physical and etheric bodies. The physical body has passed through four stages of Earth’s evolution, the etheric body through three stages, the astral body through only two stages, and the “I” has passed through only one stage.

[ 9 ] Thus, those who have become spirits—who have become disembodied souls—rest in the element that we ourselves experience during our sleep. But we can only bring them to mind in our waking consciousness through our memories. For it is one force that causes a spiritual impulse to live within us, and another force that causes such a spiritual impulse to rise to consciousness within us. The impressions on our senses arise because they can flow in from the outside into the physical body and the etheric body. But for that which can exist only in the I and the astral body, our current normal development does not yet possess sufficient power to force and press it into the etheric body and the physical body in such a way that it becomes a mental image for us. Nevertheless, a connection of a deeply spiritual nature exists. For it is precisely in the most subtle aspects of our being that we are inseparably connected with the so-called dead. For this connection, outward death represents no break, scarcely even a transformation. In these subtle aspects—the “I” and the astral body—the dead live just as the living do; there live those who, having left our ranks, have become spiritual beings.

[ 10 ] Let us observe them using the means of knowledge we have been able to acquire in the course of our lives. It has, after all, been emphasized here on several occasions how fundamentally different the relationship of any being—including a human being—is to its surroundings when that being does not, like us in the physical world, possess a physical body or an etheric body. When the one who has passed through the gate of initiation leaves the physical and etheric bodies for the sake of his knowledge, he then lives in his spiritual environment; he lives there just as the dead live there. And I have often had to emphasize how entirely different the relationship to the spiritual world is—to which the perceiver then belongs—whether he is a disembodied human being, a being of the hierarchies, or a being of the elemental world. We have had to emphasize that we ourselves must choose different words to describe the relationship of the spiritual being to its surroundings, as opposed to the relationship of a being embodied in a physical body to its surroundings.

[ 11 ] Here in the physical world, the things and beings of the external world make an impression on us. We stand here; the beings exist outside of us. What they radiate flows through our senses into our soul. And we say, being aware of this: We stand here enclosed within the limits of the body. We perceive the other beings; we take notice of them. — When we enter the spiritual world, we must choose our words differently: As spiritual beings, we are perceived by the other spiritual beings. We perceive animals insofar as they are sensory embodiments; we perceive plants; we perceive human beings. Now, as we ourselves enter the spiritual world, we are perceived by the beings of the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, the Archai, and so on. And while here we say, “We see the plants, the animals, the human beings”—when we enter the spiritual world, we must say: We experience something within ourselves, and this experience means that the spiritual eyes of another being are resting upon us. We are perceived. — This being perceived, this knowledge that we are being looked upon, is what distinguishes our life in the spiritual world from life in the physical world.

[ 12 ] Strictly speaking, the words themselves must be transformed, for everything is entirely different in the spiritual world. And to put it figuratively—and yet, in a sense, more than figuratively: When a being from the spiritual world enters a physical embodiment, it must be prepared to learn gradually—just as a child must learn—to look outward through the physical senses, to perceive an external world, and to become an “I” that perceives the external world. When a being enters the spiritual world from the physical world through the gateway of death or in some other way, it must accustom itself to saying: You are an “I,” but an “I” that does not live in isolation in the world, that inwardly is always experiencing something anew, just as it once experienced the memories that surface from the depths of the soul. But now you know: What emerges there are the images, thoughts, and feelings of other beings who live together with you in the spiritual world and have entered into you. — Just as impressions from the sensory world and from sensory beings enter us from the outside, so too do the images and feelings of beings who are in the spiritual world arise within us. But we know that these ideas and feelings, which arise within us from what is then our essential inner self, originate from spiritual beings who are with us. There, in the spiritual world, an idea arises within us—the idea of a being we must love, a being who inspires us to accomplish this or that in the spiritual world. Where does this image come from? How is it that it arises within us, just as memories do here? It stems from this: another being, a being of the spiritual world, has drawn near to us. We do not look at it from the outside; we know it is there because what lives within it is sent into us. We are presented to it; we are perceived by it—that is how we should speak of what lives in the spiritual world. This does not make the experience in the spiritual world any more abstract or nebulous; on the contrary, it makes it all the more vivid. What we experience in the spiritual world becomes as vivid as anything we experience in the physical world in our immediate surroundings. Thus, we must familiarize ourselves with this entirely different way of coexisting with the beings who dwell in the spiritual world.

[ 13 ] And now, from this perspective, let us look upon those who have passed through the gate of death. They enter the world of which they must say: I am coming to know more and more how I am perceived, how the disembodied human beings, the elemental beings, and the beings from the hierarchy of the Angeloi and the Archangeloi send their ideas, sensations, and feelings into me. All these beings live within me. — And we look up at such a deceased person, and we sense: Just as a human being approaches us here in the sensory world and we sense the blood through his skin, just as we sense the workings of his nerves in his features, so too, as we gaze upon the spiritual, disembodied human being, do we sense—through what we experience in him—the thoughts and feelings of the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, and the Archai at work.

[ 14 ] Here in the physical world, the physical human being comes before us. Through his soul and his evolution, he has ennobled animal, plant, and mineral existence. But this animal, plant, and mineral existence still confronts us within him. When a human being approaches us here in physical existence, his soul-spiritual nature lies deeply hidden within him and shines through his physical body. Yet what radiates from their impulses into our eyes—what acts upon us in the sensory world—is permeated by the animal nature that has been ennobled to the level of humanity; what meets us in the human being is animal nature ennobled, but still animal nature. The plant world and the mineral realm, too, meet us in the human being. We know that the kingdoms of nature live on in the human being at a higher level. And if the mineral kingdom did not live within the human being, then where the human being meets us in the physical realm, a true human being could never truly meet us, for it is only through what he contains of the mineral within himself that he can evoke an impression in us. When we, as spirits, face a spiritual being, we look—just as we see the animal nature here in the physical human being—at the spiritual human being in the spiritual world, at that which the Angeloi allow to flow into him, into this spiritual human being, in the form of feelings and thoughts, in a soul-like manner. What the Angeloi experience is organized downward all the way to the human body. Just as the animal nature is organized upward within the human being, so is that which the Angeloi impel through the soul life of the human being organized downward in the spiritual world. And just as the plant kingdom is organized upward within the human being, so is that which the Archangeloi allow to flow into him organized downward in the spiritual form of the human being. And just as the mineral kingdom shines forth within us in the sensory human being, thereby making the sensory human being within us perceptible, so what confronts us as spiritual human beings in the spiritual world is a self-contained imagination, in that the Archai pour into the human being all the formative and shaping power they possess. Just as the three kingdoms of nature permeate the physical human being here, so do the angels, archangels, and Archai permeate the human spirit in the spiritual world.

[ 15 ] Once a person has passed through the gate of death, he remains—with the exception of the very earliest period—connected to his astral body and his “I” for a long time. But just as the human being now exists in the spiritual world—with the ego and the astral body preserved from the earth—the spirits of form and those spirits we come to know as members of the hierarchy of the Archai can initially influence him, making him actually perceptible. Just as the mineral kingdom itself makes human beings visible and tangible here, so the realm of the Archai and the spirits of form makes human beings into solid, compact beings in the spiritual world. And just as the plant kingdom is no longer seen, but is only sensed in human beings here in the physical world, so too is that which the hierarchies allow to flow into the human being sensed in the solidly formed human being in the spiritual world. Just as the animal nature within the human being no longer confronts us here in an animal form, and only spiritual science draws our attention to the extent to which animal nature is a part of the human being, so too, in the spiritual world, one does not initially perceive the somewhat hidden aspect of the Angeloi, which remains strong as long as the human being has not shed the etheric body. The hidden aspect of the Angeloi remains, but it is less evident when one sees the human being’s spiritual form in the spiritual world. Thus, when we enter into a relationship with the deceased after some time has passed, we do indeed encounter them, so that we can say, “It is they”; but what the fully formed being gives them is the way in which the spirits of form work within them. And what can still be strongly sensed in him are the spirits of personality. — Thus, organized, as it were, from above, from the hierarchies, the deceased then appears to us, just as the physical world, thoroughly organized by the mineral world, appears to us here.

[ 16 ] When we are parted from a human soul because it has passed through the gate of death, we retain the memory of that soul within the realm of our physical consciousness. We hold within ourselves everything about the deceased that is dear to us. This is a different kind of memory from the memories we otherwise have in our outer life. Just think about what our other memories are like. What are they, after all? They are thoughts about something that is no longer there; that is precisely why they are memories. What we remember is not there; it is not happening at the very moment we remember it. The content of our memories is not present; it has no effect now. When we remember the essence of a soul that was connected to us and has passed through the gate of death, we have a thought of that deceased person; but the deceased person himself is present—he is in our immediate presence—and is a real being of the spiritual world. Here we do not merely have a memory image; here we have an image in the soul that is indeed also a memory image, but one that corresponds to a real spiritual being. The image lives within us, and out there in the spiritual world the deceased lives. The being is there, and the image is there. So within us, when we look back reverently upon the deceased, when we, in faithful remembrance, bring to life within ourselves what the deceased meant to us, the image of the deceased arises in our waking consciousness. There it is. What does that mean? It means: it is present there in a living, active process within our physical and etheric bodies.

[ 17 ] In our physical and etheric bodies, we present this to the other life—which is not devoted to the memory of beloved departed ones—and combine in our thoughts that which exists in the physical world. When we evoke within ourselves the image—whether a mental image, a sensory image, or an emotional image—of the deceased, a being lives in the immediate presence of that image; through this being, angels and archangels gaze, connecting their visions within it. Consider this: when we direct our thoughts and feelings toward beloved departed ones, there is more—much more—present than there is in ordinary, everyday life in terms of the connections between the spiritual and the sensory worlds. There is something present that, I would say, could not otherwise exist. And a question arises for the spiritual researcher: What does it mean for the dead that we live in the world they have left behind, in the realm whose outer shell they have shed? What does it mean for these dead who live there that we evoke, in our waking consciousness—that is, in the physical and etheric bodies—that which connects us to them? This question arises for the spiritual researcher—a question that is seemingly of a rather intimate nature, but which, I believe, when the spiritual researcher resolves it, sheds much light on the mysteries of life.

[ 18 ] For we can pose this question in yet another way, from the perspective of immediate life—a life that, admittedly, is not always present, but which people nevertheless seek in the manner I indicated earlier. Let us put the question this way: What does it actually mean for reality as a whole when, on a day of remembrance for the dead—such as All Souls’ Day or another festival honoring the dead—the souls of people living here on earth in their physical bodies go to the graves or unite in thought with their deceased loved ones? What does it mean when we set aside our own days or moments of remembrance for the dead? When we read aloud to them in our own way? When we do something to unite with them and, in particular, to bring to life what constantly connects us to them? In other words: What does it mean when, in our waking consciousness, we call to mind what connects us to the dead? — This question, too, can come to the forefront of the spiritual researcher’s consciousness.

[ 19 ] He must therefore express it through something else that arises for him from spiritual research. In essence, the most important facts of the spiritual world can really only be expressed figuratively. One must seek analogies if one wishes to express the realities of the spiritual world. For our words are shaped for ordinary life, for the physical world, and we cannot speak of the spiritual world using the words of the physical world directly when we wish to express its realities. We must try, by way of a comparison, to evoke in our souls such images that bring to life what we wish to conceive of regarding the spiritual world. And here in the physical world, something presents itself to the spiritual researcher through which he can evoke an image of what has just arisen before us as a question. Here in the physical world we find something that could not exist without disrupting the external, natural processes of the sensory world, yet which those who strive to live life in its entirety would not wish to do without. What is it that we find here in the physical-sensory world—something that does not belong to the ongoing natural process, yet which we would not wish to do without? Now, when we create images of what is there and what relates to the natural world—be they artistic images or those produced in recent times by external photography—what we encounter in these images of the physical-sensory world, depicting beings that belong to this world, is something that is added to the natural process; the natural process could exist without them.

[ 20 ] Try to imagine just how life is enriched by the fact that we create images of what otherwise exists in the natural process. How much we long to have art in our world in addition to the natural process. How much we want to have an image of anything that has been experienced! The course of the world could continue even without it. A being remains what it is even if we have no image of it, but in a certain sense we need an image. The spiritual researcher is reminded of this when he must form ideas about what the dead gain from the fact that the living bring them to life in their souls.

[ 21 ] That which is the spiritual process corresponding to the natural process—the one toward which the dead, that is, the spiritual beings, look—would be there even if the cherished memories did not come alive in the souls of human beings. But for the dead—for these spiritual beings—the ongoing spiritual process would then be bleak and empty, just as we would feel a sense of emptiness if we were surrounded only by the natural process and nothing figurative were incorporated into human life or into the natural process.

[ 22 ] Truly, one can draw the following comparison: If a dear friend has been away from you for a long time, and you think of them fondly but cannot see them, and now they send you a picture, that picture is dear to you. It is something that fills your heart with warmth, something you need. Just as that picture must be dear to you, so too are the thoughts of the dear departed—who live on in people’s waking daily consciousness—for those who have passed on, when they look down upon the world, which they otherwise perceive only as a continuous mental process, but which they now feel interwoven with that which might not be there and yet must be there —the words are to be taken in one sense or another—when they feel that which is a continuous mental process interwoven with what is radiated upward to them from the souls that have remained here, much like the image of a loved one. That is why one can say: When one goes to a cemetery—on Remembrance Sunday or All Souls’ Day—and sees many people there who, at this time, are filled with the image of their dear departed, and one then looks up into the souls of those being remembered, those are the cathedrals, the works of art for these departed. Then what shines up to them from the earth illuminates the world for these dead like a magnificent cathedral that reveals mysteries to us, illuminates the world for us, or like a picture that is dear and precious to us, bringing a loved one to mind. The world into which the dead must gaze forever would be desolate and empty; from their perspective, this earthly world would be desolate and empty if they were to look down, and if what looked up to them from the souls of those living here on earth were not present—which, of course, cannot be, and yet must be: the thoughts that connect those living on earth with those living in spirit, the dead.

[ 23 ] A profoundly moving contrast is revealed to us here—between earthly life and life in the spirit. In order to elevate earthly life, we must add to it, in a figurative sense, that which does not exist, for the sake of those living on earth. An earth stripped of all imagery, a mere natural earth—how desolate, how empty it would be! And now let us rise to the perspective of the dead. They would perceive the ongoing spiritual process, but it would be desolate and empty to them—as desolate and empty as the image-less natural existence is to the children of the earth— if the memories of the dead were not alive, if faithful remembrance were not awake in waking consciousness, if within the ongoing spiritual process there were not thoughts that are, for the spiritual world, like works of art—insofar as they are beautiful thoughts—and are not interwoven with the earthly process, but are directed toward those who no longer live within the earthly process. And what makes a work of art a work of art here on Earth—what enhances its beauty—is, after all, something connected to the innermost being of the human soul in a far lesser sense than what our thoughts of the dead represent for the spiritual world. For even in the spiritual world there is, in this sense, a beauty—a real, genuine beauty. But it does not arise to the same extent through outward appearance as it often does here in the physical world through the outward form of an image. The fact that the paintings of Raphael, Leonardo, and Dürer are more beautiful than others stems from the fact that these masters were simply more capable than other masters. The fact that a deceased person feels a more beautiful work of art—to speak analogically—radiating upward from the earth toward them stems from the depth of inner life, from the sacred spiritual feeling of remembrance that we continually cherish for them. The intensity of our feelings for the dead permeates our inner life and deepens it in the very presence of the dead themselves. This makes our soul more and more beautiful.

[ 24 ] Pursue this thought within your own souls, my dear friends, and through this deep reflection you will meditate upon many things that can shed light on the connection between the spiritual and the physical worlds, and on the specific aspect of the spiritual world where the dead live and the physical world where earthly human beings live. We will develop further reflections that can lead us into broader realms of the spiritual world, following this first chapter that we have worked through today.