The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] As I have already noted, we will be engaging in reflections over the next few days that will culminate tomorrow or the day after in a discussion of historical necessity and freedom—culminating in an effort to show in what sense a historical event is necessary, and in what sense a historical event—or indeed anything that affects human life on a spiritual level—could also be different. This is a problem of particularly profound significance in the present, when such momentous events are intervening in human life. For in light of the sad, catastrophic events of the present, every person must ask themselves: To what extent are such events—and this event in particular—dependent on a certain necessity, and to what extent could it have turned out quite differently, could it have unfolded in a completely different way?

[ 2 ] As I said, over the next few days we will aim to answer this broad, comprehensive question using the resources currently available within the occult principles that can be discussed publicly. But we must start from a more comprehensive view of human life. We must delve somewhat deeper into human nature itself from a certain perspective. We must let that come first. For, as you may have gathered from the public lectures held recently, the forces of that world in which the human being finds itself between death and a new birth are constantly at work in human life. Much more intensely than one might think, the forces in which a human being—as a so-called dead person—is embedded play a role in life. We are—I drew attention to this more physically last time, I might say—as human beings of such a nature that, fundamentally speaking, the threshold between the ordinary physical world and the spiritual world runs right through us. If we consider our ordinary life and look today from a more soulful perspective at what we examined more physically last time, we can say: our human life, when we are embodied here in the physical body, unfolds in such a way that, first of all, we have active within us everything that can be experienced through our senses during our lifetime—everything that, so to speak, spreads out around us like a tapestry of sensory impressions and of which we receive knowledge through our senses. Everything we derive from this sensory world—as well as what we can penetrate in our life of imagination independently of this sensory world—is then built upon this foundation. But when we bring together sensory life and the life of imagination, we essentially already have everything in which we live with our ordinary waking consciousness.

[ 3 ] From the moment we wake up in the morning until the moment we fall asleep, we are in reality fully awake only in our sensory impressions and in our ideas. In our feelings, in our emotional life, we are not actually awake in the full sense of the word. And between the life of the imagination and the emotional life lies a threshold that goes largely unnoticed by ordinary consciousness. For what permeates our emotional life as a deeper reality does not actually come to a person’s consciousness at all. It is the feelings themselves that come to consciousness. Feelings well up from a subconscious world, but consciousness really has no more to do with these feelings than we have to do with our dreams while we sleep. That is why it was also possible to say in the public lectures here in Switzerland: As human beings live in their emotional life, they are actually asleep, dreaming. Dream life extends into our waking life. From the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we are actually always in dreams; but only the dreams most closely connected to our physical existence come to consciousness or are remembered. Dreaming continues throughout the entire sleep cycle, and only in the deeper layers of our consciousness do we sleep, so to speak, without dreaming. But this life of dreaming and dreamless sleep also extends into our waking life. Dream life enters into our emotional life, into our life of affections. And in ordinary consciousness—in non-clairvoyant consciousness—we know no more about our emotional life than we do about what is actually happening when the images of dream life unfold before us. Therefore, it could also be said that human beings do not experience the content of what is called “history” with waking consciousness, but rather dream it through. What history is, is a world-dream of humanity. For the impulses that live in history actually live in the emotional and affective impulses; human beings dream as they experience history. Thus, emotional life already lies below the threshold of true waking consciousness. In this psychological sense, too, the boundary between conscious and subconscious life runs right through the human being.

[ 4 ] And in the life of the will, the human being is completely asleep. For the human being, with ordinary consciousness, knows nothing of what actually lives in the will. His ordinary consciousness lives in the reality that expresses itself in the will, just as it lives in deep sleep. Consciously, a person actually pursues only that which has already emerged from the will and been translated into action; in that, he is awake, but he cannot be awake in the very act of exercising the will. That is why philosophers have always argued about the freedom and lack of freedom of the will, because they could not penetrate the realm—which can only be perceived through clairvoyant consciousness—from which the will actually draws its impulses. Thus, I emphasize once again, even in a psychological sense, the threshold between the actual physical waking world and the world that remains subconscious to the individual lies right within the person himself.

[ 5 ] Now, insofar as our life consists of feelings and will—that is, insofar as it is dreamlike and drowsy—everything that a person experiences between death and a new birth plays a part in it. The experiences of the dead are actually present in the world in which we, too, live, in that we feel and will. But with our ordinary consciousness, we are unaware of the realities that live in feeling and will. If we were to experience the reality underlying the life of feeling—and especially the reality underlying the life of will—just as we experience the reality of sensory perceptions and imagination (though imagination to a lesser extent, though to a certain extent—then the dead person, the human being who has passed through the gate of death, would be right beside us, in constant connection with us, just as much as the one who still walks among us on the physical plane in such a way that we can receive impressions of them in waking consciousness through our senses and through our life of imagination. That which lives in the impulses of the dead continually reaches into our emotional life, into the life of our volitional impulses. And it is only because we dream this away and sleep through it that we feel separated from the dead with whom we were connected.

[ 6 ] But essentially, the world in which the so-called dead live is also quite different from the world in which we live when we are embodied in a physical body. For ask yourself with complete composure: What is actually present to the waking consciousness—to the consciousness that has not yet become clairvoyant—from the moment of waking until falling asleep? All that is present is what can be experienced in the world that unfolds as a tapestry of the senses, and in the world we create for ourselves through our ideas derived from this sensory world. Of this world, everything that belongs to the so-called mineral kingdom—which requires sensory organs to be perceived—is initially not immediately present to the dead. This mineral world includes, for example, the stars, the sun, and the moon; it includes, in fact, everything that is perceived by the senses, and a large part of the plant world belongs to it as well. These are, to begin with, realms that do not lie open before the spiritual and soul eye of the deceased.

[ 7 ] In contrast, the world that lies before us—more or less unconsciously—begins to open up to the soul’s eye of the deceased as we direct our gaze—though in this case, a gaze veiled by the sensory world—toward the animal world. The animal world—that is, the world of impulses and forces that live within animals—is just as much the lowest world for the deceased as the mineral world is the lowest world for us in our physical bodies. Just as the plant world, which springs forth from the mineral world, unfolds for us, so too does the human world—the human world as a spiritual world—unfold for the deceased from the foundation that lives in the animal world. And just as the animal kingdom constitutes only the third category for us—arising from the mineral and plant worlds—so for the dead, the realm of the angels, archangels, and so on is the realm that lies further above.

[ 8 ] The entire environment into which the deceased is transported is thus different from the environment in which we ourselves live in our physical bodies. For just imagine: if everything you perceive through your senses were to be removed from the world you perceive in your physical body—the world you form mental images of while in your physical body— at first, nothing would remain for the non-clairvoyant consciousness that could appear as anything other than a ‘dream world’—something that could only be dreamed, something that could not exist more vividly in consciousness than a dream.

[ 9 ] The difference becomes even clearer, however, when we consider it from another perspective. The most essential characteristic of our life in the environment, as long as we are embodied in a physical body—although internally the situation is different, as you know from other lectures—is that, in our relationship with mineral and plant beings, we can be aware that these beings remain relatively indifferent to what we do with them. After all, we act under the influence of this very thought I have just expressed. We calmly break stones and are initially aware that we are neither harming the stone nor giving it pleasure. You know that inwardly, the matter is somewhat different. But insofar as we humans are in contact with the mineral environment, we think, with some justification, that pleasure and suffering are not immediately stirred up when we break a stone or the like.

[ 10 ] We behave in a similar way toward the plant world. And those people who, for example, feel a kind of pain or compassion when a flower is picked are already very rare. People who, in a certain sense, would rather have the roses on the rosebush than in a bouquet in the room are not all that common. It is only when it comes to the animal world that we begin to relate our humanity directly to the environment. And let it be said once again: people who, with even remotely similar feelings, pluck roses from the rosebush as they would tear off the heads of animals to arrange them into bouquets—such people are, after all, rare among people today. Even among anthroposophists, I have found that not everyone always prefers roses on the rosebush, although this sentiment has already progressed so far that, for example, I have never once been presented with a bouquet of nightingale heads in a hall! That is where we begin to feel how the life that expands within us continues into our surroundings.

[ 11 ] The dead man doesn't feel that way. For the dead, there is nothing in their surroundings for which they could not feel—if only they were to extend a finger—it is now entirely symbolic, figuratively speaking—that through the act of extending a finger, that is, through any action, indeed through everything the dead do, pleasure and suffering are triggered in their surroundings. He cannot relate to his environment in any other way than by arousing pleasure and suffering, so that everywhere there is an echo of pleasure and suffering. If you do something after you have passed through the gate of death, what you do will always cause, somewhere, pain or joy, relaxation or tension—something akin to emotional life. When we tap on a table, we have the feeling that it does not hurt the table. The deceased can never perform an action without knowing that he lives and acts not only within the living, but within what is emotionally alive. Emotional stimuli are spread throughout his entire surroundings.

[ 12 ] You will find this described from another perspective in the relevant chapters of my Theosophy. This world of sensory stimulation thus exists at the lowest level of the animal kingdom. And just as we are familiar with a certain outer aspect of the mineral kingdom through our sensory perceptions, so too is the deceased familiar with the inner aspect—not the outer form, but the inner aspect—of animal life throughout his entire world. This is the lowest foundation upon which he lives, upon which he builds himself, upon which he builds his existence. And a major part of the deceased’s work consists in establishing a direct relationship with the world of animal life.

[ 13 ] Just as we relate here, from childhood onward, to the world of the mineral-dead, so after death we gradually enter into a relationship with the world of the animal-living that grows ever broader and more expansive. The dead person comes to know this world from all sides. The deceased comes to know this world by having to gradually penetrate all the mysteries that are so hidden from them here—just as, on a soul level, that which slumbers beneath their emotional life; for it is the same thing.

[ 14 ] Of course, a question such as the one I am about to raise cannot be considered a proper scientific question. Yet it may still point to something behind which real relationships lie. One might ask why, in the face of the all-pervading wisdom of the world, certain things remain hidden from human beings here in the physical world. One might ask why that which the dead must be initiated into—the mysteries of the structure of the entire animal world—remains hidden.

[ 15 ] It is precisely when one attempts to answer such a question that one delves into the deepest mysteries of existence itself. And we will also have to deal with this question in more detail in these reflections. For now, however, we must turn our attention to what this understanding of the inner nature of animal life actually entails.

[ 16 ] To avoid getting too theoretical, I could perhaps begin by referring to a fact of contemporary history. As you know, in a certain external sense, human historical consciousness has undergone a transformation in recent times as a result of Darwinism. Attempts have been made to identify the forces through which organisms evolve from so-called imperfect to perfect states. The Darwinists have, of course, cited various factors: first and foremost, the principle of natural selection, adaptation to circumstances, and so on. I do not wish to dwell on these matters, which you can read about in any textbook on Darwinism—or even in any encyclopedia. But I do want to point out that these are external, abstract principles; that for those who look more deeply, they say absolutely nothing. What actually happens is not explained when one says: perfection occurs because the fittest are selected and the others gradually die off, while the fittest are the survivors. Of course, this says nothing about the forces, the impulses, that actually animate the animal kingdom—forces that enable animals not only to perfect themselves but also to shape their lives accordingly in the ordinary, present world.

[ 17 ] What is it that truly operates within the forces that Darwinism refers to as forces of selection, as forces of pure mechanical expediency, and so on? It is the dead who are at work there. It is one of the most surprising and profound experiences that can be had in the realm of the dead when one realizes how—just as there are blacksmiths, carpenters, and others here who work as craftsmen in the mechanical world and thereby create the physical-sensory foundation of life here—the dead work in the spiritual world, starting with the animal kingdom and moving upward. While the animal kingdom here is, in many respects, one that humans perceive as inferior—and the mineral kingdom lies even lower—the foundation of the dead’s work is the continuation of the animal kingdom. Thus, the dead, in a sense, familiarize themselves with all the skills that are hidden from them here during life between birth and death.

[ 18 ] This brings us to a point that has often been kept secret up to the present day by the brotherhoods, which believe—partly rightly, partly wrongly—that other people are not ready for such things. If one learns to recognize what pertains to the animal nature in the world of the dead, and looks around there, one finds that it is all emotional and living. Human beings also possess this emotional-living aspect within their souls. But how? Between birth and death, it is such that, were it not enclosed within their unconsciousness, human beings could at any time use this emotional-living aspect—which lies between birth and death—to the detriment of the rest of the emotional-living aspect in the world. So consider what that actually means! You yourselves live out an emotional-living aspect in your personal lives, but it is confined within the limits that have been set for the physical human being. If people in general had free access to it—anthroposophists are already more cultivated in this regard—then human beings could at any time use the forces that are currently hidden there to destroy the emotional-living aspect surrounding them. The animal nature in human beings is, at first, destructive even in the best sense of the word, and it is, in fact, predisposed to destroy. And once a person has passed through the gate of death, their primary task is to tear all those impulses out of their soul that have been set free in such a way that there is, in fact, a very strong urge to destroy living things, to kill living things. And one can say that what the dead must learn includes, above all, respect—a reverence for all living things.

[ 19 ] This reverence for all living things is something that can be observed as the natural development of the dead. Just as we here follow with deep interest a child who, from an early age, gradually, day by day, week by week, develops naturally; just as we observe in this child how the soul takes hold of the physical body; just as we take deep joy in what is happening there, without the so-called free will playing a part—what is happening there purely through soul-organic forces: so, too, when one continues to observe the deceased from the day of their death throughout their life, one again gains insight into a process—initially beyond the reach of free will—of becoming attuned to the sanctity of all living beings in the surrounding environment. In a sense, this is something that occurs as an external aspect within the dead person, just as it occurs as an external aspect in a child—that the child grows and its features become more expressive. What grows outwardly in the child to our delight also grows in the dead person, as we find radiating from them, ever more and more, this uplifting reverence for all living things.

[ 20 ] And in this respect, life after death differs significantly from life here. Life here has veiled precisely that into which the dead must immerse themselves. We perceive the world through our senses and formulate certain laws—which we call the laws of nature—according to which we then shape our mechanical tools and the devices around us. What we construct around us as a world according to the laws of nature is, in essence, a world of death. We must even kill the plant, even the tree, if we wish to put its wood to use in the service of our mechanical arts. And it is, in turn, one of the most shattering realizations that, fundamentally, everything our senses teach us—when we apply it through our will—is destructive and cannot be anything other than destructive.

[ 21 ] Yes, even when we create art, we must participate in the world of destruction. What we build there emerges only from destruction. A benevolent worldly wisdom has merely caused us, as human beings, to generally hesitate at first to place that which lives—ascending from animal nature—in the service of mechanical art. In a certain higher sense, however, everything in the world actually lives. You can already see this from the various descriptions that have been given over the years. But what are we actually doing when we place what we perceive through our senses and combine through our intellect in the service of mechanical art? We are constantly bringing death into life. Even a Raphael painting cannot come into being without death being brought into life. Before a Raphael painting comes into being, there is more life than there is after it has been created. The only compensation in the universe is that souls come to enjoy this Raphael painting, receiving an impulse, an impression from it. The impulse, the impression that the creating or the appreciating soul receives—that is the one and only thing that can help overcome the workings of death—even in the case where the highest goods, the so-called highest goods of humanity, are created here on the physical plane. The Earth will essentially be destroyed by the fact that human beings, through their mechanical arts, are introducing death into the Earth to such a great extent. It will no longer be able to live because death outweighs that which can be saved and carried over from the demise of the physical Earth into the world of Jupiter. But from what human beings have created by interweaving death with life, they will in turn have received spiritual content, which they will now carry over into the Jupiter world.

[ 22 ] More than can be put into words weaves its way through human action itself, in that this human action, between birth and death, is intimately interwoven with sensory existence; more than can be put into words, death continually weaves itself—the destruction of the living continually weaves itself—into life. However, the very emergence of consciousness depends on death being woven into life, and human beings would not be able to fulfill their earthly task with regard to consciousness at all if they were not called upon to weave death into life. Even within ourselves, we kill the life of the nerves the very moment we seek to imagine something. For a nerve that is truly alive cannot imagine. We are constantly dying within our nervous life, as I have said in recent public lectures.

[ 23 ] In this respect, life between death and a new birth is completely opposite. Here, the human soul must fully immerse itself in the sanctification of the living, in the permeation of the living with ever more and more life. Thus, life between birth and death is connected with death, and life between death and a new birth is connected with the life of the whole. For it is only through the fact that human beings die and send their impulses from the spiritual world into the life of animals that an animal world lives on across the earth.

[ 24 ] The second realm into which a person enters after death is the realm of human souls themselves, regardless of whether these human souls are currently embodied here in physical bodies or whether they themselves have already passed through the gate of death. In contrast to the animal world, after death a human being has the sense, when performing an action, that something brings joy or causes pain to a being—or at least to something that possesses a soul. He knows: If you push even with your mental power, you are pushing against something living.

[ 25 ] Here, it is more a matter of a general life and interplay within the living world. In contrast to our experience of what enters our sphere—the human sphere—when we are dead, the situation is this: when another soul enters into a relationship with us after we ourselves have passed through the gate of death, we then feel that, depending on the nature of our relationship with that soul, our own sense of life is either strengthened or weakened. We relate to a soul—whether it dwells here on Earth or in the spiritual worlds beyond—in such a way that we feel we become stronger inwardly; after a certain connection, being together with that soul strengthens us, our inner powers are strengthened, and we come alive, as it were. We encounter a soul and feel that we awaken more fully through it than we would have without it. A certain intensity of life flows into us through our acquaintance with one soul. Through our acquaintance with another soul, we become weaker in a certain direction of strength; it dampens our life, so to speak. And this is what living together with souls consists of: that we feel our own life pulsating vividly in connection with other souls.

[ 26 ] As human beings, we live out our emotional and volitional lives between birth and death, completely unaware that the souls of the dead live on through the waves of our emotional and volitional lives—waves that we sleep through and dream away. They are always there; they live within our own waves of feeling and will, and they live in such a way that they share in this life. While we experience the external world through our senses as something external, so to speak, the dead live within our feelings and impulses of will, more intimately connected to us than we are to our physical environment here, insofar as we are physically embodied.

[ 27 ] But the fact is that this life—or rather, this inner experience of life—of the dead develops slowly and gradually, in accordance with the circumstances that have been established here in this life. Certainly, after death we are together with all souls—that is certainly true—but we know nothing of it. Slowly and gradually, relationships are established, specifically with those souls with whom we formed relationships during the life between birth and death. A human being cannot form new, original relationships with other human beings in the life between death and a new birth; he cannot form them originally or immediately. If we have loved someone here, or hated someone—that is, if we were connected to them in some positive or negative way—then this emerges again from a gray spiritual depth as life after death gradually wells up, in the manner I have just indicated, such that we live within these souls.

[ 28 ] And so a large part of this experience—this inner life of the dead—consists in the fact that, gradually, from the depths of the gray spirit, everything that existed in terms of bonds from the last, the second-to-last, or earlier lives, as well as relationships with other souls, begins to emerge. This can expand further; for some of the dead, it expands relatively early, very soon after death, though indirectly.

[ 29 ] It may be that someone dies; he has been connected in some way to a soul that either still dwells on earth or dwells in the spiritual world. After death, this connection manifests itself to him once again in the manner described. But this soul with whom they were connected has connections to other souls with whom they may not have been connected in any life between birth and death. Thus, indirectly, such souls can also approach the so-called deceased and enter into a relationship with them. However, as I have already said, these are never direct relationships; rather, they are always mediated by those souls with whom one is karmically connected through physical life. The connection with such souls—with whom one has not established a connection in physical life—is always quite different, and it is mediated by the souls with whom one was connected in physical life.

[ 30 ] You can easily imagine that direct relationships come first, followed by indirect ones. But because all souls are, to a greater or lesser extent, connected with one another across the Earth, and because, in the long life between death and a new birth, a person enters into many relationships—at least indirectly—a person does, in fact, live within a vast shared experience with other souls, if one takes the indirect relationships into account. We always carry this immersion in other souls within us, even when we are here on Earth. We have lived time and again with countless souls in the spiritual world. This empathy with all souls—which abstract philosophy treats only in abstract terms and discusses as abstract oneness—has a very concrete aspect: in fact, there are hardly any souls across the earth with whom at least a distant, indirect connection does not exist.

[ 31 ] One must grasp this matter as concretely as possible; only then can one arrive at reality. What the deceased experiences, then, is a gradual awakening—an awakening into a world that is, however, founded on their karma in the broader sense. Beyond this world, it becomes, as it were, ever brighter and brighter within, as we experience ever richer and richer things in this second realm, which is built upon the animal realm, just as our experience of the plant realm is built upon the mineral realm. We experience ever richer and richer things.

[ 32 ] Imagine this experience unfolding in all its concrete relationships, and you will have a good sense of much of what permeates the soul of the dead between death and rebirth. For connected to this experience are all the thoughts that link us karmically, in one way or another, to other souls. An infinitely rich world lies within it. And essentially—as you can already gather from the cycle on life between death and a new birth—the first half of life between death and a new birth is characterized by a development that is more wisdom-filled. The human being wisely immerses himself in the connections that he gradually draws forth once more from the gray depths of the spirit; he wisely lives himself into them.

[ 33 ] Before what I have called the “Midnight Hour of Existence” in the Mysteries, the threads are essentially drawn out toward all the direct and indirect karmic connections to which they must be drawn. Then comes the process of assimilation. Then an element of power more akin to the will enters the human soul life—but only akin to it, not identical to it. This element of power, akin to the will, makes the human being stronger and stronger. Above all, it strengthens the impulses within him that contribute to a wise overview of the world as elements of the will, as impulses of the will, as impulses of power.

[ 34 ] Now something strange occurs. In human beings, a certain will arises in the second half of life, between death and a new birth. If one observes this will—and this can be seen particularly in those people who, due to certain circumstances, have a relatively short life between death and a new birth, an abbreviated life—a peculiar direction of will emerges, which can be characterized, for example, by saying: The will arises to obliterate, in a certain way, the traces of life, the traces of karma.

[ 35 ] I ask you to understand this very clearly. This desire—to cover up the traces of karma—is becoming increasingly prevalent in human beings. This covering up of the traces of karma is connected to the deepest mysteries of human life. And if human beings were constantly to have the full overview of wisdom that they can attain relatively soon after their death, countless people would prefer to erase the traces of their existence rather than enter into new earthly lives. The processing of past earthly lives within the karmic context—which we do, after all—can essentially only develop through the fact that, in the second half of the life between death and a new birth, we are clouded and dulled by certain beings of the higher hierarchies with regard to the light of wisdom, so that we increasingly restrict our activity and our impulses of will. And one can only say: the goal is then to restrict them to such an extent that we create precisely that which can then connect with a physical human body through the stream of heredity and live out its earthly destiny within that physical human body.

[ 36 ] However, one can only fully understand this idea by contemplating this earthly destiny for oneself. How dreamlike this earthly destiny itself is for the earthly human being! As a child, he immerses himself in the circumstances of earthly life. What we call destiny approaches him in the form of individual life experiences. From the fabric woven by these life experiences, something takes shape that is, in fact, who we truly are. For consider, all of you, what you would have been up to this very day if you had not experienced precisely the life of destiny that you have just lived. You can indeed say: What I have experienced as destiny is who I am. — For you would be a completely different person if you had just experienced something other than fate.

[ 37 ] And yet, how alien does a person actually feel toward their fate, how little do they feel it to be interwoven with what they call their “self.” In how many countless cases does the self feel as though it has simply been struck by fate? Why? Because what we ourselves work out from within ourselves to shape our fate remains precisely in the subconscious. What we experience manifests itself in the world of sensory perception and in the world of ideas. It merely touches upon our emotional life. Our emotional life remains passive in relation to it. But what we share with the realm of the dead emerges actively from this emotional life and from this life of volitional impulses. But what emerges from there—and what we ourselves do without our consciousness, what we in turn sleep through and dream away—that forms our destiny; that is who we are. What we do with our destiny, we sleep through and dream away. What we experience in our destiny, we do indeed live through while awake, but only because it remains subconscious. What actually remains subconscious? That which flows over as impulses from our earlier earthly incarnations and from the life between death and a new birth—in a purely spiritual way—from the realm where the dead also dwell, from the realm that we dream away and sleep through. These are, at the same time, forces that also come from within ourselves. They are the forces with which we shape our destiny. We weave our destiny out of the very same realm that, together with us, gives life to the dead.

[ 38 ] Just imagine how we grow together with the realm—a realm we now understand, to a certain extent, how it is being neglected—and how we experience it! —even though we have not yet been able to discuss what this experience is like in relation to the beings of the higher hierarchies; that will come later as well. But what one hopes to bring about through a discussion such as the one I have just given is that we bring the realm of the so-called dead into the realm in which we ourselves live. And we become aware that we feel separated from the dead—though we are not actually separated from them—simply because we let our emotional life, in which the dead are also present, and our life of will, in which the dead are also present, slip away in a dreamlike state and fall asleep.

[ 39 ] But in this world, which we dream away and sleep through, there is something else—something that people, in their ordinary state of consciousness, do not really pay attention to. People sometimes become aware of it when it confronts them in particularly striking cases; but these are sensational isolated incidents that merely point to what constantly permeates and runs through life. How many such cases, like the one that follows, have you yourself heard of!

[ 40 ] A man is in the habit of taking a daily walk; he walks up a mountainside. He goes there every day—that is his pleasure. One day he goes there again. Suddenly, as he walks, he hears something like a voice—though it is not physically present—that says to him: “Why do you actually walk this path?” Can’t you do without this pleasure? — That’s roughly what it says to him. This makes him pause. He steps slightly to the side and reflects on what has happened to him. At that very moment, a boulder rolls down into the depths—a boulder that would certainly have crushed him if he hadn’t stepped aside.

[ 41 ] This is a true story, but one of those stories that—I would say—simply uses a sensational angle to point out something that is constantly present in our lives. How often does it happen that you resolve to do this or that, only to be prevented from doing so by this or that? Just imagine how much might sometimes have turned out differently in the small events of the day if you had gone out at a set time but ended up leaving half an hour later because you were held up by something—imagine what kind of change that brought into your life, and what kind of change it even brought into the lives of many other people! It’s easy to imagine something like that. Let’s suppose: You had planned to take a certain walk one day at a quarter past four in the afternoon; there you would have met another person; you would have shared some news with them, and they, in turn, would have passed that news on to someone else. Because you’re running late, you don’t share this news with that other person, and you see: it gets delayed, and certain quite important things don’t happen.

[ 42 ] Here we see a world order that is of a different kind than the world order we refer to as a natural necessity. In the fact that someone is prevented from continuing along a walking path because they hear a voice that causes them to step aside—thereby preventing them from being struck by a boulder—we sense another world order at work. But this other world order is at work in every moment of our existence; it’s just not manifested through such sensational events. People are simply accustomed to focusing their attention on the sensational, even in these matters. We simply do not pay attention to that world. Why? Because we focus our attention on what happens in our lives and in our environment, and do not focus on what does not happen—what is constantly prevented, what is constantly held back.

[ 43 ] From a certain point in spiritual experience onward, that which does not happen—from which we have, so to speak, been spared or held back—can come to our consciousness just as much as that which has happened. It simply comes to our consciousness as a different world order. Try to truly bring that world order to your soul by telling yourself: Human beings are accustomed to looking only at what happens, and not at what has been prevented from happening. — What they fail to notice there is intimately connected with the realm where the dead are, where we ourselves are with our dreaming feelings and our sleeping will. We separate ourselves within ourselves from an entirely different world by the fact that dreams and sleep also play a part in our waking life. And all that which simmers, lives, and weaves beneath the boundary that separates our imagination from our feeling—that is at the same time what encompasses the mysteries that form the bridge-images between the so-called living and the so-called dead, but also the bridge between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom and so-called chance.