The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Earth-Death and Universal-Life III

[ 1 ] What we have repeatedly examined, what we have often discussed here from a wide variety of perspectives: that this transitional state between waking and sleeping has a deeper significance in human life than outward observation would suggest—one should certainly bear this in mind for a holistic view of the world, for a practical stance in the world in the most ideal sense. To the casual observer, it appears that a person’s consciousness alternates between the waking state and the sleeping state. We know that this is only an apparent fact. For we have often discussed from a wide variety of perspectives that the so-called state of sleep does not merely last from falling asleep to waking up, but that for a certain part of our being it also continues during the time from waking up to falling asleep. We must admit: We are never fully, thoroughly awake with our entire being. Sleep extends into our waking state. With a part of our being, we are constantly asleep. We may now ask ourselves: With which part of our being are we actually truly awake at all times during so-called waking?

[ 2 ] We are awake in relation to our perceptions, in relation to everything we perceive from the sensory world through our senses, from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep. This is precisely what characterizes ordinary perception: that upon waking, we transition from a state of disconnection with the external sensory world to a state of connection with it; that very soon our senses begin to function, and this pulls us out of that dull state we know in ordinary life as sleep. Thus, through our sensory perceptions, we are awake in the true sense of the word. We are less awake—as careful self-observation can reveal to anyone, as we have often mentioned, and you can find more details on this in my book *On the Riddles of the Soul*—we are less awake, yet in a way that allows us to describe the state as true wakefulness, with regard to our life of imagination. We must, after all, distinguish the life of perception from the actual life of thought and imagination. When we think apart from sensory perception—that is, not directed outward—we are, in this act of thinking, already awake in the ordinary sense of the word and also in the higher sense of the word, even if this wakefulness in the mere life of imagination still has a certain dreamlike quality, more so in one person than in another. Even though a dreamlike quality can easily creep into the life of imagination for some people, we can still say, on the whole: We are awake, even when we are imagining.

[ 3 ] But we are not awake when we feel. Certainly, feelings well up from an indeterminate, undifferentiated inner life, and because we imagine these feelings—because representations, that is, waking activities, are always intermingled with feeling—we think that we are also awake when we feel. However, this is not actually the case. In reality, the activity of our soul during feeling is exactly the same as during ordinary “dreaming.” There is a deep kinship between the state of dreaming and the actual state of feeling. If we were always able to shed light on what we dream—since the greater part of our dream life is lost to us—by means of imagination, just as we shed light on our emotional life, then we would know about the dream life to exactly the same degree as we know about the emotional life, for the actual feelings are present in the soul in no other way than dreams are. Emotions, affects, and even, in a certain sense, the life of passion are present in our soul just as much as dreaming is. No one can, through their waking life, say what is actually taking place when they feel, or within what they feel. As I said, this surges up from an indeterminate, undifferentiated life of the soul, and it is then illuminated by the light of imagination. But it is a dream life. This kinship between the life of affect and feeling and the dream life has also been well recognized by non-occultists, for example, the distinguished aesthetician Friedrich Theodor Vischer, who often emphasized the deep kinship that exists in the human soul between feeling and dreaming.

[ 4 ] Even deeper within the life of the soul lies the actual life of the will. What does a person really know about what is actually going on inside them when they say, “I want to pick up a book”—and when their arm reaches out and picks up the book? What takes place there between muscle and nerve, what occurs within the organism and what also occurs in the soul, so that a volitional impulse is transformed into movement and action—human beings are no more aware of this than they are of the events of deep, dreamless sleep. It is indeed the case that the true nature of our volitional life is once again illuminated by our imaginative life. As a result, it appears as if we were conscious of it, but the true nature of volitional life actually remains in a state of complete sleep from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep.

[ 5 ] So we see: We are truly awake—in the proper sense of the word—only in relation to our perceptions in the sensory world and our life of imagination; as for our emotional life—which we are actually dreaming—and even more so with regard to our volitional life, which we are actually constantly sleeping through, we are asleep, even while in the waking state. Thus, the state of sleep extends into the waking state. Let us imagine, then, how we go about our lives in the world: What we experience with our consciousness while awake is actually only the perception of the sensory world and our world of imagination; and embedded within this human experience is a world in which our feelings and volitional impulses float, a world that surrounds us just as the air surrounds us, but which does not enter ordinary consciousness at all. Anyone who approaches the matter in this way will truly not be very far from recognizing a so-called supersensible world around them.

[ 6 ] Now, everything I have just said has even more significant consequences. Behind what I have mentioned lie significant facts about life as a whole. Anyone who comes to know the life that the human soul leads between death and a new birth — you need only familiarize yourselves with this life in a more abstract form through the lecture series “The Inner Being of the Human Being and Life Between Death and a New Birth,” which was held in Vienna in the spring of 1914 and has been published — whoever familiarizes themselves with it will see that in this world, through which we wander in a state of sleep, we live together with the so-called dead. The dead are, after all, constantly present. They are there, moving and acting in a supersensible world. We are not separated from them by our reality; we are separated from them only by our state of consciousness. We are no more separated from the dead than we are separated from the things around us while we sleep: We sleep in a room, and we do not see chairs or perhaps other things that are in the room, even though they are there. We sleep—in the so-called waking state, as far as feeling and will are concerned—right in the midst of the so-called dead—we just don’t call them that—just as we do not perceive the physical objects around us when we sleep. We do not, therefore, live separate from the world in which the forces of the dead reign; we share a common world with the dead. We are separated from them, as far as ordinary consciousness is concerned, only by our state of consciousness.

[ 7 ] This knowledge of communion with the dead will be one of the most important elements that spiritual science must instill in the general consciousness of humanity and in the general culture of humanity for the future. For people who believe that what is happening takes place solely through the forces perceived in sensory life know nothing of reality; they do not know that the forces of the dead are constantly at work in the life that unfolds here, that they are constantly present. And if you now recall what I said in the first lecture, where I explained that, fundamentally speaking, in today’s materialistic age we have a completely false view of historical life—that we actually dream away or sleep through history’s true impulses—then you will also be able to form a conception of how the forces of the dead can live on in what we dream away or sleep through of historical life. A new way of viewing history will emerge in the future—one that takes into account the forces of those who have passed through the gate of death and whose souls live in the world between death and a new birth. A consciousness that encompasses all of humanity—including so-called “dead” humanity—will give human culture an entirely new character.

[ 8 ] The perspective that opens up to the spiritual researcher—who can now put what has just been said into practical application—reveals many concrete details about this coexistence of the so-called living with the so-called dead. If human beings could shine the light of their imagination down into the very essence of their feelings and impulses of will, they would have a continuous, living awareness of the existence of the dead. However, they do not have this. And ordinary consciousness does not have it because things are strangely distributed within our conscious life. One could say: For understanding a higher cosmic context, a third element is actually much more important than the perception of the waking state and the sleeping state. What is this third element?

[ 9 ] This third element is what lies in between—what for modern people is really just a fleeting moment that they pass through without a second thought: it is waking up and falling asleep. Modern people do not pay much attention to waking up and falling asleep. And yet: waking up and falling asleep are extraordinarily important in the total consciousness of human beings. Just how important they are becomes clear when one illuminates the experiences of ordinary consciousness—which are permeated by unconsciousness—with the experiences of clairvoyant consciousness. Since we have spent so many years preparing for something like this, we can now, quite impartially, shed light on such things from the supersensible facts.

[ 10 ] There is certainly a possibility for the clairvoyant consciousness not only to become acquainted in general with the facts of the supersensible world—the world in which we find ourselves, for example, between death and rebirth—but there is also a possibility for the clairvoyant consciousness—although this possibility is not as easy as the one just mentioned and described— to come into contact, or correspondence, with individual disembodied souls—to put it bluntly. You know that, of course. I would just like to add: Observation is more difficult—difficult for the general scientific understanding of supersensory conditions—simply because there are far more obstacles to overcome. Just as few people today succeed in obtaining general scientific results about the supersensible world, one cannot say that this is extraordinarily difficult; for it is not something that lies entirely beyond the capacity of the ordinary human soul. . But it is more difficult to establish contact with these souls on an individual basis, for the simple reason that the real, concrete, individual connection between the human soul living here in the body and the disembodied soul presupposes that the one who strives for such a connection—who is able to establish such a connection— that is, to have contact with individual disembodied souls, must truly be able to live to a certain higher degree in the purely spiritual realm, undeterred by the fact that such concrete life in the purely spiritual realm can very easily awaken precisely the lower human instincts, for reasons I have often cited: that the higher faculties of supersensible beings bear no relation to the lower instincts of human beings—nor to the higher instincts of those embodied in a physical body—just as the lower instincts of supersensible beings bear no relation to the higher, spiritual qualities of human beings. I describe this as a significant mystery in communication with the supersensible world, a mystery whose nature can very easily cause one person or another to fail. But once this obstacle is overcome—once a person is able to engage in supersensible communication without being distracted from the world of spiritual experiences—such communication is entirely possible. Yet it takes a form very, very different from what we are accustomed to regarding as communication here in the sensory world.

[ 11 ] I want to speak in very concrete terms: When you speak here in the sensory world, from person to person, you speak, and the other person answers you. You know that you produce your words through your vocal organs; the words come from your thoughts. You feel that you are the creator of your words. You know that you hear yourself while you speak, and while the other person is answering, you hear them, and you then realize: You are silent; you are now listening to the other person. — You see, one becomes deeply accustomed to such a relationship simply by being aware of interacting with other beings in the physical world. But communication with disembodied souls is not like that. As strange as it may sound: communication with disembodied souls is exactly the opposite. When you yourself convey your thoughts to the disembodied soul, it is not you who speaks, but rather the other who speaks. It is exactly as if you were speaking with someone, and what you think—what you wish to convey—is not spoken by you, but rather by the other. And what the so-called dead person answers you does not come to you from the outside, but rises up from within you; you experience this as your inner life. The clairvoyant consciousness must first get used to this—it must first get used to the fact that you yourself are the one asking the questions in the other person, and that the other person is the one answering within you. This complete reversal of being is necessary.

[ 12 ] Anyone familiar with such matters knows that such a reversal of one’s nature is not easy. For it contradicts everything to which a person is accustomed; habits are formed over the course of a lifetime; but not only that—it even contradicts everything that is offered to a person. For it is innate in human nature to believe that one is speaking when one asks a question, and that the other is silent when one answers. And yet, what has just been said is precisely the case in communication with supersensible beings. This reversal of nature, which the clairvoyant consciousness experiences, will, however, make you aware that a good part of the reason the dead are imperceptible is that they interact with the living in a way that seems not only unfamiliar to the living but entirely impossible. The living simply do not hear what the dead are saying to them from the depths of their being; and the living do not pay attention when someone else says exactly what they themselves are thinking or what they themselves want to ask.

[ 13 ] The fact is, however, that of the two intermediate states of consciousness that pass fleetingly for modern humans—waking up and falling asleep—only one is suitable for asking questions, while the other is suitable only for answering them. What is peculiar is that when we fall asleep, this moment of falling asleep is particularly conducive to asking questions of the dead—that is, to hearing the questions we ask of the dead, as they come from them. When we fall asleep, we are particularly predisposed to hear, as if from the dead themselves, what we wish to ask. However, in our ordinary state of consciousness, we fall asleep immediately afterward, and the result is that we actually ask the dead hundreds of questions and speak to them about hundreds of things as we drift off to sleep—yet we are unaware of any of it because we fall asleep right after. This fleeting moment of falling asleep is a moment of immense significance for our communication with the dead. And again, the moment of waking: it predisposes us in a very special way to hear the answers of the dead. If we did not immediately slip back into sensory perception, but were able to linger in the moment of waking, we would be particularly well-suited at that moment to receive messages from the dead. Only, these messages would appear to us as if they were rising from within ourselves.

[ 14 ] As you can see, there are two reasons—one for each—why ordinary consciousness pays no attention to communication with the dead. One is that we immediately follow waking and falling asleep with a state that is capable of erasing what we experience in those moments; the other is that these things seem, shall we say, unfamiliar or actually impossible to us. When we fall asleep: the hundred questions we can—and indeed do—ask the dead are lost in the realm of sleep simply because we are completely unaccustomed to hearing—rather than saying—what we ask. And in turn, we do not interpret what the dead person tells us upon waking as coming from the dead, because we do not recognize it; we regard it as something that arises from within ourselves. This is the second reason why people cannot find their way into communication with the dead.

[ 15 ] These general phenomena are, however, occasionally interrupted, and in the following manner. What a person experiences while falling asleep—as if spontaneously asking questions of the dead—continues, in a certain sense, throughout the state of sleep. As we continue to sleep, we unconsciously look back to the moment of falling asleep, and this can give rise to dreams. Such dreams can indeed be reproductions of the questions we ask of the dead. It is certainly true that in our dreams we approach the dead and speak to them far more than we realize, even though what is experienced in the dream was already spoken immediately upon falling asleep. But the dream brings it up from the undifferentiated depths of the soul. Yet people easily misinterpret this; when they later recall these dreams as dreams, they usually do not take them for what they are. Dreams are, in fact, always a form of communion with the dead that arises from our emotional life. We have moved toward them, and the dream often presents us with questions that we have asked of the dead. It gives us our own subjective experience, but as if it were coming from outside. The dead speak to us, but we are actually speaking it ourselves. It merely seems as if the dead are speaking. As a rule, what we encounter in dreams are not messages coming from the dead; rather, the dream we have about the dead is an expression of our need to be with them—that we have succeeded in coming together with them at the moment of falling asleep.

[ 16 ] The moment of waking brings us messages from the dead. This moment of waking is erased by the sensory life that follows. But there is also the fact that, upon waking—as if rising from within the soul—we experience something about which, if we only engage in closer self-observation, we can know very well: it does not come from our ordinary “I.” These are often messages from the dead.

[ 17 ] You will come to terms with these ideas if you do not misconstrue a relationship that must now have come to the forefront of your mind. You will say: Then the moment of falling asleep is the right time to ask the dead questions; the moment of waking up is the right time to receive answers from the dead. So these are distinct from one another. You will only be able to judge this correctly if you properly grasp the relationship between time and space in the supersensible world. There, what Richard Wagner expressed in a remarkable intuition in the sentence “Time becomes space” is true. — In the supersensible world, time truly becomes space, just as one point in space is here and another is there. Thus, time has not passed; rather, a point in space is simply at a greater or lesser distance. Time truly becomes space in the supersensible realm. And the deceased simply speaks the answers by standing a little farther away from us. This, of course, is again unfamiliar. But the past is not past in the supersensible world; it is there, it remains there. And in relation to the present, it is merely a matter of confronting the past from a different location. The past is no more gone in the supersensible world than the house from which you left this evening to come here is gone. It is in its place, and so the past in the supersensible world is not gone—it is there. And whether you are now close to or farther away from the deceased depends on you yourself—on how far you have come with the deceased. It can be very far, but it can also be very close.

[ 18 ] So we see: Because we do not merely sleep and wake, but rather awaken and fall asleep, we are in constant communication, in constant contact with the dead. They are always among us, and we truly act not only under the influence of those who live around us as physical human beings, but also under the influence of those who have passed through the gate of death and are connected to us.

[ 19 ] Today I would like to highlight certain facts that, from a particular perspective, lead us deeper and deeper into the supersensible world.

[ 20 ] Now we can distinguish between different souls who have passed through the gate of death, once we have grasped that such contact with the dead is constantly present. If we are, in fact, always passing through the realm of the dead—whether by asking questions of the dead as we fall asleep or receiving answers from them upon waking—then we will also come to realize how we are connected to the dead, depending on whether they passed through the gate of death as younger or older people. The underlying facts, however, reveal themselves only to the clairvoyant consciousness. But that is merely the knowledge of it; the reality is constantly unfolding. Every person is connected to the dead in the way described by clairvoyant consciousness. When younger people—children or adolescents—pass through the gate of death, it becomes particularly evident that a certain connection remains between the living and these deceased, a connection that is of a different nature than when older people are involved, who have passed through the gate of death in the twilight of their lives. There is a profound difference. When we lose children, when young people leave us, the reality is that they do not truly leave us at all, but actually remain with us. This is evident to the clairvoyant consciousness in that the messages we receive upon waking are particularly vivid and lively when they concern children or young people who have died. There is a connection between those left behind and the deceased that can be described as follows: in reality, we have not lost a child or a young person at all; they actually remain with us. — And they remain here, above all, because after death they show a vivid need to influence our waking life, to send messages into our waking life. It is indeed very remarkable, but it is true that the child who died in youth has an extraordinary amount to do with everything connected to waking life. For the clairvoyant consciousness, it becomes particularly interesting to see how we actually owe a debt of gratitude to the souls who died young when people in their outer physical lives feel a certain piety, a certain inclination toward piety. For this is what the souls who died young tell them. An immense amount is accomplished with regard to piety through the messages of the souls who died young.

[ 21 ] The situation is different when souls pass away in old age—in physical old age. In that case, we can describe what appears to the clairvoyant consciousness in a different way. We can say: We do not lose those people; we remain with them through our souls. — Note the contrast: We do not lose the youthful souls; they remain among us. The souls who have passed away at an older age do not lose us; they take, so to speak, a part of our souls with them. — This is only a figure of speech, if I may put it that way. The souls who have passed away at an older age draw us more toward them, while those who have passed away in their youth are drawn more toward us. That is why, even at the moment of falling asleep, we have much to say to the souls of the elderly who have passed away, and we can weave a bond with the spiritual world especially by making ourselves ready to address the souls of the elderly who have passed away at the moment of falling asleep. With regard to these things, a person can truly do quite a bit.

[ 22 ] So we see that we are in constant connection with the dead; we have a kind of question-and-answer exchange, an interaction with them. To make ourselves particularly suited to asking questions—that is, to draw closer to the dead, so to speak—the following is the right approach. Ordinary abstract thoughts—that is, thoughts derived from materialistic life—bring us little closer to the dead. The dead also suffer from our distractions in purely material life, if they are connected to us in any way. If, on the other hand, we hold fast to and nurture what brings us together with the dead emotionally and through our will, then we prepare ourselves well to ask the dead appropriate questions; we prepare ourselves well to enter into a relationship with the dead at the moment of falling asleep. These relationships exist primarily because the deceased in question were connected to us during their lives. The connection in life lays the foundation for what follows regarding the connection after death. There is, of course, a difference between whether I speak to someone indifferently or with concern, whether I speak to them the way one person speaks to another when they love that other person, or whether I speak while behaving indifferently. There is a great difference between speaking to someone as if over five o’clock tea and being genuinely interested in what the other person has to say. When one creates more intimate relationships in life between soul and soul—relationships based on feelings and impulses of the will—and when, after a soul has passed through the gate of death, one is able to maintain, above all, such emotional connections, such interest in the soul, and such curiosity about the answers it will give; or when one perhaps feels the urge to to be something to the soul oneself—if one can live in these recollections of the soul, recollections that do not flow from the content of one’s imaginative life regarding the soul, but from the relationships between soul and soul—then one is particularly well-suited to approach the soul with questions at the moment of falling asleep. To receive answers or messages, on the other hand, at the moment of waking, one becomes particularly suited to do so if one is capable of and inclined to engage with the essence of the deceased person in question during their lifetime in a discerning way. Consider how, especially in the present day, people pass each other by without truly getting to know one another. What do people actually know about one another today? There are—if one may take this somewhat strange, striking example—marriages that last for decades without the two spouses ever really getting to know one another in any way. That is how it is. But it is entirely possible—which does not depend on talent, but rather on love—to respond with understanding to the nature of the other and thereby carry within oneself a true mental image of the other. This, however, prepares one particularly well to receive answers from the deceased themselves at the moment of awakening. That is why one is actually more inclined to receive answers upon the awakening of a child or a young person, because one still tends to get to know young people better than those who have turned inward and grown older.

[ 23 ] In this way, people can already do something to establish the relationship between the living and the dead in the proper way. In fact, our entire life is permeated by this relationship. As souls, we are embedded in the sphere where the dead also reside. The degree—as I mentioned earlier—to which we are devout is very much connected to how those who died in their youth affect us. And if those who died in their youth did not influence our lives, there would probably be no piety at all. Therefore, the best way for people to relate to the souls of those who died young is to keep their memory alive in a more general way. Memorial services for children or those who died in their youth should always have a ceremonial, more general character. When young people die, there should be a kind of ritual. The Catholic Church, which tailors everything to youthful, childlike life—which wishes to deal exclusively with children and to care for children’s souls—therefore rarely asks for individual eulogies to be given for the child’s life that has come to an end with death. This is particularly good. The grief we feel for children is of a different nature than our grief for older people. I would most like to call grief for children “compassionate grief”; for the grief we feel for a child who has passed away is, in many ways, a reflection from our own soul upon the essence of the child, who has actually remained close to us. We share in the child’s life, and the child’s essence shares in that grief. It is compassionate grief. When, on the other hand, grief arises specifically for older people who have passed away, it cannot be described as compassionate grief; it must always be described as selfish, and it is best sustained by the consideration that the deceased actually takes us with them when they have grown older; he does not lose us when we try to make ourselves ready to be with him. Therefore, we can shape our remembrance of the older deceased in a more individual way, carry it more in our thoughts, and remain united in thought with what we used to share with him in our thoughts, provided we try not to behave like an inconvenient companion. He has us, but he has us in a peculiar way when we have thoughts that he cannot at all absorb. We remain with him, but we can become a burden to him if he has to carry us along without us harboring thoughts that he can unite with himself, that he can contemplate spiritually in an appropriate manner.

[ 24 ] Consider how concrete our relationship with the dead becomes when we can truly examine it from a spiritual-scientific perspective, when we are truly able to take in the entire relationship between the living and the dead. It will become important for the humanity of the future to take this into account. As trivial as it may sound—because one could say that every age is a time of transition—our age is indeed a time of transition. Our age must give way to a more spiritual age. It must know what comes from the realm of the dead; it must know that we are surrounded here by the dead just as we are by the air. In the future, it will simply be a real sensation: When someone has passed away in old age, you must not become a nightmare to them; but you will become a nightmare to them if you harbor thoughts within yourself that they cannot take in. Consider how life can be enriched when we take this to heart. Only then will coexistence with the dead become a reality.

[ 25 ] I have often said: Spiritual science does not seek to found a new religion, nor does it seek to introduce anything sectarian into the world; otherwise, one completely misunderstands it. On the contrary, I have often emphasized that it can deepen people’s religious life by laying a solid foundation. The remembrance of the dead, the cult of the dead, has its religious aspect. A foundation is laid in this aspect of religious life when life is viewed through the lens of spiritual science. Things are brought out of the abstract by doing what is right. For example, it is not a matter of indifference to life whether a proper funeral service is held for a young person or an older person. For these matters—whether a proper or an improper funeral service is held for the deceased— that is, a ceremony that does not arise from an awareness of what a deceased young person is and what an elderly deceased person is—this fact, whether a funeral ceremony is conducted properly or improperly, is far more important for human coexistence than a local council resolution or a parliamentary decision, strange as it may sound. For the impulses that are at work in life will arise from within human individuals themselves when people stand in the right relationship to the world of the dead. Today, people want to organize everything through the abstract structure of the social order. People are happy when they don’t have to think much about what they should do. Many are even glad when they do not have to think much about what they are supposed to think. But this is quite different when one has a living awareness—not merely of a pantheistic coexistence with a spiritual world, but a living awareness of a concrete coexistence with a spiritual world. One can foresee religious life becoming imbued with concrete ideas if this religious life is deepened through spiritual science. The spirit was, after all—as I have often mentioned—abolished for Western humanity in the year 869 at the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople. At that time, it was elevated to dogma that Catholics were not to regard human beings as consisting of body, soul, and spirit, but only of body and soul; and the soul was attributed with “spiritual qualities.” This abolition of the spirit has immense significance. The fact that a decision was made in Constantinople in 869 that human beings should not be conceived as endowed with “anima” and “spiritus,” but that they possess only “unam animam rationalem et intellectualem”—that is dogma. “The soul has spiritual qualities”—this has cast a shadow over the spiritual life of the West since the 9th century. This must be overcome once again. The spirit must be recognized once more. What was considered heresy in the medieval sense—namely, the recognition of the trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit—must once again be regarded as the correct, authentic view of humanity. This will require a great deal of effort on the part of people who today, as a matter of course, reject all authority and swear that human beings consist only of body and soul—and these are not merely people of a certain religious denomination, but also those who listen to professors, philosophers, and others. And the philosophers—as you can read everywhere—distinguish only between body and soul, leaving out the spirit. This is their “unbiased” view of the world, which, however, stems solely from the fact that in the year 869, at a church council, a resolution was passed not to recognize the spirit. But people are unaware of this. Philosophers who have become world-famous—for example, Wilhelm Wundt, a great philosopher by the grace of his publisher, yet world-famous—naturally also divide human beings into body and soul, because he considers this to be unbiased science—and does not realize that he is merely following the council’s decision of 869. One must look to the true facts if one wishes to see through what is taking place in the world of reality. If, in this area—which we have touched upon especially today—one looks at the true facts, then an awareness opens up of a connection with that world which is dreamt away and slept through in history. History, historical life—one will be able to see it only in the right light if one can also develop a proper awareness of the connection between the so-called living and the so-called dead. We will speak further about this when we meet here again.