The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Three Realms of the Dead: Life Between Death and Rebirth

[ 1 ] I am picking up on some reflections I shared here in a previous lecture, in a sense to continue these reflections, which are in line with what I am convinced must be discussed among us right now. For just as I must believe that in the public lectures given by anthroposophists today, very specific things—demanded by the signs of our difficult times—must be said and must reach people’s ears, so I am also necessarily of the view that very specific spiritual-scientific truths must now be discussed among ourselves.

[ 2 ] In a previous lecture, we discussed how souls who have passed through the gate of death enter into earthly life. We reflected on the way in which the impulses of the so-called dead continue to work in what is accomplished here on earth by human beings, and how connections are formed between the forces of the so-called dead and those of the living. And today we would like to add a few points that are closely related to this topic.

[ 3 ] Above all, it is necessary to realize that, although we can only describe this life between death and a new birth in a certain sense through images drawn from the sensory, physical life on Earth, and the ideas we form within this physical earthly life, yet the life in the realm of the dead is such that it is very difficult to grasp with the concepts and ideas we form during our earthly existence. One must therefore attempt to approach this life from various angles.

[ 4 ] I would say that an attempt was once made immediately before the outbreak of this global catastrophe during that series of lectures in Vienna, where I spoke about life between death and a new birth in connection with the inner forces of the soul. Today I would like, above all, to draw attention to the fact that a realm which, in a certain sense, is—and must be—the most important thing for human beings in their earthly life, is excluded from the experiences and perceptions of souls who have passed through the gate of death.

[ 5 ] Just think how much we, as human beings on Earth, receive through impressions that come to us from the mineral and plant worlds. We must also include in these impressions from the mineral and plant worlds everything that comes to us from the heavens in the form of impressions, perceptions, and sensations: the starry sky above us, the sun, and the moon—in that they enable us to perceive physical images during our earthly lives—are certainly part of what I now count as mineral nature. This mineral nature—and essentially, I say: essentially also plant nature—is excluded from what is perceived in the time between death and a new birth. What can be highlighted as particularly characteristic in this regard, with reference to the experiences of the so-called dead, is that when we encounter the mineral or plant kingdoms, we humans here on Earth have a very specific consciousness. We have, after all, spoken on other occasions about how it is an illusion to speak of the absence of pain or pleasure in the mineral and plant kingdoms. However, through the actions we humans carry out, we make impressions on the mineral kingdom and also on the plant kingdom, about which we can say with some justification that they remain free from such impressions—from such effects that cause pain or pleasure, suffering or joy. We know that when we, as human beings, break a stone, certain elemental beings do indeed experience such pleasure or such suffering, but this does not enter our ordinary, everyday consciousness; so that, within the experience of the ordinary earthly human being, one can say that he must have the feeling: When he breaks stones, when he undertakes any activity involving that which is of a mineral and, essentially, also of a plant nature, it causes neither pleasure nor pain to his surroundings.

[ 6 ] But that does not exist at all in the realm that a person enters once they have passed through the gate of death. Above all, one must be clear about this: even the smallest thing a person does there—we must simply use the words of our earthly language—such as merely touching something, is connected in this spiritual realm either with pleasure or suffering, and also evokes, in some way, sympathy or antipathy.

[ 7 ] So you must imagine this realm of the dead in such a way that, whenever you so to speak come into contact with it, you cannot make such contact without the thing you are touching experiencing pleasure and suffering in its own right, but also developing certain sympathies or antipathies. This is already hinted at in my Theosophy, where the realm of the soul is discussed, and where the most important forces of this realm of the soul are found precisely in the forces of sympathy and antipathy. But one must incorporate such things into one’s living imagination. As one becomes aware of the interaction, so to speak, between the realm of the dead and the realm of the so-called living, one must also be aware of how to conceive of the dead, so to speak, as ruling and governing within their own realm. They act in such a way that they must, so to speak, always be aware: they evoke sympathy or antipathy, suffering or joy; everything they do brings about, if I may put it that way, this resonance, this living sensation. Something that, in the sense of our plant and animal kingdoms, one might call insensitive does not exist at all beyond the gate of death.

[ 8 ] This is, in a sense, the defining characteristic of the very lowest realm, which a human being enters once they have passed through the gate of death; just as, when he enters the physical realm here through the gate of birth, he enters the lowest realm—the mineral realm—so there, by touching the spiritual realm, he enters a realm of general sensibility, a realm of prevailing sympathy and antipathy. Within this realm, they unfold their powers; within this realm, they act. When we imagine them acting there, we must at the same time imagine that from these actions emanate continuous forces bearing sensation—forces bearing sympathies and antipathies.

[ 9 ] What do these forces that carry feelings mean in the overall context of the universe? You see, this brings us to a topic that can truly be resolved for physical life on Earth only through spiritual science—a topic whose importance you will immediately recognize once you consider its full implications. Many things are unfolding in the present age in such a way that people—who increasingly wish to accept as an explanation of the world only what they find within the physical world—are foregoing an explanation; they are turning away from an explanation.

[ 10 ] One such concept that has been set aside in recent times is the principle of evolution as it applies to the animal beings that inhabit the Earth with us. I need only draw your attention to all that has occurred in recent times to support what is called the theory of evolution. It is with a certain degree of justification that people today speak of the evolution of the animal world in such a way as to assume that this animal world has evolved from more imperfect beings to more perfect ones. It would be more accurate to say: It has evolved from undifferentiated beings to increasingly differentiated ones, all the way up to human nature, insofar as human beings are physical beings. This theory of evolution has, for the most part, already entered the popular consciousness of humanity; in a certain sense, it has even become an integral part of humanity’s secular religion, and the religions and denominations themselves are, after all, striving to come to terms with this theory of evolution. At least among their more prominent representatives, they no longer have the courage they possessed until recently to oppose this theory of evolution. They have, in a sense, accepted it and come to terms with it.

[ 11 ] But now, if one asks: What is actually at work in the evolution of animal beings, as they develop from imperfect to more perfect forms? What is at work in all that can be observed in the animal world—not only in their evolution, but in the very existence of the animal world itself? As strange as it may still sound to people today: what one encounters when one truly enters, through the conscious eye of the mind, the realm inhabited by the dead—that which exerts a dominant influence throughout a large part of the animal world—these are forces that emanate from the dead. Human beings are called upon to be co-rulers of the impulses in the cosmos. — In the mineral kingdom, their role is limited to what they produce through their technology—machines and the like—in accordance with the laws of the mineral kingdom; in the plant kingdom, it is limited to what they cultivate as gardeners and farmers. Thus, in the time he spends between birth and death, he is concerned with these kingdoms at most as a secondary matter. But he is concerned with the kingdom that is reflected here on Earth in animal existence, in that forces immediately arise within him after death, and he immediately enters a realm of forces that govern this animal kingdom. There he works within it. In a sense, this is for him the basis, the foundation of his activity, just as the mineral world is for us; it is the ground on which one stands there.

[ 12 ] It arises, just as the plant kingdom arises for us during our existence in the physical world on the basis of the mineral kingdom—on the basis of this realm of prevailing sympathies and antipathies, which then continue into the life of the earthly animal kingdom— a second kingdom, which does not act in the dead in such a way that they merely experience pleasure and suffering, that they merely send out impulses driven by sensations that then continue and take effect; rather, this second kingdom that arises there essentially acts in conjunction with what one might call the strengthening and weakening of the forces of will inherent in the dead after death. If you wish to gain a proper understanding of these forces of the will, you must read the aforementioned Vienna Cycle, where I have described how the will inherent in the human soul between death and a new birth is not exactly the same as what we call “will” here in physical life; but we can still speak of the will, even though the will there is quite different—namely, interwoven with emotional elements and yet another element that does not exist at all here on Earth. But this will, after death, is in a constant ebb and flow for human souls. When one interacts with a deceased person, one experiences their soul life in such a way that, in one moment, one senses: they feel strengthened in their impulses of will; they feel stronger within themselves; in another moment, the will weakens somewhat, falling asleep, as it were. Thus this will ebbs and flows between growing stronger and growing weaker. And this ebb and flow between the strengthening and weakening of the will constitutes a large part—an important, essential part—of the life of the deceased.

[ 13 ] This strengthening and weakening of the will—these are impulses that do not merely flow into the realm of the dead, but rather flow into the human realm here on Earth; not into the thoughts of ordinary consciousness, but into everything that people here — I will even be discussing this tomorrow in a public lecture — experience themselves as impulses of the will, but also as emotional impulses.

[ 14 ] That is, after all, the peculiar thing: that in his ordinary consciousness as a physical human being on Earth, a person actually experiences only his sensory perceptions and his thoughts. Awake consciousness exists only in relation to this perceiving and thinking; feelings are, in fact, merely dreamed, and the will is completely overlooked. No one knows—as well as they know their own thoughts—what is taking place when they simply raise a hand, that is, when the will intervenes in their physical being. Even the workings of feeling, although they are somewhat more clearly present in consciousness than the workings of the will, remain obscure; they are no clearer than the images we see before us in a dream. Passions, emotions, feelings—in truth, they are merely dreamed; they are not lived or experienced in the light of consciousness through ideas and sensory perceptions; and the will certainly is not. In this—which plays into everyday life as sleep, as a dream—the dead live. He lives with souls who are embodied on earth in physical bodies; he lives within them just as we live within the plant world, except that we are not intimately connected to the plant world, whereas the dead person is intimately connected to our feelings, emotions, and impulses of the will; he lives on in all of this.

[ 15 ] This is his second realm. And while we unfold our feelings and sensations here in human life, the dead person continues to live on in this life in a soul-like form, in such a way that precisely that ebb and flow—which I have described as the strengthening and weakening of the will, as the intensification and dulling of the dead person’s will—is, in a certain sense, one and the same with what is dreamt and slept through here on earth as the feelings and impulses of the will of the so-called living.

[ 16 ] You can see from this how little the realm of the dead is actually separated from our earthly realm, and how intimate the connection between these realms is. As I said, under normal circumstances, the dead have nothing to do—with the exceptions I will discuss later—with the mineral and plant kingdoms; but they do have a connection with what takes place in the animal kingdom. That is, in a sense, the ground on which they stand. They also have a connection with what takes place in the human realm of feeling and will. In this realm, we are by no means separated from the dead. But the fact is this: When one passes through the gate of death, experiencing these intensifications and weakening of the will, one can live with the so-called living in their physical bodies—but not with everyone, not with just anyone. Rather, there is a specific law that one can live only with those with whom one is somehow karmically connected. Thus, a person who is a complete karmic stranger and who lives here is imperceptible to a dead person—he does not exist at all. The world that the dead person experiences is defined by the karma that was woven here during life. However, this world is not limited to those souls who are here on Earth; rather, it extends to include those souls who have themselves already passed through the gate of death.

[ 17 ] This second realm thus encompasses all the karmic bonds that a person has formed with those who are still on Earth and with those souls who, like himself, have passed through the gate of death. It thus arises within a realm shared by the dead, a realm of animal existence—though we should not think so much of earthly animals here. I have explicitly stated that these earthly animals reflect what exists in the spiritual world: the species soul of the animal. With regard to the dead, we must think more of the spiritual aspect of the animal realm; on this common ground, an individual karmic realm then arises for each dead person in a sense entirely different from what is the case here in our earthly realm; for one has formed this connection, another that one. For the only aspect of the human realm that remains is that with which karmic connections have been formed.

[ 18 ] And there is yet another law at work there, which shows us how this second realm is actually structured. To begin with, that which acts upon the dead in this realm—strengthening or weakening their powers of will—is initially limited to a circle formed essentially by the last earthly life, or perhaps even only by parts of that last earthly life. Those who were particularly close to him—those with whom the one who has passed through the gate of death was especially closely connected—are the ones with whom he lives most intensely. And only gradually does this circle expand to include those with whom he has formed broader karmic connections.

[ 19 ] And this process by no means takes the same amount of time for everyone; for some it is shorter, for others longer. It is difficult to discern from the course of earthly life how things unfold after death. Some personalities, some souls appear unexpectedly in the realm of the dead, because it is very easy to draw false conclusions from physical life. But this is a fundamental law: that the circle gradually expands. And the entire process of becoming accustomed to this circle takes place exactly as I described it in that series of lectures dealing with life between death and a new birth; what I described there as entering into the life of the dead is precisely this expanding life of impulses of the will, which are now present in the dead just as ideas are in the living—through which the dead know, through which the dead possess consciousness. It is extraordinarily difficult to make it clear to the earthly human being that the dead person knows essentially through the will, whereas the earthly human being knows essentially through the concept. This, of course, also makes communication with the dead person difficult.

[ 20 ] One might say that the realm into which the deceased enters—as the second realm—expands more and more. Later—though this “later” is always relative; for some it comes sooner, for others later—indirect karmic connections are added to the direct ones.

[ 21 ] Here’s what I mean: When a deceased person has spent a certain amount of time in the realm between death and a new birth, the scope of their experiences has expanded and now extends to those souls—whether on Earth or in the beyond—with whom they have entered into a direct karmic connection. Now, however, these souls in turn have karmic connections of their own that are not at the same time karmic connections of the deceased person I am referring to. So let me put it this way: Person A has a karmic connection with Person B, but not with Person C. Here we see how the deceased person extends his experiences to include Person B, how he lives with that person in the manner described. Later, B becomes a mediator to C. A has no direct relationship with C, but acquires an indirect relationship through the fact that B has a karmic connection to C. Through this, however, this second realm expands—slowly but gradually—across a very, very vast field. In a sense, one becomes ever richer and richer in such inner experiences—experiences that strengthen or weaken the will and that must acclimate us to the realm of dead or living souls once we ourselves have passed through the gate of death.

[ 22 ] And a significant part of life between death and rebirth consists precisely in the fact that we, as souls—if I may put it in trivial terms—are constantly making more and more acquaintances. Just as we expand our experiences here in earthly life between birth and death, just as we come to know the world around us more and more here, so too do we undergo more and more experiences there that relate to perceiving the existence of other souls in such a way that we know: through certain aspects of these souls, we ourselves experience a strengthening of the will; through others, a weakening of the will. An essential part of the experience there consists in this.

[ 23 ] From this you can deduce what this actually means for existence as a whole, for the entire cosmic existence. It means that there is not only this vague bond of unity between all of humanity—the one that pantheists and fanciful mystics rave about and dream of—but that, in a certain sense, spiritual connections are actually formed between a large portion of humanity across the Earth in the period between death and a new birth. When we look at what we experience between death and a new birth, we are truly not all that far removed from earthly human beings. It is not an abstract bond, but a truly concrete one.

[ 24 ] Just as here on Earth the animal kingdom stands as a third kingdom above the mineral and plant kingdoms, so over there, as a third kingdom, stands the realm of certain hierarchies—which we perceive as a realm of beings who never experience earthly incarnation, but with whom we enter into relationships between death and a new birth. This realm of the hierarchies is, on the other side, precisely what gives us the full intensity of our experience of the “I” between death and a new birth. Through the first two realms we experience the other; we experience ourselves through the hierarchies. And this already implies that the human being, as a spiritual being, experiences himself within the hierarchies on the other side as a son, as a child of the hierarchies. He knows himself to be connected to the other human souls, as I have described, but at the same time he also knows himself to be a child of the hierarchies. Just as he must feel himself here to be a confluence of the outer natural forces of the surrounding cosmos when he recognizes himself within the cosmos, so does he feel himself over there—I would say—to be organized as a spiritual being through the interplay of the various hierarchies.

[ 25 ] When we consider ourselves as human beings—which need not lead us to arrogance—we look upon the so-called lower kingdoms and see ourselves, as human beings, placed, so to speak, at the pinnacle of these natural kingdoms. We pass through the gate of death and find ourselves on the other side as the lowest of the hierarchical realms, but as the confluence—only that this confluence flows down from above, just as it flows up from below here—of the impulses of the hierarchies. Just as here our “I” is embedded in our physicality, so that it is an extract of the rest of nature, so there our spirituality is embedded in the hierarchies, an extract of the hierarchies, in that which one can say: It is our spirituality there, just as here our physicality is that into which we clothe ourselves when we pass through the gate of birth.

[ 26 ] Thus, imaginative cognition can already form concepts of the outline of life between death and a new birth. It would also be extraordinarily sad for human beings if they were unable to form such ideas at all. For just consider that, through our emotional and volitional lives, we are not at all separated from the realm of the dead. That which is hidden from our sight has merely vanished from our imagination and our sensory perceptions. It will mark a giant leap forward in the evolution of the human race on Earth—for the portion of the earthly life cycle that this human race still has to live through—when people come to realize this within themselves: In their emotional impulses and in their volitional impulses, they are one with the dead! — Death can only rob us of the physical sight of the dead. But we cannot feel anything without the dead being present in the sphere in which we feel, nor can we will anything without the dead also being present in the sphere in which we will.

[ 27 ] I spoke earlier about exceptions in relation to the mineral and plant kingdoms. Such exceptions apply in particular to our period, to our era. They did not apply to earlier eras, but we need not discuss that now. In our time, when a certain materialistic mindset is inevitably spreading across the earth, people very easily fail to acquire spiritual concepts during their earthly lives. And I even pointed this out yesterday in a public lecture: when a person fails to acquire spiritual concepts during their earthly life, they become bound to earthly life—in a sense, unable to break free from it—and thereby become a destructive force. Much of what acts as destructive forces within the earthly sphere comes from such dead souls who are bound to this earthly sphere. One should feel compassion for such human souls rather than pass any critical judgment. For after death, it is not particularly easy to have to remain within a realm that is not really appropriate for the deceased. And in this case, that realm is precisely the mineral and plant kingdoms—including the mineral realm that animals carry within themselves and that human beings themselves carry within themselves. For these beings are, after all, permeated by the mineral realm. For those who have not absorbed any spiritual concepts within themselves, the situation is such that after death they recoil from this experience, which evokes sensations everywhere: They cannot enter the realm that reigns in the animal spirit and in the human; they can only enter that which is of a mineral nature, that which is of a plant nature. I cannot describe what this actually entails; for, first of all, language has no words for it, and secondly, one can only slowly and gradually approach what actually underlies it, because this approach is, at first, truly somewhat frightening.

[ 28 ] One must not imagine, however, that such dead are then completely removed from the life I described earlier; but they approach this life only with a certain hesitation, with a certain fear, and time and again plunge back into the plant and mineral kingdoms, because they have formed, for the most part, only concepts that have a certain significance for the latter kingdom—the kingdom of the dead, the kingdom of physical mechanism.

[ 29 ] What I consider to be my main task today is to use such ideas to reawaken an awareness of how the dead contribute to human development. One would actually like to proclaim such things in public lectures today; but one simply cannot, because people are not yet really open to such ideas unless they have already experienced some of what has been communicated in our branches. However, by describing life in this way—between death and a new birth—and by describing, in particular, its connection to earthly life, one meets—or, one might better say, fulfills—the demands of our age in particular. For our age has, for a relatively long time, cast off the old instinctive notions concerning the realm of the dead, and humanity must take on new concepts. It must move beyond abstractions about the higher worlds and not merely speak of spirituality in general terms; rather, it must come to truly understand what actually functions as spirituality. It must be clear that the dead have not passed away, but continue to live and work within the historical process of human development,3 and that the forces that surround us spiritually are, on the one hand, the forces of the higher hierarchies, but are also the forces of the dead. The greatest illusion to which the humanity of the future could succumb would be to believe that what people develop among themselves as social life—as coexistence here on Earth with their feelings and their will—occurs to the exclusion of the dead, through earthly institutions alone. It cannot happen through mere earthly institutions alone, because the dead are already active in people’s feelings and will.

[ 30 ] But the question is this: How will it be possible, amid the influences of modern times, to develop an awareness of this kind of connection with the spiritual world in the right way? The course of human evolution is such that, with his ordinary consciousness here in the physical body, the human being is actually withdrawing more and more from the spiritual world. Now, in order that the human being, as a physical being, might once again find the proper entrance into the spiritual world, the Mystery of Golgotha took place within the course of Earth’s evolution.

[ 31 ] This Mystery of Golgotha is not only a unique event—and as such, the greatest event in the history of the Earth—but it is also an event whose effects continue to unfold; it is an impulse that continues to work. And humanity must do its part to ensure that this impulse continues to work in the right way. I have emphasized time and again for a long time how the impulse of Golgotha is directly connected to the very task of our spiritual science, and how spiritual science must, in a certain way, be present in order to understand this impulse of Golgotha in the right way for our age and for the near future. You can be certain of this: As an earthly science that will at the same time serve to shape worldly religion, natural science will gain ever greater and greater influence. Such follies as the accusation leveled against me, for example, that I am hostile toward the natural sciences even in their radical development, belong to the most antiquated prejudices in thinking; for anyone who understands the course of Earth’s evolution knows that the natural sciences cannot be refuted, that, on the contrary, they will continue to expand further and further. And that which is being cast over the world of the natural sciences as a kind of religious belief—that cannot be stopped in any way; it is coming; it is coming, on the one hand, with certainty, and it will be a blessing to humanity. And it will not take long at all—perhaps only a few decades—before no religious denomination will be able to resist the fact that even the simplest, most primitive of people will come to possess such an awareness of pure natural existence as is cultivated by the natural sciences. That, at least, is already certain.

[ 32 ] But on the other hand, one thing is certain. It is certain that, as this purely scientific worldview takes hold of people’s minds, the spiritual realm itself will be able to be nurtured less and less through this natural science. The spiritual must be drawn from another source—albeit one that is equally rigorously scientific—just as natural science comprehends natural existence from one perspective; for the understanding of natural existence will become increasingly necessary for the fulfillment of those tasks that human beings must accomplish in the future between birth and death. That which lifts him into the spiritual world will have to come to him from another direction.

[ 33 ] A fundamental impulse for the broadest circles has already made itself felt in the way the Mystery of Golgotha has been understood thus far, and this is particularly evident in our time. One can already say today: The most intense enemies of an understanding of the Christ impulse are the pastors of the various denominations—as strange as that may sound; but what distances people the most from the Christ impulse is the way in which the pastors of the various denominations and the theologians represent this Christ impulse. For the denominations are, in fact, already quite, quite far removed from an understanding of what this Christ impulse is actually all about.

[ 34 ] Now, I do not intend to cover all the essential points regarding the Christ Impulse today. We have, after all, gathered a great deal of material on this subject over time, and we will continue to do so. But there is one thing I would like to emphasize, something that stands out particularly strongly today in relation to the Christ impulse. That is, people really must come to realize that the Christ impulse, in the most intense sense, must be treated differently from other historical impulses. People do recognize this, but they are constantly making compromises of one kind or another. They settle for half-measures; they lack the courage to embrace the whole. What one must realize about the Christ Impulse is that it is impossible to say anything at all about it using the methods of ordinary history. Prominent theologians say that there can be no question of the Gospels being authentic in the ordinary historical sense; whatever can be cited as historical evidence that Christ lived can be summarized on a quarter-page, say these famous theologians. Thus, even renowned contemporary theologians already admit today: The Gospels cannot be relied upon if one wishes to treat them solely as historical sources. There is absolutely no way to prove that they represent historical facts. — This, of course, must be noted today. But what can be presented as historical corroboration—just as there are historical documents regarding other figures in world history—that, say famous theologians, can be written on a single quarto page. The significant point here is simply that what is written on that quarto page is also not true in the ordinary historical sense.

[ 35 ] Humanity will have to acknowledge this: that there are no historical reasons—such as those that exist for Socrates or Caesar, for example—for the existence of Christ Jesus on earth, but rather that this existence must be understood spiritually. That is precisely the essence of the matter. In the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity was meant to receive something that—if it relies solely on physical evidence—will inevitably lead it astray, since physical evidence offers nothing regarding this matter; or else it must grasp it in a spiritual way.

[ 36 ] With regard to everything else, humanity is free to search for historical evidence; but when it comes to the Mystery of Golgotha, historical evidence in the most intense sense will never be of any use to human beings. Rather, humanity should be compelled not to understand this important event on Earth in a physical-historical way, but to approach it with spiritual understanding. Whoever does not wish to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha—without historical documents—through a spiritual understanding of our Earth’s evolution, let them not comprehend it. This is the will—one might even say, the will of the gods. Humanity must be compelled to turn to spirituality with regard to the most important matter on Earth. It can only comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha—otherwise it is always historically refutable—if it elevates itself to a spiritual grasp of the world.

[ 37 ] Only spiritual science as such can speak of the reality of the Mystery of Golgotha. One might say: Everything else is outdated. If you read the remarkable book by a theologian who traces all modern theories about Jesus—from Lessing to Wrede—you will find that such an account provides proof that history must actually be transcended in this area, that a new understanding must emerge. And this new understanding can only be found through spiritual science.

[ 38 ] Let us understand this, my dear friends: in our time, the moment has come when people will be able to experience the continuing effect of the Mystery of Golgotha only in a spiritual way. That is why I have also spoken of the spiritual-etheric reappearance of Christ in the 20th century, and described it in the first Mystery. But this will be a spiritual experience—albeit a spiritual-clairvoyant experience—a spiritual experience.

[ 39 ] Thus, the Mystery of Golgotha is intimately connected with humanity’s necessary ascent to spirituality from our time onward. Just as humanity must rise to a certain spirituality from our time onward, so it is equally true that, from our time onward, it must understand that the Mystery of Golgotha can henceforth only be grasped in spirituality; that Christianity, in essence, must undergo a spiritual continuation—not a historical continuation—in the external sense of historical research or historical tradition. However, the point is simply that what I have just said should not be understood in an abstract sense; one must not believe that by using the few concepts people very often employ to grasp the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha, one has already done everything. No, one must approach these things with complete concreteness; one must not only form ideas about Christ and his work, but one must, in a certain way, be able to find the Kingdom of Christ within our earthly realm. Christ has entered the earthly realm, and one must be able to find his domain.

[ 40 ] Natural science, even as it develops toward its highest perfection, will present a picture of the world that could also come about without the aid of the Mystery of Golgotha; Natural science, on its own, will never advance that far during the course of Earth’s evolution, for the physicist or biologist will base his assumptions on the Mystery of Golgotha. But all science, insofar as it deals with what takes place around us from birth to death, will gradually become more and more like natural science. Alongside it, spiritual science will have to draw from the spiritual realm.

[ 41 ] But the question is this: How can we find not merely a science, but a way of standing within the spiritual realm, so that we do not find only nature? For we will never find the Christ impulse within nature alone. How can we seek to place ourselves within the spiritual realm, rather than merely knowing about it? Well, you can already see from what I have said that alongside the consciousness—which in modern humanity, and especially in future humanity, will become a mere natural consciousness, a consciousness of natural facts—another consciousness must be added. A completely different kind of consciousness must yet be added. For this consciousness, the necessity of grasping the Mystery of Golgotha as a spiritual fact will, so to speak, be only the highest pinnacle. But what is necessary in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha—to perceive the matter as a spiritual one—will also have to be extended to the rest of life. This means nothing other than that, in addition to pure natural observation, a completely different way of viewing things must enter human consciousness.

[ 42 ] And this perspective on things—which will come and must come—arises from the fact that human beings learn to look at the world with the same level of consciousness with which they look at the sensory world through their sensory perceptions, and to view the course of their destiny, both in the grand scheme and in the details. What do I mean by this? Today, people still pay little attention to the course of their destiny. But consider extreme cases. I want to tell you about one case that can lead us to what I actually mean—one case out of thousands. One could recount thousands of such cases, countless thousands.

[ 43 ] A man walks from his home along a path he has often taken. It leads him up a mountainside to a rocky plateau, from which he has a very beautiful view. He has often sought out this view; it is, so to speak, his usual walk. One day, while taking this walk, a thought comes to him as if out of nowhere: “Be careful, watch out!”—And he hears in his mind—not through a hallucination, but in his mind—a voice saying: “Why are you walking this path? Can’t you forgo your pleasure just this once?” He hears this in his mind. It gives him pause; he steps slightly aside, thinks for a moment—and then a massive boulder comes hurtling down, right onto the spot where he would have been standing had he not stepped aside, and which would most certainly have killed him.

[ 44 ] Now I ask you to consider the question of what fate has to do with this. There is certainly something at play here. The man lives on. The lives of many people on this earth are connected to his life. Everything would have turned out differently if the boulder had killed this man. Something is unfolding here. If you try to explain this “something” in terms of the laws of nature, you will naturally fail to grasp what it is about this that is fateful. Of course, you can use the laws of nature to explain why the boulder broke loose, and why the man was killed after the boulder had already fallen once, and so on. But in everything that can be said about the matter in a natural way, the element of fate is not present at all; it has nothing to do with it.

[ 45 ] I have described an extreme case to you. But, my dear friends, our entire life is made up of such things, insofar as our life is a matter of fate. It’s just that people don’t pay attention to this—they aren’t mindful; they don’t pay as much attention to these things as they do to what is conveyed to them through their senses as natural facts. Day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, things happen that have only been described in an extreme case, as I just mentioned. Just think for a moment how often you—and one must also consider these things on a small scale—want to leave home: you are delayed for half an hour. Such and similar things occur a thousand times over in life. You see only what happens after you have been delayed for half an hour; you do not even consider what might have happened instead if you had left half an hour earlier!

[ 46 ] Thus, a completely different realm truly and constantly intervenes in our lives—the realm of what is fated—a realm that people today do not even take into account, because they focus their attention only on what is happening right now, and not on what is constantly being kept out of their lives. After all, you have no way of knowing whether, three hours ago, you might not have been able to do something that you were prevented from doing—as a result of which you would not be sitting here now, and might not even be alive. You always see only that which required spiritual impulses in manifold ways in order for it to come to pass. With your ordinary consciousness, you generally do not assume that what you do in life is the result of cooperating spiritual impulses. Once you become aware of this, once you realize that there is a realm of destiny just as there is a realm of nature, you will find this realm of destiny by no means poorer in content than the realm of nature. But in this realm of destiny—which, I would say, only appears clearly before the human mind in specific instances, when extreme cases occur, such as the one I have described to you—in this realm of destiny, what I described earlier comes into play. There, the impulses of the dead influence the feelings and the impulses of the will through which the fateful forces flow. And even if the person who says such a thing is still regarded today by the “completely rational” as a superstitious fool, it is nevertheless true that—with precisely the same certainty with which one states a law of nature today—one can state that the voice attributed to that man was bestowed upon him by this or that deceased person, acting in turn on the command of certain hierarchies, and that continuously, from morning to evening and especially from evening to morning, while we sleep, the impulses of the dead and the impulses of the spiritual hierarchies, which bring about what is fated, are at work within us.

[ 47 ] But now I would like to draw your attention to one thing. You have probably already heard something about the Socratic daemon, the daemon of Socrates: how Socrates, the wise Greek, spoke of how everything he does is under the influence of a daemon. I have discussed this Socratic daemon in my short treatise The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and of Humanity. In my new treatise On the Mysteries of the Soul, where the second chapter deals with the learned individual Dessoir, one can see how Dessoir also addresses such matters; I have pointed out this daemon of Socrates. Socrates merely became conscious of what had been at work in all human beings. Up until the Mystery of Golgotha, certain beings were the guiding forces behind what the dead brought into human life. These beings lost their power at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and the Christ impulse took their place. And now, from a spiritual-scientific perspective, you have linked the Christ impulse with the fateful aspects of the human being. As I have described, the forces—the impulses—of the dead work their way into our spheres of will and feeling. The dead exert their influence; but they, too, experience both strengthening and weakening of the will. And this entire realm is an earthly realm; just like the natural realm, it is an earthly realm. But the impulse that has been active since the Mystery of Golgotha—that is, since the Mystery of Golgotha—is the Christ impulse. Christ is the guiding power in this realm that I have described to you. So not only will we establish a science of the Mystery of Golgotha, but in the future we will have to recognize that our world is permeated—just as much as the world of natural facts—by a realm of destiny as its other pole. This realm of destiny is still largely overlooked today. It will have to be given just as much attention as the realm of the natural. But at the same time, people will come to realize that in this realm of destiny, they are connected to the dead; one will know that this realm, which we share with the dead, also contains the realm of Christ; that Christ descended to Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha to carry out His work, so that He might share with us humans on Earth that which we, in turn, share with the dead—insofar as the dead are active in the earthly realm—I am not referring here to the exceptional case, but to the normal case.

[ 48 ] If this is to be more than just an abstract truth, more than just a conceptual truth—a “Sunday truth” that one recalls from time to time simply because it occurs to one that such a thing is true—but if human beings are to walk in this realm of destiny as consciously as they walk in the realm of sensory perception, if, so to speak, just as one walks through the world and perceives it with one’s eyes, one also feels interwoven with this realm of destiny, and in this realm of destiny always feels the forces of Christ united with the forces of the dead—then, my dear friends, humanity will already develop a real, concrete, and sensibly experienced life with the dead. When one feels this or that oneself, when one brings about this or that oneself, one will experience how one is united with the beloved departed within it. Life will be infinitely enriched.

[ 49 ] In the sense that we call it that, we may not forget our dead; we honor their memory. But an intense life—and that will be the true life, because otherwise life is simply slept through, insofar as it is a matter of fate—an intense life will take hold of humanity, and that will lead not only to keeping the memory of the dead alive, but also to knowing: If you do this, if you take this path, if you undertake this, if you succeed in it: this or that deceased person is working alongside you. — The bonds with the dead are not severed; they remain. This enrichment of life lies in store for humanity in the future of the Earth. And now that we are in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, this fifth post-Atlantean epoch essentially works toward the education of humanity in the direction just described; and humanity will not be able to survive the sixth post-Atlantean epoch at all unless it prepares itself to feel these things in the right way: to take the reality of the fateful into consciousness, just as humanity now takes in only the reality of the natural.

[ 50 ] To gain a concrete understanding of the connection between the Mystery of Golgotha and the problem of death—that is what I wanted to point out today. This is also something that is intimately connected with what must now come into humanity’s consciousness. For among the many things humanity lacks is precisely the fact that people have lost the ability to experience true realities through their emotional and volitional impulses. People are gradually lulling themselves into great illusions: that they can shape earthly life according to earthly laws—the greatest illusion to which human beings can succumb. A great illusion that finds its extreme—its radical extreme—for example, in purely materialistic socialism, which, of course, will never allow the dead to play a part in even the smallest of our human interactions, but instead organizes everything according to economic—that is, purely physical—laws. That is one extreme. On the other hand, there is the extreme of which all manner of so-called idealists now dream: To create, across the entire world and disregarding all that is spiritual, purely programmatic, domestic, and international organizations through which wars are supposedly to be abolished. People will come to realize, once they become accustomed to such an illusion, that by doing so they are not abolishing what they wish to abolish, but rather conjuring up precisely what they wish to abolish. There is good will behind these efforts. It is what must emerge from the materialistic consciousness of our time—I would say as a political pinnacle of the entire earthly existence—but it will lead precisely to the opposite of what one actually intends to achieve. What is at stake is that an understanding of the inevitable must spread across the earth, and that this understanding of the inevitable must also take hold of legislation and political organizations, for these, after all, form the foundation for the structure of social relations. Whatever refuses to keep pace with this spiritual development of humanity will simply disintegrate; it will only break down and erode. That is why it is intimately connected with what the signs of the times mean today. We do not need to engage in—to put it bluntly—any political activities here; of course we will not. But the demands of the times must be recognized precisely by those who wish to focus their gaze on the spiritual development of humanity. And it must be understood: on the path that is being followed almost everywhere today, Christ can only be lost; he can be won as the only truly rightful King and Lord of the Earth only through the elevation of humanity to spirituality. You can be certain of this: If Christ is not sought in the way that the various denominations seek him today—denominations that, in recent times, have indeed, in a strange way, found themselves everywhere making all manner of compromises regarding a conception of Christ, even going so far as to celebrate him here and there as a god of battle —but rather if Christ is sought where he can be found in his reality, as people come to understand the realm of what is fated as a reality and thus find Christ as we have indicated today, then that intergovernmental organization will be established, which signifies the spread of true Christianity across the globe.

[ 51 ] You can see for yourself that we are not very close to this goal if you give it a moment’s thought. Just imagine if you were to present to all those people who are now talking about how they want to bring peace to the world—all those who put forward these programs (and who isn’t talking about it!)—if you were to counter their ideas with the program of making Christ accessible to humanity; then peace—lasting peace—would come, to the extent that it is at all possible on earth. Imagine what the various organizations, which are motivated by “goodwill,” would say if this were presented to them! We have even witnessed a peace program issued by the Vicar of Christ on earth. But you would not have found much about Christ in it!

[ 52 ] These things, I know, are not taken seriously enough in the present day. But if they are not taken seriously, humanity will not be able to embark on a path of salvation. Just as it is essential that the Mystery of Golgotha be understood in a spiritual way, so it is essential that people understand the signs of the times in such a way that they truly recognize in spiritual science something without which the external social structure of the future can no longer do without. Even in tomorrow’s public lecture, I will have to touch upon such matters, albeit in a different way.

[ 53 ] This is what I would like to add as a second observation to the one we made at the time regarding the coexistence of the so-called dead with the living.

[ 54 ] And now I would like to conclude here with the remark—which I find distasteful—that I have made in other sections. Most of my dear friends are, of course, well aware of it, and I must make it only for the sake of completeness. I do not know if you are aware that the most unbelievable slanderous things—which sound so outrageous that one is even astonished at how any abomination in the impulses of the mind could give rise to such things—are circulating in the world, and that the spiritual science movement must be protected against these—one might even say—heinous slanders. This gives rise to the necessity that, for the time being—notwithstanding the fact that everything is to be done to further the desired esoteric development of our friends—what used to be private discussions in the usual sense can no longer take place. For it is precisely from these private discussions that these slanders are concocted. So this is what I must necessarily ask our friends to understand: that, for the time being, such private meetings cannot take place. But that would be incomplete if you were to say only that; rather, it must be supplemented by the following: that anyone who wishes—of course, only those who wish!—may recount without reservation everything that has ever been said or done in such private discussions. If the truth is told, there is nothing within our movement that needs to be concealed in any way.

[ 55 ] I am compelled to take these two measures. Please give me some time; other ways and means will be found to ensure that everyone receives their due in the spiritual sciences. But the spiritual science movement must not be held back by such matters that have absolutely nothing to do with it. And therefore, it is precisely those who are loyal and sincere supporters of our movement who must understand that these meetings can no longer take place in the usual sense, and that, on the other hand, I release everyone from any and all promises. Everyone is free to share whatever they wish—no one is obligated to do so, of course—and as far as I’m concerned, they may share it anywhere, for there is nothing that may not be said, provided it is told in accordance with reality and truth. But in order to ensure this, these two measures must be taken. I am very sorry that I must make these announcements; but I know that precisely those of our friends who are most committed to our movement fully understand the necessity of this, and that they will sympathize completely with it.

[ 56 ] Now we simply need to be aware of the gravity of the situation we find ourselves in today. And that is why, for me in particular, such a gathering is always—I would say—a particularly important and solemn event; and especially now, in these catastrophic times, I would like us to be truly and honestly imbued with the awareness of the necessity of standing together in accordance with our anthroposophical principle of unity in spirit. Even if, for the time being, we cannot be together physically, we remain united in spirit. In this, I see the best greeting I can offer you, since we were together again and may, for some time, once more be able to be together only in spirit.