The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] I will have to structure the discussion we are having here in such a way that today I expand on the arguments presented yesterday, so that tomorrow we can reach a certain preliminary, brief conclusion. Therefore, today’s session will serve more as an interlude.

[ 2 ] In the present day, there is indeed very, very good reason—not least because of current events—to reflect on this or that, if one does not intend to miss out on the most important developments of our time. Particularly striking in the present—and, I would say, posing a challenge—is the phenomenon, with which you are surely quite familiar, that in the broadest sense, the most monstrous untruthfulness has taken hold in our time; that precisely where far-reaching events are unfolding today, untruthfulness is present. Such things—such as the emergence of such effective, such pervasive untruthfulness—then also prompt us to investigate all manner of related issues from a spiritual-scientific perspective. And there, one might say, we are often confronted quite particularly with the fact—which I have also touched upon here on several occasions—that what is usually presented as the history of humanity is a kind of “fable convenue.” The issue is not so much that the facts that are reported cannot be considered true to a certain extent; but other facts—you will recall that I recently explained here how the most profound influences of a certain figure from Roman history were simply erased—are simply obliterated. The Church has, after all, erased a vast number of facts from history because it was in the Church’s interest that certain facts not come to people’s attention.

[ 3 ] Yesterday we spoke once again, from a certain perspective, about the period that ushered in the Greco-Roman cultural era—the important period in the 8th century B.C. It is, after all, a time about which historical records have little to say. The historical records become very, very unreliable at that point, but a figure shines forth from the dawn of this era who has inspired a great many people to reflect on a wide variety of topics. Shining forth from that formative period—that is, after the 8th century B.C.—is the name of Pythagoras, and also the name of the Pythagorean School. And as I pointed out yesterday, I discussed what Pythagoras was able to receive from the remnants of the ancient Egyptian mystery teachings, and the nature of these things that Pythagoras was able to receive.

[ 4 ] Now, it is not only interesting to consider what Pythagoras and his students said and did—which was, of course, quite significant, since they not only developed a body of teaching but also engaged in extensive political activity. What Pythagoras and his disciples did is interesting, but it is also significant to examine the world that, in a sense, surrounds these Pythagorean activities—the world from which later Greek civilization emerged, a civilization that had already absorbed a certain influence from what we find in Pythagoras, illuminated by a special radiance. If one considers life in the 7th, 6th, and 5th centuries B.C.E.—from which the later Greco-Roman world subsequently emerged—if one considers this life on the Greek peninsula and in the neighboring lands as well as on the Italian peninsula, then it becomes particularly striking—if one does not view these things according to the conventional historical narrative, but rather in the light of truth (to which spiritual scientific research must always contribute)—that one characteristic of humanity was very widespread throughout this way of life. Indeed, at no other time were there as many lies told across the Mediterranean lands as during this period. The lying—the telling of untruths to others—was a strikingly characteristic feature of the entire way of life from which later Greek and Roman civilization emerged.

[ 5 ] One must not delude oneself in such matters. Everything that one sees developing in Roman civilization—what is regarded as the immense beauty, as the admirable sum of Greece’s imaginative creations, what is regarded as the most magnificent sum of abstractions the world has ever known—all of that grows forth, just as the plant world grows out of manure, out of a soil that stretches across the Mediterranean lands, out of a soil inhabited by people who are entirely consumed by the addiction, by the passion for lying. This is something that ‘history’ tends to downplay, but which must be understood if one wishes to gain a true insight into the declining third post-Atlantean cultural epoch. After all, as we move from earlier centuries and millennia up to the 8th century B.C., we are dealing with the declining third post-Atlantean cultural epoch. And the people who were the bearers of culture during that time—the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the declining third post-Atlantean cultural epoch—were, in essence, great liars. This is also the very epoch in which that ability I spoke to you about yesterday—and which is so extraordinarily interesting—developed in a particularly significant way: the ability to form language out of the cosmic realm of reason. And it was precisely this greatest talent that existed at that time, alongside such things as I explained yesterday, in the great compulsion to lie.

[ 6 ] When one wishes to observe reality, one must not succumb to delusion in these matters any more than one may succumb to the delusion that the violet, which blooms in spring, will eventually wither and that, even as it blooms beautifully and magnificently, it already carries within itself the forces of transience. In the case of the violet, the forces of creation and destruction occur, so to speak, one after the other. In human life—and especially in the broader life of humanity—these forces very, very often exist side by side in time, and one cannot grasp reality unless one understands the necessity that such things arise side by side: evolution and devolution, the possibility of having a constructive effect—as, for example, in the development of language—and, at the same time, that devastating effect which lying exerts on spiritual life.

[ 7 ] In a sense, this is the flip side of what I explained to you yesterday. There is also a bright side. This bright side is of an even more spiritual-scientific nature. I already pointed out yesterday that it would not be possible today to speak with such certainty about these matters of language formation—which we discussed yesterday—if human life after death did not provide clear proof of this, in that what is composed here in life, for example, from individual word atoms or parts of words, is in turn dissolved. And this breaking down of words, this dispersal of words, is something that plays a significant role in the life of the dead. In a sense, the dead person lives from this dispersal of words. And the dead person has the most distinct feeling that in his life—that is, before his death—he was cut off from the spiritual world in which he now finds himself after his death by the very fact that he formed words composed of sounds and letters. The dead person has the feeling that language is, in a sense, a carpet that was laid down in life to block the view of the spiritual world. And in the unraveling of this carpet, in the dissolution of the words, he has the feeling that he is now re-entering the spiritual world. Therefore, it is one of the characteristics of the dead person to dissolve, to pick apart, and to break down into their constituent parts the human words that the individual has come to know during the life between birth and death. The deceased, for example, experiences a very solemn, profound feeling when he succeeds in gaining a certain understanding through such a process of dissolution. I have often spoken to you about how the moment of death is, in a certain sense, something frightening for life here in the physical body. People, after all, tend to turn their faces away from death. After death, the sight of death is always there—as I have often emphasized—but it no longer signifies anything terrifying; rather, as the person looks upon their own death from the other side of life, this sight always carries the certainty that they are an “I” and will remain an “I.” I have, in fact, emphasized this many times.

[ 8 ] But now the task for the “dead” is to understand what is revealed to them from the other side of life as they face death. They come to understand this better and better as they decipher these or those words, depending on which language they spoke. The ancient Hebrews—and, to a certain extent, the Romans as well—had their so-called sacred name, the unpronounceable name of God, Yahweh. For the Hebrews, this unpronounceable name consisted of a certain combination of sounds that we perceive as five vowels, which were conceived as being connected during physical life. Even in the Roman “Jovis,” or Jupiter, there is merely another form of the name Yahweh concealed; in essence, with regard to the five vowels, it is connected in a certain way within “Jovis.” The dead person lived within the dissolution of what had been united in this divine name, and as he dissolved the vowels that had been combined in life, the meaning—one might say—of death was simultaneously revealed to him. One must at least attempt to intuit this meaning of death in the proper way. One must understand that this meaning of death is revealed to the deceased through the dissolution of the sacred name into its constituent parts, which then fade away and continue to resonate in the world as they fade. The dissolution of this sacred name is linked to the understanding of the spiritualization of death. This is a concept that is extremely difficult to describe. Death, viewed from the other side, can be called spiritualization. When death is viewed from the other side, this view is linked to the emergence of the spiritual. And in the breaking down of the word into its vowels, the spiritual reveals itself out of the disintegration that death signifies. Decay is, at the same time, the birth of the spiritual, the emergence of the spiritual. While one may perceive decay in an unsympathetic way as something ugly, like any destruction, when viewed from the other side, this destruction reveals itself as a flash of the spiritual, which is then understood in the fading away. It is as if the sacred word were resonating far out, radiating outward, and in this radiating outward were dissolving precisely into its vowel components, which are then audible as if coming from the periphery of the world, and thus make audible the meaning of death, the spiritual meaning of death.

[ 9 ] This alone will lead you to the conclusion that it is justified to speak of the components of human nature—just as we speak of the components of human nature here in life: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I—in reference to the components of human nature that exist between death and a new birth. For by presenting to you, as it were, the central phenomenon that the human being continually experiences between death and a new birth—this revelation of the spiritual meaning of death itself—the question must arise: What does this world, which is to be revealed to human beings after death, actually look like? — But this can only be understood by gaining some knowledge of the nature and essence of the human being itself.

[ 10 ] Today, let us first try to describe the dead in the same way that we usually describe the living. We can begin with that aspect of the dead person that still has a strong connection—not kinship, but connection—to what a person experiences here between birth and death. We are thus dealing with the first aspect of human nature, which can also be called the “I,” as it is, so to speak, the highest aspect of human nature here between birth and death. We will now set aside the fact that, immediately after death, the deceased still possesses the sheath of the etheric body—which is subsequently shed—and the sheath of the astral body—which is also shed over time; these are components that, in a sense, do not belong to it. When speaking of the dead person, the only element that can initially be recognized as truly inherent to that dead person is the “I.” I said that there is a connection with the “I” of earthly life, but not an actual kinship; for in fact, after death, this “I” presents itself in a completely different way than the “I” is experienced between birth and death. Between birth and death, the “I” is, in a sense, something fluid, something that feels within itself the power to become different every day. Just think how terrible it would be in physical life between birth and death if you were unable to grasp the thought: “I did something bad yesterday, but I can make amends for it; I can do something good in its place.” — Or if, at an even younger age, you had to say: “I haven’t learned much, but I can’t learn anything more.” — At no moment in life between birth and “death” is the self so fixed that it cannot, in a sense, be changed from within by its own willpower. What you experience as the self after death is something that has become fixed; it has taken on certain characteristics that cannot now be changed immediately; it remains as it is. The transformation of the “I”—which remains constantly fluid during life between birth and death—into a fixed entity in which nothing can change, one that remains as it was formed during life: this is the essential point that must be grasped in order to understand this “I” after death. There can be no question of development—which we must, of course, speak of in regard to the “I” between birth and death—after death. After death, the “I” is, so to speak, a fixed spiritual entity that springs from the very sight of death itself, and nothing about this “I” can be changed. One could say, if one wanted to put this matter in more or less banal terms: Human beings are condemned, after death, to view all the details of their lives as something fixed. Just as when you look out over a field, you see the nearby crops and the distant crops side by side, and just as you see within it nothing fluid but a fixed, expansive, and—at first glance—permanent formation, so you survey the entire course of your life, but in such a way that—unlike in the life of the physical body, where what lies ahead is not constantly obliterated by what lies behind—you perceive it as a lasting, concrete expanse that you cannot, at first glance, alter in any way. It would also be terrible for the dead person if this were not the case; for their gaze—the gaze of the dead—is, in fact, initially and primarily absorbed by this “I.” It is, as it were, spellbound by this “I.” And if this “I” were to disappear, it would be for the dead person just as if, for the living, the surrounding world of the senses were to vanish. The individual human being, within his or her “I,” is in fact—if I may put it this way—just as important to himself or herself—and in saying this we are expressing a significant truth—as the entire sensory world that we share as human beings is to the human being here in physical life. An immense abyss would open up—the abyss of nothingness, quite literally—if, after death, we were unable to behold the solidified “I,” the “I” that has solidified from its fluid state.

[ 11 ] Second, we have a kind of spiritual being that we can also call the “spiritual self,” by analogy with what we already know. As the second aspect of the human being after death, we have a kind of spiritual being. Human beings become aware of this spiritual being primarily in such a way that this awareness of the spiritual self arises within them, as if from within. While the “I” presents a kind of external appearance, the awareness of this “spirit-self” arises from within. And to the same extent that one feels: “This spirit-self is coming to life”—to that same extent, the beings of the higher hierarchies emerge from consciousness, so that one knows they are there. I therefore call this “the spiritual self”—I must define it exactly as I am now writing it on the board, otherwise I would be writing something imprecise— “directed by the hierarchies toward the ‘I.’”

[ 12 ] What I have just written accurately describes the situation. You have the feeling that there is a being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi, from the hierarchy of the Exusiai, who is now directing their gaze toward your “I.” By directing your gaze toward the “I”—sometimes through a being from one hierarchy, and at other times through the awareness that your gaze is now directed toward the “I” by a being from another hierarchy—you come to know this hierarchy within the workings of your spiritual self. Thus, through your own activity, you come to know the hierarchies. You begin, through your spiritual self, to find yourself in the company of the hierarchies. And while, before this spiritual self dawns, you still have the feeling that you alone are engaged in directing your gaze toward your own “I,” you increasingly sense that more and more beings from the higher hierarchies are taking care of you and intervening in your vision, guiding your gaze. As you develop your higher sensory activity through the spiritual self, you increasingly feel that the beings of the higher hierarchies are actively participating in this sensory activity. What would be unbearable for a human being in the sensory world here becomes, in fact, the very element of life for the human being in the state after death.

[ 13 ] Just imagine you were standing here at the window, looking out and observing the surroundings. One of you stood there wanting to look around, and the first person sitting here goes over, turns your head to one side so that you look in that direction; a second person goes over and turns your head up a little so that you look at something else; a third turns it around a bit so that you look at yet something else, and so the entire group sitting here would approach you from behind, and you would only be able to perceive your surroundings outside because those sitting here are constantly turning your head in that direction. Now, don’t think of this as viewed from the outside, but as an inner experience, as an inner sensation—then you have something that is quite analogous to this experience that you have as your spiritual self. You immerse yourself more and more into the life of the higher hierarchies as these higher hierarchies come into your field of vision.

[ 14 ] The beings of the higher hierarchies are already at work in the dissolving of words that we have already discussed. This is one aspect of what is experienced there. But it is, after all, the ongoing enrichment of life that arises from gradually becoming more and more familiar with the hierarchies. And in a very similar way, one becomes acquainted with the beings with whom one was somehow karmically connected before death. And there one feels that one is, as it were, guided and directed. This is what can be said about the second member of the human being in the life between death and a new birth.

[ 15 ] The third link is something that might at first seem somewhat shocking to human understanding. As one gradually immerses oneself in this life after death, one feels permeated by a certain force—I might say, by a network of forces. Having first sensed that the hierarchies are drawing near and guiding one in supersensible sensory activity—if I may coin the term—one gradually feels that these hierarchies are infusing one with power, giving one strength. One gradually feels filled with this force that the hierarchies allow to flow into one as they establish themselves within one, as they infuse one with their essence. One gradually feels this force. One feels that one is not merely guided by the hierarchies toward this or that, but one feels that through this activity of the hierarchies—which at first appears as an activity that mediates vision—one is oneself inwardly filled with power. One feels the forces of the cosmos, truly of the cosmos, flowing into oneself like life-giving sap. But now, what is shocking is that the forces one now feels flowing into oneself are of a very peculiar nature. They are forces that, at first, are by no means constructive, but rather dissolving and destructive to what we here in the physical world call life. One gradually feels filled with a cosmic, death-bringing world force.

[ 16 ] It is important to take such strange ideas to heart, because only in this way can the spiritual world truly be understood. Just imagine, for a moment, your spiritual-soul being gradually filled with forces of which you become aware by experiencing them within yourself: Through these forces, everything that lives here on Earth would be killed if you were to touch it. — So, thirdly, you clothe yourselves in what I can call, by analogy with something we already know, the life spirit. You clothe yourself in something that can be called the life spirit, but whose principal characteristics lie in the fact that it is lethal to what is otherwise called the power of the life body. And you acquire a third member of your being through which you are able to kill any etheric body that crosses your path. Everything you touch through this aspect of your being becomes dead in the sense in which we speak of death here on Earth. And as you kill through the powers you have acquired, you awaken the spiritual—and initially, specifically, the soul—from what has been killed. This is a remarkable experience, consisting in the fact that through contact with the living, the living is killed, yet from this killing something soulful springs forth; the soul is liberated. It is a killing, but at the same time it is a liberation of the soul from the bonds of life. So one can say: The life spirit kills what is earthly and living, thereby releasing the soul within it. And one arrives at this strange experience because, in a sense, the soul is enchanted within life, within the living, and through this process, which is carried out after death, the enchanted soul is released from the living. One might be inclined to see something terrible and unsympathetic in the act of killing, in which, after all, the force we are speaking of here essentially operates. This is not the case for life after death, because in killing—in the killing force—lies the continuous radiance of the soul, because through it the continuous emergence of the soul is kindled. But the deceased must possess this awareness: not only must they continually look back upon the death they themselves have undergone, but they must also be conscious of the fact that the very essence of their death spreads, as it were, across the backdrop of everything they now experience in the spiritual world. It is as if one were now living in the spiritual world in such a way that one could say: Here in this spiritual world, spiritual forms are constantly arising—initially, essentially, soul forms; the soul shines forth in the most varied ways. But if one were to ask what the soil is from which all this soul life springs forth, it is this power of death that we have just discussed. Such a force—which destroys ordinary life here on Earth—is therefore our essential soul, which we must acquire between death and a new birth, just as we must acquire our physical body here in life.

[ 17 ] As a fourth element, I can say—again by analogy with what we already know—the spiritual human being. This spiritual human being is perceived as something one tends to regard as part of oneself in the time between death and a new birth, is perceived in such a way that, along with the forces already instilled by the hierarchies—as I have described—one is now also imbued with the ability not only to kill, destroy, or dissolve life—what we here on earth call life—but also to annihilate forms or transform them into others. [It is written on the blackboard:]

1. The Ego
2. The Spiritual Self
3. The Life Spirit
4. The Spiritual Man.

directed through the hierarchies toward the ego kills earthly life, triggering the soul within it

[ 19 ] Of course, it is becoming increasingly difficult to describe these things. But essentially, the power of this spiritual being—as one experiences it between death and a new birth—consists in performing the opposite activity, if I may put it that way, of everything that could be called the creation of forms in the broadest sense. Here—if I may illustrate with a specific example—one draws triangles, quadrilaterals, and so on. After death, by virtue of the powers developed here, one “undraws”; one dissolves everything that has been drawn, the forms. But the peculiar thing is that this does not merely mean that one undraws something; rather, it is at the same time a cosmic activity. One is now oneself within the cosmic activity; one is linked to the cosmic activity. For this undrawing, this de-forming, this dissolving of forms—that is a cosmic activity, and the human being, having acquired this power of de-formation after being permeated by the life spirit, has become a part of the cosmic world. One acts within the cosmos.

[ 20 ] What is called destruction and ruin here on Earth has a great deal to do with creation and formation in the spiritual worlds, and vice versa. What appears here as destruction, as decline, as a loss of form or a fading of outlines has much to do with emergence in the other, spiritual worlds. So that when I speak of a fading of outlines or a loss of form, I am not speaking of decline in the spiritual world, but only of decline in the soul world; conversely, I am speaking of the emergence of something spiritually new in the spiritual world.

[ 21 ] Various mysteries in the world are connected to these things. Today, they are approaching Southern Italy from Central Italy; as they approach Southern Italy, they enter regions that are poor, not particularly fertile, and where few natural resources are available to the people. These are the same regions where Pythagoras was active at the dawn of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. And Pythagoras’s influence at that time was centered in the midst of the most fertile, richest, and most luxuriant regions. As short a time as has passed since that epoch: by pointing specifically to this very spot on earth where Pythagoras was active, one has transformed the fertility and luxuriance—which had reached the level of Sybaris—into poverty, even to the point of the emergence of alarming symptoms of disease. In place of the burgeoning, luxuriant life that existed in those times—times to which very little historical record extends—something is developing that, in comparison to that luxuriant, burgeoning life, is also a natural barrenness. And it is actually of the utmost interest to observe such transitions in the external world. In this external world, emergence and decay are constantly intertwined. In their historical research, however, people do not think far enough to correctly link this constant coming into being and passing away with one another. In the midst of that exuberant opulence, in which people lied on a grand scale, Pythagoras carried out his work, and this work continued after his death. And what Pythagoras and the Pythagorean souls had to do after death is in many ways connected to what manifested itself in the downfall of the flourishing, sprouting life in the midst of which Pythagoras lived. Pythagoras and the souls of his followers were not entirely uninvolved in the work of destruction—which is a work of creation for the afterlife—that arose in the post-Pythagorean era at the very site of lush, burgeoning life within nature. And if one wishes to understand the world as a whole, one must simply come to terms with the fact that, viewed from different perspectives—between birth and death, and between death and new birth—things appear quite differently. The one who would commit a sacrilege by artificially undermining lush, burgeoning life here is, in a sense, merely doing what occurs in accordance with eternal necessity when he participates in the life between death and new birth in a work that here evidently signifies ruin.

[ 22 ] With the third post-Atlantean epoch, something was also destined to come to an end, and this cast its shadow. Much was to come to an end in a different realm than the one just discussed. And the fact that so many lies were told at that time is essentially connected to the end of the third post-Atlantean epoch. People on Earth lied because, as I explained to you yesterday, they were still connected to the cosmic forces; but the very cosmic forces that were at work in Earth’s evolution before the 8th century B.C. were, in many cases, forces of deception. Demonic liars were active in the sphere into which human beings projected their souls as they developed language, as I explained yesterday. They had to, as it were, project their soul-head into a sphere where they could do so: the sphere of cosmic reason. But as he immersed his soul-mind there, that Ahrimanic force was present within it, manifesting itself in the activity of countless demons of falsehood. And from this very same source—from which the language-forming power of that time was drawn—from that very same power, this immense force, this gigantic power of falsehood, developed on the soil of Mediterranean culture. People lied because the demons, who were connected to those other demons that instilled the power to form language, were liars. And these demonic liars, who were of an Ahrimanic nature, had the task of bringing about the downfall of that which had to perish, so that the third post-Atlantean epoch could come to an end and the fourth post-Atlantean epoch could begin.

[ 23 ] The world is organized according to necessities, and one must take these necessities into account if one wishes to answer the great question we posed yesterday at the beginning of our reflections—the great question regarding the connection between the moral and the ideal and natural phenomena. I will continue speaking about this tomorrow in order to bring these reflections to a provisional conclusion for now.