The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Spiritual Tasks Ahead for Norway and Sweden II

[ 1 ] We have seen how, in accordance with anthroposophical insights, we must place the human being—in accordance with his essence—within the entire universe, and we have first considered the human form, the human constitution. We had to trace this human form back to the fixed-star sky—or rather, to the representation of that fixed-star sky—the zodiac. We have seen how certain forces emanate from those stellar configurations when they come into contact with the forces of the Sun, and how that which forms the shape of the human head and the associated organs is connected to the upper signs of the zodiac—Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer; how, in turn, what constitutes the human chest region is connected to the middle constellations—Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio; and finally, how that which gives rise to human metabolism and the limbs is connected to the lower constellations—whose influence, when they are, so to speak, covered by the Earth, is associated with the constellations of Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. So we can say: The fixed-star sky—for the constellations are merely meant to represent the effects of the fixed stars on human beings—the fixed-star sky influences human form and structure.

[ 2 ] The planetary sphere influences the stages of human life. We must be clear about the fact that human beings possess various forms of life within themselves. We would not be able to think—our head would not be an organ of thought—if we had within our head a life as vigorous as that which we have, for example, in our metabolic organs. If metabolism in the head becomes too vigorous, then our consciousness and our composure fade away. From this you can already conclude, even from an external perspective, that consciousness and imagination require a subdued, sluggish, and fading life, whereas the upward-striving, powerful, and intense life is necessary for that which acts within us more from the unconscious—namely, the will.

[ 3 ] So among our stages of life, there are some that are more like stages of life that are dying off or killing themselves, and others that are true stages of life, such as the strong, intense organic life found, for example, in a child, where thinking has not yet emerged. We have this childlike life within us continuously, ‘but the life that is gradually dying out is superimposed upon this childlike life.’

[ 4 ] These various stages of life depend on the planetary sphere. While the fixed-star sky influences human beings through its physical forces, the planetary sphere influences them through the etheric forces it contains. Thus, the planetary sphere influences human beings in a more subtle way. But it is indeed true that the human physical body derives its form and shape from the fixed-star sky, not from anything earthly, and its stages of life from the planetary sphere.

[ 5 ] We have thus considered the form of the human physical body and the stages of life of the human etheric body. We can now proceed to the soul life and the spiritual life of the human being. There, however, we must adopt a different approach. What is it that our physical body and our etheric body convey to us in our waking daily life? It is that which we perceive through the senses and which we can process through our thinking. We are truly awake only in what our senses perceive and what we can process through our thinking.

[ 6 ] Consider, on the other hand, feeling. Even from a superficial observation, you will be able to tell that feeling does not imply the same degree of wakefulness as thinking and sensory perception. When we wake up in the morning and the colors and sounds of the outside world come to us, when we are consciously immersed in the surrounding warmth, our full, alert state emerges, and we then process what our senses provide us through our thinking. But when feelings arise from the soul, we cannot say that we are just as clear-headed or conscious within those feelings. Feelings are linked to sensory perceptions. One sensory perception pleases us, another displeases us. Feelings are also linked to our thinking. But anyone who compares the images we experience in dreams with what we experience in our feelings will readily notice the kinship between dreaming and feeling.

[ 7 ] Dreams must first be grasped by our waking thought life so that we can evaluate and understand them correctly. But feelings, too, must first be observed by our thought life, so to speak, if we are to connect them to ourselves in the right way. In our feelings, we are actually dreaming. When we dream, we dream in images. When we are awake, we dream in our feelings. And in our willing, we are also completely asleep even while awake. Just consider this: When you raise an arm, when you do this or that, you know from observation what movement your arm makes, what movement your hand performs; but you do not know how the power of the will actually operates within your organism. This is as unknown to you as the states from falling asleep to waking up. By willing, by acting, we sleep, even though we are otherwise awake in terms of our sensory perceptions and our thoughts. So we do not sleep only from falling asleep to waking up; we also sleep with a part of our being while we are awake. We sleep with our will and dream with our feelings.

[ 8 ] What we experience while sleeping is actually beyond our consciousness. But the true nature of feeling and willing is also beyond our consciousness. Nevertheless, it is important for a person to also gain an awareness of what they experience in their unconscious worlds—those worlds that remain unconscious in ordinary life.

[ 9 ] As you know from various anthroposophical considerations, from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, our “I” and our astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies. Now it can be of particular importance to gain insight into precisely those experiences that the “I” and the astral body have from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. When we are awake, we are open to the sensory perceptions of nature; we reach, so to speak, as far as the sensory perceptions of nature. But with our sensory perceptions and our waking thinking, we cannot go beyond the surface of things.

[ 10 ] Certainly, someone might object that they can go beyond the surface of things. They could, after all, cut up a piece of wood that their perception comes up against, and then they would be inside it. But that is not true, because if you cut a piece of wood, you are left with only another surface; and if you cut those two pieces again, you are left with more surfaces. And if you go all the way down to the molecules and atoms, you are always left with only surfaces. You do not reach what can be called the true interior of things. The true inner essence of things lies beyond sensory perception. We can imagine sensory perception as a carpet spread out around us. What lies on this side of the carpet, we perceive through the senses; what lies beyond the carpet, we do not perceive through the senses. We are in this sensory world from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep. Our soul is filled with the impressions that this sensory world makes on us. When we then drift off to sleep, we are no longer in this world on this side of the senses; for in reality, we are then within the inner essence of things—we are beyond the sensory carpet. But the human being in earthly consciousness knows nothing of this, and dreams of all sorts of things that are supposed to exist beyond sensory perception. He dreams of molecules, of atoms; but these are merely dreams—dreams of waking consciousness. People invent molecules and atoms that are supposed to be realities. But take any description—even the most meticulous modern description of atoms—and it is nothing more than tiny things described according to the pattern of what is experienced on the surface of things while awake. It is a fabrication drawn from what is experienced in waking consciousness on this side of the tapestry of the senses.

[ 11 ] But when we fall asleep, we step out of the entire sensory world; we cross over to the other side. And while here we experience nature with our senses and our waking consciousness, over there—beyond—from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we experience the spiritual world, the very same spiritual world we pass through before our birth and after our death. But human beings are constituted in this earthly evolution in such a way that, when they are beyond the sensory world, their consciousness is extinguished. Their consciousness is not strong enough to penetrate this spiritual world. But what we encounter in spiritual science as imagination, inspiration, and intuition provides us with knowledge of what lies beyond the veil of the senses. And the first thing we discover is the lowest level of that world, which we call the world of hierarchies.

[ 12 ] When we wake up, we are transported into the world of animals, plants, and minerals—the realm of the beings of the three kingdoms of nature that belong to the sensory world. When we fall asleep and pass beyond the sensory world, we are first transported to the realm where the first level of beings above humanity—the Angeloi, the angels—resides. And from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we are initially connected to that being assigned to us as our angelic being in the same way that we are connected through our eyes and ears to the three kingdoms of nature here in the sensory world. Even if we are initially unaware of this connection to the world of the Angeloi, it is nevertheless there—this connection. This connection extends into what is our astral body.

[ 13 ] If we were to live in our astral body while asleep and were to suddenly wake up, we would likewise come into contact with the world of the Angeloi, first and foremost with the angelic being connected to our own life, just as we are connected here in the earthly world to animals, plants, and minerals.

[ 14 ] But even in the earthly world—the world of the senses—if a person is attentive and trains their thoughts, they see more than when they are inattentive or distracted. Thus, the connection with the three realms of nature can be either a deeper one or a more superficial one. The same is true of the world of spiritual beings. However, there are different conditions for this world of spiritual beings. A person whose thoughts are entirely absorbed in the material world—who never wishes to rise above the material world, who does not wish to familiarize himself with moral ideals that go beyond mere utility, who does not wish to experience true love for humanity, who does not know devout devotion to the divine -spiritual world while awake—such a person, upon falling asleep, has no strength left to come into contact with their angelic being in the proper way. This angelic being, so to speak, waits each time we fall asleep to see how much we bring with us in the way of ideal feelings and ideal thoughts as we fall asleep. And the more we bring of this kind, the more intimate the relationship with this angelic being becomes while we are asleep. And so, in a sense, throughout our entire waking life we gather within ourselves that which we develop beyond material interests; we gather that which makes our relationship with our angelic being ever more intimate. And when we then pass through the gate of death, everything that constitutes our senses falls away from us. The outer world can no longer make an impression on us, for it must do so through our senses. But these fall away with our physical body. Likewise, the thinking that is linked solely to sensory perception ceases, for it is present in the etheric body. The etheric body remains with us for only a few days after death. We see it as it first appears in a “tableau”—which I have already discussed in a different context in my public lectures these past few days—that can be recognized and beheld, but which must be beheld after death.

[ 15 ] But at the same time, we see how this ethereal body tissue dissolves into the cosmos, how the ordinary thoughts we have formed about the external sensory world drift away from us. They do not remain. Everything a person has thought about what is useful in life, about the connections within the sensory world, and everything they have thought in relation to the material world—all of this departs from us when we pass through the gate of death. Only what we have cultivated in our waking state—ideal thoughts and feelings, pure love for humanity, and religious devotion in the true sense of the word—and united with our angelic being, that is what we take with us when we pass through the gate of death.

[ 16 ] This, however, has a very important effect during the period in which we evolve between death and a new birth. Of course, even during our earthly life we are connected to the even higher hierarchies, and it is indeed true that when we fall asleep and these ideal experiences reach our angelic being, that angelic being in turn is connected upward to the archangelic being, to the Archai, and so on. So that, in a sense, we find our existence continuing in a rich spiritual world. But this rich spiritual world has no special significance for us while we spend our time between birth and death. It is only because this world of the higher hierarchies becomes our surroundings between death and a new birth that it takes on great significance for us. The more we have, so to speak, entrusted ourselves to our angelic being, the more this angel can give us—even after death, when we are spiritual-soul beings—of conscious life and conscious soul content from the higher hierarchies. I would like to say: What our eyes are here in the physical world, or what our ears are here in the physical world, is for our consciousness between death and a new birth in the spiritual world that which the angelic being—and indeed, through this angelic being of ours, the other beings from the realm of the third hierarchy in connection with the higher hierarchies—develops. And our consciousness becomes all the brighter, all the more intimately radiant, the more we have nourished our angelic being with ideal thoughts and ideal feelings, with love for humanity and religious devotion.

[ 17 ] Now, between death and a new birth, there is a certain period of time during which the angelic being has a specific task to fulfill with us. This angelic being must establish an even more intimate and important connection with the realm of the Archangeloi, the archangels, than was previously the case. I have described the period that a human being experiences between death and a new birth from a wide variety of perspectives—which is certainly possible—most recently in my Vienna lecture series from 1914, titled “The Inner Being of the Human Being and Life Between Death and a New Birth.” Today I would like to present the subject from a few other perspectives.

[ 18 ] Some time after death, there comes an important moment when, so to speak, the angel must hand over to the archangel what he has received from us humans through the ideal experiences described. The human being is, so to speak, placed before the world of the Archangels, who can take over what he has already developed in terms of such spiritual and soul experiences between birth and death. And this is the great difference that emerges between one human being and another in the time between death and a new birth: that in our present stage of human development, there are personalities who bring with them very little in the way of ideal feelings, thoughts, and love for humanity when the angel is to hand over to the archangel—for the further development of the worlds—that which we have carried through the gate of death.

[ 19 ] The activity that unfolds there between the Angeloi and the Archangeloi must take place under all circumstances. But there is a great difference between whether, through the experiences described, we can follow with greater awareness what is happening to us between the angels and archangels, or whether we experience it only in a dull, twilight-like state—as must be the case for those people who have allowed themselves to be permeated solely by materialistic consciousness.

[ 20 ] It is not entirely accurate to say that people experience life as dull and dim. To characterize it more precisely, I might have to say: They experience it in such a way that they are constantly being cast out of a world that is actually meant to embrace them, that they constantly feel themselves growing colder toward a world that is actually meant to welcome them warmly. For at that crucial moment in time, human beings are meant to be received sympathetically by the world of the Archangels; they are meant to be warmly welcomed by them. Then they will also be led in the right way to what I have called in one of my Mystery Dramas “the midnight hour” of existence.

[ 21 ] Then, through the Archangeloi, the human being is once again led into the realm of the Archai. And as the human being is, so to speak, incorporated into the realm of the Archai, he is incorporated into all the higher hierarchies; for through the Archai he enters into relationship with all the higher hierarchies, and he now takes up from the realm of these higher hierarchies the impulse to descend once more to Earth. For they absorb the power to work spiritually and psychologically within what will later be handed down to them materially through the stream of heredity.

[ 22 ] And the midnight hour of existence is the point in a person’s life between death and a new birth, which is crossed in such a way that we become increasingly estranged from earthly existence beforehand, growing ever more deeply into the spiritual world, as we are received by that spiritual world with ever greater sympathy—in the sense described above—and are drawn to it with ever greater warmth, or else are repelled by it and grow cold.

[ 23 ] But then, when the midnight hour of existence arrives, the human being, as it were, slowly turns back toward a longing for earthly existence. And on the second part of the journey, he now encounters once again the world of the Archangeloi. It is indeed the case that between death and a new birth, the human being first ascends to the world of the Angels, Archangels, and Archai, then descends again, and after the world of the Archai, encounters primarily the world of the Archangels.

[ 24 ] Now we come once again to an important point in the life between death and rebirth. For the person who has carried nothing through death—no ideal thoughts, no ideal feelings, no love of humanity, and no true, genuine piety—something of the spiritual-soul aspect has, so to speak, died off amid the antipathies of the higher world, amid the coldness of the higher world. Whereas in a person who now approaches the realm of the angels in the right way, spiritually and soulfully, the power is implanted within their spiritual and soul life to act, in their later life back on Earth, to work by permeating the body; but if a person has not brought such spiritual-soul insights with them, the angels must implant within them—in a way that acts more unconsciously—that which is a longing for earthly life. And an extraordinary amount is determined by this implantation. For it is at this point that it is determined to which people, to which language, to which so-called mother tongue the human being will descend for their next earthly existence. And it is determined whether this urge toward national identity and the mother tongue is implanted more inwardly or more outwardly. So that, upon descending, the human being is imbued with an inner love for what will then become his mother tongue, or is more automatically placed into that which he will later have to express as language through his speech organs.

[ 25 ] It makes a great difference whether a person is predestined to one language or another for their coming earthly life. The person who, even before this earthly life—during the second passage through the realm of the Angeloi—can be inwardly and soulfully imbued with a loving inclination toward their mother tongue, absorbs that mother tongue inwardly. They absorb it as part of their being. They become one with it. Love becomes second nature; it becomes a spiritual love. The person grows naturally into the language and the national culture by growing into them in this way.

[ 26 ] But if a person grows into it in the other way—which I have called more automatic—then later, when that person descends through birth into the next earthly existence, they arrive on Earth in such a way that, in a sense, they learn to love their language only instinctively, out of impulse. Whatever love—that natural, self-evident love for their language and their cultural heritage—they fail to cultivate within themselves, they then, as it were, expel from their physical being. And that makes the great difference between whether we grow into a cultural identity and a linguistic context with that quiet, chaste love possessed by the person who is inwardly intertwined with that cultural identity and language, or whether we grow into that cultural identity and language more automatically, so that we, as it were, expel an inner love for this cultural identity and for this language out of our drives and instincts. The former never manifests as what the world calls chauvinism—that is, an outward insistence on national identity—but rather, the inner, spiritual-emotional love for national identity and language, truly attained through a prior ideal and devout experience, expresses itself naturally and is entirely compatible with true universal love for humanity. Such a spiritual and emotional love for language and national identity never stifles the cosmopolitan, international spirit. But when a person grows into their language more automatically—that is, when they thereby develop, through their instincts and drives, an overheated, organic, animalistic love for language and national identity—then what arises is false nationalism, a chauvinistic mindset that emphasizes national identity in an external manner.

[ 27 ] Especially in our time, we need to view what we encounter in the outer world during the time we spend as human beings on Earth between birth and death from the perspective of life between death and a new birth. For how we encounter the realm of the Archangels a second time determines how deeply we immerse ourselves in folklore and language through our connection to the stream of heredity via birth.

[ 28 ] For those who wish to understand present-day life from a spiritual perspective, this experience between death and a new birth—when one enters the realm of the Archangels for the second time—is of great importance. Looking out over the world today, we see how peoples view their nationality, their folk culture, and their language in a mistaken way. And much of what emerged in the catastrophic period of the second decade of the 20th century in the development of Western civilization can only be explained when viewed from such a perspective. Anyone who views life from an inner anthroposophical and spiritual-scientific perspective must recognize that, for many people today, their previous earthly life was one in which they had gradually become entangled in materialism. You are all aware of the fact that, under normal circumstances, a considerable amount of time elapses between death and a new birth. Yet, particularly in the current stage of Earth’s evolution, there are many people who have had only a short time between their last death and their present birth, and even in their previous earthly life they were scarcely imbued with love for humanity or with idealistic feelings. Even in that previous earthly life, they were concerned solely with practical utility. And as a result, during their second encounter with the realm of the Angeloi between death and rebirth, everything was actually prepared for them that is now emerging in such a pernicious way in the life of the West.

[ 29 ] Just as one can only understand human beings as beings of space if one knows that one must trace their form all the way to the fixed-star sky, that one must trace their stages of life all the way to the planetary sphere—that human beings, as beings of space, are precisely beings who draw the forces at work within them not only from the Earth but from the entire cosmos— just as it is necessary to transcend the earthly realm in order to gain this spatial understanding of humanity, so too is it necessary to transcend life between birth and death in order to understand social and communal life on Earth.

[ 30 ] When one studies many aspects of life today, one discovers how people today, despite their constant cries for freedom, are in fact inwardly unfree; how the endeavors that are currently giving rise to such forces of decline are not driven by a free life, but rather by instincts and drives that make social life miserable. When one sees this, one also wants to understand it.

[ 31 ] Just as there is a second encounter with the realm of the Archangels, so too, later on—when the human being is once again drawing very close to earthly life—there is a deeper connection with his Angelos, with his angelic being. As a person moves back toward earthly life, so to speak, they become more detached, drawn out of the realm of the Archangels. As long as they are in the realm of the Archangels, their angel is also more strongly connected to that realm. In a sense, the human being lives within the higher hierarchies. As he continues to spend time between “death and a new birth,” he becomes increasingly dependent on the realm of the angels, and they then guide him through the elements—fire, earth, air, and water—leading him toward what is the current of heredity. It is specifically his angelic being that leads him toward physical-earthly existence. It can make him a human being who is capable of acting freely from the depths of his soul-spiritual being, provided that all the conditions have been fulfilled through a previous life, as I have characterized it.

[ 32 ] But Angelos is incapable of leading people to a free life if people must, as it were, be automatically bound to their language and their national identity. Then individual life, too, becomes unfree. This lack of freedom is expressed in the fact that, although a person does develop inner consciousness—not by grasping free concepts, but by thinking words inwardly—the person becomes externalized, rendered unfree, because their entire thinking is absorbed in words. Yet this is indeed a fundamental experience of people today: that their thinking is absorbed in words. Nor can one understand earthly life in its historical development—especially in its present state—unless one ascends to the life between death and a new birth, to the spiritual-soul world.

[ 33 ] If one wishes to understand the human form, one must look to the fixed-star sky. If one wishes to understand the stages of human life, one must look to the sphere of the planets. If one wishes to understand human spiritual and soul life, one cannot stop between birth and death, for this spiritual and soul life, as we have seen, is rooted in the world of the higher hierarchies, just as the physical and etheric nature of human beings belongs to the physical and etheric external world.

[ 34 ] If, then, we wish to understand thinking, feeling, and willing correctly, we must not merely consider the human being in relation to the external sensory world; rather, we must consider the human being in relation to his or her life between death and a new birth. Thinking, feeling, and willing are the forces through which our soul being first develops. Our ideal thoughts—that which has taken root in these thoughts, in the soul, out of ideal love and piety—carry us, so to speak, through the gate of death. The way we have influenced our thinking, the way our thinking was imbued with an ideal disposition, leads us in the right way to our first encounter with the Archangels. But then, as we pass through the midnight hour of existence, our thinking, I might say, fades away. For it is this thinking that is now being shaped, after the midnight hour of existence, for the next earthly life. And from what our thinking was, those forces are now formed that will permeate the physical organs of thought in the next earthly life.

[ 35 ] When you look at the human head and see how the forces within it work, these are not merely the forces at work in this life. These are the forces that stem from the thinking of the previous life and that give rise to the form of our brain. In contrast, during the second encounter with the Archangeloi, it is specifically the will that plays a special role in the soul-spiritual life of the human being. And it is the will that then, in the next earthly life, takes a greater hold of our limb-metabolic organism. When we enter earthly existence through birth, this will manifests as that which, on the part of the limb-metabolic human being, makes us—more or less skillfully—into one person or another. I would like to say that within our minds we see more the physical reflection of what we developed in thought during our previous life. In the abilities of our metabolic-limb human, we see the workings of the newly acquired forces of the will, which are now integrated into us either inwardly and soulfully, as I have described, or more automatically upon our second encounter with the Archangeloi.

[ 36 ] Anyone who sees how, in a sense, the present life has taken shape—a life that is leading Western humanity in particular toward such forces of decline—will look with the greatest and most ideal interest at what was active within the human being between death and a new birth, in the life that preceded this earthly existence. And it is precisely from what they can recognize in this regard that they will receive the powerful impulse to offer humanity—which was already too materialistic in its previous incarnation— now that the consequences of this materialism have become apparent in the life of nations, to bring forth and provide as inspiration that which can once again lead to an inner life, to freedom, to a truly inner—that is, natural—life in language and folk culture, one that is not at odds with internationalism or cosmopolitanism.

[ 37 ] But this can only be achieved if our thinking can be infused with true spirituality. What, then, does the human spirit actually consist of today? Thoughts—thoughts about something. When people today speak of their spirit, they are really speaking only of their thoughts, of more or less abstract thinking. What we need is true spirit that penetrates deep within us—living spirit. It is precisely this living spirit that anthroposophy addresses in its view of the world that lies between death and a new birth. Human beings today therefore need to view their form, their shape, their stages of life, and their soul-spiritual nature from within themselves as belonging to a world that lies beyond the earthly realm. Then they will be able to bring what is right into the earthly realm.

[ 38 ] We have witnessed how the spiritual aspect of human beings has gradually been absorbed by the other elements of earthly existence—by political life and by economic life. We need a striving toward an independent spiritual life. That alone can provide the foundation for the human being to be permeated with true spirituality, with spiritual substance—not merely with thoughts about something or other. That is why anthroposophy must be committed to working toward the liberation of spiritual life. If this spiritual life does not stand on its own foundations, human beings will become more and more abstract. They will not be able to imbue themselves with living spirit, but only with abstract spirit.

[ 39 ] When a person passes through the gate of death here in physical life, his physical body is buried in the earth or left to the elements. The person in his true essence is no longer present in this physical body. When a human being is born in such a way that, with regard to ethnicity, language, and their own actions, they have become automatic through the processes described, then the living thinking, the living willing, and the living spiritual-soul aspect die out as the human being is born into the physical world. And then the corpse of the divine-spiritual-soul human being arises within physical earthly existence.

[ 40 ] In our abstract, rationalistic thinking, we have the corpse of the spiritual-soul aspect. Just as we no longer possess the true human being in the physical body left behind, so too do we, in abstract thinking—in a soul being that is not spiritualized—actually possess only the corpse-like aspect of the divine-spiritual world. And humanity stands today at a critical turning point where it must resolve to reconnect with the spiritual world, so that what has taken root in humanity’s abstract thinking—more or less as a divine-spiritual corpse—and has now given way to instincts and drives, to the automatic nature of being—so that humanity may once again penetrate it.

[ 41 ] As you can see, what I said yesterday at the end of my lecture to the local student body is profoundly true; it is deeply, deeply true at the core: In the present, if humanity wishes to turn from decline toward a true ascent, it must overcome the abstract—one might say, the soul-corpse-like quality—that is present in contemporary intellectualism and rationalism. Humanity needs a kind of reawakening of the soul-spiritual. And the necessity of this reawakening of the soul-spiritual can be recognized precisely from the phenomena of contemporary social and historical life. If one recognizes these phenomena correctly and impartially, one says to oneself: Anthroposophy certainly has an eternal task—a task toward that which must live within the human being across all epochs of time. But in the present day, it also has a task for our time. It must bring humanity back from externalization, from paralysis, from the suppression of the divine-spiritual life within them. It must restore this divine-spiritual life by helping human beings learn to regard themselves not merely as earthly beings but as heavenly beings, and by helping them realize that they can lead their earthly existence in the right way only by bringing the forces of heavenly existence—the existence between death and new birth—into this earthly life.

[ 42 ] We will pick up on these matters next time, in order to bring them to some sort of conclusion while I am still able to remain among you in a way that is satisfying to me.