The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] The facts of the spiritual world can be expressed in various ways and viewed from a wide variety of perspectives. This sometimes results in different formulations. But it is precisely through these different perspectives that the facts of the spiritual world are fully revealed to the soul. And so this evening I will present, in somewhat different language and from a different perspective, some of what I have discussed in my last two lectures at the Goetheanum regarding the human experience between death and a new birth.

[ 2 ] We have heard how, once the physical body has been shed, a human being first enters a state of cosmic experience. After shedding the physical body, the human being still retains his etheric organism; but, in a sense, he no longer feels himself to be within this etheric organism, but rather feels his soul expanding into the vastness of the cosmos. However, within this vastness of the cosmos—into which his consciousness is now beginning to expand—he cannot yet clearly distinguish the various beings and processes from one another. He possesses a cosmic consciousness, but this cosmic consciousness lacks inner clarity. Moreover, during the first few days after death, this consciousness is initially occupied by the etheric body that still remains. What is lost first is that part of the human being which is bound to the head organization. I do not mean to say anything ironic, but rather something quite serious: One loses the head—in the soul-sense as well—first and foremost when one passes through the gate of death. The head organization ceases to function.

[ 3 ] It is precisely the head organization that mediates thinking during earthly existence. It is through the head organization that a person forms their thoughts while engaged in certain activities during their earthly existence. One initially loses the head organization once one has passed through the gate of death, but one does not lose one’s thoughts; the thoughts remain. However, they become imbued with a certain vitality. They become dull, twilight-like, spiritual entities that point one out into the vastness of the worlds. It is as if the thoughts had detached themselves from the human head, as if they were still casting a glow back upon the last human life course—which one experiences as one’s etheric organism—but at the same time pointing toward the vastness of the worlds. One does not yet know what they are trying to tell us—these human ideas, which were, so to speak, harnessed and confined within the organization of the head and are now liberated, pointing out into the vastness of the worlds.

[ 4 ] If, for the reasons and in the manner I described yesterday over at the Bau, the etheric body has dissolved—if cosmic consciousness is no longer bound in this way to the final earthly life course — in the other way, which I also described, it remains focused for the time being —, if this etheric body has now also been separated from the human being, then the ideas that have broken free from the head organization become, so to speak, brighter, and one now notices how these ideas point one out into the cosmos, into the universe.

[ 5 ] The fact is that one enters the universe in such a way that the plant world of Earth serves as the intermediary. Please do not misunderstand me: I do not mean to say that the plants covering the ground at the place where one has died are the very ones that prepare the way out for us, but rather that when we consider the plant world of the Earth, it appears to the spiritual eye in such a way that what the physical eyes see is only a part of this plant world. I would like to sketch what takes place there in a schematic way on the board (see drawing). Suppose this were the Earth’s surface; plants (green) grow out of it. Of course, it is not drawn to scale at all, but you will understand what I mean. One follows this plant with the senses up to the flower (red). The spiritual vision of these plants, however, reveals that this is only a part of the plant world, that an astral process and weaving begins from the flower upward. In a sense, an astral substance is poured out over the Earth, and spiral-shaped formations (yellow) emerge from this astral substance. Wherever the Earth provides the conditions for plants to arise, the outpouring of these astral world spirals gives rise to plant life.

[ 6 ] These world spirals now surround the Earth everywhere, so you must not believe that the flowing down, shining down, and glistening down of these astral world spirals occurs only where plants grow. It is present everywhere in various forms, so that one could even die in the desert and still have the opportunity to encounter these plant spirals as one flows out into the cosmos.

[ 7 ] These plant spirals are the path along which one moves from the Earth toward the planetary sphere. In a sense, one slips out of the Earth’s realm through the spiritual extensions of the Earth’s plant world. This goes on and on. These spirals expand more and more, forming ever-wider circles. They are the pathways leading out into the spiritual world. However, one would not be able to get out there—one would, so to speak, have to remain stationary forever—if one did not gain the ability to possess a kind of negative weight: weights that do not pull one down, but rather push one upward. And these weights are the spiritual contents, the ideas of the mineral formations found within the Earth, especially the metals; so that one moves out into the vastness of the worlds along the plant pathways and is supported by the force that carries one, in particular, from the Earth’s metals toward the planetary stars. Certain mineral formations always have the characteristic that the ideas inherent in them carry one precisely to a specific planet. One is thus, let us say, carried by tin-like minerals—that is, by their ideas—to a specific planet; by what is iron in the Earth—that is, by the idea of iron—one is carried to a specific planet. Thus, what in earthly existence plays a role for the physical human being from the surrounding environment—namely, the mineral and plant worlds—takes on, in its spiritual counterparts, the task of guiding the human being after death into the vastness of the cosmos. And one is truly carried into the planetary movements, into the entire rhythm of the planetary movements, through the Earth’s mineral and plant kingdoms.

[ 8 ] As consciousness gradually expands to encompass the entire planetary sphere, so that one becomes aware of planetary life within one’s own inner world of the soul, one thus floats through the entire planetary sphere. If there were nothing else there but the outpourings of plant and mineral existence in the vast expanses, one would experience within it everything that can be experienced in the mysteries of the mineral and plant kingdoms. And these mysteries are extraordinarily diverse, magnificent, and awe-inspiring; they are rich in content, and no one need believe that the life which begins there for the soul-spiritual human being, once he has left his physical organism, is in any way poorer than the earthly life we lead day by day. It is diverse in itself, but it is also majestic in itself. One can experience more through the mysteries of a single mineral than one experiences in earthly life through all the realms of natural existence combined.

[ 9 ] But there is something else in this sphere, which we traverse as the planetary sphere. These are the lunar forces described in the previous “Days”—the spiritual lunar forces. The lunar sphere is present. However, the further one immerses oneself in an extraterrestrial existence, the weaker and weaker its influence becomes. Its influence is strongly felt in the early stages—which are likely measured in years—following death; but it grows weaker and weaker as cosmic consciousness expands. If this lunar sphere were not present, one would be unable to experience two things after death. The first is that being I have mentioned in recent days, which one has oneself developed during one’s last earthly life from the forces that constitute the moral-spiritual assessment of one’s own earthly life. One has formed a spiritual entity, a kind of spiritual elemental being, whose limbs—whose tentacle-like formations—are, in essence, a reflection of one’s human moral and spiritual worth. If I may put it this way: a living photograph, formed from the substance of the astral cosmos, lives on with the soul—a photograph that is, however, a real, living photograph, in which one can see what kind of person one actually was in one’s last earthly life. One has this photograph before one as long as one is in the lunar sphere. But in addition, in this lunar sphere one encounters all manner of diverse elemental beings, of whom one very soon notices that they possess a kind of dreamlike—yet very lucid—consciousness that alternates with a brighter state of consciousness, one that is even brighter than human consciousness on Earth. These beings oscillate, so to speak, between a dull, dreamlike state of consciousness and a state of consciousness that is brighter than that of human beings on Earth. One comes to know these beings. They are numerous, and their forms differ extraordinarily from one another. In the state of life I am now describing, one experiences these beings in such a way that one sees how, when they enter a more dull, dreamlike state of consciousness, they float down toward Earth, how they are, so to speak, pushed down to Earth by the spiritual forces of the Moon, and how they float back up again. A rich life unfolds through such figures—floating down to Earth and back again, flowing up and down—of the kind I have just described. One comes to recognize that the animal kingdom on Earth is connected to these figures. One comes to recognize that these figures are the so-called group souls of the animals. These group souls of the animals descend. This means that a certain animal form is awake down on Earth. When this animal form is predominantly in a state where it sleeps down below, then the group soul ascends upward. In short, one realizes that the animal kingdom stands in such a relationship to the cosmos that the sphere of the Moon is the field of life for the group souls of the animals. Animals do not have individual souls; rather, entire groups of animals—such as lions, tigers, cats, and so on—share common group souls. These group souls lead their existence in the lunar sphere, floating up and down. And it is through this floating up and down that the life of the animals is brought about from the lunar sphere.

[ 10 ] It is simply a law of the world that in this sphere—where one encounters the group souls of animals, that is, in the lunar sphere—our moral-astral counterpart also has its life. For when one then lives one’s way further out into the cosmic expanses with cosmic consciousness, one leaves behind in the lunar sphere, as I have described, this living photograph of what one has achieved as a moral-spiritual being during one’s last earthly life and also during earlier ones. In this way—that is, by experiencing the plant, mineral, and animal worlds—one enters the planetary sphere. One is still immersed in the lunar sphere, but in this way one lives one’s way into the planetary sphere. One participates in the movements of the planets. One has advanced out into the cosmos along the paths of the plant kingdom. One has been carried by the ideas of the mineral, particularly the metallic, beings. One senses that a certain type of plant on Earth is an earthly reflection of what leads one—as a spiral path that widens more and more—to, say, Jupiter. But being led to Jupiter depends on experiencing the idea of a certain metal and certain minerals of the Earth in a living way.

[ 11 ] Once the plant path has led one to a planet—one has always carried with oneself the idea of the mineral realm on Earth that carried one out—and one has arrived at that planet, then this idea, which carried one out of the mineral realm, this idea that has become more and more alive, begins to resonate within that planet. So that after death, one experiences being led along the plant path, an experiencing of the inner mineral entities in ever more and more living ideas. These ideas become spiritual entities. When they arrive—one living idea at one planet, another at another planet—these mineral ideas, now become entities, feel as if they are at home. One type of mineral feels at home on Jupiter, another type feels at home on Mars, and so on. And what was regarded on Earth as merely inconspicuous now begins, once it has arrived, to resonate and ring out in the most manifold ways on the respective planet. So that one now hears what has mineral counterparts on Earth—which are perceived only through the senses—resounding from within the planets and in this way becomes part of the harmony of the spheres. For in the universe, in the cosmos, everything is interconnected. What grows out of the earth down here on Earth as the plant world is the image of that which connects the Earth to the planetary system, as it were, through the plant realm. What exists in the earth as a mineral is actually only an inconspicuous reflection of that which acts as a force upward along the paths of the plants—a force that has its home out among the planets and represents cosmic tones within them, which combine to form a great cosmic harmony.

[ 12 ] One thus expresses reality when, understanding what exists here on earth, one says of gold: I see in the gold, which glows with its distinctive color, the reflection of that which, in the sun, causes a central world tone to resonate within my soul when I have carried it up to the sun along certain plant paths.

[ 13 ] Once a person has gone through this, once what I have described in recent days as necessary has come to pass, then the possibility opens up for them to rise above the planetary sphere and enter the sphere of the fixed stars. They can do this only by freeing themselves from the lunar sphere. That sphere must, so to speak, remain behind them. But what they experience in the planetary sphere in the manner described—what they experience as the meaning of the mineral-metallic realm of the physical Earth, what they experience as the guiding forces of the Earth’s plant world— all that which is so magnificent that he experiences there—is, in a certain sense, disrupted by the influences of the lunar sphere; it is, in a certain way, obscured by his encounter with the elemental beings belonging to the animal kingdom, who, alongside those otherwise entirely harmonious movements in which they ascend and descend—that is, alongside these vertical movements—also exhibit horizontal movements. In these horizontal movements, which are carried out by the group souls of the animals within the lunar sphere, terrible archetypes of disharmonious, discordant forces in the animal kingdom are played out. There are terrible, savage struggles between the group souls of the animal kingdom. Through this impact of the lunar sphere upon the planetary sphere, what might otherwise be experienced in inner peace and with dignity and majesty through the archetypal nature of the plant and mineral kingdoms is, in a certain sense, disrupted.

[ 14 ] When a human being breaks free from the lunar sphere and enters the sphere of the fixed stars, he retains a cosmic memory—as we might call it—of these powerful, majestic experiences in the planetary sphere, with the archetypal nature of the earthly mineral and plant kingdoms. This remains with him as a memory. And they enter a world of spiritual beings whose physical-sensory image, as I have already said, is the constellations of the stars—those constellations which, when understood correctly, are the expression of, and in a sense represent the characters from which one can perceive the characteristics, deeds, and volitional intentions of the spiritual beings in the stellar sphere. One now experiences, as it were, through inner vision, the spiritual beings who do not walk the earth in physical bodies, but who can be experienced only in this sphere of the stars. And one enters this sphere in order to permeate one’s own being within it with the deeds of these divine-spiritual beings—through the cosmic consciousness, which has now expanded, for which spatial perception has given way to qualitative perception, and for which temporal perception has given way to simultaneity.

[ 15 ] While here on Earth we are confined within our own skins and other human beings out there, within their own skins, go about what they have to do—while we are all side by side here on Earth—in this stellar sphere we are not only intertwined as human souls, but our cosmic consciousness also expands, and we feel the beings of the divine-spiritual world within us. Here on Earth, we say “we” to one another, or rather, each person says “I” to themselves. Out there, one says “I,” meaning: Within this “I” of mine, I experience the world of the divine-spiritual hierarchies; I experience them as the content of my own cosmic consciousness. — This is, of course, an even more powerful, vaster, more diverse, richer in content, and more majestic world of experience into which one now enters. And when one becomes aware of the forces at work within the human soul—forces emanating from the most diverse beings of the divine-spiritual hierarchies—one sees that these are forces which all interact, each possessing intentions—cosmic intentions—that, in a sense, all converge toward a single point. One becomes entwined, through one’s own spiritual and soul activity, in these intentions of the divine-spiritual hierarchies and their individual beings. And everything into which one is woven—into which one’s own inner, felt activity, encompassed by cosmic consciousness and itself a cosmic activity, merges—all of this ultimately aims at constructing the spiritual germ of the human physical organism, as I have described it.

[ 16 ] It was indeed a profound statement made in the ancient mystery temples: that human beings are temples of the gods. What is first built in immense, majestic grandeur from the spiritual cosmos and then condensed into the human physical body—where it is transformed to such an extent that one no longer recognizes the archetype, the immense, majestic archetype—that is, in fact, what the interconnection of the divine-spiritual hierarchies builds, finding its purpose in this very act of building.

[ 17 ] This sphere of experience is such that, in a sense, we view the cosmos—which, when we stand on Earth, we see from the inside, from a point from which we look out in all directions—from the outside when we are in this sphere. For as we enter the sphere of the stars, we feel—even at the very moment we have torn ourselves away from the sphere of the Moon—that we are out in the vastness of the universe and are, in fact, viewing the cosmos from the outside.

[ 18 ] Let me illustrate what is happening there with a sketch (see drawing). Suppose this is the Earth. Of course, the proportions are not accurate, but you’ll get the idea. We are looking out into the vastness of the cosmos. We see stars moving across the sky, the planets, and the fixed stars out there. Here on Earth, our consciousness is concentrated into a small point (red). We gaze out into the universe from this central point. The moment we escape the lunar sphere, our consciousness enters the stellar sphere. But we pass through the stellar sphere, so to speak, guided only by the memories that remain from our experiences in the planetary sphere, and enter the sphere beyond the stars.

[ 19 ] In this sphere beyond the stars, space itself no longer really exists. Of course, when I draw here, I have to depict what is essentially qualitative in spatial terms. I can then draw it like this: While our consciousness on Earth is, so to speak, condensed at this point as our “I” (red), it becomes peripheral once it has reached beyond the sphere of the stars (blue). We look inward from every point (blue arrows). This act of looking is represented only as an image through the concept of space. We look inward. If we have the constellation of Aries here (top left, red) and, from Earth, see the Sun (yellow) situated within the constellation of Aries—so that the Sun, as it were, obscures the constellation of Aries for us—and if we then venture out into outer space, we see Aries standing before the Sun. But to understand this from the perspective of cosmic consciousness is something different: to see Aries standing before the Sun—as opposed to looking at it with earthly consciousness and seeing the Sun standing before Aries. It is precisely in this way that we view everything spiritually. We look at the universe from the outside.

[ 20 ] And in the process of developing the spiritual seed of the physical organism, we actually possess within us the powers of the spiritual-divine beings, but in such a way that we essentially feel ourselves to be outside the entire cosmos that we experience from Earth. And now, in our cosmic consciousness, we experience our oneness with the divine-spiritual beings.

[ 21 ] When we then look back and see, as it were, the constellations—but not in a spatial sense, rather in a qualitative one—standing above the sun, sometimes this one, sometimes that one, then we recognize in what we are experiencing there, by connecting it with our memory of how the metals and minerals, resonated within the planets after the plant paths had been completed—then we experience that this resonance, which was initially a “music of the spheres,” transforms into the cosmic language, into the Logos. We discern the intentions of the divine-spiritual beings among whom we dwell by experiencing the individual signs of this cosmic script: The position of Aries before the Sun, the position of Taurus before the Sun, and so on—by experiencing how this unfolds and how the sounds that cause the metals to resonate within the planets ring out within this script. This gives us guidance on how we are to work on the spiritual seed of the physical organism on Earth.

[ 22 ] As long as we are in the lunar sphere, we have a vivid sense of this “photograph” of our moral and spiritual life on Earth. We have a vivid sense of what is taking place among the group souls of the animals. But these are a kind of demonic, elemental beings. Now that we find, as it were, the zodiac placed on the other side of the Sun, we begin to recognize what we actually saw there. For even the memory of these animal forms—these group-soul forms of the animals—remains with us all the way into the realm beyond the stellar sphere, and we discover that these group souls of the animals are, so to speak, lower—if one wishes to speak in human terms—caricatured afterimages of the magnificent forms that now, beyond the stellar sphere, permeate our cosmic consciousness as the beings of the divine-spiritual hierarchies.

[ 23 ] Thus, outside the stellar sphere, we have the beings of the divine-spiritual hierarchies, and within the stellar sphere—insofar as it is permeated by that which spiritually belongs to the lunar sphere—we have the caricatures of the divine-spiritual beings in the group souls of animals. When I say “caricatures,” please do not take this in a derogatory sense. What appears to be a caricature from a human, humorous, or artistic perspective is, of course, something extraordinarily trivial compared to the magnificent caricatured nature of the divine-spiritual beings in the world of the lunar sphere, which is at the same time the world of the group-soul beings of the earthly animal kingdom. We owe an extraordinary great deal to this experience we have in this sphere. I have already spoken of this in a more abstract form over the past few days; now I would like to express it in a more imaginative way.

[ 24 ] Suppose a person is up there (see illustration on p. 19, in red). He is thus looking back down here. His true realm lies in the perceptions of his spiritual-soul world beyond the sphere of the stars. That is where the field of his present activity lies. Just as when one stands, so to speak, on a high mountain, with sunshine above and fog below, so in this cosmic experience one has beneath oneself the entire surging, struggling, discordant, and disharmonious—yet also harmoniously rising and falling—group-soul nature of the animals. Like a mist that takes many forms, this spreads out below and plays itself out there. And while, gazing at the constellations, one perceives the intentions of the divine-spiritual beings—while one discerns there the intentions of the divine spiritual beings have, while one learns to understand within cosmic consciousness how the temple of the gods—this spiritual seed of the physical body—actually holds its secrets within itself, those secrets that correspond to the pure world of extraterrestrial and extra-lunar existence—one looks down and sees what is taking place in the sphere of the animal kingdom’s spirituality. And as one looks down—as if from a sun-dappled mountain peak into a lower mass of mist—one has the experience that one grasps in cosmic thought: If you do not take with you all the strength with which you have now imbued yourself from this divine-spiritual world as you descend once more, you will not pass unscathed through this world of misty clouds inhabited by the animal group souls. There you will find the reflection of your previous earthly lives, accompanied by a moral-spiritual assessment. It will be floating in that mist down below. You must take it up again. But there will be all those animal group souls wildly rushing at one another; there will be all that chaotic turmoil. You must bring with you such strong forces from your afterlife in the stellar sphere that you can remove these forces of the animals’ group-soul nature from your destiny as much as possible. Otherwise, just as matter adheres to a crystal, that which these animal group-souls cosmically exude toward your moral-spiritual core will adhere to you. And you will have to take with you everything that you cannot then hold back through the forces you have accumulated, and you will have to incorporate it into your next earthly existence as all manner of drives and instincts.

[ 25 ] However, one will be able to draw only those forces from beyond the stellar sphere for which one has made oneself capable by developing a devotion to Christ, a devotion to the Mystery of Golgotha, through a truly religious—not an egoistically religious—permeation of the soul, in the sense of Paul’s words: “Not I, but Christ in me.” This makes one strong enough to permeate, beyond the astral sphere and in communion with the divine spiritual beings, to penetrate with those forces which, upon descending once more through the lunar sphere, prevent the forces that gather there in the disharmonious, discordant interplay of the spiritual-animal environment from penetrating this spiritual-soul core.

[ 26 ] If one wishes to describe what the human soul experiences between birth and death—what it unites with itself, what it takes in through its thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will—then one must describe the earthly world that surrounds the human being. But if one wishes to describe what a human being experiences between death and a new birth, one must describe what the archetypes of this earthly existence are. If one wants to know what minerals truly are, one must hear their essence resound from the planets in the life between death and a new birth. If one wishes to know what plants truly are, one must study, along the paths that extend from the plant kingdom out into outer space—and which are traced in the forms of plant structures—the essence of that which grows out of the earth in the plant as a faint reflection. If one wishes to study the animal kingdom of the Earth, one must come to know what takes place in the surging and undulating currents of the group souls of the animals in the lunar sphere. And once one has extricated oneself from all this and entered the sphere beyond the world of the stars, only then does one begin to recognize the true mysteries of the human being. And one learns to look back upon all that one has experienced in the archetypal worlds of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms.

[ 27 ] One carries this out into those realms of the cosmos where one not only recognizes the true mysteries of the human being, but also experiences them vividly and actively shapes them. One carries into these realms, as a kind of cosmic memory, everything one has experienced in relation to minerals, plants, and animals during the ascent. In the convergence of these memories and what one perceives as the mysteries of human existence—what one actively experiences and actively contributes to—a rich, multifaceted life unfolds. And it is this multifaceted life that a human being undergoes between death and a new birth.