The Rudolf Steiner Archive

15. Human Experiences in the Ethereal Cosmos

[ 1 ] It gives me great satisfaction to be able to speak to you once again, to speak within the branch of our Anthroposophical Society in which I was able to carry out the bulk of my work for many years. Today I would like to speak to you about a few things that I believe are particularly important to consider at the present time; I would like to speak to you, from a certain perspective, about the relationship between human beings and the supersensible world.

[ 2 ] Actually, this is the recurring theme we discuss within the anthroposophical movement. But you must have grown accustomed to the fact that truths about the supersensible worlds can only truly take root in the human mind when they are viewed from a wide variety of perspectives, so that—as I have often said—by taking in images from all sides, a comprehensive impression can emerge.

[ 3 ] You know that spiritual science reveals how human life during our earthly existence is divided into two distinct phases: the fully conscious waking state and the sleeping state. You also know that during the state of sleep, those components of the human being that we designate as the physical body, the etheric or formative body, the astral body, and the “I” are separated, so that the human being, as it were, leaves behind in physical existence his physical body and his etheric body, and that, in his astral body and in his “I”-essence, he initially leads an existence of which he is unaware, outside the physical body and the etheric body. When one ascends to higher insights, it is certainly not the case that through this ascent itself—through the insight—one gains anything for the human being, any more than we gain anything for our digestion by having theoretical knowledge of it, or at least gain nothing for the immediate nature of digestion as it takes place in our normally organized human being. One might well say: Higher knowledge brings nothing new into the human being. Everything that higher knowledge provides is already within the human being. But it is nevertheless the case that what we can definitely say brings nothing new into the human being points to that which remains unknown to the human being in ordinary consciousness, and which—by being not merely recognized, but experienced with the full content of the soul, with all the soul’s powers— does indeed bring something higher into the human being: not knowledge as such, but the experience of this knowledge.

[ 4 ] With this, however, I have pointed to what I would like to present as a threefold aspect within the anthroposophical endeavor. First of all, there must be individual human beings who master the methods of spiritual science in such a way that, through higher vision in the supersensible worlds, they can bring forth knowledge of these supersensible worlds. What one calls the acquisition of this knowledge during earthly existence is of lesser importance. If one does not associate the term “clairvoyance” with those nebulous mystical notions that are very often linked to it, then one can indeed speak of clairvoyant knowledge. Through this, therefore, what must increasingly take root in people’s minds as the meaning of life in our present age first comes into being.

[ 5 ] The second point is that, through what is commonly called “common sense”—provided it is open-minded enough—one can grasp what is revealed through clairvoyant insight. As I have often emphasized: one does not need to be a clairvoyant oneself to understand what is revealed through clairvoyant research. But it is also important for those who arrive at clairvoyant perception on their own to translate what they see into ordinary human concepts. For that is precisely the significance that clairvoyance has for human beings at the present stage of their development: that it can be translated into those concepts which we in today’s civilization generally regard as the concepts of humanity. So whether one is a clairvoyant or not, one must understand what is revealed through clairvoyant research.

[ 6 ] And the third point is this: whatever is thus translated into concepts from clairvoyant research—whatever can be conceptualized from clairvoyant research—must become the inner substance of life; it must become such that the human being thereby comes to understand: I am a being who is not merely bound to earthly existence between birth and death, but I am a being for whom earthly existence is only a phase, only a temporary metamorphosis. — And everything that can reach the human mind through anthroposophy becoming a source of meaning in this sense is meant to take root in the soul. First, through this, a person comes to know themselves as a member of the spiritual worlds, and they also know that earthly existence must receive its tasks from the spiritual worlds. Second, however, the human being thereby recognizes their responsibility toward the spiritual worlds. All of this elevates them beyond mere earthly existence, but not in such a way that they abandon it in a fanciful, mystical manner and regard it as insignificant; rather, it is precisely by drawing their tasks for earthly life from the supersensible world that they influence the entire course and the entire nature of their earthly existence.

[ 7 ] This is particularly important for our time: that we first learn to listen to what can be said through clairvoyant research; that we then strive to understand the content of this research through sound common sense; and that we make this content the work of our lives, a means of illuminating life with tasks, and a way to increase our responsibility toward the spiritual worlds. In offering these words—and I would like to say that I wish to set the tone that I believe should permeate my remarks today—I would like to share with you some new insights regarding humanity’s relationship to the supersensible world.

[ 8 ] Human beings living here on Earth open their senses to the physical world. By looking within themselves, they perceive their thinking, feeling, and willing in a certain way. What they perceive through their senses and make part of their soul’s content, they call their earthly environment. Note that, as earthly human beings standing within this physical environment, we are actually quite familiar with what we call the external world—the natural external world—insofar as it lies within our horizon; yet, fundamentally, through our immediate consciousness, we are quite unfamiliar with what lies—often even physically—within our own being. A person may indeed come to know their internal organs through external science, but only when they transform these internal organs into external entities on a dissection table or the like. Through introspection, a person cannot, of course, come to know their lungs, their heart, and so on, using ordinary cognition. At most, we learn to feel and perceive our internal organs when they are diseased. When healthy, a person does not actually perceive their inner self. They live within it; it is active within them. But precisely because they live within it—are, so to speak, embedded in it and are it themselves—they do not perceive it in the same way as the external world, which they themselves are not.

[ 9 ] This shows us that, during our earthly existence, we direct our gaze toward the outside world and indeed have a world full of content around us; that when we look inward, we have a general, indefinite sense of a “self,” about which—if we are honest with ourselves—we must say: It is quite dark, quite unclear. — And that we can alternate between this looking inward—in which we experience something rather unclear and dark within our soul—and the experience of the external world, which is concrete in itself, defined in every respect, and rich in content. We can shift our consciousness between the two. This is, in essence, our experience between birth and death.

[ 10 ] Between death and a new birth, the experience is fundamentally different. Precisely during those periods of existence between death and a new birth—which can be roughly compared to the middle phase of our earthly life, when, as thirty- or forty-year-olds, we are at the peak of our physical powers—precisely during this time, which is thus the middle phase between death and a new birth, the situation is the opposite of that in earthly life. There we look into our inner being through a different consciousness that we possess at that time, and as we look into our inner being, what we perceive is as concrete and as rich in content as when we look out into the external world here on Earth. However, when we look out into the external world here on Earth, we are surrounded by the beings of the three or four kingdoms: the beings of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, and the physical human kingdom. We have them around us in that they present themselves to us as sensory content. When we look within ourselves during the period between death and rebirth—and this is indeed the case—we do not have things of nature within us, but rather a world of beings, a world of those beings we describe as the beings of the higher, spiritual hierarchies. Here we have perception of the world, perception of the external, perception of things; in the spiritual world we have inner perception, perception of beings. We look within ourselves, but we do not find organs such as those we carry within us here on Earth; rather, we find the entire world of beings, provided we can attain the proper consciousness for it. And whoever describes these beings of the higher hierarchies is actually describing nothing other than the human being’s outer experience between death and new birth. And just as we can turn our gaze away from the external world and back toward ourselves here, so too, between death and new birth, when we turn our gaze outward from within—where we find the beings of the higher hierarchies within ourselves—we find ourselves; we come to ourselves. The external world there is actually the inner world, and the inner being is the external being, in the way I have just explained.

[ 11 ] But what we perceive there as an inner, rich world of spiritual beings within ourselves is presented to us here, during our earthly existence, in the form of its reflection; it is presented to us in such a way that we see the sensory reflections of those beings whom we otherwise perceive within ourselves between death and rebirth. However, we do not see the same beings here, but rather, in a sense, the dwelling places of these beings; and this is—because a whole host of these beings always dwell together—the world of the stars around us. So what are we describing when we speak of the stars—for example, of the sun—with full understanding, rather than with that “mole-like” understanding between birth and death that is characteristic of ordinary consciousness? The Sun presents us with a certain image in contrast to the sensory perception: but what appears to us here as the image of the Sun, we experience between death and new birth as a realm of spiritual beings. There we do not see the Sun as it is here now, but rather a realm of spiritual beings. From our earthly existence, we have something like a memory through which we know: this realm of spiritual beings corresponds, as seen from Earth, to the Sun. And so it is with the other stars as well. This means that our spiritual consciousness between death and rebirth becomes a cosmic consciousness. We are not there as we are here within our own skin; we truly are the whole world. Only, one must not imagine this in spatial terms. But we are the whole world; we carry the starry sky within us. And it is this: just as we here on Earth carry our lungs, our heart, our stomach, and so on within us, so between death and rebirth we carry the Sun, the Moon, Saturn, and the other stars within us as our inner organs—but they are spiritual beings. It is their spiritual counterpart, their spiritual archetype, that we then carry within us.

[ 12 ] If we were always in this state, we would never come to our senses in the spiritual world; we would always feel at one with the world of the higher hierarchies. But that cannot be. It would be exactly as if, here on Earth, we merely wanted to inhale and never exhale. Therefore, our life between death and rebirth consists of a rhythmic alternation: a life within these higher hierarchies and—in cosmic consciousness—a looking out; that is to say, coming to ourselves. Just as we have alternating inhalation and exhalation here—I could also say: waking and sleeping—so there we alternate between experiencing the hierarchical spiritual world and experiencing ourselves, where we are withdrawn into our own soul, where we return to ourselves. This gives rise to the rhythmic alternation in human experience between being spread out across the entire cosmos and coming to oneself: being spread out across the entire cosmos—coming to oneself, and so on.

[ 13 ] This life between death and rebirth within the spiritual world—of which the world of the stars is a physical reflection—is truly no less rich than earthly life. But in our earthly life, we can actually perceive only the result—and that in a very vague form—of what we experience between death and rebirth. Let us imagine the following: We live here on Earth, where one person makes shoes, another makes skirts, a third cuts people’s hair, a fourth builds locomotives, and so on. By doing these things here on Earth in our physical existence, so-called human culture—civilization—comes into being. Now imagine that the products of this entire civilization were, from time to time, synthesized into a kind of result in a completely different realm—for example, on the Sun. In that case, one could not immediately recognize, through a solar consciousness, that what exists there on the Sun is the result of Earthly civilization. Let us suppose, for a moment, that everything that comes into being here on Earth, as I have indicated, were to produce a single result in many copies on the Sun. For this is in fact the reality of what we do in the context described, together with the beings of the higher hierarchies, between death and new birth: there we work with these beings on the spirit form of our physical Earth body. And this work, which is carried out where the human being, between death and new birth, collaborates with the beings of the higher hierarchies to bring about the spiritual form of the physical earthly body, this work is truly richer and more multifaceted than what we accomplish here as cultural work in physical existence, even if the physical human body standing before us does not immediately reveal to us that it is the result of the work of divine beings in connection with the human being during the time of their existence between death and new birth. But older worldviews certainly knew what they were saying when they called the human body a “temple of the gods.” For this human body is in fact—however little we take this into account with our ordinary consciousness here on Earth—the most complex thing that exists in the entire universe. And what a single human body is, is precisely the combined work of countless beings, to which we ourselves belong; for we ourselves contribute to the body with which we clothe ourselves in an earthly incarnation—only we cannot create it individually on our own, but must fashion it in communion with countless spiritual beings of the most diverse ranks.

[ 14 ] When we speak from the perspective of earthly life, we are accustomed to calling that which is small at first and then grows large in the physical sense a “seed.” If we call what the human being develops between death and a new birth the spiritual seed of the physical body, then we must say that this spiritual seed is as vast as the universe and then, as it passes through the human embryonic life, becomes “small” in physical life. Within the small human germ lies an image of the great spiritual germ that has been developed by the human being in connection with the higher beings. Thus, as we gaze into the world that the human being experiences between death and a new birth, we actually see how, out of the tasks of the macrocosm, the microcosm—the human body—is formed in ever-new instances. And this is a more sublime task than all the cultural work that a human being performs between birth and death. And the life that a human being experiences by working on the human embryo from within the cosmos—this life is more multifaceted and richer than the one we spend here on Earth making shoes, sewing skirts, teaching children, governing states, and so on; I could, of course, go on and on with the list. Anyone who wishes to truly understand the world must come to realize that there is something immensely sublime in shaping the human body—as it exists here in its physical form—out of the tasks of the cosmos, and that the experience of this shaping—in terms of its sublimity—is something so immense that it cannot be compared at all to what human beings accomplish here, even when they help create the most valuable cultural products of physical life on Earth.

[ 15 ] This is actually how a human being stands in the spiritual world between death and new birth: he has an outer world, which is himself; his gaze is directed toward his future earthly life, and in that vision, in the perspective of this future earthly life, lies precisely the fact that he withdraws into himself, that he comes to himself. At the moment when his consciousness is filled with looking toward his future earthly life and looking back on his past earthly life, he is at one with himself. At the moment when he works together with the beings of the higher hierarchies on the task of bringing the complex physical body into being within the spiritual germ, he is, so to speak, outside of himself, but he has become one with the spiritual being; he lives within the spiritual being outside of himself. It is precisely at this high point of experience between death and new birth—which I have called the midnight hour of human existence in one of my Mystery Dramas—that the human being experiences within himself what he sees here as the image of the fixed-star sky. The fixed-star sky—or its representative, as the ancient worldviews also called it—the zodiac, seen from here, is the physical image of the spiritual world in which the human being lives between death and new birth, and which he experiences as his inner world.

[ 16 ] This continues for some time, and the human being then, in a sense, leaves behind this living, this active, this—from an earthly standpoint—sublime direct work with the spirits of the higher hierarchies. And the next stage of their experience is the perspective of sharing in the experiences of those higher beings who are manifestations of higher beings. From a certain point onward, the human being knows: Yes, the direct collaboration with the higher beings is no longer present, but the higher beings reveal themselves to me in reflection. Viewed from an earthly perspective, one might describe this as follows: the human being makes the transition from the world of fixed stars to the planetary world. As the human being passes through the planetary sphere on the way toward an earthly existence, he no longer feels the life of the higher worlds as his inner life; previously, he had felt it as his inner life. Here in the physical world, we experience our blood circulation, our breathing, and so on, as our inner life; there, in the life between death and new birth, we experience the life and essence of the higher hierarchies as our inner life. We are immersed in a spiritual reality and are actively participating in it. Now, from a certain point onward, we say to ourselves: Now we are no longer participating; now what we used to participate in appears to us as if in a picture; previously we were actually within the spiritual world, now we are within its manifestations. But in reality this means: we have passed from the sphere of the fixed stars into the sphere of the planets.

[ 17 ] First, we have a certain difficulty to overcome: entering the sphere of Saturn. Certain spiritual forces radiate from Saturn. For when we have passed through death, we first enter the planetary sphere and only then reach the sphere of the fixed stars; for we then follow the path I have just described, in reverse order. Thus, when we pass out of earthly life through death, Saturn is the dwelling place of those beings who do not want to let us remain on Earth, who want to lift us away from Earth, free us from our earthly forces, and transport us into the world of pure spirituality. I have described this experience in my *Theosophy* from a different perspective—namely, as the transition from life in the realm of the soul to the realm of the spirits. These two descriptions relate to one another in the same way that, for example, a tree can always be photographed from different angles: it is always the same, yet it always looks different. Upon returning to a new earthly life, we are thus subject to the influence of the Saturn beings. And those people who, due to their previous earthly life, have accumulated such karma that the Saturn forces exert a great influence on them upon their return to a new earthly life, easily become people who are out of touch with the earthly realm; people who either rave about how earthly things are actually worthless and how one should take refuge in a conceptual cloud cuckoo land, or people who, because they viewed human conditions only superficially, develop a tendency to organize spiritualist séances and the like, in which the most diverse spiritual beings can run amok. All of this is brought about by the fact that the person had acquired such karma in their previous earthly life that, upon returning to the earthly sphere, they enter into a stronger relationship with the forces of Saturn.

[ 18 ] But as the human being enters the planetary sphere and approaches the solar sphere, he also comes under the influence of the counterpart to the forces of Saturn—that is, those spiritual beings who dwell on the Moon. The primary task of these beings is to guide human beings back into earthly existence, so that the person who absorbs what is wrought by the lunar forces remains firmly grounded in earthly existence—although, on the other hand, it may of course be the lunar forces themselves that imbue human beings too strongly with a purely physical existence, that is, with a preference for, and an inclination toward, this purely physical existence.

[ 19 ] So we can say: Here in our earthly life, we walk among trees, flowers, grasses, animals, and so on; between death and a new birth, we walk beneath the stars. And it is not at all unrealistic if you simply form a comprehensive picture in your mind in which, during your earthly life, you are here on Earth; after death, you pass through the spheres of the planets, leaving the lunar sphere, losing your attachment to earthly life, are carried beyond Saturn, live for a relatively long time—even a very long time compared to earthly existence—in the sphere of the fixed stars, then return again, enter the planetary sphere, and, in particular, as you come under the influence of the Moon, the lunar forces in the supersensible realm provide the impetus for you to return to earthly life. It urges you once more to return to earthly life. Just as we here on Earth have certain relationships to what we call our sensory environment, so too do we in this life through the world of the stars. And all of this is of great significance for our work with the beings of the higher hierarchies on the spiritual germ of the physical human body. For until we enter the planetary sphere during our descent to a new earthly life, it remains undecided—even within the being we are building there for our future earthly life—whether we will become a man or a woman. Indeed, this remains undecided for a certain time even when we are already in the planetary sphere as soul-spiritual beings. In the sphere of the fixed stars, it would be sheer nonsense to speak of anything even remotely similar to what we have here as man and woman. But in the picture I have now begun to paint, you can quite well imagine—as you move away from Earth—that here you have seen the Moon from the front; then you have seen it from the back. You also see Venus, Mercury, and the Sun from the back, then you see the zodiacal sphere, and so on. But as you pass through these spheres, what is otherwise a physical image for us here transforms into a multitude of spiritual beings that you behold. As you look at the Moon from behind, you see spiritual beings—for example, those spiritual beings who were of particular interest to the initiates of the Old Testament: the Yahweh Being and the beings associated with it. But when you now return to Earth, through your past karma—as you approach the lunar sphere—you can choose the moment when, as seen from Earth, there is a full moon in the sky; that is, viewed from Earth, you see the full moon, the illuminated lunar disk, but when viewed from the opposite direction as you approach Earth, the moon appears black. Choose this moment for your approach to Earth precisely so that, in a sense, the black lunar sphere—uninfluenced by the Sun—acts upon you, that is, when there is a full moon on Earth; then you will appear on Earth as a female being. If, on the other hand, you choose the time when we here on Earth cannot see the Moon—that is, when it is a new moon and the Sun’s influences radiate freely in all directions into outer space—then you will establish a male existence on Earth. So you see, even down to the form of the male and female, we must derive what we are here on Earth in the physical body from the experiences we have, so to speak, in the stellar sphere—that is, in the spiritual sphere, viewed from the other side—between death and new birth. These things can be traced in every detail. Just as we can say here on Earth what a person gains by eating, for example, cabbage or eggs or beef—for his physical existence on Earth depends on these things—so there are corresponding relationships everywhere in the spiritual worlds, the results of which then manifest in the formation and inner experience of the human being on Earth. Here on Earth we eat beef or eggs; in the spiritual world, between death and rebirth, we choose—depending on our karma—either the new moon phase or the full moon phase for the time of transition, and thereby become male or female. But full human existence in connection with world existence can only be understood if we do not merely focus on what takes place here between birth and death, but if we can grasp what unfolds in earthly life in connection with what takes place for the human being between death and a new birth.

[ 20 ] This is something that people today do not yet fully grasp in its true, real significance—even as it pertains to life on Earth. But today, people really only know humanity in the same way that a mole knows museums. The mole, burrowing through the ground beneath the museums, might be able to recount its experiences of them; but there won’t be much in that account of what actually lies above it. In much the same way, a “mole’s perspective” is taken toward the world in what can be an earthly science for us; except that the mole could also live without a museum above it—it has little connection to it—but human beings are intimately linked to that with which they are connected, namely the supersensible world; they are bound to it. Humanity must regain an awareness of this. There once existed a dim, subdued awareness of these things, which was illuminated in the ancient mysteries, though also using the ancient methods. These ancient mysteries were not merely one-sided places of worship. It is actually only modern humanity that has a need for one-sided places of worship. Modern humanity must indeed practice separate forms of worship because it has become selfish and wants assurance of its own immortality. This assurance can be given; it is, after all, a fact. But people today are inclined to pursue all these things in isolation from one another. This was not the case even in Paracelsus’s time; back then, medicine was still a form of worship. We must—although we need to go through transitional phases—return to viewing all earthly activity as the fulfillment of a spiritual process. It is simply the case today that human beings, cut off, as it were, from the spiritual world during their earthly existence, must go through earthly events; otherwise, they would not be able to attain their sense of freedom. But the time has come to an end when human beings may remain cut off from spiritual existence. They must once again imbue their consciousness with inner enlightenment from spiritual existence, and to do so, they cannot use the old methods today. They must pass through whatever can be revealed to them in the present in this direction.

[ 21 ] For suppose, for a moment, that some ancient mystery site provided for the affairs of the mysteries in the surrounding region. The concern of this mystery site extended to all matters of the people living in the surrounding area—to all those matters that could only be fulfilled and ordered through the connection between earthly life and the spiritual world. Let’s suppose a person fell ill. In those earlier times, people did not ask: “What substances have we tested that have had an effect on the human being in this or that direction?” — Least of all did people inquire about the effects of substances that had been tested on animals and so on. Today, people must go through all of that. This is not meant as a disparaging criticism of medicine, but merely as a placement within the proper context of the development of the Earth and humanity. But in ancient times, a sick person afflicted with some ailment would seek refuge in the mystery temples; for the priests were at once artists and physicians. Art, religion, and science were one; this was cultivated in the mysteries. In those ancient times, there was still a holistic view of the human being. It was understood that when a person is afflicted by something at a certain stage of life, this is not merely related to the chemical composition or imbalance of their physical substances, but—from a higher perspective—it is connected to the experiences and events they underwent while in the world of the stars and as they sought their earthly existence from there.

[ 22 ] Let us suppose, then, that such a patient came seeking help between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one to a mystery site that also served as a medical center. In ancient times, when even at the mystery schools only an instinctive, half-dreamlike knowledge was at work, if such a patient came for treatment, the examination he underwent was often nevertheless more lucid than the examinations of today. For I have actually met doctors who, when one spoke with them about the most important aspect of the patient’s condition and asked, “How old is the patient?”—did not know. As if one could contribute to a person’s health at all without having a precise idea of their age! For in every year of life, a person must, so to speak, be treated differently, because human life is constantly changing. It would never occur to anyone, for example, to take a petal, plant it in the ground, and believe that a new plant would grow from it; rather, they would take the seed from the fruit and plant it in the ground, because they know that the plant’s development is a process. And human life must be viewed in the same way. So if a sick person seeking help—between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, roughly speaking—came to a mystery physician, the latter knew that there are a number of illnesses that are simply related to the human being’s passage through the solar sphere as they descend from the planetary world into the physical world. If the patient was between the ages of thirty-five and forty-two, the mystery priest knew which illnesses were related to the human being’s passage through the sphere of Saturn during their descent. So he inquired above all into the connection between earthly life and the experiences and events of the human being in the existence between death and new birth; then he understood what here on Earth, in turn, relates from the outer realm to the beings of the higher hierarchies or their physical images, the stars. Now, certain plants on Earth have a more intimate relationship with the Sun than others, and others, in turn, have a more intimate relationship with Saturn, and so on. For example, by relying on a healthy instinct, you will be able to see that sprouting, budding flowering plants have a different relationship to the Sun than a mushroom or a lichen on a tree. And someone who, for example, is afflicted by a stomach or heart ailment between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one—you will certainly not cure them with Kramperl tea, just as the ancient mystery physician would not have treated them with Kramperl tea, but rather with a plant sap related to the sun; but this would stem from an understanding of the connection between human life and the universe.

[ 23 ] These things are, so to speak, “buried” knowledge; they must be rediscovered on a higher level, illuminated by our modern intelligence, after humanity has passed through a period of darkness. They must be rediscovered, and they can be rediscovered; and it is precisely the anthroposophical worldview that marks the beginning of this rediscovery of spiritual enlightenment for humanity in all areas of life.

[ 24 ] I have now described to you this descent of the human being until he enters the planetary sphere. Then comes a time—after the influence of the Moon has already been present, or rather has just begun—when the human being loses that spiritual seed of his physical body, which has, however, already shrunk considerably—the terms are, of course, crude, but you will not misunderstand them. This spiritual seed of the physical body descends earlier than the human being himself; it is entrusted to a pair of parents, settles into a fertilized human embryo, and forms the element of growth there before the human being himself has descended. So there is, in a sense, a time when the human being has already entrusted this physical germ to earthly life, when he, as it were, looks down upon the Earth: “This is what I am to become, the human being to whom I will belong”—yet the human being himself still lives freely in the cosmos for a short time. At this point, the human being draws together the forces from the etheric world of the cosmos into his etheric body, so that he then consists, in his essence, of the I-being, the astral body, and the etheric body. And after he has thus acquired his etheric body, he now unites himself with what has become his physical embryo, which he himself first sent down.

[ 25 ] There is an immensely profound wisdom in this preliminary sending forth of the physical human germ and in the subsequent gathering together—if I may put it that way—of the etheric body. For suppose we retained our physical body while we gathered the etheric body together, and the physical body were not that which is permeated by physical matter, but rather the forces that could be permeated by physical matter in the womb—but suppose we did not send it ahead, but instead still imbued it with the etheric body before we arrived at the substance of the physical embryo and what is presented to us there. What would happen then? It is precisely because we can know what might happen there that we begin to marvel immensely at the wise guidance of the universe. For if it were otherwise, every thought we conceived and every inclination we had toward evil would constantly stand before us. It would be as if a living memory of everything—even the smallest evil we had ever committed on Earth, even if only in thought or feeling—were constantly present. We would be overwhelmed by the contents of our conscience, especially its evil aspects, and we would be unable to form a single neutral thought; for example, we would be unable to gain any understanding of nature. If we were to observe plants neutrally according to the laws of nature, thoughts such as these would easily creep into our observation of nature: “Oh, what a terrible person you were back then at seventeen—what have you done!”—This would seep into our observation of nature, and we would be unable to arrive at a neutral perspective. The fact that we can distinguish our simple, neutral composure from the moral or immoral instincts within us is due to the fact that we first send down our physical spirit germ and only then, after we have gathered the etheric body, unite with the physical body. In this way, we keep these two so far apart that memory can be held back in the physical body—so that it is not always present, so that it also leaves us free, so that not our entire life, especially our moral life, is constantly before us—and so that we can grasp the thoughts of neutral composure in the etheric body.

[ 26 ] I have now described to you the descent of the human being from the spiritual world up to the moment when the human being unites with the physical substance of the Earth in order to continue living on Earth. What does this reveal now that we have reached this point? As I have already said, it turns out that we must acknowledge: If I recognize that the human being first sends down the formative forces of his physical body and then follows them, I am inevitably led to admire the wise guidance of world affairs. If I grasp this with all my vitality, I cannot stand there like a blockhead who builds a machine and feels no need to admire it; for I would have to be a completely withered human being to be shown such immense wisdom in the governance of the worlds and yet not have admiration for this wisdom welling up within me! And so it is with all anthroposophical insights.

[ 27 ] In other words, the ordinary knowledge of the earth that we acquire in the waking state appeals to our intellect rather than to our feelings. This is not the case with the insights we receive from the spiritual world through inner experience. These engage our whole being; indeed, our entire being is reorganized as we assimilate these insights. Insights from spiritual science do not leave us cold in our hearts, as physical insights do, yet they are no less objective insights. If someone were to say, for example, “Insights that touch the heart are not objective; they are subjective”—one need only imagine the following: If someone stands before Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, they would have to be a strange bird indeed not to be filled with admiration at the sight of this painting; yet no one could say: “That’s merely subjective; Raphael’s Madonna isn’t objective.”—For the point is not that we should not actively feel forces of sympathy or antipathy in our minds when we look at something objective, but rather that the objective is not disturbed by our subjectivity. Of course, if we acknowledge something simply because it suits us to regard it as objective, then we are not being objective, since in that case we are accepting something merely because we like it. But if something were to present itself to us as objectively as such insights do, and we were then to burst into admiration, that admiration would certainly not impair the objectivity of the insight. This is the essence of anthroposophical, spiritual-scientific insights: that they engage not only our intellect, our mind, but our whole being. And whoever comes to know more and more of such truths—which pertain to human life between death and rebirth—will find an emotional life springing up within them, and subsequently a life of will as well. This means that a person infuses the impulses behind their actions with what they recognize from the spiritual worlds. Here on earth, they feel themselves to be fulfilling what they were in the spiritual life between death and rebirth.

[ 28 ] Thus, what arises from lived anthroposophy already possesses the power to fill the whole human being of its own accord, just as instinctive clairvoyance—that is, the instinctive connection with the spiritual world—was once present in ancient humanity as a natural part of the whole human being. How is it, then, that we have become such intellectual types today, and why were the people of antiquity not like that? Precisely because the people of antiquity also knew the principles that arose from the whole human being. Today, for example, people study geometry; there they are taught what a perpendicular is. But what a perpendicular is simply hovers—one cannot even say “in the air”—it hovers in the realm of the ideal; one simply does not know the connection. A person would never have developed a sense of a perpendicular if he had not himself, in the course of his life, become a being who walks upright, so that he feels what a perpendicular is through his own movement. And what the whole human being experiences in this way, the head experiences as well and transforms into the vertical. In the same way, what a person experiences when spreading their arms becomes the experience of the horizontal. Human beings, who originally acted as whole human beings in their soul life, have gradually restricted themselves to the head, which can only represent everything figuratively. And how does the head function in human beings? Well, when I walk, I experience life differently than when I ride in a car: there, the car moves, and I am at rest. That is actually what the head does in a human being: it is lazy; it has its vehicle in the rest of my organism and lets itself be driven; everything comes to rest, just as when I am sitting in a train. That is why everything becomes figurative, abstract. We have arrived at this abstractness in the course of our earthly existence. But we must return to what allows the spiritual to take hold of us in our existence. And this then takes hold of the whole human being. This is the reverse process of what took place in ancient times, but through this reverse process we can once again come to an exploration of the whole human being. In this way, we then also return to a culture that fulfills the whole human being.

[ 29 ] There are people today who hear what spiritual science has to say and then say: “There are such strange people who proclaim a spiritual scientific truth today and believe it is necessary for humanity.” We don’t want to doubt at all that it might be true that all these worlds exist, the ones spiritual scientists talk about; but what business is it of ours? We can just wait calmly until we die; then we’ll see what it’s all about. Why should we make an effort here to understand what the spiritual world is like? — But that’s not how it is at all. The fact is this: if one wants to understand what spiritual knowledge—specifically, the kind that can reach people through common sense based on the spiritual researcher’s communications—means, one learns to recognize it best when spiritual research explains how the first stage of supersensible knowledge, imaginative knowledge, is acquired. To illustrate this, I will cite a few examples.

[ 30 ] In the way a person usually lives, he has only an awareness of the present. He has this awareness through his physical body. The body exists in space. Space represents the present with its three dimensions. A person therefore always has only an awareness of the present. And when a person has a memory, it is a memory of the present; they do not immerse themselves in what they experienced, say, ten years ago, but only in the image of what they experienced at that time. This is therefore sufficiently shadowy and abstract. If one earnestly performs the exercises I have described in the book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* for the purpose of attaining imaginative knowledge, one comes to not merely live in the present, but gradually to overcome the shadowy nature of memory and to live within one’s earlier experiences as well; so that in the year 1922, one is still able to relive one’s experiences from, say, the year 19Äther just as one experienced them in 19Äther. And whoever makes a special effort to live a life in thought—which is not a life of abstractions, but of full concreteness, through which one is enabled to grasp how life in thought brings about twists of fate and all manner of things, deep sympathy and antipathy, as otherwise only the coarse, material earthly existence does— —that person also comes to experience their temporal body just as they experience their spatial body through ordinary consciousness. If, for example, I cut my big toe, it hurts, and I do not merely have a memory of this pain in my head—because the head is far removed from the big toe—but I have an immediately experienced sensation of pain. Certainly, the head is spatially connected to the big toe, but time is not experienced in that way. When, as a thirty-year-old, you think back on what you experienced as a seventeen-year-old—from which you are now temporally removed—it has faded. How intense was the experience of pain thirteen years ago, when you lost a loved one, compared to your memory of it today. But whoever, through the exercises described in *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* —so that one understands how to live in thought, namely in pure, senseless thoughts, as I have described in *The Philosophy of Freedom*—then one lives there, just as one lives here in every part of one’s spatial body, simultaneously in every part of one’s temporal body and with the same intensity. One sees, when one transports oneself back as a fifty- or sixty-year-old person—or even as an eighty-year-old, not just five years back—for present existence extends over the entire course of life—that one is immediately present at every single point. Admittedly, one pays for this presence with transience. If you are able to have an experience—no matter how vivid—of something that occurred in your eighteenth year: it does not vanish as quickly as a “dream,” but you cannot hold onto it; you must forget it. And as a researcher of the spiritual realm, one could, for example, find oneself in a very difficult situation if there were no other aids. One could establish the connections that allow one to see something in the etheric world, but one forgets it immediately. Therefore, one must also resort to all sorts of aids—I have provided details on this in *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*—so that what one acquires in this way as a spiritual-etheric vision does not vanish again right away. It will almost certainly vanish after a few days, and whatever a person still carries within themselves as their etheric body after death will vanish just as quickly.

[ 31 ] For it is through this experience—as I have just described it—that one comes to know the very essence of the etheric realm. The things that are told about life after death are not mere fabrications, but are derived from a living insight. But if one wishes to make use of such aids, mere intellectual activity is never enough. I do not hesitate to speak here of my own experiences, which I had when I realized how fleeting such experiences in the etheric cosmos are. No matter how much one observes, if one wants to recount these experiences to others a week later, one must resort to other means. But these aids are not drawn from intellectual processes. One very helpful method, for example, was to write down what had been experienced while it was still fresh, so that the activity did not pass through the mind but through the writing hand. In this case, it is not a matter of mediumistic writing, nor is the purpose simply to have the matter written down. Writing things down—including transcribing lectures—is, in any case, something extraordinarily unappealing when one is engaged in spiritual work. But it provides a means of fixing what would otherwise be fleeting by involving the entire organism in the process, just as when one creates a drawing or a painting. It then remains within one’s own organism; there is no need to re-appropriate it afterward. The sole purpose is to capture these things. But one cannot rely on mental aids for this. If you are a spiritual researcher, you cannot capture it through any mental aids; you must capture it through something that engages your entire being. One such means would be to write down what you have experienced. But do not worry about incorporating an intellectual activity into the process; what matters is only the style of writing; or you could even make a symbolic drawing, copy a picture, or something similar.

[ 32 ] From this you can see how intimately connected what is necessary for existence is with the whole human being, so that one can convey to ordinary perceptions what one perceives in the spiritual world. But once it is conveyed, one can share it with others who cannot see spiritually themselves and who then grasp it with their ordinary, sound common sense through the very same concepts in which it is conveyed to them. They then have the same concepts regarding what the clairvoyant presents to them. To discover the truths of spiritual science, one needs the art of clairvoyance; to live with these truths, one does not need this art of clairvoyance, but only a sound understanding of what is presented.

[ 33 ] But from what has been described here, you can see something else as well. What the human being is spiritually in his etheric body does not exist in space; it exists in time. Now consider the physical organism—for example, the eye: with it, you see visible things. If you remove the eye, you can no longer see visible things. If you look at the spiritual human being, he is, so to speak, the entire stream that flows from life to life—living first in the existence between death and a new birth, then in physical earthly life, then again in the life between death and a new birth, and so on. This is a unity. People of ancient times were born into earthly life with their instinctive clairvoyance—that is, a connection to the spiritual world through the forces of nature themselves—and this developed in them in such a way that they could take it with them again through death; but knowledge of the spiritual realm was not allowed to cease. Nor must it disappear in modern human beings. Human beings must acquire this knowledge of the spiritual here on Earth, for they are a continuous stream on Earth. If you have lived an earthly life in which you knew absolutely nothing of the spiritual, this is, for spiritual life, just as if you were to tear out the eye of your physical body. For whatever knowledge of spiritual life you acquire here on Earth belongs to you; it is your eye, with which you will later “see” between death and a new birth. And if you remain “in the dark” here on Earth with regard to knowledge of spiritual life, then you will have no eye after death; then you will walk through the life between death and a new birth as if through a dark valley. For you must possess this eye through what you have acquired here. You tear out the eye of the spirit by excluding knowledge of the spiritual world.

[ 34 ] This is a realization that humanity must come to terms with. Now that the old, instinctive perception of the spiritual realm has completely faded away, humanity must realize that, in the way sought by the anthroposophical movement, organs for spiritual life must be regained. It is not, therefore, a matter of saying: “We will wait until after death; we do not need to make an effort now to understand the spiritual worlds, for after death we will see for ourselves what the spiritual worlds are like.” Certainly, we will see it after death. But it will be like a dark dungeon for the soul if we have not, here in the life between birth and death, developed the eye for life in the spiritual worlds. Therefore, you can see how impossible it is when a person virtually establishes as a dogma that he need not concern himself with the supersensible realm here in earthly life. For we live, rather, in a time when, in the true sense of the word, the one who says to himself—“Here, in the life between birth and death, you must develop the ability to see, so that it will not be dark for you in the spiritual world after death, and so that you may also experience the light that will then surround you”—is the one who fulfills his spiritual duty toward the whole world.

[ 35 ] When I had the opportunity to speak here in this circle some time ago, I described human beings in their relationship to the spiritual world from a certain perspective and concluded by saying: It is clear from all this that in the present age we have reached the point where a core group of people must form who recognize the necessity of spiritual scientific knowledge. — From what I have said again today, one can see this necessity all the more clearly. We are living today in an age in which the spiritual world wishes to reveal itself to us during our earthly lives. We must not close the doors and windows through which it can enter. We must let the light of the spiritual world enter; we must let it enter for the sake of earthly life; we must let it enter for the sake of the life we live between death and rebirth. Human beings must hear the voices that speak to them in a spiritual way from the spiritual world, and they must say to themselves: The time has come for human beings to perceive the light of the Spirit, to hear the voice of the Spirit. — And once we have familiarized ourselves with what can be recognized in this way—based on spiritual scientific insight—as the necessities of the times, then the right attitude prevails in such a workplace when one considers it one’s duty to lead humanity to the realization that now is the time to behold the light of the Spirit, to hear the voice of the Spirit, and to understand it.

[ 36 ] In these thoughts, particularly in this feeling, and above all in this spirit, let us be united and stand together during the times when we are once again physically apart. That is what I would like to say to you as a greeting—a greeting to this effect: Let what we can say to one another when fate brings us together be the occasion for this thought to prevail among us—a sense of belonging that exists in the spiritual realm, even when we cannot be together physically! Nevertheless, I would like to add the hope that I will soon be able to speak among you to continue what I have presented today.