The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] The last time I had the opportunity to speak to at least some of you was when our Goetheanum in Dornach was still standing. At that time, it gave me great satisfaction to be able to speak before a number of French friends. That satisfaction is now renewed by the fact that, at the invitation of our French friends, I am now also able to speak here on topics related to our anthroposophy. I thank these friends for their kind invitation, especially Mile Sauerwein, and I also express my satisfaction that Dr. Sauerwein, who at that time translated the lectures in Dornach in such a lovely, accommodating manner, has agreed to take on this work here in Paris as well. I am especially grateful to him for this.

[ 2 ] Indeed, a number of changes have taken place within the anthroposophical movement as a result of the fact that, in a relatively short time after we were struck by the misfortune of the fire, we were able to hold the Christmas Conference with the active participation of our anthroposophical friends—an event that, I believe, gave a new impetus—particularly a new impetus with regard to the content of anthroposophical work itself. What is new in the anthroposophical movement is, after all, that I myself have now had to assume the presidency, whereas previously it had been exercised by others, and I regarded myself merely as a teacher. Well, my dear friends, it was a very significant decision—also in relation to the spiritual world—that I had to make at that time. For it was a risk. A risk for the reason that, by assuming external leadership, it could just as easily have been the case that the revelations from spiritual beings—on whom we are, after all, entirely dependent when it comes to the dissemination of anthroposophy—might have diminished as a result of my allowing myself to be drawn into the external administration of the Society. Today I can already point to the extraordinarily significant fact that this is not the case; on the contrary, since the Christmas Conference, the spiritual impulse that must descend from the spiritual worlds—if the anthroposophical movement is to proceed in the right direction—has definitely grown, so that our anthroposophical movement has been able to become more and more esoteric since our Christmas Conference and will continue to do so. This is connected to the fact that, admittedly, very strong opposing forces—I mean from the spiritual side—demonic forces are also assailing the anthroposophical movement. But there is every reason to hope that the forces of the alliance we were able to form with benevolent spiritual powers through the Christmas Conference will, in the future, be able to defeat all those opposing forces in the spiritual realm—forces that, after all, make use of human beings on Earth to achieve their ends—all these opposing forces.

[ 3 ] In these three lectures, my dear friends, I would like to take the liberty of speaking about how, on the one hand, anthroposophy can live as an understanding of the spiritual in the world and in human beings—and indeed as such an understanding of the world and human beings that, on the other hand, it is possible to derive from this understanding genuine inner spiritual impulses for moral and religious life. Precisely because it will be possible to gain insights that simultaneously provide religious and moral impulses, anthroposophy will be able to offer humanity something different from the civilization of the past centuries. That civilization suffered, in particular, from the fact that there were magnificent insights—in the natural sciences, economics, and philosophy—but all these insights occupied only the human mind. Moral and religious impulses must come from the heart; they must spring forth from the soul. They existed as religious and moral ideals. But whether these moral ideals also contain a force strong enough that moral and religious feeling can create worlds that hold a future—once the physical world of the present has perished—is something modern science could say nothing about. Yet it was from this that the great doubts of the past and present ages arose.

[ 4 ] Today, I would like to begin by examining the nature of the human being from three perspectives. We explore this nature of the human being; we ourselves are part of it, with our destiny unfolding between birth and death. What we are tracing here is bounded on one side by birth—or rather, by conception—and on the other side by death. Birth and death are not life; they mark the beginning and the end of life. The question is this: Can we view birth and death themselves with the same perspective with which we stand within life—in our own lives and in the lives of others—between birth and death? Or must our perspective change when we reach the boundaries of birth and death? Accordingly, let the aspect of death, which so clearly delimits human life, be the first thing we wish to contemplate spiritually today.

[ 5 ] Death takes away the physical body that stands before us from the human being during earthly life. How does it take this physical body away? The earth with its elements—whether in its own element during burial, or through the element of fire during cremation—the earth with its elements takes the physical human being away. What can it do with what we perceive of the human being through our physical senses? It can do nothing but destroy it. Let us look at the forces around us. When the human corpse is handed over to them, they do not build anything up within the human body; they destroy it. We can say: The forces of nature around us are not there to build up; for when the human body is left to the forces of nature, it decays. So there must be something else that builds it up—something other than the earthly—for through the earthly it decays.

[ 6 ] But this whole matter looks quite different when one observes human death using the powers of insight that are drawn from the soul through spiritual exercises. Ordinary powers of perception see only the corpse, nothing else. But if, through spiritual exercises, one reaches the first level of perception—which I have described in my books—that of imagination, then death is completely transformed. In death, the human being tears itself away from the earth. And when we develop the level of perception known as imagination, we see in direct vision, through vivid images, that the human being in death does not die, but rises from his or her corpse. Physical death is transformed into spiritual birth at the level of imagination. Before death, the human being stands there as an earthly being. He or she can say: “I am here in this place; out there is the world.” — At the very moment death occurs, the human being is simply not where his physical body is. He begins his existence in the vastness of the cosmos; he becomes one with the world he previously only observed. The world outside his body now becomes his experience, and thus what was previously the inner world becomes the outer world; what was previously the outer world becomes the inner world. We move from a personal existence to a cosmic existence. The Earth—as imaginative insight reveals—gives us the opportunity to pass through death. To this imaginative insight, the Earth reveals itself as the bearer of death in the cosmos. Nowhere else in the realms that human beings enter—whether in physical or spiritual life—do we find death as we do on Earth. For at the moment when a human being passes through death and becomes one with the world, a second aspect presents itself to us—no longer the aspect of death, but that aspect in which the vastness of space appears to us as universally filled with cosmic thoughts. The entire world, the entire cosmos, now becomes—for the beholder and for the human being who has passed through death—full of world-thoughts that live and weave throughout the vastness of space. The spatial aspect becomes more evident, so that when we pass through death, we enter a world of world-thoughts. Everything acts and weaves within world-thoughts. This is the second aspect of death.

[ 7 ] When we encounter people in earthly life, what we see before us first and foremost is the person’s personality; they must speak if we are to know their thoughts. We then say: The thoughts are within them; they come to us through their speech—but nowhere within the sphere of earthly life do we discover thoughts in and of themselves. They exist only within human beings and emerge from them. When we step out of the earthly sphere of death into the cosmic sphere of thoughts, there are initially no beings there; in the vastness of space, we do not initially encounter beings—neither gods nor humans—but we encounter cosmic thoughts everywhere. It is as if, after passing through death and entering the vastness of the worlds, we did not first see human beings here in the physical world, but rather, when we encounter a human being, we first perceive their thoughts without seeing the human being themselves. We would see a cloud of thoughts. And we see a second cloud: we do not encounter beings; we encounter the world-thoughts, the universal world intelligence.

[ 8 ] In this sphere of cosmic intelligence, a person lives for a few days after death. And within the cosmic thoughts that weave there, one’s own last earthly life—the one one has lived—appears as a detail, I would say, like a distinct cloud that one looks upon. This is inscribed in the cosmic intelligence. One suddenly sees one’s own life—all at once, in a vast tableau—condensed into a few days. With each passing day—and there are only a few—what has been inscribed in the world intelligence grows weaker and weaker. It expands out into the vastness of the cosmos; it fades from one’s sight. While the aspect of death looms at the end of one’s earthly life, what stands at the end of this experience after a few days is the fading into the vastness of the cosmos. Thus, after the first aspect—which we can call the aspect of death—we have the second aspect, which we can call the aspect of the disappearance of earthly life. Indeed, after death, there is a moment for every human being when an immense anxiety arises—fear, dread—that they might lose themselves, along with their entire earthly life, into the vastness of the cosmos.

[ 9 ] If one wishes to gain a deeper understanding of human experiences after death, the insight provided by the imagination is not sufficient. The second level of insight—inspiration—must come into play. The level of insight known as imagination presents images; these are essentially like dream images. However, with dream images we can never be certain whether there is any reality behind them; with the images of imagination, it is always the case that they express a reality through their very nature. Through imagination, one lives in a world of images that is, however, reality. This world of images must be transcended if one is to come to behold what a human being experiences after death, following the few days during which he has observed his own life.

[ 10 ] This inspiration, which must now be attained after or during the act of imagination, does not have images before it; it is a realization of the absence of images, but of spiritual hearing. Inspired realization takes in the intelligence of the world, the thoughts of the world, in such a way that one hears them as if spiritually. It speaks from all sides; the word of the world resounds with complete clarity; one knows that there is something behind it. First comes the proclamation. And then, when one can surrender to this inspiration, one begins—behind the thoughts of the world—to perceive the beings of the world through intuition. Imagination perceives images of the spiritual; inspiration hears the spiritual speaking spiritually. Intuition perceives the beings themselves. I said: The world is filled with world-thoughts. — These do not yet point to any beings, but we come to hear words behind the thoughts and to see the beings of the world through intuition.

[ 11 ] The first aspect is that of death, the earthly aspect; the second aspect, which leads us out into the vastness of space—into which we, as earthly human beings, otherwise gaze without understanding—is the aspect of humanity’s disappearance. Then the third aspect provides us with that which also limits the expanses of space to the visible eye—the third aspect is the aspect of the stars. But the stars do not appear as they do to physical sight. To the physical eye, the stars are luminous points at the boundaries of space toward which we gaze. Once we have arrived at intuitive knowledge, the stars become revealers of world beings, of spiritual world beings. And instead of the physical stars, we see with our intuition colonies—spiritual colonies in the spiritual universe—located at the very places where we suspect physical stars to be. The third aspect is the aspect of the stars. It introduces us—after we have come to know death, after we have recognized the world intelligence through the vastness of space—it introduces us, this third aspect, into the spheres of the world beings, the spiritual world beings; it enters as the human aspect into the spheres of the world beings, and thereby into the sphere of the stars. And just as the Earth has received the human being between birth and death, so too, after the human being has crossed the abyss of world intelligence a few days after death, the world of the stars receives the human being. On Earth, the human being was an earthly being among earthly beings; after death, he becomes a celestial being among celestial beings. The first sphere into which the human being enters is the lunar sphere. He then later enters the other spheres of the worlds. Perhaps I may sketch what I wish to explain on the board to give you a little guidance. At the moment of death, a human being still belongs to the earthly sphere. At that moment, everything that earthly knowledge can encompass no longer has any significance for the human being. On Earth, we have various substances, metals, and other materials. At the moment of death, all this differentiation ceases. All external solid substances are earthly, and at the moment of death, the human being exists within earth, water, air, and warmth. The few days following death are characterized by this “blue sphere,” the sphere of world intelligence. The human being surveys their own life, existing between the earthly realm and the heavenly realm. A few days after death, they enter the celestial realm, beginning with the sphere of the Moon. In this sphere of the Moon, we as human beings first encounter true cosmic beings, though they are still very much like humans; for we were once together on Earth with the beings we meet here in the lunar sphere a few days after our death. You will be able to read in my books, my dear friends, how the Moon, as a physical celestial body, once separated from the Earth. It was connected to the Earth and became an independent celestial body. But it was not only the physical Moon that separated from the Earth. There were once on Earth, among humanity, great teachers of mankind—the great primordial teachers of humanity—who brought the first wisdom to the people of Earth. These primordial teachers did not inhabit a physical human body; they were present on Earth only in an etheric body. When a person was taught by them, they perceived it inwardly. After these great primordial teachers had remained on Earth for a while, they separated from Earth along with the Moon and formed a colony on the Moon—a colony of lunar beings. It is these primordial teachers of humanity on Earth, who have long since departed from Earth, whom we encounter as the first celestial beings a few days after death.

[ 12 ] This period, during which a person lives together with the lunar beings after death, gives the person a life that stands in a peculiar relationship to earthly life. If one enters into the life of such a person after death through supersensible knowledge, one might believe that this life is more fleeting, less dense than earthly life, that the person, so to speak, leads a more ethereal existence in comparison to earthly life. But that is not the case. If one participates through supersensible perception in the life that a person experiences after death, it becomes clear that for a long time the person lives a life that seems far more real to them than earthly life; in comparison, earthly life is in many ways a dream. It lasts about one-third of one’s lifetime. What is experienced following the few days after death that I have described varies from person to person. For what do we experience then? When a person looks back on their earthly lives, they succumb to an illusion. They see only the days; they do not take into account what they experienced spiritually during sleep. It is simply a fact of life that, unless one is a particularly heavy sleeper, one spends a third of one’s life asleep. One now looks back on this and consciously relives it together with the united lunar powers. One relives this because these great primordial teachers of humanity then infuse their presence into us and live with us; one relives these nights—which were not consciously experienced on Earth—in a reality far more intense than earthly life.

[ 13 ] I would like to illustrate what I have said here with an example. Perhaps some of my dear friends are familiar with the first or another of my “Mystery Dramas” and know that I depicted, among other characters, the figure of a certain Strader. This Strader is artistically based on a real person—one who has since passed away but was alive at the time. Not that his earthly life was copied verbatim, but the character of Strader in my “Mystery Plays” was based on the earthly life of a man who was extraordinarily interesting to me because he had risen from relatively humble circumstances—first to a life as a priest, then cast off the priest’s robe and outwardly became a scholar of the world in a certain rationalistic sense. I was fascinated by all of this man’s inner struggles. I tried to grasp them spiritually. I wrote the four “Mysteries” by looking closely at his earthly life. After he died, the interest I had taken in him enabled me to follow him beyond death through the time he is now experiencing in the lunar sphere. He is still there today. From the moment this personality, this individuality, broke through to me in the life after death—in all the intense reality in which this life now operates—that which might have interested one in his earthly life in such a case was completely extinguished. One now lives entirely with this individuality after death, and this manifested itself in me in such a way that I also had to let this individuality die in the fourth Mystery Drama, because this person no longer stood before me as an earthly human being. This is offered merely to reinforce the assertion that this life after death is experienced inwardly by human beings as more intense, more substantial, and more real than earthly life, which is like a dream.

[ 14 ] We must be mindful that after death, a person extends into the vast world, into the cosmos. The cosmos now becomes the person himself. He now feels the cosmos as his own body, but he also feels—on a moral level—that which was outside of him during his earthly life now within himself. What was within him, he now feels outside himself. Take a very trivial example. Suppose that during your earthly life, you allowed yourself to be carried away by an emotion and struck someone, thereby first causing them physical pain and second, inflicting moral suffering upon them. After death, in the lunar sphere, under the influence of those lunar individualities, you do not experience what you experienced during your earthly life—when, out of inner anger, you struck someone, perhaps with a sense of inner satisfaction, without feeling the other person’s suffering—but now you experience what the other person experienced. The physical pain, the suffering that the other person had to endure—you experience that in the lunar sphere. You experience what you yourself did or even thought during your earthly life, not as you felt it, but as the other person experienced it. Thus, for one-third of their time after death, human beings relive everything they thought and did during their earthly life—in the way that the lunar beings I have spoken of show it to them in an intense reality—and they experience this life in reverse. For example, when I relived Strader’s life with him—I call him that in the Mystery Dramas, although his name was different—he died in 1912—it was the case that he first experienced what he had experienced most recently on Earth, then what came before that, and so on backward. When he now appears before my soul, he is experiencing in the other sphere—the lunar sphere—what he experienced in the year 1875. He has since relived the period between 1912 and 1875 and will continue to relive it all the way back to his date of birth.

[ 15 ] Thus, for one-third of the time after death, a person relives their life in reverse in the spheres of the lunar beings, who were once earthly beings. This life is the first seed of what manifests as karma in subsequent earthly lives. In this life—which is lived through during one-third of the earthly lifespan—one truly comes to know, inwardly through one’s own feelings and perceptions, how one’s own actions have affected other people. And there, my dear friends, a powerful desire arises within the spiritual human being: that what one is now experiencing in the spiritual sphere—the lunar sphere—because of what one caused in other human beings on Earth—may be returned to one, so that balance may be restored. The resolve to realize one’s destiny in accordance with one’s earthly deeds and thoughts—this desire marks the end of this lunar period. And if this desire, arising from this experience that extends back to birth, is fearless, then the human being becomes ripe to be received by the next sphere, the Mercury sphere. The human being then enters the Mercury sphere. In the Mercury sphere—which we will examine in the next lecture—the human being learns, through beings into whose realm he now enters—beings who were never earthly beings but have always been super-earthly beings—how he can continue to shape his destiny. Thus we will follow the human being through the sphere of Mercury, the sphere of Venus, and the sphere of the Sun, in order to understand what the human being undergoes between death and a new birth, corresponding in their spiritual existence to what they experienced among earthly beings between birth and death. For the human being lives his entire life in earthly existence between birth and death, and in heavenly existence between death and a new birth. This is what constitutes his entire life: How? — We will discuss this in the next lectures.