The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday I endeavored to show how, by passing through the gate of death, a person ascends into the first experiences of the supersensible world, which they undergo in the decades following death. I showed how a human being dwells for a certain number of years in what might be called the lunar region, and how, in this lunar region, the human being comes into contact with beings who were once connected to the Earth—beings who did not live on Earth in a physical body, but in an etheric body, and as such were the teachers of early humanity, inspiring people with that profound wisdom that once existed on Earth and which gradually faded away there. With the physical Moon’s departure from Earth, these beings also departed; they continue their existence on the Moon, and human beings are reunited with them once they have passed through the gate of death and are to survey all that which—in the manner described yesterday—is surveyed in a reality far more intense than what human beings actually experience during their earthly existence.

[ 2 ] I have already hinted that, after a person has spent a sufficiently long time in the lunar region, he finds his way into the Mercury region, where he encounters beings who lead him out into a region of the world inhabited by beings entirely different from those on Earth—a region to which, as a human being, he now belongs during the time between death and a new birth, just as he belonged to the Earth and its reality during his earthly existence.

[ 3 ] Now, my dear friends, please allow me to continue today with the brief sketch I began yesterday. We can assume that when a person experiences death—which actually takes only a very short time—that person then experiences their existence within the elements: earth, water, fire, and air. The substances that constitute differentiated matter on earth—metals and all other substances—are no longer present at the moment of death. All solid substances are earth, all liquid substances are water, all gaseous substances are air, and everything that exhibits warmth is warmth. At the moment of death, the human being lives within this fourfold differentiation of matter. He then passes into the region that I characterized yesterday as the region of world intelligence. World thoughts interweave with and permeate the region into which he then enters and in which he remains for a few days. Then he reaches the lunar region that I have described, and from there, the Mercury region.

[ 4 ] This sketch—I would like to repeat it once more: the region of the elements, the region of world intelligence. And now the human being enters the region of the stars, first the region of the Moon and then the region of Mercury.

[ 5 ] Now let us consider how a person’s life in the lunar region can initially have a decisive influence on their later karma. I already alluded to this yesterday. The fact is this: As a human being passes through death, they have committed this or that in their earthly life—this or that act of good or evil. And with all of this, through the experience I described yesterday, they appear before those beings who can be called the lunar beings. These lunar beings pass a strict judgment, a cosmic judgment: how much value a good deed has for the entire universe, and how much value an evil or unjust deed has for the entire universe. And then the situation is such that a person must leave behind in the lunar region everything through which they have harmed the universe. Human beings must leave behind in the lunar region the results of their evil actions. And in doing so, they leave behind a part of themselves. We need only realize that human beings are, more than one might think, a unity of themselves and what they do, what they accomplish. With every good or evil deed, so to speak, the whole being of a human being enters into a connection. If we must leave behind the evil we have committed, we must leave behind a part of ourselves. — In fact, we emerge from this lunar region only with the good we have done for the universe. Consequently, in a certain sense, when we move beyond the lunar region, we are a mutilated human being—all the more mutilated to the extent that we have united evil thoughts with our own being. We must leave behind as much as we have done that is harmful to the world.

[ 6 ] If we now wish to study the further course of human life between death and a new birth, we must consider the following: The human being, as he stands here on Earth, consists of parts that are clearly distinct from one another. The head region is, relatively speaking, the most highly developed; it is already predisposed in the human embryo even before birth, so that it is relatively complete, whereas the rest of the human body is, in embryonic life, still rather imperfect. In a certain sense, this remains the case throughout the entire course of life. The most highly developed part of the human being is the head region; the other regions of the human being are less developed. Now, however, it is precisely the case that what remains of the human head after death as a spiritual element is lost most rapidly in the spiritual region; it disappears, so to speak, almost entirely upon passing through the lunar region. Of course, you must understand me correctly: the physical substance is shed along with the corpse; but in the head we have not only physical substance, we have forces that shape and animate this physical body of the human being—supersensible forces; these pass through the gate of death; through imaginative perception, one can see them even after death as the human being’s spiritual form—only in this spiritual form, one sees the head, the human head, continually fading away, fading more and more. That which actually remains—and which can be mutilated—is the rest of the human being’s region apart from the head. With this remaining region—which can thus enter the Mercury sphere more or less completely if the person was, for the most part, a good person, but which enters the Mercury region in a very mutilated state if the person was an evil person—with these forces that surround our soul, we enter the life between death and a new birth. Out of these forces we must shape the entire life between death and a new birth. Here, the spiritual beings in the Mercury sphere—who have never been human, who have never taken on human form, and into whose sphere we now enter—have a significant task. For everything that approaches there, so to speak—forgive the expression—as a “headless human being,” is now connected, after the moral blemishes have been cast off in the lunar region, to what the human being experienced during their earthly life as health or illness. It is important—for it is highly significant, surprising, and striking—that while human beings shed their moral blemishes already in the lunar region, what has afflicted them in the form of illness is not shed in the lunar region, but can only be removed from human beings in their spiritual effects in the Mercury region by those beings who have never been human. It is precisely the recognition of this fact that is of extraordinary significance: the spiritual consequences of illnesses are removed from human beings in the Mercury region. And when we observe this, we first experience how, in the world of the stars—which is the true world of the gods—the physical and the moral interact with one another. That which is morally flawed cannot enter the spiritual world; it remains, so to speak, in the lunar region, which has such a share in human beings, for its inhabitants include beings who were once among humans. On Mercury, there are inhabitants who were never Earth dwellers. These beings now take the illnesses away from human beings. One sees these illnesses as if flowing out into the vastness of the worlds, into the spiritual cosmos, and the spiritual consequences of human illnesses are, as it were, absorbed by the spiritual cosmos; they flow out and are even received with a certain pleasure. But the human being who experiences this in the life between death and a new birth now has the first impression—which is actually a purely spiritual one and yet confronts him as truly as the Earth itself confronts him. Just as we experience the wind, the lightning, and the flow of water here on Earth, so too, when we have passed through the gate of death and entered the Mercury region, do we experience the departure of the spiritual effects of illnesses; we see how these spiritual effects of illnesses are received by the spiritual beings, and the impression is this: “Now you are reconciled, O gods!” — I mention this first of all—we will be able to go into these matters in more detail tomorrow—that one experiences how the gods are reconciled for the evil that has occurred on Earth, through the effects of the illnesses flowing out into the vast universe.

[ 7 ] This is a very important fact concerning the phase of our lives between death and a new birth. Such facts were once known, back when those very beings were present who, as the great primordial teachers of humanity—and who later became the inhabitants of the Moon—taught humankind. At that time, it was also known that one could only learn the truth about the nature of diseases when that truth came from the Mercury beings; therefore, all healing practices and all medical knowledge were the secret of certain mysteries—the Mercury mysteries. In such mysteries, it was truly the case that no human being stood there, as is the case at today’s universities, but that higher beings from the stellar regions actually worked through the rituals customary in these mysteries. The gods themselves were teachers of humankind, and medicine was, in ancient times, the branch of wisdom that was brought directly to humankind through the Mercury beings in the mysteries; therefore, this ancient medicine was also regarded by humankind as a gift from the divine. Essentially, everything that is fruitful in medicine today either originates from ancient times—as an aftereffect of what was learned from the gods of Mercury—or must be rediscovered through those methods that guide human beings to interact with the gods and learn from them. The ancient wisdom has dried up and disappeared; a new wisdom, based once again on communion with the gods, must be found. This is the task of anthroposophy in the most diverse fields.

[ 8 ] From the Mercury region, the human being then enters the region of Venusian existence. Whatever the human being can bring with them from their own being into the region of Venus is transformed by those beings who inhabit Venus—and who are even more distant from earthly beings than the Mercury beings—in such a way that it can progress further in the spiritual region. But this is only possible because, upon entering the Venus region, the human being enters a new element. When we live here on Earth, it depends a great deal on our having ideas, concepts, and mental images. For what would a human being on Earth be if he had no mental images or ideas? Thoughts sustain him; they are valuable, and we as human beings are intelligent precisely because we have thoughts that are of value. Especially today, it matters a great deal for a person to be intelligent. Today, almost all people are intelligent. It wasn’t always that way, but today it is. And indeed, the whole of earthly life depends on people having thoughts. Great technology has sprung from human thoughts; ultimately, everything that humanity brings about on Earth—whether good or evil—comes into being with the help of thoughts. However, thoughts continue to have an effect in the lunar region; for the beings in the lunar region judge according to the manner in which good and evil deeds arose from thoughts. But the beings in the Mercury region, too, still judge the illnesses they must relieve from human beings according to those thoughts. But in a certain sense, this is the limit up to which thoughts—indeed, anything that still resembles human intelligence—have any significance. For when one emerges from the Mercury region into the Venus region, what prevails there is what we know in earthly life, in a reflected form, as love. Love, so to speak, takes the place of wisdom there. We enter the region of love. It is only through love that a human being can be led onward to the solar existence—as love guides them from the sphere of wisdom into the solar existence.

[ 9 ] You see, my dear friends, this question will surely resonate within your souls: How does someone—who is even capable of experiencing such things through contemplation—actually experience them? — Now, you have certainly read the soul exercises I have provided in the book that has been translated into French under the title L’Initiation, and you will know that through such soul exercises, a person gradually arrives at such a vision. First, when one attains imaginative consciousness, one experiences one’s entire life in a spiritual way—all the way back to birth—as a great tableau. What one naturally experiences after death, one experiences through initiation in every moment of life. But this experience, when it leads to inspiration, reveals, as it were, something that shines through this tableau, through this human life. This is what is significant. In fact, one can only speak about the entire context of the mysteries that underlie this—and it has always been this way—once one has reached a certain age. One can be initiated at any age; but a complete understanding of the cosmic mysteries through one’s own direct perception of these things is only attained at a certain age. This is so for the following reason.

[ 10 ] When one looks back on this panorama of life, it is divided into seven-year periods, such that one can survey a first period from birth to about the age of seven, a second period from the age of seven to fourteen, a third from the age of fourteen to twenty-one, and then a single, continuous period from the age of twenty-one to forty-two; followed by a phase from the age of forty-two to forty-nine, a phase from forty-nine to fifty-six, and another from fifty-six to sixty-three. One experiences these phases of life one after another. In the first stage of life, one looks back on this period; everything is there all at once, right up to the time of losing one’s baby teeth. As if through a mist, the mysteries of the world and the mysteries of the cosmos appear to one in each of these stages. In the first stage of life, from birth to the age of seven, one beholds the mysteries of the Moon in this retrospective view. When life is laid out in this way during the first stage, it appears to one as if the sun were shining through a mist; so, too, do the mysteries of the world appear through one’s own etheric body, which one surveys. What I have told you today, my dear friends, about leaving behind one’s flaws and evil deeds, and what I have told you about the inhabitants of the Moon—all of this is written in the Book of Life, in this Book of Life of the first stage.

[ 11 ] When we look back on our childhood with imagination, inspiration, and intuition, we tell ourselves: This life has one, two, three, up to seven chapters. The first chapter, encompassing our early childhood, contains the mysteries of the moon. In the second chapter of life, which encompasses the period between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity, lie the mysteries of Mercury. During this age, which children spend in school, and when one looks back on it, the mysteries of Mercury become apparent. It is well known to physicians that this is the age when childhood illnesses occur. It is the healthiest stage of human life; mortality is relatively lowest when one considers humanity as a whole. It is during this phase of life that the mysteries of Mercury become apparent; so that if someone—though this is not very likely, but if it were possible—were to be initiated as early as eighteen, they would be able to comprehend, through their initiation, the mysteries of the Moon and the mysteries of Mercury. When one looks back from later years on the subsequent stages of life from the age of fourteen to twenty-one, everything that pertains to the mysteries of the Venus region in the cosmos becomes apparent in retrospect. During the period when physical love emerges in a person—from the age of fourteen to twenty-one—the mysteries of Venusian existence in the cosmos are also spiritually inscribed in the book of life. If we then continue living from the age of twenty-one to forty-two, we need three times as long to live through this phase; for when we look back from later life, the entire essence of the solar mysteries is revealed to us. One must have reached the age of forty-two to be able to look back; but then, in retrospect, one sees the solar mysteries in this phase of life. If one has now grown quite old and can look back on the period from the twenty-second to the forty-ninth year of life, then the mysteries of Mars are revealed. Thus, to penetrate the mysteries of Mars, one must have passed the age of forty-nine. One may be initiated; but to penetrate the mysteries of Mars through one’s own insight, one must be able to look back on a life that has unfolded during the period from the age of forty-two to forty-nine. If one is over forty-nine years old, one can look back on the mysteries of Jupiter. And—I am permitted to speak of this matter—if one is past the age of sixty-three, one is allowed, by the decree of the gods, to speak of the mysteries of Saturn as well.

[ 12 ] You see, my dear friends, within this life—between death and a new birth—we increasingly move beyond the conditions that surround us here on Earth and into other conditions. What a person experiences after passing through the Venus region is the world of reality in the Solar region. And now that I have described to you how one comes to understand these things through initiation, I would like to continue my discussion of what a human being goes through between death and a new birth.

[ 13 ] However, growing into the spiritual world also involves drawing ever closer to beings that stand above humankind. In the lunar region, we are still, for the most part, among beings who lived with human beings on Earth. But even in the lunar region, we are already encountering those beings who guide us on Earth from one earthly life to the next. These are the beings whom I have referred to in my books, following an old Christian tradition, as the Hierarchy of the Angeloi. When one looks back, in that experience—that initiated experience—of which I have spoken, to early childhood, one simultaneously sees what has come to pass in human beings through the world of angels. Just think, my dear friends, how beautifully certain insights live in the naive human mind and are actually upheld by higher, initiated wisdom! We are speaking of how a person’s earliest childhood is interwoven with the activity of the angels. And we truly see, when we look back to study the Lunar stage, our childhood and, with it, the weaving of the world of the Angeloi. Where the stronger forces begin to take effect in human beings—when a person enters school age—we see the essence of the Archangeloi. And these Archangeloi become important to us when we consider the Mercury stage of existence. Within the Mercury phase, we are in the world of the Archangels. And when a person has reached sexual maturity, they pass through the period from approximately the fourteenth to the twenty-first year of life. Looking back, one can see the mysteries of Venus shining through the course of human life, through the tableau of one’s life. At the same time, one learns to recognize which beings are primarily connected to the Venusic existence—the beings from the hierarchy of the Archai, the primordial forces. And now one comes to know an important truth—again, something that, when truly understood, is immensely striking. One looks at the beings connected to the Venusic existence, who shine into human life after sexual maturity. And these beings are precisely those who, as primordial forces, are linked to the very creation of the world itself. These beings, who as primordial forces are linked to the very creation of the cosmos itself, are in turn active—in their reflection—in the formation of the physical human being through successive generations. The great connection between the cosmos and human life is revealed in this way.

[ 14 ] One then gains insight into the mysteries of the Sun’s life. This solar body—what, after all, is it for our modern physicists? — A glowing ball of gas, in which gases burn, radiating heat and light. — To the spiritual eye, this is a childish notion, a truly childish notion; for the truth is this: if physicists could organize an expedition to the Sun, they would be very surprised to find everything different from what they had imagined. There are no solar gases there. One would not be consumed by flames if one could organize an expedition to the Sun. But upon entering the solar region, one would be torn apart, consumed by being torn apart. For what, in fact, is that place where the Sun is?

[ 15 ] Well, my dear friends, when you walk through this room, there are chairs here, there are people here—you might bump into them. I want to sketch out some of these things schematically; they’re there, and you bump into them. There are the objects, and in between is the empty space—that’s where you walk through. That is the difference in the territory we’re in here: certain parts of the space are filled with chairs or with you; other parts of the space are empty. If I remove the chairs and you come in, only the empty space remains. Empty space is even more widespread in the universe. Here on Earth, we don’t know what we need to learn about the universe. There, space can become empty of itself, so that in some places there is no longer any space at all. If you have what is called “Selterswasser” in Germany, there are tiny bubbles inside that are thinner than the water—you can see them; you don’t see the water, but you see the bubbles. So, when you look out into space, you might not see anything either. But where the sun is, there is less space. Imagine that this is the empty space of the universe, but that within this empty space there is nothing at all—not even space—so that, in fact, if you were to go there, you would be absorbed and disappear. There is absolutely nothing there; there is room for everything spiritual. Nothing physical, not even space, is present. This is the true nature of the sun, which would greatly surprise physicists. Only at the edge of this empty space does it begin to resemble what physicists assume. There are some incandescent gases in the solar corona, but within this empty space there is nothing physical—not even space itself. It is all spiritual. Inside are the three types of beings: Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes, which exist within the solar realm. We now enter the region of the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes once we have passed through the Venusian existence during the period between death and a new birth. There, if one looks back—though one must have reached the age of forty-two—one sees, so to speak, the reflection of the solar nature. Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—one spends most of the time between death and a new birth in these realms.

[ 16 ] Well, my dear friends, if a person truly enters this solar region between death and a new birth, then everything becomes different from anything we are accustomed to seeing in the physical, earthly world. In the physical, earthly world—we have good intentions, yet someone standing next to us may have very evil intentions; we try to perform good deeds, succeeding to a greater or lesser extent, while someone standing next to us succeeds at everything, so to speak. We then watch life pass us by. Years or decades later, we look back on what has happened, and it is all too easy to come to the conclusion regarding the course of physical, earthly life: It is not the case that good intentions—or even good deeds—necessarily lead to good consequences for a person in earthly life. For example, on Earth the good person appears to be punished and the wicked person rewarded, in that the good person may become unhappy while the wicked person may become happy. We see no connection between what is lived morally and what is realized physically. In contrast, everything physical has its necessary consequences; magnetic force must attract iron—it has this necessary consequence. On Earth, for the life we live between birth and death, only what is connected to the physical realm is realized. Now, my dear friends, such a physical connection does not exist in solar existence. In this solar existence, there is only a moral connection. Every moral act has the power there to realize itself—and to do so in a corresponding way. Goodness brings about manifestations of existence that are joyful; evil brings about manifestations of existence that are not joyful for human beings. The moral context, which here on Earth is merely ideal—and can only be established in an outwardly imperfect way through jurisprudence that punishes the wicked—becomes a reality there.

[ 17 ] In the Solar Region, everything that a human being has harbored—even in the slightest thought—as good intentions begins to take on reality, and this is what the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes then observe. Just as one has been able to think, feel, and experience the good within oneself, so will one be regarded by the beings of the Solar Region. Therefore, I cannot describe the Solar Region to you in a theoretical way, but only in a living way. It is difficult to give a precise definition of how this or that good quality works in the Solar Region; one must speak in such a way that it becomes clear to the listener: If, as a human being in the Earth Region, you have had a good thought, then in the Solar Region—in the life between death and a new birth—you will be in the company of the Exusiai, the Dynamis, and the Kyriotetes. You may lead a spiritually social life with these beings. But if you have thought evil—which you have, so to speak, left behind with your own being in the lunar region—then you are a loner, abandoned by the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes. Thus, goodness becomes a reality in the solar world through our coexistence with these beings. We do not understand the language of these beings if we have not thought good thoughts; we cannot appear before them if we have not accomplished good deeds. There, everything is reality as the actual effect of our goodness in the solar region.

[ 18 ] That is all I wanted to say about these matters for now; let’s continue this discussion tomorrow.