The Rudolf Steiner Archive

73. The Victory of the Spirit over the Flesh

My dear friends,

[ 1 ] We remember those who stand outside in the fields of the present:

Spirits of your souls, watchful guardians!
May your wings carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the earthly people entrusted to your care.
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine forth in aid
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

[ 2 ] And for those souls who have already passed through the gates of death as a result of these current events:

Spirits of your souls, watchful guardians!
May your wings carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the beings of the spheres who trust in your protection.
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine forth in aid
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

[ 3 ] And may the Spirit we seek through our striving for spiritual knowledge—the Spirit who, through the Mystery of Golgotha, brought healing to the earth and progress and freedom to humanity—be with you and your heavy responsibilities.

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My dear friends, we are living in a time when—more than ever before—it may be appropriate to base a reflection such as the one we are once again able to undertake today on what we call: human life between death and a new birth. We have, after all, spoken about this very topic here on numerous occasions. We also have published lectures on this subject. But you know, my dear friends, that the mysteries of the spiritual world can only be understood by us again and again if we consider them from a wide variety of perspectives, if we continually add new insights to what we already know about such a subject. And so today, let us once again add various insights from more or less new perspectives to what is already well known to us.

[ 4 ] As we know, a person enters the spiritual world when he or she passes through the gate of death. This passing through the gate of death, is, for the human being’s sensory perception and for everything that the human being can perceive with the intellect bound to the brain and the nervous system, the end of the life that stretches from birth to death. For the one who has passed through the gate of death, the moment of death itself is something of the utmost significance—and of lasting significance. The experience of death is linked to the subsequent life—the period between death and a new birth—in a way that is, so to speak, the opposite of how physical life is linked to the experience of birth. As you know, my dear friends, in normal human life, a person cannot remember the experience of their own birth. Our memory extends back to a certain point in time, but it does not go back to birth. No one, with the normal faculties of human consciousness, can remember their birth here on Earth; thus, birth is not experienced personally. Death, however, is experienced again and again in the life between death and a new birth; or rather, this experience presents itself again and again to the soul’s consciousness after death.

[ 5 ] So the exact opposite is true of the experience of death compared to the experience of birth into physical life. As a person passes through the gate of death, they come to know—once again—precisely because we have already passed through earthly incarnations many times—they come to know once more; they experience death once more. And an immense amount depends on this experience of death—that it remains as something one continually sees before oneself after death; an immense amount depends on this. If one can speak of death as something dreadful at all, this applies only to the view of death here from the perspective of the physical world, where it represents an end—an end to physical life. But it does not apply to the time between death and a new birth. For as the human being looks back on this entire period and reflects on the experience of death, this experience of death—or rather, the vision of this experience of death—belongs to the most sublime, the greatest, and the most blissful impressions a human soul can ever have in this or any other world. For this contemplation of death from the other side—from the perspective of the spirit—signifies the victory of the spirit over physicality, the spirit’s emergence from physicality. And this contemplation of the spirit’s victory over physicality—that is what brings bliss; that is what warms the heart for the entire time between death and a new birth.

[ 6 ] But there is something else connected to this as well. You see, here during our physical life, we have our sense of self. However, we only experience this sense of self in the way we do here in physical life, within the physical body. As you know, when we are outside the physical body—from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up—the sense of self is not present. The fact that we force ourselves into the physical body upon waking—that we are, so to speak, squeezed and pressed into the physical body—is what causes us to have the sense of self between waking and falling asleep.

[ 7 ] The experience of the “I” is different, however, in the period between death and a new birth. Here, too, the human being has the experience of the “I.” But this experience arises from the fact that the person can always look back on the experience of death. Just as we must wake up in the physical body to have the sense of self, we must turn our spiritual gaze back after death to the experience of dying, so that the “I,” the self-awareness, is present in the time between death and a new birth; for it is this gaze that kindles the sense of self for this period. So the fact that we have a personal “I,” an individual “I,” after death depends on our ability to look back on the most sublime event of all: the experience of death.

[ 8 ] Now, as you know—and this is the most common observation a person can make even here on the physical plane— you know that death consists, first of all, in a person shedding their physical body, separating it from themselves, and that this physical body—whether through cremation or decomposition, the difference being merely the length of time it takes for this to occur—that the parts, the elements of the physical body, are returned to the earth. We also know from the [elementary] teachings of our Spiritual Science that a person then continues to live for days on end with their etheric body, their astral body, and their I. But they have separated their physical body from these three other members of their being. This fact—that the human being has separated from his physical body—also signifies something very important, and one can only describe what it means by attempting to depict the process as concretely as possible. You must, my dear friends, accustom yourselves to making your concepts and mental images more flexible if you wish to comprehend the spiritual world. One must try to gradually acquire different mental images from those suited to the physical world. Anyone who wants to take the easy way out and imagine the spiritual world as merely a somewhat diluted version of the physical world will never arrive at a true understanding of the spiritual world. All mental images, all ideas, must be internalized.

[ 9 ] What this shedding of the physical body—this surrender of the physical body to the earthly elements—means for consciousness after death can be described roughly as follows. It is truly something that appears after death as if the portion of space that our physical body previously occupied were now empty of our physical body, and we were looking back upon this empty space.

[ 10 ] Understand this well, my dear friends: Here, as long as you have your physical body, you know you are within your own skin, and you say, “There you are inside.” With death, you step out of this body of yours and out of space. It does not necessarily have to be the same place; it depends on the form of space, not on the location. Your physical body falls out of space, is returned to the earth, and, as they say, dissolves into the earth. But the mental image of space remains. Here you sense it filled with what your physical body is—bones, muscles, and so on. Now, after death, you feel the same space, the same spatial form, as empty. This is immensely important, immensely significant, because after death it becomes increasingly clear that a person experiences a sensation: they expand, they dissolve; but that part of space which remains empty is not filled with anything—it remains as it is. Nor is it filled by anything else, as observed afterward. And what one experiences there—by viewing oneself as physically full here and physically empty there, like a hollow in space—is a feeling, a sensation. This sensation is immensely significant, immensely important. If one wishes to put it into words, one can do so in the following way. One can say: By gazing in this way at the emptiness that has filled one’s physical body between birth and death, a person feels that they have their place in the world, that there is a place, something in the world, that exists solely for them. This is an immensely important fact. It is so significant because it gives one, for the entire time between death and a new birth, the immediate awareness that one belongs to the entire universe as a building block. The universe would not be quite the same if one were not a part of it. Everything has its task, its purpose. And this sense of belonging to the universe is expressed by looking upon this empty space. Of course, it is easy to say: From the perspective of earthly consciousness, an empty space that takes the form of a human being cannot evoke such a sensation. Yet the sensation experienced within the body and outside the body is different. This sensation is something entirely natural for a person after death: I am assigned a place that exists for me to fill as a human being, provided I create the conditions to re-enter an earthly incarnation. This place can only be filled by me, and only by my re-entering an earthly incarnation. Just as one has a sense of one’s physical body within the skin here, so one has a cosmic sense through the very existence of what I have just described: the feeling of belonging to the entire universe.

[ 11 ] Now we know that for days afterward, a person continues to live—as they say—through their etheric body. How, then, is this etheric body actually experienced? You see, here in the physical world, we do not merely perceive things; we form mental images of them. You do not merely know what you see right now; rather, what you saw yesterday also remains in your memory. And so the sum of our experiences is formed by the fact that this continuous memory exists.

[ 12 ] How does this memory actually come about? Memory arises in the following way: When I am confronted with a color impression or any other experience, the sensory impression is there first. Then this sensory impression is grasped as a mental image; but the mental image engages the whole person, truly setting the entire etheric body in motion. And this movement accumulates, one might say. It accumulates in the physical body; otherwise, it would dissipate in all directions; but the physical body holds it together. Consequently, memory—including the memory of the physical body—is also bound to the physical body. But in our etheric body, all the mental images we have ever formed during our lives are present as pure potentials for movement. Of course, it is not so easy to conceive of, but you must imagine that this etheric body is the most elastic thing you can imagine, and that from everything you think and create as a mental image, you receive an impression and retain the tendency to preserve that impression. Of course, our etheric body can retain not just millions, but billions of such tendencies toward impressions. It does indeed possess them; they are dampened so that not all of our memories are constantly before our soul. They are dampened by the fact that we are immersed in the physical body and in the entire etheric body.

[ 13 ] But now, when the etheric body emerges from the physical body, this etheric body expands. And one now has present around oneself—not as a sequence of memories, but in the present moment—everything one has ever created as a mental image and everything that can become a memory in life; not what is, but what can become, everything one has ever created as a mental image—all of this comes together to form that great panorama of life that one experiences day after day. One has before one’s eyes everything one has experienced, in the form in which one thought of it at the time, as one had a mental image of it. As the etheric body expands, all of this becomes visible to the soul as in a panorama. Otherwise, it is completely compressed within the space of the skin by the physical body. Now it becomes interwoven with the entire world ether. And what until now, up to the moment of death, was within us as memory now flows out and becomes interwoven with the outer ether. Our own experience—insofar as we have created a mental image of it—now becomes a world experience: we see it outside ourselves. It is outside us. What we have experienced between birth and death lives on into the world ether. It becomes interwoven with the world, woven into it, and shaped within it. We do not live in vain; rather, what we think during our lives becomes—when we die, when we have passed through the gate of death—a part of world life, a life within the world ether. It would be a grave misconception to believe that our thoughts—which arise from our experiences—belong to us for any length of time beyond our death. When we die, they emerge from our body and weave themselves into the world-ether.

[ 14 ] It is very important to note this. In this way, our inner being becomes an outer one. And so, while all our mental images and thoughts submit to the world ether, what one might call a kind of prototype of a Spirit-Self becomes integrated with our astral body and our “I.” The Spirit-Self will, after all, approach humanity in physical form once Jupiter is in place. But everything that later approaches in physical form first approaches spiritually. And through the fact that we shed our etheric body—that is, that it becomes interwoven with the world ether—the Spirit-Self becomes integrated into us—not with the same intensity as it will be on Jupiter, for there it will have physical organs, but—spiritually and soulfully, the Spirit-Self becomes integrated as a higher member of human nature.

[ 15 ] Thus, within the inner etheric world that is breaking away—a world that influences and weaves itself into the physical world—we develop: the astral body, as we already had it; the “I”; and the Spirit-Self. Our “I” can now be directed toward that which we ourselves have woven into the world ether. If we previously wanted to reflect on any thought within us, we had to draw it out of memory, bringing it from within us into our consciousness. Now it lies embedded somewhere—embedded as an imagination in what we have woven into the world ether.

[ 16 ] Then, as we have already learned in elementary Spiritual Science, comes the time when the human being relives—at three times the speed—their last life, from death back to birth. But they relive it differently than it was lived here. When we live through life here, we have an impression of our intentions toward other people and of how we relate to others and to the things of the world. But there is a difference. Let’s take a striking example: I insult someone. In doing so, I have certain sensations and feelings. But the other person also has feelings—they feel insulted. They have those. I have the feelings that led me to utter the insult at the time; the other person has the painful feelings of receiving the insult. What I felt when I insulted someone during my life here on Earth—I do not experience that after death; rather, I experience what the other person felt—the one who was insulted. We experience all the consequences of our behavior in this re-living. We cannot inflict anything upon another person without experiencing it ourselves after death during this re-living, just as that person experienced it here in life. This means: We experience the consequences of our actions, our thoughts, and our feelings. We experience these consequences. And as we experience these consequences and live our way back to the point where we have once again reached our birth or conception, what develops now is what we might call a precursor to the Life-Spirit—which will not be born as a physical organ for human beings until on Venus— but now surrounds the human being spiritually and soulfully, so that when he sheds his astral body, he then possesses an “I,” a Spirit-Self, and a Life-Spirit. In this way, the human being now enters into the spiritual world.

[ 17 ] Then, when a human being has, so to speak, come to terms with the physical world in this way—by incorporating into the etheric body, in the form of a tissue, what the physical world has given him—and has thereby also come to terms with the physical world, not only by living in what he has done and thought, but also in the effects of his actions, [in] their thinking, feeling, and willing—then the human being is fully immersed in the spiritual world.

[ 18 ] And look, what does it mean to be in the spiritual world? It means that our entire environment actually becomes something different from the environment we have here in physical existence. Here in physical existence, we are surrounded by other people, insofar as these other people have physical bodies. We are surrounded by beings from the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. When we enter the spiritual world, we find ourselves in the spiritual world proper in such a way that our lowest link is the “I”; here it was the highest, there it is our lowest link.

[ 19 ] The next beings are [superior] beings, Angeloi; just as we have here, as the next level of beings, the creatures of the animal kingdom that stand below us, we have there the Angeloi as beings that stand above us. Archangels instead of the beings of the plant kingdom here, which are two levels below us, just as we have beings there that are two levels above us: the archangels. And so on up: the Archai, and so on.

[ 20 ] Now, as you can easily imagine, a time begins in which such a plant kingdom and such a mineral kingdom as those that surround us here on Earth naturally do not exist for us on Earth. At first, we live among our own kind and among beings who are higher than we are. This state of being among our own kind begins very soon after a person has passed through the gate of death. One can describe it in the ordinary sense, using ordinary words: finding the souls to whom one has somehow drawn closer on the physical plane, or reuniting with those souls.

[ 21 ] And you see, first of all, it’s important to form certain mental images about this process of rediscovering. Most people do want to have mental images of the spiritual world that are as similar as possible to the mental images of the physical plane. And if you present them with difficult mental images, they say that these mental images are simply too difficult for them, because they cannot understand them.

[ 22 ] But one cannot understand the spiritual meaning if one merely imagines it as a shadow of the physical world or something of that sort; rather, one must turn one’s mind toward a higher level of mental image.

[ 23 ] Let us suppose, my dear friends, that after death we encounter a soul who has already passed through the gate of death before us. The first mental image that comes to mind is this: We are standing face to face with a soul. - The fact that it is a soul that has something to do with us is evident from our inner experience: “You are now facing a soul.” And now the task is, starting from this feeling, this sensation, to mentally sense, as it were, the spiritual locus from which this feeling arises: “You are facing a soul.” And then one experiences inwardly what is within that soul. But it is not the case that the soul simply approaches you and reveals itself; rather, you must generate for yourself all the concepts, all the mental images, and all the impressions you wish to have of it. At most, you might form a mental image if you were to imagine that we did not live in the light, but rather in darkness, and that we would only know of one another through physical contact—and then we would have to, by tangibly sensing one another, actively create these mental images for ourselves. So it is with regard to the dead who have gone before us. We must come together with them inwardly in this way, for this is precisely the basis of being together with them—we must come together with them inwardly in such a way that we actively create a vivid, living mental image of them within ourselves when they appear before us. If we wish to have a mental image of them, we must actively create that image.

[ 24 ] As a result, life after death appears to be far more active and far more intense than life here between birth and death. Here, many things may lie dormant for us; there, everything that is to become our experience comes about through our own actions. We are in constant activity. But do not think that this activity is unpleasant for us. We do not become lazy or indolent in the life after death; on the contrary, if we were forced to rest there, that would seem to us as if we were dead. Thus we perceive those souls who have passed through the gate of death before us. And thus we also perceive those beings who belong to the hierarchies of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and so on. We must create mental images of them. We know that they are there: we must create mental images of them.

[ 25 ] An exception to this are those souls who remain behind—souls who are still in their physical bodies even after we have already passed through the gate of death. We can also perceive such souls from the world in which we live after death. But these souls reveal themselves as if of their own accord; they appear as images without our first having to actively create them. So, in a sense, our world is filled with images that exist of their own accord, and we know: whatever comes to us as souls—appearing like images—are those souls who are still here in their bodies. Where our activity requires that we have imaginations or images of them, these are souls who are currently only in the spiritual world. We then truly look down from the world we enter through the gate of death upon the souls we have left behind here and with whom we lived between birth and death. And we perceive not only these souls, but we also perceive what is within these souls—if it is something akin to the worlds in which we now find ourselves—and since our souls are already akin to those worlds, we perceive them as well. The souls of the people who have remained behind are akin to the spiritual worlds; they are perceived. But what these souls often experience here—you see—does not need to be perceived. When these souls here are entirely turned toward the physical-sensory world, then the deceased does indeed perceive the souls, but not the impressions of the physical-sensory world; after death, those no longer concern him.

[ 26 ] But when we read aloud to the dead, as we have called it—when we thus fill our minds with that which itself pertains to the spiritual world—these are thoughts that apply to the world in which the dead also live. This means that the dead perceive, within our souls, those thoughts that relate to the spiritual world. — Therefore, we can truly read aloud to the dead in our thoughts. Even when we send them thoughts of love—that is, when we think of them, of the dead—we are thinking of something that exists in the spiritual world... can they perceive this?

[ 27 ] And the question may be raised—and it seems to be an important one, my dear friends: What, exactly, are the thoughts that arise here in the souls of the living regarding the dead? This question is not so easy to answer. And only gradually, as one contemplates the spiritual world, does one begin to formulate an answer to this question. For you see: True knowledge of the spiritual world cannot be gained simply by looking into it at will, as one pleases, and answering questions in the spiritual world as one sees fit, as people tend to have a mental image of it.

[ 28 ] To truly know about the spiritual world, my dear friends, depends on experiencing things—truly experiencing a question such as this: What do thoughts of love for the dead mean? The thoughts that, for my sake, live on as thoughts read aloud about matters of the spiritual world in the souls of those who have remained here—what do these thoughts mean for the dead?

[ 29 ] This is not something one can simply answer out of thin air; rather, it must be experienced—just as here, for example in the field of natural science, one must conduct experiments to discover anything, and one cannot just fantasize at will about what one must deduce from the experiment—so too, when conducting spiritual research, here in physical life—that is, in the physical body—to come to know spiritual mysteries, one must wait until the soul is ready to receive such things; otherwise, one is merely fantasizing, not conducting spiritual research. The soul is not always ready to truly perceive this or that truth. It must wait, wait until it is ready—and until the spiritual world is also ready—to impart these truths to it.

[ 30 ] These, however, are matters that the so-called scholars in the physical world are reluctant to address. Just think for a moment: if someone were to say to a person who wants to be a professor of philosophy, “Yes, you can certainly recognize the truth, but you have to wait”—well, that just won’t do, will it? That is precisely what someone who wants to be a philosopher in the outer world won’t accept; after all, he knows, doesn’t he, that he is a clever man and that at any moment he can think about it and speak about what he sets out to fathom.

[ 31 ] That things want to be experienced, that things want to come to us—surely the proponent of such conceptual drivel, as exemplified by the philosopher Eucken, who lets it flow freely through the intellectual life of Central Europe, will not, one must say, allow himself to be drawn into this! Of course, he will not get involved with such things. So these things are not so easy to find.

[ 32 ] First and foremost, my dear friends, it is a matter of repeatedly asking ourselves this question with patience and humility, and of initially contenting ourselves with posing the question, as it were, to the universe: What do the loving thoughts we send to the dead mean? What do these thoughts mean that we send to them—reading to them from the Spiritual Science in regard to these departed?

[ 33 ] If the time has not yet come to answer such a question, one must wait, wait. Then the answer comes by following on from the question, just as in an imagination, an image through which one experiences it. And specifically for the question that now stands before us, I want to share an image with you. You see, one day, for example, you might experience this answer coming to you—first as an imagination—and you know exactly: it is being given to you as an image. Isn’t that right? At first, one has the impression that one must now pose a new question—the question: Could people live on Earth if, for example, there were no art at all? You could eat, you could drink; but you wouldn’t see what Raphael painted, what Michelangelo painted—wouldn’t you agree that if there were no art, you wouldn’t even see your own portraits? But you could live. - People could certainly live; they just wouldn’t be human in the fullest sense of the word here on the physical plane: Art is something that elevates life beyond what is strictly necessary—that is art.

[ 34 ] The deceased could also live over there in the spiritual world between death and rebirth, even if he had nothing but what the spiritual world could give him; but it would be a life like that of earthly human beings here—without warmth, without light—if one had to live without looking down upon what is taking place in the souls of those who still live on in their physical bodies. This is something that is added to the experience in the spiritual world, just as art is—or, for that matter, the portrayal of people—isn’t it? Through this, life is given something beyond the bare necessities. - So something that goes beyond life, that elevates life—that is what is added; just as true as it is that the world here is something because human beings are not merely confined to the continuous flow of natural events, but because this activity takes hold within them, going beyond natural events, going beyond their own natural events - it is equally true that the life of the dead is infinitely elevated precisely by that which lives here in the souls in relation to the dead.

[ 35 ] Driven by a deep instinct, people in times when life was still lived from an awareness of the spiritual world celebrated and observed (?) the festivals of the dead. This looking back at the world of thoughts left behind here on earth... means a great deal to those who are passing through life between death and a new birth.

[ 36 ] So first, when one asks the question, one is presented with an image that relates to the physical world: the course of nature and its connection to art. And then you realize: This image gives you something that you first have to [interpret]. And through this, you come to ask: What do the dead do with what is given to them here in the manner described? — This is roughly how it presents itself to you when you prepare yourself to recognize such a fact.

[ 37 ] Another question that certainly arises, my dear friends, is this: What do the dead do during the long period between death and a new birth? For, as you know, it is a long time.

[ 38 ] Well, what do the dead actually do? You see, this question is not at all easy to answer from the ordinary earthly perspective, for the simple reason that people with materialistic mental images are very prone to refusing to acknowledge the much more comprehensive activity of the dead—which far exceeds that of the living—as activity at all. People do, after all, have quite strange mental images regarding the world’s true, deeper impulses. You see, I have already pointed out such strange mental images. People say: Even the soul-spiritual qualities that a person possesses are inherited. People today, with their crude, clunky materialism, believe this can be proven: that soul qualities come from the father, the grandfather, and so on. For, when one considers a genius, people say, one sees: a genius enters the world... Goethe. A thick volume was published only recently about Goethe’s ancestors, in which all the individual qualities concentrated in Goethe have been painstakingly traced back to his father, grandfather, mother, grandmother, and so on, far into the past. Nothing is to be said against the erudition of these honorable men; they are certainly all honorable men. It is said: One can see from the genius that his traits have been gathered from his ancestors.

[ 39 ] Yes, my dear friends, that is a strange kind of logic—taken purely as logic; for the fact that the soul, when it incarnates in the body, possesses the characteristics of its ancestors—insofar as these are physical characteristics—is no more remarkable than when someone falls into water and is pulled out wet! Of course, he possesses that which he went through: namely, because he fell into the water, he got wet. That is no great wisdom. Proof would only exist if one could demonstrate in external life that qualities of a spiritual-soul nature are inherited as such.

[ 40 ] But one would have to prove that a genius passes on his genius to his descendants—and that’s best left alone; after all, just try to trace Goethe’s traits down through his descendants to his grandchildren! Or anyone else’s.

[ 41 ] That is the worst thing about materialistic science: it regards the most absurd things, so to speak, as the most logical! One cannot help but say: the most absurd things. ... For it would only be proof if one could demonstrate in the descendants that the brilliant qualities of the ancestors were inherited in the same way—and not merely show that the descendants possessed something that the ancestors possessed, as is self-evident, because the soul passes through that with which it unites in embodiment, because the soul envelops itself in that in which it incarnates.

[ 42 ] But that is not the only thing; this so-called theory of heredity—which, among all the follies spread by more or less materialistic philosophies, worldviews, or whatever else is classified as monism (and God knows what else)—is one of the very worst things being disseminated among the people: it turns, so to speak, all true mental images upside down.

[ 43 ] Just think about it for a moment, my dear friends: A soul enters into existence at a specific moment; it has gone through the period between death and rebirth, and now enters into existence. What does it mean, first of all, that this soul enters into existence? It means that this soul feels a certain kinship with two people—the people who will become its father and mother—a sense of kinship. And because it feels this kinship with these people who will become its father and mother, for that very reason, it is drawn to this father and this mother. But it is drawn to them much earlier than one might think!

[ 44 ] In earlier times, when people still knew a great deal about these things (they, too, interpreted this in materialistic terms; and what I am saying now is a materialistic interpretation; but at least the materialistic interpretation is based on some truth)—just think of the value that was placed in earlier worldviews on the firstborn child... what the firstborn child was considered to be! Why was the firstborn child regarded as something special? Because people sensed in this firstborn child—though they only brought this to conscious awareness in the very earliest times, not in later periods; back then, they merely sensed it—because they saw in this firstborn child the soul that had first brought the parents together in this world, that had led them to marriage. That soul had already been working its power from above long before and had brought the parents together. That is what people saw in it.

[ 45 ] The later child had already found what its predecessor, the older child, had put together; it no longer had such great freedom to put something together for itself. Its relationship to father and mother was also present, but it could no longer forge the bond itself; rather, it had to adapt its strength to a bond that had already been forged, to conform to it. And the institutions that existed—which today are often interpreted in materialistic terms and viewed as superstition—nevertheless point to something that is, in a certain way, based on truth.

[ 46 ] But it is not only the case that the soul, after having gone through the life between death and a new birth, when it has turned toward a new life, now exerts its influence downward upon the parents, the father and mother; specifically, not only upon the parents, but this goes much further: The fact that the parents are the children of their respective grandparents is also already inherent in this interplay; the force is already at work there. And, in turn, the parents of the grandparents. As if gathered from all over the world, what ultimately leads to the parents from a broad family stream is at work here. Within this—and one might say, over the course of centuries—the force is already at work, which then descends and incarnates itself in a human body.

[ 47 ] So it is indeed the case that one can say: Well, Goethe entered physical existence on August 28, 1749. He not only influenced his parents; he also influenced his grandparents and brought about the fact that his grandparents had the parents he needed; he had already influenced his great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. In short, over the course of centuries, through the succession of generations, certain forces have been developed that can ultimately culminate in the soul in question appearing in the right way—in the manner most appropriate to its nature.

[ 48 ] What takes place in this interaction among human beings, in this weaving of a fabric between them—it is not merely our souls that are involved in this—they are involved in the way I have described—but these souls are involved under the guidance of the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies. For this is indeed a momentous process; these are momentous events, my dear friends! Just imagine what is at work here in the world as the physical realm. Yes, people view this physical world in a most [peculiar] way. Just imagine for a moment that there were beings who could not see human beings; it is quite conceivable that there might be beings who cannot see human beings, but who can only see souls. So let’s say: All the souls we have here would be able to see such beings; but human beings could not see them. Let’s accept this hypothesis for a moment. What would these beings say? These beings would say: The clocks all come into being on their own …, because they wouldn’t see the work humans do on the clocks. To these beings, the clocks would come into being entirely on their own; they would assemble themselves somewhere. So to these beings, the clocks would be self-generating entities. Such beings would walk through the city of Hanover and say: There aren’t any beings in there who make the clocks. ... So the clocks come into being by themselves. — That’s roughly what materialistic thinking says when it claims: When a human being is born, well, then he simply comes into being—doesn’t he?—by himself, through the germ cell and so on. That’s just as sensible as if there were beings who caused the clocks to come into being by themselves.

[ 49 ] For, my dear friends, throughout this entire process that spans century after century—and which, due to human short-sightedness, appears to unfold of its own accord—forces from the spiritual world are at work; there is nothing random about it; forces from the spiritual world are at work everywhere. The fact that they appear somewhat random is only because the flowing forces are constantly thwarted in many ways by Ahriman. The spiritual forces are always at work here. The world is constantly guided and directed from the spiritual world. And the human being, between death and new birth, participates from the spiritual world in the guidance of the physical world. He attends to those matters that are precisely guided and directed from the spiritual world.

[ 50 ] For this to happen, however, various things must take place in the spiritual world—things that are not at all visible in the physical world, things that are simply a matter for the spiritual world. You see, my dear friends, in our physical world we can say: Our brain is a marvel of construction. Imagine if you had to consciously create it. Of course, you wouldn’t be able to do that. You could not create this marvel of the human brain that you carry within you. Nor is this possible for your consciousness; for the spirits of the higher hierarchies also work on this marvel, in accordance with earlier Earth periods and in accordance with our karma. Our karmic effects from earlier Earth periods are being worked out. Our karmic effects today for later periods—just as we build machines here. After all, that is all we can do on Earth. However, just as these machines are suited for destruction, we can also use them in such a way that they prove useful for various human endeavors and various works of nature.

[ 51 ] Just as we can build machines here, so too are beings created in the spiritual world that bring about the events which then lead to beings that transcend the realm of machines.

[ 52 ] How, exactly, does such a human head come into being? This head that you have placed there—how does it come into being? Well, my dear friends, I have said: When a person has passed through the gate of death, their thoughts are first interwoven with the world-ether. They are contained within it.

[ 53 ] What he felt, sensed, and willed is not woven into the next life; rather, it is his thoughts that are. The rest remains with his “I,” which he carries through the world between his death and his new birth. This world of thoughts is woven into the next life. His sensory impulses, his feelings, and his volitional impulses remain with him. But depending on what they were like, the next life must be shaped accordingly. You see, here in the physical world, the human being is, as it were, a kind of duality: his head, with what extends into the spinal cord—and then the rest of the organism, which is simply attached. You can see this in the skeleton, which you can view in any natural history collection; there you can observe this twofold division purely in the physical body: that which belongs to the head and the spinal cord, and that which is attached to it. When you consider these two, you will say to yourself: The head is primarily—with the exception of the sense of feeling—intended to be an organ of cognition, an organ of thought, together with its appendage, the spinal cord. Attached to it is the rest of the organism, in which our movements develop, and in which—even though modern physiology still views this from a completely wrong perspective—our sensations, our feelings, and so on are physically localized; from this, my dear friends, we now experience life in this incarnation through the rest of our body attached to the head. From these forms, in accordance with the thoughts we have here, the new head must be formed for the next incarnation.

[ 54 ] And this new head is formed—of course, it is difficult to describe something like this, but one can say—in such a way that it actually encompasses the entire universe. What is now inside there [in your head] was, in your previous incarnation, the appendage. That was the entire body. And it has been reshaped in accordance with the thoughts that have been drawn outward toward the present head. It was, as it were, spread out over the entire world and is being drawn together more and more, so that it can become our head. It is being woven together more and more. I merely wish to suggest that the entirety of worldly art and worldly wisdom is necessary to bring into being this sphere with its appendage—which is the human head that we use here between birth and death. An infinite amount of work in the spiritual world is necessary to shape this head in such a way that it corresponds to, is adapted to, and aligns with what we prepared in our previous incarnation. Every single hair must correspond to what we prepared in our previous incarnation!

[ 55 ] This means: We must exert an influence throughout the entire lineage from which we descend—we must ensure that, starting with the earliest ancestors, everything is arranged in such a way that when we then have to choose a body for ourselves, it is adapted to what we were in our previous incarnation. Here, mechanisms can be created—a human head that takes on this form (for what happens in heredity is, I would say, merely a reflection of what occurs in the spiritual world)—the forces by which all of this is inherited, and ultimately our head emerges; all of this emerges from the spiritual world as a completed process. For our head to come into being, the entire spiritual work is necessary—in which we ourselves participate between death and a new birth, and in which the beings of the higher hierarchies also participate.

[ 56 ] If we can think wisely about the head we carry within us, we must not think otherwise than to say to ourselves: You carry this head within you; but in the time between your last death and your present birth, this head was, as it were, stretched out—as vast as the outer world itself. Entire worlds of gods were there to prepare the model for this head, adapted to everything that you were in your previous incarnation.

[ 57 ] Then it had to be condensed into the small space it occupies when it sits atop your head. We do not even think that we carry out the work of the gods within ourselves, that—simply by virtue of how we are organized—no other feeling, no other sensation can overcome us than the feeling of the deepest gratitude toward the spiritual beings among whom we find ourselves between death and a new birth. Spiritual knowledge is not merely a means of acquiring this or that piece of information, but of developing a sense of what contributes to the formation of the human being.

[ 58 ] My dear friends, I have tried to evoke a sense of what I have now once again attempted to express in a certain form—to evoke a sense of this in the first part of the second [Mystery Drama] The Trial of the Soul, where Capesius’s thoughts convey that entire worlds of the gods are at work on what makes us human.

[ 59 ] We are, in the truest sense of the word, a small world. But the greater world must work to bring about this small world that is the human being. Just as we work here in physical life—first in the mineral kingdom, then also in the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom—and just as we establish history and create social order, so there is something similar in the world between death and a new birth. But the impression of this is found precisely in what we have around us as a human organization for the soul.

[ 60 ] When you look at life, my dear friends, you will say to yourselves: The present has an important, a very, very important duty. For of all the things to which so much attention is drawn—what does the external science of the present know about any of this? How does this external science of the present relate to all of this? It knows nothing; it behaves mockingly and derisively. But what path is this external science following? One can truly have the greatest respect for the diligence, industriousness, precision, and exactness of this external science. But where does it lead?

[ 61 ] You see, a prominent criminal anthropologist, for example, has dissected a great many criminals’ skulls and found that murderers and other serious criminals have a very specific brain structure: The occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum, whereas in people who are normal—that is, not criminally predisposed—he found that all occipital lobes fully covered the cerebellum. In criminals, it does not cover it. So one can say: There are people among us whose occipital lobes are too short; they become criminals.

[ 62 ] Yes, just think about it: if a materialist were to ask, “Where does criminality come from?” The answer is: from an occipital lobe that is too short! Because that makes humans similar to monkeys. Monkeys have that, too: an occipital lobe that is too short. That is a regression, an atavism back to the monkey! - Does it make even the slightest sense, my dear friends, to punish someone or in any way penalize them for a crime if the sole reason is that they have a too-short occipital lobe? Just think of the lie we’re living when we still talk about morality in any way, when materialism teaches people: “Whoever has a too-short occipital lobe simply must kill, for example!” One can still punish them, but it is nothing more than a brutal lie to do so. - Other traits depend on other structures in the brain. These things aren’t wrong… they’re right, absolutely right. It is true: Criminals have an occipital lobe that’s too short.

[ 63 ] Now imagine that the materialistic worldview prevails; in that case, no one will ever accept, for example, that human beings have an etheric body. But if the worldview of Spiritual Science prevails, then people will say: Human beings have an etheric body—and aside from having a physical occipital lobe that is too short, they also have an etheric occipital lobe! A person may very well have a short physical occipital lobe, having been born with it. But if one notices that they have certain characteristics that reveal they have a physical occipital lobe that is too short, then one will place all the more emphasis on educating them in such a way that their etheric body is developed more strongly, so that it grows larger and the physical occipital lobe that is too short cannot harm them! One will develop the etheric brain all the more. And one will already gain experience in this regard if one educates in the manner suggested in the short treatise The Education of the Child from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science: Then a person may well have an occipital lobe that is too short in one incarnation, but the etheric brain will be in order, and he will not become a criminal.

[ 64 ] It also emerges that, in the next incarnation, the predispositions present in the etheric brain will develop into better physical predispositions. But even here, in this physical incarnation, the appropriate training of the etheric body will serve them.

[ 65 ] Well, if one denies it, then one can say nothing other than this: No matter how one chooses to educate a child, one can assume nothing other than what is actually there. One cannot turn someone with a too-short occipital lobe into anything other than a criminal. So if one denies the etheric body, one will not be so foolish as to raise children as if an etheric body were present, will one? That is to say: If one now holds a materialistic worldview and denies the etheric body, then one does not develop the etheric bodies; then people with their small occipital lobes will simply become criminals.

[ 66 ] But there is a tendency for everyone to gradually come to embrace it! In other words, what is now a worldview shapes the human physical form for times to come. Let this sink into your soul, and you will see that a false worldview is not merely an error, but that it is the seed of the downfall of nobler forms of humanity. What is merely conceived today will become a form of humanity in the future. Spiritual Science must truly intervene in life here. Education must become something entirely different; above all, it must ensure that those who are to practice education are instructed to truly examine the individual in order to recognize their characteristics, and from there to gain insight into their hidden potential—not merely their ordinary, outward traits.

[ 67 ] You can see what a significant beginning has been made with Spiritual Science for a necessary future human culture. But today, everything still tends to deny this necessity, to refuse to acknowledge it. Yet sometimes it is hard to understand how certain people can be so obtuse toward the world, so unable to grasp certain things! We in the field of Spiritual Science emphasize time and again: It is only recently that people have come to live in this way in the outer physical world; for in the past they possessed clairvoyance—albeit an unconscious, atavistic kind—but clairvoyance nonetheless. Those people who believe today that we have come so wonderfully far—they think: “Well, how childish it was, what people used to fantasize about the spiritual world.” “We have come so wonderfully far” that we now finally see the world clearly. And so they believe that, no matter how far back one goes, people were all organized in the same way as they are now.

[ 68 ] I’d like to use an example—though there are many such examples in the world—to illustrate to you just how shallow this line of thinking actually is, how truly shallow it is! You see, if today someone paints that wonderful symbol, that wonderful image from the Bible where the serpent appears on the tree and carries out that temptation—which we call the Luciferic temptation—the modern painter paints the serpent, doesn’t he? Of course: Why shouldn’t he paint a serpent as it slithers through the grass?

[ 69 ] He has no idea that he should do anything other than paint a snake, because that’s smart, isn’t it? If one were not to paint an ordinary snake, one would be stupid, according to the materialists. The painter is smart, after all, even though he can’t quite see why he’s supposed to be smart; for I don’t believe that any woman—even if she were Eve herself—would let herself be seduced by a modern-day snake like that! For how is that actually supposed to happen? How is that actually supposed to take place?

[ 70 ] Isn't it true that this serpent—even as it slithers about today as a physical serpent—can be nothing more than a symbol, merely an image, because the outer form of the tempter cannot exist on Earth, since it is a lunar being. We have always emphasized: Lucifer remained behind during the lunar existence. He must have been organized differently then; therefore, he cannot have a physical form on Earth. The serpent can only be a symbol, created retrospectively; it is itself something that has descended, representing Lucifer.

[ 71 ] But what existed during the Lunar Era cannot be seen with physical eyes now; it can only be seen inwardly. And how will one see Lucifer? He, after all, was left behind during the Lunar Evolution. Why during the Lunar period? Because even then he had already reached the stage where he possessed this human head; but the other part—that which is attached to this human head—is, after all, the Earth organization; that did not yet exist in that form. If we were to depict Lucifer during the Lunar period, we would see: his head, and attached to it, the spinal cord in the shape of a serpent. So if we, as painters, could perceive this clairvoyantly, we would—if we wanted to depict Lucifer—paint him as a serpent’s body with a head. That would roughly correspond to what one could recognize as Lucifer through inner vision.

[ 72 ] When we were in Hamburg the other day, my dear friends, we walked through the main art museum and found a painting from the 13th or 14th century by Master Bertram: It depicts the story of the head—the biblical story of the temptation—and in Paradise there is not a snake painted as today’s naturalistic painters would depict it, but rather a serpentine body on the tree with a human head at the top: Lucifer! In the 13th and 14th centuries, people still knew this, my dear friends—something that must now once again be brought to the people through Spiritual Science.

[ 73 ] There you have proof that can even be documented, because the painting is right there! The painter did not depict a biblical scene in accordance with a naturalistic or materialistic worldview, but rather what is truly real. It wasn’t that long ago that humanity moved away from a spiritual worldview and adopted a materialistic one. But look how entangled humanity is today; how it cannot even imagine that just as what are now spiritual dispositions developed from something else, so too must these in turn develop into something else.

[ 74 ] However, humanity cannot gain mental images of that which is so closely connected to life—namely, life between death and a new birth—except by acquiring mental images that do not originate from the physical-sensory world, but rather mental images such as those we have again described today regarding life between death and a new birth; only in this way can one comprehend life in its fullness.

[ 75 ] But certain things that are taken for granted today, my dear friends, must first be eradicated from human development. Almost the entire philosophy of education—including that which is admired today—must actually be discarded, because it is misleading; because it leads people away from the most important concepts rather than guiding them toward them. It is very strange when one sees, for example—you’ll find this described in the chapter of my The Riddles of Philosophy where I titled the chapter: “The World as an Illusion” —this is not because I want to show that the world is an illusion, but because there were philosophers in the nineteenth century who claimed that the world is an illusion, that everything outside of us merely makes an impression on our senses, so that we have only what the eyes and ears perceive—in short, whatever is perceived by the senses—and that, in fact, the world is merely an illusion.

[ 76 ] Where does this tendency of people to indulge in such distorted mental images come from in the first place? It stems solely from the fact that people persist in a certain kind of deceptive thinking—which, after all, can be proven—in a certain kind of deceptive thinking. People come to the conclusion that if something—even if it isn’t actually a color—gives the impression of color, perhaps electric light, then the eye reacts to the sensation of light; thus, all perception of light actually originates from the eye. Certainly, what we initially experience as our consciousness is a reflection, and every individual thing is a reflection. People still tell themselves that everything is a reflection; but now they cannot think any further. Now they let everything be a reflection—their own head, another person’s head—every head a reflection. But when one reflection slaps another reflection in the face—a so-called slap—then they can no longer claim that the image gave the slap; the relationships—they immediately become real, truly real! That one must recognize reality from the thing itself, not through intellectual reasoning—people are already coming to this realization. You need not grasp this in every detail, my dear friends, for naturally the friends gathered here cannot be familiar with the entire course of philosophical development as it stands today; but simply—I would say—gaining a sense of this is important for anyone who wishes to contribute to the development of concepts of Spiritual Science: to gain a sense of how contemporary cultural trends are actually leading people into a materialism that is, at first, a worldview, but which, if it were to become a way of life, would lead humanity down the most pernicious path.

[ 77 ] What I myself have been permitted to present, my dear friends, has been presented within Central European spiritual education, but it must become not only a duty—it must become a love of duty—and it can only become a duty for those who are captivated by Spiritual Science; otherwise, it will not be able to flourish! Spiritual Science is also placed upon our souls as a task—as a most important task for the future of humanity. What human beings can currently grasp must be expanded—expanded beyond the observation of what takes place between birth and death to encompass the greater span of time that lies between death and a new birth.

[ 78 ] Today I tried to evoke feelings arising from these experiences between death and rebirth. As I said, this is a natural topic today. And last year I was already able to share with you here how this also leads us to a deeper understanding of the significant events of the present. We have, in fact, spoken here today about how everyone who passes through the gate of death sees interwoven within it what their thoughts and mental images were during their lifetime. Now imagine how many, many people are now passing through death at a young age. The etheric body they carry within them—that is, the sum of the forces of the etheric body—could continue to sustain a physical body on Earth for decades to come. These forces are not lost; they remain present. Of course, only what a person has actually lived through can become interwoven in the way I have described. But what they could still have lived through remains present. These etheric bodies, then, do not belong to the individual human being—they are shed by the person—but they do exist in the spiritual world.

[ 79 ] Consider how many, many young etheric bodies—which could have sustained human bodies, and thus human lives, for decades to come—might exist in the spiritual world in the future of humanity: These etheric bodies have the power to influence human beings. They could indeed have influenced the human beings who had shed them, had those individuals not been compelled to die a sacrificial death; they have the power to influence, and they will do so. But this influence must be received—it must be received! It can be received only by those who are able to direct their thoughts upward into the spiritual world. Consider how important, how essential it is to allow oneself to be permeated by the realization: What is brought about in such a terrible way through so, so many deaths in the present can bear fruit for future humanity, if there are souls here on Earth who will understand this, who will say to themselves: The world is interwoven and permeated by the forces of the etheric bodies that come from those who have undergone a sacrificial death. And thousands who have now undergone a sacrificial death are in the spiritual world. It is up to me—me, who am still in the physical world—just as in this regard as in so many others—it is up to me to develop a sense that there are forces that want to enter into me, forces that are indeed there and that want to work!

[ 80 ] Imagine that materialism lives on, survives the effects of this war—up there will be the forces I have just spoken to you about, these etheric forces: On Earth, people will think materialistically and will not allow these forces to flow into them—at least not in such a way that more and more people are educated in the field of Spiritual Science, so that they experience the possibility of perceiving the spiritual world! Then, of course, these forces will still be present; but people will not take them in, and the light will not shine into the darkness! Instead, the light will naturally be taken over by other beings—the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings—and development will take a completely different course. It is a cheap excuse, my dear friends, to say: “It is not up to me to steer and guide such things.” No, the gods have made human beings free. Human beings must play their part—play their part here in physical life and play their part between death and a new birth. It does not really matter—truly, it does not really matter—that we take in the individual teachings. We must take them in so that we may strengthen ourselves more and more in our feelings. What matters is not merely that we take in these individual teachings, but that we feel more and more how we stand within Spiritual Science as spiritual scientists engaged in humanity’s most important, its most essential task. Learning to feel how this must happen—what can happen through Spiritual Science alone—that is what is infinitely important! And so we can look toward the overall current of spiritual scientific development.

[ 81 ] This is how we can view an event such as the current war. ... Everywhere we see that we truly understand our times here when we understand them in the light of Spiritual Science. Let us conclude by summarizing—with reference to the immediate events of our time—once again primarily what emerges from such a perspective when we look up at the enduring, still-unconsumed etheric bodies of those who have indeed undergone a sacrificial death, and look up at what these etheric bodies can become. We could just as well grasp the great currents of humanity in this way through our feelings, but let us do so with reference to the current events, so that these events may not merely bring external glory to one state or another, but so that this severe trial of humanity may truly serve to advance human beings themselves—to advance humanity as beings of soul and spirit. And truly, certainly, it was good for the Germanic peoples of that time that they emerged victorious over the Romans during the decline of the ancient Roman Empire. But it was not merely a matter of the Germanic peoples defeating the Romans at that time; rather, everything that has happened since then—including the greatest challenges that humanity has overcome—depends on the fact that it was the Germanic peoples, and not the Romans, who triumphed back then! And so, the significance of current events for the world does not depend solely on who prevails at this very moment, but rather on the one who embodies the crucial challenges for humanity’s future.

[ 82 ] If we become aware of these tasks facing humanity—truly aware—otherwise these war-related events will remain merely external occurrences. You must attain a soul through knowledge of the soul, through the science of the soul. That is why we must once again truly imbue ourselves with the feeling:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of battle,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruit of the spirit grows—
Guiding souls, spiritually aware,
Toward the realm of the spirits.

[ 83 ] May it come to pass that you consciously direct your attention toward the spiritual realm, so that Spiritual Science may find a realm of the soul on Earth into which it can sow its seeds! Humanity will need Spiritual Science as a force. Let us do our part, my dear friends, so that what must happen may come to pass. To stir these feelings in your souls, I was glad that we were able to be together once again. Especially in these difficult times, however, even when we are not physically together, we must hold fast to one another through the power of thought. For what matters most, my dear friends, is that there is now a small group of people who hold fast to Spiritual Science with faith and steadfastness in their feelings. Whether we can see one another often or rarely with our physical eyes: let us remain all the more strongly united in the spirit that unites us through our spiritual knowledge.

[ 84 ] With this in mind, let these final words also serve as a message of comfort—and as my farewell, my dear friends: Goodbye!