The Rudolf Steiner Archive

78. Abstract Thoughts, Living Will

My dear friends!

[ 1 ] After a long time, I am once again able to speak to you. Today I would like to say a few things that can serve as a public supplement to yesterday’s lecture. We must try to understand human beings as they are now. When a person dies here in the physical world, their body remains behind as a corpse. It is abandoned by the soul and spirit and returned to the earth. The dead person is, in fact, no longer a human being, but merely an image of a human being. What is death on earth is a birth in the spiritual world. When, on the other hand, the human soul builds itself a body after conception, this signifies a death for the spiritual world. The soul dies to the spiritual world. But where does this “corpse of the soul” remain? It does not remain in the spiritual world, but is buried within the human body, in the brain. And what exactly is this “corpse of the soul”? It consists of a person’s abstract thoughts. A person’s thoughts are not alive; they are dead.

[ 2 ] It wasn’t like that in the past. Back then, the human soul still brought some of the life force of its thoughts with it into the physical world. That is why it was possible to perceive the spiritual worlds. This has only changed since the first third of the fifteenth century. It is necessary for humanity to come to realize that, in its abstract thoughts, it carries the corpse of the soul with it. Through anthroposophy, these thoughts are to be brought back to life.

[ 3 ] This makes some people uncomfortable. When someone like that walks into a lecture—someone whose thinking has become deeply entrenched in their own subject matter, who pursues only abstract ideas—they suddenly realize that their thoughts are beginning to fidget and squirm. Before, they were as still as a corpse being dissected. But now they’re starting to come alive. And that makes people uncomfortable. They have an unconscious fear of this life. That’s where the nervousness and anxiety of many people come from. They unconsciously realize that they have a corpse in their thinking, and that makes them anxious. And this anxiety will continue to grow as one develops further and further toward intellectual maturity. You see, you can really observe in a small child that it brings down nothing but a corpse from the spiritual world. If you observe a child, you will see that it has almost no living thoughts. It must first gradually awaken thoughts through its will, take thoughts into its own hands.

[ 4 ] It’s quite different with the will. The child has a great deal of will. It cries, moves, and kicks. But will is something that operates unconsciously. I see only the effects of will, not the will itself. When I make a movement with my will, my surroundings change. I enter into a different relationship with them. To recognize the will, I must step out of myself and into the world.

[ 5 ] The will is present within us only as a seed, as an embryo. It points beyond the gates of death toward life after death.

[ 6 ] Usually, people experience their bodies as—forgive the harsh expression—a lump. But it will increasingly come to pass that people will feel their organs individually, that they will develop an awareness of their individual organs. Deep in the unconscious, a person already possesses this organ consciousness. It sometimes surfaces into consciousness, making the person restless. They become furious. Many of today’s illnesses can be traced back to this unconscious knowledge of the individual organs. This lack of knowledge also has the effect that, after death, a person feels as if they have been torn apart. They are unable to reunite what the individual organs imparted to them. It can break one’s heart to witness such souls entering the spiritual world. Only a true understanding of the essence of Christ can help in this regard. One must allow the Christ impulse to flow into oneself. One must recognize that Christ has conquered death.

[ 7 ] One must consider not only the “Ex deo nascimur,” but also the “In Christo morimur.” Theology focuses solely on life after death. It is not interested in exploring life before birth. People are here, and that is the main thing. And now it is concerned only with what becomes of a person after death. They believe in eternal life out of selfishness; they can listen to sermon after sermon, yet the focus is always on human selfishness. One must take into account the “Ex deo nascimur / In Christo morimur / Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.” That is what anthroposophy seeks. That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to add for you today.

[ 8 ] (Some things that are out of context.)

[ 9 ] When a person sleeps, the “I” and the astral body separate. In this process, we can perceive that the “I” is a questioning spirit. It constantly asks questions of the physical and etheric bodies. When we have the “I” and the astral body back within us while awake, it asks its questions through us. This was still known in ancient times. It has been immortalized in many myths.

[ 10 ] When one mentally observes the moment of waking, one perceives that the “I” and the astral body feel the need to return to the physical body and the etheric body. But when one is awakened by a pounding sensation, it is different. The pounding initially affects the physical body. The astral body and the “I” sense this effect. The “I,” so to speak, becomes afraid that something might happen to its physical body. That is why it returns, and the person awakens.

[ 11 ] Great figures in human history have recognized the development of humanity. Take Goethe’s Faust, for example. Goethe sets it in the era when abstract thinking first emerged. Faust himself feels unsatisfied by these abstract sciences. Although he has been leading his students by the nose for ten years as a professor, he longs for the old way of seeing things. He has therefore turned to magic.

[ 12 ] One can roughly calculate that Faust might have been a professor at the University of Wittenberg. And if one now looks for a student of Faust’s, one finds Hamlet, as portrayed by the author of Shakespeare’s plays. Hamlet, after all, studied in Wittenberg. Hamlet has, in fact, almost entirely embraced abstract thinking. It has come to the point where he regards the brain as a book. He is one of those who still stands there with a slate in his hand, writing everything down, because:

If you have it in writing, you can take it home with confidence.

[ 13 ] The spirit of the Father appears to him—the spirit of the old way of seeing, of the old science.