The Living's Loving Thoughts Sustaining the Dead

GA 174b — 22 November 1915, Stuttgart

Fourth Lecture

Due to the great events of the time, many of those souls who have joined their aspirations to ours have already passed through the gate of death. As I have already indicated to you here from this place during these times of war: it is precisely through what has been experienced with these souls that it has been confirmed that the souls who have passed through the gate of death as a result of the struggle continue to live what the great time demands of them. They live connected with the spirit of their people, they continue to fight with spiritual weapons. But this, my dear friends, is our particular responsibility toward these souls: to unite our loving thoughts, our most heartfelt impulses that connect us to them in love. When the storm of events has passed — in which these souls in particular are interwoven, even though they have already passed through the gate of death, in the best sense of the word — or when the time is right, the opportunity will arise to celebrate the festival of the dead with precisely those thoughts and ideas that must inspire us for these dear departed.

Even in these turbulent times, the power of death has spread its warnings within our ranks. Just today, we have surrendered the earthly shell of our dear friend Sophie Stinde to the elements of the earth. Numerous souls, including many from this city, will feel a deep connection to her, one of the most loyal members of our ranks. When I am able to speak in Munich in the coming days, it will be my duty—but a duty performed with the deepest love—to commemorate our dear Sophie Stinde within our spiritual movement.

In many respects, my dear friends, we have been reminded of that which, like all the other mysteries of life, stands at the center of many of the riddles of existence: death. Death, which is often so painful, but always so mysterious, especially for those who are sensitive to the mysteries of life, enters into earthly existence and is something within earthly existence itself that can never be explained by this earthly existence itself. It is certainly justified in the deepest sense to bring together the two thoughts that were once brought together in the theme of one of the public lectures, “The Mystery of Death and the Riddles of Life.” For a consideration of death does not, as some in the materialistic camp believe, refer only to something that is far removed from earthly life, something that does not really concern earthly human beings. Rather, a worldview contemplation of death brings forth insights from the depths of existence which, precisely from the mystery of death, make life here on earth a powerful and meaningful one. And that is why we must not allow ourselves to be deterred from approaching the mystery, the secret of death, from the point of view of our worldview, precisely in order to explain and illuminate life.

And so, at this time, when death has been so close to us in our own ranks, especially in the last year, and when it also confronts us a hundredfold in the historical events in which we find ourselves, let the mystery of death be woven into the reflections of these days on various questions of worldview. By approaching the mystery of death, we can contemplate death where it is still, so to speak, fully present in immediate life. The dead person himself bids farewell to this sensory life and enters a new sphere. But he remains present in the pain of those he has left behind; they remain present in the thoughts of those whose thoughts, feelings, and emotions were inspired by the dead while they were still among the living. And it was not only a beautiful custom, arising from the deepest human needs, to hold festivals for the dead, festivals of the dead, everywhere where the human heart is not cold and dry. They still exist in our time, the festivals for the dead, in the Catholic All Souls' Day, in the Protestant festival for the dead, and many other festivals for the dead also exist in our time, more or less individually. Who would not feel that in the existence of these festivals for the dead, even a materialistic age pays tribute to spiritual life? Even if materialism has already corroded souls to such an extent that they do so only unconsciously, even materialistic souls will shy away from approaching what is associated with the usual festivals of the dead with anything other than a deepened soul and a deepened heart. The dead remain in life through what the living can feel, sense, and think for them. And so, even when we consider death in the narrowest sense, we can still begin this contemplation of death in the midst of life.

We know from the general observations that have been made over many years that we must never say: Here is the physical-sensory world, and separate from it is the spiritual world. — The physical-sensory world extends up into the spiritual world, and the spiritual world extends down into the physical-sensory world. And even if the outer senses of human beings perceive the physical-sensory world only in sensory being, nevertheless, just as air in the gross sense spreads out immediately, the spirit is spread out everywhere and permeates and surges through everything that human beings in physical life perceive only sensually with their normal senses. And those who have passed through the gate of death, who are in the spiritual world, reach into our sensory world with their impulses and forces. So we can say: even though the bond that connects those living in the physical body with the dead living in the spirit lies beyond the threshold of normal consciousness, this bond is nevertheless real. And for those who immerse themselves in spiritual science, many a mystery must be solved in order to understand life where it must be understood, not from a theoretical point of view, but from the point of view of life itself, from the point of view of life that encompasses not only thinking, but the soul in all its content and scope.

Let us try to imagine what we can understand from ordinary life in relation to death. The dead person leaves us. What changes outwardly is that our eyes no longer see him, that we can no longer exchange handshakes with him, that our words no longer go from us to him, from him to us. What poured into our hearts as warmth from their emotional currents no longer flows to us in the sensory world. During the time we were able to live with them, with the help of their sensory body, that with which they clothed themselves in the physical world, they conjured up again and again the image we could have of them. The change that has taken place is that now, when the soul we were close to has passed through the gate of death, we no longer have the help for our connection with this soul that is brought about by the image of this person being created in us with the help of the sensory impulses that emanate from him, with all that it evokes in terms of sensations, feelings, impulses of will, capacity for love, sympathy, and antipathy. What lives on in us from the moment when the soul has passed through the gate of death is the image that must now be within us, that permeates us inwardly. If we want to raise this image from the imagination, as it lives on in our etheric body, but especially in the astral body and in the ego — which, of course, remains unconscious to us in normal consciousness — if we want to raise this to the consciousness of physical existence, we must let it arise from within. What we have preserved within ourselves from our relationship with the deceased must be poured out from the innermost depths of our soul, that is, from the ego and astral body, into the parts of our human being that produce consciousness and imagination: into the etheric body and physical body.

When the soul that had passed through the gate of death was still with us, it still created the image; the image radiated toward us from outside, and we only needed to respond to the image with what our soul had to give. When the dead person has left us, we are dependent on pouring what we have preserved of them into our outer human shell ourselves, so that the concept, the idea, the image of them can come before our soul. We are then no longer supported — as we are when remembering an acquaintance who is still alive on earth — by the thought that this memory is not our only one, that we can still see them externally. This is the tremendous turning point for us, that from now on, as long as we ourselves have not passed through the gate of death, we are dependent on memory.

This memory of unconscious forces within us can never be erased from the depths of our soul, our ego, and our astral body. And when we fall asleep at night, when the impressions of the physical outside world sink from our ordinary daytime consciousness, when all the thoughts we may have had from waking up to falling asleep sink away, then the imaginations, the light images of those personalities with whom we were connected and who have passed away through the gate of death, shine forth in what we carry out of our body in our ego and astral body. In that part of our being that lives within us from falling asleep to waking up, the dead live with us, just as the living on earth live with us from waking up to falling asleep. We owe our waking daytime consciousness precisely to the fact that we have passed through four stages of our earthly development with our physical body, which together with the etheric body conveys daytime consciousness to us. And nighttime consciousness eludes us because our ego only entered us during Earth's development and the astral body only during the Moon's development. What we can experience when we raise our dead into the I and the astral body, we will only experience in later epochs of our earthly development in the same way as we now experience the life of the living on earth, that is, in normal, waking daytime consciousness. The I is the youngest member; it must first struggle to attain a consciousness that can be as awake as our present daytime consciousness, which is achieved and caused by the fact that our I and astral body are connected with the physical and etheric bodies. The physical body has gone through four stages of Earth's development, the etheric body has gone through three stages, the astral body only two stages, and the I has only gone through one stage.

Thus, those who have become spirits, who have become disembodied souls, rest in the element that we ourselves experience during our sleep. But in our daytime consciousness, we can only bring them to mind from our memories. It is, after all, one force that causes a spiritual impulse to live within us, and another force that causes such a spiritual impulse to come to consciousness within us. The impressions on our senses arise from the fact that they can also flow into the physical body and the etheric body from outside. But for that which can only exist in the ego and astral body, our current normal development does not yet have sufficient power to push and press it into the etheric body and physical body in such a way that it becomes a concept for us. Nevertheless, a deep spiritual connection exists. For it is precisely in the most delicate members of our being that we are inseparably connected with the so-called dead. For this connection, external death is not a break, hardly even a transformation. In these delicate members, in the ego and astral bodies, the dead live just as the living do; there live those who have become spirit beings from our ranks.

Let us look at them with the means of knowledge we have been able to gain in the course of our lives. It has often been emphasized here how completely different the relationship of a being, including a human being, is to its environment when this being does not have a physical body or an etheric body in the physical world as we do. When someone who has passed through the gate of initiation leaves their physical and etheric bodies for the sake of their knowledge, they live in their spiritual environment; they live in it just as the dead live in it. And I have often had to emphasize how completely different the relationship to the spiritual world is for the perceiver himself when he is a disembodied human being or a being of the hierarchies or a being of the elemental world. We have had to emphasize that we ourselves must choose different words to indicate how the relationship of the spiritual being to its environment differs from the relationship of a being embodied in a physical body to its environment.

Here in the physical world, the things and beings of the outside world make an impression on us. We stand there, the beings stand outside of us. What they radiate enters our soul through our senses. And we say, being conscious of this: we stand here enclosed within the boundaries of the body. We imagine the other beings; we perceive them. — When we enter the spiritual world, we must choose different words: as spiritual beings, we are perceived by other spiritual beings. We perceive animals insofar as they are sensory embodiments, we perceive plants, we perceive human beings. Now, as we ourselves enter the spiritual world, we are perceived by the beings of the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, the Archai, and so on. And while we say here: We see the plants, the animals, the people — when we enter the spiritual world, we have to say: We experience something within ourselves, and this experience means that the spiritual eyes of another being are resting on us. We are perceived. — This perception, this knowledge that we are being looked at, distinguishes our life in the spiritual world from life in the physical world.

The words themselves must be transformed, strictly speaking, because everything is completely different in the spiritual world. And to express it figuratively, yet more than figuratively: when a being from the spiritual world enters into physical embodiment, it must be prepared to gradually learn — as even a child must learn — to look outwards through the physical senses, to receive a world from outside, to become an I that receives the world from outside. When a being enters the spiritual world from the sensory world through the gate of death or in some other way, it must accustom itself to saying to itself: You are an I, but an I that does not live in isolation in the world, that always experiences something inwardly, just as it has experienced the memory images that emerge from the depths of the soul. But now you know: what emerges are the ideas, thoughts, and feelings of other beings who live with you in the spiritual world. Just as impressions from the sensory world and sensory beings enter us from outside, so the ideas and feelings of beings in the spiritual world arise within us. But we know that these ideas and feelings that arise within us from what is then essential to us come from spiritual beings who are with us. There we are in the spiritual world, and an idea arises within us, the idea of a being whom we must love, a being who inspires us to accomplish this or that in the spiritual world. Where does this idea come from, how does it arise within us, like memories here? It comes from this: another being, a being from the spiritual world, has approached us. We do not see it from the outside; we know that it is there because it sends what lives within it into us. We are introduced, we are perceived; that is how we should speak of what lives in the spiritual world. This does not make the experience in the spiritual world more abstract or nebulous; it only makes it all the more vivid. What we experience in the spiritual world becomes as alive as what we have in our immediate surroundings in the physical world. So we must familiarize ourselves with the very different way of living together with the beings who are in the spiritual world.

And now, from this point of view, we look at those who have passed through the gate of death. They enter the world of which they must say: I am learning more and more how I am perceived, how the disembodied human beings, the elemental beings, the beings from the hierarchy of the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, send their ideas, sensations, and feelings into me. All these beings live in me. And we look up at such a dead person, and we sense: Just as a human being confronts us here in the sensory world and we sense the blood through his skin, we sense the work of his nerves in his features, so we sense, when we see the spiritual, disembodied human being, how the thoughts and feelings of the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, the Archai work through what we experience in him.

Here in the physical world, the physical human being confronts us. Through his soul and his development, he has ennobled the animal, plant, and mineral beings. But this animal, plant, and mineral being nevertheless confronts us in him. When a human being confronts us here in physical existence, his soul and spirit are deeply hidden within him and shine through his physical shell. But what shines into our eyes from his impulses, what affects us in the sensory world, is interspersed with animal nature ennobled to the level of humanity; we encounter ennobled animal nature in human beings, but it is still animal nature. The plant world and the mineral world also confront us in human beings. We know that the kingdoms of nature live in human beings on a higher level. And if the mineral kingdom did not live in human beings, then a human being could never truly appear to us in the physical world, for it is only through what he contains of the mineral kingdom that he can make an impression on us. When we stand as spirit before a spiritual being, we see — just as we see animal nature in the physical human being — in the spiritual human being in the spiritual world, that which flows into him, into this spiritual human being, in the form of feelings, thoughts, and soul-like angeloi. What the angeloi experience is organized down to the human body. Just as animality is organized upwards in the human being, so what the angeloi flash through in the soul life of the human being is organized downwards in the spiritual world. And just as the plant kingdom is organized upwards in the human being, so what the archangeloi allow to flow into him is organized downwards in the spiritual form of the human being. And just as the mineral kingdom shines forth in the sensual human being within us, thereby making the sensual human being within us perceptible, so what we encounter as spiritual human beings in the spiritual world is a self-contained imagination, because the Archai pour into human beings their formative power, their creative, shaping power. Just as the three natural kingdoms permeate the physical human being here, so the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai permeate the spirit of the human being in the spiritual world.

When the human being has passed through the gate of death, he is — with the exception of the very earliest time — connected with his astral body and his I for a long time. But now that the human being is in the spiritual world and has preserved the ego and the astral body from the earth, the spirits of form and those spirits whom we know as members of the hierarchy of the Archai can initially work within him, making him actually perceptible. Just as the mineral kingdom makes human beings visible and tangible here, so the kingdom of the archai and spirits of form makes human beings into firmly closed beings in the spiritual world. And just as the plant kingdom is no longer seen, but is only sensed here in the physical world in human beings, so too is that which the hierarchies pour into human beings sensed in the solid form of human beings in the spiritual world. Just as the animal in human beings no longer appears to us here in an animalistic form, and only spiritual science draws our attention to the extent to which animal nature plays a part in human beings, so too in the spiritual world we do not initially recognize the somewhat hidden part played by the angeloi, which remains strong as long as human beings have not shed their etheric body. The hidden part of the angeloi remains, but it is less apparent when one sees the spiritual form of the human being in the spiritual world. This is indeed how we encounter the dead person when we enter into contact with them after some time, so that we can say: it is them; but what gives them their fixed essence is the way in which the spirits of form work within them. And what can still be strongly sensed in him are the spirits of personality. — Organized, as it were, from above, from the hierarchies, the dead person then confronts us, just as the physical, thoroughly organized by the mineral world, confronts us here.

When a human soul has left us by passing through the gate of death, we preserve the memory image here within the framework of our physical consciousness. We preserve within ourselves everything that is dear to us about the ‘dead’. This is a different kind of memory from the memories we otherwise have in our outer life. Just think about what our other memories are like. What are they? They are thoughts about something that is no longer there, because that is what makes them memories. What we remember is not there; it is not happening at the moment we remember it. The content of our memories is not there, it is not active now. When we remember the essence of a soul that was connected to us and has passed through the gate of death, we have the thought of this dead person; but the dead person himself is there, is in our immediate presence, is a real being of the spiritual world. We do not merely have a memory image, we have an image in our soul that is also a memory image, but which corresponds to a real spiritual being. The image lives within us, and the deceased lives outside in the spiritual world. The being is there, and the image is there. So within us, when we look reverently after the dead, when we faithfully remember what the dead person meant to us, the imagination arises in our waking consciousness, the image of the dead person appears. There it is. What does that mean? It means that it is there in a living, active process in our physical and etheric bodies.

In our physical and etheric bodies, we imagine the other life that is not dedicated to the memory of dear departed ones, combining in our thoughts what is in the physical world. When we evoke the image, the thought or feeling image, or the emotional image of the deceased within ourselves, then a being lives for this image in the immediate present, through whom angels and archangels look, connecting their ideas in him. Consider that when we direct our thoughts and feelings toward dear departed ones, there is more, much more, than is present in ordinary, normal coexistence in terms of relationships between the spiritual and the sensory world. There is something present that, I might say, could also not be present. And a question arises for the spiritual researcher: What does it mean for the dead that we live in the world they have left, in the realm whose shell they have cast off? What does it mean for these dead who live there that we, in our waking consciousness, that is, in our physical and etheric bodies, evoke what connects us to them? For the spiritual researcher, this question arises, a question that is seemingly quite intimate in nature, but which, if the spiritual researcher solves it, I believe will shed much light on the mysteries of life.

For we can also ask this question from the perspective of immediate life, the life that is not always present, but which people nevertheless seek in the way I indicated earlier. Let us ask the question this way: What does it actually mean for the whole of reality when, on a day of remembrance for the dead, on All Souls' Day or another day of remembrance for the dead, the souls of people who live here on earth in their physical bodies go to the graves or unite with their dead in their thoughts? What does it mean when we ourselves create days or hours of remembrance for the dead? When we read to them in our own way? When we do something to unite with them and especially to bring to life what connects us to them permanently? In other words: What does it mean when we consciously recall what connects us to the dead? This question can also arise in the consciousness of the spiritual researcher.

There he must express it through something else that now arises for him from spiritual research. The most important facts of the spiritual world can basically only be expressed figuratively. One must search for comparisons if one wants to express the things of the spiritual world. For our words are shaped by ordinary life, by the physical world, and so we cannot speak about the spiritual world in the same way as we speak about the physical world if we want to express its facts. We must try, by means of a comparison, to evoke in our souls such ideas that make present to us what we want to imagine about the spiritual world. And here in the physical world, something presents itself to the spiritual researcher through which he can evoke an idea of what has just appeared before us as a question. We find something here in the physical world that could not exist without disturbing the external, natural processes of the sensory world, but which those who strive to live life to the fullest would not want to do without. What is it that we find here in the physical, sensory world that does not belong to the ongoing natural process, but which we would not want to do without? Well, when we form images of what is there and what relates to the natural world, whether they be artistic images or those produced in more recent times by external photography, what we encounter in images of the physical-sensory world of beings that belong to this world is something that adds to the natural process; the natural process could exist without them.

Try to imagine how life is enriched by the fact that we form images of what is otherwise present in the natural process. How much we long to have art in our world in addition to the natural process. How much we want to have an image of something that has been experienced! The course of the world could continue without it. A being remains what it is, even if we have no image of it, but in a certain sense we need an image. The spiritual researcher is reminded of this when he has to form ideas about what the dead have through the living reviving them in their souls.

The spiritual process corresponding to the natural process, which the dead, that is, the spiritual beings, look to, would be there even if the dear memories did not live on in the souls of human beings. But then the ongoing spiritual process would be dreary and empty for the dead, for these spiritual beings, just as we would feel emptiness if we only had the natural process around us and nothing figurative had been placed into human life, into the natural process.

Truly, one can draw the following comparison: If a dear friend has been away from you for a long time, you think of them fondly and cannot see them, and now they send you a picture, you cherish that picture. It is something that fills your heart with warmth, something you need. Just as the picture must be dear to you, so too are the thoughts of your dear departed, who live on in people's waking consciousness, dear to them when they look down on the world, which they otherwise perceive only as a continuous mental process, but which they now feel permeated by what could not be there and yet must be there — the words are to be taken in one sense or another — when they feel what is a continuous mental process to be permeated by what is radiated up to them from the souls that have remained here, something like a picture of a loved one. That is why we can say: when you go to a cemetery on All Souls' Day or All Saints' Day and see many people there who are filled with images of their dear departed, and then you look up into the souls of those who are being remembered, these are the cathedrals, the works of art for these dead. Then, what shines up to them from the earth illuminates the world for these dead like a magnificent cathedral that reveals mysteries to us, illuminates the world for us, or like a picture that is dear and precious to us, bringing a loved one to mind. The world into which the dead must gaze forever would be empty and barren; from their perspective, this world on earth would be desolate and void if they looked down upon it, and if the souls of those living here on earth did not look up to them with what cannot be, and yet must be: the thoughts that connect those living on earth with those living in spirit, the dead.

A deeply moving contrast is revealed to us here, between life on earth and life in the spirit. In order to elevate life on earth, we must add to the image of life on earth that which is not there for those living on earth. A world stripped of all imagery, a mere natural world, how desolate, how empty it would be! And now let us rise to the standpoint of the dead. They would perceive the ongoing spiritual process, but it would be desolate and empty for them, as desolate and empty as the imageless natural existence is for the children of the earth, if the memories of the dead were not alive, if faithful remembrance were not awake in the waking consciousness, if within the ongoing spiritual process there were not thoughts that are like works of art for the spiritual world, insofar as they are beautiful thoughts, and are not interwoven with the earthly process, but are directed toward those who no longer live in the earthly process. And what makes a work of art a work of art here on earth, what enhances its beauty, is something that is connected to the innermost being of human beings in a much lesser sense than what our thoughts of the dead are to the spiritual world. For in the spiritual world, too, there is beauty in this sense, a real, genuine beauty. However, it does not arise to the same extent through outward appearance as it often does here in the physical world through outward appearance in the image. The fact that the paintings of Raphael, Leonardo, and Dürer are more beautiful than others stems from the fact that these masters were simply more skilled than other masters. The fact that a dead person feels a more beautiful work of art — analogically speaking — shining up from the earth towards them stems from the depth of inner life, from the sacred spiritual feeling of remembrance that we continue to cherish for them. The strength of our feelings for the dead affects our soul life and deepens it when we see the dead themselves. This makes our soul more and more beautiful.

Follow this thought in your own soul, my dear friends, and through this deepening you will meditate on many things that can give you insight into the connection between the spiritual and the sensory world and into the special chapter of the spiritual world in which the dead live and the sensory world in which earthly human beings live. We will build on other considerations that can introduce us to further circles of the spiritual world, after this first chapter that we have worked through today.