The Soul's Journey Through Death and Karma

GA 174b — 23 November 1915, Stuttgart

Fifth Lecture

When approaching the mystery of death, one must always bear in mind, as was emphasized again yesterday, that in order to characterize the spiritual worlds, it is necessary to change the meaning of our ordinary words, which are tailored for the physical world. For the dead, the so-called dead, enter the spiritual world, and as we have already repeatedly indicated, it is fundamentally different in the spiritual world than in the physical world.

Not only according to spiritual scientific insights, but also in accordance with ordinary physical reason, it can be thought that when entering the spiritual world through the gate of death, the first thing for the dead person is: the loosening of the physical body from what is within this physical body his other human existence. This is, of course, a very trivial truth. Today, we want to look at the processes that come into play when describing the gate of death and the further pursuit of the path between death and a new birth, in terms of the inner experiences of the dead person, in the sense in which this can be explored in spiritual science.

For the person who remains behind here in physical life, it is indeed the case that he has the sensation that what is enclosed in the physical body shell leaves the one or ones remaining behind, that the dead person goes away into another world. The first perception that the dead person has – as I said, according to what can be researched for spiritual science – is that he, in turn, is abandoned by the inhabitants of the earth and also by his physical body, by that which was the tool for his perception, for his thinking and feeling and his ability to will between birth and death. So these, who were around him, who were connected with him, go away from him: that is his first perception. This perception is initially linked to the processes that we have often described: that the earth itself, in a sense, moves away, so that it takes away the physical shell of the body of the one passing through the gateway of death. It is absolutely as if the dead person, so to speak, were to feel that he is lagging behind a movement that he did not actually perceive here on earth, that he is lagging behind the earth's own movement; the earth is leaving him and with the earth everything that surrounded him on earth. And now he is incorporated into a completely different world, but one through which he now perceives something that was previously completely hidden from him, through which he perceives that what was given to him as a physical shell is bound to the earth, and also to the movements of the earth. He has a feeling, although that is a rather inaccurate expression, that he can no longer follow the path that the earth and its spirits take; so they leave him. He remains in a certain greater state of rest, he integrates himself, as it were, into a quieter world.

For the dead person, many things are now based on this perception of being abandoned, namely also by the physical shell of the body, by everything that one has experienced with people between birth and death, everything that one has learned from people. During his life on earth, the possession of his physical body was something he took for granted. Therefore, what he now perceives is something completely new, and we will see how different these perceptions are depending on whether one dies a so-called natural death from illness or old age or a violent death, for example, the kind of 'death that many thousands now have to die.'

This realization that one is being abandoned by that which was naturally one's own, gives rise to something completely new in the life of the soul. It means that something arises in the life of the soul that one could not have become acquainted with while dwelling in the body. The first thing that arises in the life of the soul is, I would say, the opposite feeling towards life. Here on earth one has the feeling that life is given from outside, that one lives through the life forces that are given to one from the outside of the earth. Now, so to speak, the earth leaves with what it has given one, and immediately, through this leaving, the feeling arises that the power of enlivenment is now bubbling up from within. So the first thing is the perception of being enlivened. It is the transition to a certain activity, whereas before you remained in passivity: You are invigorating that which you now are. You are within yourself. What you previously called the world has gone away from you. That in which you now live, but by completely filling it, that generates in itself the power of invigoration, that is invigorated. And in concrete terms, this results in what I have often called the panorama of life, the flooding life in all that one has experienced between birth and death. The images of this life arise before the soul. It rises, as it were, from the point where one is, like a powerful, self-generating “dream, the whole of one's past life between birth and death. But this image needs strength so that it is not a dream. It would be like a dream flowing by if one had not gained the power of animation by having attained this consciousness: one's own physical shell detaches itself from the spiritual-soul. The dream comes to life. What would otherwise be only a world of dark, floating dream images is animated from the same point; it becomes a living world, a living panorama of life. One is oneself the source of the animation of what thus emerges as a dream. This is the direct experience after death.

All this happens while the person is hardly aware that he has emerged from his previous consciousness, but only feels that something has stirred within him, as if from the center of his being, spreading out and escaping that life to which he has so far passively surrendered. What one did not know between birth and death: that thoughts, which otherwise merely undulated like a dream of the ego, are alive, one now knows that. And one now lives one's self out of the formerly alien life into this inner life. One experiences what it means that what was previously more externally connected to one, now seizes the innermost. What was previously not life, but an image of life, seizes the imagination, the thinking. And while one is finding one's way into this conception, gradually a further one arises. This is this, which one could call: a living into a sounding through of the panorama of life with the universe. I have already described these things more generally. But one must always look at them more closely in order to penetrate the secrets of the world.

At first, one's innermost life dream comes to life, so to speak, and becomes a living universe, a living cosmos. Then, as it were, it is filled with what one can call: the music of the spheres of the universe resonates through this life dream. One experiences how what one was oneself between birth and death as a part of the cosmos is now absorbed by the cosmos, how this integrates with that which is now not earthly. For one has gone through the earthly between birth and death. And then the next thing is that one feels how intimately the cosmos permeates what one was as a part. One has the feeling of an inner light coming on and illuminating what one was. But all this streams and resounds, so to speak, into the panorama of life. Then the etheric body detaches itself – because these processes all happen while the person is connected to the etheric body – and what is called the detachment of the etheric body occurs.

Now this experience, this perception of the panorama of life, this clothing of the panorama of life with the sounding and luminous substances of the cosmos, is similar to the way the physical body integrates into the human being when one enters into existence through birth. Just as the human substance given to one by the earth, so to speak, integrates into the human soul, so the cosmic, the universal, integrates after passing through the gate of death. This experience, which has been described, is necessary. And when one really follows the spiritual side of life between death and a new birth, then one notices the significance for this whole life between death and a new birth of this first experience after passing through the gate of death. Here in physical life on earth — we must be quite clear about this, I have emphasized it often — we have our sense of self-consciousness because we live in the physical body. I emphasize: the sense of self, not the self. Our self is assigned to us by the Spirits of Form, that is something else. But we have our sense of self because we are immersed in the physical body. We only have to be quite clear about the nature of this sense of self in the waking state. The best way to understand it is to imagine you are moving through a room. At first you feel nothing; now you are touching something. The outside world touches you, but you become aware of yourself. You become aware of the impact that the outside world has on you, you become aware of the outside world, you feel yourself touching the outside world.

In fact, we have our sense of self in the physical world by bumping into the outside world everywhere. Of course, not only with the sense of touch, but when we open our eyes, we also bump into the outside world; when sounds reach our ears, we become aware of it when our hearing bumps into the sounds.

But we also become aware of ourselves by emerging from the spiritual world every morning and immersing ourselves in the physical world. This immersion in our physical body, that is, this collision of our ego and astral body with the etheric body and physical body, that is what creates our sense of self. This is why there is usually a lack of self-awareness in the dream world: because we need this collision with the physical body and the etheric body to have self-awareness.

For a clear, distinct, waking self-awareness, we need this collision. Now, the outer physical body has been taken from the one who has passed through the gate of death. In the same way as between birth and death, he cannot produce self-awareness. Without consciousness of self, he would have to tread the path between death and a new birth if this consciousness of self were not now generated by another path. This other path is that everything we now experience directly in the etheric body after we have passed through the gate of death remains in existence all the time between death and a new birth.

In this respect, too, the experience in the spiritual world between death and a new birth is the opposite of the physical experience here between birth and death. Here in the physical world, no one can consciously remember the moment of their birth; remembrance only sets in later. Man does not remember his birth, it is, so to speak, too far in the past for the memory process to go backwards. But what the person experiences inwardly from the other side of death remains throughout life between 'death and a new birth for the soul. The experience of death remains just as surely as the experience of birth disappears when the person enters the physical world. The physical person does not look back on his birth in the physical world, but he looks back on death in the whole time between death and a new birth. This looking back, this encounter with the experience of death, is what creates the sense of self between death and a new birth, and we owe it to that.

The sight of death is only from the side of physical experience, if at all, something terrible. Only there it has horror and terror, if one sees it from this side. But the dead see it from the other side. And seen from this side, there is really nothing terrible about the fact that the moment of death remains, so to speak, for the whole of life between death and a new birth. For even if it is annihilation, seen from this physical side of life, it is the most glorious, the greatest, the most beautiful, the most sublime, which can be seen continually from the other side of life. There he constantly testifies to the victory of spirit over matter, to the self-creative power of spirit. In this intuitive perception of the self-creative power of spirit, the consciousness of self exists in the spiritual worlds.

In the spiritual worlds, one has this self-awareness precisely because one is constantly creating oneself inwardly, never appealing to an existing being, but always creating oneself, and in this self-creation, one touches back to the moment of death. So we can also indicate how the sense of self-awareness is generated in the time between death and rebirth. The birth of self-awareness is of great significance in this experience in the first period after death. And of course, this first experience is also different depending on whether the person, let us say, reaches an advanced age, then passes through the gate of death in a natural way, or is perhaps carried off in the tenderest childhood or in the prime of life. And of quite particular significance in relation to the difference in this area is approximately — not pedantically exact, of course — the age of thirty-five. What now takes place in a thousand different ways, that young people in the prime of their lives pass through the portal of death: tomorrow it will show us how this is further modified by death approaching them from outside. But if a person does pass through the portal of death young, then the view of this described tableau of life with its invigorating events is already different than if one passes through the portal of death after the age of thirty-five.

You can say, although it is of course difficult to find the right words for these circumstances, that someone who dies at a young age has the feeling that the dream image of their life appears and they bring it to life from the center of their life. But as you pour your own vitalizing powers over this tableau of life, something still stands behind this tableau of life like a remnant from the world from which you have stepped out by going through birth.

When a child dies, the tableau of life is extremely short. If, for example, a six-year-old child dies, the tableau of life is still not very substantial. But behind this tableau, so to speak, entering from behind and casting a shadow over it, there is still much of what was lived through in the spiritual world before birth, or, as one also said in the German language in the past – Goethe used the expression – before one “came into the world”. A beautiful expression that has now been lost. And when a child dies who has not yet any memory of the past, for whom the time has not yet come when one remembers back, then such a tableau of life does not actually exist for him, in which he feels himself in it so directly as a human being feels himself in it when he dies later; but what he had around him before birth emerges through the whole tableau of life, only a little modified. One could say that this glimpse of certain remnants of the spiritual world that one has experienced before birth is only lost after death, when one has passed the age of thirty-five.

One should never – and this is said in parenthesis – be tempted, I emphasize this expressly, to indulge in the not-at-all-harmless thought of what might be better for a person: to die before the age of thirty-five, or to die after the age of thirty-five and to live through what we will describe. These thoughts should not be pursued, they should not be entertained, but they should be considered: when one passes through the gate of death, one should, in the strictest sense of the word, leave it solely and entirely to karma.

But it is important to understand these things. If one dies after the age of thirty-five, there is no possibility of seeing anything of the remainder of the spiritual life preceding birth. That is obscured. But the tableau of life still appears. One has a strong feeling that one is creating it from within, that one is weaving it oneself, as it were; but this web is brought to life. In this way, dying before the age of thirty-five and dying after the age of thirty-five differ quite significantly in terms of the tableau of life. The life tableau before the age of thirty-five has much more the character of something that comes to you from outside, as if from a spiritual world, and you only push towards it what you yourself have experienced. The tableau of life after thirty-five years is such that at first more of an emptiness, a darkness, comes towards you from the outside, and you bring what you have acquired in life towards this darkness. But it is no less vividly ignited by this. Our inner experience is modified by the fact that one moment it is like the approach of a mirage that we approach, while the other moment we carry our world into the world of the cosmos. All this has great significance for life, as we shall see tomorrow. This karmic process, whereby our physical body is snatched from us at a certain age of physical life, has a great significance for the nature of life after death. But this is intimately connected with our entire karma.

Then comes the time when we feel: Now you are actually out of the earthly. If you want to be very rough, you could say that as soon as you pass through the gate of death, you have the feeling that the earthly body is leaving you. The friends, the people you were with, are leaving you. The experiences you had with them are leaving you. You are alone with yourself for a while, alone with what you have experienced. Of course, everything you have experienced with people is included in the dream of your life; you look at it as what people have engraved in you, but in such a way that you live within yourself during the day and bring the dream of your life to life within yourself. You get the impression that the earth is also leaving you, but that you are still living in the same sphere as the earth, in the sphere that still belongs to the earth. And the laying down of the etheric body is actually also experienced in such a way that one has the feeling: now you are not only out of the earth and its substance, but also out of what is the most immediate environment of the earth, out of the light; you are also out of what, on earth, as dense substantiality, makes the music of the spheres inaudible. You are – this is perhaps the last impression, which is very significant, which is then something lasting – you are no longer in the habit of having external light illuminate you and your surroundings, so to speak. I note, as if to interject, that the most foolish idea is held by those who believe that if one were to fly away from the Earth toward the Sun, one would fly continually through light. This fantastic notion is currently held by materialistic physicists. The belief that the sun spreads light in the way it is described in physics, that light passes through space and falls on the earth, is one of the worst superstitions. After death, one realizes this by realizing, when one is free of the etheric body, that only in the area that belongs to the earth, that is what we have as sunlight here in physical life. One has the perception: Now this light no longer disturbs you. Now it is the inner generation of the light that spreads out in the first sounding through. The inner light can now become effective because the outer light no longer disturbs the inner.

And now, with the shedding of the etheric body, the entry into that world begins, which is so often called the world of kamala. We will call it the soul world, because after the inner life-giving power has first emerged, one then experiences something like an inner resounding of what one is, since one is now alone with oneself. And after the inner illumination, what appears to be an inner warming occurs. Here on earth, one is warmed by receiving warmth from outside and feels dependent on it in the physical body. And now the inner warming occurs, and this warming is such that one now feels again: You are now able, in the element in which you live, to evoke in yourself the sensation that you also had earlier, but in the form: warmth affects you. — This permeates the tableau of life with warmth. As a result, one enters a completely new element. One has the feeling that the etheric body is now leaving one. And that is precisely the entrance into the world that in my book “Theosophy” was called the world of the blaze of desire, because the warmth that arises from within is at the same time desire, generating, flowing desire, feeling of the element of will. And into this, there already mingles that which remains with us for a certain length of time: the experience of the soul world, which I have often described. We can only describe these things more precisely bit by bit, as a reliving of life. One proceeds from the experience of death back towards birth. And now one relives from the other side everything that one has gone through in physical life. But you do not experience it in the same way as you experienced it here in the physical world, but you experience it in a moral way. If, let us say, at some point between birth and death you have harmed someone, you felt at the time what you did, but not the suffering that the other person felt. Now you experience the same thing again, but not what you yourself experienced in terms of anger or antipathy, but rather how the other person experienced it. You extend your own experience, if I may put it this way, to the effects of his actions that occurred between birth and death. You live yourself into all the effects of the actions.

This is, in a sense, the basis of life between death and a new birth: that one gradually immerses oneself in what one has done between birth and death during the experience in the soul world, that one gradually submerges oneself in it. Just as one gradually lived into nature here from childhood, learning to perceive nature and understand nature, so in the time after death one lives into the effects of one's own deeds, into the effect of one's own thoughts and words, in short, into the entire world of effects; one pours oneself into the world of effects. Of course, spiritual beings gradually emerge from this background: the beings of the higher hierarchies, the beings of the elemental world. Just as we do not merely experience nature here, but animals, plants and minerals emerge from the soil of nature, so within this reliving, where we live into the effects of our deeds - for that is actually the basic soil of our world - the spiritual beings in the spiritual world emerge. And there, as in the physical world, physical beings come to meet us among the spiritual beings of the elemental realms and the higher hierarchies, the souls that have been connected to us, the souls that have already died and are in the spiritual world, or the souls that are still embodied in the physical body, with whom we have had contact here. With all this, this basic ground of the after-mortal being, this dissolving into the world of one's own deeds, comes to life.

And in a certain way, it can be perceived that there is a difference between perceiving a soul that is still on earth and a soul that has already passed through the gate of death. The dead person naturally knows whether he is dealing with one soul or the other. When he is dealing with a soul that still dwells in the earthly body, then the dead person has the feeling that this soul is approaching him more from the outside, that the image, the imagination, forms itself. With a soul that already belongs to the disembodied, there is a much more active experience. You have the feeling that the soul is approaching you, but that you have to form the image for this soul. The dead person comes to you with his being, you have to form his image yourself; the person who is still alive brings you his image when you look down on him.

And so now, in a certain way, one experiences with moral emphasis what one can call one's deeds, that is, the effects of what one has done, thought, wanted. There one plunges in, there one lives oneself into it. And one plunges in in a very specific way, namely in such a way that one experiences, for example, that one has hurt someone, and now one experiences what the other has experienced through the injury! This is really your own experience of what the other person experienced here in the physical world. You go through it. And by going through it, the strength arises in you, as if by inner, elementary necessity: You have to make up for that, you have to make amends for that! It is really the case that you can use the comparison: A mosquito flies towards you, you close your eyes. You carry out an activity under an impression. After death you experience the effect of something you have done; then you respond by generating the strength to make amends, that is, to compensate for what you have done to the other person. This means that by reliving this experience in your soul, you take upon yourself the strength to make amends for what you have done to this person. This creates the desire to be with him in earthly life in order to balance out what was done to him. During this reliving, all the forces for karma are created, for balancing karma. One takes them on.

So already in these first years or decades after passing through the gate of death, one creates the living out of karma. And as true as there is a growing power in the germ, which only later realizes itself in the blossom, it is as true that already now, in the time after passing through the gate of death, the power exists in the dead as root power, which then remains for the whole life between death and a new birth, and which realizes itself in the new earth life or in later earth lives as karmic compensation for what one has done. Thus the will is generated, which then becomes unconscious will for karma.

And now we can take a closer look at something that is important for the understanding of this picture of life between death and a new birth. We can see this if we cast our eyes once more on the reciprocal action between the conditions of earthly life here, which are well known to us in their outer appearance and on which we have reflected many a time, and their inner secrets, when we look at the reciprocal action between the waking life of the day and the sleeping life of the night.

Today, we want to look at this waking and sleeping again from a certain point of view. From an external point of view, sleep consists of our I and astral body being outside the physical and etheric bodies. The life of sleep initially remains unconscious if it is not interspersed with a certain type of dream life. However, this does not mean inactivity. On the contrary, this life in sleep is a soul life that is much more active within than the waking soul life, even though it remains unconscious during normal life on earth. The waking life of the soul is only so intense because the activity of the ego and the astral body experiences resistance from the aetheric body and the physical body. In this mutual pushing and shoving between the ego and the astral body on the one hand, and the physical and etheric bodies on the other, something develops that resembles continuous pushes and counter-pushes. This is what appears to us as an alert day-life, while in normal life on earth we are not yet able to bring the continuous but intense activity of the night-life to consciousness. This does not push against the physical and etheric bodies, so it does not become conscious. But in itself the day-life is weaker; it only becomes conscious through the fact that it continually beats against the etheric body and physical body. This beating is perceived, while the more intense activity of the life during sleep goes into the indefinite, cannot beat against anything and thus remains unconscious.

But what is a person actually doing during this 'dream life'? When dreams occur in normal life, these dreams are not the actual activity during sleep, but are actually a visualization of the activity through the memories of ordinary life. The images of dream life arise because life spreads its tapestry over the actual inner activity; and in this way many things are perceived in 'dream life'. There the I and the astral body are in a living activity; when this touches the etheric body and the human being touches the etheric body, the dream arises. But the dream uses the physical life memories from the etheric body to make visible the invisible activity of the ego and the astral body. Therefore, one can only understand the dream if one takes these images in terms of their character sequence, that is, if one learns to understand these images. “Dreams must first be read in the right way, the right art of interpretation must first be added. Then, however, they point to this most significant reality, which is carried out by the ego and the astral body during sleep. This activity, then, which the human being carries out, is revealed to serious and dignified spiritual research.

What exactly is this activity that takes place from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up? It consists of reliving the experiences of the day in a much more intense way, so that one becomes, as it were, one's own judge of the day's experiences. It is a trite expression, but deeply true: during the day, one lives into the normal consciousness, letting the events that take place around one wash over one. But at night, in the astral body, one takes the events of the day much more seriously, much more meaningfully, both intellectually and emotionally. One weighs them, examines them in terms of their cosmic value. One concerns oneself with what they mean in the context of the whole world. An immense inner thoroughness in the contemplation of life is poured out upon the activity from falling asleep to waking up; only in normal life it remains unconscious. All this, what man goes through every night like a reliving of the day's life, has a great significance as preparation for life after passing through the gate of death.

Consider, then, with the means of ordinary physical consideration, this continuous life between birth and death. Of course, one only says that one remembers back to a certain point in time in this life. In truth, one does not remember the whole life back, but one remembers in the evening what goes on until the morning. Then the memory breaks off. Then comes the previous 'day', and then the night, which one does not remember. So one remembers back, but it is, as it were, chain link on chain link, a white and a black link. One does not remember the night in the life between birth and death. The strange thing is that in this time when you are in the realm of the soul, you remember the way you relived your daytime experiences night after night during the nights. Here in physical life you remember your days; in the realm of the soul you remember the same, but you remember how you worked through and lived through the days in the nights. You retrace your nights. In this way you can see the whole nature of the experiences in the soul realm.

If you realize this in detail, it is like this: you met a person on a certain day of your life, you experienced something with him. You relive it not only with him during the day, but also at night, and in the following nights; then it is a kind of reminiscence. You experience it inwardly in the ego and astral body. Everything you have experienced here in your waking consciousness, you experience again in your night consciousness. And the way you have experienced it in your night consciousness gives you the handle for how you need it in the soul world. You relive your nights. This is a very significant truth of spiritual research, and one can always remember through such a thing the fact that spiritual research is not as many believe. Many believe that once one has entered the spiritual world, then the spiritual researcher suddenly knows the whole spiritual world and is informed about everything. This belief is just as naive as it is naive to believe that someone who has walked across one part of the earth knows the whole earth. He knows parts of the earth quite well, but he knows nothing about other parts of the earth. Equally, someone who knows the spiritual world at some point does not need to know everything about the spiritual world. That is the subject of a slow research. That is why it is so difficult to talk about spiritual science, because you keep running into this prejudice. When lectures on spiritual science are given, people demand in the question and answer session that information be given about all things. Such questions are to be judged in the same way as if, for example, someone had become acquainted with a certain number of minerals or plants and one would then ask him about the secrets of the animal world and say: He knows one thing, so he must know the other too!

It is quite the case that all the details of the spiritual world must first be worked out. And above all, one must be able to wait until one thing or another arises. Now you have been able to see that in my “Occult Science” and “Theosophy” I have spoken about the approximate length of the so-called Kamalokalebens, the life in the soul world. From a certain point of view, one can say that, as it has happened. But now the spiritual researcher comes to a certain context that can really be compared to traveling from country to country. One comes from one place to another, and so one comes here from one area to another. Thus, the spiritual researcher can come to a different point of view; and this point of view answers the question: What does the activity of the ego and the astral body during the night involve? The experiences of the night can be seen as a reprocessing of the day's experiences. The question may arise: How does life turn out in the soul world when we know that the nights are lived through in the soul world? I have stated that life in the soul world makes up about a third of the last life on earth. If you live through the nights, how long will life in the soul world last? Well, you sleep through about a third of your life here on earth; some people sleep more, others less, but you sleep through about a third of your life on earth.

So are the tremendously significant impressions one can have regarding the truth of spiritual science. Because that is how it is in spiritual science: something is given to you from a certain point of view, from which you look into the spiritual world. A truth arises. One could doubt this truth. Now one starts from a different point of view and comes to the same truth, as is the case now with the experience of the Nights. This is the result of the truth. This is an important criterion, this inner agreement. And you will find this everywhere in spiritual science, where it is seriously and worthily pursued: that the same thing is sought from different points of view, and that the same truth emerges from these different points of view. Once people develop a feeling for the truth value inherent in this way of approaching spiritual truth and then finding this spiritual truth, they will also sense how much more true it is than anything that can be investigated in the physical world. The important thing is that we have a memory here in physical life for what we have experienced in our waking consciousness, and that we have a memory in the time when we pass through the soul world for what is further worked on during the nights on the basis of what the waking consciousness experiences.

In order to approach the meaningful truths that we will discuss tomorrow with the right attitude, let us recall something that I have already mentioned here in a different context with reference to the great events of our time: When a person passes through the portal of death in such a way that their life is, as it were, torn away from the outside, especially if they die at a young age, then after they have passed through the portal of death, after a short time, the separation of the etheric body also occurs. But this etheric body would have the power to supply the rest of life with external life forces. Normally, the person receives the powers of the etheric body that can supply them with life forces into old age. If life is suddenly interrupted, then these powers remain. These powers are also present in the discarded etheric body. And just as nothing of the forces is lost in the physical world, but only transformed, so these forces are not lost either, but remain present. Apply this specifically, then you will say to yourself: When a person dies in his youth, in his prime, he leaves the world what he still has of vital forces in his ether body, which he could have used up himself. Imagine it even more concretely. Suppose a person, let us say in the twenty-fifth year of life, is struck by a bullet: he leaves to the world in terms of etheric forces of life that which he would have been able to use up from the twenty-sixth year of life onwards for the rest of a long life. That remains, that is a gift that the dead leave to the spiritual atmosphere of life in which we find ourselves. We remain surrounded by these forces. And in these forces lie the sacrificial attitudes with which the departed person permeated his etheric forces. That remains. And future generations have no idea how they actually live in the forces left by their ancestors in this way, how they are surrounded by them, and how our spiritual life air is imbued with them. They pay no attention to what is left behind by the departed in such a time, when so many etheric bodies that can still be used in life are given back to the spiritual atmosphere of the earth in a relatively short period of time. We will continue from there tomorrow.

We will now direct our attention to what can be revealed to us from such profound connections, through which we can see into the spiritual world, and no longer see the spirit in a merely abstract, trivial way, even hazily in the world of the senses, but see the spiritual essence in a concrete way. In addition to the fates of those who have passed through the gate of death, we see beings of the higher hierarchies and of the elemental world. But we also see what remains inwardly connected to the earth: that which is left in the etheric bodies. What the souls who meet their death in the great fields of battle leave behind in the way of unused etheric forces will have a definite effect. These will combine with the understanding that the children of the earth will show for the future. And looking at this, we say what we have often said at the end of our meditation:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.