Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 22 January 1913, Graz

53. The Effects of Spiritual Science Truths on the Behavior of the Dead and the Living

On the occasion of the inauguration of a branch room

It was sad for the spiritual researcher to meet a person in the life between death and a new birth whom he had known in his past physical life. This person had left behind a personality to whom he himself was close. But he heard nothing of her because she did not lead a life turned towards the spiritual. The man felt a gloomy desolation around him, and a deep longing for contact with people filled him. The language of the spirit is the one understood by the living and the dead. The souls of the dead have a deep longing for it. The great thing about events that deny the spirit (monist gatherings) is that they starve the soul life of the dead. Souls who have not concerned themselves with spiritual things in physical existence must carelessly pass by the souls of great individualities such as Lao Tzu and Buddha in the life between death and a new birth.

The language of spiritual life is acquired through what we call Theosophy. Spiritual science is there to bridge the abyss between the physical and the spiritual world. It can only be acquired in physical life. The work done by a soul that absorbs nothing spiritual falls out of the earth. Therefore, if we take nothing in from spiritual life, we are beings who destroy. Such souls destroy the temple of the world. We can either be destroyers or builders. Spiritual science will become a kind of world judgment. This has been made clear to the students of the sacred mysteries. This is being communicated to wider circles today. The teacher made it clear to the students: Man can deny his connection with the spiritual world. There is no compulsion that prevents people from pursuing only unspiritual feelings. Man is free to choose.

But it is true that all people who detach themselves from the spiritual life are destroyers of life. The teacher said: You may deny the spiritual world, but you become a destroyer because you work to destroy the forces that created you.

Most souls who spread education today are completely abandoned by spirituality. Newton is said to have found the laws of gravity by watching an apple fall from a tree. It was different: he had dozed off under the tree and the apple fell. He was in a not quite physical consciousness. Galileo had discovered the laws of the pendulum by observing the oscillations of a church lamp. But there was something else involved. He was somewhat detached from physical consciousness because of all the incense. The spiritual world has an effect everywhere. One can feel the interweaving of physical existence with grace from the spiritual world. The question forces itself upon us: Do you want to be destroyers or promoters of the world? In the past, people received an inheritance from the spiritual world. Today this has been lost because people can consciously gain spiritual knowledge. This is why associations such as the one we have formed come into being. We should follow the dull urge.