Supplements to Member Lectures
GA 246 — 27 February 1913, Heidelberg
56. Life Between Death and a New Birth
My dear friends!
He who has recognized certain facts of the supersensible life cannot but regard Theosophy as something absolutely necessary in our present spiritual life.
When the shearer makes acquaintance with those human individuals who are just passing through life between death and a new birth, then he can experience the following: He can meet a personality that he may have known quite well in life, that he knew how it stood in earthly life before it passed through the gate of death. Now he gets to know them after they have passed through the gate of death. The following can then be experienced: The personality who was not able to think about the spiritual, about the realm of the spirit in today's sense - and whose friends and family members were equally unable to do so - this personality then complains to the shearer about the following: I have now lived for many years in the most intimate union with my wife; she was the comfort, the strength, the happiness of my life. I feel that we belong together. Now it is terrible for me that I can no longer find her in the world where she is. I know she is there, she is on earth, but I cannot find her; she has slipped away, she is dead to me.
When the seer then sees why this is so, he can convince himself that there is indeed a great difference between the life between death and a new birth and the present life and that life in the human cycle before the Mystery of Golgotha. At that time, the whole life of the soul in embodiment was still different. For people, life in the physical body was not divided into day waking and night sleeping; there was an intermediate state between waking and sleeping. Then people looked into the starry worlds, and they saw not only stars but also spiritual beings connected with them. The fact that spiritual beings lived in the world was still accessible as a perception of the human soul. When a dead person looked down into the physical world, where the embodied souls lived, then he saw the content of their souls. He saw what they imagined about the spiritual world. And one could see from above - if I may say so - the embodied souls because they knew something about the spiritual world. When people carry ideas and concepts of spiritual worlds in their souls, then they are seen by the dead. If we carry ideas and concepts of spiritual worlds in our souls, then the dead see us. If we do not do this, if we do not carry such ideas and concepts in our souls, then we are only there for the dead in memory.
In Greek times, the saying was still true: “Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows”. - It is precisely this saying that shows so clearly how humanity is evolving. In Greece the connection with the spiritual world disappeared. Now the human race is living in a time in which the souls here on earth, when they are embodied, for the most part only want to be filled with what the physical world provides in terms of stimulation. And the souls are empty in terms of spiritual images. This is not an accusation, but a description of the true state of affairs. These need not only be bad or uninstructed souls who do not want to know anything about spiritual worlds, because souls today can no longer see into spiritual worlds as they could in ancient times. But because it is so that the souls here are mostly empty of spiritual images, they also remain imperceptible to the souls who have passed through the gate of death.
As an example I would like to cite a man who does a lot for human love and even for animal love, but who, despite his kind soul, is completely materialistic and works everywhere to spread the materialistic teaching. In a lecture he quoted a saying that is characteristic of the present day, as proof of how little souls today carry within themselves of the insight into the spiritual world. It is Forel who made the statement:
Ah! If the Lord God would bestow me,
Leaving me still free to choose,
I would not seek [from myself vain high dignity, No!
My heart would rejoice all at once:]
Allow me to remain on earth,
For this realm is good enough for me.
I am not drawn to the heavenly gesture,
Keep it for your angel brood.
We do not want to practise theosophy, my dear friends, in order to know, we want to practise theosophy for the sake of a higher love of man. For people miss a great deal, in retrospect, of the spiritual world after death, if they only know souls here that are extinguished for them. When one experiences something like what I have just described, one is overcome by the thought of the necessity of a common language for the living and the dead. This common language, which not only makes the expression audible, so to speak, but the essence, this language is theosophy. And what are we actually doing when we practise Theosophy? We bring nothing absolutely new to human souls, because these souls have passed through previous earthly lives. Now they are empty, but what was once in the souls remains there. What the souls have absorbed in the past is just like forgotten mental images. Spiritual knowledge dives deep into the soul. When we practise Theosophy, we only remind the souls of what they have forgotten and thus redeem what is deeply rooted in the soul's subsoil. We carry back into the souls what once made the souls visible to the dead. This bridges the chasms that would otherwise have to open up between the living and the dead in a materialistic age. For this reason, the shearer has the duty to proclaim the truths of the spiritual world to the world around him.
When you hear this, you can get an idea of the seriousness and dignity of Theosophy. Taken from the voices of the dead themselves, this is what spurs us on to Theosophy. This is connected with the fact that we can bridge the abyss between the living and the dead by being imbued with theosophical life and maintaining the connection through what I would like to call “reading to the dead”. We have already seen good results from this work with the dead.
People have died who have lived alongside Theosophists. They were very averse to Theosophy, scolded it, got angry when people spoke of Theosophy. But in the depths of their souls were rooted quite different feelings than those that showed themselves in ordinary consciousness. The souls hated Theosophy because their friend loved it. While they were raging against Theosophy, an unconscious longing for Theosophy was awakening in them. It is like this: a person can rant and rave about Theosophy and want nothing more than to numb himself, to numb the longing that lives within him and which he does not want to allow to arise. But death makes all things real. Then the longing that man has numbed emerges. Then he has the strongest urge to hear something of Theosophy. And we can do him the greatest service if we sit down with the image of the dead man in front of us and read to him quietly, teach him. We can also tell him our own thoughts that we have absorbed, always vividly imagining the image of the dead person. We must not be stingy with this, as it bridges the chasm that separates us from our dead.
Not only in the most extreme cases, but in every case we can do good to the dead. Three to five years after death, the dead can usually still have an understanding of the language that was spoken when they lived on earth. Then comes the time when you can only send spiritual thoughts; then the dead only understand the thoughts. Then you can even read to the dead in a foreign language if you understand it yourself. This is a comforting feeling that can ease the pain of the passing of someone you love. Souls have been known to have a longing for what we are spreading here as Theosophy.
Now the question arises: Don't the dead up there also find teachers among the spiritual individualities? For a very long time after death man lives, so to speak, through the whole nature of his being in connection with those with whom he has lived here on earth, and he is enclosed in this connection as in a kind of atmosphere, so that for about ten years after death he does not easily find the way to merely spiritual individualities which he meets above. And when he does meet them, they speak in a different way from that in which Theosophy is spoken of here; their manner cannot be a substitute for what goes on on earth. The earth is not there for nothing. The things that have to be experienced here can only be experienced here.
I would like to give one more example: Those who are not familiar with the things of the spiritual world easily believe that the higher hierarchies experience what happens on earth. They do not! The beings of the higher hierarchies only experience things on earth by looking through the people who live here on earth. And there was one thing that could only be experienced by a god on earth; it could never have been experienced in another world. That is why the God had to descend into the earthly sphere. The Mystery of Golgotha could never have been experienced in another sphere of the world. For the beings of the higher hierarchies cannot die in the manner of human beings. In order to die, God had to descend to earth. Gods cannot experience death as humans do in the higher hierarchies. So it is not so easy to hear the message of theosophy from the higher spirits.
One can also make the acquaintance of other spirits, for the individualities of the world undergo various developments. The seer can get to know beings who have never been in a human body, who only come close to our sphere, as it were, but who are never born on earth. The spirits can tell you many things in the language that is common to humans and spirits. But if you let them tell you what they can tell you, it always differs - even though there may be truth about the higher world - from the views that people form here by absorbing Theosophy. The human being would lack something if it did not absorb Theosophy on earth or from earth. Therefore you can understand that it is something different to be read to by a person who lives here than to receive teachings from a spirit who has never been on earth.
It is also not easy when two people have passed through the gate of death to find each other in the spiritual world, when one is filled with spiritual life and the other is not. When both are filled with it, however, they find each other easily.
So we see how a bridge is built from the earth up into the higher world through the theosophical life. But the reverse is also true. In a certain way it can also become important for people on earth to see what is going on in the higher world flowing into their earthly life. The bridge from the higher world to the earth realm can also be consciously built. I would also like to give you an example of this.
Many years ago, when I had to teach a number of children, I made an effort to study the children's abilities, their dispositions, the effects of their environment and so on, because you can only teach fruitfully if you take all this into consideration. And lo and behold, with everything that was taken into consideration, something was still missing. There were factors at play in the children's lives that were puzzling. And this only became clear to me when the higher world was consulted, when I investigated what forces from the deceased father were influencing the children's souls. And only when this could be reckoned with did I come to terms with the treatment of the children. Then I was no longer disturbed by what the father wanted from over there. You can see how important it is to include in the earthly calculation what works into the earthly realm from higher worlds.
If you consider what has been said today, you will realize that Theosophy must become an elixir of life, that it does not consist of theories. Do not believe that it is justified to always speak of the fact that conscious connection with the spiritual world is difficult. In decades it will not seem difficult when Theosophy will be heard in such a way that it will be absorbed by people on earth. When Theosophy is no longer understood as fantasy, but rather grasps what can be understood with the common sense of man, then the step will only be a small one, where the conscious knowledge of the spiritual world will break in upon countless people.
Today, so to speak, the brains are still too dense for clairvoyance to awaken easily from the study of Theosophy, but it will awaken. Then we will know how the spiritual world influences life on earth. Certain things are tremendously significant when you take them in, when you can perceive how they work from another world into human existence on earth. For example, we have often considered the connection between the various incarnations of a personality: Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis. The Raphael incarnation presents itself to the clairvoyant eye as follows. One could ask oneself the question: How did Raphael come to be - after having been a forerunner of the Christ in a previous incarnation through his powerful word - how did he come to be a herald of the Christ now through the medium of painting? Yes, my dear friends, the profession is related. One gradually comes to the conclusion, if one does not merely look at human history from the outside, that Raphael was a kind of John for modern times. After all, his paintings of Christ and Mary have had far more impact than all the dogmas of the Church. But it is not this that should be emphasized today, but another side, the side of why Raphael in particular came to express himself with such ease in painting. Raphael's father was not a special painter, but he was only not because he lacked physical skill. He did, however, have significant artistic abilities that could not emerge in that incarnation. It was his mission to work in a different way than as a painter. He worked by dying when Raphael was still very young. If you follow Raphael's life, how the art of painting poured into him, so to speak, you will find that his father's art poured into him. The father poured his skills into his son in order to enhance his abilities. This brought about John's transformation into Raphael, that Giovanni Santi's soul worked into Raphael's soul. - In many ways, a connection can be made if it is karmically necessary.
Countless riddles connected with the relationship of the living to the dead are solved in a practical way when people learn through Theosophy that they have not lost their dead, but that they still have them, that they live with them. The certainty that people can belong to each other, regardless of whether they are alive or not, will become theirs through Theosophy, and this is what makes Theosophy so great and meaningful. What will come to people particularly through Theosophy is the awareness of belonging to the whole world. Here on earth, man can otherwise only gain the awareness of this togetherness with a part of the world.
Kant instinctively made the statement: two things filled him with deep reverence, the moral law within him and the starry sky above him. - He made this statement instinctively because he did not know that these two things were one, because man carries within him, hidden in the depths of his soul, what he has experienced in the starry sphere between death and rebirth in the spheres of the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, in the starry spheres. I have not mentioned the star spheres as they correspond to astronomy. What I have mentioned is what man lives in between death and a new birth. And when the seer sees the human souls, he sees that they are still in the lunar sphere for a time after death. This sphere extends to the extent that we get when we draw a circle that includes the earth and the moon.
At a later time we find the souls expanding and becoming larger and larger in the sphere of Mercury; still later in the sphere of Venus, then in the sphere of the sun, in the sphere of Mars, then in the sphere of Jupiter, then in the sphere of Saturn and then in the sphere of the stars. The human being lives through all these spheres between death and rebirth. From these star spheres, i.e. from what the sun, Mars and so on mean spiritually, very different influences emanate on the human being.
When we look at the human being on earth, he first appears to us in his physical body. Only some of the spiritual forces and entities of the star spheres have an influence on this physical human being. Namely on the physical human being, which we must divide into two parts. The one part is everything that is enclosed in the bone capsule of the brain and the rings of the spinal cord, which are firmly closed to the outside. That is one part. That is a world of its own within the human being. And what is outside, outside this part, is again a part in itself. Only the spiritual entities of the sun, moon and earth have an influence on what lies outside the brain and the spinal vertebrae. That which lies within the bones of the skull and the vertebrae is not influenced by anything that surrounds us now. The forces of the old Saturn, the old sun and the old moon have an influence there. Only the soul of the human being has a relationship to the other planetary forces.
So the forces and entities of the starry world affect our organism in very different ways. This becomes particularly clear when we consider the life of human beings between death and rebirth. In the first period - for some it lasts longer, for others shorter, for exceptions the time is very short or does not occur at all, but everyone goes through the same thing in one way or another. So in the first time people are still completely in living connection with their earthly life. They live, so to speak, only from memory. That is why it is so painful immediately after death, when all the deceased are alive in memory but can no longer perceive the souls they remember. That is why it is such a blessing when the souls are read to by those left behind after death. The dead person is then not isolated in a cruel loneliness, but has the company of the living, so to speak. Man still needs this company for a long time, because it is the only thing he lives from in his soul. Only at a later time is it possible for the soul to find a connection with the spirits of higher hierarchies. Only in the Venus sphere can one actually make the acquaintance of these higher beings, if one is sufficiently prepared. Before that, you can only be in contact with fellow living beings from the last or previous incarnation.
But to make acquaintance with higher beings is only possible under certain conditions. A soul that comes to the sphere of Venus without the moral attitude it received on earth will not find there the possibility of connection with other souls, not even with souls with whom it has already been together in the past, but not at all with the spiritual beings of higher hierarchies. The preparation for a life in the Venus sphere, which does not pass in cruel loneliness, is a moral attitude here on earth. If we could look into the Venus sphere, we would see souls living in terrible loneliness. They are spiritually very close to other souls, but they do not perceive them. They cannot get close to them. And they have condemned themselves to this through an immoral attitude. Many a soul in these spheres would long for what sleep is in a certain sense here in life. Souls cannot become unconscious there, only lonely, as if living alone on an island. This solitude is a kind of sleep of death. Even in the sphere of Mercury one cannot get along without a moral attitude, but in the sphere of Venus it is one of the most important conditions. If you want to live in the Venus sphere, if you want to get to know human souls and beings of the higher hierarchies, then you have to arrive there not only with moral, but also with religious feelings, because there you will find yourself together with souls who are religiously attuned.
From the Venus sphere you then enter the solar sphere. There it is necessary to arrive not only with a religious mood, but with an understanding of all the religious beliefs that exist on earth. One can only get along there with the true, genuine, inner tolerance which was first poured out by the Christ and which is now to be understood through Theosophy. For within the solar life we find, so to speak, men and beings of all kinds, and our life there can only be a non-tortured one if we have understanding for every soul, no matter through which elements of education it has passed. In the solar sphere we can only understand souls if we are tolerant of the religious beliefs and religious experiences they have gone through. Among the beings of the higher hierarchies, for example, there are those that are most easily understood by Buddhists. They are of a special kind. They are not of the kind that can be understood by everyone at once. There is a certain separateness there.
When we come together with these beings in the solar sphere, something else special happens. These beings are there to give us something. And we need what they have to give. If we have no understanding for them, then what they can give us remains unusable for us. One speaks quite correctly when one says: What the angels in the solar sphere have to give can be understood through what one acquires when one settles into the age and into the powers that are given through the Buddha. - If you lack understanding when you meet the angels, who are the guiding powers of these creeds on earth, then they cannot give you what you need. Then the soul is just like a person here on earth who has no legs or no eyes. If you do not arrive in the solar sphere with full tolerance, you will be a cripple of the soul. This is a significant truth, my dear friends.
What first Christianity and now Theosophy gives to people must be absorbed. The Christ impulse was a very special impulse, and Christianity is very different from all other creeds. You can see this very clearly when you pick up Theosophical magazines from recent years. Theosophical principles have been recognized, but the Indian adept has only understood his religion and not the creeds of others. Hinduism and Buddhism appear in these journals as the only religion that can bring salvation. It is said that all religions should be studied, but this is not made the truth, and it cannot be made the truth if one has not received the power of tolerance from Christ. It is an anomaly when we are accused of intolerance towards all religions. This is incorrect, because we have spoken of the various religious systems in the same way as we have spoken of Christianity. This has to do with the way Christianity spread in Europe. Westerners would still be worshippers of Wotan today, but they are not, because they did not keep their religion, but accepted Christianity and submitted to it. This must be taken into account. In the naive way in which Christianity has been given to the peoples so far, it has sufficed, despite the great excesses against tolerance. But now it is no longer sufficient in this form. It must be deepened through theosophy. And only those who know that Theosophy must be understood will understand Christianity today. And he sins against Christianity who wants to keep Theosophy away from Christianity.
Here we are again at the point where we become aware of how the different religious systems of the peoples have their meaning.
The god had to descend to earth to experience death in the human way. In no other world could the mystery have taken place. If we grasp this, we will clearly understand that we must also experience the Christ impulse here on earth; we cannot experience it in another sphere if we have failed to experience it here. It must remain with us as a memory after death. We must carry this memory through all spheres.
When we then arrive in the solar sphere, my dear friends, we find two thrones. One throne is empty, is not filled with a real entity, but an Akashic entity sits on the throne. We only understand the entity if we look at it with the memory of the Mystery of Golgotha, which we take with us from this earth. Only with this memory do we understand this image of Akasha on the sun, for it shows us the Christ. The Christ gradually descended from the solar sphere and came to earth. At the baptism of the Jordan, the Christ being passed into the earthly sphere; since that time it has been experienced here on earth.
And we find yet another throne there. A throne with the entity by which it has always been occupied; it is occupied by Lucifer. Lucifer must now lead us into the other spheres. Without Lucifer we will not get any further. Even if the influence of Lucifer becomes pernicious to us on earth, even if we must wish not to fall prey to it on earth, we must remember that all influences are justified, but only in their sphere. Our further guide up into the universe must be Lucifer. We are guided in the same way by Christ and by Lucifer into the other spheres so that we can absorb the forces of the universe that we must absorb.
And when we have then developed to a certain extent, when we have become a large, very diluted sphere, as it were, then we compress ourselves again, so to speak, we go back through all the spheres once more; In the process we become smaller and smaller until we have become a very small spiritual sphere and are led to a pair of parents in order to embody ourselves anew, and a connection has always come about between that which has traversed the whole universe between death and new birth and that which is given by father and mother when we enter birth. That which lives in the human germ has traversed the entire universe of our planetary system and yet another sphere of stars and has clothed itself again with a body in order to reconnect with earthly life.
So we come from the universe with what we carry in our soul, what powers we have acquired. And if we now say to ourselves out of a moral reflection: You must do this, you must not do that, - this is because we have passed through the star spheres and have absorbed impulses for earthly life there. In each sphere we absorbed different impulses, and everything works together in us as the overall constitution of our soul. When we look out into the starry expanses, we say to ourselves: How related the starry worlds are to us! We carry something of those starry worlds within us! We have absorbed what is in us there. Let us once again recall Kant's saying: “Two things fill me with deep reverence: the moral law within me and the starry heavens above me.” The moral law only lives in us because we have absorbed it while wandering through the starry sky.
I could only describe a little, my dear friends, about life between death and a new birth. How could it be otherwise in such a short time. But we were able to discuss important moments. And my words were intended to help make human life in all its fullness more and more comprehensible. And if we draw the feeling of responsibility from this, then we have a real elixir of life in Theosophy. For when we have become aware that our powers have been brought together from the world, then the sense of responsibility can awaken that we must not let these soul powers lie fallow, but must develop them if we do not want to sin.