Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 3 March 1916, Bremen

74. The Riddle of Death as a Riddle of Life

[My dear friends!]

This time, too, we remember first those souls who stand outside on the great fields of events and have to stand up with soul and life for the great facts within which we live:

Ghosts of your souls, working guardians! May your wings bring
Our souls' pleading love
Your guardianship to trusted earthlings.
That united with your power
Our plea may shine helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

And for those who have already passed through the gates of death as a result of these events:

Ghosts of your souls, working guardians!
May your wings bring
Our souls' pleading love
To your guardianship trusted sphere people.
That united with your power
Our plea may shine helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

And the spirit that we seek with our spiritual science to be striven for, the spirit that has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha for the salvation of the earth, for the freedom and progress of mankind, may it be with you and your heavy duties!

At this time death enters life in such a thousand ways ... And just as it corresponds to our spiritual-scientific endeavor to always look at those sides of life which are only expressed here in the physical world, but which are the spiritual sides which man experiences in the normal course of his existence only through death, so it must be particularly appropriate in our time to look at this world, which lies behind the world of the senses, in so far as out of it that which men call death dissolves in its mysteriousness and itself becomes a part of life. We have certainly already been able to gain the attitude and conviction from the many considerations we have made that the kind of contemplation of death that we make is not an idle contemplation that brings man far from life, but that a full, pure view of life emerges precisely from the contemplation of the riddle of death. Therefore, when we contemplate death, we do not mean that we turn away from life within the physical body, which is assigned to us as a divine-spiritual task, but on the contrary, we mean: By contemplating eternal powers with the death of man, we are precisely bringing higher courage, higher power into that life which is allotted to us within the physical world.

Now we have looked again and again at the riddle of death, and our writings do the same. But we have probably already become accustomed to thinking, as is correct within spiritual science, that one can only gain a conviction about the facts of the spiritual world if one looks at the phenomena, the facts, again and again from the most diverse points of view.

It is already the case with the spiritual world that one must modify the mental images, the views one has from the sense world, and that one must change them many times, because the world behind the sense world is not merely a shadowy imprint of the sense world, but in many respects is fundamentally different from this sense world. And only gradually, by looking at the facts of the spiritual world from different points of view, is it possible to gain real mental images of what is present in the spiritual world. Thus, again from a certain point of view, the riddle of death may also be considered as a riddle of life in today's contemplation.

That which death initially presents to the senses, man already sees from this side: the decay of the physical body. But if death should have something terrible, something horrible at all, it could only be for this sight here from the physical world; for there it presents itself as an end of that which we always see in man as long as he dwells in the physical world between birth and death. But we then have the sight of death, when we ourselves have passed through the gate of death, from the other side. While here in physical life we see the physical body disintegrate, by looking at death from the side that we live through between death and a new birth, we see from that side how the eternal essence of the human being develops out of the physical shell. We do not have death as a decline, we have it as an ascent.

[Just as] we have it as an ascent, so it convinces us of the everlasting victory of the spirit over the physical. And here we must immediately get used to a mental image that is foreign to the physical view: the beginning of our physical life here on earth never enters our normal consciousness during this physical life. We remember back to a certain point in time; this is not the time of birth, but it is later than the time of birth. But no human being in the physical world here can look back to his birth without increased powers; no human being can say anything about his birth from his own experience in a normal way; it does not enter into physical consciousness. But just as it is true that the event of physical birth never enters our physical consciousness between birth and death, it is equally true that from the awakening of consciousness after death, through the whole time we live between death and a new birth, there is always present for us the retrospective view of the experience of death from the other side. So while we can never experience our birth, the beginning of our physical existence, with normal consciousness, it is normal for life between death and a new birth to always be able to look back at death from the other side, where it is a victory of the spirit over the physical, where it is not the death of the physical body, but the ascent of the spiritual, which now has to live through the period between death and a new birth, where death is the victory of the spiritual. And if we did not have this sight, then we would have no self-consciousness in this time between death and a new birth. But in the moment when we come into a state after death - there are also such states - that the sight of death, so to speak, withdraws from us, we are sleep-like in the time between death and a new birth, our state becomes sleep-like. Just as we know nothing of our ego here when we are asleep outside our physical body, so we know nothing of our ego after death if we cannot look back on the experience of death. This looking back to the experience of death continually ignites our self-consciousness after death. And as I said, if death could have anything horrific at all, it can only have it here in its physical appearance. For the most sublime, the greatest event to which we can look back is that which represents this victory of the spiritual over the physical ... seen from the other side, seen from the side after death - which we always have when we live self-consciously in the time between death and a new birth. Just as we have to immerse ourselves with our ego and our astral body into the physical body when we wake up, so that we become aware of our ego, so it is through this pushing in of the ego and the astral body that we can become aware of our ego - for the ego can be there as in sleep, some people are not aware of their ego. So it is necessary after death that we turn our spiritual gaze to the moment of death, to the events of death, so that this gaze can ignite our self-awareness after death.

We hand over our physical body to the elements of the earth - faster through burning, slowly through decay. Basically, the two ways of handing over the physical body to the earth differ only in the length of time. Both are basically the same process. We hand over our physical body to the elements of the earth; we no longer have it; it passes away from us in death, so to speak. What remains of this physical body? It is not as if we have nothing left, but something remains of this physical body. It would be quite wrong to believe that we have nothing left at all. You see, when we are here in the physical world, we feel like self-aware human beings within our skin. And the fact that we have our physical body within our skin means that we can feel like self-aware people here. Everything that we have falls away from us; it falls away from us to the outermost limits of our skin ... But what filled our body really remains in our consciousness after death, like a kind of cavity of the whole universe - as strange, as paradoxical as that sounds - it remains there. It is not the place that matters, but the form. While we feel ourselves here within our skin form, after death, when the physical body has fallen away from us, we get the mental image of the whole universe, which, as we will see in a moment, fills us more and more: But left out of this universe of our physical body form is hollow space. And we do not perceive it in such a way that we would merely regard it as a hollow space; in fact, that is by no means the main thing ... but after death it becomes a feeling, a basic feeling; it becomes an extraordinarily blissful and important feeling. It becomes the feeling: Look, there is something in the world that only you can fill. There are many things in the whole universe, but what is in the whole universe leaves your place empty. And that space will always be empty from beginning to end if you don't fill it.

That you belong as a building block to the whole universe, to the whole world, that is the feeling that arises from this contemplation, if I may say so, of the hollow space, the hollow space of our physical body. Here we have our physical body between birth and death filled with muscles, blood and bones. There we find precisely that which is filled here, hollow in the world, empty. And we know: This space is ours, it belongs to us. And that is a blissful thing. You know that you are incorporated into this whole world as something that has a meaning, a purpose in the whole world.

Do not underestimate the realization of just such a sensation, for it is given to us with the falling away of the physical body. Because we no longer have the physical body, what we otherwise feel in the physical body is transformed into sensation: You are not in the world for nothing. You are a building block in it. It depends on you. You have to be there.

Such a feeling was naturally felt by those who had a true, real, at least sentient knowledge of the spiritual world. As, for example, Angelus Silesius coined his beautiful saying after such a sensation, saying:

God could not live a moment without me;
If I were to perish,
He would have to give up the ghost from need.

This means: Whatever there is in the world of the divine-spiritual, there is one thing where I belong. The soul can say this to itself - because it is caused by the discarding of the physical body - throughout the whole time between death and a new birth. And that is a fundamental feeling, an important, essential feeling.

Then we know that we carry our etheric body, as we say, with us for days after death, and that during this time we have, so to speak, a life tableau of everything we have experienced in a certain relationship between birth and death. But we must also understand this life tableau correctly, really understand it correctly. ... We can perhaps start from life here between birth and death in order to get a mental image of what actually happens to us immediately after death. Not true, we live here in the physical body between birth and death. We have the most diverse experiences. When we are awake, we have experiences every hour, every minute; whether we hear something, whether we do something, we always have experiences. And these experiences accompany our thoughts. As humans, we are thinking beings. Regardless of whether we hear something or do something: We think. Thoughts, mental images accompany what we experience in our physical body. And with these thoughts we work through our inner soul. And these thoughts are not, as we know, merely of a temporary nature, but we can retrieve these thoughts from our soul again and again. We have a memory, which means that a thought that I have now formed does not pass immediately, but I can perhaps still retrieve it from my soul years later. Imagine for a moment everything that you are carrying inside you: You have this whole world of thoughts that you have formed from experiences in the outside world inside you. Imagine that ... then you have to say: you are constantly weaving in your thoughts. What are you weaving into when you think? In truth, you are weaving in your etheric body. So this weaving, which leads to the thought being able to remain in the memory, actually happens in the etheric body, happens correctly in the etheric body.

But now man lives like this in the etheric body and thinks and says: Well, I think, and I carry my thoughts within me, and sometimes I remember my thoughts. And he believes that this web of thoughts is only within him. But it's not like that; it's not like that at all. In reality, man does not know himself at all! The fact that we go through the world, have thoughts, that these thoughts are interwoven by us, that is the very least of this process. Let's put the matter in concrete terms: you are sitting here now and listening to me. Thoughts are constantly passing through your soul, which you can then retain ... Sure, that's one side of it. But that is only the lesser side of the matter. While you are all thinking here, beings of the higher hierarchy, from the Angeloi through the Archangeloi up to the Archai, are flitting or undulating through space, and they have their work to do on the thoughts. You do not perceive all this with normal consciousness. But do not believe that man is merely placed here in the world so that he can form his thoughts here for his pleasure between birth and death; but while we are forming our thoughts, a wealth of spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies are working on these thoughts here. Our soul is only the scene where the thoughts arise. From these thoughts something quite different is made than what merely lives on in our memories. These thoughts are woven together, these thoughts are formed into one another and mean something quite different from what we make of them. We not only live for ourselves, we also live between birth and death - if we may say so - for the gods. And while we are thinking, the gods are working on their world. We put our thoughts together, one after the other, so that they serve us until we die. The gods arrange them differently, the thoughts. They arrange them in us in such a way that they serve them in the creation, in the ongoing creation of the world. While we organize our thoughts according to our logical human rules, the gods also organize our thoughts in such a way that - when a person passes through the gate of death - they have created a new piece of the world in these thoughts. They then pull them out of the etheric body ... and there they have a new piece of the world. It is not unnecessary for a person to contemplate the world. Rather, by thinking, a new piece of the world is woven from his thoughts, a real new piece of the world is woven. Let us only become aware of the fact that behind the outside of our thinking, which we perceive inwardly, are world-working divine spirits of the various hierarchies who, while they let us weave our thoughts between birth and death so that we can enjoy our freedom, do their work with our thoughts for the world!

Now, after death, our thoughts remain for a few days approximately as they were in our memory; but not only those which we remember as thoughts - also those which we have otherwise forgotten appear in these days. And they do not appear as they are remembered here, that one is later, the other earlier - but they appear in a panorama of life, in a tableau, all at the same time. For a few days, we have our whole life around us at the same time. Yes, we do. Our whole life is seen for a few days, really seen for a few days. But then, when it has been looked at for a few days, the divine-spiritual beings take away what we call our etheric body and weave it into the whole etheric universe. At first it is woven in in a small way; then it becomes correspondingly larger and from then on forms a part of the whole etheric realm of the world.

So what does “dying” actually mean for humans? For the human being, “dying” means - forgive the trivial expression, but it is correct - that he has spent his whole life sewing a thought structure, and that he now hands this thought structure over to the world ether a few days after his physical death. And it is now woven into the world ether.

His physical body has held it together in him until death. Now that his physical body has fallen away, it is pulled apart and interwoven into the whole world ether - in one case to a greater extent, in another to a lesser extent; but it is interwoven into the whole world ether. Thus it is outside of us what we have always carried within us in our thoughts; for only the thoughts with which we have accompanied that which we have experienced are woven into the world ether in this way by the gods. Thus what we have always carried within us, what the physical body has held together, is outside of us ... Not true, until death we can regard that which is our thought-fabric as our property, as inner. No man, when he remembers, will say: The thought, it would have sat somewhere else than in his soul; from there he brought it up. - Now it is outside us, belongs to the outside world. This is again a significant experience after death, that after we have gone through the days after the life tableau, we turn the inside into the outside, so to speak. What was the course of our thoughts now becomes the outer course, lives inside in the outer world. And as true as we look here at the stars and moon, as we look here at mountains and rivers, so after death we look at that which the gods have woven out of our thoughts during our life, and which is now woven into the world ether. That is where we look back to. One can speak quite correctly when one says: With this event the inner has become an outer in man. The inside of his world of thoughts has become an outside.

And now begins that life, of which we have also often spoken, which is quite familiar to you, where man lives back that life approximately in the time, which is a third of the earth life lived through, where he lives it back in such a way that he now goes through the events again three times as fast as he has lived between birth and death, from death back after birth. But he goes through them differently than he went through them here during physical existence - differently. Here during physical existence we commit certain actions, for example, or we form certain thoughts according to inner impulses. In these actions, in these thoughts, we have certain feelings within us.

But now it is particularly important to consider what we are now dealing with in the time after death - of which we are now speaking - to consider what effect both our thoughts and our actions have had on our fellow world. Just take the extreme case that I often cite, just because it illustrates something: I inflict an insult on someone in life, whether through words or deeds. Not true, I, who inflict the insult, will have certain feelings. I will not inflict a certain offense on him for nothing, if I am not a fool; but I will have my reasons for doing so. I feel something. But he feels differently - differently when he receives the insult. What he feels and what I feel are two different things. But during my life here between birth and death, I only go through what I feel. This feeling is not repeated in the same way after death in the life backwards, but I experience what he felt. I go through all my actions in their effects. I go through the effects of what I have experienced here, thus living back what I have done. I live through that.

On the other hand, it is quite correct to say that what is there, what is to be experienced here in physical life apart from us, is now to be experienced inwardly. You see, the weaving of the etheric thought-tableau into the world ether can be described by saying: The inner becomes an outer. In this time that now follows, when one lives back, the outer becomes an inner; for until now it was outside what the other felt. Everything that the other person felt now becomes inner - that is what you experience as your own experience in this living back. Everything is experienced in this way. You really experience it like this! And you are really spared nothing, nothing. You relive everything, everything that you have done or thought or felt that has had an effect in the world, you experience it again by now feeling inside the other person.

The etheric body is discarded after death. That which was experienced in the etheric body is woven into the etheric world. One lives on in what we call the astral body ... and in the ego. Now again, it is good to consider this life in the astral body already here during the physical existence between birth and death. You see, the human being, while he is here on earth, with all that he can think and understand and judge, actually feels enormously clever. There is no doubt that man seems extraordinarily clever. But it would be a bad thing for man if this cleverness that he possesses had to guide him through life. It does not do that at all. For this cleverness does not lead him through life; but man can have no other view than this, that he is led through life by his own cleverness, because he cannot perceive that which is still necessary for his life. In a sense, man sees very little of what actually relates to his life - very little. Take an extreme, a radical case.

Someone has the obligation to appear at his office at eight o'clock in the morning. He always leaves home in such a way that he arrives at his office punctually at eight o'clock. Once it happens that he is five minutes late. It has no other effect than that he arrives at the office five minutes after eight o'clock. If the boss is grumpy, well, then there's a little ruffle; if the boss isn't grumpy, then there isn't even a ruffle, is there! So it doesn't need to have any particular effect at all - it just passes. But it could be that you wouldn't have seen something important, wouldn't have noticed it at all. Suppose the situation had been such that, even if you had left at the right time that day, you would have crossed a road embankment somewhere and an accident would have happened to you there: The conditions were all there for disaster to befall you. The only thing you can see is that you arrived at the office five minutes late, right! But you don't even realize that you came out of it with your skin intact and how you were saved from something that could have brought you great misfortune. Yes, that's just one example - but we live like that all the time. We only ever pay attention to how we weave ourselves into life, how we lead our lives. What we are constantly protected from, what we pass by because we are not touched by it, we pay no attention to. If we were to pay attention to what we are protected from, what is constantly at work around us, so to speak, that life does not proceed as it apparently does through our cleverness ... then we would first become aware of how in every

minute of our life, whole hierarchies of divine beings work into our astral body, and how we are under the guidance of the beings of the higher hierarchies and complete our life under the guidance of these higher hierarchies.

A complete knowledge of the wisdom that is necessary to guide a human being along the path of life between birth and death would be such a comprehensive wisdom, such a colossal wisdom - which is taken from us by the beings of the higher hierarchies - that we cannot even form a mental image of it according to the wisdom that we can accumulate here between birth and death according to the tools of our brain. But this wisdom flows through our astral body as the work of the gods. Where does it come from that we know nothing of this wisdom? If we knew anything about it, we would not be able to learn freedom as human beings. We would always be guided. It is wisely arranged in the world that we know nothing of this wisdom between birth and death; for this is our school of freedom. Therefore, through the wise guidance of the higher hierarchies, we are made to see nothing of this wisdom in our astral body. How can we see nothing? Yes, of course this wisdom must be obscured. And it is obscured by all the feelings that live in our astral body, which numb us to what is happening. These feelings always spread like a fog over the wisdom that actually shines into our astral body from all sides from the whole world. The fact that I walk across the street, that I have impressions, all this covers the wisdom that shines into my astral body for normal consciousness ... That is why there is so much lying in the world now, because the truth would be agonizing, because the truth would be terrible.

Well, this is also how we cover up the wisdom that we cannot bear; we cover up that immensely wide light of wisdom that constantly permeates our astral body by always awakening feelings and sensations about the positive things we experience, through which we are just passing. On the other hand, everything that is necessary to lead us past the overall current of the world, the wisdom current: We cover ourselves with that!

But even after death we must first gradually become accustomed to the sight of that which pulsates through the whole world as wisdom from the higher hierarchies and passes through our astral body. We have to get used to it first! And this happens during our return to life by turning the outer into the inner. By seeing the effects, the outer effects of our thoughts and deeds, we become accustomed to the outer world. In this way we get used to seeing not only what lies in our own wisdom, but what lies in the wisdom of the world. You see: There is a deep meaning to every single series of facts that we go through, even between death and a new birth.

And then, when we have gone through this, what kind of time begins? Yes, you see, if you really want to look at it inwardly, you can find out what then begins by perhaps going through the following mental image with me. You see, man, thank God, has not been given the task by world events of consciously forming the miracle structure that he himself is. For just think how little man knows - through today's science, for example - of the miraculous structure of his own organism! If he first had to build it from the concepts, from the mental images that today's science can already give him: Something beautiful would come out of it! Now, of course, the clever people who build a worldview from today's science will say: Man doesn't need that at all, because it all takes care of itself. All a person needs to do, isn't it, is to be born! It's all done by the forces of nature. Why does he need to build up his organism? That takes care of itself! - That is of course a clever point of view! It really is a point of view appropriate to an epoch of human development that has its own opinions, in contrast to the earlier opinions, isn't it, which were built on authority alone! People today, of course, always have their own opinions, because they have forgotten that they have read their own opinions in the newspaper; because today their own opinions are those that they have forgotten that they have read in the newspaper or at most in a brochure or a modern book!

I said: It is an opinion of today that man has no need to build anything on his own organism from the spiritual. Because, isn't it true, man naturally makes himself! - That's what people say. But just think about it: there could be beings - we can certainly accept the hypothesis - who would not be able to perceive people, who would not perceive people at all ... but otherwise they could perceive everything. Here in Bremen - let's assume again - these beings could perceive everything except people. Now, just as humans do not perceive Angeloi, these beings would not perceive humans, but they could perceive clocks ... They could perceive clocks. Suppose: These beings were now walking around in their species or flying - or whatever - through Bremen. They would say: there are clocks in Bremen, but there are no people to make clocks, so the clocks are created all by themselves. Nobody needs to be there to make the clocks, right? They could even go into a clock store, these beings; they would see how it all comes together to make clocks ... They don't see people! So they would say: the clocks come into being all by themselves. - So far are those who say today: What need to think today about the fact that people arise from some spiritual activity? People come into being of their own accord, don't they, through conception and birth; that's how they are formed. - That what is an external process is completely organized by spiritual beings, that it is only the external process for the work of the spiritual beings: That is, of course, something that must be recognized. And just as the watchmaker must stand behind the watch, so countless beings of the higher hierarchies must stand behind this process, which takes shape “by itself” according to the view of the very clever people of today - isn't that right?

But there is something else that we must include in our mental image in order to gain insight into this area. You see, today's science says: you can see from the geniuses that the qualities in the soul are also inherited. - Not so long ago, a rather thick book about Goethe was published. It talks about Goethe's qualities and then it looks at his mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, in all directions, as far back as one could go, to see how these qualities are found in the ancestors, isn't it, and then they were organized in such a way that they finally appeared in the genius. So the inheritance has been given according to experience - they say - it is quite natural that the genius has inherited all this, isn't it! But this wisdom is not very clever, because it is similar to that which considers it particularly clever that if someone falls into water, he gets wet. Not true, because the soul winds its way through the succession of generations, it takes on the characteristics of the succession of generations, just as the one who falls into the water takes on the water and gets wet. Thus man bears the characteristics of the generations with which he lives in the way - as we shall see in a moment - he bears them in himself, which is not at all wonderful.

But if you wanted to go about it differently, to prove it in a scientific way, you would have to start from genius and then show how the descendants of the genius in question have inherited the characteristics of the genius. This will probably not be done. For one can, can't one, at best make all sorts of observations, talk about how Goethe inherited certain qualities from his ancestors; but to show that his great, brilliant qualities were passed on to his son or his grandchildren is something one will probably leave alone. And if you can prove it ... well, for example, there is a very famous European statesman today who is the son of his father: it seems as if the genius qualities had passed directly from father to son. The greatest quality ... which posterity will perhaps one day recognize, is that neither of them were geniuses, neither the father nor the son!

Yes, this whole idea of heredity has nothing to do with it at all. Rather, this whole matter must be investigated in the following way ... because occult observation shows us the following.

You see: Does man know anything at all about his physical inner being, how he lives in his physical inner being within his skin? Yes, sometimes one knows something: when someone has a terrible headache, he knows something of the inside of his head; he feels it inside, feels his head, which one does not feel at all when one is normally healthy. The stomach only growls when it is hungry, when something is wrong as a result of pain or deprivation. It's just a rather dull realization, and you wouldn't be able to do much with it. After all, in contrast to what we usually feel about the outside world, it is a kind of inner sensation. But in a subtle way, in a very subtle way, this experience of our inner being is actually present throughout our entire life between birth and death, in that we grow older and older between birth and death. What does it mean to grow older and older? It means, doesn't it: the physical body becomes less and less alive, it makes us more and more tired and weary, because we want to work through it. You can feel this as the years go by. In a way, there really is the fact that you do feel your physical body more and more ... even if this happens habitually and of course you don't feel it as strongly. But just think, someone could compare the way he related to his physical body as an eight-year-old boy or girl while working with the way he relates to his physical body in his fiftieth year, and the intermediate things would follow one after the other: Then one would already notice how different the physical body has become, how a certain slackening occurs in the physical body - a becoming tired of life, which is quite natural, but which is nevertheless there - like a becoming tired of life. The bruises of old age consist in nothing other than that one feels one's physical body, that it becomes more and more perceptible. And the core freshness of youth consists in not feeling it, in carrying it through life impalpably. The whole of life between birth and death is such that one can say: The physical body is felt, sensed, more and more.

When you discard it, this cannot yet emerge. But when you have discarded the etheric body, when you have gone through life backwards, as I have described, by observing the effects of it ..., only then do you realize what significance it has that you live into the physical body by feeling it. For then one realizes that tremendous perceived wisdom is necessary in order to form out of the universe that which is a human body as a microcosm. And this is poured into our physical body during our lifetime. We now see this as the wisdom of the whole cosmos. Indeed, it is hardly possible today to make clear to a human being what significance it actually has, the confluence of this wisdom from all the undertakings of the gods, which are necessary to produce the miraculous construction of the human head alone, which in fact crystallizes out of the whole universe as a small world, but wisely built. By carrying our head through the world, we make use of this head between birth and death; but for this head to come into being, for it to really be an image of this whole world, the work of many, many divine-spiritual beings of the highest hierarchies is necessary.

I tried to give you a mental image of the feeling you can have when you become conscious: That which you are wearing above your neck is truly the work of worlds of gods, just as truly as a machine is not only the work of the one who makes it, but the own work of the one who first had to think so that it can be invented. But on the physical plan of the earth a wretched machine is brought about - out of the whole universe this head is brought about, through which we carry the whole world within us. We really do carry the whole world within us! Not only the whole world, but the creation of the gods within us! Oh, if only people could feel that!

And when that which has been described between birth and death has been stripped away in the passing through from death to birth in threefold speed, then it approaches man that the preparation for a next earthly existence is already begun, so that his next earthly existence can take on the form that he needs after all that he has formed in the etheric world picture, which is interwoven in the effects that he has put out into the world. These causes are now, so to speak, built upon.

You can imagine correctly: When we have reached the time that has been described, then the work on us, into which we have to integrate ourselves, in which we ourselves take part, but under the guidance of the spirits of the Hierarchies ... these spirits of the higher hierarchies do the work on us. And as true as that which happens to us is condensed here in our skin, so true - I would like to say - is that which is now being worked on in the whole time between death and a new birth poured out as if in a hollow sphere of the whole world. So with the exception of time, which we have already discussed, everywhere - but now in the universe, not in the center, not within our skin, but in the circumference - is being poured out. That must be the case. There must be some kind of vibration. If you were to imagine (figuratively speaking, of course) instead of being here: The firmament as a real reality ... and genii or beings of the higher hierarchies arranged working on the firmament, drawing a winding ... just this winding, which has to be worked out so that it corresponds exactly to our karma, to what we have lived out ... then another winding that has to be drawn ... and when the time has passed that we go through between death and a new

Birth, then the whole universe is interwoven with a structure that has come into being through the work of the gods. This is in there - it then contracts, becomes smaller and smaller and finally appears by uniting itself with that which is created in the mother.

Pulled together from the whole world and united with what happens purely materially in the mother, that which is called the incarnation of the human being comes into being. What is in there, these convolutions of the brain, they are folded together from the whole universe.

Such mental images can really translate into deep, deep religious feelings. For how one feels one's human share in the mysteries of the world when one can look at the human being!

When man has now arrived between death and a new birth at what in the last Mystery Play was called the midnight hour of existence, thus approximately in the middle between death and a new birth, when man has arrived there, then in the normal course of the continued work that is done in the spiritual world, so that man can appear again in the way just described, the time is also there when he already works down to earth again. What is produced in the spiritual world is already working down to earth again.

So let us take the concrete case of “Goethe”. Not true, he had previously incarnated at some point in time. Now he has gone into the spiritual world, then comes the time in the middle between death and new birth: there he is already working down again - and there something happens that brings certain people who live here into relationships. Relationships between people are certainly connected with the karmic relationships of people on the one hand, but they are also dependent on many other relationships. So connections between many people happen when a person begins to work on earth again a long time before he returns, i.e. in the middle of the time between death and a new birth. And these relationships then continue, on and on under the influence of the spiritual world, until finally the relationship between father and mother arises from these relationships, through which the respective incarnation of the soul then takes place. So Goethe was involved in all the relationships that formed in the world, so that in the end Caspar Goethe and Mrs. Rat Goethe could come together, that their parents, their grandparents could come together. And here we can go back centuries in the way in which people are brought together, until what finally results is what leads old Caspar Goethe to the woman who is called “Mrs. Aja”; that they come together, in this the individuality of the man Goethe is already at work. It is the man himself who works through the generations that preceded his parents. It is not the hereditary relationships that make man similar to his ancestors, but it is he [himself] who already organizes heredity through long periods of time. If you think, for example, from our present time up to Charlemagne, that is about thirty generations. You don't need to think any further than that: there are only thirty generations up to Charlemagne. If you imagine thirty people standing one behind the other, gripping each other's hands backwards, you could imagine that they have lived since Charlemagne. Through such a period of time, that which is being worked out up there in the spiritual realm is already working its way down to the physical earth.

As a rule, the opposite of what physical science propagates as a worldview is true. While physical science believes that heredity gives us our qualities, we actually bring about, centuries before our birth, through our qualities, that the relevant conditions are created in our ancestors within which we can then embody ourselves. All this is connected with work that takes place in the spiritual world. And from this you will now be able to judge that one need not imagine that man has to work hard here in the physical world, as a being embodied in the physical body, and can then lie down [on] the lazy skin of bliss between death and a new birth - yes, he does not have skin - and surrender to bliss, does he not? That is not the case at all. Creation takes place between death and a new birth, just as it does here. And creation not only has a meaning for the spiritual world, but it flows down into what happens here, which is just as little seen as beings - who could not see people, only watches could see what happens daily through the fact that people are created on earth, that people follow one another. All of this is organized, behind it is the organization of the spiritual world. And this is based on work, on serious work by the spiritual world. Of course, all this is hidden from physical observation.

Now all the wisdom that is necessary to build up a human being between death and new birth must be utilized. And man then utilizes it in what he unconsciously absorbs between birth and death from this feeling of ageing, in the feeling, in the sensing of ageing, the quiet feeling of ageing. What he acquires there is received by the gods, and that which he experiences as weariness of life is sprouted through them in their wisdom, so to speak, into fertile forces for a new organization, for a new incarnation. One does not become tired in an incarnation for nothing. You need fatigue so that the forces can sprout out of it that you need to develop in order to form a new incarnation.

We can only ever hint at individual aspects of these things, but from these hints you will see how multifaceted the ideas we have to gain must be if we really want to gain a corresponding mental image of life between death and a new birth that is so corresponding that we can also see the connection between life between death and a new birth and between birth and death. If we consider, as we have done again today, the life between death and a new birth, we will not be so foolish as to believe that the forces which we only develop between death and a new birth do not continually enter into life. They are always and forever there.

Now it may be important, after we have considered so many things in relation to life between death and a new birth, to draw attention to something else: to the way in which after death the one who has passed through the gate of death is looked at. He has the opportunity to perceive the soul, the spiritual - the soul-spiritual. Now one must imagine that this perception is a spiritual co-experience.

It is the perception of those souls, which have gone up before us through the gate of death into the spiritual world, which we meet there, much more inwardly, let us say, than when we perceive these souls here, where they are separated from us through the body. Nevertheless, it is much more inward - but precisely because it is much more inward - the mental images that we form of the dead, of those whom we encounter there as dead people who have died before us, must basically be created by ourselves. So think: someone goes through the gate of death, and someone is there whom he knew here in life: He comes into their region. (He always enters their region.) He senses that someone is there. He also knows from an immediate feeling who it is; but he cannot imagine him unless he mentally scans, as it were, what he only knows is there. You can form an approximate idea of the way in which you have to work on the mental image of the souls that you get to know after death, if you think to yourself: We would be here in the dark, and one would not see the other with physical eyes, but only recognize them by touch, so we have to create the image ourselves. Thus all mental images of souls that have passed through the gate of death before us must first be formed through spiritual scanning. So to be active - as a rule we do not really imagine this - we must not give ourselves over to the impressions of the spiritual world as passively as we give ourselves over to the impressions of the physical-sensual world. In order for me to see one of you physically-sensually, he only needs to walk in the door: There he appears to my eye - I need do nothing about it. It is not like that after death. You know that, but you have to form the mental image first. I am active in that I have to form the mental image of the soul out of my own imagination.

This is somewhat different for souls which are still here on earth and which the dead person sees from the spiritual world than souls which still live on earth, which therefore have not yet died. The dead person also perceives such souls that have not yet died, but in such a way that he does not need to form the mental images himself, but that these images confront him as imaginations. Thus, even after death, one knows, for example, whether one is dealing with an inhabitant of the same world who has already passed through the gate of death. You imagine him through activity; the one who still lives in the physical body appears before you as an imagination, as a picture, as a finished image. That is the significant difference. And everything that lives in such a soul, especially if it is related to the spiritual world, can also be perceived by the other world. Hence the advice, isn't it, to send loving thoughts to the deceased or to read aloud such things that relate to the spiritual world. Reading aloud is something like spiritual nourishment for the dead or a spiritual breathing process. They take part in this when we direct our thoughts to them.

There are certainly some people today who believe they are idealistic. They are not. Because they think in a very materialistic way, even though they want to be idealistic. So there is one of the most important - let's say - criminal anthropologists of our time (I've mentioned him before), Benedikt. Benedikt first studied the brains of criminals with great care on a broader scale. And there is always a peculiar aspect to criminal brains. These criminal brains have the characteristic that the occipital lobe does not properly cover the cerebellum, whereas in normally developed people the occipital lobe covers the cerebellum quite properly. So, isn't it true that through such an investigation - and it is true, it is quite correct - through such an investigation one comes to divide people into two classes: into those who have proper occipital lobes that cover the cerebellum and who do not commit crimes; and into those who have an occipital lobe that is too small, a stunted one that does not cover the cerebellum, and who become criminals. That is right; that is an absolutely correct observation. This smaller, this atrophied occipital lobe is also present in apes. So the criminal simply reverts to the nature of the ape, says the materialist. Well, that's how it is.

Yes, I ask you, what can a person do if he is organized in such a way that he has acquired an occipital lobe that is too small and thus becomes a criminal? Doesn't professing a worldview that looks only at this mean introducing criminal justice as a mere lie? Can you still punish someone if you can say to yourself: A person must become a criminal if he has too small an occipital lobe! Does it make any sense to punish people then? Or is it not rather only sensible to say to oneself: Yes, if it depends on someone becoming a criminal because he has too small an occipital lobe, then being a criminal is just as necessary as rain and sunshine; and just as one does not punish the rain or the sea - unless one is Xerxes and has it whipped through, isn't it, when it becomes unpleasant - so one cannot punish a criminal. The whole criminal justice system would become a lie! And yet what Professor Benedikt said is true: It is true that all criminal brains have an occipital lobe that is too short.

Now think to yourself, if there is truth in it that is based on materialism, then all punishment and all talk of moral responsibility could actually be abolished! It wouldn't make the slightest sense, and it would have to be abolished if, in truth, no other worldview than this one had to enter. It is quite clear that it should be abolished.

What do people need to know for it to be possible to speak of morality at all? People need to know that the human being also has an etheric body, and that if the occipital lobe of the physical brain is too small, the etheric brain, the etheric occipital lobe, can nevertheless be developed not only in a normal way, but even in an excessively normal way, in a way that goes beyond the normal; and that the human being compensates for what he develops as inner soul life, and what he misses when he has a too small, a stunted occipital lobe, by the fact that the etheric body is all the more powerfully developed, because one has taken care of this in his upbringing. Because they balance each other out: the physical occipital lobe and the etheric occipital lobe. This means that a time must come when people will say to themselves: It is quite true that the criminal has too small an occipital lobe; but how the consequences are to be remedied will become clear when one learns to look at people in their development in the way described in the simple booklet “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”. If you observe people, you will know: This or that principle of education must be applied in order to compensate for what is lacking in the physical body. People will have to know this in the future, they will have to know it correctly in the future! It will have to be taken into account that the spiritual human being is present. From the present time onwards it is the task of human beings to know this and to apply it in life. For what would happen otherwise, if nowhere, nowhere in the world were educated in this way, and people did not behave towards people in the way they do on the condition that an etheric human being is present? Yes, then, under the influence of those thoughts which cling only to the physical body, mankind would come to depend only on the physical body. It would come to depend only on the physical body! If the materialistic worldview were able to triumph, the etheric body would be forgotten, and it would not be developed in the near future. - The human being who is born with an occipital lobe that is too short shows that by nature he also has an etheric lobe that is too short, for the physical brain is formed in this way because the etheric lobe is also too short; but through education the etheric lobe can be lengthened ... although not the physical one, at least only partially

... you then have to lengthen it in a roundabout way through the etheric lobe.

What can be a materialistic worldview today can be a human institution according to the corresponding length of time. For the moment one forgets the spiritual, the physical is at the mercy of Ahriman: He then takes possession of the whole physical. You can only wrest it from him by taking the spiritual into consideration in the way you relate to people. If one forgets the spiritual, then one is working in the spirit of Ahriman: one hands over the earthly world to Ahriman, as it were, with the materialistic worldview. People do not even think about how they are on the way to handing over the earth to the devil. It is terrible how far they have come on this path! Some phenomena can be heartbreaking!

Not true, out of a deep instinct such a man as Goethe delivered his “Faust” to show people that the devil is really there, that Mephisto is there, that he is at work. A man as clever as Stendhal, who wrote so many beautiful works, objected to “Faust” that it would actually be silly to invent the Faust fable in this way ... Forgive me for having to repeat the expression, but as I said, a very witty Frenchman like Stendhal said it - he said: Well, you really don't need to go to the lengths that Goethe did! After all, a halfway normal person would succeed in seducing a fashionista without the help of the devil.

This is the criticism of “Faust” by the witty Stendhal! It is written in such a way that even with this witty man it must be said:

The little people never feel the devil,
even if he had them by the collar!

He just doesn't see the devil when “a halfway normal person”, in his opinion, “seduces a fashionista”! He just doesn't see that it's there, always there. - And so we can say: the materialists don't see the devil they are working into the hands of. And they are basically in the process of having a materialistic worldview today and bringing about a materialistically shaped humanity in the future.

One would really like to see what would become of humanity if only the materialistic worldview were to continue to work. Of course, very clever people today imagine that in centuries ... well, the human world and the animal world will be a bit more developed! But even from geology they could deduce that this is not the case: for the mammal fauna appears within the earth's evolution and tells us of extinct species ... But well, don't they, people don't think of such things! A time will come when there will be a completely different animal world in the world, with which man will only be able to do something if he has spiritually developed within himself that which can be developed through a spiritual worldview. That which exists today as the higher animal world, for example, will be almost completely extinct. There will be peculiar higher animals. Yes, there will then be, for example, a species of animal very close to man, which will spread a kind of light backwards and have an organ in front which will, so to speak, reproduce in sounds what is influenced by the world. But man will only be able to find his way in this animal world when he has developed his spirituality according to the principles of the knowledge of this spirituality. Only then will he be able to find his way in this world; otherwise he will have to walk around on earth as an upright animal, probably with lobes on the back of his head that are all too small. - You see, it's easy to say: Well, we'll leave it to the gods to make sure that it doesn't turn out that way and that the earth reaches its destination! If the gods are clever enough (you could say), then people can become materialists for a long time - the gods will lead the earth to its goal.

But that's not how the gods have set up the earth. The gods want people to be free beings. And we have to play our part! And it depends on us whether we now integrate spiritual science into the spiritual development of humanity. It depends on that. What the impulses of spiritual science are must take hold in human hearts.

It is so dismal when you see how short-sighted people are! I said to our friends in Hamburg some time ago how one could even see outwardly, from external documents, that people still had correct views of the spiritual world a relatively short time ago, views such that they knew: there is the spiritual world behind it. At that time they were atavistic views. Now it has to develop consciously. But think how impressive it is when something like the following can be experienced: Let us remember the biblical image of the Luciferian seduction of man. If a painter today paints this, naturalistically, futuristically or cubistically, impressionistically or expressionistically ... (somehow “istic” has to be painted today too, doesn't it) ... but in any case he paints in such a way that he paints the snake - as a seducer figure on a tree. He thinks he is being quite realistic. But just imagine that a modern-day snake could seduce a woman! Even Eve would not be able to seduce a modern-day snake! At most, today's snake as a real animal can only be an image of what is meant. Or do you believe that those who cling to the mental image are thinking in real terms? The serpent of paradise must be imagined as a present-day serpent.... and paints that? - He thinks just as little realistically as the critic, doesn't he, who accuses anthroposophy or theosophy of being full of fantasists. There is a review about myself (I think it appeared in “Hammer”): There's a long story about how all that is presented is fantastic. And then such fantasy is condemned, and then the person in question shares some notes about me: 'It's pure fantasy! It's all just drawn from the imagination! About where I was born, how I was born, who I'm descended from - it's all pure fantasy! Yes, that's how consistent people are!

You see, if you want to paint Lucifer, you have to remember that he lived on the moon and stayed behind with his lunar development - so you have to depict him in such a way that you can't see him as an external being. He cannot be absolutely similar to an external earthly being - only remotely, not absolutely. So what is this Lucifer? And you get to that as soon as you know that the human organization actually consists of two limbs. We have our head with the spine attached to it, and then - you can see this in the skeleton - everything else is actually attached to it. What we bring with us from the moon is our head. Everything else that was first formed on earth is actually so predisposed in us that you can also see it all - but now inwardly; on the moon it was still etheric, not yet physically formed. If you wanted to paint Lucifer on the moon, you would have to paint a human head and on it - as is the case with us now as a spinal cord - a serpent's body.

Now there is - I have seen this in Hamburg - a picture by Master Bertram, who painted the Fall of Man in the thirteenth or fourteenth century like this: Lucifer with a human head, with the spinal cord attached to it in the form of a snake. So in the thirteenth or fourteenth century there was a painter who painted it correctly. And people today don't even think of it: So people in the thirteenth, fourteenth century must have known this in an old form of clairvoyance ..., but these people of today claim: Everything proceeds so successively in development. Although any flower could teach you that it is not successive, because the green leaves change into the colored petals in one leap! Successive development - without leaps - is the stupidest thing you can say, because nature is always making leaps, constantly making leaps. But people think to themselves, don't they: it's all child's play, it's all invented, it's made up! - It's not made up, it's not invented, but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as we can see, people were still atavistically looking into the spiritual world, and you can prove it externally, documentarily. Many such things could be cited.

The centuries we have now lived through were there to alienate man from the spiritual world, and he must in turn now place himself in the spiritual world. This must happen through spiritual science. It is very necessary that we take seriously, very seriously, what we recognize as the task of spiritual science: as I said, the cultivation of spiritual knowledge, so that this spiritual knowledge can intervene, can really intervene, in all life practice. And for this a special help will arise. Mankind is facing a terrible event in the present. Oh, if only people would think a little, a little today! But in their own opinion, people today are actually too clever to think! The lecture I gave publicly here yesterday, I also gave it recently in Leipzig. Two gentlemen approached me after this lecture, pacifists, who have no insignificant position in Leipzig - pacifists. They expressed their astonishment that, in view of today's events, the humanities, which should be much closer to pacifism than any other worldview, could also emphasize what is important to a nation. The national, they said, that - they would have thought - was far removed from such a worldview as spiritual science.

Of course, you can't ask people to accept that the greatest wars in world history have taken place since the existence of this abstract pacifism and have led to the present day! You can't even ask people to realize that they are imitating that strange man who ruled a great empire in the East, involved it in a devastating war, at the same time officially launched pacifism into the world and at the same time, didn't he, help organize the most terrible war that is now tearing humanity apart! But people live in their opinions and walk through the world like bulls, not wanting to see left or right.

One of these gentlemen said afterwards, after I had answered him: Yes, but isn't it an ad absurdum leading of that which people have felt and thought from previous worldviews when humanity today is tearing people apart? Is that not an ad absurdum? Does it not prove that something completely new must enter the world if such absurdities are not to occur?

Well, that's just a disease that needs to be cured! -said the gentleman in question. It doesn't help to say to such a gentleman what I had to say to him ..., because it's certainly the worst thing to have half-correct, quarter-correct mental images: Yes, but imagine what an illness is! A disease is not there because it has to afflict a person, but because something was wrong beforehand. So war is not sent by the spiritual world of humanity for the sake of war, but because what came before was not in order. It is not war that is abnormal: just as illness is there - the process of illness is there - to compensate for something that is not in order in the organism, so is war.

If people would only understand what they themselves say, then something would be gained! For the physical world, people admit to the preservation of forces; they talk about no force being lost. If this is to be extended to the spiritual world ... Yes, then of course thinking will not be lost either, but it will be handed over to Ahriman. But what people don't talk about today! A philosophy has also emerged within Germany, the so-called philosophy of “as if”, modeled on what I referred to yesterday as English pragmatism. The philosophy of “as if” ... what does this philosophy of “as if” mean? A certain Vaihinger explained the philosophy of “as if” as follows: Man should not have a soul, but what manifests itself in man should be regarded as if he had a soul ... because, is it not true, it is convenient to regard it under a certain useful concept. No one has seen the atom either, but atomism is valid. One should look at the world as if there were atoms in it. The philosophy of “as if”! People have no concept at all, you see - if you look at something “as if” and consider it real - you can't do that: consider something “as if” if it's not really there! For example, people today - yes, people who are roughly the same, let's say, as those who read the “Berliner Tageblatt” - consider Fritz Mauthner to be a great philosopher, greater than Kant, who ‘overcame’ Kant and wrote the “Critique of Language”. They regard Fritz Mauthner as a great philosopher! I don't want to talk about Fritz Mauthner now, but I just want to mention it: This philosophy, which is contained in three thick volumes as a critique of language, which is actually nothing more than the most rolled-out philosopher's tinsel (it's also contained in a thick dictionary), that could make you look at Fritz Mauthner, for example, as if he had a spark of philosophical spirit! But you get nothing out of it. If only one could say that one regards Fritz Mauthner as if he had a philosophical spirit! If only he really had it! But you get nowhere that way. As-if philosophy is of no use if things do not contain what the “as if” includes! - Yes, the fact is that we live much deeper in materialism than we think, and that Central European thinking needs to be stimulated in those places where Germanism must first and foremost become aware of what it actually contains in its national substance!

One would like such things to make an impression! For they are in themselves capable of making an impression, like the things I read out in relation to Karl Christian Planck. What conclusions should we actually draw from what I read out publicly yesterday about Karl Christian Planck? He died in 1880. In his “Testament of a German”, which is available to the public in printed form, there is a sentence that was written before 1880, which is exactly the same as what is happening now in this war! The man was not even mistaken about the fact that Italy could stand on the side of the Entente! But he was an “impractical idealist”. The “practical” people who were wrong about Italy's position right up to the last moment - indeed, many were wrong right up to the last moment - are the practical people of today. The impractical philosopher is not allowed to pass judgment on the physical world! But it should actually occur to people what it means that the one who judges from the laws of the world wrote down before the year 1880 what exactly coincides with current events.

In many respects mankind has lost the respect and regard for the occupation with the spiritual world. This will be the great task of the German people in the future: To educate themselves from what the great spirits (and we have seen what great spirits there have been who have been forgotten) have achieved, so that they can once again continue to educate themselves in spreading respect, respect for the spiritual world. Only then will we be able to face a great and significant process. Spiritual powers can no more be lost than physical powers. Man has his etheric body, he has powers in his etheric body that would certainly last for decades in relation to his physical body. Let us assume that he finds sacrificial death, as perhaps a million will soon find it on the German side alone ... Let us assume that he finds sacrificial death at a young age. The powers of his etheric body could have continued to work in his physical body for decades: They are not lost, they remain there. He only weaves into the spiritual world that which has been worked out in his thoughts until his death; the rest remains in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world there will be the unused etheric bodies of thousands upon thousands of people. People will have to know: They hover above in the spiritual world. It will be decided whether there will be souls here on earth who will know how to progress in spiritual knowledge, in spiritual cognition, in human culture, in human cognition, by having consciousness: There hover the unspent etheric bodies. And you only need to surrender to the feelings, as it were, and they will inspire the necessary strength into your words. Oh, it could really be a great help from the spiritual world, this awareness of the unspent etheric bodies that will be there and will work in the souls of people to spiritualize humanity!

But if people want to be materialists and there are no souls here on earth who will know about the existence of these souls in the spiritual world, that they work there and descend from there, then all these sacrificial deaths could be in vain .... And all the etheric bodies above could be robbed from humanity by the Luciferian and Ahrimanic powers. It is precisely man's freedom that determines his participation in the spiritual world. Oh, if only the fire could be kindled in as many souls as possible which would enlighten the understanding of this connection which man must establish from now on with the spiritual world, because mankind must be consciously led forward! Could one kindle the fire that provides understanding for the fact that these difficult events in the present are a warning and a test, so that people reflect on what it will lead to, will lead to more and more if materialism were to advance! If we could awaken an understanding for the fact that as many of us as possible will remain faithful to spiritual science by imbuing their souls with the necessity of such faithfulness to spiritual science in the sense of further educating humanity for the characterized connection, we could awaken an understanding for the fact that there must be souls here on earth in the future, as many souls as possible who will become aware of the new connection with the spiritual world! Could one awaken an awareness of how true it is what lies in the words with which we also want to conclude again today:

From the courage of the fighters,
from the blood of battles,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
From the fruit of the spirit grows,
Souls steer spirit-consciously
Their minds into the spirit realm!