Our Dead

GA 261 — 25 September 1915, Dornach

Eulogy for Gertrud Noss

My dear friends!

Today I feel the need to speak once more about the great loss we have suffered; not so much because I believe that after what I had to say yesterday, we committed our dear friend, Mrs. Gertrud Noß, to the fire elements, but rather because I truly believe that focusing our thoughts on the very unique essence of this woman for our souls, for our hearts, can and should be of great importance, especially at this moment.

We may, as Mrs. Gertrud Noß stood among us, truly regard her as an exemplary personality, and we may carry the view of her being as something through our further life, which is suited to equip us with powers that can have deep significance for our lives.

My dear friends, death, when it comes before us, is, one might say, the most profound phenomenon in human life, and when it comes before us in such a way that it means for the living: You will no longer be able to look into an eye that you were so often allowed to look into, you will no longer be able to hold a hand in yours, which you so much wanted to feel again and again in yours for a long time, you will no longer be able to face a personality with whom you were intimately connected in life. If death approaches us as a manifestation of life, then this approach really connects us for a shorter or longer time, depending on what we are capable of, with the eternal, with the sources of the spiritual.

Now, with the death of our dear friend, Mrs. Gertrud Noß, we have every reason to anchor this thought very deeply in our souls. We have had to watch, in quick succession, how Mrs. Gertrud Noß herself stood before the last mortal remains of her beloved son, who, as one of our hopes, stood so beautifully in our midst. And at least some of us – but many of us should know this – were able to experience how the death of a deeply beloved close friend affected our friend herself at the time. Some of us were touched by the great change that had taken place in this woman's soul after the deeply meaningful, deeply painful death of a close friend had passed her by.

From the depths of my soul, my dear friends, I spoke yesterday the word that this death for our friend was a kind of consecration of the spirit. You could see from our friend's soul how close she had come to an intimate spiritual understanding in a very natural way, precisely since death had passed by her in such a painful way. I have often said that it can never be the task of someone who has to speak words when death comes upon us to comfort the surviving friends, that it can never be the opinion of the one who has to speak on the occasion of a death to want to give comfort that is supposed to ease the pain. For to assuage pain would be to speculate on the weakness of human life. The pain we feel in such a case is fully justified, and the one who wanted to assuage it did not in reality reckon with the deepest demands of life. So it cannot be the task in this our case either to want to assuage the pain of those who are seized by pain in this moment.

But something else is what the words press onto our tongues when we are faced with such an event. We have seen how death touched our dear friend, and we ourselves then had to be touched by the death of that friend. The death of a person close to us brings us, as it has brought our friend close, close to the spiritual world; under all circumstances it brings us in some way closer to the feeling, to the real grasp of the spiritual world. For the very closest, the most obvious thing we feel and experience in the face of death is that we say to ourselves: When we face a person in life, there are perhaps many conditions that nuance our feelings towards that person in this or that way, so that they can easily change again at a later time. There are many, many conditions that, after we have formed a judgment, a judgment of life about a person, cause us to change that judgment about the person later on as a result of something that person does or says. We may not think about how we make a change in this sense, but we do change many things. Everyone who has thought about life knows, and anyone can know it if they just think about life a little: We often change our feelings and perceptions of people and always have the belief, I would say, in an incomplete judgment. When we face death, we instinctively feel that what is then thrusting into our soul is a kind of involuntary review of life, which we have experienced with him, felt about him. When we face the moment of death, we instinctively feel that what then forces its way into our soul, what then seems like an involuntary review of the life we have lived with the person, is something lasting, something that now stands as a conclusion in our soul, something we only have no feeling of dissatisfaction when we know: we form these thoughts in such a way that they can remain in our soul in a certain way. — Yes, we have the feeling from the outset that we may form only such judgments and feelings that can remain in our soul and take root so that we can keep them. We feel this as a sacred obligation to the dead person; we feel a certain responsibility awakening in our soul to be completely true to the dead person, and we also feel when we know that the dead person is now actually beginning to be much closer to us. We may not say to ourselves that he is beginning to be much, much closer to us, but in a subconscious way we have in our thoughts, in our feelings, the realization that we want to be closer to the person now than we were when he was alive.

During our lifetime we were aware that we could not fathom human beings, not even in our thoughts. Now that we are face to face with the dead person, we get the feeling that, step by step, he grows into our thoughts with that which, in his nature, passes from the temporal into the eternal. We must not think anything untrue about him, if we do not want to stand before him as a liar through what we think; we must not think anything about him that is distorted for our own feelings by our own feelings, which are often dominated by resentment and envy towards the living, without us knowing it. So when we stand before the so-called dead person, the thoughts about what we experienced with him come over us; we are summarized, as it were, into a kind of conclusion that we have within us involuntarily when forming the words, a greater responsibility, so that we feel a greater responsibility than was the case with the living. And we also have to come to terms with our feelings towards the dead person in a certain way. He stands there, as it were, having passed from the temporal into the realm of the lasting, into the realm of the enduring for us. He stands there so that he now becomes for us something that looks at us unchangingly. Our feelings towards the dead person must become selfless because we now know that we cannot express the love we feel for him on the earth plane in any earthly way so that he can find it in return.

That, my dear friends, means a great deal. We enter into a new relationship with a soul that we have come to love.

Herman Grimm, whom I have often spoken of here, was once at the funeral of a friend, and when he then had words printed about the deceased, there was a sentence within these words that was obvious but extraordinarily meaningful.

Then Herman Grimm said: What had until then only appeared before him like a distant, light cloud has now become reality for him, and what had until then surrounded him in the flesh lies like a distant cloud below him. A simple sentence, but a beautiful sentence that expresses beautifully, if simply, a person's growth into the spiritual world. It remains certain, however much we delve into the study of spiritual science, that the spiritual world is a light, fine cloud, and this light, fine cloud becomes reality when the reality that surrounds us before we enter this light, fine cloud itself belongs to this light, fine cloud, when this reality itself becomes a light, fine cloud for us.

Yes, my dear friends, the souls who have passed through the gateway of death now belong to that light, fine cloud themselves and no longer to the reality from which the dead person has departed. But we can meet the needs of the dead more and more fully if we fill the light cloud with what we have experienced in close connection with the dead.

My dear friends, we are talking about the mortal, physical remains of a person; we can also talk about those remains of a person that the soul leaves behind on earth. And this soul on earth is embedded in coarser things, which are our hearts, our souls themselves, as long as we are embodied in the earthly body. The thought stones, the thought bricks made of this coarser material are the thoughts that we take with us through life from those with whom we have been brought together by life. For a personality such as our friend had, we can perhaps say, we may say, take with us thoughts that will further invigorate our life on earth. The attitude that our deceased friend developed from her spiritual familiarity before her passing was moving. For in her case, in the last months of her life, one must speak of spirit communion. As I said, the attitude was touching. What would now happen to her, how she herself would continue her existence in the great cosmic context, was permeated by a basic feeling, especially in the last days, when it was already clear to her that the scales were very much in balance between life and death on earth. A basic feeling pervaded her attitude, that was the feeling of surrender, of surrender to what was to come, be it life or death; for so firmly rooted was the conviction of the wisdom that pervades the world in the soul of our friend, who was detaching herself from the body, that she knew, however it might turn out: Everything corresponds to this wisdom that pervades the world. Everything, however impenetrable it may be for the individual human soul, must be right in the eyes of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. This feeling was a deeply meaningful force in our friend's soul. Therefore she could look back at the earthly world with a calm and serene gaze and look into the spiritual world with a calm and serene gaze.

By looking at the earthly world with a calm and serene gaze, the attitude that she always carried through life proved itself. I was allowed to speak of this at her funeral. The attitude can be expressed with the words: She tried to extinguish herself wherever she could, in order to do for others what was necessary for them to live. During her last days she did not consider a possible continuation of life on earth as a personal need for her own yearning, but only as an opportunity to continue to care for those people who were close to her and with whom, in the narrower sense, she had to fight the battle of life. She only thought how different it would be for them when they would have to live without her, when she could no longer be their leader and helper. Those were her thoughts; not the thought, not the need, to still live here on earth herself. She had always lived mainly in what she did for others and in what she was allowed to be for others, and so, before her earthly departure, the images arose before her eyes of those who would be there and who would now have to take up the struggle in life without her, who would now stand without her in this earthly life, while they had received the warming, regulating light from her for so long.

Then probably also the thoughts of her previous son came into her mind, who had remained in close contact with her soul and with whom she was connected even more intimately since he had parted from his earthly shell. And then there lived in her that which is so difficult to express, my dear friends, which certainly did not come before our friend's soul with a distinct thought, but which lived in her and spread the quiet, calm, awe-inspiring serenity over her entire being in her last days, the thought that looked from the living to the dead, from the dead to the living, from the spiritual to the earthly, from the earthly to the spiritual, and which, as a matter of course, knew how to unite the two worlds into one.

She had truly struggled to such a basic feeling, which glorified her death so much, through the way she lived here on earth. And much, much of how she lived makes her a role model for everyone, and we would do wrong to the feelings and sensations that blossom from the spirit in the being when we do not dare to express on such an occasion what we are able to recognize in human value and human dignity through spiritual science, through its deepening in relation to the individual person.

I know, my dear friends, that the simple, inner greatness and great modesty of our friend would never have allowed what was not possible during her time on earth to be said about her. But that is also one of the peculiarities of the death experience in others, since our tongues may be loosened with regard to it. If we ask ourselves what exactly made our friend of such greatness in the face of her immediate confrontation? Then we have to say that because our friend tried to

explore life, one might say, to remedy the difficulties of this life in others in a self-evident way. She never had to ask herself whether she should intervene when she was able to help. Instead, she always had the same question before her soul: How can I best intervene? How can I learn the conditions so that I can intervene in the best possible way, so that I can do the best thing in such a way that it also benefits the people it should relate to? When our friend, Mrs. Gertrud Noß, encountered people in her life, she never did the slightest thing she did for them or in connection with them in such a way that she thought of imposing something on them or acting against their nature in any way. In this she was exemplary in a wonderful way.

This woman's heart, out of its original, elemental goodness, always knew how to find it.

We see, my dear friends, so many natures in life that are intent above all on changing the people they meet, on wanting to teach the people they meet something that should change these people. We see so many people saying: How can I help this or that person? And they actually only have their eye on how they can help themselves, because they cannot stand that this or that person is different from them. Our friend, Mrs. Gertrud Noß, was never of that kind. She never had the desire to make any person different from what he or she is. She never had the desire to reduce the difficulties that arise in relationships with people by first wanting to change the person before entering into a relationship with him or her. She knew all too well from her original wisdom how little one can actually change in life about people. But she also knew, and sensed it with a sure instinct, that people can still be changed, and that they change most of all when you don't want to change them, but at the appropriate moment do what you feel is right for that person at that moment. When we first transform our ability to help people into deeds, into a deed that corresponds to the person at that moment, we approach him without wanting to change him in this moment, if we do everything in such a way that we leave people as they are and do the right thing, perhaps the thing we ourselves do not want but what they want, then the deeds we perform in the context of life will also become causes for other people in certain directions. This is what is meant when it is said that we contribute most to changing the people who, according to our judgment, should be changed, when we do not want to change them at all, but when we do the right thing at the right moment.

My dear friends, when I myself often faced our friend Gertrud Noß in life, a thought arose in me that I felt was a matter of course precisely with regard to this woman. In the book in which I have summarized the thought forms that I had gained through my research into life up to the 1890s – I am referring to The Philosophy of Freedom – you will find a chapter that deals with the rhythm of life, with the transition of our morals and ethical principles into that which is expressed in life as the natural rhythm of life, where in man, as in a habit, what regulates his life relationships with other people comes to light, where it has become self-evident to man what he should do in this or that situation in life, so that he does not need to think about why he should do this or that, and yet does it in such a way that it becomes right in life. This must strengthen people's faith in life again and again, that there are people who have such a sense of life, who, I would say, always know in a nutshell what is necessary in life, who have a sense of morality and a sense of life. This is what was spread over our friend's entire being like an imprint, so that one could say that when one met Gertrud Noß without prejudice, one saw much that could awaken faith in the values and meaning of life. Those people who awaken faith in life and radiate certainty are the ones who most readily allow those sources to flow within them, so that they cannot be accused of having anything devious in what they do. It really takes a warped mind not to immediately recognize in Gertrud Noß, when she encountered someone, that what she poured out over the surface of her actions and behavior came from the very innermost part of her soul; she had the gift of putting soul into every word and every look. And a beautiful soulfulness was expressed in her actions and also in all her relationships, which she had to establish with people. This gives a sense of security, a sense of security in dealing with such people, to those who are allowed to get close to such people. Where could the thought or feeling arise in the minds of those who are straightforward when they have come close to Gertrud Noß: You are unsure about the feelings that this woman has for you? Well, they give you the certainty that what they give in the moment is also deeply rooted in all the following moments of life; they give you the certainty that if you can be connected to her soul once, you could never be abandoned by her soul again. Being with such people and forming a life bond with them gives life security, the security that life needs, and this security also arose when one was face to face with Gertrud Noß in the most sacred matters of her life. Yesterday I already mentioned how she did not join our spiritual movement out of blind faith and with a light heart, how she was perhaps even repelled by the first impressions of our spiritual movement, but how she then grew into this spiritual movement, and from the way she grew into it and how we got to know her within it, we may again have that certainty of life which we also need in our spiritual movement and which we must appreciate in our spiritual movement. It consists in the fact that man is connected with the spiritual world in a natural, elementary way and not in a sentimental-egoistic way. Gertrud Noß will never want to impose this teaching in any external way on those who are not initially attracted to it. Gertrud Noß knew how to talk about our teaching when it was right to do so, and she knew how to remain silent about our teaching when it was right to do so. That is also the beautiful, right rhythm of life.

And when we now look at what connected both those who were intimately and closely connected with our friend in life, who were closest to her, and those of us who were connected with her through a shared world view, when we look at that, one thought in particular comes to mind: The pain of the death of Mrs. Gertrud Noß.

This woman left us at an early age. She was one of those people who make us think: What could have been possible in terms of developing a community of life if we had been able to look into her sunny eyes for longer, if we had been able to enjoy her sunny company for longer, if we had been able to spend more time with her here in this earthly life. In a sense, she belongs to those who died prematurely. Knowing her as we came to know her, we say to ourselves: as she undoubtedly became more and more serene, she could have done so much more for the inner well-being of those with whom she was connected during her earthly life. But she left us, and we remember, in accordance with our teaching, how life in the spiritual worlds follows this earthly life. We also remember how every earthly life, in the way it is lived, is a preparation for future earthly lives. And now we ask ourselves: What was the state of mind of our dear friend with regard to one of the vital nerves of our teaching, with regard to repeated earthly lives?

I can imagine that there may be many people who, out of a certain vanity, might harbor the belief that they are closer to the teaching of repeated earthly lives than Gertrud Noß was, because they occupy themselves with this teaching much, much more with regard to their own lives. I believe I may say that nothing was further from our friend Gertrud Noss than thinking about herself. When considering repeated lives on earth, to think of herself as this or that embodiment, as this or that historical personality, and at the same time to think of Gertrud Noß – it is impossible. And why? It is impossible because our friend held this teaching far too sacred to link it directly with her own life. And in this, more than in her dragging this sacred teaching down into her personal life, I see the intimate familiarity with the spiritual life. Our friend had a solemn sense of the spiritual world in the highest sense, that solemn sense in which one can be sure that even in one's inmost heart the contemplation of the spiritual world can never be abused. That Gertrud Noß could ever drag down into the realm of personal fantasy that which is sacred to us was inconceivable, due to the character and noble nature of this friend, and anyone who came close to her must also have considered it inconceivable. This revealed a great certainty in our dealings with our friend Gertrud Noß.

That was her loyalty to what she had found within our spiritual movement. She was one of those who enrich our spiritual movement, who have something to contribute to it in terms of a secure inner attitude of the soul and, as I said yesterday, a straightforward, inner sense of truth. She knew and never ceased to know that as long as human beings are embodied in the physical body, they have to fulfill their duties in the earthly body and must not become alienated from this life on earth. And so she never lost her footing, she never belonged to those who want to live here on earth with their heads in the stars and then, because they do not respect the conditions of earthly life, get involved in all sorts of things that a spiritual worldview should never lead to. Thus, what Gertrud Noß brought into our movement was above all a healthy, hearty, healthy soul life. And in this respect she is exemplary, undoubtedly exemplary for many.

My dear friends, we do not only learn from those who speak to us with words of teaching, we learn much more when we have to make ourselves learners. You could learn a lot from Gertrud Noß if you were just eager to learn, because life itself is an even greater teacher than any word or teaching. But life speaks modestly, in such a way that one must first prepare the ear of the soul to be able to hear. Dealing with Mrs. Gertrud Noß was a lesson, a deep lesson. And among the many things that the death of this noble woman should remind us of, so that they remain with us, is also that we should not pass up opportunities where life can be our teacher. One often speaks of balance in life. But in our times, we have forgotten how to feel this balance in life in the right way. You see, when we encounter what grows in the meadow, we will take it for granted that we can distinguish the beautiful flower from the less beautiful one, without wanting to blame the less beautiful flower for not being the more beautiful flower, because we see in the beauty of the flower not only the expression of what is directly before us, but the expression of divine-spiritual activity. We must really struggle to the realization that it is divine-spiritual work when so much beautiful work is expressed in a person, as it has been expressed in our friend. We must learn to form the concept of divinely gifted people again.

Yes, my dear friends, and then the thought of compensation comes, then we may well wonder, when such people have passed through the gate of death, what the compensation will be in such a case, and there we, like our friend, who passed through the earthly gate of death prematurely, has an earthly life behind her that touches us, especially when we speak of repeated earthly lives, so much so that we say: This life had passed so that the one who was blessed with this life has given much, much to him who was attached to it. when we speak of repeated lives on earth, so touched that we say: This life had passed so that the one who was blessed with this life has added much, much of what can be carried over into a later life, great and beautiful, for further earthly development.

And how could we then escape the thought of the divine spiritual real wisdom of the world, when we see on the one hand people who appear to us to be divinely graced, and on the other hand people who show us how they take on the effort and work of life precisely because of this and seek out all possibilities to benefit from life and to create life forces. And how do we see how we can most intensely recognize, I would say, in such a person's work the significance of one earthly life for the following ones in reality. In what she did and how she did it, Mrs. Gertrud Noß expressed how she thought and felt about the connection between her present earthly life and the one to follow. And that is the healthy, firm standing in life and at the same time in spiritual vision. That is also what compelled me to utter the words at the cremation of Frau Gertrud Noß, that the traces she has left in our movement here during her life on earth will not be able to fade within our movement for so long as this movement itself exists. And just as we thought, when our dear Fritz Mitscher died, how he is a helper to us in his spirituality, so we also think so now, so we think, the best help for our spiritual movement will arise for us when such soul beings as Gertrud Noß were united to us. And if we should ever entertain the thought that our movement could perhaps be based on error or aberration, then we can always take comfort in the fact that souls of such health, such uprightness, such a sense of truth wanted to connect with our movement as Gertrud Noß did. And so we remain, we want to remain, closely, intimately connected to her. We only want to admit to ourselves that her loss in earthly life is deeply painful for us, that we do not want to be consoled by it. But we also want to admit to ourselves that we want to become worthy of having such souls among us who can give such certainty for the whole of human life.

We will no longer be able to look into her dear eyes, we will no longer have her wonderfully human kindness before our physical eyes, but we will remain united with her in our souls, because we have the certainty that we have found each other with her in such a way that we face her in such a way that she will not leave us. And that will be an important, essential, significant thing for us.

I would like to ask those who, even if only as the two representatives of those who were close to our movement in life as well as otherwise, were close to our Mrs. Gertrud Noß, the two of her relatives and those present among us today, I would like them to know that the union of the spirit that Gertrud Noß has sought will keep this love and loyalty for our friend, will always give her love and loyalty, that we cling to her with them, insofar as we have recognized her. I ask you to believe us, those of us who have met Gertrud Noß. And if pain, which should not be cured by easy consolation in this case either, must be experienced because we can no longer live in the physical proximity of a loved one, in which we would have liked to have continued to live, if such pain, which is so deeply justified in life, can be alleviated by sharing it, then I ask those who were so close to our dear Mrs. Gertrud Noß to believe that they will find fellow-bearers of this pain, fellow-bearers of this suffering, that they will not stand alone in humanity with their suffering. It is out of this spirit, my dear friends, that we begin to develop those thoughts that have become second nature to us in life, that, if we have been close to Gertrud Noß, are in our soul and should continue to live in our soul. Once more we let the thoughts pass through our soul, which I had to convey to our souls yesterday, when we stood before the earthly remains of our dearly beloved friend and saw her beautiful soul ascending into the spiritual world. It is a good feeling for all of us when we see such a soul ascending into the spiritual world, much as it was for Friedrich Rückert when he directed his thoughts to the soul of her who had preceded him in death. There Friedrich Rückert, who had drawn and shaped so much from the spiritual world, especially in terms of feelings and emotions, expressed a beautiful thought, and the thought arose in me when I had to think about how the heavenly-spiritual part of this woman united with a physical body, with a physical human life, through which she brought happiness to many, to bring about a grace-filled earthly existence. This union of the spiritual with the physical could present itself to the soul in the same way as it presented itself to the soul of a man as spiritual as Rückert, when he had to direct his thoughts to his wife who had preceded him in death:

I dreamt that I stood as a vine
In the ground of a grave,
The roots are directed towards the ground,
While the crown reaches for the sky. And from the grave, through the root,
The lifeblood rises, which waters the vine,
Which, poured out through the vine's eyes,
Becoming solid tears, gives grapes. Then a dove flies out of heaven,
And from the tearful vine's stem
She plucks the berry-rich grape
And carries it up where an angel
Smilingly receives it and in Eden's bower
Counts the tears from the land of want.

So we also felt how a spiritual dove united our friend's soul with life, and so we feel how this spiritual dove carries the spiritual seeds that she planted on earth, where an angel takes them smilingly and counts the tears from the land of shortcomings in the bower of Eden.

So let us, my dear friends, take up the thread of what we have made our own from the life of this woman, the thoughts that we will remain true to her in a loyal spiritual connection with her.

A bright human star
Faded from earthly vision;
It will shine in the spiritual splendor
shine in the eyes of the soul, which felt its beauty of light as a gift of life's happiness. When did the joyful light of life shine brightest for us
from your faithful heart
? —
When did you create joy
the souls that needed joy
you invented. When did your quiet
human greatness, shining with kindness, feel
life's most beautiful happiness?
When did you succeed in awakening the
warming light of happiness
on other people's paths through life. So you yourself were happiness
For the souls that fate
In the struggle of life connected to you.
You carried the power of noble love
In your gaze and in your words,
In your work and in your thoughts. Those who recognized you in the full force of life
In your worth,
It was revealed to him in you, How kind power and sense of truth From the depths of heart and soul Are embodied in human beings. Those who followed your soul's release From bodily being and form, In holy awe, It was shown to them through you, How souls find each other in the spirit,
Who wanted to live striving as spirits. You look at our sorrow;
We feel the mildness of Your gaze;
We feel the power of Your soul;
We need consolation in our suffering:
You Yourself console us
With loving spiritual words. We are certain that you are near,
United with the power of your son,
Who now walks in the bright heights of the spirit
Towards you,
You will shine for us, not lost,
Another soul star in the spiritual realm.