Our Dead

GA 261 — 17 November 1916, Dornach

Anniversary of the Death of Sophie Stinde

A much-cited American coined the phrase some time ago: No one is irreplaceable here on earth. This testifies that everyone can be fully replaced by another in relation to their position immediately after their death. It must be said: how miserable a world of ideas can be, when it can lead to such thoughts and feelings. Those who, from the foundations that can be built from a more intense feeling for the human context of life, face the mystery of death, will actively feel the opposite feeling in their soul.

We have been looking back on the deaths of dear friends, deaths that have touched our hearts, very deeply, for the relatively short existence of our anthroposophical spiritual movement. We have seen friends pass through the gate of death who were allowed to live their lives through, as they say, a normal number of decades on earth, and we have seen young friends pass through the gate of death. In the quiet peace of a calm environment, the one has gone; the storms of today's world have also torn many, many souls from our ranks, others have passed away from the storm-tossed life through the gate of death. And as we cast a sensitive glance at the passing of our dear friends, so will we undoubtedly, especially on this day, which so painfully reminds us that we have already been conducting our work for a year without our dear, precious Sophie Stinde here on the physical plane, so will we undoubtedly, especially on this day, the other word, the other feeling will struggle out of the depths of our souls: For the physical plane, every human being who passes through the gate of death is irreplaceable. And even if it often seems otherwise to the superficial eye, one need only look at the souls of those who were karmically connected with the dead in one way or another, and one will realize that each one is irreplaceable.

While we would do well to take such words to heart, we look up to the spiritual world into which the dead person enters through the gate of death. We look up to this spiritual world as we may look up when not only does our soul come alive to that which spiritual science can give us, but when our being itself becomes active life in the spiritual science. Do we not already know comparatively from our physical life that we can only understand, really understand, that being in whose own existence we carry something akin, something echoing? Understanding of a being is only possible if something lives in us that also lives in the other being. We acquire the concepts and ideas of how alive a person's life is and how that person's life remains alive when he passes through the gate of death. But we should also endeavor to make the concepts and ideas that spiritual science gives us more and more alive in our souls. For only in this way does something enter into the life of our souls that also lives in the souls of those who have shed their physical shells and live in the spiritual world itself with an unclouded view through physical organs. And we shall gradually learn what it means to develop understanding for our dear departed if we make spiritual science the living source in our own soul, for the essence then becomes part of our own being, which is the element of life for them, the dead. No longer, when we acquire an understanding of their life element, do they then need to look over at the souls, at the hearts that they have left behind here, so that they must perceive: Oh these souls, oh these hearts down there, they lack the understanding that they must have when they look up at us with a look that we can answer them! Just as one can only get to know a being here on the physical plane if one is able to delve into its world, so we can only be in understanding with our dead if we have an inner life in the conceptions of those worlds in which they find themselves.

This, my dear friends, seems to me – and not only to me – to be a reminder from those dead to whom we look with love, who have risen from our ranks into the spiritual worlds, a reminder from them, because they now know from their own experience what it means for the whole world when people recognize the nature of the spiritual worlds. And we may indeed have progressed so far in our study of spiritual science that we hear our souls speaking with urgent words the words spoken to us from the spiritual worlds by our dear dead: “Recognize the spiritual world!” For among the many things that will come of this for humanity is that the dead and the living will be able to form a unity.

I know that we think in the spirit of many of our dear departed, especially in the spirit of Sophie Stinde, as she is thinking now, when we write this admonition into our souls today, and when we add so many other thoughts that can now become us, if we take in all seriousness and in full depth what spiritual science is supposed to be for us.

Perhaps I may refer to the fact that it has often been my duty to speak about the obligation to love in view of the recent death of dear departed members of our movement at their funeral or cremation. I may say: Such moments bring the thought particularly to mind, what it means to speak words under the kind of responsibility that arises when it is known: Not only in general is there a spiritual world, but in the concrete, the one with whom you have worked here to affirm the existence and nature of spiritual worlds looks down on you. To bear witness to the truth in such moments and in the moments that arise from them, to be aware of the community in this truth between the living and the dead, that is one of the heart and soul achievements of the spiritual scientific world view, belongs to that which flows through the spiritual-scientific movement from the livingly felt mystery of death. And we, my dear friends, may all, all be permeated by this feeling, by the feeling of our community, which we cultivate here as living beings in the physical body with the living who have passed through the gate of death, with the living in the light of the spiritual world and in spiritual life. And when we develop the feeling of that responsibility towards the knowledge of the spiritual worlds, which arises from the consciousness: Here we commemorate the spiritual world, and there are the spiritual eyes that look down and examine how we stand in relation to the truth of the world, there are the spiritual ears that listen to whether truth or lie dwells in our hearts, — if we develop this feeling in concrete community with those who have worked side by side with us here and who now continue to work with us with the currents of our soul, then, then the spiritual-scientific worldview, the spiritual-scientific movement, will become that living thing that builds the bridge between worlds, between those in our time and the eternal future, between which no bridge can be built in any other way.

And when we develop such feelings, when we truly awaken such feelings in our souls, then we also feel the karmic connection in a special way when we have been close to someone who has passed through the gateway of death in one way or another. And then, through those subtle, fine revelations that always exist between the spiritual world and our souls, we gradually learn to sense them — the voices of our dead, especially those who were karmically connected to us in a very special way. We experience them in the way just described, by directing our thoughts to them and, in the inner soul atmosphere and soul aura that which these thoughts convey to us, in a perhaps quiet, quite intimate, but nevertheless gradually perceptible way, we sense how they live on in us, those who have passed through the gateway of death, how they live with us, how they participate in our destiny, but how at the same time they give their strength to everything that is perhaps best in ourselves and can become of us in the working of the world. And so, starting from such feelings and thoughts, it becomes more and more possible for us to transform the abstract feelings towards death, which must become more and more widespread in our materialistic time, back into vividly concrete ones, to be allowed to be together spiritually and soulfully with those who have left us as physical personalities for a while, until we follow them through the gate of death. And perhaps it is a message from our dead to us when I say that we should be aware of the invigoration of earthly existence beyond the concept of death in the direction of the sanctification of this earthly existence, in that we take spiritual science with the seriousness that is necessary when we feel: Our dead are watching us, hearing our most intimate thoughts and our true or false presence in the realizations of spiritual science.

It feels like a message from the dearly departed that the conceptual world of the spirit must be revealed to humanity in general. For how does it cut to the heart, especially today, especially in our present time, when one hears the words from there or from there, from sides that many people even see as called, that countless people see as called, when one hears the words from such sides in this sad time often today: one owes it to the dead to continue what is going through the world in such a gruesome way today! If we recognize the attitude of the dead as I have characterized it, then we also know that the worst aspect of materialism is that the mystery of death is desecrated in our time, when people bring death into the world, in that the passions of the living invoke those who have passed through the gates of death.

Let us honor and love our dear dead, my dear friends, by trying to bring living spiritual life into all the places where we are placed, one and the other, in our earthly existence. In this way, we also carry spiritual life into all world existence according to our ability, and we will be most united with our dear dead precisely in our zeal, in our devotion to a spiritual-scientific worldview. And I know that I also speak in the spirit of Sophie Stinde, who has now been in the spiritual world for a year, when I say these words, which have been spoken today in her memory and that of the others close to us and those who have passed through the gate of death, especially on this day. If on this day I try to awaken in you the awareness that in the work for the spiritual scientific world view, there are always those great, but also those intimate moments for our soul, in which our soul knows: Now you are not alone: the soul is with you, the soul to whom you were close when it spoke with the organs of the physical body, when it looked at you with the eyes of the physical body, when you were allowed to look into its physical eyes. You are close to this soul now, the soul you approached then, the soul you accompanied to the gate of death, the soul you mourned when it had to turn away from physical existence. You knew her, you loved her, she was dear to you; you continue to know her, you continue to love her, she continues to be dear to you. And since you accompanied her to the gate of death, only then did the nature of your being with her change; for you feel how she is around you, how she is with you.

Let us, my dear friends, on this anniversary of the death of our dear Sophie Stinde, permeate ourselves with such thoughts, and let us remember in such thoughts all those who have passed through the gate of death from our ranks, and who will all meet with her, because all were united with her by their common spiritual striving. And let us seek to be close to them all through the most intimate phases of our soul, united with them by the same yearning, the same striving for the spiritual world.