Transforming Interest: Death, Immortality, and Spiritual Consciousness

GA 266I — 16 August 1908, Stuttgart

Esoteric Lesson

We should talk about the place of death in human life. The period between birth and death has not always been as finite for humans as it is today. One of the masters of wisdom and harmony of feelings said: Man is immortal if he wants to be. By throwing himself completely into the physical world, man has allowed it to take over his entire interest. That was a necessary stage of development. Today, people often think: if I just try hard to live right here on earth, then after I die I will find out what it is like. That seems very logical, but it is completely wrong. By being indifferent to the spiritual, we weave a veil around ourselves so that we will see nothing after death. Thinking about the spiritual world is therefore not as impractical and alien to life as it might seem. The ancient Rosicrucians called this interest in the physical world “Aestimatio,” the interest one attaches to the things that bind people to this life. It is not the viewing of external objects in themselves, but the interest in them that binds us. This interest should not be killed, but transformed.

One should have as much interest in spiritual mental images as in the things of the physical world. The descriptions that the teacher gives us of the supersensible worlds should make more impression on us than when we cut our finger. As long as this is not the case, our interest is still directed downward.

This transformation of “Aestimatio” has been taught throughout the ages, but in a certain sense it has never been as difficult as it is now, when human beings are so completely connected to the physical world. A different method is necessary for each age. Thus, Eastern and Western esotericism are one and the same; the same masters who preside over one also preside over the other, and both lead to the same height, but their methods must be different.