Answers of Spiritual Science to the Great Questions of Existence

GA 60 — 27 October 1910, Berlin

Life and Death

When one considers some of today's statements about the relationship between humans and life and death, one is reminded of a line spoken by Shakespeare's gloomy Hamlet:

Great Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Fills a hole well against the harsh north.
O that the earth, which the world trembles at,
Sticks together like a wall against wind and weather.

Such a statement can be made by anyone who, in the spirit of the discussions that took place eight days ago, is under the suggestive influence of certain ideas about time that have been gained on the basis of natural science, and who felt moved to follow all the movements of the individual substances that make up the human body after death, who above all feels justified in asking: What do oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and so on, which make up the human body, do after a person's death? Apart from the fact that there are many people today who are influenced by the suggestive phrase “eternity of matter,” there are others who completely lose the ability to imagine anything other than matter and its effects in infinitely empty space. However, it is clear from many reflections on the nature of death that in discussions of this kind it is always important to define terms and ideas as precisely as possible. In many considerations that establish the concept of a contrast between death and life and, as happens again and again, completely forget that death and life are a contrast that depends on the essence to which it refers, on closer inspection one cannot speak in the same way about the death of a plant, an animal, or a human being. The following discussions will explain why this is the case. But how little clarity there is about the words used in this field can be seen, for example, in the following passage from the physiology of the great naturalist Huxley.

It is said that a distinction must be made between local death and general death, the death of the tissues in an organism, and then it is explicitly stated that human life depends on the brain, the lungs, and the heart, but that this is a trinity that can actually be reduced to a duality, namely that if one artificially maintains respiration, one could quite easily remove a person's brain and they would still continue to live. In other words, it is said that life continues even when the brain is removed. This means that if a person is no longer able to form any idea of what is around them or what is going on inside them, if life could be maintained merely as a life process in the organism through artificial respiration, then the organism would continue to live in the sense of this scientific definition. And one could not really speak of death, even though there was no brain at all.

This is an idea that everyone, even if they would not welcome a life without a brain, should at least, if they find such a definition plausible, be clear in their perception that this very explanation shows how the scientific definition of life in this form is not at all applicable to humans. For no one would be able to call the life of an organism—even a human one—the life of a human being, even if the fact alluded to is entirely correct.

Today, we are already somewhat further along in the field of natural science than we were perhaps ten years ago, when people were almost embarrassed to talk about life at all and reduced all life to the life of the smallest organisms. This life of the smallest organisms was seen as a complicated chemical process. According to this view, if this definition were extended to a worldview, one could only speak of the smallest parts of life continuing to live, so that one could only speak of the preservation of matter. Nowadays, for example in relation to research on radium, the concept of the eternity of matter has become somewhat less certain. But the point to be made here is that in the field of natural science, attempts are already being made to speak of a kind of independence, at least in the case of the smallest living beings. It is said that the smallest living beings reproduce by division, one divides into two, two into four, and so on. In this case, one could not speak of death, because the first lives on in the second, and when these die, they live on in the next.

Those who wanted to speak of the eternity of single-celled organisms then sought a definition of death. But this very definition of the essence of ‘death’ is extremely characteristic. The characteristic feature of death has been found to be that when someone dies, a corpse remains. And since no corpse remains in the case of single-celled organisms, they cannot truly die. So we seek the characteristic of what is at the deepest foundation of life in what remains of life. Now it will be immediately clear that what remains of life gradually turns into lifeless matter. Such lifeless matter now becomes, in death, the outer organism of the smallest, the outer organism of the most complex living being. However, if one wants to consider the meaning of death for life, one must not look at what remains, what is transformed into lifeless matter, but one must look at the cause, at the principles of life, as long as life is present.

I said that one cannot speak of death in the same way for plants as for animals and humans, because one does not take an important phenomenon into account. This phenomenon is also found in certain lower animals, for example in mayflies, and it consists in the fact that the majority of plants and lower animals have the peculiarity that the moment the fertilization process is initiated and the possibility of a new living being is created, the old one begins to die. In plants, the process of decline, the process of dying, begins at the moment when they have taken up the possibility of creating a new plant within themselves. Of those plants in which this can be observed, we can say with certainty: the cause that took their life lies in the new living being or beings; they left nothing of it behind in the old being.

A simple consideration convinces us that this is so. There are certain plants that last, that repeatedly bloom and bear fruit, where, so to speak, new plant structures are constantly being planted on the old stem, like parasites. But you can see for yourself that they buy the possibility of continuing to live by pushing certain parts into the lifeless, into death, that is, by surrounding themselves with a bark. It is entirely justified to say that a plant that surrounds itself with a bark, carries the lifeless within itself, and can continue to live has an excess of life. And because it has this excess, which it will not give up—it only gives up what the young creatures need—it must secure itself by repelling death to the outside. But one can also say that every living being that has within itself the possibility of outliving the creation of a new living being is compelled to continually overcome life itself within itself by absorbing inorganic, inanimate matter. And this can be observed sufficiently in animals and in humans.

So we have a conflict between death and life within the being itself. We have an interaction between a living member that develops in one direction and a continuous introduction of another member that develops in the direction of death. If we now want to move from this point of view into the innermost being of the human being, we must, of course, remind ourselves of something that has often been said before, but which is never superfluous, because it is by no means yet one of the commonly accepted truths.

If we approach the question of life and death from a spiritual scientific perspective, based on very ordinary ideas — which we will do in the first half of this lecture — we must remember that what we are considering here is very, very little recognized today. It is a truth that is as new to humanity today as another truth that is now considered trivial but was new or unknown to humanity three centuries ago. I have often pointed out that today it is self-evident to natural scientists and to those who base their views on scientific concepts that the statement “All living things come from living things” is true. Of course, I am speaking here only with the same reservation with which this statement is used in the field of natural science. We need not go into the question of spontaneous generation, for it can be noted from the outset that the analogous statement, which will be mentioned later, is also used in the field of spiritual science.

It was not long ago that the great natural scientist Francesco Redi had to fight with all his energy for the statement: “Everything living comes from something living.” Before this 17th-century natural scientist, it was considered entirely possible, not only among laymen but also in scientific circles, that new organisms could develop from decaying river sludge, from organic matter that had undergone decomposition. This was believed to be true of worms and even fish. The view that living things can only develop from living things is not old. And Francesco Redi recently, just a few centuries ago, caused such a storm of indignation that he narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. Considering that the fashions of the time change, one can say that the fate of this truth can give us courage for the fate of the truth that we must now express here. For this truth—that living things can only come from living things—caused a storm of indignation at the time. Today, those who are compelled to draw similar truths from the wellspring of knowledge for other fields are no longer delivered to the flames of the stake. That is no longer the fashion. But today people make fun of such things; they mock those who can communicate such things. And they make those who are compelled to speak such things in relation to spiritual development spiritually dead. But the fate of the truth just mentioned also consists in the fact that today it has become a matter of course, a triviality for those who are capable of judgment.

What mistake lay at the root of the failure to recognize this truth: that life can only come from life? A very simple error of observation! People looked at what they saw directly and did not try to penetrate the fact that a living being is really based on a germ left behind by another living being, so that a new living being of a certain kind can only come into being when an old living being leaves behind a germ of the same kind. In other words, people looked at the environment of the developing living being and should actually have looked at what had been left behind by another living being and developed within that environment. But that is how it was done in all the centuries before the time of Francesco Redi. One could cite very interesting passages from books which, in the seventh and eighth centuries, were considered just as authoritative as the writings of the most modern natural scientists are today, and in which it was classified very precisely how, for example, hornets developed from a rotten ox carcass, wasps from a donkey carcass, and so on. This was nicely classified. And using exactly the same method that led to mistakes being made back then, mistakes are being made today with regard to the spiritual and mental aspects of human beings.

We see a human being come into existence and observe their individual development from birth through their entire life. We see how their physical form, their various abilities, and their aptitudes develop. We will discuss the details of this development in a later lecture. But if one wants to recognize the essence of human form, the essence of what is involved, one has to ask the question: What are the hereditary conditions, what is the environment from which the human being has emerged? This is exactly the same method as looking at the mud around the emerging worm and not looking at the egg. In what develops as predispositions, as various abilities in the human being, a precise distinction must be made between the characteristic features that are transmitted from parents, ancestors, and so on, and a certain core that the true observer will not fail to recognize. Only those who approach the spiritual-soul element in the same way that natural scientists approached Francesco Redi externally will be able to fail to recognize how a core of the human being clearly presents itself that cannot be traced back to what has been inherited from parents, grandparents, and so on.

In what develops in a human being, we must therefore distinguish between what comes from the environment and what can never be derived from the environment. In a plant or animal organism, one will always find that the newly emerging being is essentially designed to bring it up to the level of its ancestors. Take the highest animals. How far do they get? To the generic. And they are designed for the generic.

Certainly, some will say: Doesn't a horse, a dog, or a cat have individuality? They will believe that one could just as well describe the individuality of a cat, a horse, and so on, perhaps even in a biography, as one can describe the individuality of a human being. Those who want to can do so. But they should not take it as something real, but as something symbolic, for example when students are given the school assignment—as my colleagues and I had to do in our youth—of writing the biography of their fountain pen. Otherwise, one could also speak of the biography of a fountain pen. But in reality, it is not a matter of cultivating analogies and comparisons, but of getting to the heart of the matter. In humans, this is the individuality that does not make them a generic being, but rather the very specific individuality that each human being is. Every human being strives toward the development of the individual, just as a plant strives toward the development of the species. And the fact that human beings have an excess of individuality in their development beyond what is typical of their species is the basis of all development, all progress in education as well as in historical development. If there were not a spiritual-soul, individual core in every human being that develops spiritually and soulfully in the same way as animals develop physically within their species, there would be no history. Then one could only speak of a species when referring to the human race. Then one could also only speak of a development, but not of a history and a cultural development. That is why natural science speaks of a species or genus development of horses, but not of a history.

We must therefore see in the development of every human being a spiritual-soul core that has exactly the same significance as the generic characteristics in animals. The generic characteristics in the animal kingdom correspond to the individual characteristics in humans. But if, in the animal kingdom, every being that moves toward the generic repeats the genus of its ancestors and can only come into being on the basis of the seed of its ancestors, the physical germ, then the individuality of each human being cannot arise from anything that is here in the physical world, but only from something that is spiritual and soul-like. This means that a spiritual-soul core that comes into existence with human birth does not merely refer back to the human species, insofar as the human being goes back to ancestors, to parents and forefathers, but points to an ancestor of a spiritual-soul nature, to a being that preceded, that does not belong individually to the human species, to any species at all, but to this same human individuality. So when a human being is born, an individual core is born with them that is designed for nothing other than this individual human core. Just as animals seek their species, humans seek their individual humanity. This means that just as this individual core appears at birth, it existed before, just as a species germ existed for animals. And we must search in prehistory for something essentially spiritual and soul-like, which is the spiritual and soul-like, not physical, germ of this individually developing spiritual and soul-like human being. Only those who do not see that the spiritual and soul-like does not develop as a core within the general human appearance will deny that the conclusion just given is correct.

Thus, every individual human life carries within itself the proof that it existed before. We are therefore led back from an individual human life to an individual spiritual-soul germ, and from this again to a spiritual-soul germ, that is, we are led back from our individual life to a previous individual life and then, of course, to our next life. An unbiased observation of human life provides this with the same necessity as the truth expressed in the field of natural science appears there as truth. Suppose one wanted to say as a person with an unbiased mind: One cannot know anything about this. If one draws this conclusion again and again, one could experience the following fate, telling oneself: You must sin against all observation and all logic. Nevertheless, this truth of repeated earthly lives is still little recognized. But this truth, that spiritual-soul things can only arise from spiritual-soul things, will certainly become as quickly established in human cultural life in the near future as the other truth characterized above. And a time will come when people will have to realize that they used to believe something else, just as they used to believe that lower animals, fish, and so on could arise from river mud.

But if one continues to observe this individual core of the human being, which can be seen to come into existence at birth, so to speak, in the course of life, it manifests itself in a twofold relationship, especially in the emerging human being, in youth. There it manifests itself as that which conditions the ascending development of the whole human being. And anyone who can observe youth life really closely, who has learned to observe the child not only externally but also very intimately, who remembers what they themselves experienced in this relationship, will admit that what is inside them is not yet there at a certain point in time, that it only shows itself later as a feeling of strength, as a feeling of life, as a purpose in life that has a powerful uplifting effect. What we carry within us as our individual core essence has an effect not only on the external structure of our lives, but also on the most elementary structures and functions of life. And when a person reaches a certain level of maturity and has the opportunity to take in a great deal from the outside world, this individual core essence has the effect of enriching itself, adapting to the outside world, and accumulating content. But if one observes this interrelationship between the individual core of a person's being and what happens to them in the course of their life, not only through what they learn and experience, but also through experiences such as pleasure and pain, pain, and joy, then one will see in this spiritual-soul life itself, on a higher plane, a similar interaction as — let us say — between the new plant seed that develops in the blossom of the old plant and the old plant from which the new seed takes life.

If we extend this observation to the tree, we can say that life is also always taken away when the tree becomes woody in the plant kingdom. But in return, certain things on the tree itself are transformed into dead, lifeless products; bark that is becoming inorganic surrounds the tree.

In the same way, when we look more closely at the nature of human life, we see not only an upward development, but we see an upward development that allows the spiritual-soul core of the human being to ascend and grow, allowing it to connect with the outer world; and as it grows further and further, we see it coming into conflict with its old disposition, that is, coming into conflict with itself. This happens because in youth it was able to build up organs, to structure organs according to its disposition, whereas now, in the further course of life, this process is no longer possible and it must now continue to exist in a life that is becoming woody. So we see that precisely when our life develops richly over time, when we take in new things and thereby enrich our individual core being, we come into conflict with what is the shell of this core being, what we have built up and what was growing. As long as we grow, and to the extent that we grow in this way, we do not take in a spiritual-soul death process. Only when we take in external things do we take in a spiritual-soul death process. But this is basically the case throughout life, even if it is less apparent in childhood than in later life.

So we can say that in the spiritual-soul realm, growth and death are located in the innermost part of the human being, including the spiritual-soul realm. But what is the process that takes place there? We can understand it well if we consider it in a lower form and draw on something from the realm of ordinary life in order to arrive at concepts and ideas about the higher realm of existence, so to speak.

Let us take fatigue, for example. We speak of fatigue in relation to animals and human beings. Now it is a matter of gaining an understanding of the nature of fatigue. I cannot go into all the concepts that have been collected on this subject, but let us consider the whole process of fatigue in relation to the life process. One could say: Man becomes fatigued because he wears out his muscles and because new strength must be supplied to the muscles. In this case, one could define it as follows: humans become tired because they wear out their muscles through some kind of work. At first glance, such a definition seems quite plausible. But it is not true. Today, however, we work with concepts that appear to touch on things from above, but do not seek to penetrate beneath the surface. For think, if muscles could really tire, what would happen to the heart muscle? But it never tires; it works day and night, continuously, as do other muscle areas of the human and animal body. This gives you an idea that it is not correct to say that there is anything in the relationship between work and muscle that could explain fatigue.

When do animals or humans become tired? When work is not caused by the organism, not by the life process, but when work is caused by the outside world itself, that is, by the world with which a living being can interact through its organs. So when a living being performs work on the basis of its consciousness, the organ in question becomes fatigued. In itself, there is nothing in the life process that could cause fatigue. So the life process, all the organs of life, must be brought together with something that does not belong to them at all if they are to become fatigued.

I can only draw attention to this important fact. Its elaboration can yield tremendously fruitful insights. Thus, only that which is brought to a living being indirectly through a process of consciousness, through a stimulus of consciousness, can cause fatigue. It would therefore be completely nonsensical to speak of fatigue in plants. Therefore, we can say that in everything that causes a living being to tire, there must actually be something foreign to it, something that is not part of its own nature.

We can therefore say that the disturbance of the life process caused by fatigue indicates, even in a very minor area, that what we have in our soul life is not simply born out of physical life, but that it is in complete contradiction to the laws of this life. The contradiction between the laws of conscious life and the laws of life and life processes alone explains what is involved in fatigue, which you can convince yourself of if you think about it more carefully. We can therefore say that fatigue is an expression of the fact that what is added to a life process must be foreign to it and can therefore only disturb it. Now, the life process can essentially compensate for what is worn out by fatigue through sleep and rest. But wear and tear is caused by something new appearing in relation to the old life process.

Now, in human individual life, an inner process of wear and tear occurs as a result of the human being entering into relationship with the outside world. The old, which was present in the predisposition, enters into interaction with the new. The result is expressed in the fact that during individual life, the individual core of life is transformed, but in return it must also cast off, so to speak, the woody parts that it has formed since birth. The cause of death lies in the human soul's destiny for a new life, just as in the animal organism the predisposition to fatigue can only lie in its interaction with something new and foreign to it. One could therefore say that the process of death, of gradual dying, can be better understood when one considers the contrast between the soul and the organic, which is expressed in fatigue. Therefore, we actually have the seed of death in our inner core throughout our entire individual life. But we could not develop further, we could not possibly take what we already are at birth a step further, if we did not accompany life with this death from within. Just as fatigue is part of performing external work, so too is the rejection and killing of the outer shell part of enriching and elevating the core of individual life.

It is precisely in the spiritual-soul process of life and death that what we might call the following is expressed with great clarity: we purchase the higher development, the further development of life, by enjoying the benefit of casting off what we already were. Development would not be possible if we could not cast off the old. But with what we have incorporated into our spiritual and soul life in the new, we pass through death. What forces lie within this? Forces that are the fruits of past life. We can experience the seeds of these fruits, we can experience the observations of life, we can also do many things in life, but we cannot integrate them, we cannot really transfer them into our outer shell. For we do not build our shell from what we learn in one life, or at most to a certain extent, but we build it according to what we have become in our previous life. So we can only build our lives by using what we have acquired in our previous life, and we can develop further by casting off the old—like a tree sheds its bark—and entering into death. And with what we take with us through death, we are able to build our next life, because it contains within itself the same forces that built our spiritual and soul growth when we developed fresh and joyful in our youth. It is similar to these forces. We have absorbed it from our life experience and are building ourselves a future living being, a future physical shell, which will carry within it, as a bud, what we have gained in this life.

In response to such things, the question is repeatedly asked: What does it actually help people to talk about repeated earthly lives if they are unable to remember previous lives, if they have no memory of previous lives?

It is in the nature of today's spiritual culture that we are not yet able to think and reflect on such questions of spiritual and soul life as we do on the things of natural life, but we must be clear that it is possible to develop concepts and insights about these questions of spiritual and soul life in exactly the same way. We can only do this if we take a closer look at this spiritual and soul life, if we ask ourselves: What is the nature of human memory? What is the essence of human memory?

There is a point in personal human life that can very easily lead to gaining insights into this question, and it is the following. You all know that in normal human life today there is a time of which there is no memory in later life. That is the time of early childhood. In normal life today, people remember up to a certain point in their childhood, then their memory fades. Although they are quite clear that they were there before, they do not remember it. They know that it is their same spiritual-soul self that has built up their life, but they lack the ability to extend their memory beyond this stage. Anyone who observes many childhoods will be able to make this observation. Of course, it will only be realized in essence in outer life, but it is nevertheless correct. From observing the child's soul, one can conclude that memory goes back exactly to the point in time when the concept of the self, the idea of one's own self, arose in the human being in question. This is an extremely important fact. The moment the child no longer says of its own accord, “Little Karl wants this,” or “Little Marie wants this,” but instead says, I want this — from the moment when the conscious concept of the self arises, retroactive memory also begins. Where does this remarkable fact come from? It comes from the fact that something else is necessary for memory than simply coming into contact with an object once or at all. One can come into contact with an object as often as one likes, but that does not necessarily evoke a memory. Memory is based on a very specific mental process, on a very specific spiritual-mental, inner life process, which you can visualize if you consider the following.

A distinction must be made between the perception of an object or experience and the idea of that object. In the process of perception, you have something that you can have again and again when you come face to face with the thing. But there is something else to the experience. When you come into contact with something, when you take in a visual or auditory impression, you also take in something like an inner seal, and it is this that we carry with us, that remains in our imagination, that can become part of our memory. But it must first come into being. I know that what I have just said will be widely criticized by staunch Schopenhauerians, by those who claim that our worldview is only our imagination. But this is based on a confusion of perception and imagination. The two must be urgently distinguished. Imagination is something reproduced. No matter how often the external experience occurs, if it does not leave an inner imprint on the imagination, it cannot be incorporated into memory. If, on the other hand, it is said that imagination is nothing more than what is presented in perception, one need only point out that the imagination of a piece of steel, no matter how hot, will certainly not burn anyone, but the sensory experience will burn. Therein lies the difference between imagination and sensory perception. Therefore, we can say that imagination is a sensory experience turned inward. But in this turning inward, in this external impact of the object in interaction with the human interior, whereby the inner seal impression is evoked, something else comes into play. What is experienced inwardly in our sensory life is incorporated into our ego with every external sensory impression, with everything we can take in from the external world. A sensory perception can also be there without being incorporated into the ego. For the external world, it is impossible for an idea to be retained in memory if it is not taken in inwardly, into the realm of the ego. Thus, for every idea that we form from a sensory experience and that can be retained in memory, the ego is at the starting point. An idea that enters our soul life from outside cannot be separated from the ego at all. I know that I am speaking figuratively. But these things nevertheless represent a reality, as we will see in the course of the next lectures.

We can imagine that the ego experience is something like an inner spherical surface, seen from the outside, that the sensory experiences then approach it and that the reflection of the experiences within produces the idea. But for this to happen, the ego must be present in every single sensory perception. Thus, in everything that can be incorporated into memory, the experience of the self is like a mirror that reflects experiences back to us inwardly. It must be there. This explains the following to us: As long as the child does not perceive concepts in such a way that they become ideas, but as long as they only approach the child externally as sensory perceptions, are only experienced externally between the ego and the outside world, but are not transformed into an inner ego experience, as long as the child does not have the concept of the ego, no ego mirror, so to speak, covers what is around it. As long as this is the case, however, one will also notice that the child fantasizes about many things in its environment that adults do not understand. When recalling memories, however, only what the ego has already absorbed can emerge, so that it is forced into memory. Where ego perception has occurred, the ego stands before the ideas like a mirror, and what lies before this time of ego experience can no longer be recalled. Therefore, human beings always come into contact with the outside world in such a way that their ego experiences everything, that their ego is always present. This does not mean that everything must come to consciousness, but only that experiences do not remain mere sensory perceptions, but are transformed into ideas.

We can now say that the innermost core of the human being, from the center of which develops what has now been described as passing from incarnation to incarnation, is covered by the concept of the I as it usually exists. Human beings place themselves before their memory with their present ego development. And so it is quite understandable that their memory will only extend to the sensory world.

Can experience itself provide proof that this can also be different? Can we speak of an expansion of memory into earlier incarnations? This is self-evident from the mere definition, if we grasp what lies behind our own ego point, which we cover up, so to speak. If one begins to grasp it, one must also recognize its innermost nature and essence, and one must also recognize what a human being does in human life, not just in general, but in one's own individual life. Is there a possibility, so to speak, of looking behind this ego? There certainly is. And it lies in that inner soul life of which I already spoke in the introductory lecture. If a person really undertakes to develop their soul in a strictly methodical way so that the powers slumbering within it emerge, so that the soul rises above itself, then they can only do so by acquiring, with a certain inner renunciation, ideas that are not those in which the ego experience is directly involved. In everything where the ego experience is present, the ego experience stands in front of the core of the human being. For the training of the soul, he must therefore acquire ideas that do not involve the ego experience. That is why the inner soul exercises that man undertakes must be carried out in a very specific way. What matters is the content of the reflection, what he incorporates into his soul life. And he must incorporate into his soul life something that corresponds to the inner nature of the soul, but does not refer to the external world. What does not refer to the external world? Only reflection. But reflection usually extends over the external world. Therefore, it is not useful for those who want to ascend to the higher worlds. It is therefore necessary to develop a life of imagination that, in images and symbols that are constantly presented to the soul, evokes such activity in the ego that the ego, if it wanted to gain the truths of the ordinary sensory world, would never form such an idea. So the soul must incorporate images and symbols that do not occur when one accompanies everything external with one's ego experience.

If one observes this, one has the following experience, about which one can only say something by pointing to that state which human beings enter again and again in their lives, namely the state of sleep. When we fall asleep, all the ideas, all the suffering, pain, and so on that we have experienced during the day sink into an indeterminate darkness. Our entire conscious life descends into an indeterminate darkness, and it returns when we wake up in the morning. Compare the life of consciousness when waking up and when falling asleep. As long as a person only gains conscious impressions from external sensory life, they only bring back in the morning what they had in their consciousness in the evening. They wake up with the same content of consciousness, they remember the same things, can think the same things, and so on. But if a person undertakes such inner training in the manner indicated, in which the ego is not involved, then the situation is different. In this case, the person will notice their first progress in that they feel enriched by sleep when they wake up, that what they took in before falling asleep returns to them with richer content. Now they can say: I have now looked behind the spiritual world, which the ego does not cover, and as a result, something has been incorporated into my conscious life that I have not gained from the sensory world, for I have brought it with me from the world of sleep. Such are the first steps of someone who is going through a spiritual-soul life. But then the possibility arises that, even during waking daytime life, they can integrate content that is not permeated by the ego experience, even though the ego is present. The ego experience must place itself alongside this content in the same way that it places itself within all sensory content. When we consider this, we must say: those who are able to look behind the ego can look into the spiritual-soul content of human existence. Those who go through such a path are often encouraged to develop certain feelings. The nature of these feelings already reveals what the path is like. One must learn to be without desire for coming experiences, learn to become without desire, and in particular to wean oneself from fear and anxiety about coming events. One must learn to say cold-bloodedly: You let everything come to you, whatever may come, and not just say this in a dry, abstract idea, but make it your innermost feeling. There is no need to become a fatalist, because you have to intervene in life yourself. You are a fatalist if you think that everything happens by itself. But to instill this absolute balance as a feeling and sensation into the ego is something that, according to the spiritual-soul nature of human beings, exerts such a force that it excludes the ego from the perceptions that already enter our consciousness. In this way, one remains within the world of the ego, but takes in a new world of inner soul experiences. These experiences alone make it possible to see the innermost core of the human being, which develops from birth as something that originates from a previous life but cannot be truly recognized, in its true, individual form. One must first see it as it is, as it is immediately present and at work. How can one remember something that one has never set eyes on? Just as a child has no consciousness of what took place before the development of ego consciousness, so human beings cannot take into their memory those experiences of previous births that are not based on a knowledge of the inner core of human beings, on feelings and sensations of the spiritual and soul core that is in every human being.

Those who truly go through this, who above all learn to earn the right to look back on previous lives by facing the future with equanimity and serenity, without desire, will see that previous earthly lives are not merely a logical conclusion, but prove to be reality through a newly created, truly evoked memory. But one thing is necessary for this. The ability to look into the past can only be gained through desirelessness, equanimity, and indifference toward the future. To the extent that we are prepared in our feelings and sensations to experience the future, to the extent that we can switch off our ego in relation to the experience of the future, to that extent we are able to look into the past. And the more a person develops this equanimity, the closer they come to the point where past earthly lives become a reality for them.

Thus, we can explain why it is often said that there is no memory in ordinary human life. This objection is like someone bringing a four-year-old child and saying, “This child cannot count,” and then concluding, “Therefore, humans cannot count!” Therefore, humans cannot do arithmetic! To this one could only reply: Let the child reach the age of ten, and it will be able to do arithmetic. Therefore, humans can do arithmetic! — The memory of past earthly lives is a matter of development! It is therefore necessary to learn to reflect on this through the compelling logical conclusion that has been placed at the beginning of today's lecture. Then we will find that there must be a spiritual-soul core to the human being and that we carry it through death into a new life, just as we carried it into this life through birth.

Thus, spiritual science cannot point to what is eternal in human beings in relation to life and death in a simplistic way, but only in a way that is factually correct. And we may say: the logical conclusion about death and life in relation to the human being tells us from the outset that in this human individuality there is also the possibility of acquiring memory of past lives. Then there is no longer any need to say: if you cannot remember, past earthly lives are of no use to you! Is only what one remembers useful? Are not the times that the child does not remember also important? We carry within us the fruits of past lives. In our present life, we develop within ourselves — without our consciousness — what we have from previous lives. And when we begin to look back on previous earthly lives, then the memory is there. Then we can also tell ourselves how good it was that we did not remember in earlier times. For example, retrospection is not only to be achieved through what I have characterized as feelings and sensations for future life, but it is even only compatible with such a state of mind as described. If it were to occur in an artificial way and yet the person were to accompany it with a life of desires and cravings permeated by egoism, their spiritual and soul life would have to become unbalanced, would have to fall apart. For certain things belong together — and certain other things repel each other.

Thus we have been able to trace what is eternal in human beings, what comes into being through birth, what passes from life into spiritual worlds through death, and reappears in new incarnations. And connected with this is how we can only develop higher in new incarnations by utilizing the fruits of our previous lives. Today, the relationship between the core of the human being and these two concepts should be demonstrated. With this in mind, when asked about the nature of life and death, we will no longer answer: The nature of death can be recognized in the corpse — but we will say: We sought in the innermost core of the human being that which must bring forth new life. But in order for new life to arise, the old must gradually die and then disappear completely, just as the old plant, if it is annual, must die so that the new plant can take life from it. Those who view the world of death in this way will not look at what remains as a corpse, but will look at the characteristic features of life in every being that are carried over into a new life. So even if Shakespeare has the gloomy Danish prince express what for many seems to follow from the certain facts of today's science:

The great Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Clogs a hole against the harsh north wind.
O that the earth, which the world trembles at,
A wall against wind and weather.

If such a view is based solely on the paths of the dying, then, looking at human beings from the perspective of spiritual science, we turn to the spiritual-soul core of the being that passes through birth and death and through ever new lives. And we gain confidence by not following the paths of oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, but by seeking the paths of life, by looking at what the actual core of the human being goes through, so that we can contrast Shakespeare's words with the other words:

The smallest earthly human being,
A son of eternity,
Defeats in ever new life
The old death!