Spiritual Science as a Life's Work

GA 63 — 4 December 1913, Berlin

5. The Meaning of the Immortality of the Human Soul

Continuing the reflections of the previous lecture, today I would like to speak to you about the meaning of the immortality of the human soul. It is not in the nature of spiritual science to discuss such a topic as the meaning of human immortality in terms of conceptual definitions or theoretical debates. Rather, in today's lecture, I will offer a number of insights from the field of spiritual science that may shed light on what can be called the meaning of human immortality.

From the considerations made here last Thursday, it emerged that spiritual research is essentially concerned with penetrating precisely that within human nature which can be called the immortal core of the human being. Spiritual science is primarily concerned with finding this immortal core. And it has been said that the region of human knowledge where this immortal core of the human being is to be found can be penetrated by research that arises from the development of the human soul itself, the human soul, that unique instrument through which we can truly penetrate the spiritual world. It has often been suggested that everything in spiritual research depends on individual human personalities being able to bring their souls, through the soul exercises already outlined this winter, to a point where they are capable of exercising a truly inner spiritual-soul activity, which is practiced, as it were, detached from the physical body, detached from the instrument through which all other human soul activity is exercised in the course of everyday life. That this detachment of the human soul from the body is possible, possible through intimate processes of soul development, is what I tried to point out in particular in my last lecture. And I tried to point out further that for the spiritual researcher who has learned to really connect a meaning with the words “experiencing outside the body,” this human soul also reveals itself with its characteristics, with those characteristics that prove by themselves how the life of this soul extends beyond birth and death.

Now, in the course of today's reflections, we will see how such a contemplation of the human soul, to be attained through initiation, gives meaning to the word immortality. But by way of introduction, I would like to emphasize beforehand that we are indeed living in a time in which, in a sense, deeper human thinking and more serious contemplation of human life are gradually leading us onto the path that spiritual science indicates for the problem of the immortal life of the human soul. Much could be pointed out in this regard; only one thing should be pointed out from this point of view: namely, gaining a sense of human immortality. Reference should be made to that spirit who is considered one of the leading figures of the modern Enlightenment worldview: to Lessing, as he attempted to derive meaning from the idea of immortality.

In that writing, in which Lessing gave humanity his spiritual testament, so to speak, he came, as it seemed to him, to a renewal of the ancient human idea of repeated earthly lives; and he came to this because he found himself compelled to understand the whole of historical life on earth within human development as an education of humanity. It is easy to dismiss Lessing's testament, which he gave as a conclusion to his thinking and striving, as many in our time would certainly like to do, by saying: Even great minds grow old and then indulge in all sorts of fantasies. But anyone who has learned to respect intellectual life and intellectual striving will certainly not be able to dismiss Lessing's “Education of the Human Race,” his most mature work, in this way. I cannot go into the details of his writing here; I can only point out how history appears to Lessing, namely that humanity ascends from more primitive ways of human life and perception to ever more developed ones; and how Lessing understands this further development of the human race as a mysterious education bestowed upon the human race from the spiritual world. He distinguishes between individual epochs in the progress of humanity, and from these observations, he, who of course could not yet stand on the ground of our modern spiritual science, arrives at the question: How can the individual soul life of man be placed within this whole of human historical development? And he comes to the conclusion that the individual soul life can only be placed within the course of historical development if one thinks of repeated earthly lives of the human soul. If one thinks that the soul that lives today has lived repeatedly, if one imagines it living in previous epochs of historical development, in which it has absorbed what previous epochs could pour into souls if one thus imagines the soul as taking with it from previous epochs the fruits it could take from these epochs after passing through a purely spiritual existence between death and the next birth. This satisfactorily resolves the question for Lessing: What about the souls that lived in ancient times and did not experience what the progress of humanity could offer them in terms of higher developmental forces? The answer for Lessing is that it was the same souls who lived earlier who carried the fruits of past epochs into their present existence, who now add to what they integrated at that time what the present can offer — and who now, with what they reap from their present existence, after death through a purely spiritual life and carry these fruits over again into future epochs of humanity in order to participate in what the progress of humanity can then offer them. Thus, for Lessing, the meaning of the immortality of the human soul illuminates at the same time the whole meaning of historical earthly development. This meaning arises for him, and with it the possibility of thinking that the life of the individual human being, in what it contains inwardly, is greater and more comprehensive than what can be expressed in a life between birth and death. And if one considers the individual life in such a way that this individual human soul lives from birth to death, integrates and organizes itself, gives what this life can give, then passes through the gate of death, lays down the physical body, enters a spiritual world to seek its further development, then, in Lessing's sense, the entire historical development of humanity can also be imagined, yes, even the entire development of the earth itself, in that what humanity lives out on earth is the “soul” of the earth, and everything that geology, biology, and other sciences explore is the “physical body” of the Earth, which, as modern physics can already prove today, will one day fall away from the confluence of all human souls, just as the individual human body falls away from the individual human soul at death. But then, after the body has fallen away from it, the Earth will proceed to a future embodiment in the cosmos in order to ascend to future spiritual and material heights.

One can see how the meaning of all human existence, and indeed the meaning of the Earth's development itself, emerges from this idea of Lessing's. Lessing did not allow himself to be deterred by the objection that this was an idea which humanity had in the most primitive stages of soul development, but which then disappeared from cultural development. On the contrary, at the end of his treatise on the “Education of the Human Race,” Lessing says: Should this idea be worth less now than when it first dawned on the soul — now that it has been paralyzed and weakened by the sophistry of the school? And Lessing undoubtedly believes that a future of human spiritual development will bring back to souls what has been lost to them in the meantime.

In this way, one acquires real, actual powers that carry the results of ancient times into the present and into more recent times. In this way, one moves beyond that impossible standpoint where, despite wanting to be realistic, one speaks of “ideas” that are supposed to have an effect on the history of humanity, as if “ideas” could ever be realities! But ideas cannot be effective in history, for mere ideas are abstractions, they are not real. Lessing, however, imagines that real earthly human life proceeds in such a way that it is the realities of human souls that carry over from one epoch to another what has been worked out in one epoch. Here we stand on the ground of spiritual realities that hold together the historical epochs of humanity.

Now the question is: What does spiritual research in the narrower sense, as meant here, have to say about this idea, which Lessing arrived at through certain historical necessities?

Spiritual research arrives at seeing, at having before the spiritual eye or before the other spiritual organs of perception, that which may be addressed as passing beyond the birth and death of the human being. To prove this, it is necessary to point out once again in a few words what presents itself to the spiritual researcher in real soul experience. If he allows the exercises indicated in the previous lecture to really affect his soul and thus comes to experience soulfully after the soul itself has withdrawn from the physical body and come to an experience in the spiritual, then this soul, which the spiritual researcher has made independent of the physical body, has this physical body beside it or in front of it, experiences this body in such a way that it is subject to death as an external thing; whereas everyday life otherwise flows by in such a way that human beings only develop consciousness when they are, so to speak, inside their physical body and use it as a tool to make what is around them the object of their consciousness, namely the physical-sensory world.

Let us vividly imagine what the spiritual researcher's real experience is: that with what the soul really is, he lifts himself out of his body, that he strengthens the inner powers of the soul, makes them so intense that he is not dependent on perceiving only with the help of physical tools, but can direct them within himself without physical powers. The spiritual researcher then comes to a very specific realization: where it actually comes from that one has consciousness in everyday sensory life. Then, when the spiritual researcher has truly freed his soul experience from the physical-bodily, and this bodily aspect is beside or before him, he learns to recognize how this whole everyday soul life actually comes about. I would like to use a comparison to illustrate how everyday soul life comes about. The spiritual researcher does not change soul life into anything other than what it already is. What he achieves is only that he can spiritually observe and see what otherwise happens in everyday life. The spiritual researcher discovers that the activity of the spiritual-soul — now grasped purely spiritually-soul — works on the body in such a way that, first of all, let us call it that, the nerve organs of the human being are worked on, worked on in such a way that this working can be compared to writing letters on paper. Please note that what the spiritual researcher initially recognizes as spiritual-soul activity is not thinking, not feeling, not willing, nor even what we recognize in everyday life as soul activity; rather, it is what initially acts in the physical organs and works on them, I would say, so plastically that they first come into those movements of which the materialistic worldview speaks. These movements in the brain, in the nervous system, and so on, are really there, and in this sense the materialistic worldview must be given complete credit. These movements, these vibrations in the brain, are just as present as the letters I write down on paper when I write. But just as my activity is that of writing, so the first activity that human beings develop is that of inscribing into their nervous system what they then perceive in their movements, in their vibrations, in all their activities, in such a way that it is comparable to the perception of my own letters that I have written. The only difference is that when I write, I consciously write the letters on paper and can also read them again consciously; whereas when I relate to the outside world, I unconsciously inscribe the physical activities to be performed in the nervous system with the spiritual-soul. Once I have inscribed them, they run their course, and I observe them, and this observation is conscious soul life.

Thus we see that what can truly be called spiritual-soul stands behind the spiritual-soul that develops in everyday life, and that between the true spiritual-soul life, that in which the spiritual researcher lives when he has learned to experience without a body, and between the spiritual-soul life in everyday soul life lies the whole physical experience. Between our true spiritual, between our true soul, and everyday conscious life lies our body. But what this body lives out, how this body engages in continuous organic activity so that consciousness can be reflected back to us like a mirror or like an image from a mirror, what this body does, is the result of the spiritual-soul. Behind our body we stand with our spiritual-soul, and in this spiritual-soul standing behind the body lies the immortal core of the human being.

If one makes this distinction, one will no longer seek the meaning of the immortality of the human soul in the continued existence of the soul's contents that one experiences between birth and death; instead, one will have to seek the actual source of immortality in what lies behind everyday life. Now it is a matter of gaining an understanding of what lies behind this everyday life. But this can only be done by taking a look at the actual essence of spiritual research into the soul.

From what I have just discussed, it is clear that everyday consciousness, the consciousness we develop in ordinary life, depends on being reflected out of the body, just as our own image is reflected in a mirror. Those who do not seek the spiritual-soul aspect behind the image, but believe that the spiritual-soul aspect arises from the body as the function, as the effect of the body, those who think materialistically in this regard, are, for those who know things and have truly researched them through spiritual research, like people who would say, for example: I see a mirror in front of me; strangely, this mirror allows my image to emerge from its substance. But it does not allow it to emerge from its substance at all, and it is simply nonsense to believe that the mirror produces the image; rather, the image is reflected back by the mirror. In the same way, our own spiritual-soul activity is reflected back by the body. Our body can quite rightly be compared to a mirror that reflects our mental and spiritual activity, with the only difference being that we are completely passive in relation to the mirror, but in relation to the body we first have to work on this body with our mental and spiritual activity, first inscribe this activity into it, which then results in consciousness. The comparison, the reflection I see in the mirror, would only be correct if I were to perform an activity from my body that would cause a process in the glass, which would then cause the reflection, if I were to stand actively in front of the mirror and emit certain rays and so on, which would cause intersections and the like to arise, in order to then produce the content of everyday consciousness and thus make it possible for the human being to appear before himself. But this shows that the human being needs a counterpoint for life between birth and death, something in which he can reflect his mental and spiritual activity. At the moment when one would have to develop such a content of consciousness, as it is in everyday life, without the body, one would not be able to do so as long as one stands between birth and death. If the body failed in its service as a tool, one would have no support; one would have nothing from which spiritual-soul activity could be reflected back.

If, through the exercises indicated, the spiritual researcher manages to lift his spiritual-soul activity out of the physical body, it also becomes apparent that the spiritual-soul gaze cannot possibly be directed toward the outer physical world. This outer physical-sensory world disappears from the horizon of consciousness at the very moment when the spiritual researcher truly lifts the spiritual-soul out of the physical. I would just like to mention this in passing for those who believe that spiritual research could somehow distract us from the joyful, devoted contemplation of the physical-sensory world that surrounds us in such rich abundance. Oh no, that is certainly not the case. It is precisely those who have become spiritual researchers who find that, at the moment when they live in their spiritual-soul life, the sight of the physical-sensory world disappears; but then they appreciate it all the more in its beauty and its true value. He returns again and again, as long as he is allowed to return, strengthened and invigorated by his stay in the spiritual world; he develops an even greater interest in everything beautiful in the physical world — and also gains a special support for recognizing the beauty, sublimity, and grandeur of the physical world in its tasks, which previously escaped him without the training that comes from spiritual research. Objections such as the one just mentioned are only made by those who have not yet approached spiritual research more closely.

If it is really the case that the physical world disappears when we do not have the support of the body for our perception — and the spiritual researcher has this body beside him, but does not use it as a tool — then the question arises: How then does actual spiritual consciousness come about? Does spiritual consciousness not need a basis? Does the soul not need something to reflect itself in if it wants to enter spiritual consciousness?

Initiation research answers this question by saying that at the moment when a person steps out of the physical body with their spiritual-soul and lives solely in the spiritual-soul, they do indeed need a support, something that now serves as a mirror for them. And something that is actually, in a certain sense, a mirror within life before death, when experienced in spiritual research, becomes a mirror for them, but one that is painful to bear. Here we are again at one of the points where it must be pointed out that spiritual research does not merely lead to bliss, but also to tragic moods, to what, it may be said, can only be endured with great inner pain. But for the true researcher, higher knowledge must be purchased with this pain. What then presents itself as opposition is our own individual experience, which we have gone through from the point of childhood to which we can otherwise remember, which we otherwise also have in our memory image. But we have it in our memory image in everyday life in such a way that we are, as it were, stuck inside it, that we are united with it. Our thoughts, our experiences, our pains, everything we remember, are basically ourselves; we are stuck in them, we are one with them. But with the spiritual researcher, what one otherwise has in one's memory slips out of it, as if from a shell. What one is otherwise one with, and of which one says: you have experienced it, and you now feel united in your thoughts, sensations, and feelings with what you have experienced — one now feels this as an external dream image, like a mirage placed before one. One feels as if magnified, stepping out of what reflects the spiritual-soul. Then you realize that in spiritual-soul experience, in initiation — not by passing through the gate of death — you have to endure, instead of external physical impressions, instead of what the senses give us, having your own life as a material basis or as a substantial basis of experience. On this foundation, as on a mirror, what can be perceived spiritually stands out. There one learns to know oneself, to what extent one has become a good or bad mirror for the spiritual world. Above all, one learns what it means to truly have before oneself what one has lived through. For this is now the reflective surface from which everything else that presents itself in the spiritual world stands out. So instead of having one's body as a tool for perception, one now has as a tool one's own selfhood, one's memory selfhood, one's own experiences. One's own experiences must merge, according to consciousness, with what one experiences spiritually; they must reflect back what one experiences spiritually. And it now becomes apparent in this research that one becomes aware, at the moment when one no longer experiences one's own inner life within one's body, as in everyday life, within one's body, but has it externally before one in the manner just described, like a mirage — how at that moment this inner being presents itself like an ethereal entity that becomes greater and greater because it is inwardly related to the entire spiritual cosmos. One feels as if one is being absorbed by the spiritual cosmos. So when one has gone through the experiences described, one feels as if there were something present in human life between birth and death, as if rolled up in the forces of the physical body. At the moment when one leaves the physical body in initiation, the something held together by the forces of the physical body becomes free as the etheric body. But what has become free then strives to spread into the spiritual world, becoming more and more imperceptible — and one is always in danger, when one perceives spiritually in this way, that one's own self, the thinking self, will dissolve into the spiritual cosmos, and that one will thereby lose sight of it, because after the dissolution the mirror image is no longer there.

This is counteracted, as long as the physical lasts, by the physical body. For at the moment when one is threatened by the danger that the finer etheric part of a more spiritual body, so to speak, would be lost, the physical body asserts its increased powers and one must return to the physical body. This is just as if one were forced back by the power of the physical body into everyday perception, into ordinary seeing and into the physical mode. But as you can see from this description, through spiritual research one learns to recognize the moment that must occur when the physical and chemical forces take hold of the outer physical body and take it away when death occurs. One learns to recognize how consciousness can live on after death, but can live on because the physical body, which is now approaching its dissolution, no longer calls back the finer etheric body just described — can live on, at first, in the form of one's own experience standing before us as a memory image, only until the forces of the spiritual cosmos assert their innate mode of action and what exists as a finer body dissolves into the cosmos.

Thus we see how the spiritual researcher, through his experiences, evokes the state that must occur in the human being when he passes through the gate of death. First of all, by experiencing the process of death in its most elementary form, one learns what happens immediately after death. But one also learns to recognize that this is only the very first moments after death. In my book “An Outline of Esoteric Science,” I pointed out how long these very first moments after death last. They vary in length, depending on a person's character, but they only last for days. The recollection of the past earthly life that one has lived between birth and death lasts for days. It lasts as long as the forces of the inner, finer body that we carry within us, and which comes to light through initiation research, can endure.

When one considers the circumstances in the manner described, one comes to ask oneself: What is it that determines the length of time during which this recollection can take place? If one compares this recollection with the length of time that this or that person can live through in ordinary life, and in which they can remain awake, that is, in which they do not fall asleep, then one has approximately the period of time, which lasts only a few days, within which this recollection of past earthly life takes place. So we can say that depending on the extent to which a person has the opportunity to let life unfold in their etheric body without having to call upon the forces of sleep, without having to invoke sleep as a means of compensation, the length of time after death during which the past earthly life from birth to death is presented like a tableau of memories, like a living mirage, will be shorter or longer.

Over such a period of time, over this and also the following ones, which I will mention in a moment, one learns to speak in the field of spiritual research through inner contemplation, not through external measurement. What one experiences there through retrospection in initiation presents itself in such a way that one knows: it contains the forces that the human being must keep awake before sleep overcomes him. What one experiences there is such that one must say: this review of one's past earthly life is experienced over a period of days. But what comes next also results from the spiritual researcher's view. It is not only what one has experienced in one's life between birth and the present moment that is revealed, so to speak, in indifferent thoughts; but also what one has experienced morally or otherwise in the realm of one's abilities, one's life skills. But this is revealed in a very special way, and here we are again at a point where we must say that a spiritual researcher sees a life that is not what one would wish for according to the desires and experiences of everyday life. Let us discuss what is revealed here with a concrete example.

We look back on our life, look back to a time when we did something that was wrong. And this wrongdoing now appears to us in the mirage of past earthly life just mentioned. It must be said, however, that the impression for spiritual research is that this earthly life first appears to us as if in an indifferent picture, as in a tableau, and then gradually emerges from it — but this envelops the spiritual researcher's gaze in ever more tragic conflicts — something of which one could say: one's entire personal value arises from what one has done and experienced. If one has done wrong, this wrong emerges from the tableau of one's past earthly life, but at first only in such a way that one pursues the image: this is what you have done. Then this image is permeated with an element of feeling arising from the spiritual-soul itself, with emotional forces, and one cannot help but say: You cannot be the person you should be if you always have to look at what you have done; you can only be what you should be when you have erased this injustice from your perception of your inner destiny, your karma. The longer one succeeds in dwelling on what appears as a spiritual mirror, and the longer one looks into it, the more intensely the purely emotional experiences arise, saying: You must look at what you have done wrong until you have erased it!

This is indeed what the spiritual researcher must go through. After looking at the mirage of his past life spreading out before his eyes, which may leave him indifferent, he must then see what stands out from it and becomes a sum of countless self-reproaches, which shows him very clearly his value, how far he is, and what he must do after what he has done in order to become a true human being. Self-knowledge—that is the peculiar thing about it, that it becomes more and more difficult, more and more tragic, the further one progresses in it, and that one has before one, in particular, everything one should not have done as self-reproaches, so that one is spellbound by it, so that one cannot turn one's spiritual gaze away from it before it is extinguished.

Up to this point, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle had already recognized the vision of human spiritual life from spiritual insight, and he also recognized what must follow this mirage. Aristotle already knew in ancient Greece that when a person has passed through the gate of death, they truly live in their own uniqueness, in their own being — and live in such a way that they now, looking back, have the experience of their own deeds and misdeeds, on which their gaze is fixed; only that Aristotle was not yet so far advanced as a researcher of the mind that he had gone beyond this view of looking back. According to him, this looking back extends into eternity. Aristotle sees no possibility that man could ever escape from it; so that once man has had the brief retrospective, which lasts only a few days, he would then have the other, which would present itself figuratively before him for all eternity. This is one of the bleak aspects of Aristotelian philosophy, if one really understands it. Aristotle believes that the short earthly life is there to prepare us for an experience in the spiritual realm, in which man, looking back, is captivated by the sight of the imperfect existence between birth and death; and his life after death would consist of being captivated by this sight. His world would be to see himself as he was in the life between birth and death; and just as we see here a world of animals, plants, stones, mountains, seas, and so on, so in the time after death we would be enclosed in the sight of the experience of our own deeds. The distinguished Aristotle scholar Franz Brentano clearly pointed this out in his beautiful book Aristotle and His Worldview. What I have just mentioned—even if Aristotle's words are sometimes such that one can argue about what he meant—is entirely consistent with Aristotle. He did not yet know that what today's spiritual research can show us is also only a passage, which, when a person has passed through the gate of death, presents itself as a retrospective view permeated by inner emotional experiences.

What does the spiritual researcher encounter when he penetrates into the region into which human beings enter when they pass through the gate of death?

If he has developed his spiritual research vision to such an extent that his body does not, so to speak, call him back too quickly, then what follows is what follows the experience of the days after death, the indifferent mirage-like memory as a retrospective. For the spiritual researcher can ascend on his path in such a way that at first he really only sees, like a mirage, the reflection of his life events and some spiritual experiences that are obvious; then his body can reclaim that fine etheric body into its interior, and he re-enters everyday reality as if from an initiation dream. But if he continues the exercises, increasing his attention and devotion further and further, he will indeed come to see what stands out from this mirage, but now stands out in such a way that what we are not yet, what we must become, is revealed in the vision — in the sense that we are not yet, that we have done an injustice which we must look at. We are not yet the one who has eliminated this injustice from the world; but we must become the one who eliminates injustice from the world.

And that is again the pressing, the inwardly oppressive thing in the spiritual-scientific view, that through the contemplation of inner experience awakened to self-contemplation, one feels the awakened forces that want to compensate for all injustice as if by fate; one looks at the imperfections that cling to one. One sees that. But one also sees more and more how one must act so that the imperfect disappears, so that injustice is eradicated. One sees what one must become. This is the self-knowledge that one feels within oneself the germinating forces that already push beyond death, that one must say to oneself: These forces live on in us after death; when we are freed from the body, we do what they demand. Now I must leave the injustice as it is, must retain these imperfections; but I feel these forces: like a germinating force in a plant, I feel the force that can eradicate injustice. Now we know through inner vision that it takes years for what presents itself through our own experience to gradually develop the forces that can truly compensate for injustice. But they cannot compensate for it now. They must first pass through a spiritual world, through a world of spiritual experiences. Just as surely as physical consciousness, when it sees the sun setting, says to itself: you must now experience the night, then the sun that has set in the west can reappear in the east, so surely does the spiritual researcher know, when he experiences the forces that are developing as germ forces in the soul: after you have gradually developed these forces, after you have inwardly realized after death — or learned to realize over the years — what the forces must be like that can bring about compensation, you must immerse yourself in a spiritual world in order to find in it the forces that are now, as it were, gathered from this spiritual world, one might say spiritually breathed in, so that after passing through this spiritual world between death and new birth, the human being becomes ripe again to enter a new earthly life with these forces that have been worked out inwardly in the manner described.

But spiritual research can also give us an impression of what the soul has to go through when, after death, it has first acquired these forces spiritually in the light of its past life, after it has realized what forces it must have in order to prepare itself for a new earthly life as it passes through the spiritual world. For the spiritual researcher, if he can maintain his spiritual vision long enough through continued practice while he is still in earthly life, cannot transform these forces himself. But he looks into the spiritual world; he sees the material for this transformation. He sees, as it were, how the forces within him long for a new life. Just as one can see in a human embryo that has not yet come into the light of day a lung that one can see will breathe when it comes into contact with air, so one can see in the spiritual world, when the soul is freed from the body, the spiritual organs breathing in the spiritual air. when it comes into contact with breathing air, it will breathe — so too, when the soul is freed from the body, one sees in the spiritual world the spiritual organs breathing in the spiritual air, which, however, only develop spiritually when they approach a new earthly life. One learns about this spiritual formation through direct observation, learning what it means to grasp spiritual substance with spiritual organs. — If one wants to use an expression for what is happening there with the soul, there is no other expression in ordinary language than to say: It is a blissful experience in a certain sense, because it is a life of activity, a continuous calling upon and appropriating of spiritual substance in the existence between death and new birth, a creating, a bringing about of the preconditions for a new earthly life. In this existence, the soul feels itself to be part of a spiritual world, and through this it feels a heavenly bliss — after it has felt what it must find tragic in its past life and in the view of it — what must develop as the germinating forces based on the past life.

So we would have together what we can call the meaning of life after death, when a person has passed through the gate of death: first, a spiritual, mirage-like review of the past earthly life lasting several days, followed by an emotional reliving of it; for this latter emotional experience is not only a review, but a reliving of the past earthly life, in which one experiences all the imperfections and wrongs one has committed, what one should have done differently in order to achieve what one should achieve in the next life, and a working out of the powers one needs so that the next life can be different. As long as one still has a retrospective view of one's past life, it is only a mental development of those powers, which proceeds in such a way that one realizes: in the coming earthly life, one must have these or those powers. But once you have relived your entire life, once you have gone through your earthly life again in the spiritual realm after death, you enter a purely spiritual region, and there you breathe in, as it were, all those powers that then descend to unite with what your father and mother can give in physical substance and form a new earthly life.

It might now seem as if what I have just described as the passage of human beings through life between death and new birth necessitated that successive earthly lives should become more and more perfect. However, this is not the case in practice. It is not the case for the reason — and this is again shown by actual spiritual research, if one only has the view from the soul freed from the body — that what a truly great spirit of recent times said, almost out of a sick mind, is really true: that the world is deep, and indeed deeper than we think, that we can only slowly and gradually come to what is inherent in us, and that our human powers are quite imperfect in relation to what they must one day become, and what can stand before us as an ideal of true humanity. It then becomes apparent that we are not always able to see after death what powers we need to acquire in order to compensate for the wrongs we have committed. And many powers have a say in this, so that it may be that we believe we can compensate for what we have done out of selfishness in our life before death by even greater selfishness, and that we want to compensate for what we have done out of foolishness by even greater foolishness. As a result, the following earthly incarnation may turn out to be even more imperfect, an even harsher training than the last one. On the whole, however, the passage of human beings through repeated earthly lives is an ascent. It is quite possible that when human beings look back on their past earthly lives, they may be mistaken about the way in which something can be compensated for, and that this may result in apparent or real descents. But on the whole, deep “falls” of human beings are often followed by strong ascents, in that after death the terrible thing happens that we look back on what we have done as a deep injustice, or what has clung to us as a great imperfection, and that as a result we will experience a great ascent after the deep fall.

Many things become apparent when the spiritual researcher observes life with a keen eye, for one thing does not occur alone. When one has one's own life after death as a background, one merges with the spiritual world, one unites with the spiritual world; so that when one encounters an injustice one has committed in life through one's spiritual-soul experience, one also encounters the soul to which one has committed this injustice, and one then experiences the injustice done to this soul. In general, expanding our view to the spiritual leads us not only to our own soul at first, but also to the souls of other people themselves. One learns to observe the souls of other people, so that, even though it is difficult to believe for today's consciousness, one enters into an observation of the souls of other people and really succeeds in following a soul that has already left the body, that has already passed through the gate of death. However, it must be pointed out that when the spiritual researcher endeavors to expand his own life so that he penetrates into the space of experience — “space” is of course meant symbolically here — where a soul is, he can witness the fate of that soul after death. It must be said, however, that one initially experiences the fate of those souls with whom one was connected in past lives; but in further spiritual experience, the fate of souls with whom one was connected in earlier earthly lives also arises. The spiritual researcher then finds that he develops relationships with almost all souls on earth; however, recognition is often extremely difficult and can only succeed with certain aids.

Some questions may arise for the individual when the meaning of the immortality of the human soul is discussed in this way. If we combine what was explained in the previous lecture with what has been presented today, we can say: We can understand that everyday consciousness can only develop by spreading like a veil over the eternity of the human soul, and that we develop sensory consciousness because we obscure between birth and death what unfolds after death. According to what was said in the last lecture, we must carry death within us in order to have present consciousness. To the extent that we develop the forces that lead us to natural death, we can develop everyday consciousness. The fact that we can die makes it possible for us to have the sensory world around us.

Thus, one can understand that human beings must, so to speak, die when they have lived through their lives. But those who hear talk of immortality in this way must repeatedly ask the question: What about those lives that end unfulfilled, whether through inner illnesses or inner weaknesses or through misfortunes, perhaps in the prime of physical earthly life? What can the spiritual researcher say about such deaths? How do they fit into the full course of earthly life, and what are they in terms of what human beings carry through the gate of death when they enter the spiritual world?

I do not wish to speak in abstract terms here. I have been giving these lectures here for many years. It is therefore quite natural that now, after such a cycle has been given so many times, some people may believe that the descriptions given here are mere assertions. One will experience again and again that those who hear such things for the first time and are not familiar with the literature will raise objections that have long since been refuted. However, it would not be possible to progress in these considerations if one had to say the same thing every year. Therefore, in response to what may be legitimate objections, I must point out that it must be said: Try to delve into the literature and take into account that such objections have already been refuted in the course of the many lectures.

Let us take the case of a flourishing human life being cut short by an accident. The following presents itself to the spiritual researcher. If he follows this soul beyond death, it becomes apparent that, by going through this misfortune, it has absorbed forces within itself that are suitable for preparing higher intellectual abilities for the next earthly life than would have been prepared if this misfortune had not occurred. However, it would be a mistake to think that it would be very easy to become more intellectual for one's next earthly life by allowing oneself to be run over by a machine now. This is not the case. Rather, it shows that what is necessary in human destiny beyond death cannot be decided by the consciousness we have between birth and death, but by that higher consciousness that enters before birth or after death, in the purely spiritual world. With the consciousness that we can develop in the physical body, we can never foresee whether an accident would affect us in this or that way. But in numerous cases, it becomes apparent to the spiritual researcher that during a life that preceded our present birth as a spiritual experience, our soul, in a purely spiritual consciousness, has already brought about a fate that has led with a certain necessity to this misfortune. It is not for us to decide this after birth. Before birth, we direct our existence toward misfortune so that our soul, so to speak, passes through the possibility of external physical activities that shatter our physical body and thus, at the moment of transition, has the experience: how does our humanity work in shattering when this body will not develop in a natural way? It makes good sense — not to our everyday consciousness, but to our superconsciousness — that human lives can also be destroyed by misfortune before reaching normal age, so to speak. As risky as it is to say such things in the present, it must nevertheless be pointed out. And in many souls whom the spiritual researcher finds, in whom he finds this or that talent in their basic disposition, he can go back to earlier earthly lives and see how inventive powers, powers of insight into the great world, which are suited to rendering great services to humanity, have developed through accidents at a certain age. It is reasonable to look only at how a certain age is necessary for this or that task, which is of an original nature. Great inventors will, at a certain age, through a maximum tension of their abilities, cause certain powers to rise up from the depths of life. It does not have to be an epoch-making invention; it can also be something that serves ordinary everyday life. This may be based on the fact that in a previous earthly life, this soul had to pass through circumstances of physical life that shattered the body at that time. In passing through the forces that destroy physical life, the soul acquires inventive powers that dominate, direct, and permeate the physical world. — That such things can be researched cannot be “proved” by ordinary external logic; Instead, we can only do what has been shown so often in these lectures: how the spiritual researcher, through a strictly regulated methodology of his soul life, comes to be able to truly observe what happens in a moment when a soul experiences some misfortune that leads to this or that, or even to death.

Or let us take another case: when a young human life is cut short relatively early by illness, it becomes apparent to the spiritual researcher that it is not so much the intellectual life that is influenced in the next incarnation; rather, it is essentially the life of the will that is influenced in such a case. Again, we must not bring about such a strengthening of the life of the will, which we desire in ordinary consciousness, by allowing ourselves to become ill. But when, in the whole context of existence, which is governed by the spiritual world, a human life is cut short in the prime of life by lung disease or some other illness, the spiritual researcher very often finds that such a soul, which has gone through such an illness, was not able to develop that inner strength of will that was already predisposed in it in a certain way. The outer physical body offered resistance. But by going through the illness, and by the spiritual-soul experiencing the resistance of the physical body, it found, when it then passed through the life between death and new birth, in this resistance that which then gives that strength of will. And it is precisely through such a consideration that it becomes apparent that life acquires its meaning in all respects.

Certainly, it must be said: all the suffering that we feel in physical earthly life, that we rightly feel when we face the misfortunes of life or our own fate, this suffering will always be there. It cannot be completely eliminated, but perhaps it can be mitigated if we realize that, from a higher perspective, wisdom nevertheless permeates and interweaves our lives. From a higher point of view, all suffering that is woven into life appears to be part of development, and this is the starting point for the spiritual researcher: to assume and find wisdom in the world from the outset. He looks at life with all its good and bad luck; and just as the result of a calculation is not there until the calculation has been done, so wisdom does not exist in human life until we have convinced ourselves in so many cases that wisdom nevertheless underlies all life. Because we are immersed in an experience that must take place through the body, misfortunes will have a corresponding effect, will affect us as human beings, and if life in the body could not feel pain in the event of misfortune, it would seem inhuman to us. But just as sensory perception in life obscures what is spiritual and soulful in its eternal significance, so too does experience in the body obscure that higher point of view from which all conscious human experience appears to be imbued with wisdom. The spiritual researcher does not become like a parched crop of grain because he can perceive wisdom even in misfortune. No, precisely because he can rise to a higher point of view, from this point of view the overview of life appears to him to be imbued with wisdom and reason. But then, when he re-enters earthly life and experiences it in his body, he is of course as much a feeling human being as anyone else. Just as someone who climbs a mountain peak and has a beautiful view from the top must not cease to have an eye for what is happening down in the valley, so too the true spiritual researcher cannot lose all compassion and empathy for all human happiness and suffering when he encounters happiness and suffering in life between birth and death. But it is precisely this spiritual research that shows that, in relation to eternity, human beings are not born to despair, but that every glance into the realm of the spirit shows them the world in a wise and meaningful way, and that knowledge of true immortality is at the same time knowledge of the meaning of immortality.

I could only hint at human immortality and its nature, and from this the meaning of this human immortality must emerge. The spiritual researcher must express in words precisely those things that lie, so to speak, outside of ordinary life if he wants to point to what human beings experience after they have passed through the gate of death. What is experienced in ordinary life offers no clue to characterizing life after death if it is to be recognized in its spiritual substantiality. So we must be clear that human beings will not be able to carry the image of a single lion or a single mountain through the gate of death, but rather the inner spiritual-soul activity through which we are able to have a mountain as an idea, to have it in our consciousness, or to imagine a lion. We carry these through the gate of death. It is precisely what is not “real” in life that we carry most through the gate of death. When we see different lions, we form the concept of a lion. It is, of course, child's play to prove that the concept of a lion does not exist in sensory reality, but only the individual lion; likewise, not the concept of a mountain, but only the individual mountain. But what enables us to recognize and comprehend mountains and lions, to comprehend the spiritual and soul aspects, to recognize justice, freedom, and so on, what enables us to live with a human soul as with our own kind, what allows us to penetrate the human soul through mysterious sympathies, that mysterious weaving from soul to soul — we take that with us through the gate of death. And when the question is raised: Will we be reunited with our loved ones after death? — we can say: We will be reunited with them! There will be a reunion with those who were close to us in life. Even between birth and death, there are bonds between souls that belong to the extraterrestrial — which cannot yet be seen because the soul's gaze is bound by physical sight.

To explore the spiritual means, at the same time, if one truly comes to this spiritual realm, to recognize the eternity of this spiritual realm. To recognize the human being as spirit means to recognize the eternity of the human spirit. And actually, as a spiritual researcher, strange as it may seem, one must say the following: Those who consider the spirit to be mortal cannot truly recognize it. Philosophers who do not believe in the immortality of the human soul are to soul research what botanists who deny the existence of plants are to botany. It is the specific way of looking at the world of the spirit, as revealed by the spiritual researcher's gaze, that allows us to say: the soul learns to recognize the spiritual as something self-evident, just as the botanist recognizes the plant for what it is. Therefore, we may say that the most valuable thing for the whole of human life in relation to the spiritual-soul, in relation to the behavior of the human soul after death, is that which is obscured by external perception in physical-sensory experience, that which is not perceived in this experience. Those who want to bring concepts into life after death, those who do not want to suffer from a “hunger for concepts” after death, if I may use that expression, must acquire concepts that already here in earthly life extend beyond the merely sensually perceptible. What we know from spiritual science can nourish us as concepts in life after death. If anyone believes that the hunger for concepts after death would kill them, it must be said that because the soul is immortal, it can suffer from the hunger for concepts, but it cannot die from it, unlike the physical body.

So I could only give you a few hints about the meaning of the immortality of the human soul. Of course, the person who gives such hints knows best what can, or often must, be objected to such hints by those who are so completely immersed in today's consciousness of time. We live in a time that, on the one hand, is completely averse to recognizing that the development of the soul discussed here truly leads to a purely spiritual experience, where what has been discussed here is revealed; yet at the same time we live in an age in which, in the subconscious depths of the human soul, there is a longing to go beyond the knowledge of the intellect and that which is bound to the intellect. There may well be people who say: Why can't human beings remain with what nature has given them, with the intellect and the senses that are given to them by nature? But that would be like saying that a child should remain with what it has as a child and should not learn what it would have to do as an adult. Anyone who said that the soul should remain with the abilities that are already given to the soul would be taking exactly the same position.

Wherever one can detach oneself from the crudest prejudices that the century has produced, we see that one arrives at the true nature of what is the essence of the human being. One can see how contemporary philosophers are detaching themselves from purely physical experience and the interpretation of purely physical experience. It remains interesting, even if it misses the mark by a long shot, that the French philosopher Bergson sees in memory something that leads into the spiritual realm. But such examples show how difficult it is for contemporary philosophers to bring themselves to acknowledge the spiritual world. And in other respects, we see how a healthy soul life, when it develops healthily, can reach the gateway to spiritual science. It is most interesting that what we call attention in ordinary life, when increased to infinity, gives us the possibility of making something else out of human beings. And when we see how a very important contemporary philosopher, McGilvary, who nevertheless remains stuck in contemporary concepts, arrives at the point where he says to himself, based on the healthiness of American nature: If one wants to know the actual nature of the soul, if one wants to know what the soul is, what immortality is, one can only do so through the development of attention. And McGilvary comes to say that through an effort, through an increase in the powers of attention, human beings can know that through this effort they can grasp a spiritual-soul aspect that they have as an inner activity. From this we can see how such endeavors lead to the gateway of spiritual science.

Or another example: I felt extremely satisfied when I came across a treatise written by a very talented high school principal — Deinhardt in Bromberg. Here we see how a highly educated man of the present day, who could not yet know anything about spiritual science, grapples with the highest questions of human life. Others have done the same, of course. But it is interesting to see how, in the lecture in which the high school principal presented his ideas on the immortality of the human soul, the editor draws attention to a letter he received from the principal, in which the latter writes: if he were still able to continue his efforts in this direction, he would like to show how the soul still works in the life between birth and death in a subtle body, which then passes through the gate of death. It is heartening, in the midst of an age of flourishing materialism, to see someone grappling with the problem which has just been dealt with in these last two lectures, in which an attempt was made to show that through spiritual research one can grasp the immortal core of the human being, which develops and continues to develop, which passes through the gate of death in order to prepare itself for a new earthly life while passing through the spiritual world. What has been called here the “spiritual-soul core” in its growth is referred to by that high school principal as a “subtle body” that the soul organizes in order to carry it through death, and in which the finer forces can gather that the soul then needs to continue its development in the whole of life.

Even if today, due to the great and admirable achievements of external science, attention is diverted from the spiritual-soul aspect, and therefore the immortality of the human soul is not yet recognized or understood, on the other hand we see a struggle for concepts that give human beings a picture of what exists after death, and what, because it is not only present after death but, in Hegel's words, “is also present in life,” brings strength and security into life and makes human beings fully human. And for those who can live without these “metaphysical things,” it can be said that life cannot unfold in any other way than by bringing up from its depths, even if the spiritual gaze may be clouded throughout entire epochs, that which opens up the self-evident view into the realms of the eternal, the immortal.

So it can be said that even for what seems paradoxical today, the time will come when it will be understood in the same way that the achievements of science, which have advanced humanity, have always been understood. I have already pointed out that spiritual science is in harmony with contemporary science and with all the personalities of human development who have penetrated the spirit and its life. Therefore, at the end of these reflections, through which I have attempted to interpret the meaning of the immortality of the human soul, — for one can only speak of these things in a stammering way — I would like to point to something that emerged from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who, from the standpoint of his time, took a deep look into the experience of the cosmos — something that sprang from the soul of this philosopher, who felt his own soul carried away by the “stream of becoming,” as he called the entire universe. Heraclitus saw in becoming, in never-resting becoming, the true characteristic of the cosmos. For him, “being” was an illusion. What is, is in truth only seemingly there. Everything is within the stream of becoming, in subtle activity, and the soul is woven into this eternally flowing activity. For Heraclitus, fire was the symbol of becoming, and he felt his own soul transported into the becoming fire of the cosmos. Living spiritually within it, he felt the impulse of immortality as an inner experience, as a direct inner observation. And so he expressed it in such a way that his words, with only minor changes, could form the conclusion of the reflections on human immortality that I have tried to express today in a stammering manner. It is true — this is shown by the trained eye of the spiritual researcher:

When the soul, freed from the body, soars up to the free ether, it reveals itself to itself as an immortal spirit, freed from death!