Spiritual Science as a Life's Work

GA 63 — 19 March 1914, Berlin

10. Between Death and Rebirth of the Human Being

Today's topic is certainly the most daring in this series of lectures, and yet I would like to make a few remarks about this very special subject of spiritual scientific research, which is to be discussed here today. I may assume that this esteemed audience, some of whom have been attending these lectures for many years, will accept such a special subject of spiritual scientific research, since I have so often endeavored to present here, in a more general way, the possible evidence and proof for the validity of this spiritual research. Of course, we must refrain from presenting all this evidence and proof today. For what is to be said about human life between death and rebirth will essentially be that the corresponding spiritual scientific findings, as they present themselves to the researcher, will be given in narrative form, so to speak. Nevertheless, although what is to be said will cause certain conceptual difficulties for the present consciousness, and although it is clear that today's consciousness must still be rejecting in the most comprehensive sense such “alleged” spiritual scientific research results, I would nevertheless like to make the following introductory remark. I am well aware that I am speaking in an age that has seen more than sixty years since Julius Robert Mayer's great discovery of the transformation of natural forces, more than half a century since the great discoveries made by Darwin, and the great successes of natural science, for example through spectral analysis, the achievements of astrophysics, and, more recently, those of experimental biology. Standing firmly on the ground of recognition of these scientific results, I would nevertheless like to speak about the subject of today's topic, despite the contradiction it must provoke in those who believe that they can only stand on the firm ground of science by rejecting spiritual scientific research and spiritual scientific convictions. And I would like to make a second introductory remark. If I did not know clearly that, within the strictest spiritual scientific methodology and the strictest scientific requirements, what is to be said about life between death and rebirth is just as tenable as the findings of the aforementioned scientific chapters, I would consider it, in a certain sense, reckless, not to say frivolous, to speak to this assembly about the results of spiritual scientific research. For I am fully aware of the responsibility involved in speaking about these areas in today's scientific sense. However, even the very attitude that the soul must have toward the truth and authenticity of research if it is to accept spiritual scientific research without prejudice, even this attitude of the soul is still unpopular today. I would like to briefly address this state of mind, this disposition of the soul, which must be present in the spiritual researcher and, in a certain sense, also in those who should and want to recognize the truth of spiritual scientific research results.

A completely different attitude toward truth and truthfulness, toward human knowledge, is necessary than is common in our time. Anyone who wants to obtain spiritual-scientific results using the methods discussed in these lectures must, above all, approach what can be called truth and knowledge with a sacred awe, with boundless reverence. How easily, in our time, do we accept as our attitude toward truth one that wants to make a decision in advance about everything that presents itself in human life, a decision that presupposes: I can, with the soul capacities given to me in the state of mind and mood in which I happen to be, allow myself to judge what can be said about the realms of existence and reality. The spiritual researcher and those who wish to receive his findings need a different state of mind; they need a state of mind that says: in order to receive the truth, in order to participate in the truth, my soul needs above all preparation, it needs to live itself into a state that goes beyond everyday life. And when one is immersed in spiritual science — although I ask you not to misunderstand this expression in an ascetic or other sense — one feels very strongly, I would say, how impossible the everyday state of mind is for truly living with truth, with knowledge. One feels knowledge as something hovering above, which one can approach when one goes beyond one's ordinary self, as it were, when one strains all the forces within oneself to prepare oneself to receive the truth worthily. One feels unworthy when, based on the everyday state of mind, one wants to allow oneself to judge the truth — this is something one can know from spiritual science — and one then strives to wait until the soul has progressed a little further in its preparation, until it has prepared within itself that strength and worthy receptivity that is justified in the face of truth and knowledge. And often one feels that way, saying to oneself: I would rather wait, I would rather be patient and let the truth hover above me; I must not enter into it, for if I were to enter into it now, I might spoil it by not yet being ready for it.

With these and many other words that I could add to characterize the matter, I would like to draw attention to the soul's mood of holy awe, of boundless reverence for truth and truthfulness and knowledge, which must be inherent in spiritual scientific research. It becomes increasingly clear how the soul must rise above itself, how it must be less and less concerned with making final judgments based on its ordinary daily state of mind, and how it must devote more and more care to preparing the forces necessary to reach a standpoint that is worthy of the truth. In short, the seeker of truth who acts in the spiritual-scientific sense must devote more and more care to preparing the soul, to developing abilities for the truth, and must increasingly refrain from approaching this truth with the ordinary soul forces, with ordinary criticism. With these introductory words, I wanted only to indicate the attitude in which spiritual science itself stands toward such things as are now to be spoken of. Now I will proceed without further ado to the subject, which I believe has been sufficiently prepared for by the lectures of this winter.

When a person passes through the gate of death, they belong to a world that is accessible only to spiritual research, spiritual research in the sense in which it has been presented in the lectures given here so far. This spiritual research can gain knowledge that can only be attained by the soul that knows itself to be free of the body. We have often discussed the methods by which the human soul actually comes to gain knowledge not only by using their body and senses to come into contact with the outside world, but by actually stepping out of their body, so that this body stands outside them, just as any other external object stands outside them, and that they experience themselves in separation from their body, in a spiritual environment. How the soul of the spiritual researcher comes to do this has often been discussed; and in this way it enters the world that human beings enter when they pass through the gate of death. And now, without further preparation, I will recount what the spiritual researcher has to say about human life between death and rebirth, based on the methods that have long been discussed here.

The first thing the human soul experiences when it has become bodyless after death in the natural way, just as the spiritual researcher can become bodyless for temporary moments of his life, is a change in its position to what we otherwise call the world of thoughts. We have often emphasized that the human soul carries within itself the powers of thinking, feeling, and willing. This division of the powers of the human soul is basically only correct for the life of the soul in the body, between birth and death, and today, in addition to the general boldness of the subject, I will also have to struggle with the difficulty of finding suitable expressions for a completely different world that human beings have to live through between death and the next birth. For the expressions of language are shaped by the sensory life we experience in the physical body; and only by attempting to characterize the very different soul experiences after death from a certain point of view, which makes use of words in an approximate way, will I be able to cope with this realm, which is remote from ordinary knowledge. It must be borne in mind that we are talking about a realm for which we actually lack the words.

So, after a person has passed through the gate of death, they have an experience in relation to what we call their thinking, their thoughts. We have a life of thought in the way we live between birth and death, so that we say: thoughts are in our soul, we think. And these thoughts are, at most, images of an external reality between birth and death. When a person has shed their physical body, their thoughts become an external reality in a peculiar way. This is the first experience that the deceased has in the spiritual world: they feel their thoughts as if detached from themselves, as if they were outside, outside their soul, just as in life between birth and death, sensory objects are outside, outside of us. It is like thoughts wandering out into a spiritual outer world. One could say that thoughts travel a certain path; they travel a path in which they detach themselves from immediate spiritual experience in a similar way to the thoughts that become our memories in ordinary life; only that with our memories we have the feeling that they sink into an unconscious experience from which they can be retrieved at the appropriate moment; they detach themselves from present life, but in such a way that we have the feeling that they are within us. After death, thoughts also detach themselves, but in such a way that the entire world of thoughts that a person has accumulated in life between birth and death becomes an objective world. They do not break away in such a way that we are aware of it: they descend into an indeterminate darkness; rather, they become independent in such a way that they then form a spiritual world of thoughts outside of us. In this world, everything we have gained in the last course of life between birth and death in the form of life experiences is present in the form of thoughts, so that we can say to ourselves: we have lived a life, experienced this or that, and thereby become richer in life experiences. This is, as it were, dissolved, as if it had become a kind of tableau of life, of which we say to ourselves: you experienced this in your last life in such a way that it becomes a mental life experience; it surrounds the soul after death. But it does not remain around us in such a way that it appears like fleeting thoughts, but rather it appears as if, at the moment when the thoughts detach themselves from the soul and gain an independent life, they become denser, more alive, more animated within themselves, and form a world of beings. This world in which we then live is the world of our thoughts that have migrated out of us and have an independent existence.

This world is also often described as a kind of tableau of memories from the last life. In fact, it is like a tableau of memories, but one that has become independent, and of which we know: you have acquired this, but it is there in the outside world, objectified; it is alive!

Now, this experience of the soul in the world of thoughts that has become objective lasts for different lengths of time, varying individually for each person, but only for days. For after days – I have pointed out in my “Outline of Esoteric Science” how this relates to human life – after days, the person who has passed through the gate of death experiences how this whole world, which has become his world, so to speak, recedes, recedes from him as if in a spiritual perspective, as if it were moving far, far away from him in the spiritual sphere. It takes days until the moment of this departure, this becoming thinner and thinner, this becoming more and more foggy, more and more dim, of the world of thoughts, which recedes into the distance. In my “Secret Science,” I pointed out that spiritual scientific research shows that it takes longer for those people who, in life before death, can more easily, that is to say, without losing their strength, spend days without sleeping. As long as one is able to spend days without sleeping in life, this tableau of memory lasts. This can be discovered through spiritual scientific research. Therefore, those who tire more quickly—but here it depends above all on the powers that the person has—those who cannot endure without sleep at all, if it should be necessary to stay awake longer, will find that the tableau of memory recedes sooner than in those who can exert themselves to maintain their powers longer without sleep. However, one does not need to make an effort in this direction; it is only a matter of what a person is capable of achieving in this regard.

This is also related to what appears as the new consciousness. What we have as our ordinary consciousness, as our ordinary waking consciousness between birth and death, is stimulated by our encounter with the objects of the outside world. We do not do this in sleep, when we do not have our ordinary consciousness; but we also encounter the outside world with our hearing and our eyes, and this gives us our everyday consciousness. Just as consciousness in ordinary life is stimulated by interaction with the outside world, so our consciousness after death is developed by the fact that the human being knows itself to be connected with what I have described as the thought experience after death, which is receding. And this is also the stimulation of consciousness after death, which consists in the soul retaining the feeling: Your thoughts have gone into the distance, you must seek them! With this I could characterize the impression that the soul then experiences, and which forms the force that stimulates spiritual consciousness after death: You must seek your thoughts that have gone into the distance! This knowledge of the departed thoughts forms part of self-consciousness after death. We will see shortly what role this kind of self-consciousness continues to play.

In a different way from the world of thoughts, what we might call the world of will and the world of feelings changes after death. Actually, after death, one cannot speak of such a separation between the life of feeling and the life of will as one can in life between birth and death; therefore, I must use the expressions: After death, there is something in the soul like a willing or desiring feeling, or like a will completely permeated by feeling. The terms we have for feeling and will do not fit for the time after death. For this time, feeling is much more similar to what one experiences in the will; and the will is much more permeated by feeling than in life between birth and death. While thoughts after death become, as it were, a world outside the soul, it must be said of the willed feeling and the felt will that they are much more closely and intimately connected with the soul. And now, in addition to the indicated part of self-consciousness, the soul begins to experience itself in a strengthened and empowered, felt will and a willed feeling. This forms an infinitely more intense inner life than the inner life of the soul when it lives in the body. When thoughts have receded, the human being initially feels, for a long time, a time that can last for decades, that his inner life is his main world. This inner life becomes so powerful that, if I may use the word, even though it does not really fit for post-mortem life, they must focus their attention on what is striving upward within them as felt will and willed feeling. And after years, this felt will or willed feeling looks back, as it were, on their past earthly life. After death, the human soul feels something like a longing, like a leaning toward the felt will and the willed feeling, and thus toward what the last life had to offer. Every life is such that one can say: it offers us many things, but the possibilities of experience are far greater than what human beings actually take in. When human beings pass through the gate of death, they feel a desire, or they want to feel, to experience everything that they, I cannot say, know, but rather feel: you could still have experienced it. All the undefined emotions, all the possible experiences that life could have brought us but did not, all of this enters into the context of the previous life, into what the soul goes through. In particular, what the soul feels it should have done appears as strong, intense inner experiences. What the soul has done wrong to other people, what it has done against others, all this appears as a feeling of lack of love, of which we are not at all aware in life between birth and death; this is felt intensely.

Therefore, we can say that after death, years pass in which the soul is busy gradually detaching itself from its last life, weaning itself off its connection to its last life. These years pass in such a way that we are not torn away from the experiences of our last life. We remain connected to the people we have left behind, the people we loved; but we remain connected because we gained certain feelings and connections with them during our life; and through the detours of what life offered or denied us, we remain connected to them. One must always express oneself figuratively in this regard. After death, one can certainly remain connected to those who were close to one in life, but only through the connection of the feelings one had for them in life. This creates an intense connection with them. After death, one lives together with the living, but also with those who have already passed away, with whom one had a connection in life. So one must imagine life after death as continuing in this way for years. It is primarily a life in which the soul experiences everything it wants and desires and longs for, as it were, in a felt and willed connection of memories with its last life.

If one tries to investigate scientifically how long this period lasts, one comes to the conclusion that life in the first years of childhood has no influence on these years after death, the content of which has just been described. Life from birth to the point at which we later remember, when we learn to experience our self-awareness internally, this time is initially meaningless for these years, and even the life that follows in our mid-twenties is more or less insignificant for the individual in terms of the length of that state of soul I have just described; so that one must assume that the time between the third, fourth, fifth years of life and the mid-twenties, the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth years, is the average number of years that the soul lives through as just described, that the soul has its self-awareness through knowing: Your world of thoughts has gone with your life experiences; it is now in the distance. You have a connection, a kinship with this thought experience, and you must find it again, for it is what has made you what you are in your earthly life; but it has receded. You face these life experiences, transformed in your thoughts, as you would an external life that you know is there. And the other world that one experiences after death, when this world of thoughts has departed, one experiences in such a way that one experiences it in the strengthened will and feeling within oneself.

Then comes the time when one breaks free from the mere strengthened inner life, where it is as if beings gradually emerge from the spiritual world, beings that are as adapted to the spiritual world as the beings of the physical world — minerals, plants, animals, and physical human beings — are adapted to this sensory physical world. This means that one lives out of oneself and into a spiritual world. One lives into a spiritual environment in such a way that one now has a completely different feeling towards it than one has towards the physical world of the senses. I would have to cite many examples to characterize this completely different feeling, but I would like to cite just one that is particularly striking.

When we see objects in the outside world through our eyes, we say we see them when light from some source falls on them; we are aware of them because they are illuminated by this light when we see them. Now, as we live our way into the objective state of the spiritual world from the state of feeling back into our last earthly life, we have the experience: You have allowed something from the time of your last earthly life to mature within you, like an inner light, like an inner soul force, and this now gives you more and more the opportunity to see and perceive the outer world of spiritual beings and processes, to live within them. If one can perceive the time of that described state of soul as a kind of weaning away from the connection with the earthly life one has lived through, as a tearing oneself away from it, as a freeing oneself from it, one now experiences that in the deepest interior of this feeling will and willing feeling, that inner world, which is basically the inner world of many years, has matured within oneself — just as the blossom of a plant has matured the seed within itself — this inner light, which one spreads out from oneself like a force and through which the processes and beings of the outer spiritual world become visible. One then knows that if one had not developed this inner light within oneself, it would be dark around one in the spiritual world, and one would perceive nothing. The power that one must apply to overcome the connection with the last earthly life is at the same time the power that must be applied and that is like an inner luminosity. A soul power awakens for which there are no words in the ordinary world, because such a thing exists in ordinary sensory life only for those who penetrate the spiritual world through spiritual research. If I want to use a word for what a person experiences as a power of illumination of the spiritual environment coming from within themselves, I would say: It is something like a creative unfolding of the will, which is at the same time permeated by intense feeling. There is something creative in there; one feels like a part of the universe, but one that is creative in this part just discussed, which overflows into the spiritual world. And one has the feeling: this awareness of oneself as part of the universe makes the spiritual world tangible, knowable, experiential, by experiencing what can be called the “soulfulness” after death and an immersion into what is becoming more and more visible and experiential.

Today I am describing this world between death and the next birth, I would say, more from an inner experience, from an inner state. In my “Theosophy” or in my “Occult Science” I have described this world more from the spiritual-scientific point of view from the outside. But since I do not like to repeat myself at all, I am choosing the other path today. But anyone who knows how many different perspectives there are from which to describe a realm of the sensory world will know that it is exactly the same as what I have characterized in other words in the books mentioned above.

The soul feels itself as it settles into the world of spiritual processes and spiritual beings. And it must be expressly stated that these spiritual processes and spiritual beings, into which the soul lives itself through its own luminous power, also include those human souls with whom one has established a connection in life — but only these, and not those with whom one has not established a connection. So we can say that while up to now, through the years, we have experienced our inner life more in terms of willing desire and feeling will, we now begin more and more to experience the spiritual world outside ourselves objectively; we begin to be able to work in it, just as we work in the sensory world according to our corresponding tasks and experiences. Only one thing needs to be mentioned: what one experiences as an inner luminous power develops gradually, little by little, and, as one might say using an expression familiar to spiritual researchers, cyclically, in life cycles. It develops in such a way that one feels: the luminous power has awakened within you; it enables you to experience certain other beings and processes of the spiritual world; but in a certain respect it wanes again, fades away. When you have used it for a while, it fades away. Just as, to use a comparison from ordinary sensory life, when evening approaches, you feel the sun setting externally, so in the life between death and rebirth you feel more and more how the inner light force wanes. But then, when this has waned, another state sets in. In this state, the soul feels all the stronger in its inner being, which it now experiences repeatedly; but again, if I may use the expression, how inwardly it experiences what it has brought over from the other state, where it had developed its power of light. So it must be said that the states in which we are devoted to all spiritual processes and beings alternate with those in which the inner light dims again and finally goes out completely, but in which our felt will and willed feeling awaken again, but now awakens in such a way that everything we have experienced in the spiritual world, everything that comes from outside, lives on within us as if in remembrance. In this way, we have states that alternate, as if we had once lived in the outer world, then taken the outer world completely into ourselves, so that it appeared as if in the form of inner experiences, living, as it were, completely within us — as if what we had previously experienced externally now lived within us, enclosed by the shell of our soul. There is an alternation between these two states. We can also describe it by saying: at one moment we experience ourselves as if in extended sociability with the whole spiritual world; then this state alternates with inner solitude, with a knowing of oneself in the soul, with having the whole experienced spiritual cosmos within oneself. But at the same time we know: now you live within yourself; what is experienced there is what your soul has retained, and you are now in no connection with anything else. — With the regularity with which sleeping and waking alternate in life, these states alternate in the spiritual world between death and new birth: the state of the soul spreading out into a spiritual outer world — with the state of inner self-enjoyment and self-knowledge, where one feels: now you are alone within yourself, with all external processes and beings shut out; now you experience within yourself. These two states must alternate, for only in this way is the inner light preserved, as the human being is repeatedly referred back to himself. — These processes are explained in more detail in my book “The Threshold of the Spiritual World.” This experience of oneself in cycles, in solitary life and then again in social life, is necessary, for it is through this that the power of light is maintained. And this continues in such a way that one becomes accustomed to ever richer and richer spiritual worlds, for which one needs more and more inner power of light. This goes on for a long time. Then one senses how, by settling into these spiritual worlds, one is subject to a certain limitation that is connected with the abilities one has acquired in life. One soul creates a smaller horizon for itself, another a larger one, a horizon over a larger or smaller spiritual world.

But then there comes a time when you feel your inner light diminishing. This happens when you are approaching the middle of the time between death and your next birth. You experience this as a feeling that your inner light is becoming weaker and weaker; you are now able to illuminate less and less of what is around you. It becomes dimmer and dimmer, and the time approaches when those times become more and more significant in which the inner experience becomes more and more intense, when what one has already experienced in inner experience ebbs and flows. The inner experience becomes richer and richer, and in the overview it becomes darker and darker, until it approaches the middle of the time between death and rebirth, where one experiences what I have called spiritual midnight in my mystery drama “The Awakening of the Soul.” For there one experiences a time when one is filled with the spiritual world, when one awakens, but awakens into the “night,” where one experiences oneself as enclosed in the spiritual world. It is a feeling of the most intense inner experience in the middle between death and rebirth. This inner experience brings about a state that must be said to be unbearable for the soul in the long run. It is a knowledge of a knowledge that is unbearable, that one does not want to have, because it is only knowledge. One feels within oneself: you carry a world within you that you only experience knowingly, knowing that you are cut off from it in reality; you have lost the power to illuminate it. Night falls in the spiritual world. But in this state we have experiences that are otherwise only passively felt in the body during earthly life. They now become something active. And as one lives more and more into the twilight and finally into the night of the spiritual world, the longing for an outer world becomes greater and greater; and while the longing, the desire for the world of earthly life is something that must find its satisfaction from outside, what one experiences as longing in spiritual midnight is a force that develops, just as electrical or magnetic force develops in us under the right conditions. It is a longing in the soul that gives birth to a new force, a force that can conjure up an outer world before the soul again. The soul has increasingly lived itself into a spiritual inner world; this has become ever larger and larger, ever more powerful and powerful. But within it lives the longing to have an outer world around it again. This longing is an active force, and what it brings about is an outer world, but one of a very peculiar kind.

The first thing we experience after reaching the midpoint between death and rebirth is that an outer world appears before us, but it is not really an outer world. When we awaken from our solitude, we are confronted with images that emerge from our previous earthly life. So an outer world, which is once again our past outer world, surrounds us, and longing has led us to it, which is an active force. Thus, for a time, we stand before our past earthly experiences in such a way that they are an outer world for us, that we stand before them as if judging them. While we were experiencing them, we were inside them; now we stand before them.

And now another longing arises in addition to the one already developed. The longing arises to compensate in a renewed earthly life for what the old earthly lives show in terms of deficiencies and imperfections in relation to the newly awakened consciousness. Now comes the time when the soul feels what it has to do in relation to the thoughts that have rushed away from it. It now receives the certain knowledge that awakens in the second half of life between death and new birth: your thought experiences have rushed ahead of you; you can only find them again by the detour of a new earthly life. And from this second experience, that of the old earthly life and the knowledge that you can only find your thoughts that have rushed ahead if you recall them in a new earthly life, arises the instinctive urge for a new earthly life. This cannot be judged according to the last earthly life. At the moment indicated, the soul naturally finds it natural to reunite with what has departed from it in terms of thoughts, and what it can only find through the detour of a new earthly life, where it also finds the opportunity to correct the imperfections and shortcomings it has encountered in view of its past earthly lives.

And now, ever new experiences emerge from the twilight darkness of the spiritual world. What occurs can be called connection with the people closest to us. We had this connection before we experienced the time before the designated center point; but we lived with the people closest to us in such a way that we worked with them in the spiritual world, that we were connected with them in spirit. Now they reappear; now those from our own earthly life appear to whom we were unbalanced in life; those with whom we were related by blood, those to whom we were close in life, appear. They reappear in such a way that we can judge from their reappearance what is still unbalanced in us, what we still owe them, what we still have to balance with them. We feel connected to these souls who appear, just as we must feel connected after the result of living together with them in previous earthly lives. This is the first thing we experience after our own earthly life: how we want to live together in a new earthly life with the souls with whom we lived more closely in the past. And in the further course of this time, the souls who are more distant from us appear, those with whom we had a connection in life in such a way that we had the same religious beliefs as them, that we formed a people with them, that we formed a whole with them in a certain way. The souls that were part of our earthly development appear in such a way that their appearance can reveal how our soul must form its new earthly embodiment in order to seek what must result from earlier earthly lives in life with the souls that appear there. Finally, out of the twilight darkness of the spiritual, the connection with souls or with other spiritual beings in earthly life emerges, which can be called ideal. After experiencing an overview of one's past earthly life, after experiencing an overview of the people who were close to one in one's past earthly life, the communities that were close to one, one now encounters vividly those people who shone out as ideal figures in one's life, even if one was personally distant from them. What one calls one's personal ideals, one's spiritual world in earthly life, is the last thing to appear before one.

From these experiences, the soul itself develops the strength to reconnect with earthly life. I must mention, however, that in the second half of existence between death and new birth, life again proceeds in circles, cyclically. Here we must again distinguish between the time of life in the outer world, where we see our former friends and relatives, our ideals, and so on, experiencing them, as it were, objectively from the outside, and then that other time when we are separated from them, when we have them only within ourselves. This alternates again with necessity for the soul, just as in ordinary life waking and sleeping, day and night alternate. And from the forces that develop in the soul through the sight of everything I have just characterized, the soul develops the ability to first form the archetype of the new earthly life in a spiritual-soul way. What we have had to send on as life experiences transformed into thoughts, we do not yet see immediately when we enter the second half of life between death and rebirth. But it is in the creative will and in the creative feeling that the soul perceives this life as an increase in strength; and this increase in strength causes something like the archetype of a new life to crystallize out of the surrounding spiritual substance. For in the spiritual world there is a different relationship between perception and soul experience than in the physical world. In the physical world, we perceive the outside world; it is then present in our thoughts, but the thoughts are passive. When we experience the spiritual world in the manner described, when we see the soul remnants of our past life, of those close to us, of our former friends, of our ideals, in the spiritual world, this forms a force that lives through us and interweaves with us; it makes us strong. And this strengthening is the same thing that drives us to a new life on earth. — You will excuse the fact that some expressions have to be chosen in such a way that they are unusual; but then, unusual circumstances are being described for ordinary life.

More and more, the forces that were initially felt only vaguely, which go to the escaped life experiences, now appear to the person who illuminates the outer spiritual world around them. The archetype of a new life becomes more and more definite, and this causes the person, through the forces that are placed within them, to feel driven down to physical life on earth, in such a way that they feel attracted to the pair of parents who can give them the physical shell that most closely corresponds to the archetype of their coming life on earth created in the spiritual world. Three elements are thus combined in the rebirth of the human being: the masculine, the feminine, and the spiritual. It can be said that long before a human being enters the new earthly life at birth, this developed force draws them to the parents in question; for the human being is, inwardly and substantially, this force, which grows, one might say, as the force that first drives them to the archetype and then to the new earthly life. But it is precisely here that a wide variety of circumstances can arise. What comes into consideration here is, first of all, that the human being has a retrospective view of his or her previous earthly lives. This naturally leads to an inner longing for a new earthly life. But now it can happen that the human being feels very strongly within themselves: You must incarnate on earth; but you cannot get to the point where you can incarnate in a new earthly body in such a way that you can grasp the life experiences that have preceded you.

Let us consider this case, which arises quite naturally from spiritual experience. When we are in earthly life, we do not make all the earthly experiences that we could make. It does not take spiritual science to see this; for if much passes our attention in earthly life, then it must be said all the more that much comes to us that we do not bring to consciousness. In other words, if we pay attention, we must admit to ourselves that we do not have the experiences we could have. But the experiences, the events, still come to us. If we regard ourselves as students of life, we must say: all of this comes to us. This experience is also part of our experiences in the life between death and rebirth. But when we reach the second half of this life, we have convinced ourselves: you cannot now, with everything you have acquired, reach the point where you can fully connect with a new earthly life. Then the necessity arises to connect with a new earthly life earlier than would be necessary according to your hasty thoughts — and to remind yourself: Only in another earthly life, perhaps even after two or three earthly lives, will you have reached the point where you experience your now hastily departed thoughts. This will cause such a person not to have the intense desire for earthly life that they would have in the other case, and they would not grasp life fully. There is the possibility that the person does not connect intensely enough with earthly life; they may have gained the strength to reincarnate, but not the strength to experience everything there was to experience. In such a case, they do not have enough joy in earthly life in the depths of their soul. Everything that causes a person not to take earthly life seriously enough or fully enough comes from this side. And here the spiritual researcher sees something that often weighs heavily on his soul.

As a spiritual researcher, one faces all life with sympathy. Let us suppose that, as a spiritual researcher, one looks at the life of a criminal who is, in the fullest sense, opposed to the human order. Even if one does not want to deny the guilt, one can feel the deepest compassion for such a life and want to explain it from the context of his life. When one tries to find an answer to such a question, the answer turns out to be that people who are unable to take life seriously in its full weight due to the circumstances indicated actually turn to injustice and crime. By investigating these matters, even in the language of criminals, I have become convinced that even there there is something of a disregard, an underestimation and contempt for life. Such disregard does not have to be fully conscious. Full consciousness often knows little of what is present in the depths of the soul. The criminal often develops a strong sense of self; he wants life. But in the depths of the soul, where consciousness does not penetrate, there lives a contempt for life. The fact that he has not reached the place where his thoughts have gone is the reason why he does not take life seriously. If one looks into the lives of criminals, one will find that there is a contemptuous attitude toward life, even in the expressions of thieves' slang. Enormous mysteries are revealed to the attentive observer of life. I would say that it is spiritual premature births that develop there. That is why they did not have the strength, because they came too early, to take life seriously enough to develop the sense of responsibility in the full sense of the word that needs to be developed in life. A life that has at least approximately reached the point where thoughts transformed into objective entities have rushed ahead grows most intimately with earthly life; it grows together with the forces that can only be developed on earth: conscience, love of the earth, responsibility; it grows together with everything that makes earthly life important, so that morality and ethics develop. For one must feel toward earthly life that one must connect oneself completely with it if true morality and ethics are to grow in the soul. This is one thing, for example, that becomes clear to us when we view human life in the light that spiritual science can provide, and it truly enriches our feelings and perceptions of life and of human beings, because when we understand them, we can cope more easily and orient ourselves more easily in life.

The spiritual researcher finds, for example, a life that ends earlier than normal in the time between birth and death, either through illness or misfortune. Essentially, this has the effect on the other life between death and rebirth that the premature entry into the spiritual world, whether caused by misfortune or illness, creates forces for the soul that would not otherwise have been there. As strange as it may sound, as paradoxical as it may seem: what we may lack from our previous earthly life in order to develop all the powers that may be inherent in us through other circumstances can perhaps only come to us by ending our life earlier than is normal for a human being. However, spiritual science will never in any way justify an artificial end to life that could be initiated by the individual themselves before the normal end of life or the end brought about by other circumstances.

It must be said that when we try to look into the spiritual life between death and rebirth in this way, we become aware that forces are at work there that are completely different from those in the life between birth and death, but forces that are naturally connected, one might say, to everything that external life offers us in the body. I freely admit that I could never have arrived at what I have dared to express before you today through purely philosophical thoughts or intellectual efforts; only through spiritual research, which has been described here so often, can these things come to light. But once you have them and ask yourself: Do they fit in with earthly life, with what we experience between birth and death? — then they indeed present themselves as completely adapted to life. And even if the question might arise: Why does man not remember his previous earthly lives? — the answer can be given: The spiritual researcher sees that when human beings descend from the life between death and rebirth to an earthly life, they must first use the powers that could remember everything I have just described for the inner development, for the plastic development of their sensory-physical body, which is indeed plastically developed and also maintained by human beings themselves. What the human being expends in forces to transform the twilight of the first years of childhood into waking consciousness for later earthly life, what he expends to transform the body so that the dawning childhood life can be transformed into waking life, is expended from those forces which the human being could transform in order to remember his previous earthly lives. They flow into the body and strengthen the human being in relation to life between birth and death. And only when the spiritual researcher detaches his soul from the physical body, when he comes to an experience outside the physical body, when he thus frees the forces that the human being otherwise uses to cause his eyes to see, his ears to hear, his limbs to move, when he uses these forces to experience purely in the soul, then his gaze expands beyond the purely spiritual horizon, where what I have described today is experienced. Thus, the powers of retrospection, which one might suppose to exist in human beings, are seen by the spiritual researcher in their transformation.

One can say: in human beings there is the eternal, immortal core of the soul. But in the life between birth and death, it is initially used in such a way that it is absorbed in the activities of the physical body. However, with regard to the present time, one can say: we are in a transitional period in which human beings will gain a new relationship to the body, where they will also hasten toward a strengthened inner life of the body. That is why spiritual science feels it has a duty to communicate what it explores, because the soul develops from life to life in such a way that it becomes more and more inwardly formed and, as it rushes toward the future, will recognize what is said today as necessary knowledge without which it will not be able to live in its entire constitution; and then, through a return to a natural clairvoyant state, what has now been pointed out will become explainable.

Thus, when spiritual science speaks of the immortality of the soul, it takes a different path from that which mere conceptual philosophy can take. Spiritual science does not approach the question of immortality by seeking to prove immortality, but rather by first seeking ways to find the soul itself, seeking the paths to the soul, to the essence of the soul. And once you have the soul, once you know how it experiences itself inwardly, then you do not need to devise external philosophical proofs for the immortality of the soul. For then one realizes: what leads beyond death, what passes through a life between death and rebirth and leads to a constantly renewed earthly life, is already within us in the life between birth and death, and by recognizing it within ourselves, we simultaneously recognize it in its immortality. This is as certain in life as we know from the plant seed: it will develop by producing a new plant being. So we can know that the soul is immortal. But we know from the plant seed that it can be used for human nourishment. Such an external removal cannot be perceived in the human soul core; but it is certain that what lives in the soul is at the same time the entitlement to subsequent earthly lives, and thus the entitlement to the immortality of the soul, and cannot be used for anything else, as may be the case with a plant seed. Therefore, one may speak of the immortality of every soul.

I already mentioned at the beginning of today's reflection that what has now been said is still very much opposed to the consciousness of the times. But how could the consciousness of the times look favorably upon what has been said in today's and other lectures? On the one hand, contemporary consciousness feels a longing to know something about the soul; on the other hand, however, it is eager to restrict the powers of cognition when one wants to know something. Spiritual science is often criticized for being illogical and superstitious. Well, spiritual science can bear that. For when it looks at the “logic” that you believe must be opposed to it, it knows where it comes from that spiritual science can only slowly find its way into people's minds. And again—I have had to mention many a book and many a contemporary phenomenon here in my lectures—I can refer to a book that presents thoughts on death. There is a strange statement in it, which I quote only for formal reasons: Immortality cannot be proven. Even Plato and Mendelssohn, who based his work on Plato, were unable to substantiate the immortality and simplicity of the soul; for even if one is willing to admit the simplicity of the soul, the soul is still an object of inner persistence that is unproven and unprovable. There is no need to go into further detail, for anyone who is capable of writing the sentence: Plato and even Mendelssohn were unable to prove the immortality of the soul from its indestructibility, should also write: One cannot prove the immortality of the rose from its red color. For when one speaks of the immortality of the soul, one cannot, unless one is thoughtless, speak of it as not being immortal because it cannot be proven. Such things are written down today and appear in a work that will have and does have a large audience, because such books appeal to our contemporaries and because such things, as they have just been characterized, are overlooked. Thus, many things are overlooked that are fundamental to what most strongly opposes spiritual science. If spiritual science is accused of being illogical, one should first of all look at one's own logic. All other objections to spiritual science have often been discussed here; I therefore do not want to return to them, but only to quote what I have already presented as a concluding thought in other lectures:

One feels that the findings of spiritual science are always in agreement with the most enlightened minds of human development on earth; even though they did not have spiritual science, for it is only in our time that it has become possible in the form we have today, they nevertheless sensed the direction in which spiritual science is moving. And when, on the one hand, some monistic or other minds speak of the unprovability of immortality, as a spiritual researcher one would like to point to a great mind among those who had this intuition, with whom one feels in agreement. — What does spiritual science say, if one takes it in the spirit, about what I have tried to explain? It shows us that which develops within us between birth and death in such a way that, when freed from the body, it must pass through all the states that have been described today. One cannot know the human soul that rests in the human body, even between birth and death, unless one knows what it is capable of between death and rebirth. If some religious denominations do not feel in harmony with spiritual science because it creates an expanded concept of God, one can only say to these religious denominations: How weak-minded you are with your concept of God, with your religious feelings! It is as if one had said to Columbus: Do not discover America, for why should you discover this unknown land? The sun shines so beautifully in our country; how can we know whether it shines just as beautifully in another country? — A reasonable person would have said: Oh, it will shine everywhere as beautifully as it does here! The spiritual scientist sees what his concept of God is. And that is such that he perceives it as great, like a shining spiritual sun! And he knows that the concept of God must be weak, the religious feeling weak, the faith weak of those who say: The God we worship in our religious life will not reign in the worlds of the spiritual scientist. But if religious feeling is strong enough, it will also perceive the radiance in the spiritual worlds from this conception of God held by the spiritual researcher, and the conception of God will suffer no more damage from spiritual science than it did from Copernicus and Galileo. But spiritual science knows that the soul prepares itself for life between death and rebirth while still in the body; and life between birth and death takes on meaning and significance when we look at existence between death and the next birth. This puts us in harmony with the most enlightened spirits, one of whom foresaw what we have set before our souls today. Goethe once said: I would like to say with Lorenzo de' Medici that those who do not hope for another life are already dead in this one. Spiritual science feels so much in harmony with these words that it knows: the soul must take in what it can become by looking toward what it can become outside and after life in the body. Just as the plant seed has its justification only in that it lives toward a new plant life, so too what we live toward with our soul is not what we already have within us, but what we can hope for. The strongest proof of immortality is that we need only look at the forces from which we live; for we live from the forces that we can hope for as immortal forces. Yes, spiritual science leads us to the fundamental feeling that illuminates and permeates our whole life, which Goethe so beautifully expressed in the words just quoted. Spiritual science tells us, proves to us, and confirms our feeling that anyone who cannot hope for life in the spirit and for what the soul is to the spirit for the whole world is already dead to life in the body!