The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit

GA 68b — 28 March 1904, Cologne

1. Birth and Death in the Life of the Soul

Report in an unknown Cologne newspaper

Birth and death in the life of the soul. A look at the theosophical worldview. On Monday evening, Dr. Rudolf Steiner from Berlin gave a lecture on this topic at the Theosophical Society (Cologne Section), which was attended by almost 100 people in the Isabellensaal of the Gürzenich. The thought process of the captivating two-hour speech is briefly summarized here.

Those who are not completely absorbed in material life will have to ask themselves the questions: What happens to us after death, what were we before we were born? These questions have been raised by the oldest philosophers. From the conversation of the dying Socrates with his students, it becomes clear to us that Socrates firmly believed in the continued life of his soul. This belief has been further developed by his student Plato. He asked the question: “Why do we live?” It was clear to him that the purpose of our life could not be fulfilled with the death of the body. Through birth, our life is essentially already predetermined. The environment into which we are born determines whether we live in wealth or poverty, in joy or sorrow, whether our spirit will progress or remain at a lower level. Should death be the fulfillment of life for the poor and ignorant? Only rarely does a person die without desires; they indicate that there must be another life for us in which we can achieve higher development. The body is indeed perishable, but our spirit is eternal. It can never be a product of the body. The body draws its nourishment from the physical, while the spirit draws its from the spiritual. What the spirit has absorbed does not perish. The truth and goodness that allow the spirit to reach a higher level are eternal. The outstanding physiologist Wilhelm Preyer said: “Everything physical perishes and disintegrates into its component parts, but the power and the movement remain.” Speaker adds to this saying: and the spirit is lasting. If we believe in the eternity of the soul, we must also assume that our soul continues to develop and that there is a highest level of this development. To achieve this, the soul will embody itself again and again. The doctrine of reincarnation has been more or less expressed by the founders of the great religions, and our great sages believed in it. The speaker reminds the audience of Giordano Bruno, Lessing, Goethe and of natural scientists of the past and the present. Even in the early centuries of Christianity, the belief in reincarnation prevailed. But in the Middle Ages it was lost. At that time, man knew only heaven and earth. Today, however, when we have progressed far in our knowledge of nature, it has become necessary to study our soul again on the basis of this view of nature. Like the lily in the field, which fades away and leaves behind a seed in which all the power to bring forth a new plant like itself lies dormant, so the soul of man returns again and again in a new body. These are not speculative thoughts that have led to this belief, but what highly developed people have seen with the spiritual eye. This study of the soul is called Theosophy. In a narrative style, Redner now provides insight into the theosophical worldview. He explains how a person consists of three parts. The outer shell is the perishable body, which encloses the soul, which gives one the ability to grasp the perceptions of the outside world, to feel joy and sorrow, love and hate. These soul-substances separate from the body soon after death and spread out into the universe. But the core of the human being is formed by the spirit. The spirit, which is only possessed by humans and not by highly developed animals, is eternal and will always return to a human body until it has reached the highest level and entered the spiritual realm.

The speaker's remarks were met with enthusiastic applause. It may interest you to know that Dr. Steiner was formerly a librarian at the Goethe Archive in Weimar and was involved in editing the scientific journals for the great Weimar collection.