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

## GA 68b — 1 February 1908, Wiesbaden

### 8. The Mystery of Death and the Riddle of Life

Every profound soul must repeatedly ask itself the question about the meaning of life and must always ask itself anew about the mystery of death. Not only when we look up at the starry heavens, at the far reaches of the world, but at every step of everyday life, questions arise about the essential riddles of life. When one person is born under such circumstances that we can already see at his cradle that hopelessness and hardship will accompany him through life, while another is born under the most favorable circumstances and with the most favorable disposition, so that it is known that he is destined for a happy life and will be able to bring many blessings to his fellow human beings, we ask: Why is that so? We ask: How is it that one person seems to be born and grows up in need and misery through no fault of their own, while the other seems to be able to lead a happy existence through no merit of their own?

Human beings are incapable of finding answers to life's riddles through purely physical observation. Theosophy seeks answers in spiritual knowledge of the background of existence, which leads beyond the sensory world. Theosophy does not seek to answer the questions about the riddles of life because people are plagued by idle curiosity, but because humanity needs, for its healthy existence, the confidence that comes from the sources that give us answers to the questions about the mysteries of life.

If we want to explore the sources of life in the sense of the theosophical worldview, we must remember the structure of the human being. What the senses see in a person is only a part of the human being, which it shares with so-called mineral beings. Spiritual science shows us how the physical organism is kept alive by a second principle of human existence, the etheric or life body, which is a continuous fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. Furthermore, we have seen from the study of Theosophy how everything that lives in the soul in the way of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, instincts, desires and passions, has a third member in the human being as a carrier – the astral body. While the physical body is shared with all mineral beings, the etheric body is shared with all living beings, but the astral body is shared only with animals. The sum of powers, that which the human being has at the center of his being, he is able to summarize with the words “I am.” The “I am” is proper only to man among all the living beings around him.

From this I, he becomes the master and transformer of his other three members. As the I works, it first transforms part of the astral body into the Spirit Self or manas. By working on itself through powerful impulses, the life body is transformed into the Life Spirit or budhi. When the ego works down into the physical principle, Atman or the Spirit Man develops from it.

The ordinary human being has the four members up to the I. Large parts of Manas are also usually already developed. In the course of his development, the human being will achieve the ability to independently develop the seven members of his being. Actually, the seven parts are only four members, because Manas is the transformed astral body, Budhi is the transformed etheric body, and Atman is the transformed principle of the physical body.

When a person wakes up in the morning until the moment he falls asleep at night, we have the four members in front of us: physical body, etheric body, astral body and I.

In the state of sleep and in the state of death, these four members are present in different proportions. The state of sleep is also called the brother of death. When a person falls asleep in the evening, all the things that the astral body carries, such as desire and suffering, joy and pain, sink into an indeterminate darkness. The I also sinks into an indeterminate darkness when a person falls asleep in the evening. For those who view the human being from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, the state of the sleeping person is as follows: the physical body and the etheric body are lying in bed; the astral body and the ego are lifted out. In today's human beings, the astral being and the ego do not yet have spiritual organs of perception. In order to perceive the world, they still need the organs of the physical and etheric bodies. Otherwise, he cannot perceive consciously. Naively, man does not say, quite correctly, “My eye sees, my ear hears,” but “I see” and “I hear.” The sense organs of the physical body are the instruments of the astral body and the I.

Sleep thus presents itself as that state of man in which the astral body and the inner man, the I, are in a purely spiritual world. Is the astral body inactive during the night? It is not. During the night it is outside the physical and etheric bodies. For those who can explore these things, it can be observed that the astral body works on the physical and etheric bodies of the person throughout the night. Its actual home is where it is at night. There are the forces into which it immerses itself during the night. During the day, it absorbs all kinds of impressions through the external senses: form, color, light and so on. All of this surges back and forth in the astral body.

The astral body is not yet in complete harmony with the physical body; this is what causes fatigue. This has to be removed at night by the astral body immersing itself in the forces of its spiritual home and refreshing itself. Once complete harmony has been established between the astral body and the physical body, a very different state will have been reached. The surging and swaying of the impressions absorbed during the day from the physical environment manifests itself in the evening as fatigue. During the night, the astral body works off the fatigue. We feel the consequences of this work on the physical and etheric bodies early in the morning. We can see the manifestations of what the astral body does during the night in the refreshment we experience in the morning. Even when the physical and etheric bodies are ill, the astral body has a harmonizing effect on the disturbed etheric and physical bodies during sleep.

Physical science may object to some of these things, but spiritual processes at work behind the facts do not contradict the results of scientific research. If, time and again, physical research wants to object to the teachings of spiritual science about spiritual and psychological processes, the following example of a similar assessment can be pointed out. Let us assume: A person gives another a slap in the face. A has observed that the first person had a fit of anger and was therefore tempted to give the other a slap in the face. But B says: “I saw his hand rise and move towards the other person's face, and that's why he slapped him.” The part about the fit of anger is nonsense! This is the verdict of physical research when it insists on the truth of external facts in the face of the results of spiritual research. We only recognize a small part of the world when we only judge and observe external facts. Everything that happens in the world, that physics researches, that external observation shows us, these are only the gestures of the soul life of the world. The situation is quite different for a person in death than in sleep. Then not only the ego dissolves with the astral body, but the etheric body also goes with it and only the physical body remains behind. During life, the etheric body is a constant fighter against the decay of the physical body. But the physical body disintegrates the moment the etheric body leaves it. Immediately after death, the ego, the astral body and the etheric body are together – for a short while. Not all people experience this togetherness right after death; for each person, it lasts as long as that person has been able to exist without sleep.

The experiences that a person has during this time are very strange. They literally feel how they grow out of themselves, become greater. During this time, they see all the events of their past life around them as in a large memory tableau. This moment is extraordinary. Only in exceptional cases does a person experience something similar during their lifetime. It may be that in the event of a strong fright, when he is close to drowning or falling, he experiences a loosening of the etheric body from the physical body to such an extent that the memory of his entire past life then comes to him. However, this is only the case if the ego and the astral body do not lose consciousness. The astral body must remain within the etheric body.

Another example of the etheric body being disconnected from the physical body in places is when a limb, for example a hand, has fallen asleep. Children have a very telling expression for this; they say: “It feels like seltzer water.” The seer knows that at this moment the etheric body is protruding from the physical body at that point. The different blood circulation is only a consequence of the etheric body being partially released. Like the fingers of a glove, we can see the etheric body hanging out of the hand. When someone is hypnotized, you can see how the etheric body protrudes to the left and right, hanging down like rags.

Perhaps some will say that these explanations are nonsense and consider them foolishness. It is very good when we can cite examples from people who might otherwise laugh at Theosophy to support our stories about the facts of the spiritual world. Criminal anthropologist Benedikt recounts the following experience: When he was once close to drowning while bathing, he suddenly saw his entire life before him.

We can explain this fact, that after death a person sees their entire previous life in front of them, and the similar experience of a tremendous shock, as follows: the etheric body is, among other things, also the carrier of memory. In ordinary life it is connected with the physical brain. At the moment when the vehicle of memory is freed from the physical brain, but while the astral body is still within the etheric body, the whole of life presents itself to the human soul as a great tableau of memories. Bit by bit it fades away into darkness, and a second corpse remains of the human being. From the etheric or life body, something remains for him like an essence, like an extract of the great memory picture, as if the content of a large book had been summarized in one page. So after death, the essence of earthly life remains for us from this memory tableau; this is incorporated into the astral body on its journey after death.

Now the human being still consists of his ego, the astral body and the imprinted essence of his last life. If we want to know what fate the astral body has after death, we must remember the experiences of ordinary life. Let us see who actually experiences the enjoyment of physical things. That is the astral body, which uses the physical organs only as tools. For example, in the case of a gourmet, it is also the astral body that uses the physical organs only as tools. But it is the astral body that craves the delicious food. Let us imagine ourselves in the astral body after death. It has the same desires and instincts as it had before, but now it lacks the instruments to satisfy them. The astral body is now in a special situation. It has desires but no tools to satisfy them. The human being is in a state of burning thirst. The more a person depends on everything that can only be satisfied by the physical body, the more burning the thirst. This thirst lasts until the astral body can recognize that it must get rid of these desires. The time of burning thirst is called the Kamaloka time; Kama - desire; Loka - place. It is the sum of experiences that can only be satisfied by the physical body and must be given up.

When man learns to seek the Divine-Spiritual in the world, he will lack nothing after death. It is a method of shortening the Kamaloka time if one frees oneself from the lower pleasures and learns to let one's inner being be satisfied by spiritual interests. The highest by which man can free himself from the sensual in the sensual is art, true art. The more idealistic and spiritual the art that affects a person, the shorter the Kamaloka period. Art that is directed towards the external, the sensual, is not suitable for the whole of the human being. For one person it is relatively longer, for another person it is relatively shorter, the time in which he must unlearn what connects him to the physical world.

Then there is the shedding of a third corpse. After a long time, the human being discards the astral corpse. The ego cannot take anything with it on the further pilgrimage through life that is not purified by the ego. The unpurified, unprocessed parts of the astral body remain in the astral world. These astral corpses are always around us. People who are or have been closely connected to the material world leave dense astral corpses behind.

Some influence on a person comes from the fact that he walks through spiritual entities, that his soul is permeated by such spiritual entities. These also include such astral corpses. Because if a person is not armed against it, he is open to such influences. A restlessness arises in him, perhaps also bad impulses. But a good person, full of character, will not succumb to these harmful influences.

We have now followed the human being to the point where only the ego remains, with the purified parts of the astral and etheric bodies. Now a purely spiritual state occurs, which is called devachan. The human being is stripped of his covers; he is a purely spiritual being. We now still have the I before us. It has sprung out of the bodily sheaths and has become spiritual in itself. The I in man is almost like a plant that has been enclosed in crevices and has been freed and unfolds freely. The I unfolds in all directions when the astral corpse has fallen away. It feels a bliss of the deepest kind.

If we want to get to know these feelings, we have to compare them with a feeling that is only a very weak echo of these feelings. When the hen on the egg uses her body heat to guide the developing being towards maturation, we have a small something in this feeling of bliss that the I experiences during this time.

Then comes the time when the fruit ripens, as an extract of the last life. It is not for nothing that the I has absorbed this extract of the last life. The I has absorbed the world in a thousand and one impressions. The I has faced life with the intellect and the mind. Everything it has absorbed is compressed into this small extract, and this extract has become a creator through the feeling of inner bliss.

The I is preparing to build a new human being. We have built ourselves as we are. Only the outer disposition and something of what is in the etheric body has been passed down to us by inheritance. What we have already seen developing in the child's body took this long time after death to utilize the fruits of the last life. Every time after death, the human being takes with them an extract of their last life. Each time, the human being builds a new life through what they have experienced. In addition to what we have brought with us from previous lives, after death we take with us the extract of our last life. The ego experiences this bringing in of the fruit of the last human life and its use as a blessing. So the ego works to use this fruit of the last life to build a new human being. Physical inheritance provides the building blocks. How they are put together comes from the last life. The extract of the last life contains the design of the new life.

But after death, people have more to do than just occupy themselves with themselves. If we look at the development of the earth, we have to realize that everything on earth is changing. People will not reappear on earth until they can have new experiences on earth. Imagine Europe a few centuries before Christ, when everything was covered with mighty forests, and how every corner of the earth has changed since then. The face of the earth is constantly changing, and so is the cultural face of the earth. Our children learn something completely different at school than the children of ancient Rome learned. The face of the earth has also changed in spiritual and mental terms. Where are the forces that bring about these changes?

The forces that transformed the Germany that existed in the first centuries after the birth of Christ lie in the spiritual world. The co-workers in this change are the people themselves. After death, they continue to work on the physiognomy of the earth. The seer sees how the earthly beings are surrounded and enveloped by the bodiless human beings who are preparing the soil into which they will be born into a new life. In the physical life, we build cities, construct instruments, machines, and so on. But after death we transform the face of the earth. We prepare the bed in which the human being will be embedded when he is ready to take on a new form. We see the human being creating in the spiritual world; he is one of the architects, one of the co-creators in the transformation of the earth.

It takes a long time for the earth to change in such a way that the soul returns to a completely different scene. Once man appeared for the first time in the earthly body. Before that he was in a purely spiritual world, in the bosom of the Godhead. What man experiences in the physical body in the physical world can only be experienced within the physical body. With each life he adds a new page to the previous one, so to speak. At the end of his incarnations, these earthly experiences are added to his soul, and he lays them down before the altar of the Deity.

As long as the human being can be enriched by special forms of earthly existence, he embodies himself. This is how the individual life is comprehensible. It is an effect of previous lives and is a preparation for a later life. This law was not created for brooding, for idle speculation and for looking back at the past without taking action. This law tells us: the experiences of this life are the consequences of previous lives and the preparations for later lives. If I am in need and misery, then this is the preparation for later experiences. This is a law of life that knows how to solve the riddles of life in a wonderful way.

If someone, invoking this law, were to object, as sometimes happens, that one could not then help someone who is in need, then that is completely nonsensical. Just as a merchant's balance is a specific one, but a new item can be entered on the debit and credit side every day, so you can take stock of all your good and bad deeds at any moment in your life, but a new item can also be added to either side at any moment. It is never out of the question for us to add completely new items. Through the law of karma, we are able to help people. It is a law that gives impetus to life and mobilizes all energy. The law of karma is often misunderstood from two sides: from theologians and from some theosophists. The theologians object that salvation was brought to all of humanity by Christ Jesus, and therefore people cannot do anything themselves for their salvation. On the other hand, many a theosophist believes that he must oppose the teaching of redemption through Christ Jesus because he believes in the law of karma. But if he understands the law of karma correctly, then he knows that you can always add a new item to your life account and that you can therefore always help another person. Thus, the more powerful a person is, the more he can help other people. A mighty being, such as Christ, can have an effect on an infinite number of people. The act of redemption is inscribed in the karma of all humanity. The law of karma is in beautiful harmony with the redemption of Christ Jesus.

The most beautiful instrument for comprehending the great religious truths is Theosophy. Through it, the modern human being receives the form that is right for his soul.

The meaning of life arises when we recognize that which is behind life and incorporate it into the impulses of our actions. Theosophy is for energetic people who want to create in this life. When we learn to recognize spiritual forces, we also learn to introduce them into life. The theosophist is indifferent to arguments for or against Theosophy based on the usual dialectical arguments. What matters for Theosophy is that it becomes an instrument for life, that it increasingly intervenes in life. In the next period of cultural development, it will become clear what people owe to Theosophy: that people become joyful in their work and hopeful through Theosophy.

Theosophy is a remedy for humanity. If it proves to be such, then it needs no other logical proof. If Theosophy has a healing effect on people, then it will be proven by the facts of life.