Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 69d — 26 February 1913, Heidelberg

13. The Supernatural Worlds and the Nature of the Human Soul

Dear attendees! Anyone who speaks about the supersensible worlds in our time cannot expect that what they have to say will meet with general, or even any kind of, approval, because research into the supersensible world is not, so to speak, part of the thinking habits and way of thinking of our age; and the opposition, the hostile attitude toward insights gained from the supersensible worlds, are understood by no one better than those who themselves wish to engage in this supersensible research. The great achievements, the great triumphs of the human spirit, both in past centuries and up to the present day, have been in a different field than that of supersensible research. Since we as humanity have experienced the dawn of the new natural science, it has rushed from triumph to triumph, and it can be said that it has not only achieved significant things in terms of understanding the outer, sensory world and its connections, but it has also achieved the most significant things for human progress in terms of material culture. Today, we need only take a look at life to appreciate how everything in our environment and everything on which our lives depend is now linked to the great advances in the field of natural science.

The humanities, which seek to explore the supersensible world, must never come into real conflict with this natural science, which has rightly conquered the modern age, if they want to reach the hearts of people at all. But anyone who allows the whole spirit of scientific research to work on them, anyone who delves deeply into what natural science can achieve, will have to say: the further natural science progresses, the more it remains true to its own foundations, the more it must lead away from the exploration of the supersensible realms of existence.

Nevertheless, the human soul can never do without these supersensible realms of existence. Even if it has not yet explored them, it still has a vague inkling that the most important thing for it is to know its own nature, and that this knowledge of its own nature is connected with knowledge of the higher world. That is why many people today, even those who think scientifically, are lifting their gaze from narrow boundaries and striving to find answers to the great questions of existence. You can see, ladies and gentlemen, how the longing to know something about the supersensible world is stirring more and more in the human soul; for we feel that this knowledge is connected not only with a wide-ranging field of human cognition, but also with the two most important questions of the soul, the riddles of the soul — riddles that we encounter not only in the field of science, but again and again in life, every day and every hour, one might say, at every moment. Yes, the field of supersensible research is wide-ranging, but it can be divided, so to speak, into two questions that touch on the interests of the human soul: one question is that of human destiny, the other is the question associated with the words “immortality” or “mystery of death.”

Here we see a person born into an existence predestined from the outset to misery, a person with limited abilities, born into an environment from which he can receive nothing good. We see another person entering into existence, cared for and nurtured, gifted with brilliant abilities, predestined for a useful and happy existence. Looking at everything in between, the question of fate becomes a burning one. One can theoretically deny the urgency of this question, but even if the soul tries to ignore the question in its thinking, in its conscious feelings, perhaps through prejudice, the hidden depths of the human soul still depend on an answer to these enigmatic questions. One may encounter people in life who, one might say, do not concern themselves with these questions in their thinking. But these people appear to us to be out of sorts, uncertain in life, with a more or less unhealthy soul. It is often the mood of the soul that reveals to us the dissatisfaction that lies within that soul, because it is unable to answer these questions. This, however, makes this question [about destiny] a question of life, because it affects the mood, the state of the soul. These are profound questions of life that are closely related to the soul, even if it is not aware of this.

The same is true of the question of immortality. Certainly, this question is not yet raised in a scientific form by most people today. Fear of death, hope and desire, the longing to continue life beyond the gates of death, is not only the reason for the question, it is the reason for answering the question one way or another. In this area, desire is usually the father of the answer that the soul gives to this question. And the way in which this question has taken shape under the influence of scientific thinking in the nineteenth century and up to the present day is the best way for us to see how this question can be raised scientifically or unscientifically. It is truly not the ignoble souls who believed that life must end with physical death and believed that all longing for the immortality of the soul springs from egoism. And one can feel how it is nobler to go with these souls than with those who, out of fear [a] response to the question of immortality. When such souls say: Yes, what we have worked for is intended for humanity as a whole, and when a person passes through the gate of death, they are called upon to hand over their creations to human society; we gladly sacrifice all this on the altar of humanity! - [then] one senses a selfless mood in these souls.

But there is another way to ask the question, and it is as follows. Precisely when we immerse ourselves in the life of the soul, we can ask ourselves: What characterizes it? It is characterized by the fact that it has individually experienced and created within itself the most valuable thing it can conquer. It is not what we have in common with others that is most valuable in human beings, but what each individual has worked out for themselves. It is so closely connected to the soul that it cannot even be put into words. It cannot be handed over to another. If it were to cease to exist at death, it would have to cease to exist forever. If the human soul were to be extinguished in its consciousness at death, then the individual good would also be extinguished. But that would contradict one of the laws of the world that we can observe everywhere, the law of the general world economy. Wherever we see forces passing into a [completely different] state, we see only that they change, but never that they pass into destruction. We would have to arrive at the absurdity, so to speak, that everywhere else in nature forces are collected and stored for use, but only in humans are they collected to be extinguished. Here, quite apart from the fear of death and the like, the question begins to become a scientific one.

If, imbued with a sense of the importance of this question, we take a look at the habits of thinking that have developed today from the rightly praised natural sciences, we can say that precisely when this science develops its essence properly, it will not be able to answer the two questions mentioned above. Why can it not answer these questions? Natural science cannot say anything about cause and effect as they appear in human destiny, because that would be a foreign territory for it. And with regard to the question of immortality, it must be said that natural science is great precisely because it uses methods that appeal to the intellect, which is bound to the brain, and to the senses. But these are parts of the human being that die with death. How can one use these tools, the senses and the intellect, which die with death, to find out anything about the world that lies beyond the gate of death? With what dies with death, one cannot answer the question of what happens after death.

When we consider the relationship between the human soul and its physicality, we must say that the whole life of the soul, as it unfolds in everyday life, is bound to the physicality of the human being. In what do human souls actually live? Well, they live in everything they owe to the impressions of the sensory world and in everything they make of the impressions of the soul. Everything that flows into the soul during the day depends on the senses, the physical sensory organs. In ordinary life, we are never alone with our soul. We are always together with what the soul conquers for us through the senses. But not entirely. There is a possibility for human beings to be alone with their soul. However, this possibility is of a peculiar nature. When does this possibility arise? When the mind, which is bound to the brain, is silent, when the senses are silent, when the person sinks into sleep. Basically, this statement expresses nothing that scientific researchers do not also admit [reference to Du Bois-Reymond].

Anyone who has a proper understanding of scientific research will agree wholeheartedly when one says: The further science advances, the more it becomes aware of its peculiar nature, the more it will have to limit itself to observing humans insofar as they are imbued with the soul, but it will not be able to explain this soul.

Now, it would be absurd to believe that everything a person experiences from morning to night disappears when they fall asleep and reappears when they wake up. But if one cannot find this in the sleeping human being, then it would be natural not to attribute it to him, to accept what spiritual research has to say, namely that what is in the body during the day is found outside the body during sleep. Since it cannot be explained from the human body, it must be explained in another way. But if the soul being is drawn out of the body of the sleeping person, then the person is in a state where they are alone with themselves; unfortunately, however, the strange thing happens that the person is not conscious of themselves and cannot explore themselves. But this immediately illuminates what would have to happen for the soul to become aware of its own being. A state similar to sleep must occur, but at the same time the soul must be able to explore itself. It must be inwardly alive in the being that is inactive in sleep. And indeed, all soul research depends on some people being able to make active and alive what is otherwise unconscious to human beings. In this state, the soul must become independent of the impressions of the senses. But, unlike sleep, the state would have to be such that the soul can perceive itself internally.

In ordinary life, the human soul can really be compared to the reflection that a person sees when they look in a mirror. Imagine three mirrors set up. A person walks past these three mirrors; they will perceive their image in front of each mirror, but not between the mirrors. So it is with the human soul. When it enters the physical body upon awakening, the physical body acts like a mirror. The soul does not become aware of itself within itself, but through its reflection, the physical body. And just as a reflection depends on the shape of the mirror, so too does what the soul knows about itself depend on its body. Humans can only know something about themselves by not only looking at their reflection, but also by perceiving something about themselves outside of the time when they look in the mirror. The soul must know about itself; it must perceive itself.

But this is what the soul of the spiritual researcher must become if it wants to enter the supersensible world. He must not only consider the soul life that is experienced as a reflection of physicality, but he must also learn to truly perceive the soul, which is only perceptible and at the same time imperceptible in sleep. And how can this be done? It can only be done through concentration, contemplation, meditation. What is that?

Dear attendees, attention must be drawn again and again to these methods of spiritual science, because they are the only way to activate the soul so that the state described above can occur. It is true that in ordinary life we form ideas and concepts, but we only find these ideas and concepts valuable if they represent something to us. However, ideas that are only formed and evaluated in this way are not what is important in the training of the spiritual researcher. What is important in the spiritual researcher's soul experience is that the concepts and ideas he brings into his consciousness awaken inner forces.

Concentration, contemplation, meditation—these are based on bringing ideas, preferably limited and manageable ideas, to the center of our consciousness and then allowing our entire consciousness to focus on this one idea. It is not important at first that different meditations are necessary for each person. We must first direct all our soul power toward a single idea for a prolonged period of time. We must not focus our attention on what the idea means, but rather on gathering all our soul power toward the one point of such an idea. We can then concentrate our entire soul life on a single such idea for longer and longer periods of time. If we do this for a while, we will notice that we are in fact training ourselves to achieve a very special state of mind, a state that is still little known today. Our inner soul life is transformed; it is born again for the second time. In fact, one then increasingly acquires the ability to put the body into a state similar to that of sleep. Through willpower, one can exclude all sensory impressions, all memories, all worries, everything that the mind thinks. One lives in that which is independent of the physical, in that which is soulful.

The spiritual researcher is well aware of all the objections that can be raised by people who stand on a materialistic, or as we say today, a monistic basis. It would go too far to refute all these objections, but one thing can be said: If one examines the objections, one will find that they are made by people who have not yet experienced [this state], who have not yet gone through this state. People who have experienced it once no longer make these objections. What it means to be inwardly active independently of the physical body must be experienced and learned. No matter how many theories are put forward, for those who experience the matter for themselves, the objections are worthless.

How often has it happened that important facts have been discovered that were declared impossible because they did not fit into the existing system? The same is true of the results of spiritual research. However, one does not become a spiritual researcher through external tools, but only by transforming one's own soul.

When the spiritual researcher applies the methods mentioned above, he enters a state where it is no longer necessary for him to call certain ideas into his consciousness, such as those just described, but then such ideas and images arise in his soul of their own accord. This is an important moment in the spiritual researcher's self-experience. It must be said that an inner soul life has then become active. It is as if the sleeping soul were to see the soul outside the body and yet have a purely spiritual world around it within itself. Such a world initially surrounds the spiritual researcher. Now comes the most important moment, when one becomes aware of how, in the development of the soul into a spiritual researcher, self-education is the most important thing, education towards a decision, towards a state of mind.

Those who think materialistically may say: when such ideas arise, they are pathological visions, hallucinations. However, only a thoroughly healthy soul life is considered the starting point for soul research. — Outwardly, however, the materialist cannot see any difference between pathological states of mind — visions or hallucinations — and the state of the spiritual researcher described above. The following must now be taken into consideration. It is not possible to talk pathological souls out of their hallucinations. Why is that so? Attention must be drawn to something that can only be seen through true spiritual research; what comes into consideration here is what could be called self-love, self-will. The hallucinator believes so strongly in his visions because he loses himself in them, because he loves these ideas that have become one with him. Anyone who wants to become a spiritual researcher must develop great soul power, and it is this soul power that matters. They must be able to judge that what often arises within them in wonderful beauty is nothing more than a reflection of their own soul life, projections of their own ego. Those who have delusions believe that their visions are objective phenomena. The spiritual researcher, however, knows that what he himself has created, even though it appears as a world, is nothing but his own reflection. One must be able to overcome the great self-love that now enters the soul like a force of nature. At the same time as preparing to develop such structures in his soul, the spiritual researcher must be able to realize that these images are only reflections of his soul. They must have the strong will to remove from their soul life what they themselves have conjured up and to empty the entire horizon of consciousness again. But this requires a strong will, for nothing is as blissful as when a person has arrived in a new world. The spiritual researcher must be able to remove this new world. What does this removal mean? Well, in our ordinary, everyday view of the world, we would become ill if we could only ever see one thing. We must look at this and that, otherwise we will not gain any external knowledge of the world. In the realm of supersensible knowledge, this turning away is comparable to the erasure of what one has achieved with so much effort. One cannot turn away the soul; one must erase the images. One must be able to come to the selfless decision to erase what one has achieved.

When one has reached this point, a soul experience usually occurs, which can be characterized because it is typical – [reference to the book “A Path to Self-Knowledge for Human Beings”]. It does not have to be as described there, but this is how it usually occurs. When one describes such an experience, people easily come and ask: How can one see anything objective in such an experience? People completely forget about mathematics and geometry and so on. [Gap in the transcript]

When people train themselves in this way, they come to the following conclusion. One day they say to themselves: What is happening to you now? You feel like a being, but completely dissolved. It seems like a force of nature, like when lightning strikes. People say to themselves: It is as if your physicality were being torn away from you.

Dear attendees, this is very easy to describe, but it is a powerful experience. It is an experience that can be described as the moment when death touches you. It is like being outside of all physicality. At first, it is only a visual experience, but one experiences it with one's will in such a way that one gains knowledge of it. And when facts and events and beings then appear before the soul, they are spiritual realities. Then the person knows that they no longer have mirror images of their own being before them, but now they know what the spiritual world looks like, and now they can describe it. He now knows the nature of the supersensible world, and he knows it because he has seen beside him the tool through which he otherwise approached the world. He has emerged from what he otherwise called his being, and he has seen himself as a being among other beings.

Here, too, objections can be raised about objections. For example, someone might say: Yes, but how did the spiritual researcher arrive at this state? Couldn't it be imagination, fantasy? After all, there are people who can form very vivid fantasies.

Through life itself, one can distinguish between imagination and reality. [Citation of the following examples: real lemonade and imaginary lemonade, a hot piece of iron.] A hundred possible talers and a hundred real talers do not differ in idea, but one cannot pay debts with possible talers. Schopenhauer: The world is my imagination. One must let life take effect everywhere, then life is also the best critic of imagination and reality. This applies in the sensual world, but it also applies in the supersensible world. The spiritual researcher knows exactly what approaches him in the spiritual world.

Great scholars today already take the position of pointing to the spiritual-soul realm. But how far do people get who admit today that there is spirit and there is soul? They only refer to spirit and soul in general terms. It is just as if one were to say: Go out into the meadow, there you will find trees, flowers, all kinds of plants, everything is nature. And in the chemical laboratory, in everything you can see, you see nature, nature, nature. People would say: Yes, but we are not satisfied with you always talking about nature, nature. When it comes to nature, people naturally always demand the concrete, the details. In my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds,” one finds the concrete, the details in the spiritual realm, but there it is not forgiven.

It is characteristic of the present time that the soul actually demands what it does not yet want to admit in its depths. And more and more, our time will come to recognize that the supersensible world can be understood in detail, just as the sensible world can be understood in detail.

One important thing that human beings can now experience in the supersensible world is that they learn to recognize their own soul as the worker on their physical body. They learn to look at their lives with completely different eyes. They now know that the physical body is not the creator of what lives in the soul, but that the soul works creatively on the body. When they look at a child coming into life at birth, they now know that something from the supersensible world is connected with what has been inherited. They know that their existence is not limited to the visible, and that the soul works most intensively on the physical body in the very first years of life. And when we see how the child's undeveloped traits and aptitudes become more and more pronounced, how the inner becomes master of the outer, then we feel that the soul can only be thought of as creative – creative in the body. The sculptor of the body is the soul.

When we consider all this, we come to a point where we can understand how spiritual research in today's world has something similar to achieve for the supersensible world as natural science achieved for the sensible world not so long ago. Until the seventeenth century, it was still believed that living beings could form from river mud; living animals could arise from it. It was Francesco Redi who first said: Life can only come from life. He proved that the river mud contained [germs] from living animals of the past, from which new animals developed. Everyone turned against Francesco Redi; he narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno and other scholars who dared to bring something new to humanity. Today, people are somewhat more lenient in their assessment and condemnation of such people. Today, they are not burned at the stake, but merely labeled as fantasists, sometimes even as fools.

Today, people still believe that what a person brings with them at birth comes only from physical heredity. Spiritual science, however, has to show that it is only inaccurate observation that leads to the belief that the physical is concentrated [in heredity]. In truth, the spiritual can only come from the spiritual, and what causes the concentration of heredity is the soul, which descends from the supersensible world into physical existence. When it comes to the spiritual-soul, we must go back to the same individuality. And this logically leads us to the view of repeated earth lives. What makes us the spiritual-soul beings we are today is only the result of a previous earthly life. What we create for ourselves in an earthly life passes through the gate of death into a purely spiritual world. Then it turns back to the [next] earthly life and merges with the forces we acquire in a new earthly life. And in the next life, we enter earthly existence again as the sculptor who creates the body. Thus we go from life to life.

Today, this truth may still be considered foolishness by many. The spiritual researcher understands perfectly well that it must be the fate of spiritual research to still be regarded as foolishness today. I have already said that in the past, people who had something new to bring to the world were burned. Today, people are a little milder. Today, people who talk about spiritual research are simply called fools. But the spiritual researcher does not care about this. He understands very well the people who must be his opponents. Schopenhauer once said: It has always been the fate of truth that when it entered an age, it was not understood. — And in his writing on the foundation of morality, Schopenhauer says:

Throughout the centuries, poor truth has had to blush for being paradoxical: And yet it is not her fault. It cannot take the form of the enthroned general error. There it looks up with a sigh to its guardian god, time, which beckons its victory and glory, but whose wing beats are so large and slow that the individual dies over them.

But truth will prevail, even if individualities die away and the pains of error are still experienced so intensely. - The spiritual researcher therefore sees a necessity in the opposition that must exist today, because habits of thought cannot immediately adapt to such ideas. [Gap in the transcript]

But then, when we have explained human life, we have the nature of the soul and the connection of the soul with the supersensible worlds in a form that is completely consistent with natural science. We see the fate of human beings, but we [also] see that this fate is the effect of what human beings have planted within themselves as a cause in a previous life. When we see the soul in misfortune, we know that we have brought this misfortune upon ourselves. People may say: Yes, the spiritual researcher is telling us something beautiful. But this view can become a blissful one. Let me give you an example: A young man loses his father at the age of eighteen, and at the same time loses his entire fortune; his father was a very rich man. If the fortune had remained intact, the young man would never have learned anything, never had to work. Now he had to find his way into life in a different way. He had to work and became a useful member of human society. When the stroke of fate struck him, he felt it was a great misfortune. Later, he had to realize that the great misfortune had befallen him for his own good. Without the misfortune, he would have remained incompetent; he would have become a useless person.

One is not always the right judge of one's own fate, and least of all when one is in the midst of misfortune. You have to wait for the right moment to be able to judge your fate in its entirety. Looking back, you will often be able to say: Yes, I truly knew that I had brought this or that misfortune upon myself. For example, a person who has struggled for ten years to gain insight, who has wrestled with the questions of existence, looks completely different after those ten years than he did before. Their features will bear the traces of their inner work. If you were to ask such a person: If you had the choice between the joys you have experienced and the sufferings you have endured, which would you prefer? They would answer: I would give up joy and happiness, but not my sufferings and my pains, for it is to them alone that I owe my deepening understanding.

We must see fate as the great educational tool of life, then the very idea of repeated earthly lives will give us satisfaction. There is bliss in saying to oneself: With the powers I gather here, I build up spiritual powers and spiritual abilities; and when I am given a new earthly life, the body will be the expression of my spiritual experience. Such an attitude to life brings strength into our lives.

Someone may say that natural science must recognize heredity as the only correct explanation. It would not occur to the spiritual researcher to rebel against the truths of natural science. But because one thing is true, can the other also be true? Suppose two people are looking at a third person. One says: I know why this person is alive; he has two lungs with which he breathes, and that is why he can live. The other says: That is not true. Two weeks ago, the man hanged himself; I cut him down in time, which is why he is alive today." Both are right. In the same way, the view of heredity of physical characteristics, which is represented by natural science, and the view of spiritual science, according to which man has worked his characteristics into himself in a previous life, can coexist.

Let us now turn to the question of immortality. It does not arise when we think about an infinite void of time. We see a human being living, we see the powers he has developed that form his individuality. And the way he has become in life is the guarantee for a new earthly life. Immortality is composed of its individual parts, exactly in the sense of natural science. Now one might say: Yes, the spiritual researcher sees this, but not everyone can be a spiritual researcher. Not everyone needs to be a painter to be able to look at and understand a picture. The fact that the spiritual researcher recognizes the supersensible worlds is not enough; he must be able to give other people a picture of these spiritual worlds in ideas and concepts. And just as a person who looks at and understands a picture does not have to be a painter, so too one does not need to be a spiritual researcher when presented with views of the supersensible worlds expressed in terms of common sense. If you allow yourself to be influenced by what the spiritual researcher describes, then you can recognize everything he has to offer without being a spiritual researcher yourself. All you need is common sense. Not everyone can become a spiritual researcher, but that is not necessary. For what does spiritual science give us? It gives us the supersensible world in concepts and ideas, in images and pictures; and what enters our lives with it enlightens us about our own soul life. What the spiritual researcher experiences cannot be of any use to him until he has brought it down [into ideas and concepts]. Only then does spiritual science become a comfort and security for the soul. Merely observing the spiritual world is of no use to us. What we need in order to be certain that the soul is indestructible cannot be obtained by looking into the spiritual world, but through what can be understood with common sense.

Once spiritual science penetrates the spiritual culture and education of young people, then as they grow old, people will feel how true Goethe's words are: “In old age, man becomes a mystic.” They will feel that despite the decline of the outer body, an inner soul core has grown within them. Just as the plant dies in autumn in order to blossom in spring, so will human beings know that they will unfold the seed of their soul when they enter the life between death and new birth. We feel within ourselves the strengthening of that which passes from one earthly life to the next. Today we cannot yet speak of the end of these repetitions. But it can be deduced from what has been described that what is ensured by repeated earthly lives does not exist only in theories, but that it acts as a force for earthly life itself. What spiritual science can give us thus becomes the elixir of life, the security of life. It gives us comfort in suffering and pain because we learn to look at life in the right way. It is precisely the practice of life that follows from supersensible knowledge that is the most important thing, the essential thing. When people equip themselves with this essential knowledge, they gain inner stability, which can already be strong today if they have enough patience to delve deeply enough to gain real insight into the supersensible realm, so that they can behave toward their opponents, their enemies who want to deny the supersensible world, as Goethe once behaved in another matter. Goethe saw many things coming his way that seemed opposed to his views. This included the view, already expressed in ancient times, that there is no movement. It always had and still has adherents who say, for example: An arrow shot from a bow is always at rest at a certain point in its flight, so movement is a continuous state of rest, and therefore there is no movement. Goethe considered this to be a caricature, which is indeed strictly provable and yet nonsense. Goethe had a beautiful sentence for these deniers of motion:

Enemies may appear,
Remain calm, remain silent;
And if they deny your motion,
Walk around in front of their noses.

He believes that this is probably the best proof of movement. Life, captured spiritually, provides the kind of certainty that Goethe had in the face of those who denied movement. And when people today come along who are hostile to the teaching of the immortality of the human soul and the supersensible world, then, armed with the certainty of life that comes from spiritual science, one can summarize what one feels toward such opposition in the words:

Hostility may arise,
But remain calm, remain cheerful,
And if they deny the spirit,
Do not ponder it further.
Yes, in the end, agree with them,
For their spirit is in a bad state.