Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 69d — 6 March 1914, Stuttgart

17. The Inner Nature of the Human Being and Life Between Death and Rebirth

Question: What should one do if one has lost God?

Rudolf Steiner: Actually, one cannot lose God, but only one's conception of God. One should strive to deepen, or one could also say, to elevate, one's conception of God. Every conception of God only approaches God, none can encompass Him. People talk about pantheism and theism, for example, as if one excludes the other; but in reality one is both, because by day one is a pantheist, by night more of a theist. Pantheism means actively experiencing the divine in the world. In theism, one experiences the Deity as watching over the world, as in a clairvoyant world sleep. One cannot rely on proofs, but “whosoever strives, we can redeem him.” One should only not want to stand still, but to want to rise above every point of view. Truth is one, but it is manifold in its revelations. Above all, inner peace, security, and vitality are needed, which one acquires through spiritual science. So the answer is basically: deepening in spiritual science, not an abstract answer.

Question: Is the practice of table turning to be approved, and can messages from the spiritual world be conveyed through it?

Rudolf Steiner: It should be said that the world of the spirits is spiritual. Those who want to get to know the spiritual world by table turning are like those who want to learn mathematics and do not go to a mathematician but to a parrot.

Question: Does a person have to experience rebirth in a spiritual-divine relationship in every life?

Rudolf Steiner: The rebirth that one has experienced in one life remains a fruit for the next life on earth, but does not have to be the seed. What mystics call “spiritual rebirth” may transform into poetic or artistic abilities in the next life.

Question: Do spirit and matter both come from a spiritual source?

Rudolf Steiner: Please read my books on this topic, such as “Truth and Science”, “Philosophy of Freedom” and so on. Question: Do Neptune and Uranus belong to our planetary system or to another?

Rudolf Steiner: They do not belong to our planetary system in the same sense as the other planets, but rather have migrated there.

Question: Where are the dead?

Rudolf Steiner: I deliberately avoided speaking about space and time in this context in the lecture because these [categories] belong only to the sense world; in the spiritual world, time is experienced in a completely different way. In the nineteenth century, even the materialists said: If all souls are transported out into space after death, the world will soon be overcrowded. But that is nonsense, because the law of impenetrability belongs only to the physical world.

Question: How does what was said in the lecture square with the teaching of resurrection and the Last Judgment?

Rudolf Steiner: Some believe that a passage in the Bible is called that, but that is not what this is about, but about direct spiritual research.

Question: Can souls be helped after death? What about suicides? Rudolf Steiner: Only in more oral [personal] conversations can something be said about that.

Question: My brother Theodor Schmidt left on [gap in transcript] 1898. In a fortnight he was insane.

Rudolf Steiner: The I is not dead between falling asleep and waking up during the night. [In] leave alone, institutional treatment.

Question: If a man and woman love each other very much, will one of them soon follow the other?

Rudolf Steiner: In such a case, they long for an embodiment that does not last longer than that of the other. You will also not dispute that many a man and woman lives for a long time after the death of the other. I do not want to talk about Bluebeard, but there are people who quickly find comfort with another love. Inner connections exist between all people in a good and evil sense, in love and hate, in an understanding and unintelligent sense. Our aim should be to establish spiritual bonds in the physical body that are spiritual forces. Our strength increases, our power grows stronger when we connect with another person in our physical life through love, friendship or some other shared bond. If we strip away the forms that belong only to the earthly, what remains are the forces that live on here and in the spiritual world. Consciousness after death is much stronger, except for the period when consciousness, as it were, rejects the outside world; but the inner life is all the stronger. Also, the experience in the “midnight hour of existence” is much stronger, as consciousness can be in the body, even if it is an inner one. All fruits reveal themselves in eternity: what we experience in solitude and what we experience in community with others.