Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 69d — 31 March 1914, Munich

19. On Death

For a number of years now, I have been speaking in this hall about elementary matters and, in a further constructive manner, about spiritual science, and it is only for this reason that I take the liberty of give this lecture this evening, but I must point out that [today's lecture is, in a sense, a risk, and] those [listeners] who have heard little or nothing of the earlier lectures will easily come to the conclusion that everything that is said [is] more or less up in the air. In the past, I have presented in various ways the reasons for everything that leads to such insights, and shown how it is entirely possible for human knowledge to penetrate to the sources from which today's lecture has also drawn, so that I do not need to repeat the same arguments over and over again in order to communicate something from the special research of spiritual science on today's topic, which is, after all, close to every human soul. The concepts for this are found in other lectures, but I would like to begin by presenting various points that may serve as a transition for those who have not yet dealt much with the subjects of spiritual science.

It has often been emphasized that spiritual science is very different from external science, even though it can certainly be regarded as a continuation of the achievements of natural science. Spiritual science is not based on natural science, but on a recognition that is achieved with developed powers of the soul, which initially lie dormant in the subconscious of the soul, but can be brought to the surface through meditation and concentration, so that the soul [becomes so strengthened that it can connect a meaning with the words: I experience myself as a soul outside the body], I feel myself as a spiritual being in such a way that I look at my body as something foreign. This is therefore a kind of spiritual chemistry that is driven by meditation and concentration on the human being and through him or her. Through this spiritual chemistry, spiritual life separates itself when it is prepared by these exercises of meditation and concentration.

Through this, the human being discovers that there is a being living within them that usually uses the senses as a tool, but can lift itself out of the body and then does not have the world around them that is perceived through the senses, but a world of spiritual beings and processes. The moment when the budding spiritual researcher reaches the point of truly knowing himself to be experiencing the spiritual world is significant.

This moment can arise from waking daily life without disturbing it, or it can occur in the middle of sleep [but it does not become a dream, rather a spiritual experience]. However, one experiences this detachment from the body in a shocking way. The typical thing is that – in sleep or waking life – the moment comes when one feels: Now something is happening that penetrates you like an [irresistible], elemental force, something like when you are in a house where lightning strikes. You feel the detachment from the body, feel that you can perceive it outside yourself [as something foreign]. This experience is the gateway to spiritual research. Once you have experienced it, you know what the spiritual researcher means when he speaks of higher knowledge and characterizes this higher knowledge, this spiritual-scientific knowledge, by saying: It begins with approaching the gates of death, because then you know what it means to live outside the body in the soul. You experience this event [only in image], but in real imagination. You know what it means to experience death, to stand in the world in which the human soul stands when it has actually passed through the gate of death and surrendered the body to the earth, [when] the soul enters the spiritual world.

There is a necessary peculiarity involved. [I would now like to describe the state of mind that is necessary in order to face the facts that arise in this process; for] the state of mind that the spiritual researcher develops is different from that of the scientist when he moves in the realm of ordinary science, or indeed in everyday life. There one has the feeling that one can judge everything. This mood ceases as one immerses oneself in spiritual knowledge. One learns more and more to feel how truth is something that hovers above one in lofty heights and that one always wants to wait for in order to approach it. One feels how necessary it is to prepare oneself to bring the soul into the sphere where it matures, to receive from spiritual worlds, as if by grace, that which is called truth in the spiritual realm. Holy awe [of the union of the soul with truth] takes hold of the soul. One has the feeling: if only I could wait a little longer, postpone what I now want to research until a later time, when I have matured. This feeling: you must first mature, not judge, but transform yourself in order to reach spheres where truth comes to you — this mood arises quite naturally in spiritual research. Whereas one otherwise wants to work hard on what science can bring together, in spiritual research one feels the need to work on oneself, to bring oneself into a state where one can overcome sacred awe.

This is [only in dry, crude words] a reference to something that is infinitely sacred and familiar to anyone who is involved in spiritual research. Such a person knows the moment when they say to themselves: Yes, you still have something to recognize, but it is better to wait. — One has the feeling of not being worthy of the truth. This peculiar mood of being unworthy of the truth in a higher sense is something that one learns to recognize as permeating oneself. This is said in order to indicate, as it were, something about the mood I would like to have poured out over everything that is to be presented today.

[Today, I would like to speak about the problem of death in a narrative form, drawing on spiritual research and its sources, while at the same time referring to my writings on “Theosophy” and “The Threshold of the Spiritual World.” The description of the lecture should be more like the soul, which has transported itself into the spiritual worlds by its own powers, experiences the events; so it will be from a slightly different perspective than in those books.]

When a person passes through the gate of death [i.e., when their soul has detached itself from the physical body], an event occurs that lasts only a short time [with which the spiritual researcher is familiar through witnessing a recently deceased person]. Because the spiritual researcher can enter the world into which the dead person enters, these experiences are familiar to him. The entire inner state of the soul then becomes different. In our outer life, in our physical body, we distinguish between thinking, imagining, feeling, and willing. After death, these soul activities become something different than in life [after death, they come to consciousness in a different way than with the words that our earthly language has coined to express them]. The experience is completely different than in the physical body. One can only try to approach with words what is seen in the spiritual world, [even if it seems awkward and will be unfamiliar in the sense of ordinary language].

The first thing a person experiences after death is that they experience themselves in their thoughts in such a way that these thoughts begin to lead an independent life. This is something already familiar to the spiritual researcher [and appears to him in a similar way] when he has left his body. He cannot say: I move my thoughts. They become like an internally independent entity. Instead of feeling at one with our thoughts [in the body], they step out into the environment, as it were, and become an external world. Just as we perceive the sensory things and processes around us before death, so after death we perceive our thoughts, so that it appears like a tableau of memories of our past life.

Anyone who looks at life with an open mind knows that between birth and death they accumulate an inner wealth of life. We can only survey a part of what we have become richer in, in such a way that we know ourselves to be within it in our thoughts. What we have achieved in our last life appears before our soul like an entity of thoughts, [a living image of memory consisting of thought entities], a tableau. The first is therefore like a review of our past earthly life, which is like an external world in which the thoughts we have absorbed are woven together [in full activity].

This review lasts only a few days. The length varies [depending on the development of the individuality, and the spiritual researcher has noticed in studying this question]: After death, a person may look back on their life's achievements, which have been transformed into thoughts, for about as long as they would have had the strength to remain awake during their life before death [without the natural forces of fatigue forcing them to sleep]. One person can do this for many nights, another cannot. Nothing in the moral value of life depends on this duration.

When this time of review has come to an end, it is as if an extract, the thought extract of what we have achieved in our last life, were to “distance” itself from us. An important part of this tableau departs from us. We have the feeling that our life experience is going far away into the spiritual distance. This feeling that arises from it: that what you knew was connected to you before death is going far away – this feeling is the dawning of a new consciousness after death. We develop our object consciousness in physical earthly life before death by encountering things with our senses and powers of judgment, so to speak. The fact that the outside world offers us resistance develops a counterforce within us. This gives us consciousness before death. Afterwards, consciousness is not duller, but completely different.

[In the feeling: Now the whole achievement, the extract of the last earthly life, goes away from one – so the new consciousness begins, and] other, much more inner experiences now follow. While in the first moments after death we experienced our thoughts as a spiritual outer world around us, we now experience a connection with our last earthly life through inner soul forces that are completely different from those before death, soul forces for which there is no word, which cannot be treated as either feeling or will. One could describe this as something between feeling and willing, as a feeling will or a willing feeling. It dawns like feeling, but desire is in the feeling. The soul stands directly in this desire, and this part of the soul force is directed toward the last earthly life, so that we now go through a period that can still be measured in years. It can be characterized as follows: During our earthly life, we satisfy our desires and cravings, enter into certain relationships with the outside world, but for no one is everything they have desired in life, feeling, wanting, exhausted when they leave life. The soul's experience, its feeling, still retains a remnant of what could still have been enjoyed. This now lives on in the soul in such a way that the soul feels it as a desire. This gives rise to a longing for connection with the last earthly life. The soul is inwardly occupied with the last earthly life in its feeling of desire. Being in a spiritual environment, it learns to recognize that earthly life and earthly conditions are necessary for that feeling and desire, [and] that it cannot satisfy them here. It takes years [in the spiritual world] to get over this. The person is already in the spiritual world, perceiving it, but perceiving it indirectly through their previous earthly life.

Let us assume that a person has passed away, leaving behind someone, friends, or someone else in earthly life. They are still connected to the being they left behind, but this connection is such that the deceased looks back on their own earthly life: “This is how you felt about the other being.” — In looking at this feeling, the connection with the other being is established. One gains insight into the being one has left behind. The same is true of a being who is already in the spiritual world and who had a relationship with us on earth. We do not find them directly, but indirectly through the relationship that connects us, as it were, like a telegraphic connection, with these beings, who then dwell spiritually in our surroundings. We are not separated from the beings to whom we have connected ourselves. Relationships can be established, but because we need the detour through our earthly life, only with those with whom we were connected in earthly life. We need what we felt and experienced towards these people as a mediating link. [The world of the dead consists of people who have passed through the gate of death and lived with him on earth in friendly or hostile relationships.] In the first few years, our relationships do not go beyond this circle.

One can therefore say that it is the time that a person lives through until the moment when they remember — the first years of childhood, which one does not remember, are not taken into account.

It makes no difference to the duration of this experience whether a person has reached the age of twenty-five, thirty-six, or fifty-five. When one has reached middle age, how long one has lived does not contribute much to the prolongation of this experience after death. About two decades is the time during which this struggle to break away from the context of the last earthly life takes place in soul forces that can be called “feeling will,” “feeling will.” When this time is over, one notices—one already notices it coming during this time—that a new soul force awakens. It is not present in earthly life; the spiritual researcher recognizes it only outside the body. The expression that can be used for this is: creative acts of will, activity of will. Gradually, the human being comes to feel that something like a soul force is flowing out of them into their spiritual environment. This force could also be described as spiritual luminosity, although it is not similar to physical light. It spreads from the soul into the spiritual environment. Through it, we learn to recognize what spiritual processes take place between birth and death. We illuminate our surroundings, as it were. When we look at the state of mind in which a person finds themselves when they illuminate their surroundings with their soul light, which they sense as creative willpower, we could say: There is an infinite but spiritual, noble well-being in the productive power of spiritual light, truly something like bliss, which one senses by recognizing beings and processes in this spiritual world. It is the emergence into immediate perception of the beings who have passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world. Now spiritual recognition and spiritual connection come into being, which no longer arise from looking back on our last earthly life. [Compare my writing “The Threshold of the Spiritual World”]. One has the feeling that one perceives because one spreads one's spiritual light around oneself — otherwise everything would remain dark.

Now something like a change occurs in the experience. One could say that the soul radiates this spiritual light from within itself, but as it develops this spiritual luminosity, the soul feels its power being exhausted, it feels itself becoming weaker, its creative power waning. It becomes like a spiritual darkness in the surroundings. But this has nothing to do with darkness in the physical sense. The soul now has a different experience, which alternates with the soul's feeling of being in the midst of darkness, alone. One might say: Times of spiritual conviviality, spiritual togetherness alternate with states where the soul feels alone with itself, experiencing only what wells up from within, what one might call an echo of what one has gone through in the state of spiritual light radiation. One cannot call it memory. One feels lonely in a vast spiritual world that is now dark.

These states must alternate. When one is alone with oneself, the inner experience of the reverberation becomes infinitely vivid. One turns what was previously the outer world into inner life. By reliving in solitude what one has previously experienced, this causes the creative power to intensify and the other vibration to enter. One then feels as if one is awakening again, together with other spiritual beings. [These are processes that can be compared to everyday sleeping and waking, but which last much longer.] Radiating light is a kind of waking state, while being alone, but with a very clear consciousness, is a kind of sleeping state. One learns to recognize that these two states are necessary, that during one, the forces for the other are generated. In this way, one experiences more intensely what one's own self is in the latter state.

As one continues, the further one recedes from the center of time between death and birth, the more the power that creates soul light from solitude is dampened. There come times when we feel that we can radiate less and less light. The lonely times become harder and harder because they are lonelier; the times when one is closed within oneself become longer and longer. One knows more and more that there is a world around us, but the experience is an inner, lonely one — until the time comes when we are in the middle between death and birth. I have tried to describe this with [the expression] “spiritual midnight” [compare the description of the spiritual midnight hour in the Mystery Drama “The Awakening of the Soul”].

One lives as if in a [dark] spiritual environment [which we can already imagine here if we switch off all impressions of our environment and concentrate completely on ourselves] — which is concentrated within us, so that the whole world we experience is, as it were, only ourselves. When the soul, after experiencing the bliss of sharing in the lives of spiritual beings and processes [has] — not only other human souls, but also spiritual beings who live and weave in the spiritual world, after they have, as it were, ascended hierarchically in the spiritual world from lower forms of being to higher ones — all this is [then] processed internally in times of solitude.

Then comes the spiritual midnight. Now the soul forces take on a completely different meaning. When we feel longing in our ordinary life in the body, it is the most passive of our forces. Longing comes from the weakness of the soul. This soul force has a completely different meaning in the time between death and birth. For out of the solitude of the soul [at spiritual midnight] awakens a longing for a world that is outside ourselves, but this longing is a creative force, and because it is a positive force, it presents us with a very peculiar outer world that is just as much an inner world. It appears before our eyes, as if from what could be called the distant past, the image of our past earthly lives. It is so for every soul that it surveys its past earthly lives. Longing sharpens the gaze. The soul takes in the tendencies. These earthly lives were as they were, and because they were as they were, a new earthly life is necessary to compensate for the imperfections, so that human harmony can be fully established within you. I have met people who could not believe in repeated earthly lives. They said: One earthly life is enough for me! - At this point, not only does every soul believe in it, but in looking at it, it develops the tendency to lead new, compensating earthly lives.

This takes some time, and as we have this longing within us, it becomes brighter again. The next thing that emerges is that we not only have the souls of those who were close to us in life around us as spiritual beings—they now appear in a new form. We see those who were related to us by blood or lived in friendship, and we feel: You still owe them this, you still have to make amends for that. We experience the imbalance, and the power to compensate for it is planted in our soul. But these souls experience the same thing as we do; they have a tendency to compensate for what can be compensated for in new earthly lives. This causes them to spend a new life together with us. The souls strive together in such a way that they find themselves in new lives in order to balance what has remained unbalanced. What was our immediate environment emerges, and further away, what was our more distant environment emerges [personal relationships of love and dislike arise]. We are also together with those with whom we belong to a people, have joined together in this or that society, have had a common religious confession. Within the circle we have lived through in this way, we now feel, again at a later time than the one characterized, and learn what forces we must implant in our feeling will, willing feeling, in order to progress.

Thus, little by little, what awakens in us the tendency to spend a new earthly life in a very specific way emerges. Something like an archetype of a new earthly life is formed, like a creative imagination: one feels a will toward it, because one desires this imagination. One feels: this is how you should be in another life. In solitude, one then experiences a strengthening of the tendency toward the image of how one wants to shape one's new body. While experiencing all this, a peculiar feeling arises, which is like a strange will. Whereas in physical life we feel that we are doing something, we now feel that it is flowing into us from afar, weaving itself into our being, flowing through us like feelings of warmth. There is a feeling of will flowing within us. We feel that it comes from where our thoughts have “departed.” We feel that we are on the way to the thoughts that have gone away. We feel that at the right moment we will seek out a pair of parents who can give us the shell for what we are shaping as the archetype for a new life on earth. We feel that the moment to reincarnate is when we meet again with the thoughts that have left us. We approach our life experience again, and where it unites with us, we then penetrate the archetype and are attracted to a pair of parents who give us the genetic material for a new life.

This is only the case when everything proceeds normally, but that is rarely the case. In most cases, the tendency to incarnate does not arise at exactly the right moment, but other circumstances cause us to descend earlier. This results in earthly lives that do not fully resume what we have previously acquired, lives that represent a decline.

It then turns out that when a person has to descend to earth and their thoughts are still distant, when they descend again and again before reaching the point where they encounter their acquired life experiences, they still arrive once more at the thoughts that they must balance themselves with what they have, as it were, gone through prematurely.

This shows how enlightening the results of spiritual research are. The spiritual researcher naturally develops an intimacy with everything that lives and suffers and rejoices on earth. He develops understanding for every soul. Let us assume that one is faced with the soul of a criminal – necessary punishment must be meted out – but one can face the soul of a criminal with deep compassion. The urge arises to find out how this soul came to be incarnated. One discovers that this is a special spiritual premature birth. It is caused to descend much earlier than the thoughts have met on their way. Such souls have a tendency to incarnate at this point in time, but because they cannot incarnate at the moment when their thoughts meet, they nevertheless have a tendency to enter earthly life, carrying within them, because they have not arrived where they should have, a disregard for life in the subconscious. Such a soul becomes understandable to us. I have tried to trace the peculiarity of the criminal soul into criminal language. There are already dictionaries of this language. Criminal language reveals a character that is connected with the unconscious tendencies of the soul. One need only examine this language. It expresses, one might say, a certain contempt for life. If one follows these connections, one sees that only the person who incarnated at the right moment, [whose soul comes together with all their thoughts at the right moment]; others do not feel harmonious within it. These souls have a particularly strong superconscious instinct for self-preservation, while in their unconscious depths there is contempt for life. The interaction of this contempt with the self-preservation instinct results in criminal natures.

One experiences many things in the details of reincarnation when one considers what the soul can explore using the correct spiritual scientific method. What I am describing are individual cases. When a person dies prematurely as a result of misfortune, they leave a body that they did not yet need to leave. They enter this spiritual world in such a way that it appears to them in a completely different way [than if death had occurred at an advanced age]. They see it through the veil of the forces that could still have been at work in the body. This develops stronger forces than if they had been able to develop without this veil. As spiritual researchers, we get to know people who have become so strong, who have powers that enable them to control their bodies more than others, to go beyond what fatigue is. They have gone through an accident – so we find – through early death, and have retained something that has given them a lot of strength.

The worlds are separated from each other. We must say: it is impossible, it would be nonsense to say that a life should end earlier in order to gain strong powers [in life in the spiritual world and, if necessary, also in later earthly life]. These powers can be bad. Or they can be good. We must live out the possibilities of this life; but if that is to be the case, [early death] lies in our destiny, [it will occur without further action; only at the highest spiritual level of experience can such a thing be foreseen]. Life becomes bright when one looks at it through such research results, looking into the life between birth or conception and death, and the life between death and birth. We have formed the archetype of our life ourselves [in the spiritual world]. In this higher sense, we are the shapers, the designers of our lives, the new creators, [co-creators of our earthly life] from the spiritual world.

[If some people should interpret these descriptions to mean that only one soul has a relationship with another, it can be corrected by saying that the spiritual researcher at the gate of death also faces the disembodied souls in a similar way to how they face each other, and this makes it possible to learn something about death.

That which lives in us as immortal lives with qualities that do not come across in life as they are. Between death and birth, feeling and willing are not as they are here, for feeling willing and willing feeling are much more vivid there than here. The spiritual researcher discovers within himself what truly lives immortal in the soul.

When we encounter something in the physical world, we do not have to prove its characteristics [which we can perceive in many ways through the senses], for example, the redness of a rose. Philosophical investigations into immortality are only possible as long as we do not encounter what lives within us with characteristics other than those we see. The spiritual researcher knows: this soul being has a different destiny than the body; it carries immortality within itself. Communication with the outside world plants something in the soul that is the seed that shapes a new earthly life. Just as a new plant develops from the seed of the plant that is already there while the plant is alive [after it has withered], so it is true that between death and birth the seed develops into new life; it only has to go through the life between death and birth. Something is different from the plant. That a core develops in the soul that passes through spiritual worlds soon becomes clear when one becomes familiar with spiritual research, but one may still have the concern: Yes, but the plant seed can be eaten, it can spoil. There may be the possibility of becoming something new, but it may also not become so. This is only the case in the physical world, not in the spiritual world. [For the spiritual researcher, none of his observations reveal anything that could prevent the soul core from reappearing in a new life after the forces sunk into it in the life between death and new birth.

Thus, life in the body only becomes clear when viewed as the consequence of life outside the body and again as the seed for a new life on earth. It is well known that in our present time, hostile voices must be raised against such findings, which have been obtained with all the caution of spiritual research. This deviates greatly from the thinking habits of the time. But even with the advent of the Copernican worldview [when Copernicus appeared and, so to speak, pulled the earth from under the feet of the people of that time by teaching that the earth moves at breakneck speed through space, but that the sun stands still in relation to it, completely contrary to the previous way of thinking], people had to relearn, to learn to see something different. People only gradually become accustomed to new ways of thinking. For the spiritual researcher, there is already a longing in the depths of the soul to see what lies beyond birth and death, [beyond earthly life]; without knowing it, souls strive to reach this “spiritual Copernicus.”

Those who must engage with these matters because their destiny compels them to speak about them must rely entirely on what has always proven to be right in the course of human development. Even then, backward-thinking minds were often unable to keep up. [At the time of Copernicus, natural science did not want to delve into his views in a backward-looking way, and his works were also frowned upon by the Church for a long time], but he showed how truth finds its way, even if it has to squeeze through the narrowest of cracks. The spiritual researcher relies on this. Just as Copernicus and Giordano Bruno settled into the resistant thinking habits of people whose gaze leads into infinite space, so will spiritual perception settle in, showing that the spiritual firmament that lies between birth and death is only made by human knowledge, and that the gaze will expand into temporal infinity. One might characterize this as an inner source of comfort in the face of the voices that, understandably, still speak out against spiritual research today, especially from those who believe they stand firmly on the ground of science. The spiritual researcher recognizes the triumphs of science and understands its necessity. When objections are raised from the religious side, out of a certain urge to preserve the spiritual realm for faith, one would like to say: When Copernicus came up with his new worldview, many said: You can't believe that, it's not in the Bible. They believed religion was endangered. Time passed. Religion came to terms with Copernicus. Religion cannot be endangered by the discovery of new truths. How weak must a concept of God be [that it could not bear to have new insights brought into it]. Let us assume that Columbus had wanted to discover America and others had wanted to prevent him from going because they could not know whether the sun would shine there too. Standing at the same level, the belief that religious sentiment and faith in God could be endangered by opening up new spiritual realms of the soul seems absurd. Just as we know that the sun will also shine in the new land, so the spiritual researcher knows which worlds of the soul and spirit will ever be opened up. Your conception of God is a strong, inner sun that can be brought into everything. Religious feeling cannot be endangered by this. Someone replied to me: Yes, but you are confusing the Copernican worldview with the new supposed spiritual science. You do not see that Copernicus discovered facts. Spiritual science merely makes assertions. One would like to say: [Poor mind-swallower], how little you realize what you are saying. [What do you know about the facts of the Copernican world view, what have you ever really experienced of them yourself?] If you were not living under suggestion, but were to study the matter, you would see that at that time [when those revolutionary ideas about the cosmic structure and movement of our planetary system first arose] the same thing existed as now through the view of the spiritual worlds. The same person would certainly have said before the discovery of the new Copernican view: It is a fact that the Earth stands still [and the Sun moves around the Earth, as it appears to the eye]. So now he says: It is a fact that human beings live only once on Earth. - He will recognize [that different lives on Earth are also facts]. Spiritual science today [despite our logically proud age] cannot easily convince [materialistically awakened] people. In a [recent] book, “Thoughts on Death” by [Brausewetter, we read]:

It is impossible to prove immortality. Neither Plato nor Mendelssohn, who followed in his footsteps, succeeded in substantiating it from the simplicity and indestructibility of the soul. Even if we grant the soul a simple nature, its persistence as a mere object of inner reflection remains unproven and unprovable.

One cannot prove the redness of a rose. For those who can comprehend spiritual life, [such a test, which is symptomatic, however] reveals the flimsy logic of much of what is happening today. [In conclusion, allow me to summarize what has been presented this evening in a single sentiment: Spiritual science is felt to be something new that is approaching humanity in our time, one with our ancestors, the most outstanding leaders of spiritual humanity.] I would just like to point out a beautiful quote from Goethe, which we should not take lightly, as it is not only an affirmation of Goethe's belief in the immortality of the soul, but is also deeply related to spiritual science's research into life outside the body. Goethe says:

I would not want to be deprived of the happiness of believing in a future continuation; indeed, I would like to say with Lorenzo de' Medici that all those who do not hope for another life are dead even in this life; but such incomprehensible things are too remote to be an object of daily contemplation and thought-destroying speculation. Spiritual research shows us that what lives on after we have passed through the gate of death, that it lives on in us as the core of our soul between birth and death in the depths of the soul and continues to have an effect. We live from the core that develops for future lives. We live from what we hope for [otherwise we could not live spiritually without the emotional, deep inner conviction of what we might expect from a spiritual life]. Our life force is our hope for a spiritual life. Goethe senses this, feels it. That is why he does not merely say that he feels convinced of the immortality of the soul, he says:

I feel that human beings live from what they can hope for.

This statement is confirmed by spiritual science, which says that we already live in the present from our hope for future lives.

Question and answer

Question: I was a missionary and had severe malaria and was in agony. During this time, I experienced my whole life passing before my eyes in rapid but not restless images, like pictures without frames on a long wall.

Rudolf Steiner: This experience is not [an] exceptional case, but [it is] quite natural in spiritual life. This passing by does not only happen when one dies, but every time one stays outside one's body with one's soul forces. The spiritual researcher can bring it about at will. Such a case is described by the criminal anthropologist Moritz Benedikt, [who as a child] fell into the water . Every time the soul experience detaches itself, this recollection occurs. So one cannot expect anything other than what has been described here. It looks like cinematography because it happens so quickly that it appears almost simultaneously. The comparison with the cinematograph is only meant to express the speed of the image sequence.

Question: Can one choose one's parents and one's new existence?

Rudolf Steiner: In spiritual existence, human beings cannot relate their concepts to their desires in the same way as before death. Only if one wants to be an effective ideal — but it must be an effective one — of one's coming earthly life can one choose one's parents.

Question: Can one have memories of one's previous existence?

Rudolf Steiner: That is only a question of maturity. The fact that most people today do not have such memories does not argue against them. That would be like saying: You claim that human beings can calculate. I'll bring you a person who can't do math, so humans can't do math." You can be a very famous person in one earthly life, and that can determine that completely different conditions will arise in the next earthly life. This recollection actually only occurs as a kind of increase in knowledge.

Question: How is reincarnation possible? The population is increasing, after all.

Rudolf Steiner: That is a question that comes up after almost every second lecture, often after every lecture. But one does not exclude the other.

Question: Do repeated earthly lives go on indefinitely? And if not, what comes after?

Rudolf Steiner: They continue for about as long as the physical earth lasts. It is not possible to cover everything in a single lecture, from the beginning of the world to its end. One should not have such superimposed layers, such speculative levels of thought, in one's imagination. In any case, what is to follow will unfold in its own time. A speaker is said to have once answered the question of what God did before the creation of the world by saying: He cut rods for those who asked useless questions. I would not have said that, because a speaker has to be polite in a certain sense, but the idea that one can ask “ultimate questions” stems from a habit of thinking. Question: [Is there] a difference for life after death if a suicidal person has taken their own life in madness?

Rudolf Steiner: There are other circumstances involved here; one must look at the entire fate.

Question: Is there [a] purpose in praying for our deceased, in reading masses? Do the dead remain in contact with us?

Rudolf Steiner: With death, everything physical falls away, but everything else remains: the spirit of relationships, friendship, and so on. Living remembrance is best; this can also be done without a mass, it just varies according to religious beliefs. Every gathering of oneself, every being within oneself, being with oneself, brings one closer to the spiritual worlds and also benefits the dead.

Question: Does Hodler represent the beginning or the end of an art form?

Rudolf Steiner: That depends on your point of view! Everything is the beginning of something and the end of something else.

Question: What about mental illness: [in the case of] superhuman destructive forces [or] rigidity, internally agitated impressions [or] hearing voices? Rudolf Steiner: There is a whole bundle of questions here. There is not really such a thing as a mental illness. What we call “mental illnesses” are actually nothing more than physical abnormalities. If you look at yourself in a poorly constructed mirror, you may see a face staring back at you that you would rather not have. The cause of so-called mental illnesses is to be found in the interaction between the soul-spiritual and the diseased body. I would like to emphasize that this does not mean that the cure needs to be purely physical. It is often the case that a body that is out of order distorts the expression of the soul; when the body is healed, calmness and, in many cases, improvement ensues.

Question: Is birth control permitted? Rudolf Steiner: Well, there we have it!

Question: What about an incarnation where the person died shortly after birth?

Rudolf Steiner: This incarnation must be added to the previous earthly life. Perhaps the person was not able to express everything they wanted to in their last earthly life. Then they add on such a short life. Karmically, this still belongs to the previous life, not to the following incarnation, especially if death occurs before birth. At least sometimes it is so, sometimes it is different. For example, one may want to meet certain people who are currently incarnated. This can happen in early childhood. The circumstances can be manifold.

Question: What happens when a person dies insane? [The rest of the question was such that the audience began to laugh.]

Rudolf Steiner: Recently, there was also someone who mocked a question; I had to mention that I find this unchristian, and since it was a pastor, it was a peculiar occurrence.

One should not speculate about such cases, but only take concrete examples. There was once a person who was born an idiot and suffered greatly from the unkindness of his fellow human beings. Looking back after death, he realized that this had enabled him to develop great powers. Powers are transformed in the most diverse ways. This person was reborn as a genius of philanthropy.

Question: What if the spiritual researcher is not a saint?

Rudolf Steiner: Perhaps he is not one only in the eyes of his fellow human beings. Lichtenberger says: If a book and a head collide and it sounds hollow, must the fault lie with the book? Question: [What about] hereditary predisposition? Rudolf Steiner: [No answer available.]

Question: Judging by the last lecture, people with evil instincts must be the most spiritually gifted.

Rudolf Steiner: The last lecture was not meant to glorify evil. One cannot say that evil is something valuable in the spiritual world. But if it is brought down to where it does not belong, then it is evil. Even gifted people with evil instincts show that they have not left what they have in higher worlds, but have wrongfully brought it down into the physical world.

Question: Is keeping it awake for a long time particularly desirable?

Rudolf Steiner: No, such things achieve nothing.

Question: When I close my eyes, I often see the face of my mother, who died five years ago; she opens her eyes wearily, and they are often filled with sadness. What can I do for her?

Rudolf Steiner: This is a very specific question, and the answer must take into account that we are dealing with a special case here. The most diverse phenomena can have the most diverse causes; for example, there may be an affectation of the etheric body. In any case, it is good to think of such a deceased person with love and to occupy oneself with them in one's thoughts, because what one does in one's thoughts belongs to the spiritual world, that is, to the deceased.

Question: What is anthroposophy?

Rudolf Steiner: That is not so easy to explain in words. Anthroposophy is what a person can learn about themselves when not only the intellect—which is only part of the human being—but the whole anthropos gives the answer.