Lecture I

Thus we may hope that the partition separating the dead from the living may become thinner as Spiritual Science is more widely known in the world. Truly it will be a beautiful result of the work of Anthroposophy, paradoxical though it may seem, if men eventually learn by practical experience, and not merely in theory, that we only have a difference of experience when we have passed through so-called death and are in the company of the dead. We can even help them to share in what we ourselves take part in physical life. We are forming an entirely wrong conception of the life between death and rebirth if we ask: “What is the good of reading to the dead? Can they not see for themselves all that we can read to them, and know it all much better than we do?” This question can only be asked by one who is not in a position to judge of what can be experienced in the spiritual world! As you know, a man may be in the physical world without acquiring knowledge of it; and if he is not in a position of being able to judge of this or that, he cannot acquire knowledge of the physical world. The animals live in the physical world with us, yet they have not so much knowledge concerning it as we have. The fact that the dead live in the spiritual world does not necessarily give them knowledge of the world, although they can see it. The knowledge which can be acquired through Spiritual Science can only be acquired on earth; it cannot be acquired in the spiritual world. If, therefore, the beings in the spiritual world are to possess it too, they can only gain it from the beings still on the earth. That is an important secret of the spiritual worlds. We may live in them and be able to perceive them, but the necessary knowledge concerning these worlds can only be acquired on earth. Here I must mention something about the spiritual worlds which I shall amplify in my lecture tomorrow—something of which most people have no correct conception. While man between death and rebirth is living in the spiritual world he has more or less the same longing as we here below have for the spiritual world, and he expects from us on earth that we should show him things connected with the earth, and cause them to shine forth so that they can be seen by him and thus give him the knowledge that can only be acquired on the earth. Not without reason has the earth been founded on the spiritual cosmic existence; it has been called to life so that what can only be brought about on earth can come into existence. Knowledge of the spiritual worlds which transcends the vision and perception of those worlds themselves can only be acquired on earth. I have already said that the spiritual beings of the spiritual worlds are not able to read our books, and I must now add that what lives in us now as Anthroposophy is to the spiritual beings, as well as to our own souls after death, what books are to human physical beings on our earth—something whereby they acquire knowledge of the world. But these books which we ourselves are to the dead are living books.