Lecture I

People speak of so many relationships between the human and the divine. They often speak of the relationship between the human and the divine, and of the meaning which the human has within the divine, in such a way that it is impossible to differentiate between the relation of the human to the divine, or of anything else earthly to the divine. Today we find again and again that philosophers want to rise to the divine through pure philosophy. But through pure philosophy one cannot rise to the divine. Certainly by means of it man does come to feel that he is bound up with the universe and to know that the human being must, in some way or other, be bound up with the universe at death; but how and in what manner he is thus connected with the universe he cannot know through pure philosophy. Why not? If you take the whole meaning of what we have considered today, you will be able to say to yourselves: What is at first revealed to the soul of earthly man between birth and death is too weak to perceive anything that transcends the earthly, that leads to the divine-spiritual. In order to make this quite clear to ourselves, let us investigate the meaning of immortality.