10. Between Death and Rebirth of the Human Being

As a spiritual researcher, one faces all life with sympathy. Let us suppose that, as a spiritual researcher, one looks at the life of a criminal who is, in the fullest sense, opposed to the human order. Even if one does not want to deny the guilt, one can feel the deepest compassion for such a life and want to explain it from the context of his life. When one tries to find an answer to such a question, the answer turns out to be that people who are unable to take life seriously in its full weight due to the circumstances indicated actually turn to injustice and crime. By investigating these matters, even in the language of criminals, I have become convinced that even there there is something of a disregard, an underestimation and contempt for life. Such disregard does not have to be fully conscious. Full consciousness often knows little of what is present in the depths of the soul. The criminal often develops a strong sense of self; he wants life. But in the depths of the soul, where consciousness does not penetrate, there lives a contempt for life. The fact that he has not reached the place where his thoughts have gone is the reason why he does not take life seriously. If one looks into the lives of criminals, one will find that there is a contemptuous attitude toward life, even in the expressions of thieves' slang. Enormous mysteries are revealed to the attentive observer of life. I would say that it is spiritual premature births that develop there. That is why they did not have the strength, because they came too early, to take life seriously enough to develop the sense of responsibility in the full sense of the word that needs to be developed in life. A life that has at least approximately reached the point where thoughts transformed into objective entities have rushed ahead grows most intimately with earthly life; it grows together with the forces that can only be developed on earth: conscience, love of the earth, responsibility; it grows together with everything that makes earthly life important, so that morality and ethics develop. For one must feel toward earthly life that one must connect oneself completely with it if true morality and ethics are to grow in the soul. This is one thing, for example, that becomes clear to us when we view human life in the light that spiritual science can provide, and it truly enriches our feelings and perceptions of life and of human beings, because when we understand them, we can cope more easily and orient ourselves more easily in life.