10. Between Death and Rebirth of the Human Being

One feels that the findings of spiritual science are always in agreement with the most enlightened minds of human development on earth; even though they did not have spiritual science, for it is only in our time that it has become possible in the form we have today, they nevertheless sensed the direction in which spiritual science is moving. And when, on the one hand, some monistic or other minds speak of the unprovability of immortality, as a spiritual researcher one would like to point to a great mind among those who had this intuition, with whom one feels in agreement. — What does spiritual science say, if one takes it in the spirit, about what I have tried to explain? It shows us that which develops within us between birth and death in such a way that, when freed from the body, it must pass through all the states that have been described today. One cannot know the human soul that rests in the human body, even between birth and death, unless one knows what it is capable of between death and rebirth. If some religious denominations do not feel in harmony with spiritual science because it creates an expanded concept of God, one can only say to these religious denominations: How weak-minded you are with your concept of God, with your religious feelings! It is as if one had said to Columbus: Do not discover America, for why should you discover this unknown land? The sun shines so beautifully in our country; how can we know whether it shines just as beautifully in another country? — A reasonable person would have said: Oh, it will shine everywhere as beautifully as it does here! The spiritual scientist sees what his concept of God is. And that is such that he perceives it as great, like a shining spiritual sun! And he knows that the concept of God must be weak, the religious feeling weak, the faith weak of those who say: The God we worship in our religious life will not reign in the worlds of the spiritual scientist. But if religious feeling is strong enough, it will also perceive the radiance in the spiritual worlds from this conception of God held by the spiritual researcher, and the conception of God will suffer no more damage from spiritual science than it did from Copernicus and Galileo. But spiritual science knows that the soul prepares itself for life between death and rebirth while still in the body; and life between birth and death takes on meaning and significance when we look at existence between death and the next birth. This puts us in harmony with the most enlightened spirits, one of whom foresaw what we have set before our souls today. Goethe once said: I would like to say with Lorenzo de' Medici that those who do not hope for another life are already dead in this one. Spiritual science feels so much in harmony with these words that it knows: the soul must take in what it can become by looking toward what it can become outside and after life in the body. Just as the plant seed has its justification only in that it lives toward a new plant life, so too what we live toward with our soul is not what we already have within us, but what we can hope for. The strongest proof of immortality is that we need only look at the forces from which we live; for we live from the forces that we can hope for as immortal forces. Yes, spiritual science leads us to the fundamental feeling that illuminates and permeates our whole life, which Goethe so beautifully expressed in the words just quoted. Spiritual science tells us, proves to us, and confirms our feeling that anyone who cannot hope for life in the spirit and for what the soul is to the spirit for the whole world is already dead to life in the body!