5. Natural Death and Spiritual Life

Let us look, then, my dear audience, at how death manifests itself in the natural existence of man; and let me be clear: today I will speak only about human death, not about the types of death that we can observe in the animal world and even down to the plant world. Within the human world, how does death confront us? It draws together in a certain sense into a single moment – precisely at the moment of the conclusion of life – and that is what makes it so mysterious. We live our lives, we enjoy this life of ours, we make use of it in the outer realm of humanity and the world, and we do not immediately become aware of death in this experience of existence, but only as a riddle about a fact, that this life, as we live it every day, simply comes to an end.