5. Natural Death and Spiritual Life

GA 80b/1922-02-12/p049 ·1922-02-12 · English MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
Record: unknown. How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.

That was what I wanted to present to your soul through today's contemplation, based on the essence of this spiritual science, and what I would now like to summarize in a few words, saying: a more intimate contemplation of the position of anthroposophy and the world brings us to a very special view of the relationship between natural death and spiritual life. But we can only gain such an insight if we fulfill what Anthroposophy basically calls out to us from the deeper nature of the world itself, by saying: Human being, if you want to recognize that which lives immortal in the spirit, first enliven your own world of knowledge. If you want to grasp life in the spirit, first enliven your knowledge within you. Understand what it means when it is said not in dead but in living concepts. Rise up from that which, as dead matter, needs a support, to that which, as spiritual, moves freely in the spiritual, in the spiritual worlds, which is not bound to that which lives and weaves in the transitory, which lives in itself and which can be grasped can be grasped by man when he presents the great, significant antitheses before his soul: natural death in itself, the spiritual life that he can grasp when he frees himself from that which is bound to the transitory in earthly life!

Read this passage in another edition
ENEnglish
Raw JSON: /v1/steiner/en/ga/80b/1922-02-12/p049.json
Cite: GA 80b/1922-02-12/p049 · edition English