The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Event of Death in Connection with the Christ

[ 1 ] The life of the soul in earthly existence takes place in the facts of thinking, feeling and willing. In thinking appears a mirror image of what the astral organism and the I-entity experience within the physical-sensual world. Another experience of these higher members of the human being occurs during the state of sleep. But this experience remains unconscious in earthly existence. The soul is too weak within itself to present its own content to consciousness. As soon as the seeing consciousness experiences this content, it presents itself as a purely spiritual-mental one.

[ 2 ] With awakening, the astral organism and the I-entity enter the etheric and physical organism. Through thinking, the sensory perceptions are experienced in the etheric organism. But in this experience it is not the world that surrounds the human being that is active, but an imitation of this world. This reproduction reveals the sum of the formative forces that underlie the course of man's life on earth. In every moment of life such a replica of the outside world is present in man. The human being does not experience this reproduction directly through thinking, but its reflection through the physical organism presents itself as thought content before the ordinary consciousness.

[ 3 ] What goes on behind the reflective activity of thinking in the physical organism cannot be perceived by the ordinary consciousness, but only the result, which are the reflected images that present themselves as thoughts. These unperceived processes in the physical organism are activities of the etheric and astral organism and the I-entity. The human being perceives in his thoughts that which he himself, as a soul-spiritual being, brings about in his physical organism.

[ 4 ] In the etheric organism lives an imitation of the outer world as an inner activity that fills the physical organism. In the astral organism lives a replica of the pre-earthly existence; in the ego-entity lives the eternal essence of man.

[ 5] In the etheric organism, the outer world is active in the human being. In the astral organism, that which the human being experienced in the pre-earthly existence is still active. In essence, this activity has become no different during the earthly existence than it was during the pre-earthly existence. It was one that took place in the spiritually transformed physical organism. It is similar in the waking state. The inner head organization of the human being is in a continuous effort to be transformed from the physical state into a spiritual one. However, this transformation only occurs as an investment during earthly existence. The physical organization offers resistance. At the moment when the astral organism in its transforming activity has reached the point where the inner physical head organization would have to disintegrate as a physical one, the sleep state occurs. This state provides the inner head organization with the forces from the rest of the physical organism through which it can exist in the physical world.

[ 6 ] These powers lie in the etheric organism. During the waking state, this becomes increasingly undifferentiated within the head organization; during the sleeping state, it differentiates itself inwardly into certain forms. These formations reveal the forces that have a constructive effect on the physical organism during the earthly existence.

[ 7 ] There is thus a twofold activity taking place in the head organization during the waking state: a constructive one through the etheric organism and a destructive one, that is, one that destroys the physical organization. This destruction is brought about by the astral organism.

[ 8 ] Through this astral activity, man has death permanently within him during his earthly existence. This death is only defeated every day by the forces working against it. But ordinary consciousness is owed to the constantly occurring effects of death. For in the dying life of the head organization lies that which becomes capable of reflecting the activity of the soul as thought-experience. An organic-sprouting activity pushing towards life cannot bring forth a weaving of thoughts. For this, an activity tending towards death is necessary. The organic-sprouting activity dampens the thought-weaving down to numbness or unconsciousness.

[ 9 ] What takes place with the whole human organism once in physical death always accompanies human existence during earthly life as a disposition, indeed as a continually forming beginning of dying. And man owes his ordinary consciousness to this first dying within himself. The etheric and physical organisms stand before this consciousness like opaque entities; man does not see them, but the mirror images of thought which they reflect back to him and which he experiences in his soul. The physical and etheric organization conceal the astral organization and the I-entity. Because the consciousness of the soul is filled by the reflection of the physical organism in the ordinary earthly existence, man cannot perceive his etheric and astral organization as well as his I-entity.

[ 10 ] With death, the physical organism detaches itself from the etheric and astral and from the ego-entity. The human being now carries his etheric and astral organism as well as his ego-entity. The removal of the physical organism means that there is no longer any obstacle to man's becoming conscious of the etheric organization. Before the human soul comes the image of the earthly life that has just passed. For this image is only the expression of the formative formative forces, which in their sum constitute the etheric body.

[ 11 ] What thus lives in the etheric body is woven into the human being from the etheric being of the cosmos. It can never completely detach itself from the cosmos. The cosmic-etheric events continue into the human organization; and the inner-human continuation is the etheric organism. Hence it is that at the moment when man becomes conscious of his etheric organization after death, this consciousness already begins to transform itself into a cosmic consciousness. Man feels the world ether just as he feels his etheric organism as something that is in his own being. In reality, however, this means that the etheric body dissolves into the world ether after a very short time. The human being retains his inner being, which was bound to the physical and etheric organism during his earthly existence, his astral organism and his I-entity.

[ 12 ] The astral entity is never fully integrated into the physical organism. The head organization represents a complete transformation of this astral organism and the I-entity. But in everything that is the rhythmic organization of the human being, in the breathing process, the blood circulation and in the other rhythmic processes, the astral organization and the I-entity live on with a certain independence. Their activities are not reflected by these processes in the same way as by the head organization. With the rhythmic processes, the astral organization and the I-entity unite. There arises a spiritual-physical entity which appears in ordinary consciousness as emotional life. In the emotional life, that which the human being experiences through his thoughts together with the sensory world connects with the astral organism and the ego entity.

[ 13 ] This connection must be considered in detail. Let us assume that man accomplishes something in the world of the senses. His soul life is not limited to the external event. He judges his own deed. However, this judgment does not take place in the thought life alone, but the impulse for it comes from the astral organism, which also manifests itself in physical existence in union with the rhythmic processes. A reflection of moral judgment is inserted into the life of thought, which proceeds in reflex images. This reflection appears within the reflected world of thought itself with the character of the merely reflected thought entity. In the astral-rhythmic organism, however, it lives in its reality. This reality does not enter the ordinary consciousness during the earthly existence. Entry is prevented by the fact that the physical rhythmic processes are felt more strongly than their accompanying spiritual processes. When the physical organism is thrown off at death, when the physical rhythmic processes are no longer present in the human experience, then the view of what man's deeds mean before the spiritual-cosmic world enters the cosmic consciousness. This cosmic consciousness develops after the etheric organism has been eliminated. In this state man sees himself as a moral formation, just as he saw himself as a physical formation in his earthly existence. He now has an inner being that is shaped by the moral quality of his earthly activity. He looks at his astral organism. But the spiritual-cosmic world shines into this astral organism. What it says about the human deeds accomplished in earthly existence stands before the human soul as a factual image.

[ 14 ] With death, man enters a form of experience in which he experiences a different rhythm than in earthly existence. This rhythm appears as if in a cosmic replica of earthly activity. And the life of the spirit-cosmos continually flows into this after-experience as the air breathed into the lungs in earthly life. In the conscious cosmic experience a rhythm appears of which the physical is an image. Through the cosmic rhythm, what happens through the human being in earthly existence is integrated as a world with moral qualities into an amoral world. And after his death, the human being experiences this moral essence of a future cosmos that is forming in the bosom of the cosmos, which will not only live itself out in a purely natural order like the present one, but in a moral-natural one. The basic feeling that pervades the soul during this experience in a becoming cosmic world is given to it by the question: will I be worthy to integrate myself into the moral-natural world order in a coming existence?

[ 15 ] In my book "Theosophy" I have called the world of experiences, which man undergoes after death in this way, the "soul world". The consciousness of this world that arises through inspiration provides the content for a true cosmology, just as an imaginative realization of the real course of human life provides the content for a true philosophy.

[ 16 ] From that cosmic consciousness into which the cosmic after-effects of human earthly deeds work, the sufficient impulses cannot be gained from which the human soul in the spiritual can prepare the coming physical organism. This organism would be corrupted if the soul remained in the world of the soul. It must enter a world of experience in which the extra-human spiritual impulses of the cosmos are at work. I have called this world the "spirit land" in the aforementioned book.

[ 17 ] The old initiates could tell their confessors from the knowledge they had acquired through initiation: the spiritual being, which has its reflection in the sun in the physical world, you will find in the spiritual world after death. It will lead you from the world of souls into the land of spirits. You will be purified through its guidance so that you will be able to prepare a worldly physical organism in the spirit land.

[ 18 ] The initiates at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and those of the first Christian centuries had to say to their confessors: The degree of ego-consciousness which you attain during earthly existence becomes so bright through its own being on earth that its opposite pole, which appears after death, is so dark that you would not be able to see the spiritual sun guide. That is why the sun being descended to earth as Christ and accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha. If you now imbue yourselves during your time on earth with a living feeling of your connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, its meaning will be incorporated into your earthly life and will continue to work in the human being after death. You can then recognize the Christ leader through this after-effect. -

[ 19 ] From the fourth century onwards, this ancient initiated knowledge has been lost within the development of humanity. A renewed Christian knowledge of religion must also reintroduce the work of Christ for humanity into cosmological science from inspiration into the experiences after death. How the events of human existence on earth, hidden in the will, continue to have an effect after death, remains the task of the next presentation.