The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Experience of the Will Part of the Soul in its Effect Beyond Death

[ 1 ] When the ordinary consciousness sets the will into activity, a part of the astral organism is particularly effective, which is in a looser connection with the physical organism than that which corresponds to feeling. And this part of the astral organism that corresponds to feeling is already more loosely connected to the physical organism than the part that corresponds to thinking. At the same time, the true essence of the "I" lies in the astral organism of the will. While feeling corresponds to a soul-spiritual entity that is in constant active connection with the rhythmic part of the physical organism, the will part of the soul does indeed constantly permeate the metabolic organism and the organization of the limbs; but it is only in an active connection with these members of the human being while volition is taking place.

[ 2 ] The relationship of the thinking part of the soul to the head organization is a surrender of the spiritual-soul to the physical. The relationship of the feeling soul to the rhythmic organization is an alternating surrender and withdrawal. The will part, however, has a relationship to the physical which it initially experiences as an unconscious soul. It is an unconscious desire for physical and etheric events. This part of the will is not absorbed into physical activity through its own being. It holds itself back from it and remains soul-spiritually alive. Only when the thinking part of the soul extends its activity into the metabolic and limb organization is the will part stimulated to devote itself to the physical and etheric organization and to be active in it.

[ 3 ] The thinking part of the soul is based on a decomposing activity of the physical organism. In the formation of thoughts, this degradation extends only to the head organization. If something volitional is to arise, the degrading activity takes hold of the metabolic and limb organization. The power of thought flows into the trunk and limb organism, in which it corresponds to a decomposing activity of the physical organism. This stimulates the will part of the soul to counter the degradation with a building up, the dissolving organic activity with a forming, shaping one.

[ 4 ] Death and life thus struggle in the human being. Thinking reveals an organic activity that is always in the process of dying; willing reveals a life-awakening, life-creating activity.

[ 5 ] In those exercises of the soul which are undertaken with the aim of supersensible contemplation as exercises of the will, success only occurs when they become an inner experience of pain. Whoever brings his will to a heightened energy will experience a feeling of suffering. In earlier epochs of human development, this pain was brought about directly through ascetic exercises. Through these, the body was put into a state that made it difficult for the soul to surrender to it. As a result, the will part of the soul was torn away from the body and stimulated to experience the spiritual world independently.

[ 6 ] This type of exercise is no longer appropriate to the human organization that has been achieved at the present time of earthly development. The human organism is now so constituted that it is disturbed as the basis of ego development when the old ascetic exercises are practiced. One must now do the opposite. The exercises of the soul, which are necessary in the present time in order to make the will part of the soul free of the body, formed the subject of a characterization in the preceding descriptions. They do not bring about the strengthening of this part of the soul from the body side, but from the soul side. They strengthen the soul-spiritual in the human being and leave the physical-bodily untouched.

[ 7 ] You can already see from ordinary consciousness how the experience of pain is connected with the development of spiritual experiences. Anyone who has gained some knowledge of a higher kind will say: I am grateful to fate for the happy, pleasurable impacts on my life; but I owe my knowledge of life, which is rooted in true reality, to my bitter, painful experiences.

[ 8 ] If the will part of the soul is to be strengthened, as is necessary for the attainment of intuitive knowledge, then the desire must first be strengthened, which in ordinary human life lives itself out through the physical organism. This happens through the exercises described above. If this desire then becomes such that the physical organism in its earthly existence cannot be a basis for it, then the experience of the will-part of the soul passes over into the spiritual world; and the intuitive contemplation enters. Thus the spiritual-eternal part of the soul's life becomes conscious of itself for this contemplation. Just as the consciousness living in the body experiences this within itself, so the spiritual consciousness experiences the content of a spiritual world.

[ 9 ] In the alternating process of building up and breaking down the human organization, as it manifests itself in the thinking, feeling and willing human organization, one must see the more or less normal human life course of earthly existence. It is different in childhood than in the adult human being. The task of a true pedagogy is to see through how the degrading and constructive forces work in childhood and what effect is exerted on them through education and teaching. This can only arise from a knowledge of the complete human nature, rooted in the supersensible, according to its physical, mental and spiritual essence. A knowledge that only remains within the limits of what can be achieved scientifically cannot be the basis of a true pedagogy.

[ 10 ] In the sick person, the more or less normal course of the interrelationship between constructive and destructive forces is disturbed for the whole organism or for individual organs. Either the build-up in a proliferating life or the degradation in deadening formations of individual organs or processes predominates. Only those who recognize the total human organization according to the physical, etheric and astral organism and the ego being can see what is going on. And the means of healing can only be found through such a realization. For in the realms of the outer world there are mineral and vegetable beings in which, with constructive knowledge, one recognizes forces that counteract a certain kind of excessively constructive or destructive forces in the organism. Likewise, such counteracting can be found in certain activities of the organism itself that are not carried out or stimulated for a healthy state. True medical knowledge, genuine pathology and therapy can only be based on a knowledge of the human being that encompasses spirit, soul and body and utilizes the results of imagination, inspiration and intuition. Today, the demand for such a medicine is still called childish. We do this because we stand on the standpoint of a mere sensory science. From this point of view it is quite understandable, for from it one has no idea how much more must be known for a knowledge of the whole man than for that of the mere human body. It can truly be said that anthroposophy knows and appreciates the objections of its opponents. For this very reason, however, it also knows how difficult it is to convince these opponents.

[ 11 ] The will part of the soul experiences that which takes place in the emotional part. This experience takes place unconsciously for the ordinary life of the soul. But it takes place in the depths of the human organization as a context of facts. There the evaluation of human earthly activity carried out through feeling and will is transformed into the striving to counter the inferior deed with a valuable one in further experience. The whole moral quality of the human being is experienced unconsciously; and from this experience a kind of spiritual-soul entity is formed, which grows in the unconscious region of the human being during his earthly existence. It represents that which results from the earthly existence as a goal to be reached, but which the human being cannot reach in this because the physical and etheric organism, which have their certain formation from the previous earthly life, do not make this possible. Therefore, through this spiritual-soul entity, the human being strives to form another physical and etheric organism through which the moral result of the earthly existence can be reshaped in further experience.

[ 12 ] The formation of such a physical and etheric organism can only be brought about by the human being carrying the marked spiritual-soul entity through the gate of death into the supersensible world.

[ 13 ] Immediately after death, the soul-spiritual human being has the etheric organism for a short time. Only a hint of the unconscious moral, spiritual-mental value-being that has arisen in earthly life appears in the consciousness. For the human being is then completely absorbed in the contemplation of the etheric cosmos. In the following longer experience (which I have called the soul world in my "Theosophy") there is indeed a clear consciousness of this moral value-being, but not yet the power to begin the work of building up the spirit-germ for the following physical earth organism. The human being still has a tendency to look back because of the moral quality acquired in earthly life. After a certain time, the human being can find the transition to a state of experience in which this tendency is no longer present. (In my "Theosophy" I have described the region through which man then passes as the actual spiritual realm.) From the point of view of the supersensible thought-content which man - after death - acquires in cosmic consciousness, one can say: man lives for a time after death still turned towards the earth, in that he permeates himself with the spiritual forces which have their sensuous image in the physical phenomena of the moon. Although it has detached itself outwardly from the earth, it is indirectly connected with it through its spiritual content. With the marked spiritual lunar forces, everything that the human being forms during his earthly existence in terms of moral-spiritual evaluation into a real value-being in his astral organism - or as said above: in the unconscious region of the emotional and volitional life of the soul - is permeated. This moral-spiritual value-being is related in content to the spiritual moon forces. And it is these that hold man to the earth. But in order to shape the spiritual germ for the physical organism of the next earthly life he must also separate himself spiritually and mentally from the earth. He can only do this if he also detaches himself from the realm of the moon forces. In this realm he must leave behind the moral value being related to him. For the work for the future physical organism in connection with the spiritual beings of the supersensible world must take place unencumbered by that being.

[ 14 ] This detachment from the realm of the spiritual lunar forces cannot be achieved by man through his own spiritual-soul forces. But it must nevertheless take place.

[ 15 ] Before the Mystery of Golgotha it was so that the science of initiation could say to man: At a certain point in the post-earthly existence, the human experience must be withdrawn from the lunar sphere, which sustains the human being in the realm of planetary life. Man cannot bring about this withdrawal himself. But then the being, whose physical reflection is the sun, enters for him and leads him into a pure spiritual sphere in which it itself, but not the spiritual moon being, is active. Man experiences a stellar existence in such a way that he sees the spiritual archetypes of the fixed star constellations from the other side, so to speak, from the periphery of the cosmos. Although the stars reveal themselves to him, this vision is non-spatial. With the powers with which man is now imbued, the possibility arises for him to form the spirit-germ of the physical organism out of the cosmos. Divinity accomplishes divinity in him. Once the spirit-germ has matured, the descent to a renewed earthly existence begins. The human being re-enters the sphere of the moon. There he finds the moral-spiritual value-entity that he left behind when he entered the pure star existence; and he incorporates it into his soul-spiritual being in order to make it the basis of his fateful (cosmically determined) following earth life.

[ 16 ] The initiation science of Christianity reveals something different. By absorbing the power that arises for the soul from the contemplative and active emotional co-experience of the earthly life of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, man acquires the ability already on earth, not only through the solar being after death, to withdraw from the influence of the moon at a certain point in his post-earthly existence and to enter the pure starry sphere. This ability is the spiritual counterpart, experienced after death, of the freedom brought about by the ego-consciousness in earthly life. In the time between death and a new birth, man then takes over his moral-spiritual value-being left behind in the sphere of the moon as the maker of his destiny, which he can thereby experience in freedom during the following earthly existence. He also carries in freedom the earthly after-effect of his God-infused existence experienced between death and birth as a religious consciousness.

[ 17 ] A newer science of initiation can see through this and recognize the effectiveness of Christ in human existence. It adds to a vital philosophy and a cosmology that recognizes the spirit-cosmos, a religious knowledge that recognizes the Christ as the mediator of a renewed religious consciousness, as the world leader in freedom.

[ 18 ] In these descriptions I have only been able to sketch the possible emergence of a philosophy, cosmology and religious knowledge. There would still be much to say if the sketch were to become a colorful picture.