The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Mystery of Birth and Death

[ 1 ] If a snail were to crawl through a hall where Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is being played, the snail would likely hear none of what stirs the most beautiful emotions in the people present in that same hall. The sounds of the symphony are expressed in the airwaves of the hall; these airwaves spread in all directions; they are the outward expression of the magnificent harmony of sound. This harmony of sound passes through the snail’s organism just as it does through the human organism. In humans, it evokes sensations of the highest order; the snail remains untouched by it. It is in the same medium, in the same vibrating wave of sound as the human, yet it knows nothing of what is happening around it. A world surrounds it, and it is within this world, yet it has no inkling of this world. And yet, this world of sound waves is not in some other place where the snail is not, but in the very same place where everything the snail needs is found. The space in which the snail finds itself is thus filled with the facts that the snail can perceive, but it is also filled with a sum of facts that the snail cannot perceive.

[ 2 ] We have thus established that phenomena can exist around a being without that being having the slightest inkling of them, and we may ask whether we humans might not also be living in a world filled with facts and phenomena of which we initially perceive nothing—facts and phenomena that relate to our world in the same way that the sound waves of the Ninth Symphony relate to what a snail is capable of perceiving. We must therefore ask ourselves whether what we sense and perceive in the space in which we find ourselves is all that exists in our surroundings. There could well be facts in our surroundings that are simply not there for us because we have not developed the organs to perceive them. There could indeed be beings in our world, or we humans ourselves could, through evolution, develop into beings capable of perceiving far more than what is around us in our world. A similar relationship could exist between more or less developed humans as between the snail and humans.

[ 3 ] This is the question that must give rise to speculation upon speculation within us regarding the unknown worlds that surround us, and this is also the question that the Theosophical Movement is intended to answer. Essentially, the task of the Theosophical Movement is to acquaint us with worlds that surround us every day and every hour, with worlds within which we live but of which we know nothing under ordinary circumstances. Theosophy does not seek to acquaint us with worlds that lie beyond our own, nor with worlds found in places inaccessible to us, but with those worlds that continually extend into our world, that always surround us, yet remain unknown to us because our senses are not attuned to them. For now, we can only speak of these worlds. We can only point to them and urge you to participate in those practices through which the senses open up to these higher worlds, so that you may perceive these higher worlds just as you are currently able to perceive only the ordinary world. I would like to speak to you about such worlds in the coming lectures.

[ 4 ] First, I would like to speak about the world that we in Theosophy call the astral world. It will reveal itself to us as a world that is not far from us, but is everywhere we are. In the room where we currently find ourselves, it is just as real as the world you see. The astral world is a higher world whose manifestations permeate and ripple through the world in which you find yourselves just as the waves of sound in a symphony permeate the world of the snail, yet are not perceived by it. So we are not speaking of something to be found outside our world, but rather of something that permeates our world at every point of its existence. The theosophical view teaches us to recognize various such worlds; it teaches us first to recognize the world familiar to us from everyday life: the physical world—that is, the world which every human being is capable of perceiving with their sense organs, the world we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, the world in which we find natural objects, minerals, plants, and animals. This world is permeated, spiritualized, if I may put it that way, by a higher world, the so-called astral world, which we now wish to get to know. Just as one liquid mixes with another, finer liquid, so that one liquid permeates the other in every part, so the astral world permeates our physical world; and this astral world is in turn permeated by an even higher world, which we call the mental world—that is, the true spiritual world. Thus three worlds are interwoven, each one permeating the other, yet of these, human beings, with their present organs, perceive only the physical world. Gradually opening the senses to the worlds that are invisible and, under ordinary circumstances, inaudible—that is the task of Theosophy.

[ 5 ] What is the astral world? When we speak of the astral world, the quickest way to understand it is to look, among all the worldviews that have recognized a spiritual realm in addition to the physical, for those that have spoken of the astral world and its relationship to human beings. The Christian worldview also recognizes this astral world. In the early centuries of Christianity, people did not merely distinguish between two natures in the human being, as was done later and more superficially—body and soul—but rather distinguished three: body, soul, and spirit. In all deeper worldviews since time immemorial, the soul and spirit have always been regarded as the constituent parts of the human being. Go back to those peoples who lived in our regions long before the Germanic tribes. Look at the temples of those ancient Celtic peoples, and you will find that they had an altar in the center, surrounded by three circles of pillars. These three circles of pillars signified nothing other than the threefold nature of the human being: body, soul, spirit. The physical nature is well known. In all deeper religions and worldviews, the soulful nature was understood to be what we in the theosophical worldview call the astral. The term “spirit” was understood to denote the truly eternal aspect of human nature. Body, soul, and spirit constitute the threefold nature of the human being. Modern science has studied the body quite thoroughly. Through it, we are connected to everything around us. We are not isolated, self-contained beings. We could not live physically if our environment were different. Imagine the temperature of the physical world to be ten to twenty degrees higher than the temperature of our atmosphere; humans could not live in such a world. Our life depends not only on what goes on within the confines of our skin, but also on the life of the phenomena in nature around us. In a certain sense, we are merely a result of what is happening all around us. If there were no plants in the world, we could not feed ourselves. It is only by being able to sustain our physical metabolism that we are able to live physically. Human beings are entirely dependent on their physical environment; that is to say, they are physical beings within the whole of physical nature; they belong to this physical nature. The materialists of the 19th century rightly saw it this way. Our body is the effect of the physical environment. We live in the physical world with the physical world.

[ 6 ] Now you know that there comes a very specific moment for this body when it no longer obeys the laws to which it has been subject under ordinary conditions of life; that is the moment of death. At the moment of death, the body that belongs to us no longer obeys the same laws it has obeyed throughout our entire life; and yet it is still the laws of nature that it obeys. When we die, our physical organism returns to the natural substances that were at work in this body during our life. Chemical and physical forces are at work in our physical body during our life. Our digestion is a physical process; our breathing is a physical process. What takes place in our eye when we see is also a physical process; it is very similar to the process on a photographic plate when you have your picture taken. Physically, we are a confluence of physical and chemical forces, but we cease to be a confluence of chemical and physical forces when we succumb to death. This body then no longer holds together; it flows into the stream of general physical phenomena. But the human body as such cannot possibly be merely a chemical and physical composition, for the very moment the chemical and physical forces are left to their own devices, they take entirely different paths; they merge into the stream of general chemical and physical processes. They no longer generate the processes of seeing, hearing, and thinking, but instead enter into entirely different processes. There must therefore have been something that called upon them to establish an organism during our lifetime. This organism is composed of no different substances one hour before death than one hour after death. The physical composition is exactly the same; but the element of life is no longer there. It is no longer present that which calls upon these physical substances to perform a powerful action, one they would never perform if left to their own devices.

[ 7 ] This leads us to recognize that this body, composed of physical and chemical elements—since it is an impossibility in purely physical and chemical terms—must be permeated and animated by a higher principle that organizes, animates, and permeates the lower one. The next principle that animates and permeates our body is that which prevents its parts from falling apart even during our lifetime; and we call that which brings this about the astral element in human beings.

[ 8 ] We can say quite precisely what the astral element in human beings is. It is that which causes all people who possess such an element within themselves to allow something to occur within them that we describe, in the broadest sense, as pleasure and displeasure. Pleasure and displeasure are phenomena that occur in our bodies and in bodies that are similar to us in astral terms, and which cannot be brought about by chemical or physical substances. Take a crystal or any other physical substance composed of chemical substances. Everything that otherwise occurs in the physical realm can happen to it, but not pleasure and displeasure. These are found only within human beings themselves and in those beings organized like humans. These beings are permeated by an element capable of experiencing pleasure and displeasure. If you strike a stone, it will fly on or fall somewhere and make an impression. If you affect such a natural object in this or another way, you can see it from the outside; you can even subject it to a process that destroys it, but it will never feel pleasure or displeasure. Pleasure and displeasure extend as far as the astral world extends. And just as I belong to the external world through the chemical and physical processes taking place within me, so do I truly and really possess all the various nuances of pleasure and displeasure within me; and through these various nuances and manifestations of pleasure and displeasure, I belong to a world that permeates and animates our physical world and that is just as much outside of me as it is within me. Space contains not only air, which sustains physical life, but space is also permeated by an astral world in which we humans participate just as we participate in the external physical world. And just as we could not live as physical beings without allowing physical energy to flow through our organism, so too could we not live as beings of pleasure and displeasure, as astral beings, without participating in what takes place in the astral world—what lives and weaves within it and what continually permeates and animates us. Just as we are demarcated by our skin in the physical world and thereby individualized, so too are we enclosed within the general astral world. We are individualized within it as distinct astral beings and participate in this astral world around us.

[ 9 ] We have now pointed to a world that permeates, runs through, and surges through our physical world, just as the world of sound in the Ninth Symphony surges through the world in which the snail also lives. In ordinary life, human beings perceive the world through their senses, but they are unable to perceive that world which spiritualizes and interweaves them and constitutes their own astral organism. The fact that we do not perceive a world is, however, no reason to say that this world does not exist. Why do you perceive every other person sitting here as a physical being? Because your eyes are attuned to perceiving the physical rays of light through your eyes. Your eyes can perceive the physical bodies of the other people around you. These physical bodies are real to you. They would not be there for you if your eyes were not there to see them. Likewise, within each of these other people, pleasure and displeasure exist in countless nuances. A world just as rich as the one you see with your eyes exists within each of you; it is a rich world of pleasure and displeasure. And just as real as your physical body is a second body that permeates the physical body, a body by which this physical body is completely permeated. You must not

[ 10 ] say that only what you see, what you can physically perceive, is real, for each of you knows that a world of pleasure and pain lives within you just as truly as muscle tissue and nerve fibers do. It is only because your spiritual eyes are not open that you do not see these realities. If your eyes were open to this, then with every other person, just as you perceive their skin color and their clothes, you would also be able to perceive them as being permeated by forces and substances, by beings that are real, which we can describe as beings of pleasure and displeasure. For those whose senses are open to these realities, this world is just as real as the physical world.

[ 11 ] In addition to the physical body, every human being possesses the astral body, so called because it shines with a bright light to the seer, which is an expression of the person’s entire life of pleasure and displeasure, of everything that lives within them as emotion. Just as you yourself know that you are made of flesh and blood, and others can perceive this as well, so too are feelings of pleasure and displeasure present only to you alone as long as no one else perceives them. Your astral organism is slightly larger than your physical body, extending slightly beyond it. Imagine a hall in which a gathering is being held and in which various speakers are addressing the audience. When a clairvoyant looks through the hall with his clairvoyant eyes, he perceives not only the words that are spoken, not only the sparkling eyes and the expressive physiognomies; he sees something else as well: he sees how the passions flow from the speaker to the other people; he sees how the sensations and feelings light up within the speaker; he sees whether a speaker is speaking, for example, out of revenge or out of enthusiasm. In the enthusiast, he sees the fire of the astral body radiating forth, and in the great crowd of people, he sees a multitude of rays; these in turn evoke pleasure or displeasure in the speaker. There is an interplay of temperaments that unfolds openly and clearly before the seer. This is a world just as real, of which we are a part, as the outer world in which we live.

[ 12 ] It is not in vain, nor without purpose, that the Theosophical Movement has drawn people’s attention to these invisible worlds, of which human beings are a part, and into which we continually send our influences. You cannot utter a word or form a thought without emotions radiating out into space. Just as our actions radiate out into space, so do our feelings; they permeate space and influence people and the entire astral world. Under ordinary circumstances, a person is not aware that a stream of effects emanates from them, that they are a cause whose effects can be perceived everywhere in the world. They are not aware that they can thereby also cause harm, that they send out streams of pleasure and displeasure, of passions and drives into the world, which can affect other people in the most harmful way. They are not aware of what they bring about with their emotional life.

[ 13 ] Our knowledge is not destined for a purposeless existence; it is not meant merely to recognize, nor does it exist for its own sake. It has become a beautiful phrase of Western scholarship that knowledge exists for its own sake. Those who delve into Eastern wisdom find something other than knowledge for its own sake. They know that knowledge is about acting in the world in accordance with that knowledge. We come to know the physical world so that we do not act in physical nature as if in chaos. And we come to know the higher nature so that we may act within this higher nature in a conscious manner. Whoever recognizes and masters this higher nature learns to act consciously within it; they learn to master their thoughts and not to let them act haphazardly, nor to let them go haphazardly, but to keep them in check; they learn to master their inner life, to regulate their inner life, so that it has a refining effect on the environment in the most ideal sense. Through this, the higher worlds—which, let me emphasize, are just as real as our physical world, indeed even more real—acquire immense significance for the physical world. Whoever knows that what takes place in the astral world is far more important for the world process than what you are able to see and do in the physical world will also correctly assess the significance of this world.

[ 14 ] If you were to ascend even further, you would find worlds that are even more important than the astral world. The Christian religion also speaks of these. What it calls the “soul” is the astral world; what it calls the “spirit” is what you know in Theosophy as the “mental plane.” Why is the higher, astral world so infinitely more important than the physical world? Because the physical world is nothing other than the expression of this astral world, the effect of the astral world. To illustrate this, I would like to cite a phenomenon that will show you how infinitely more significant what takes place in the astral world is than what unfolds in the physical world. What I have to say is referred to in the teachings of mysticism and in Theosophy as the mystery of birth and death. It is one of the greatest mysteries or secrets of the world. We speak of seven world secrets.

[ 15 ] Those who think trivially—and today’s world is all too prone to trivial thinking—will readily accuse us of fancifulness and obscurity. But we Theosophists know the meaning of the three words that were frequently mentioned in the early centuries of Christianity, when Christianity was still among the world’s most profound religions: perception, thinking, and conjecture. — These three words were mentioned side by side. The fact that supposition was mentioned alongside perception and thinking shows us that people were not as presumptuous regarding knowledge as they are today. Yes, people today are presumptuous regarding knowledge, presumptuous because they are hostile toward everything their senses and intellect cannot grasp. Just imagine, if the snail were to presume to say that here in this hall there is nothing other than what it perceives—wouldn’t we have to say of this snail that it exhibits great immodesty regarding knowledge? Make no mistake. In the worst sense of the word, it is the same with human beings when they say: “What my mind cannot perceive or comprehend does not exist in this world.”—It is two things, perception and thought, that convey beauty, grandeur, and number to us in the world. But there is a third thing that keeps us humble, that keeps us striving, that leads us ever deeper into the world: that is conjecture—the conjecture that there might be something else besides what we know.

[ 16 ] The Theosophical Movement differs from all other intellectual movements in this respect. What does the ordinary scientist, who takes pride in his education and is presumptuous regarding his ordinary knowledge, want? He wants to pursue everything he can perceive and understand, and he wants to extend his knowledge to countless things. It is as if a snail were crawling in all directions and perceiving whatever it can perceive—it would perceive nothing other than what its snail-like organs are capable of perceiving. So it is with human beings as well. That is why we have added the element of conjecture to perception and thought—the conjecture that, as we continue to develop, higher sensory organs will open up to us, revealing what is usually hidden from us in the world. Thus the theosophist’s mindset differs from that of the ordinary scientist in that he seeks to develop himself, that he believes honestly and sincerely in the development of his abilities, and strives to work on himself. That, dear attendees, is the theosophical attitude: to work on oneself so that higher faculties may open up to us, so that we may become capable of perceiving what is meaningful and significant in our surroundings. This must increasingly become the Western attitude if Western humanity does not wish to be completely absorbed by the materialistic current. If this theosophical attitude spreads more and more, then people will come to realize that all external physical facts and phenomena are the consequences, the effects of deeper causes lying in the astral world or in even higher worlds. Usually, Western science is content to investigate the body in all its components. But the theosophical mindset asks: Did this body assemble itself? What could be the reason for this? Can we believe that the forces out there in nature feel the need to assemble themselves into a human being? No. Whoever is able to see into the higher world knows that before living in the physical organism, before birth, the human being lived in an astral existence. Just as we had an astral existence before our physical existence, before birth, so too do we have an astral existence after our birth, and this extends beyond our physical body. All of this is encompassed in what we call the mystery of birth and death.

[ 17 ] Theosophy understands the importance of the third word: conjecture. What I conjecture today may become knowledge as early as tomorrow, and what I conjectured yesterday has become a certainty for me today. Whoever trusts in the deeper meaning of this conjecture does not believe in limits to knowledge; he tells himself: I do not believe that what I recognize at any given time is the deepest truth. — And so we are clear that even in the most important phenomena of nature, its laws and its essences are deeply veiled. “Mysterious in broad daylight, nature cannot be stripped of its veil.” Mysterious, enigmatic, is nature, is all of life, and to penetrate it is the task of humanity. For working with the mysteries is the task of humanity.

[ 18 ] We are speaking of the seven great mysteries of life. There are seven great mysteries that reveal to us the seven great phases of life. They are called the “inexpressible ones.” The fourth of these great mysteries, to which we are to be gradually introduced through these lectures, is the mystery of birth and death. It is not that we need to lift a veil to understand the mystery of birth and death. The body that lives between birth and death is visited by another body that exists only in the astral world. Our astral body precedes our physical body. It is the fundamental tone of our emotional life, the fundamental tone of our temperament and our passions. This is what the seer perceives in the astral world. Before a human being is born, this fundamental tone—which each of us carries within—constructs the physical body. Our physical bodies do not create our passions, desires, and temperaments; rather, these come from another world and select the corresponding bodies. Therefore, every human being is endowed with a very specific soul entity. Anyone capable of truly studying human beings knows that people differ from one another, that no two people are alike in terms of passions, desires, and the nature of their physical bodies. In terms of the nature of their physical bodies, they may differ only slightly from one another, but people differ enormously in terms of their astral nature.

[ 19 ] Before a human being is born, the seer sees the human’s astral body—the sum of their desires, instincts, and passions—flowing toward the place of birth; these will later develop within the physical body and interact with the external world. And within this astral body, as the innermost essence of the incarnating human being, lies the human being’s true higher spiritual being. Descending from an even higher world, this higher spiritual being of the human being surrounds itself within the astral world with what we call desire-substance, astral substance. Thus it traverses the astral world at lightning speed. The seer sees it in the astral world long before the person’s birth. It exists in a luminous, bell-shaped form and descends upon the human body to spiritualize it. What we say today about such astral substance easily draws the accusation of fanciful speculation, and it is natural that, when we speak this way in today’s world, we may face this accusation. We must therefore be all the more cautious. We must not allow ourselves to speak of it in this way, nor should we speak of it unless we are just as firmly and securely at home in this world as we are in the physical world.

[ 20 ] I consider it a requirement for a teacher of Theosophy that he advocate only as much of the doctrine as he can justify in good conscience; that is to say, I demand of every Theosophical teacher that he speak only of that of which he himself has direct knowledge. The theosophical teacher should not speak a single word about these higher worlds if he is not capable of conducting research himself; just as no one who has not studied chemistry can speak about it. Therefore, in these lectures I will say only what I am able to say with absolute certainty. No one is capable of describing the astral world in its entirety; it is richer and more extensive than our physical world. I admit that even the spiritual researcher can err in details, just as one can err in the physical world, for example, when trying to determine the height of a mountain. But just as such an error in detail cannot be a reason to deny the physical world, so too can a person not be tempted to deny the reality of the astral world because of an error in detail.

[ 21 ] Before a human being is born into the physical world, they live in the astral world as a being of instinct, with their “body of desire.” In the astral world, there is no birth or death in the same sense as in the physical world. In the astral world, the mystery of so-called “attraction by choice” applies. It works in the same way as in this physical world with our desires and wishes. Just as one desire develops from another, so it is in the astral world. One being develops from another through an eternal process of reproduction, without our having to record birth and death. Beings are subject only to the law of attraction, not to birth and death. Why is it that physical beings are subject to birth and death? I wanted to draw particular attention to this question today. Where do birth and death come from in physical nature? I have said that before a human being lives in the physical world, they live in the astral world and are subject there to the law of attraction; there would be no birth and death there. But now there is birth and death, because the astral world forms the middle point between two other worlds.

[ 22 ] Human beings are citizens of two worlds. They point downward toward the physical world and upward toward the highest, the spiritual world. Through their astral nature, human beings connect the spiritual world in its eternity with the physical world. For a very long time, through several cosmic epochs, human beings were merely astral beings. We are now in the fifth “root race,” the post-Atlantean era, which was preceded by the fourth and third. It was not until the third “root race,” the Lemurian era, that human beings became physical beings; before that, they were closer to the astral world. Back then, however, when human beings were still astral beings, they did not yet possess the power of the spirit. The higher, spiritual soul united with the astral being only at the moment when the spiritual united with the physical. And this united spiritual-physical entity demands birth and death for the physical. Therefore, because the human being is the stage for the highest spiritual, he must be born and die within the physical. The astral being is neither born nor does it die. The spiritual being will thereby preserve its eternity by destroying the physical being time and again, in order to ascend once more into the spiritual and then descend again into the physical world. Goethe hinted at this in his prose hymn “Nature”: Life is its most beautiful invention, and death is its stratagem for having much life.

[ 23 ] This interplay of birth and death—the mystery of life itself—will continue to be the focus of these lectures, and we will also become acquainted with the beings of the astral world, whom we have scarcely mentioned thus far, so that we may come to realize that there are more beings than human beings, with their current materialistic mindset, can even imagine.