The Rudolf Steiner Archive

18. The Human Experience after Death

[ 1 ] We have often emphasized how the present can best be understood from the past and its events, and that the characteristics of our spiritual ideals for the future can also be most easily found and understood by looking back to ancient times long past. Today, therefore, we want to point out what emerged after the demise of ancient Atlantis, and in doing so we want to deal with what human beings experienced in the time after death.

[ 2 ] The state of the soul between death and a new birth was not always the same; it too changed in the course of human evolution. During the four great cultural epochs, the ancient Indian, the sacred Rishi, the ancient Persian, the Zarathustra, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Greek-Latin, and our present, human beings became more and more closely connected with the physical plane and grew to love it more and more. In each of these periods, the human soul descended deeper and deeper into the sensory world, so to speak. The more understanding humans had of this world, the more foreign the spiritual world after death became to them. This was most evident in the Greek-Latin culture. The Greeks loved the physical world, this sensual existence, because they could live out their whole soul in their wonderful art, in this magnificent embellishment of physical existence. The Romans loved this world because they could fully develop their sense of their own personality in the discovery of the self. The concept of the Roman citizen and Roman law are milestones of this cultural epoch. The Romans felt at home in this physical, sensual world. It was only from this time onwards that legal concepts emerged, so that one can rightly speak of the advent of jurisprudence in the Roman Empire, which is a sign of the veneration of the individual personality. And death became the great unknown that inspired fear. Achilles' saying, “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows,” best describes the view of the state of souls during life after death at that time. This corresponds to the experience of the soul in the spiritual world. The more these souls lived out their full potential in the earthly realm, the more their ability to find their way in the spiritual world after death diminished. The soul felt lonely in the worlds it now entered. Even in the spiritual realm, it felt that everything around it was dark, empty, and cold. It lacked the ability to experience the spiritual nature of the world beyond. Even the great leaders of humanity, the initiates, were unable to change this state of affairs, for they are not only the teachers of human beings here on earth, but also in the worlds beyond. When they told the dead something about the world here, the latter felt twice as painful that they had to do without the physical world they had grown so fond of. They could therefore not convey anything to the dead that gave them something that was valuable to them, and so they all longed for reincarnation. Human beings felt cut off from their brothers; they felt abandoned even in the spiritual realm. If this had remained so, love and brotherhood would have disappeared more and more from the earth. For remaining in the spiritual realm would have had no other effect on the souls than to bring egoism, life in one's own self, with them into the sensory-physical existence as a predisposition.

[ 3 ] In ancient Indian times, when humans still regarded the earthly world as Maya, things were different. Zarathustra already pointed out that man could also find the spiritual in the physical world. He opened the way for people to understand that the outer body of a high spiritual being is only present in the outer body of sunlight, which he called the great aura, Ahura Mazdao, in contrast to the small human aura. He wanted to imply that this being, though still far away, would one day descend to earth in order to unite substantially with the earth within human history and continue to work in the evolution of humanity. Thus, Zarathustra pointed these people to the same being who later lived in history as the Christ. When you gradually learn to understand, he said to his disciples, that the spiritual is within everything physical and sensory, that the physical is permeated by the great solar aura, by Ahura Mazdao, then Ahriman will no longer seduce you.

[ 4 ] At other times, Zarathustra said: So great and so powerful is he who has revealed himself to me in the sun that I will give everything for him. I gladly sacrifice to him the life of my body, the etheric being of my senses, the expression of my deeds—the astral body.

[ 5 ] That was the vow once made by the great Zarathustra. He pointed out to his disciples that the great spirit of the sun would reveal itself directly in the earth itself, in its facts. Thus Zarathustra begins with the teaching that sees in the sensual only physiognomy, the expression of the spiritual.

[ 6 ] Then came the time when this same entity, which Zarathustra had proclaimed, revealed itself to Moses in the burning bush and on Mount Sinai. Moses now teaches that this solar being is at the same time the I-being, the highest thing that man can take into himself. But not only is a drop of the sun spirit sunk into man, but also into everything outside in nature, in the elements, everywhere. The same divinity that revealed itself to Moses in the name “I am that I am,” that which once revealed itself to Zarathustra as Ahura Mazdao, as the innermost, most intimate, as the source of all being, was thus proclaimed to an entire people as the highest being, whose name was unpronounceable and could only be uttered by the priest in the holy of holies. The deity that lives in man, not only revealed itself in the essence of the elements, in the flash of fire, is proclaimed here.

[ 7 ] In Zarathustra, we can thus see the forerunner of Yahweh, the same being who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth at the beginning of our era and remained there for three years. It is the same God whom Moses and Zarathustra proclaimed.

[ 8 ] “How will you believe me if you did not believe Moses and the prophets?” says Christ. With this, Christ confirms that the Old Testament foretold the same God, only under a different name. All events in the world need a certain amount of time to play out. On Mount Sinai, in the fiery bush, this solar being descending from spiritual heights had reached the point where it could communicate with humans through the elements. Now it came closer and closer to the earth, at the baptism in the Jordan into the shell of Jesus of Nazareth, and when the mystery of Golgotha was accomplished on earth and the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer, this was not only the expression of a great cosmic event, but also of the greatest earthly event: Christ entered the earth's aura as the spirit of the earth. A new impact had taken place. Clairvoyantly, this could be observed in that the earth's aura changed at that moment, displaying very specific colors. New colors appeared in it, new forces were incorporated into it. At the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Savior on Golgotha, the blood that is the physical expression of the I, the I of Christ connected itself with the earth. But it was also the moment when things could begin to change in the spiritual world for souls after death. This is the meaning of Christ's descent into hell.

[ 9 ] Anyone who was clairvoyant before the events of Golgotha would not have seen in the earth's aura what could later be perceived there after Christ Jesus had passed through death on Golgotha. Let us consider the event at Damascus: Saul, who as an initiate of the Jewish mysteries knew very well that the great aura—Ahura Mazdao—would one day connect with the earth, refused to believe that this being could have ended on the shameful cross. Even though he witnessed the events in Palestine, he did not believe that this great spirit had dwelt on earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It was only when he became clairvoyant at the gates of Damascus that he saw in the earth's aura the Christ spirit, the living Christ, who could not be seen there before. Then he said to himself: Yes, what has been foretold, that the earth's aura will change, has now come to pass! - and Saul became Paul. Paul himself calls himself a premature birth who has become clairvoyant through grace; a premature birth because he is not yet fully mature, has not descended so deeply into matter and is less firmly connected to the physical body. Anyone who follows the course of Christianity knows that Paul is the most important personality who contributed most to its spread. It was therefore an occult fact, a supernatural event, that converted Paul, and one can say that through this clairvoyant event, humanity came to Christ. At that time, when the earth's aura changed — and it has changed ever since — when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Savior, then what is hidden in the words of the Gospel of John was fulfilled: “He who eats my bread treads me underfoot.” Since then, Christ has become the spirit of the earth, the planetary spirit. The earth is the body of Christ; he has his dwelling place within the earth. This profound statement in the Gospel of John is not to be understood disparagingly or as a reference to Judas, who betrayed Christ, but rather it refers to the Christ-Yahweh deity and its relationship to the earth.

[ 10 ] When comparing Greek art and post-Christian art, occult researchers find the following in their effect on the world that humans enter after death: When a clairvoyant looks at a Greek temple with its Doric columns, such as the ruins of Paestum, with the physical eye, they can revel in the harmonious forms which are born out of spiritual guidelines themselves and which thereby truly make this temple a dwelling place for God. Just as a soul feels drawn to the body that corresponds to it, so God descends into these forms, which correspond so perfectly to His being. But when the seer's eye then wants to look at the spiritual counterpart of this temple, it finds nothing of it in the spiritual world. How obliterated this temple is there, how empty is the space in the spiritual world, nothing of it can be seen there. On the other hand, if the seer looks in the same way at the works of post-Christian art, or for example at the Gospel of John, at what is connected with Christ-Yahweh, at the Old and New Testaments, or at Raphael's Madonnas, if he looks at these creations first with the senses and then with clairvoyance, they are not lost in the spiritual world, but shine there even more gloriously. This is especially true of the Gospel of John. Only then does the greatness of this creation become apparent to you. Only in the spiritual world does what can be described as connected with the event of Golgotha become clear and bright.

[ 11 ] At the same time as the historical event on the physical plane, something spiritual happened that was also symbolic, since blood flowed from the wounds of the Savior. When Christ no longer lived in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth, at the moment when he died on Golgotha, Christ appeared in the spiritual world to the souls living between death and birth, and the darkness there receded. The spiritual world was suddenly illuminated as if by a light. Just as in a dark room all objects suddenly become visible when a ray of light enters, just as you suddenly see everything that was always there but which you could not perceive before, so light poured into that world of the departed. And they in turn were able to perceive what was around them, could feel connected again in the spiritual realm with their brothers, and could now bring love and brotherhood into the physical world as a predisposition. A new light thus entered this world of the dead, for the mystery of Golgotha has not only significance for the world in which it physically took place, but it has significance for all the worlds with which human beings have to do in their development. If things had remained in the spiritual world as they were for the dead in the Greek-Latin period, the soul would have remained in the icy cold and loneliness of that time, and what we call brotherhood and love would have disappeared more and more from the physical world. Human beings would have brought with them from Devachan a tendency toward isolation. For the light that streamed into the earthly world at that time and also shone into the world of the dead was to establish the kingdom of brotherhood and love on earth. That is the mission of the Christ impulse.

[ 12 ] Now let us look at the mystery of Golgotha, the secret of the blood flowing from the wounds of the Savior, from another angle.

[ 13 ] We know that human beings on Earth have inherited something from the Moon. The three lower bodies, the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body, were prepared for them, and only on Earth did the I come into being, the expression of human freedom and independence. In ancient times, it was important to establish the unity of humanity. In the beginning, the only way to save relationships between people was to give them a physical basis. Blood is the expression of the I. Blood relationships and blood ties ruled the human race. Physical blood was the means, the medium, for influencing one person to another. That's how it was in ancient times. Now, however, through Christ Jesus, love has become a non-sensory bond. The activity of the human group ego recedes. In the past, the individual human being belonged to a communal tribal ego and felt secure in it, in the bosom of Father Abraham. This sense of belonging was much more important than his individual person. His higher self exists in the togetherness of blood relationship. In the Old Testament, we hear of Noah and other patriarchs who lived for centuries. This is to be understood as taking us back to times when people not only had a memory of what they themselves had experienced, but when this memory went far back into the generations. He did not say “I” to himself, but lived as if in his “I” back to his distant ancestors. His life did not begin at his birth; he did not begin to say “I” to himself, but said “I” to everything his ancestors had experienced.

[ 14 ] Throughout all ages, the Luciferic beings have directed their fiercest attacks against blood love. They wanted to isolate each individual human being. They wanted to instill self-consciousness in human beings between death and a new birth. Divine beings, bearers of love, sought to bring human beings together with other human beings in love through bonds other than blood ties, which do not allow for freedom. The Christ principle connects the full expression of the I with the power flowing from the spirit of love and allows it to flow from person to person. Hence the saying: Christus verus Luciferus – Christ the true Lucifer or bringer of light, and ultimately the opponent of the fallen Lucifer. Blood love was transformed by Christ into spiritual love, into the flowing brotherly love from soul to soul. The saying of Christ, “Whoever does not forsake father and mother cannot be my disciple,” is to be understood in such a way that blood love must be transformed into brotherly love, which embraces all people with equal power. Spiritual science does not wish to take anything away from these statements in the Bible, but can only add a deeper understanding of Christian grace when it is accepted in the right sense. The power of spiritual love was first brought to the human soul by Christ when he appeared on earth, and with the blood that flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer on Golgotha, the surplus blood of humanity was, so to speak, sacrificed. Through this act, the teaching was sealed that the individual must stand before the individual as a human brother to a human brother. The understanding of Christ is still very small in the world today. We must first learn to understand the full magnitude of this most powerful cosmic event. Some have always sensed the full meaning of the Christ being and his appearance on earth. How did they sense it? Look at the people and nations who have maintained their connection with the spiritual world for longer. The Indian did not care much about the connection with the physical world. He wanted to attain supersensible truths and the highest spiritual life in the spiritual world, but he did not want to love physical life. Let me tell you an Eastern legend that points in a magnificent way to how the Christ principle was intuitively grasped there.

[ 15 ] Over time, it is said, the power that governs our earth appeared. An Eastern legend that tells of this was recounted in the temples of Tibet, in its northern parts, to the disciples of the Buddha's primordial wisdom, and has been preserved ever since. Kashyapa, according to the Eastern legend, the best disciple of Buddha, lived at a time when even in the East there was little understanding of wisdom. And when he felt his end approaching, he withdrew to a cave, where he lived for a long time, and his body was to remain there, awaiting the appearance of the Maitreya Buddha, so that he could then ascend to heaven.

[ 16 ] This legend means that if nothing special had happened, that is, if Christ had not appeared on earth, the East and the West would not have been able to find their way into the spiritual world. The body of Kashyapa is preserved until the Maitreya Buddha frees the corpse from the earth, which means that human beings will again have the power in the future to spiritualize what is earthly. Deeper than any such being has ever descended, the high being will descend who will lead Kashyapa's body up into the spiritual world. Christ himself will liberate Kashyapa's body. And in the time following this event, the body will no longer be there. What does this mean? The body will simultaneously be transferred into the spiritual world. In the element of fire, the body of Kashyapa can be liberated. Where is this fire? It is spiritualized, as Paul saw it before Damascus. Thus, the appearance of Christ on earth is the great turning point where human beings can ascend again from the physical world into the spiritual world.

[ 17 ] And now look at what Buddha taught. Through contemplating old age, sickness, death, and so on, Buddha realized the great truth of suffering. And he taught the abolition of suffering, liberation from suffering through the extinction of the desire for birth, for sensual embodiment.

[ 18 ] Now look at humanity six hundred years later. What do you see? Humanity worships a corpse: it looks at Christ on the cross, who died and brought life through his death. Life has overcome death.

[ 19 ] Firstly: Is being born suffering? No, because Christ entered our earth through birth, and from then on, for me as a Christian, being born is no longer suffering. Second: Is illness suffering? But the great remedy will arise, the soul force that has been ignited by the Christ impulse. By connecting with the Christ impulse, human beings spiritualize their lives. Third: Is old age suffering? - But while his body becomes frail, he himself becomes stronger and more powerful. - Fourthly: Is death suffering? - But through Christ, the corpse has become the symbol that death, the physical, has been defeated by life, the spirit, that death has been finally overcome by life. - Fifthly: Is separation from what one loves suffering? - But the person who has grasped Christ is never separated from what he loves, for Christ has illuminated the world between death and a new birth, so that man remains connected with what he loves. - Sixth: Not getting what one desires is suffering? - Those who live with Christ will no longer desire what does not belong to them, what is not given to them. Seventh: Is it suffering to be united with what one does not love? But the person who has recognized Christ kindles within himself that great, all-encompassing love which embraces and loves every being, every thing, according to its value. Eighth: Being separated from what one loves is no longer suffering, for in Christ there is no more separation.

[ 20 ] Thus, the remedy for the disease of suffering, which Buddha taught and recognized, is given by Christ.

[ 21 ] This development of humanity toward Christ and the body on the cross is the greatest reversal that ever occurred in evolution.