The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Human Cycle through the Worlds of the Senses, Soul, and Spirit

A public lecture

[ 1 ] Last Thursday’s lecture was intended to describe the paths through which human beings can enter the spiritual worlds, and an attempt was made to show how even a simple observation of the successive events of our life’s course between birth and death reveals laws—great laws—that point to a spiritual world lying beyond the physical world; and a sketch was provided of how human beings themselves can then enter this spiritual world.

[ 2 ] Today we shall discuss, in broad outlines, a chapter of those insights that the spiritual researcher can attain through the method described the day before yesterday. To an even greater extent, of course, than in the lecture the day before yesterday, everything said today could be regarded as a kind of fantasy. However, following the discussions from the day before yesterday, it may well be assumed that what is to be presented today simply in the form of a straightforward narrative will be regarded as a summary of research results that arise precisely from the observation of the higher worlds. So today, in simple terms, we shall describe the experiences a person has as they proceed after death through the various worlds through which they are destined to pass.

[ 3 ] We must begin at that point in human development where a person stands when they pass through the gate of death—that is, when they shed their physical body, as described yesterday, and ascend into a different, spiritual existence. What a person first experiences immediately upon passing through the gate of death, after shedding the physical body, is what should be considered first.

[ 4 ] The first impression that our astral body and our ego have after a person’s death is that the person can look back on the life that has just passed, the life that unfolded between birth and death, and can look back upon it as a comprehensive tableau of memories. The individual events of the last life, which have long since vanished from the spiritual gaze, appear before the soul, so to speak, in all their details at this important turning point in life. And when we ask ourselves: How is such a thing possible? — then we can at least make sense of what presents itself to the clairvoyant eye by pointing to those well-known moments in life described by those who have once been in mortal danger, such as during a fall in the mountains or when they were close to drowning. They recount that in such a moment, their entire past life appeared before their eyes as if in a great painting. What is recounted in this way can certainly be confirmed by spiritual science.

[ 5 ] Why is it that, at such a moment, a person’s entire past life appears before their eyes as if in a great painting? This is because that which can be seen with physical eyes and grasped with physical hands—what is called the physical body of a human being—is permeated and saturated by the etheric or life body. This is the second—and indeed already invisible—component of the human being, which, in the time between birth and death, prevents the physical body from following the physical, physic, and chemical forces and laws implanted within it. This etheric or life body, this second body of the human being, is, so to speak, our faithful fighter against the decay of the physical body.

[ 6 ] Now it may well be understandable that, from a physical perspective—that is, from the standpoint of physical science—the entire human being seems to succumb to death upon its onset; for that which passes through the gate of death, and which then experiences the impressions that are about to be described, exists only for spiritual perception, only for a clairvoyant eye. But everything that exists only for spiritual perception must necessarily appear as nothing to the physical eye.

You will see nothing in the eternally empty distance,
You will not hear the footsteps you take,
You will find nothing solid where you rest!

[ 7 ] So says Mephistopheles in Goethe’s *Faust*. It will indeed be so forever. This characteristic reveals Mephistopheles as the representative of a worldview that focuses solely on external, physical existence and regards as nothingness everything that lies beyond this physical existence and can be attained through spiritual knowledge. But eternal, too, will be the one who has a sense and an understanding that powers lie dormant within the human being, which can be developed in such a way that spiritual worlds break into this human soul, just as light and color break into the operated eye of one born blind; eternal will this human soul be, which senses something of such higher knowledge, and will reply to materialism with the words that Faust replies to Mephistopheles:

In your nothingness, I hope to find the universe.

[ 8 ] Just as Faust hopes to find the universe in nothingness, so too must we turn to the nothingness of the materialistic mindset and worldview if we wish to grasp that which passes through the gate of death and leaves its impressions when there are no longer any physical instruments or organs through which an external world can be perceived. This nothingness of the materialist—this fundamental essence of human nature as seen by the spiritual gaze—has before it that vast tableau of memories in which all the individual experiences of the last life are contained, just as, indeed in a higher sense, they are contained after that shock a person experiences when in mortal danger, when, for example, they are close to drowning. What actually happens to a person facing mortal danger? Through the shock they have suffered, their etheric or life body has been loosened from their physical body for a brief moment. Now, however, this etheric or life body in the human being—let it be explicitly stated: in the human being—is also the bearer of memory, and in ordinary life, when this etheric or life body is connected to the physical body, then the physical body acts as a kind of barrier, as a kind of obstacle to the emergence of all individual memories, all individual mental images. But when the etheric or life body is lifted out of the physical body for a brief moment by such a shock, then the whole of life appears before the soul as a panorama of memories, and in such a person, at the moment of drowning, we have a kind of analogue to what is present immediately after death, when the etheric or life body has been set free with all its powers, since the physical body has been laid aside in death.

[ 9 ] This is the experience one has after passing through the gate of death. However, we must describe it in greater detail. This experience is of a very peculiar nature. For this recollection is not such that we relive the events of our recently concluded life exactly as we experienced them during our lifetime. In life, the events of the day make an impression of pleasure, an impression of joy, an impression of pain, an impression of suffering upon us. They approach us in such a way that we feel sympathy and antipathy toward them. In short, these events stir our emotional world and also spur us on to exercise our will and our desires in one way or another. All that which is pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, sympathy and antipathy, interest in the external phenomena of existence—all of that is, for the period just discussed, as if erased from the human soul, and the image of memory stands there, truly like a picture. When we have a picture before us, when we imagine a scene in which we would suffer terribly—we endure it objectively, neutrally, when it is presented to us in the picture. But in this way, too, the memory-image of our entire life appears before our soul: we experience it without the involvement we otherwise had in life.

[ 10 ] That is one thing. The other is that, upon passing through the gates of death, a person now experiences something with which they have become acquainted only to a very limited extent between birth and death, unless they have become a spiritual researcher themselves. In life, we are always outside of things, outside of the beings that surround us. The tables and chairs are outside of us; the flora spread across the field is outside of us. The impression immediately after death is as if our being were pouring out over everything that is outside of us. We, as it were, immerse ourselves in things; we feel at one with them. The sensation of the soul spreading out, expanding, and widening arises—a merging with the things that exist in the external environment as images. This experience lasts—as spiritual research shows us through the methods we have discussed—for varying lengths of time; yet it is generally a brief experience following death. Today we can even speak of how long this experience lasts for the individual human being, depending on their individuality, since more precise clairvoyant research on this matter is now available. You know that different people, in their normal state of life, can remain awake for varying lengths of time, if necessary, without being overcome by sleep. One person may, for example, stay awake for three, four, or five days, while another can manage only thirty-six hours, and so on. On average, this tableau of memories lasts approximately as long as the person was able to remain awake in their normal state of life without being overcome by sleep. Thus, it is calculated in days and varies from person to person.

[ 11 ] Then, when this tableau of memories has come to an end, when it has gradually faded—for it depicts a gradual descent into darkness—the person feels as if certain forces were withdrawing from within them and something that had hitherto been part of their nature were being expelled. That which is expelled is now a second corpse of the human being, an invisible corpse; it is that part of the human being which he cannot take with him from his etheric or life body through the subsequent experiences in the soul world. So while the physical body has already been shed and returned to its physical substances and forces, the etheric or life body is now squeezed out and disperses into the world we call the etheric world—a world that is nothing to those who can see and think only materialistically, but which permeates and lives through everything for those whose spiritual eyes are open. Now, however, something remains from this squeezed-out etheric or life body that can be described as an essence, as an extract of everything that has been experienced. As it were, the experiences of the last existence between birth and death, compressed into a seed, now remain united with that which the human being is. Thus the fruit of the last life, compressed, remains.

[ 12 ] What, then, does the human being retain in the further course of their life after death? The human being retains what we call the bearer of their I, what we call their I itself; but this ego is initially enveloped by what we have characterized as the third member of the human being after the physical and the etheric or life body; this ego is enveloped by the astral body. We could say that the human astral body is the bearer of pleasure and pain, of joy and sorrow, of drives, desires, and passions. Of all that which during the day thus flits through our soul as pleasure and pain, as instincts, desires, and passions, the astral body is the bearer; and every night the ego and the astral body leave the physical and the etheric or life body of the human being, which remain in bed during sleep. Now, after death, we have united the I and the astral body with that life essence of which we have just said that it has been extracted as a fruit or seed from the etheric or life body. With these members of his being, the human being now continues his journey through the so-called soul world. If we wish to understand what the human being’s spiritual vision can reveal to us about this world, we must first realize that it is this astral body that is the bearer of everything that constitutes pleasure, desire, and interest in the things around us. Yes, the astral body is the bearer of all pleasures, desires, all pains and sufferings, even the basest desires—those desires, for example, that are linked to our nutrition. The physical body is a structure of physical and chemical forces and laws. It is not the physical body that experiences pleasure and enjoyment in relation to any food or stimulants; that is the astral body of the human being. The physical body merely provides the tools so that we can procure such pleasures, which take place within the astral body. Now, anyone who has come to understand that this astral body of the human being is something real, something genuine—not merely a function, a result of the interaction of physical and chemical processes—will not be surprised to hear that at the moment of death, when the physical body is shed, the astral body does not immediately lose its longing for these pleasures. Indeed, it does not. Let us take a striking example, say a person who was a gourmet in life, who took pleasure in delicious food. What has happened to him with death? He has lost the ability—because he has shed his physical instruments—to procure these pleasures in his astral body. But the craving for these pleasures has remained in his astral body. The consequence of this is that the person is now, with regard to these pleasures—albeit for different reasons—in the same situation as he would be, for example, if in physical life he were in a region where he suffers from a burning thirst and there is nothing far and wide that can quench this thirst. After death, the astral body suffers from a burning thirst because the physical organs through which this thirst can be satisfied are no longer present. The instruments have been laid aside, but the craving for these pleasures has remained in the astral body. The consequence of this is that the human being is now in the same situation with regard to these pleasures; the astral body suffers from a burning thirst. In the astral body there are still all those drives, cravings, and passions that can only be satisfied through the physical instruments. Therefore, it is understandable, simply from this logical consideration, what the spiritual researcher must say in this regard: After shedding his etheric or life body, the human being goes through a period in which he must wean himself, in relation to his innermost being, from all longings and desires that can be satisfied only through the physical instruments of the physical body. — This is the time of purification, during which all longings for anything that can only be obtained by setting one’s physical instruments into motion must be eradicated from the astral body.

[ 13 ] We will find it understandable that, depending on a person’s individuality, the length of time that must be endured for the sake of this purification—for the sake of this purging of desires directed solely toward the physical world—will vary. However, a person also experiences this time in such a way that it is not merely counted in days, but rather, according to the research of spiritual science, it takes up approximately one-third of the life in the physical world that has elapsed between birth and death. It is understandable to those who are able to look more deeply into this that the time of purification takes up approximately one-third of one’s lifetime. When one surveys human life, one finds that this human life between birth and death is clearly divided into three thirds. The first third of life is intended for the human being’s innate dispositions and abilities, which come into being at birth, to work their way through the obstacles of the physical world. A kind of ascending life is present in the first third. As a spiritual being, the human being gradually takes possession of their physical organs. Then comes the next third of life, which lasts on average from the 21st to the 42nd year of life. The first lasts until the age of 21. This second third of life is devoted to the development of all those powers that a person can unfold by interacting with the outer world through their inner being, through their soul. By then, they have already plastically shaped the organs of their physical and etheric or life body; they no longer encounter any obstacles in them. They are fully grown. His soul enters into a direct relationship with the external world. This lasts until the human being must once again begin to draw sustenance from his physical and etheric or life body, and this then continues for the remainder of his life. There, the human being gradually draws upon once again what he has plastically shaped in his youth. We have been able to draw attention to the wonderful connection that exists between youth and old age. If, during the period when the inner human being is plastically formed in the human organs, the person acquires certain qualities; if, during this time, they have overcome various outbursts of anger in their soul; if they have experienced what we call the feeling of devotion—then this comes to expression precisely in the last third of life. This flows through the middle third of life like a hidden stream. And what we call overcome anger emerges in old age as just mildness, so that the cause of mildness lies in the overcome anger. And from the mood of devotion that we cherish in our younger years comes, at the end of life, that quality we see in those people who can enter into a community and, without “saying much, have a blessing-like effect.”

[ 14 ] It is clear that human life is divided into three parts. In the first part, a person works to develop their physical body; in the last part, they draw upon that physical body; in the middle part, the soul is, so to speak, left to its own devices. This middle period must now, as may seem understandable, correspond to the period of purification after death. For there the soul is free from the physical body and the etheric or life body and stands in a relationship to its spiritual surroundings similar to that in the second third of life.

[ 15 ] What the spiritual researcher is able to perceive, we can understand logically if we take a look at ordinary life. We can understand that the time given is an average figure; for some people the period of purification will be longer, for others shorter. It will be longer for those who, with all their passions, are devoted to a purely sensual existence, who know hardly anything other than the satisfaction derived from those pleasures bound to the physical organs of the body. But for those who, in ordinary life, through an immersion in art or through insight, are already able to look beyond the veil of the physical to the spiritual mysteries of existence—those who even intuitively grasp the revelations of the spirit through the veil of the physical—for them the period of purification will be shorter, for they will pass through the gate of death prepared, prepared for all that can come as satisfaction only from the spiritual world.

[ 16 ] Here, then, we have a period that a person experiences between death and a new birth, which differs significantly from the time measured in days immediately following death. While during this period measured in days we have a neutral tableau of memories, in the face of which all our interest and involvement fall silent, it is precisely during the period of purification that we have within our soul everything that has drawn us to our experiences through a longing for pleasure, through a longing for desire. It is precisely the emotional life, the life of feeling, that is what takes place in the soul during this period of purification.

[ 17 ] Spiritual research, however, reveals a curious peculiarity of this period of purification. As strange as it sounds, it is nevertheless true: this period of purification proceeds backward to forward, so that we have the impression that we first live through the last year of our physical life, then the penultimate, and finally the third-to-last. And so, purifying and cleansing ourselves, we relive our lives as if in a mirror image; we pass through it in such a way that it appears as if it were moving from death to birth, and at the end of the period of purification we stand at the moment of birth. First old age, then middle age, all the way back to childhood—we pass through life.

[ 18 ] Now, no one need think that this is merely a terrible time, merely a time of burning thirst and longing. All of that is certainly present; but it is not the only thing. We also relive everything we have already experienced spiritually between birth and death; we also relive the good events of life in such a way that we have them before us again, as it were, in a mirror image. How this is will become clear to us as we examine this time more closely. Let us suppose that a person died at the age of 60. Then he first relives the 59th, then the 58th, the 57th year of life, and so on; he relives everything only in reverse, as a kind of mirror image. For what remains is that we feel as if we were poured out over the things and beings of the world, as if we were within all beings and things. Now let us consider the fact that in a life that lasted until the age of 60, we might have insulted someone in our 40th year. We then relive those twenty years in reverse at three times the speed. When we reach the age of 40, we relive the pain we inflicted on the other person, but we do not experience what we went through at the time; rather, we experience what the other person went through. If we have caused someone pain out of a sense of revenge or a surge of anger, and then, after death, looking back, we come to that moment, we do not feel the satisfaction we experienced, but rather what the other person experienced. We are transported into them in spirit. And so it is with everything we relive as we journey backward. We relive all the acts of kindness and good deeds we have scattered throughout our lives, in the benevolent effects they have caused in our surroundings.

[ 19 ] We experience this with a soul that feels, as it were, poured out into the entire environment. This is not without effect; rather, as human beings experience everything, they take away certain impressions, certain marks from all these situations of experience. We can characterize this roughly as follows. But I would like to point out explicitly that these things can really only be characterized in words by way of comparison, for you can understand that our words are shaped for the physical world and are actually only applicable to this physical world in the proper sense. Since we do use these words—and we could not otherwise communicate about all the mysterious worlds that open up to the spiritual eye—we must be aware that these words have only an approximate meaning. What is thus experienced can only be characterized as follows: When a person perceives the pain they have inflicted on another, when they relive this pain after death, they feel it as an obstacle to their development. They say to themselves, as it were, in their soul: What would I have become if I had not inflicted this pain on the other? This pain is something that holds my entire being back from a degree of perfection that it might otherwise have attained. — And so, regarding all the error and falsehood, all the ugliness that the person has spread in their surroundings, they say to themselves: These are obstacles to development, something I have placed in the way of my own perfection. — And from this a force forms in the human soul that leads to the person, in that state in which they now live between death and a new birth, taking up the longing, taking up the impulses of will to remove these obstacles from the path. That is to say, step by step, as we journey backward, we take in impulses to make amends in the coming life, to once again balance out the obstacles we have placed in our own path.

[ 20 ] Therefore, we must not succumb to the belief that what we are going through is merely suffering. It is certainly suffering and deprivation, and it is painful to see all that we ourselves have caused laid upon our own soul; yet we experience it in such a way that we are glad to be able to go through it, because only through this can we absorb the strength that enables us to remove those obstacles from our path. And so all these impulses that we absorb during the period of purification add up, and when we have returned to the beginning of our last life, there is a powerful sum there that lives within us as an immense urge to make amends in a new life, in the subsequent stages of existence, for all that which needs to be made amends for in the sense described. Thus, at the end of the period of purification, we are equipped with the power to develop our will in the future in such a way that compensation is created for all the wrong, ugly, and evil things we have done. This is a power of which a person can gain some inkling when, through wise self-knowledge, they become acquainted with the pangs of conscience it causes them when they think back on what they have done to this or that person. But all of this remains merely a thought in life. It becomes a powerful creative impulse during the period of purification between death and a new birth. And equipped with this creative impulse, the human being now enters a new life: the truly spiritual life.

[ 21 ] If we wish to understand this spiritual life that a person enters after the period of purification, we can do so in the following way. It is difficult to capture in the words of our language the entirely different experiences that the spiritual researcher has when examining the life between death and a new birth—those entirely different, essential impressions that cannot be compared to anything the eye can see in the sensory world or the intellect, bound to the brain, can conceive; but one can gain some idea of what may open up to the spiritual researcher like a new world through his insight into the spiritual world in the following way. If you want to look around and comprehend the world, if you want to understand what is around you, then you do so by thinking, by forming ideas about the things that are around you. It would be a logically absurd notion if someone were to think that one could scoop water out of a glass in which there is none. It would be exactly the same if you were to imagine that you could extract thoughts and laws from a world in which there are no thoughts and no laws. All human knowledge, all human understanding would be mere fantasy, would be nothing but a figment of the imagination, if the thoughts that we ultimately form in our minds were not already underlying things as thoughts—that is, if things had not sprung from thoughts. All those who believe that thoughts are merely something formed by the human mind, something that does not underlie things as the actual forces of action and creation within them, should simply give up all thinking altogether; for the thoughts thus formed, without corresponding to an external world of thought, would be mere figments of the imagination. Only he thinks truly who knows that his thinking corresponds to the external world of thought and, as in a mirror within us, in turn awakens the external world of thought; he knows that all things originally sprang forth from this world of thought.

[ 22 ] Thus, while for us humans thought is the last thing we grasp about things, for things themselves it lies at their very foundation. Creative thought underlies things, but human thoughts—through which humans ultimately come to know them—differ in a certain, very significant respect from the creative thoughts that exist outside of us. If you try to look into the human soul, you will say to yourself: No matter how human thinking may roam within the horizon of thoughts and ideas, as long as a person thinks, as long as they try to fathom the mysteries of things through their thoughts, they appear to be something far removed from anything creative. — This is the peculiarity of human thoughts: that they have lost the productive, the creative element contained in the thoughts that permeate and animate the world outside. Those thoughts that permeate the outside world are imbued with the element that first springs up within the human being like a mysterious undercurrent of our existence. You know, of course, that if your ideas are to be transformed into will, they must plunge into the depths of the human being, for the thought itself is not yet imbued with will. But the thought that works out in the world is permeated and interwoven with the will. And that is precisely what is peculiar about the spirit that objectively interweaves things out there: that it is creative. Through this, however, it is no longer merely thought; through this, it is spirit. The thought of human nature has come into being because the will has been pressed out of the spirit and because this will appears from within the human being like a reflex. To the spiritual eye, it appears nowhere outside as separate from the creative.

[ 23 ] Into this spirit, which unites within itself will and thought, a person enters as if into a new world once they have undergone their period of purification after death. And just as we live here in this world—which we pass through between birth and death—surrounded by the impressions of our senses, surrounded by all that our mind can conceive, just as we are thus surrounded and enveloped by the physical world, so too is the human being, after the period of purification, enveloped everywhere by the creative, spiritual world. And they are within this creative, spiritual world; they are immersed in it and belong to it. This is also what first occurs as an experience once the period of purification has been completed: The human being does not feel themselves in a world that surrounds them with a horizon of things they can perceive, but rather they feel themselves within a world where they are thoroughly creative. — Everything that the human being has taken in during the last life and also in earlier lives, insofar as it has not yet been processed, what is particularly contained in the described extract of their etheric or life body, what has remained in their astral body as that powerful impulse that seeks to balance the obstacles that have been perceived, all that which is thus within the human being—he now feels it within himself as productive, he now feels it as creative.

[ 24 ] Now, life within the realm of productivity is best described by the term “bliss” or “enjoyment.” Even in everyday life, you can observe a comparable sense of bliss on a lower level when you see a hen sitting on her eggs, hatching them. In the act of production itself lies a warming sense of bliss. In a higher sense, one can perceive this bliss of creation when the artist is able to translate what has matured in his soul into the material external world, when he is able to create. The entire human being is now permeated by this feeling of bliss—of which one can gain an approximate idea in this way—as he passes through the spiritual world.

[ 25 ] What does a person bring into the spiritual world? They bring into the spiritual world everything they have gained in the form of fruits and essences from their last and other previous lives—things about which we could say the day before yesterday that, although they have approached our soul as experiences, the human being, in the life between birth and death, because they are limited by the physical and etheric or life body, must initially keep to himself and cannot incorporate into his entire being. Now the physical and etheric or life bodies are no longer there; now he works in purely spiritual substance; now he imprints upon it all that he experienced in his last life but could not, due to the limitations of his physical and etheric or life bodies, incorporate into himself.

[ 26 ] If we now consider the length of time during which a person productively incorporates into the spiritual realm what they have gained in their previous life, then we must first and foremost ask ourselves: Does this law of repeated earthly lives, to which we have alluded, have a certain meaning? — Yes, it has a purpose, and this is evident in the fact that when a human being has completed an incarnation, they do not reappear in a new life simply so they can relive the same experiences, but rather they reappear only when the external earthly world has changed in the meantime to such an extent that they can undergo entirely new experiences. Anyone who reflects a little on evolution will find that, even in physical terms, the physiognomy of the Earth changes considerably from millennium to millennium. Just think for a moment about what it might have looked like here, where this city now stands, in the time of Christ, how different it was then, and how this spot on Earth has changed since that time; and consider how even what we call the moral, intellectual, and other spiritual development of humanity changes over the course of a few centuries. Let us consider what children absorbed in their early years just a few centuries ago, and let us consider what they process in their early years today. The Earth changes its appearance, and after a certain time, a person can set foot on the Earth again, and everything has changed so much that they can now experience something new. Only when a person can experience something new do they truly enter this world anew.

[ 27 ] The period between death and a new birth is determined by the fact that when a human being incarnates—say, in a particular century—they are born into very specific hereditary circumstances. We know, of course, that we must not imagine the human core, the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being, as if it were simply the sum of the characteristics of the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. We have emphasized that just as the earthworm does not grow out of the mud, the human soul does not arise from the physical. The soul arises from the soul, just as the living arises from the living. We have emphasized that this human soul points back to a previous life and that through birth it enters into existence in such a way that it draws together the hereditary characteristics. But in bringing this to the forefront of our understanding of the soul, we must also be clear that when we look back on a previous life, we carry over from that earlier human life through birth those qualities that gradually unfold in the interval between death and a new birth. We then take with us through the gate of death that which we have newly gained between birth and death, that which we were not yet able to draw from a previous life. So that—as has already been emphasized—through the gate of death we now carry with us everything that was gained piece by piece in the last life. Now, as we pass through life in the spirit between death and a new birth, we can unfold this anew in a fresh relationship only by not being dependent in this new existence on rediscovering the inherited conditions we had in our previous existence. In our previous existence, we had drawn certain qualities of our ancestors into our soul. We would encounter nothing new in a new existence if we were to find the qualities of our ancestors in the same way. So if we have incarnated in a particular century, then—in order that we may also live out our lives in this direction in a new existence—we must pass through the spiritual world until all those inherited qualities to which we were previously drawn, and to which we would continue to feel drawn as long as they remain, have been lost. Our reincarnation depends on the disappearance of those characteristics that have run through the generations. So when we look back to our ancestors, we find in our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on, certain characteristics that have been carried down through heredity to our present existence. After death, we now enter the spiritual world. There we remain until all the characteristics to which we felt drawn in this incarnation have disappeared from the line of inheritance. But this takes many centuries, and spiritual research shows that the process takes so many centuries that we can say, for example, that certain characteristics are inherited, passing from generation to generation. It takes about seven hundred years for the qualities that pass from generation to generation to have faded to such an extent that we can say: What we found in our ancestors back then has dissipated. — But now these characteristics must develop to such an extent that they must once again pass through seven hundred years. And we arrive at the point where we can specify a period of two times seven hundred years—this is, of course, only an average figure, but it appears to spiritual research as the time that elapses between death and a new birth—until the soul enters existence once more through a new birth.

[ 28 ] First and foremost, we must understand that everything here on Earth that is already spiritual extends upward into this spiritual world. We have just emphasized that whatever we take into our spirit is creative out there in the spiritual world. We have seen that we ourselves, in a certain sense, are present in this creative world with our own creative power. This spiritual world, which is creative out there, is reflected in a certain way within our own soul. To the extent that our own soul experiences the spiritual and goes through a spiritual life, the spiritual-soul experiences within us are also citizens of the spiritual world. Just as the spiritual world reaches down into the physical world, so our own spiritual nature reaches up into the general spiritual world. This, however, explains to us what spiritual research asserts: That which is in the human being in relation to its various constituent elements sheds its outer shells, and what remains is the spiritual, which grows upward into the productive spiritual world; it is also understandable to us that spiritual conditions, everything soul-related that takes place here in the physical world, sheds its outer shells and lives on upward into the spiritual world. Take, for example, the love a mother has for her child. This love grows out of the physical world. At first, it has an animalistic character. It consists of sympathies that bind mother and child, which are a kind of physical force. But then what grows out of the physical world is purified; the love between the two beings is ennobled; this love becomes increasingly soul-spiritual. Everything that springs from the physical world is cast off in death just as the outer shells are. But in return, everything that is built up in this love—the soulful and spiritual elements within this physical-human shell—remains; just as the human inner being itself lives on into the spiritual world, so that the love between mother and child lives on in the spiritual world. There they find one another again, no longer limited by the barriers of the physical world, but in that spiritual environment where we do not have things outside of us, but where we live and weave and are within the things themselves. Therefore, one must imagine what prevails in the spiritual world as the result of the relationships of love and friendship established in the physical world; one must imagine them in such a way that those who have united in the spiritual world are far more intimately connected than the bonds of love and friendship that are formed in the physical world. And it is nonsensical to ask whether we will see again after death those with whom we live together in love and friendship in the physical world. We do not merely see them again, but we live within them; we are, so to speak, poured out over them. And everything that is woven within the confines of the sensory world only acquires its true meaning, its true significance, when we grow upward into the spiritual world with the spiritual part of it.

[ 29 ] Thus we see the spiritualization not only of the individual but of humanity in its noblest aspects in the spiritual realm that the human being experiences between death and a new birth. There, too, all the impulses that the human being has carried into the spiritual world are transformed into living archetypes. We saw, after all, that the human being entered the spiritual world with an essence of the etheric or life body, that is, with an essence of all the experiences they had between birth and death. We see the human being entering the spiritual world with that powerful impulse that allows them to make amends for what they have done wrong. The human being weaves this together into a spiritual archetype. And the time they spend in the spiritual world unfolds in such a way that this archetype is woven more and more, so that it increasingly incorporates the fruits of the previous life and the urge, the will to make amends for their wrongdoing, for the ugly things they have done. And so, during that time, the human being is capable, on the one hand, of vividly shaping into the body made available to them at reincarnation all the abilities they have acquired in previous lives; on the other hand, by having woven into their archetype the urge, the impulse, to make amends for the wrongs, ugly, or evil, drawn to circumstances that allow him to make amends for this wrongdoing, this ugliness, that he has committed. Through birth, we enter existence with the will to enter into circumstances that allow us to make amends for the imperfections of our past life. Thus, through a hidden will, we seek out pain in appropriate situations when, driven by our pre-birth impulse, we have the unconscious realization that only the overcoming of this pain can remove certain obstacles that we have previously placed in our own path.

[ 30 ] Thus we see how the human being passes through the spiritual world, where even before the new birth he can shape his physical body. And now we also see how what we have woven into our archetype only gradually unites with our life after birth. For one does not understand life who believes that everything that develops in life in terms of abilities and soul capacities is already present within the child. Whoever can view life correctly sees the human being entering existence through birth and sees how the human being only gradually finds themselves in life, how in the first years the human being by no means already possesses within themselves everything they are capable of becoming. We can understand life much better if we say: The human being unites only gradually with that which they have woven as a spiritual archetype in the life between death and a new birth; little by little they grow together with it until they face the outside world in a free interplay. — Anyone who observes life without prejudice can see how, as a child, a human being is still enveloped by the spiritual atmosphere they have woven for themselves between death and a new birth, and how they gradually adapt to their own archetype, which they have not yet woven together with the physicality they bring with them at birth. While the animal is already interwoven with its archetype from birth, we see the human being individually and inevitably growing into the archetype that he has woven for himself through repeated earthly lives up to this last one. And we understand the physical-sensual aspect of human life best when we conceive of it in such a way that we say: it is truly like the shell of an animal, an oyster, that we find by the wayside. As long as we try to understand it as merely assembled, say, from mud, we will never be able to grasp this shell. But if we assume that what appears to have been deposited layer by layer on the shell has been excreted from the interior of an animal that has left this shell behind, then we understand the structure.

[ 31 ] Human life between birth and death—we cannot understand it if we try to grasp it solely in and of itself, if we try to understand it by merely drawing together what is found in its immediate surroundings. We can go on at length about how humans adapt to their environment, their people, and their family. Just as an oyster shell without an oyster is incomprehensible to us, so too will human life be incomprehensible if we view it solely as having emerged from its immediate surroundings. But it becomes clear and distinct when we can assume that human beings come from a spiritual and soul world, and that in this spiritual and soul world they have processed the achievements, the essence, the fruits of past lives, and that they reshape their new existence with the help of this processing. Thus, life itself becomes comprehensible to us only through that which lies above life; thus, the physical world becomes comprehensible to us only through the spiritual and soul world.

[ 32 ] This is the human being’s cycle through the sensory, soul, and spiritual worlds. If we view the human being in this way, then his physical-sensory life represents, as it were, only a part of his complete life cycle. And our understanding, when we pursue it in the right sense, is not merely a theoretical understanding that tells us this or that, as external science does, but rather an understanding that simultaneously shows us objectively how life between death and a new birth acquires meaning and significance, in that what we gather here is processed in a higher world. From such insight springs knowledge and willpower for life; meaning and significance, confidence and hope for life spring forth. We need not merely attribute to such insight the fact that we look desolately upon past lives, of which we might say: Well, it is claimed that we have brought our pain upon ourselves. To the pain is added this desolation! — No, we can tell ourselves: This law is not merely one that points to the past, but also one that points to the future, showing us that pain overcome is a gain in strength that we can utilize in our new life, and the more we work, the more pain we have overcome, the stronger our strength will be. In happiness, one can only suffer in a higher sense; it is a fulfillment from past lives. In pain, one can develop strength, and the strength developed through the overcoming of pain signifies an enhancement for future life. And we walk confidently through the gate of death when we know that death must be brought into life so that this life may rise from stage to stage. Thus it seems well justified to say: Spiritual science in this sense is not merely a theory; it is the sap and strength of life, in that what flows directly into our entire spiritual existence makes it healthy, vigorous, and strong. — Spiritual science is that which confirms the words that must live in the soul of every spiritual researcher—and indeed of every person who senses something of the spiritual world—as words of truth, as guiding principles for their evolving, healthy, and powerful life, a life that sees the overcoming of pain as a source of strength; it confirms the words:

Mystery follows mystery in space,
Mystery follows mystery through time;
Only the mind can provide the solution,
Which reaches
Beyond the boundaries of space
And beyond the flow of time.