The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The latest Findings from Occult Research on Life between Death and Rebirth

[ 1 ] It is a great pleasure for me to be among you this evening on the occasion of my visit to Vienna, which was necessitated by other matters.

[ 2 ] I would like to speak to you this evening, my dear friends, since this is, after all, an exceptional gathering, about something that one might well call intimate—something that can only be discussed within the very close circle of those who have been engaged in Spiritual Science for quite some time.

[ 3 ] In occult research, it is the case that one can never check often enough, as it were, to see what the situation is with matters that are investigated and examined time and again, and about which proclamations are made time and again, and which, because they are situated in the spiritual world—a realm not easily accessible to human beings and not easily grasped by them—can, so to speak, easily be misinterpreted or viewed inaccurately by the researcher himself in one direction or another; therefore, they must be rechecked again and again, so to speak. Certainly, the main facts of the supersensible life have been established for millennia, but it is difficult to describe them. And that is why it has been a deep satisfaction to me that in recent times I have been able to engage once again more intimately with a field that is of importance on the side of occultism: with the field of life between death and a new birth. Certainly, it is not exactly new things that come to light on such an occasion, but many things then offer the opportunity to state them again and again more accurately and precisely. So today I would like to speak specifically about this time in a human being’s life that is so important for supersensory knowledge—the time between death and a new birth; not so much about the next realm, which has indeed been discussed often in the writings and elsewhere here, the so-called Kamaloka realm, but about what follows it, about the actual sojourn of the human being in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. I would like to preface this description with just a few words.

[ 4 ] What lies between death and rebirth is revealed through initiation, through the rite of initiation, or through passing through the gate of death. Usually, we do not take seriously enough the difference that exists between all the knowledge we can acquire regarding the sensory world, in which we are always immersed with our senses and our intellect, and in relation to the spiritual world, into which we enter either through initiation while still in this body, in this physical existence, or without this body, once we have passed through the gate of death. In a sense, everything is reversed in this spiritual world. I would like to cite two characteristics that can truly show how the spiritual world differs significantly from the ordinary sensory world.

[ 5 ] Let us consider our existence in this sensory world during our waking hours, from morning until evening. We see that the things we perceive through our eyes and ears come to us; and, so to speak, we seek out only the higher realms of life—the realms of knowledge, the realm of art—which we must actively bring to ourselves; there we must participate—but the rest of external life, which engages us, truly brings everything that is meant to affect our senses and our intellect to us from morning to night. Wherever we go, on the street, however we live, everything and anything, every moment has its impressions, and we do nothing, with the exceptions mentioned, to bring them about; they come of their own accord.

[ 6 ] The situation is different with what happens through us in the physical world; there we must be active, there we must move from place to place, there we must take action. These are the defining characteristics of daily life: that what presents itself to our awareness happens without us doing anything to bring it about. As strange as it may seem, in the spiritual realm it is the opposite. In the spiritual world, one cannot act, cannot be active, cannot bring about anything by moving from one place to another; nor can one bring anything about in the spiritual world by, so to speak, moving organs that would be analogous to physical hands; rather, what is necessary above all else for something to happen to us in the spiritual world is absolute peace of mind.

[ 7 ] The calmer we can be, the more happens through us in the spiritual world; thus, we cannot speak of anything happening in the spiritual world when we are rushing about, but rather by developing, in complete peace of mind, a greater loving interest in what is to happen, and then waiting to see how things unfold. This peace of mind, which is creative in the spiritual world, has hardly any parallel in ordinary physical life, but it does in higher realms on the physical plane, in intellectual life and in artistic life. There you already have something analogous. The artist cannot truly create the highest work of which he is capable according to his talents if he cannot wait, if he cannot wait in complete calm of mind until the right moment has come, until intuition strikes. Whoever seeks to create by a set program can produce only inferior works. Whoever seeks to create any work—no matter how small—in response to some external impulse will not produce it as well as if they can wait with loving devotion and calm for the moment of inspiration; we might also say, for the moment of grace. So it is in the spiritual world as well: there is no haste or urgency there; there is only peace of mind.

[ 8 ] Essentially, this is how the spread of our movement must proceed. All external agitation, all attempts to force Spiritual Science upon people, ultimately leads to nothing. It is best if we can wait until people who have a need in their souls to hear something, who are inclined toward the spiritual, reveal themselves to us in life, and we should not feel the need to introduce everyone to Spiritual Science. We will find that the more calm, the more agitation-free calm we can develop, the more people will come to us, whereas through abrupt agitation we will actually push people away. When a public lecture is given, it is done only so that what must be said may be said; whoever wishes to take it in may do so. In this respect, our entire life within the Spiritual Science movement must be a reflection of the spiritual, so that we allow what is to happen to happen and await it with equanimity.

[ 9 ] Let us consider an initiated person who has realized that, at a certain point in time, something is to occur from the spiritual world. I have often drawn attention to an important moment when something did indeed occur from the spiritual world, though it has not yet manifested itself to such an extraordinary degree. That was the year 1899, the end of the Minor Kali Yuga. That was essentially the year that brought a specific impulse intended to give people something from within, to awaken in their souls what had essentially been given from the spiritual world in earlier times through various external events—what was called chance. I would like to cite a specific case: In the twelfth century, there lived a certain Norbert. He founded an order. He initially led a rather worldly, one might say, a dissolute life, when he was struck by a bolt of lightning. It often happens in history with individual people that such an event occurs; a bolt of lightning can shake the physical and etheric bodies. That is when his whole life was transformed. It is the case that an external event is utilized by the spiritual world to help transform people. Such coincidences often occur; they shake up the entire connection between the physical and etheric bodies and completely transform the person concerned. That was the case here as well. But these are no coincidences; they are events in the spiritual world that have been carefully prepared to transform human beings. From the year 1899 onward, these events became ever more intimate, much less external, and much more effective through the inner self; the human soul is internalized. And indeed, with such an upheaval in the world as in 1899, all beings and powers from the spiritual world must be involved, but also all the initiates who live here. They do not say: “Prepare yourselves!”—they do not shout it into people’s ears, but it happens in such a way that the impulse comes from within, that people learn to understand it from within. Then people remain calm in their souls, engage with the thought, allow this thought to work within them, and wait. And the calmer they become with the thought in their souls, the more powerfully such spiritual events come. So, let us await this blessing! It is above all this that we should wait to see what is to happen to us in the spiritual world.

[ 10 ] The situation is different when it comes to perception in everyday life; there we must bring everything to bear, must acquire it, must work to bring it to us, so to speak. A rose we find along the way brings us joy in this physical world; on the spiritual plane this would not happen; nothing similar to a rose on the physical plane would present itself to us if we did not make an effort to enter certain spiritual realms in order to bring things to us. Precisely what we do here in our actions, we must do in our spiritual perception; and conversely: We must wait patiently for what is to happen through us and merely observe, so to speak, the projections from the spiritual world into the physical; the higher activities of human beings form a reflection of what occurs in the spiritual world. Therefore, it is necessary that the one who wishes to understand through his soul the truths that are to come through Spiritual Science develop these two qualities more and more: a love for spiritual life, which leads him to actively bring the spiritual world closer, and this is the surest way to enable us to bring these things to us again and again—and calmness, peace of mind, a calmness that does not seek to bring about success through vanity and ambition, but rather seeks to be graced, that can wait for inspiration. This waiting is difficult in concrete cases. But a thought that we should hold in our souls again and again can lead us beyond many things. It is hard to grasp because it goes very much against our vanity. This thought is that, in the context of the world, it makes no difference whether something happens through us or through another person. This should not deter us from doing everything that falls to us to accomplish; it should not deter us from our duty, but it should deter us from haste and restlessness. How much every person loves to be capable, to be able to do something. It takes a certain resignation to love just as much that and when another person can do something. One should not love a thing because one does it oneself, but love it because it exists in the world, regardless of whether through us or through others. This thought surely leads us to selflessness if we keep it in mind. Such dispositions are necessary to attune oneself to the spiritual world, so as not only to keep seeking, but also to understand what is being sought. Far more important than visions—which must certainly be present as well—are these states of mind, and it is precisely so that we may judge the visions that such states of mind are necessary.

[ 11 ] Visions—one need only utter this word, and anyone who has given it even a little thought knows what is actually meant by visions—but our entire life after death, once the Kamaloka is over, is in fact a life of visions. When a person has passed through the gate of death, left the Kamaloka behind, and entered the actual spiritual world, they live in a world that is just as if they were surrounded on all sides by nothing but visions; only these visions are images of realities. And one can very well say that just as we perceive the physical world through colors conjured up by the eye and through sounds conveyed by the ear, we also perceive the spiritual world—even after we have passed through the gate of death—as visions into which we are woven. Now, because I wish to speak more intimately about these things, I will have much to say in a more narrative form, which, when first heard, may seem somewhat grotesque, but it arises precisely from genuine spiritual research.

[ 12 ] The Kamaloka itself, when described in terms of its nature, is as I have described it in my *Theosophy*; but it can also be characterized in other ways. Once a person has passed through the gate of death, where does he find himself? one might ask. And one can answer this question: Where, then, is the human being during their time in the Kamaloka? One can even express, in terms that can be physically grasped, the space where the human being is during their Kamaloka life. If you imagine the space between the Earth and the Moon, the human being detached from the Earth but still very much within the space between the Earth and the Moon, within that spherical space that results when one regards the Moon’s orbit as the outermost ring—away from the Earth, yet within this space—that is where the human being is during the Kamaloka period. When the Kamaloka period is over, the human being leaves this circle and goes out into the actual celestial space. As I said, it sounds grotesque, but it is so. In this regard as well, one realizes through truly conscientious research that these things are the opposite of those on the physical plane here. We are bound to the Earth from the outside, surrounded by the earthly realm and separated from the celestial spheres; after death, the Earth is removed from us, and we are united with the celestial spheres. As long as we are within the lunar sphere, we are in the Kamaloka, which means that we still have the desire to be connected to the Earth, and we emerge when, through life in the Kamaloka, we have learned to renounce emotions, passions, and desires. One must now create a mental image of life in the spiritual world differently than one is accustomed to here. There we are spread out across the entire space; there we feel ourselves to be everywhere within the whole space. Therefore, life—whether that of an initiate or of a human being after death—is a feeling of spreading out into space, and one becomes so vast after death or as an initiate that one is then bounded by the lunar cycle just as one is now by the skin. Yes, that is simply how it is, and it does no good to express such things in words that the present age finds easier to accept, for that does not express them more accurately. In a public lecture, one must omit such shocking things, but for those who have been engaged in Spiritual Science for a long time, it is good to name things by their true names.

[ 13 ] Then, after the life in Kamaloka, we continue to grow, and this now depends on certain qualities we have already acquired here. For a long time after death, the way we are able to expand into the next sphere depends on the moral character, ethical concepts, and feelings we have developed on Earth. One might say that the person who has developed the qualities of compassion and love—the qualities usually described as morally good—integrates into the next sphere in such a way that they can become acquainted with the beings who are otherwise in that sphere and live together with them, whereas the person who brings deficient morality into this sphere lives there like a hermit. This is the best way to describe it: morality prepares us for coexistence with the spiritual world; the immorality of our hearts, as well as of our thoughts and behavior in the physical world, condemns us to a tormenting solitude in which we always long to get to know the other but cannot. And whether as a hermit or as a sociable spirit who is a blessing in the spiritual world, we settle into the second sphere, which in occultism has always been called the sphere of Mercury. Today it is called Venus in external astronomy; as is well known, a reversal of names has taken place, as has often been said. Human beings extend their being as far as the orbit of today’s morning and evening star, whereas in the past they extended only as far as the Moon. Now something peculiar occurs. Up to the lunar sphere, we are still engaged with earthly conditions, but even beyond that, the connection to Earth has not entirely crumbled; we still know everything we have done and thought on Earth; just as we can now remember something, so we know it, and—you see, my dear friends—once again, remembering is easily the torment!—If we are still living on Earth and have wronged a person, or have not loved sufficiently a person whom we ought to love, it is up to us to avert the consequences; we can go to them and come to terms with them and the like. From the Mercury sphere onward, this is no longer the case. We can perceive all circumstances in our memory, and these remain intact, but we can no longer change them.

[ 14 ] Let us suppose that someone has died before us whom, given the circumstances on earth, we really should have loved but did not love enough. We meet them—we do indeed meet again after death the people with whom we were connected—but we meet them just as we were toward them, and we cannot change that at first. So a sense of reproach lives within us that we did not love them enough, but we can no longer change our character here so that we might love them a little more now. What we established on Earth remains; we cannot change it. Precisely this fact—that we enter there into the true, unchangeable perceptions regarding love—came to me very strongly in my recent research this summer, and through such things one becomes aware of many things that otherwise escape human notice, and I would also like to give you, so to speak, a sense of this. Through the knowledge of the spiritual world, one thus comes to know this peculiar fact: that one lives in the sphere of Mercury, as I said, with all people in the old relationships that cannot be changed for the time being. Looking back and developing what one has already developed—that is how one lives.

[ 15 ] Well, I can safely say that I have spent a great deal of time with Homer in my life, but one passage only became fully clear to me when what I just spoke of confronted me so powerfully in my occult research; this is the passage where Homer calls the realm after death the land of shadows, where nothing can be transformed. One can interpret it intellectually, but what the artist intends to say about the spiritual world—speaking as a prophet—one comes to understand only after making the relevant discovery in spiritual research. This is true of every true artist; he need not be aware in his everyday thoughts of what flows to him through inspiration. And what humanity has received through its artists over the centuries will not fade away with the spread of the spiritual movement, but will be deepened more and more, and people will certainly come to realize the true nature of their artists when, through occult research, they enter the spiritual world—that world from which artists draw their inspiration. However, those who are often regarded as artists in a given age but are not will not receive such enlightenment. Many figures of the day will be recognized as having no inspiration from the spiritual world.

[ 16 ] In occultism, the next sphere can be called the Venus Sphere; there we extend our being as far as Mercury, which is occultly called Venus; that is as far as we extend our being. In this sphere, indeed, there is again something that exerts a great influence on human beings, and this influence is such that the one who possesses it becomes, so to speak, a sociable spirit, while the one who lacks it becomes a lonely spirit; the absence of this something is terribly tormenting—this is the religious element. The more religious a disposition we have acquired, the more sociable spirits we become in this sphere. People who lack a religious disposition shut themselves off into beings who, so to speak, cannot go beyond a certain shell or covering that spreads around them. We get to know, let us say, our friends, even though they are recluses, but we cannot get close to them; we always feel as if we had to break through a shell, which we cannot, however, break through. If we lack religious inwardness, we freeze, so to speak, in this Venus sphere.

[ 17 ] Then comes a sphere—as strange as it may sound—where, when a person—and everyone does this after death—immerses themselves in this sphere, they feel themselves expanding all the way to our sun. It won’t be long before people begin to think of the celestial bodies differently than modern astronomy assumes. We ourselves are connected to this sun; there is a time between death and a new birth when we have become a solar being. But now something else is necessary: for the first sphere, a moral life; for the Venus sphere, a religious life; for the solar sphere, it is necessary that we truly know the nature and essence of the solar spirits, namely the Chief Solar Spirit, Christ, and that we have established a connection to him while on Earth. The situation with this connection is as follows: When people still possessed the ancient gift of clairvoyance, they found this connection by living into it through the ancient divine grace; that then disappeared, and the Mystery of Golgotha, with its preparation through the Old Testament, was there to make the solar being comprehensible to humanity. Today, the old way—in which, since the Mystery of Golgotha, people have more naively striven toward Christ—is no longer sufficient; today, Spiritual Science is to make the world comprehensible from the perspective of a solar being. The first time this was truly understood was during the Middle Ages, when the Grail legend took root within Europe in its actual, deeper meaning. Through an understanding of what is now being given by the spiritual movement, we are reclaiming precisely what was brought by the High Solar Spirit, Christ, who descended and has now become the Earth Spirit through the Mystery of Golgotha. This impulse, given through the Mystery of Golgotha, is capable of uniting all religious confessions across the entire globe in peace within Spiritual Science. This remains the fundamental requirement of Spiritual Science: to treat every religion with equal devotion, to give no religion preference for any external reasons. If, for example, our movement is accused of placing the Mystery of Golgotha at the center of world evolution and that this constitutes a preference for the Christian religion, then this is a completely unjust accusation. Let us first understand what such a reproach would actually entail. If a Buddhist or a Brahmin were to come to us and make this accusation, we would say to him: Does it really matter what is written in religious books, and is it a disadvantage to a religion if one does not reject everything that is not written in these books? Can’t every Buddhist accept the Copernican worldview without ceasing to be a Buddhist? That is a step forward for humanity as a whole. And so the realization that the Mystery of Golgotha stands at the center of world development is a step forward for the entire development of humanity, whether or not it is written in the ancient books, and to expect us, so to speak, not to think this way from the Chinese or Buddhist religion would be the same as if all of Europe were forbidden by these religions to accept the Copernican worldview because it is not in their books. But it is precisely this understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha—when one recognizes what took place there—that makes us a social spirit after death in the solar sphere. In general, it is this: the moment we go beyond the moon, something occurs that we can now also describe spiritually and inwardly—we are surrounded by visions. When we encounter a deceased friend after death, it is a vision, but it is he himself; he lives within this reality; yet these are visions built upon the memory of what we have done here.

[ 18 ] Later, beyond the lunar sphere, this is still the case, but then the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies shine upon us. It is as if the sun rises and gilds the clouds. So it is in the solar sphere. But we only come to know the spiritual hierarchies in the Mercury sphere when we are filled with a religious disposition, and in the solar sphere only when we are filled with a Yahwist-Christian mood. Then the outer spiritual beings approach us. Again, something highly remarkable occurs, and what I have said is the result of objective occult research: Beyond the Moon, the human being is woven like a cloud of spirit and is illuminated by the spiritual beings as soon as he enters the Mercury sphere. That is why the Greeks called Mercury the messenger of the gods, because in this sphere high spiritual beings illuminate the human being. These are the great, powerful impressions we receive when, from the realm of occult research, we develop what humanity has created, what has been given as art and as myth.

[ 19 ] Thus, having been permeated by Christ, we enter the solar sphere. Then we continue on and enter a region where the Sun lies beneath us, just as the Earth once lay beneath us. We begin to look back at the Sun—and then something very strange begins to happen. At that moment, it becomes clear to us that we are beginning to recognize yet another spirit in its own peculiar way: the spirit of Lucifer.

[ 20 ] We cannot truly understand who Lucifer is—if not through occult science or initiation beforehand, then certainly not through the mere experience of life after death. Only when we have arrived beyond the solar sphere do we learn to recognize him as he was before he became Lucifer, when he was still a brother of Christ. For the fact that he became different only occurred at the time when Lucifer remained behind and detached himself from the progress of the cosmos. And the evil he is capable of doing extends only as far as the Sun. Above that there is another sphere where Lucifer can carry out his activity as it was before his detachment. There is no harm in what he develops there, and if we have made ourselves one with the Mystery of Golgotha in the right way, we go, guided by Christ and received by Lucifer, out into the even further spheres of the universe in the right way. The name Lucifer is well chosen, just as the ancients chose wise names in general. When we have the sun beneath us, the sunlight is also beneath us. Then we need a new bearer of light to shine out for us into outer space. We then enter the sphere of Mars. As long as we were beneath the sun, we looked out toward the sun; now the sun is beneath us, and we look out into the vast expanse of space. And we perceive this vast outer space through what is always spoken of yet so little understood—in the true sense, through the music of the spheres, through a kind of spiritual music. The visions into which we have been immersed then take on less and less significance, while what we hear and perceive spiritually gains ever greater and greater significance. There the celestial bodies do not appear to us in such a way that we measure, as earthly astronomers do, whether one moves quickly or slowly—the rapid or slow harmonization produces the sound of the cosmic harmony. And what the human being experiences inwardly in this process is that he feels more and more: the only thing that remains to him in this region is what he has absorbed as spiritual on Earth. Through this, they develop their acquaintance with the beings of this sphere; they remain a sociable spirit. People who shut themselves off from the spiritual today do not enter the spiritual world, despite their moral conduct or religious life. There is nothing to be done about it. It is, of course, entirely possible that such people will join in the next incarnation. All those of a materialistic disposition, when they pass beyond the Sun into the sphere of Mars, become hermits; it is no different. As foolish as this might seem to some, it is nevertheless true; the entire Monist League will not be able to continue to exist once its followers have reached the sphere of the Sun, because its followers cannot come together, since each one is a hermit.

[ 21 ] On Mars, the human being who has attained spiritual understanding here on Earth will have yet another experience. And since we are already speaking more intimately today, this may also be stated. One might well ask, particularly within our worldview as we are developing it as Spiritual Science in the West: What happened to a spirit such as the Buddha after his last incarnation on Earth? I have already pointed this out, haven’t I? The Buddha underwent his last incarnation as Gautama six hundred years before Christ. If you have followed my lectures closely, you will know that he, so to speak, worked once more—he no longer needed to incarnate as the Buddha—he worked only spiritually at the birth of the boy Luke-Jesus. Spiritually, he worked down from higher spheres onto the Earth; but where is he himself? In Sweden, in Norrköping, I alluded to an even later working of the Buddha upon the Earth. Thus, in the eighth century, there was a place of initiation in Europe, on the Black Sea, where the Buddha lived spiritually within a disciple—namely, a disciple who later became Francis of Assisi. Francis of Assisi was thus, in his earlier incarnation in the eighth century, a disciple of the Buddha and had absorbed all the qualities necessary to work in this peculiar way, as he did as Francis of Assisi. In many respects, his community cannot be distinguished from the followers of the Buddha, except that one group were followers of the Buddha and the other were Christians. This was a consequence of his having been a disciple of the Buddha—the spiritual Buddha—in his previous life. —But where is the Buddha himself, where is he who lived as Gautama? He has become for Mars what Christ became for the Earth; he has carried out a kind of Mystery of Golgotha for Mars, and the Buddha has brought about the peculiar redemption of the Martians; he lives there among them. And for him, his earthly life was precisely the right preparation for redeeming the people of Mars; yet his redemption was not like the Mystery of Golgotha, but something different.

[ 22 ] Spiritually, however, a person lives in the Mars sphere during the period described; then they continue on, eventually entering the Jupiter sphere. In the sphere of Jupiter, the connection with the Earth—which previously still existed to some extent—becomes, so to speak, completely meaningless for the human being; the Sun still exerts a slight influence on the human being, whereas the cosmos exerts a powerful influence on him. This is how it presents itself: Everything acts in from the outside, and the human being absorbs the cosmic. The entire cosmos acts precisely through the harmony of the spheres, which takes on ever-changing forms the further we explore life between death and a new birth. It is difficult to characterize this life, this change in the harmony of the spheres; since these things cannot be expressed in earthly words, one might say by way of comparison: The music of the spheres changes during the passage from Mars to Jupiter in such a way that one can only describe it as the transition from orchestral to vocal music. It becomes more and more a tone, that which permeates the tone at the same time as the meaningful, as the expression of being and essence. The music of the spheres acquires content as we enter the sphere of Jupiter, and in the sphere of Saturn it becomes complete content, the expression of the World Word from which all things are created—and this is what is meant in the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word…” This Word is the resounding of cosmic law and wisdom. Then, when prepared—the spiritual human goes further, the non-spiritual less so—the human proceeds into even further spheres, but they also pass into a state entirely different from the one in which they were before. And if one were to characterize this later state, one would have to say: From the point where the human being has advanced beyond Saturn, a spiritual sleep begins, whereas what preceded it was a spiritual waking. Consciousness now subsides; a drowsiness sets in, and this drowsiness in turn allows the human being to experience things different from what he has experienced before. Just as we dispel fatigue in sleep and replenish our strength, so too does the dimming of consciousness allow a flow of spiritual forces from the cosmos to enter, when we have, so to speak, become a vast, vast spiritual sphere. First we sensed it, then we heard it as a world orchestra, then it sang, then we heard it as a word, then we fall asleep and it permeates us, and during this time we pass back through all these spheres as our consciousness subsides; our consciousness grows ever more dull, we contract, slowly or quickly depending on our karma, and during this contraction the forces coming from the solar system reappear. We return from sphere to sphere. We are not receptive to the lunar sphere when we return from the cosmos; we pass through it, so to speak, untouched and unimpeded, and then we are in such a state that we contract and contract, so that we can unite with the tiny human embryo, which then undergoes its development before birth. And there will be nothing true in all of physiology and embryology if this does not come to you from occult research, not from these facts; for the human embryo is a reflection of the great cosmos. It carries the entire cosmos within itself; what happens materially between conception and birth and forms as a human being, but also what the human being has undergone in the sleep of the worlds, it carries within itself as a force in the embryonic state.

[ 23 ] Here we touch upon a wondrous mystery that, in our time, has essentially been hinted at and portrayed only by artists, but it will certainly be understood even better—let us say, the Tristan question—than what lives within it, the Tristan mood, once we come to feel in the love of Tristan and Isolde the influx of the entire cosmos, which we come to know in its true form precisely through passing through the entire development of the human being from death toward a new birth. What is drawn in from the cosmos, what has been brought in from Saturn, acts upon lovers who are brought together. Many things are made into a cosmic event; only, it must not be analyzed intellectually, but one must feel what connects human beings in reality with the entire cosmos. Therefore, Spiritual Science will certainly lead humanity to develop a new piety, which is a true, genuine religiosity, in that what often manifests as the smallest thing appears to have arisen from the cosmos. We learn to connect what lives in the human breast to its origin in the right, wise way when we view it in connection with the cosmos. Thus, what emanates from Spiritual Science can pour out a truly new mood over the whole of life, over the whole of humanity that is to come. Artists have prepared the ground for it, but the true understanding must in many cases first be created precisely through this spiritual mood.

[ 24 ] These are just a few insights I wanted to share with you, based specifically on my recent in-depth research into human life between death and rebirth. There is actually nothing in Spiritual Science that does not simultaneously touch us in our deepest sensibilities, in our deepest feelings; nothing remains a mental image if we grasp and understand it correctly. A flower brings us more joy when we look at it than when a botanist dissects it. The distant world of the stars can awaken a sense of foreboding within us, but what lives there only becomes clear to us when we can lift ourselves with our soul into the spheres. The plant loses something when it is dissected; the world of the stars loses nothing when we go out into it and recognize how the spirit is connected to it.

[ 25 ] Kant uttered a curious remark, but only as someone who had grasped ethics one-sidedly: two things struck him in a peculiar way—the starry sky above him and the moral world within him. Both are actually the same; we merely take them into ourselves from the celestial realms. If we possess something moral, if we are born with it, it is because, as we fall asleep—during our re-evolution—the sphere of Mercury has been able to give us much, and the sphere of Venus, when we emerge with religious feelings. Just as we wake up in the morning here in earthly life strengthened, with reawakened powers, so are we born with what the cosmos has given us as a strengthening force; we can receive it according to our karma. To the extent that karma permits, the cosmos can give us these powers, so that we are born with them as predispositions.

[ 26 ] Thus, life between death and rebirth is divided into two parts. At first, it is unchangeable. We then live our way upward; beings approach us; we fall asleep, and then it becomes changeable; the forces with which we are born enter into us. When we consider this development of the human being in this way, we see at the same time that, as the human being develops after death, they first live in a world of visions. What the human being is in spirit and soul, they come to recognize later. Then the beings come from outside, who, just as the golden morning sunlight illuminates the things of the outer world, now illuminate us; thus we live our way upward, thus the spiritual world penetrates us. This living into the spiritual world from the outside first comes to the fore when what we ourselves are in our visionary world has, so to speak, become fully mature, when we as human beings encounter the beings of the spiritual world who approach us from all sides like rays.

[ 27 ] Now imagine yourself in the spiritual world, as if you were an observer. There, the human being ascends as a cloud of vision; there, he is truly what he actually is. Then the beings approach him and illuminate him from the outside. You cannot see the rose in the dark; when we turn on the light, the light falls on the rose, and that is why we see the rose as it is. It is the same when a human being ventures out into the spiritual world: the light of the spiritual beings comes to him. But there is a moment when the human being is clearly visible, when he is illuminated by the light of the hierarchies, so that he actually reflects the entire outer world, and then the entire cosmos appears to be reflected back from the human being. So you can imagine: first you continue to live as a cloud that is not sufficiently illuminated, then you reflect the light of the cosmos back, and then you dissolve. There is such a moment when the human being reflects the cosmic light. One can rise to that point. Dante says in his *Divina Commedia* that in a certain part of the spiritual world one sees God as a human being. This passage is meant literally; it cannot be understood any other way. One can accept it as a beautiful thing, as the aesthetes do, but one cannot understand its inner meaning. This is another such case where we see the spiritual world reflected in the works of artists; this is especially true of the works of the great composers of recent times, such as Beethoven, Wagner, and Bruckner. One will feel there as I did a few days ago, when I actually resisted a realization because it was too startling. In Florence there is the Medici Chapel, where Michelangelo created the two Medici monuments and four allegorical figures: “Day and Night, Dawn and Dusk.” It is easy to speak of cold allegory; but when one looks at the four figures, they appear to be something other than cold allegories. There is a figure called “Night.” You see, the fact that research in this field is not particularly well-developed has already shown me that it is generally accepted that, of the two Medici monuments of Lorenzo and Giuliano, Lorenzo is the one considered to be the contemplative one. Now, from an occult point of view, it has become clear to me that the opposite is true, for the one whom historians refer to as Lorenzo is Giuliano, and vice versa. This can also be historically proven based on the character of the two personalities. The monuments stand on pedestals; a mix-up has likely occurred over the course of time. That is not what I actually wanted to say; I merely wanted to point out that there is a certain lack of precision in external research.

[ 28 ] One of the figures, the one referred to as “Night,” is particularly well-suited for artistic study: the gestures, the posture of the resting body, the head resting on the hand, the arm resting on the leg—how it is positioned. If one studies all of this artistically, one can then summarize the whole by saying: When the etheric body is particularly active in a human being, and if this were to be depicted, it would have to be depicted in this way; this is expressed in the gesture, in the outward appearance, when the human being is at rest. When a human being sleeps, the etheric body is most active. Michelangelo created the most appropriate posture in “The Night.” The way the figure lies there is the effective expression of the active etheric body, the Life-Body.

[ 29 ] When one moves on to the “Day” that lies on the other side, this is the most appropriate expression for the ego; the figure of “Dawn” for the astral body, and that of “Evening” for the physical body. These are not allegories, but truths drawn from life, immortalized there with a depth of immense artistic significance. I resisted this realization, but the more closely I studied it, the clearer it became. I am no longer surprised by a legend that arose in Florence at that time. It was said that Michelangelo had power over the “Night”; when he was alone with her in the chapel, she would rise and walk about. If she is the expression of the etheric body, it is no wonder. I only wanted to say how clear and vivid everything becomes when we learn more and more to view everything from the standpoint of occultism. |

[ 30 ] But the greatest contribution to the development of spiritual life and culture is made when one person approaches another in a way that presupposes and senses the occult, the hidden. Then the right relationship between human beings will be achieved, and love will enter the human soul in the form in which it is truly and genuinely human—where one person approaches another in such a way that one person is a sacred mystery to the other. It is only in this attitude that the true nature of human love is cultivated.

[ 31 ] Thus, Spiritual Science will not be something that constantly needs to emphasize the outward cultivation of universal love for humanity, but rather it will be that which receives this love for humanity through true and genuine insight into the life of the human soul.