The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Life Between Death and a New Birth I

[ 1 ] The world of occult facts—as we have often emphasized—is not as easy to investigate and describe as is very often assumed, and anyone who wishes to proceed conscientiously in this field will repeatedly find themselves compelled to reexamine certain important chapters of spiritual research, so to speak. And so, in recent months, among other things, I have once again found myself examining a chapter that we have already discussed here on several occasions. Such new investigations inevitably yield new perspectives. The chapter in question, which we wish to describe briefly today—even if only in outline form—concerns life between death and a new birth. When it is said that new perspectives have emerged in this process, this should not be taken to mean that what was said earlier should now be thought of as having changed in any way. That is certainly not the case with this chapter. But it is a fact of the study of supersensible realities that one can truly come close to them only when one approaches them from the most diverse perspectives. And so we may now have to present some of what, for example, in my *Theosophy* or *Esoteric Science* was described more from the perspective of immediate human experience, from a more universal standpoint. The things are the same, but one should not believe that one already knows them simply because one has received a characterization of them from a single perspective. Occult facts, in particular, are such that one must, as it were, walk around them and view them from the most diverse angles. In assessing these matters communicated by Spiritual Science, the most common mistake is made by people who, let us say, have just heard a few remarks on a subject and lack the patience to truly allow everything that can be said to sink in from the most diverse perspectives. Then even for ordinary common sense, the understanding comes into play of which we spoke yesterday in the public lecture on “Truths of Spiritual Research.” Today we do not wish to begin so much where life after death, which we usually call the Kamaloka, begins, but mainly where Kamaloka life comes to an end and life in the spiritual world begins—mainly from the end of Kamaloka life until re-entry into a new earthly life—and where the forces are forming for a new incarnation.

[ 2 ] You know that clairvoyant insight into the spiritual world places one, in a certain sense, in the same situation as that of a human being between death and a new birth, so that during initiation one experiences precisely what is also experienced between death and a new birth, albeit in a somewhat different way. And this, of course, makes it possible to speak about these things and share some insights regarding them. I would like to begin by discussing two important aspects of clairvoyant perception that can also lead to an understanding of life after death. First of all, it has often been pointed out how different life in the supersensible world is from life here in the physical, sensory world. When we ascend into the supersensible world, for example, the entire process of cognition is different from what it is here in the physical world. Here in the physical world, we move through this world, so to speak, and things approach our senses; things make their impressions of color and light on our eyes, auditory impressions on our ears, and other impressions on our other sense organs. We perceive things; we move through the world and must move through the world if we wish to perceive things, and it does us no good to perceive anything that is in a distant place unless we go there; in short, we must be active in the world of the senses; we must move if we wish to perceive things. The exact opposite applies to perceptions in the supersensible world. The calmer we become in our soul, the more we exclude, so to speak, all inner agitation, the less we seek out any object, the less we can strive for that object to come to us, the more we can wait—the more surely the perception of the object occurs, and the truer is then the sensation, the experience, that we can have of the object. In the supersensible world, we must allow things to come to us; that is the essential point. We must acquire inner calm; then things will come to us.

[ 3 ] And the second point I would like to address is this: when we enter the supersensible world, we must take into account that the entire way in which this supersensible world presents itself to us depends on what we bring with us from the sensory world—from our ordinary human-sensory world—into this supersensible world. This sometimes causes quite serious spiritual difficulties in the supersensible world. It may sometimes be quite painful for us in the sensory world when we know that we love a person less than we actually ought to, than he deserves to be loved by us. For those who enter the supersensible world burdened by the fact that they love a person less than that person should be loved, this stands before the spiritual eye with a much, much greater intensity than it can ever appear before our souls here in the physical-sensory world. But now something else comes into play, and this is the immensely important factor that can often cause the greatest soul-pain precisely to the clairvoyant consciousness. All the powers we can draw from the supersensible world, everything we can gain in the supersensible world, cannot help us in any way to improve a soul relationship that we recognize as wrong in the physical world, for example through powers we draw from the supersensible world. This creates, in contrast to all that can torment us in the sensory world, something even more tormenting in the supersensory world; there is a certain feeling of powerlessness in the face of the necessary working out of karma, which must, after all, take place in the sensory-physical world.

[ 4 ] You see, these two things, which the student of occult science encounters very soon after making even a little progress, immediately arise in the life between death and a new birth. Let us just take the case where, between death and a new birth—shortly after our death—we encounter human beings who may have died before us here in the physical world. We meet them; we can sense the entire relationship we had with them here in the physical world. We are, so to speak, together with someone who died before us, or at the same time as us, or after us, and we feel: “This is exactly how you related to this person in life; this was your relationship with them.” But whereas in the physical world, if we realize, for example, that we have wronged someone in our feelings or actions, we are able to do something about it to make amends, in the life after death we are by no means able to do so immediately. We see clearly: This is the state of our relationship, but we see that it is impossible, within this supersensible world, to change anything—even from the deepest insight that it should be different. It must first remain as it is. This is the oppressive nature of many a reproach: that one clearly sees how the relationship should not have been, but that one must leave it as it is, while always having the feeling that it should be different. And this will apply to the entire life after death. The things we know we did not do correctly in life, we perceive all the more deeply after death; but we must leave them as they are, must continue to live with them as they are. We look back, as it were, on what we have done, but we must live out the full consequences of what we have done, and have the clear experience that we cannot change anything about it.

[ 5 ] This applies not only to our relationships with other people, but also to our entire spiritual life after death. For this spiritual life depends on many factors. First, I would like to describe this life after death a little, as if through imaginative visions. If one takes the terms “visions” or “imaginations” in the sense discussed yesterday, for example, there can be no misunderstanding regarding what is now to be said. While here on earth a person perceives the sensory world through their organs, after death they live, so to speak, in a world of visions—except that these visions are reflections of reality. Just as we do not directly perceive the inner essence of the rose here in the physical world, but rather its red color externally, so we do not directly perceive a deceased friend or brother or the like, but what we have after death is the visionary image. We are, so to speak, within the cloud of our visions, but we know quite precisely: we are together with the other; it is a real relationship, indeed a much more real one than can exist here on Earth between human beings. Through the image we perceive the being. In the early period, and even after the Kamaloka period, the visions surrounding us and experienced by us are such that they actually mostly refer back to what we have experienced here on Earth, in the sense indicated. We know, let us say, that there is a deceased friend here in the spiritual world outside of us; we perceive him through our vision. We have this feeling of being together with him in its entirety; we know how we belong together with him. But what we perceive primarily is what took place here on earth with him; that is what initially takes shape in our vision. An aftereffect of our earthly circumstances is initially the main focus of our experience; just as, even after the kamaloka period, we continue to live, in a certain sense, with the consequences of our earthly existence. And this cloud of visions that envelops us is entirely dependent on how we spent our earthly life. Only gradually, as time passes between death and a new birth, does the situation present itself to the imaginative perception in such a way that the human being, who is spiritually as if wrapped in his own imaginations, then begins to appear to the imagination like a cloud that is at first dark—that would be the human being in the early period following the Kamaloka period— then this cloud begins to be illuminated from one side, as when we see a cloud glowing in the morning light of the sun. When inspiration then comes and is to explain this image, it turns out: We first live in the world, in the cloud of our own earthly experiences, are, as it were, enveloped in it, and are only able to form a relationship with the beings with whom we were together on earth—that is, primarily with people who have died or who have the possibility of ascending with their souls from earth into the spiritual world. But what is expressed there for the imaginative world—that the cloud of our being is illuminated from one side as by a glimmering light that spreads around—testifies that we are beginning to settle into the approach of the hierarchies to our own being. The beings of the higher hierarchies are drawing near to us; we are gradually settling into the world of higher spirituality. Previously, we had connections only with the world we brought with us; then the life of the higher hierarchies begins to shine upon us and penetrate into us; we come to share in the life of the beings of the higher hierarchies; we settle more and more into the world of the higher hierarchies. But in order to understand how we become attuned, it is necessary that we actually gain insight into the proportions of our being—so to speak—as perceived through imaginative knowledge, by withdrawing from our physical body with our soul being.

[ 6 ] That is indeed what we do when we pass through the gate of death. There, our being actually expands; there, our being grows ever larger and larger. It is a difficult mental image to grasp, but it is nonetheless true. It is only here on Earth that we are tempted to believe that we are as big as the limits of our skin. It is a growing out into endless space, so to speak, a process of becoming ever larger and larger. And when we reach the end of the Kamaloka period, we are literally so large that we extend to the orbit that the Moon makes around the Earth. So, we become very, very large. We become, as the occultist says, lunar inhabitants; but that means we expand our being so far that our outer boundary coincides with the circle the Moon describes around the Earth. I cannot go into the relative positions of the planets today, but you will find clarification of what appears to be incorrect in external astronomy if you compare these matters with the lecture series held in Düsseldorf on “Spiritual Hierarchies and Their Reflection in the Physical World.” And then we continue to expand out into space, into our entire planetary system, and then initially grow into what the occultist calls the Mercury sphere. That is to say, we become—within the limits you set for yourselves, if you understand things correctly—we become inhabitants of Mercury after the Kamaloka period, and we certainly feel then that we inhabit outer space. Just as we feel ourselves to be inhabitants of the Earth during our physical existence, so do we feel ourselves to be inhabitants of Mercury. I cannot describe in detail what this is like, but the consciousness is definitely present: we are now not confined to such a small part of space as we are on Earth, but our entire being actually encompasses this vast expanse, which is bounded by the orbit described by Mercury. The time we are experiencing there, and how we experience it, also depends on how we have prepared ourselves here on Earth, what forces we have absorbed here, in order to grow into this Mercury sphere in the right or wrong way.

[ 7 ] In occult investigation, one can now compare two people—or several people, but let’s start with two—in order to gain insight into this fact. And there has been a comparison, for example, between the soul of a person who passed through the gate of death in an immoral state and the soul of a person who passed through the gate of death in a moral state. A considerable difference emerges. It becomes apparent very quickly what the difference is, at least initially, when it comes to the relationship of one person to others whom they encounter after death. In the case of the person with a moral state of mind, the images in which the soul is enveloped are indeed present; but the person finds everywhere the possibility, so to speak, of being together with these other people to a certain extent. That is what the moral state of the soul accomplishes. Whereas with an immoral state of the soul, what happens is that the person becomes what one might call a kind of hermit in the spiritual world. For example, they know that a person who is also in the spiritual world knew them on Earth; they know that they are together with that person, but they cannot find a way, so to speak, to emerge from the prison of their imaginative cloud and approach them. Morality makes us a social being in the spiritual world, a being capable of forming relationships with other beings; immorality makes us a hermit in the spiritual world, casting us into solitude. And this is actually an important causal connection between events that take place here on Earth with our soul and what occurs between death and a new birth.

[ 8 ] And so it continues. After passing through the sphere of Mercury in the occult sense, we experience a further phase—the so-called sphere of Venus—and feel ourselves to be inhabitants of Venus. It is there, between Mercury and Venus, that our cloud is gradually illuminated from the outside, so to speak, and where the beings of the higher hierarchies can approach human beings. But now it depends again on whether we have prepared ourselves in the right way to be accepted into the ranks of the hierarchies as sociable spirits, to be able to have a relationship with them, or whether, although we know they are there, we must pass everyone by like hermits, moving through the spiritual world as hermits. And in this Venus sphere, it again depends on something else whether we are social spirits or spirits wandering in solitude. While in the previous sphere it is only possible to be a sociable spirit if we have prepared ourselves for it through morality on Earth, the power that essentially leads us to sociability—that is, to a certain social life in the Venus sphere—is the religious life, the religious mood of the soul. And we are most likely to condemn ourselves to a life of solitude in this Venus sphere if, during our earthly life, we have not developed a religious mood, a sense of our belonging to the infinite, to the divine. Indeed, it is precisely the case that, as occult observation reveals, a person—for example, through a mere atheistic inclination, through a rejection of any connection between their finitude and the infinite—imprisons themselves within the confines of their own sphere. And it is true when it is said that the so-called Monist League, in which people also unite socially across the globe, through its creed actually brings about the situation where those who are united within it by a creed not inclined toward a religious mood are well prepared for the fact that they will then no longer be able to form a Monist League, but rather that each person will truly be sitting in their own prison.

[ 9 ] This is not something intended to justify a judgment, but rather something that presents itself to occult observation as an inevitable consequence of earthly religious or non-religious sentiments. Now we know, of course, that the most diverse religions have been founded on Earth, essentially in the course of human development from a common source. They were founded in such a way that, drawing from this common source, the individual founders of religions took into account the temperaments of the individual peoples, the climate, and all the factors to which the religions had to be adapted. Thus, naturally, the souls did not come into this sphere of Venus with a general religious disposition, but rather with the disposition of their particular religious denomination. Even if one has a feeling for the spiritual, for the eternal, for the divine, but this feeling is colored by this or that religious denomination, this in turn causes one to become a social being only for those who, so to speak, have the same feelings, who lived in the same religious denomination here on Earth. And that is why, particularly in the Venus sphere, we find people separated according to their specific religious creeds. As we know, people on our Earth have hitherto been divided into races, more according to external characteristics. Since racial and tribal affiliations have something to do with religious creeds, this configuration of groups in the Venus sphere generally—but only generally—corresponds somewhat to how people are grouped here on Earth, though not exactly, because there people group themselves solely according to their understanding of a particular religious creed. In this way, people, as it were, confine themselves within certain boundaries, within provinces, in that they have feelings only for their specific religious beliefs. In the Mercury sphere, a person still shows a greater degree of understanding for the people with whom they were connected here on Earth, to whom they had a certain relationship. If they had a moral disposition of soul, then during the Mercury sphere they essentially associate with the people with whom a relationship had already been established here. During the Venus sphere, people are more absorbed into the great religious communities into which they felt accepted due to the nature of their soul here in earthly existence.

[ 10 ] The next sphere that human beings must enter is the solar sphere. And indeed, between death and a new birth, we come to feel ourselves as inhabitants of the sun for a certain time, that is, to know that we are connected to the sun. During this time, we come to know the very nature of the Sun, which is quite different from how physical astronomy describes it today. And once again, the point is that we must be able to settle into the solar sphere in the right way. In the solar sphere, one thing in particular confronts us: a strong need arises in the soul, as if through an elemental force, that all differences between human souls must cease. While in the Mercury sphere we are more or less integrated into the circle with which we had a relationship on Earth, and while in the Venus sphere we feel at home through a religious life within the circles that shared our religious sensibilities on Earth, and we can still feel a certain degree of satisfaction merely within these communities, the soul feels deep loneliness on the Sun when it feels condemned for lacking understanding of all the souls who are transferred from Earth into this solar sphere between death and a new birth. Now, in the early days of human evolution, it was indeed the case that during the Venus sphere, souls were, so to speak, situated in the various religious provinces, finding and offering their understanding there; and because all religions stem from a common source, when a person passed into the solar sphere, had, as it were, so much of the old common heritage of all religious creeds that he was given the opportunity to approach all other souls in the solar sphere and to be with them, to understand them, to cultivate common ground with them, and to be of a convivial spirit with them.

[ 11 ] The souls of earlier stages of human development could do little on their own to satisfy this longing that arose; but because a universal human core existed within the souls without human intervention, the souls found the possibility of interacting with souls of other religious denominations beyond their own religious affiliation. In ancient Brahmanism, in the Chinese faith, and in the other religions of the earth, there was so much of the common religious core—which had been imparted from the common source of all religions—that the souls in the solar sphere found themselves, as it were, in the original homeland of all religions, which holds within itself the source of all religious life. This has now changed in the middle period of the earth’s history. The connection with the primordial source of religions has been lost, and it can only be rediscovered through occult knowledge; so that even for this solar sphere in our present human cycle, human beings must prepare themselves already on Earth and do not arrive at a universal human fellowship of their own accord. Herein lies once again the great significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, of Christianity: that it offers the possibility for modern humanity, for the present human cycle, to prepare itself on Earth in such a way that human beings may attain a life of universal human fellowship during the solar sphere. That is why the Sun Spirit, Christ, had to descend to Earth. And after he has descended and united with the Earth, the possibility can be found on Earth for souls to become a universal human social being in the solar sphere between death and a new birth.

[ 12 ] Much could be said about the universal nature of the Christ Mystery when truly understood. We have, of course, already discussed many aspects over the years; yet this Christ Mystery can always be illuminated anew from fresh perspectives. If it is said that a particular emphasis on the Christ Mystery might give rise to prejudices against other religious denominations—this has often been said, for example, that in our Spiritual Science movement here in Central Europe the Christ Mystery is particularly emphasized and that, as a result, other religious denominations are not treated equally— such a charge would be the most incomprehensible thing one could make; for this Christ Mystery, in its true meaning, has, so to speak, only recently been occultly discovered in modern times. And if, for example, a follower of the Buddha were to say: “You place Christianity above the Buddhist faith because you present Christ as something special that is not yet found in my sacred texts; therefore, you are discriminating against Buddhism”—this is no more reasonable than if a Buddhist were to demand that one should not accept the Copernican worldview either, because it is not found in his sacred texts either. It has nothing to do with the equality of religions that things discovered later are recognized. The Mystery of Golgotha is such that it is not a special privilege of the Christian faith, but rather a truth of Spiritual Science that, just like the Copernican world system, can be recognized by any religious system, and it is truly not a matter of asserting a religious denomination that has so far understood the Mystery of Golgotha quite poorly, but rather the fact of Spiritual Science concerning the Mystery of Golgotha. But if this is already quite foolish, it is even more foolish to speak of the need to now compare all religious creeds abstractly and assume a kind of abstract equality of essence among all religious creeds. For these various religious creeds must be compared not with what Christianity has become as this or that creed, but with what it contains in its very essence.

[ 13 ] Take the Hindu creed. No one who is not a Hindu is admitted into it. It is essentially tied to a particular people. This is the case with most ancient religious creeds. Only Buddhism has broken this pattern; but even it is meant only for a specific community, if it is properly understood. But now consider the external facts. If, for example, we were to have a religious creed in Europe that were to be treated in the same way as, say, the Hindu creed, then we would have to swear by the ancient Wotan. He was a national god, the deity given to a single tribe, a people. But what has happened in the West? Truly, no national god has been adopted, but rather, in terms of external life, a completely foreign figure: Jesus of Nazareth has been adopted. While essentially the other religious creeds have something religiously egoistic about them and do not seek to transcend themselves, it is precisely the defining characteristic of the West that it has pushed back its religiously egoistic systems—for example, the old Wotan system—and has adopted something that did not grow out of its own flesh and blood, adopting it because of its spiritual content. For the West, Christianity is by no means a religiously egoistic creed in the same sense that other religious creeds were for individual peoples. This is the extraordinarily important point that must be grasped even from the external facts alone. And this constitutes the universality of Christianity in another respect, if this Christianity truly knows how to place the Mystery of Golgotha at the center of human becoming.

[ 14 ] This form of Christianity has not yet progressed very far in its development; for there are still two things within it that cannot be properly distinguished. It will take a very long time and a gradual process before we are able to make this distinction. In the true sense of the Mystery of Golgotha, who is a Christian? A Christian is one who knows that something real happened with the Mystery of Golgotha, that the Sun Spirit lived in Christ, poured out His being over the earth, and that Christ died for all people. Although Paul already proclaimed that Christ did not die only for the Jews but also for the Gentiles, this word is still understood quite poorly today. Only when one knows that Christ accomplished the deed on Golgotha for all humanity will one understand Christianity. For the real effect that poured forth from Golgotha is one thing, and whether one has acquired an understanding of it is another. One should strive to know what Christ is, but one can never look upon a human being on earth in light of the Mystery of Golgotha in any other way than by saying: Whether you are Chinese or Hindu, Christ also died for you, and he has this significance for you just as for anyone else. So that in the right understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, the view arises that we approach every human being and ask: How much of the Christian has he? — regardless of what faith he holds. Because human beings must acquire more and more awareness of what is real within them, it is naturally a high ideal to know something of the Christ Mystery as well. This will spread more and more. And part of that will be: having an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. But this is something different from the conception one might have of the Mystery of Golgotha: the universal aspect that applies to all human beings. What matters now is that we feel it in our souls: this makes us social beings in the solar sphere. We are hermits there if we feel confined within some religious creed; we are social beings in the solar sphere if we have an understanding of the universal aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha. There we find the possibility of having a relationship with every being that approaches us in the solar sphere. The feeling we acquire during our earthly life for the Mystery of Golgotha within our human cycle makes us beings who can move freely in the solar sphere.

[ 15 ] For what must we be capable of, especially during this time between death and a new birth?

[ 16 ] Here we come to a fact that is of extraordinary importance for modern occultism. Those people who lived in the times before the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place on Earth—essentially, what I am about to say does not apply to them at all—found, so to speak, the throne of Christ in the solar sphere, and Christ sitting upon it. They were able to recognize him because the ancient heritage of the commonality of all religions lived within them. But this Christ spirit descended from the Sun, and in the Mystery of Golgotha it flowed out, so to speak, into the life of the Earth. And by flowing out into the life of the Earth, it left the Sun, and today, between death and a new birth, one finds in the Sun only the Akashic image of the Christ. The throne there is not occupied by the real Christ. We must bring up from the Earth the mental image of the living connection with the Christ, so that through the Akashic image we may have the living connection with the Christ. Then we will find the possibility of having the Christ from the Sun as well, the possibility that he may awaken within us all the forces we must awaken if we are to traverse the solar sphere in the right way.

[ 17 ] Our journey between death and a new birth continues. While on Earth, we had the strength—namely through our moral and religious state of mind—to, so to speak, live ourselves into the beings with whom we were together on Earth, and then into the beings of the higher hierarchies. But this power gradually wanes, becoming ever fainter and fainter, and what essentially remains to us is actually the power we draw on Earth from the Mystery of Golgotha, enabling us to find our way in the solar sphere. In its place, a new bearer of light appears in the solar sphere, whom we must come to know in his primal, vital nature. We bring our understanding of Christ with us from Earth; but in order for us to develop further, to ascend further into the cosmos from the solar sphere into the Martian sphere, it is necessary that we—and we can do this simply because we are human souls—recognize the second throne, which is situated, so to speak, next to the Christ throne in the Sun, from which we come to know the other being who now guides us onward with Christ: Lucifer. We are now getting to know Lucifer, and through the powers he is able to bestow upon us, we can make the further journey through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

[ 18 ] And we continue to venture further and further into outer space, in an ever-increasing expansion. Indeed, as we move beyond the sphere of Saturn, something occurs that slightly alters our state of consciousness. We enter, as it were, a kind of cosmic twilight—one cannot call it cosmic sleep, but cosmic twilight. Through this, however, the forces of the entire universe can act upon us all the more. Forces then act upon us from all sides, and we take in the forces of the entire cosmos. So, as we have expanded outwards, there is a time between death and a new birth when the forces of the entire cosmos enter our being as if from all sides, just as the forces from all the stars enter our being. Then we begin to contract, passing back through the various spheres down to the sphere of Venus, contracting, growing smaller and smaller, until the time comes when we can once again connect with an earthly human embryo.

[ 19 ] But what are we, as we connect with this seed? We are what we have described as existing between death and new birth. Yet we have absorbed the forces of the entire cosmos. Out there, in the vastest expanse, the forces of the entire cosmos have worked their way into our being. As we developed outward, the better we prepared ourselves, the more we absorbed what could reach us; and our karma is shaped by the way we lived together with the people we met. Through living together with them after death, the forces form within us that, through karma, balance these things out in a new earthly life. That we appear as human beings, that we are capable of having inner karma which at the same time absorbs the cosmic forces within itself, depends, however, on our absorbing the forces of the entire cosmos during a specific period between death and a new birth. And when a human being is born into the physical world, what has become connected with the physical human embryo is something that has been condensed down to the smallest degree, yet has drawn into itself, from a gigantic expansion, the forces of the entire cosmos. We carry the entire cosmos within us when we reincarnate on Earth. And in a certain sense, we may say: We carry this cosmos within us in such a way that it can unite, that it can truly unite with what we have brought with us in our soul as a mood when we journeyed out, when we expanded into the spheres following our previous earthly existence.

[ 20 ] These two things are brought together, harmonized, we might say: adaptation to the entire cosmos and to our past karma. The fact that we are also attuned to our past karma—which, however, must be in harmony with the cosmos—struck me in an extraordinarily remarkable way during my investigations of the past few months in individual cases—I say this explicitly—in individual cases; I do not wish to state a general law with this. When a person dies, that is, passes through the gate of death, they die under a certain constellation of stars. And this constellation of stars is indeed essential for their further soul life insofar as it imprints itself in a certain way upon their soul being and truly remains as an imprint. And there remains the striving within this soul to enter again at the time of the new birth with this constellation of stars, to once more live up to the forces one has taken in at the moment of death, to enter again under this constellation of stars. And here is the interesting thing: When one attempts to determine the constellation for a human death, the constellation of the subsequent birth corresponds to a high degree with the constellation of the previous death. One must only take into account that it is a different spot on Earth where the human being is born that corresponds to this constellation. Thus, the human being is indeed adapted to the cosmos, fits into it, and there is thus in the soul a kind of balance between the individual and the cosmic life.

[ 21 ] Kant once made the beautiful remark: There are two things that particularly elevate him—the starry sky above him and the moral law within him. This is a beautiful statement for the reason that occultism reveals to us. Both are, in fact, the same: the starry heavens above us and what we carry within us as the moral law. For in the life between death and a new birth, we grow out into the cosmos, take the starry heavens into ourselves, and then carry within our soul, as our moral constitution, an image of the starry heavens. Here is one of the points where it is in fact hardly possible for Spiritual Science to become anything other than a universal moral feeling in the soul. Here is one of the points where what appears to be theory is transformed into the immediate moral life of the soul, into moral impulses of the soul; for here the human being feels all responsibility toward his own being. Here the human being feels: You were in such a situation between death and a new birth that the entire cosmos had to work into your being, and you drew together what you had drawn out into the small physical human embryo. You are responsible to the entire cosmos; you truly carry the entire cosmos within you. — This is where one senses something of what was attempted to be hinted at in the “Trial of the Soul” in Capesius’s monologue, where attention is drawn to the passage: “World-thoughts live in your thinking …,” what a momentous moment it is when the soul feels: One has the sacred obligation to bring forth the forces one has drawn from the cosmos, because one must return them to the gods, and where the soul recognizes that it would be the greatest sin to let these forces lie fallow. In these concrete investigations, it became clear how we indeed take the entire cosmos into ourselves and bring it back into existence. Indeed, of the forces that human beings actually carry within them, only the very few are actually forces that have any origin on Earth. We consider the human being in relation to the forces that act in their physical body, govern their etheric body, and govern their astral body and I. The forces that enter our physical body do indeed come to us directly from the Earth; but what we need for the etheric body, we cannot draw directly from the Earth, but only from the forces that approached us between death and the new birth, when we extend ourselves into the planetary system. And a person who brings an immoral state of mind into this process will not be able to draw upon the right forces while passing through the Mercury sphere in the time between death and a new birth. A person who has not developed religious impulses cannot draw upon the right forces in Venus, and so it happens that we may have allowed the forces we need in the etheric body to atrophy. Here we see the karmic connection between present and past lives taking shape. All these are things that simultaneously point out to us how the insights we gain through occultism can become impulses in our soul life, and how we actually need only to know what we are in order to ascend to an ever more spiritual life.

[ 22 ] What the Mystery of Golgotha has prepared is necessary in our human cycle so that human beings can properly enter into the solar sphere between death and a new birth. What spiritual research must actually accomplish is to enable human beings to grow even further beyond the solar sphere with that universal human, spiritually communal consciousness that is necessary there. For the solar sphere, the intuitive connection with the Mystery of Golgotha is sufficient. But in order for what constitutes general human understanding and general human feeling to remain even beyond the solar sphere during the time between death and a new birth, it is precisely necessary that we understand, through Spiritual Science, the relationships of the individual religions to one another and the development of the individual religious impulses; that we do not grow up within a narrowly defined religious creed with its emotional nuances, but that we gain the ability to understand every soul, regardless of what it believes, just as souls are in other respects. One thing is fulfilled as that which, so to speak, is connected with the Christ impulse for all souls in the course of Earth’s development; one thing is fulfilled in particular between death and a new birth—that which is contained in the words: “Where two are united in my name, I am in their midst.” And in this saying, Christ does not link the unity of two to this or that faith, but merely to the possibility that he is among them, inasmuch as they are united in his name.

[ 23 ] What has been practiced for years now, including through our mystery plays—especially the most recent one, *The Guardian of the Threshold*—is intended to provide a understanding of Spiritual Science regarding what is necessary in the current cycle of time. It is necessary, in a certain sense, to develop a relationship on the one hand to the Christ impulse, but also to the forces that stand in opposition to it: the Lucifer and Ahriman impulses. That we are dealing here with forces that, in the universe, as soon as we move beyond maya, develop their power—this is what we must learn to understand. For the time is drawing ever closer in human development when we will have to learn that what matters is the essence and not the doctrine. And nowhere is this more evident than in the Mystery of Golgotha, where we see how it is the essence that matters and not the content of the word. I would like—for it is easiest to deal with people who truly examine closely what is to be said here from occult sources—I would like people to examine very closely what I am about to say. There is nothing like this in any other religious creed. In all this depth, as it is revealed through the Mystery of Golgotha, it is not found in the other religious creeds.

[ 24 ] The world still harbors a very particular prejudice today. People speak of it as if the world were bound to function exactly like a school: as if everything depended solely on the world-teachers. Christ is not a world teacher, but a world-maker who accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha and whose essence we must come to know. That is what matters. Just how little depends on the mere word, on the mere content of the teaching—this is precisely what a beautiful saying from the mouth of Christ can teach us: “You are gods!” (John 10:34), and that he repeatedly pointed out that human beings attain their highest potential when they come to the awareness of the divine nature within themselves. And one might say, the words of Christ resound throughout the world: You must be aware that you are godlike! — One might say: A great teaching!

[ 25 ] The same teaching resounds from elsewhere. Where the Bible recounts the outcome of the Earth’s development, it is Lucifer who steps forward and says: “You shall become like gods!” The same teaching, resounding from Lucifer; the same teaching, emanating from Christ: You shall be like gods! And for humanity, both mean the opposite. Truly, these words resound with the shattering tones of a trumpet: once spoken by the tempter, the other time by the Redeemer, Liberator, and Restorer of human nature.

[ 26 ] What matters—and matters greatly—between death and a new birth is the recognition of the essence. The greatest danger lies in confusing Lucifer with Christ in the solar sphere, because both speak the same language, teach the same doctrine on the Sun, and we hear the same words from them—if we may speak of words in this context. What matters is the being. Whether this or that being speaks this or that word—that is what matters, not the content of the teaching; for what pulsates through the world as real forces—that is the essential. And in the higher worlds, and above all in what plays into the earthly spheres, we only truly understand the words when we know from which being the words in question come. We never recognize the height of a being by the content of the words, but rather by coming to know the entire cosmic context in which a being is situated. We can see this confirmed quite precisely in the saying about the godlikeness of human beings, in the resounding presence of Lucifer and Christ in existence.

[ 27 ] Such things express important facts of evolution. And they are expressed not—and in this case, not so much—because of their content, but because of their essence; they are expressed so that the feelings may arise in the souls that necessarily follow from such words. And if those who have taken such truths into themselves retain the feelings and forget the words, then not much is actually lost. Even if I were to imagine the most extreme case—that there were someone among us who had forgotten everything that has just been said and could not recall a single word, yet carried within them, in feeling, what can flow from such words—they would still possess, in the sense of Spiritual Science, enough of what is actually meant by these words.

[ 28 ] We must, of course, speak in words, and words can sometimes sound theoretical. But what matters is that we are able to look beyond the words to the essential nature of the spirit and take this essence into our souls. The world will come to understand many things, particularly regarding the progress of human development, if it grasps Spiritual Science in its essence. And today I would like to cite just two examples that are not so much intrinsically as extrinsically connected to my occult research of the past few months, but which struck me as particularly striking because they showed me how it is actually only by recognizing something in the occult teaching that corresponds to what is already present in the world—what has been introduced by inspired human beings—that this truth can be rediscovered there.

[ 29 ] You see, I have studied Homer extensively; I have read his works many times. Now, over the course of the last few months, this has repeatedly come vividly to mind: how after death one can change nothing, how circumstances remain the same; how, for example, regarding a person to whom one was somehow attached in life, one knows: you did not love him enough, but how one cannot change that. When one faces this fact and then reads in Homer that he describes the afterlife as the place where life becomes unchangeable, only then does one begin to understand the full depth of these words from the place where things are no longer subject to change: And it is a wonderful experience to compare one’s own occult insight with what “blind Homer,” as a seer of souls, brought forth as an important occult truth and expressed in his poetic work!

[ 30 ] And there was something else that struck me as astonishing—something I truly resisted, because it seemed unbelievable to me—but which cannot be avoided if one approaches it using all the methods of occult research.

[ 31 ] Some—or perhaps most—of you may be familiar with the so-called Medici tombs in Florence, by Michelangelo. They depict Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici, along with four allegorical figures. People don’t usually think of them as artistic. “Stiff allegories,” is what people usually say. Now, with the exception of one, these so-called allegorical figures were actually never quite finished; yet they still do not give the impression of being allegories. It is very peculiar that travel guides point out, regarding these Medici tombs, that on one side stands one of the Medici, Lorenzo, and on the other the other, Giuliano. And they are exactly reversed. The one referred to as Lorenzo is Giuliano, and the one referred to as Giuliano is Lorenzo. That is how it is. And that is how it is described in almost all art history books—even though it is not true. In any case, it is not as it is described in art history books and in Baedecker. I haven’t bothered to find out why that is, but it is true that the two figures are always confused. The descriptions wouldn’t be accurate at all, and they were probably rearranged at some point. They now stand differently than Michelangelo placed them. But I don’t want to talk about that; I just want to mention that there are four allegorical figures: at the foot of one Medici, “Night” and “Day”; at the other, “Dawn” and “Dusk.” Now consider this: I have been reluctant to say what I am about to say, but one really must immerse oneself in every gesture, in everything one sees before one, and begin with “Night”; look at this figure, about which the books contain the nonsensical remark that it has a gesture a sleeping person could not assume. But if one studies every gesture and every single limb and then asks oneself the following question: How would an artist have to depict the human figure if he wanted to express in the figure’s expression the greatest possible activity of the etheric body, as it might occur precisely during sleep — that is, if he wanted to give the figure a posture that best corresponded to the moment when the etheric body is working most intensely on the physical body—then he would have to do it exactly as Michelangelo did, guided by his artistic instincts. He has enshrined the gesture corresponding to the etheric body within this “Night.” I am not claiming that Michelangelo knew this, but it is so.

[ 32 ] And then look at the “Day”! This is no mere allegory. If one were to have a mental image of the lower members of the human being as being less active and the “I” as being the most active, this would result, apart from the peculiar inversion of the entire figure, in the figure of the “Day.” And if one wanted to express how the astral body acts most freely when the other human members are excluded, how it expresses itself in gesture, one would have that in the so-called allegory of dawn. And if one were to express how the physical body does not immediately collapse, but rather how it becomes limp when the ego and astral body withdraw, this is wonderfully expressed in the gesture of “Evening Twilight.” There before us are the living manifestations of the four human members. One can quite well imagine how such a legend could have arisen, one that spread regarding the “Night,” of whom it was said that when Michelangelo was alone with her, she could come to life and rise and walk about, if one knows that she has the corresponding gesture of the etheric or Life-Body, and that the etheric or Life-Body can be fully active in this gesture. And when one senses this, then one sees this figure rise, then one knows: she can walk about. If she were not made of marble, if truly the etheric or Life-Body alone were active—which is the animating force—then there would be no obstacle to her walking about.

[ 33 ] Much is veiled in mystery within what human evolution has brought forth, and much will only become understandable when people view things through what can sharpen the occult gaze. But in the end, none of these things really matter! Whether or not we understand a work of art better is not a matter of general human significance. But something else matters: Once we have sharpened our gaze in this way, an understanding opens up for us of the soul of our fellow human beings; not through the occult gaze, which must already look into the spiritual world, but through the gaze that has been sharpened by Spiritual Science. Through the understanding of Spiritual Science brought about by common sense, the recognition of what we encounter in life grows within us, above all of what the soul of our fellow human beings is. And we will strive to gain an understanding of every human soul.

[ 34 ] However, this understanding is, for every human soul, something different from what is often called “understanding” in life. In life, love is, unfortunately, all too often quite selfish. One loves the person—well, the one to whom one is particularly drawn through this or that relationship—and for the rest, one usually content oneself with what is called general love for humanity: one loves humanity in general. What is that, then? One must be able to understand every soul.

[ 35 ] Perhaps not everyone will find them all admirable, but that is no great loss, for there is nothing more harmful to a soul than to idolize it with blind love.

[ 36 ] We will discuss this factor in more detail the day after tomorrow.