The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Anthroposophy as a Source of Feeling and Life. Devotion and Reverence for the Unseen

[ 1 ] If we pause for a moment in our anthroposophical reflections and ask ourselves: What drives us to join a spiritual movement such as ours? —-, then we can, of course, answer these questions from a wide variety of perspectives. One of the perspectives that can provide an answer most in line with our feelings and sensibilities is—though not the only one, yet the most important: the contemplation of the life that the human soul experiences between death and a new birth. The events that unfold during the long period between death and a new birth are truly no less significant than the events between birth and death; and we can only ever highlight individual instances of these important events that we must undergo. But one might say that wherever one looks at this life between death and a new birth, it convinces us everywhere of how humanity must live toward a time in which it knows and feels something of the supersensible worlds.

[ 2 ] Now let us turn, so to speak, to the specific, the concrete. When the seer, who has the ability to observe life between death and a new birth, is presented with the following vision, this vision alone can impose upon him the urgent duty to work toward the understanding of the spiritual world. A person has passed away. The seer seeks him out, seeking to observe him some time after the person in question has passed through the gate of death. In the manner by which one communicates with the dead, one can hear the following from the deceased—this is now a very specific case. He says: “I have left my wife behind; I know she is still down in the physical world.” — Of course, this is not said in physical words. — When I lived with her in the physical world, after I had attended to my business from morning till night, she was always my sunshine; every word she spoke was a joy to me; and it was so that I could not imagine that I would have wanted to live this life at all if it had not been constantly illuminated by my life partner. Then I passed through the gate of death and left her behind; and now I long to return, now I feel that I am missing all of this, I search with a longing soul to find a way to my life partner. But I cannot find that soul, I cannot reach her, it is as if she were not there. And when I occasionally get a sense, feel as if she were there, as if I were near her, then she is as if mute, so that I can only compare it to two people standing face to face, one of whom wants the other to speak a few words to him, but the other is mute and cannot say anything. Thus has the soul become mute to me, the soul that was so blissful to me for a long time during my physical life. — Now, you see, when one investigates what lies at the root of such a fact, one receives this answer: There is simply no common language between the one who has passed away and the living one left behind. There is nothing that the soul can use to penetrate that substance through which it remains perceptible. Because there is no common language, these two souls feel separated.

[ 3 ] It wasn't always this way. If we go further back in human evolution, we find that souls possessed a certain spiritual heritage of that spirituality through which they were perceptible to one another, regardless of whether they are here on the physical plane or whether one is here in the physical world and the other in the spiritual world. But that ancient legacy of spiritual inner life has been exhausted today; it is no longer there, and the painful situation can indeed arise in which a soul that was so loved by another, as just indicated, can no longer be found by the other soul beyond death, because nothing lives in the soul left behind that can be perceived by the departed one. For what can be perceived by the departed soul is spiritual knowledge, feeling, and sensation; this is the soul’s connection here on earth with the spiritual world. When such a soul is left behind—one that engages here with knowledge and insight into the spiritual worlds, allowing thoughts of them to pass through itself—then these thoughts can be perceived by the departed soul. Not even the old religious sentiments are sufficient to give the soul something that can be perceived by the other soul. — If this case were to be further investigated, it would become clear to the seer that even after both souls have passed through death, the departed souls can only dimly perceive one another—but cannot bring about mutual understanding at all, or only with great difficulty, because they cannot speak a common language.

[ 4 ] As a seer, one comes to understand what anthroposophy is in its deepest sense: it is the language that will gradually be spoken by the living and the dead—those who live in the physical world and those who live between death and a new birth. The souls who have remained behind and who have taken within themselves mental images of the supersensible worlds can also be perceived and seen by those who have passed away. If they have spread love before death, they can do so even after death. This brings us to the conviction that anthroposophy is a language that makes perceptible what is happening in the physical world for the world of the supersensible. Indeed, this is the prospect facing humanity on Earth: that souls will become increasingly isolated, unable to build bridges to one another, unless they can find the bond that must be drawn from soul to soul through the absorption of spiritual concepts. This is the reality of anthroposophy, for it is not a mere theory. Theoretical knowledge is the very least of it; what we take in is a true elixir of the soul, a true substance. Through this substance, the soul that has passed through death sees the soul that has remained behind. One may say: The seer who perceives this, who once recognizes such a soul that longs to perceive what it has left behind on Earth but cannot do so because the family in question has not yet entered into Spiritual Science, the seer who has seen what souls can suffer under such deprivations knows that he has no choice but to speak to his fellow human beings of spiritual wisdom and to regard the time as having come when spiritual wisdom must enter into human hearts. We may say that those who derive their mission to speak of these supersensible worlds from their own knowledge of them feel this to be an urgent necessity against which they can never act; that would be the gravest sin. Thus they feel the necessity to give spiritual proclamations, revelations about the supersensible worlds.

[ 5 ] From what has just been said, you can see the immense gravity associated with the necessity of spiritual proclamations. However, there is also another aspect to communication between the living and the dead. In this regard, we have not yet made much progress, but it will come. In order to understand how, little by little, the living will be able to achieve a kind of communication with those who have passed away, we must consider the following. Human beings know the very least about the physical world. For how do they acquire their knowledge of the physical world? By using their senses, applying their imagination, and perceiving what confronts them in the external world. But that is only the smallest part of what the world contains. It contains something quite different. I would like you to get a mental image of what there is in the world that is much more important than what is sensually real. Nor do I mean the supersensible world, but something else. Imagine for a moment that you are accustomed to going to your office every day at eight o’clock in the morning; suddenly you notice that today you are leaving three minutes later, and lo and behold, you are walking across a certain square where you would have had to pass through a kind of shed with a roof supported by columns, and when you arrive three minutes later today, it becomes clear to you that—had you arrived on time today, that is, not three minutes later than usual—you would have been crushed by the collapsing roof. Imagine that! It happens that a person misses a train that subsequently collides. Had he been on that train, he would have perished. These are all things that did not happen, which is why people do not pay attention to them. When you are faced with such an event, which you are practically forced to confront, it makes a definite impression on you. But from morning to night, all sorts of things can happen that haven’t affected you at all during the day. That’s undeniable. All these are things that may seem “fantastical,” but they are among the most important parts of life. You will have a certain feeling when you see, say, a man in Berlin who had a ticket for the Titanic; an acquaintance meets him and says: “I want you not to sail on the Titanic!”—and he dissuades him from taking that ship. The Titanic sinks—he has escaped death. This makes a lasting impression on the person in question! —That is a special case. But such things can happen again and again without being noticed; yet when they are noticed, they make an emotional, a psychological impression on the person.

[ 6 ] But let us consider the matter from another angle: How many emotional and sensory impressions do we miss simply because we do not pay attention to what we are being spared! If we could take note of everything that is about to happen and everything we pass by, we would go through the world with a completely different state of mind. Now the seer discovers the following possibility: Suppose the matter is real. You would cross the square three minutes later than usual. At that very moment is the most opportune time for a deceased person seeking to make themselves heard to speak into your soul. You may have the thought, the feeling: Where does this come from, what is emerging in my soul? This need not be the case only in such a specific instance; it can happen in manifold ways. It will begin when people start to take notice of the world of the possible as well, and not just the world of the real. Today, only the world of the real is considered. For example, a large number of herring in the sea are real; but they are possible only because an infinite number of eggs have been laid. Thus, at the foundation of life lies an infinite abundance of possibilities.

[ 7 ] This is what also makes an infinitely profound impression on the seer when he reaches the boundary between two worlds. There the seer has the impression: How infinitely rich is what takes place in this supersensible world, and only a small part of it is realized in this world of our senses! — When one feels this, one also feels: the infinite lies hidden at the very foundation of existence. — This feeling will develop through anthroposophical contemplation. One will come to feel that behind every point where something is outwardly real, there is something else behind it. Behind every flower, behind every breath of air, behind every little stone and crystal lie infinite possibilities. Human beings will gradually cultivate this feeling in such a way that they will increasingly develop a sense of reverence and awe toward the hidden. As they cultivate this feeling more and more, they will come to realize on their own that in moments such as those just described, those who are dead to earthly life are speaking to them. In the future, this will become something people experience as perfectly normal: “A dead person has just spoken into your soul.” — Little by little, he will know where this message comes from—that is, who is speaking to him. It is only because people today pass so carelessly by the infinite world of possibilities, the infinite depth of the possible, that they do not hear what the dead would like to speak into the hearts of the living.

[ 8 ] From the two things I have told you: that through the living, through the thoughts of anthroposophists here, something is created that becomes perceptible to the dead—and that the dead will be able to speak to the hearts that have found their way into spiritual feeling—from this fact you can deduce what a transformation the spread of anthroposophy will bring about for all of humanity. A bridge will be built between the worlds here and the worlds beyond. And it is true that life will be different between death and a new birth. This will not merely be a theory, but a transition into reality, so that there will be understanding between the so-called living and the dead, who are, however, far more alive. And then the souls here will also feel what can be so fruitful for the dead. For one cannot truly make it fruitful unless one feels what a blessing it can be for the dead when one reads to them. Let us take an extreme case. You can experience this when living with other people—such as siblings, parents, or spouses—that while one feels the urge to turn to Spiritual Science, the other develops a veritable hatred whenever the former approaches it. How often one can experience this! This is how it may play out in consciousness, but it need not be so in the soul itself. Something else can take place there. There is the subconscious in the astral body. While someone rages passionately and rails against Spiritual Science, it may be that in their subconscious they feel all the more urge, the longing, to experience something of Spiritual Science for themselves. Once one has passed through the gate of death, things become true; there is nothing that can be masked there. Here on earth one can lie, put on a false front, but after death all things become true; there they show their true face. No matter how much one has numbed oneself during life by railing against Spiritual Science, after death a longing for it makes itself felt, and one suffers pain because the longing cannot be satisfied. Then the living person can create a mental image of the deceased sitting opposite them, and they can go through spiritual matters in thought, and the dead person understands this; and even if the dead person was not an anthroposophist, even if it is only the living person, the dead person still perceives the living person.

[ 9 ] What one might call a certain inclination toward the language one spoke in life must be taken into account, because in the early stages after death, the deceased still maintains a certain connection with that same language, just as they did here in life. It is therefore advisable to mentally adopt the language the deceased spoke; but after five, six, or eight years—sometimes even sooner—it becomes apparent that the language of the spirit is such that the external language poses no obstacle to it, and that the deceased can understand spiritual thoughts even if they did not know the language in life. In any case, it has turned out to be something tremendously beautiful when our friends have read aloud to the deceased, especially to those who were not anthroposophists in life. This has proven to be an immense blessing, one of the greatest acts of love. And what we aim to achieve is not merely to spread anthroposophy outwardly as a doctrine—we must do that, and it is necessary—but anthroposophy must also work in the soul in a much quieter way. Spiritual offices, so to speak, can develop there, through which much can be accomplished for the further development of souls after death. And that is what we must increasingly achieve: that we help overcome a great difficulty for the souls who stand between death and a new birth, a difficulty that lies in the fact that the old spiritual heritage has been exhausted and a time has come in which it is immensely difficult for souls to find their bearings after death, and in which it is almost impossible for souls to find their way between death and a new birth.

[ 10 ] There the seer sees how souls, between death and a new birth, are compelled to perform tasks that they must complete but do not understand. For example, it is a fact that the seer, turning his gaze to the life between death and a new birth, can discover souls who must perform a specific task: during certain periods, they must serve those powers we know as the spirits of death and disease. We are speaking here of that death which does not occur regularly as a phenomenon of life, but of the death that approaches people out of turn, when people die in the prime of their lives. When illnesses occur, they are physical events; but they are brought about by forces that intervene from the supersensible world. Underlying the spreading diseases are the deeds of supersensible beings. Certain spirits have the task of bringing untimely death. We cannot now go into why this is grounded in wisdom; but it is important to note that we now find souls who are yoked to such ‘beings.’ And for the seer, even though he must have become accustomed to a certain composure, it is nonetheless painful and harrowing to watch how those who are yoked must serve to bring sickness and death to human beings. And when the seer attempts to trace such souls back to the time of their previous life, he finds the cause of why these souls are condemned to be servants of the spirits of disease and death: these causes lie in the lack of conscience that these souls developed in their physical life. To the extent that they were unscrupulous, to that extent do they condemn themselves to be servants of these evil beings. Just as cause and effect are connected in the case of colliding spheres, so too must unscrupulous people be servants of these evil beings. This is harrowing! Another fact that the seer perceives: such souls are yoked to Ahrimanic spirits; they must prepare the spiritual causes of all that occurs here as resistance, as an obstacle to our actions. Ahriman, after all, also has this task. All the resistance that arises here is directed in from the spiritual world. They are servants of Ahriman. How did such souls condemn themselves to this service? By the fact that in their lives between birth and death they have paid homage to comfort. And if you consider how widespread comfort is, you will find that there are an infinite number of recruits for Ahriman. It is comfort that governs life to the greatest extent. — Modern economists have also come to take human comfort into account, not just selfishness and competition. Comfort is a factor.

[ 11 ] Now, it makes a difference whether one has such experiences in a way that allows one to make sense of them—knowing why one is experiencing them—or whether one experiences them completely unconsciously, without knowing why one must serve such spirits. If one knows why one is yoked to the spirits that bring epidemics, then one also knows what virtues one must acquire in the next life in order to create a cosmic balance and to eliminate from the world whatever works in this direction. If one is disoriented in these experiences, one does indeed create the same karma, but one only creates again what must take shape as a balance toward the second incarnation, and thus one delays true progress. That is why it is important for human beings to learn these things here. One will experience them after death; one must learn to orient oneself here. Here we have yet another fact that makes it an absolute necessity to create a new orientation through the dissemination of spiritual truths, because the old orientation can no longer exist. We can answer the question: Why are we anthroposophists? — from the spiritual facts, with an answer that speaks very deeply to our feelings, not just to our intellect. And so we increasingly view anthroposophy as a universal language, as a language that will enable us to remove the barrier between the various worlds in which our souls live—sometimes in the physical body, sometimes outside the physical body; and thus the barrier to the supersensible world will fall when Spiritual Science truly takes root in the souls of human beings. We must feel this, sense it; then we will have the right, the inner enthusiasm for Spiritual Science.

[ 12 ] Let me speak of another phenomenon. For the seer, there comes a moment that reveals itself in the life of souls between death and a new birth, and which becomes immensely significant not only for the seer but also for those who are undergoing this life. For some, this moment lies further in the past; for others, further in the future. When one observes sleep with the seer’s gaze—that is, when the human being, with their astral body and I, is outside the physical body and looks back upon the physical body and the etheric body—the impression is that, for the most part, the physical body appears to be slowly dying. Only in the very earliest years of childhood, until the child develops an understanding, until the time to which our memory extends, does sleep appear in the child’s body as something that sprouts and flourishes; but it begins very early, so that it becomes clear to the seer that the physical body, after entering life, slowly dies away again; death is merely the final act of this dying process. The fact is that sleep serves to restore the expended forces. But this restoration is only incomplete; this residue is always a small part of the cause of death. When so many residues remain that the restorative forces can no longer counteract them, then the human being dies the physical death. So, when one looks at the human body, one actually sees death slowly taking place. One really dies very slowly from the moment of birth. The impression is quite a serious one when one first becomes aware of it.

[ 13 ] Between death and a new birth, the soul now reaches the moment when it begins to develop the powers through which it enters its next existence. Let me illustrate what is meant by an example. Today there are already many books about Goethe’s disposition. Researchers look to Goethe’s ancestors to determine where he inherited this or that trait. They seek these causes in the physical line of inheritance. It is not to be disputed that they can be sought there; but whoever can follow the soul between death and a new birth will find the following. Take Goethe’s soul. Long, long before it is born, it is already working from the supersensible worlds upon its ancestors, already connected to them through its own powers. It even works in such a way that the men and women who, after a long time, can provide the right qualities the soul needs, come together in a corresponding manner. This is no easy task, for many souls are involved in it. If you have a mental image of people in the eighteenth century being descended from the souls of the sixteenth century, and that all of these are already working together beforehand, then you must understand that such communication is a vital matter. Souls born in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries must already communicate in the sixteenth century so that the entire networks of kinship can be established. There is much to do between death and a new birth. Not only do we have to deal, in an objective sense, with spending part of our time in service to the spirits of resistance, but we must also work on the forces that make our reincarnation possible in the first place. The situation is such that we must already work out the form in the archetype. This gives an impression opposite to what the seer observes when looking at the sleeping physical and etheric bodies. The physical and etheric bodies appear in sleep as something dying; but what is building itself up there like an archetype and drawing into physical nature gives the impression of something sprouting, of something becoming.

[ 14 ] Thus, there is a crucial moment between death and a new birth: it lies between the memory of the previous existence and the transition to the next existence, where the human being begins to work on the formation of their physical body. If you have a mental image of physical death and compare it to this moment, you will find in it the opposite of physical death. Physical death is a transition from physical being to non-being; the moment described is a transition from non-being to becoming. One experiences this moment quite differently when one understands it than when one does not understand it.

[ 15 ] A concept such as that of the opposite of death—that which occurs between death and rebirth—should actually be felt in the soul of an anthroposophist. It should not merely be grasped intellectually, but deeply felt; then one can sense the enrichment our life experiences when such concepts are taken up by the soul. Then something else occurs: namely, that the soul gradually develops a sense of all that exists in the world. If one walks through a forest in spring and has previously meditated on the concept I just mentioned, one is not far from, if one pays attention, perceiving the spirits that work and reign among physical things. Perceiving the spiritual world would actually not be difficult at all if people did not make it difficult for themselves. By striving to transform what is grasped in concepts into sensation, to bring it to life inwardly, this striving can lead them to vision. Through such things as have been spoken of today, I would like to contribute to bringing this urge for Spiritual Science to life. The description of such things is always such that one feels: the description is like stammering, because our language is, after all, only for the physical world—and one must make an effort to bring forth at least a faint notion of these things through very special means of expression. But it is precisely this way of speaking about these things that can trigger within our hearts what can be described in anthroposophical terms as a content of feeling.

[ 16 ] This is what Spiritual Science should become for us: a source of feeling and life, so that we do not view the assimilation of spiritual concepts as something trivial, but rather pursue them willingly; yet we must not see the main point in these concepts themselves, but rather in what Spiritual Science makes of us.