The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. The Mutual Interaction Between the Living and the So-Called Dead

[ 1 ] It has often been said that Spiritual Science, as it spreads, will intervene in life as a genuine life force. And the most diverse individual observations regarding the interconnections of life can substantiate this assertion. Simply by the fact that we are coming to know more and more the peculiarities of that invisible world which underlies the visible one, mental images and concepts take root in our souls, which in turn will be the driving force behind very specific actions, very specific behavior in life. Of particular importance will be the attitude that can be cultivated toward the so-called dead—toward those who, during our lifetime, are passing through the time between death and new birth.

[ 2 ] Just as human beings here in their physical bodies are connected in the most varied ways—through their souls and bodies—to the physical world and the spiritual world that underlies it, so too are human beings, between death and rebirth, connected in the most varied ways to the facts, processes, and beings of the supersensible world. And just as human beings can have an occupation, an activity in the physical world between birth and death, so too do they have activities—one might say, affairs—between death and new birth. What we can come to know there about human life and human activity between death and new birth will increasingly bring about what one might call the bridging of the gulf that opens up, especially in our materialistic age, between those living here on earth and the dead. More and more, what might be called a connection, a mutual engagement between the living and the so-called dead, will come to pass.

[ 3 ] Today, attention should be drawn to details regarding this communication between the living and the dead, as well as to the activities and ways of life of the souls who live between death and rebirth. Those who pass away before the people with whom they had a relationship here on earth must, understandably, often look back from the spiritual world upon the beings who have remained here in earthly life as loved ones or in some other capacity. The question then arises as to whether such souls, who are between death and new birth, can perceive the people who live here between birth and death. When one has developed the ability to penetrate into the life between death and new birth, one has very special—one might say, shattering—experiences. There one can find, for example, souls of the deceased who sometimes say the following in the language that is possible between the departed souls and the seer, and which is comprehensible only to the one who can look from this side into the world of the departed. For example, a soul made itself heard after death in the following manner—it was a soul that had been incarnated in a male body in its last incarnation—: All my thoughts and memories go back to that personality who had been my beloved wife. When I was down here in earthly life, she was, so to speak, the sunshine of my life. When I came home in the evening after finishing my business, my soul found solace in what she could be to me, in what flowed from her soul into mine at that time. She was true spiritual nourishment for me. And the longing for her has remained with me. My spiritual eye looks down toward the earth, and I cannot find her; she is not there. I know, after all I have learned, that this soul must be on earth in a physical body as before, but to me she is as if erased, as if not there.

[ 4 ] This is a deeply moving experience that one often encounters with souls who think back to those they have left behind and who feel as if they are bound, so that they cannot penetrate, cannot look down upon those souls. They are not bound by their own being, but rather by the other soul that has remained behind. And when one investigates why such a soul in the beyond cannot perceive the soul that has remained on earth, one learns that this soul left behind, due to the present circumstances, has not been able to take in any thoughts or allow them to live within itself that could become visible or perceptible to such a soul that has passed through the gate of death. One could use another comparison. Such souls who have passed through the gate of death and long to see those who have remained behind in physical bodies—they do indeed sense that these souls are on the physical plane, but they cannot make themselves known to them. Just as a mute person cannot make themselves known through speech, so that the other cannot hear them, so the soul itself remains silent to the one who longs for it, its spiritual essence inaudible to the one who has already passed through the gate of death.

[ 5 ] There is a great difference between souls here on Earth, depending on whether these souls are filled with one set of ideas or another. Take, for example, a soul that lives here in a physical body and, from the moment it wakes up until it falls asleep, is occupied solely with mental images borrowed from the material world; such a soul, which is entirely filled with mental images, notions, ideas, and sensations borrowed from the material world, cannot be perceived at all from the other world. One notices nothing of it. A soul that is filled with spiritual mental images, such as those found in spiritual science, for example, a soul that is permeated and illuminated by spiritual mental images—such a soul is perceptible from the beyond. That is why such souls who have remained behind, no matter how good they may have been as human beings, if they are absorbed in materialism, remain insubstantial and imperceptible to the world beyond, to the other world. This nevertheless gives the seer, who has certainly attained serenity, shattering, terrible impressions. Numerous, however, are these perceptions that one can have of the world beyond, especially in our age. In our age, it is as if every connection were severed between souls who are often so close to one another here. When one soul has passed through the gate of death, the situation often appears this way, while one can always find that the souls living in the beyond have thus passed through the gate of death and look down upon those who, even if only now and then, cherish spiritual thoughts within themselves and allow them to flow through their souls, can now perceive them, so that these souls remain for them as real souls. Even more significant is that what is at stake here can become a practical reality. The souls in the beyond can not only perceive but also understand the spiritual thoughts that souls here cherish. And through this, what can become so important for the communication between souls in this world and those in the beyond can come about: namely, what one might call reading aloud to the dead. And such reading aloud to the dead is often extraordinarily important.

[ 6 ] Here, too, the seer may observe that people who, while alive, paid no attention whatsoever to spiritual teachings, once they have passed through the gate of death, feel a strong longing for such teachings and wish to hear them. When the souls who have remained here create a mental image of the deceased and, in their thoughts—and certainly not aloud—go through spiritual trains of thought or open books on Spiritual Science and read them in their minds, reading aloud to the deceased whom they hold before their spiritual eyes, the deceased hears this. In our movement, we have achieved the most beautiful successes in this area precisely because living friends read aloud to their departed loved ones. One can often see how these dead yearn to hear what reaches them from here. Especially in the early days after death, one thing is necessary in order to establish a connection with a soul.

[ 7 ] One cannot simply establish a relationship with just any being. There is a great deal of deception, a great deal of illusion; it is not that easy. If one believes that a person need only die in order to come into contact, so to speak, with the entire spiritual world, that is a great mistake, a very great mistake. — It once struck me particularly how a man, who wasn’t exactly a genius but constantly spoke of Kant, Schopenhauer, and so on—and even gave lectures on Kant and Schopenhauer—replied to me in a somewhat smug manner when I was giving lectures on the nature of immortality: People here on earth can know nothing about immortality, since we only experience it once we have died. — One could say to him: given his disposition, he will not differ particularly in regard to his soul after death compared to now. It is a complete prejudice to believe that souls are immediately all-wise once they have passed through the gate of death. On the contrary, after death we cannot readily establish relationships with other beings if we have not established them here before death. These relationships, which are established here, continue to have an effect for a long time. It is not simply a matter of a soul being able to receive instruction immediately from souls in the beyond: because it cannot have any relationships with them. But human beings do have relationships with beings on this side, and these can bring them the sustenance they long for; they can bring them spiritual wisdom by reading to the dead, and can thereby perform immensely meritorious deeds. Reading to them from external, materialistic science—such as chemistry or physics—is of no help; that is a language they do not understand, because these sciences have value only for earthly life. But what is spoken of in Spiritual Science as a language concerning the spiritual worlds remains understandable to the dead.

[ 8 ] In the early stages after death, however, one thing must be taken into account: souls can still understand what is spoken in the languages they habitually spoke here on earth. Only after some time do the dead become independent of language; then one can read to them in any language; they perceive the content of the thoughts. In the early period after death, a person is also connected to the language they last spoke, if they actually spoke a specific language. One should certainly take this into account: in the early period, one truly thinks for the dead—for one thinks for them, meaning one thinks on their behalf—in the language that is their familiar language.

[ 9 ] This brings us straight to a chapter, my dear friends, that can teach us how the gulf is bridged by the way in which anthroposophy flows into our spiritual life—here in this world and in the other world, the world in which we live between death and new birth. While materialism allows communication only between souls who are confined to their earthly lives, anthroposophy will clear the way for free communication, for interaction between the souls who are here and the souls who are in the other world over there. The dead will live with us. And what one might call passing through the gate of death will truly be experienced, little by little, as merely a kind of change in the form of life. And of great significance will be the entire transformation of soul and spiritual life that will then take place when such things become commonplace.

[ 10 ] That was just one example of how the living influence the dead. We can also form mental images of how, in turn, the dead influence the living. I have spoken of this on several occasions—please forgive me if I turn to personal matters—that in times past I had many children to teach. I taught a group of children in a family where only the mother was present; the father had died, and my constant concern—which is, in fact, what a teacher must always strive for—was to bring out the children’s innate talents and abilities in order to guide them through proper education and instruction. With the children I am about to speak of, something always remained incomprehensible, no matter what one tried: the children exhibited a certain behavior that did not stem from their aptitudes or their environment; one could not quite cope with it. In such a case, one must, of course, call upon every available resource; and spiritual investigation revealed the following: The father had died, and due to the particular circumstances that had arisen within the family, he did not approve of what the relatives were doing with the children, nor of what was happening within the immediate family, and through these special circumstances he was influencing the children. And only from the moment I could take into account that there was something special—something that stemmed neither from the children’s predispositions nor from their environment, but rather came from the supersensible world via the deceased father, who was directing his forces into the children’s souls—only from that point on could one act accordingly. Now one had to take into account what the father actually wanted. And the moment one could discern what the father, who had passed through the gate of death, wanted, and when one regarded him as a real personality like the other physical personalities who were working on behalf of the children, then one was able to cope.

[ 11 ] This is one such case where it became clear that spiritual knowledge can reveal to us—can show us—how forces from the supersensory, spiritual world influence this physical world. But to perceive something like this, one needs the right moment. For example, one must try to develop a kind of power that enables one to perceive, as it were, the shining in of the supersensible force—in this case, the father’s influence into the child’s soul. This is often difficult. An easy method would be, for example, to try to recognize how the deceased father wishes to instill this or that into the child’s soul, in accordance with the father’s thoughts. However, this does not always prove to be correct, and above all, it cannot always be done anew. A good method, then, is to form a mental image of the father’s appearance, of how he looked in his final days; if one imprints a clear image of his handwriting in one’s mind and holds this before one’s eyes, thus preparing oneself for the kind of instruction meant here by concentrating on the writing or the image: then one incorporates into one’s own work the views, intentions, and goals of the deceased. One must take into account what the dead want for those left behind. Today we can only count on the will of those who are on the physical plane. A mutual, one might say free, exchange will take place between the living and the dead. We will learn to explore what the dead want for the physical plane. Imagine the great upheaval—one might say, even in the outward aspects of earthly life—when the dead will have their share and will work through the living onto the physical plane. Spiritual Science, when properly understood—and it must always be properly understood—will not be a mere theory; Spiritual Science will increasingly become an elixir of life that intervenes in the whole of existence and will transform the whole of existence the more it spreads. And it will certainly do so, for it will not function as an abstract ideal that is preached or disseminated through associations. It will, slowly but surely, take hold of souls and transform earthly souls.

[ 12 ] But many other aspects of our mental images will also be enriched. We will coexist with the dead in a completely different way in our lives, because we will understand what the dead do. Much remains quite incomprehensible at first in the connection between the world here on earth, the physical plane, and the world we pass through between death and new birth; for much of what happens here in the physical world remains incomprehensible. And since everything that happens here corresponds to what happens on the other side, the relationship of the world and humanity to the supersensible worlds also remains incomprehensible. But as Spiritual Science is correctly understood, understanding will increasingly take the place of incomprehension in this realm.

[ 13 ] Now we shall discuss a connection that can show how strangely winding paths are taken by the beings who, so to speak, carry out the further development of world wisdom. These beings follow strangely winding paths, yet when we trace them, they prove to be full of wisdom in every respect. We will consider various circumstances. Let us first consider souls whom we can observe with the seer’s eye in their activities between death and new birth. There we see—and this is again something deeply unsettling for the seer—many souls who, for a certain time between death and new birth, are condemned to become slaves to the spirits who send sickness and death into physical life. So there we see souls between death and rebirth who are yoked as slaves to those we call the Ahrimanic spirits or the spirits of obstacles—that is, those who work through death on earth and those who bring obstacles into life. This is a harsh fate that the seer observes in some souls when they must thus bend under the yoke of slavery. If one then traces such souls back to the life they led before passing through the gate of death, one finds that the souls who must serve the spirits of resistance for a certain time after death have brought this upon themselves through the complacency they developed in life. And the slaves of the spirits of sickness and death have brought this upon themselves by developing a lack of conscience before death. So here we see a certain relationship between human souls and the evil spirits of sickness and death, the evil spirits of resistance. But now let us look further at the following matter: now let us look at the souls who, here on earth, are afflicted by what such souls must do. Let us look at the souls who die here on earth in the prime of life, without being able to die of old age. Let us look at the souls who are afflicted by illness here on earth, who are pursued by misfortune, as obstacle upon obstacle piles up before them. What does the seer observe when he follows such souls who die prematurely or are pursued by misfortune and enter the spiritual world? What does the seer notice in such souls? One can have remarkable experiences in human earthly destinies. At any rate, let us point to an example that belongs to the moving earthly destinies, and what can indeed take place.

[ 14 ] A child is born; the mother dies during childbirth; the child is orphaned of its mother at birth. On the day of the child’s birth, the father learns that his entire fortune, which had been placed on a ship sailing across the sea, has been lost; he hears that the ship has been wrecked, becomes despondent, and also dies, leaving the child completely orphaned. The little girl is taken in by a wealthy lady. She is very fond of the child and bequeaths her vast fortune to her. The lady dies while the child is still relatively young. The will is examined, and a technical error is found: the child receives not a penny of what was bequeathed to her. For the second time, she is cast out into the world completely destitute and must hire herself out as a maid, performing menial tasks. A man falls in love with her, but it is impossible for the two to be together because of the prejudices that prevail in the community: they are of different faiths. But the man loves the girl so much that he promises that as soon as his father, who is already very old, dies, he will convert to her faith. He goes abroad; there he hears that his father has fallen ill. His father dies; he converts to the girl’s faith, and while he hurries to her, the girl has fallen ill and died. When he returns, she is dead. He feels the deepest sorrow and can do nothing but have the grave opened to see her one last time. And from the position of the body, it is found that the girl had been buried while still in a state of apparent death. — It is a legend—Hamerling retold it in his works—it is a legend that is not true, but it could be a hundred times so. We see that a human soul does not merely die in the prime of life, but we see it, in a certain sense, pursued by misfortune from the very beginning. In the unfolding of such circumstances, those souls are at work who, through a lack of conscience, become the servants of the evil spirits of illness, death, and misfortune. Thus, such unconscionable souls must work to bring about such grave fates: this is a connection! To the seer, this becomes particularly evident in a case such as, for example, the Titanic disaster. Let us examine how the souls acted there who, through a lack of conscience, became the servants of these spirits of disease and adversity. Karma must indeed be fulfilled; things are necessary, but it is still a terrible fate in which these souls are entangled, who after death are bound in such a yoke of slavery. — But let us ask ourselves further: What of the souls who experience such a fate here on earth, who die here on earth in the prime of their lives, who are cut down prematurely by epidemics? When these souls pass through the gate of death into the spiritual world before their time, what becomes of them?

[ 15 ] We learn of the fate of these souls when we use the seer’s eye to penetrate, so to speak, into the work of the spirits who guide the development of the Earth—or indeed, development in general—forward. These beings of the higher hierarchies possess certain powers and certain forces to advance this development; but they are, in a certain sense, limited in these powers and forces. This leads, for example, to the following. The entirely materialistic souls, who lose all interest in the supersensible world, are actually already threatened in our own age with a kind of downfall, a kind of exclusion from the ongoing development. And in a certain sense, the danger already exists in our age for a large portion of humanity that they will not be able to keep up, because they are, so to speak, held back on Earth by the heaviness of their own souls—since they are entirely materialistic souls—and are not carried over to the next incarnation. But this danger is to be averted according to the decision of the higher hierarchies. In truth, it is the case that the decisive hour for those souls who, having cut themselves off entirely, are not carried along by evolution, will not actually strike until the sixth epoch—and ultimately, not until the Venusian evolution. Essentially, the souls are not yet to have fallen so deeply into heaviness that they must remain behind. It is indeed the decision of the higher hierarchies that this should not happen. But these beings of the higher hierarchies are, in a certain sense, limited in their powers and abilities. Nothing is unlimited, not even among the beings of the higher hierarchies. And if it depended solely on the powers of these higher hierarchies, then entirely materialistic souls would already have to be cut off from the ongoing development in a certain way by their own doing. On their own, these beings of the higher hierarchies cannot actually save these souls; a means of intervention is employed. For the souls that die here a premature death do, after all, have a possibility before them as souls. Suppose they die in some catastrophe, for example, by being struck by an express train: then the shell is taken from such a soul; it is now body-free, stripped of its body, but it still possesses all the powers within it that could be active here on earth within the body. As such souls ascend into the spiritual world, they bring with them very special powers that could actually still be effective here on Earth, but which have been prematurely diverted here. These are particularly useful powers that these prematurely deceased bring with them. And these powers are now used by the beings of the higher hierarchies to save those souls whom they could not save through their own power.

[ 16 ] Materialistically inclined souls are thus led into better times and saved, since their powers are equipped only for the regular course of human development. Salvation occurs because these beings of the higher hierarchies gain strength from such unused forces that come from the Earth, which still contain energy tensions that have remained unused. These forces accrue to the beings of the higher hierarchies. Thus, the souls who perish prematurely help their fellow human beings, who would otherwise sink into the mire of materialism. Therein lies the task of souls who perish prematurely. Strange connections, aren’t they, in the intricate paths of world wisdom! On the one hand, world wisdom permits human souls, through a lack of conscience, to be condemned to contribute to the entry of illness and premature death into the world—the souls affected by this are utilized by benevolent beings of the higher hierarchies to help other people. Thus, what outwardly appears as evil in maya is often directed toward good, but through complicated paths. The paths of wisdom that are taken in the world are very complicated. One learns only gradually to find one’s way through these paths of wisdom. One might say: The spirits of the higher hierarchies hold counsel above. Because human beings must be free, they allow them the opportunity to sink into materialism, into evil. They grant them so much freedom that these human souls, who could not otherwise reach a certain point through their own strength, slip away, as it were. They need souls who develop powers on Earth that remain in tension through the premature separation from the body when they must return to the spiritual world through premature death and misfortune. For these to occur, the services must in turn be rendered by human souls who, as a result of their freedom, have sunk into a lack of conscience. A wondrous cyclical path opens up here; one might even say, a cyclical path of world wisdom. One must by no means believe that what is so-called “simple” is the universal. The world has become complicated. It was, after all, a significant word of Nietzsche’s that came to him as if by inspiration when he said: “The world is deep, and deeper than the day is thought.” — Those people who believe that everything can be grasped through the daylight wisdom of the intellect are terribly mistaken. For the higher spiritual light is not the one that shines into the daylight wisdom, but the one that shines into the darkness. We must seek this light so that we may find our way in the darkness, where the wisdom of the world nevertheless reigns.

[ 17 ] When we take in such concepts, ideas, and thoughts, my dear friends, we end up seeing the world through different eyes than before. And it will become increasingly necessary to learn to view the world with different eyes; for humanity has indeed lost much since ancient times. One can get an idea of what it has lost by considering the following. Even in the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, there were often such intermediate states between sleeping and waking, in which these souls gazed into the world of the stars and saw not merely physical stars as we do now, but perceived the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies—the guides and directors of the stars’ destinies and movements. And what existed there as ancient star charts from time immemorial, where all manner of group-soul-like forms are depicted—things that looked animal-like yet were not animals—did not spring from the imagination, but were spiritually perceived. The souls perceived this in the spiritual realm. They were able to carry this spiritual vision through the gate of death. This spiritual vision into the world of the supersensible has been lost to the souls. Today, when souls are born, they encounter the physical world through their physical sense organs and see only the outer physical. That which surrounds the outer physical—the spiritual-soul aspect in the beings of the higher hierarchies—they can no longer perceive. But what kind of souls are these that appear in today’s bodies? All the souls sitting here were incarnated in earlier times, and the vast majority of souls were incarnated in Egyptian-Chaldean bodies and looked out through these bodies into the world, which they also perceived spiritually. They have taken this spiritual aspect within; it is within the souls. Not in all souls; but even the souls who today see nothing but physical facts once lived in the perception of the spiritual; they lived a whole mental image life of the spiritual. How do these souls live now? They live exactly as if they had completely forgotten this spiritual aspect. These people live in such a way that they have forgotten the mental images they once took in. What has been forgotten is forgotten only to the consciousness; it lives in the deepest recesses of the soul. Here the peculiar thing is revealed: that the souls living today do indeed have, consciously, only a physical-sensory worldview around them; but within, in the depths of the soul, the mental images that were once taken in as true spiritual vision live on unconsciously. The souls know nothing of these; they merely display such peculiar mental images that rummage in the depths of the soul, which do not rise up into consciousness; these have a paralyzing, deadly effect. And so something does indeed arise in people today that is a deadly element within them.

[ 18 ] When a clairvoyant observes modern human beings and their anatomical structure, they find within them—particularly in the nervous system—certain currents and forces that are forces of death, stemming from mental images that were lived out in past incarnations. These spiritual mental images, which people have now forgotten, have a consuming quality. This would become increasingly evident the more humanity moves toward the future, were it not for something that counteracts it. What could that be? Nothing other than bringing to mind what has been forgotten. One must remind the souls of what they have forgotten. This is what Spiritual Science does. It does, in essence, nothing other than recall the mental images that the souls absorbed in earlier earthly lives. Spiritual Science raises these mental images into consciousness. In doing so, it gives people the opportunity once again to revive what would otherwise be like a dead impact in life.

[ 19 ] Now consider these two things that you have received in the course of today’s reflection. On the one hand, the seer perceives human souls who have passed through the gate of death, who long for the souls that have remained behind—souls they cannot perceive because, even though they may belong to quite good people, only materialistic worldviews exist within them. For the seer, it is deeply moving—even if he has attained serenity—to perceive these yearning souls. On the other hand, the seer looks toward a human future that contains ever more dead elements within itself unless it revives the mental images it once absorbed, mental images that will kill it if they do not come to consciousness. The seer must look toward a future where people—much earlier than is the case today, due to all manner of hereditary factors—will show signs of aging. Just as one can already see childlike signs of aging, even signs of old age, so would people soon after birth develop wrinkles and other signs of aging if revitalizing forces did not arise through spiritual knowledge, which are memories of the mental images once absorbed in a natural way. In order to provide the dying human race with a life-giving elixir, to give the dead the opportunity to connect with their surviving relatives, therefore the seer, becoming aware of this fact, seeks a language that is not only understood here on earth by the souls embodied in physical bodies, but is spoken in common by the souls who live here between birth and death, and those who live on the other side between death and new birth: a language for the living and the dead.

[ 20 ] And truly, it is not because one feels mere sympathy for what spiritual science is—such theoretical sympathy as one feels for other things—that this is decisive; rather, the one who truly understands, who looks into the world, perceives it as a mission for the world. He says to himself: There is a necessity to find a common language, to find the elixir of life that protects people from the withering of their mental images. This is the mission of Spiritual Science for the spiritual worlds themselves. One perceives this mission as a high, sacred duty, as something very serious and significant. And we should not merely take pleasure in the mental images that the Spiritual Science can provide for our theoretical satisfaction, but rather, out of the necessities of human and world development, we should perceive the spiritual power that it must possess. Then we will feel, in the true sense of the word, why Spiritual Science must exist, why it must be implanted in the spiritual life of humanity. We must, in essence, make this feeling our own; we must allow it to permeate us. This feeling possesses a very healing power; it belongs to those that bring the human soul into a true harmony of its forces. That is how it is. The more that which we allow to permeate our minds belongs to the world of supersensible truths, the more inwardly adept our feelings become at guiding us in life, the more essential these feelings become. The person who merely takes a liking to Spiritual Science, who embraces it out of curiosity or some similar reason, will perhaps make rather poor use of it in life. But the person who is imbued with the feeling described above—that sacred feeling that arises because we know that Spiritual Science must arise out of inner necessity—will approach life with the right feelings toward it. In the most serious and difficult situations of life, they will at least be able to find their way with Spiritual Science inwardly; perhaps they will find their way precisely when the greatest external difficulties arise. For Spiritual Science is a matter of the future; it has entered the world today because it is meant to serve humanity in the most comprehensive sense and in the most comprehensive way. But this causes people who, in a sense, harbor a fear of the spiritual worlds in the depths of their souls to act out this fear as hatred in their consciousness.

[ 21 ] Many human emotions are related to one another; ambition and vanity, for example, are related to fear. And in complex ways, many emotions are related to one another. Why is a person ambitious, vain? What does it mean to be ambitious, to be vain? To be ambitious, to be vain, means: to want to be valued through the judgment of one’s surroundings and to take pleasure in being valued through that judgment, to derive pleasure from that judgment. Why would one want that? One might want it for various reasons. But today is the time when, if one looks into the deeper depths of people’s souls, they turn out to be particularly timid. People who in their outer consciousness sometimes appear quite robust—in the depths of their souls they are timid. And they seek various intoxicants when they feel such genuine fear toward the supersensible worlds. That is to say, because some believe they are losing the ground beneath their feet when they enter the spiritual worlds, fear overcomes them. But they want to numb this fear—sometimes out of fear of the serious and dignified power they must apply to enter the spiritual worlds. One has seen many who believed they would be in the spiritual world in four weeks, but then it turns out—oh, most terrible of terrors—that in this incarnation, based on spiritual knowledge, one can no longer become what one so dearly desires, namely a famous man! Thus many lose their joy; many fear this, and to numb themselves against this fear, they devise an antipathy toward the Spiritual Science, permeated by hatred and vanity.

[ 22 ] This sentiment will continue to spread in the present day, for souls who are inwardly cowardly yet outwardly vain are becoming increasingly common in the world today. And so it may very well happen in the near future that even more hatred and even more attacks will be hurled against Spiritual Science than has already been the case. There is therefore sufficient reason to see and feel all these things with absolute clarity, to maintain harmony despite the feelings described, precisely when it often seems outwardly that everything could go wrong. To see clearly and distinctly—that will be necessary if one wishes to stand firm on the ground of spiritual knowledge. For in our present age, those who believe most strongly that they can be critical often do not know at all what they are talking about. There are people who, let’s say, start writing articles about Spiritual Science, railing furiously against the fantasy of the spiritual researcher: what he can come up with! In the second half of the article, all sorts of details about the author appear, all of which are lies, none of which are true. A wild imagination reigns in these descriptions. No one who ascends into the supersensible worlds could conjure up such fantastical notions as the one who, in the first part of his article, railed against “fantastical Spiritual Science.” This is how things turn in the human soul. Those who believe they can speak the truth quite clearly, and who are endowed with a certain dishonest imagination regarding the facts of the physical plane, numb themselves by railing against what must be grasped supersensually. Thus humanity seeks numbness not only in alcohol but also in all manner of other means. In many matters, one must see clearly, and the spiritual worldview will guide us toward clear seeing. The most diverse kinds of intoxicants are sought and also found, and they are found for the reason that more and more truly demonic natures are at work in the hidden depths of the human soul. These demonic beings will gradually be unleashed precisely against that which is meant to enrich humanity from the spiritual side.

[ 23 ] This is something I would like to paint before your souls right now, my dear friends, as a kind of vision of the future, for the simple reason that it is good for us in our time to remember how, when we truly recognize Spiritual Science and its mission, through this stirring of the right feelings toward Spiritual Science and its mission, we want to stand firmly and securely on the ground from which we can calmly observe the unfolding of the future within ourselves, even if outwardly we may be drawn into ever greater disharmony and subjected to ever greater injustice.