The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] As we have already hinted at in our reflections on life between death and rebirth, you will recall that between death and rebirth, a person initially continues to live under the circumstances they have prepared for themselves here in their earthly existence. We have pointed out that when we encounter a personality again in the spiritual world after death, the relationship between us and this other personality is initially the one that developed during our earthly existence, but that we cannot initially change these circumstances. So let us say: We have encountered in the spiritual world after death a friend or some other person who died before us. Let us assume that this person is one to whom, due to certain circumstances, we owed love, for example, and from whom we withheld that love in a certain respect. We will now have to continue experiencing the relationship that existed before death—the relationship of a certain lack of love for which we were responsible. We stand before the person in the manner described in the previous lecture and, so to speak, look upon and experience again and again what we developed in life before death. If, for example, life was such that from a certain point onward in our earthly existence we allowed a change to occur in our relationship with the personality in question—so that, for instance, ten years before this personality’s passing, or before we ourselves died, only then allowed the relationship of self-inflicted ill will just described to take hold, then we will have to live in this relationship for a correspondingly long time after death, and only after we have fully experienced this relationship will we be able to move on to also live through, in a corresponding manner after death, the better relationship we previously had with this personality. This is what we must bear in mind: that with regard to the changes in relationships we have allowed to occur on Earth, we are not in a position after death to, so to speak, compensate for them or alter them; a certain immutability has set in.

[ 2 ] One might very easily believe that this is merely a painful situation, and that, in fact, this whole matter can only be viewed by human beings as a source of suffering. If we were to judge in this way, we would be judging according to our limited earthly circumstances. However, when viewed from the spiritual world, things often appear quite differently. In the life between death and rebirth, a person must indeed endure all the pain caused by having to say to themselves: Now that I am in the spiritual world, I recognize the injustice, but I cannot change it; I must, so to speak, allow circumstances to bring about the change. — Whoever sees this certainly experiences this pain. But they also experience the fact that they know it must be this way, and that it would be harmful and detrimental to their further development if it were not so, if they could not absorb what they can experience through such pain. For by observing such a situation and being unable to change it, we absorb the strength to change it later in the karma of life. This is how the mechanism of karma works: we can transform and change it when we enter a physical incarnation again. In reality, there is only a very slight possibility that the deceased person can change it themselves. He sees it coming, as it were—this refers above all to the first period after death, to the time in the Kamaloka—which is conditioned by the life before death; but he must initially remain there and cannot bring about a change in his circumstances or in his experience.

[ 3 ] We can say this: The living, those left behind here, have far more influence than the deceased person has over themselves, and than other departed souls have over them. And that is something of immense significance. Those who have remained on the physical plane and have established a certain connection with the deceased, those who have ties to the souls between death and rebirth, are actually the only ones capable of bringing about any changes in the deceased after death through human will during this life.

[ 4 ] Let us consider a specific case that can teach us several things at once. In doing so, we can also take into account life in the Kamaloka; for in this respect, conditions do not change when one passes into the later Devachan period. Let us imagine two people who lived on Earth. It may happen that one of them, at a certain point in his life, developed a relationship—let us say, for the sake of simplicity—with anthroposophy; he became an anthroposophist. The other, walking alongside him, becomes quite furious with anthroposophy precisely because his friend has become an anthroposophist, and now begins to rail against it terribly. Perhaps you have also experienced something that leads you to say: The other might not be so furious with anthroposophy at all if his friend had not just become an anthroposophist! — Let us suppose that anthroposophy had approached him first: then he might have become a good anthroposophist. That may be; such circumstances exist in life. But we must be clear that such circumstances can often play a very significant role in maya, in what we call the illusion of life. Thus, the following may be the case. The person who starts railing terribly against anthroposophy because his friend has become an anthroposophist is only railing in his upper consciousness, in his ego-consciousness; in his astral consciousness, in his subconsciousness, he need not at all share this aversion to anthroposophy. Without his knowing it, a longing for anthroposophy may even emerge. And for many, what appears as aversion in the upper consciousness is actually an affinity in the subconscious. Just because someone expresses this or that in the upper consciousness does not mean he necessarily feels and perceives things in the same way as he expresses them. After death, we do not merely experience the aftereffects of what is in our conscious mind, in our ego-consciousness. Anyone who believed that would view the conditions after death entirely incorrectly. We have often emphasized how, although a person sheds their physical body and etheric body at death, desires, longings, and so on remain. But it is not only the desires and longings of which a person is aware that remain, but also those that lie in their subconscious and of which they are unaware—those they may be fighting against or raging against. After death, these are often much stronger and more intense than they are in life. In life, a certain disharmony between the astral body and the ego manifests as a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of dissatisfaction, and so on. After death, it is precisely the astral consciousness that determines the entire character of the human soul, the entire imprint of what a person is like. What we experience in our conscious mind is not even as significant as all the hidden desires, cravings, and passions that exist in the depths of the soul and of which the ego is often completely unaware. Thus, it may be that a person who, because his friend has become an anthroposophist, rails against anthroposophy, passes through the gate of death. And that longing, which may have developed precisely because he railed against anthroposophy, asserts itself and now becomes a most heartfelt desire for anthroposophy. This desire would have to remain unfulfilled; for it could hardly be the case that the person would have the opportunity after death to satisfy this desire. But through a peculiar chain of circumstances, in such a case the one who has remained on earth can help the other and change something in the other’s circumstances. And here we see the situation that can be observed in numerous cases even within our own ranks.

[ 5 ] For example, we can read aloud to the deceased. This is done by vividly forming a mental image of the deceased standing before you: you picture their facial features, for instance, and mentally go over with them the things described in an anthroposophical book. You need only do this in your mind; this has a direct effect on the one who has passed through the gate of death. And as long as they are in the Kamaloka state, language is no barrier; it would only become one once they are in Devachan. Therefore, the question cannot be raised: Does the deceased understand the language? — During the Kamaloka period, a sense of language is still very much present. In such an active way, a person can offer help to one who has passed through the gate of death. What flows up from the physical plane in this way is something that can bring about a change in the conditions of life between death and the new birth—something that can be given to the deceased only from the physical world, but which cannot be given to him directly from the spiritual world.

[ 6 ] We can see from this that anthroposophy, if it truly takes root in people’s hearts, will indeed bridge the gap between the physical and spiritual worlds, and that will be the essence of life, the great value of anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is truly only at the beginning of its work if one regards its main purpose as the acquisition of certain anthroposophical concepts and ideas, such as how the human being is composed of its constituent parts or what may come to him from the spiritual world. Only when we know how anthroposophy intervenes in our lives will it build the bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds—but build it in a practical way. We will then no longer merely remain passive toward those who have passed through the gate of death, but we will actively engage with them, stand in living communion with them, and be able to help them. For this, however, anthroposophy must take root in our consciousness—that our entire world is composed of physical existence and the supersensible, spiritual existence, and that the human being is not on Earth merely to gather for himself the fruits of physical life during the period between birth and death, but that he is on Earth to send up into the supersensible world that which can only be planted on the physical plane, that which can exist at all only on this plane. Whether a person has remained distant from anthroposophical views for a valid reason, or whether, let us say, out of convenience: after death, we can bring these anthroposophical views to them in the manner described.

[ 7 ] It may well be that someone raises the question: Perhaps this would embarrass the deceased; perhaps he would not want this? This question is not entirely justified, for the reason that people today do not, in their subconscious, have all that much against anthroposophy. They actually have nothing against it in their subconscious; and if we could access the subconscious of those who rage against anthroposophy in their conscious mind—to the extent that their subconscious could have a say—there would hardly be any opposition to anthroposophy. For human beings are prejudiced and biased against the spiritual world only in their ego-consciousness, only in what manifests as ego-consciousness on the physical plane.

[ 8 ] In this way, we have come to understand one aspect of the mediation between the physical world and the spiritual world. But we can also raise the question: Is mediation possible from the other side toward this physical world? That is to say: Can those who have passed through the gate of death, in a certain sense, somehow communicate with those who have remained on the physical plane? — This is not the case in the slightest today, and the reason is that people on the physical plane mostly live only in their ego-consciousness and do not immerse themselves in the consciousness connected to the astral body. Now, it is not so easy to conjure up a mental image of how, as anthroposophy continues to flourish further and further in human evolution, people will gradually attain an awareness of what surrounds them as an astral, devachanic, or otherwise spiritual world. But this will come to pass. Simply by taking into account what anthroposophy can offer through its teachings, the human being will find the means and ways to break through the world of the purely physical plane and, so to speak, direct their attention to the world that is all around them and which escapes them only because they are not attentive to the spiritual world.

[ 9 ] How can we find ways and means to become aware of this spiritual world?

[ 10 ] Today I would like to help you create a mental image of how little a person actually knows and perceives about the things in the environment. For in truth, a person perceives very little of significance about the world. Through his senses and his intellect, he learns to recognize the ordinary facts into which he is entangled. They come to know what is happening there and what is happening within themselves, and then they connect these things, calling one the causes and the other the effects, and believe they understand the processes when they link them according to cause and effect or other concepts. For example, we leave our apartment at eight o’clock in the morning, step out onto the street, then go to our workplace, eat during the day, and do this or that for our pleasure; we do this until we drift off to sleep again. Then we link these things in our lives: one makes a stronger impression on us, the other a weaker one. Through this, we also experience soul impressions: one is sympathetic to us, the other unsympathetic. This is how we live—a little reflection can teach us this—as if we were floating on the surface of the sea and had no mental image of what lies at the bottom of the sea. This is how we live our lives, coming to know only what appears externally as reality. But there is an immense amount contained within what appears as reality. Let’s take an example: We are supposed to leave our room every day at eight in the morning to go to our place of work. One day we leave three minutes later. We experience something there as well: We arrive three minutes later and then go about things as usual, just as we do when we leave home at eight. But sometimes we do manage to realize that, had we been on the street at eight o’clock, we might have been run over and killed by a car. That means, in this case: If we had gone out onto the street at eight o’clock, we would no longer be alive. Or we might realize another time that a train we would otherwise have taken has just crashed, so that we can figure out that we would have been involved in the accident. Here we have an even more radical version of what I just said. We only pay attention to what happens, and not to what could be happening all the time and which we escape. We constantly escape things that could happen to us, and the sphere of possibilities is infinitely greater than what actually happens.

[ 11 ] Now we might say: At first glance, this has no significance for our external life. — Certainly not for the external, but certainly for the internal! Suppose you had the experience of having already purchased a ticket for the “Titanic,” and a friend had advised you against going; you sold the ticket, and you then heard about the disaster. Would you then have the same emotional experience as if you were an uninvolved observer? Wouldn’t it rather make an extraordinarily significant impression on your soul? If only we knew how many things we are spared in the world, how many things are possible—in both a good and a bad sense—for which forces are converging and come together only by a hair’s breadth, then we would have a sense of the spiritual experiences of happiness or misfortune, of bodily experiences that are possible for us, but which we do not experience, which we do not experience at all. Who among all those sitting here can know what he would have experienced if, for example, the lecture had been canceled this evening and he were somewhere else? But if he did know, he would sometimes have a completely different inner state of mind from this knowledge than he has now, because he does not know what might have happened.

[ 12 ] All of this—what is possible but does not actually come to pass on the physical plane—exists as forces, as effects, behind our physical world, in the spiritual world; it is truly present there as forces, permeating the spiritual world, so to speak. We are not only assailed by the forces that determine our reality here, but also by the immeasurably numerous forces that exist only as possibilities, and only rarely does anything from these possibilities penetrate into our physical consciousness. When it does, however, it is usually the occasion for a significant soul experience. Do not say: What has just been described—that there is an infinite world of possibilities, that, for example, this lecture could have been canceled and that those sitting here could have experienced something else—all of this speaks against karma. — It does not speak against karma. If one were to say that, one would not know that the idea of karma, as we have presented it, applies only to the world of realities within physical human life, and that the life of the spiritual permeates and interweaves our physical life, that a world of possibilities prevails where the laws now operating as karmic laws are of an entirely different nature. If we allow ourselves to be imbued, even a little, with a sense of what a small part the world of physical realities is of what we could experience—how our world of experiences is but a carved-out fragment of possibilities—then this can suggest to us the immense richness, the effervescence of spiritual life that lies behind our physical life.

[ 13 ] Now the following can happen. A person may indeed take this world of possibilities into account, if only a little, in their thoughts—or not even in their thoughts, but in their feelings. For example, they might experience something like this: You missed a train, and had that train been involved in an accident, you would likely have been killed. — This can be a moment that makes a deep impression on the soul when we are confronted with it. Such moments are suited to opening us up, so to speak, to the spiritual world, where intuitions can then enter us. Such moments, which are somehow connected to us, can then also foreshadow existing desires or thoughts of souls living between death and rebirth.

[ 14 ] If anthroposophy can awaken in people a sense of life’s possibilities, of certain events and upheavals that did not occur simply because something—for which the forces were present—did not come to pass, and if this is felt, and the soul holds on to such a feeling, then it is indeed capable of receiving experiences from the spiritual world from those personalities with whom it has been connected in the physical world. Although people are generally not inclined, even during the turbulence of daily life, to indulge in feelings about what might have been, there are nevertheless times in human life when this “what might have been” exerts a decisive influence on the human soul. If you were to observe more closely the life of dreams or the peculiar state of transition from waking to sleep or from sleep to waking, if you were to observe more closely certain dreams that are sometimes quite inexplicable—where this or that which happens to one appears before the soul in a dream image or a vision—and if the soul were to investigate this, it would find that such inexplicable images are things that could have happened, and which were only prevented by the fact that circumstances arose other than those that could have occurred, or because obstacles of some other kind arose. Whoever makes their mental images flexible through meditation or in other ways will, even if not in clearly defined mental images, nevertheless experience moments in waking life—emotionally—in which they feel as though they are living within a world of possibilities. When one develops such a feeling, one prepares oneself to receive impressions from the spiritual world precisely from those people who were connected to one in the physical world. And then such influences also come to light in moments such as those just described, as dream experiences, which, however, then have a real significance that points to something real in the spiritual world. Precisely by teaching us that karma exists here in life between birth and death, anthroposophy shows us that, wherever we stand, we are always faced with an infinite number of possibilities that could occur. One is chosen according to the law of karma; the others lie behind it, surrounding us, as it were, like a real world aura. The more we believe in karma, the more we also believe in this real world aura that surrounds us, consisting of forces that come together but are shifted in such a way that they lead to nothing on the physical plane.

[ 15 ] When we allow our minds to be influenced by anthroposophy, when such things take root in our minds, then anthroposophy will serve as the means of human education for absorbing impressions and influences from the spiritual worlds as well. So when anthroposophy begins to influence cultural life and spiritual life, not only will the influences described earlier flow upward from physical life into the spiritual realm, but the experiences that the deceased have during the time they spend between death and rebirth will also return. Thus the gulf between the physical and the spiritual world will be bridged here as well. This will bring about an immense expansion of human life, and only through this will what anthroposophy is meant to achieve come to pass: a genuine connection between the two worlds, not merely a theoretical understanding that a spiritual world exists. It is necessary to understand that anthroposophy will only have fulfilled its complete task when it permeates human souls in a living way, and when, through it, we not only understand something but become entirely different in our entire stance and in our relationship to the surrounding world.

[ 16 ] Due to the prejudices of our current era, people think far, far too materialistically. Even though they often believe in a spiritual world, their thinking remains far too materialistic. This makes it extremely difficult for people in the present age to grasp the proper relationship between the spiritual and the physical. Our habits of thought tend too much toward viewing the spiritual, so to speak, as too closely bound to the physical. Perhaps only a comparison can help us grasp what we are actually meant to understand.

[ 17 ] When we look at a clock, we see that it consists of gears, other metal parts, and the like. Do we ever look at a clock in everyday life—when it is meant to serve us—in order to study its inner workings or the interplay of its gears? No. We look at the clock to find out what time it is. But that has nothing to do with all the metal parts and the like. For what does time have to do with metal parts? We look at the clock and pay no attention at all to what the clock itself shows us. Or let’s take another example for comparison. When people today speak of telegraphing, they have the electric telegraph in mind. But even before the electric telegraph existed, people still telegraphed. For if one knows only the right signals and so on, one could manage—perhaps not even much more slowly—to communicate from one place to another even without an electric telegraph. Imagine, for example, setting up columns from Berlin to Paris, with a person standing at each column to immediately relay the relevant signals. And if this is done with the necessary speed, then exactly the same thing happens as with the electric telegraph. Certainly, it is easier and faster with the electric telegraph; but what happens there—the act of telegraphing—has not the slightest thing to do with the mechanism of an electric telegraph, any more than time has to do with the inner workings of a clock.

[ 18 ] Just as much as a message sent from Berlin to Paris via the electric telegraph—just as much, and just as little, does what the human soul is have to do with the functions of the human body. Only when we think this way do we gain a true mental image of the independence of the soul. For it could very well be that this human soul, with all that it contains, makes use of another body, a body of a different form, just as a message from Berlin to Paris could be sent by means other than the electric telegraph. And just as the electric telegraph is merely the most convenient means within our circumstances for transmitting a message, so too is the body, which is in a state of oscillating motion and has a head at the top, the most convenient means for the soul to live out and express itself within our earthly circumstances. But it is by no means the case that the body has any more to do with what the life of the soul is than the electric telegraphs and their equipment have to do with the transmission of a message from Paris to Berlin, or than the clock has to do with time. For one could devise a completely different instrument to measure time than our clocks. And so a human body quite different from the one we use under present-day earthly conditions to live out the conditions of the human soul is conceivable. For, to what is the human soul connected? How are we actually to understand the human soul in its relationship to the body?

[ 19 ] It is precisely in this area that one might quote Schiller’s saying, applied metaphorically to human beings: “If you seek the highest, the best, the plant can teach it to you. ” Look at the plant that spreads its leaves and opens its blossoms by day, and that, when the light is gone, draws its leaves and blossoms together. What is withheld from it? What comes to it from the sun, from the starry space during the day—that is what is withdrawn from it. But what works in from the sun causes the folded leaves to spread out again, the flower to unfold. Out there in the cosmos, then, are the forces that either cause the plant’s organs to slump limply or allow them to unfold when they act. What is spread out in the cosmos and causes the plant’s limbs to go limp when it withdraws from the plant is done in humans by the individual ego with the astral body. When does a human let their limbs sink, when do they let their eyelids sink, just as with the plant when it draws in its leaves and blossoms? When the ego and the astral body step out of the human being. What the sun does to the plant, the ego and the astral body do to the organs of human nature. Therefore, we can say: The plant body must look up to the sun, just as the human body must look toward its own ego and astral body and regard them as that which makes the same impression on it as the sun does on the plant. If you consider this merely from an external perspective, is it still a wonder to you that occult research now teaches us that the ego and the astral body are in fact born out of the cosmic space to which the sun belongs and do not belong to the earth at all? And now, in light of the observations already made, this will not be surprising to you either: When human beings step out of the Earth in sleep or in death, they experience the great cosmic relationships; they are there. The plant, however, remains bound to the Sun and to the forces present in space. The human ego and astral body have become independent of the forces spread out in space and go their own way. Therefore, the plant can only sleep when sunlight is truly withdrawn from it. The human being, in regard to his ego and astral body, is independent of what is his home—of suns and planets—and so he can also sleep during the day when the sun is shining. In his ego and astral body, he has freed himself from that with which he is, however, essentially one: the forces of the stars and the sun. And it is not grotesque to say: Thus, what remains on Earth and in its elements after death belongs to the Earth and its forces; but the ego and the astral body belong to the great world forces, return to these world forces upon the death of the human being, and live out within them the life between death and new birth. And during the time between birth and death, while the soul is embedded here in a physical body, what constitutes our soul life—which actually belongs to the life of the sun and the stars—has no more to do with this physical body than the time, which is fundamentally also determined by solar and stellar constellations, has to do with the clock and its mechanism in the gears. It would be entirely conceivable that if we lived on another planet instead of on Earth, we would be adapted to entirely different planetary conditions with the very same soul. The fact that we have eyes shaped in this way, that we have ears shaped as they are, does not stem from the conditions of the soul, but from what Earthly conditions are. We merely use these organs. Imbuing ourselves with the awareness that, through our soul, we belong to the world of the stars—this is precisely what gives us insight into our true human relationship, into our true human nature. When we know this, we also know how to relate correctly to our circumstances here on Earth. If, therefore, one penetrates in this way the human being’s—one might even say—more or less external relationship to his physical body or etheric body, then a sense of security will come into the human being. He will no longer see himself merely as an earthly being, but as a member of the whole world, of the whole macrocosm, as a being situated within the macrocosm. It is only because they are bound to their body here that they are not aware of their connection to the forces of the great universe.

[ 20 ] This is what people have always sought to instill in souls throughout the ages, wherever spiritual life has been deepened. And, in essence, it was only in the last four centuries that awareness of this connection between human beings and the spiritual forces that weave and reign throughout the cosmos was lost. Let us take what we have always emphasized: that we must see in Christ the great solar being who, through the Mystery of Golgotha, united himself with the Earth and its forces, so that human beings can take the Christ force within themselves on Earth—then, in the permeation with the Christ impulse, there will also lie what lies in the great impulses of the macrocosm, and it will be right for every human cycle to see in Christ that which is meant to give us a sense of belonging to the macrocosm.

[ 21 ] In the 12th century, a beautiful parable emerged in the West, a story that tells the following. Once upon a time, there was a girl who had several brothers. The whole family was destitute. One day, the girl found a pearl. This made her the owner of an immense treasure. The brothers were eager to share in the wealth that had come to the girl, and the following took place. One brother was a painter, and he said to the girl: “I will paint you the most beautiful picture that has ever existed if you let me share in your wealth.” — But the girl wanted nothing to do with him and turned him down. The second brother was a musician. He promised the girl that he would compose the most magnificent piece of music if she would let him share in her wealth. But she rejected him. The third brother was an apothecary, and as was the custom in the Middle Ages, apothecaries primarily stocked perfumes and other items that were not merely medicinal herbs but were also suitable for everyday life. And this brother promised the girl the most fragrant water if she would let him share in her wealth. But she rejected this brother as well. The fourth brother was a cook. He promised the girl that he would cook such delicious things for her that, by eating them, she would gain a brain like Zeus’s and, moreover, have the most delicious food if she let him share in her wealth. She rejected him. The fifth brother was an innkeeper, and he promised her that he would find her the best suitors if she would let him share in her wealth. But she rejected him as well. Then came the one, as the parable tells, who could truly find the girl’s soul, and with him she shared her treasure, the pearl she had found.

[ 22 ] The whole story is told very beautifully. And it is portrayed even more beautifully by a later poet in the 17th century, Jakob Balde, in greater detail and with greater artistry. But we also have an explanation that dates back to the 13th century and was provided in this case by the poet himself, so that one could not say the story was merely interpreted in this way. In it, the poet says he wanted to depict the human soul with its free will. The girl is the human soul, which has free will. The girl’s five brothers are the five senses: the painter is the eye, the musician the ear, the apothecary the sense of smell, the cook the sense of taste, and the innkeeper the sense of touch. She rejects them in order to then share—with the one who is truly kindred to her soul, with Christ, as it is depicted—the treasure of free will; that is, not to take in what the senses urge, but what the Christ impulse urges when the soul is permeated by him. Here, one might say, we have beautifully distinguished the independence of the soul’s life—which is born of the spirit and has its home in the spirit—from that which is born of the earth: the senses and all that which exists solely so that the soul may be embedded within it, that is, earthly physicality in general.

[ 23 ] In order to begin demonstrating how one can transcend ordinary life through proper thinking, it should be shown how well-founded and correct are the insights gained through occult research into the spiritual world, when the occult researcher knows directly through his own perception that the human soul—that is, the ego and the astral body—belongs to the world of the stars. If one considers the human relationship with the limbs that remain united during sleep—which, however, is quite independent of the world of the stars, since a human being can also sleep during the day—and if one compares it with the plant and the sunlight, then one can see how well-founded the findings of occult research are. The point is to consider the grounds that can truly be found in the world. But if someone finds what occult research reveals to be unfounded, this is merely a sign that they have not consulted everything that can truly provide knowledge from the outer world. This sometimes requires a great deal of energy and impartiality; one does not always muster these. But one can say: Whoever researches the spiritual world with truthfulness and then presents the results of their research to the world, presents them to proper judgment. For true occult research does not shy away from rational criticism, only from superficial criticism, which is not criticism at all.

[ 24 ] If you now recall how the course of human development has been described—from the Saturn era through the Sun and Moon eras to our present Earth era—then you will also recall how a separation occurred during the Moon era, which then continued into our Earth existence. This separation has resulted in the soul and the body being relatively more distant from one another today. In the ancient Sun Age, they were still much more closely related. The fact that the Moon separated from the Sun as early as the ancient Moon Age caused the human soul to become more independent. At that time, the soul, during certain intervals between incarnations, reached out into the general macrocosm, became independent, and this brought about those peculiar conditions that, during the Earth’s development, led to the separation of the Sun and then of the Moon in the Lemurian epoch, whereby a host of individual human souls — as described in more detail in Outline of Esoteric Science — to undergo special destinies apart from the Earth and to return only later. It will become clear to us, however, that with regard to what remains when a person has passed through the gate of death and enters the spiritual world, their true home, they lead a radically different life that is, in essence, quite dissimilar to that of the earthly body.

[ 25 ] In the upcoming lectures, we will learn more details necessary for a deeper understanding of life between death and rebirth.