The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] When we consider human life in relation to life in the rest of the world, as we are able to do through ordinary perception—that is, through the external existence of human beings—we are actually observing only the very smallest part of the world that pertains to human beings themselves. In other words: Everything that a human being can observe, if they do not wish to penetrate the mysteries of existence, cannot, in essence, enlighten them about themselves. For when we look around us with the ordinary human organs of perception, with the organ of thought, we actually have before us only that which does not encompass the deepest, most significant mysteries of existence. This becomes most apparent when one manages to develop, even to a relatively small degree, the ability to view life and the world from the other side, namely from sleep. What one can see in sleep is, after all, usually veiled from present human perception. For as soon as a person sinks into sleep—and thus during the entire period between falling asleep and waking up—the person actually sees nothing. But when, in the course of spiritual development, the point is reached where one can observe even while asleep, then one initially sees, for the most part, that which pertains to the person themselves and which remains entirely hidden from them during everyday observation. It is easy to see that this must remain hidden from them during everyday observation. For the brain is an instrument of judgment, of thinking. One must therefore make use of the brain if one wishes to think and judge in ordinary life; one must, so to speak, set the brain in motion; but through this one cannot look at it, one cannot observe it. After all, not even the eye can observe itself when it is observing. And fundamentally, this is true of the whole human being. We carry it within us, but we cannot observe it; we cannot delve into it; so that while we actually direct our gaze out into the world, in modern life we are unable to direct this gaze inward at all.

[ 2 ] Now, the greatest mysteries of existence are not out there in the world, but lie within the human being. Let us consider what we know from esoteric science. There we learn that the three kingdoms of nature that surround us are, in fact, based on a certain state of underdevelopment. The mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms are, in essence, entities that, as they are, are based on the fact that something has remained behind in evolution. Only that which participates in human existence during earthly life has actually made normal progress in development. When a human being observes mineral, plant, or animal existence, they are actually observing in the world that which corresponds in their own existence to what they “remember,” to what is incorporated into their memory. When a person reflects solely on what is incorporated into their memory—that is, what they have experienced in the soul—they are observing precisely what has taken place in the past and still persists, what still maintains a certain existence. But one does not observe the living, invisible soul-life of the present when one merely surrenders to memory. Memory, with all its mental images, represents something that has, as it were, been stored within our living soul life, something that is literally lodged there—these things are, of course, all figurative; but it is that which, in terms of memory, is incorporated into the soul life, not the immediate, elemental, present soul life. — So it is out in nature with the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. In these kingdoms live, as it were, the thoughts of the divine-spiritual beings that were thought in the past; and they continue into present living existence just as our memories continue into our soul life. Therefore, in the world around us, we do not have before us the thoughts of the present, immediate, living divine-spiritual beings, but rather the memories of the gods, which are based on the preserved thoughts of the gods.

[ 3 ] When we examine the contents of our memory, this can indeed be interesting to us in a certain way, because through our memory we grasp, as it were, a corner of the creation of the world—that which passes from creation into existence. It is, so to speak, the lowest level of the created world, what exists there in our own soul as memory, as recollections; the very first, most fleeting level of the created world. But when one, so to speak, awakens spiritually in sleep, then one sees something else. Then one does not see at all what is out there in space; one does not see at all such processes as those that meet one in the mineral, plant, or animal kingdoms, nor even in the outer human kingdom. Rather, one then knows that what one actually sees there is the creative and life-giving aspect of the human being itself. It is literally as if everything else were erased and the earth, viewed from the perspective of sleep, contained only human beings. Precisely what one would never see during the day, while awake, is revealed to one when one views the world from the perspective of sleep. And only then does one truly come to know the thoughts that the divine-spiritual beings have reserved for themselves in order to create in human beings beyond mineral, plant, and animal existence. So while through the physical observation of the world one observes everything else but the human being, through spiritual observation from the perspective of sleep one does not observe anything else—and in fact only the human being, insofar as one speaks of creation, and what takes place in the human realm, that is, everything that eludes ordinary daily observation. Hence the initially alienating quality of this perception that lives within us when we view the world from the perspective of sleep—that is, when we become clairvoyant within sleep and awaken spiritually.

[ 4 ] Yes, but this human body—and by “human body” I now mean whatever remains in bed during sleep, that is, the physical body and the etheric body together—this human body then presents a peculiar sight, a sight whose nature can be described in words something like this: Only in the case of the child in the very earliest stages of life is this sleeping human body, in a certain sense, similar to the weaving, living, and activity in the other realms of nature. The body of the adult human, however—or indeed of the child from a certain age onward—actually presents, when viewed from the standpoint of sleep, a continuous process of decay and destruction. True, every night during sleep the destructive forces are once again overcome by the forces of growth; what the day destroys is balanced out at night, but there is always a surplus of destructive forces. And the fact that there is always a surplus of destructive forces is what causes us to die in the first place. The differences that remain accumulate. Every night, a difference always remains. The forces that are replenished during the night are never exactly as great as those that have been expended during the day, so that in the normal life of a human being, a certain residue of destructive forces remains every day. And since this residue, which remains every day, adds to the others, natural death from old age occurs when the sum becomes so great that the destructive forces outweigh the constructive ones.

[ 5 ] So when we look at human beings from the perspective of sleep, we are actually observing a process of destruction. We do not view this process of destruction with sadness. For the feelings one might have about this process of destruction in daily life are absent when one surveys this process from the perspective of sleep, because one then knows that this process of destruction is the condition for the actual spiritual development of the human being. No being that did not destroy its body could think, could develop an inner spiritual life. It would be quite impossible for spiritual life to develop—in the sense that human beings experience it—through mere growth processes that were not counterbalanced by processes of destruction. One thus sees in the processes of destruction taking place within the human organism the conditions of human soul life and perceives the entire process as a blessing. From the other side of life, one even feels a sense of bliss at the fact that one can gradually dissolve one’s body. Not only does the view from ‘the other side of life’ appear different, but all sensations and perceptions also appear different; from this other side of life, from the standpoint of the consciousness of sleep, one actually always has before one the decaying body, the truly decaying body.

[ 6 ] When we now consider the life between death and rebirth, we are faced with something different. For a time after death, there is a certain kind of coexistence with the previous life. You have already come to understand all this regarding the Kamaloka period; but even after the Kamaloka period, it continues for a while longer: one lives with one’s previous life. But then there comes a time that always occurs in the life between death and rebirth. There comes a certain point when, in fact, in a much higher sense than during sleep consciousness, a reversal of all seeing and all perceiving takes place in relation to ordinary seeing and perceiving—a reversal for the following reason: When one stands here in this earthly existence, one looks out from one’s body into the other world, which is not our body itself; from this point in time between death and new birth, to which I have just referred, one actually looks only to a very small extent at the environment, at the universe. But one looks all the more at what one might now call the human body; one knows all its secrets. So there comes a moment between death and new birth when one begins to take a particular interest in the human body. It is, of course, immensely difficult to characterize these conditions, and one can really only do so with stammering words. There comes a moment between death and new birth when one feels, in relation to the entire cosmos, as if one had this universe within oneself and, outside oneself, only the human body. Just as one feels toward the stomach, the liver, the spleen—that one has them within—so does one feel toward the stars and, in general, the other worlds from that moment on: one feels that one carries them within one’s being. What is the external world in this life is then the true inner world, and just as one now looks out at the stars, clouds, and so on, so does one then look upon the human body. And upon which human body, exactly?

[ 7 ] If one wants to know which human body one is looking at, one must realize that what comes into being as a new human being through a subsequent birth has, in its essence, been preparing itself long, long before birth. It is not with birth or conception that this human being, so to speak, prepares to be here on earth again, but long before that. After all, quite different things are important for this than those assumed by modern statistical biology. The latter assumes that when a human being comes into existence through birth, they inherit certain characteristics from their father, mother, grandfather, and so on, all the way back through the entire ancestral line. There is already a rather charming book about Goethe in which Goethe’s characteristics are traced all the way back to his ancestors. Now, this is entirely correct in an external sense; it is absolutely correct in an external sense, precisely in the sense I have often hinted at: that there is absolutely no contradiction between any scientific fact that is rightly asserted and the facts to be discussed from a perspective of Spiritual Science. It is just as if someone were to come and say: Here stands a person, why is he alive? — To which someone might reply: I know why he is alive: he lives because he has lungs inside and because there is air outside. — That is quite correct, of course it is correct. But another person might come along and say: “This person is alive for an entirely different reason. He fell into the water two weeks ago, and I jumped in after him and pulled him out: that is why he is alive; for if I hadn’t jumped in after him and pulled him out of the water, he certainly wouldn’t be alive today!” — This statement is entirely correct, but the other statement is just as correct. So it is quite correct to demonstrate, using external natural science, that someone carries within them the inherited characteristics of their ancestors; but it is just as correct to point to their karma and other factors. In principle, therefore, Spiritual Science cannot be intolerant at all; in principle, only external science can be intolerant, for example, by rejecting Spiritual Science. So someone may come and say that they have preserved the characteristics of their ancestral line within themselves. But alongside this there is also the fact that, from a certain point in time between death and the new birth, a person begins to develop forces that work down upon their ancestors. Long before a person enters physical existence, they are already in a mysterious connection with the entire ancestral line. And the reason why very specific characteristics appear in an ancestral line stems from the fact that a very specific human being is to emerge from this ancestral line—perhaps only after centuries. This human being, who is to emerge from an ancestral line perhaps after centuries, regulates the characteristics of his ancestors from the spiritual world. Goethe, then—if we wish to refer to this example once more—exhibits the characteristics of his ancestors because, from the spiritual world, he has continually been at work implanting his characteristics into his ancestors. And just as it was shown for Goethe, so does every human being.

[ 8 ] From a very specific point in time onward, therefore, the human being is already engaged, between death and rebirth, in preparing for his or her future earthly existence. For what a human being carries here on Earth as his physical body does not stem entirely from the physical lives of his ancestors, nor does it stem entirely from processes that can take place on Earth. What we carry as our physical body is, in fact, already a fourfold being in itself. We have, after all, developed our physical body through the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth periods. It was first formed on ancient Saturn; during the Sun period the etheric body was integrated, during the Moon period the astral body, and during the Earth period the ego; and through these integrations the physical body has been continually transformed. Thus we have within us the transformed Saturn structure, the transformed Sun conditions, and the transformed Moon conditions. We could not bear a physical human body if we did not carry the transformed physical conditions within us. Of all this, only what we have from the Earth is actually visible; the other members are, in fact, invisible. The physical body of the human being becomes visible through the fact that it takes in the substances of the Earth, transforms them into blood, and permeates the invisible with them. In reality, one sees only the blood and the products of the blood’s transformation—that is, only a quarter of the physical human body; the other three quarters are invisible. For there is first an invisible framework; within this invisible framework are invisible currents; but all of this exists as forces. Within these invisible currents, there are in turn invisible interactions between the individual currents. All of this is not yet visible. And now this threefold invisible realm is permeated by what the foodstuffs, processed into blood, form as the substance filling this threefold invisible realm. Only through this does the physical body become visible. And only with the laws of this visible realm are we in the sphere that originates from the earthly. Everything else does not originate from earthly conditions; everything else is that which comes from cosmic conditions, and which is already prepared for us when conception occurs, when the first physical atom of the human being comes into existence. There, in times past, without there being a physical connection with father and mother, what is to become the human being’s later physicality has long been prepared. The laws of heredity are only then worked into it.

[ 9 ] It is toward this—what one might call the spiritual embryo, the spiritual seed of life—that is preparing itself, and which begins to prepare itself from the moment between death and new birth, that the human soul actually looks down. That is its outer world! Notice now the difference when one awakens clairvoyantly during sleep, when one looks upon the human body in the process of decay, when one sees the human body that is actually in a continuous process of destruction—and when one looks at the moment when one sees one’s inner viscera as one’s outer world. But then the inner, developing human being is the outer world! So one sees it in reverse, as compared to when one otherwise sees it clairvoyantly during sleep. During sleep, one feels how one perceives one’s internal organs as one’s outer world, but otherwise one looks only upon a decaying human being; in the time between death and new birth, one looks from the indicated point in time toward the emerging, the developing, the human body creating itself into existence. It is simply that the human being lacks the ability to retain a memory of what he sees between death and new birth. But what one sees there as the miracle of human physicality coming together is truly more magnificent than anything a human being can behold when gazing at the starry sky, or when looking at the physical external world through any perception bound to the physical body. Great are the mysteries of existence, even when we view them only sensually, from our sensory standpoint; but greater still is what we behold when we carry within ourselves, as our innermost being, that which we otherwise see so outwardly, and when we then perceive the developing human body with all its mysteries! There we see how everything tends toward and prepares itself to ultimately take hold of physical existence when the human being enters the physical world through birth.

[ 10 ] In reality, there is nothing that can truly be called bliss except the contemplation of the process of creation, the process of becoming. Any contemplation of what already exists is nothing compared to the contemplation of what is becoming; and what is meant by the bliss that a human being can experience between death and rebirth actually refers to the fact that during this time of existence, the human being can contemplate what is becoming. Words such as those found, for example, in the “Prologue in Heaven” in Goethe’s “Faust” refer to such things that have passed through the revelations of the ages and have been grasped by individual spirits who were suitably prepared:

The emerging, which eternally acts and lives,
Encircle yourselves with love’s gentle barriers,
And what hovers in a wavering form,
Fortify with enduring thoughts.

[ 11 ] That is precisely the difference in how we view the world between birth and death and the world between death and new birth: that here we see existence, and there we see becoming.

[ 12 ] Perhaps someone might now think: But then isn’t the human being merely preoccupied with observing his own body? He is not. For at this stage of becoming, this body is truly the external world; it is not one’s own body, but rather the manifestation of divine mysteries. And that is when it really strikes one why the physical body—which, in truth, a person merely mistreats between birth and death—why this human body, when one takes this entire process of seeing into account, is the temple of the world’s mysteries, for it contains more of the outer existence than one perceives when one is within. One then has what is otherwise the outer world as the inner world; what one otherwise calls the universe is then that which one can call the ego—and what one beholds there is the outer world. One must simply not take offense at the fact that one beholds one’s own body—that is, the body that is to become one’s own—and that, naturally, all other bodies in the process of formation must be present alongside it. But that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter for the simple reason that we are dealing here once again with pure multiplication. And in fact, a distinction among human bodies—one that might interest us and that might be significant—only begins a relatively short time before people enter physical existence. For most of the time between death and the new birth, when one looks down upon the developing human body, it is truly the case that the individual bodies differ only in number, and this is correctly reflected in one’s own experience, in one’s own perception. After all, there really isn’t much difference between going out to a field, plucking a grain of wheat from any ear, and walking fifty steps further to pluck a grain from another ear. As far as the essential qualities of the grain of wheat are concerned, one grain is just as good as the other. But one has this same feeling when observing one’s own body; the fact that it is one’s own is actually of value only for the future, because one intends to relate to it later on earth; now it interests one only as the bearer of the highest mysteries of the world, and therein lies the bliss that one can regard it just as one would any other human body. One stands before the mystery of number, which need not be discussed further here, but which, among many other things involved in this, entails that number—that is, manifold existence—is no longer perceived from the spiritual standpoint in the same way as from the physical standpoint. What is perceived in many instances is nevertheless perceived again as a unity.

[ 13 ] One feels oneself to be within the universe through one’s body, and through what is called the universe in physical life, one feels oneself to be within one’s own selfhood. Perception is so different when one views the world from here versus from there.

[ 14 ] For the seer, that moment is actually the most significant one between death and rebirth, when the human being ceases to concern himself solely with his last life and now begins to look toward the future. It is the impression the seer receives when following such a soul during its passage between death and new birth, as the soul begins to settle into the process of becoming—and it is so deeply moving because the soul itself, passing through this moment, experiences a profound upheaval. This can only be compared to the onset of death here in physical life. When death occurs in physical life, one passes from life into being; there one passes—though this is not an exact description, for it cannot be described quite precisely—from something connected with a life that has previously ended, to a becoming, to a coming into being. One encounters that which carries within itself, in a germinal state, a completely new life. It is the reverse moment of death. This is so immensely significant.

[ 15 ] In this context, we must now take a look at human development, at the evolution of humanity on Earth. Let us look back to a time when our soul was, for example, in the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean era, where, when it looked out into the world through the physical body, it did not merely see the stars as physical, sensory celestial bodies, but where it still—albeit only in certain intermediate states in the life between birth and death — perceived spiritual beings in the stars that are connected to the starry existence. This penetrated into the souls, and the souls were filled with impressions from the spiritual world in that time. It was inevitable that, in the course of evolution, the ability to perceive the spiritual would gradually fade, and the gaze would become limited to the sensory world. This took place during the Greco-Roman period, when human vision was increasingly diverted from the spiritual world and restricted to the sensory world. And now we live in a time when the soul’s ability to perceive the spiritual in the life of the physical external world is fading ever more. The Earth is, after all, now in the process of losing its spiritual character, in the process of dying, and we are entering very deeply into this process of dying. So while in the Egyptian-Chaldean era people still perceived the spiritual around them, they now perceive only the sensory, and they take pride in being able to establish a science that contains only the sensory. This process will continue. A time will come when human beings will lose interest in the immediate impressions of the sensory world, and when they will, as it were, turn their gaze to the sub-sensory and take an interest in it. We can actually already observe this today, as the time approaches when people will be interested only in the sub-sensory. Sometimes this even emerges quite significantly, for example when modern physics no longer considers colors at all. For in reality, physics today no longer considers the quality of color, but seeks to observe what lies beneath the color—what vibrates there beneath the color, what oscillates beneath the color. You can already read the nonsense in some books today that claim, for example, that the color yellow is a certain number of wave vibrations. Thus, attention is already diverted from the quality of the color and directed toward what is not in the yellow color, and what is then created as a mental image of reality. Today you can find physics books, and even physiological books, in which it is emphasized that attention should no longer be captured by the immediate sensory image, but rather by something where everything is dissolved into vibrations and vibration frequencies. And this way of viewing the world will continue to spread. People will lose their attention for sensory existence and will want to focus only on what is present as force effects. One need only recall one thing to prove the matter, so to speak, from a cultural-historical and empirical perspective. Open today the speech that Du Bois-Reymond delivered on August 14, 1872, “On the Limits of Knowledge of Nature.” There you will find a peculiar expression for a concept that Laplace had already described: the “astronomical knowledge of a material system”—that is, when one represents what lies behind a process of light or color as something brought about solely by mathematical-physical forces. It will come to pass that human souls will have reached a point—and those being educated today in certain schools already possess the best predispositions for this in their next incarnation—where they have lost the proper interest in luminous color and the world of light, and will ask only about the relationships of forces. People will no longer have any interest in violet and red, but only in this or that wavelength.

[ 16 ] This desolation of the human inner life is something we must counteract, and anthroposophy exists to work against it, to counteract it in every detail. For it is not merely direct pedagogy that contributes to this desolation of life; rather, this tendency is present throughout all of life. And there was a certain contrast to ordinary life when, in our anthroposophy, we want to give the soul what will fertilize it anew, what is not merely derived from the sensory maya; for we want to give the human soul back what is not merely given by the sensory maya, but what springs forth as spirit. And we can do this when we give them that through which they will be able to live in the true world again in their subsequent incarnations. Thus there was a certain contrast in the fact that we had to present these things in a world whose indifference to form and color forms such a counterpoint to what we aim for; for especially with regard to colors, the modern world also prepares souls to counteract what we aim for. We must not only work with concepts and ideas, but we must work with world-ideas. That is why it is not merely a personal preference of ours to surround ourselves as we do here in this room, but this is connected to the very essence of Spiritual Science. The possibility must be reawakened in the soul to directly perceive what presents itself to the senses, so that from there the living life in the spiritual realm may once again spring forth in the soul. Now, in this incarnation, each of us can take in Spiritual Science. We take it in with our soul and process it with our soul; but what we now take in spiritually goes into our predispositions for the next incarnation. So as they pass through the time between death and the next birth, they send from their soul into their developing body that which then prepares their physical constitution to see the world in a more spiritual way. They cannot do this if they do not take in anthroposophy. For if he does not take it in, he prepares his body to see nothing but barren conditions, no longer even having an eye for the sensory world.

[ 17 ] And now let us say something that, so to speak, serves as a judgment for the seer regarding the mission of Spiritual Science.

[ 19 ] When the seer today turns his gaze to the life that souls lead between death and rebirth—those souls who have already passed through the stage described earlier and are preparing for a future existence by contemplating the body-in-the-making—he can perceive that the souls are looking toward a body-in-the-making that will no longer offer them the opportunity in future lives develop the faculties to comprehend the spiritual, for these faculties must already have been instilled before birth for life in the physical body. Therefore, even in the near future, people will be born who will increasingly—as has been the case for some souls for quite some time—lack the capacity to receive spiritual knowledge. We will witness souls who, in previous lives, lacked the opportunity to absorb the spiritual, and who do indeed represent a glimpse of a becoming—but the terrible thing is this: a becoming in which something is missing and must be missing. It is from these visions that the understanding of the mission of anthroposophy arises. It is indeed one of the most harrowing sights to see a soul looking toward its future incarnation, toward its future body, looking toward a sprouting, budding becoming—but a becoming of which it must say to itself: Something will be missing from this! But what will be missing, I cannot give it, because that depends on my previous incarnation! — On a small scale, this can be compared to having to work on something about which one knows: it must be imperfect; one is condemned to make it imperfect. Try to visualize the comparison: you can make such a work perfect and take joy in the work, or you are condemned from the outset to make it imperfect!

[ 18 ] That is the big question: Is the human soul destined to be condemned, more and more, to look down upon its bodies, which remain imperfect, or is it not? — If it is not to be condemned to this, then it must, here in its life within physical bodies, receive the news, the message from the spiritual worlds.

[ 19 ] To begin with, what those who proclaim the message from the spiritual worlds regard as their task is not merely derived from earthly ideals! It does not spring from any earthly ideal, but from the view of life as a whole—that life which presents itself to us when we add to earthly life the time between death and new birth. And within this, the possibility of a fruitful human future reveals itself to us, as does the possibility of counteracting the desolation of the human soul. Then one can develop that feeling which tells one: Spiritual Science must be there; it must come; it must exist in the world. True, genuine Spiritual Science is precisely that without which humanity cannot survive in the future. But not in the sense that one cannot survive without some other kind of knowledge; rather, Spiritual Science is that which gives human beings not only concepts and ideas, but also life. And what concepts and ideas of Spiritual Science are for the soul in one incarnation, that is life for it in the next incarnation—inner life force and vitality. Therefore, it is not merely a life of concepts and ideas that Spiritual Science gives to human beings, but it is the elixir of life, life force. Therefore, if one counts oneself among a Spiritual Science movement, one should feel Spiritual Science as a necessity of life, not merely as something that is established in the same way as the things established in other associations. This feeling of being vividly immersed in the necessities of existence is the right attitude toward Spiritual Science. And we have made these reflections on life between death and new birth in order to receive, from the other side, the right impulse that can immediately give us enthusiasm for Spiritual Science.