The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] During the period when materialism flourished primarily in theory—that is, in the middle and, to some extent, even the final decades of the 19th century, when the writings of Büchner or Vogt, the so-called “fat” Vogt, had made a deep impression on wide circles of people who considered themselves enlightened at the time, one could often hear a saying—a saying that can still be heard from time to time today, since in certain ideological groups the stragglers of that theoretical materialism are still present, so to speak. If people do not wish to reject any life after death outright, if they are sometimes willing to admit the possibility of such a life after death, then they say: Well, there may be such a life after death. But why should we concern ourselves with it here in this earthly life? We will see, after all, once death has come, whether such a life exists. And if we here on earth concern ourselves only with what the earth provides us, and pay no further heed to what is to come after death, then surely we will not miss out on anything special. For if life after death has something to offer, we will see it then!

[ 2 ] As I said, this saying could be heard time and again—and can still be heard today in many circles—and when it is expressed in this way, it almost seems acceptable in a certain sense. And yet: it completely contradicts the facts revealed by spiritual research, when one spiritually contemplates the events that unfold in the life between death and rebirth. Once a person has passed through the gate of death, they enter into relationships with the most diverse forces and beings. Human beings, so to speak, do not merely immerse themselves in a sum of supersensible facts, but they come into contact with certain forces, indeed with beings, whom we know and have often discussed as the beings of the various higher hierarchies. Let us now ask ourselves what significance it has for human beings, as they pass through the life between death and new birth, to come into connection with these forces and beings of the higher hierarchies.

[ 3 ] We know that when a human being has passed through this life in the supersensible world and re-enters existence through a new birth, he becomes, in a certain sense, the architect of his own physical form—indeed, of his entire destiny—in the next life. Within certain limits, the human being shapes and builds his body—right down to the convolutions of his brain—with the forces he brings with him from the spiritual worlds when he re-enters physical existence through birth. And here in physical existence, our entire life depends on having such forms, such configurations of our physical body, through which we can relate to the external physical world, through which we can act and be active in this external physical world, indeed, through which we can think in this external physical world. For if we do not have here in the physical world the appropriately formed brain, which we shape for ourselves—throughout the process of birth—from the forces of the supersensible world, then we remain inadequate for life in the physical world. We are only adequate for this life in the physical world if we bring with us such forces from the spiritual world through which we can build a body suited to this physical world with all its demands. The forces—the supersensible forces—that human beings need to shape their bodies and their destinies, we receive from those beings and forces of the higher hierarchies with whom we come into contact between death and rebirth. What we need to build our lives, we must therefore acquire in the time that has preceded our birth since our last death. We must, so to speak, approach the corresponding beings step by step between death and the next birth—beings who can bestow upon us, who can impart to us the forces we will need for our lives once we have re-entered physical existence.

[ 4 ] Now, in this life between death and rebirth, we can pass before the beings of the higher hierarchies in two ways. We can pass before them in such a way that we recognize them, that we understand their nature and their character traits, and that we are able to receive what they are able to give us; for it is a receiving from the higher hierarchies of what they can give us and what we need in the life to come. We must be able to understand—or even just see—what is being offered to us, so that we may receive what we will need in the life to come. For we could also pass by these beings in such a way that, figuratively speaking, the hands of these beings of the higher hierarchies offer us their gifts, which we also needed for our lives, but that we do not take them because it is dark, spiritually speaking, in this higher world through which we are passing. We can therefore pass through this world with understanding, so that we become aware of what is to be offered to us by those beings, or we can also pass through this world without understanding and remain unaware of what the beings wish to offer us. The manner in which we pass through—which of the two ways we must necessarily choose for the passage between death and new birth—is predetermined by the aftereffects of our most recent and earlier earthly lives. A person who, in their last earthly life, behaved with indifference and rejection toward all thoughts and ideas that might come to us as insights into the supersensible world—such a person passes through the life between death and new birth as if through a world of darkness. For the light, spiritually speaking, that we need to recognize how these beings approach us, to recognize which gifts we are to receive from one or another of these beings for our next life—the light of understanding for this we cannot attain in the supersensible world itself, but we must attain it here in our physical earthly incarnation. We pass through the supersensible life until our next birth in such a way that we pass by everything, recognize nothing, and receive nowhere the powers we need for our next life, if, passing through the gate of death, we bring no ideas or concepts with us to carry into the spiritual life.

[ 5 ] From this we see how impossible it is to say that one can wait until death occurs, for only then will it become clear what reality—if any—we will encounter after death. How we can then relate to this reality depends on whether, here in our earthly life, we have behaved in our souls in a receptive or rejecting manner toward the concepts of the supersensible world that we have been able to receive, and which must be the light through which we illuminate the passage between death and new birth.

[ 6 ] We can glean yet another point from what has been said. The belief that one need only die, so to speak, to receive everything the supersensible world can offer—even if one has failed to prepare for it here—is entirely false. All worlds have their own special mission. And what a person can acquire during their earthly incarnation, they cannot acquire in any of the other worlds. Between death and rebirth, they can, under all circumstances, come into communion with the beings of the higher hierarchies. But in order to receive their gifts, so as not to grope through life in darkness or in dreadful loneliness, but rather to be able to establish a relationship with the higher hierarchies and their forces—for this, the ideas and concepts that are the light for beholding the higher hierarchies must be acquired here in earthly life. Thus, a person who, in earthly life—in the present cycle of time, for example—has scorned to acquire spiritual concepts goes through life between death and rebirth in dreadful loneliness, and in relation to the higher life, dreadful loneliness means groping in the dark; and in the next life, he does not bring with him the forces that are to build up his body and fashion his tools in the appropriate manner. He can build them up only in an imperfect form, and he will therefore be an inadequate human being in the next life.

[ 7 ] From this we see how karma carries over from one life to the next. In one life, a person, through his own willfulness, refuses to develop any kind of spiritual connection with the spiritual worlds; in the next life, they lack the strength to even acquire the faculties through which they might think, feel, and will the truths of spiritual life. Then they remain dull and inattentive to spiritual conditions, and spiritual life passes them by as if in a dream, as is indeed the case with so many people. They are then unable to take an interest in the spiritual worlds while on Earth. And when such a soul then passes through the gate of death once more, it becomes easy prey for the Luciferic forces; it is precisely such souls that Lucifer approaches. And the peculiar thing is that in the next life in the spiritual world—the one following the dull and inattentive one—the beings and realities of the higher hierarchies are indeed illuminated for such a person, but now not through what he has acquired in his earthly life, but through the light that Lucifer instills into his soul. Lucifer now illuminates the higher world for him as he passes through the life between death and new birth. Now he can indeed perceive the higher hierarchies; he can perceive when they wish to bestow powers upon him. But the fact that Lucifer has kindled this light within him is what gives it that special nuance, that special hue; it is what makes all these gifts of a special kind. The forces of the higher hierarchies are then not such as the human being could otherwise have received, but they become such that, when he enters the next life, he can indeed form and shape his physical body, but he shapes it in such a way that he becomes a human being who is now, admittedly, a match for the outer world and its demands; but in a certain respect such a human being is then inwardly deficient, because his soul is permeated and colored by Lucifer’s gifts, or at least by gifts tinged with Luciferic influence.

[ 8 ] When we encounter people in life who have developed their physicality in such a way that they can make good use of their intellect and acquire certain skills through which they can elevate themselves, but who do so only for their own benefit—when they use their gifts solely to seize what is significant for them and their existence, when they are, in other words, quite ruthlessly dryly focused on their own advantage—as is the case with quite a few people in our time—then the seer very often finds that they have gone through the very history that has just been described. Before they arrived at this dry, rational, and skillful way of life, they were led through the world that lies between death and new birth by the Luciferic beings; and these were able to approach them because in their previous incarnation they had gone through life in a dull and dreamy state. But they had acquired this dullness and dreaminess because they had previously passed through a life between death and new birth, where they groped their way through darkness, a life in which the spirits of the higher hierarchies were to give them the powers to build a new life, but which they were unable to receive properly; and that, in turn, had happened because they had previously arbitrarily refused to engage with the ideas and concepts of a spiritual world. Here we have the karmic connection! Depending on what is factual in the historical development of humanity, the things that have now been described multiply. But they do occur; they occur all too frequently when, with the help of spiritual research, we penetrate the higher worlds and, recognizing the conditions of human lives, bring them before the spiritual eye.

[ 9 ] It is therefore incorrect to say: “We need only concern ourselves here with what surrounds us in our earthly existence, for what comes later will reveal itself.” — How it will reveal itself depends entirely on how one has prepared for it here.

[ 10 ] Something else can easily happen as well. And I say these things so that, by understanding life between death and rebirth, we may at the same time come to understand life between birth and death more and more clearly.

[ 11 ] If we look at this earthly life with clear-headedness, we see many people—especially in our time, when such people are once again very common—who, in a certain sense, can only think halfway, whose logic comes to a standstill everywhere when confronted with reality. Let me give an example. A liberal preacher, who was by the way entirely sincere in his endeavors, once said the following in the first Freidenker calendar: One should not teach children religious concepts, for that would be unnatural. If one allows children to grow up without instilling religious concepts in them, then we see that they do not arrive at concepts of God, immortality, and so on of their own accord. From this, however, one might conclude that such concepts are unnatural to human beings; and what is unnatural to human beings should not be taught to them, but only that which can be drawn out of them from their own souls. — As with so many things, there are thousands upon thousands of people today who find such a statement to be very clever and very astute. But one need only apply true logic to find the following. Take a person who has not yet learned to speak, place them on a desert island, and ensure that they hear no speech sounds. The result will then be: he will never learn to speak. And anyone who now says that one should not teach a person religious concepts would, logically speaking, also have to say that a person should not learn to speak, for language does not convey itself through itself. The independent preacher in question cannot, therefore, propagate the idea in question through his logic, for his logic comes to a standstill in the face of the facts. He can reach only a small circle with it and fails to realize that the idea, if one grasps it at all, negates itself.

[ 12 ] Anyone who looks around in life will find this inadequate, half-baked way of thinking to be widespread. When one traces the path of such a person through supersensory research and arrives at the realms the soul passed through between the last death and the last birth—where, in other words, the person became illogical in this way—the seer often finds that in the previous life, between death and rebirth, such a person passed through the spiritual world in such a way that, under the guidance of Ahriman, they encountered the higher spiritual beings and forces—those very beings and forces that were meant to provide them with what they now needed in this life—and who could not give them the opportunity to develop in such a way that they could think correctly. Ahriman was the guide, and Ahriman gave him the opportunity to receive the gifts of the beings and powers of the higher hierarchies only in such a way that, in life, his thinking comes to a standstill before the real facts everywhere, so that nowhere does he grasp his thinking in a way that is self-contained and valid. A large portion of those people—and there are indeed far too many of them—who are unable to think today owe this to the fact that in their last life, between death and rebirth, they had to be accompanied by Ahriman, because they had, so to speak, made themselves suitable for this through their last earthly life, through that earthly life which preceded the present one.

[ 13 ] And how did this earthly life unfold when viewed through the eyes of the seer?

[ 14 ] One finds that such people were hypochondriacs, morose individuals who did not want to engage with the world and its facts and realities, and who, in a certain sense, always felt uncomfortable establishing any connection with their surroundings. Very often, such people were unbearable hypochondriacs in their previous life. If they had been physically examined for their physical strength, they would have had the kinds of physical illnesses that are very commonly found in people with a hypochondriacal disposition. And if one then goes further back, back to the earlier life between death and reincarnation that thus preceded the hypochondriac life, one finds that these people at that time again lacked proper guidance, that they were unable to properly perceive what the gifts of the higher hierarchies should have been. And how did they prepare themselves for such a fate in their third-to-last life here on Earth? They prepared themselves by developing a certain, albeit thoroughly religious, spiritual disposition at that time—but one born solely of selfishness. They were people who, out of selfishness alone, were pious, perhaps even mystical in nature, just as mysticism very often arises from selfishness, in the sense that a person says: I search within myself to recognize God within myself. — And if one examines what he is seeking there, it is only his own self that he makes into God. In many devout souls one finds that they are devout only so that this or that spiritual mood may flourish for them after death. It is a selfish state of mind that they have prepared for themselves in this way.

[ 15 ] So when we trace three such earthly lives through spiritual research, we find in the first one a basic mood in the soul characterized by egoistic mysticism and egoistic religiosity. And when we look today at people who approach life in the manner described, spiritual research takes us back to times when there were souls in abundance who developed a religious mood out of pure selfishness. They then passed through an existence between death and rebirth, powerless to receive from the spiritual beings the gifts that were to properly shape their next life. Their next life then became a morose, hypochondriacal one, in which everything was repugnant to them. Through this, they prepared themselves so that, once they had passed through the gate of death, Ahriman and his hosts became their guides, and they received such forces that in the earthly life that followed, they displayed flawed logic and short-sighted, dull thinking.

[ 16 ] Thus we have the other case of three successive incarnations. And we see time and again how absurd it is to believe that one can wait until death approaches to enter into a relationship with the supersensible world. Indeed, how one comes into contact with the supersensible world after death depends precisely on the inner inclinations and interests of the soul that one has acquired here in relation to the supersensible world. Not only are successive earthly lives connected as cause and effect—but the lives here between birth and death and the lives between death and the new birth are also connected in a certain sense as cause and effect. We can see this from the following.

[ 17 ] When the seer turns his gaze upward toward the supersensible world, where souls dwell after death, he finds there souls who, in a certain phase of this life, are between “death and new birth”—for one does indeed undergo many experiences during this long period, and in such descriptions only fragments can ever be portrayed — servants of those powers we call the Lords of all healthy, sprouting, and budding life on Earth. Among the departed, we certainly find those who, for a certain time, participate in the supersensible world in the wondrous task—for it is a wondrous task—of pouring into the physical world, of dripping into it, everything that can promote the health of earthly beings, everything that can cause them to blossom and flourish. Just as we can, through certain conditions, become servants of the evil forces of illness and misfortune, so can we become servants of those spiritual beings who promote health and growth, who send into our world forces from the spiritual world that foster flourishing life. For it is, after all, merely a materialistic superstition that physical hygiene and external facilities alone are what promote health. Everything that happens in physical life is directed by the beings and powers of the higher worlds, who continually send their forces into the physical world, pouring them in—forces that act freely in a certain way, or affect humans or other beings either by promoting health or by harming health and growth. — Certain spiritual powers and beings are the guiding forces behind these processes of health and illness. But in the life between death and rebirth, the human being becomes a co-worker with these powers; and if we have prepared ourselves in the right way, we can enjoy the bliss of cooperating in the task of dripping the health- and growth-promoting forces from the higher worlds into our physical world. And when the seer investigates how such souls have earned this, he observes: In physical earthly life, human beings can accomplish and think in two ways whatever they wish to accomplish and think.

[ 18 ] Let us take a look at life. We see many people who do their work as prescribed by their office or by this or that circumstance. But even if the extreme case does not arise—where such people approach their work like an animal being led to the slaughterhouse—one could still say that they work because they have to. They would never neglect their duty—certainly, that is all there is to it! In a certain sense, in today’s human cycle, it cannot be any other way with regard to what duty demands and for which the human being has no other motivation than that duty demands it. This is by no means meant to be a wholesale criticism of work done out of a sense of duty! It must not be understood that way; the development of the Earth is such that precisely this aspect of life is gaining more and more ground. This will not improve in the future: the tasks that people will have to perform will become increasingly complicated insofar as they concern external life, and people will be increasingly condemned to do and think only what they are driven to do by duty. But we already have it today—and will have it more and more—that there are people who do their work only because they are driven by duty, and that, on the other hand, there will be other people who seek out a society like ours, where they can also accomplish something, not out of an external sense of duty, as in external life, but something for which they have devotion and enthusiasm. Therefore, we can consider work from this perspective: whether it is, so to speak, work of external accomplishment and thinking out of duty, or work performed with enthusiasm, with devotion, from the innermost impulse of the soul, driven by nothing but the soul itself. This mood of the soul—to think and act not merely out of duty, but out of love, out of inclination, out of devotion—this mood prepares the soul to become a servant of the good forces of health, of all the healing powers sent down from the supersensible world into our physical world, a servant of all that sprouts and grows, and to feel the bliss that can be felt through this.

[ 19 ] It is of extraordinary importance for a person’s entire life to know this. For it is only by acquiring within life the powers that enable him to come into contact with the relevant forces—only in this way can a person contribute spiritually to an ever-increasing healing and an ever-increasing flourishing of earthly conditions.

[ 20 ] And we can consider yet another case. Let us take a person who makes an effort to adapt to their surroundings and their demands. This is not the case for everyone. There are those who make no effort to find their place in the world; there are people who cannot find their place in their circumstances, either in their spiritual or in their external physical life. For example, we have people who once read a notice on a bulletin board that an anthroposophical lecture is taking place here or there; they might go in once, but as soon as they are inside, they are already asleep. Their soul cannot adapt to the environment; it is not attuned to it. I have come to know men who cannot sew on a button that has come off their clothes; this means, however, that they cannot adapt to external physical circumstances. And so we can cite a thousand and a thousand ways of skillfully or clumsily finding one’s place in life. Many things depend on such matters, as I have already said. Now let us mention only what depends on this for life between death and the new birth.

[ 21 ] Everything becomes a cause, and effects arise from everything. A person who strives to integrate into their surroundings—who, for example, can sew on a button themselves or listen to something unfamiliar without immediately falling asleep—prepares themselves in this way to become, after death, a collaborator, a helper to those spirits who promote human progress, who send spiritual powers and forces down to Earth to foster human progress and the advancement of life—a life that progresses from age to age. Only in this way can we earn bliss after death: by looking down upon earthly life as it progresses and cooperating with the forces that are constantly sent down to Earth so that progress may occur, as we strive here in life to adapt to circumstances and find our place in our surroundings. Karma is only understood in the correct, comprehensive way when we are able to consider it in its details—those details that show us the manifold ways in which causes and effects are connected here in the physical world, in the spiritual world, and in existence as a whole.

[ 22 ] This, in turn, sheds light on the fact that our life in the spiritual worlds depends on how we spend our life in the physical body. For, as has been said, all worlds have their own special mission, and no two worlds share the same mission in existence. What are the characteristic phenomena and experiences in one world are not necessarily the characteristic phenomena and experiences in another world. And if a being is to take in, for example, those things that it can only take in on Earth, then it must take them in on Earth. And if it fails to do so, it cannot make up for this in another world. This is particularly evident in a matter we have actually already touched upon, but which it is good to engrave especially deeply in our souls: it is evident in the assimilation of certain concepts and ideas that human beings need precisely for their entire lives. Let us take an example close to us: anthroposophy, which is justified and effective in our age. People appropriate it in such a way that they first live on Earth and approach anthroposophy in the manner familiar to them, absorbing it into themselves. Now, here too, the belief could easily arise that it is not necessary to practice anthroposophy here on Earth, but rather: what the spiritual worlds are like, one will be able to learn once one has passed through the gate of death; there, too, spiritual teachers of the higher hierarchies will be found who can bring these things to the soul!

[ 23 ] The fact is that, with all his soul, following the developments he has undergone up to the present human cycle, man is now prepared to approach, here on Earth, the kind of anthroposophical life that can only be approached because one lives in a physical body, because one participates in physical life. Man is predestined for this. And if they do not participate in it, they cannot develop relationships with any of the spiritual beings that would make them their teachers. One cannot simply die and then, after death, find a teacher who could replace what, here in physical earthly life, can approach the soul as anthroposophy. We need not therefore fall into gloomy thoughts because we see that many people spurn anthroposophy, and we must now assume that they cannot acquire it between death and a new birth. We need not despair because of this, for these people will be born into a new earthly life, and by then there will be sufficient anthroposophical inspiration and anthroposophy available on Earth for them to take it up. Despair is not yet called for in the present time—but this should not lead anyone to say: I can take up anthroposophy in the next life; for now I can still do without it!—No, what is missed here cannot be made up for later. When our German theosophical movement was in its very infancy, I once spoke in a lecture on Nietzsche about certain things of the higher worlds. Discussions were interwoven into the context in which this was spoken at the time. During one such discussion, someone stood up and said: “One must always test such matters against Kantian philosophy, and then one comes to the conclusion that one cannot know all these things here; for one can only know anything about them once one has died.” — That is exactly what the person in question said at the time. Well, it is not the case that one merely needs to die in order to experience certain things. When one passes through the gate of death, one does not experience the things for which one has not prepared oneself. Life between death and new birth is very much a continuation of life here, as we have seen from the examples already given. Therefore, as human beings, we can only attain from the beings of the higher hierarchies after death what we can gain by becoming anthroposophists in the first place, and we can only do so if we have prepared ourselves for it here on Earth. Our connection to the Earth, our passage through earthly life, has a significance that cannot be replaced by anything else.

[ 24 ] A kind of mediation can, however, take place precisely in this area. I have spoken about this before. A person may pass away without having learned anything about Spiritual Science during their earthly life; but their brother, their wife, or a close friend may be an anthroposophist. The deceased refused to learn anything about anthroposophy during his life; he may even have railed against it. Now he has passed through the gate of death. There, through the other personalities on earth, he can be introduced to anthroposophy. But we also take care that someone is present on earth to offer it to the other out of love, so that the connection with the earthly realm must be maintained here as well. This is the basis of what I have called “reading aloud to the dead.” We can thereby do them a great service, even if they previously knew nothing of the spiritual world. We can either do this in thought form, thereby instructing the dead, or we can take an anthroposophical book or something similar, create a mental image of the personality of the deceased, and then read to them from the book. Then the dead hear it. It is precisely through such things that we have experienced great, beautiful examples in our anthroposophical movement of what we can bestow upon the dead. Many of our friends read aloud to their deceased loved ones. — One can also have the experience I recently had, in which someone asked me about a person who had died shortly before, because that person was making their presence known through all sorts of signs, especially at night—through restlessness in the room, rumbling, and so on. One can often conclude from this that the deceased wants something. In this case, it indeed turned out that the deceased had a longing to learn something. The person in question had been a learned man in life, but he had previously rejected everything that came to him as knowledge about the spiritual world. Now it became clear that he would be greatly helped if, for example, a very specific series of lectures were read to him, because those lectures discuss the very things he was, so to speak, thirsting for. In this way, even beyond death, a remedy can be provided in an immensely meaningful way for something that was neglected on earth.

[ 25 ] This is what truly brings home to us the great, significant mission of anthroposophy: that anthroposophy will bridge the gulf between the living and the dead, so that people do not simply pass away as if they were leaving us, but rather that we can remain in contact with them and continue to work on their behalf. If someone asks whether one can ever know for certain whether the deceased is actually listening to us, it must be said that, on the one hand, people who do such things with genuine devotion will, after some time, truly sense—from the way the thoughts they read aloud to the deceased live within their own souls—that the deceased is present among them. But this is, after all, a sensation that only more finely attuned souls can experience. The worst that can happen is that such an act—which can be a great service of love—is simply not heard; in that case, one has rendered it unnecessary for the person concerned. Perhaps, however, it then has another significance within the context of the universe. One should not, however, worry too much about such a failure, for it does happen that one reads something aloud to a number of people here—and they do not listen to one either.

[ 26 ] These things can help us grasp the seriousness and dignity of anthroposophy. However, we must always remember that the way we will live in the spiritual world after death will depend entirely on the way we have lived here on Earth. Our coexistence with other people in the spiritual world also depends on the kind of relationship we have sought with them here. We cannot simply establish a relationship in the other world—between death and rebirth—with a person with whom we have not formed a connection here. The opportunity to be led to them, to be together with them in the spiritual world, is usually earned through what has been established here on Earth—not merely through what was established in the last incarnation, but also through what was established in earlier incarnations.

[ 27 ] In short, the material and personal circumstances we have created on Earth are what determine life between death and rebirth. There are exceptions, but they are, after all, just that—exceptions. And if you recall what I said here during the Christmas season about the Buddha and his current mission on Mars, you have precisely such an exception in the figure of the Buddha. There are numerous souls on Earth who, in the mystery inspirations, have personally encountered the Buddha—or even earlier in his Bodhisattva existence. But because the Buddha, as the son of Suddhodana, underwent his final earthly incarnation, and then carried out what I have described as his work in the etheric body, and has now transferred his activity to Mars, the possibility now exists—even if we did not meet the Buddha before—to enter into a relationship with him in the life between death and new birth; and whatever this relationship yields, we then bring back into our next earthly incarnation. But this is the exception. As a rule, after death we find those people with whom we established relationships and connections here, and we continue these relationships and connections after death.

[ 28 ] These discussions, which build on what has been said this winter about life between death and rebirth, are presented with the aim and perspective of to show how anthroposophy is only half a reality for human beings if it remains a theory and an external science, and how it is only what it is meant to be when it permeates souls like an elixir of life, so that the souls fully experience what approaches human beings through feeling when they enter into a relationship of knowledge with the higher worlds. Death, then, does not appear to human beings as something that destroys personal human relationships. The abyss between life here on earth and life after death is overcome; many activities will unfold in the future that are carried out from this perspective. The dead will influence life, and the living will influence the realm of the dead.

[ 29 ] And now I would like your souls to reflect a little on how life becomes richer, fuller, and more spiritual when everything truly happens through anthroposophy. Only those who can perceive anthroposophy in this way perceive it correctly. It is not the main thing that we know: that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an I; that he passes through various incarnations; that the Earth has undergone various incarnations during its existence—the Saturn existence, the Sun existence, the Moon existence. — Knowing this is not the main thing; the most important and essential thing is that we can transform our lives through anthroposophy in a way that the future of the Earth requires. We cannot feel this deeply enough, and we cannot inspire ourselves often enough in this regard. For the feelings we take away from our gatherings, inspired by the knowledge of the supersensible world, and with which we then walk through life—these are what is important in anthroposophical life. Therefore, it is not enough for us in anthroposophy merely to know; rather, in anthroposophy we know through feeling, and we feel through knowing. We must only understand how wrong it is to believe, without knowing anything of the world, that one can do the world justice. True is the saying of Leonardo da Vinci: Great love is the daughter of great knowledge. And whoever does not wish to know will not learn to love in the true sense.

[ 30 ] Thus, in this sense, anthroposophy must first enter our souls, so that from this influence, emanating from us, a current may begin to flow more and more into the development of the Earth—a spiritual current that will bring spirit and physicality into harmony. Then the time will come when people on Earth will still live materially—and outer earthly life will become ever more and more material—but human beings will walk upon the Earth carrying within their souls a connection to the higher world. Outwardly, earthly life will become ever more material—that is the karma of the Earth—yet to the same extent that earthly life becomes more material outwardly, if the Earth’s development is to reach its goal, souls must become ever more spiritual inwardly. I wanted to make a small contribution to understanding how this task unfolds through today’s reflection.