The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday, as part of a discussion on thinking, feeling, willing, and perceiving, it was my task to share some esoteric experiences that the human soul undergoes when, through spiritual research, it lives outside the body with the intention of learning about the inner life of the soul and its essence. Today, my task will be to describe such experiences from a different perspective, because only when we view life from a wide variety of spiritual viewpoints can we truly gain insight into this life.

[ 2 ] Create a mental image of what the human soul sees when it first looks back from outside the body at its own physicality and all that is physically connected to it, and what it then experiences afterward; that is, what the human astral body and ego experience as they gain more and more strength in the space they have, as it were, entered outside the body. There is now another way, so to speak, of viewing the same thing. This is precisely what is significant about a truly spiritual approach: that, fundamentally, one only arrives at the mysteries of existence through spiritual contemplation by viewing a matter from the most diverse angles. For there is another way to step out of the body. I would say that the method described yesterday showed us: in that process, the soul leaves the body in such a way that it simply moves out of the body into space and begins to live there outside the body. This stepping out of the body can also occur in the following way. To find the way out of oneself, one can, at first, try to go deeper within oneself. One can try to connect the experiences with what in the soul is, one might say, most similar to spiritual experience. One can try to connect with these experiences through our memory. It has often been said: because we, as human souls, are capable not only of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and willing, but also of preserving thoughts and perceptions as a treasure of memory, we are in fact already transforming our inner life into something spiritual. And I pointed out in my public lecture that the French philosopher Bergson had even already concluded that what exists as a treasure trove of memories in the human soul cannot be regarded as directly connected in any way to the physical; that rather, it must be regarded as a spiritual inner life, as something the soul develops, as something that exists purely in the spiritual-soul realm.

[ 3 ] And indeed, when imagination begins in clairvoyant consciousness, when the first impressions emerge from the darkness of spiritual existence, these impressions are, in their quality and in their very essence, very similar to that inner life that lies within us as a treasure trove of memories. Like images of memory, yet now as something infinitely more spiritual, the revelations from the spiritual world appear to us when we begin to perceive with clairvoyant consciousness. We then realize, as it were, that our store of memories is the first truly spiritual thing, the first through which we, so to speak, already lift ourselves out of our physical bodies; but that we must then go further, that we must raise up from the depths of the spirit such images floating in the spiritual realm—as memory presents them to us, though with far greater vitality— from depths of the spirit that do not belong to our experience in the same way as the images of memory, that something, as it were, rises up from behind memory. This must be noted: something rises up from foreign spiritual realms, whereas the storehouse of memory rises up from what we have experienced in the physical world.

[ 4 ] If we now try to turn our inner gaze back to the experiences of our “I” during the years we have lived since the time of our childhood—the earliest point to which our memory extends—if we try to set aside all external matters and live entirely within ourselves, so that we find our way deeper and deeper into our memories, bringing to the surface from our store of memories even what is not usually present to us, then we draw ever closer to the point in time as far back as we can remember. And if we do this often, if we even acquire a certain practice in it—and we can do so—of bringing up memories that would otherwise have long been forgotten, so that we develop a stronger power of remembering, if we bring up more and more of what has been forgotten and thereby strengthen our power to bring up memories, then we will see that, I would like to say, just as flowers appear in a meadow among the individual green blades of grass and grass plants, so too do images and imaginings emerge among our memories of something we did not know before. It is something that truly emerges just like the flowers in the meadow among the grasses, but which rises from entirely different spiritual depths than the memories, which emerge only from our own soul. And we then learn to distinguish what might somehow be connected to our memories from what emerges from spiritual depths and spiritual realms. And so, little by little, we grow into the possibility of unfolding a power to bring the spiritual out of its depths.

[ 5 ] This, however, allows us to leave our body in a different way than the one described yesterday. In the method described yesterday, we leave the body, so to speak, directly. In the method we are referring to today, we first retrace our life, passing through our life. We immerse ourselves in our inner life, accustoming ourselves, through the strengthening of our power of remembrance within our inner life, to draw spiritual elements from the spiritual world out of our memories, and in this way we finally manage to break through our birth, through the sequence of time beyond our conception, into the spiritual world in which we lived before we connected ourselves to our present incarnation with a physical hereditary substance. We pass through our life and emerge into the spiritual world, back to the time before we entered this incarnation. This is the other way of leaving the body and entering the spiritual realm. And this way differs greatly from the one described yesterday. Please take note of these differences, for in this very lecture series I have many subtleties and intimacies of spiritual life to share with you. But it is difficult to point out these subtleties and intimacies in suitable words. And only when one attempts to grasp precisely such distinctions does one truly get to the heart of the matter and gain a sure understanding of them.

[ 6 ] When one leaves the body in the way I have just described, one emerges from the body in a completely different way. When one emerges from the body in the manner described yesterday, one feels as though one is outside the body in the outer space. I was able to describe how one spreads out into outer space, how one looks back at one’s physical body. One steps out of oneself and, as it were, fills the space; one steps out into space. But when one experiences what is meant here, one steps out of space itself; space ceases to have any meaning for one; one leaves space and is then only in time. So that in such a leaving of the body, the phrase “I am outside my body” ceases to make sense—for “outside” implies a spatial relationship. One then simply does not feel oneself to be simultaneous with one’s body; one experiences oneself in time. In the time in which one was before incarnation, in a “before.” And one perceives the body as existing afterward. One is truly only within the flowing, ongoing time. And in place of the outside and inside, a “before” and “after” have taken their place.

[ 7 ] By stepping out of one’s physical body in this way, one is able to truly enter the realms we experience between death and a new birth. For one goes back in time, immersing oneself in a life one lived before this earthly existence. And this earthly life appears in such a way that we ask: What is there in the future, what appears to us there as what comes after? There you will find a more detailed account of many things that I was unable to explain so precisely in my public lecture: namely, how one actually enters the realms one experiences between death and a new birth.

[ 8 ] In this way, one has now left one’s body by returning to the life previously lived in the spirit; but in doing so, one has also left the physical realm. Consequently, this leaving of the body—from the present to the past—possesses a far higher degree of inner depth than the other kind of departure; and for the spiritual researcher, the leaving of the body described here is in fact of infinitely greater significance than the one described yesterday, which does not transcend space. For in truth, one can only truly grasp that which concerns the soul’s deepest innermost aspects through the path described today. And here I would like to cite one example to begin with, from which you will see how one must strive to penetrate the intimacies and subtleties of human life.

[ 9 ] It is in this physical body that we live our physical lives. We use our senses, perceive the world, create a mental image of the world, feel within it, and try to give ourselves value through our actions in this world; we act consciously through our bodies. This is how everyday life unfolds; this is how life unfolds insofar as we belong to the physical plane. But now, for every human being who truly wishes to feel their human dignity within themselves, there must be a higher life; and there has always been a higher life of the soul. The religions that filled people with a higher life have always been there. Spiritual Science will fill people with such a higher life in the future. What does this higher life seek? What does this life—which, in thoughts, in feelings, and sensations goes beyond what the physical plane can offer—a life that, for some, extends only in dark intuitions in the realm of religion, and for others in the clearly defined lines of Spiritual Science—beyond what the senses can perceive, what one can think with one’s intellect bound to the brain, and what one can accomplish with one’s body in the world?

[ 10 ] The human soul strives toward a spiritual life. To sense a spiritual life within oneself, to know something of such a spiritual life that transcends physical existence—this is what truly gives human beings their dignity. One could say: As long as a human being dwells in the physical body, they seek to elevate their dignity; they seek to glimpse their true destiny through a life they imagine as extending beyond the physical world, through a sense, a feeling, a recognition of a spiritual world. Look up to the spirit, feel that spiritual forces weave through the physical worlds: these are, in essence, the tones that religious life and the life connected to it are meant to give to human beings. And the concern of the educator who is serious about a growing human child will be not to let this child grow up living only in external material images, but to teach him or her mental images of a supersensible world.

[ 11 ] Let us now—without wishing to point to the narrow-mindedness or dogmatic limitations of religious systems—call that which draws human beings out of this physical world, religion, and let us ask, in contrast to what we have just described—namely, the human soul’s journey beyond birth and conception into a spiritual world preceding earthly life, where the soul is also outside of space—let us ask in contrast: Is there, between death and a new birth into the world we enter as we have described, something that could be called a religion of that spiritual realm? Is there something over there that could be compared to religious life on Earth? We have already described some details and will continue to describe the processes that a human being experiences between death and a new birth. But now we ask ourselves: Is there such a thing as a religion in this spiritual life? Something of which one can say: it stands in relation to the experiences we describe for the spirit world just as the references to the supersensible world stand in relation to everyday life on the physical plane?

[ 12 ] Anyone who leaves their body in the manner described comes to realize that there is indeed something akin to a religious life over there in the spirit world. And strangely enough, while one experiences everything one has around oneself in the spirit world—spiritual beings and spiritual processes—just as one experiences physical beings and physical processes here, one has before one, throughout this life, or at least during a large part of this life between death and a new birth, the image of the human ideal, like a powerful spiritual entity. Everything that transcends the human being is what we have here on Earth as religion. The human ideal—that is what we have over there in the spiritual world as religion. One learns to understand that the various beings of the various spiritual hierarchies allowed their intentions and their powers to work together so that, in the stream of worlds, in the manner described in my Outline of Esoteric Science, the human being might gradually emerge. The gods envisioned the ideal of humanity as the goal of their creation—not the ideal that is currently realized in physical human beings, but rather the ideal that could be realized through the highest human soul-spirit life within the fully developed faculties of these physical human beings.

[ 13 ] Thus, as a goal, as the highest ideal, the religion of the gods holds before the gods an image of humanity. And just as on the distant shore of divinity the temple stands before the gods—as the highest artistic achievement of the gods, presenting the likeness of divine being in human form. And this is the peculiar thing: that while the human being develops in the spirit realm between death and a new birth, he gradually matures more and more there to be able to behold this temple of humanity, this lofty ideal of humanity. And while here on earth we perceive religious life in such a way that it must be our free act, that we must draw it out of ourselves, that it is also possible for the materialistic mind to deny the religious, the opposite is the case in the spiritual realm between death and a new birth. The more we live into the second half of the time between death and a new birth, the more clearly it stands before us, so that we cannot overlook it, so that it is always before our spiritual gaze: the loftiest human ideal, the divine goal of the worlds. Here on earth, a person can be irreligious because their soul can overlook the spirit in relation to the physical. Over there, it is impossible for a person not to see the divine goal; for it certainly presents itself before their eyes. Thus it stands, especially in the second half of life between death and a new birth, as on the shore of being, that is, on the shore of time flowing by—please take all these expressions to mean that we are dealing with time outside of space—thus it stands there, the ideal of humanity. There can be no religion of knowledge on the other side; for one must recognize that which is religious content. What I have now described is religious content on the other side. In this sense, no human being can be irreligious in such a way that they do not have the religious ideal of the spirit realm before them. For it stands there by itself; it is the goal of the gods and is presented as the most powerful, most glorious vision when we enter the second half of our life between death and a new birth. But even if we cannot develop a religion of knowledge over there in this way, we do develop a kind of religion under the guidance of higher spiritual beings who are active there on behalf of humanity.

[ 14 ] But while perception and vision cannot be taught to us—since they are self-evident—our will, our willing feeling, and our feeling will must be stirred in the second half of life, between death and a new birth, so that we may truly strive toward what we see there. Divine will and divine feeling flow into our willing feeling and our feeling will, so that we may choose the path in this direction in the second half of our life between death and a new birth. All expressions are, of course, inadequate for this entirely different kind of life; nevertheless, the expression may be used: here we are instructed with regard to our intellect; only when a teacher passes through the mental image does he continue to influence our feeling here on earth. Over there, it is the case that, once one has passed the point—to be described further—of the midpoint between death and a new birth, once one has crossed what I called in my last Mystery Drama The Awakening of the Soul, there is initially a certain dullness regarding our will and feeling toward what stands like a magnificent temple in the distant past. There, divine forces glow through and warm our inner soul capacities: it is a lesson that speaks directly to our inner being and expresses itself in such a way that we increasingly gain the ability to truly want to walk the path toward what we perceive as an ideal. While in physical life we may stand before a teacher or an educator, and they may stand before us, yet we essentially feel that they speak into our hearts from the outside, we sense that our spiritual educators of the higher hierarchies, by educating us as I have just described, allow their own powers to flow directly into our innermost being. Earthly educators speak to us; spiritual educators in the life between death and a new birth pour their life into our souls by educating us spiritually and religiously. And so we feel them more and more within us, these educators from the higher hierarchies; thus we feel ourselves ever more intimately connected with them. Through this, however, our inner life is strengthened and invigorated. You are increasingly accepted by the gods; the gods live more and more within you, and they help you to become ever stronger and stronger inwardly! This is the fundamental feeling that pervades this life between death and a new birth, especially in its second half.

[ 15 ] Thus we see how everything in this life is arranged so that our experiences take place directly in the depths of our own souls. But now, as we are instructed by the gods, we arrive at a specific point in our experience between death and a new birth. We arrive at an important point. It is, I would say, in the most distant of times that we catch a glimpse of the human ideal; but the forces that can be instilled in us by these divine-spiritual educators of ours depend on what we have made of ourselves in the course of our incarnations, in the course of our previous human lives. And so, as we approach from the midnight of the world, standing precisely in the middle between death and a new birth, and continuing to live further and further into the future until we see the ideal of humanity in the most distant times, we finally arrive at a point—the ultimate perspective of the ideal of humanity. But we stand at this point where we must now say to ourselves—we do not say it aloud, of course, we experience it entirely inwardly, but one must express it in the words of ordinary life—: Divine-spiritual forces have worked upon you, have become ever more inner in your soul, now live within you; but now you are at the point where you can no longer penetrate yourself further with these forces, for you would have to be much more perfect if you wished to go further than you have come so far.

[ 16 ] And now comes a crucial turning point. At this very moment, a severe temptation approaches us! The gods have meant well by us; they have given us everything they can give us at this stage; they have made us as strong as was possible given the strength we have acquired in our lives so far. So this strength given to us by the gods is within us, and temptation approaches us, telling us: Yes, you can now follow these gods; you can now, as it were, pour everything that you are into the powers the gods have given you; you can enter the spiritual worlds. For the gods have given you much, much indeed.

[ 17 ] One can become completely spiritual: this prospect lies before us. But one can do so only by diverting one’s path from the course toward the great ideal of humanity, by stepping off that course. In other words: one sets out on the path into the spiritual worlds by taking all one’s imperfections along into those worlds. There they would already transform into perfections. They truly would. One could enter with these imperfections; one would be a being with them, because one would be permeated by divine forces. But this being would have to renounce the capacities that it does possess, which it has not yet developed on its path thus far and which point toward the great ideal of humanity; it would have to renounce them. Every time before we go to an earthly incarnation, the temptation approaches us to remain in the spiritual world, to enter into the spirit and develop forward with what one already is—what is now fully deified—and to renounce what one, as a human being, could still become more and more on the path toward the distant religious ideal of the divine-spiritual world. The temptation arises to become irreligious toward the spirit realm.

[ 18 ] This temptation is all the more pressing because at no other moment in human evolution has Lucifer wielded greater power over humanity than at this very moment, when he whispers to them: Seize this opportunity now; you can remain in the spirit; you can transfer everything you have developed into the light of the spirit! And to make the soul forget, as far as is at all possible, Lucifer seeks out what still exists as potential, what stands there in the distant temple on the distant shore of temporal existence.

[ 19 ] As humanity is now, man would not be able to resist Lucifer’s temptation at this point if the spirits, whose adversary Lucifer is, did not now take charge of human affairs. And so begins the battle between the gods who guide humanity toward its ideals—the gods professing the religion of the gods—and Lucifer over a human soul. And the result of this battle is that the archetype which man has formed of his earthly existence is cast out of time into space, drawn magnetically by the existence of space. This is also the moment when that magnetic attraction through the parental pair occurs, when man is transported into the spheres of space, gaining kinship with the sphere of space. But through this, everything around the human being that might instill in him the temptation to remain only in the spiritual world is veiled. And this veiling is expressed precisely in his envelopment in physicality. He is inserted into physicality so that he does not see what Lucifer wants to place before him. And when he is enveloped in the physical body and now views the world through his physical senses and his physical intellect, he does not see what he would otherwise, seduced by the tempter, strive for in the spiritual world; he does not see it, he views this world of spiritual beings and processes from the outside, as they reveal themselves to the senses and the intellect bound to the brain. And because he is in the sensory body, the spirits who guide his progress take charge of his development.

[ 20 ] And let us now ask ourselves: How much is happening within us between birth and death in the depths of the subconscious soul? How much is happening within us without our knowing it? — If we were required to conduct ourselves in such a way that we accomplished everything consciously, we would be utterly unable to complete our earthly existence. I have already pointed this out in my book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity: when entering physical incarnation, human beings must first actively shape their own brain and nervous system. They do this, but they do so unconsciously. All of this is the expression of a wisdom far greater than that which human beings can comprehend with their sensory intellect. Between birth and death, a wisdom reigns within us that exists behind the world we perceive with our senses and about which we think with our intellect bound to the brain. This wisdom exists behind it; it is veiled from us between birth and death. But it reigns, weaves, and works within us in the subconscious depths of the soul, and it must, so to speak, take matters into its own hands in these subconscious depths of the human soul, because the human being must be removed for a time from a sight that would be tempting to him. The entire time we live in our physical body, under normal circumstances—without having been introduced to the spiritual world through careful training, and if the Guardian of the Threshold did not withhold from us the ability to look into the spiritual worlds—we would be tempted throughout our entire life, step by step, to abandon our still imperfect, our not yet fully developed human nature and to follow the upward ascent into the spiritual worlds, but with our imperfections. We need the time of our earthly life to be removed from Lucifer’s temptation during this time.

[ 21 ] Up until the specified moment when we are led out into space, Lucifer does not yet have power, for there is still a possibility of moving forward; but he arrives precisely at the moment when we have reached the point of decision. Since we cannot move forward due to our previous life, we would stray with our imperfections and remain in the spiritual world. The progressive gods, whose adversary is Lucifer, protect us from this by removing us from this spiritual world, by veiling it from us, and by carrying out what must happen to us from this spiritual world behind our consciousness.

[ 22 ] And so we stand here as human beings in the world, with our consciousness within our physical bodies, and say to ourselves: Thank you, gods! You have left us just enough of the ability to know something of the world as is good for us. — For if we were to look beyond the threshold of what constitutes the horizon of our consciousness, we would face the danger at every moment of no longer wishing to attain our human goal. From that brighter, higher state of consciousness in which we are between death and a new birth, where we are surrounded by spiritual worlds and spiritual beings, where we are in the spirit, we had to be transferred into the world of space, so that in the world of space the world we could not bear might be veiled from us, until we have passed through the time between birth and death—the time in which, because we were removed from the spiritual world, because this spiritual world did not act upon us during this time, and because only material things surrounded us—we have once again received a new impulse toward the distant goals of the human ideal. For throughout the entire time we live on earth, during which we do not look into the spiritual world with our consciousness, the divine spirits that drive us forward now act within us once more—unhindered by our consciousness, unhindered by our temptation to follow Lucifer. And they in turn instill so much strength in us that, when we pass through the gate of death, we can once again advance a little further toward the ideal of humanity.

[ 23 ] This is yet another mystery underlying human existence, which I have hinted at with these words. And I think it is a fitting Easter sentiment to look upon those aspects of life that are attained more through an inner stepping out of the body, to look upon the relationship between death and a new birth, and the life we subsequently gain in the physical body. There we look upon this life between death and a new birth and become aware of the guidance of the good divine-spiritual beings who help us forward. Just as we look back to our past in the spirit, we look up to these divine-spiritual beings, and we now understand of this existence of ours in the body between birth and death that it has been bestowed upon us by the gods so that the gods may care for us for a time, without our having to do anything, for our further development. While we perceive the world, while we think, feel, and will within it, while we store up our treasure of memories to have a coherent existence in physical life, the divine-spiritual beings are at work behind all this, behind our conscious life. They steer the flow of time. They have released us into space so that we may have in this space just as much consciousness as these gods deem good to allow us, when they wish to continue guiding our destinies behind this consciousness according to the great ideal of humanity, according to the ideal of the religion of the gods.

[ 24 ] Let us look within ourselves in this way—now at that inner self which we cannot even perceive or explore with our consciousness under normal circumstances—and let us try to imbue ourselves with the feeling: There lives within you something that you cannot, admittedly, perceive with the normal powers of human life, but which is your deepest inner soul; let us seek to become aware of it within us, this deeper aspect of our soul hidden within us, and then let us try to become aware of how, within this aspect of our soul that we ourselves do not direct, the gods reign, the God within us reigns: there we gain the true sense of the God reigning within us. And it is so that such a feeling might arise—such a true Easter feeling—that I actually wished to speak these words today, not so much for their theoretical content.

[ 25 ] If—as the soul looks upon what presents itself to it, as it steps, as it were, out of itself into space, filling the space—this soul can know and learn: “I am born of the Divine”—then, through what has been said today, it can deepen this knowledge by becoming aware that: With all that I know, with all that is accessible to my soul in perception, thinking, feeling, and willing, I have been born out of a deeper soul, out of that soul within me that is still with the Divine, that flows along in the stream of time, but flows along with the Divine. We can become aware of a knowledge that can express itself in a much deeper sense than the one that might have been meant yesterday at the end of our meditation. In an even deeper sense, we can today present the words as the result of our contemplation: We are born of God. For we perceive that this soul, with what it can know of itself, is born from the Divine at every moment, so that at every moment we may fill our deepest inner being with this: We are born of God.

[ 26 ] Ex deo nascimur.