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The Mystery of Death
GA 159

13 March 1915, Nuremberg

5. The Intervention of the Christ-Impulse in History—Bridging the Abyss Between the Living and the Dead

If spiritual science shall be a kind of life-force for our souls, and it can be that, this spiritual science must also prove itself powerful and suitable to extend the spiritual ken of the souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science in such times like ours in which a lot prepares which is so significant. One sees the events thereby in a wider perspective than other contemporaries often can do with their narrow view of materialism. One could see in that what our spiritual-scientific movement has nurtured during the years that one of the purposes has also consisted in extending the mood of soul, so that the human being frees himself from the bare thinking about his narrow self and about that what surrounds this narrow self and is really able to look at the big impulses, the big manifestations of forces which go through the whole evolution of humanity. If we have tried that way to extend the vigour of our feelings and sensations as it were, we also have to make the forces suitable which we have won by spiritual science, just in such times, on the one hand, the waves of which break so deeply painfully against the soul and, on the other hand, raise this soul to particular height because they bear such important matters in themselves. We must be able to come already to the position in such times to go along with that what is not so externally visible in the events, what the everyday mind is not able to see in these events. We must be able to ask ourselves: does that mean something prophetic for the whole earth development what as such a dreadful torch of war is burning above our heads?

Only that human being lives properly in the present events who sees these events in such a significant light as far as it is possible. Friends, who are in our circles, will often have asked themselves, why I have spoken in our circle during the last years now and again of the fact that in decades of the 20th century times come for which we must look ahead with a particular attention because children and grandchildren of those who live now will have to experience important and immense, but also tragic and painful events. Those upon whom it is incumbent today to give something to keep the souls of the children and grandchildren upright towards that what the humankind of the 20th century experiences must be aware that this gift must be a strong internal spiritual force. Even more than we can imagine already today in our everyday life, our offsprings of the 20th century will need strong internal forces keeping up the soul to pass on the achievements of humankind, which were accumulated in the human development throughout centuries. To quite other storms of life the offsprings of humankind now living on earth will be exposed. I said that someone could be surprised when that was said within our circles that way. Now, however, a sensation of that may arise if we consider that we are in the most dreadful war events which concerned human beings, since humankind experiences history consciously on this earth.

It would be absolutely wrong if we did not penetrate ourselves so intensely as possible with the importance of the moment and present the question to ourselves: with what does that have actually to do that we strive for out of internal longing of the soul, what spiritual knowledge does have to do with that which should come in the development of humankind? Don't we see, even if we look only cursorily, a tempest breaking out which got up from the East since long ago menacing modern education and civilisation of Europe? You have at least to know that in the lap of this East immense forces are working from which you can already see that they make themselves noticeable; so that they now intend to dismember, destroy the European civilisation. You can only anticipate now to which extent this is the case.

Our European civilisation is in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It is the culture of the consciousness-soul in whose middle souls are among us who have to give something to humankind. Looking back at what was the Greek-Latin culture, this Greek-Latin culture was basically, even if in another arrangement, an echo, a recapitulation of that what already lived in the old Atlantis but on a higher level. It lived there still differently. In the fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch a kind of recapitulation happened. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch in which we stand is a new formation, is something absolutely novel what has been added to the current development of humankind. We should not conceive that only as an abstract truth, as a theory, but with the deepest and most intensive human sense of responsibility. We should also be clear to ourselves about the fact that in the earthly evolution still long times will have to run off, until everything has come out of the human hearts and souls what the divine cosmic order has to give to humankind in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch.

In the fourth culture-epoch, the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha took place as the most significant event of the whole earth development. Just as this Mystery of Golgotha had an effect in the fourth culture-epoch, it does not merely continue working in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. This fifth culture-epoch is incumbent to go to meet the Mystery of Golgotha gradually with full knowledge of spirit, with full understanding, with all forces of knowledge of the soul; not only with the forces of the reason, the forces of devoutness. It has to comprehend Christ, Who went through Death and Resurrection, bit by bit with everything the soul can produce from itself of knowledge and understanding forces. So that the word of Paul1Galatians 2:20 is true, indeed, in a new way: “not I, but Christ in me.” Every effort we make in spiritual science is a preparation to grasp with all internal recognising forces of the soul in the end what is, actually, this Christ. This is a significant, great task of the fifth culture-epoch.

Now we may imagine what it means, actually, if such efforts are expected from the fifth culture-epoch. Let us put before our souls the way how the Christ Impulse has worked since the Mystery of Golgotha in humankind. If the Christ Impulse could have worked only by that what the human beings understood about this Christ Impulse in the course of the centuries, since the Mystery of Golgotha has taken place, then the Christ Impulse could have worked only a little among the human beings. But it is not such an impulse which has spoken only conceptually to the human understanding or to the feeling understanding, but it is a real impulse which flowed into the course of history with living forces. The external symbol of the blood flowing on Golgotha represents the living force flowing into the history of humankind.

We will try to get clear in our mind with the help of a historical event in which way this Christ Impulse has worked, without being understood already by human beings, in which way it has worked as a living driving force in the evolution of humankind. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch has a vocation to make conscious the whole internal nature and being of the Christ Impulse. But that has already worked as a living force in the subconscious soul forces, before it became fully conscious in humankind. One of those figures the Christ Impulse selected to work through them, to work something significant is, for example—one could still give others—the figure of the Maid of Orleans. If we pursue the history of Europe up to the event that is connected with the personality of the Maid of Orleans, we must say, even if we look only externally at history: with that what she accomplished in those days when she struck back the English, in the midst of the French people rising up,—she did that really,—the map of Europe was arranged as it was just arranged gradually. Any other historical consideration is basically a fairy tale for the last centuries, in so far as it concerns the distribution of nations and states in Europe. It is something unconscious that the Christ Impulse as a living impulse with the help of the Maid of Orleans caused the distribution of the European nations and national forces in those days.

I may say: while the learnt people argued about a lot, already started to argue about the question whether one has to take the Communion in this or that form whether this or that has to be interpreted according to this or that formula, and while the learnt people showed that they were not yet able to comprehend the Christ Impulse, this impulse worked through the simple farmer girl, the Maid of Orleans, worked as a formative force in European history.

Because the effect of the Christ Impulse is just not dependent on the understanding which somebody shows for it. By his Michaelic representative the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid of Orleans. Now, however, the Maid of Orleans had to go through something that is similar to an initiation. We talk of initiation today and give the rules to the consciousness of the human being which I have collated in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds But such an initiation of the Maid of Orleans is out of the question, of course. You can only talk about an initiation which was as it were a relic of the ancient initiation which took place more in the subconscious soul forces of the human beings. Now just these ancient initiations have reproduced like elementary forces up to the modern time. In old legends and fairy tales a lot is told: that this or that happened to this or that person by which he got the internal soul-force. That is why he has seen this or that of the spiritual world. Such matters should be only an indication of it, like without any help of the human being, by the effect of divine-spiritual forces permeating the world, certain human beings, who are suitable for that because of their karma, are natural initiates, by the place on which they are put by karma where the karma of humankind flows together with the personal karma. A good echo of such a natural initiation, as one would like to call it, gives us a poem which speaks of the fact, that the “solar son” Olaf Åsteson was in a kind of sleeping state during thirteen nights and days—the interval between Christ's birth and His Epiphany, up to the 6th January. The name Olaf Åsteson already indicates that subconscious hereditary forces of knowledge are included in it, because somebody is called Olaf Åsteson through whom the blood of his forefathers runs. The solar son Olaf Åsteson sleeps through and dreams for thirteen nights which are the darkest of the year or contain at least the biggest force of the earthly annual darkness in them, from the first Christmas Day up to the 6th January, to Epiphany.

That is not only superstitious nonsense what goes back to these nights in such legends. Since, indeed, there are two seasons which are in a certain way like two opposite cosmic poles for the soul-life of the living human being. If we take the season around the St Johns-tide in summer, this is the time when the human soul with all its passionate impulses is united with the universe through the external physical sun force whose energy then reaches its peak. Hence, the St Johns-tide festival of the old time was intended to put divine-spiritual forces, permeating the universe, into the human soul when the human beings forgot themselves and were wrapped up in the external strong physical forces of the universe. However, when the solar force is physically the weakest, in the middle of winter, the spiritual forces which have an effect in the darkness reaches its peak in return. And rightly, one can say, according to the cosmic laws the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is in this time. When the physical surroundings are the darkest, the soul can have the profoundest experiences if it feels united with the forces permeating the aura of the earth.

That is why Olaf Åsteson keeps on sleeping during these days, and experiences everything we call Kamaloka, soul-world, and, finally, spirit-land. The Norwegian legend tells us that Olaf Åsteson, when he awoke again after thirteen nights, knows to tell about his experiences that he has met the souls in the soul-world and in the spirit-land. Indeed, these are pictures which correspond to an Imaginative knowledge, but they point to that what really living possibilities of the human soul are if these souls feel transported in that time of physical darkness which is, however, the time of spiritual enlightenment, if they feel transported to that what flows and weaves in the earth's aura. At the end of the legend, we see the forces of the Christ Impulse which get hold of the subconscious understanding of Olaf Åsteson. In such legends one speaks—as it were—of natural initiations which were still possible in olden times, of beholding the spiritual world. In these times the earth's aura really has a force which it does not have in other times when it is flooded and outshone by the physical sun force. Because Christ is united with the earth's aura since the Mystery of Golgotha, the force of the Christ Impulse is also able to work into the souls particularly during these days if the souls are susceptible for it.

Hence, one may assume, before one investigates something historical, that—also with such a figure like the Maid of Orleans—the Christ Impulse would have worked subconsciously in her soul during thirteen days. The fact that also she would have gone through something like enlightenment by the Christ Impulse in the subconscious soul forces—what Olaf Åsteson has gone through during thirteen days and nights in the sleeping state. Then, however, the Maid of Orleans would have been in a kind of sleep once during the thirteen days from the 25th December to the 6th January, and then on the 6th January the Christ Impulse would have grasped this soul after it had been in a kind of sleeping state. That what one can assume did really exist in a peculiar way, only in a quite particular time when the human being can be, indeed, in a kind of sleep. Namely, before the human being does the first gasp in his earth-life, before he is released from the body of his mother and receives the first earthly-physical beam of light, he spends a time as a nascent human being in a true sleeping state. Just as you get a dreaming sleep in the evening, you are in the body of the mother in such a dream-like sleep.

Those days in which the dream-like sleep is most receptive to the unaware influence of the spiritual world are just the last days which the human being spends in the body of his mother. That is why it could also be that just these days would have been used with the Maid of Orleans to plant the Christ Impulse to her, before she saw the physical sunlight with physical eyes and did the first gasp outside the body of her mother. This was the case, because the Maid of Orleans is born on the 6th January. On the 6th January, it took place that the whole village gathered because something uncertain was in the aura of the village. This is a historical fact. The people did not know what had happened: the Maid of Orleans was born. Behind such matters a lot is hidden. Only if humankind gets round to seeing this mysterious fact once in the right light, will understanding of that also exist what really takes action in the human development under the surface of the external sensory world. The divine forces look for the most manifold ways for themselves to get into the human soul. Of course, the karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be suitable that such a thing could happen.

But while the karma of the Maid of Orleans coincided with the fact that she was born on the 6th January, the historical chance was given that the Christ Impulse had a particular effect on her and gave Europe a new formation. These are matters which you can examine if you observe the course of history with some understanding. These are the matters which the spiritual understanding resumes in future when this fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch really gets every knowledge force out of the souls. Then the soul experiences the existence of the Christ Impulse more and more consciously. But it experiences this only if humankind is able to regard spiritual science not as a mere theory, but to feel it as living, to experience it internally. Then spiritual science is able to achieve its actual mission in the development of humankind.

In such a time like ours, we must be clear to ourselves in particular about the fact that the chasm must be bridged which opens for a materialistic age more and more between the human souls, who are here incarnated, and those who have already gone through the gate of death. More and more one will get round to regard also the souls which stand in the life between death and a new birth as belonging to the whole humankind, like those who are in the physical life between birth and death. The consciousness must become stronger and stronger, that we all are united on earth, also those who have gone into the supersensible realms before us who work only with different forces among us than we do who are incarnated. This consciousness must become more and more intense. However, just understanding of the spiritually effective forces is necessary. It is necessary that we learn to look at the connections of the earthly phenomena in that new light spiritual science can give.

Only because spiritual science should be something that touches our hearts at the same time, while it helps our souls in knowledge, want I to talk to you about something that has concerned us during the last weeks. I do that to explain something about the way which goes back at the same time to something that occupied us in the farther vicinity of our spiritual-scientific current during the last weeks. I could also take other cases, indeed, but these cases are connected with our karma immediately, so that I can speak about them just today again. You can extend that what I say here also to other persons who stand within and beyond our spiritual-scientific movement with their destinies and their relation to death in a similar relation as in the cases about which I want to speak.

Last autumn we have experienced a distressing case in Dornach in the vicinity of our construction. Dear friends had moved with their children to Dornach, settled there near the construction to manage the garden. And the oldest, seven year-old child, a spiritually infinitely bright boy who was something quite peculiar, however, also concerning his heart qualities was really a little bit like a sunny child. One had the most intimate interest in the soul of this child, even if one could see it only briefly here and there. When then the father joined the armed forces to do his duty as a German citizen on the battlefield, there was the seven-year-old boy with his heart, I would like to say, already in the whole situation of life that he made particular efforts to substitute the father, as well he was able to do, to help his mother, while he managed everything possible. He went into the city, made purchases, the seven-year-old boy quite on his own. One evening the boy was missed. It was just an evening lecture. A person friendly to us came possibly at ten o'clock and said that the boy would be missed. It could not be unclear in the end at all that this had to do something with a removal van which had toppled over near our construction at a place where perhaps a removal van has never gone before and and will probably also not go for a long time. The van had toppled over a small embankment in a meadow that the carters said, it would be out of question that one could lift the van in the evening. They unyoked the horses about which they were very anxious, and left the van to lift it the next day because they believed that they had to work for a whole day to be able to lift the heavy carriage. Now it was ten o'clock in the evening. We had to assume that the boy was missed because the carriage had toppled over. All possible tools were brought, and everybody who could work worked, and in two hours the carriage was lifted. At midnight we found the dead boy under the removal van.

Now if one takes only externally into account and considers, how from longer time, before this had happened, everything pushed itself together, so that the boy who had always gone, otherwise, a somewhat different way by which he would have passed the van on the right side, however, at that time he went so that he passed the carriage on the left side where the carriage just had to topple over him. If you imagine that he was detained a little bit in the most benevolent way, so that he left possibly a quarter of an hour later—he got something for the supper in the so-called canteen,—so that he has left later than he wanted, actually. If you imagine that the whole accident took place that it depended really on some, even not some minutes that the boy was just here where the carriage toppled over, and nobody noticed the accident. Not far away from that place people noticed that the carriage fell down, but they did not see the boy. If you imagine everything, you will recognise already externally that this is a most remarkable example of logical delusion which may occur easily to human beings.

I have often shown clearly, also to you, that the human being can already delude himself in the external life, so that he mistakes cause and effect. I have said: imagine that you see a person from the distance going along a riverside. You see him suddenly staggering and falling into the river. He is pulled out dead not long afterwards. Now you are quite justified to suppose according to all external reasons that the person has fallen into the water and has just drowned. If you do nothing else, you adhere to this judgment. In this case it only requires external means to convince you of the opposite. One has still found a stone where the person has fallen into the river, and you are supported in your judgment. If one opens the corpse, one will find out that the person suffered a stroke that he has fallen consequently into the river and that he has met his death not because he fell into the river, but that he fell because he was dead. So cause and effect were completely mistaken. However, somebody who understands the matters observes that at many places above all in science. In our case where the boy met his death, we must say: the karma of this boy ordered the removal van; karma brought the van just to that place. The judgment is wrong if one believes that chance played a role. The boy should only arrive just at the seventh year in this incarnation. I would like to say, the whole arrangement was made for that. We must completely get used to exchange cause and effect compared with the way of judging matters in the everyday life.

If we look now with the glance of the seer at the life of this soul, something stupefying becomes apparent to us that at the same time lights up the divine-spiritual secrets of the world. Not long after the boy's death, the whole aura of the Dornach construction changed. While I say this, I say something to you that is connected with my experiences. If anybody himself has to work for the Dornach construction of the Anthroposophical Society, if one has to instigate what is to be carried out there, then one knows what one has to thank the supporting forces for working from such an aura into one's soul. Since those days, the still unused etheric body of the boy is really connected with the aura of the Dornach construction. After the human being has taken off his etheric body, he goes on with his ego and astral body; this is something different. But the etheric body if it is taken off at such a tender age has forces in itself which could still have supplied the physical body and its life for decades. Now these forces have gone unused through the gate of death. They are taken off after some days. These forces just co-operate with the aura of our construction. One is not allowed to say that it is the soul itself of this individuality, but it is the unused etheric body. Nothing gets also lost in the spiritual world. The physicist knows that nothing of physical forces gets lost that the forces only change. Also in the spiritual world we have to look for transformed forces, unused etheric forces which ascend from early-deceased human beings to the spiritual world. We approach these matters if we observe them in concrete cases. That is why I may talk to you only about such concrete cases today.

A dear anthroposophical friend (Sibyl Colazza) died before some weeks in Zurich after a life which had brought her some ordeals, and the karma of our movement brought it about that I had to speak at the cremation. The time from death up to cremation lasted from Wednesday at six o'clock p. m. until Monday at eleven o'clock a. m. This interval was a little longer than usual. That is why the separation of the individuality from the etheric body had already happened, while the cremation took place. Now the peculiar was that in the time, in which the soul had already separated from the etheric body during the days between death and cremation, the necessity arose to me to speak certain words before and after the obituary. My own ability of coining words had really to do a little with the way these words were coined. However, by identifying with the soul of that personality the necessity resulted to characterise this personality as if an inspiration came from her soul itself. The soul said as it were: coin your words, so that they characterise my soul.—But the soul was still unconscious. The words came not consciously from the soul, but from the being of this soul. I had to characterise her as she wanted not to mirror herself in selfish way, but as she appeared to herself if another soul looked at her. For this other soul the necessity arose to speak the following words at the beginning of the funeral speech and to coin each single word. The words had to be spoken as an address to the soul who had gone through the gate of death:

You walked among us.
Your being's gentle spirit
Spoke through the quiet power of your eyes—
Ensouled, alive, peace
Flowed in waves,
With your glance
To things and people
Bearing your inner weaving;
And your voice ensouled this being
Your voice that eloquently,
More in the kind of words
Than in the words themselves,
Revealed what worked hidden
Within your beautiful soul;
Yet your sacrificial love
Unveiled itself completely
To sympathetic people without words—
This being, who, from noble, quiet beauty,
Heralded the sensitive awareness
Of worlds-and-souls creation.

As I said, in the beginning and at the end of the funeral these words had to be spoken. Now, indeed, this soul was as it were like sleeping during the whole process, during the funeral ceremony. Then the cremation followed. Strangely enough the soul experienced a first flashing of consciousness, which later passed again, at the moment when, one cannot say the flame, but the heat seized the corpse. There one could say: now this soul has gone through the gate of death, it had taken off its etheric body, and it now appeared how such a soul looks back. In this retrospective view, the whole funeral ceremony stood before the soul, looking at the spoken words. Someone could see there the secret of time effectiveness for the soul, after it has gone through the gate of death. One could always have seen this in such a case. If one here in the physical body looks at something spatial and then leaves it, this object does not leave, but is left, and one can always look around—one sees that it is left. However, that does not hold true of something we experience in time in the physical life. There we have a memory picture of the events only. If one looks back after death at past events, they are left; one looks at the events like through space. Thus the words had been left; the soul looked back at them like at spatial things through the course of time. This is the way to look at the things of the Akasha Chronicle. Then a kind of sleeping state happened again. But particularly in this case it was rather clear that the fear of the materialistic soul is unfounded that the consciousness of the soul is reduced when it goes through the gate of death.

We do not have no consciousness or not enough consciousness after death when we sink in a kind of sleeping state, but we have too much consciousness. When we have taken off the etheric body, when the life tableau is taken off, we are full of consciousness that blinds us at first, and the human being must orientate himself first.—I gave more details in my talks of the Vienna cycle The Inner Nature of the Human Being and Life Between Death and New Birth.—The soul orientates itself, while it looks back at its own earth-life and at its character in this earth-life. It has to orientate itself by means of self-knowledge. The force of orientation must take hold there, and then the abundant consciousness is reduced as far as the human being is able to endure it, depending on what he has gone through in his last incarnation. It is, actually, reducing the superabundance of consciousness to the degree which the human being can endure. But that may happen in stages. When the body was seized by the heat, the first flashing of real consciousness took place in the soul of this personality friendly to us.

It appeared to me especially clearly in another case that the soul, when it has gone through the gate of death, wants to summarise its being. I said that you can experience these matters at every death, but I give you typical examples of the most recent time. It appeared to me with quite particular clearness in another case when a friendly personality, after it had reached higher years, has gone through the gate of death. During the last years which it lived through on earth it was given away with all feelings in a rare way to the impulses of spiritual science. It felt the details of spiritual science more than it grasped them with the mind, that it united with its soul the kind of feeling which gives not a theoretical, but a true view of spiritual science. Shortly after the hour of death, while the soul experienced the life tableau with its etheric body, it tried now to grasp its self where it had taken off its body. This process seemed likewise to ray forth to me, and I identified with it. I had then to note words shortly after death, when the soul was still united with the etheric body, which I have also not coined with the help of my human knowledge. These words are nothing else than a reproduction of that what the soul worked internally in itself to summarise what it had been able to get from spiritual science and came to an internally complete self-awareness that way. There the words sounded from the soul which I had to speak then also, following an inspiration, before and after the funeral speech. You will immediately notice the great difference to the whole tone of those words I gave for the other personality before.

Into cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;

Into cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of eternal life-becoming;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted contemplation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In the peace of God I strive thus
Amidst life's battles and cares,
To prepare myself for the higher Self;

Aspiring to work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
I seek to fulfil my human duty;

May I live in anticipation
Oriented toward my soul's star,
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.

The soul speaks of itself as “I.” In the former case, the considering soul had to characterise the other soul interchanging with it. In this case, the considering soul had nothing else to do than to transport itself completely into the soul which still tried to grasp, enriched by spiritual science, with the forces of the etheric body to become clear that it has now to orientate itself in the spiritual world.

These are cases again in which one realises that the human being, after he has gone through the gate of death, is dependent on looking back at himself in self-knowledge. One could see clearly that somebody who is still in the physical body can help the dead to formulate in words what works and weaves in him. Of course, the times, when the human being sees his weaknesses and mistakes, his sins, come later in the soul-world. But we have to retain: as much as death is feared now and again by those who are still in the body, death is something completely different seen from the other side in the retrospective view. Here in the physical life nobody can look so far back with his everyday human forces to the hour of his birth. Actually, nobody who does not have clairvoyant forces has the possibility to look at his entry into the world; only later the point in time up to which one can look back takes place.

Just the reverse is the case with that birth for the spiritual world which we call death. The human being looks at this point in time permanently in the life between death and new birth. This moment belongs to the most marvellous, greatest at which one can generally look in the spiritual world. Death is always an immediate proof of the fact that the spirit incessantly celebrates his victory over the physical nature. And you experience this in yourself. That is why the soul wants to experience that which one can be also really in the soul after death. Hence, it is a help if a soul living in the body expresses that in words what the soul strives for, so that the soul clearly sees itself with the best it has before its own spiritual view after it has gone through the gate of death. I just could see in this case that such words came to me with an internal necessity which referred to the soul in question when I had to speak at the funeral and did not speak out of arbitrariness, but obeyed the divine voice which told me what I had to do.

In still another case that appeared to me by the karmic course of the last times, when one of our friends died as young man who gave rise to great hopes just for our movement. He died in the thirtieth year of his life. On the 26th February he would have been thirty years old, he died shortly before. This friend, our dear Fritz Mitscher, has been somebody who was able to summarise that spiritual-scientifically what he had gained in learning—he had a disposition to scholarship,—with infinite, sacrificing devotion, and thus, indeed, he stood before something our movement needs so much: taking up our extensive science in oneself, so that one penetrates it spiritual-scientifically and reports it spiritual-scientifically, so that one stands completely on the ground of the scientific present. He was well prepared for that. Even if now the karma runs a way that such souls go early through the gate of death, this has its significance in the whole world course. Like in the other cases—because I was urged just by karma to speak at the funeral,—it was there also that I had to speak words in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech which had to be spoken again in the same manner, transporting myself into the soul's being, so that I coined the words again not arbitrarily, but grasped them in the lively being together with the deceased. There I had to say then:

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to you life's true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Un-lost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

Already in the next night I could experience that the following sounded from this soul from the spiritual realm:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

I assure you, when I had written down these verses, I did not think, not in the least, that in both stanzas each “you” can be transformed to “me,” each “your” to “my.” I took notice only, when both stanzas sounded back from the other soul like an answer in the next night. So that the stanzas could just remain, only the second person was replaced by the first person.

I mention this, because a heart understanding can arise to us that in the future of the human development the possibility remains to speak from soul to soul, when the mouth is no longer the tool. In the same way we get answer here for the everyday life from the mouth of the other soul, it was here at an example where the soul gave answer still even from the unconscious of its being, saying as it were: I have now understood, because it was to me really that way in life; now I understand what I have aimed at in life, after I have taken off my body.

It does not only depend on the fact that we take up concepts, ideas and mental pictures of the spiritual worlds, but that we live in a certain life, in a certain way of life as human beings, while we go as human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch towards the sixth and seventh culture-epochs. It depends on the fact that the chasm is bridged really which separates the living human beings from the so-called dead that humankind becomes one more and more not only in so far as it is incarnated in the body, but also as it has taken on those forms of existence which the human being lives through between death and new birth. Spiritual science has not only to bring that to humankind, but for the life which the earth needs for the rest of this post-Atlantean development, spiritual science is the first, I would like to say, still stammering attempt, because what can be given in spiritual science is basically only a stammering compared to that what future generations experience of spiritual science.

My account tried to make that comprehensible by the force of heart what we can think about the relations of life and death, referring today to spiritual science facing life, so that you get another understanding than the head understanding, the lively heart understanding which we seek for, actually, through the spiritual-scientific deepening. That is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. The sixth and the seventh epochs follow it. However, you understand only what is to be defended as Central European culture if you just feel this Central European culture intimately connected with that which must be gained in the fifth culture-epoch for humankind. Something may then begin from that which I have mentioned in the beginning of this consideration: a widening of the view beyond that what our destiny-burdened times have in their lap.

In the East, a kind of human life prepares which will be significant for the future. You only need to read up about that in the series of talks about the mission of the folk-souls2The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology 11 lectures in Kristiania (today Oslo, June 1910), Steiner's Collected Works volume 121 I held once in Kristiania (= Oslo). But totally different from the soul kind which is just that of the Central European is already the soul kind of the Eastern European not to speak at all of the Far Eastern—totally different. We have already to get on by that what spiritual science should be for us to create an open spirit eye for such things. What is often told that once the Varangians were invited by the Russian-Slavic population that they would have said to them: we have a nice country, but we have no order, come to us and make order. Arrange something like a state for us. What is told sentimentally as a starting point of the Russian history is nothing else as a legend without any historical background. This has never taken place that way. In truth, these Varangians came into the country as conquerors and were not called really. Nevertheless, what is told in history has more significance, even more than it would have if it corresponded to a historical truth. Because it means something prophetic, something really prophetic, something that has not yet happened that happens, however, in future. What should develop in the East, has to develop so that the abilities of the eastern peoples are used to take up what the western civilisation has created, and to process it in itself to get fertilised with that which the West has created. This is the task of the eastern peoples in future.

One can just characterise the nature of the Russian eastern nation briefly. When we look at the real nation—not at that dishonest society which now governs the Russian nation,—then we have to be aware of the fact that the Russian soul has an immense lot of talents that it is gifted as it were for everything; but just while it unfolds its mission in the world human development more and more, will appear that something can be there in humanity what one can call: talent without productive power. The talent will still become greater and greater. That, however, what distinguishes, for example, the Central European, that he has combined his talent with the spiritual force that he produces that “for him whose striving never ceases ...” and lives intimately with his folk-soul. He wants to produce that what he wants to understand at the same time what is there so splendid in Fichte's philosophy where the ego to understand itself wants to produce itself perpetually—one will see only later which significance this philosophy has,—just that what distinguishes Central Europe. The opposite of that is in existence in Russia, in the east of Europe. These Russian souls are receptive first of all: they have the biggest gift for taking up, and if one speaks of productiveness, one is mistaken. They have a vocation to develop talents without productiveness. Today even the concept is difficult to grasp because something like that has not yet existed in the development, but has to develop only bit by bit. In future it happens that from the East over here to the West the call goes out: we have a nice country, but no order—for disorder increases more and more,—come and make order.—Central Europe has a vocation to bring spiritual productiveness to the East. What happens now means that they defend themselves unreasonably against that which must still happen in future. One wants to crush that to which once one will have to come and say: come to us and make order.—It is thus in the historical evolution of humanity that that is thrown back mostly, pushed back mostly what one has to long for in the end. The biggest misfortune would be that the east of Europe, if Russia were victorious in this process. That would not be the biggest misfortune for Central Europe, not at all, but for Russia herself, the biggest misfortune, considered internally, because this victory would have to be cancelled again. This victory could not last with its effects. Thus we stand before the tragic moment of the historical evolution of humanity that the East defends itself against something it will long for in future, will long for with all its forces. Because it would experience an entire decline if it could not be fertilised by the spiritual life of the directly bordering West. In the further course of its culture this West has to produce a lively cultural life, not only idealism, but lively cultural life. This lively cultural life will be like a spirit sun which moves from the West to the East, opposite to the movement of the sun. The external Russian human being will see more and more how little he is able to do by himself how he is dependent on arranging himself really in the whole evolutionary process of humanity; how he commits the biggest sin assaulting the west-European culture.

I would like to say we could feel strange pre-flashes of it. Something appeared in this East that was impossible in the West: the so-called world view of the discalced friars,3the following quotation from the dramatic poem The Lower Depths by Maksim Gorky (1868–1936) stems originally from a writing by Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1865–1941) a type of philosophy of the discalced friars which has quickly spread over big circles, while it was not there some years ago at all. Being discalced! The world view of those who make the absolute unbelief in human beings and humanity a philosophy, because they cannot believe that the human being is really something different than that what there walks around between birth and death under tribulation and fright, that the words liberty, fraternity, compassion and love are empty phrases, and that the only wise one is who walks as a pilgrim barefoot through the world, who the whole culture, the whole putrescent west-European culture—as the discalced friar says—feels as a big deception and regards the tattered clothing, the musty room and broad street as something through which the human being walks, when he forced himself to the discalced friars' world view. When a poet allows to express this discalced friars' world view by one of his persons with characteristic words, this must touch us quite strangely who always try to find out that of the Central European world view which can kindle the light of the future for the human beings. If a poet allows to express a person that what is, however, basically a kind of a summary of the discalced friars' world view and their philosophy how does it seem to us?

”Yes what does this person mean to you? Do you understand? He collars you, quashes you under the nails like a fleeing! Then you may feel sorry for him ... Certainly! Then you may manifest your whole stupidity to him. He will stretch you on seven instruments of torture for your compassion; he wraps your intestine over the hand and pulls all your veins out of the body, an inch per hour ... Oh you ... Compassion! Pray to God that one may thrash you simply without any compassion, and finish ... Compassion ... Bah!”

And Gorki of whom you have already heard something says to such words: “Cruel, but true,” while he returns now not only the world view of a poetic personality, as the poet expresses it, but he expresses his own world view which results for him as the consideration of the world. This is the world view of a discalced friar, a world view about which one can just talk like about other world views now in existence. It is the world view which has lost the possibility to come out of itself to something that rays light to life. It has to wait, until it is fertilised by this light, and then it can fulfil its mission in the human evolution. However, now it rebels against that what it just must do. One could experience many phrases in the world, but I say that from the most tragic feeling:

Such phrases, as they were spoken by the most different parties in August 1914 on the war assembly of the Russian Duma, such a sum of phrases exceeds the peak of phraseology. Such a thing is only spoken when any lively productive force of the soul is exhausted. In the East one stands in reality in the eve of that what should become first, and unfolds a force that is opposite to that what will once make this East great. We in Central Europe have to say to ourselves: nevertheless, this East waits just for the spiritual wisdom which has to arise in the middle of Europe.

My dear friends, try to transform that into feelings what I has suggested to you with grievous feelings, I would like to say, in single words that it can light up that what we are able to see as spiritual scientists with enlarged sensations and with which we should familiarise ourselves to understand the real necessity and also the contemporary historical necessity of the spiritual-scientific world view. Then we penetrate ourselves with thoughts which ascend from our souls to cosmic distances. Thoughts which meet then what works down from these spiritual worlds, when peace prevails on earth.

Today I have shown you how the etheric bodies of those souls work which free themselves as unused etheric bodies from the souls, which could work still for years, still for decades here in the physical bodies, for the physical lives. The idea must become apparent to us how many such unused parts of etheric bodies ascend into the spiritual world—still except that what human beings going through the portal of death on the battlefields take with their individualities into the spiritual world. However, these etheric bodies represent a big sum of spiritual forces, those spiritual forces which should help forming a spiritual world view from the spiritual spheres which should seize humanity more and more. It is necessary that thoughts ascending from earthly human beings to the spiritual spheres meet these forces of the unused etheric bodies which are able to work down from the spiritual spheres. These human thoughts have to show understanding for the secret work of the spiritual world into which the forces of these unused etheric bodies are woven.

However, this should be an encouragement for us that we penetrate ourselves with the profundities of spiritual science. Since these profundities stimulate thoughts in us which have an effect then more and more also in other human beings. Depending on what develops as destiny-burdened contents of our days, days full of peace will come when that what the souls have planted of spiritual science in themselves will ascend. It will meet the forces that have collected from the etheric bodies of those who went through the gate of death on the battlefields and flow down. Then this will happen what I would like to subsume in some words as a result of this spiritual-scientific consideration. If we are able to put the fruits of spiritual science in our time rightly, then that will happen what I would like to express in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

Das Eingreifen Des Christus-Impulses In Das Geschichtliche Geschehen - Die Überbrückung Der Kluft Zwischen Lebenden Und Toten

Wenn Geisteswissenschaft vor allen Dingen eine Art Lebenskraft für unsere Seelen sein will, und dies auch sein kann, so muß diese Geisteswissenschaft sich auf der andern Seite auch mächtig und geeignet erweisen, in solchen Zeiten, in denen sich so viel vorbereitet, die so bedeutsam sind wie die unsrigen, den geistigen Blick der Seelen, die sich der Geisteswissenschaft ergeben, zu erweitern. Dadurch wird dasjenige, was geschieht, in einem etwas weiteren Licht gesehen, als der durch den Materialismus beengte Blick der andern Zeitgenossen es vielfach heute noch kann. Man hat sehen können in dem, was durch die Jahre her innerhalb unserer geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung gepflegt worden ist, daß eines der Ziele auch darin bestanden hat, die Empfindungsart der Seele zu erweitern, so daß der Mensch von dem bloßen Denken über sein engeres Selbst und über dasjenige, was dieses engere Selbst umgibt, loskommt und wirklich ein wenig hinzuschauen vermag auf die großen Impulse, die großen Kräfteäußerungen, die durch die ganze Entwickelung der Erdenmenschheit gehen. Und wenn wir uns so bemüht haben, gewissermaßen die Spannkraft unserer Gefühle und Empfindungen zu erweitern, so müssen wir auch die Kräfte, die wir durch die Geisteswissenschaft gewonnen haben, geeignet machen können, gerade in solchen Zeiten, die auf der einen Seite so tief schmerzlich heranbranden an die Seele mit ihren Wogen, auf der andern Seite aber diese Seele erheben zu ganz besonderer Höhe, weil sie so Bedeutungsvolles in ihrem Schoße bergen, wir müssen in solchen Zeiten schon in die Lage kommen können, ein wenig mit dem zu gehen, was nicht so äußerlich sichtbar ist in den Ereignissen, was der gewöhnliche Verstand in diesen Ereignissen nicht zu schauen vermag. Wir müssen uns namentlich die Frage aufwerfen können: Bedeutet dasjenige, was als so furchtbare Kriegsfackel entzündet über unseren Häuptern brennt, bedeutet das etwas von prophetischer Art für die ganze Erdenentwickelung?

Nur derjenige wird in den gegenwärtigen Ereignissen recht darinstehen, der diese Ereignisse in einem so bedeutsamen Licht sieht, wie dies nur irgend möglich ist. Oftmals werden sich Freunde, die in unseren Reihen sind, gefragt haben, warum in den letzten Jahren in unserem Kreise zuweilen davon gesprochen worden ist, daß in den Jahrzehnten des 20. Jahrhunderts Zeiten kommen werden, auf die wir mit einer besonderen Aufmerksamkeit vorausblicken müssen, weil die Kinder und Kindeskinder derer, die jetzt leben, wichtige und gewaltige,aber auch tragische und schmerzende Ereignisse werden zu durchleben haben. Denen, welchen es heute obliegt, etwas mitzugeben, um die Seelen der Kinder und Kindeskinder aufrechtzuerhalten gegenüber dem, was über die Menschheit des 20. Jahrhunderts kommen wird, muß bewußt sein, daß dieses Mitzugebende eine starke innere geistige Kraft sein muß. Viel, viel mehr als wir uns heute schon im gewöhnlichen Leben vorstellen können, werden unsere Nachkommen des 20. Jahrhunderts starke innere, die Seele haltende Kräfte brauchen, um fortzutragen die Güter der Menschheit, die in der Menschheitsentwickelung durch Jahrhunderte und Jahrhunderte angesammelt worden sind. Und noch ganz andern Stürmen des Lebens werden die Nachkommen der jetzt lebenden Erdenmenschheit ausgesetzt sein. Ich sagte, man hat sich manchmal wundern können, wenn das in unseren Reihen so gesagt worden ist. Vielleicht kann aber jetzt eine Empfindung davon entstehen, wenn wir bedenken, daß wir in den größten kriegerischen Ereignissen, den furchtbarsten kriegerischen Ereignissen darinstehen, die jemals die Menschen betroffen haben, seitdem die Menschheit eine bewußte Geschichte auf dieser Erde durchlebt.

Da wäre es durchaus unrichtig, wenn wir uns nicht so intensiv als möglich, so stark als möglich von der Bedeutung des Augenblicks durchdringen und uns die Frage vorlegen würden: Was hat denn eigentlich dasjenige, was wir aus inneren Sehnsuchten der Seele heraus erstreben, was hat denn geistige Erkenntnis mit demjenigen zu tun, was da in die Entwickelung der Menschheit hereinkommen sol? Sehen wir denn nicht, auch wenn wir nur oberflächlich blicken, ein drohendes Ungewitter, das sich von Osten herüber seit langer Zeit erhoben hat, über die neuere Bildung und Kultur Europas entbrennen? Und man muß wenigstens wissen, daß im Schoße dieses Ostens ganz gewaltige Kräfte wesen, von denen man schon sehen kann, daß sie so, wie sie sich jetzt geltend machen, im Grunde auf das Zerstückeln, das Zerstören der europäischen Kultur hinausgehen. In welchem:Grade dies der Fall ist, das kann jetzt nur geahnt werden.

Mit dem, was wir europäische Kultur und Zivilisation nennen, stehen wir in der fünften nachatlantischen Kulturperiode. Es ist die Kultur der Bewußtseinsseele, in deren Mitte Seelen unter uns sind, die der Menschheit etwas zu geben haben. Wenn wir darauf zurückblikken, was die griechisch-lateinische Kultur war, so ergibt sich uns diese griechisch-lateinische Kultur im wesentlichen, wenn auch in einer ganz andern Ausgestaltung, als ein Nachklang, eine auf einer höheren Stufe zutage tretende Wiederholung desjenigen, was auch schon in der alten Atlantis gelebt hat. Wenn es dort auch noch anders lebte, in der vierten nachatlantischen Kulturperiode ist eine Art Wiederholung davon eingetreten. Die fünfte nachatlantische Kulturperiode, in der wir stehen, ist eine Neuformation, ist etwas völlig Neues, was zu dem bisherigen Entwickelungsgang der Menschheit hinzugekommen ist. Solches sollen wir nicht bloß als abstrakte Wahrheit, als Theorie, sondern mit dem tiefsten und intensivsten menschlichen Verantwortlichkeitsgefühl erfassen, und wir sollen uns auch klar darüber sein, daß in der Erdenentwickelung noch lange Zeiten werden ablaufen müssen, bis alles das aus den Herzen und Seelen der Menschen herausgekommen ist, was die göttliche Weltenordnung durch die fünfte nachatlantische Kulturperiode der Erdenmenschheit zu geben hat.

In der vierten Kulturperiode ging als das bedeutendste Ereignis der ganzen Erdenentwickelung der Impuls des Mysteriums von Golgatha auf. So wie dieses Mysterium von Golgatha in der vierten Kulturperiode gewirkt hat, so wird es in der fünften nachatlantischen Kulturperiode nicht bloß weiterwirken. Dieser fünften Kulturperiode obliegt es, mit voller Geist-Erkenntnis, mit vollem Verständnis allmählich dem Mysterium von Golgatha entgegenzukommen, mit all den Erkenntniskräften der Seele; nicht nur mit den Kräften des Verstandes, den Kräften der bloß gefühlsmäßigen Frömmigkeit; nach und nach durch all das, was die Seele aus sich selbst hervorbringen kann an Erkenntnissen und Verständniskräften, den Christus, der durch das Mysterium von Golgatha gegangen ist, zu erfassen. So daß das Wort des Paulus, allerdings in einer neuen Art, wahr ist: «Nicht ich, sondern der Christus in mir.» Und im Grunde genommen ist alles das, was wir in der Geisteswissenschaft aufbringen, die Vorbereitung dazu, mit allen inneren Erkenntniskräften der Seele zuletzt zu erfassen, was eigentlich dieser Christus ist. Das ist eine bedeutende, große Aufgabe der fünften Kulturperiode.

Nun wollen wir uns einmal ein wenig hineinversetzen, was damit eigentlich gesagt ist, wenn der fünften Kulturperiode solches zugemutet wird. Bringen wir vor unsere Seelen die Art, wie der ChristusImpuls seit dem Mysterium von Golgatha in der Menschheit gewirkt hat. Wenn der Christus-Impuls nur durch dasjenige hätte wirken können, was die Menschen über diesen Christus-Impuls im Laufe der Jahrhunderte, seitdem das Mysterium von Golgatha vollzogen worden ist, verstanden haben, dann hätte der Christus-Impuls nur wenig wirken können unter den Menschen. Aber er ist nicht ein solcher Impuls, der nur begrifflich zu dem menschlichen Verständnis oder zu dem Gefühlsverständnis gesprochen hat, sondern er ist ein realer Impuls, der mit lebendigen Kräften in den Verlauf der Geschichte selbst hineingeflossen ist. Dasjenige, wofür das auf Golgatha fließende Blut das äußere Symbolum ist, das ist ja das, wovon eine lebendige Kraft in die Menschheitsgeschichte hereinfließt.

Versuchen wir, uns einmal an einem geschichtlichen Ereignis klarzumachen, wie dieser Christus-Impuls gewirkt hat, ohne daß ihn die Menschen schon verstanden haben; wie er gewirkt hat als eine lebendig treibende Kraft in der Entwickelung der Menschheit. Die fünfte nachatlantische Kulturperiode ist dazu berufen, in das Bewußtsein hereinzubringen die ganze innere Natur und Wesenheit des ChristusImpulses. Aber er hat schon als eine lebendige Kraft in den unterbewußten Seelenkräften gewirkt, bevor er in der Menschheit voll zum Bewußtsein erwachen konnte. Und eine derjenigen Gestalten, die der Christus-Impuls sich ausgesucht hat, um durch sie zu wirken, Bedeutsames zu wirken, ist zum Beispiel — man könnte auch noch andere anführen — die Gestalt der Jungfrau von Orleans. Wenn wir die Geschichte Europas bis zu dem Ereignis zurück verfolgen, das sich in Anknüpfung an die Persönlichkeit der Jungfrau von Orleans abgespielt hat, so müssen wir, auch wenn wir nur äußerlich die Geschichte betrachten, sagen: Mit dem, was sie dazumal vollbrachte, als sie, inmitten des französischen Volkes sich erhebend, die englischen Kräfte zurückgeschlagen hat - sie hat das ja in Wahrheit getan -, ist erst die Landkarte Europas so gestaltet worden, wie sie sich eben nach und nach gestaltet hat. Und alle andere Geschichtsbetrachtung ist im Grunde für die letzten Jahrhunderte, insofern sie europäische Volks- und Staatenverteilung betrifft, ein Märchen, ist etwas, was sich nicht bewußt ist, daß mit der Jungfrau von Orleans der Christus-Impuls war, der dazumal als ein lebendiger Impuls die Verteilung der europäischen Völker und Volkskräfte bewirkt hat. Und man möchte sagen: Während die gelehrten Leute über allerlei stritten, schon anfingen zu streiten über die Frage, ob man das Abendmahl in dieser oder jener Gestalt zu genießen habe, ob dieses oder jenes durch diese oder jene Formel gedeutet werde, und während so die gelehrten Leute zeigten, daß sie eben mit ihrem bewußten Verständnis noch nicht herangekommen waren an die Erfassung desjenigen, was der Christus-Impuls ist, wirkte dieser Impuls durch das einfache Landmädchen, durch die Jungfrau von Orleans, wirkte gestaltend in die europäische Geschichte hinein. Denn die Wirkung des Christus-Impulses ist eben nicht von dem Verständnis abhängig, das man ihm entgegenbringt. Durch seinen michaelischen Vertreter wirkte der Christus-Impuls in die Jungfrau von Orleans hinein. Nun aber mußte die Jungfrau von Orleans dazu etwas durchmachen, das einer Initiation ähnlich ist. Wir reden heute von der Einweihung, der Initiation und geben dazu dem Bewußtsein des Menschen die Regeln, die wir zusammengestellt haben in dem Buch «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?». Aber von einer solchen Einweihung konnte bei der Jungfrau von Orleans natürlich nicht die Rede sein. Bei ihr kann nur von einer Einweihung die Rede sein, die gewissermaßen ein Überbleibsel der älteren Einweihung war, die sich mehr in den unterbewußten Seelenkräften der Menschen vollzog. Nun haben sich gerade diese alten Einweihungen wie Elementarkräfte fortgepflanzt bis herauf in die neuere Zeit. In alten Sagen und Märchen und Legenden wird vieles erzählt: daß diesem oder jenem Menschen dieses oder jenes passiert ist, wodurch ihm die innere Seelenkraft aufgegangen ist, so daß er dieses oder jenes von der geistigen Welt gesehen hat. Solche Dinge sollen nur eine Andeutung davon sein, wie ohne menschliches Zutun, durch Wirkung göttlich-geistiger, die Welt durchwallender Kräfte, gewisse Menschen, die durch ihr Karma dazu geeignet sind, naturgemäße Eingeweihte sind, durch den Platz, auf den sie durch das Menschheitskarma hingestellt werden, wo dieses Menschheitskarma mit dem eigenen Karma zusammenfließt. Ein sehr schöner Nachklang an eine solche Natureinweihung, wie man sie nennen möchte, gibt uns ein Gedicht, welches davon spricht, daß der «Sonnensohn» Olaf Åsteson in den dreizehn Nächten und Tagen, die von der Geburt Christi bis zur Erscheinung Christi, bis zum 6. Januar, abfließen, in einer Art Schlafzustand verweilte. Olaf Åsteson: in dem Namen ist schon angedeutet, daß in ihm durch Vererbung liegende Erkenntniskräfte unterbewußter Art enthalten sind, denn Olaf Åsteson heißt eigentlich: derjenige, durch den das Blut seiner Ahnen geht. Der Sonnensohn Olaf Åsteson durchschläft und durchträumt die dreizehn Nächte, welche die finstersten des irdischen Jahres sind, oder wenigstens die größte Kraft der irdischen Jahresfinsternis in sich enthalten, vom ersten Weihnachtstag bis zum 6. Januar, dem Epiphaniasfest. Nun ist das nicht bloß eine menschliche abergläubische Spintisiererei, was sich in solchen Sagen und Legenden an diese Nächte knüpft. Denn in der Tat ist es so, daß es zwei Jahreszeiten gibt, die sich kosmisch gewissermaßen wie zwei entgegengesetzte Pole zum Leben der Seele des Menschen im Leibe verhalten. Wenn wir die Jahreszeit nehmen, die um das Johannisfest im Sommer liegt, so ist das die Zeit, welche besonders geeignet ist dazu, daß die menschliche Seele mit all ihren Leidenschaftsimpulsen durch die äußerliche physische Sonnenkraft, die da ihre größte Energie erreicht, im Kosmos aufgeht, sich mit dem Kosmos vereinigt. Daher war das Johannisfest der alten Zeit dazu bestimmt, in die menschliche Seele das an göttlich-geistigen Kräften hineinzulegen, was den Kosmos durchwellt und durchwallt, wenn die Menschen sich vergaßen und aufgingen bei diesem Fest in die äußeren starken physischen Kräfte des Kosmos. Da aber, wo die Sonnenkraft die schwächste physische Entfaltung erreicht, in der Mitte des Winters, erreichen dafür die geistigen Kräfte, die in der Finsternis wirken, die größte Stärke. Und mit Recht, man kann sagen, nach kosmischen Gesetzen liegt das Fest der Geburt des Jesus von Nazareth in dieser Zeit. Da, wo das äußere Physische am finstersten ist, kann die Seele das Gewaltigste erleben, wenn sie sich vereinigt fühlt mit den Kräften, die geistig die Aura der Erde durchspielen. Daher ist es in diesen Tagen, daß Olaf Åsteson schläft und schläft, und all das erlebt, was wir das Kamaloka nennen, dann das, was wir die Seelenwelt, und endlich das, was wir das Geisterland nennen. Und die norwegische Legende erzählt uns, wie Olaf Åsteson, nachdem er nach den dreizehn Nächten wieder erwacht, zu erzählen weiß von dem, was er erlebt hat, wie er den Seelen begegnet ist in der Seelenwelt und im Geisterlande. Das alles sind zwar Bilder, die einer imaginativen Erkenntnis entsprechen, aber sie deuten auf dasjenige, was wirklich lebendige Möglichkeiten der menschlichen Seele sind, wenn diese Seelen sich entrückt fühlen in jener Zeit der physischen Finsternis, die aber die Zeit der spirituellen Erleuchtung ist, wenn sie sich entrückt fühlen zu dem, was in der Erdenaura wallt und webt. Und am Ende der Legende sehen wir die Kräfte des Christus-Impulses, die mit Gewalt packen — aber das unterbewußte Verständnis des Olaf Åsteson. In solchen Legenden wird gleichsam von Natureinweihungen, die in alten Zeiten noch möglich waren, gesprochen, von einem Hinschauen in die geistige Welt. In diesen Zeiten hat die Erdenaura wirklich eine Kraft, die sie in andern Zeiten, wo sie von der physischen Sonnenkraft gleichsam überflutet und überstrahlt wird, nicht hat. Und da der Christus seit dem Mysterium von Golgatha mit der Erdenaura vereinigt ist, so kann auch die Kraft des Christus-Impulses in diesen Tagen ganz besonders in die Seelen hineinwirken, wenn ihr diese Seelen Empfänglichkeit entgegenbringen.

Daher könnte man, bevor man irgend etwas geschichtlich untersucht, voraussetzen, daß, auch bei einer solchen Gestalt wie der Jungfrau von Orleans, der Christus-Impuls durch dreizehn Tage hindurch unterbewußt in ihre Seele hineingewirkt hätte; daß auch sie gewissermaßen -— was Olaf Åsteson in den dreizehn Tagen und Nächten im Schlafzustand durchgemacht hat - etwas wie eine Erleuchtung durch den Christus-Impuls in den unterbewußten Seelenkräften durchgemacht hätte. Dann müßte die Jungfrau von Orleans aber einmal in den dreizehn Tagen, die vom 25. Dezember bis zum 6. Januar liegen, in einer Art schlafähnlichem Zustand gewesen sein, und am 6. Januar müßte dann, nachdem ihre Seele in einer Art von Schlafzustand war, der Christus-Impuls diese Seele ergriffen haben. Dasjenige, was man so voraussetzen kann, war wirklich in einer eigentümlichen Weise vorhanden, nur in einer ganz besonderen Zeit, wo der Mensch in der Tat in einer Art von Schlafzustand sein kann. Nämlich bevor der Mensch den ersten Atemzug im Erdenleben tut, bevor er dem Leib seiner Mutter entbunden wird und den ersten irdisch-physischen Lichtstrahl empfängt, verbringt er ja eine Zeit als werdender Mensch in einem wahren Schlafzustand. Und ebenso wie man am Abend in einen Traumesschlaf kommt, ist man im Leibe der Mutter in solch einem traumähnlichen Schlaf. Und diejenigen Tage, in denen der traumähnliche Schlaf am meisten für die unbewußten Einflüsse der geistigen Welt empfänglich ist, sind eben die letzten Tage, die der Mensch im Leibe der Mutter verbringt. Und so könnte es auch wohl sein, daß gerade diese Tage bei der Jungfrau von Orleans dazu verwendet worden wären, ihr den Christus-Impuls einzupflanzen, bevor sie mit physischen Augen das physische Sonnenlicht erblickte, den ersten Atemzug außer dem Leibe der Mutter tat. Das war der Fall, denn die Jungfrau von Orleans ist am 0. Januar geboren. Am 6. Januar vollzog es sich, daß das ganze Dorf zusammenlief, weil irgend etwas Unbestimmtes in der Dorfaura lag. Das ist eine historische Tatsache. Die Leute wußten nicht, was geschehen war: die Jungfrau von Orleans war geboren. Hinter solchen Dingen verbirgt sich vieles. Und erst dann, wenn die Menschheit dazukommen wird, diese geheimnisvolle Tatsache einmal im richtigen Licht zu sehen, wird auch Verständnis desjenigen vorhanden sein, was unter der Oberfläche der äußerlichen Sinnenwelt im Menschenwerden wirklich vorgeht. Die göttlichen Kräfte suchen sich die mannigfaltigsten Wege, um hineinzukommen in dasjenige, was menschliche Seele ist. Selbstverständlich mußte das Karma der Jungfrau von Orleans geeignet sein dazu, daß so etwas geschehen konnte. Aber indem das Karma der Jungfrau von Orleans zusammenfiel mit der Tatsache, daß sie am 6. Januar geboren ist, war dasjenige historisch gegeben, was möglich machte, daß auf diese Gestalt der Geschichte der Christus-Impuls besonders wirkte und Europa eine neue Gestaltung gab. Dies sind Dinge, die man prüfen kann, wenn man mit einigem Verständnis den Lauf der Geschichte beobachtet. Das sind die Dinge, an welche das geistige Verständnis anknüpfen wird in der Zukunft, wenn diese fünfte nachatlantische Kulturperiode wirklich alle Erkenntniskräfte aus den Seelen heraufholen wird. Die Seele wird dann bewußter und immer bewußter das Dasein des Christus-Impulses erleben. Aber sie wird das nur dann so erleben, wenn die Menschheit in den Stand kommt, Geisteswissenschaft nicht mehr als eine bloße "Theorie zu betrachten, sondern als das lebendige Leben zu erfühlen, sie innerlich zu erfahren. Dann wird Geisteswissenschaft dasjenige bewirken können, was eigentlich ihre Mission im Werdegang der Menschheit ist.

In einer solchen Zeit, wie die unsrige ist, müssen wir uns insbesondere klar darüber sein, daß der Abgrund überbrückt werden muß, der sich für ein materialistisches Zeitalter immer mehr und mehr auftut zwischen den Menschenseelen, die hier im physischen Leibe verkörpert miteinander leben, und denen, die schon durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind. Und immer mehr wird man dazukommen, auch die Seelen so zur gesamten Menschheit hinzugehörig zu erschauen, die in dem Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt stehen, wie diejenigen, die sich im physischen Leben zwischen Geburt und Tod befinden. Das Bewußtsein, daß wir alle vereint sind auf dem Erdenrund, auch diejenigen, die vor uns in die übetsinnlichen Reiche übergegangen sind, die nur mit andern Kräften unter uns wirken als wir, die wir im Leibe sind, dieses Bewußtsein muß immer stärker, immer intensiver werden. Aber dazu ist eben Verständnis der geistig wirksamen Kräfte notwendig. Dazu ist notwendig, daß wir lernen, die Zusammenhänge der irdischen Erscheinungen in jenem neuen Lichte zu nehmen, das die Geisteswissenschaft geben kann.

Nur weil Geisteswissenschaft etwas sein soll, was zugleich unsere Herzen bewegt, indem es unsere Seelen in der Erkenntnis weiterbtingt, will ich — um einiges zu erläutern über den Weg, der zugleich ein solcher ist, daß er anknüpft an manches, was uns im weitern Umkreis unserer geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisströmung in den letzten Wochen beschäftigt hat -, will ich zu Ihnen sprechen von etwas, was in den letzten Wochen an uns herangetreten ist. Ich könnte gewiß auch andere Fälle wählen, aber diese Fälle sind mit unserem Karma verknüpft in einer unmittelbaren Weise, so daß ich über sie gerade am heutigen Tage wiederum sprechen kann. Und Sie können das, was da gesagt wird, auch für andere erweitern, die innerhalb und außerhalb unserer geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung mit ihrem Schicksal und seinem Verhältnis zu ihrem Tode in einem ähnlichen Verhältnis stehen, wie das in den Fällen ist, von denen ich sprechen will.

Da haben wir einen erschütternden Fall im vorigen Herbst in Dornach im Umkreis unseres Baues erlebt. Liebe Freunde waren mit ihren Kindern nach Dornach hingezogen, hatten sich dort in der Nähe des Baues angesiedelt, um die Gärtnerei zu besorgen. Und das älteste, sieben Jahre alte Kind, ein geistig unendlich aufgeweckter Knabe, der aber auch in bezug auf seine Herzenseigenschaften etwas ganz Eigentümliches war, der war wirklich etwas wie ein Sonnenkind. Man hatte innigsten Anteil an der Seele dieses Kindes, auch wenn man es nur flüchtig da und dort einmal sehen konnte. Als dann der Vater eingerückt war, um auf dem Schlachtfelde seine Pflicht als deutscher Bürger zu tun, da war der siebenjährige Knabe mit seinem Herzen, ich möchte sagen, schon so in der ganzen Situation des Lebens darin, daß er sich ganz besonders angestrengt hat, den Vater, so gut er konnte, zu ersetzen, um der Mutter zu helfen, indem er alles mögliche besorgte. Er fuhr in die Stadt, kaufte ein, der siebenjährige Knabe ganz allein. Bines Abends wurde nun der Knabe vermißt. Es war gerade ein Vortragsabend. Eine uns befreundete Persönlichkeit kam so etwa um zehn Uhr und sagte, daß der Knabe vermißt wäre. Und es konnte zum Schluß gar nicht unklar sein, daß dieses Vermißtsein des Knaben etwas zu tun habe mit dem Umfallen eines Möbelwagens, der in der Nähe des Baues an einer Stelle umgefallen war, wo vielleicht vorher kaum ein Möbelwagen gefahren ist, seit jener Zeit auch nicht wieder und wohl auch lange Zeit hindurch keiner fahren wird. Der Wagen war über eine kleine Böschung in eine Wiese hinein so heruntergefallen, daß die Fuhrleute sagten, es wäre keine Rede, daß man den Wagen am Abend noch heben könne. Sie spannten die Pferde aus, für die sie sehr besorgt waren, und ließen den Wagen ruhig liegen, um ihn am nächsten Tage zu heben, weil sie glaubten, man würde einen ganzen Tag zu tun haben, um den schweren Wagen heben zu können. Nun war es zehn Uhr abends. Wir mußten das Vermißtsein des Knaben in Zusammenhang mit dem Umfallen dieses Wagens bringen. Es wurden alle möglichen Instrumente herbeigeschafft, und alles, was arbeiten konnte, arbeitete, und in zwei Stunden war der Wagen gehoben. Um Mitternacht fanden wir den toten Knaben unter dem Möbelwagen.

Nun, wenn man nur äußerlich beachtet und ins Auge faßt, wie von längerer Zeit her, bevor das geschehen war, sich alles zusammenschob, so daß der Knabe, der sonst immer einen etwas andern Weg gegangen war, wodurch er auf der rechten Seite am Wagen vorbeigegangen wäre, damals aber so ging, daß er an der linken Seite vorbeikam, wo ihn der Wagen gerade überfallen mußte, wenn man bedenkt, daß er etwas aufgehalten war in der wohlwollendsten Weise, so daß er etwa eine Viertelstunde später weggegangen ist — er hatte in der sogenannten Kantine etwas für das Abendbrot geholt -, so daß er später weggegangen ist, als er eigentlich wollte, wenn man bedenkt, daß das Ganze sich so vollzogen hat, daß es eigentlich wirklich auf ein paar, ja kaum ein paar Minuten ankam, daß der Knabe gerade an der Stelle war, wo der Wagen umfiel, und daß das Ganze nicht beachtet wurde; von gar nicht ferne schauten Leute zu, wie der Wagen umfiel, aber von dem Knaben hatte man nichts gesehen, wenn man das alles bedenkt, dann wird man schon äußerlich anerkennen, wie das im eminentesten Sinne ein Beispiel ist für eine leicht sich vollziehende logische Täuschung, der sich der Mensch hingeben kann.

Ich habe öfter, auch vor Ihnen, anschaulich gezeigt, wie der Mensch sich schon im äußeren Leben Täuschungen hingeben kann, so daß er geradezu Ursache und Wirkung verwechselt. Gesagt habe ich: Man nehme an, man sähe von der Ferne einen Menschen am Rande eines Flusses gehen. Man sieht, wie er plötzlich taumelt und in den Fluß hineinfällt. Man zieht ihn nicht lange danach tot heraus. Nun ist man ja wohl berechtigt, nach allen äußeren Gründen anzunehmen, daß der Mensch ins Wasser gefallen und eben ertrunken ist. Und tut man nichts anderes, so wird es im menschlichen Urteil dabei bleiben. In diesem Falle bedarf es nur eines äußeren Mittels, um sich vielleicht vom Gegenteil zu überzeugen. Man hat an der Stelle, wo der Mensch in den Fluß gefallen ist, auch noch einen Stein gefunden und wird dadurch in dem Urteil bestärkt. Öffnet man die Leiche, so wird man finden, daß der Mensch vom Schlage getroffen wurde, daß er infolgedessen in den Fluß gefallen ist und daß er den Tod nicht aus dem Grunde gefunden hat, weil er in den Fluß fiel, sondern daß er hineinfiel, weil er tot war. Also Ursache und Wirkung sind völlig verwechselt worden. Das aber geschieht vor allen Dingen in der Wissenschaft für denjenigen, der die Dinge durchschaut, an vielen Stellen. In unserem Falle, wo der Knabe seinen Tod fand, müssen wir sagen: Den Möbelwagen hat das Karma dieses Knaben bestellt, den Wagen hat sein Karma gerade an die Stelle hingebracht. Falsch ist das Urteil, wenn man glaubt, da sei ein Zufall im Spiele gewesen. Der Knabe sollte in diesem Falle eben nur das siebente Lebensjahr in dieser Inkarnation erreichen. Und ich möchte sagen, die ganze Veranstaltung ist dazu gepflogen worden. Wir müssen da uns völlig daran gewöhnen, Ursache und Wirkung zu vertauschen gegenüber der Art, wie wir sie im gewöhnlichen Leben sehen.

Wenn wir nun aber mit dem Blick des Sehers auf das Leben dieser Seele hinschauen, dann wird uns gewiß erschütternd, ganz gewaltig erschütternd, aber zu gleicher Zeit beleuchtend die göttlich-geistigen Geheimnisse der Welt, etwas aufgehen können, was bedeutsam ist. Es dauerte nicht lange nach des Knaben Tod, so war die ganze Aura des Dornacher Baues verändert. Und indem ich dieses sage, sage ich Ihnen etwas, was mit meinen Erfahrungen zusammenhängt. Wenn man selbst zu arbeiten hat für den Dornacher Bau der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, wenn man dasjenige einzuleiten hat, was dort auszuführen ist, dann weiß man, was man den helfenden Kräften verdankt, die aus einer solchen Aura in die Seele hereinwirken. Seit jenen Tagen ist mit der Aura des Dornacher Baues wirklich verbunden, echt verbunden dasjenige, was der noch unverbrauchte Ätherleib des Knaben war. Denn der Ätherleib ist ja dasjenige, was vom Menschen abgelegt wird. Die Individualität, aus dem Ich und Astralleib bestehend, geht dann weiter, das ist etwas anderes. Aber der Ätherleib, wenn er in so zartem Kindesalter abgelegt wird, hat Kräfte in sich, die noch jahrzehntelang den physischen Leib und das physische Leben hätten versorgen können. Nun sind diese Kräfte unverbraucht durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen. Sie werden nach einigen Tagen abgelegt. Und diese Kräfte wirken nun gerade mit der Aura des Baues zusammen. Man kann also nicht sagen, daß es bei dieser Individualität die Seele selbst ist, sondern es ist der unverbrauchte Ätherleib. Nichts geht auch in der geistigen Welt verloren. Der Physiker weiß, daß nichts verlorengeht von physischen Kräften, daß sich die Kräfte nur verwandeln. Auch in der geistigen Welt haben wir verwandelte Kräfte zu suchen, unverbrauchte Ätherkräfte, die von frühverstorbenen Menschen in die geistige Welt hinaufgehen. Wir kommen diesen Dingen nah, wenn wir an konkreten Fällen diese Dinge beobachten. Und nur aus diesem Grunde sei heute von solch konkreten Fällen zu Ihnen gesprochen.

Eine liebe anthroposophische Freundin starb nach einem Leben, das ihr manche Prüfung gebracht hatte, vor Wochen in Zürich, und das Karma unserer Bewegung brachte es mit sich, daß ich bei der Einäscherung zu sprechen hatte. Die Zeit bis zur Einäscherung vom Tode ab dauerte vom Mittwoch abends sechs Uhr, wo der Tod eintrat, bis Montag früh um elf Uhr. Also eine etwas längere Zeit als gewöhnlich. Dadurch war die Abtrennung der Individualität von dem Ätherleib, während die Einäscherung geschah, schon geschehen. Nun war das Eigentümliche, daß in der Zeit, in welcher die Seele sich in den Tagen zwischen dem Eintreten des Todes und der Einäscherung schon vom Ätherleib losgetrennt hatte, die Notwendigkeit an mich herantrat: Du mußt vor der Einäscherungsrede und nachher, gewisse Worte sprechen. Wie diese Worte geprägt waren, damit hatte dasjenige, was eigenes Können, eigenes Wortprägen tut, wirklich recht wenig zu tun, sondern es ergab sich durch die Identifikation mit der Seele der Persönlichkeit, die durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen war, die Notwendigkeit, diese Seele zu charakterisieren, aber so zu charakterisieren, daß die Charakteristik gegeben war wie eine Eingebung, wie eine Erleuchtung, die von der Seele selbst kam. Die Seele sagte gleichsam: Präge Worte, durch die dasjenige in tönenden Worten erscheint, was meine Seele charakterisiert. - Aber es war in der Seele noch Unbewußtheit. Nicht bewußt rührten die Worte von der Seele her, sondern sie rührten von dem Wesen dieser Seele her. Ich mußte sie charakterisieren, wie sie sich nicht in egoistischer Weise selbst bespiegeln wollte, sondern wie sie sich erschien, wenn eine andere Seele sie betrachtete. Und für diese andere Seele ergab sich die Notwendigkeit bis in die Prägung der einzelnen Worte hinein, am Anfang desjenigen, was man eine Leichenrede nennen könnte, das Folgende zu sprechen. Wie in Anrede an die Seele, die durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen war, mußten die folgenden Worte gesprochen werden:

Du tratest unter uns.
Deines Wesens bewegte Sanftmut
Sprach aus Deiner Augen stiller Kraft
Ruhe, die seelenvoll belebt,
Floß in den Wellen,
Mit denen Deine Blicke
Zu Dingen und zu Menschen
Deines Innern Weben trugen;
Und es durchseelte dieses Wesen
Deine Stimme, die beredt
Durch des Wortes Art mehr
Als in dem Worte selbst
Öffenbarte, was verborgen
In Deiner schönen Seele weset;
Doch das hingebender Liebe
Teilnahmsvoller Menschen
Sich wortlos voll enthüllte —
Dies Wesen, das von edler, stiller Schönheit
Der Welten-Seelen-Schöpfung
Empfänglichem Empfinden kündete.

Wie gesagt, am Anfang und am Ende der Bestattung mußten diese Worte gesprochen werden. Nun war in der Tat diese Seele gewissermaßen wie schlafend während des ganzen Vorganges, während der Bestattungszeremonie. Dann folgte die Einäscherung. Das Merkwürdige trat ein, daß der erste Augenblick eines nachher wiederum vergehenden Aufblitzens des Bewußtseins für die Seele in dem Moment eintrat, wo, man kann nicht sagen die Flamme, sondern die Wärme den Leichnam ergriff. Da konnte man sagen: Diese Seele ist nun durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen, ihren Ätherleib hatte sie abgelegt, und nun zeigte sich, wie eine solche Seele zurückblickt. Vor dieser Seele stand in diesem Rückblick die ganze Bestattungszeremonie, das heißt das, was gesprochen worden war; darauf blickte sie hin. Und man könnte da das Geheimnis der Zeitenwirksamkeit für die Seele sehen, nachdem sie durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen ist. Das hätte man in einem solchen Falle immer sehen können. Wenn man hier im physischen Leib auf etwas, was im Raume steht, hinblickt und dann davon weggeht, so geht dieser Gegenstand nicht weg, sondern bleibt stehen, und man kann sich immer umschauen — man sieht, er bleibt stehen. So ist es aber nicht mit dem, was wir zeitlich erleben im physischen Leben; da haben wir nur ein Erinnerungsbild der Ereignisse. Wenn man dagegen nach dem Tode auf vergangene Ereignisse zurückblickt, so bleiben sie stehen; man blickt wie durch den Raum hindurch auf die Ereignisse. So war also stehengeblieben, was gesprochen worden war, die Seele blickte darauf zurück wie auf ein Raumgebilde durch den Zeitenlauf hindurch. Das ist das Hinblicken auf die Gebilde der Akasha-Chronik. Dann trat wiederum eine Art Schlafzustand ein. Aber besonders in diesem Falle zeigte sich so recht klar, wie unbegründet die Befürchtung der materialistischen Seele ist, daß das Bewußtsein, wenn die Seele durch die Pforte des Todes geht, herabgemindert werden könne. Wir haben nach dem Tode, wenn wir in eine Art Schlafzustand sinken, bis zum späteren Erwachen nicht kein oder zu wenig Bewußtsein, sondern wir haben zu viel Bewußtsein. Wir sind zunächst, wenn wir den Ätherleib abgelegt haben, wenn das Lebenstableau abgelegt ist, so erfüllt von Bewußtsein - ich habe darüber in dem in Wien gehaltenen Zyklus «Inneres Wesen des Menschen und Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt» Näheres gesagt -, daß das Bewußtsein zunächst blendet, und der Mensch muß sich zuerst orientieren. Und er orientiert sich, indem er auf sein eigenes Erdenleben und auf seinen Charakter in diesem Erdenleben zurückblickt. An der Selbsterkenntnis muß er sich orientieren, da muß die Orientierungskraft angreifen, und von da aus wird dann gewissermaßen dasjenige, was zu viel Bewußtsein ist, so weit herabgedämpft, daß der Mensch, je nachdem, was er durch die letzte Inkarnation durchgemacht hat, es ertragen kann. Es ist also eigentlich ein Herabdärnpfen der Überfülle des Bewußtseins, die da war, bis zu dem Grade, den der Mensch ertragen kann. Aber es kann das etappenweise auftreten. Und unter dem Eindruck des Ergriffenwerdens des Leibes von der Wärme, der Hitze, entstand ein erstes Aufblitzen von wirklichem Bewußtsein in der Seele bei dieser uns befreundeten Persönlichkeit.

Daß die Seele aber danach strebt, wenn sie durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen ist, dasjenige zusammenzufassen, was in ihr ist, das zeigte sich mir besonders deutlich an einem andern Fall. Ich sagte, diese Dinge kann man ja bei jedem Tode erleben, aber ich führe Ihnen charakteristische Beispiele aus der allerjüngsten Zeit an. Es zeigte sich mir mit ganz besonderer Deutlichkeit bei einem andern Falle, wo eine befreundete Persönlichkeit, nachdem sie höhere Jahre erreicht hatte, durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen ist. Die letzten Jahre, die sie auf der Erde durchlebte, war sie mit allen Gefühlen und Empfindungen in einer seltenen Weise an das hingegeben, was man die Impulse der Geisteswissenschaft nennen kann. Sie war so, daß sie alles einzelne der Geisteswissenschaft mehr fühlte, als mit dem Verstande erfaßte, daß sie mit der Seele vereinigte die Art der Empfindung, des Fühlens, welches eine nicht theoretische, sondern lebenswahre Auffassung der Geisteswissenschaft gibt. Nun war es bei dieser Persönlichkeit so, daß ganz kurz nach der Todesstunde, während des Hineinlebens in das Lebenstableau mit dem Ätherleib, wie hinstrahlte von der Seele, mit der man sich dann identifizierte, dasjenige, was diese Seele als ihr Selbst jetzt zu erfassen suchte, wo sie den Leib abgelegt hatte. Und ich mußte mir dann ganz kurz nach dem Tode, als die Seele mit dem Ätherleibe noch vereinigt war, Worte aufschreiben, die ich auch wiederum nicht geprägt habe durch mein Menschenwissen, sondern die nichts anderes sind als eine Wiedergabe dessen, was die Seele sich innerlich in sich selbst erarbeitete, um gleichsam zusammenzufassen wie in eine Art Resümee dasjenige, was sie aus der Geisteswissenschaft hatte bekommen können, um zu einem innerlich vollen Selbstbewußtsein zu kommen. Da tönte es in der Seele mit den Worten, die ich dann auch, einer Eingebung folgend, vor und nach der Bestattungsrede zu sprechen hatte. Sie werden gleich den großen Unterschied zwischen dem ganzen Ton dieser Worte merken, die ich für die andere Persönlichkeit vorher angeführt habe.

In Weltenweiten will ich tragen
Mein fühlend Herz, daß warm es werde
Im Feuer heil’gen Kräftewirkens;

In Weltgedanken will ich weben
Das eigne Denken, daß klar es werde
Im Licht des ew’gen Werde-Lebens;

In Seelengründe will ich tauchen
Ergeb’nes Sinnen, daß stark es werde
Für Menschenwirkens wahre Ziele;

In Gottesruhe streb’ ich so
Mit Lebenskämpfen und mit Sorgen,
Mein Selbst zum höhern Selbst bereitend;

Nach arbeitfreud’gem Frieden trachtend,
Erahnend Welten-Sein im Eigensein,
Möcht’ ich die Menschenpflicht erfüllen;

Erwartend leben darf ich dann
Entgegen meinem Schicksalsterne,
Der mir im Geistgebiet den Ort erteilt.

Selbstcharakteristik der Seele in der Ich-Form! Sie haben bei dem Früheren den deutlichen Charakter, daß die betrachtende Seele die andere Seele charakterisieren muß im wechselseitigen Geistverkehr mit ihr. Hier hatte die betrachtende Seele nichts anderes zu tun, als sich ganz zu versetzen in die Seele, die sich noch mit den Kräften des Ätherleibes in ihrem durch die Geisteswissenschaft bereicherten Wesen zu erfassen suchte, um sich gewissermaßen klarzuwerden, wie sie sich nun zu orientieren hat in der geistigen Welt.

Das sind wiederum Fälle, in denen so recht klar wird, wie der Mensch, indem er durch die Pforte des Todes geschritten ist, angewiesen ist darauf, in Selbsterkenntnis auf sein Selbst zurückzublicken. Und man konnte deutlich sehen, wie es für den Toten eine gewisse Hilfe ist, wenn der noch im physischen Leibe Weilende ihm hilft zu formulieren, in Worte zu fassen dasjenige, was in ihm waltet und webt. Selbstverständlich kommen später die Zeiten, wo der Mensch seine Schwächen und seine Fehler, seine Sünden erblickt in der Seelenwelt. Aber das müssen wir festhalten: So sehr zuweilen der Tod von denen, die noch im Leibe weilen, gefürchtet wird, von der andern Seite rückblickend gesehen, nimmt sich der Tod ganz anders aus. Hier im physischen Leben kann kein Mensch mit den gewöhnlichen Menschenkräften bis zur Stunde seiner Geburt zurückblicken. Eigentlich gibt es für keinen Menschen, der nicht hellsichtige Kräfte hat, eine Möglichkeit, sein Eintreten in die Welt anzuschauen; erst später tritt der Zeitpunkt ein, bis zu dem man zurückschauen kann. Gerade das Umgekehrte ist der Fall mit jener Geburt für die geistige Welt, die wir den Tod nennen. Auf diesen Zeitpunkt blickt der Mensch unausgesetzt in dem Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt. Allein dieser Moment gehört zum Herrlichsten, Großartigsten, zum Allerschönsten, auf das man überhaupt in der geistigen Welt sehen kann. Von der andern Seite gesehen ist der Tod immer unmittelbar beweiskräftig dafür, daß der Geist unablässig seinen Sieg über die Leiblichkeit feiert. Und das erlebt man an sich selbst. Daher dieses Streben, das, was man sein kann, auch wirklich in der Seele nach dem Tode zu erleben. Daher ist es eine Hilfe, wenn eine im Leibe lebende Seele dasjenige in Worte prägt, wonach die Seele strebt, damit ihr das, was sie ist, klar mit all dem Besten, das sie hat, vor dem eigenen geistigen Blick stehe, nachdem sie durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen ist. Man konnte gerade in diesem Falle so recht sehen, wie einem mit einer inneren Notwendigkeit solche Worte kommen, die sich auf das Selbst der betreffenden Seele beziehen, wenn man bei der Bestattung zu sprechen hat und nicht aus Willkür heraus spricht, sondern der göttlichen Stimme gehorcht, die einen zu tun heißt, was man zu tun hat.

In einem noch andern Falle zeigte sich mir das durch den karmischen Verlauf der letzten Zeiten, als einer unserer Freunde in früher Jugend starb, der zu großen Hoffnungen gerade für unsere Bewegung berechtigt hat. Er starb im dreißigsten Jahr seines Lebens. Am 26. Februar würde er dreißig Jahre alt gewesen sein, kurz vorher starb er. Und dieser Freund, unser lieber Fritz Mitscher, er ist ja derjenige gewesen, der mit unendlicher, sich opfernder Hingabe dasjenige, was et, der eine Anlage zur Gelehrtennatur hatte, an Gelehrsamkeit erraffen konnte, geisteswissenschaftlich zusammenfaßte und damit in der Tat vor etwas stand, was für unsere Bewegung so notwendig ist: den Umfang unserer Wissenschaft so in sich aufzunehmen, daß man sie geisteswissenschaftlich durchdringt und geisteswissenschaftlich wiedergibt, so daß man voll auf dem Boden der wissenschaftlichen Gegenwart steht. Er war dazu gut vorbereitet. Auch wenn nun das Karma so verläuft, daß solche Seelen frühzeitig durch die Pforte des Todes gehen, so hat das seine Bedeutung im ganzen Weltenverlauf. Und wie es in den andern Fällen war - weil ich gerade durch das Karma dazu gedrängt war, bei der Bestattung zu sprechen -, so war es auch da, daß ich am Anfang und am Ende der Bestattungsrede Worte zu sprechen hatte, welche wiederum in derselben Weise gesprochen werden mußten, sich hineinversetzend in das Wesen der Seele, so daß die Worte wieder nicht willkürlich geprägt sind, sondern im lebendigen Zusammensein mit der durch den Tod gegangenen Seele gefaßt waren. Da mußte ich denn sagen:

Eine Hoffnung, uns beglückend:
So betratest Du das Feld,
Wo der Erde Geistesblüten,
Durch die Kraft des Seelenseins,
Sich dem Forschen zeigen möchten.

Lautrer Wahrheitliebe Wesen
War Dein Sehnen urverwandt;
Aus dem Geisteslicht zu schaffen,
War das ernste Lebensziel,
Dem Du rastlos nachgestrebt.

Deine schönen Gaben pflegtest Du,
Im der Geist-Erkenntnis hellen Weg
Unbeirrt vom Welten-Widerspruch
Als der Wahrheit treuer Diener,
Sichern Schrittes hinzuwandeln.

Deine Geistorgane übtest Du,
Daß sie tapfer und beharrlich
An des Weges beide Ränder
Dir den Irrtum drängten
Und Dir Raum für Wahrheit schufen.

Dir Dein Selbst zur Offenbarung
Reinen Lichtes zu gestalten,
Daß die Seelen-Sonnenkraft
Dir im Innern machtvoll strahle,
War Dir Lebenssorg’ und Freude.

Andre Sorgen, andre Freuden,
Sie berührten Deine Seele kaum,
Weil Erkenntnis Dir als Licht,
Das dem Dasein Sinn verleiht,
Als des Lebens wahrer Wert erschien.

Eine Hoffnung, uns beglückend:
So betratest Du das Feld,
Wo der Erde Geistesblüten
Durch die Kraft des Seelenseins
Sich dem Forschen zeigen möchten.

Ein Verlust, der tief uns schmerzt,
So entschwindest Du dem Feld,
Wo des Geistes Erdenkeime
In dem Schoß des Seelenseins
Deinem Sphätensinne reiften.

Fühle, wie wir liebend blicken
In die Höhen, die Dich jetzt
Hin zu andrem Schaffen rufen,
Reiche den verlaß’nen Freunden
Deine Kraft aus Geistgebieten.

Höre unsrer Seelen Bitte,
Im Vertrau’n Dir nachgesandt:
Wir bedürfen hier zum Erdenwerk
Starker Kraft aus Geistes-Landen,
Die wir toten Freunden danken.

Eine Hoffnung, uns beglückend,
Ein Verlust, der tief uns schmerzt:
Laß uns hoffen, daß Du ferne-nah,
Unverloren unsrem Leben leuchtest
Als ein Seelen-Stern im Geistbereich.

Schon in der nächsten Nacht konnte ich es erleben, daß von dieser Seele aus dem Geistbereich das Folgende herübertönte:

Mir mein Selbst zur Offenbarung
Reinen Lichtes zu gestalten,
Daß die Seelen-Sonnenkraft
Mir im Innern machtvoll strahle,
War mir Lebenssorg’ und Freude.

Andre Sorgen, andre Freuden,
Sie berührten meine Seele kaum,
Weil Erkenntnis mir als Licht,
Das dem Dasein Sinn verleiht,
Als des Lebens wahrer Wert erschien.

Ich kann Ihnen die Versicherung geben, daß ich, als ich diese Verse hingeschrieben hatte, nicht daran gedacht habe, nicht im entferntesten, daß die beiden Strophen gerade so sind, daß jedes Dir in ein Mir, jedes Dein in Mein verwandelt werden können. Ich wurde darauf erst aufmerksam, als mir die beiden Strophen zurücktönten von der andern Seele wie eine Antwort in der nächsten Nacht. So daß die Strophen genau so bleiben konnten, nur daß sie aus der zweiten Person in die erste gesetzt waren.

Wenn ich dies erwähne, so ist es, weil uns daran das Herzensverständnis aufgehen kann, wie in der Zukunft der Menschheitsentwickelung die Möglichkeit bleiben wird, von Seele zu Seele zu sprechen, wenn der Mund auch nicht mehr das Werkzeug ist. Denn wie wir hier für das Alltagsleben durch den Mund der andern Seele Antwort bekommen, so war es hier an einem Beispiel, wo die Seele noch sogar aus dem Unbewußten ihres Wesens heraus Antwort gab, gleichsam sagend: Ich habe verstanden, denn so war es mir wirklich im Leben; jetzt begreife ich es, nachdem ich den Leib abgelegt habe, was ich im Leben angestrebt habe.

Es kommt wirklich nicht allein darauf an, daß wir Begriffe, Ideen und Vorstellungen über die geistigen Welten aufnehmen, sondern darauf, daß wir uns in einem bestimmten Leben in eine bestimmte Lebensart hineinleben als Mensch, indem wir als Menschen der fünften nachatlantischen Kulturperiode der sechsten und siebenten Kulturperiode entgegengehen. Es kommt darauf an, daß real überbrückt werde der Abgrund, der die Lebenden von den sogenannten Toten trennt, daß die Menschheit immer mehr und mehr eins wird, nicht nur insofern sie im Leibe inkarniert ist, sondern auch insofern sie diejenigen Formen des Daseins angenommen hat, die der Mensch zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt durchlebt. Nicht etwa dies bloß der Menschheit zu bringen, ist die Geisteswissenschaft da, sondern für das Leben, das die Erde braucht für den Rest dieser nachatlantischen Entwickelung, ist die Geisteswissenschaft der erste, ich möchte sagen, noch stammelnde Versuch, denn, was in der Geisteswissenschaft gegeben werden kann, ist ja im Grunde genommen jetzt noch ein Stammeln nur gegenüber dem, was zukünftige Menschheitsgeschlechter an Geisteswissenschaft erleben werden.

Ich wollte durch diese Schilderung, die versucht, durch die Kraft des Herzens dasjenige begreiflich zu machen, was wir über die Verhältnisse von Leben und Tod denken können, Sie heute auf dieses nach dem Leben Hingeordnete der Geisteswissenschaft verweisen, damit Ihnen für ein anderes Verständnis als das Kopfverständnis, für das Herzensverständnis aufgehe, was wir eigentlich durch die geisteswissenschaftliche Vertiefung lebensvoll suchen, was also die Aufgabe der fünften nachatlantischen Kulturperiode ist. Ihr wird ja die sechste, ihr wird die siebente folgen. Man begreift aber erst so recht, was mit der mitteleuropäischen Kultur zu verteidigen ist, wenn man gerade diese mitteleuropäische Kultur innig vereint fühlt mit dem, was in der fünften Kulturperiode für die Menschheit errungen werden muß. Und dann kann etwas beginnen von dem, was ich am Anfang der heutigen Betrachtung genannt habe: ein Erweitern des Blickes über dasjenige, was unsere schicksaltragenden Zeiten in ihrem Schoße haben.

Im Osten bereitet sich eine Art des Menschenlebens vor, welche für die Zukunft eine Bedeutung haben wird. Sie brauchen darüber nur nachzulesen in dem Zyklus über die Mission der Volksseelen, der einmal in Kristiania gehalten worden ist. Aber grundverschieden von der Seelenart, die gerade diejenige des Mitteleuropäers ist, ist schon die Seelenart des Osteuropäers, vom weiteren Orient gar nicht zu sprechen — grundverschieden. Und wir müssen schon durch dasjenige, was uns die Geisteswissenschaft sein soll, darauf kommen, uns für solche Sachen ein offenes Geistesauge zu schaffen. Was oftmals erzählt wird, daß einmal die Waräger von der russisch-slawischen Bevölkerung geholt worden wären, daß ihnen gesagt worden wäre: Wir haben ein schönes Land, aber wir haben keine Ordnung, kommt zu uns und macht uns Ordnung! Richtet uns eine Art von Staatswesen ein! was so wie gemüthaft erzählt wird wie ein Ausgangspunkt der russischen Geschichte, ist ja nichts weiter als eine Legende ohne jeden historischen Hintergrund. Das hat niemals so stattgefunden. In Wahrheit sind diese Waräger ausgezogen, als Eroberer, und sind wahrhaftig nicht gerufen worden. Und dennoch bedeutet das, was so erzählt wird in der Geschichte, doch noch mehr, als es selbst bedeuten würde, wenn es einer historischen Wahrheit entsprechen würde. Denn es bedeutet etwas Prophetisches, etwas wirklich Prophetisches, etwas, was noch nicht geschehen ist, was aber in der Zukunft geschehen wird. Was sich im Osten entwickeln soll, wird sich nämlich so entwickeln müssen, daß die Fähigkeiten der östlichen Völker verwendet werden, um dasjenige, was die Kultur des Westens geschaffen hat, aufzunehmen und in sich dann weiter zu verarbeiten, sich befruchten zu lassen mit dem, was im Westen geschaffen wird. Dies wird in der Zukunft einmal die Aufgabe der östlichen Völker sein. Man kann mit einem kurzen Wort das Wesen gerade des russischen östlichen Volkes charakterisieren. Wenn wir das wirkliche Volk betrachten — nicht jene verlogene Gemeinschaft, von der das russische Volk jetzt regiert wird —, dann müssen wir uns klar sein darüber, daß die russische Seele einen ungeheuren Umfang von Begabung hat, daß sie gewissermaßen zu allem begabt ist; aber gerade indem sie ihre Mission in der Welten- und Menschheitsentwickelung immer mehr entfaltet, wird sich zeigen, daß etwas da sein kann in der Menschheit, was man nennen kann: Begabung ohne produktive Kraft. Die Begabung wird noch immer mehr werden, wird immer größer werden. Dasjenige aber, was zum Beispiel den Mitteleuropäer so auszeichnet, daß er seine Begabung vereinigt hat mit der geistigen Kraft, daß er hervorbringt jenes «Wer immer strebend sich bemüht...» und intim mit seinem Volksgeist lebt; daß er dasjenige, was er verstehen will, zugleich hervorbtingen will, was so großartig in Fichtes Philosophie da ist, wo das Ich, um sich zu begreifen, sich fortwährend hervorbringen will - man wird erst später sehen, was für eine Größe diese Philosophie hat -, gerade dasjenige, was so Mitteleuropa auszeichnet, von dem ist das polarische Gegenteil in Rußland, im Osten Europas vorhanden. Diese russischen Seelen sind absolut aufnehmend: sie haben die größte Begabung für das Aufnehmen, und wenn man bei ihnen von Produktivität spricht, so täuscht man sich. Sie sind dazu berufen, Begabung ohne Produktivität zu entwickeln. Selbst der Begriff ist heute schwer zu fassen, weil es dies in der Entwickelung noch nicht gegeben hat, sondern sich erst nach und nach entwickeln muß. Und in der Zukunft wird es so kommen, daß von Osten herüber an den Westen der Ruf ergeht: Wir haben ein schönes Land, aber keine Ordnung - denn die Unordnung wird immer noch größer werden -, kommt und macht Ordnung! — Mitteleuropa ist dazu berufen, die Produktivität des Geistes hineinzutragen in den Osten. Und was jetzt geschieht, das ist ein unvernünftiges Sich-Wehren gegen das, was in der Zukunft doch geschehen muß. Man will zertreten dasjenige, zu dem man einmal wird kommen müssen, um zu sagen: Kommt zu uns und macht Ordnung! — Es ist so in der Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit, daß dasjenige am meisten zurückgestoßen, am meisten zurückgeworfen wird, was man zuletzt am allermeisten ersehnen und ertrachten muß. Das größte Unglück, das kommen könnte, wenn der Osten Europas, wenn Rußland in diesem Vorgang einen Sieg erringen würde, das größte Unglück wäre dieses gar nicht für Mitteleuropa, sondern für Rußland selber, das allergrößte Unglück, innerlich betrachtet, denn dieser Sieg müßte wieder rückgängig gemacht werden; dieser Sieg könnte mit seinen Wirkungen nicht bleiben. So stehen wir vor dem tragischen Augenblick der Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit, daß sich der Osten vor etwas wehrt, was er in der Zukunft ersehnen wird, mit allen Kräften ersehnen wird. Denn er würde in einen vollständigen Niedergang verfallen, wenn er sich nicht befruchten ließe von dem geistigen Leben desjenigen, was für ihn der Westen ist, der unmittelbar angrenzende Westen. Und zwar muß dieser Westen im weiteren Verlaufe seiner Kultur dasjenige hervorbringen, was lebendiges Geistesleben ist, nicht bloß Idealismus, sondern lebendiges Geistesleben. Dieses lebendige Geistesleben wird wie eine Geistessonne sein, die von Westen nach Osten, in einer dem Lauf der äußern Sonne entgegengesetzten Richtung, sich bewegen wird. Und der äußere russische Mensch wird immer mehr einsehen, wie wenig er durch sich selbst vermag, wie er darauf angewiesen ist, sich wirklich in den ganzen Entwickelungsprozeß der Menschheit hineinzustellen; wie er die größte Sünde dadurch begeht, daß er sich an der für ihn westeuropäischen Kultur vergreift. Merkwürdige Vorblitze möchte ich sagen, könnten wir davon empfinden. Trat doch wiederum etwas auf in diesem Osten, was im Westen eine Unmöglichkeit war: die sogenannte Barfüßerweltanschauung, eine Art Philosophie der Barfüßer, die sich rasch, nachdem sie vor einigen Jahren noch gar nicht da war, über große Kreise verbreitet hat. Barfüßertum! Die Weltanschauung derjenigen, die den absoluten Unglauben an Menschen und Menschentum zu einer Philosophie machen, da sie nicht glauben können, daß der Mensch wirklich etwas anderes ist als dasjenige, was da zwischen Geburt und Tod herumwandelt, herumwandelt unter Mühsal und Schrecken, herumwandelt so, daß die Worte Freiheit, Brüderlichkeit, Erbarmen, Mitleid und Liebe leere Phrasen sind, und daß der nur weise ist, der als Pilger mit bloßen Füßen durch die Welt wandelt, barfuß, der die ganze Kultur, die ganze verfaulte westeuropäische Kultur - wie der Barfüßer sagt - als eine große Täuschung empfindet, und der die abgerissenen Kleider und die dumpfe Stube und die weite Straße als dasjenige betrachtet, wodurch sich der Mensch durchwälzt, wenn er sich zu der Barfüßerweltanschauung durchgerungen hat. Und wenn ein Dichter diese Barfüßerweltanschauung ausdrücken läßt durch eine seiner Personen mit bezeichnenden Worten, so muß uns das ganz merkwürdig berühren, uns, die wir versuchen, aus der mitteleuropäischen Weltanschauung immer das herauszufinden, was den Menschen das Licht der Zukunft anfachen kann. Wenn ein Dichter eine Person aussprechen läßt dasjenige, was aber im Grunde genommen eine Art von Fazit der Barfüßerweltanschauung und ihrer Philosophie sein kann, wie mutet es uns an?

«Ja, was ist er dir denn, dieser Mensch? Verstehst du? Er nimmt dich am Kragen, zerdrückt dich unter dem Nagel wie einen Floh! Dann mag dir ja leid um ihn sein!... Jawohl! Dann magst du ihm ja deine ganze Dummheit offenbaren. Er wird dich für dein Erbarmen auf sieben Foltern spannen, deine Eingeweide wird er sich über die Hand wikkeln und dir alle Adern aus dem Leibe zerren, einen Zoll pro Stunde... Ach du... Erbarmen! Bete zu Gott, daß man dich ohne alles Erbarmen einfach durchprügeln möge, und Schluß!... Erbarmen!... Pfui!»

Und Gorki, von dem Sie schon manches gehört haben werden, sagt zu solchen Worten: «Grausam, aber wahr», indem er nun nicht nur die Weltanschauung einer dichterischen Persönlichkeit wiedergibt, wie sie der Dichter ausspricht, sondern seine eigene Weltanschauung ausspricht, die sich für ihn als die Betrachtung der Welt ergibt. Das ist die Weltanschauung eines Barfüßers, eine Weltanschauung, von der man gerade so reden kann wie von andern jetzt vorhandenen Weltanschauungen. Es ist die Weltanschauung, die die Möglichkeit verloren hat, aus sich herauszukönnen, aus sich heraus zu etwas zu kommen, das Licht hineinsendet ins Leben; die zu warten hat, bis sie von diesem Licht befruchtet wird, und dann ihre Mission in der Menschheitsevolution erfüllen kann; die sich aber jetzt aufbäumt gegen dasjenige, was sie gerade tun muß. Man hat viele Phrasen erleben können in der Welt, aber ich sage es aus dem tragischsten Empfinden heraus: Solche Phrasen, wie sie von den verschiedensten Parteien im August 1914 auf der Kriegsversammlung der russischen Duma gesprochen worden sind, solch eine Summe von Phrasen übersteigt den Höhepunkt aller Phrasenhaftigkeit. So etwas wird nur gesprochen, wenn alle lebendige Produktionskraft der Seele ausgepumpt ist. Im Osten steht man in Wirklichkeit am Vorabend desjenigen, was erst werden soll, und entfaltet eine Kraft, die entgegengesetzt liegt - dem, was einstmals diesen Osten groß machen wird. Und wir in Mitteleuropa haben uns zu sagen: Dieser Osten wartet doch gerade auf die spirituelle Weisheit, die in der Mitte von Europa aufgehen muß. Meine lieben Freunde, versuchen Sie, dasjenige in Empfindungen umzusetzen, was ich also mit schweren Empfindungen, möchte ich sagen, in einzelnen Worten charakterisierend angedeutet habe, was ich Ihnen so angedeutet habe, daß es dasjenige beleuchten kann, was wir als Geisteswissenschafter mit erweiterten Empfindungen überschauen und in das wir uns hineinfinden sollen, um die eigentliche Notwendigkeit, auch die zeitgeschichtliche Notwendigkeit der geisteswissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung zu begreifen. Dann werden wir uns mit Gedanken durchdringen, welche verständnisvoll von unseren Seelen hinaufgehen in die Weltenweiten. Gedanken, welche sich dann begegnen werden mit dem, was in der nächsten Zukunft, wenn wiederum Friede über den Gefilden der Erde sein kann, herunterwirken wird aus diesen geistigen Welten.

Heute habe ich Ihnen gezeigt, wie die Ätherleiber derjenigen Seelen wirken, die als unverbrauchte Ätherleiber sich loslösen von den Seelen, die noch jahrelang, noch jahrzehntelang hier im physischen Leib, für das physische Leben wirken könnten. Es muß uns der Gedanke aufgehen, wie viele solche unverbrauchten Ätherleiberteile in die geistige Welt hinaufsteigen - noch außer demjenigen, was die auf den Schlachtfeldern durch die Todespforte gehenden Menschen durch ihre Individualität in die geistige Welt hinauftragen. Diese Ätherleiber aber werden eine große Summe von geistigen Kräften sein, jener geistigen Kräfte, welche mitwirken sollen aus den geistigen Sphären zur Heranbildung einer geistigen Weltanschauung, welche die Menschheit immer mehr und mehr ergreifen soll. Daß aber herunterwirken können aus den geistigen Sphären diese in den unverbrauchten Ätherleibern heraufgestiegenen Kräfte, dazu müssen ihnen begegnen Gedanken, die von Erdenmenschen wiederum hinaufsteigen in die geistigen Sphären, solche Gedanken, die Verständnis entgegenbringen dem geheimen Wirken der geistigen Welt, in das hineinverwoben sein werden die Kräfte dieser unverbrauchten Ätherleiber. Das aber soll für uns eine Aufmunterung sein, daß wir uns durchdringen mit den großen Wahrheiten der Geisteswissenschaft. Denn diese Wahrheiten werden in uns Gedanken anregen, die weiter und weiter auch in andern Menschen dann wirken werden. Und je nachdem, was als schicksalschwerer Inhalt unserer Tage sich entfaltet, werden friedensvolle Tage kommen, wo das, was die Seelen aus der Geisteswissenschaft in sich eingepflanzt haben, hinaufsteigen wird. Es wird sich begegnen mit dem, was aus den Ätherleibern derer, die auf den Schlachtfeldern der Ereignisse durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind, an Kräften sich angesammelt hat und herunterströmt. Und dann wird das eintreten, was ich zusammenfassen möchte in einige Worte als ein aus der geisteswissenschaftlichen Betrachtung sich ergebendes Fazit. Wenn wir die Früchte der Geisteswissenschaft in unsere Zeitenentwickelung recht hineinzustellen wissen, dann wird eintreten, was ich aussprechen möchte in den Worten:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht
Denken Seelen geistbewußt
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

The Intervention of the Christ Impulse in Historical Events – Bridging the Gap Between the Living and the Dead

If spiritual science wants to be, above all, a kind of life force for our souls, and if it can be this, then this spiritual science must also prove itself powerful and suitable for broadening the spiritual vision of souls who devote themselves to spiritual science in times such as ours, when so much is being prepared that is so significant. This enables us to see what is happening in a somewhat broader light than is still possible today for many of our contemporaries, whose view is restricted by materialism. It has been evident in what has been cultivated within our spiritual scientific movement over the years that one of its goals has also been to expand the soul's mode of perception so that human beings can free themselves from mere thinking about their narrow self and what surrounds this narrow self, and truly be able to look a little at the great impulses the great manifestations of power that run through the entire development of humanity on Earth. And if we have endeavored in this way to expand, as it were, the elasticity of our feelings and perceptions, then we must also be able to make the powers we have gained through spiritual science suitable, especially in times such as these, which on the one hand strike the soul so deeply and painfully with their waves, but on the other hand lift the soul to a very special height because they hold such meaningful things in their womb, we must be able to go a little with what is not so outwardly visible in the events, what the ordinary mind cannot see in these events. We must be able to ask ourselves the question: Does what is burning above our heads like a terrible torch of war have a prophetic meaning for the entire development of the earth?

Only those who see these events in as meaningful a light as possible will be right in the current events. Friends in our ranks have often asked why, in recent years, there has been talk in our circle that the decades of the 20th century will bring times that we must look forward to with particular attention, because the children and grandchildren of those who are now living will have to go through important and momentous, but also tragic and painful events. Those of us who are responsible today for passing something on to sustain the souls of our children and grandchildren in the face of what is coming to humanity in the 20th century must be aware that what we pass on must be a strong inner spiritual force. Much, much more than we can imagine today in our ordinary lives, our descendants of the 20th century will need strong inner forces that sustain the soul in order to carry on the goods of humanity that have been accumulated in human evolution over centuries and centuries. And the descendants of the earth's humanity now living will be exposed to completely different storms of life. I said that one might sometimes have been surprised when this was said in our ranks. But perhaps we can now begin to understand this when we consider that we are in the midst of the greatest war events, the most terrible war events that have ever affected human beings since humanity has lived through a conscious history on this earth.

It would be completely wrong if we did not penetrate as deeply as possible, as strongly as possible, into the significance of the moment and ask ourselves the question: What does that which we strive for out of the inner longings of our souls have to do with spiritual knowledge, with that which is now entering into the development of humanity? Do we not see, even if only superficially, a threatening storm gathering in the East for a long time now, about to break over the newer education and culture of Europe? And we must at least be aware that there are very powerful forces at work in the bosom of this East, which we can already see are fundamentally aimed at fragmenting and destroying European culture, just as they are now asserting themselves. To what extent this is the case can only be guessed at present.

With what we call European culture and civilization, we are in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period. It is the culture of the consciousness soul, in the midst of which there are souls among us who have something to give to humanity. When we look back at what Greek-Latin culture was, we see that it essentially, albeit in a completely different form, was an echo, a repetition on a higher level of what had already existed in ancient Atlantis. Even though it lived differently there, a kind of repetition of this occurred in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period. The fifth post-Atlantean cultural period, in which we now live, is a new formation, something completely new that has been added to the previous course of human development. We should not merely grasp this as an abstract truth, as a theory, but with the deepest and most intense sense of human responsibility, and we should also be clear that long periods of time must still pass in the Earth's evolution before everything that the divine world order has to give through the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period of Earth humanity has come out of the hearts and souls of human beings.

In the fourth cultural period, the most significant event in the entire evolution of the earth was the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha. Just as this Mystery of Golgotha worked in the fourth cultural period, so it will not merely continue to work in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period. It is the task of this fifth cultural period, with full spiritual knowledge, with full understanding, gradually approach the mystery of Golgotha with all the powers of soul knowledge; not only with the powers of the intellect, the powers of mere emotional piety; but gradually, through all that the soul can bring forth from itself in terms of knowledge and powers of understanding, to grasp the Christ who passed through the mystery of Golgotha. So that the words of Paul are true, albeit in a new way: “Not I, but Christ in me.” And basically, everything we bring to bear in spiritual science is preparation for finally grasping, with all the inner powers of knowledge of the soul, what this Christ actually is. This is a significant, great task of the fifth cultural epoch.

Now let us try to understand what is actually meant when such a task is expected of the fifth cultural epoch. Let us bring before our souls the way in which the Christ impulse has worked in humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha. If the Christ impulse could have worked only through what people have understood about this Christ impulse over the centuries since the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished, then the Christ impulse could have had only a limited effect among human beings. But it is not an impulse that has spoken only conceptually to human understanding or emotional understanding; rather, it is a real impulse that has flowed with living forces into the course of history itself. That for which the blood flowing on Golgotha is the outer symbol is precisely that living force flowing into human history.

Let us try to understand, through a historical event, how this Christ impulse worked without people having understood it yet; how it worked as a living driving force in the development of humanity. The fifth post-Atlantean cultural period is called upon to bring the whole inner nature and essence of the Christ impulse into consciousness. But it had already been working as a living force in the subconscious soul forces before it could fully awaken to consciousness in humanity. And one of the figures that the Christ impulse chose to work through, to do something significant, is, for example—one could also mention others—the figure of the Virgin of Orleans. If we trace the history of Europe back to the event that took place in connection with the personality of the Virgin of Orleans, we must say, even if we only look at the history from the outside: With what she accomplished at that time, when she rose up in the midst of the French people and repelled the English forces — for she did indeed do this — the map of Europe was shaped as it gradually took form. And all other historical views of the last few centuries, insofar as they concern the distribution of European peoples and states, are basically fairy tales, something that is not aware that with the Virgin of Orleans there was the Christ impulse, which at that time, as a living impulse, brought about the distribution of the European peoples and peoples' forces. And one might say: while the learned people were arguing about all sorts of things, already beginning to argue about whether the Lord's Supper should be enjoyed in this or that form, whether this or that should be interpreted by this or that formula, and while the learned people were thus showing that they had not yet arrived at an understanding of what the Christ impulse is, this impulse was working through the simple country girl, through the Virgin of Orleans, shaping European history. For the effect of the Christ impulse does not depend on the understanding with which it is met. Through his Michaelic representative, the Christ impulse worked into the Virgin of Orleans. But now the Virgin of Orleans had to go through something similar to an initiation. Today we speak of initiation and give human consciousness the rules we have compiled in the book How to Know Higher Worlds. But of course, there could be no question of such an initiation in the case of the Maid of Orleans. In her case, we can only speak of an initiation that was, in a sense, a remnant of the older initiation, which took place more in the subconscious soul forces of human beings. Now, it is precisely these old initiations that have propagated themselves like elemental forces up to the present time. Many things are told in ancient legends, fairy tales, and myths: that this or that happened to this or that person, whereby their inner soul power was awakened, so that they saw this or that from the spiritual world. Such things are only meant to be hints of how, without human intervention, through the influence of divine-spiritual forces permeating the world, certain people who are suited to it through their karma are natural initiates, through the place where they are placed by human karma, where this human karma flows together with their own karma. A very beautiful echo of such an initiation into nature, as one might call it, is given to us in a poem which tells that the “Son of the Sun,” Olaf Åsteson, remained in a kind of sleep state during the thirteen nights and days that elapsed from the birth of Christ to the appearance of Christ, until January 6. Olaf Åsteson: the name itself suggests that he possesses subconscious powers of knowledge inherited from his ancestors, for Olaf Åsteson actually means “he through whom the blood of his ancestors flows.” The sun's son Olaf Åsteson sleeps and dreams through the thirteen nights, which are the darkest of the earthly year, or at least contain the greatest power of the earthly eclipse, from the first day of Christmas to January 6, the feast of the Epiphany. Now, what is associated with these nights in such legends and tales is not merely human superstition. For in fact, there are two seasons that, cosmically speaking, are like two opposite poles to the life of the human soul in the body. If we take the season around St. John's Day in summer, this is the time that is particularly suitable for the human soul, with all its passionate impulses, to rise up into the cosmos through the external physical power of the sun, which reaches its greatest energy at this time, and to unite with the cosmos. That is why the festival of St. John in ancient times was intended to imbue the human soul with the divine spiritual forces that permeate and fill the cosmos when people forget themselves and become absorbed in the strong physical forces of the cosmos during this festival. But where the sun's energy reaches its weakest physical expression, in the middle of winter, the spiritual forces working in the darkness reach their greatest strength. And rightly so, one can say that according to cosmic laws, the festival of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth lies at this time. Where the outer physical world is at its darkest, the soul can experience the most powerful things when it feels united with the forces that spiritually permeate the aura of the Earth. That is why it is during these days that Olaf Åsteson sleeps and sleeps, and experiences all that we call Kamaloka, then what we call the soul world, and finally what we call the spirit world. And the Norwegian legend tells us how Olaf Åsteson, after awakening again after the thirteen nights, recounts what he has experienced, how he encountered souls in the soul world and in the spirit world. All these are images that correspond to imaginative knowledge, but they point to what are truly living possibilities of the human soul when these souls feel enraptured in that time of physical darkness, which is, however, the time of spiritual enlightenment, when they feel enraptured by what is stirring and weaving in the earth's aura. And at the end of the legend, we see the forces of the Christ impulse taking hold with violence—but this is Olaf Åsteson's subconscious understanding. Such legends speak, as it were, of initiations into nature that were still possible in ancient times, of a glimpse into the spiritual world. In these times, the earth's aura truly has a power that it does not have in other times, when it is, as it were, flooded and outshone by the physical power of the sun. And since Christ has been united with the earth's aura since the Mystery of Golgotha, the power of the Christ impulse can also work particularly strongly into souls in these days, if these souls are receptive to it.

Therefore, before investigating anything historically, one could assume that, even in a figure such as the Virgin of Orleans, the Christ impulse had been working subconsciously in her soul for thirteen days; that she too had undergone something like the thirteen days and nights of sleep experienced by Olaf Åsteson, something like an illumination by the Christ impulse in the subconscious soul forces. Then, however, the Virgin of Orleans would have had to have been in a kind of sleep-like state during the thirteen days from December 25 to January 6, and on January 6, after her soul had been in a kind of sleep state, the Christ impulse would have had to have seized this soul. What one might assume to be the case was indeed present in a peculiar way, but only at a very special time when human beings can actually be in a kind of sleep state. Namely, before human beings take their first breath in earthly life, before they are delivered from their mother's womb and receive the first earthly physical ray of light, they spend a period of time as developing human beings in a true state of sleep. And just as one falls into a dream sleep in the evening, one is in such a dream-like sleep in the mother's body. And those days in which dream-like sleep is most receptive to the unconscious influences of the spiritual world are precisely the last days that human beings spend in their mother's body. And so it may well be that these very days were used to implant the Christ impulse in the Virgin of Orleans before she saw the physical sunlight with her physical eyes and took her first breath outside her mother's body. This was the case, for the Virgin of Orleans was born on January 0. On January 6, the whole village gathered because there was something indefinable in the village atmosphere. This is a historical fact. The people did not know what had happened: the Virgin of Orleans had been born. There is much hidden behind such things. And only when humanity comes to see this mysterious fact in its proper light will there be an understanding of what really goes on beneath the surface of the outer sensory world in the process of becoming human. The divine forces seek the most varied ways to enter into what is the human soul. Of course, the karma of the Virgin of Orleans had to be suitable for something like this to happen. But because the karma of the Virgin of Orleans coincided with the fact that she was born on January 6, the historical conditions were in place that made it possible for the Christ impulse to have a special effect on this figure in history and give Europe a new form. These are things that can be verified if one observes the course of history with some understanding. These are the things to which spiritual understanding will connect in the future, when this fifth post-Atlantean cultural period truly brings all the powers of knowledge up from the souls. The soul will then experience the existence of the Christ impulse more and more consciously. But it will only experience this when humanity reaches the stage where it no longer regards spiritual science as a mere “theory,” but feels it as living life and experiences it inwardly. Then spiritual science will be able to accomplish what is actually its mission in the development of humanity.

In a time such as ours, we must be particularly clear that the abyss that is opening up more and more in a materialistic age between the human souls who live here together in physical bodies and those who have already passed through the gate of death must be bridged. And more and more we will come to see that the souls who stand between death and a new birth belong to the whole of humanity, just like those who are in physical life between birth and death. The awareness that we are all united on earth, including those who have passed before us into the supersensible realms, who work among us with forces different from those of us who are in the body, this awareness must become ever stronger and more intense. But this requires an understanding of the spiritual forces at work. It is necessary that we learn to see the connections between earthly phenomena in the new light that spiritual science can provide.

Precisely because spiritual science should be something that moves our hearts by bringing our souls further in knowledge, I want to say a few words about the path which is such that it ties in with many things that have occupied us in the wider circle of our spiritual scientific stream of knowledge in recent weeks — I want to speak to you about something that has come to us in recent weeks. I could certainly choose other cases, but these cases are linked to our karma in such a direct way that I can speak about them again today. And you can also extend what is said here to others within and outside our spiritual scientific movement who are in a similar relationship to their fate and its connection with their death as in the cases I am about to mention.

Last fall, we experienced a shocking case in Dornach in the vicinity of our building. Dear friends had moved to Dornach with their children and settled near the building to take care of the garden. The eldest child, a seven-year-old boy, was intellectually extremely bright, but also had a very unique character, and was truly something like a child of the sun. Everyone felt a deep connection to this child, even if they only saw him briefly here and there. When the father was called up to do his duty as a German citizen on the battlefield, the seven-year-old boy was, I would say, already so caught up in the whole situation of life that he made a special effort to replace his father as best he could and help his mother by doing everything he could. He went into town to shop, the seven-year-old boy all alone. That evening, the boy went missing. It was just about the time of a lecture. A friend of ours came by around ten o'clock and said that the boy was missing. And in the end, it could not be unclear that the boy's disappearance had something to do with the overturning of a furniture van, which had overturned near the building at a spot where perhaps hardly any furniture vans had driven before, and where none would drive again since that time, and probably not for a long time to come. The truck had fallen down a small embankment into a meadow in such a way that the drivers said there was no question of lifting the truck that evening. They unhitched the horses, which they were very concerned about, and left the truck where it was to be lifted the next day, because they believed it would take a whole day to lift the heavy truck. It was now ten o'clock in the evening. We had to connect the boy's disappearance with the overturning of this wagon. All possible tools were brought, and everyone who could work did so, and in two hours the wagon was lifted. At midnight we found the dead boy under the furniture wagon.

Now, if one only considers the external circumstances and how, for some time before this happened, everything had come together in such a way that the boy, who had always taken a slightly different route, which would have taken him past the car on the right-hand side, had on this occasion walked on the left-hand side, where the car was bound to hit him, and if one considers that he had been delayed in the most benevolent way, so that he left about a quarter of an hour later—he had gone to the so-called canteen to get something for his evening meal—so that he left later than he actually wanted to, when one considers that the whole thing happened in such a way that it really came down to a few, indeed hardly a few minutes, that the boy was at the very spot where the cart fell over, and that the whole thing was ignored; people were watching from not far away as the cart fell over, but no one had seen the boy. When you consider all this, you will outwardly acknowledge how this is an example in the most eminent sense of an easily occurring logical deception to which human beings can succumb.

I have often shown, even before you, how people can succumb to deception in their external lives, to the point of confusing cause and effect. I have said: Suppose you see a man walking along the bank of a river from a distance. You see him suddenly stagger and fall into the river. Shortly afterwards, he is pulled out dead. Now, based on all external evidence, one is justified in assuming that the man fell into the water and drowned. And if one does nothing else, this will remain the human judgment. In this case, only an external means is needed to convince oneself of the opposite. A stone is found at the spot where the man fell into the river, and this confirms the judgment. If one opens the corpse, one will find that the man was struck by a blow, that he fell into the river as a result, and that he did not die because he fell into the river, but that he fell into it because he was dead. Thus, cause and effect have been completely confused. But this happens above all in science, in many places, for those who see through things. In our case, where the boy met his death, we must say: the moving van was ordered by the boy's karma; his karma brought the van to that very spot. The judgment is wrong if one believes that chance was at work here. In this case, the boy was only meant to reach the age of seven in this incarnation. And I would say that the whole event was planned for this purpose. We must become completely accustomed to reversing cause and effect in relation to the way we see them in ordinary life.

But when we look at the life of this soul with the eyes of a seer, then something significant will surely dawn on us, something that is deeply shocking, but at the same time illuminating, something that reveals the divine-spiritual mysteries of the world. It was not long after the boy's death that the whole aura of the Dornach building changed. And in saying this, I am telling you something that is connected with my own experience. When you have to work for the Dornach building of the Anthroposophical Society, when you have to initiate what is to be done there, then you know what you owe to the helping forces that work into the soul from such an aura. Since those days, what was the boy's still unspent etheric body has been truly connected, genuinely connected, with the aura of the Dornach building. For the etheric body is what is laid down by the human being. The individuality, consisting of the I and the astral body, then goes on; that is something else. But the etheric body, when it is laid down at such a tender age, has forces within it that could have sustained the physical body and physical life for decades. Now these forces have passed through the gate of death unused. They are discarded after a few days. And these forces now work together with the aura of the building. So one cannot say that it is the soul itself in this individuality, but rather the unused etheric body. Nothing is lost in the spiritual world. Physicists know that nothing is lost from physical forces, that forces are only transformed. In the spiritual world, too, we must look for transformed forces, unused etheric forces that ascend to the spiritual world from people who have died prematurely. We come close to these things when we observe them in concrete cases. And it is for this reason alone that I am speaking to you today about such concrete cases.

A dear anthroposophical friend died in Zurich a few weeks ago after a life that had brought her many trials, and the karma of our movement meant that I had to speak at her cremation. The time between her death at 6 p.m. on Wednesday evening and the cremation at 11 a.m. on Monday morning was a little longer than usual. This was a somewhat longer period than usual. As a result, the separation of the individuality from the etheric body had already taken place during the cremation. Now, the peculiar thing was that during the time when the soul had already separated from the etheric body in the days between death and cremation, I was faced with the necessity of saying certain words before the cremation and afterwards. You must say certain words before the cremation speech and afterwards. How these words were formulated had very little to do with my own ability or choice of words. Rather, it arose from my identification with the soul of the personality who had passed through the gate of death. It was necessary to characterize this soul, but to do so in such a way that the characterization came as an inspiration, an illumination, from the soul itself. The soul said, as it were: “Form words that express in sound what characterizes my soul.” But there was still unconsciousness in the soul. The words did not come consciously from the soul, but from the essence of that soul. I had to characterize them not as they wanted to reflect themselves in an egoistic way, but as they appeared when another soul looked at them. And for this other soul, it was necessary, right down to the formulation of the individual words, to say the following at the beginning of what could be called a funeral oration. As in an address to the soul that had passed through the gates of death, the following words had to be spoken:

You walked among us.
The gentleness of your nature
spoke from the silent power of your eyes
a calm that enlivened the soul
Flowed in waves,
With which your gaze
Carried things and people
To the inner workings of your mind;
And this essence was imbued with
Your voice, which eloquently
Through the nature of the word more
Than in the words themselves
Revealed what was hidden
In your beautiful soul;
But that devoted love
Of compassionate people
Revealed itself wordlessly —
This essence, which spoke of noble, quiet beauty
Of the creation of the soul of the world
And of receptive feeling.

As I said, these words had to be spoken at the beginning and end of the funeral. Now, in fact, this soul was, in a sense, asleep during the entire process, during the funeral ceremony. Then came the cremation. The remarkable thing was that the first moment of a flash of consciousness for the soul, which then passed again, occurred at the moment when, one cannot say the flame, but the warmth took hold of the corpse. Then one could say: This soul has now passed through the gate of death, it has laid down its etheric body, and now it is apparent how such a soul looks back. Before this soul, in this backward glance, stood the entire funeral ceremony, that is, what had been said; it looked at this. And one could see there the mystery of the effectiveness of time for the soul after it has passed through the gate of death. One could always see this in such a case. When we look at something in space here in the physical body and then walk away from it, that object does not go away, but remains where it is, and we can always look back — we see that it remains where it is. But this is not the case with what we experience in physical life; there we only have a memory image of events. When, on the other hand, we look back on past events after death, they remain standing; we look at the events as if through space. So what had been spoken remained standing, and the soul looked back on it as on a spatial structure through the course of time. This is looking at the structures of the Akashic Chronicle. Then a kind of sleep state set in again. But especially in this case, it became very clear how unfounded the fear of the materialistic soul is that consciousness could be diminished when the soul passes through the gate of death. After death, when we sink into a kind of sleep state until we awaken later, we do not have no or too little consciousness, but rather we have too much consciousness. When we have shed the etheric body, when the tableau of life has been laid aside, we are at first so filled with consciousness — I have spoken about this in more detail in the cycle “The Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth,” given in Vienna — that consciousness is initially dazzling, and the human being must first orient himself. And they orient themselves by looking back on their own earthly life and on their character in this earthly life. He must orient himself through self-knowledge; this is where the power of orientation must take hold, and from there, what is too much consciousness is then, so to speak, dampened to such an extent that the human being can bear it, depending on what he has gone through in his last incarnation. So it is actually a reduction of the excess of consciousness that was there to the degree that the human being can bear. But this can occur in stages. And under the impression of the body being moved by the warmth, the heat, a first flash of real consciousness arose in the soul of this personality who was a friend of ours.

But the fact that the soul strives, after passing through the gate of death, to gather together what is within it, became particularly clear to me in another case. I said that these things can be experienced with every death, but I will give you characteristic examples from the very recent past. This became particularly clear to me in another case, where a friend of mine, having reached an advanced age, passed through the gate of death. During the last years of her life on earth, she had devoted herself in a rare way, with all her feelings and sensations, to what can be called the impulses of spiritual science. She was such that she felt every detail of spiritual science more than she grasped it with her intellect, that she united with her soul the kind of perception and feeling that gives a non-theoretical, but true-to-life understanding of spiritual science. Now it was the case with this personality that very shortly after the hour of death, during the process of entering the life tableau with the etheric body, what this soul now sought to grasp as its self, having laid down the body, shone forth as if from the soul with which one then identified. And then, very shortly after death, when the soul was still united with the etheric body, write down words that I did not shape with my human knowledge, but which are nothing other than a reproduction of what the soul worked out inwardly in itself, in order to summarize, as it were, in a kind of summary, what it had been able to gain from spiritual science in order to arrive at an inwardly complete self-consciousness. Then it sounded in the soul with the words that I then, following an inspiration, had to speak before and after the funeral speech. You will immediately notice the great difference between the whole tone of these words and those I quoted earlier for the other personality.

I will carry my feeling heart throughout the worlds
That it may become warm
In the fire of holy forces at work;

In world thoughts I will weave
My own thoughts, that they may become clear
In the light of eternal becoming and life;

In the depths of the soul I will dive
With devoted thoughts, that they may become strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In God's peace I strive thus
With life's struggles and with cares,
Preparing my self for a higher self;

Seeking peace with a joyful heart,
Anticipating the existence of worlds in my own being,
I would like to fulfill my duty as a human being;

I may then live in expectation
Towards my destiny,
Which grants me a place in the realm of the spirit.

Self-characterization of the soul in the first person! In the earlier ones, they have the distinct character that the contemplating soul must characterize the other soul in mutual spiritual communication with it. Here, the observing soul had nothing else to do but to place itself completely in the soul that was still trying to grasp itself with the forces of the etheric body in its being enriched by spiritual science, in order to become clear to itself, as it were, how it must now orient itself in the spiritual world.

These are again cases in which it becomes quite clear how, having passed through the gate of death, human beings are instructed to look back upon themselves in self-knowledge. And one could clearly see how it is a certain help to the dead when those still dwelling in the physical body help them to formulate, to put into words, what is working and weaving within them. Of course, later times will come when human beings will see their weaknesses and mistakes, their sins, in the soul world. But we must remember this: as much as the death of those who are still in the body is sometimes feared, when viewed from the other side, death appears quite different. Here in physical life, no human being can look back to the hour of his birth with ordinary human powers. In fact, there is no possibility for anyone who does not have clairvoyant powers to see his entry into the world; only later does the moment arrive when one can look back. The opposite is true of that birth into the spiritual world which we call death. Human beings look back constantly on this moment during the life between death and new birth. This moment alone is one of the most glorious, magnificent, and beautiful things that can be seen in the spiritual world. Seen from the other side, death is always immediate proof that the spirit is constantly celebrating its victory over the physical body. And we experience this ourselves. Hence this striving to experience in the soul after death what one can be. Hence it is helpful when a soul living in the body puts into words what the soul strives for, so that what it is, with all the best it has, stands clearly before its own spiritual gaze after it has passed through the gate of death. In this case, it was particularly clear how words relating to the soul in question come from an inner necessity when one has to speak at a funeral and does not speak arbitrarily, but obeys the divine voice that tells one to do what one has to do.

In yet another case, this became clear to me through the karmic course of recent times, when one of our friends died in early youth, who had given us great hope for our movement. He died in the thirtieth year of his life. He would have been thirty years old on February 26, but he died shortly before that. And this friend, our dear Fritz Mitscher, was the one who, with infinite, self-sacrificing devotion, grasped what he could of scholarship, which he had an aptitude for, summarized it in spiritual science, and thus stood before something that is so necessary for our movement: to take in the scope of our science in such a way that one can penetrate it spiritually and reproduce it spiritually, so that one stands fully on the ground of present-day science. He was well prepared for this. Even if karma now dictates that such souls pass through the gate of death at an early age, this has its significance in the whole course of the world. And as it was in other cases—because I was compelled by karma to speak at the funeral—so it was here that I had to speak words at the beginning and end of the funeral oration which again had to be spoken in the same way, putting myself into the essence of the soul, so that the words were not arbitrarily coined, but were conceived in living communion with the soul that had passed through death. I had to say:

A hope that made us happy:
Thus you entered the field,
Where the flowers of the earth's spirit,
Through the power of the soul,
Wish to reveal themselves to the seeker.

A pure love of truth
Was your original desire;
To create from the light of the spirit
Was the serious goal of your life
Which you tirelessly pursued.

You cultivated your beautiful gifts
On the bright path of spiritual knowledge
Unperturbed by worldly contradictions
As a faithful servant of truth,
Walking with sure steps.

You exercised your spiritual organs
So that they might bravely and persistently
At both edges of the path
They pushed error away from you
And created space for truth.

To reveal your true self
In pure light,
So that the power of the soul's sun
Would shine powerfully within you,
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys,
Barely touched your soul,
Because knowledge appeared to you as light,
Which gives meaning to existence,
As the true value of life.

A hope that made us happy:
Thus you entered the field,
Where the fruits of the earth's spirit
Through the power of the soul
Wish to reveal themselves to the seeker.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You thus disappear from the field,
Where the seeds of the spirit
In the womb of the soul
Matured in the womb of the soul.

Feel how we gaze lovingly
Towards the heights that now call you
To other creative work,
Give your strength from the realms of the spirit
To your departed friends.

Hear the plea of our souls,
Sent to you in trust:
We need here for our earthly work
Strong power from spiritual realms,
Which we thank our dead friends for.

A hope that makes us happy,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Let us hope that you, far away yet near,
Shine upon our lives, unlost,
Like a soul star in the realm of the spirit.

Already the next night, I experienced the following coming from this soul in the realm of the spirit:

To shape my self into a revelation
Of pure light,
So that the soul's solar power
Might shine powerfully within me,
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys,
Barely touched my soul,
Because knowledge appeared to me as light,
Which gives meaning to existence,
As the true value of life.

I can assure you that when I wrote these verses, I did not think, not in the slightest, that the two stanzas are such that every “you” can be transformed into “me,” every “yours” into “mine.” I only became aware of this when the two verses echoed back to me from another soul like an answer the following night. So the verses could remain exactly as they were, only that they were put from the second person into the first.

I mention this because it can open our hearts to understanding how, in the future of human development, it will remain possible to speak from soul to soul, even if the mouth is no longer the instrument. For just as we receive answers in everyday life through the mouth of another soul, so here was an example where the soul answered even from the unconsciousness of its being, as if saying: I have understood, for that is how it really was in my life; now that I have laid down my body, I understand what I strove for in life.

It is not only important that we absorb concepts, ideas, and representations about the spiritual worlds, but that we live a certain life in a certain way as human beings, as we approach the sixth and seventh cultural periods as human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period. What matters is that the abyss separating the living from the so-called dead be bridged in reality, that humanity become more and more one, not only insofar as it is incarnated in the body, but also insofar as it has taken on those forms of existence that human beings experience between death and new birth. Spiritual science is not there merely to bring this to humanity, but for the life that the earth needs for the rest of this post-Atlantean development, spiritual science is the first, I would say, still stammering attempt, for what can be given in spiritual science is, after all, still only a stammering in comparison with what future generations of humanity will experience in spiritual science.

Through this description, which attempts to make comprehensible through the power of the heart what we can think about the conditions of life and death, I wanted to point you today to this spiritual science that is oriented toward life, so that you may gain a different understanding than that of the head, an understanding of the heart, of what we are actually seeking with a deepening of spiritual science, which is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. It will be followed by the sixth and then the seventh. But one can only truly understand what is worth defending in Central European culture when one feels this Central European culture deeply united with what must be achieved for humanity in the fifth cultural epoch. And then something can begin of what I mentioned at the beginning of today's reflection: a broadening of our view beyond what our fateful times have in store for us.

In the East, a way of human life is preparing itself that will have significance for the future. You need only read about this in the cycle on the mission of the souls of the peoples, which was once given in Kristiania. But the nature of the soul of the Eastern European is fundamentally different from that of the Central European, not to mention the nature of the soul of the Far East — fundamentally different. And we must, through what spiritual science is supposed to be for us, come to create an open spiritual eye for such things. What is often told, that the Varangians were once brought by the Russian-Slavic population, who said to them: We have a beautiful country, but we have no order, come to us and bring us order! Establish a kind of state for us! which is told in such a heartfelt way as the starting point of Russian history, is nothing more than a legend without any historical background. That never happened. In truth, these Varangians set out as conquerors and were certainly not called. And yet what is told in history means even more than it would if it corresponded to historical truth. For it means something prophetic, something truly prophetic, something that has not yet happened but will happen in the future. What is to develop in the East will have to develop in such a way that the abilities of the Eastern peoples are used to take up what the culture of the West has created and then process it further within themselves, allowing themselves to be enriched by what is created in the West. This will one day be the task of the Eastern peoples. The essence of the Russian Eastern people can be characterized in a few words. If we look at the real people — not the hypocritical community that now rules the Russian people — then we must be clear that the Russian soul has an enormous range of talents, that it is, in a sense, gifted for everything; but precisely as it unfolds its mission in the development of the world and humanity, it will become apparent that there is something in humanity can be called talent without productive power. Talent will continue to grow and become ever greater. But what distinguishes Central Europeans, for example, is that they have combined their talent with spiritual power, that they produce that “Whoever strives with all his might...” and live intimately with the spirit of their people; that they want to bring forth what they want to understand, which is so magnificent in Fichte's philosophy, where the ego, in order to understand itself, wants to continually bring itself forth—we will only see later what greatness this philosophy has—precisely that which distinguishes Central Europe, the polar opposite of which exists in Russia, in Eastern Europe. These Russian souls are absolutely receptive: they have the greatest talent for absorption, and when one speaks of productivity in relation to them, one is mistaken. They are called upon to develop talent without productivity. Even the concept is difficult to grasp today, because it has not yet existed in development, but must first develop gradually. And in the future, the cry will go out from the East to the West: We have a beautiful country, but no order—for the disorder will continue to grow—come and bring order! Central Europe is called upon to bring the productivity of the spirit to the East. And what is happening now is an unreasonable resistance to what must happen in the future. People want to trample underfoot that which they will one day have to come to in order to say: Come to us and bring order! — It is so in the history of human development that that which is most rejected, most cast back, is that which one must ultimately desire and strive for most. The greatest misfortune that could happen if Eastern Europe, if Russia, were to win in this process, would not be for Central Europe, but for Russia itself, the greatest misfortune, viewed from within, because this victory would have to be reversed; this victory could not remain with its effects. So we stand before a tragic moment in the history of human development, in which the East is resisting something that it will long for in the future, long for with all its might. For it would fall into complete decline if it did not allow itself to be fertilized by the spiritual life of what is for it the West, the immediately neighboring West. And in the further course of its culture, this West must bring forth what is living spiritual life, not mere idealism, but living spiritual life. This living spiritual life will be like a spiritual sun moving from West to East, in a direction opposite to the course of the outer sun. And the outward Russian will increasingly realize how little he can achieve by himself, how dependent he is on really placing himself within the whole process of human development; how he commits the greatest sin by attacking Western European culture. I would say that we could perceive strange flashes of this. Something appeared again in the East that was impossible in the West: the so-called barefoot worldview, a kind of philosophy of the barefoot people, which spread rapidly over large circles after it did not even exist a few years ago. Barefootism! The worldview of those who make absolute disbelief in people and humanity a philosophy, because they cannot believe that people are really anything other than what wanders around between birth and death, wanders around in hardship and terror, wanders around in such a way that the words freedom, brotherhood, mercy, compassion, and love are empty phrases, and that the only wise man is he who wanders through the world as a pilgrim with bare feet, barefoot, who regards the whole culture, the whole rotten Western European culture—as the barefoot man says—as a great deception, and who regards the tattered clothes and the dim room and the wide street as the things through which man rolls himself, once they have come to embrace the barefoot worldview. And when a poet expresses this barefoot worldview through one of his characters with characteristic words, it must strike us as very strange, we who are trying to find in the Central European worldview that which can kindle the light of the future for mankind. When a poet has a character express what is essentially a kind of summary of the Barfuß worldview and its philosophy, how does that strike us?

“Yes, what is he to you, this man? Do you understand? He grabs you by the collar, crushes you under his fingernail like a flea! Then you may well feel sorry for him!... Yes, indeed! Then you may reveal all your stupidity to him. He will stretch you on seven tortures for your mercy, he will wrap your intestines around his hand and tear all the veins out of your body, an inch an hour... Oh you... Mercy! Pray to God that you may be beaten without mercy, and that's the end of it!... Mercy!... Fie!”

And Gorky, of whom you will have heard much, says of such words: “Cruel, but true,” thereby not only expressing the worldview of a poetic personality as expressed by the poet, but also expressing his own worldview, which is his view of the world. This is the worldview of a barefoot man, a worldview that can be spoken of in the same way as other worldviews that exist today. It is a worldview that has lost the ability to emerge from itself, to become something that sends light into life; that has to wait until it is fertilized by this light and can then fulfill its mission in human evolution; but that now rebels against what it must do. We have heard many empty phrases in the world, but I say this with the deepest sense of tragedy: phrases such as those uttered by various parties at the Russian Duma's war assembly in August 1914, such a collection of phrases, exceed the height of all empty rhetoric. Such things are only spoken when all the living productive power of the soul has been drained. In the East, we are in fact on the eve of what is to come, and a force is developing that is opposed to what will one day make this East great. And we in Central Europe must say to ourselves: this East is waiting for the spiritual wisdom that must arise in the middle of Europe. My dear friends, try to translate into feelings what I have characterized in individual words, with heavy feelings, I would say, what I have hinted at to you, so that it can illuminate what we as spiritual scientists with expanded feelings can see and into which we must find our way in order to understand the actual necessity the contemporary necessity of the spiritual scientific worldview. Then we will be imbued with thoughts that rise understandingly from our souls into the world expanses. Thoughts that will then encounter what will descend from these spiritual worlds in the near future, when peace can once again reign over the fields of the earth.

Today I have shown you how the etheric bodies of those souls work who, as unspent etheric bodies, detach themselves from the souls who could still work here in the physical body for years, even decades, for physical life. We must realize how many such unspent etheric body parts ascend into the spiritual world—in addition to what those who pass through the gates of death on the battlefields carry up into the spiritual world through their individuality. These etheric bodies will be a great sum of spiritual forces, those spiritual forces which are to work from the spiritual spheres toward the formation of a spiritual worldview that will increasingly take hold of humanity. But in order that these forces, which have ascended in the unspent etheric bodies, may work down from the spiritual spheres, they must be met by thoughts which ascend again from earthly human beings into the spiritual spheres, thoughts which show understanding for the secret working of the spiritual world, into which the forces of these unspent etheric bodies will be woven. But this should be an encouragement to us to imbue ourselves with the great truths of spiritual science. For these truths will stimulate thoughts within us that will then continue to work further and further in other people. And depending on what unfolds as the fateful content of our days, peaceful days will come when what souls have implanted in themselves through spiritual science will ascend. It will meet with the forces that have gathered and are flowing down from the etheric bodies of those who have passed through the gate of death on the battlefields of events. And then what I would like to summarize in a few words as a conclusion resulting from spiritual scientific observation will come to pass. If we know how to place the fruits of spiritual science correctly in our development, then what I would like to express in the following words will come to pass:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruits of the spirit will mature
Souls will think spiritually
And find their meaning in the spiritual realm.