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On the Connection of the Living and the Dead
GA 168

9 November 1916, Berne

Translator Unknown

It is one of the aims of our spiritual-scientific endeavour to form concrete ideas of how we, as human beings upon earth, live with the spiritual worlds, even as we are connected through the physical body—its experiences and perceptions—with the physical world.

At the present stage of our studies we may well take our start from what is already known to us—what has already come before our souls during these years. Here, for instance, is the world of our sense-perceptions, the world to which we direct our will-impulses for which the physical body mediates—that is to say, our actions. Immediately behind it, as you know, there is the elemental world. That is the next world behind this one. It is not a question of the name; we might have named it differently. To gain clear and living ideas of these super-sensible worlds we must at least enter into some of their peculiarities. We must try to recognize what they are for us as human beings. For in truth our whole life between birth and death—and also our subsequent life which takes its course between death and a new birth—depends on our co-existence with the various worlds that are spread out around us. We call the ‘elemental world’ that world which can only be perceived by what we know as ‘imaginations.’ Hence we may also call it the ‘imaginative world.’ In ordinary human life, under ordinary conditions, man cannot lift into consciousness his imaginative perceptions—his perceptions of the elemental world. Not that the imaginations are not there, or that in any given moment of our sleeping or waking life we are not in relation to the elemental world, receiving imaginations from it. On the contrary, imaginations are perpetually ebbing and flowing in us. Though we are unaware of it, we constantly receive impressions from the elemental world. Just as when we open our eyes or lend our ears to the outer world we have sensations of colour and light, perceptions of sound, so do we receive continual impressions from the elemental world, giving rise to imaginations—in this case, in our etheric body. Imaginations differ from ordinary thought in this respect. In ordinary, every-day human thoughts, only the head is concerned as an instrument of conscious assimilation and experience. In our imaginations, on the other hand, we partake with almost the whole of our organism—albeit, it is our etheric organism. In our etheric organism they are constantly taking place—we may refer to them as unconscious imaginations, since it is only for an occultly trained cognition that they rise into consciousness. Moreover, though they do not enter our consciousness directly in every-day life, they are by no means without significance for us. No, for our life as a whole they are far more important than our sense-perceptions, for we are united far more intensely and intimately with our imaginations than with our sense-perceptions.

From the mineral kingdom, as physical human beings, we receive few imaginations. We receive more through all that we develop by living with the plant-world and with the animal. But the greater part, by far, of what lives as imaginations in our etheric body is due to our relations to our fellow human beings, and all that these relations entail for our life as a whole. In fact, our whole relation to our fellow human beings—our whole attitude towards them—is fundamentally based on imaginations. Imaginations always result from the way we meet another human being, and though, as I said, to ordinary consciousness they do not appear as imaginations, nevertheless they make themselves felt in the sympathies and antipathies which play such an overwhelming part in our life. To a greater or lesser degree, we develop sympathies and antipathies with all that approaches us as human beings in this world. We have our vague undefined feelings, slight inclinations or disinclinations. Sometimes our sympathies grow into friendship and love—love which can be so enhanced that we think we can no longer live without this or that human being. All this is due to the imaginations which are perpetually called forth, in our etheric body, by our life with our fellow human beings. In fact we always carry with us in life something that cannot quite be called memory—for it is far more real than memory. We bear within us—shall we say—these enhanced memories or imaginations which we have received from all the impressions of the human beings with who we have ever been, and which we go on receiving all the time. We bear them within us, and they constitute a goodly portion of what we call our inner life. I mean not the inner life that lives in clear, well-defined memories, but that inner life which makes itself felt in our prevailing mood and feeling and outlook—our outlook on the world itself, or on our own life in the world. We would go past the world around us coldly and we would live with our contemporary world indifferently if we did not unfold this imaginative life by living together with other beings—and notably with other human beings.

It is, as we might say, our soul's interest in the surrounding world which makes itself felt in this way. It belongs especially to the elemental world, and notably to our own etheric body. It is, above all, inherent in the forces of our etheric body, and it makes itself felt in this way. Sometimes we feel ourselves immediately ‘caught’ and interested. Such interest as is often woven from the very first moment between one human being and another is due to definite relationships which arise between the one—the one etheric human being—and the other, bringing about the play of imaginations hither and thither. We live with these imaginations and with our resulting sympathies, of whose effect and intensity we are often largely unaware, or aware only in the vaguest way. Indeed, when our everyday life is not wide-awake but runs along more or less obtusely, we often fail to observe them at all.

We belong with all this to the elemental world, for it is out of the elemental world that we have our own etheric body. Our etheric body is our instrument of communication with the elemental world. With it, however, we do not only spin out relationships to those other etheric bodies which belong to physical beings. We are also related with our etheric body to spiritual beings of an elemental character. The ‘beings of an elemental character’ are precisely those who are able to call forth in us imaginations—conscious or unconscious. We are perpetually related to a multitude of elemental beings. It is in this that one human being differs from another. They have their several relationships—one person to a given set of elemental beings, another to another set of elemental beings. Moreover, the relations of the one human being to certain elemental beings may sometimes coincide with the relations of the other to the same beings. One thing, however, must be observed in this connection. While we are always, in a manner of speaking, akin to a large number of elemental beings, we have relations of special intensity to one elemental being, who is in essence the counterpart of our own etheric body. Our own etheric body is intimately related to one particular etheric being. Just as our etheric body—what we call our etheric body from birth until death—develops its own relations to the physical world inasmuch as it is inserted in a physical body, so does this etheric entity, which is as it were the counterpart or counter-pole of our own etheric body, enable us to have relations to the whole of the elemental world—the whole of the surrounding, cosmic-elemental world.

We gaze upon an elemental world to which we ourselves belong by virtue of our etheric body, and with which we stand in manifold relations—specific relationships to such and such elemental beings. In the elemental world we make acquaintance with beings who are truly no less real than human beings or animals in the physical—beings, however, who never come to incarnation, but only to ‘etherization,’ so to speak, for their densest corporeality is ethereal. Just as we go about among physical people in this world, so do we constantly go about among such elemental beings, while other elemental beings—more remote from ourselves—are related in their turn to other people. A certain number, however, are more nearly related to ourselves, and one among them—related to us most nearly of all—acts as our organ of communication with the entire cosmic-elemental world. Now in the time immediately following our passage through the Gate of Death, when for a few days we still bear our etheric body with us, we ourselves become precisely such a being as these elemental beings are. In a manner of speaking, we ourselves become an elemental being. We have often described this process of the passage through the Gate of Death, but the more exactly we study it, the clearer the imaginations it provides. For the impressions we receive immediately after the passage of a human being through the Gate of Death always consist in imaginations—make themselves felt as imaginations.

Observing the process more exactly, we find that there is a certain mutual interplay, immediately after death, between our own etheric body and its etheric counterpart. The fact that our etheric body is taken from us a few days after death is mainly due to its being attracted—drawn in, as it were—by this etheric counterpart. Henceforth it becomes one with the etheric counterpart. A few days after death we do in fact lay aside our etheric body, we hand it over, so to speak; but it is to our own etheric counterpart that we hand it over. Our etheric body is taken from us by our own cosmic prototype or image and, as a result, special relations now emerge between what is thus taken from us and the other elemental beings with whom we have been related in any way during our life. We might describe it thus: a kind of mutual relation now arises between what our own etheric body has become—united as it now is with its counterpart or counter-image—and the other elemental beings who accompanied us from birth till death. It might be compared to the relation of a sun to its associated planetary system. Our etheric body with its cosmic counterpart is like a kind of sun, surrounded—as a kind of planetary system—by the other elemental beings. This mutual interplay gives rise to the forces which instill into the elemental world—in the right manner and in slow evolution—what our etheric body is able to take into that world. That which we commonly refer to in abstract terms—‘the dissolution of the etheric body’—is essentially a play of forces, engendered by this sun-planetary system which we have left behind. Gradually, what we acquired and assimilated to our etheric body in the course of life becomes a part of the spiritual world. It weaves itself into the forces of the spiritual world. We must be very clear on this. Every thought, every idea, every feeling we develop—however hidden it remains—is of significance for the spiritual world. For when the coherence is broken by our passage through the Gate of Death, all our thoughts and feelings pass with our etheric body into the spiritual world and become part and parcel of it. We do not live for nothing. Even as we receive them into the thoughts we make our own, into the feelings we experience, so are the fruits of our life embodied in the cosmos. This is a truth we must receive into our whole mood and outlook; otherwise we do not rightly conduct ourselves in the spiritual-scientific movement. You are not a spiritual scientist merely by knowing about certain things. You are so only if you feel yourself, by virtue of this knowledge, within the spiritual world; if you know yourself quite definitely as a member in the spiritual world. Then you will say to yourself: the thought you are now harbouring is of significance for the entire universe, for at your death it will be handed over to the universe in such or such a form.

Now after a human being's death we may have to do, in one form or another, with what is thus handed over to the universe. Many of the ways in which the dead are present to those whom they have left behind are due to the fact that the etheric human being—which has, of course, been laid aside by the real individuality—sends back his imaginations to the living. And if the living person is sensitive enough, or if he is in some abnormal state or has normally prepared himself by proper spiritual training, the influences of what is thus given over to the spiritual world by the dead—the influences, that is to say, of imaginative natures—can emerge in him in a conscious form.

But there still remains a connection after death between the true human individuality and this etheric entity which has separated from him. There is a mutual interplay between them. We can observe it most clearly when by spiritual training we come into actual intercourse with this or that dead individual. A certain kind of intercourse can then take place, as follows: to begin with, the dead human being conveys to his etheric body what he himself wishes to transmit to us who are still in the physical world. For only by his transmitting it to his etheric body—as it were, making inscriptions in his etheric body—only by this means can we, who are here in the physical, have perceptions of the dead in terms of what we call ‘imaginations.’ The moment we have imaginations of him, the etheric body of the dead—if you will pardon my use of the trivial and all too realistic term—is acting as a ‘switch’ or ‘commutator.’ Do not imagine that our relations to the dead need be any the less deeply felt because such an instrument is needed. A person who meets us in the outer world also conveys his form to us by the picture which he calls forth in us through our own eyes. So it is with this transmission through the etheric body. We perceive what the dead wishes to convey to us by ‘getting’ it, so to speak, via his etheric body. This body is outside him, but he is so intimately related to it that he can inscribe in it what lives within himself, and thus enable us to read it in imaginations. There is, however, this condition. If a person who is spiritually trained wishes to come into connection with a dead human being through the etheric body in this way, he must have entered into some relation to the dead—either in his last life between birth and death, or out of former incarnations. Moreover, these relationships must have affected his soul—the soul of the one who is still living here—deeply enough for the imaginations to make an impression on him. For this can only be if in his heart and mind he had a definite and living interest in the dead person. Interests of heart and feeling must always be the mediator between the living and the dead, if any intercourse at all is to take place—conscious or unconscious. (Of the latter we shall speak presently.) Some interest of heart and feeling must be there, so that we really carry something of the dead within us. In a certain respect at any rate the dead person must have constituted a portion of our own soul's experience. Only one who is spiritually trained can make himself a certain substitute. For instance—(it may seem external at first sight, but spiritual training turns it into something far more inward)—one can give oneself up to the impression of the handwriting, or of something else in which the individuality of the dead is living. However, one can only do so if one has acquired a certain practice in making contact with an individuality through the fact that he lives in the writing. Or again, one may establish this possibility by entering with sympathy into the feelings of the physical survivors, partaking in their grief and in all the emotional interest they have in the dead person. By entering with sympathy into these real and living feelings, which flow from the dead into the dear ones whom he has left on Earth—or which remain in their inner life—a person of spiritual training can prepare his soul to read in the aforesaid imaginations.

But we must also realize the following. Though to perceive the imaginations which play over from the etheric body depends on spiritual training or other special conditions, yet at the same time what passes unperceived by people is there none the less. And we may truly say, those who are living in the physical world are not only woven around by the elemental forces, as imaginations, which proceed from other human beings living with them in the physical body. Whether we know it or not, our etheric body is constantly played-through by all the imaginations which we absorb from those who stood in any kind of relation to us and who passed before us through the Gate of Death. As in our physical life, in the physical body, we are related to the air around us, so are we related to the whole of the elemental world—including all that is there of the dead.

We shall never learn to know our human life unless we gain knowledge of these relationships, albeit they are so intimate and fine that they remain unnoticed by most people. After all, who can deny that we do not always remain the same between birth and death. Let us look back upon our lives. However consistent we may think the course of life has been, we will soon notice that we have often gone hither and thither in life, or that this or that has occurred. Even if this does not immediately change the direction of our lives, which it can of course do, it nonetheless has the effect of enriching our lives in one way or another—in a happy direction or in a painful one. It brings us into different conditions—just as when you go into another district your general feeling of health may be changed by the different composition of the air.

These moods of soul, into which we enter in our life's course, are due to the influences of the elemental world, and in no small measure to the influences that come from the dead who were formerly related to us. Many a human being in earthly life meets with a friend or with some person with whom he becomes connected in one way or another—to whom, perhaps, he finds himself obliged to do this or that by way of kindness or of criticism or rebuke. The fact that they were brought together required the influence of certain forces. He who recognizes the occult connections in the world knows that when two human beings are brought together to this end or that, sometimes one and sometimes several of those who have gone before them through the Gate of Death are instrumental. Our life does not become any the less free thereby. We do not lose our freedom because we starve if we do not eat. No one who is not deliberately foolish will say: how can a person be free, seeing that he is obliged to eat? It would be just as invalid to say that we become unfree because our soul constantly receives influences from the elemental world as here described. Indeed, just as we are connected with warmth and cold, with all the things that become our food and with the air around us, so are we connected with that which comes to us from those who have died before us. We are equally connected with the rest of the elemental world, but above all with that which comes to us from them, and we can truly say: man's working for his fellow human beings does not cease with his passage through the Gate of Death. Through his etheric body, with which he himself remains connected, he sends his imaginations into those with whom he was connected in his life. Indeed, the world to which we are here referring is far more real than that we commonly call real—even if, in our every-day life, for very good reasons, it remains unperceived. So much, for today, about the elemental world.

A further realm which is ever present in our environment, and to which we ourselves belong no less than to the elemental world, is the soul world—for so we may call it. (It is not the name that matters.) With the elemental world we are always connected in our waking life, and in sleep, too, indirectly, when with our ego and astral body we are outside the physical and the etheric; when our body that lies there in the bed, and our etheric body, are still connected with the elemental world. But with the higher world to which I now refer, we are connected most directly—only that this too cannot rise into our consciousness in ordinary life. We are connected with it in sleep when we have our astral body freely around us, and also in waking life—albeit then the connection, mediated as it is by forces which the physical body has drawn into itself, is no longer so direct.

Now in this world-of-soul (let us call it the soul world for the present; medieval philosophers referred to it as the heavenly world or the celestial) in this world, once more, we find beings who are just as real as we are during our life between birth and death, nay, more so. They are, however, beings who do not need to come to embodiment in a physical, or even in an etheric, body. They live—as in their lowest corporeality—in that which we are wont to call the astral body. Constantly, during our life and after our death, we are connected intimately with a large number of these purely astral beings. Here, too, human beings differ from one another inasmuch as they are related to different astral beings—albeit, here again, two people may have their relationships to one or more astral beings in common, while at the same time each of them has his several relations to other astral beings.

It is to this world, in which these astral beings are, that we ourselves belong from the time when, after passing through the Gate of Death, we have laid aside our etheric body. We with our own individuality are then among the beings of the soul world. We are such beings at that time, and beings of the soul world are our immediate environment. True, we are also related to the content of the elemental world, inasmuch as we can kindle in it that which calls forth imaginations as aforesaid. We have, however, the elemental world in a certain sense outside us—or, as one might also say, beneath us. It is a portion of which we rather make use for purposes of communication with the remainder of the world, while we ourselves belong directly to what I have now called the world-of-soul. It is with the beings of the soul world that we have our intercourse, including other human beings who have also passed through the Gate of Death and, after a few days, laid aside their etheric bodies.

Now just as we constantly get influences from the elemental world, although we do not notice it, so too we constantly receive influences—straight into our astral body—out of this world-of-soul which I am now describing. It is only the immediate, straightforward influences which we thus receive that can appear as inspirations. (Of the indirect influences via the etheric body we have already spoken.) You will understand the character of such an influence from the soul world if I describe once more in a few words how it appears to one who is spiritually trained—one who is able to receive conscious inspirations out of the spiritual world. It appears to him as follows. He can only bring these inspirations to his consciousness if he is able, so to speak, to take into himself some portion of the being who wants to inspire him—some portion of the qualities, of the inherent tendency in life, of such a being.

One who is spiritually trained to develop conscious relations with a dead person, not only via the etheric body but in this direct way through inspiration, must bear in his soul even more than mere interest or sympathy is able to call forth. For a short while, at least, he must be so able to transform himself as to receive into his own being something of the habits, the character, the very human nature of the one with whom he wishes to communicate. He must be able to enter into him till he can truly say to himself, ‘I am taking on his habits to such an extent that I could do what he could, and in his way; that I could feel as he could, and will as he could, also.’ It is the ‘could’ that matters—the possibility. We must, therefore, be able to live together with the dead even more intimately. For a person of spiritual training there are many ways of coming thus near to the dead, provided the dead person himself allows it. We should, however, realize that the beings who belong to what we are now calling the world-of-soul are quite differently related to the world than we are in our physical body. Hence there are certain conditions, quite definite conditions, of intercourse with such beings—and, among others, with the dead, so long as they are living still as astral beings in their astral bodies. We may draw attention especially to certain points.

You see, all that we develop for our life in the physical body—our many and varied relationships to other people (I mean precisely those relationships which arise through earthly life)—all this acquires quite another kind of interest for the dead. Here on the earth we develop sympathies and antipathies. Let us be fully clear on this. Such sympathies and antipathies as we develop while we are living in the physical body are subject to the influences of this our present form of life, which we owe to the physical body and to its conditions. They are subject to the influences of our own vanity and of our egoism. Let us not fail to realize how many relationships we develop to this or that human being as a result of vanity or egoism—or other things that depend on our physical and earthly life in this world. We love other people or we hate them. Verily, as a rule, we take little notice of the true grounds of our loving and our hating—our sympathies and antipathies. Nay, often enough we flee from taking conscious notice of our sympathies and antipathies, for the simple reason that, if we did so, highly unpleasant truths would as a rule emerge. If, for instance, we followed up the real facts which find expression in our not loving this or that human being, we should often have to ascribe to ourselves so much of prejudice or vanity or other qualities that we are afraid to do so. Therefore we do not bring to full clarity in consciousness why it is that we hate this person or that. And with love, too, the case is often similar. Interests, sympathies and antipathies evolve in this way, which only have significance for our everyday life. Yet it is out of all this that we act. We arrange our life according to these interests and sympathies and antipathies.

Now it would be quite wrong to imagine that the dead can possibly have the same interest as we earthly people have in all the ephemeral sympathies and antipathies which thus arise under the influence of our physical and earthly life. That would be utterly wrong. Truly, the dead are obliged to look at these things from quite another point of view. Moreover, we may ask ourselves, are we not largely influenced in our estimate of our fellow human beings by these subjective feelings—by all that lies inherent in our subjective interest, our vanity and egoism and the like? Let us not think for a moment that a dead person can have any interest in such relationships between ourselves and other human beings, or in our actions which proceed out of such interests. But we must also not imagine that the dead person does not see what is living in our souls. For it is really living there, and the dead one sees it well enough. He shares in it, too, but he sees something else as well. One who is dead has quite another way of judging people. He sees them quite differently. As to the way in which the dead person sees the human beings who are here on earth, there is one thing of outstanding importance. Let us not imagine that the dead has not a keen and living interest in the world of human beings. He has, indeed, for the world of human beings belongs to the whole cosmos. Our own life belongs to the cosmos. And just as we, even in the physical world, interest ourselves in the subordinate kingdoms, so do the dead interest themselves intensely in the human world, and send their active impulses into the human world. For the dead work through the living into this world. We have only just given an example of the way in which they go on working soon after their passage through the Gate of Death.

But the dead sees one thing above all, and that most clearly. Suppose, for example, that he sees a human being here following impulses of hatred—hating this person or that, and with a merely personal intensity or purpose. This the dead sees. At the same time, however, according to the whole manner of his vision and all that he is then able to know, he will observe quite clearly, in such a case, the part which Ahriman is playing. He sees how Ahriman impels the person to hatred. The dead actually sees Ahriman working upon the human being. On the other hand, if a person on earth is vain, he sees Lucifer working at him. That is the essential point. It is in connection with the world of Ahriman and Lucifer that the dead human being sees the human beings who are here on earth. Consequently, what generally colours our judgement of people is quite eliminated for the dead. We see this or that human being, whom in one sense or another we must condemn. Whatever we find blameworthy in him, we put it down to him. The dead does not put it down directly to the human being. He sees how the person is misled by Lucifer or Ahriman. This brings about a toning-down, so to speak, of the sharply differentiated feelings which in our physical and earthly life we generally have towards this or that human being. To a far greater extent, a kind of universal human love arises in the dead. This does not mean that he cannot criticize—that is to say, cannot rightly see what is evil in evil. He sees it well enough, but he is able to refer it to its origin—to its real inner connections.

What I have here described is not without its results, for it means that an occultly-trained person cannot consciously come near to one who is dead unless he truly frees himself from feelings of personal sympathy or antipathy to individuals. He must not allow himself to be dependent, in his soul, on personal feelings of sympathy or antipathy. You need only imagine it for a moment. Suppose that an occultly-trained, clairvoyant person were about to approach a dead human being—whoever he might be—so that the inspirations which the dead was sending in towards him might find their way into his consciousness. Suppose, moreover, that the one here living were pursuing another human being with a quite special hatred—hatred having its origin only in personal relationships. Then, of a truth, as fire is avoided by our hand, so would the dead avoid such a person who was capable of hatred for personal reasons. He cannot approach him, for hatred works on the dead like fire. To come into conscious relation with the dead we must be able to make ourselves like them—independent, in a sense, of personal sympathies and antipathies.

Hence you will understand what I now have to say. Bear in mind this whole relation of the dead to the living, in so far as it rests on Inspirations. Remember that the inspirations are always there, even if they pass unnoticed. They are perpetually living in the human astral body, so that the human being upon earth has his relations to the dead in this direct way, too. Now, after all that we have said, you will well understand that these relationships depend on our whole mood and spirit here in our life on earth. If our attitude to other people is hostile, if we are without interest or sympathy for our contemporaries above all, if we have not an unprejudiced interest in our fellow human beings—then are the dead unable to approach us in the way they long to do. They cannot properly transplant themselves into our souls, or, if they must do so, in one way or another it is made difficult for them and they can only do it with great suffering and pain. All in all, the living-together of the dead with the living is complicated.

Thus man goes on working beyond the time when he passes through the Gate of Death, even directly, inasmuch as after death he inspires those who are living on the physical plane. And this is absolutely true. Notably as to their inner habits and qualities—the way they think and feel and develop inclinations—those who are living at any given time on earth are largely dependent on those who died and passed from the earth before them, who were related to them during their life, or to whom they themselves established a relation even after death—which may sometimes happen, though it is not so easy.

A certain portion of the world-ordering and of the whole progress of mankind is altogether dependent on this working of the dead into the life of earthly human beings, inspiring them. Nay, more, in their instinctive life people are not without an inkling that it is so and that it must be so. We can observe it if we consider ways of life, formerly very wide-spread, which are now dying out because humanity in the course of evolution goes ever onward to new forms of life. In bygone times when, generally speaking, they divined far more of the reality of spiritual worlds, people were more deeply aware of what is necessary for life as a whole. They knew that the living need the dead—need to receive into their habits and customs the impulses from the dead. What, then, did they do? You need only think of former times, when in wide circles it was customary for a father to take care that his son should inherit and carry on his business, so that the son went on working on the same lines. Then when the father was long dead, inasmuch as the son remained in the same channels of life, a bond of communication was created through the physical world itself. The son's activity and life-work being akin to his father's, the father was able to work on in him. Many things in life were based on this principle. And if whole classes of society attached great value to the inheritance of this or that property within the class or within its several families, it was due to their divining this necessity. Into the life-habits of those who live later, the life-habits of those who lived earlier must enter, but only when these life-habits are so far ripened that they come from them after they have passed through the Gate of Death—for it is only then that they become mature.

These things are ceasing, as you know—for such is the progress of the human race. We can already see a time approaching when these inheritances, these conservative conditions, will no longer play a part. The physical bonds will no longer be there in the same way. But all the more, to compensate for this, people must receive such detailed spiritual-scientific knowledge as will lift the whole matter into their consciousness. For then they will be able consciously to connect their life with the life-habits of former times—with which we have to reckon in order that life may go forward with continuity. Since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period we are living in a transition time. During this time a more or less chaotic state has intervened. But the conditions will arise again when in a far more conscious way—by recognition of the spiritual-scientific truths—people will connect their life and work with that which has gone before them. Unconsciously, merely instinctively, they used to do so—of that there can be no doubt. But even that which is still instinctive to this day must be transmuted into consciousness. Instinctively, for instance, people still teach in this way—only we do not observe it. One who studies history on spiritual lines will soon observe it, if only he pays attention to the facts and not to the dreadful abstractions which prevail nowadays in the so-called humanistic branches of scholarship. If we look at the facts we can well observe it: what is taught in a given epoch bears a certain character only because people attach themselves unconsciously, instinctively, to what the dead are pouring down into the present. If once you learn to study in a real way the educational ideas which are propounded in any given age by the leading spirits in education—I mean not the charlatans but the true educationists—you will soon see how these ideas have their origins in the habitual natures of those who have recently died.

This is a far more intimate living-together; for that which plays into the human being's astral body enters far more into his inner life than that which plays into his etheric body. The communion which the dead themselves, as individualities, can have with people on earth, is far more intimate than that which the etheric bodies have—or, for that matter, any other elemental beings. Hence you will see how the succeeding epoch in the life of humanity is always conditioned by the preceding one. The preceding time always goes on living in the time that follows. For in reality, strange though it may sound, it is only after our death that we become truly ripe to influence other people—I mean to influence them directly, working right into their inner being. To impress our own habits on any man who is ‘of age’ (I mean now, spiritually speaking, not in the legal sense) is the very thing we should not do. Yet it is right and according to the conditions of the progressive evolution of mankind for us to do so after we ourselves have passed through the Gate of Death. Beside all the things that are contained in the progress of karma and in the general laws of incarnation, these things take place. If you ask for the occult reasons why, let us say, the people of this year are doing this or that, then—not for all things but certainly for many—you will find that they are doing it because certain impulses are flowing down to them from those who died twenty or thirty years ago, or even longer. These are the hidden connections—the real concrete connections—between the physical and the spiritual world. It is not only for ourselves that something ripens and matures in what we carry with us through the Gate of Death. It is not only for ourselves, but for the world at large. And it is only from a given moment that it becomes truly ripe to work upon others. Then, however, it does become ever riper and riper.

I beg you here to observe that I am not speaking of externals, but of inner, spiritual workings. A person may remember the habits of his dead father or grandfather and repeat them out of memory on the physical plane. That is not what I mean; that is a different matter. I really mean the inspired influences—imperceptible, therefore, to ordinary consciousness—the influences which make themselves felt in our habits in our most intimate character. Much in our life depends on our finding ourselves obliged, here or there, to free ourselves from the influences—even the well-meant influences—coming to us from the dead. Indeed, we gain much of our inner freedom by having to free ourselves in this way, in one direction or another. Inner conflicts of soul, which a person often does not know, will grow intelligible to him when he views them in this light or that, taking his light from spiritual knowledge of this kind. To use a trite expression, we may say: the past is rumbling on—the souls of the past go rumbling on—in our own inner life.

These things are facts—truths into which we look by spiritual vision. But alas, especially in the life of today, men have a peculiar relation to these truths. It was not always so. Anyone who can study history in a spiritual way will know this. Today people are afraid of these truths—they are afraid of facing them. They have a nameless fear—not indeed conscious, but unconscious. Unconsciously they are afraid of recognizing the mysterious connections between soul and soul, not only in this world, but between here and the other world. It is this unconscious fear which holds back the people in the outer world. This is a part of that which holds them back, instinctively, from spiritual science. They are afraid of knowing the reality. They are all unaware of how they are disturbing—by their unwillingness to know reality—disturbing and confusing the whole course of world-evolution, and with it, needless to say, the life that will have to be lived through between death and a new birth, when these conditions must be seen.

Still more mature—for everything that evolves, becomes ever riper and more mature—still more mature becomes that which lives in us when it no longer has to stop short at Inspiration but can become Intuition (in the true sense in which I used the word in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. Now Intuition can only be a being that has none other than a Spirit-body (to use this paradoxical expression). To work intuitively upon other beings—and, among others, upon those who are still incarnated here in the physical life—a human being must first have laid aside his astral body; that is to say, he must first belong entirely to the spiritual world. That will be decades after his death, as we know. Then he can also work down on other people through intuition—no longer merely through Inspiration as I described it just now. Not until then does he as ego—now in the spiritual world—work in a purely spiritual way into other egos. Formerly he worked by Inspiration into the astral body—or, via his etheric body, into the etheric body of man. But one who has been dead for decades past can also work directly as an ego—albeit at the same time he can still work through the other vehicles, as described above. It is at this stage that the human individuality grows ripe to enter no longer merely into the habits of people but even into their views and ideas of life. To modern feeling, full of prejudice as it is, this may be an unpleasant truth—very unpleasant, I doubt not. None the less it is true. Our views and ideas, originating as they do in our ego, are under constant influences from those long dead. In our views and conceptions of life, those who are long dead are living. By this very means, the continuity of evolution is preserved—out of the spiritual world. It is a necessity, for otherwise the thread of people's ideas would constantly be broken.

Forgive me if I insert a personal matter at this point. I do so, if I may say so, for thoroughly objective reasons. For such a truth as this can only be made intelligible by concrete examples.

No one ought really to bring forward, as views or ideas, his own personal opinions—however sincerely gained. Therefore, no one who stands with full sincerity on the true ground of occultism—no one who is experienced in the conditions of spiritual science—will impose his own opinions on the world. On the contrary, he will do all he can to avoid imposing his own opinions directly. For the opinions, the outlook he acquires under the influence of his own personal tendency of feeling, should not begin to work until thirty or forty years after his death. Then it will work in this way: it will come into the souls of people along the same paths as the impulses of the Time-Spirits or Archai. Only then has it become so mature that its working is in harmony with the objective course of things. Hence it is necessary for everyone who stands on the true ground of occultism to avoid making personal proselytes—setting out to gain followers for his own personal views. That is the general custom nowadays. No sooner has anyone got an opinion of his own, he cannot hasten enough to make propaganda for it. That is what a real and practising spiritual scientist cannot possibly desire to do. Now I may bring in the personal matter to which I referred just now. It is no chance, but something essential to my life, that I began by writing—communicating to the world—not my own views, but Goethe's world-conception. That was the first thing I wrote. I wrote entirely in the spirit and in the sense of Goethe's world-conception, thus taking my start not from any living person. For even if that living person were oneself, it could not possibly justify one in teaching spiritual science in the comprehensive way I try to do. It was a necessary link in the chain, when I thus placed my work into the objective course of world-evolution. Therefore I did not write my theory of knowledge, but Goethe's—A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception—and in this way I continued.

Thus you will see how the development of man goes on. What he attained on earth ripens not only for the sake of his own life as he advances on the paths of karma. It ripens also for the world. So we continue to work for the world. After a certain time we become ripe to send imaginations; then—after a further time—inspirations into the habits of human beings. And only after a longer time has elapsed do we grow ready and mature enough to send intuitions into the most intimate part of man's life—into the views and conceptions of people.

Let us not imagine that our views and conceptions of life grow out of nothing—or that they arise anew in every age. They grow from the soil in which our own soul is rooted, which soil is in truth identical with the sphere of activity of human beings who died long ago.

By knowledge of such facts, I do believe human life must receive that enrichment which it needs, according to the character and sense of our age and of the immediate future. Many an old custom has grown rotten to the core. The new must be developed, as I have often said; but man cannot enter the new life without those impulses which grow in him through spiritual science. It is the feelings that matter—the feelings towards the world in its entirety, and all the other beings of the world, which we acquire through spiritual science. Our mood of life grows different through spiritual science. The super-sensible, in which we always are, becomes alive for us through spiritual science. We are and always have been living in it; but human beings will be called to know it, more and more consciously, the farther they evolve through the fifth, sixth and seventh post-Atlantean epochs and for the rest of earthly time.

These things I wanted to communicate to you today. They are indeed essential to the enrichment, the quickening of man's whole feeling for the world, and to the deepening of all his life. These things I wanted to kindle in your hearts, now that we have been able to be together once more after a lapse of time. May we be able to be together often again to speak of similar matters, so that our souls may partake in achieving that evolution of mankind which is the aim and endeavour of spiritual science.

Die Verbindung Zwischen Lebenden und Toten

Das Ziel unseres geisteswissenschaftlichen Strebens geht dahin, uns Vorstellungen zu bilden, wie wir als Menschen zusammenleben mit geistigen Welten in einem ähnlichen Sinne, wie wir durch unseren physischen Leib, dessen Erlebnisse und Wahrnehmungen, zusammenhängen mit der physischen Welt. Nun können wir jetzt schon bei unseren Betrachtungen immer an Bekanntes, das uns vor die Seele getreten ist im Laufe der Jahre, anknüpfen. Wir wissen, die nächste Welt, die hinter der Welt unserer sinnlichen Wahrnehmungen liegt, auf welche unsere durch den physischen Leib vermittelten Willensimpulse, unser Handeln in der physischen Welt gerichtet sind, ist die elementarische Welt, Man könnte ihr auch einen anderen Namen geben. Deutliche Vorstellungen bekommen wir von diesen übersinnlichen Welten doch nur, wenn wir uns in ihre Eigentümlichkeiten ein wenig einlassen, wenn wir versuchen, dasjenige zu erkennen, was sie für uns selbst als Menschen sind. Wirklich hängt ja zunächst unser ganzes Leben zwischen Geburt und Tod, aber auch das Leben, das dann verläuft zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, von unserem Zusammensein mit den verschiedenen um uns sich ausbreitenden Welten zusammen.

Die elementarische Welt soll uns die sein, welche wahrgenommen werden kann nur durch das, was wir Imaginationen nennen. Man kann daher auch diese elementarische Welt die imaginative Welt nennen. Für das gewöhnliche Menschenleben ist es so, daß der Mensch seine imaginativen Wahrnehmungen aus der elementarischen Welt unter gewöhnlichen Verhältnissen sich nicht zum Bewußtsein bringen kann. Das besagt aber nicht, daß diese Imaginationen nicht da sind oder daß wir in irgendeinem Augenblicke unseres schlafenden oder wachenden Lebens nicht in Beziehungen stünden mit der elementarischen Welt und Imaginationen von ihr empfingen. Diese Imaginationen fluten wirklich fortwährend in uns unvermerkt auf und ab. Und gerade so, wie wir, wenn wir die Augen aufmachen oder unsere Ohren der Außenwelt darbieten, Farben- und Lichtempfindungen, wie wir Tonwahrnehmungen haben, so haben wir fortwährend Eindrücke der elementarischen Welt, die jetzt in unserem Ätherleibe - Imaginationen bewirken. Diese unterscheiden sich dadurch von den gewöhnlichen Gedanken, daß im Grunde an den gewöhnlichen, alltäglichen menschlichen Gedanken nur das menschliche Haupt beteiligt ist als ein Instrument des Verarbeitens, des Erlebens; bei den Imaginationen jedoch sind wir fast mit unserem ganzen Organismus, aber eben mit unserem Ätherorganismus beteiligt. In unserem Ätherorganismus verlaufen fortwährend diese, wir können sie nennen unbewußten, nur für das geschulte okkulte Erkennen zum Bewußtsein kommenden Imaginationen.

Wenn diese Imaginationen auch nicht direkt, nicht unmittelbar in unser Bewußtsein hereintreten im alltäglichen Leben, so sind sie deshalb für uns nicht etwa bedeutungslos, sondern sie sind eigentlich für unser gesamtes Leben viel bedeutender als die sinnlichen Wahrnehmungen; denn wir sind mit unseren Imaginationen viel intensiver, viel intimer verbunden als mit den sinnlichen Wahrnehmungen. Von dem Reiche des Mineralischen bekommen wir als physische Menschen wenig Imaginationen. Schon mehr Imaginationen bekommen wir durch dasjenige, was wir entwickeln im Zusammenleben mit der Pflanzenwelt, der tierischen Welt; aber der weitaus größte Teil desjenigen, was in unserem Ätherleib als Imaginationen lebt, kommt aus unserem Verhältnisse zu unseren Mitmenschen und aus alledem, was für unser Leben folgt aus dem Verhältnisse zu unseren Mitmenschen. Ja, es beruht im Grunde genommen unser ganzes Verhältnis zu unseren Mitmenschen, die ganze Art, wie wir zu unseren Mitmenschen stehen, auf Imaginationen, welche sich immer ergeben aus der Art und Weise, wie wir einem anderen Menschen entgegentreten. Das macht sich allerdings als Imaginationen, wie ich schon andeutete, für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein gar nicht geltend; aber es macht sich geltend in den in unserem Leben eine so große, eine so umfassende Rolle spielenden Sympathien und Antipathien, die wir entwickeln in minderem oder in höherem Grade zu demjenigen, was uns als Mensch in der Welt nahetritt, in unbestimmten Gefühlen, in nur angedeuteten Neigungen oder Abneigungen, in alldem, was sich dann heranentwickelt zu Freundschaft, zu Liebe, was sich steigern kann so, daß wir ohne diesen oder jenen Menschen glauben gar nicht leben zu können.

All das beruht auf den Imaginationen, die immer hervorgerufen werden in unserem ätherischen Leibe durch das Zusammenleben mit unseren Mitmenschen. Und wir tragen eigentlich immer in unserem Leben etwas, was Erinnerung zu nennen nicht ganz richtig ist, weil es etwas viel Realeres ist als die Erinnerung; wir tragen in uns diese, sagen wir also gesteigerten Erinnerungen, Imaginationen, die wir empfangen haben aus all den Eindrücken der Menschen, mit denen wir zusammen waren, die wir aber auch noch immer fortwährend empfangen. Wir tragen die alle in uns, und sie bilden im Grunde genommen ein gutes Stück desjenigen, was wir überhaupt unser Innenleben nennen, nicht das Innenleben, das in deutlichen Erinnerungen lebt, sondern dasjenige Innenleben, welches sich in einer Gesamtempfindung, in einer Gesamtstimmung, in einer Gesamtanschauung über die Welt geltend macht und über unser Zusammenleben mit der Welt. Wir könnten nur kalt an unserer Mitwelt vorbeigehen, mit unserer Mitwelt leben, wenn wir nicht also ein imaginatives Leben entwickelten im Zusammenleben mit anderen Wesenheiten, namentlich mit anderen Menschen.

Das, was sich da geltend macht und was man besonders beachten muß als der elementarischen Welt und unserem ätherischen Leben ganz besonders zugehörig, ist dasjenige, was wir das Interesse unserer Seele an der Umwelt nennen. Das, was vorzugsweise in den Kräften unseres Ätherleibes liegt, macht sich geltend dadurch, daß wir in bestimmten Fällen sogleich durch ein Interesse für einen Menschen gefangengenommen werden. Solch ein Interesse, wie es sich anspinnt zwischen einem Menschen und dem anderen Menschen, beruht auf ganz bestimmten Beziehungen, welche zwischen dem einen ätherischen Menschen und dem anderen ätherischen Menschen auftreten und welche das Herüber- und Hinüberspielen der Imaginationen bewirken. Da leben wir mit diesen Imaginationen und mit den Interessen, über deren Wirkung, Stärke und so weiter wir uns oftmals nicht Rechenschaft oder nur unbestimmteste Rechenschaft geben können, die wir, weil ja unser Leben im Alltage nicht geweckt ist, sondern mehr oder weniger stumpf dahinläuft, wohl auch gar nicht beachten.

Mit all dem gehören wir der elementarischen Welt an. Wir gehören dieser elementarischen Welt so an, daß wirklich wir aus dieser Welt unseren eigenen ätherischen Leib haben, der das Instrument zum Verkehr mit dieser elementarischen Welt ist. Aber nicht nur, daß wir durch unseren ätherischen Leib Beziehungen anspinnen mit anderen ätherischen Leibern, die physischen Wesen angehören, sondern wir sind durch unseren ätherischen Leib verwandt geistigen Wesenheiten elementarischer Natur, und das sind eben solche, die für uns Menschen Imaginationen, unbewußte oder bewußte, hervorrufen können. Wir stehen immer in Beziehung zu einer Vielheit von elementarischen Wesenheiten. Dadurch unterscheiden sich die Menschen voneinander, daß sie Beziehungen haben, der eine zu einer bestimmten Anzahl von elementarischen Wesenheiten, der andere zu anderen elementarischen Wesenheiten, aber so, daß zum Beispiel die Beziehungen eines Menschen zu gewissen elementarischen Wesenheiten zusammenfallen können mit den Beziehungen des anderen Menschen zu denselben elementarischen Wesenheiten. Nur das müssen wir festhalten, daß wir, während wir gewissermaßen Verwandtschaft haben immer zu einer größeren Zahl von elementaren Wesenheiten, wir Beziehungen haben ganz besonders starker Art zu einer elementarischen Wesenheit, die gewissermaßen das Gegenbild ist von unserem eigenen Ätherleib. Man kann sagen, daß unser eigener Ätherleib zu einem besonderen Ätherwesen intime Beziehungen hat. Und so, wie unser Ätherleib - das, was wir von der Geburt bis zum Tode unseren Ätherleib nennen - dadurch, daß er dem physischen Leib eingegliedert ist, seine besonderen Beziehungen entwickelt zur physischen Welt, so vermittelt uns dieses Ätherwesen, das gewissermaßen das Gegenbild, der Gegenpol zu unserem eigenen Ätherleib ist, unsere Beziehungen zur gesamten elementarischen Welt, zur umliegenden, kosmisch-elementarischen Welt.

Da also schauen wir auf eine elementarische Welt, der wir selber durch unseren Ätherleib angehören, mit der wir in Beziehungen stehen, und zwar in konkreten Beziehungen zu besonderen elementarischen Wesenheiten; und innerhalb dieser elementarischen Welt lernen wir also Wesenheiten kennen, welche wahrhaftig ebenso wirkliche Wesenheiten sind wie Menschen, wie Tiere hier in der physischen Welt, welche es aber nicht bis zur Inkarnation, sondern nur bis zur Ätherisierung bringen, deren dichteste Leiblichkeit eben die ätherische Leiblichkeit ist. So wie wir hier zwischen physischen Menschen herumgehen, so gehen wir auch fortwährend zwischen solchen elementarischen Wesenheiten herum. Andere stehen uns ferner, haben aber wiederum ihre Beziehungen zu anderen Menschen; aber eine gewisse Anzahl steht uns besonders nahe, und eine ist von allerintimsten Beziehungen zu uns und vermittelt unseren Verkehr mit der kosmischelementarischen Welt.

Ein solches Wesen wie diese elementarischen Wesenheiten sind wir selber in der allerersten Zeit, nachdem wir durch die Pforte des Todes geschritten sind, wenn wir noch unseren ätherischen Leib für einige Tage an uns tragen. Da sind wir gewissermaßen ein solches elementarisches Wesen selber geworden. Nun haben wir ja öfters diesen Vorgang des Durchgehens durch die Todespforte beschrieben. Allein je genauer man ihn betrachtet, desto genauere Imaginationen ergibt er. Denn das, was man an Eindrücken empfängt unmittelbar nach dem Durchgang eines Menschen durch die Todespforte, das lebt in Imaginationen, das macht sich als Imaginationen geltend. Nun, im Genaueren zeigt sich da, daß eine gewisse Wechselwirkung gleich nach dem Tode stattfindet zwischen unserem Ätherleib und seinem ätherischen Gegenbilde. Daß uns unser Ätherleib einige Tage nach dem Tode abgenommen wird, das beruht im wesentlichen darauf, daß unser Ätherleib gewissermaßen angezogen, aufgesogen wird durch sein ätherisches Gegenbild und mit diesem nun eins wird, so daß wir in der Tat einige Tage nach dem Tode unseren Ätherleib ablegen, gewissermaßen ihn übergeben, aber an unser ätherisches Gegenbild. Dadurch, daß unser Ätherleib von unserem kosmischen Ebenbilde uns abgenommen wird, stellen sich jetzt ganz besondere Beziehungen heraus desjenigen, was uns so abgenommen ist, zu den anderen elementarischen Wesenheiten, mit denen wir im Leben in Beziehungen gestanden haben. Es ist wirklich das, was sich da als Wechselverhältnis herausstellt zwischen dem, was unser Ätherleib mit seinem Gegenbilde zusammen geworden ist, und den anderen elementarischen Wesenheiten, die unsere Begleiter waren von der Geburt bis zum Tode, eine Art von Wechselverhältnis, das man vergleichen könnte dem zwischen der Sonne und einem Planetensystem, das zu einer Sonne gehört. Gewissermaßen bildet unser Ätherleib mit seinem kosmischen Gegenbilde eine Art Sonne, und die anderen elementarischen Wesenheiten umgeben diese Sonne wie eine Art Planetensystem. Und dadurch, daß diese Wechselwirkung stattfindet, werden diejenigen Kräfte erzeugt, die in der richtigen Weise in langsamem Werden einfügen das, was unser Ätherleib hineintragen kann in die elementarische Welt. Dies, was man so gewöhnlich mit einem abstrakten Worte Auflösung nennt, ist, ich möchte sagen im wesentlichen eine Wirkung der Kräfte, die sich durch dieses von uns übriggelassene Sonnen-Planetensystem abspielt. Da wird allmählich das, was wir im Laufe des Lebens für unseren Ätherleib erworben haben, was wir diesem Ätherleib angeeignet haben, Mitglied der geistigen Welt; das webt sich ein den Kräften der geistigen Welt, und wir müssen nur durchaus uns klar darüber sein, daß jeder Gedanke, jede Vorstellung, jedes Gefühl, das wir entwickeln, wenn sie auch noch so verborgen bleiben, ihre Bedeutungen haben für die geistige Welt, daß sie mit unserem Ätherleib, wenn der Zusammenhalt zerrissen ist mit dem Durchgang durch die Pforte des Todes, in die spirituelle Welt hineingehen und Glieder dieser spirituellen Welt werden. Wir leben nicht umsonst. Die Früchte unseres Lebens, wie wir sie aufnehmen in das, was wir an Gedanken erarbeiten, was wir an Gefühlen erleben, das wird dem Kosmos einverleibt. Das ist etwas, was wir aufnehmen müssen in unser Fühlen, in unser Empfinden, wenn wir uns in rechtem Sinne in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung verhalten wollen. Denn nicht dadurch, daß man von gewissen Dingen bloß weiß, ist man Geisteswissenschafter, sondern dadurch, daf) man sich durch die Erkenntnis drinnen fühlt in der geistigen Welt, daß man sich als ein Glied in einer ganz bestimmten Art in dieser geistigen Welt fühlt, daß man gewissermaßen weiß: Was du jetzt für einen Gedanken hegst, das hat eine Bedeutung für das ganze Universum, denn das wird bei deinem Tode in der entsprechenden Form diesem Universum übergeben.

Mit dem, was da dem Universum übergeben wird auf die beschriebene Weise, kann man es in der einen oder in der anderen Form nach dem Tode eines Menschen zu tun haben. Und mancherlei von den Arten, wie im Leben Zurückbleibenden die Toten gegenwärtig sind, beruht darauf, daß der ätherische Mensch, der eigentlich von der wirklichen Menschenindividualität abgelegt ist, seine Imaginationen den Lebenden zurücksendet. Ist der Lebende sensitiv genug dazu oder ist er in irgendeinem abnormen Zustande oder hat er sich durch entsprechende Geistesschulung in normaler Weise dazu vorbereitet, so können die Einwirkungen desjenigen, was da vom toten Menschen an die geistige Welt abgegeben ist, die Einwirkungen imaginativer Natur auch in bewußter Art beim Menschen auftreten.

Nun, es bleibt aber eine Verbindung nach dem Tode zwischen dem, was eigentliche menschliche Individualität ist, was sich getrennt hat von dem Ätherischen, und zwischen diesem Ätherischen, eine Verbindung, die wirklich eine Wechselwirkung bedeutet. Man bemerkt dieses am deutlichsten dadurch, daß man es mit geistiger Schulung dahin bringt, einen wirklichen Verkehr mit diesem oder jenem Toten zu haben. Dann kann eine bestimmte Art dieses Verkehrs darinnen bestehen, daß der Tote zunächst das, was er selber an uns herankommen lassen will, die wir noch hier sind in der physischen Welt, auf seinen Ätherleib überträgt; denn nur dadurch, daß er es auf seinen Ätherleib überträgt, gewissermaßen in seinen Ätherleib Einschreibungen macht, können wir in dem, was man Imaginationen nennt, solange wir hier im physischen Leibe sind, Wahrnehmungen von den Toten haben. Sobald man wirklich Imaginationen hat, so ist - lassen Sie mich diesen trivialen, allzu realistischen Ausdruck gebrauchen - der Ätherleib des Toten der Umschalter. Wir dürfen uns nicht vorstellen, daß man deshalb in weniger gemütvollen Beziehungen zu stehen braucht zum Toten, weil ein Umschalter da sein muß. Gerade so, wie ein Mensch, der uns in der Außenwelt entgegentritt, uns seine Gestalt vermittelt sein läßt durch das Bild, das er durch unsere Augen hervorruft in uns, so bedeutet auch diese Vermittelung durch den Ätherleib etwas ganz Ähnliches. Wir schauen gewissermaßen das, was der Tote an uns herankommen lassen will, dadurch, daß wir es auf dem Umwege durch seinen Ätherleib erlangen. Dieser Ätherleib ist außer ihm; aber er ist in einer innigen Beziehung zu diesem Ätherleibe, so daß er das, was in ihm lebt, diesem Ätherleibe einschreiben kann und wir es drinnen als Imaginationen lesen können. Allerdings, wenn derjenige, der geistig geschult ist, auf diese Weise durch einen Ätherleib mit einem Toten in Verbindung treten will, so gehört dazu, daß sich entweder im letzten Leben zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode oder aus vorhergehenden Inkarnationen Beziehungen angeknüpft haben, welche die Seele des hier noch Lebenden soweit ergriffen haben, daß die Imaginationen auf ihn einen Eindruck machen können. Das kann nur sein, wenn in einer ganz bestimmten, intensiven Weise für den Toten selber ein unmittelbares Gemütsinteresse da war. Gemütsinteressen müssen überhaupt die Vermittler sein zwischen den Lebenden und den Toten, wenn ein Verkehr stattfinden soll, ob er nun bemerkt wird oder nicht bemerkt wird - wir werden über den letzteren Fall gleich sprechen -, Gemütsinteressen solcher Art, daß wir wirklich etwas von dem Toten gewissermaßen in uns tragen, daß der Tote in einer gewissen Beziehung wenigstens ein Stück unseres eigenen Erlebens gebildet hat. Nur der geistig Geschulte kann in einer gewissen Beziehung sich einen Ersatz dafür schaffen. Er kann sich einen Ersatz schaffen dadurch - das erscheint zunächst äußerlich, kann aber durch die geistige Schulung in ein mehr Innerliches umgewandelt werden —, daß er zum Beispiel die Schrift oder irgend etwas anderes, worin die Individualität des Toten lebt, auf sich wirken läßt. Aber er muß eine gewisse Praxis sich erworben haben, mit einer Individualität, insofern sich diese Individualität in die Schrift hineinversetzt, in die Schrift hineinlebt, in Beziehung zu treten, oder er muß die Möglichkeit haben, sich mit regem Anteil in die Gefühle von Physisch-Überlebenden zu versetzen, teilzunehmen an ihrem Schmerz, an dem ganzen Anteil, den die anderen Überlebenden an dem Toten haben. Dadurch, daß er diese konkreten, von dem Toten in die lieben Angehörigen herüberfließenden, herüberlebenden und bleibenden Gefühle der Anteilnahme selber in seinen Anteil aufnimmt, dadurch kann er seine eigene Seele bereit machen, in den angedeuteten Imaginationen zu lesen.

Nun müssen wir uns aber klar sein, daß das Bemerken dieser Imaginationen, die aus dem ätherischen Leibe herüberspielen, gewiß von der geistigen Schulung oder von irgendwelchen anderen Verhältnissen abhängt, daß aber das, was nicht bemerkt wird von den Menschen, deshalb nicht minder da ist, und man darf sagen: Die in der physischen Welt hier lebenden Menschen werden nicht nur von den elementarischen Kräften als Imaginationen umspielt, welche von dem physischen Leibe eines lebenden Menschen herrühren, sondern unser ätherischer Leib ist fortwährend durchspielt von Imaginationen, die wir in uns aufnehmen, wenn wir sie auch nicht bemerken, die von denen herrühren, die mit uns in irgendeiner Verbindung standen und die vor uns durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind. Wie wir im physischen Leben als physischer Leib mit der uns umgebenden Luft in Verbindung stehen, das darf schon gesagt werden, so stehen wir mit der ganzen elementarischen Welt und auch mit all dem, was in der elementarischen Welt von den toten Menschen ist, in Beziehung. Wir lernen unser Menschenleben niemals kennen, wenn wir keine Erkenntnis erlangen von diesen Beziehungen. Allerdings sind diese Beziehungen so intimer, so feiner Art, daß sie den meisten Menschen wohl recht unbemerkt bleiben. Aber wer wollte denn leugnen, daß schließlich der Mensch zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode nicht immer derselbe ist?

Man schaue nur einmal in sein Leben zurück, und man wird schon bemerken, wenn man auch scheinbar einen noch so konsequenten Fortlauf des Lebens zu haben meint, daß man manche Züge hin und her im Leben gemacht hat, daß dies oder jenes aufgetreten ist. Wenn es auch nicht gleich unser Leben in ganz andere Bahnen gebracht hat — was auch zum Teil der Fall sein mag -, so hat es doch unser Leben nach der erfreulichen oder nach der leidvollen Seite in dieser oder jener Richtung bereichert, in dieser oder jener Richtung in andere Verhältnisse hineingebracht. Wir wissen, wenn wir in eine andere Gegend kommen, daß wir durch die andere Luftzusammensetzung in eine andere Gesundheitsstimmung kommen können. Diese verschiedenen seelischen Stimmungen, in die wir im Verlaufe unseres Lebens eintreten, rühren her von den Einflüssen der elementarischen Welt, und zum nicht geringen Teile von den Einflüssen, die von den vorher mit uns in Beziehung gestandenen Toten ausgehen. Mancher trifft im Leben einen Freund oder irgendeine Person, zu der er in diese oder jene Beziehungen tritt, der er diese oder jene Gefälligkeit, der er vielleicht auch einen Verweis, eine Kritik erteilen muß. Daß er mit ihr zusammengeführt worden ist, bedarf der Einwirkung bestimmter Kräfte. Und wer die okkulten Zusammenhänge der Welt erkennt, der weiß, daß, wenn zwei Menschen zu dem oder jenem zusammengeführt werden, manchmal einer, manchmal mehrere derjenigen an diesem Zusammenführen tätig sind, welche vor uns durch die Pforte des Todes geschritten sind. Unser Leben wird dadurch nicht unfreier. Niemand, der nicht töricht sein will, wird sagen: Wie kann der Mensch frei sein, da er doch gezwungen ist, zu essen. — So gilt es auch nicht, zu sagen: Wir werden dadurch unfrei, daß unsere Seele fortwährend Wirkungen aus der elementarischen Welt in der geschilderten Weise empfängt. Aber wirklich, ebenso wie wir mit Wärme und Kälte, mit dem, was unsere Nahrung wird, mit der Luft der Umgebung in Verbindung stehen, so stehen wir zwar auch mit der anderen elementarischen Welt, aber vor allen Dingen mit demjenigen in Verbindung, was von seiten der vor uns verstorbenen Toten kommt. Und man kann wirklich sagen: Des Menschen Wirken für seine Mitmenschen hört nicht auf, wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes geht, und durch seinen Ätherleib, mit dem er selber in Verbindung bleibt, schickt er seine Imaginationen in diejenigen hinein, mit denen er in Verbindung gestanden hat. Eigentlich ist diese Welt, auf die wir da hindeuten, für unser menschliches Leben, wenn sie auch aus guten Gründen unbemerkt bleibt für das alltägliche Leben, eine viel realere als diejenige, die wir gewöhnlich die reale nennen. So viel für heute über diese elementarische Welt.

Ein weiteres Reich, das fortwährend in unserer Umgebung ist und dem wir ebenso angehören wie der elementarischen Welt, können wir die seelische Welt nennen. Auf den Namen kommt es ja nicht an. Mit der elementarischen Welt stehen wir wachend auch immer in Verbindung. Schlafend steht unser im Bette liegender Leib und unser Ätherleib mit dieser elementarischen Welt in Verbindung, mittelbar, wenn wir im Ich und astralischen Leib außer dem physischen und Ätherleib sind. Aber mit jener höheren Welt, die ich jetzt meine, stehen wir in unmittelbarster Verbindung, nur kann es eben auch für das gewöhnliche Leben nicht zum Bewußtsein kommen. Die Verbindung besteht im Schlafe, wenn wir unseren astralischen Leib frei um uns haben, aber auch im Wachen, wenn auch da die Verbindung durch die Kräfte, die der physische Leib an sich gezogen hat, vermittelt ist, also keine unmittelbare ist. Wiederum finden wir in dieser Welt- nennen wir sie die seelische, die mittelalterlichen Philosophen haben sie die himmlische genannt - Wesenheiten, welche ebenso wirklich, ja wirklicher sind, als wir während unseres Lebens zwischen Geburt und Tod, welche es aber nicht bis zu einer Verkörperung in einem physischen Leibe, auch nicht bis zu einer Verkörperung in einem ätherischen Leibe zu bringen brauchen, sondern welche leben als in ihrer niedrigsten Leiblichkeit in dem, was wir gewohnt sind, astralischen Leib zu nennen. Wir stehen mit einer großen Anzahl von solchen rein astralischen Wesenheiten fortwährend während unseres Lebens und nach unserem Tode in engster Verbindung. Wiederum unterscheiden sich die Menschen dadurch voneinander, daß die verschiedenen Menschen zu verschiedenen astralischen Wesenheiten in Beziehung stehen. Dabei kann es so sein, daß zwei Menschen Beziehungen haben zu gemeinsamen Astralwesen — jeder von ihnen dann wiederum zu anderen -, aber sie haben beide zu einem oder mehreren Astralwesen gemeinsame Beziehungen.

Dieser Welt nun, in der solche astralische Wesen sind, gehören wir Menschen selber an von der Zeit an, wo wir, nachdem wir durch die Todespforte geschritten sind, unseren ätherischen Leib abgelegt haben. Mit unserer Individualität sind wir dann solche Wesenheiten in der seelischen Welt, und unsere unmittelbare Umgebung sind Wesenheiten der seelischen Welt. Was in der elementarischen Welt enthalten ist, zu dem stehen wir dann so in Beziehung, daß wir in ihm das erregen können, was Imaginationen hervorruft in der geschilderten Weise. Aber die elementarische Welt haben wir dann in einer gewissen Art außer uns; sie ist, können wir auch sagen, unter uns. Sie ist mehr ein Teil, dessen wir uns zum Verkehr mit der übrigen Welt bedienen; derjenigen Welt, die wir jetzt als seelische Welt bezeichnet haben, gehören wir aber unmittelbar selber an. Wir haben unseren Umgang mit den Wesenheiten der seelischen Welt, also auch mit denjenigen Menschen, die durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind und nach einigen Tagen ihre ätherischen Leiber abgelegt haben. Gerade so, wie wir, auch wenn wir es nicht bemerken, fortwährend Einflüsse erlangen aus der elementarischen Welt, so haben wir auch fortwährend Einflüsse unmittelbar in unseren astralischen Leib herein aus dieser seelischen Welt, die ich jetzt schildere. Nur die unmittelbaren Einflüsse, die wir haben - die mittelbaren haben wir ja kennengelernt auf dem Wege durch den ätherischen Leib -, die unmittelbaren Einflüsse können Inspirationen sein.

Nun wird es uns verständlich werden, wie solcher Einfluß der seelischen Welt auf uns ist, wenn ich wiederum zuerst mit einigen Worten berühre, wie sich dieser Einfluß dem geistig Geschulten darstellt, der imstande ist, Inspirationen aus der geistigen Welt zu empfangen. Er stellt sich ihm so dar, daß er zum Bewußtsein bringen kann diese Inspirationen nur dann, wenn er gewissermaßen etwas von dem Wesen, das ihn inspirieren will, selber in sich aufnehmen kann, etwas von den Eigenschaften, von der Lebenstendenz und Lebensrichtung dieses Wesens. Handelt es sich darum, daß der geistig Geschulte bewußte Beziehungen entwickeln soll, nicht bloß auf dem Umweg durch den Ätherleib, sondern in dieser unmittelbaren Art durch Inspirationen mit einem Toten, dann ist notwendig, daß er in seiner Seele noch mehr trägt als dasjenige, was durch das Interesse, durch den Anteil hervorgerufen werden kann. Der geistig Geschulte muß gewissermaßen, wenigstens für kurze Zeit, sich so verwandeln können, daß er in sich selber etwas annimmt von den Gewohnheiten, von der Art des Wesens, also sagen wir des Menschenwesens, mit dem er in Verkehr treten will. Er muß sich so einleben können, daß er sich sagen kann: Du nimmst so sehr dessen Gewohnheiten an, daß du das tun könntest in seinem Sinne, was er tun könnte, fühlen könnte, empfinden könnte, wollen könnte; auf das «könnte» kommt es an! Die Möglichkeit muß vorhanden sein. Man muß also intimer zusammensein können noch mit dem Toten. Dazu gibt es für den geistig Geschulten allerlei Mittel, wenn der Tote selber das zuläßt, nur muß man sich darüber klar sein, daß diejenigen Wesenheiten, welche dieser jetzt von uns seelische Welt genannten Welt angehören, wirklich zur Welt in einer ganz anderen Weise stehen, als wir Menschen hier im physischen Leib, und daß es daher ganz besondere Bedingungen des Verkehres mit diesen Wesen, also auch ganz besondere Bedingungen gibt des Verkehres mit den Toten, solange sie in ihrem astralischen Leibe sind, als astralische Wesen also nur. Namentlich auf einzelnes kann aufmerksam gemacht werden. Das, was wir Menschen hier für unser Leben entwickeln im physischen Leibe durch diese oder jene Beziehungen zu anderen Menschen, die gerade durch das Erdenleben auftreten, das gewinnt eine andere Art des Interesses für die Toten. Wir entwickeln hier auf Erden Sympathien, Antipathien, und seien wir uns ganz klar darüber: solche Sympathien und Antipathien, wie wir sie, solange wir im physischen Leibe leben, entwickeln, stehen unter dem Einflusse unseres eben durch den physischen Leib und seine Verhältnisse vermittelten Daseins. Sie stehen unter dem Einflusse unserer Eitelkeit, unseres Egoismus. Seien wir uns klar darüber, wieviel wir entwickeln an bestimmt gearteten Beziehungen zu diesen oder jenen Menschen aus Eitelkeit, aus Egoismus heraus, aus anderen Dingen, die eben hier auf unserem physischen Erdenleben beruhen. Wir lieben, wir hassen die Menschen. Wir kümmern uns gewiß wenig zumeist über die Gründe unseres Liebens und Hassens, unserer Sympathien und Antipathien, ja wir vermeiden es oft, uns über diese Sympathien und Antipathien viel zu bekümmern, aus dem einfachen Grunde, weil etwas zumeist recht Unangenehmes herauskommen würde. Wenn wir der Tatsache nachgehen würden, die darinnen sich ausspricht, daß wir diesen oder jenen Menschen zum Beispiel nicht lieben, da würden wir uns manchmal so viel an Vorurteilen, an Eitelkeit, an anderen Eigenschaften noch zuschreiben müssen, daß wir uns fürchten, solche Dinge uns zuzuschreiben. Und so bringen wir uns nicht zur Klarheit, warum wir diesen oder jenen Menschen hassen. Aber mit dem Lieben ist es ja schließlich oftmals ganz ähnlich. Dadurch aber entwickeln sich Interessen, Sympathien und Antipathien, die eigentlich wirklich nur eine Bedeutung haben für unser Erdenleben. Aber aus alldem, was sich so als Interesse entwickelt, handeln wir, aus alldem heraus richten wir unser Leben ein.

Es wäre nun ganz falsch, wenn wir glauben würden, daß an dem, was sich so unter dem Einfluß unseres physischen Erdenlebens an ephemerem Interesse, Sympathien, Antipathien anknüpft, die Toten einen ebensolchen Anteil haben könnten wie wir Erdenmenschen hier. Der Tote kommt wirklich in die Notwendigkeit, diese Dinge von einem ganz anderen Gesichtspunkte aus zu sehen. Und fragen wir uns dann weiter, wie wir beeinflußt sind in der Beurteilung unserer Mitmenschen durch unsere subjektiven Gefühle, durch dasjenige, was in unserem Interesse, in unserer Eitelkeit, in unserem Egoismus und so weiter liegt, so dürfen wir nicht glauben, daß ein Toter ein Interesse haben kann an unseren also gearteren Verhältnissen zu anderen Menschen und zu alledem, was wiederum an Handlungen fließt aus solchen Interessen. Aber wir dürfen auf der anderen Seite auch nicht glauben, daß der Tote das nicht sieht, was da in unserer Seele lebt. Denn es lebt ja wirklich in unserer Seele. Der Tote sieht es schon, der Tote nimmt teil daran; aber der Tote sieht noch etwas anderes, der Tote hat überhaupt eine ganz andere Menschenbeurteilung als der Lebende. Er sieht gewissermaßen die Menschen ganz anders an. Und da ist eines eine ganz besondere Hauptsache: wie der Tore die Menschen, die hier sind auf der Erde, ansieht. Und glauben wir nur nicht, daß der Tote nicht ein reges Interesse für die Menschen hat. Das hat er, denn die Menschenwelt ist ein Glied des ganzen Kosmos; unser Leben gehört dazu. Und so wie wir uns für die untergeordneten Reiche auch in der physischen Welt interessieren, so interessieren sich die Toten intensiv für die Menschenwelt, und da senden sie ihre Impulse herein; durch die Lebenden wirken sie in die Welt herein. Wir haben ja selber gerade vorhin ein Beispiel dafür angeführt, wie die Toten fortwirken, nachdem sie eben durch die Pforte des Todes geschritten sind.

Aber der Tote sieht vor allen Dingen eines genau. Er sieht, wie da ein Mensch ist, der Haßimpulsen folgt, der den oder jenen haßt aus bloßen persönlichen Intentionen heraus; das sieht der Tote. Aber der Tote muß nach seiner Art des Schauens, nach dem, was er wissen kann, den Anteil genau auf sich wirken lassen, wie Ahriman zum Beispiel den Menschen beeinflußt zum Hasse; der Tote sieht Ahriman arbeiten am Menschen. Und er sieht auf der anderen Seite, wenn der Mensch hier eitel ist, Luzifer an ihm arbeiten. Das ist das Wesentliche, daß der Tote die Menschen im Zusammenhange mit der ahrimanisch-luziferischen Welt sieht. Dadurch fällt für den Toten dasjenige weg, was uns oftmals unser Menschenbeurteilen ganz und gar färbt. Wir schen diesen oder jenen, den wir verurteilen müssen nach der einen oder anderen Richtung; wir schieben es ihm zu, was wir an ihm tadelnswert finden. Der Tote schiebt dies nicht unmittelbar dem Menschen zu, sondern er schaut an, wie der durch Ahriman oder Luzifer verführt ist. Dadurch wird herbeigeführt dasjenige, was wir nennen können ein Abdämpfen der in unserem physischen Erdenleben scharf differenzierten Gefühle, die wir für diesen oder jenen Menschen haben. Es tritt für den Toten viel mehr auf eine Art allgemeiner Menschenliebe. Glauben Sie nicht, daß dadurch der Tote nicht kritisieren könnte, das heißt, in der richtigen Weise das Böse sieht. Er sieht es schon; nur kann er es zurückführen auf die Ursprünge, auf die Zusammenhänge.

Aber dies alles, was ich Ihnen hier geschildert habe, das bewirkt auch, daß der geschulte Mensch einem Toten eigentlich bewußt nur dadurch nahekommen kann, daß er wirklich sich frei macht von persönlichen Sympathie- und Antipathiegefühlen zu den einzelnen Menschen, daß er sich nicht abhängig machen läßt in seiner Seele von persönlichen Sympathie- und Antipathiegefühlen. Denn denken Sie sich einmal: Irgendein geschulter hellsehender Mensch würde sich einem Toten, wer das auch sein mag, nähern, so daß dessen Inspirationen in sein Bewußtsein kommen, und dieser hier Lebende würde einen Menschen mit ganz besonderem Haß verfolgen, einem Haß, der nur in persönlichen Verhältnissen seinen Ursprung hat. — Ja, wie Feuer von unserer Hand gemieden wird, so meidet der Tote einen solchen Menschen, der in einer solchen Weise aus persönlichen Gründen heraus hassen kann! Er kann nicht heran, weil der Haß auf ihn wie Feuer wirkt. Um in bewußte Beziehungen zu kommen zu den Toten, muß man sich gleich ihnen in einer gewissen Weise von persönlichen Sympathien und Antipathien unabhängig machen können. Daher werden Sie auch begreifen, daß nun das ganze Verhältnis der Toten zu den Lebenden, insoweit es auf Inspirationen beruht, die auch, wenn sie nicht bemerkt sind, doch immer da sind, die immer im astralischen Leib des Menschen leben, so daß der Mensch auch in dieser direkten Weise mit den Toten in Beziehungen steht, abhängig ist von der Art und Weise, wie wir hier auf Erden in unserem Leben gestimmt sind. Wenn wir menschenfeindlich gesinnt sind, wenn wir kein Interesse und keinen Anteil an unserer Mitwelt nehmen, namentlich wenn wir nicht unbefangenes Interesse und Anteil haben an unserer Mitwelt, an unseren Mitmenschen, dann können so, wie sie wollen, die Toten an uns nicht heran; die können sich nicht in der richtigen Weise in unsere Seelen hineinversetzen, oder es wird ihnen, wenn es sein muß, ganz besonders erschwert, und sie können es nur unter Leiden und Schmerzen. Dieses Zusammenleben der Toten mit den Lebenden ist überhaupt ein recht kompliziertes. Aber Sie sehen daraus, daß der Mensch auch unmittelbar dadurch, daß er auf dem physischen Plane Lebende inspiriert nach seinem Tode, über die Zeit hinaus wirkt, da er durch die Todespforte geschritten ist. Und es ist durchaus wahr, daß diejenigen, die in irgendeiner Zeit auf der Erde leben, namentlich mit Bezug auf ihre inneren Gewohnheitsqualitäten, auf die Art, wie sie denken, wie sie fühlen, wie sie Neigungen haben, intensiv abhängig sind von denen, die vor ihnen hingestorben sind und die im Leben in Beziehungen zu ihnen gestanden haben oder zu denen sie irgendwelche Beziehung selbst noch nach dem Tode herstellen, was ja unter Umständen geschehen kann, aber schwieriger ist.

Ein gewisser Teil der Weltenordnung, des Menschheitsfortschrittes beruht durchaus darauf, daß die Toten inspirierend in das Leben der Erdenmenschen hereinwirken. Ja, in den Instinkten der Menschen liegt durchaus eine Ahnung von diesem Hereinwirken, eine Ahnung davon, daß das so sein muß. Und das kann man sehen, wenn man beachtet jenes Leben, das früher namentlich verbreitet war und das jetzt im Ersterben ist, weil die Menschheit im Verlaufe ihrer Entwikkelung zu immer anderen, neuen Lebensformen vorschreitet. Die Menschen ahnten früher, wo sie überhaupt mehr von der realen Wirklichkeit der geistigen Welten geahnt haben, viel mehr, welche Notwendigkeiten für das Gesamtleben bestehen; sie wußten, die Lebenden brauchen die Toten, brauchen bis in ihre Gewohnheiten herein die Impulse der Toten. Was hat man getan? Denken Sie zurück an frühere Zeiten, wo in ganz weiten Lebens-Menschenkreisen es so war, daß der Vater gesorgt hat, daß der Sohn sein Geschäft übernahm, daß der Sohn fortwirkte in derselben Weise. Wenn der Vater dann längst tot war, dann war durch die physische Welt, dadurch, daß der Sohn in den Bahnen des Vaters geblieben ist, ein Vermittlungsband geschaffen, so daß eine Verwandtschaft bestand in der Betätigung des Sohnes zu der Betätigung des Vaters, und der Vater konnte fortwirken in dem Sohne. Darauf beruhte vieles im Leben. Und wenn ganze Stände einen großen Wert darauf legen, daß sich innerhalb der Stände oder innerhalb der Familien dieser Stände dies oder jenes Reale forterbt, so beruht das darauf, daß geahnt wird die Notwendigkeit: In die Lebensgewohnheiten der Späteren müssen die Lebensgewohnheiten der Früheren hinübergreifen, wenn diese Lebensgewohnheiten der Früheren soweit gereift sind, daß sie von ihnen herkommen erst, nachdem die Betreffenden durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind; denn da werden sie erst reif.

Diese Dinge hören ja auf, wie Sie wissen, indem das Menschengeschlecht fortschreitet, und eine Zeit kann man heranrücken sehen, in der diese Erbschaften, diese konservativen Verhältnisse keine Rolle mehr spielen werden. Die physischen Bande werden nicht mehr da sein können in derselben Weise wie früher. Dafür müssen aber um so mehr die Menschen aus den geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen dasjenige herausnehmen, was die Sache ins Bewußtsein herüberträgt, so daß man bewußt anknüpfen kann an solche Lebensgewohnheiten früherer Zeiten, mit denen man rechnen muß, damit das Leben kontinuierlich vorwärtsschreiten kann. Wir leben jetzt in einer Übergangszeit seit dem Beginn der fünften nachatlantischen Periode, mit der mehr oder weniger das Chaos eingezogen ist. Aber es werden spätere Verhältnisse wieder kommen, wo man in einer viel bewußteren Weise durch Erkenntnis der geisteswissenschaftlichen Wahrheiten an das Frühere anknüpfen wird. Unbewußt haben es die Leute schon getan, instinktiv. Aber dasjenige, was heute noch instinktiv ist, muß in Bewußtsein umgewandelt werden. Man achtet zwar nicht darauf, wer aber nur Geschichte geistig studieren kann, der würde schon bemerken, wenn er nur auf die realen Verhältnisse ginge und nicht auf die schauderhaften Abstraktionen, in denen heute gerade die sogenannten Geisteswissenschaften arbeiten, daß, was in einem Zeitalter gelehrt wird, den Charakter trägt, daß man gewissermaßen unbewußt, instinktiv anknüpft an das, was die Verstorbenen hereinströmen lassen in die Gegenwart. Wird man einmal verstehen, die großen pädagogischen Gedanken wirklich zu studieren, die in einem Zeitalter von den Trägern der Pädagogik verbreitet werden - von den wahren, nicht von denjenigen, die Scharlatane sind —, dann wird man sehen, daß diese tragenden pädagogischen Gedanken herrühren von dem gemeinsamen Übertragen der Gewohnheiten derjenigen, die vor einer gewissen Zeit gestorben sind, die ihre Gewohnheiten hereinfließen lassen.

So ist es ein viel intimeres Zusammensein noch mit dem Menschen, was die Toten haben; denn das, was in den astralischen Leib hereinspielt, greift mehr noch in das Innere, als das, was in den Ätherleib hereinspielt. Es ist ein noch viel intimeres Zusammensein mit dem Menschen, was die wirklichen Toten haben, als das, was die ätherischen Leiber haben oder irgendwelche elementarischen Wesen anderer Art. Daraus ersehen Sie aber, daß die Folgezeit des Menschenlebens immer durch die vorhergehende Zeit bedingt wird, daß die vorhergehende Zeit in der folgenden Zeit immer weiter drinnen lebt. Denn eigentlich, so sonderbar dies klingt, so recht reif, um unmittelbar auf andere Menschen zu wirken, indem wir in ihr Inneres hineinwirken, werden wir erst nach unserem Tode. Das, was wir im Leben nicht sollten: unsere eigenen Gewohnheiten einem anderen Menschen aufdrängen, der mündig geworden ist — ich meine jetzt geistig mündig geworden ist, nicht staatlich -, das ist aber recht und entspricht den Bedingungen der Fortentwickelung der Menschheit, nachdem wir selber durch die Pforte des Todes geschritten sind. Außer allem übrigen, was im fortschreitenden Karma und in den allgemeinen Gesetzen der Inkarnation enthalten ist, finden diese Dinge statt. Und wenn Sie nach den geheimen Ursachen fragen, warum die Menschen, sagen wir, jetzt dies oder jenes tun, so werden Sie bei vielem - allerdings nicht bei allem - finden, daß sie es tun aus dem Grunde, weil gewisse Impulse von denjenigen herunterfließen, die vor zwanzig, dreißig Jahren gestorben sind, oder die vor noch längerer Zeit gestorben sind. Das sind die geheimen, aber konkreten Zusammenhänge zwischen der physischen und der geistigen Welt. Denn nicht nur für uns selber reift etwas heran in demjenigen, was wir durch die Pforte des Todes tragen, sondern auch für die übrige Welt. Aber es wird erst von einem bestimmten Momente ab wirklich reif, auf andere zu wirken. Aber es wird auch immer reifer und reifer. Und ich bitte Sie, beachten Sie jetzt, daß ich nicht rede von Äußerlichkeiten, sondern von innerem, realem spirituellem Wirken. Wenn irgend jemand sich erinnert an die Gewohnheiten eines verstorbenen Vaters oder Großvaters und diese Gewohnheiten aus der Erinnerung auf dem physischen Plane wiederum ausführt: das meine ich nicht, das ist etwas anderes. Ich meine wirklich die inspirierten, also für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein nicht wahrnehmbaren Einflüsse, die sich geltend machen innerhalb der Gewohnheiten, innerhalb unseres intimsten Charakters. Und vieles in unserem Leben beruht darauf, daß wir uns sogar gezwungen sehen, von gutgemeinten Einflüssen, die von den Toten kommen, da oder dort uns frei zu machen. Ja, wir erkämpfen uns manches an innerer Freiheit dadurch, daß wir uns nach der einen oder nach der anderen Seite frei machen müssen. Innere Seelenkämpfe, deren Ursache der Mensch oftmals nicht kennt, werden ihm verständlich werden, wenn er sie in dem Lichte betrachtet, das aus solchen Erkenntnissen herkommt. Wenn man ein triviales Wort gebrauchen will, so kann man sagen: Es rumort die Vergangenheit, es rumoren die Seelen der Vergangenheit wirklich in unserem Inneren.

Diese Dinge sind einfach Wahrheiten, in die wir hineinschauen durch das geistige Anschauen. Nur haben die Menschen, namentlich im heutigen Leben - es war nicht immer so, wer Geschichte geistig studieren kann, weiß es -, ein ganz besonderes Verhältnis zu diesen Wahrheiten: sie fürchten sich nämlich davor, sie fürchten sich vor der Erkenntnis der Wahrheiten; sie haben eine heillose Angst, keine bewußte, aber eine unbewußte Angst. Und diese unbewußte Angst vor der Erkenntnis, wie man drinnensteht in der Welt, wie die geheimnisvollen Zusammenhänge sind nicht nur zwischen Seele und Seele hier in der Welt, sondern zwischen Seele und Seele hier und in der anderen Welt, die hält die Menschen zurück. Es ist das ein Teil dessen, was sie zurückhält instinktiv von der Geisteswissenschaft. Sie fürchten sich, die Wirklichkeit kennenzulernen. Sie ahnen nur nicht, wie sie dadurch, daß sie die Wirklichkeit nicht kennenlernen wollen, störend eingreifen in den ganzen Weltengang und dadurch selbstverständlich störend vor allen Dingen in das Leben, das dann zu durchleben ist zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, wo diese Verhältnisse durchschaut werden müssen.

Noch reifer — dasjenige, was sich fortentwickelt, wird immer reifer und reifer - wird das, was in uns lebt, wenn es nicht mehr bloß Inspiration zu sein braucht, sondern wenn es Intuition in dem Sinne, wie ich das Wort in «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» gebrauche, sein kann. Aber Intuition kann nur ein Wesen sein, welches überhaupt nur, sagen wir, einen «Geistleib» hat, um das paradoxe Wort zu gebrauchen. Der Mensch kann erst intuitiv in diesem Sinne wirken auf andere Wesen, also auch auf die Wesen, die hier noch im physischen Leben verkörpert sind, wenn er seinen astralischen Leib abgelegt hat, wenn er selbst ganz der geistigen Welt angehört, also Jahrzehnte nach seinem Tode. Dann kann er auch durch Intuition, nicht mehr bloß, wie ich es geschildert habe, durch Inspiration, herunterwirken auf die anderen Menschen. Dann wirkt er erst auf geistige Art als Ich, das jetzt in der geistigen Welt ist, in die Iche hinein. Früher hat er in den astralischen Leib inspirierend hereingewirkt oder auf dem Umweg durch den Ätherleib in den Ätherleib des Menschen. Als Ich kann auch unmittelbar, und natürlich zugleich durch die anderen vermittelt, derjenige wirken, der schon Jahrzehnte tot ist. Und da ist dann des Menschen Individualität reif geworden, nicht bloß in die Gewohnheiten der Menschen sich hineinzuleben, sondern sogar jetzt in die Anschauungen! Vielleicht ist dieses für die heutige vorurteilsvolle Empfindung sogar eine unangenehme, eine recht unsympathische Wahrheit; aber es ist eben eine Wahrheit. Unsere Anschauungen, die in unserem Ich entstehen, sind immerzu unter dem Einflusse derjenigen, die lange verstorben sind. In unseren Anschauungen leben diejenigen, die lange verstorben sind. Dadurch aber wird die Kontinuität der Entwickelung aus der geistigen Welt heraus aufrechterhalten. Es ist dies eine Notwendigkeit, sonst würde der Faden der Anschauungen fortwährend abreißen.

Verzeihen Sie, daß ich an dieser Stelle etwas Persönliches einschalte; aber dieses Persönliche schalte ich durchaus, ich möchte sagen, aus objektiven Gründen ein, denn nur durch die konkrete Anschauung kann eine solche Wahrheit ganz verständlich werden. Anschauungen sollte eigentlich niemand vorbringen so, daß er sie als seine persönlichen Meinungen, wenn sie auch noch so ehrlich errungen sind, vorbringt. Daher wird keiner, der ganz ehrlich auf dem Boden des Okkultismus steht, der erfahren ist in den Bedingungen der Geisteswissenschaft, der Welt seine Meinungen oktroyieren, sondern er wird alles tun, um ja nicht seine Meinungen der Welt unmittelbar zu oktroyieren; denn dasjenige, was er unter dem Einflusse seines persönlichen Gestimmtseins sich als Meinungen erwirbt, das wird erst dreißig, vierzig Jahre nach seinem Tode wirken dürfen. Da wirkt es dann so, daß es auf denselben Wegen in Seelen hineingelangt, auf denen die Impulse der Zeitgeister, der Archai, in die Seelen hineingelangen. Da ist es so reif geworden, daß es wirklich wirken kann, daß es dem objektiven Gang der Dinge entspricht. Daher ist es notwendig, daß derjenige, der auf dem Boden des Okkultismus steht, vermeidet, persönlich Proselyten zu machen, persönlich für seine Meinungen Anhänger zu werben.

Dasjenige, was heute allgemein Sitte ist, daß einer, nachdem er seine Meinung erworben hat, nicht schnell genug für seine Meinung Propaganda machen kann, das könnte von dem wirklichen praktizierenden Geisteswissenschafter nicht angestrebt werden. Und da komme ich mit dem Persönlichen: Es ist wirklich nicht ein Zufall, sondern etwas, was mit meinem Leben notwendig zusammenhängt, daß ich nicht damit begonnen habe, meine Ansichten niederzuschreiben, der Welt mitzuteilen, sondern geschrieben habe «Goethes Weltanschauung» ganz im Geiste und im Sinne der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, um nicht anzuknüpfen an einen Lebenden. Auch wenn man selbst dieser Lebende ist, so könnte einem das niemals eine wirkliche Berechtigung geben, Geisteswissenschaft in diesem Umfange zu lehren, wie das von mir versucht wird, sondern das ist ein notwendiges Glied, sich ganz in den objektiven Gang der Weltenentwickelung hineinzuversetzen. Ich habe also nicht meine Erkenntnistheorie geschrieben, sondern Goethes Erkenntnistheorie, die Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltauschauung und so fort. Sie sehen daraus, wie gewissermaßen die Entwickelung des Menschen weitergeht, wie reif werden diejenigen Dinge, die der Mensch sich hier erwirbt, nicht nur für sein eigenes im Karmaweg fortschreitendes Leben, sondern wie es auch immer reifer wird für die Welt, und wie wir fortfahren zu wirken auf die Welt, indem nach einer bestimmten Zeit wir ausgereift sind, Imaginationen, nach weiterer Zeit Inspirationen in die Gewohnheiten der Menschen hineinzuschicken. Nach einer noch längeren Zeit erst sind wir bereit und reif, Intuitionen in das Intimste des menschlichen Lebens, in die Anschauungen, hineinzusenden. Man darf durchaus nicht glauben, daß unsere Anschauungen aus dem Nichts herauswachsen, oder daß sie in Jedem Zeitalter neu entstehen. Sie wachsen aus dem Boden heraus, in dem unsere Seele wurzelt, der aber eigentlich identisch ist mit dem Wirken längst verstorbener Menschen.

Ich glaube, daß durch das Wissen von solchen Tatsachen des Menschen Leben wirklich jene Bereicherung erfahren muß, die es braucht nach dem ganzen Charakter und Sinn unseres gegenwärtigen Zeitalters und der nächsten Zukunft. Und vieles Alte ist morsch geworden, und Neues muß sich entwickeln, wie ich es öfter schon ausgeführt habe. In dieses Neue hinein kann aber der Mensch nicht kommen ohne die Impulse, die ihm durch die Geisteswissenschaft werden. Auf die Empfindungen zum Weltenall und zu den übrigen Wesen des Weltenalls, die wir uns aneignen durch die Geisteswissenschaft, darauf kommt es an, daß also unser Leben anders gestimmt wird durch die Geisteswissenschaft, als es vorher gestimmt war. Lebendig soll durch Geisteswissenschaft für uns dasjenige werden, worinnen wir immer sind, was aber zu erkennen die Menschheit berufen sein wird, je weiter sich diese Menschheit durch die fünfte, sechste und siebente nachatlantische Periode noch während der Erdenzeit entwickeln wird.

Diese Dinge, die zusammenhängen mit der Bereicherung und Belebung des Weltgefühles des Menschen, des vertieften Darinnenstehens im Leben, diese Vorstellungen wollte ich nun heute vermitteln; das ist dasjenige, was ich in Ihren Herzen anregen wollte, nachdem wir wiederum nach einiger Zeit beisammen sein durften, und ich hoffe, daß wir noch öfter hier zusammensein können, um ähnliche Dinge zu besprechen, damit durch unsere Seelen die durch die Geisteswissenschaft angestrebte Entwickelung der Menschheit mitbewirkt werden kann.

The Connection Between the Living and the Dead

The goal of our spiritual scientific endeavors is to form ideas about how we as human beings live together with spiritual worlds in a similar way to how we are connected to the physical world through our physical bodies, their experiences, and perceptions. Now, in our reflections, we can already draw on familiar things that have come to our minds over the years. We know that the next world, which lies behind the world of our sensory perceptions, toward which our will impulses, mediated by the physical body, and our actions in the physical world are directed, is the elementary world. One could also give it another name. However, we can only gain clear ideas of these supersensible worlds if we allow ourselves to become a little involved in their peculiarities, if we try to recognize what they are for us as human beings. In fact, our entire life between birth and death, but also the life that then unfolds between death and a new birth, depends on our interaction with the various worlds that surround us.

The elementary world is to be understood as that which can only be perceived through what we call imagination. This elementary world can therefore also be called the imaginative world. In ordinary human life, people cannot bring their imaginative perceptions from the elementary world to consciousness under normal circumstances. However, this does not mean that these imaginations do not exist or that we are not in contact with the elementary world at any moment of our waking or sleeping life and do not receive imaginations from it. These imaginations really flow continuously within us, unnoticed. And just as we have sensations of color and light when we open our eyes or offer our ears to the outside world, just as we have perceptions of sound, so we have continuous impressions of the elemental world, which now produce imaginations in our etheric body. These differ from ordinary thoughts in that, in ordinary, everyday human thoughts, only the human head is involved as an instrument of processing and experiencing; in imaginations, however, we are involved with almost our entire organism, but precisely with our etheric organism. These imaginations, which we can call unconscious and which only come to consciousness through trained occult perception, are constantly at work in our etheric organism.

Even if these imaginations do not enter our consciousness directly or immediately in everyday life, they are not meaningless to us, but are actually much more important for our entire life than sensory perceptions; for we are much more intensely and intimately connected with our imaginations than with sensory perceptions. As physical human beings, we receive few imaginations from the mineral kingdom. We receive more imaginations through what we develop in our coexistence with the plant world and the animal world; but by far the greatest part of what lives in our etheric body as imaginations comes from our relationship to our fellow human beings and from everything that follows for our life from our relationship to our fellow human beings. Yes, basically our entire relationship to our fellow human beings, the whole way we relate to them, is based on imaginations that always arise from the way we encounter another person. However, as I have already indicated, this does not manifest itself as imagination in ordinary consciousness; but it does manifest itself in the sympathies and antipathies that play such a large and comprehensive role in our lives, which we develop to a lesser or greater degree toward those who approach us as human beings in the world, in vague feelings, in only hinted inclinations or aversions, in everything that then develops into friendship, into love, which can intensify to such an extent that we believe we cannot live without this or that person.

All this is based on the imaginations that are always evoked in our etheric body through living together with our fellow human beings. And we actually always carry something in our lives that cannot quite be called memory, because it is something much more real than memory; we carry within us these, let us say, heightened memories, imaginations that we have received from all the impressions of the people we have been with, but which we also continue to receive. We carry them all within us, and they basically form a good part of what we call our inner life, not the inner life that lives in distinct memories, but the inner life that asserts itself in an overall feeling, in an overall mood, in an overall view of the world and of our coexistence with the world. We could only pass coldly by our fellow human beings, live with them, if we did not develop an imaginative life in coexistence with other beings, namely with other human beings.

What asserts itself here and what we must pay particular attention to as belonging especially to the elementary world and our etheric life is what we call the interest of our soul in the environment. What lies primarily in the forces of our etheric body asserts itself in that we are immediately captivated by an interest in a person in certain cases. Such an interest, as it develops between one human being and another, is based on very specific relationships that arise between one etheric human being and another and which cause the imaginations to flow back and forth. We live with these imaginations and with interests whose effect, strength, and so on we often cannot account for, or can only account for in the most vague terms, which we probably do not even notice because our everyday life is not awakened but runs more or less dully.

With all this, we belong to the elemental world. We belong to this elemental world in such a way that we really have our own etheric body from this world, which is the instrument for communication with this elemental world. But not only do we, through our etheric body, establish relationships with other etheric bodies belonging to physical beings, we are also related through our etheric body to spiritual beings of an elemental nature, and these are precisely those that can evoke imaginations, unconscious or conscious, in us humans. We are always in relationship with a multitude of elemental beings. This is what distinguishes human beings from one another: that they have relationships, one with a certain number of elemental beings, another with other elemental beings, but in such a way that, for example, the relationships of one human being to certain elemental beings can coincide with the relationships of another human being to the same elemental beings. We must simply note that while we are, in a sense, related to a large number of elemental beings, we have particularly strong relationships with one elemental being that is, in a sense, the counterpart of our own etheric body. One could say that our own etheric body has intimate relationships with a particular etheric being. And just as our etheric body—what we call our etheric body from birth to death—develops its special relationships with the physical world through its integration with the physical body, so this etheric being, which is, in a sense, the counter-image, the counter-pole to our own etheric body, mediates our relationships with the entire elemental world, with the surrounding cosmic-elemental world.

So we look at an elemental world to which we ourselves belong through our etheric body, with which we are in relationship, and indeed in concrete relationships with particular elemental beings; and within this elemental world we therefore get to know beings who are truly just as real as human beings, as animals here in the physical world, but who do not incarnate, but only to etherization, whose densest physicality is precisely etheric physicality. Just as we walk around here among physical human beings, so we also walk around constantly among such elemental beings. Others are more distant from us, but they in turn have relationships with other human beings; but a certain number are particularly close to us, and one is most intimately related to us and mediates our communication with the cosmic-elemental world.

Such beings as these elemental entities are what we ourselves are in the very first period after we have passed through the gate of death, when we still carry our etheric body with us for a few days. There we have, in a sense, become such an elemental being ourselves. We have often described this process of passing through the gate of death. But the more closely we examine it, the more precise our imaginations become. For what we receive as impressions immediately after a person passes through the gate of death lives in our imaginations and asserts itself as imagination. Now, on closer examination, it becomes apparent that a certain interaction takes place immediately after death between our etheric body and its etheric counterpart. The fact that our etheric body is taken from us a few days after death is essentially due to the fact that our etheric body is, in a sense, drawn to and absorbed by its etheric counterpart and becomes one with it, so that we actually shed our etheric body a few days after death, handing it over, as it were, to our etheric counterpart. Through the removal of our etheric body from our cosmic counterpart, very special relationships now emerge between that which has been taken from us and the other elemental beings with whom we have been in relationship during our life. It is really what emerges as an interrelationship between what our etheric body has become together with its counterpart and the other elemental beings that were our companions from birth to death, a kind of interrelationship that could be compared to that between the sun and a planetary system belonging to a sun. In a sense, our etheric body with its cosmic counterpart forms a kind of sun, and the other elemental beings surround this sun like a kind of planetary system. And through this interaction, those forces are generated which, in the right way and slowly developing, integrate what our etheric body can carry into the elemental world. What is usually called dissolution in abstract terms is, I would say, essentially an effect of the forces that play out through this solar-planetary system that we have left behind. Gradually, what we have acquired for our etheric body in the course of our life, what we have appropriated to this etheric body, becomes a member of the spiritual world; it weaves itself into the forces of the spiritual world, and we must be absolutely clear that every thought, every idea, every feeling that we develop, however hidden it may remain, has meaning for the spiritual world, that it enters the spiritual world with our etheric body when the cohesion is broken by passing through the gate of death, and becomes a member of this spiritual world. We do not live in vain. The fruits of our life, as we take them up into what we work out in our thoughts, what we experience in our feelings, are incorporated into the cosmos. This is something we must take up into our feelings, into our sensibility, if we want to behave in the right sense in the spiritual scientific movement. For it is not by merely knowing certain things that one is a spiritual scientist, but by feeling oneself inside the spiritual world through knowledge, by feeling oneself to be a member of this spiritual world in a very specific way, by knowing, as it were, that What you are thinking now has meaning for the entire universe, because when you die, it will be handed over to this universe in the appropriate form.

What is handed over to the universe in the manner described can be encountered in one form or another after a person's death. And some of the ways in which the dead are present to those who remain behind in life are based on the fact that the etheric human being, who has actually been separated from the real human individuality, sends his imaginations back to the living. If the living person is sensitive enough to this, or is in some abnormal state, or has prepared themselves for it in a normal way through appropriate spiritual training, then the effects of what has been given over to the spiritual world by the dead person can also appear in the living person in a conscious form as effects of an imaginative nature.

Now, however, a connection remains after death between what is actual human individuality, which has separated from the etheric, and between this etheric, a connection that really means interaction. This is most clearly noticed when, through spiritual training, one is able to have real communication with this or that dead person. Then a certain kind of communication can take place in which the dead person first transfers to his etheric body what he wants to let come to us who are still here in the physical world; for it is only by transferring it to his etheric body, by making inscriptions in his etheric body, so to speak, that we can have perceptions of the dead in what are called imaginations as long as we are here in our physical bodies. As soon as one really has imaginations, then—let me use this trivial, overly realistic expression—the etheric body of the dead person is the switch. We must not imagine that we need to have less warm relationships with the dead because there must be a switch. Just as a person who encounters us in the external world conveys his form to us through the image he evokes in us through our eyes, so this mediation through the etheric body means something very similar. We see, as it were, what the dead person wants to let us see by obtaining it indirectly through his etheric body. This etheric body is outside him, but it is in such an intimate relationship with him that he can inscribe what lives in him into this etheric body, and we can read it inside as imaginations. However, if someone who is spiritually trained wants to connect with a dead person in this way through an etheric body, it is necessary that relationships have been established either in the last life between birth and death or in previous incarnations, which have affected the soul of the person still living here to such an extent that the imaginations can make an impression on them. This can only be the case if there was a direct emotional interest in the dead person themselves in a very specific, intense way. Emotional interests must always be the mediators between the living and the dead if communication is to take place, whether it is noticed or not—we will discuss the latter case in a moment—emotional interests of such a nature that we really carry something of the dead person within us, so to speak, that the dead person has, in a certain sense, formed at least a part of our own experience. Only the spiritually trained can create a substitute for this in a certain sense. They can create a substitute by allowing themselves to be influenced by the writings or something else in which the individuality of the deceased lives on. But they must have acquired a certain practice of relating to an individuality, insofar as this individuality is transferred into the writing, lives in the writing, or they must have the ability to actively empathize with the feelings of those who have survived physically, to participate in their pain, in all the feelings that the other survivors have for the deceased. By taking these concrete feelings of sympathy, which flow over from the dead into their loved ones, continuing to live on and remain, into his own sympathy, he can prepare his own soul to read in the imaginations indicated.

Now we must be clear that noticing these imaginations, which play over from the etheric body, certainly depends on spiritual training or on some other circumstances, but that what is not noticed by human beings is no less present, and one may say: The people living here in the physical world are not only surrounded by the elemental forces as imaginations originating from the physical body of a living human being, but our etheric body is constantly permeated by imaginations that we take in, even if we do not notice them, which originate from those who were connected to us in some way and who have passed through the gate of death before us. Just as we are connected in physical life as physical bodies with the air surrounding us, so too are we connected with the entire elemental world and also with everything in the elemental world that belongs to dead human beings. We will never get to know our human life if we do not gain insight into these relationships. However, these relationships are so intimate, so subtle, that they remain quite unnoticed by most people. But who would deny that, after all, the human being is not always the same between birth and death?

Just look back at your life, and you will notice that even if you think you have had a seemingly consistent life, you have made many twists and turns, and this or that has happened. Even if it has not immediately set our lives on a completely different course — which may be the case in some instances — it has nevertheless enriched our lives in a pleasant or painful way in this or that direction, bringing us into different circumstances in this or that direction. We know that when we come to a different region, the different composition of the air can affect our health. These different mental states that we enter into in the course of our lives stem from the influences of the elemental world and, to no small extent, from the influences emanating from the dead who were previously related to us. Many people meet a friend or some other person in their lives with whom they enter into this or that relationship, to whom they must render this or that favor, or perhaps even give a rebuke or criticism. The fact that they have been brought together requires the influence of certain forces. And those who recognize the occult connections in the world know that when two people are brought together, sometimes one, sometimes several of those who have passed through the gate of death before us are involved in this bringing together. This does not make our lives any less free. No one who does not want to be foolish will say: How can man be free when he is forced to eat? — Nor is it true to say that we are unfree because our soul continually receives influences from the elemental world in the manner described. But really, just as we are connected with heat and cold, with what becomes our food, with the air around us, so too are we connected with the other elemental world, but above all with that which comes from the dead who have gone before us. And one can truly say: Man's work for his fellow human beings does not cease when he passes through the gate of death, and through his etheric body, with which he himself remains connected, he sends his imaginations into those with whom he has been connected. Actually, this world we are referring to is, even though it remains unnoticed in everyday life for good reasons, much more real for our human life than the one we usually call real. So much for today about this elemental world.

Another realm that is constantly around us and to which we belong just as much as to the elementary world is what we can call the soul world. The name is not important. When we are awake, we are always connected to the elementary world. When we are asleep, our body lying in bed and our etheric body are connected to this elementary world indirectly, when we are in our ego and astral body outside the physical and etheric bodies. But we are in the most direct connection with the higher world I am now referring to, only it cannot come to consciousness in ordinary life. The connection exists in sleep, when we have our astral body freely around us, but also in waking life, although there the connection is mediated by the forces that the physical body has drawn to itself, so it is not direct. Again, in this world—let us call it the soul world, the medieval philosophers called it the heavenly world—we find beings that are just as real, more real than we are during our lives between birth and death, but which do not need to be embodied in a physical body, nor even in an etheric body, but which live in their lowest physical form in what we are accustomed to calling the astral body. We are in close contact with a large number of such purely astral beings throughout our lives and after our death. Again, human beings differ from one another in that different people are related to different astral beings. It may be that two people are related to common astral beings—each of them in turn to others—but they both have common relationships with one or more astral beings.

We humans belong to this world of astral beings from the moment we pass through the gate of death and shed our etheric body. With our individuality, we are then such beings in the soul world, and our immediate surroundings are beings of the soul world. We are related to what is contained in the elemental world in such a way that we can stimulate in it what evokes imaginations in the manner described. But we then have the elemental world in a certain way outside of ourselves; it is, we might also say, beneath us. It is more a part that we use to communicate with the rest of the world; but we ourselves belong directly to the world that we have now called the spiritual world. We interact with the beings of the spiritual world, including those human beings who have passed through the gate of death and, after a few days, have laid down their etheric bodies. Just as we are constantly receiving influences from the elemental world, even though we do not notice it, so too do we constantly receive influences directly into our astral body from this spiritual world that I am now describing. Only the direct influences we have—we have already learned about the indirect ones on our way through the etheric body—the direct influences can be inspirations.

Now we will understand how such an influence from the soul world affects us when I first touch on how this influence appears to the spiritually trained person who is capable of receiving inspirations from the spiritual world. It appears to him in such a way that he can only bring these inspirations to consciousness if he can, as it were, take something of the essence that wants to inspire him into himself, something of the qualities, the life tendency, and the direction of life of this essence. If it is a matter of the spiritually trained person developing conscious relationships, not merely indirectly through the etheric body, but in this direct way through inspirations from a dead person, then it is necessary that he carry within his soul even more than what can be brought about by interest and involvement. The spiritually trained person must, in a sense, at least for a short time, be able to transform himself in such a way that he takes on something of the habits, the nature of the being, let us say, of the human being with whom he wants to communicate. He must be able to live in such a way that he can say to himself: You have adopted his habits to such an extent that you could do what he could do, feel what he could feel, and want what he could want; the word “could” is important here! The possibility must exist. One must therefore be able to be even more intimate with the dead. For those who are spiritually trained, there are all kinds of means to achieve this, if the dead person himself allows it. However, one must be aware that those beings who now belong to what we call the spiritual world are really in a completely different relationship to the world than we humans here in our physical bodies, and that there are therefore very special conditions for communicating with these beings. and therefore there are also very special conditions for communicating with the dead as long as they are in their astral bodies, that is, as astral beings only. Attention can be drawn to individual points in particular. What we humans develop here for our life in the physical body through this or that relationship with other people, which arises precisely through earthly life, takes on a different kind of interest for the dead. Here on earth we develop sympathies and antipathies, and let us be quite clear about this: such sympathies and antipathies as we develop while we live in the physical body are influenced by our existence as mediated through the physical body and its conditions. They are influenced by our vanity and our egoism. Let us be clear about how much we develop certain kinds of relationships with this or that person out of vanity, out of egoism, out of other things that are based precisely on our physical life here on earth. We love people, we hate people. We certainly care little about the reasons for our love and hate, our sympathies and antipathies; indeed, we often avoid worrying too much about these sympathies and antipathies for the simple reason that something quite unpleasant would usually come of it. If we were to investigate the fact that we do not love this or that person, for example, we would sometimes have to attribute so much prejudice, vanity, and other characteristics to ourselves that we would be afraid to attribute such things to ourselves. And so we do not bring ourselves to clarity as to why we hate this or that person. But with love, it is often very similar. This gives rise to interests, sympathies, and antipathies that really only have meaning for our earthly life. But we act on the basis of everything that develops as an interest, and we organize our lives on the basis of everything that develops as an interest.

It would be completely wrong to believe that the dead have as much influence on the ephemeral interests, sympathies, and antipathies that arise under the influence of our physical earthly life as we earthly beings do. The dead really need to see these things from a completely different perspective. And if we then ask ourselves how we are influenced in our assessment of our fellow human beings by our subjective feelings, by what lies in our interest, in our vanity, in our egoism, and so on, we must not believe that a dead person can have any interest in our thus colored relationships to other people and to all that flows from such interests in the form of actions. But on the other hand, we must not believe that the dead cannot see what lives in our souls. For it truly lives in our souls. The dead can see it, the dead participate in it; but the dead see something else as well, the dead have a completely different assessment of human beings than the living. They see people in a completely different way, so to speak. And there is one very special main thing: how the dead see the people who are here on earth. And let us not believe that the dead have no keen interest in human beings. They do, because the human world is a member of the whole cosmos; our life belongs to it. And just as we are interested in the lower realms in the physical world, so the dead are intensely interested in the human world, and they send their impulses into it; through the living, they influence the world. We ourselves have just given an example of how the dead continue to have an effect after they have passed through the gate of death.

But the dead see one thing above all else. They see how there is a human being who follows impulses of hatred, who hates this or that person out of mere personal intentions; the dead see that. But the dead person, according to their way of seeing, according to what they can know, must let the proportion of Ahriman's influence on human beings, for example, influence them precisely; the dead person sees Ahriman working on human beings. And on the other hand, if the human being here is vain, they see Lucifer working on them. The essential thing is that the dead see human beings in connection with the Ahrimanic-Luciferic world. This removes from the dead what often completely colors our judgment of human beings. We give this or that person, whom we must condemn, one or the other direction; we attribute to them what we find reprehensible in them. The dead person does not immediately attribute this to the person, but looks at how they have been led astray by Ahriman or Lucifer. This brings about what we might call a dampening of the sharply differentiated feelings we have for this or that person in our physical earthly life. For the dead, it is much more a kind of general love for humanity. Do not think that this prevents the dead from criticizing, that is, from seeing evil in the right way. They do see it; only they can trace it back to its origins, to the connections.

But everything I have described to you here also means that the trained person can only consciously come close to a dead person by truly freeing themselves from personal feelings of sympathy and antipathy toward individual people, by not allowing themselves to become dependent in their soul on personal feelings of sympathy and antipathy. Just think about it: if a trained clairvoyant approached a dead person, whoever that may be, so that the latter's inspirations entered his consciousness, and this living person were to pursue someone with a very special hatred, a hatred that had its origin solely in personal circumstances. Yes, just as we avoid fire with our hands, so the dead avoid such a person who can hate in this way for personal reasons! They cannot approach them because the hatred acts on them like fire. In order to enter into conscious relationships with the dead, one must, like them, be able to free oneself in a certain way from personal likes and dislikes. You will therefore also understand that the entire relationship between the dead and the living, insofar as it is based on inspirations which, even if they are not noticed, are always there, always living in the astral body of the human being, so that the human being also stands in this direct relationship with the dead, depends on the way we are disposed here on earth in our lives. If we are hostile toward people, if we take no interest in our fellow human beings, especially if we do not have an unbiased interest in our fellow human beings, then the dead cannot reach us, no matter how they try; they cannot enter our souls in the right way, or, if they must, it is made particularly difficult for them, and they can only do so through suffering and pain. This coexistence of the dead with the living is a very complicated matter indeed. But you can see from this that human beings, by inspiring those living on the physical plane after their death, continue to have an effect beyond the time when they have passed through the gates of death. And it is absolutely true that those who live on Earth at any given time especially with regard to their inner habitual qualities, the way they think, feel, and have inclinations, are intensely dependent on those who died before them and who were related to them in life or to whom they themselves establish some kind of relationship even after death, which can happen under certain circumstances, but is more difficult.

A certain part of the world order, of human progress, is based entirely on the fact that the dead have an inspiring influence on the lives of people on Earth. Yes, there is definitely an inkling of this influence in human instincts, an inkling that this must be so. And you can see this if you consider the life that was once widespread and is now dying out because humanity is progressing toward ever new forms of life in the course of its development. In earlier times, when people had a greater sense of the real reality of the spiritual worlds, they had a much better understanding of what is necessary for life as a whole; they knew that the living need the dead, need the impulses of the dead to influence their habits. What has been done? Think back to earlier times, when in very large circles of human life it was customary for the father to ensure that the son took over his business and continued to work in the same way. When the father had long since died, a bond of mediation was created through the physical world, through the son remaining in his father's footsteps, so that a kinship existed between the son's activity and the father's activity, and the father could continue to work in the son. Much in life was based on this. And when entire social classes attach great importance to this or that real thing being passed on within the classes or within the families of these classes, this is based on a sense of necessity: The habits of the former must carry over into the habits of the latter when these habits of the former have matured to such an extent that they come from them only after the persons concerned have passed through the gate of death; for only then do they become mature.

These things cease, as you know, as the human race progresses, and a time can be seen approaching when these inheritances, these conservative conditions, will no longer play a role. The physical bonds will no longer be there in the same way as before. But this means that people must draw all the more from spiritual scientific knowledge that which carries the matter over into consciousness, so that they can consciously connect with the habits of earlier times, which must be reckoned with in order for life to continue to progress. We are now living in a transitional period since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which has brought with it more or less chaos. But later conditions will return, when people will be able to build on the past in a much more conscious way through knowledge of spiritual scientific truths. People have already done this unconsciously, instinctively. But what is still instinctive today must be transformed into consciousness. People do not pay attention to this, but anyone who can study history spiritually would notice, if they looked at the real conditions and not at the appalling abstractions in which the so-called humanities work today, that what is taught in an age has the character of connecting, as it were unconsciously, instinctively, with what the dead allow to flow into the present. Once we understand how to truly study the great pedagogical ideas that are spread in an age by the bearers of pedagogy — by the true ones, not by those the charlatans—then we will see that these fundamental educational ideas originate from the collective transmission of the habits of those who died some time ago, who allow their habits to flow into the present.

Thus, the dead have a much more intimate connection with human beings, for what enters the astral body penetrates even more deeply into the inner being than what enters the etheric body. The real dead have a much more intimate relationship with human beings than the etheric bodies or any other kind of elemental beings. From this you can see that the subsequent period of human life is always conditioned by the preceding period, that the preceding period continues to live on in the subsequent period. For, strange as it may sound, it is only after our death that we become truly mature enough to have a direct effect on other people by working into their inner being. What we should not do in life—imposing our own habits on another human being who has come of age—I mean spiritually, not legally—is right and corresponds to the conditions of the further development of humanity after we ourselves have passed through the gate of death. Apart from everything else contained in progressive karma and the general laws of incarnation, these things take place. And if you ask about the secret causes why people do this or that now, you will find in many cases — though not in all — that they do so because certain impulses flow down from those who died twenty or thirty years ago, or even longer ago. These are the secret but concrete connections between the physical and spiritual worlds. For it is not only for ourselves that something matures in what we carry through the gate of death, but also for the rest of the world. But it only becomes truly ripe to affect others from a certain moment onwards. But it also becomes more and more mature. And I ask you to note that I am not talking about outward appearances, but about inner, real spiritual activity. If someone remembers the habits of a deceased father or grandfather and carries out these habits from memory on the physical plane, that is not what I mean; that is something else. I really mean the inspired influences, which are imperceptible to ordinary consciousness, that assert themselves within our habits, within our most intimate character. And much in our lives is based on the fact that we even feel compelled to free ourselves here and there from well-meaning influences that come from the dead. Yes, we fight for some of our inner freedom by having to free ourselves from one side or the other. Inner soul struggles, the causes of which are often unknown to us, become understandable when we view them in the light that comes from such insights. If one wants to use a trivial expression, one can say: the past is rumbling, the souls of the past are really rumbling within us.

These things are simply truths that we see through spiritual observation. But people, especially in today's life—it was not always so, as anyone who can study history spiritually knows—have a very special relationship to these truths: they are afraid of them, they are afraid of recognizing the truths; they have a hopeless fear, not a conscious fear, but an unconscious fear. And this unconscious fear of knowing how we stand in the world, how the mysterious connections are not only between soul and soul here in the world, but between soul and soul here and in the other world, holds people back. It is part of what instinctively holds them back from spiritual science. They are afraid of getting to know reality. They just don't realize that by not wanting to know reality, they are interfering with the whole course of the world and, of course, with the life that must be lived between death and a new birth, where these relationships must be understood.

Even more mature — that which develops further becomes more and more mature — is what lives within us when it no longer needs to be mere inspiration, but can be intuition in the sense in which I use the word in “How to Know Higher Worlds.” But intuition can only be a being that has, so to speak, a “spiritual body,” to use the paradoxical term. Only when a person has shed their astral body, when they themselves belong entirely to the spiritual world, i.e., decades after their death, can they intuitively influence other beings, including those who are still embodied in physical life. Then they can also work down on other people through intuition, no longer merely through inspiration, as I have described. Only then do they work in a spiritual way as an I that is now in the spiritual world, into the I's. Previously, they worked into the astral body in an inspiring way or indirectly through the etheric body into the etheric body of the human being. As an I, someone who has been dead for decades can also act directly, and at the same time naturally through others. And then the individuality of the human being has matured, not merely in living into the habits of human beings, but even now into their views! Perhaps this is an unpleasant, even quite unsympathetic truth for today's prejudiced sensibility; but it is a truth nonetheless. Our views, which arise in our ego, are constantly under the influence of those who have long since passed away. Those who have long since passed away live on in our views. This maintains the continuity of development from the spiritual world. This is a necessity, otherwise the thread of our views would be constantly broken.

Forgive me for inserting something personal at this point, but I am doing so, I would say, for objective reasons, because only through concrete perception can such a truth become fully understandable. No one should present their perceptions as their personal opinions, no matter how honestly they have been arrived at. Therefore, no one who stands completely honestly on the ground of occultism, who is experienced in the conditions of spiritual science, will impose his opinions on the world, but will do everything possible not to impose his opinions directly on the world; for what he acquires as opinions under the influence of his personal mood will only be able to take effect thirty or forty years after his death. Then it will have an effect in such a way that it will enter souls in the same way that the impulses of the spirit of the times, the archai, enter souls. There it has become so ripe that it can really have an effect, that it corresponds to the objective course of things. Therefore, it is necessary that those who stand on the ground of occultism avoid making proselytes personally, avoiding personally recruiting followers for their opinions.

What is generally customary today, that once someone has formed an opinion, they cannot propagate it quickly enough, cannot be the goal of the true practicing spiritual scientist. And here I come to the personal: it is really no coincidence, but something that is necessarily connected with my life, that I did not begin to write down my views and communicate them to the world, but wrote “Goethe's World View” entirely in the spirit and meaning of Goethe's world view, so as not to tie myself to a living person. Even if one is that living person oneself, that could never give one real justification for teaching spiritual science to the extent that I am attempting to do, but it is a necessary link in order to place oneself completely in the objective course of world development. So I have not written my theory of knowledge, but Goethe's theory of knowledge, the theory of knowledge of Goethe's world view, and so on. You can see from this how, in a sense, human development continues, how the things that human beings acquire here mature, not only for their own lives as they progress along the path of karma, but also how they become ever more mature for the world, and how we continue to work on the world by sending imaginations into people's habits after a certain time, and inspirations after a further time, once we have matured. Only after an even longer period of time are we ready and mature enough to send intuitions into the most intimate sphere of human life, into people's perceptions. One must not believe that our views grow out of nothing, or that they arise anew in every age. They grow out of the soil in which our soul is rooted, which is actually identical with the work of people who have long since died.

I believe that through knowledge of such facts about human beings, life must truly experience the enrichment it needs in accordance with the whole character and meaning of our present age and the near future. Much that is old has become rotten, and something new must develop, as I have often said. However, human beings cannot enter into this new realm without the impulses provided by spiritual science. What is important is that our feelings toward the universe and the other beings in the universe, which we acquire through spiritual science, cause our lives to be attuned differently than they were before. Through spiritual science, what we are always in, but what humanity will be called upon to recognize the further humanity develops through the fifth, sixth, and seventh post-Atlantean epochs during the Earth's time, should become alive for us.

These things, which are connected with the enrichment and enlivenment of the human sense of the world, of standing more deeply within life, these ideas I wanted to convey to you today; that is what I wanted to inspire in your hearts after we were able to be together again after some time, and I hope that we can be together here more often to discuss similar things, so that through our souls we can contribute to the development of humanity that spiritual science strives for.