Outer and Inner Life
GA 208
21 October 1921, Dornach
Translator Unknown
Let us consider a few facts connected with man and his relation to the universe in respect of body, soul and spirit. We have seen that in a certain way man’s experiences between death and a new birth, which were connected with the whole universe, enter his inner life during his earthly existence. We have seen that what we experience before birth or conception in the form of outer experiences, is afterwards contained within us, in our inner life. Let us now consider man’s relation to the universe from another aspect, namely that his experiences between birth and death go with him through the portal of death and become experiences of the new existence through which he passes between death and a new birth. In man we must distinguish what he has (I mean, during his earthly life), to begin with, as his inner life, and what separates from this as a kind of external life.
Inner Life: We may first indicate man’s feelings, the inner content of his feelings between birth and death. This constitutes his real inner life. What he feels in regard to the impressions left upon him by the external world, or in regard to his own inner experiences, his feelings of approval or reproach towards his actions, which are the expressions of his will, all this is something which man more or less settles with his own self during his earthly life. He may allow others to look into it, but the essential thing is the way in which man settles all this with his own self. His experiences in connection with perception are, as we already know from our preceding lectures, not real experiences, but they form a world of semblance which surrounds him. In reality, this world is neither inside nor outside; man participates in it and it becomes his inner world only because he develops thoughts and feelings connected with it and because it stimulates him to this or that action. His attitude towards it is essentially the result of capacities he brings along with him through birth. This attitude towards the external world, also his place in the world, the nation he belongs to by birth, etc., all this depends on his preceding earthly and spiritual life. Consequently it points backwards rather than forwards. But something else must be considered that connects us with the external world. What is rooted in our will and passes over into our actions becomes part of the external world. Everything taking place through our actions brings about a change in the external world. The least thing we do transforms the external world.
We may now say: The external world which we ourselves prepare through our actions is rooted in our will. It is related to us in the same way in which the events during sleep are related to us. With our consciousness, with our ordinary consciousness, we are just as unable to look into the depths of our volitional world, as into the conditions which exist during sleep.
All that really takes place in the sphere of the will thus remains inaccessible to our consciousness. I have often explained this as follows: The whole volitional process which takes place when we move an arm or a hand, the forces which develop in these movements, are not accessible to our consciousness. Yet we see the movement of the hand. We see the changes which we bring about; when we simply move something to another place we see this change through our forces of perception. We may therefore say: Our perceptions enable us to know something about the expressions of our will. The human will and the effects which it produces flow, as it were, into man’s sphere of perceptions.
Let us bear in mind our recent lectures. In these we explained that we have, to begin with, man’s physical body, (see drawing) and then his etheric body. In between lies the weaving world of thought, in so far as it is incorporated in the human organism. Between the etheric and the astral bodies lies the world of feeling, and between the astral body and the sheath of the Ego lies the world of the human will.
Our ordinary consciousness is really unable to distinguish the volitional world from the Ego. For the will is united with the Ego. Everything that takes place in the Ego when it wills or does something, does not enter our ordinary consciousness in a direct way. This lives below the surface of our ordinary consciousness, like the events which take place during sleep.
In our physical body we have sense-organs and these are endowed with perception. This also enables us to perceive the manifestations of our will. The physical body has eyes and ears and through these sense-organs we perceive what comes from the Ego and from the sphere of the will. Man’s perceptions, which constitute his most external part, thus become united with what he experiences through his will and his Ego. (See arrow in drawing.)
Consider the following: The will-processes in the depths of the human organism, which arise whenever we walk a few steps, the forces which induce us to move our legs—all this is not accessible to our ordinary consciousness. After a few steps we see a different environment, or at least we see it from a different standpoint. In this changed aspect, sense-perception gives us something which thought transmits during our ordinary state of consciousness; it gives us a picture of what ordinarily lives in the depths of a waking state of sleep. So that whenever our Ego is filled by will-impulses and these become actions, no matter whether brought about by walking or by taking hold of something, or by any kind of activity, this is experienced through perception. Through our will, we really belong to the external world of our perception. By developing what may thus be observed in connection with the manifestations of our will, we do not reach our real inner being. Although our will streams out of the innermost depths of our being, we grow conscious of it by passing through an external process, or rather a sum of external processes connected with the body. But let us now consider man’s inner life. There is, to begin with, his weaving world of thoughts. The way in which thoughts are active outside in the work does not touch the present subject.
Outwardly, the world of thoughts exists in such a way that it brings certain logical, lawful connections into our perceptions. We classify Nature. We see plants which resemble each other and classify them; we see animals which resemble each other and classify them. We also try to discover the laws of Nature. What we thus unfold, does not really belong to our inner life. All this is science, which we share with every other person. It does not form part of our inner life. Yet we cannot simply assert that everything connected with thought does not form part of our inner life. It suffices to bear in mind that when we see a beautiful landscape (through external perception) and develop thoughts about it, we may recall this picture at any time, even if this memory grows pale. The things connected with the external world therefore become part of our inner world. The same may be said of other experiences connected with the external world, which become thoughts forming part of our inner world. To begin with, these thoughts pervade our etheric body, yet they also unite with feeling, which reaches as far as the astral body.
All this takes place inwardly. The inner side of thought-life, and the life of feeling, really constitute man’s inner world. What we experience in connection with the inner aspect of our thoughts and with our feelings cannot really be sought in an outer world. Whenever we want to know something about the outer world, we must look into us, into our inner life. I have already told you that we may speak with other people and indirectly allow them to look into us, but our inner life is the essential thing. It is possible to distinguish clearly what constitutes external life, through the fact that we constantly bring our inner world into the outer world.
When a train brings us at night from the West to the East of Switzerland, we are in an entirely different environment in the morning and it is our perception which makes us aware of this change. We have brought our inner life with us. It was the same in one place and in the other, perhaps modified by what induced us to turn towards our inner being, by the thoughts which induced us to do so; in fact, by what has become our inner life.
If we want to, we may therefore distinguish quite clearly between that which constitutes man’s real inner life, psychically woven out of thought and feeling and based on reciprocal, rhythmical processes of the etheric and astral bodies, and that which constitutes in a certain sense our external world, psychically woven out of the content of our will and the content of our perception, and bodily woven out of the Ego and the physical body. For we take along with us our physical body, we observe it and see that it enters into different relations with the world. As explained just now, we may distinguish inner and outer life.
This distinction is very important if we want to observe the life which man carries through the portal of death. In a compendious way we may describe how the inner and outer life characterised just now, will behave after death, for we may say that the outside becomes inside, and the inside becomes outside.
In fact, this is the great change which takes place when we die. Outer life becomes inner life. Even as we are now able to feel our soul’s inner being—for we can see that our inner soul-life is woven out of thoughts and feelings and we address this inner being with "I"—so after death all our perceptions connected with our actions become our inner life. But what we now experience as our inner being, the contemplation of everything we did here on earth, is concentrated, as it were, in a point, or rather in a sphere. Everything we did, we carry through death as an inner memory, as pictures of our whole earthly existence. Here we therefore have a complete reversal. For what was outside, what could only be perceived by looking upon our actions, becomes our inner life. Even as now we live in our feelings, in the impressions gained from outside, so after death we live in our actions. Our actions then become our inner life.
After death, we ourselves become what we have done to a person, in the form of good or evil deeds. Such things should not be imagined abstractly, we should not think that a vague kind of Ego slips through death and then changes, or undergoes a slight change, but we ourselves become what we have done, right into the very details. After death, we are each one of our actions. We are each one of our experiences and we address them all with "I".
On the other hand, our inner life becomes an outer life. All our thoughts, the whole life of our feelings, become an external world. Even as we are now surrounded either by the shining sun and the clouds, or at night by the starry sky and its movements, so after death we are surrounded by the external world of our thoughts and feelings; that is, everything that now constitutes our innermost being, becomes part of the external world after death, and we see it outside in mighty pictures. The sky which shines down upon us after death, is our present inner life, our inner human essence. If I were to describe this in detail I would have to say: I have explained to you just now that our actions become a sphere, that we experience them as our inner being. We experience again and again all our activities here on earth; we again walk as we have walked. After death we change, as it were, into something that experiences its own actions in an ever growing sphere. We always look back upon the earth. Even as now we look out into the world’s spaces and behold the sun and the stars, so then we look back upon the earth. And we see the earth surrounded by the pictures of our preceding inner world.
We do not only experience the semblance of our inner world, but from the site we abandoned, and sending a reflexion after our own self, we experience all that once constituted our inner world; we experience it in the form of clouds, stars, and so forth, streaming out of this site. We feel ourselves within the former peripheric world, and we experience the earth upon which we once stood, as a centre, but outside. And we always look towards it. We ourselves live in what surrounds it; the earth at the centre is then the object towards which we look, and mighty pictures are unrolled before us, as our whole inner life unrolls. Outer life becomes inner life. Inner life becomes outer life. This takes place right into the very details.
And when we look down towards the earth, from this sphere spreading out more and more, we then behold, streaming back to us from the earth, all the feelings and sensations we had for other people. And all the other feelings we had, besides those in connection with human beings, appear more in form of clouds. But our feelings for others appear like stars. The human beings themselves, whose forms we see during our life between birth and death, these human beings with whom we now come into contact through experiences caused by our deeds, now constitute a world. All the people with whom we were connected, become part of our inner world.
This is of course reciprocal. Even as every person now bears within him his feelings, or his heart and stomach, so between death and a new birth everyone bears within him all that took place outside in space, and also all that occurred between himself and other people. Of two men who were closely connected, A bears within him the picture of B as his inner content, and B the picture of A. What was outside is now inside; our inner life, our feelings, become an external world, they become the content of a cosmos; what we felt for others, what we obtained from others, all this rays out towards us from the earth.
Man thus really becomes almost the creator of the world which surrounds him after death. During our earthly life, matters stand as follows: We always live in a certain place, and by this I do not only mean trivially that we live in Basle, or Dornach, etc., but any point, any standpoint we have in the world, physically as well as morally. We view the world from this standpoint. We may therefore say that we stand at a certain point and see the world perspectively from this point. But this is a subjective view, for every other person has another standpoint.
Things change after death. There, all men already have something in common. This common element is the sphere. Yet each person has had a different inner life, consequently the earth appears to each surrounded by different clouds, by different stars. It is as if we were all standing upon the same point of the earth, yet each one sees another picture. When we die, we discard the physical body. In the lectures I gave during the past weeks, I have already explained that the physical body is dissolved by the earthly kingdom as such. What remains, is the web spun out of our deeds, by what we see when we follow up our deeds, or the manifestations of our will, through perception. Think of all the ways you have gone on earth: As an infant you first crept about, then you began to walk, you made a long journey, and so forth. All this becomes your inner life. Yet this is only its outermost structure.
Every single thing you did is spun together and forms a web. This stretches out and becomes a sphere. This is your inner life and the fact that it becomes inner life is a guarantee for your Ego during your earthly existence. For man obtains his Ego from the earth, or through the earth. Because after death everything is spun together in this picture of perception and memory, we may take our Ego with us through death. But our real inner experiences are lived through again immediately after death, when the etheric body dissolves shortly after we have died.
The etheric body dissolves into the cosmic spaces and this brings about the fact that all the thoughts and feelings woven out of the etheric body, but with an astral influence as well, change into forms of clouds, or—as I have pointed out—into forms of stars which surround the earth. What falls away from us in two directions—towards the earth, and out into the cosmic spaces, into the air, as it were,—constitutes our inner and our outer world, when we pass through the life between death and a new birth.
Imagine quite vividly the world which surrounds you between death and a new birth. There are your actions, in so far as they come from the will, and these constitute your inner life. There is your feeling and thinking life in the form of a cosmos, as an external world. You do not look out into the world’s spaces, but from the cosmic spaces you look towards the earth, and the earth rays back to you your inner thought-aspects.
When we live here on earth, between birth and death, we have on the one hand, the life of the sun. The sun is outside and we stand upon the earth and see the sun. When we die, the sun immediately vanishes. For then we ourselves are the sun and we cannot see what we are. We simply pass over into the life of the sun. And what I have described to you above, is our passage through the life of the sun.
That we ourselves become our actions, is connected with the fact that we pass over into the life of the sun. When we have left the earth, our earthly experiences become something we behold. Here we stand upon the earth and look at the sun and we see the earth below our feet. This is due to the peculiar material structure of the earth. But the sun has no material structure. What physicists say in regard to this, is pure invention. I have often spoken of this. When we ourselves exist, as it were, within the sun and look back, we have the whole spiritual world behind us, the world of the Hierarchies. Even as here on earth we see solid matter when we look down, so between death and a new birth we have behind us the world of the Hierarchies. Thus we ourselves are sun and we behold the real sun, which is spiritual. We may say that the earth is then the sky. But it is a sky which we ourselves prepare through our inner experiences.
This will be the ease in future, this is how the future existence of Jupiter will arise. I have already explained this in detail. Everything we weave around the earth through our feelings and thoughts, will remain. The now existing material earth will vanish, for it will decay. Between death and a new birth, we are able to behold our inner experiences. This will change into reality, when the earth decays, and it will form the new earth, for the old earth will dissolve and all our inner experiences will constitute the future earth.
This is the real process of metamorphosis. When we simply say, the earth will become Jupiter, this is an abstract statement. We can only understand this process by knowing that all earthly, external substance will melt away into the cosmic spaces, it will become dust, whereas the web spun out of our feelings will form the future earth; it will condense more and more and become the planet of Jupiter.
Geologists now dig into the sub-soil of the earth and sometimes discover strata which have arisen in very remote ages; similarly, during the Jupiter existence, it will be possible to investigate the different strata which have thus formed themselves. All kinds of strata formed out of human feelings and thoughts will be discovered, lying one on top of the other. A Jupiter geologist may, for example, discover various strata, and in the same way in which a geologist upon the earth may say, here are the lower strata, the tertiary strata, so a geologist upon Jupiter will one day ascertain: Here is a stratum pointing back to an age which was called upon the earth the 20th century, the early 20th century; this is a stratum formed by the materialists and profiteers, who spread their thoughts and feelings over nearly the whole world. Even as we now speak of a Silurian stratum, so it will in future be possible to speak of a "Profiteer-stratum". Of course, one will also speak of other strata. But these things are realities.
It is not allowed to man to let his inner experiences vanish. They are a developing world; they will one day be a real world. And between death and a new birth, human consciousness may already look upon that which will in future become a world; indeed, this is the only thing man beholds after death.
Among the many different things in our environment, we also observe the Moon when we stand here upon the Earth. But the Moon is there in a very special way. It sends back to us the reflected sunlight. We can only see its surface, as it were, in so far as its garment is woven by the sunlight. So that when the Moon is shining, it is really the Sun that is shining for us; the sun’s rays come to us indirectly. The Moon, the earth’s satellite, is connected with us in a special way.
During the life between death and a new birth we thus have, to begin with, our inner world, the effect of all our actions in so far as these are rooted in the will, and this inner world, this sphere or central kernel, is surrounded by our feelings and thoughts, which ray out into the cosmic spaces. Yet after death there also exists something resembling the Moon. I might say: After death we see the Moon from the other side. Our existence within a sphere is subjected to laws of perspective which differ from those which exist here on Earth and it is, of course, difficult to explain certain things connected with the laws of perspective which exist after death. This is very difficult, because between death and a new birth we are, in a certain sense, inside, not outside the Moon. In a certain way, we are always connected with the Moon’s inner being. We live, as it were, within the Moon. Even as here upon the earth we continually see the reflected sunlight, so between death and a new birth we always see the inside of the Moon.
But as stated, there the perspective changes. Let us assume that here we have the Earth with the Moon circling round it. We must take into consideration the whole sphere, the whole orbit of the Moon if we take the after-death aspect and the conditions which apply to it. We must consider the whole sphere in which the Moon revolves, and this sphere is really perceived from within. To begin with, we go further and further away from the Earth by moving within this sphere. There, we cannot look at the Sun from within. But at the same time we do not see it from outside, because it becomes invisible; we cannot perceive it. The Sun remains as a memory. What we first behold as we move away from the Earth, what becomes, as it were, visible upon the inner wall of the Moon, or the Moon’s sphere, and is retained as a memory, are the effects of a former earthly life in a subsequent one. It is, in fact, the Moon that preserves the events of one earthly life, and these appear in a subsequent earthly life as effects of the former life. For the whole mystery of the Moon in the cosmos is connected with the fact that the content of one earthly life continues and is taken along into the next earthly life.
This is the aspect presenting itself when we stand upon the Earth and look out into the cosmic spaces—the aspect between birth and death. But there is another aspect, the one between death and a new birth, when we live within a sphere and look back upon the central kernel. We then exist in a world which is, in a certain sense, opposed to the one we now live in. Yet we carry through both these worlds that part of our being which has been concentrated, etc. upon the Moon, preserved by the Moon. The Moon is, in a certain sense, highly important to us as a celestial body. The Moon connects our different earthly lives; it is not, of course, that slag shining down upon the Earth; in its whole mysterious cosmic essence it forms a connecting link.
You see, the individual life of men is thus connected with the life of the whole universe. Here, between birth and death, we can see what has been left to us by former worlds, what has remained from the Saturn, Sun and Moon existences and from the past existence of the Earth. We perceive all this when we live here upon the Earth, surrounded by the radiant phenomena above us. This more or less points back to the past.
Everything we bear within us and what we ourselves do upon this Earth points to the future. And we already behold this future during our life between death and a new birth, sending, as it were, a reflexion into the present—we see it, when our inner life becomes outer life and our outer life inner life. If you consider the whole meaning of the descriptions which have just been given to you, if you consider that man carries his after-death life into his earthly life, you will find that this resembles his experiences in connection with the outer world, reaching as far as the stars, the planets; this reappears in his organisation, it rises up again in his inner being. And man’s inner being becomes his outer world. After death, something similar takes place. The external world which man formed for himself, all the actions that went out from him, become his inner world. All his inner experiences, derived either from his surroundings or from his actions, giving rise to feelings of satisfaction or of self-reproach, all this inner world becomes his outer world and it looks towards him like a firmament, but this firmament is now at the centre and it looks towards him, i.e. out into the cosmic spaces.
If we do not misunderstand this, we might also say: Man’s outer life becomes his inner life, his Sun-life, for he becomes an inhabitant of the Sun. Man’s inner being, in so far as he experienced it upon the Earth, becomes his firmament. But he now inhabits the firmament. The Earth becomes sky, the Sun becomes Earth, during the life between death and a new birth.
When true vision adds this other aspect of the world to the intellectual world-conception which modern man gains here on Earth, the only conception which he accepts, only then will a complete picture of the world stand before us. We shall then have entirely different feelings in regard to the world. This other picture of the world is, in reality, the one described in Anthroposophy, it is the picture I have always described to you, in contrast to the world-conception formed through external observation; the picture I have always described to you is the active picture, for we must participate in it actively. Your thoughts must become mobile when you read anthroposophical books. And your thoughts must become mobile whenever you listen to an anthroposophical lecture. But people who are only accustomed to the things offered to them by modern life do not want to be active in their thought, they prefer to obtain everything passively, so that also their thoughts are merely passive pictures of what they obtain, and in doing this they always sleep a little, as it were.
These things arise in this form because during his life between birth and death man has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an Ego. In regard to earthly life, the Ego is man’s highest part. After death, when he passes over into the Sun-existence, his Ego is the lowest member, and the next one from below is the Spirit-Self, then the Life-Spirit, and then Spirit-Man. Physically, they will exist only in future epochs of evolution, but between death and a new birth they develop spiritually.
The Spirit-Self, in fact, rays out into the cosmic spaces as the image of the Earth. The Ego lives in the Sun, in the life of the Sun, and the Spirit-Self rays back from the earth, as described above. The other members are higher forms, which afterwards come to man from the cosmos, but at first they have nothing to do with his inner being. What rays out towards him appears to him in a new life; through this it becomes "Life Spirit". And man’s deeds are pervaded by a high spiritual substantiality throbbing through them. This will be given to him by the cosmos, he receives it, as it were, outside, in the cosmos. When he comes down to birth, he obtains a physical body and an etheric body, and similarly when he has passed through the portal of death, he obtains a Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man, which are his garments. From man himself comes what constitutes his Ego. And between death and a new birth, all that rays out from the Earth becomes a finely woven planetary existence, something which can only be felt as a trans-formed earth; we look back upon it and we go on weaving it from life to life.
When the Earth will have reached the end of its evolution, man will therefore proceed with the Earth to the Jupiter-stage of existence, and what he has thus woven, will enable him to unfold his Spirit-Self physically upon Jupiter. The foundation for this has been laid during his earthly life, through his inner being.
These are the real processes. This is the true course of development. You see, it is not necessary to combine outer words—Earth-existence, Jupiter-existence, etc.—nor to describe things abstractly from outside, for when we grasp man in his totality it is quite possible to describe the transition from one stage to the other. Our thoughts must only be formed in such a way as to take hold of concepts such as the following: The thoughts and feelings extending within us, ray out from the Earth into the cosmic spaces like planets, like stars, and we ourselves then live with the cosmos; we bear within us the other human beings with whom we were associated.
Human life is complicated. But people who wish to build up a world-conception by setting up a few concepts do not have any real feeling for what is right. We can only build up a world-conception by viewing the totality of life. Life is very complicated even in the smallest bug, and we should not imagine that in the whole universe—and man is connected with it, as a microcosm—life is formed in such a way that we may grasp it by setting up a few thoughts.
Zwolfter Vortrag
[ 1 ] Wir wollen heute einiges über den Zusammenhang des Menschen in leiblicher, seelischer und geistiger Beziehung mit der Welt betrachten. Wir haben ja gesehen, wie in einer gewissen Weise das, was der Mensch an dem ganzen Universum, an dem ganzen Kosmos zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt erlebt, im Erdenleben dann in sein Inneres hereinzieht. Wir haben gesehen, wie das, was der Mensch vor der Geburt oder vor der Empfängnis, sagen wir, wie äußere Erlebnisse hat, wie das dann in der Wirkung sich auslebt in seinen Organen, in seinem Inneren, in seinem organischen Inneren. Wir wollen heute einmal nach der anderen Seite hin den Menschen betrachten in seinem Verhältnisse zur Welt, und zwar so, wie das, was der Mensch zwischen Geburt und Tod erlebt, dann mit ihm durch die Pforte des Todes geht und zu Erlebnissen eines erneuten Lebens zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt wird.
[ 2 ] Wir müssen ja am Menschen unterscheiden, was er zunächst während des Erdenlebens als sein inneres Leben hat, und das, was sich als eine Art von Außenleben von ihm absondert. Inneres Leben — wir können.ja zunächst hinweisen auf die Gefühle, auf den inneren Empfindungsgehalt, den der Mensch durchmacht zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode. Das ist sein eigentliches Innenleben. Was der Mensch fühlt, fühlt gegenüber den Eindrücken, welche die äußere Welt auf ihn macht, fühlt gegenüber seinem eigenen inneren Erleben, fühlt auch an Zubilligung oder an Vorwürfen gegenüber seinen Willensäußerungen, gegenüber seinen Handlungen, das alles ist etwas, was der Mensch während des Erdenlebens mehr oder weniger mit sich selber abmacht, wohinein er den anderen zwar blicken lassen kann, aber das Wesentliche an alledem ist doch die Art, wie der Mensch das mit sich selber abmacht.
[ 3 ] Was der Mensch in der Wahrnehmung erlebt, das ist, wie wir schon durch die Betrachtungen der letzten Zeit wissen, nicht eigentliches wirkliches Erleben, das ist Scheinwelt, die sich um uns herum ausbreitet. Das ist die Welt, welche im Grunde genommen weder innerlich noch äußerlich ist, an der wir teilnehmen, und die wir ja nur dadurch, daß wir uns Gedanken über sie bilden, daß wir an ihr Gefühle entwickeln, daß sie uns anregt, das oder jenes zu tun, zu unserer Innenwelt machen. Wie wir uns zu ihr verhalten, das ist ja im wesentlichen das Ergebnis unserer Fähigkeiten, die wir uns durch die Geburt ins Dasein mitbringen. Wie wir uns also zur Außenwelt verhalten, auch der Ort, an dem wir stehen, das Volk, in das wir hineingeboren sind und so weiter, das alles ist durch die vorhergehenden Erden- und Geistesleben bedingt. Das weist uns also eher zurück, als daß es uns vorwärts weisen könnte.
[ 4 ] Aber etwas anderes, was uns mit der Außenwelt verbindet, müssen wir betrachten: Was in unserem Wollen wurzelt und übergeht in unsere Handlungen, das wird ein Stück Außenwelt. Alles, was durch unser Handeln geschieht, verändert die Außenwelt. Das geringste, was wir machen, gibt ja der Außenwelt irgend etwas, was diese Außenwelt verändert.
[ 5 ] Nun aber können wir sagen: Diese Außenwelt, die wir da selber bereiten durch unser Handeln, diese Außenwelt, die wurzelt in unserem Wollen. Sie ist also zu uns in einem Verhältnisse wie die Ereignisse während des Schlafes. In die Tiefen unserer Willenswelt sehen wir ja mit unserem Bewußtsein, mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein, ebensowenig hinein wie in die Zustände während des Schlafes. Was da eigentlich vorgeht in der Willenswelt, das also bleibt außerhalb des Bewußtseins. Ich habe es oft ausgesprochen: Wenn wir nur einen Arm bewegen, wenn wir eine Hand bewegen — der ganze Willensvorgang, jene Kraftentfaltung, die in dem sich bewegenden Arm, in der sich bewegenden Hand wirken, sie entziehen sich dem Bewußtsein. Aber wir sehen auf unsere bewegte Hand. Wir sehen die Veränderung, die wir hervorbringen. Wenn wir nur einen Gegenstand von einem Orte an einen anderen legen, so nehmen wir durch unsere Wahrnehmungen die Veränderung in uns auf. Wir können also sagen: Durch unsere Wahrnehmungswelt wissen wir von unseren eigenen Willensäußerungen. Es fließt gewissermaßen unser Wollen und seine Wirkungen in unsere Wahrnehmungswelt hinein.
[ 6 ] Erinnern wir uns an das, was wir in der letzten Zeit an uns herangebracht haben. Wir haben gesagt: Da ist zunächst der physische Leib des Menschen (siehe Zeichnung, hell); da ist dann der Ätherleib des Menschen (rot). Zwischen beiden ist die webende Gedankenwelt, insofern sie eingegliedert ist in unseren Organismus. Zwischen dem Ätherleib und dem astralischen Leib (grün) befindet sich die Gefühlswelt, und zwischen dem astralischen Leib und der Ich-Hülle (blau) befindet sich die Willenswelt.
[ 7 ] Diese Willenswelt, sie kann ja eigentlich im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein von dem Ich nicht unterschieden werden. Sie verbindet sich ganz und gar mit dem Ich. Aber alles das, was im Ich vorgeht, wenn das Ich will, handelt, alles das kommt nicht unmittelbar in das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein herein. Das ist eben, wie gesagt, unter dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein wie die Ereignisse des Schlafzustandes.
[ 8 ] Im physischen Leib haben wir die Sinnesorgane, und die Sinnesorgane, sie haben die Wahrnehmungen. Durch diese Wahrnehmungen nehmen wir auch unsere Willensäußerungen wahr. Im physischen Leibe also sind Augen und Ohren, und was sich da aus Ich und Willenswelt entwickelt, das wird eigentlich durch die Sinne wahrgenommen. Also das, was das äußerste ist im Menschen, die Wahrnehmung, sie verbindet sich mit demjenigen, was der Mensch da erlebt durch seinen Willen und durch das Ich (großer Pfeil).
[ 9 ] Nehmen Sie nur dieses, wenn wir durch unser Ich ein paar Schritte machen: was da im Willen lebt, wie in den Untergründen des menschlichen Organismus etwas vorgeht, was unsere Beine vorwärtstreibt, das alles entzieht sich dem Bewußtsein. Aber wir sehen, indem wir ein Stückchen vorwärtsgegangen sind, eine andere Umgebung oder wenigstens die Umgebung in einem anderen Anblicke. In diesem anderen Anblicke haben wir in der Sinneswahrnehmung gegeben, was uns im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein die Vorstellung vermittelt, ein Bild gibt von dem, was sonst eigentlich unten in den Tiefen eines wachenden Schlafes ist. Indem wir unser Ich zum Willen aufraffen, die Willensimpulse in Handlungen umsetzen, erleben wir also diese Handlungen — gleichgültig ob sie durch Gehen oder durch Greifen oder durch Schreiten, durch irgendeine Arbeit bewirkt werden -, alle diese Dinge erleben wir durch das Wahrnehmen. Wir gehören eigentlich mit unserem Willen unserer äußeren Wahrnehmungswelt an. Halten wir das nur durchaus fest: Wir gehören mit unserem Willen unserer äußeren Wahrnehmungswelt an. Wir kommen, indem wir das entwickeln, was wir da an Willensäußerungen, an unseren Willensoffenbarungen beobachten, wir kommen da nicht in unser eigentliches Inneres hinein. Wir absolvieren damit, obwohl der Wille aus unserem tiefsten Inneren strömt, für unser Bewußtsein eigentlich einen äußeren Vorgang, oder besser gesagt eine Summe von äußeren Vorgängen im Leibe. .
[ 10 ] Nehmen wir jetzt dagegen das Innere. Da haben wir zunächst die webende Gedankenwelt. Diese webende Gedankenwelt, wie sie nach außen wirkt, kann uns eigentlich in diesem Zusammenhange nicht interessieren. Nach außen lebt diese Gedankenwelt so, daß sie einen gewissen logischen, gesetzmäßigen Zusammenhang in die Wahrnehmungen hineinbringt. Wir klassifizieren die Natur. Wir sehen Pflanzen, die einander ähnlich sind, bringen sie in eine Klasse; wir sehen Tiere, die einander ähnlich sind, bringen sie in eine Klasse. Wir suchen sonstige Naturgesetze. Alles, was wir auf diese Weise ausgestalten, gehört eigentlich nicht zu unserem eigentlichen Innenleben. Es ist das, was als Wissenschaft allen Menschen gemeinsam ist. Es gehört nicht zu unserem Innenleben.
[ 11 ] Aber wir können nicht ohne weiteres sagen, daß alles Gedankenmäßige nicht zu unserem Innenleben gehört. Sie brauchen sich ja nur vorzustellen, wie, wenn Sie durch äußere Wahrnehmungen, sagen wir, eine herrliche Gegend einmal in sich aufgenommen haben, sich Gedanken über diese herrliche Gegend gemacht haben, wie Sie dies jederzeit, wenn auch verblaßt, aus der Erinnerung wiederum hervorrufen können. So bildet das, was sich da als Gedanke anlehnt an das Äußere, einen Teil Ihrer Innenwelt. Ebenso ist es mit anderem, was aus der Außenwelt herein erlebt wird, was sich in Gedanken verwandelt, was einen Teil der Innenwelt bildet.
[ 12 ] Diese Gedanken, die durchsetzen ja zunächst den Ätherleib. Sie verbinden sich aber auch weiterhin mit dem Gefühle bis zum Astralleib hin. Das alles ist etwas, was innerlich vorgeht. Diese Innenseite des Gedankenlebens, die Gefühlswelt dazu, das ist die eigentliche menschliche Innenwelt. Wir können eigentlich nichts von dem, was wir da an dem inneren Aspekt unserer Gedankenwelt erleben, was wir in unserem Gefühl erleben, in der Außenwelt suchen. Wir müssen immer in unser Inneres hineinschauen, wenn wir das kennenlernen wollen. Ich habe schon vorhin gesagt: Wir können mit Menschen sprechen, wir können andere Menschen willkürlich in uns Einblick gewinnen lassen, aber das Wesentliche davon ist doch eben: Innenleben. -— Und wir können jetzt genau unterscheiden, was in gewissem Sinne Außenleben ist, indem der Mensch sein Inneres in die Außenwelt fortwährend hineinträgt, und was Innenwelt ist.
[ 13 ] Wenn wir uns von einem Eisenbahnzug in einer Nacht von der Westschweiz nach der Ostschweiz tragen lassen, dann befinden wir uns des Morgens in einer ganz anderen Willensumgebung und nehmen diese Willensumgebung durch unsere Wahrnehmung in uns auf. Unser Inneres haben wir mitgetragen. Es ist dasselbe Innere, das wir an dem einen Orte gehabt haben und das wir an dem nächsten Orte haben, höchstens eben modifiziert durch dasjenige, was wiederum von den Gedanken aus nach innen zu uns bewegt hat, was eben Inneres geworden ist.
[ 14 ] Wir können also ganz genau unterscheiden, wenn wir wollen, zwischen dem, was des Menschen eigentliches Inneres ist, seelisch gewoben aus den Gedanken und Gefühlen, leiblich gewoben aus einem Ineinander-Rhythmen von Ätherleib und astralischem Leib — wir können davon unterscheiden, was in gewissem Sinne Außenwelt ist, seelisch gewoben aus Willensinhalt und Wahrnehmungsinhalt, leiblich gewoben aus Ich und physischem Leib. Denn wir nehmen unseren physischen Leib mit, beobachten ihn, er kommt in andere Verhältnisse zur Umgebung. Wir können das Innere und das Äußere unterscheiden in der Weise, wie ich es eben gesagt habe.
[ 15 ] Diese Unterscheidung ist aber sehr wichtig, wenn man nun betrachten will das Leben, das der Mensch hindurchträgt durch die Todespforte. Wir können in einer sehr kompendiösen Weise aussprechen, wie sich das, was wir jetzt charakterisiert haben als Inneres und Äußeres, nach dem Tode verhalten wird, denn wir können sagen:
Das Äußere wird Inneres.
Das Innere wird Äußeres.
[ 16 ] Das ist in der Tat die gewaltige Veränderung, die vorgeht durch den Tod hindurch. Das Äußere wird Inneres. Geradeso wie wir jetzt das Innere unserer Seele empfinden — wir können es uns vergegenwärtigen, wie dieses Seelisch-Innere aus Gedanken und Gefühlen durcheinandergewoben ist —, wie wir zu diesem Inneren Ich sagen, so wird nach dem Tode alles, was wir an Wahrnehmungen über unsere Handlungen erlebt haben, unser Inneres. Es ist aber wie in einem Punkt zusammengefaßt, möchte ich sagen, oder besser, in eine Sphäre zusammengefaßt, was wir nun als Inneres erleben: die Anschauung dessen, was wir hier auf der Erde getan haben. Was wir getan haben — wir tragen wie unsere innere Erinnerung durch den Tod die Bilder unseres gesamten Erdenseins, und das ist dann unser Inneres. Also es ist wie eine völlige Umkehrung: was Äußeres war, was wir nur wahrnehmen konnten durch die Anschauung dessen, was wir tun, das ist dann unser Inneres. So wie wir jetzt in den Empfindungen, in den Gefühlen der äußeren Eindrücke leben, so leben wir dann in unseren Taten. Unsere Taten sind sogar dann unser Inneres. Wer also irgend jemandem etwas Gutes oder etwas Böses getan hat, der ist dann das selber, was er Gutes und was er Böses getan hat. Er ist es wirklich nach dem Tode selber. Man darf sich diese Dinge nicht so abstrakt vorstellen, daß irgendein unbestimmtes Ich durch den Tod durchschlüpft und dann etwas anderes ist, oder ein bißchen anders ist, sondern wir sind das, was wir getan haben, bis auf die Einzelheiten hin selber. Wir sind nach dem Tode jede unserer Taten. Wir sind jedes unserer Erlebnisse und sagen zu alledem Ich.
[ 17 ] Dagegen wird das Innere ein Äußeres. Alle Gedanken, Gedanken- und Gefühlswelt wird ein Äußeres. So wie jetzt um uns herum entweder die scheinende Sonne mit den Wolken ist oder in der Nacht der Sternenhimmel mit seinen Bewegungen, so sind nach dem Tod um uns herum als unsere Außenwelt unsere Gedanken und unsere Empfindungen. Also das, was wir intim in uns tragen, das gliedert sich der Außenwelt ein nach dem Tode, das erscheint uns in mächtigen Bildern in der Außenwelt. Wir sehen nach dem Tode einen Himmel, an dem uns, so wie vom jetzigen Himmel die Sonne erglänzt, unser jetziges inneres menschliches Wesen erglänzt.
[ 18 ] Wenn ich es im einzelnen schildern soll, so ist es so: Ich sagte vorhin, unsere Taten fühlen wir wie eine Sphäre, wie unser Inneres. Was wir in der Welt erarbeitet haben, das gehen wir immer wieder und wieder durch; wie wir gegangen sind, so gehen wir wiederum. Wir sind gewissermaßen nach dem Tode etwas, was in immer vergrößerter Weise in einer Sphäre die eigenen Taten erlebt (siehe Zeichnung, blau). Und wir blicken immer zurück auf die Erde (grün). So wie wir jetzt hinausschauen in den Weltenraum zu den Sternen, zur Sonne, so blicken wir dann zurück zur Erde (Pfeile). Und die Erde ist umgeben von den Bildern unserer vorhergehenden Innenwelt. Nicht etwa als ob wir den bloßen Schein unserer Innenwelt erleben würden, sondern wir erleben von dem Orte aus, den wir verlassen haben, uns nachscheinend, diejenigen Dinge, die früher unsere Innenwelt waren, wie von diesem Orte ausströmende Wolkengebilde, auch Sternengebilde und so weiter. Die frühere peripherische Welt, in der fühlen wir uns drinnen, und die frühere Welt der Erde, auf der wir standen, fühlen wir wie unsere zentrale Außenwelt. Nach der blicken wir hin. Wir selbst sind dann die Umlaufenden, und die in der Mitte befindliche Erde ist dann dasjenige, zu dem wir hinschauen, und das im Abrollen unser ganzes Innenleben in mächtigen Bildern aufrollt.
Das Äußere wird Inneres.
Das Innere wird Äußeres.
[ 19 ] Das geschieht bis auf die Einzelheiten hin.
[ 20 ] Wenn man dann aus der sich immer mehr ausbreitenden Sphäre hinunterschaut auf die Erde zurück, dann sieht man von der Erde zurückströmend all die Gefühle, Empfindungen auch, die man anderen Menschen entgegengebracht hat. Das, was man außer in bezug auf Menschen innerlich erlebt hat, das erscheint mehr als Wolkengebilde, aber sternenhaft erscheinen die Empfindungen, die man für Menschen gehabt hat. Die Menschen selber aber, die man im Leben zwischen Geburt und Tod als Gestalten sieht, die Menschen selber, die man auf diese Weise erlebt als Erlebnisse, die bewirkt sind durch die Taten, dies wird eine Welt. Also alle die Menschen, mit denen Sie in Beziehung gestanden haben, werden mit Ihre Innenwelt.
[ 21 ] Das ist natürlich durchaus gegenseitig. Jeder Mensch trägt, so wie er jetzt in sich seine Gefühle oder auch sein Herz und seinen Magen trägt, zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt alles, was sich abgespielt hat äußerlich im Raume und sonst zwischen ihm und den anderen Menschen, mit der Gestalt der anderen Menschen in sich. Von zwei Menschen, die sich gegenseitig nahegestanden haben, trägt der eine, A, das Bild des B, der B das Bild des A als seinen eigenen inneren Gehalt in sich. Das Äußere wird Inneres; das Innere, die Gefühle, die wir erlebt haben, die werden Äußeres, die werden kosmischer Inhalt. Was wir für die Menschen empfunden haben, was wir alles von den Menschen erhalten haben, das strahlt uns von der Erde nach.
[ 22 ] Auf diese Weise wird der Mensch tatsächlich zu einer Art Schöpfer dessen, was nach dem Tode um ihn herum ist. Während des Lebens ist es so: Nicht wahr, wir stehen ja immer an irgendeinem Punkte der Welt — ich meine jetzt nicht nur das gewöhnliche triviale in Basel- oder in Dornach-Stehen, sondern ich meine das überhaupt als irgendeinen Punkt, irgendeinen Standpunkt in der Welt, den wir haben, sowohl in physischer wie in moralischer Beziehung. Von dem aus sehen wir dann die Welt. So daß wir sagen können: Wir stehen an einem bestimmten Punkte und sehen die Welt von diesem Punkte aus perspektivisch. Das ist etwas Subjektives. Jeder andere hat ja seinen anderen Standpunkt.
[ 23 ] Nach dem Tode ist es anders. Da haben die Menschen schon ein Gemeinsames. Sie haben nämlich die Sphäre als ein Gemeinsames. Aber jeder hat ein anderes Innenleben gehabt. Daher umstrahlt sich ihm die Erde in einer anderen Weise, mit anderen Wolken, mit anderen Sternengebilden. Es ist so, als wenn alle Menschen an einem einzigen Punkte auf der Erde stehen würden, aber hier für den einen einmal das Bild, für den anderen ein anderes Bild vorhanden sein würde. So etwa kann ich das versinnlichen für die Zustände nach dem Tode.
[ 24 ] Der Mensch legt ja mit dem Tode seinen physischen Leib ab. Dieser physische Leib wird — ich habe das auch schon im Zusammenhange mit früheren Darstellungen der letzten Wochen hier auseinandergesetzt — von dem Erdenreich selber aufgelöst. Was aber bleibt, das ist jenes Gewebe, das aus unseren Taten entsteht, indem wir unsere Taten, die Offenbarungen unseres Willens, mit unseren Wahrnehmungen verfolgen. Denken Sie sich, alle Wege, die Sie gemacht haben auf der Erde - nehmen wir also an: als Kind, da sind Sie so irgendwie herumgekrochen, dann gegangen, dann haben Sie eine weite Reise gemacht, alles mögliche, nicht wahr -, das alles, das wird dann Innenleben. Aber das ist nur das äußerste Gerüste.
[ 25 ] Nun, alles das, was Sie da im einzelnen getan haben, alles das webt sich zu einem Gewebe zusammen; das dehnt sich aus, das wird Sphäre, das wird Innenleben. Es wird Innenleben, und daß es Innenleben wird; das verbürgt dem Menschen sein Ich während des Erdendaseins. Denn von der Erde hat er sein Ich oder durch die Erde hat er sein Ich. Daß er alles das, was er auf derErde tut, nach dem Tode zusammengewebt erhält in einem solchen Wahrnehmungs-Erinnerungsbilde, das bewirkt, daß er sein Ich eben durch den Tod trägt. Dagegen die eigentlichen inneren Erlebnisse, sie werden ja kurze Zeit nach dem Tode nacherlebt, indem sich der Ätherleib erst etwas später löst. Der Ätherleib löst sich aber in den Weltenraum hinaus auf, und das gibt die Grundlage dafür ab, daß alles das, was aus Gedanke und Gefühl so vom Ätherleib aus, aber auch mit dem astralischen Einschlag, gewoben ist, daß das wird zu jenem Wolkengebilde oder auch, wie ich angedeutet habe, Sternengebilde, das die Erde umgibt. Was da von uns abfällt nach zwei Richtungen hin, zur Erde und in den Luftraum gewissermaßen hinaus, das konstituiert unser Inneres und unser Äußeres, indem wir durchgehen durch das Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt.
[ 26 ] Stellen Sie sich einmal recht lebendig vor, was Sie also für eine Umwelt zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt haben. Sie haben Ihr Tun, insofern es dem Willen entströmt, als Ihr Innenleben. Sie haben Ihr Gefühls-, Ihr Gedankenleben als den Kosmos, als die Außenwelt. Nur sehen Sie nicht in den Weltenraum hinaus, sondern vom Weltenraume herein auf die Erde, die Ihnen zurückstrahlt diese Ihre inneren Gedankenaspekte. Wenn wir hier zwischen Geburt und Tod leben, haben wir auf der einen Seite das Sonnenleben. Die Sonne steht draußen. Wir stehen auf der Erde. Wir schauen die Sonne an. Nach dem Tode verschwindet die Sonne sofort. Wir sind sie nämlich selber, und was wir selber sind, das sehen wir nicht. Wir gehen einfach in das Sonnenleben über, und das, was ich vorhin beschrieben habe, ist eben der Übergang in das Sonnenleben. Dieses, daß unsere Taten wir selber werden, das hängt damit zusammen, daß wir in das Sonnenleben übergehen. Und indem wir uns von der Erde entfernen, wird eben dasjenige, was wir durch die Erde erlebt haben, das wird jetzt das, auf das wir hinschauen. Hier stehen wir auf der Erde, schauen zur Sonne hin. Wir sehen unter uns die Erde. Das ist wegen der eigentümlichen materiellen Beschaffenheit der Erde. Die Sonne hat keine materielle Beschaffenheit. Was die Physiker darüber aussagen, ich habe ja öfter gesagt, ist nur eitel Phantasterei. Wenn wir gewissermaßen selber in der Sonne sind und zurückschauen, so haben wir hinter uns die ganze geistige Welt, die Hierarchienwelt. Also wie wir hier auf der Erde auf feste Materie schauen, indem wir unter uns hinunterschauen, so haben wir dann zwischen dem Tod und neuer Geburt hinter uns die Hierarchienwelt. Also wir sind Sonne und sehen die wahre Sonne, die ja geistig ist. Die Erde könnten wir Himmel nennen. Nur ist das jetzt eben der Himmel, den die Menschen bereiten aus dem, was sie innerlich leben. Das wird ja auch die Zukunft sein, das wird auch das Jupiterdasein sein. Ich habe das ja anschaulich auseinandergesetzt. All das, was da die Menschen um die Erde herum weben durch ihre Gefühle, durch ihre Gedanken, das wird bleiben. Verschwinden wird das, was heute als materielle Erde da ist, denn das geht unter. Heute kann der Mensch zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt sehen, was er da innerlich webt. Nachher, wenn die Erde ihrem Untergang entgegengeht, dann wird das Realität, dann wird das selber eine neue Erde; dann schmilzt die alte Erde weg, und all das, was die Menschen innerlich durchlebt haben, das wird die Zukunft der Erde.
[ 27 ] So vollzieht sich die wirkliche Metamorphose. Wir haben ja nur ein äußerliches Abstruses, wenn wir sagen, die Erde geht über in den Jupiter. Wir durchschauen den Vorgang nur, wenn wir wissen: Das, was äußerliche Erdenmaterie ist, schmilzt in den Weltenraum ab, zerstäubt; das, was sich da herumwebt aus unseren Gefühlen, das wird die zukünftige Erde, das dichtet sich immer mehr und mehr, das wird eigentlich der Jupiterplanert.
[ 28 ] Nicht wahr, wie wir heute, sagen wir, durch die Geologie hineingraben in die untere Schichte der Erde und zuweilen diese oder jene Schichten aufgraben, die sich vor sehr, sehr langen Zeiten gebildet haben, so wird man in der Zukunft, im Jupiterdasein, einmal erforschen können die einzelnen Schichten, die sich da ergeben haben. Man wird dann also auch allerlei Schichten finden aus den übereinandergeschichteten menschlichen Gefühlen und Gedanken. Man wird zum Beispiel einmal als Jupitergeologe da eine Schichte nach der anderen weggraben und nun, wie der Erdengeologe sagt: Da ist das Rotliegende, das sind die Tertiärschichten — so wird der Jupitergeologe einmal sagen: Ah ja, das ist eine Schichte, die weist uns zurück in eine Zeit, 20. Jahrhundert wurde es von der Erdenzeit genannt, Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, das ist die Schichte, die gebildet ist durch all die Schieber, die im 20. Jahrhundert ihre Gefühle und Gedanken fast über die ganze Erde hin entwickelt haben. — Wie wir also jetzt von Silur sprechen, so wird man in der Zukunft sprechen können von der «Schieberschicht». Natürlich wird man auch von anderen Schichten sprechen können. Aber das sind durchaus Realitäten.
[ 29 ] Es ist dem Menschen nicht gestattet, das, was er in seinem Inneren erlebt, vergehen zu lassen. Das wird Welt, das ist Werdewelt. Das wird Welt. Und nur das, was in der Zukunft Welt ist, sieht eben der Mensch jetzt schon durch sein Bewußtsein zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt.
[ 30 ] Wenn wir hier auf der Erde stehen, verfolgen wir unter den mancherlei Dingen, die in unserer Umgebung sind, ja auch den Mond. Er stellt sich in ganz besonderer Weise in unsere Umgebung hinein. Er gibt uns das Sonnenlicht wieder zurück. Wir erblicken gewissermaßen nur insofern seine Oberfläche, als das Sonnenlicht ihm ein Kleid webt. So daß uns eigentlich, auch wenn der Mond scheint, die Sonne scheint; nur auf einem Umwege erscheinen uns dann die Sonnenstrahlen. Er ist gewissermaßen doch als Erdentrabant in einem ganz besonderen Verhältnisse zu uns.
[ 31 ] Wenn wir in dem Leben zwischen Tod und einer neuen Geburt sind, so haben wir also zunächst unsere Innenwelt, die Wirkung all unserer Taten, insofern sie im Willen wurzeln, als Innenweltsphäre, den zentralen Kern, umgeben von unseren Gefühlen und Gedanken, die in den Weltenraum hinausstrahlen. Aber so etwas wie der Mond ist auch da. Ich möchte sagen, wir sehen dann den Mond von der anderen Seite. Dieses Leben in der Sphäre hat es ja mit anderen perspektivischen Gesetzen zu tun als unser Leben hier auf der Erde, und manches von diesen perspektivischen Gesetzen ist natürlich schwer zu sagen, weil eben die Erdengesetze so andere sind. Wir sind nämlich zwischen dem 'Tod und einer neuen Geburt in einem gewissen Sinne nicht außerhalb des Mondes, sondern innerhalb des Mondes. Wir stehen immer mit dem Inneren des Mondes in einem gewissen Zusammenhang. Wir sind gewissermaßen im Inneren des Mondes. Wie wir hier auf der Erde immerfort dieses zurückgeworfene Sonnenlicht sehen, so sehen wir zwischen dem Tod und neuer Geburt fortwährend das Innere des Mondes (siehe Zeichnung).
[ 32 ] Nun, wie gesagt, die Perspektive ist da eine andere. Es ist Ihnen vielleicht am verständlichsten, wenn ich die Sache in der folgenden Weise klar mache: Nehmen ’Sie an, das wäre die Erde (siehe Zeichnung Tafel 1 Seite 26, Innenkreis); da herum kreist der Mond (Punkt und dunkler links äußerer Kreis innen). Nun kommt ja für die Verhältnisse, die wir dann zu erörtern haben für den Anblick nach dem Tode, nicht etwa diese Kugel hier in Betracht, sondern es kommt in Betracht die ganze Mondensphäre. Diese ganze Sphäre, in der er herumkreist, die kommt in Betracht (schraffierte Fläche), und sie nehmen wir eigentlich von innen wahr. Zunächst entfernen wir uns in der Sphäre von der Erde. Da sind wir natürlich lange Zeit so im Umkreise, daß wir uns innerhalb der Mondensphäre befinden. Zunächst, nicht wahr, sind wir ja innerhalb der Mondensphäre, da und da und so weiter, immer in der Mondensphäre drinnen. Nun kommen wir aber auch außerhalb der Mondensphäre. Da können wir sie jetzt nicht von innen aus sehen. Aber wir sehen sie auch von außen nicht, sondern sie hört auf, dann für uns sichtbar zu sein, für uns wahrnehmbar zu sein. Sie bleibt uns aber als Erinnerung.
[ 33 ] Und das, was wir da zunächst sehen, was gewissermaßen Anschauung ist an der Innenwand des Mondes, der Mondensphäre - indem wir hinausgehen, sehen wir es: Was wir dann in der Erinnerung behalten, das ist es, was wir behalten als die Wirkungen eines früheren Erdenlebens in dem späteren Erdenleben. Tatsächlich ist es dieser Mond, welcher die Ereignisse des einen Erdenlebens als Wirkungen gegenüber folgenden Erdenleben hinüber bewahrt. Mit dem Monde und seinem ganzen Geheimnis im Kosmos hängt nämlich das Hinüberleben des Inhaltes des einen Erdenlebens in die nächsten Erdenleben zusammen.
[ 34 ] Wir haben hier einen Aspekt, indem wir auf der Erde stehen und in den Weltenraum hinausblicken; das ist der Aspekt zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode. Wir haben einen anderen Aspekt zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt, indem wir in der Sphäre sind und in den zentralen Kern zurückblicken. Da haben wir eben die Welt, die der unsrigen in einem gewissen Sinne entgegengesetzt ist. Aber durch beide Welten hindurch wird getragen, was gewissermaßen durch den Mond von uns aufbewahrt wird, konzentriert wird und so weiter. Der Mond ist schon in einem gewissen Sinne ein für uns außerordentlich wichtiges Gestirn. Er ist der Vermittler zwischen den einzelnen Erdenleben; natürlich nicht jene Schlacke, die wir hier im Lichtglanze sehen von der Erde aus, sondern in seiner ganzen geheimnisvollen Weltwesenheit ist er das.
[ 35 ] Sie sehen, auf diese Weise fügt sich das Leben des einzelnen Menschen mit dem Leben des ganzen Kosmos zusammen. Indem wir hier zwischen Geburt und Tod leben, sehen wir gewissermaßen das, was uns frühere Welten übriggelassen haben, was übriggeblieben ist von Saturn-, Sonnen-, Mondendasein, von früherem Erdendasein. Das alles sehen wir, wenn wir hier sind, umglänzt von den Erscheinungen, die uns als Phänomene umgeben. Das weist uns mehr oder weniger auf die Vergangenheit. All das, was wir im Inneren tragen und was wir selbst auf dieser Erde ausführen, das weist uns auf die Zukunft. Und wir sehen gewissermaßen hereinspiegelnd in die Gegenwart schon diese Zukunft in unseren Erlebnissen zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, indem das Innere Äußeres, das Äußere Inneres wird.
[ 36 ] Wenn Sie den ganzen Sinn der Darstellungen, die ich in vorigen Wochen hier gegeben habe, nehmen, wie der Mensch sein Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt hereinträgt in dieses Erdenleben, so war es ja etwas Ähnliches. Ich sagte: Was der Mensch mit dem äußeren Kosmos bis in die Konstellation der Planeten äußerlich erlebt, das tritt wiederum auf in seiner Organisation, das tritt wiederum auf in seinem Inneren, und das, was er als Inneres hatte, das wird sein Äußeres. Jetzt nach dem Tode ist es in einer ähnlichen Weise der Fall: Das, was er von sich ausgehend als Außenwelt begründet, das wird sein Inneres; das, was er innerlich erlebt, erlebt entweder durch seine Umgebung, oder erlebt, wie ich sagte, als befriedigende Gefühle oder als Selbstvorwürfe an seinen Taten, diese innere Welt, die wird seine äußere Welt, seine äußere Welt, die ihm wie sein Firmament jetzt — aber es ist zentral — entgegenblickt hinaus in den Weltenraum.
[ 37 ] Man kann ja auch sagen, wenn so etwas nicht mißverstanden wird: Des Menschen äußeres Leben wird sein Innenleben, wird sein Sonnenleben, denn er wird ein Bewohner der Sonne; des Menschen Inneres, insofern es auf der Erde erlebt worden ist, wird sein Himmel. Nur ist der Himmel jetzt das, was er unten gewahrt. Die Erde wird Himmel, die Sonne wird Erde in dem Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt.
[ 38 ] Es ist doch schon so: Wenn diese andere Seite der Welt aus wirklicher Anschauung hinzugefügt wird zu derjenigen Weltanschauung, die ja der heutige intellektualistische Erdenmensch als die einzige betrachtet, dann wird erst das vollständige Bild der Welt vor den Menschen hintreten. Dann wird sich der Mensch eben durchaus anders in der Welt fühlen. Dieses andere Weltenbild ist ja eigentlich das, was in der Anthroposophie geschildert wird, was ich immer schildere - im Gegensatze zu dem passiven Weltbild, das sich der Mensch aus der äußeren Beobachtung bildet - als ein aktives Weltbild, als dasjenige Weltbild, an dem man tätigen Anteil nehmen muß. Sie müssen ja, wenn Sie anthroposophische Bücher lesen, Ihre Gedanken in Bewegung bringen. Wenn Sie einem anthroposophischen Vortrage zuhören, müssen Sie Ihre Gedanken in Bewegung bringen. Derjenige, der nur an Heutiges gewohnt ist, der will da nicht mit, der möchte alles in Ruhe gegeben haben, so daß auch seine Gedanken nur ruhige, passive Abbilder davon sind, daß er .da in einer gewissen Weise so etwas schlafen kann an der Umgebung.
[ 39 ] Der Mensch hat hier im Dasein zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode physischen Leib, Ätherleib, Astralleib und Ich. Das Ich ist es, was wir als das Höchste hier im Erdendasein angeben können. Indem der Mensch nach dem Tode ins Sonnendasein übergeht, ist eigentlich das Ich das Unterste, und er hat als das nächste Gebilde von unten dasjenige, was sich ergibt als Geistselbst, dann Lebensgeist, Geistesmensch, die physisch erst in folgenden Entwickelungsperioden da sein werden, die aber der Mensch in geistiger Beziehung entwickelt zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt.
[ 40 ] Das Geistselbst ist es in der Tat, was als Bild der Erde hinausstrahlt in den Weltenraum. Das Ich lebt in der Sonne, im Sonnendasein, und das Geistselbst strahlt von der Erde, so wie ich es beschrieben habe, zurück. Die anderen Gebilde sind höhere Gebilde, die dann aus dem Kosmos dem Menschen zukommen, die mit seinem eigenen Inneren zunächst nichts zu tun haben. Dieses, was ihm da entgegenstrahlt, das erscheint in einem neuen Leben; dadurch wird es Lebensgeist. Und das, was er als seine Taten hat, wird von einer hohen geistigen Substantialität durchzogen, durchzittert — Geistesmensch. Das ist etwas, was ihm dann vom Kosmos aus hinzugefügt wird, was er gewissermaßen da draußen empfängt. So wie er, wenn er herunterkommt durch die Geburt, seinen physischen, seinen Ätherleib bekommt, so bekommt er seinen Lebensgeist, seinen Geistesmenschen, wenn er durch des Todes Pforte gegangen ist, als dasjenige, mit dem er dann umkleidet wird. Dagegen stammt wirklich von ihm das, was dann Ich ist — ich habe es hier etwas skizziert. Und das, was ihm hinausstrahlt von der Erde, dieses Geistselbst, ist in der Tat zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt ein feingewobenes planetarisches Dasein, etwas, was man dann empfindet wie eine umgewandelte Erde, auf die man zurückblickt, die man von Leben zu Leben weiterwebt. So daß dann, wenn die Erde am Ende ihrer Entwickelung angelangt sein wird, der Mensch mit ihr selbst zum Jupiter hinübergehen wird und er gerade durch das, was er da gewoben hat, sein Geistselbst auch auf dem Jupiter physisch wird entwickeln können, denn er hat die Grundlage davon während des Erdendaseins durch sein eigenes Inneres gelegt.
[ 41 ] So sind die realen Vorgänge. So vollzieht sich die Entwickelung wirklich. Sie sehen, man braucht nicht äußerlich Worte zusammenzustellen: Erdendasein, Jupiterdasein —, und von außen abstrakt die Dinge zu beschreiben, sondern man kann durchaus, wenn man den Menschen in seiner Ganzheit erfaßt, das Übergehen des einen in das andere schildern. Man muß nur seine Begriffe so gestalten können, daß sie selbst solche Anschauungen erfassen können: wie unsere Gefühle und Gedanken, in uns sich verbreitend, selbst von der Erde planetarisch, sternenhaft in den Weltenraum hinausstrahlen, mit dem wir dann selber leben; wie wir die anderen Menschen, mit denen wir in ein Verhältnis gekommen sind, nunmehr in uns tragen.
[ 42 ] Kompliziert ist das Menschenleben. Aber es haben eben diejenigen recht wenig vom Richtigen einen Sinn, die da mit ein paar hingepfahlten Begriffen eine Weltanschauung aufbauen möchten. Die läßt sich nur aufbauen aus der Anschauung des Gesamtlebens. Nun ist selbst im kleinsten Käferchen das Leben etwas sehr Kompliziertes, und man sollte sich nur ja nicht vorstellen, daß im ganzen Weltenall, mit dem der Mensch als ein Mikrokosmos zusammenhängt, das Leben so gestaltet ist, daß man es mit ein paar hingepfahlten Begriffen umfassen könnte.
| Der Aufbau des Menschen: | im Erdenleben im Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt |
|---|---|
| Ich | |
| Astralleib Geistesmensch | Ätherleib Lebensgeist |
| ether body | life spirit |
| Physischer Leib | Geistselbst |
| Ich |
Twelfth Lecture
[ 1 ] Today we want to consider something about the connection between human beings and the world in their physical, soul, and spiritual relationships. We have seen how, in a certain way, what human beings experience in the entire universe, in the entire cosmos between death and a new birth, then draws into their inner being during their earthly life. We have seen how what human beings experience before birth or before conception let us say, as external experiences, how this then lives out its effect in his organs, in his inner being, in his organic inner being. Today we want to look at the other side of the human being in his relationship to the world, namely how what the human being experiences between birth and death then passes with him through the gate of death and becomes experiences of a new life between death and a new birth.
[ 2 ] We must distinguish between what a human being initially has as his inner life during his earthly life and what separates itself from him as a kind of outer life. Inner life — we can first point to the feelings, the inner content of sensation that a human being experiences between birth and death. This is their actual inner life. What human beings feel in response to the impressions made on them by the external world, in response to their own inner experiences, in response to approval or reproach for their expressions of will, for their actions—all this is something that human beings more or less settle with themselves during their earthly life, something they can allow others to glimpse, but the essence of all this is the way in which man comes to terms with himself.
[ 3 ] What man experiences in perception is, as we already know from recent considerations, not actual real experience; it is an illusory world that spreads out around us. This is the world in which we participate, which is neither internal nor external, and which we make our inner world only by forming thoughts about it, by developing feelings for it, by allowing it to inspire us to do this or that. How we relate to it is essentially the result of the abilities we bring with us into existence at birth. How we relate to the external world, including the place where we stand, the people into whom we are born, and so on, is determined by our previous earthly and spiritual lives. This therefore tends to hold us back rather than propel us forward.
[ 4 ] But we must consider something else that connects us to the outside world: what is rooted in our will and passes into our actions becomes a part of the outside world. Everything that happens through our actions changes the outside world. The smallest thing we do gives something to the outside world that changes it.
[ 5 ] Now, however, we can say: this external world that we ourselves create through our actions, this external world that is rooted in our will. It is therefore related to us in the same way as events during sleep. We cannot see into the depths of our world of will with our consciousness, with our ordinary consciousness, any more than we can see into the states of sleep. What actually goes on in the world of will therefore remains outside consciousness. I have often said that when we move just one arm, when we move one hand, the entire process of volition, the unfolding of forces at work in the moving arm, in the moving hand, is hidden from our consciousness. But we see our moving hand. We see the change we bring about. When we move an object from one place to another, we perceive the change within ourselves. We can therefore say that we know about our own expressions of will through our world of perception. In a sense, our will and its effects flow into our world of perception.
[ 6 ] Let us remember what we have been discussing recently. We said: First there is the physical body of the human being (see drawing, light color); then there is the etheric body of the human being (red). Between the two is the weaving world of thoughts, insofar as it is integrated into our organism. Between the etheric body and the astral body (green) is the world of feelings, and between the astral body and the ego shell (blue) is the world of will.
[ 7 ] This world of will cannot actually be distinguished from the ego in ordinary consciousness. It is completely connected with the ego. But everything that goes on in the ego when the ego wants or acts does not enter directly into ordinary consciousness. As I said, it is like the events of the state of sleep beneath ordinary consciousness.
[ 8 ] In the physical body we have the sense organs, and the sense organs have perceptions. Through these perceptions we also perceive our expressions of will. In the physical body, therefore, there are eyes and ears, and what develops there from the I and the world of the will is actually perceived through the senses. So what is the outermost in the human being, perception, connects with what the human being experiences through his will and through the I (large arrow).
[ 9 ] Consider this: when we take a few steps through our ego, what lives in the will, what goes on in the depths of the human organism that propels our legs forward, all this is hidden from consciousness. But when we have taken a few steps forward, we see a different environment, or at least the environment in a different light. In this different view, we have, in our sensory perception, what in ordinary consciousness gives us the idea, the image of what is otherwise actually down in the depths of waking sleep. By summoning up our will, by translating the impulses of the will into actions, we experience these actions—whether they are caused by walking, grasping, striding, or any kind of work—we experience all these things through perception. With our will, we actually belong to our external world of perception. Let us hold fast to this: with our will, we belong to our external world of perception. By developing what we observe there in our expressions of will, in our manifestations of will, we do not enter into our actual inner being. Although the will flows from our deepest inner being, we actually complete an external process for our consciousness, or rather a sum of external processes in the body. .
[ 10 ] Let us now take the inner world. First, we have the web of thoughts. The way this web of thoughts appears to the outside world is not really of interest to us in this context. Outwardly, this web of thoughts brings a certain logical, lawful connection into our perceptions. We classify nature. We see plants that are similar to each other and put them into a class; we see animals that are similar to each other and put them into a class. We look for other laws of nature. Everything we construct in this way does not actually belong to our inner life. It is what all human beings have in common as science. It does not belong to our inner life.
[ 11 ] But we cannot simply say that everything that is thought does not belong to our inner life. Just imagine how, when you have taken in a beautiful landscape through your external perceptions, you have thought about this beautiful landscape, and how you can recall this at any time, even if it has faded, from your memory. Thus, what is based on the external world as a thought forms part of your inner world. The same is true of other things that are experienced from the external world, which are transformed into thoughts and form part of the inner world.
[ 12 ] These thoughts initially permeate the etheric body. However, they also continue to connect with the feelings up to the astral body. All of this is something that happens internally. This inner side of thought life, the world of feelings that accompanies it, is the actual human inner world. We cannot actually find anything in the external world that corresponds to what we experience in the inner aspect of our world of thoughts, what we experience in our feelings. We must always look within ourselves if we want to get to know this. I said earlier that we can talk to people, we can allow other people to gain insight into us at will, but the essence of this is precisely the inner life. And we can now distinguish precisely between what is, in a certain sense, the outer life, in that human beings continually carry their inner life into the outer world, and what is the inner world.
[ 13 ] If we travel by train from western Switzerland to eastern Switzerland during the night, we find ourselves in a completely different environment of will in the morning and take this environment of will into ourselves through our perception. We have carried our inner world with us. It is the same inner world that we had in one place and that we have in the next place, modified at most by what has moved inward from our thoughts and become part of our inner world.
[ 14 ] We can therefore distinguish quite precisely, if we want to, between what is actually the inner being of the human being, woven spiritually from thoughts and feelings, physically woven from an interwoven rhythm of the etheric body and the astral body — we can distinguish this from what is, in a certain sense, the outer world, woven spiritually from the content of the will and the content of perception, physically woven from the ego and the physical body. For we take our physical body with us, observe it, and it enters into different relationships with its surroundings. We can distinguish between the inner and the outer in the way I have just described.
[ 15 ] However, this distinction is very important if we now want to consider the life that human beings carry through the gate of death. We can express in a very concise way how what we have now characterized as inner and outer will behave after death, for we can say:
The outside becomes the inside.
The inside becomes the outside.
[ 16 ] This is indeed the tremendous change that takes place through death. The external becomes internal. Just as we now perceive the inner life of our soul—we can imagine how this inner soul is interwoven with thoughts and feelings—just as we say this is our inner self, so after death everything we have experienced in our perceptions through our actions becomes our inner life. But I would say that what we now experience as our inner life is summarized in a single point, or rather, summarized in a sphere: the perception of what we have done here on earth. What we have done — we carry the images of our entire earthly existence through death like our inner memory, and that then becomes our inner life. So it is like a complete reversal: what was external, what we could only perceive through the perception of what we do, is then our inner being. Just as we now live in the sensations, in the feelings of external impressions, so we then live in our deeds. Our deeds are even our inner being. So anyone who has done something good or evil to someone else is then themselves what they have done, good or evil. They are truly themselves after death. One must not imagine these things in such an abstract way that some undefined “I” slips through death and then is something else, or is a little different, but rather we are what we have done, down to the last detail. After death, we are each of our deeds. We are each of our experiences and say “I” to all of them.
[ 17 ] In contrast, the inner becomes the outer. All thoughts, the world of thoughts and feelings, become external. Just as now, either the shining sun with the clouds is around us, or in the night the starry sky with its movements, so after death our thoughts and feelings are around us as our external world. So what we carry intimately within us becomes part of the external world after death and appears to us in powerful images in the external world. After death, we see a sky in which our present inner human being shines, just as the sun shines from the present sky.
[ 18 ] If I am to describe it in detail, it is as follows: I said earlier that we feel our deeds as a sphere, as our inner being. What we have accomplished in the world, we go through again and again; as we have gone, so we go again. After death, we are, in a sense, something that experiences its own deeds in an ever-expanding sphere (see drawing, blue). And we always look back to the earth (green). Just as we now look out into space at the stars and the sun, we then look back to the earth (arrows). And the Earth is surrounded by images of our previous inner world. It is not as if we experience the mere appearance of our inner world, but rather we experience, from the place we have left, those things that used to be our inner world, as if they were shining back at us, like cloud formations emanating from this place, or star formations, and so on. We feel that the former peripheral world is inside us, and the former world of the Earth on which we stood is our central outer world. We look toward it. We ourselves are then the ones orbiting, and the Earth in the center is what we look toward, and as it rolls along, our entire inner life unfolds in powerful images.
The outside becomes the inside.
The inside becomes the outside.
[ 19 ] This happens down to the last detail.
[ 20 ] When one then looks down from the ever-expanding sphere back to the earth, one sees flowing back from the earth all the feelings and sensations that one has directed toward other people. What you have experienced inwardly, except in relation to people, appears more like cloud formations, but the feelings you have had for people appear like stars. But the people themselves, whom you see as figures in life between birth and death, the people themselves, whom you experience in this way as experiences caused by their deeds, this becomes a world. So all the people with whom you have been in relationship become part of your inner world.
[ 21 ] This is, of course, entirely mutual. Just as every human being now carries within themselves their feelings or even their heart and stomach, between death and a new birth they carry within themselves everything that has taken place externally in space and elsewhere between themselves and other human beings, with the form of other human beings. Of two people who were close to each other, one, A, carries the image of B, and B carries the image of A as his own inner content. The outer becomes the inner; the inner, the feelings we have experienced, become the outer, they become cosmic content. What we have felt for people, everything we have received from people, radiates back to us from the earth.
[ 22 ] In this way, human beings actually become a kind of creator of what surrounds them after death. During life, it is like this: isn't it true that we are always standing at some point in the world — I don't just mean the ordinary, trivial sense of standing in Basel or Dornach, but I mean any point, any standpoint we have in the world, both in a physical and moral sense. From there we see the world. So we can say: We stand at a certain point and see the world from that point in perspective. That is something subjective. Everyone else has their own point of view.
[ 23 ] After death, it is different. Then people already have something in common. They have the sphere as something in common. But everyone has had a different inner life. Therefore, the earth shines around them in a different way, with different clouds, with different constellations. It is as if all people were standing at a single point on the earth, but here one person would see one image and another person would see a different image. That is how I can imagine the conditions after death.
[ 24 ] With death, human beings shed their physical bodies. This physical body is dissolved by the earth itself, as I have already explained in connection with earlier descriptions here in recent weeks. But what remains is the fabric that arises from our deeds, in that we pursue our deeds, the manifestations of our will, with our perceptions. Think of all the paths you have taken on earth — let us assume that as a child you crawled around, then walked, then went on a long journey, all sorts of things, did you not? — all of that becomes your inner life. But that is only the outer framework.
[ 25 ] Now, everything you have done in detail weaves itself into a fabric; it expands, it becomes a sphere, it becomes inner life. It becomes inner life, and the fact that it becomes inner life guarantees the human being his ego during his earthly existence. For he has his ego from the earth, or through the earth. That he receives everything he does on earth after death woven together in such a perception-memory image causes him to carry his self through death. On the other hand, the actual inner experiences are relived for a short time after death, because the etheric body dissolves a little later. But the etheric body dissolves into the world space, and this provides the basis for everything that is woven from the etheric body out of thought and feeling, but also with the astral influence, to become that cloud formation or, as I have indicated, star formation that surrounds the earth. What falls away from us in two directions, toward the earth and out into the airspace, so to speak, constitutes our inner and outer being as we pass through life between death and a new birth.
[ 26 ] Imagine vividly what kind of environment you have between death and a new birth. You have your actions, insofar as they flow from your will, as your inner life. You have your emotional and mental life as the cosmos, as the outer world. Only you do not see out into the world space, but from the world space in onto the earth, which reflects back to you these aspects of your inner thoughts. When we live here between birth and death, we have the sun life on one side. The sun stands outside. We stand on the earth. We look at the sun. After death, the sun disappears immediately. For we ourselves are the sun, and what we ourselves are, we do not see. We simply pass into the life of the sun, and what I described earlier is precisely the transition into the life of the sun. The fact that our deeds become ourselves is connected with our passing into the life of the sun. And as we move away from the earth, what we have experienced through the earth becomes what we now look at. Here we stand on the earth, looking at the sun. We see the Earth beneath us. This is because of the peculiar material nature of the Earth. The Sun has no material nature. What physicists say about it, as I have often said, is mere fantasy. When we are, as it were, in the Sun ourselves and look back, we have behind us the whole spiritual world, the world of hierarchies. So just as we look down at solid matter here on Earth, we have the hierarchical world behind us between death and rebirth. We are the sun and see the true sun, which is spiritual. We could call the Earth heaven. Only now it is the heaven that people create from what they live inwardly. That will also be the future; that will also be the Jupiter existence. I have explained this clearly. Everything that people weave around the Earth through their feelings and thoughts will remain. What exists today as the material Earth will disappear, because it will perish. Today, between death and a new birth, people can see what they are weaving within themselves. Afterwards, when the Earth is heading toward its demise, this will become reality, it will itself become a new Earth; then the old Earth will melt away, and everything that people have experienced inwardly will become the future of the Earth.
[ 27 ] This is how the real metamorphosis takes place. We only have an external abstraction when we say that the earth passes into Jupiter. We can only understand the process if we know that what is external Earth matter melts away into space, atomizes; what weaves around it from our feelings becomes the future Earth, condensing more and more, actually becoming the planet Jupiter.
[ 28 ] Isn't it true that today, through geology, we dig into the lower layers of the Earth and sometimes uncover this or that layer that was formed a very, very long time ago? In the future, in the Jupiter existence, we will be able to explore the individual layers that have formed there. We will then also find all kinds of layers formed by the superimposed human feelings and thoughts. For example, as a Jupiter geologist, we will dig away one layer after another and then, as the Earth geologist says: There is the red layer, those are the Tertiary layers — so the Jupiter geologist will say: Ah yes, that is a layer that takes us back to a time called the 20th century in Earth time, the beginning of the 20th century. That is the layer formed by all the shifters who developed their feelings and thoughts across almost the entire Earth in the 20th century. — So just as we now speak of the Silurian period, in the future we will be able to speak of the “shifters' layer.” Of course, we will also be able to speak of other layers. But these are realities.
[ 29 ] Human beings are not allowed to let what they experience within themselves pass away. That becomes the world, that is the world in the making. That becomes the world. And only what will be the world in the future can human beings already see now through their consciousness between death and a new birth.
[ 30 ] When we stand here on Earth, we observe many things in our environment, including the moon. It has a very special place in our environment. It reflects the sunlight back to us. We see its surface only insofar as the sunlight weaves a garment for it. So even when the moon shines, it is actually the sun that shines; the sun's rays only appear to us indirectly. In a sense, as the Earth's satellite, it is in a very special relationship to us.
[ 31 ] When we are in the life between death and a new birth, we first have our inner world, the effect of all our deeds, insofar as they are rooted in the will, as the inner world sphere, the central core, surrounded by our feelings and thoughts, which radiate out into the world space. But something like the moon is also there. I would say that we then see the moon from the other side. This life in the sphere is governed by different laws of perspective than our life here on Earth, and some of these laws of perspective are naturally difficult to describe because the laws of Earth are so different. Between death and a new birth, we are not outside the moon, but inside it, in a certain sense. We are always connected to the interior of the moon in a certain way. We are, so to speak, inside the moon. Just as we here on Earth constantly see the reflected sunlight, between death and new birth we constantly see the interior of the moon (see drawing).
[ 32 ] Now, as I said, the perspective is different there. It may be easiest for you to understand if I clarify the matter in the following way: Suppose this is the Earth (see drawing on plate 1, page 26, inner circle); the moon revolves around it (point and dark outer circle on the left inside). Now, for the conditions we have to discuss for the view after death, it is not this sphere here that is considered, but the entire sphere of the moon. This entire sphere in which it revolves is considered (hatched area), and we actually perceive it from the inside. First, we move away from the Earth in the sphere. Of course, we remain in this orbit for a long time, so that we are within the sphere of the moon. At first, we are within the sphere of the moon, there and there and so on, always inside the sphere of the moon. But now we also come outside the moon's sphere. There we cannot see it from the inside. But we also cannot see it from the outside; it ceases to be visible to us, to be perceptible to us. However, it remains with us as a memory.
[ 33 ] And what we see there at first, what is, so to speak, a vision on the inner wall of the moon, the moon sphere—as we go out, we see it: what we then retain in our memory is what we retain as the effects of a former earthly life in the later earthly life. In fact, it is this moon that preserves the events of one earthly life as effects for subsequent earthly lives. For the transition of the content of one earthly life into the next earthly life is connected with the moon and its entire mystery in the cosmos.
[ 34 ] We have here one aspect in which we stand on the earth and look out into space; that is the aspect between birth and death. We have another aspect between death and a new birth, in which we are in the sphere and look back to the central core. There we have the world that is, in a certain sense, opposite to ours. But what is preserved by us through the moon, concentrated and so on, is carried through both worlds. The moon is already, in a certain sense, an extraordinarily important celestial body for us. It is the mediator between the individual earthly lives; not, of course, that slag that we see here in the light from the earth, but in its whole mysterious world-being, that is what it is.
[ 35 ] You see, in this way the life of the individual human being fits together with the life of the entire cosmos. By living here between birth and death, we see, in a sense, what previous worlds have left us, what remains of our existence on Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon, of our previous existence on Earth. We see all of this when we are here, surrounded by the phenomena that surround us. This points us more or less to the past. Everything we carry within us and everything we do on this earth points us toward the future. And we see, as it were, this future reflected in the present in our experiences between death and a new birth, in which the inner becomes outer and the outer becomes inner.
[ 36 ] If you take the whole meaning of the descriptions I have given here in previous weeks, how human beings carry their lives between death and a new birth into this earthly life, it was something similar. I said: What human beings experience externally with the outer cosmos, right down to the constellation of the planets, appears again in their organization, appears again in their inner being, and what they had as their inner being becomes their outer being. Now, after death, the same thing happens in a similar way: What he establishes as the external world from himself becomes his inner world; what he experiences inwardly, either through his surroundings or, as I said, as satisfying feelings or as self-reproaches for his deeds, this inner world becomes his outer world, his outer world, which now faces him like his firmament — but it is central — looking out into the world space.
[ 37 ] One can also say, if this is not misunderstood: Man's outer life becomes his inner life, his solar life, for he becomes an inhabitant of the sun; man's inner life, insofar as it has been experienced on earth, becomes his heaven. Only now heaven is what he perceives below. The earth becomes heaven, the sun becomes earth in the life between death and a new birth.
[ 38 ] It is already the case that when this other side of the world is added from real observation to the worldview that today's intellectual Earth human being regards as the only one, then the complete picture of the world will appear before human beings. Then human beings will feel quite different in the world. This other worldview is actually what is described in anthroposophy, what I always describe—in contrast to the passive worldview that humans form from external observation—as an active worldview, as the worldview in which one must take an active part. When you read anthroposophical books, you have to set your thoughts in motion. When you listen to an anthroposophical lecture, you have to set your thoughts in motion. Those who are only accustomed to the present do not want to go along with this; they want everything to be given to them in peace, so that their thoughts are only calm, passive reflections of this, so that they can, in a certain sense, sleep in their surroundings.
[ 39 ] Here in existence between birth and death, human beings have a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and the I. The I is what we can designate as the highest here in earthly existence. When humans pass into solar existence after death, the ego is actually the lowest, and the next structure from below is what emerges as the spirit self, then the life spirit, the spirit human, which will only be physically present in subsequent periods of development, but which humans develop in a spiritual relationship between death and a new birth.
[ 40 ] It is indeed the spirit self that radiates out into the world space as the image of the earth. The ego lives in the sun, in the sun existence, and the spirit self radiates back from the earth, as I have described. The other structures are higher structures that then come to the human being from the cosmos, which initially have nothing to do with his own inner being. This, which shines back at him, appears in a new life; through this it becomes the spirit of life. And what he has as his deeds is permeated, vibrated through by a high spiritual substance — the spiritual human being. This is something that is then added to him from the cosmos, something he receives, as it were, out there. Just as he receives his physical body, his etheric body, when he comes down through birth, so he receives his life spirit, his spiritual human being, when he has passed through the gate of death, as that with which he is then clothed. On the other hand, what then becomes the I really comes from him — I have sketched this out here. And what radiates out from him from the earth, this spirit self, is in fact a finely woven planetary existence between death and a new birth, something that one then feels like a transformed earth, which one looks back on and continues to weave from life to life. So that when the earth reaches the end of its development, human beings will pass over with it to Jupiter, and precisely through what they have woven there, they will be able to develop their spirit self physically on Jupiter, for they will have laid the foundation for this during their earthly existence through their own inner being.
[ 41 ] Such are the real processes. This is how evolution really takes place. You see, there is no need to put together external words such as “earthly existence” and “Jupiter existence” and describe things abstractly from the outside. Instead, if one grasps the human being in its entirety, one can describe the transition from one to the other. One must only be able to form one's concepts in such a way that they themselves can grasp such views: how our feelings and thoughts, spreading within us, themselves radiate out of the earth like planets, like stars into the world space with which we then ourselves live; how we now carry within us the other human beings with whom we have come into relationship.
[ 42 ] Human life is complicated. But those who want to construct a worldview with a few hastily constructed concepts have very little sense of what is right. It can only be built from the observation of life as a whole. Now, even in the smallest beetle, life is something very complicated, and one should not imagine that in the entire universe, with which man is connected as a microcosm, life is so structured that it can be comprehended with a few hastily cobbled together concepts.
| during life on earth | during life between death and rebirth |
|---|---|
| I | |
| astral body | spirit human being |
| ether body | life spirit |
| physical body | spirit self |
| I |