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Supersensible Man
GA 231

14 November 1923, The Hague

Lecture II

My dear Friends,

In our lecture yesterday, we tried to relate man to the Cosmos. Our aim was to create a foundation for a deep and full understanding of the super-sensible being of man. To-day, I want to carry a little further what was said in that lecture, inasmuch as we have also to consider the super-sensible nature of man when his physical and etheric bodies have been laid aside, when, that is, he has passed through the gate of death and is traversing the path which stretches between death and a new birth.

I propose, therefore, to give to-day—dealing more externally as it were, with the super-sensible—a kind of description of what reveals itself to Imaginative perception in regard to this existence between death and rebirth. This will provide a basis for under- standing man in his soul and spirit.

We must, however, be clear from the outset that it is really quite incorrect to speak of the physical being of man apart from the soul and spirit. The physical part of man, the physical body that we perceive in the world of sense, is permeated through and through by soul and spirit. The form of the brow, the form of the features and countenance,—everything that belongs to the human form, man only has, inasmuch as it is given him by spiritual forces. We need not therefore be surprised that those who are possessed of the faculty of spiritual sight continue to speak of the “form” or “figure” of the human being even after he has passed through the gate of death. For it is indeed so; to Imaginative cognition a man who has passed through death reveals a form. In comparison with something physically observed it is, of course, no more than a kind of shadow-picture; it is, nevertheless, clear and very impressive. The first thing that strikes us about this form or figure is that it is “external”. Our idea of man in his soul and spirit must of course be moral and spiritual; we shall however find that we can unfold no genuine and sound conception of super-sensible man unless, to begin with, we speak of these Imaginations, these picture-forms, which man still “wears” as it were, even after he has passed through the gate of death.

At death the physical body is laid aside. We need not stay to consider what happens to it, for the particular way in which dissolution takes place is of far less importance than people think. The dissolution of the physical body, whether it be through burning or through decomposition, is a concern only of the other human beings. It is of no great importance for the life after death; we need, therefore, only say here that the physical body dissolves away into outer Nature, into the forces of outer Nature. The etheric body also dissolves, quite soon after death. The two outer manifestations of man's being having been thus laid aside, something releases itself from these two enveloping sheaths (the word “sheath” is not really quite accurate). Those who are sufficiently endowed with Imaginative cognition are able to perceive what it is that is thus released after death from the two sheaths. It is a figure or form—a form which, to begin with, bears some resemblance to the physical form of the human being. But this spirit-form, as I will call it, is involved in a constant process of transformation. I have spoken of the life between death and a new birth on many occasions and from many different points of view, for only so is it possible to develop an adequate idea of it. To-day I propose to speak from still another point of view. By bringing together what is given at different times, you will be able gradually to build up a complete picture.

This spirit-form of the human being is involved, as we said, in a constant process of change. More and more it approaches what can only be described by saying: The spirit-form becomes one great “physiognomy.” To the Imaginative sight possessed by the Initiate and also by one who has passed through the gate of death, a kind of physiognomy makes its appearance. But this physiognomy is the whole human being, not merely part of him. The whole human being, in his spirit-form, presents a physiognomy that is the expression of his being in its moral and spiritual inwardness. After death a bad man will not have the same appearance as a good man. A man who has made strenuous efforts during his life on Earth will not look the same as one who has lived thoughtlessly or wantonly. But we do not find this expressed merely in the “countenance.” In fact, the actual countenance loses much of the physiognomical expression that was stamped upon it in physical life, and what is retained tends to become more and more indefinite. In contrast to this, the other parts of the body become singularly expressive—particularly the region where the inner organs of breathing are situated. The physiognomical form assumed by this region reveals the permanent qualities in a man's character. The whole breast system takes on a definite physiognomical appearance within the spirit-form after death and reveals whether the man was possessed of courage or whether he was timid, whether he approached life with a certain boldness and bravery or whether he invariably shrank away from the buffets of life, and so forth.

The arms and hands also become peculiarly expressive after death. From the arms and hands one can, in effect, read the biography of the human being between birth and death—most clearly of all from the hands, which even in physical life are full of significance and divulge much to an intelligent observer. The way in which a man moves his fingers, how he holds out his hand to us, whether he only offers his finger tips or gives a warm hand-shake—all this can tell a very great deal. Much can also be learned by studying the forms assumed by the hands when a man is sitting quietly, or when he is at his work. Such things pass unnoticed, as a rule; but human beings become much more interesting, when we observe what they do with their hands and fingers, for here they divulge what they really are. After death this is true in a far higher degree; the life-history can be read from the appearance assumed by the arms and hands.

It is the same with other organs. Everything becomes expressive, everything becomes physiognomy. After death the human being wears his moral-spiritual physiognomy.

Yesterday's lecture showed us how the human being is built up and “formed” by the Cosmos and how the skin and sense-organs are an expression of the form that is inscribed into the cosmic ether. After death, the form that is given to man by the skin which encloses him becomes a physiognomical expression of his moral and spiritual being; and it remains so for a considerable time.

As human beings begin to find their way into this new kind of life, they meet there other human beings with whom, in earthly life, they have had a companionship of spirit, mind and heart. And no pretence is possible any longer between them. For what each man is, and what his feeling is toward his fellow-man, is faithfully expressed in the physiognomy I have described. During this period of the life after death—it follows the period of “trial,” of which I do not propose to speak to-day—men live together with those with whom destiny has in any way connected them in the last earthly life,—or in any other earthly life. They learn to know one another thoroughly, for they behold the physiognomical forms of which we have been speaking. Life consists, in this period, in learning to know those with whom one is connected by destiny. You must try to imagine what a close and intimate mutual scrutiny this is. The word sounds perhaps a little commonplace, but it expresses the reality. Each human being stands fully revealed before the other, with the whole meaning of their common destinies unveiled. In this way they are continually going past one another, meeting one another.

It is during this period of existence that the human being who has become such a “physiognomy” learns to know the Beings of the Third Hierarchy—the Angels, Archangels and Archai. For these Beings are themselves always, by their inherent nature, physiognomy. They have come forth from the Beings of the higher Hierarchies and let their whole nature of spirit and soul be impressed upon their spirit-form, making it thus perceptible to Imaginative vision. This contact with the Beings of the Third Hierarchy is thus an experience which is added to that of association with our fellowmen with whom we are connected by destiny. The spectacle of all the other human beings with whom we are connected by destiny is, of course, full of variety. Among them are, for example, some who on Earth would have preferred to have us at the opposite side of the globe, but are nevertheless bound to us by destiny. We know exactly what feelings they have harboured about us and what they have done to us. The spectacle is indeed one of very great variety! And among these wandering forms move the Beings of the Third Hierarchy, figures radiant and shining like the Sun. The words I use, are, of course, comparative; one has after all no other possibility than to employ earthly language. But we are speaking here of absolute reality, when we tell how during this period after death man meets the other human beings who are bound to him by destiny. Strange to say, it is only those with whom he is connected by destiny that a man can perceive and understand. Human souls to whom he is not actually bound by destiny remain to all intents invisible to him. He has no means of reading their moral-spiritual physiognomy. He does not notice them,—nor can he, for it is precisely the link of destiny which gives one the power to see. If it were the fate of human beings here on Earth to see with their physical eyes as they see in this period after death, they would not see very much; for here on Earth men like to be passive in their seeing and let the objects rise up before them. In our present epoch of civilisation people are little inclined to bestir themselves, in order to be awake to their environment. Many of those who are devoured to-day by a passion for the cinema, many of those who crave for impressions to which they can passively surrender themselves, would, if they were equipped here on Earth with the same kind of sight as after death, not see their fellowmen at all. For after death our sight of other human souls depends entirely upon our attentiveness, which has then, of course, been implanted in us by the way in which destiny binds us to them. The first period of the life after death is thus a time when we learn to know one another; and during this time we learn also to know how souls are received in the spiritual world by the Beings of the Third Hierarchy. We behold the joy with which the Angels, Archangels and Archai receive the spirit-forms of human beings,—or again, we perceive how little joy they experience in meeting them. We observe what impression human souls make upon those Beings of the Hierarchies who stand nearest to them in the invisible world.

Then comes another period. The souls who have been learning to know one another, who have been continually gazing upon one another, begin now, in a way that belongs to the life after death, to have understanding the one for the other. They begin to understand spiritually the moral-spiritual physiognomies.

The first period after death is really a life of memories pure and simple. Each single human being lives together with those to whom he belongs. It is of course an existence that is of the “present” in the sense that we live and move and act amid all that is taking place between the souls of men and the Beings of the Third Hierarchy; nevertheless we are living all the time in a kind of remembrance of earthly life. But now comes a time when we begin to have spiritual understanding, when we begin to grasp—in the manner of the spiritual world, of course—what these moral and spiritual physiognomies of our fellowmen signify. We learn to understand our fellowmen in such a way that we can say to ourselves: This physiognomy I see before me reveals such and such, it points back to certain phases of destiny which he and I shared in common—and so on. We have of course experienced this already in the first period after death, when we beheld our common destinies. But now in the second period the experience is of a kind that leads us to say: Having lived our life together in a manner that is now revealed to us through mutual understanding of our physiognomies, our future life together must take such and such a course. We begin to understand the possibility of a future for our common destiny; we begin to have a feeling for how relationships that have been begun in earthly life may develop further. We see—as it were in perspective—how the woven threads of destiny will work themselves out in the future, the threads of common destiny which are revealed in the physiognomical spirit-forms of which I have spoken. This experience becomes more and more intimate—so intimate indeed that there is a “growing together,” a veritable “growing together” in soul and spirit.

As the soul passes on further in this phase of existence, what was on Earth the most expressive part of man's being is found to be gradually disappearing. The head disappears, dissolving away in a kind of spiritual mist. In proportion as the head thus disappears from view, a change comes over the features of the physiognomical spirit-form. The features alter: something comes to view there now which points as it were from the past on to the future. At this time the human being is borne into the Spirit indwelling the planetary movements, the Spirit indwelling the forces of the planetary spheres; until the moment comes when human beings who belong together approach the spiritual Sun, The planetary forces bring them into the spiritual Sun; and now all the experiences they have undergone together in the past, and the germs too of future experience, are carried with them into the spiritual Sun. It is really childish to think of the Sun as a globe of gas out there in the universe. This is merely the aspect of the Sun that is revealed to the Earth. When we behold it with the eyes of the spirit, with the eyes of the soul, which we have after death, looking upon it from without in the great Universe, the Sun shows itself as a spiritual Being, or rather as a colony of spiritual Beings. And there, in among the spiritual Beings, move the human souls who have passed into the spiritual Sun, not merely each with his own spirit-content, but all of them carrying thither too their related destinies. And this whole “system” of human souls, together with the judgements passed upon them by the Beings of the Second and Third Hierarchies, shines out into the universe, into the Cosmos.

To form a true conception of the Sun, we must think along the following lines. If we look at the Sun from the surface of the Earth it appears to us like a shining, radiant orb. We could make a drawing of it. The usual idea is that if we were to go up in a balloon and inspect the Sun from high above the Earth, it would have exactly the same appearance as it has when we look at it from the Earth. This, however, is quite erroneous. If we wanted to make a picture, a sense-perceptible picture of how the Sun looks to spiritual vision, we should have to show spiritual radiations pouring out from the Sun into the wide spaces of the Cosmos. We see from the Earth only that aspect of the Sun which shines towards the Earth. But something now appears to spiritual sight which gradually changes until it becomes audible to spiritual hearing, becomes a note, a motif—oftentimes grand and imposing—in the Cosmic Music. It comes from what the souls of human beings have experienced on Earth and are now experiencing after death. All this is carried into the Sun existence and radiates thence into the Cosmos. When this happens, the human being—in his spirit-form, of course,—has himself already assumed the form of the Sun. The words sound strange, but facts must be described as they are, for we are telling of realities. All that was, after passage through the gate of death, physiognomy, spirit-form, is now as it were “rounded off,” and when the human being has arrived—speaking spiritually—in the Sun, he has himself become a “spirit-sphere.” Within this spirit-sphere the Cosmos is reflected. Our whole being becomes a spiritual sense-organ. But the impressions we receive are no longer impressions of Earth. We have become, as it were, all eye—eye of the spirit—and we receive in the eye of the spirit the impression of the whole Cosmos. We feel ourselves one with the whole wide Universe. And what we were before, on Earth—that we feel as something outside us. The whole Universe is reflected in us as in an eye of the spirit, and we feel ourselves one with the destinies we have experienced, both in ourselves and in connection with other human souls.

Having lived for a time in this phase of existence, we pass gradually into the sphere of the First Hierarchy—the sphere of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; and we unite ourselves with them. Thus, we are united first with the Third Hierarchy, when we move among those souls who are bound to us by destiny, going about among them in our moral and spiritual physiognomy. Then we are carried by the planetary forces into the spiritual Sun existence, where we unite with the Second Hierarchy, but are still outside the First. Finally, when our own Sun existence has made us feel one with the whole Cosmos, we unite with the First Hierarchy, with Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. And then our interest begins to awaken in souls other than those with whom destiny has already connected us, souls who only now, in the life between death and new birth, enter for the first time our sphere of destiny. We become able to perceive human souls who will in future lives be connected with us.

Meanwhile, under the influence of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, we begin to see mighty changes taking place in those with whom we were already connected by destiny. The closer the connection, the more perceptible the changes. To begin with, I will describe them more from their outer aspect.

When we look with physical eyes at someone who is walking, we see how he puts first one foot in front, then the other and so moves forward. As we watch him, we see what we might call a series of “momentary exposures.” But to those who with Imaginative perception look at a human being in this sphere of existence after death, it is as though in the form which the legs assume with every step, is contained the whole destiny of the man, the destiny he is undergoing and has himself moulded in his earthly life. Nor is destiny carried only in the legs; in the arms too we bear the content of our destiny, namely, the good and bad deeds we have done to our fellow-men. The way a human being moves reveals something that calls for a passing of judgement in the Universe, and the judgement then becomes a part of his destiny. And in the blood-stream, seen with the eye of the spirit in this sphere of existence, is revealed the inner destiny which has been created by the human being's attitude to life, by the way in which he reacted inwardly to his experiences. These revelations of destiny can be seen for a long time after one has entered upon this sphere of existence; one beholds them continually in the forms and structure of the limbs, indeed in all the forms of man with the exception of head and chest. On Earth the sight of a human being walking past one without head or chest would hardly be pleasant, but in the sphere between death and a new birth it is quite different, there everything is moral and spiritual. The spectacle is indeed infinitely grander than the spectacle of a human head on Earth can ever be. This is what human souls bound together by destiny experience during their spiritual Sun existence in the period which I have called in my Mystery Plays the “Midnight Hour of Existence.” Here, in accordance with the degree in which they belong together, souls unite in working at the transformation of what they were in the preceding earthly life. The eye of the spirit can perceive what is happening in detail. For example, what is contained in the legs is changed and worked upon, that it may form the lower jaws for the next earthly life. Arms and hands are transformed to become the upper jaws with the nerves belonging to this region. You must, of course, understand that all this is perceived spiritually. For spiritual perception, the whole of the lower man is transformed into the upper man.

This change is not brought about by the individual human being alone, but by all those human beings who belong together. The degree in which they are joined by destiny determines the extent to which they work upon each other. And through this working together, spiritual kinships are formed which later on lead human beings to find one another in earthly life, to come together in life. Thus, the spiritual kinships which bring us together with other human beings in a more or less intimate manner, originate in the life between death and birth. It is actually so that the spirit-form of the head as it will be in the next incarnation comes into being as a result of the working together of human beings who belong together by destiny. This is a work that is done in spirit-land, and it is far greater in content and in significance than any work that is done on Earth.

So you see, just as we can describe in pictures what happens to man between birth and death, just as we can draw pictures of physical earth-life, so can we describe in all definiteness and detail what happens to him between death and a new birth. The process of transformation that goes on in the limb system and in the system of metabolism of the blood is a marvellous and awe-inspiring process. You must, however, always remember that this transformation, which takes place in the phase of spiritual existence lying midway between death and a new birth, is a transformation of man's moral and spiritual qualities. Of that which emerges from the process—we must say of it now that it resounds as Cosmic Music. This form of man that is shaped in the likeness of the Sun, and is a mirror wherein the whole Universe is reflected, expresses in cosmic tone man's outer form and figure. It is not now—to use a comparison—as if one had a visual idea of man; we receive in cosmic sound the idea of the transformed being of man's lower organism.

As time goes on, man becomes a part of the Cosmic Word itself. What at first was all a blending of melodies, of harmonies, forms itself now into articulate parts of the Cosmic Word. Man “speaks forth” his own being—speaks it forth from the Cosmos. There is thus a period between death and the next birth when man's being is veritably a spiritual “word”—no paltry word consisting of few syllables, but an infinitely expressive word, comprising in its utterance the whole being of man as man, as well as the individual being of the man in question. When this point of time has been reached between death and a new birth, man is possessed of a deeply mysterious knowledge, and he sends out into the Cosmos the revelation—perceptible to divine and spiritual Beings—of what he himself is.

When one human being works in this way upon another, helping to bring it about that the lower man is transformed into what will be the upper man (for that which was formerly the upper man has by now faded right away), when there is this working together, dependent always on the degree to which, the one human being was already connected with the other and itself determining the connection there will be between them in the future, then this work of metamorphosis is verily a kind of moulding and sculpting in the spirit. Man then takes up, as it were, what is spiritually moulded in forms and works upon it, until it changes to sounding music and—finally—to speech.

Thus at the first stage after death the human being moves among the spirit-physiognomies of those who are connected with him by destiny: he beholds these physiognomies. Human beings learn to know each other in the spirit-form, they learn to know each other's moral and spiritual qualities. But at this first stage it is a beholding only, a seeing; although it means that the souls come into intimate connection, it is no more than a beholding. Then begins the period which I described as that of the growth of mutual understanding. The one begins to understand the other; he gazes deeply upon him and looks into his inner nature, knowing the while that the sure working of destiny will link the future to the past. Then the great process of transformation begins, where the one is able to work upon the other out of a profound knowledge and understanding, and the plastic moulding of the spirit is taken up and changed to music and to speech. And here we come to something more than understanding; the one human being is able to speak to the other his own warmth-filled, creative word. On Earth we speak with our organs of speech; by means of these we tell each other what we know. Our words live in the physical body as something fleeting and transient; and when we express what we want to say by means of our speech-organs, in that moment we completely shut off that which lives behind the merely material. But now imagine that what a man thus utters, what goes over into the fleeting word, were an expression of himself, were not alone a manifestation of him, but were at the same time his very being. Such is the intercourse of human beings in the middle period of the time between death and a new birth—differentiating each his own being and revealing them- selves one to another. Word meets word; articulate word meets articulate word; inwardly living word meets inwardly living word. The human souls are themselves words; their symphony is the symphony of the spoken Cosmic Word in its very being. There, men live in and with one another; there is no such thing as impenetrability. The word which is the one human being merges into the word which is the other human being. And it is there those links of destiny are formed which work on into the next incarnation and express themselves in the sympathy or antipathy which one human being feels when he encounters another. The feeling of sympathy or antipathy is a reflection of the intercourse which took place in spirit land in the middle phase of the life between death and a new birth. There we spoke with one another, we ourselves were the speech; here on Earth we have the shadowy reflection of it in the feeling we experience when we find one another again. For this is how we have to understand our life. What we experience on Earth together with other human beings—we are to hear in that an echo, in the life of feeling, of what we ourselves once were in the creative Word, when—between death and a new birth—we spoke forth our being. That is a time when in very truth men live for one another. And when we live for one another on Earth, it is, as it were, a projection from the spiritual on to the Earth of a real and true togetherness.

Having lived through this period of time, man enters upon another, when he begins gradually to depart from the Beings of the First Hierarchy—the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones—and to come again into the realm of the Second Hierarchy, into the realm of the forces which the planets bring to bear on one another. Perceptions of the Universe now come to him—perceptions which were not previously there to the same degree, for before he could only follow them in the other beings around him. The Universe now begins to arise before him as an outer Universe. He learns also of his relation with beings whose destinies are not bound to his; he comes to know his connection with human souls who first appeared within his orbit of experience during the middle period of time between death and rebirth. This happens on the return journey, when man comes down again into the planetary spheres and therewith into connection with the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. He has of course been with them before, but the connection is now of a different kind. The First Hierarchy has gradually faded away again from sight, until at last it is not there at all. The germs—spirit-germs, to begin with—for the new plastic forming of the human being, for the new breast-system and the new limb-system, begin to appear. Little by little, man forms and builds up anew his spiritual prototype. The utterance of his own being that he spoke forth in the Cosmic Word becomes once again the Music of the Spheres, and out of the Music of the Spheres is born the plastic image of his being. So he draws near to the moment when he is ready to enter into connection with an embryonic germ provided for him by a father and mother. For it is a spirit-form, a spiritual entity, coming down from the spiritual world into physical existence on Earth, which is the real essence and self of the human being. The physical embryo which, as it were, comes to meet him is only there for the purpose of enabling him to make a connection with earthly substances and permeate himself with them.

Full and rich in content is the life between death and a new birth! The work upon which the souls of human beings are engaged is none other than an interworking between them and Beings of the higher worlds. But the whole nature of the life between death and a new birth is different altogether from the manner and character of life here on Earth. And if we would progress in our study and attain to an ever clearer and clearer comprehension of the super-sensible being of man, we must understand the following.

We live in the physical world of Earth. We perceive the outer world through our senses. Of that which we perceive we must say: It is perceptible and it is physical,—for the physical is all we can perceive in this earthly life. Above this world lies another, to which our ether body belongs, that pervades and permeates the physical body. This second world is imperceptible to man's physical faculty of perception. It is also not physical; it is superphysical. Bordering therefore on our perceptible, physical world there is another that is imperceptible and superphysical. It is the world next our own, and it is the dwelling-place of the Beings of the Third Hierarchy—the Angels, Archangels and Archai. To a man living in physical incarnation on Earth who does not develop spiritual sight, this world is imperceptible; it is also not physical. True, it manifests its working in the physical world, but it is not physical.

Then there is a third world. This third world is also not physical; in this respect it is similar to the etheric world. It too is superphysical. But the strange thing is that this third world is perceptible. It is perceptible from our earthly world. Thus, we have come to a world which reaches into our world and is perceptible; but because it is superphysical, men are not able to explain it in its true nature. To this world that is superphysical but perceptible, belongs, for example, all that streams to us in the light of the Sun. The Spirit-Beings who people the Sun are superphysical, and yet perceptible to us on Earth. For it is nonsense to think that the light of the Sun is merely what the physicists believe it to be. The light of the Sun is the manifestation of the Sun-Beings. The Sun-Beings are perceptible, but they appear to man in a form which he cannot interpret. The light of the stars, the light of the Moon and other light beside that of the Sun and Moon and Stars is perceptible, but that which lies behind it as Being is not rightly understood by man. Here, then, we have a world that is perceptible, but superphysical, bordering on the world that is physically perceptible. It is very important to grasp the characteristics of the different worlds:

Our own world—perceptible and physical.

The second world, bordering on the first. In this world live the Angels, Archangels and Archai. It is imperceptible and superphysical—the dwelling place of the Third Hierarchy and also of human beings while they are living in community with the Third Hierarchy during the life between death and a new birth.

The third world is perceptible and superphysical. It is the dwelling-place of the Second Hierarchy.

And then there is still another:

An imperceptible, physical world.

We have then, when the fourth is added, a complete list of all possible worlds: perceptible and physical, imperceptible and superphysical, perceptible and superphysical, imperceptible and physical. For this fourth world is imperceptible and yet physical. How are we to envisage it? It is in our midst, it is present in a physical sense, but it is imperceptible. Think for a moment. If you lift your leg from the ground, it is heavy, the force of gravity is working upon it. The force of gravity works physically but is imperceptible to ordinary sense-perception. You have inner experience of this force of gravity, but it is physically imperceptible. It is the same with certain other things. You experience within you, albeit in feelings which you cannot explain, what was known to an earlier, more instinctive Spiritual Science as the “mercurial” tendency. You have continually within you this tendency to the drop-form—in the albumen constituents, that are perpetually trying to form themselves in you; once more, something physical, but imperceptible in its essential configuration. Then there is a living process of combustion, of burning, that takes place within you. It works physically, and lives in your will—but you are not aware of it. It is imperceptible and physical. Within this world, the world of the imperceptible and physical, dwell the Beings of the First Hierarchy—the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

This opens up quite a new aspect of our study. When we pass through the gate of death, we go out, first of all, into the imperceptible and superphysical. We disappear, as it were, from the world. At the second stage we enter the sphere of the Second Hierarchy; we come into the perceptible and superphysical. During this phase of existence, we learn to understand our destinies, we learn to read them in the flowing, flooding light of the Sun and the Stars. One who has learned to gaze into the essence of this light does not look up vacantly at the Sun, or out into the far distances to the spheres of the Stars; he knows that in this moving, flowing light the threads of human destiny are being woven. It is the perceptible, yet superphysical, world, and in it live the dead, the seemingly dead.

And while man is accomplishing once more this metamorphosis for the earthly, he is—on Earth. Only, the world in which he sojourns there between death and new birth is now the imperceptible and physical world; he lives in the force of gravity, in the mercurial and phosphoric tendencies. (How these forces and tendencies develop, we shall gradually learn to understand.) We are thus first withdrawn from life into the invisible, and then return again in an imperceptible manner, to be once more withdrawn, that we may prepare ourselves for the future—perceptible and physical—life on Earth. The road between death and new birth leads from the perceptible, physical life on Earth, through the other conditions, to the imperceptible, physical life on Earth. This is the Midnight Hour of Existence. Then we make our way back, and enter once again into physical existence on Earth.

So far we have been able only to give a rough sketch, but in the lectures that are to come the sketch will be amplified in all its details. You will at any rate have seen that we need not rest content with general abstract thoughts about the life of man between death and a new birth. We can show, for example, how in order to prepare for his future life in a visible world man comes to Earth between death and a new birth in an invisible manner. How much deeper will be our understanding of earthly life when we know that human spirits who are in the Midnight Hour of Existence are living within physical Earth existence; that we have around us here on Earth not only those who are incarnate in physical bodies, but also, as an integral and spiritual part of Earth existence, those who are living through the Midnight Hour—the middle, that is, of their life between death and a new birth! The reason why we are not aware of them is because they are experiencing Earth existence not at the Noontide, but at the Midnight Hour.

In the following lectures we shall go more fully into all these things.

Zweiter Vortrag

Wir haben gestern versucht, den Menschen anzuknüpfen an das Weltenall. Durch solche Betrachtungen wollen wir ja eine Grundlage gewinnen, um überhaupt vollständig in die übersinnliche Wesenheit des Menschen einzudringen. Heute möchte ich, zunächst noch auf eine mehr äußerlich-übersinnliche Weise, zu dem Gestrigen einiges Ergänzende hinzufügen insoweit, als wir das übersinnliche Wesen des Menschen auch dann ins Auge fassen müssen, wenn der physische Leib des Menschen und das, was dazu gehört, der ätherische Leib, abgelegt ist, wenn also der Mensch durchgegangen ist durch die Pforte des Todes und durchmacht den Weg zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt. Und ich werde heute zunächst mehr in der Art einer Schilderung dasjenige geben, was sich gewissermaßen für die äußerliche imaginative Anschauung innerhalb dieses Weges zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt darstellt. Wir werden dadurch gerade eine Basis gewinnen, um das eigentliche geistig-seelische Wesen des Menschen ins Auge fassen zu können.

Wir müssen uns nur immer klar sein, daß es eigentlich ein Unding ist, von dem getrennten Physischen und getrennten Geistig- Seelischen des Menschen zu sprechen. Denn was uns physisch am Menschen entgegentritt, was sich uns in der Sinneswelt darstellt als sein physischer Leib, das ist ja eigentlich überall durchzogen und durchsetzt von Geistig-Seelischem. Die Form der Stirn, die Form des ganzen Gesichtes, alles sonstige an seiner Form hat dieser Mensch ja nur dadurch, daß geistige Kräfte ihm diese Gestalt geben. Und deshalb brauchen wir uns nicht zu verwundern, wenn derjenige, der geistige Anschauung besitzt, auch dann noch von einer Gestalt des Menschen sprechen muß, wenn der Mensch durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen ist. In der Tat ist es für die imaginative Erkenntnis so, daß der Mensch, wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen ist, dann, allerdings in bezug auf die physische Anschauung, gleichsam als Schattenbild, aber als ein sehr klares, eindrucksvolles Schattenbild, eine «Gestalt» zeigt, die gewissermaßen zunächst den Eindruck von etwas Äußerlichem macht, weil wir uns ja das geistig-seelische Wesen des Menschen moralisch-geistig vorstellen müssen. Aber wir kommen nicht zu einer haltbaren geistigen Vorstellung, wenn wir nicht zunächst von diesen Imaginationen, von diesen Bildgestalten sprechen, die der Mensch noch nach dem Durchgang durch die Pforte des Todes an sich trägt.

Der Mensch legt ja mit dem Tode seinen physischen Leib ab, und wir können ganz absehen davon, was nun mit dem physischen Leibe geschieht, denn viel weniger beträchtlich, als die Menschen heute glauben, ist die Art und Weise, wie der physische Leib des Menschen sich auflöst. Es hat eigentlich diese Auflösung, ob durch Verwesung oder Verbrennung, nur für die Mitmenschen eine Bedeutung; eine große Bedeutung für das Leben des Menschen nach dem Durchgange durch die Todespforte hat das nicht, so daß wir vom physischen Leibe zunächst, wie er sich für die Sinneswahrnehmung darstellt, nur zu sprechen brauchen als von demjenigen, das sich in die äußere Natur und ihre Kräfte auflöst. Dann löst sich weiter, und zwar bald nach dem Tode, der ätherische Leib des Menschen auf. Sie kennen das aus meiner Darstellung in der «Geheimwissenschaft». Indem der Mensch diese beiden äußeren Offenbarungen seines Wesens abgelegt hat, löst sich gewissermaßen etwas heraus aus diesen beiden «Umhüllungen», der Ausdruck Umhüllung ist nicht ganz genau. Und wer mit einer entsprechenden imaginativen Erkenntnis begabt ist, der schaut dieses sich aus den beiden Umhüllungen Herauslösende eben als Gestalt, die sogar zunächst nach dem Tode in gewissem Sinne ähnlich ist der physischen Gestalt des Menschen. Nur macht diese ich will es Geistgestalt nennen - fortlaufend eine Verwandlung durch.

Ich habe ja öfter das Leben zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt von den verschiedensten Gesichtspunkten aus geschildert. Man bekommt jedoch eine angemessene Vorstellung davon nur dann, wenn man es von einer ganzen Reihe von Gesichtspunkten aus geschildert bekommt. Nun will ich es heute von einem bestimmten Gesichtspunkte aus wieder schildern. Man muß dann zu dem, was einmal gesagt worden ist, das andere hinzunehmen, dann ergibt sich erst ein vollständiges Bild.

Diese Geistgestalt des Menschen unterliegt einer fortdauernden Verwandlung, und zwar wird sie immer mehr und mehr so, daß wir sie eigentlich nur dann treffend bezeichnen, wenn wir sagen, sie wird ganz Physiognomie. In der imaginativen Anschauung, die der Initiierte hat und die derjenige hat, der schon durch die Pforte des Todes selber gegangen ist, schaut man etwas vom Menschen, was man nennen möchte eine Art Physiognomie. Diese Physiognomie ist der ganze Mensch, nicht etwa bloß ein halber. Aber der ganze Mensch sieht seiner Physiognomie nach jetzt in seiner Geistgestalt so aus, daß diese Physiognomie der Ausdruck seiner Wesenheit ist ihrer moralisch-geistigen Innerlichkeit nach, so daß also nach dem Tode ein böser Mensch anders aussieht als ein guter, und ein Mensch, der sich im Leben viel Mühe gegeben hat, anders aussieht als einer, der leichtsinnig oder leichtfertig dahingelebt hat. Das alles drückt sich aber so aus, daß das nun nicht bloß Antlitz ist. Das Antlitz wird sogar so, daß es von seiner im physischen Leben ausgeprägten Physiognomie verliert; es behält noch einen Teil seines physiognomischen Ausdrukkes, aber es wird immer undeutlicher. Dagegen wird der übrige Körper sehr ausdrucksvoll, insbesondere wird jene Gegend, wo innerlich die Atmungsorgane sind, ausdrucksvoll. An dieser Physiognomie, die die Gegend einnimmt, wo die Atmungsorgane im physischen Leben waren, sieht man namentlich die dauernden Charaktereigenschaften des Menschen physiognomisch ausgedrückt. Die Brust tritt heraus, bekommt eine deutliche Physiognomie, und an dieser deutlichen Physiognomie, am Geistbilde nach dem Tode sieht man, ob der betreffende Mensch mehr oder weniger Mut auf den verschiedensten Gebieten des Lebens gehabt hat, oder ob er etwas feige war, ob er mit einer gewissen Kühnheit und Tapferkeit an das Leben herangetreten ist, oder ob er überall zurückweichend das Leben durchgemacht hat und so weiter.

Eine besondere Ausdrucksfähigkeit haben nach dem Tode die Arme und die Hände. An den Armen und den Händen kann man geradezu ablesen die Biographie des Menschen zwischen Geburt und Tod, am deutlichsten an den Händen - die Hände, die schon im physischen Leben für den sinnig Beobachtenden so bedeutungsvoll sind durch ihre Physiognomie, die schon im physischen Leben so viel verraten, so daß man viel entnehmen kann aus der Art und Weise, wie jemand seine Finger bewegt, wie jemand die Hände einem entgegenbringt, ob er, wenn er einem begegnet, nur die Fingerspitzen reicht, oder mit Wärme einen Händedruck gibt. Aber auch die Art und Weise, wie sich die Hände plastisch gestalten, wenn der Mensch einfach dahinlebt oder seine Arbeit verrichtet, ist ja schon im physischen Leben so bezeichnend. Man achtet nicht darauf, aber die meisten Menschen sind ja schon durch ihre Finger- und Handhaltung und -bewegung viel interessanter, wenigstens verraten sie sich dadurch. Das wird nun nach dem Tode im eminentesten Sinne gesteigert. Man kann geradezu die Lebensgeschichte des Menschen daran ablesen.

Und ebenso ist es in bezug auf die anderen Organe. Alles wird nach dem Tode ausdrucksvoll physiognomisch. Und so kann man sagen: Der Mensch trägt nach dem Tode seine moralisch-geistige Physiognomie an sich.

Wir haben gestern davon gesprochen, wie der Mensch, indem er aus dem Kosmos, aus dem Weltenall herausgestaltet wird, uns zuerst seine Gestalt darbietet, und wie sich diese Gestalt aus dem, was sich in den Weltenäther einschreibt, in der Haut und in den in die Haut eingeschlossenen Sinnesorganen zum Ausdruck bringt. Aber was die menschliche Hautgestalt ist, was im physischen Leben auf der Erde so erscheint, wie man es kennt als physische Formung, das - die ganze Hautumhüllung — wird physiognomischer Ausdruck des moralisch-geistigen Menschen. Und das bleibt eine längere Zeit hindurch.

Indem die Menschen in diese «Lebensweise», wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf, eintreten, begegnen sie da namentlich denjenigen Menschen, mit denen sie schon hier auf der Erde in Verbindung waren, mit denen sie hier Geistes-, Herzens-, Gemütsgemeinschaften gehabt haben. Und keiner kann da dem anderen etwas vormachen! Denn wie ein jeder ist, und wie er gegen den anderen gesinnt ist, das stellt sich getreulich in jener Physiognomie dar, die ich eben beschrieben habe. Und für diese Zeit des Lebens nach dem Tode, die auf die Prüfungszeit folgt - von der will ich heute nicht sprechen -, ist es so, daß die Menschen in dieser Zeit namentlich den Umgang mit denen haben, mit denen sie schicksalsmäßig in irgendeiner Weise im letztvergangenen Erdenleben oder überhaupt auf der Erde in Verbindung waren. Man lernt sich da genau kennen. Aber das ist in dieser ersten Zeit so, daß man sich durch den Anblick dieser Physiognomie, die ich beschrieben habe, eben genau kennenlernt. Und was die Menschen in dieser Zeit erleben, das ist eben dieses Kennenlernen derjenigen Menschen, mit denen sie schicksalsmäßig verbunden sind. Sie müssen sich vorstellen, welch ein intimes gegenseitiges - es klingt banal, aber es ist ein doch richtiges Wort - «Betrachten» dies ist: Ein jeder steht vor dem anderen unverhüllt, mit der ganzen Bedeutung des Schicksalszusammenhanges. So geht man dann aneinander vorbei, so lebt man miteinander.

Gleichzeitig ist das derjenige Lebensabschnitt für den Menschen, wo er dadurch, daß er so ist, solche Physiognomie ist, die Bekanntschaft macht mit den Wesen der dritten Hierarchie, den Angeloi, Archangeloi und Archai. Denn diese Wesen sind ihrer dauernden Natur nach immer Physiognomie. Sie sind von den Weltenwesen der höheren Hierarchien gewissermaßen ausgegangen, indem ihre ganze geistig-seelische Natur für den, der sie in der Imagination schauen kann, sich in ihrer Geistgestalt ausprägt. Das ist also etwas, was für das Erleben des Menschen während dieser Zeit hinzukommt zu dem Umgange mit denjenigen Menschen, die mit einem schicksalsmäßig verbunden sind. Natürlich ist der Anblick der Menschen, die mit einem schicksalsmäßig verbunden sind, ein sehr mannigfaltiger. Da erscheinen einem zum Beispiel die Menschen, die einen über alle Berge gewünscht haben, mit denen man aber doch schicksalsmäßig verbunden ist. Man erkennt ganz genau, was sie im Schilde geführt haben, und was sie einem angetan haben. Dieser Anblick der Menschen ist ganz verschieden, ist ein ganz mannigfaltiger. Und unter diesen Wandelgestalten erscheinen die Wesenheiten der dritten Hierarchie, die wie Glanzgestalten, wie Sonnengestalten unter diesen Menschen dann wandeln. Gewiß, die Worte, die ich gebrauche, sind vergleichsweise, wir haben aber keine andere Möglichkeit, als uns in irdischer Sprache auszudrücken. Aber es bezeichnet schon die Wirklichkeit, wenn man sagt, daß der Mensch in dieser Zeit den mit ihm schicksalsmäßig verbundenen Menschen begegnet. Es ist aber das Eigentümliche, daß der Mensch in diesem Zeitraume ein Verständnis in der Auffassung nur denjenigen anderen Menschen entgegenbringen kann, mit denen er schicksalsmäßig verknüpft ist. Diejenigen Menschenseelen, mit denen man nicht schicksalsmäßig verbunden ist, die sind gewissermaßen unsichtbar, man hat keine Handhabe, keine Möglichkeit, kein Auffassungsvermögen für deren moralisch-geistige Physiognomien. Man beachtet sie nicht, man kann sie nicht beachten, denn nur die Schicksalsverbindung gibt einem die Kraft, zu sehen. Wenn es dem Menschen hier auf der Erde überlassen wäre, auch so zu schauen mit den physischen Augen, wie man in diesem Lebensabschnitt nach dem Tode sehen muß, dann würde der Mensch vieles nicht sehen auf der Erde, denn der Mensch liebt es, auf der Erde passiv zu sehen, die Dinge in sich hineinscheinen zu lassen. Er liebt es sogar in der gegenwärtigen Zivilisation sehr wenig, innerlich aktiv zu sein, um die Umgebung wahrzunehmen. Mancher, der heute eigentlich sein Schauen - drücken wir es so aus - insbesondere auf die Kinoneigungen legt, der also immer nur Eindrücke haben will, denen er sich passiv hingeben kann, der würde, wenn er mit demselben Schauvermögen ausgerüstet wäre, wie wir es nach dem Tode sind, er würde hier sitzen können und würde seine Mitmenschen überhaupt nicht sehen. Denn nach dem Tode hängt es von unserer Aufmerksamkeit ab, die uns allerdings dann eingepflanzt ist durch die Art, wie wir schicksalsmäßig mit den anderen verbunden sind, daß wir die anderen auch schen.

So ist diese Zeit, die da nach dem Tode zunächst verlebt wird, eine Zeit des gegenseitigen Sich-Kennenlernens und namentlich des Kennenlernens der Art und Weise, wie diese Menschen in der geistigen Welt aufgenommen werden von den Wesenheiten der dritten Hierarchie. Man sieht dann, welche Freude die Wesenheiten der dritten Hierarchie, die Angeloi, Archangeloi und Archai, an den Menschen haben, die in der Gestalt, wie ich es beschrieben habe, in die geistige Welt hinaufkommen, oder auch wie sie wenig Freude an ihnen erleben. Man sieht, welchen Eindruck die Menschen auf diejenigen Wesen der höheren Hierarchien machen, die zunächst in der unsichtbaren Welt ihnen am nächsten stehen.

Dann kommt eine andere Zeit. Es kommt die Zeit, wo die Menschen, die einander in dieser Weise kennengelernt haben, die gewissermaßen sich immer geschaut haben, nun anfangen, wie es diesem Leben nach dem Tode entspricht, im geistigen Sinne einander zu verstehen, wo sie dazu gelangen, gewissermaßen einen Geistverstand zu bekommen für diese moralisch-geistigen Physiognomien. Es ist eigentlich so, daß man in der ersten Zeit nach dem Tode wie in lauter Erinnerungen lebe. Man ist mit den Menschen zusammen, mit denen man zusammengehört, man lebt natürlich «Gegenwärtiges» — man handelt, man lebt, man webt in all den Zusammenhängen, die sich da ergeben namentlich zwischen den Menschen und den Wesenheiten der dritten Hierarchie, aber man lebt die ganze Zeit hindurch so wie in einer Art Erinnerung an das Erdenleben. Dann aber tritt eine Zeit ein, wo man eben anfängt, Geistverstand zu haben, wo man anfängt zu begreifen - in dem Sinne, wie das Begreifen in der geistigen Welt eben geschehen muß -, was nun diese moralisch-geistigen Physiognomien der Mitmenschen füreinander bedeuten. Man lernt seine Mitmenschen «verstehen». Man lernt sie so verstehen, daß man sagt: Diese moralisch-geistige Physiognomie zeigt mir dieses, das führt zurück auf Schicksale, die man gemeinschaftlich gehabt hat und so weiter. Nun, das erlebt man ja schon gleich nach dem Tode, denn man schaut dieses Schicksal an, man schaut auf seine schicksalsmäßige Gemeinschaft hin. Aber jetzt erlebt man es so, daß man sich überall sagt: Wenn wir bisher so zusammengelebt haben, wie sich das ergeben hat nach dem gegenseitigen Verstehen der Physiognomien, dann muß das weitere Zusammenleben so und so vor sich gehen. Man erlebt sozusagen jetzt verständnisvoll die Möglichkeit des Fortganges des Schicksals, und man bekommt von da an das Gefühl eben der Weiterführung der begonnenen Lebensverhältnisse. Man schaut wie in einer Perspektive, wie sich in die Zukunft hinein diejenigen Lebensschicksalsfäden gestalten werden, die angeknüpft worden sind, und die sich in den moralisch-geistigen Physiognomien verraten. Und das lebt sich immer intimer und intimer ein, so daß wirklich ein Zusammenwachsen, förmlich ein geistig-seelisches Zusammenwachsen der Seelen stattfindet. Und dabei zeigt es sich, daß das, was beim Menschen hier auf der physischen Erde am ausdrucksvollsten war, nach und nach eigentlich, indem er in diese Zeit sich hineinlebt, verschwindet. Der Kopf verschwindet, löst sich in eine Art von geistigem Nebel auf.

In demselben Maße wie der Kopf verschwindet, verändern sich die Züge der moralisch-geistigen Physiognomie, die da waren, indem überall so etwas auftritt, was wie von der Vergangenheit aus in die Zukunft hinüberzeigt. Und in dieser Zeit wird der Mensch hineinversetzt in den Geist der Planetenbewegungen, in den Geist der Kräfte im Planetensystem. Und das hat zur Folge, daß die zusammengehörigen Menschen sich zu einer bestimmten Zeit nach dem Tode dem geistigen Sonnendasein nähern. Die planetarischen Kräfte bringen sie in das geistige Sonnendasein hinein, und alles, was die Menschen miteinander durchgemacht haben, wird gewissermaßen jetzt als gemeinsame Erlebnisse und gemeinsame Keime für künftige Erlebnisse hineingetragen in das geistige Sonnendasein.

Es ist ja eigentlich für eine wirklich eindringende Erkenntnis kindisch, daß sich die heutige Wissenschaft die Sonne so vorstellt wie einen Gasball, der im Weltenall draußen ist. Das ist ja nur der Anblick, den die Sonne zur Erde her zeigt. Sobald man die Sonne mit jenen Geistesaugen, Seelenaugen beschaut, die man nach dem Tode hat, sie von auswärts im Weltenall beschaut, ist die Sonne ja ein geistiges Wesen, oder vielmehr eine Versammlung von geistigen Wesenheiten. Unter diese geistigen Wesenheiten mischen sich eben die Menschenseelen, die sich in dieser Art nicht nur selbst mit ihren Geistesinhalten, sondern auch mit ihren gemeinsamen Schicksalen hineintragen in das geistige Sonnendasein. Und dieses ganze System von Menschenseelen zusammen mit den Urteilen, welche die Wesen der zweiten und dritten Hierarchie über den Wert dieser Menschen fällen, das glänzt nun hinaus in das Weltenall, in den Kosmos.

Man stellt sich eigentlich von irgendeinem Gesichtspunkte der Erde aus die Sonne ganz richtig nur vor, wenn man sie sich etwa in der folgenden Weise vorstellt. Wenn man von der Erdoberfläche aus die Sonne anblickt, so erscheint sie uns ja wie eine leuchtende Kugel, und man kann sich davon auch eine schematische Zeichnung machen. Nun stellt man sich gewöhnlich vor, wenn man in einem Ballon hinauffahren und von dort oben die Sonne anschauen würde, so würde sie ebenso ausschauen wie hier von der Erde aus. Das ist aber nicht der Fall. Wenn man sich ein schematisches Bild machen und physisch-sinnlich zeichnen wollte, wie sich für den geistigen Anblick die Sonne ausnimmt, so müßte man sich überall geistige Strahlungen von der Sonne nach dem weiten Weltenall hin vorstellen. Was von der Erde aus von der Sonne geschaut werden kann, ist ja nur der nach der Erde hin leuchtende Aspekt der Sonne. Für den geistigen Anblick aber erscheint etwas, was - nach und nach allerdings - zur geistig-hörbaren Wahrnehmung wird, was nun der Einschlag in die Weltenmusik wird, der manchmal ja sehr imposant ist. Aber dieser Einschlag ist nun etwas, was die Menschen erlebt haben, und was sie auch nach dem Tode erleben. Das alles wird in die Sonne hineingetragen und strahlt nach dem Kosmos hin aus. Und dann, wenn das geschieht, hat der Mensch der Geistgestalt nach, die ich beschrieben habe, gewissermaßen selber schon die Form der Sonne angenommen. Es klingt ja paradox, aber man muß diese Tatsachen schildern, denn sie entsprechen der Wirklichkeit. Alles, was nach dem Durchgang durch die Todespforte ausdrucksvolle Physiognomie, Geistgestalt war, das rundet sich, und wenn der Mensch in der Sonne ankommt, geistig gesprochen, dann ist er eigentlich zur Geistkugel geworden. Jeder einzelne Mensch ist zur Geistkugel geworden. Und das Weltenall spiegelt sich in dieser Geistkugel. Und wir haben jetzt, indem wir gewissermaßen ganz geistiges Sinnesorgan geworden sind, nicht mehr Eindrücke von der Erde, aber indem wir ganz Geistesauge geworden sind, haben wir in diesem Geistesauge den Eindruck des ganzen Weltenalls. Wir fühlen uns eins mit dem ganzen Weltenall. Und was wir früher auf der Erde gewesen sind, das fühlen wir jetzt draußen, außer uns. Aber indem wir jetzt das ganze Weltenall wie in einem Geistesauge in uns spiegeln, fühlen wir uns ganz eins mit den Schicksalen, die wir an uns selber und an anderen Menschen erlebt haben.

Indem wir dann das eine Zeitlang durchlebt haben, kommen wir immer mehr und mehr in die Sphäre der ersten Hierarchie hinein, der Seraphim und Cherubim und Throne. Wir verbinden uns mit dieser ersten Hierarchie. Zuerst also verbinden wir uns mit der dritten Hierarchie, wo wir wandeln unter den uns schicksalsverbundenen Mitmenschen, wo wir da wandeln in unserer moralisch-geistigen Physiognomie. Dann werden wir mitgenommen von den Planetenkräften in das geistige Sonnendasein, da sind wir außerhalb der ersten, mit der zweiten Hierarchie verbunden. Und jetzt, wo wir uns durch unser eigenes Sonnendasein drinnenfühlen wie im ganzen Weltenall, jetzt sind wir mit der ersten Hierarchie verbunden, den Seraphim, Cherubim und Thronen. Und da stellt sich dann immer mehr und mehr heraus, daß wir beginnen, auch ein Interesse haben zu dürfen nicht nur für diejenigen Menschen, die mit uns von vorher schicksalsmäßig verbunden sind, sondern da treten jetzt weitere Seelen auf, die erst jetzt in diesem Leben zwischen dem Tode und der nächsten Geburt in unsere Schicksalssphäre eintreten. Da beginnen wir, andere Menschenseelen als diejenigen sind, mit denen wir schicksalsmäßig verbunden waren, beobachten zu können - Menschenseelen, die dann im weiteren, zukünftigen Leben mit uns schicksalsmäßig werden verbunden sein.

Aber an denjenigen Menschen, mit denen wir schicksalsmäßig verbunden waren, je nach dem Grade, in dem dies der Fall war, an denen beginnen wir gerade jetzt unter dem Eindruck der Seraphim, Cherubim und Throne eine wichtige Verwandlung der Gestalt zu bemerken, die ich zunächst wiederum mehr äußerlich schildern will.

Wenn man mit dem physischen Auge einen Menschen betrachtet, der so in der Welt wandelt, so sieht man ihn, wie er ein Bein nach dem anderen vorsetzt und so dahingeht, man sieht gleichsam eine Reihe von Momentaufnahmen dieses Menschen. Wer aber mit imaginativer Anschauung dann den Menschen in dieser Sphäre nach dem Tode anschaut, der sieht ihn gerade so, als ob die Schritte, die Formung der Beine bei jedem Schritte im Vorwärtsschreiten, gerade an unseren Gliedmaßen, das ganze Schicksal tragen würden, das der Mensch durchlebt, das sich im Erdenleben gebildet hat. Nicht nur an den Beinen, auch an den Armen tragen wir das, was unser Schicksalsinhalt ist, was wir mit unseren Händen Gutes und Schlimmes an anderen Menschen getan haben. Was einen gewissen Gerechtigkeitsimpuls in der Welt hervorruft und in unser Schicksal sich einfügt, das sieht man an der Art und Weise, wie der Mensch in Bewegung gerät. Und ebenso sieht man das innere Schicksal, das sich der Mensch geschaffen hat durch seine Stimmungen, durch die Art und Weise, wie er innerlich das Leben erlebte, jetzt an der Blutzirkulation.

Was man so an dem Schicksalsmäßigen sieht, das sieht man lange noch, wenn der Mensch diese Sphäre betreten hat, die ich geschildert habe; das sieht man eigentlich noch immer an der Form der Gliedmaßengestaltungen und der anderen menschlichen Gestaltungen mit Ausnahme von Kopf und Brust. Auf der physischen Erde wäre gewiß der Anblick eines Menschen, dem Kopf und Brust fehlten, und der so an uns vorbeigehen würde, kein sehr behaglicher; aber hier zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt ist eben alles ins Moralisch-Geistige umgesetzt. Da ist der Anblick viel gewaltiger, als der Anblick eines menschlichen Kopfes auf der Erde sein kann. Und das erleben nun die Menschen, die schicksalsmäßig miteinander verbunden sind und die während des geistigen Sonnendaseins so das Schicksalsmäßige erleben, in jener Zeit zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt, die ich in meinen Mysteriendramen als die «Mitternachtsstunde» geschildert habe. Da arbeiten jetzt die verschiedenen Menschen nach dem Grade ihrer Zusammengehörigkeit an der Umgestaltung dessen, was sie im vorherigen Erdenleben waren, so daß man sieht, wie das im einzelnen geschieht. Da sieht man, wie zum Beispiel der Inhalt der Beine umgearbeitet wird für das zukünftige Erdenleben zur Gestaltung des Unterkiefers. Was Arme und Hände sind, wird umgearbeitet zum Oberkiefer und zu allem, was das dazugehörige Nervensystem ist, aber in einer geistigen Anschauung. Der ganze untere Mensch wird umgewandelt in den oberen Menschen.

Das arbeitet aber nicht etwa der Mensch allein, sondern das arbeiten die zusammengehörigen Menschen, je nach dem Grad ihrer Schicksalsverbundenheit. Der eine arbeitet an dem anderen. Und dadurch, daß der eine an dem anderen arbeitet, werden die geistigen Verwandtschaften gebildet, die dann bewirken, daß der eine Mensch den anderen im Leben findet, daß er mit ihm zusammenkommt. Diese geistige Verwandtschaft, die uns mit dem anderen auf eine mehr oder weniger intime Weise zusammenbringt, sie ist ja auf diese Art bewirkt worden in dem Leben zwischen dem Tode und der nächsten Geburt. Es wird in der Tat eine Geistgestalt des neuen Hauptes ausgebildet durch das Zusammenarbeiten der schicksalsmäßig zusammengehörigen Menschen. Und das ist tatsächlich ein Arbeiten im Geisterlande, das nicht etwa weniger inhaltreich ist als das Arbeiten hier auf der Erde, das im Gegenteil viel inhaltreicher ist.

Daraus sahen Sie schon: Geradeso wie man im allgemeinen beschreiben kann, was mit dem Menschen geschieht zwischen Geburt und Tod in den Bildern des physischen Erdenlebens, so kann man in aller Konkretheit einzeln beschreiben, was mit dem Menschen vorgeht zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt. Man kann es ganz konkret beschreiben. Das ist ein Großartiges, Gewaltiges, wie das GliedmaRensystem und das Blut-Stoffwechsel-System umgearbeitet werden. Aber das alles, was im geistigen Dasein in der Mitte zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt umgearbeitet wird, das sind die moralisch-geistigen Qualitäten des Menschen. Und von dem, was aus dieser Umarbeitung wiederum herauskommt, muß man dann sagen: Es erklingt als Weltenmusik das, was da umgestaltet worden ist. Diese Gestalt des Menschen, die der Sonne nachgebildet und ein Spiegel des Weltenalls ist, die zeigt vom Menschen im Weltentone dasjenige, was seine äußere Gestalt ist. Also nicht, daß man dann eine, wenn ich es vergleichsweise ausdrücken darf, augenmäßige Vorstellung vom Menschen hat, sondern man hat im Weltenklang die Vorstellung der umgearbeiteten Wesenheit des unteren Menschen.

Und indem das immer weiter und weiter fortschreitet, wird der Mensch ein Teil des Weltenwortes selber. Es kommt dazu, daß dieses, was er erst nur als eine Zusammenfügung von Melodiösem, von Harmonischem war, sich gliedert in artikulierte Teile des Weltenwortes. Der Mensch wird so, daß er wie aus dem Weltenall heraus spricht sein eigenes Wesen. So daß man sagen kann: Es gibt eine Zeit zwischen dem Tode und der nächsten Geburt, wo der Mensch so wird, daß er geistiges Wort ist - nicht ein solches, das in ein paar Silben besteht, sondern das ungeheuer vielsagend ist, das nicht nur die ganze Wesenheit des Menschen im allgemeinen enthält, sondern diesen ganzen individuellen Menschen, um den es sich handelt. Der Mensch ist in diesem Zeitpunkte zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt ungeheuer geheimnisvoll wissend, und er offenbart ins Weltenall hinaus, für die göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten wahrnehmbar, was er ist. - Wenn so ein Mensch an dem anderen in dieser Weise arbeitet, um in Metamorphose zu bewirken, daß sich der untere Mensch in den oberen umwandelt - denn der obere Mensch ist nach und nach abgeschmolzen -, wenn da nach dem Grade der Zusammengehörigkeit eben für die weitere Zusammengehörigkeit gearbeitet wird, dann ist es so, als ob man im Arbeiten ein Geistplastisches in Empfindungen gestaltet. Man nimmt auf, was geistplastisch ist; man arbeitet es um, und es verwandelt sich in Tönendes und zuletzt in Sprechendes.

Zuerst wandelte man, wie ich Ihnen geschildert habe, unter den Geistphysiognomien der mit einem verbundenen Menschen, indem man sie anschaut. Man wird einander gewahr, man lernt einander in der Geistgestalt kennen nach den moralisch-geistigen Qualitäten. Aber es ist Anschauung zunächst, Anschauung, die allerdings die Menschenseelen intim zusammenbringt, aber Anschauung. Dann beginnt die Zeit, die ich geschildert habe als die des gegenseitigen Verständnisses. Man versteht sich, der eine blickt den andern an, indem er tief in dessen Inneres verständnisvoll hineinblickt, wissend, wie sich die Zukunft mit der Vergangenheit im schicksalsmäßigen Zusammenhange verknüpfen wird. Dann beginnt aus dem heraus jene Umarbeitung, wo der eine an dem anderen arbeitet aus einer tiefen Erkenntnis heraus, und wo das, was geistplastisch aufgenommen wird, umgewandelt wird in Tönendes und in Sprechendes. Dann tritt das auf, daß man sich nicht nur versteht, sondern wo der eine dem anderen sein warmes Schöpfungswort entgegenspricht. Hier auf der Erde sprechen wir mit den Sprachorganen, hier sagen wir uns, was wir erkannt haben, mit unseren Sprachorganen. Hinter dem, was in uns sitzt und spricht, steht der physische Leib, und in diesem lebt als ein Flüchtiges, dem Höheres sich mitteilt, unser gewöhnliches Wort. Und indem wir mit unseren Sprachorganen aussprechen, was wir uns sagen wollen, löschen wir damit das aus, was hinter dem, was nur Sinnlichkeit ist, lebt. Und nun denken Sie sich: Das, was der Mensch ausspricht, was in das flüchtige Wort übergeht, das würde zugleich wie ein Sich-selber-Aussprechen des Menschen sein, sein Wesen und zugleich seine Offenbarung - dann haben Sie das, wie sich die Menschen in der Mitte zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt, ihr eigenes Wesen unterscheidend und sich offenbarend, begegnen. Wort begegnet dem Wort, artikuliertes Wort begegnet dem artikulierten Worte, innerlich belebtes Wort begegnet dem innerlich belebten Worte. Aber die Menschen sind ja die Worte, ihr Zusammenklingen ist Zusammenklingen des artikulierten Wortwesens. Da leben die Menschen so, daß Undurchlässigkeit nicht da ist: Da leben die Menschen wirklich miteinander, und es geht das eine Wort, das der eine Mensch ist, in dem anderen Worte, das der andere Mensch ist, auf. Da werden jene schicksalsmäßigen Zusammenhänge gebildet, die dann in der Nachwirkung für das folgende Erdenleben bleiben, und die sich so äußern, daß die Menschen, wenn sie sich begegnen, zusammenkommen und gewissermaßen Sympathie und Antipathie fühlen. Dann ist dieses Fühlen der Abglanz dessen, als was sich die Menschen im Geisterlande in der Mitte zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt angesprochen haben. So haben wir miteinander geredet, die wir selber die Rede waren, wie wir uns jetzt auf der Erde nur im schattenhaften Abbilde des Gefühles wiederum finden.

Das ist etwa, was sich der Mensch sagen müßte, wenn er das, was er auf der Erde mit den anderen Menschen erlebt, empfände als den gefühlsmäßigen Nachklang dessen, was er im Schöpfungsworte, sich selber aussprechend, zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt einmal war. Das ist die Zeit, in der die Menschen eigentlich füreinander sind. Und das irdische Füreinandersein ist eben, ich möchte sagen, die aus dem Geistigen auf die Erde herabgestaltete Projektion des wesenhaften Zusammenseins.

Dann, wenn der Mensch diese Zeit durchlebt hat, kommt eben wiederum die andere, wo er allmählich das verläßt, was das Wesen der ersten Hierarchie ist, das Wesen der Seraphim, Cherubim, Throne - wo er wiederum in den Bereich der zweiten Hierarchie kommt, wiederum in den Bereich der Kräfte kommt, welche die Planeten aufeinander ausüben, und wo dann hinzutreten die Wahrnehmungen, die der Mensch nun von der Welt bekommt; Wahrnehmungen, die vorher nicht in demselben Maße da waren, sondern eigentlich nur insofern, als sie wiederum verfolgt wurden in den anderen Wesenheiten. Jetzt tritt die Welt auch als eine äußere Welt auf. Man lernt gegenseitig Beziehungen kennen zu Wesenheiten, die einen nichts angehen; man lernt Beziehungen zu denjenigen Menschenwesen kennen, die erst aufgetaucht sind in der Mitte zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt. Das tritt in der Zeit auf, in der die Menschen wiederum in die Planetensphäre und in den Zusammenhang mit den Wesenheiten der zweiten Hierarchie kommen. Sie waren das ja auch früher, aber es ist jetzt ein anderer Zusammenhang, weil die erste Hierarchie wiederum verblaßt ist und zuletzt gar nicht mehr da ist. Und da finden sich dann die Keime, zunächst Geistkeime, zu der wiederum plastischen Gestaltung des Menschen, zu dem neuen Brustmenschen und dem neuen Gliedmaßenmenschen. Der Mensch bildet sich immer mehr und mehr in seiner geistigen Vorgestalt wiederum aus. Das, als was er sich aussprach im Weltenworte, das wird wiederum Sphärenmusik, aus der Sphärenmusik erwächst die bildhafte Plastik seines Wesens. Und so nähert er sich immer mehr und mehr dem Zeitpunkte, an dem er dann reif ist, in Zusammenhang zu treten mit einer embryonalen Menschenkeimbildung, die ihm entgegenkommt von Vater und Mutter, mit der er sich ja nur verbindet. Denn eine Geistgestalt ist da, die aus der geistigen Welt heruntersteigt ins physische Erdendasein und die das eigentlich Wesenhafte des Menschen ist, während das, was mit dem physischen Embryo an den Menschen herankommt, nur dazu da ist, daß der Mensch mit den Erdenstoffen eine Verbindung eingehen und sich mit ihnen durchdringen kann.

So ist das, was sich zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt abspielt, ein inhaltsreiches Leben. Die Arbeit, die da die Menschenseelen verrichten, sie spielt sich ab zwischen den Wesenheiten der höheren Welten und zwischen den Menschenseelen selber. Die ganze Art aber dieses Lebens in seiner äußeren Gestaltung ist eine andere als die des Lebens auf der Erde. Und wenn wir nun weiterkommen wollen in dem immer deutlicher und deutlicher werdenden Erfassen dieser übersinnlichen Wesenheit des Menschen, dann müssen wir uns noch über folgendes klar werden.

Wir leben zunächst hier in der physisch-sinnlichen Erdenwelt. Da nehmen wir durch unsere Sinne die Außenwelt wahr. Wir müssen uns sagen: Was wir da wahrnehmen, das ist wahrnehmbar und physisch. Etwas anderes nehmen wir ja im Erdenleben nicht wahr, als was wahrnehmbar und physisch ist. Darüber ist nun eine andere Welt gelagert, der unser ätherischer Leib selber angehört, der unseren physischen durchdringt. Diese Welt ist zunächst für die sinnliche Wahrnehmung des Menschen unwahrnehmbar und sie ist auch nicht physisch, sie ist überphysisch. So grenzt also an unsere wahrnehmbare, physische Welt eine andere, eine unwahrnehmbare, überphysische Welt an. Das ist die nächste Welt, in der lebt die dritte Hierarchie, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. Für den im Physischen lebenden, verkörperten Erdenmenschen, der nicht eine geistige Anschauung ausbildet, ist diese Welt zunächst unwahrnehmbar, und sie ist auch nicht physisch: Sie äußert zwar ihre Wirkungen in der physischen Welt, sie ist aber nicht physisch.

Dann gliedert sich daran eine dritte Welt an. Die ist wiederum nicht physisch; in dieser Beziehung ist sie der zweiten, der ätherischen Welt ähnlich, sie ist überphysisch. Aber das Eigentümliche ist, sie ist wahrnehmbar. Sie ist wahrnehmbar von unserer Welt aus, und wir kommen da zu einer Charakteristik einer Welt, die in die unsrige hereinragt, die wahrnehmbar, aber überphysisch ist. Daher deutet sie der Mensch zunächst nicht in ihrer wahren Wesenheit. Zu dieser Welt, die überphysisch, aber wahrnehmbar ist, gehört zum Beispiel das, was im Sonnenlichte zu uns flutet. Die ganze Bevölkerung der Sonne, diese Geistwesen, sind überphysisch, aber sie sind auf der Erde wahrnehmbar. Denn es ist ein Unsinn, daß das Sonnenlicht nur das ist, was die Physiker glauben; das Sonnenlicht ist die Offenbarung der Sonnenwesen. Die Sonnenwesen sind wahrnehmbar, nur bekommt der Mensch von diesen Sonnenwesen eine Gestalt, die er nicht deuten kann. Das Licht der Sterne, das Licht des Mondes, der Sonne und anderes Licht, außer demjenigen von Sonne, Mond und Sternen - es ist wahrnehmbar; nur wird das, was als das Wesen dahinter ist, vom Menschen nicht richtig gedeutet. Daher haben wir hier also eine Welt, die wahrnehmbar, aber überphysisch ist, die an die physisch wahrnehmbare angrenzt. Es ist schr wichtig, daß wir diese Charakteristik geben:

1.unsere Welt, wahrnehmbar und physisch,
2.die zweite Welt, an der ersten anstoßend; in ihr sind die Angeloi, Archangeloi und Archai: unwahrnehmbar und überphysisch; sie ist der Wohnplatz der dritten Hierarchie, aber auch der Wohnplatz der Menschen, wenn diese in Gemeinschaft mit der dritten Hierarchie im Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt sind,
3.die dritte Welt ist wahrnehmbar und wiederum überphysisch, sie ist der Aufenthalt der zweiten Hierarchie.

Es bleibt uns nun noch als

4.eine unwahrnehmbare, physische Welt.

Wenn Sie als viertes eine unwahrnehmbare, physische Welt hinzufügen, so haben Sie alle möglichen Welten erschöpft: wahrnehmbar-physisch, unwahrnehmbar-physisch, wahrnehmbar-überphysisch, unwahrnehmbar-überphysisch. Wir haben also eine vierte Welt, eine unwahrnehmbare und physische. Wie ist sie vorzustellen? Sie ist unter uns da, sie ist auf physische Weise vorhanden, aber unwahrnehmbar. Denken Sie einmal: Wenn Sie Ihr Bein heben - es ist schwer, die Schwerkraft wirkt auf das Bein. Es ist physisch wirkende Schwerkraft, aber unwahrnehmbar durch sinnliche Wahrnehmung. Sie erleben zwar innerlich die Schwerkraft, aber sie ist physisch unwahrnehmbar. - Und ebenso wie bei der Schwerkraft ist es bei anderem: Sie erleben in sich, allerdings in Gefühlen, die sich der Mensch nicht deuten kann - deshalb ist es unwahrnehmbar-physisch -, dasjenige, was eine frühere Geisteswissenschaft, die mehr instinktiv war, das «Merkuriale» genannt hat, das, was sich in Tropfenform ausbilden will. Sie haben es ja fortwährend in sich - als die Eiweißbestandteile, die Sie in sich haben, wollen Sie es ausbilden: wiederum etwas Physisches, was aber in seiner eigenen Konfiguration unwahrnehmbar ist. Sie sehen, in Ihnen findet eine lebendige Verbrennung statt, eine physische Wirkung, die Sie nicht wahrnehmen, die in Ihrem Willen lebt, aber Sie deuten sie nicht so: unwahrnehmbares Physisches. In diesem Unwahrnehmbar-Physischen hält sich die erste Hierarchie auf, die Seraphim, Cherubim, Throne!

Und nun bekommen Sie einen merkwürdigen Aspekt. Indem wir durch die Todespforte gegangen sind, gehen wir zunächst in das Unwahrnehmbar-Überphysische hinaus. Wir entschwinden gewissermaßen der Welt. Wir kommen dann weiter in die Sphäre der zweiten Hierarchie, kommen damit in das Wahrnehmbar-Überphysische, das heißt wir leben in der Zeit, wo wir unsere Schicksale verstehen lernen in so etwas wie flutendem Sonnenlicht oder Sternenlicht. Wer dieses zu schauen gelernt hat, der schaut nicht bloß gedankenlos hinaus in die Weiten der Welt, in die Sternensphäre oder auf die Sonne, sondern er weiß: In diesem flutenden Licht bilden sich die Fäden des Schicksals der Menschheit; das ist Wahrnehmbar-Überphysisches, in ihm leben die toten Menschen, die scheinbar toten Menschen. Und wenn dann der Mensch diese Umwandlung, diese Metamorphose für das Irdische wieder vollzieht, dann ist er auf der Erde. Nur ist die Welt, wo er jetzt in der Zeit zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt herumwandelt, im Unwahrnehmbar-Physischen, sie ist in der SchwereBildung, in der merkurialen, in der phosphorigen Bildung. - Wie diese Bildungen sind, werden wir allmählich begreifen. - Wir werden also zunächst dem Leben entrückt in das Unsichtbare hinaus, kommen aber auf eine unwahrnehmbare Art wieder herein, damit wir uns, nachdem wir noch einmal entrückt werden, vorbereiten für das künftige und wahrnehmbare physische Erdenleben. Wir machen den Weg zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt vom wahrnehmbaren physischen Erdenleben durch die anderen Zustände durch zum unwahrnehmbaren physischen Erdenleben: Da sind wir in der Mitternachtsstunde des Daseins, machen den Weg wieder zurück und treten in das physische Erdendasein wieder ein.

Das ist zunächst eine Skizze, die wir im nächsten Vortrage in allen Einzelheiten ausführen wollen. Aber Sie schen, man kann für das Leben des Menschen zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt nicht bloß allgemeine abstrakte Gedanken angeben, sondern man kann darauf hinweisen, wie zum Beispiel der Mensch, um sein künftiges Leben in einer sichtbaren Welt vorzubereiten, in einer unsichtbaren Weise zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt auf die Erde kommt. Denken Sie sich, wie unsere Erkenntnis vom Erdenleben vertieft wird, wenn man weiß, was in der Mitternachtsstunde des Daseins an Geistigem innerhalb des physischen Erdendaseins lebt! Wir haben unter uns hier im physischen Erdendasein nicht nur die physisch verkörperten Menschen, sondern wir haben auch immerfort unter uns wandelnd als einen wichtigen geistig-wesenhaften Inhalt des Erdendaseins diejenigen Menschen, die zwischen dem Tode und der neuen Geburt in der Mitte, in der Mitternachtsstunde des Daseins sind. Daß wir diese Menschen nicht gewahr werden, rührt davon her, daß sie das Erdendasein nicht um die Mittagsstunde, sondern um die Mitternachtsstunde durchleben.

Was das alles bedeutet, werden wir in der nächsten Stunde besprechen.

Second Lecture

Yesterday we tried to connect the human being to the universe. Through such considerations we want to gain a basis for penetrating completely into the supersensible essence of man. Today I would like to add something to yesterday's observations, initially in a more external, supersensible way, insofar as we must also consider the supersensible nature of the human being when the physical body of the human being and what belongs to it, the etheric body, has been discarded, i.e. when the human being has passed through the gate of death and goes through the path between death and new birth. And today I will begin by giving a description of what the external imaginative view of this path between death and new birth represents. We will thereby gain a basis for being able to grasp the actual spiritual-soul nature of the human being.

We must always be clear that it is actually an absurdity to speak of the separate physical and separate spiritual-soul nature of man. For that which physically confronts us in man, that which presents itself to us in the sense world as his physical body, is actually everywhere permeated and interspersed with the spiritual-soul. The form of the forehead, the form of the whole face, everything else about his form, this human being has only because spiritual forces give him this form. And therefore we need not be surprised if he who possesses spiritual perception must still speak of a human form when the human being has passed through the gate of death. It is indeed the case for imaginative cognition that the human being, when he has passed through the gate of death, then shows, albeit in relation to the physical view, as it were as a shadow image, but as a very clear, impressive shadow image, a “form”, which to a certain extent initially gives the impression of something external, because we have to imagine the spiritual-soul nature of the human being in a moral-spiritual way. But we will not arrive at a sustainable spiritual conception if we do not first speak of these imaginations, of these pictorial forms that man still carries with him after passing through the gate of death.

After all, the human being lays down his physical body at death, and we can completely disregard what happens to the physical body, because the way in which the human being's physical body dissolves is much less significant than people believe today. This dissolution, whether through decomposition or combustion, is actually only of significance for fellow human beings; it has no great significance for the life of man after he has passed through the gate of death, so that we need only speak of the physical body at first, as it presents itself to sense perception, as that which dissolves into external nature and its forces. Then, soon after death, the etheric body of the human being dissolves. You know this from my description in the “Secret Science”. When the human being has shed these two outer manifestations of his being, something is, so to speak, released from these two “envelopes” - the term “envelope” is not entirely accurate. And whoever is gifted with a corresponding imaginative cognition will see this something that is released from the two envelopes as a form that even after death is in a certain sense similar to the physical form of the human being. Only this - I will call it the spiritual form - continuously undergoes a transformation.

I have often described life between death and a new birth from various points of view. However, you can only get an adequate idea of it if it is described from a whole series of points of view. Now I want to describe it again today from a certain point of view. We must then add the other aspects to what has already been said, and only then will a complete picture emerge.

This spiritual form of man is subject to a continual transformation, and indeed it becomes more and more so that we can only describe it accurately if we say that it becomes entirely physiognomy. In the imaginative view which the initiate has and which the one who has already passed through the gate of death itself has, one sees something of the human being which one would like to call a kind of physiognomy. This physiognomy is the whole person, not just half a person. But according to his physiognomy the whole man now looks in his spiritual form in such a way that this physiognomy is the expression of his essence according to its moral-spiritual inwardness, so that after death a bad man looks different from a good one, and a man who has made a great effort in life looks different from one who has lived carelessly or frivolously. But all this is expressed in such a way that it is not merely a countenance. The countenance even becomes such that it loses the physiognomy it had in physical life; it still retains a part of its physiognomic expression, but it becomes more and more indistinct. On the other hand, the rest of the body becomes very expressive, especially the area where the respiratory organs are internally. In this physiognomy, which occupies the area where the respiratory organs were in physical life, one sees in particular the permanent character traits of the human being expressed physiognomically. The chest emerges, acquires a distinct physiognomy, and from this distinct physiognomy, from the spiritual image after death, one can see whether the person concerned has had more or less courage in the various areas of life, or whether he was somewhat cowardly, whether he has approached life with a certain boldness and bravery, or whether he has gone through life retreating everywhere, and so on.

The arms and hands have a special capacity for expression after death. The biography of the human being between birth and death can be read from the arms and hands, most clearly from the hands - the hands, which are already so significant for the sensible observer in physical life through their physiognomy, which already reveal so much in physical life, so that much can be gathered from the way someone moves his fingers, how someone holds out his hands to you, whether, when he meets you, he only offers the tips of his fingers or gives a handshake with warmth. But the way in which the hands take shape when a person is simply going about their life or doing their work is also so characteristic of physical life. You don't pay attention to it, but most people are already much more interesting because of the way their fingers and hands are held and moved, at least that's how they reveal themselves. This is now enhanced in the most eminent sense after death. You can almost read a person's life story from it.

And it is the same with regard to the other organs. Everything becomes expressively physiognomic after death. And so we can say: after death, the human being bears his moral-spiritual physiognomy.

We spoke yesterday about how the human being, by being formed out of the cosmos, out of the universe, first presents us with his form, and how this form expresses itself in the skin and in the sense organs enclosed in the skin out of that which inscribes itself into the world ether. But what the human skin form is, what appears in physical life on earth as we know it as physical formation, that - the whole skin covering - becomes the physiognomic expression of the moral-spiritual human being. And this remains for a long time.

When people enter this “way of life”, if I may express it like this, they meet those people with whom they have already been in contact here on earth, with whom they have had spiritual, heart and mind communities here. And no one can fool the other! For how each one is and how he is disposed towards the other is faithfully reflected in the physiognomy I have just described. And for this time of life after death, which follows the time of testing - of which I will not speak today - it is the case that people have contact during this time with those with whom they were fatefully connected in some way in their last life on earth or on earth in general. They get to know each other very well. But it is in this first time that one gets to know oneself exactly through the sight of this physiognomy that I have described. And what people experience during this time is precisely this getting to know the people with whom they are fatefully connected. You have to imagine what an intimate mutual - it sounds banal, but it's the right word - “contemplation” this is: each person stands before the other unveiled, with the full significance of the context of fate. This is how you walk past each other, this is how you live together.

At the same time this is that stage of life for man where, by being such a physiognomy, he makes the acquaintance of the beings of the third Hierarchy, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. For these beings, by their permanent nature, are always physiognomy. They have, so to speak, emanated from the world beings of the higher hierarchies, in that their whole spiritual-soul nature is expressed in their spiritual form for those who can see them in their imagination. This is therefore something that is added to the experience of the human being during this time in addition to the contact with those people who are fatefully connected with him. Of course, the sight of the people who are fatefully connected to you is very diverse. For example, the people who have wished you over all the mountains, but with whom you are fatefully connected, appear to you. You recognize exactly what they have been up to and what they have done to you. This view of people is very different, very diverse. And among these walking figures appear the beings of the third hierarchy, who then walk among these people like shining figures, like solar figures. Certainly, the words I use are comparative, but we have no other possibility than to express ourselves in earthly language. But it already describes the reality when one says that the human being encounters the people who are fatefully connected with him in this time. It is peculiar, however, that during this period man can only show understanding in his perception to those other people with whom he is fatefully connected. Those human souls with whom one is not fatefully connected are, so to speak, invisible, one has no handle, no possibility, no ability to comprehend their moral-spiritual physiognomies. You don't pay attention to them, you can't pay attention to them, because only the connection with destiny gives you the power to see. If it were left to man here on earth to see with his physical eyes in the same way as one must see in this stage of life after death, then man would not see many things on earth, for man loves to see passively on earth, to let things shine into him. Even in the present civilization he loves very little to be inwardly active in order to perceive his surroundings. Some people who today actually place their gaze - let us put it this way - especially on the cinematic inclinations, who therefore only ever want to have impressions to which they can passively devote themselves, would, if they were equipped with the same ability to see as we are after death, be able to sit here and would not see their fellow human beings at all. For after death it depends on our attention, which, however, is then implanted in us through the way we are fatefully connected with others, that we also see the others.

So this time, which is initially spent after death, is a time of getting to know each other and, in particular, of getting to know the way in which these people are received in the spiritual world by the beings of the third hierarchy. You can then see what joy the Beings of the Third Hierarchy, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, take in the people who come up into the spiritual world in the form I have described, or how they experience little joy in them. You can see what impression people make on those beings of the higher hierarchies who are initially closest to them in the invisible world.

Then comes another time. The time comes when men who have come to know each other in this way, who have always seen each other, so to speak, now begin to understand each other in the spiritual sense, as it corresponds to this life after death, when they come to acquire, so to speak, a spiritual understanding for these moral-spiritual physiognomies. It is actually the case that in the first time after death one lives as if in nothing but memories. One is together with the people with whom one belongs, one naturally lives “present things” - one acts, one lives, one weaves in all the connections that arise there, especially between men and the beings of the third Hierarchy, but one lives the whole time as in a kind of memory of life on earth. Then, however, a time comes when one begins to have spiritual understanding, when one begins to comprehend - in the sense in which comprehension must occur in the spiritual world - what these moral-spiritual physiognomies of one's fellow men mean for each other. One learns to “understand” one's fellow human beings. One learns to understand them in such a way that one says: This moral-spiritual physiognomy shows me this, that leads back to destinies that one has had together and so on. Well, you experience this immediately after death, because you look at this fate, you look at your fateful community. But now one experiences it in such a way that one says to oneself everywhere: If we have lived together up to now in the way that has resulted from the mutual understanding of the physiognomies, then the further living together must proceed in such and such a way. One now experiences, so to speak, the possibility of the continuation of destiny with understanding, and from then on one gets the feeling of the continuation of the living conditions that have begun. One sees, as if in perspective, how those threads of life destiny that have been tied up will shape themselves in the future and reveal themselves in the moral-spiritual physiognomies. And this settles in more and more intimately, so that there really is a growing together, formally a spiritual-spiritual growing together of souls. And in the process it becomes apparent that what was most expressive in the human being here on the physical earth gradually disappears as he lives into this time. The head disappears, dissolves into a kind of spiritual fog.

In the same measure as the head disappears, the features of the moral-spiritual physiognomy that were there change, in that something appears everywhere that points from the past into the future. And in this time man is placed in the spirit of the planetary movements, in the spirit of the forces in the planetary system. And the consequence of this is that at a certain time after death the people who belong together approach the spiritual existence of the sun. The planetary forces bring them into the spiritual existence of the sun, and everything that people have gone through together is now, so to speak, carried into the spiritual existence of the sun as common experiences and common seeds for future experiences.

It is actually childish for a truly penetrating insight that today's science imagines the sun as a ball of gas that is out there in the universe. That is only the view that the sun presents to the earth. As soon as one looks at the sun with those spiritual eyes, soul eyes, which one has after death, looking at it from outside in the universe, the sun is indeed a spiritual being, or rather an assembly of spiritual beings. The human souls mingle with these spiritual beings, who in this way not only carry themselves into the spiritual existence of the sun with their spiritual contents, but also with their common destinies. And this whole system of human souls, together with the judgments which the beings of the second and third hierarchy make about the value of these people, now shines out into the universe, into the cosmos.

The sun can only be imagined correctly from any point of view on earth if it is imagined in the following way. When we look at the sun from the surface of the earth, it appears to us like a luminous sphere, and we can also make a schematic drawing of it. Now we usually imagine that if we were to go up in a balloon and look at the sun from up there, it would look exactly as it does here from the earth. But that is not the case. If one wanted to make a schematic picture and physically and sensually draw what the sun looks like to the spiritual eye, one would have to imagine spiritual radiations everywhere from the sun to the vast universe. What can be seen of the sun from the earth is only the aspect of the sun shining towards the earth. For the spiritual sight, however, something appears which - little by little, however - becomes a spiritually audible perception, which now becomes the impact into the world music, which is sometimes very impressive. But this impact is now something that people have experienced and that they also experience after death. All this is carried into the sun and radiates out into the cosmos. And then, when this happens, the human being has in a sense already taken on the form of the sun himself, according to the spiritual form I have described. It sounds paradoxical, but these facts must be described because they correspond to reality. Everything that was an expressive physiognomy, a spiritual form, after passing through the gate of death is rounded off, and when the human being arrives in the sun, spiritually speaking, he has actually become a spiritual sphere. Every single person has become a spiritual sphere. And the universe is reflected in this spirit sphere. And now that we have become, so to speak, a completely spiritual sense organ, we no longer have impressions of the earth, but because we have become a completely spiritual eye, we have the impression of the whole universe in this spiritual eye. We feel one with the whole universe. And what we used to be on earth, we now feel outside, apart from ourselves. But by reflecting the whole universe within us as if in a mind's eye, we feel completely at one with the destinies we have experienced in ourselves and in other people.

After we have lived through this for a while, we enter more and more into the sphere of the first hierarchy, the seraphim and cherubim and thrones. We connect with this first hierarchy. First, therefore, we connect ourselves with the third Hierarchy, where we walk among our fellow men who are bound to us by destiny, where we walk in our moral-spiritual physiognomy. Then we are carried along by the planetary forces into the spiritual existence of the sun, where we are connected outside the first, with the second Hierarchy. And now, when we feel ourselves inside through our own solar existence, as in the whole universe, now we are connected with the first hierarchy, the seraphim, cherubim and thrones. And then it becomes more and more apparent that we are beginning to have an interest not only in those people who are connected with us from before in terms of destiny, but that other souls are now appearing who are only now entering our sphere of destiny in this life between death and the next birth. There we begin to be able to observe other human souls than those with whom we were fatefully connected - human souls who will then be fatefully connected with us in the further, future life.

But in those people with whom we were fatefully connected, depending on the degree to which this was the case, we are just now beginning to notice an important transformation of form under the impression of the seraphim, cherubim and thrones, which I will first describe more externally.

If you look with the physical eye at a person who walks in the world in this way, you see him as he puts one leg forward after the other and walks along like this, you see, as it were, a series of snapshots of this person. But if you then look at the person in this sphere after death with imaginative vision, you will see him just as if the steps, the shaping of the legs with each step in the forward stride, just on our limbs, would bear the whole fate that the person has lived through, that has been formed in earthly life. Not only on our legs, but also on our arms we carry the content of our destiny, the good and bad things we have done to other people with our hands. What causes a certain impulse of justice in the world and fits into our destiny can be seen in the way a person moves. And you can also see the inner destiny that man has created for himself through his moods, through the way he has experienced life internally, now in the blood circulation.

What you see in the destiny you can still see long after the human being has entered this sphere that I have described; you can actually still see it in the form of the limbs and the other human formations with the exception of the head and chest. On the physical earth the sight of a human being missing his head and chest and thus passing us by would certainly not be a very pleasant one; but here, between death and new birth, everything has been transformed into the moral-spiritual. The sight is much more powerful than the sight of a human head on earth can be. And this is what the people who are fatefully connected with each other and who experience the fateful during the spiritual sun existence, experience in that time between death and new birth, which I have described in my mystery dramas as the “midnight hour”. The various people now work on the transformation of what they were in their previous life on earth, according to the degree to which they belong together, so that one can see how this happens in detail. You can see, for example, how the content of the legs is reworked for the future earth life to form the lower jaw. The arms and hands are transformed into the upper jaw and all the associated nervous system, but in a spiritual view. The entire lower human being is transformed into the upper human being.

However, this is not done by the human being alone, but by the people who belong together, depending on the degree of their connection with destiny. One works on the other. And through the fact that one works on the other, the spiritual affinities are formed, which then bring about that one person finds the other in life, that he comes together with him. This spiritual kinship, which brings us together with the other in a more or less intimate way, has been brought about in this way in the life between death and the next birth. A spiritual form of the new head is indeed formed through the cooperation of people who are destined to be together. And this is indeed a work in the spirit world, which is not less rich in content than the work here on earth, which on the contrary is much richer in content.

As you have already seen from this: Just as one can describe in general what happens to man between birth and death in the pictures of physical earth life, so one can describe in all concreteness individually what happens to man between death and new birth. It can be described quite concretely. It is a great and powerful thing how the limb system and the blood-metabolism system are transformed. But everything that is reworked in the spiritual existence in the middle between death and the new birth are the moral-spiritual qualities of the human being. And of that which comes out of this reworking, one must then say: What has been reshaped there resounds as world music. This form of the human being, which is modeled on the sun and is a mirror of the universe, shows of the human being in the world sound that which is his outer form. So it is not that one then has, if I may express it comparatively, an eye-like idea of man, but one has in the sound of the world the idea of the reworked essence of the lower man.

And as this progresses further and further, the human being becomes a part of the world word itself. In addition, what he was at first only a combination of the melodious and the harmonious is divided into articulated parts of the world word. In this way man becomes his own being, as if speaking out of the universe. So that one can say: There is a time between death and the next birth where man becomes such that he is spiritual word - not such a word that consists of a few syllables, but that is tremendously meaningful, that contains not only the whole beingness of man in general, but this whole individual man that it is about. At this point in time between death and rebirth, the human being is tremendously mysteriously knowing, and he reveals what he is to the universe, perceptible to the divine-spiritual beings. - When one human being works on the other in this way, in order to bring about in metamorphosis that the lower human being transforms into the upper one - for the upper human being has gradually melted away - when work is done according to the degree of togetherness precisely for the further togetherness, then it is as if one is shaping a spirit plastic in sensations while working. One takes up what is spiritually plastic; one reworks it, and it is transformed into sound and finally into speech.

First, as I have described to you, you walk among the spirit-physiognomies of the people connected with you by looking at them. You become aware of each other, you get to know each other in their spiritual form according to their moral-spiritual qualities. But at first it is contemplation, contemplation that brings human souls together intimately, but contemplation. Then begins the time that I have described as that of mutual understanding. One understands the other, one looks at the other by looking deep into his inner being with understanding, knowing how the future will be linked with the past in the context of destiny. Then the reworking begins, where the one works on the other out of a deep realization, and where what is received spiritually and plastically is transformed into sound and speech. Then it occurs that one not only understands the other, but where one speaks his warm word of creation to the other. Here on earth we speak with the organs of speech, here we tell ourselves what we have recognized with our organs of speech. Behind that which sits and speaks within us stands the physical body, and in it lives our ordinary word as a fleeting thing to which higher things communicate. And by expressing with our organs of speech what we want to say to ourselves, we erase that which lives behind what is only sensuality. And now think to yourself: that which the human being expresses, that which passes into the fleeting word, would be at the same time like a self-expression of the human being, his essence and at the same time his revelation - then you have how people meet in the middle between death and new birth, distinguishing their own essence and revealing themselves. Word meets word, articulated word meets articulated word, inwardly enlivened word meets inwardly enlivened word. But people are the words, their sounding together is the sounding together of the articulated word being. Here people live in such a way that there is no impermeability: here people really live together, and the one word, which is one person, merges into the other word, which is the other person. There those fateful connections are formed which then remain in the aftermath for the following life on earth, and which express themselves in such a way that people, when they meet, come together and to a certain extent feel sympathy and antipathy. Then this feeling is the reflection of what people in the spirit world have addressed each other as in the middle between death and new birth. This is how we spoke to each other, who were ourselves the speech, as we now find ourselves on earth only in the shadowy image of feeling.

This is roughly what man would have to say to himself if he experienced what he experiences on earth with other people as the emotional echo of what he once was in the Word of Creation, expressing himself, between death and new birth. This is the time when people are actually for each other. And the earthly togetherness is, I would like to say, the projection of the essential togetherness that has come down to earth from the spiritual.

Then, when man has lived through this time, the other time comes again, where he gradually leaves that which is the essence of the first Hierarchy, the essence of the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones - where he again comes into the realm of the second Hierarchy, again comes into the realm of the forces which the planets exert on each other, and where then the perceptions which man now receives from the world are added; Perceptions which were not there before to the same extent, but actually only in so far as they were again pursued in the other entities. Now the world also appears as an external world. One becomes acquainted with mutual relationships with entities that have nothing to do with one; one becomes acquainted with relationships with those human beings who have only emerged in the middle between death and new birth. This occurs at the time when human beings again come into the planetary sphere and into connection with the beings of the second hierarchy. They were in the past, but now it is a different context, because the first hierarchy has faded and is no longer there. And there we find the germs, at first spirit-germs, for the again plastic formation of man, for the new man of the breast and the new man of the limbs. The human being develops more and more in his spiritual pre-form. That which he expressed himself as in the Word of the World, that in turn becomes the music of the spheres, the pictorial sculpture of his being grows out of the music of the spheres. And so he approaches more and more the point in time when he is ripe to enter into connection with an embryonic human germ formation that comes to him from his father and mother, with whom he only connects himself. For there is a spirit form which descends from the spiritual world into the physical earthly existence and which is the actual essence of man, while that which comes to man with the physical embryo is only there so that man can enter into a connection with the earthly substances and penetrate them.

So what takes place between death and a new birth is a life rich in content. The work that the human souls carry out takes place between the beings of the higher worlds and between the human souls themselves. But the whole nature of this life in its outer form is different from that of life on earth. And if we now want to make progress in the ever clearer and clearer comprehension of this supersensible essence of man, then we still have to be clear about the following.

First of all, we live here in the physical-sensual earthly world. We perceive the outside world through our senses. We have to say to ourselves: what we perceive there is perceptible and physical. We do not perceive anything else in earthly life other than what is perceptible and physical. Above this there is another world to which our etheric body itself belongs, which permeates our physical body. This world is initially imperceptible to human sensory perception and it is also not physical, it is superphysical. So our perceptible, physical world is bordered by another, imperceptible, superphysical world. This is the next world, in which lives the third hierarchy, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. For the embodied earthman living in the physical, who does not develop a spiritual view, this world is initially imperceptible, and it is also not physical: although it expresses its effects in the physical world, it is not physical.

A third world then follows on from this. This is again not physical; in this respect it is similar to the second, the etheric world, it is superphysical. But the peculiar thing is that it is perceptible. It is perceptible from our world, and we arrive at a characteristic of a world that projects into ours, that is perceptible but superphysical. This is why man does not initially interpret it in its true essence. To this world, which is superphysical but perceptible, belongs, for example, that which floods towards us in the light of the sun. The entire population of the sun, these spiritual beings, are superphysical, but they are perceptible on earth. For it is nonsense that sunlight is only what physicists believe it to be; sunlight is the revelation of the solar beings. The solar beings are perceptible, but man receives a form from these solar beings which he cannot interpret. The light of the stars, the light of the moon, the sun and other light, apart from that of the sun, moon and stars - it is perceptible; only that which is behind it as the being is not correctly interpreted by man. Hence we have here a world which is perceptible but superphysical, bordering on the physically perceptible. It is important that we give this characteristic:

1.our world, perceptible and physical,
2. the second world, adjacent to the first; in it are the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai: imperceptible and superphysical; it is the abode of the third Hierarchy, but also the abode of men when they are in communion with the third Hierarchy in life between death and new birth,
3. the third world is perceptible and again superphysical, it is the abode of the second Hierarchy.

There now remains for us as

4.an imperceptible, physical world.

If you add an imperceptible, physical world as the fourth, you have exhausted all possible worlds: perceptible-physical, imperceptible-physical, perceptible-superphysical, imperceptible-superphysical. So we have a fourth world, an imperceptible and physical one. How can we imagine it? It is there among us, it is physically present, but imperceptible. Think about it: when you lift your leg - it is heavy, gravity acts on the leg. It is physically acting gravity, but imperceptible through sensory perception. You may experience gravity internally, but it is physically imperceptible. - And it is the same with other things as with gravity: They experience within themselves, albeit in feelings that man cannot interpret - that is why it is imperceptible-physical - that which an earlier spiritual science, which was more instinctive, called the “Mercurial”, that which wants to form itself in drop form. You constantly have it within you - as the protein components that you have within you, you want to form it: again something physical, but imperceptible in its own configuration. You see, a living combustion is taking place within you, a physical effect that you do not perceive, that lives in your will, but you do not interpret it as such: imperceptible physicality. In this imperceptible physical resides the first hierarchy, the seraphim, cherubim, thrones!

And now you get a strange aspect. By passing through the gate of death, we first of all go out into the imperceptible-superphysical. We disappear from the world, so to speak. We then move on into the sphere of the second hierarchy, thus entering the perceptible-superphysical, that is, we live in the time when we learn to understand our destinies in something like the flooding sunlight or starlight. Those who have learned to see this do not merely look thoughtlessly out into the vastness of the world, into the starry sphere or at the sun, but they know that the threads of humanity's destiny are formed in this flooding light; this is the perceptible-superphysical, in it live the dead people, the seemingly dead people. And when man then carries out this transformation, this metamorphosis for the earthly again, then he is on earth. But the world where he now walks around in the time between death and new birth is in the imperceptible-physical, it is in the heavy formation, in the mercurial, in the phosphorous formation. - We will gradually understand what these formations are like. - Thus we are first raptured out of life into the invisible, but come in again in an imperceptible way, so that, after being raptured once more, we prepare ourselves for the future and perceptible physical life on earth. We make the journey between death and the new birth from the perceptible physical earth life through the other states to the imperceptible physical earth life: There we are in the midnight hour of existence, making our way back again and re-entering the physical earth existence.

This is initially a sketch, which we will explain in detail in the next lecture. But you see, one cannot merely give general abstract thoughts for the life of man between death and the new birth, but one can point out, for example, how man, in order to prepare his future life in a visible world, comes to earth in an invisible way between death and the new birth. Think how our knowledge of earthly life is deepened when we know what spiritual beings live within the physical earthly existence in the midnight hour of existence! We have among us here in the physical earthly existence not only the physically embodied human beings, but we also have constantly walking among us as an important spiritual-being content of earthly existence those human beings who are in the middle, in the midnight hour of existence, between death and the new birth. The fact that we are not aware of these people is due to the fact that they do not live through earthly existence at midday, but at midnight.

We will discuss what all this means in the next lesson.