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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Occult Science - An Outline
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Occult Science - An Outline
The essence of man's waking consciousness cannot be penetrated without
observing the condition he lives through in sleep; so too, is the
riddle of life insoluble without the study of death. People who have
no feeling for the importance of supersensible knowledge will find
grounds for skepticism in the very fact that it dwells so much on the
facts of sleep and death. We can appreciate the motives of this kind
of skepticism. For it is not unreasonable to insist that man is here
to lead an active life, and that the more he is devoted to this life,
the more efficient and creative he will be; to delve into such things
as sleep and death can only spring from a tendency to idle dreaming
and lead to nothing more than empty figments of the mind.
People may easily regard the refusal to indulge in such empty
figments as a sign of mental health, and see in the pursuit of
these idle dreamings something morbid, natural enough to
those deficient in vitality and vigor, without ability to do creative
work. We should do wrong merely to brush aside this opinion. There is
in it a modicum of truth; it is a quarter-truth, and only needs to be
complemented by the remaining three quarters. By arguing against it we
only kindle the mistrust of those who see the one quarter well enough
but are unaware of the other three.
A study of what lies hidden behind sleep and death is only morbid if
it produces weakness and aversion from the realities of life. This may
be granted without reservation. Admittedly moreover, much that has
claimed the title of Occult Science in the past or is
pursued today under this name, bears an unhealthy stamp, inimical to
life. But the true science of the supersensible does not give rise to
anything unhealthy of this kind.
The fact is rather this: As a man cannot always be awake, so for the
full reality of life he cannot do without what the supersensible
provides. Life goes on in sleep; the faculties with which we work and
achieve results in waking consciousness derive strength and renewal
from what sleep imparts. So too it is with what man is able to observe
within the manifest world. The real world is wider than the field of
this type of observation. Therefore the knowledge man can gain within
the visible domain needs to be fertilized and complemented by all that
he can come to know of the invisible. A man who did not ever and again
derive from sleep the renewal of his exhausted powers would destroy
his life; likewise, a way of thinking which is not made fruitful by
the knowledge of hidden worlds must ultimately lead to emptiness and
desolation.
So too with death. All living things are subject to death,
to the end that new life may arise. It is the knowledge of the
supersensible which throws clear light on Goethe's well-known saying,
Nature herself invented death, to have abundant life. As
without death there could be no life in the ordinary meaning of the
term, so without insight into the supersensible there can be no true
knowledge even of the visible world. Our knowledge of the visible must
penetrate again and again to the invisible, that it may live and grow.
Thus it becomes apparent that the science of the manifest world is
awakened to essential life by the science of the supersensible. In its
true form, the latter never has a weakening effect. Time and again it
brings refreshment and healing into the outer existence which when
abandoned to its own resources becomes weak and ill.
When a man falls asleep the connection between the members of his
being undergoes a change. What we see lying there on the bed includes
the physical and the etheric body of the sleeper, but not the astral
body nor the I or Ego. Inasmuch as the etheric body remains
connected with the physical, the vital functions continue during
sleep; left to itself alone, the physical body would of necessity
disintegrate. It is the thoughts, the mental images, it is pain and
pleasure, joy and grief, the power of giving conscious direction to
the will, and all other things of this kind, which are blotted out in
sleep. Now of all this the astral body is the bearer.
For an unbiased mind there can of course be no question of supposing
that the astral body with its pains and pleasures, with its whole
world of ideation and volition, is annihilated during sleep. It is
still there, only in a different state. If the human I and
astral body are not merely to contain pain and pleasure and all the
other things above named, but to have conscious perception of them,
the astral body must be united with the physical and etheric bodies,
as indeed it is in waking life. In sleep it is not so; it has then
withdrawn from the physical and the etheric bodies, and entered into
quite another mode of existence than pertains to it when united with them.
It is the task of supersensible science to investigate this other mode
of existence. In sleep the astral body vanishes from external
observation; supersensible perception must now trace it through the
stages of its life, till on awakening it once more takes possession of
the physical and the etheric body.
As with all other knowledge of the world's hidden realities,
supersensible observation is necessary for the discovery of the
spiritual facts concerning sleep; properly stated, however, what has
thus been discovered is intelligible to unbiased thinking. For the
realities of hidden worlds are manifest in their effects. If we
perceive how the processes of the sense-world are made intelligible by
the information derived from supersensible perceptions, such
confirmation by the facts of life is the kind of proof we may expect.
Anyone not wishing to apply the methods later to be described
for the attainment of supersensible perception, can have the
following experience. To begin with, he may simply take the statements
of supersensible science and apply them to what is manifest within the
compass of his experience. He will discover that life becomes clear
and intelligible to him in the process. Indeed the more exact and
searching his study of the ordinary life he knows, the more will he be
held to this conviction.
Although the astral body during sleep experiences no ideas or thoughts
in consciousness, though it is unaware of pain or pleasure or the
like, yet it does not remain inactive. On the contrary, it is
precisely during sleep that a most vital activity devolves upon it
an activity into which it has to enter again and again in
rhythmical succession, when for a time it has been working in unison
with the physical and the etheric body. A pendulum, returning to the
middle after swinging left, will swing to the right through the very
momentum it has gathered on the left. So it is with the astral body and
the I or Ego which it bears within it. Having been active in
the physical and etheric body for a time, for a succeeding period of
time precisely as an outcome of this activity they need
to live and move and have their being in a body-free condition, in an
environment of pure soul and spirit.
As man is constituted in ordinary life, unconsciousness ensues during
this body-free condition of the astral body and Ego. Unconsciousness
is in effect the antithesis of the state of consciousness evolved in
waking life by union with the physical and the etheric bodies, just as
the swing of a pendulum to the right is the antithesis of the swing to
the left. The need to enter into this unconscious state is felt by the
human soul and spirit as tiredness, fatigue. Fatigue itself is the
expression of the fact that during sleep the astral body and Ego are
making themselves ready for the next waking state, when they will once
again be undoing and reversing in the physical and etheric body what
has arisen in the latter through a purely organic and
unconscious formative activity while free from the
soul-and-spirit. This unconscious formative activity, and what takes
place in man during his conscious life and by virtue of it, are
contrasting states which have to alternate in rhythmical succession.
The form and shape, proper to the physical body of man, can only be
maintained by means of a human etheric body, which in its turn must be
endowed with the appropriate forces by the astral body. The ether-body
is the form-giving agent or architect of the physical. But it can only
form the physical body aright if it receives from the astral body the
necessary guidance and stimulation. In the astral body are the
pattern-forms or archetypes according to which the etheric
body gives the physical its appointed shape.
Now in the waking life the astral body is not imbued with these
archetypal patterns for the physical body, or only to a limited
extent. For while awake the soul puts its own pictures, its own
images, in their place. Turning his senses to the surrounding world,
in the very act of perception man forms pictures, mental images of his
surroundings. These images are, to begin with, disturbers of the
peace for those pattern-forms which stimulate the etheric body
in its work of building and maintaining the physical. Only if a man
were able by his own inner activity to supply his astral body with
such pictures as could give to the etheric body the right kind of
stimulus, only then would there be no such disturbance. Yet the fact
is that this very disturbance plays an essential part in human life,
and as an outcome, while a man is awake the archetypal pictures for
his etheric body cannot work with their full power. The astral body
fulfills its waking function within the physical body; in sleep
it works upon the latter from without.
Just as the physical body in the supply of nourishment for
example has need of the outer world to which it is akin, a
similar thing is also true of the astral body. Imagine a human
physical body taken right away from its appropriate surroundings; it
would inevitably perish. The physical body's existence is impossible
without the entire physical environment. The whole Earth must be as it
is, if human physical bodies are to be present on it. In truth, this
human body is but a portion of the Earth-planet, and in a wider sense
of the whole physical Universe. In this respect it is as the finger is
to the human body as a whole. Separate the finger from the hand
it cannot remain a finger; it will shrink and wither. Such too would
be the fate of the human body if severed from the body of which it is
a member from the life-conditions with which the Earth provides
it. Raise it a sufficient number of miles above the Earth and it will
perish, as the finger does when cut off from the hand. As to his
physical body, man may be less aware of this fact than with regard to
the finger in relation to this body as a whole. But this is merely
because the finger cannot walk about the body as man does about the
Earth; hence the dependence is more obvious in the one case than in
the other.
Even as the physical body is embedded in the physical world to which
it belongs, so too the astral body belongs to a world of its own, from
which however it is torn away by man's waking life. This may be
illustrated by a comparison. Imagine a vessel full of water. Within
the mass of water a single drop has no separate existence. But take a
little sponge and draw a drop away, thus severing it from the total
mass. Something of this kind happens to the human astral body on
awakening. During sleep it is in a world of its own kind, a world to
which it properly belongs. On awakening, the physical and the etheric
body draw it in and fill themselves with it. These two bodies contain
the organs whereby the astral body perceives the external world, to
attain which perception it has to be detached from its own world. Yet
from the latter alone can it derive the archetypal patterns which it
needs for the etheric body.
As food and other necessities are received by the physical body from
its environment, so do the pictures of the astral body's
environment come to it during sleep. The fact is that the astral body
is then living, outside the physical and the etheric, in the great
Universe the selfsame Universe out of which the entire man is
born. For in that Universe is the source of the creative
patterns,--the archetypal pictures to which man owes his form. In his
true being he belongs to the great Universe and is in harmony with it.
In waking life he detaches himself from the all-embracing harmony, in
order to have outer perceptions. In sleep his astral body returns into
the harmony of the Universe, whence on awakening he brings sufficient
force into his bodies to enable him for a time once more to forgo the
sojourn there.
The astral body thus returns to its pristine home during sleep, and on
awakening brings with it into life newly strengthened forces. All this
finds expression in the refreshment which a healthy sleep affords. As
the further exposition of Occult Science will reveal, the home of the
astral body is of far wider compass than the more obvious physical
environment to which the physical body belongs. While as a physical
being man is a member of the Earth, his astral body belongs to worlds
wherein other heavenly bodies are contained besides our planet Earth.
The astral body therefore, during sleep, enters a Universe to which
other worlds than the Earth belong. But this can only be made fully
clear in the further course of our explanations.
Though it should really be superfluous, prevalent habits of
materialistic thought render it not unnecessary to set aside a
possible misunderstanding in this connection. People adhering to these
ways of thought will be inclined to say: Surely the scientific
procedure is to investigate the physical conditions of such a thing as
sleep. Though scientists may not yet be agreed as to its precise
causation, this much at any rate is certain: physical processes of one
kind or another can be assumed to underlie the phenomenon of
sleep. If only it were realized that supersensible science is
not at all against such a contention! All that is said from this
quarter is readily accepted, just as it will be admitted that for a
house to come into physical existence one brick must be laid on the
other, and that when the house is finished its form and its stability
are explainable by purely mechanical laws. Yet for the house to come
into being the thought of the architect was also necessary. This
thought will not be discovered by mere investigation of the mechanical
and physical laws. Behind the physical laws in terms of which the
structure of the house can be explained, there are the thoughts of the
creator. So too, behind what physical science and physiology are
perfectly right in bringing forward, there are the hidden realities of
which the science of the supersensible is telling.
Admittedly, the same comparison is frequently adduced to justify
belief in a spiritual background of the world, and one may find it
trite. But in these matters the point is not whether a line of thought
is familiar, but whether we have given it due weight. We may well be
prevented from appreciating the true weight of an idea because ideas
derived from a contrary way of thinking have too much influence upon
our judgment.
A midway condition between waking and sleeping is dreaming. Reflecting
on our dream-experiences, we are confronted by a world of pictures,
iridescent and in manifold confusion, though not without some hint of
underlying method. Pictures arise and fade away again, often
bewildering in their sequence. Man in his dream-life is released from
the laws which bind his waking consciousness to the perceptions of the
senses and the logical rules of judgment. Yet in the world of dreams
we seem to divine mysterious laws of its own, fascinating and
alluring. This is the deeper reason why we are prone to compare with
dreaming the play of fancy and creative imagination which our
aesthetic and artistic sense delights in.
We need only call to mind a few characteristic dreams to find all this
confirmed. A man will dream, for example, that he is chasing away a
dog which has been rushing at him. He awakens and finds himself in the
unconscious act of pushing away a portion of the bed-clothes which had
been weighing on an unaccustomed part of his body and had become
oppressive. In such an instance, what does the dream make of the real,
sense-perceptible event? To begin with, the life of sleep leaves
entirely in the unconscious what the senses would have perceived in
waking life. But it holds fast to one essential the fact that
we are wanting to ward something off and around this it weaves
an imaginary sequence of events. In substance these imaginary pictures
are like echoes from the waking life of the day-time, echoes selected
at random. The dreamer will generally feel that with the same external
cause his dream might just as well have conjured up quite other
pictures. Only in one way or another they would relate, in this
instance, to the sensation of having to ward something off. The dream,
therefore, creates symbolic pictures; it is in fact a symbolist. Inner
bodily conditions too can be translated into dream-symbols of this
kind. A man will dream that a fire is crackling beside him; he sees
the very flames. On awakening, he finds that he put on too many
bed-clothes and has grown too hot. The feeling of excessive heat comes
out symbolically in the picture of the fire.
Experiences of the most dramatic kind can be enacted in a dream. For
instance, a man dreams that he is standing near the edge of a cliff
and sees a child running towards it. The dream lets him undergo all
the tortures of the thought, What if the child should fail to
notice and fall over! Presently he sees the child fall and hears
the dull thud of the body down below. He wakes up and finds that a
familiar object, hanging on the wall of the room, has worked loose and
made a dull sounds as it fell. A simple enough event the
dream-life turns it into a sequence of dramatic pictures, full of
suspense and excitement.
For the present we need not stop to ponder, how and why in the
last example the instantaneous thud of the falling object gets
extended into a whole series of events, seeming to occupy a
considerable time. The point is that the dream translates what waking
sense-perception would have shown, into scenes and pictures.
We see from this that when the senses create from their activity,
immediately a creative faculty begins to stir in man. It is the same
creative faculty which is at work in fully dreamless sleep, there
giving rise to the state of soul we were describing as the antithesis
of the waking state. For dreamless sleep, the astral body has to be
withdrawn both from the etheric body and from the physical. In
dreaming, while separated from the physical body no longer
joined to the physical sense-organs it still remains connected
to some extent with the etheric. The very fact that what is going on
in the astral body is perceived in pictures, is due to its connection
with the etheric body. The moment this connection too is severed, the
pictures fade into complete unconsciousness; dreamless sleep ensues.
The arbitrary, often nonsensical character of dream-pictures is due to
the fact that the astral body, disconnected as it is from the
sense-organs of the physical, cannot relate its pictures to the proper
objects and events of the external world. This becomes very evident
when we contemplate the kind of dream in which the I, the Ego,
is in a sense divided. For instance, one dreams of oneself as a pupil
who cannot answer a question the schoolmaster is putting; yet in the
very next moment the master himself gives the required answer. Unable
to make use of the organs of perception of his physical body, the
dreamer cannot relate the two events to himself as to one and the same
person. Even to recognize himself as a continuous and coherent
I, man therefore needs to be equipped with outer organs of
perception. Only if he had attained the faculty to be aware of his own
I without the help of such organs of perception, only then
would the continuity and oneness of the I still be perceptible
to him even outside the physical body. For supersensible
consciousness, faculties of this kind must indeed be acquired. The way
to do so will be dealt with in a later chapter.
Not only sleep; death too is due to a change in the mutual connection
between the members of man's being. And here once more, what is
apparent to supersensible perception can also be seen in its effects
within the manifest world. Here once again, unbiased thinking will
find the statements of supersensible science confirmed by the facts of
external life, though in this instance the impress of the invisible in
the visible domain is less in evidence, and it is therefore not so
easy to realize the weight and bearing of those realities of outer
life which answer to the statements of supersensible science. Here
even more than for other things already dealt with in this volume, if
the mind is not open to discern the way in which the sense-perceptible
domain relates to the supersensible and indicates the latter's
presence, it is only too easy to pronounce the findings of Occult
Science mere figments of imagination.
When a man falls asleep, whereas his astral body is released from its
connection with the etheric and physical bodies, the latter still
remain united. Not so in death. Left to its own unaided forces, the
physical body will now inevitably disintegrate. For the etheric body,
on the other hand, death brings about a condition in which it never
was throughout the whole time between birth and death, save in
exceptional circumstances to be mentioned later. For the etheric is
now united with its astral body, and the physical body is no longer
with them. The fact is that the etheric and astral bodies do not
separate immediately after death. They hold together for a time, by
virtue of a force which obviously must be there, for otherwise the
etheric body could never have freed itself from the physical, to which
it is tenaciously attached, as is shown by the fact that in sleep the
astral body fails to part them. At death, the force that holds the
etheric and astral bodies together becomes at last effective,
detaching the etheric from the physical. To begin with therefore, the
etheric body after death is united with the astral body. Supersensible
observation shows that this their union varies from one individual to
another. All we need say at the moment is that it lasts for a short
time for a few days after which the astral body frees
itself from the etheric body also, and goes on its way without it.
While the connection of the two persists, man is in a condition
consciously to perceive the experiences of his astral body. So long as
the physical body was there, the separation of the astral body from
the physical in sleep involved the immediate commencement of its work
upon the physical body from without, for the renewal of the outworn
organs. With the severance of the physical body at death, this work is
at an end. But the spiritual forces which were expended on it during
sleep are still there and can now serve a different end, namely to
make perceptible the processes within the astral body as such.
From a point of view which would restrict scientific observation to
the outer aspects of life, it will be said: These are so many
assertions, evident no doubt to those endowed with supersensible
perception; men who are not thus endowed have no way of assessing the
truth. Yet this is not so. Even in this domain, remote though it
may seem from ordinary sight and thought, what the science of the
supersensible observes can be taken hold of, once discovered,
by the normal faculties of thought and judgment. One need only ponder
with due judgment the manifest and given relationships of human life.
The thinking, feeling and willing of man are related to one another,
and to his experiences in and with the outer world, in ways that are
unintelligible unless the manifest activities and relationships are
understood as the expression of an unmanifest. To thoughtful
contemplation, what is here manifest remains opaque and untransparent
till we are able to interpret the way it takes its course
within the physical life of man, as an outcome of non-physical
realities disclosed by supersensible cognition. Unillumined by the
science of the supersensible, it is as though we were in a dark room
without a light. Just as we cannot see the physical objects around us
until we have a light, so too we cannot explain what goes on in and
through the soul-life of man till we have knowledge of the
supersensible.
While man is joined to his physical body, the outer world enters his
consciousness in images. After the physical body has been laid aside,
he becomes aware of the experiences the astral body undergoes when
unconnected with the outer world by physical sense-organs. To begin
with, the astral body has no essentially new experiences. Its still
remaining connection with the etheric body stands in the way of any
new experience. But it possesses in an enhanced degree the memory of
the past earth-life, which memory the etheric body being still
united with it makes to appear in a vivid, all-embracing
tableau.
Such is the first experience of the human being after death. He sees
his past life from birth till death in a vast series of pictures,
simultaneously spread out before him. During this earthly life, memory
is only present while in the waking state man is united
with his physical body. Moreover, it is only present to the limited
extent the physical body permits. Yet to the soul herself nothing is
lost; everything that has ever made an impression on the soul during
this life is preserved. If the physical body were but a perfect
instrument for the purpose, it would be possible for us at every
moment to conjure up before the soul the whole of our past earthly
life. At death all hindrance is removed, and while man still retains
the ether-body he has a relatively perfect memory. This vanishes,
however, in proportion as the ether-body loses the form it had while
it indwelt the physical a form which bears a fundamental
likeness to the latter. This also is the reason why the astral body
after a time separates from the etheric. For the astral body can only
remain united with the etheric while the latter retains the imprint,
the form that corresponds to the physical body.
During the life between birth and death a severance of the etheric
body from the physical only takes place in exceptional cases and then
only for a short duration. When, for example, a man subjects an arm or
leg to an unusual pressure, a portion of the etheric body may become
separated from the physical. We say then that the limb has gone
to sleep. The peculiar sensation it gives is in fact due to the
severance of the etheric body. (Here too, of course, materialistic
thinking can deny the invisible within the visible, maintaining that
the effect is merely due to the physical or physiological
disturbances induced by the excessive pressure.) In such a case
supersensible perception actually sees the corresponding part of the
etheric body moving out and away from the physical. Now when a man
undergoes an altogether unaccustomed shock or something of that
nature, a like severance of the etheric may ensue for a brief space of
time over a large proportion of the body. This happens if he is
brought very near to death, as on the point of drowning, or when in
imminent danger of a fall in mountaineering.
What is related by individuals who have had such experiences comes
very near the truth. Supersensible observation confirms it. They tell
how at such a moment the whole of their past life appeared before them
in a vast tableau of memory. Among the many examples that might be
cited, we select one, the author of which by the whole tenor of
his thought would have rejected as empty fancies what is here
said about these matters. Incidentally, when one is taking the first
steps in supersensible observation it is always useful to familiarize
oneself with the findings of those who think the science of the
supersensible fantastic. They are less easily attributed to favorable
bias. (Let occult scientists learn as much as they can from those who
deem their efforts futile. If the latter do not respond in kind we
need not feel discouraged. Supersensible observation does not of
course depend on these evidences for the verification of its results,
and in adducing them the intention is not to prove, only to
illustrate.)
The eminent anthropologist and criminologist Moritz Benedict, a
scientist distinguished too in other branches of research, tells in
his reminiscences of an experience of his own. Once he was very nearly
drowned while bathing. He saw the whole of his past life in memory
before him as though in a single picture.
It is no contradiction if others have described quite differently the
pictures they experienced on such occasions, to the extent sometimes
that there seemed little connection with the events of their past
lives. For the pictures that arise during this altogether unaccustomed
state of severance from the physical body are often not so easy to
elucidate in their relation to the human being's life. None the less,
if thoroughly gone into, some such relation will always be discerned.
Nor is it valid to object that someone on the point of drowning did
not have the experience at all. For the experience is only possible
when the etheric body, while severed from the physical, remains united
with the astral. It will not occur if the shock brings about a
detachment of the etheric from the astral body too, since there will
then be complete unconsciousness, just as there is in dreamless sleep.
Once more, then: gathered together in a great memory-tableau, the past
life of man comes before him during the time immediately following his
death. Thereafter, the astral body severed now from the etheric
goes on its further way alone and by itself. It is not
difficult to see that in this astral body there will not remain
whatever it has made its own by dint of its own activity while living
in the physical. The Ego has to some extent elaborated Spirit-Self,
Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. These, in so far as they are evolved, owe
their existence to the Ego to the I not to the organs of
the bodies. Now by its very essence the I is the being which
needs no outer organs for its perception. No more does it need outer
organs to retain what it has once united with itself.
It may perhaps be objected: why, then, in sleep is there no perception
of the evolved Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man? There is none
because from birth until death the Ego is chained to the physical
body. In sleep, it is true, it is with the astral body outside the
physical. Yet even then it remains in close connection with the
latter, for to the physical body the activity of the astral body,
closely associated with the Ego, is directed. Bound as it is to the
physical throughout earthly life, the Ego is dependent for its
perceptions on the outer world of the senses; it cannot yet receive
the manifestations of the spiritual in its original and proper form.
Such manifestations can only come to the human Ego when released by
death from its connection with the physical and etheric bodies. In
life, the physical world holds the soul's activities chained to
itself; another world can light up for the soul the moment it has been
drawn forth, out of the physical body.
Yet there are reasons why even at this juncture man's connection with
the external, sense-perceptible world does not altogether cease.
Cravings, in effect, persist, maintaining the connection. These are
the cravings man engenders for himself through the very fact that he
is Ego-conscious endowed with an Ego, the fourth member of his
being. The cravings and desires which spring from the nature of the
three lower bodies can only take effect in the outer world; when these
bodies are laid aside, these cravings cease. Due as it is to the
external body, hunger is naturally silenced when this body is no
longer joined to the Ego. When death has taken place, the Ego, if it
had now no other cravings than derive from its own spiritual nature,
could draw full satisfaction from the spiritual world into which it is
then transplanted. But life has given it other cravings besides these.
Life has kindled in it a longing for enjoyments which, while only
satisfiable by means of physical organs, are not in essence
attributable to these organs. Not only the three bodies crave for
satisfaction through the physical world; the Ego too finds enjoyments
in this world enjoyments such that in the spiritual world there
are no objects to satisfy the longing for them.
Two kinds of wishes are proper to the Ego during earthly life. First
are the wishes which, originating as they do in the three bodies, have
to be satisfied in and through the bodies; these wishes naturally
cease when the bodies disintegrate. Secondly there are the wishes
which originate in the spiritual nature of the Ego. So long as the Ego
is living in the bodies, these wishes too will find their satisfaction
by means of bodily organs. For the unmanifest, the spirit, is at work
here too manifested through the organs of the body. In and with
all that they perceive, the outer senses are at the same time
receiving a spiritual portion. This spiritual portion is present also
after death, though in a different form. Therefore the spiritual that
the Ego craves for in the world of the senses is still available to it
when these senses are no longer there.
If then a third kind of wish were not added to these two, death would
merely signify the passing on from cravings satisfiable by means of
bodily senses, to such as find fulfillment in the direct revelations
of the spiritual world. But there are wishes of a third kind
wishes which the Ego engenders for itself while living in the
sense-world inasmuch as it takes pleasure in this world even where the
latter is not making manifest the spirit.
The lowest kinds of enjoyment can be true manifestations of the
spirit. The satisfaction food affords to a hungry creature this
too is a manifestation of the spirit. For by the creature's
nourishment something is accomplished, without which in one
essential direction the spiritual itself could not evolve. But
the I of man is able to go beyond this due enjoyment. The
I can long for the tasty dish, quite apart from the function
nourishment fulfils and in the fulfilling of it serves the spirit. The
same applies to many other things belonging to the sensual
world that is to say, the world of the senses. Desires are thus
engendered which would never have occurred in the sense-perceptible
world of Nature, had not the I of man entered this world. Nor
is it from the spiritual being of the I as such that these
desires spring. The natural enjoyments of the senses are needed by the
Ego even as a spiritual being while living in the body.
In and through sense-perceptible Nature the spiritual manifests
itself; it is none other than the spirit which the Ego is enjoying
when given up to sensual manifestations through which the spirit-light
is shining. In the enjoyment of this light it will continue, even when
the nature of the outer sense is no longer the medium through which
the spiritual light is radiating.
For sensual desires on the other hand, from which the living spirit is
absent, there can be no fulfillment in the spiritual world. Therefore
when death ensues the possibility of their assuagement is utterly cut
off. The enjoyment of tasty food can only be brought about by means of
the bodily organs tongue, palate and the like used in
taking of food. These organs man no longer has when the physical body
has been laid aside. And if the Ego still feels need of such
enjoyment, the need must remain unsatisfied. In so far as the enjoyment
is in harmony with the spirit, it will be present only as long as the
physical organs are there. But in so far as the human I has
fostered it without thereby serving the spirit, the wish for the
enjoyment will persist after death, vainly thirsting for satisfaction.
What now goes on in man can only be imagined if we think of one who
has to suffer burning thirst in a desert country where no water is to
be found. Such is the lot of the human I after death in so far
as it harbors unextinguished cravings for the enjoyments of the outer
world and has no organs for their satisfaction. Only, if thirst is
here to serve as a comparison for the Ego's plight after death, we
must imagine it boundlessly enhanced and extended to all the manifold
cravings which may still persist, for the assuagement of which there
is no possibility whatever.
The next stage through which the Ego passes is that it gradually frees
itself from all these bonds of attachment to the outer world. In this
respect it has to bring about within itself a purging and a
liberation. All the desires the Ego has engendered while living in the
body and that have not their rightful home within the spiritual world,
must now be extirpated. As a combustible material is seized and burned
by fire, so is the world of cravings dissolved and annihilated after
death.
Herewith we peer into a world which supersensible wisdom has very
properly described as the consuming fire of the spirit.
This fire seizes hold of every craving which is not only
sensual related, that is, to the sense-perceptible world
but is so in such a way that in its essential nature it does not
express the spirit. Pictures like these, in terms of which
supersensible insight cannot but describe what actually happens after
death, may appear terrible and cheerless. Well may it seem appalling
that a hope, for the satisfaction of which sensory organs are required, must
after death give way to utter hopelessness, or that a wish which the
physical world alone is able to fulfill, must change into the burning
want of fulfillment. Yet one can only think in this way while failing
to perceive that all the wishes and cravings, seized upon after death
by the consuming fire, represent forces which are not
wholesome but in a higher sense destructive, inimical to life. These
forces cause the Ego to form closer bonds of attachment to the
sense-world than are needed in order to receive from this world that
which will serve the Ego's progress. Nature the world of
the senses is a manifestation of the hidden spiritual.
There is a form in which the spiritual can only become manifest by
means of bodily senses, and in this form the Ego would never be able
to receive it, were it not to use the senses for the enjoyment of what
is spiritual in the garb of Nature. But the Ego becomes estranged from
the world's real and true and spiritual content when cravings for
sensual enjoyments through which the spirit is no longer speaking.
While sensual enjoyment as an expression of the spirit helps to uplift
and evolve the Ego, that which does not express the spirit spells its
impoverishment and desolation. And though a craving of this latter
kind may lead to satisfaction and enjoyment within the sense-world,
its emptying and devastating effect upon the I of man is still
there. Only that this effect does not become perceptible to the
I until after death. While life goes on, the enjoyment
consequent on such a craving can beget new wishes of its kind, and man
does not become aware that by his own doing he is enveloping him in a
consuming fire. The fire that enveloped him already during life is
made perceptible to him after death, and in so doing becomes
transmuted into its wholesome and beneficial consequences.
When one human being loves another, he is not only attracted by those
of the other's features which are directly sensible by physical organs
of perception. And yet of these alone can it be said that death will
render him unable any longer to perceive them. On the other hand,
after death there becomes visible in the beloved the very reality of
being for the perception of which the physical organs were but the
means. Moreover then the one thing that will mar this perfect
visibility will be the persistence of cravings which can only be
satisfied by means of physical organs. Nay, if these cravings were not
purged, conscious perception of the beloved would not be possible at
all after death. Looked at in this light, the terrible and hopeless
picture which the after-death events described by supersensible
science might at first sight be seeming to convey, gives place to one
that is deeply comforting and satisfying.
In yet another respect our experiences after death are different from
those we have in life. During the time of purification, man in
a sense lives backwards. He goes again through all that he
experienced in life, ever since his birth. Starting from the events
immediately preceding death, he re-experiences it all in reverse
order, back into childhood. And as he does so, there become visible to
him all those things in his life which did not truly spring from the
spiritual nature of the Ego. These too he now experiences in an
inverted way. Say for example that a man dies in his sixtieth year,
and that at the age of forty, in an outburst of anger, he caused
another person pain in body or in soul. He will experience the event
in consciousness again after death, when in his backward journeying
through life he arrives at his fortieth year the moment when it
happened. But he will now experience, not the satisfaction he felt in
giving vent to his anger, but instead the suffering the other person
underwent through his unkindness. The example shows that what is
painful in the after-death experience of an event of this kind is due
to a craving to which the Ego gave way a craving which had its
origin in the outer material world and in this alone. In truth, by
giving vent to such a craving the ego was doing harm not only to the
other human being but to itself; only the harm done to itself remained
invisible during life. After death the whole world of harmful cravings
becomes perceptible to the Ego. The man now feels drawn to every being
and to every object by contact with which a craving of this kind was
ever kindled in him, so that the craving may be destroyed even as it
originated destroyed in the consuming fire.
When in his backward journeying man has attained the moment of his
birth, all such cravings having now undergone the cleansing fire,
there is no longer anything to hinder his unimpaired devotion to the
spiritual world. He enters on a new stage of existence. Just as in
death the physical body, and soon after it the etheric body was laid
aside, so now there falls away and disintegrates the part of the
astral body which is unable to live save in the consciousness of the
external, physical world. Therefore for supersensible science there
are no less than three corpses physical, etheric and astral.
The point of time at which the astral corpse is shed is given by the
fact that the period of purification lasts about a third as long as
the past life between birth and death. Why this is so will only be
clear at a later stage, when the whole course of human life has been
more thoroughly gone into in the light of Occult Science. For
supersensible perception there are ever present in man's environment
the astral corpses cast aside by those who are passing from the stage
of purification on to higher levels of existence. It is analogous to
what is obviously true for physical perception: physical corpses come
into being where human communities are living.
After the time of purification an entirely new state of consciousness
begins for the I of man. Before death, perceptions came to him from
without, for the light of his consciousness to fall upon them. Now, as
it were, a world of coming to him into his consciousness
from within. It is a spiritual world, in which the I is also living
between birth and death. Here however, it is veiled in the
manifestations of the senses; and only when turning aside from
all outward perceptions the I becomes aware of itself in
the inmost holy of holies of its being, what otherwise is
shrouded in the veils of sense-perceptible Nature, makes itself known
directly and in its pristine form. Like to this inner perception of
the I before death, from within outward is the
manifestation of the spiritual world in its fullness, after death and
when the time of purification has been absolved.
This kind of manifestation is indeed already there as soon as the
etheric body has been laid aside, but like a darkening cloud the world
of cravings obscures it, clinging still to the external world. It is
as though a blissful world of purely spiritual consciousness were to
be interspersed with black demonic shadows, due to the cravings that
are being purged in the consuming fire. Indeed these cravings are now
revealed to be no mere shadows but very real beings; this becomes
evident to man's Ego as soon as the physical organs are taken from him
and he is thereby enabled to perceive what is spiritual. The beings
look like distortions and caricatures of what was known to him
hitherto by sense-perception. For of this realm of the purging fire,
supersensible observation must relate that it is inhabited by beings
whose appearance [to] the spiritual eye can only kindle pain and ghastly
horror. Their very joy seems to consist in destruction; their passion
is directed to an evil compared to which the evils known to us in the
outer world seem insignificant. Whatever man takes with him thither by
way of cravings of the kind above defined, appears as nourishment to
these beings nourishment by means of which they constantly
renew and reinforce their powers.
The picture we have thus been painting of a world imperceptible to the
outer senses may seem less incredible if one will look with open mind
at well-known aspects of the animal creation. What, to the eye of the
spirit, is a ruthlessly prowling wolf? What is revealing itself in the
figure of the wolf as the outer senses see it? Surely it is none other
than a soul that lives in cravings and acts out of its cravings. The
very form of the wolf may be described as an embodiment of its
cravings. Even if man had no organs to perceive this outer form, he
would still have to recognize the wolf's existence if the cravings,
though invisible, made themselves felt in their effect if there
were on the prowl a power invisible to human eye, yet by whose agency
all that the visible wolf is doing were being done.
The beings of the purging fire are not present to the outer senses
only to supersensible consciousness. Their effects however are
only too evident, in that they tend to destroy the Ego that gives them
nourishment. When right enjoyment is carried to intemperance or to
excess these effects are made visible enough.
Nature too, as perceived by the outer senses, would entice the Ego,
but only in so far as the enjoyment were true to the Ego's own
essential being. An animal is urged by instinct to desire that alone
of the outer world for which its three bodies crave. Man has higher
forms of enjoyment because he has not only the three bodily members
but the fourth, the I the Ego. If then the Ego craves
for forms of satisfaction which serve, not the furtherance or
maintenance but the destruction of its own being, such desires can
neither be the outcome of the three bodies nor of the Ego's proper
nature. They can only be the work of beings whose true shape and form
remain hidden from the senses, but who gain access precisely to the
higher nature of the Ego and entice it into cravings unfounded in the
nature of the senses, yet only satisfiable by its means. In effect,
there are beings whose food consists of cravings and passions more
evil and pernicious than those of any animal, for they live not in the
true nature of the senses but seize the spiritual and drag it down on
to the sensual level. Their forms and features are to the spiritual
eye more hideous and ghastly than those of the most savage animals.
The latter, after all, do but incorporate natural passions, natural
desires. The destructiveness of these beings boundlessly exceeds the
wildest ravings known to us in the animal world as seen by the outer
senses. Supersensible knowledge must in this way extend man's outlook
to a world of beings who in a sense are on a lower level than any
visible animal, even the most noxious and destructive.
When after death man has passed through this world, he finds himself
face to face with a world of pure spiritual content a world,
moreover, which begets in him only such longings as will find
satisfaction in the purely spiritual. But he still distinguishes what
appertains to his own I or Ego from what constitutes his
environment, which we might also call the spiritual outer
world for the Ego. Only, once more, his experiences of this
environment come to him in the same way in which the inner perception
of his own I came to him while living in the body. While in the life
between birth and death the environment of man speaks to him through
the organs of his bodies, when he has laid all the bodies aside the
language of his new environment of man speaks to him through the
organs of his bodies, when he has laid all the bodies aside the
language of his new environment speaks directly into the inmost
holy of holies of the I am. Now therefore the whole
environment of man is replete with beings alike in kind to his own
I, for in effect, only an I has access to an I.
Even as minerals, plants and animals, surrounding him in the world of
sense, constitute sense-perceptible Nature, so after death man is
surrounded by a world composed of spiritual Beings.
Yet he brings with him thither something more something which
in yonder world is not his environment. In effect, he brings
with him what his Ego has experienced while living in the sense-world.
The sum-total of these his experiences first appeared to him in an
all-embracing memory-tableau immediately after death, while the
etheric body was still connected with his Ego. The ether-body was then
laid aside, but something of the memory-tableau remained as an
enduring possession of the Ego. It is as though an extract, a
quintessence, were distilled of all the experiences that had come to
the human being between birth and death. This is the thing that
endures. It is the spiritual yield, the fruit of life. The yield, once
more, is of a purely spiritual nature. It contains all the spiritual
content, manifested during life through the outer senses. Spiritual
though it is, without man's sojourn in the sense-world it could never
have come into existence. After death, the I of man feels this
spiritual fruit, culled in the world of the senses, to be his own
his inner world. With this possession he is entering
into the spiritual world a world composed of beings who
manifest themselves as an I alone can manifest itself in its
own inmost depths. A seed, which is a kind of extract of the whole
plant, can only develop when planted in another world the
earthly soil. What the Ego brings with it from the sense-world is like
a seed a seed received into the spiritual world, under whose
influences it will now develop.
The science of the supersensible can at most give pictures in
attempting to describe what happens in this Land of
Spirits. Yet the pictures can be true to the reality.
Experiencing the facts invisible to the external eye, supersensible
consciousness can feel these pictures of them to be true. The
spiritual realities can thus be illustrated by comparisons from
sense-perceptible Nature. Purely spiritual though they are, they none
the less bear a certain likeness to this world of Nature. As in this
world a color will appear when the eye receives an influence from the
appropriate object, so too in Spirit-land, under the influence of a
spiritual Being, the Ego will experience a kind of color. Only the
color-experience will come about in the way in which the Ego's own
inner self-perception and this alone comes about during
the life between birth and death. It is not as though light from
outside were impinging on him; rather as though another Being directly
influenced the Ego of man, impelling him to represent the influence to
himself in a color-picture. Thus do all Beings in the spiritual
environment of the Ego find expression in a world radiant with color.
Needless to say, since the manner of their origin is so very
different, the color-experiences of the spiritual world differ in
character from those we enjoy in the world of Nature. The same applies
to other kinds of sense-impression which man receives from this world.
It is the sounds of the spiritual world which are most like the
corresponding impressions of the sense-world. The more man lives his
way into the spiritual world, the more does it become for him an inner
life and movement, comparable to the sounds and harmonies of
sense-perceptible reality. Only he feels the sound, not as approaching
an organ of perception from outside, but as a power flowing outward
into the world from his own Ego. He feels it as in the sense-world he
would feel his own speech or song; yet in the spiritual world he is
aware that the sounds, even while proceeding from himself, are in
reality the manifestation of other Beings, pouring themselves into the
World through him.
There is a yet higher form of manifestation in the Spirit-land, when
spiritual sound is enhanced to become the spiritual Word.
Not only does the surging life and movement of another spiritual Being
then pour through the I of man; the Being himself communicates
his inmost being to the I. Without the remnant of separation
which in the world of the senses even the most intimate companionship
must have, two beings live in one-another when the Ego is thus poured
through and through by the spiritual Word. In all reality, such is the
Ego's companionship with other spiritual beings after death.
Three distinct regions of Spirit-land the land of Spirits
are apparent to supersensible consciousness. We may compare
them with three domains of sense-perceptible Nature. The first is as
it were the solid land of the spiritual world; the second
the region of oceans and rivers; the third the
air or atmosphere.
Whatever assumes physical form upon Earth and is thus made perceptible
to physical organs, is seen in its spiritual essence in the first
region of Spirit-land. For example, one may there perceive the power
which builds the form of a crystal. Only what there reveals itself is
like the antithesis of what appears to the senses in the outer world.
The space which is here filled by the rocky material appears to the
spiritual eye as a kind of hollow or vacuum; while all around the
hollow space is seen the force building the form of the stone. The
characteristic color which the stone has in the sense-world is
experienced in the spiritual world as its complementary. Seen
therefore from Spirit-land, a red stone is experienced with a greenish
and a green stone with a reddish hue. Other properties too appear as
their antithesis. Even as stones, rocks and geological formations
constitute the solid land the continental region of the
world of Nature, so do the entities we have been describing constitute
the solid land of the spiritual world.
All that is life in the sense-world is the oceanic region of the
spiritual world. To the eye of sense, life appears in its effects
in plants and animals and human beings. To the eye of the
spirit, life is a flowing essence, like seas and rivers pervading the
Spirit-land. Better still is the comparison with the circulation of the
blood in the human body. For while the seas and rivers in external
Nature appear as though distributed irregularly, there is a certain
regularity in the distribution of the flowing life above all which is
experienced as living spiritual sound.
The third region of Spirit-land is the airy sphere or
atmosphere. All that is feeling and sensation in the outer
world is present in the spirit-realm as an all-pervading element,
comparable to the air on Earth. We must imagine an ocean of flowing
sensation. Sorrow and pain, joy and delight, are wafted in that region
as are wind and tempest in the atmosphere of the outer world. Think of
a battle being fought on Earth. Not only are there facing one another
the figures of the combatants which the outer eye can see. Feelings
are pitted against feelings, passions against passions. Pain fills the
battlefield no less than the forms of men. All that is there of
passion, pain, victorious exultation, exists not only in its outer
sense-perceptible effects; the spiritual sense becomes aware of it as
a real event in the airy sphere of Spirit-land. Such an event is in
the spiritual like a thunderstorm in the physical world. Moreover the
perception of such events may be compared to the hearing of words in
the physical world. Hence it is said: Even as the air enwraps and
permeates the inhabitants of earth, so does the wind of the Spirit
the wafting of the spiritual Words enwrap
and permeate the beings and events of Spirit-land.
Further perceptions are possible in the spiritual world, comparable to
the warmth and also to the light of the physical world. Warmth
permeates all earthly things and creatures, and it is none other than
the world of thoughts which in like manner permeates all things in
Spirit-land. Only these thoughts must be conceived as independent
living Beings. The thoughts man apprehends within the manifest world
are but a shadow of the real thought-being, living in the land of
Spirits. One should imagine the thought, such as it is in man, lifted
out of him and as an active being endowed with an inner life of its
own. Even this is but a feeble illustration of what pervades the
fourth region of Spirit-land. Thoughts in the form in which man
perceives them in the physical world between birth and death are but a
manifestation of the real world of thoughts the kind of
manifestation that is possible by means of bodily organs. The thoughts
man cultivates those above all which signify an
enrichment of the physical world originate in this
region of Spirit-land. This does not only apply to the ideas of great
inventors or men of genius. Fruitful ideas occur to every
human being ideas he does not merely borrow from the outer
world, but which enable him to work upon this world and change it.
While feelings and passions occasioned by the external world belong to
the third region of Spirit-land, all that can come to life in the soul
of man so that he becomes creative, acting on his environment in such
a way as to transform and fertilize it, is manifested in its
archetypal being in the fourth region of the spiritual world.
The prevailing element of the fifth region may be likened to the light
of the physical world. It is none other than Wisdom, manifested
in its pristine, archetypal form. Beings belong to that region who
pour Wisdom into their environment, even as the Sun sheds light upon
physical creatures. Whatsoever the Wisdom shines upon, is revealed in
its true significance for the spiritual world, just as a physical
creature reveals its color when the light is shining on it. There are
yet higher regions of Spirit-land; we shall refer to them again in
later chapters.
Such is the world in which the I of man is steeped after death,
with the yield he brings with him from his life in the outer world of
sense. This yield, this harvest, is still united with the part of the
astral body which was not cast off when the time of purification was
over. For, as we saw, only part of the astral body then falls away
namely the part which with its wishes and cravings clung to the
physical life even after death. The merging of the Ego into the
spiritual world with all that it has gained from the sense-world may
be likened to the embedding of a seed into the ripening earth. The
seed draws to it the substances and forces of the surrounding soil, so
that it may unfold into a new plant. In like manner, development and
growth are of the essence of the I of man when planted in the
spiritual world.
In what an organ perceives also lies hidden the creative force to
which the organ is due. It is the eye that perceives the light, and
yet without the light there would be no eye. Creatures that live
perpetually in the dark fail to develop organs of sight. Thus the
whole bodily man is created out of the hidden forces of what the
several members of his bodies are able to perceive. The physical body
is built by the forces of the physical world, the ether-body of those
of the world of life; the astral body has been formed out of the
astral world. Transplanted into Spirit-land, the Ego meets with these
creative forces, which remain concealed from physical perception.
Spiritual beings who, though unseen, surround man all the time, and
who have built his physical body, become perceptible to him in the
first region of Spirit-land. While in the physical world he can
perceive no more than the outer manifestation of the creative and
formative spiritual powers to which his own physical body is due,
after death he is in their very midst. They now reveal themselves to
him in their original and proper form, previously hidden from him. In
like manner, throughout the second region he is amid the creative
forces of which his ether-body consists, and in the third there flow
towards him the powers of which his astral body is formed and
organized. The higher regions too of Spirit-land now pour in upon him
the creative powers to which he owes the very form and substance of
his life between birth and death.
These Beings of the spiritual world henceforth collaborate with the
fruit of his former life which man himself has brought with him
the fruit which is now about to become the seed. And by this
collaboration man is built up anew built, to begin with, as a
spiritual being. In sleep the physical and etheric bodies are still
there; the astral body and the Ego although outside, are in
communication with them. The influences from the spiritual world
received by the astral body and the Ego during sleep can only serve to
repair the faculties and forces exhausted in the waking hours. But
when the physical and the etheric body, and after purification the
parts of the astral body which were still chained to the physical
world by desire, have been cast off, what flows to the Ego from the
spiritual world becomes not only the repairer; henceforth it is the
re-creator. And after a lapse of time (as to the length of which we
shall have more to say,) the Ego is again invested with an astral
body, able to live in an etheric and physical body such as are proper
to the human being between birth and death. He can be born again and
re-appear in a new earthly life, in which the fruits of his former
life have been incorporated.
Till his investment with a new astral body, man is the conscious
witness of his own re-creation. And as the Beings of Spirit-land
reveal themselves to him not through external organs but from within,
like his own inmost I in the act of self-awareness, he can
perceive the revelation so long as his attention does not yet incline
towards a world of outer percepts. But from the moment when his astral
body has been newly formed, he begins again to turn his attention
outward. The astral once again demands an external body
physical and etheric and in so doing turns away from what is
manifested purely from within. Hence there now comes an intermediate
condition during which man is plunged into unconsciousness.
Consciousness will only be able to re-awaken when in the physical
world the necessary organs organs of physical perception
have been developed. During this intermediate time the
spiritual consciousness illumined by purely inner perception having
faded a new etheric body begins to be formed and organized
about the astral body. This being done, man is prepared to re-enter
into a physical body. Consciously to partake in the last two events
his re-equipment with an etheric and with a physical body
would only be possible for an Ego which by its own spiritual
activity had developed the hidden creative forces of these bodies, in
other words, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. So long as man has not yet
reached this stage, Beings more advanced in evolution than himself
have to direct the process. Such Beings guide the astral body towards
a father and mother, so as to endow it with the appropriate etheric
and physical bodies.
Now before the new etheric body has been formed and incorporated with
the astral body, an event of great significance is undergone by the
human being about to re-enter physical existence. In his preceding
life, as we saw, he engendered hindering and disturbing forces,
revealed to him during his backward journeying after death. Let us
return to the above example. At age forty in his former life, in a
sudden upsurge of anger, a man did harm to another. He was confronted
after death by the other's suffering, as a force hindering the
development of his own Ego. So too with all such occurrences of the
preceding life. Now on re-entry into physical life these hindrances to
his development confront the I of man. As after death a kind of
memory-tableau of the past, he now experiences a pre-vision of his
coming life. He sees it in a kind of tableau once again, showing him
all the obstacles he must remove if his development is to go forward.
What he thus sees becomes the source of active forces which he must
carry with him into the coming life. The picture of the suffering he
caused his fellow-man becomes a force impelling his Ego, now about to
enter earthly life once more, to make good the hurt which he
inflicted. Thus does the former life wield a determining influence
upon the new; the deeds of the new life are, in a way, caused by the
deeds of the old. In this relationship of law and causation between an
earlier and a later life we have to recognize the real Law of Destiny
often denoted by a word taken from Oriental Wisdom, the law of
Karma.
The building of a new bodily organization is however not the only
activity incumbent upon man between death and a new birth. While this
is going on he lives outside the physical world. But this world too is
going forward in its evolution all the time. In comparatively short
periods of time the face of the Earth is changed. What did it look
like a few thousand years ago, say in the regions of Middle Europe?
When man appears again in a new life, the Earth will as a rule be
looking very different from what it did last time. Much will have
altered during his absence, and in this changing of the face of the
Earth, here once again hidden spiritual forces are at work. These
forces issue from the very same spiritual world in which man sojourns
after death, and he himself is working in and with them; he too has to
cooperate in the necessary transformation of the Earth. So long as he
has not yet developed Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man and thus attained
clear consciousness of the connection between the spiritual and its
physical expression, he can of course only do this under the guidance
of higher Beings. None the less, he participates in the work of
transforming the conditions upon Earth, and it is true to say: During
the time between death and a new birth human beings are at work
transforming the condition of the Earth so that it shall accord with
what has been evolving in themselves. Picture a region or locality on
Earth such as it was at a given time in the past, and then again
profoundly changed a long time after; the forces which
have wrought the change are in the realm of the dead. Thus are the
souls of men still in communication with the Earth even between death
and a new birth. Supersensible consciousness sees in all physical
existence the outer manifestation of hidden spiritual realities. To
physical observation, it is the rays of the Sun, changes of climate
and the like which bring about the transformation of the Earth. To
supersensible observation, in the light-ray falling from the Sun upon
the plants, and virtues of the dead are working. We become conscious of
how the souls of men are hovering about the plants, changing the
earthly soil, and other things of this kind. Man's activity after
death is devoted not only to himself not only to the
preparation for his own new earthly life but he is called to
work upon the outer world in a spiritual way, even as in the life
between birth and death it is his task to work upon it physically.
Not only does the life of man in Spirit-land influence and modify the
prevailing conditions of the physical world, but conversely too, his
life and action in physical existence have their effect in the
spiritual. To take one example: there is a bond of love between a
mother and her child. The love proceeds from a natural attraction,
rooted in forces of sense-perceptible Nature. Yet in course of time it
is transformed. The natural grows ever more into a spiritual bond, and
this is welded not only for the physical world but for the spiritual.
So too it is with many other relationships of life. Threads that are
spun in the physical world by spiritual beings persist in the
spiritual world. Friends who were closely united in this life belong
together in Spirit-land as well; nay, when their bodies have been laid
aside, they are in still more intimate communion. For as pure spirits
they are there for each other in the way that was described before; it
is from within that spiritual beings manifest themselves to
one-another. Moreover, bonds that have once been woven between one
human being and another will lead them together again in a new life on
Earth. Thus in the deepest sense it is true that we find one-another
again after death.
The cycle of human life from birth till death and thence to a new
birth repeats itself periodically. Again and again man returns to the
Earth when the fruits gained in a preceding physical life have ripened
in Spirit-land. But this is not a repetition without beginning or end.
Time was when man advanced from other forms of existence to those here
described, and in the future he will pass on to different ones again.
We shall gain an idea of these transitions in due course, when in the
light of supersensible consciousness we shall be describing the
evolution of the World in its relation to Man.
For outer observation, what goes on between death and a new birth is
of course still more hidden than the underlying spiritual reality of
manifest existence between birth and death. As to this part of the
hidden world, sensory observation will only see the corresponding
effects when they enter into physical existence. The question is,
therefore, whether on entering this life through birth man brings with
him any evidence of the events since a preceding death, described by
supersensible science. Finding a snail's shell in which no trace of
any animal can be detected, we shall admit that the shell was produced
by an animal's activity and vital functions. We cannot imagine this
form to have been the product of mere inorganic forces. In like
manner, if in our contemplation of man's earthly life we find what
cannot possibly have had its origin in this present life, we can admit
with reason that is may be the outcome of what the science of the
supersensible describes, if in fact, a light of explanation thereby
falls on the otherwise inexplicable. Here therefore too, wide-awake
observation with the senses and the thinking mind can find the visible
effects intelligible in the light of invisible causes. A man who looks
at life with fully open mind will come to see increasingly that this
is right; it will impress itself on him with every new observation.
The question only is to find the appropriate point of view in each
instance. Where, for example, are the effects to be seen of what the
human being underwent during the time of purification described by
supersensible science? How do the effects appear of his experiences
after purification in a purely spiritual reality once more,
according to the researches of spiritual science?
Riddles enough impress themselves upon our thought whenever we
earnestly reflect on human life. We see one man born in misery and
need, equipped with scanty talents. By the very circumstances of his
birth he seems predestined to a life of hardship and limitation.
Another is tended and looked after with every care and solicitude from
the first moment of his existence. Brilliant faculties unfold in him;
he seems predestined to a fruitful and fully satisfying life. In face
of such questions two different ways of thought and feeling can make
themselves felt. The one wants strictly to adhere to what is seen by
the outer senses and understood by the intellect which takes its data
from them. A man of this way of thinking will see no deeper question
in the fact that one human being is born to happiness, another to ill
fortune. And even if he does not have recourse to the word
chance, he will not think of looking for a deeper law or
causal nexus to which these things might be due. As to the presence or
the lack of innate talents, he will insist that these are
inherited from parents, grandparents and other forebears.
He will decline to seek the causes in spiritual experiences the
individual himself went through before his birth, whereby he shaped
his gifts and talents for himself quite apart from physical heredity.
A man imbued with the other way of thought and feeling will not be
satisfied with this. Surely he will aver even in the
manifest world nothing happens in a given locality and environment
without some underlying cause. And though in many instances our
science may not yet have found them, we can assume the causes to be
there. An alpine flower does not grow in low-lying plains; there is
something in its nature belonging to the alpine heights. So too there
must be something in a human being, causing him to be born into a
given environment. Nor is it adequate to look for causes within the
physical world alone. To one who thinks more deeply, undue insistence
on these causes is like attempting to explain the fact that one man
hit another, not by the feelings of the one who dealt the blow but by
the physical mechanism of his hand.
This other way of thinking will feel equally dissatisfied with the
attributing of gifts and talents to heredity alone. Of
course it may be pointed out how talents have been and are sometimes
inherited in families. For two and a half centuries musical talents
were inherited by members of the Bach family. No less than eight
mathematicians of distinction sprang from the Bernoulli family. Though
some had very different careers mapped out for them in childhood,
again and again the hereditary talent drew them into the
family profession. It might also be contended that by a detailed study
of his ancestry a particular man's talents can be shown to have
appeared in one way or another in his forebears, so that he is merely
benefiting by the summation of inherited potentialities.
A man whose thinking leans towards the spiritual will certainly not
disregard evidences of this kind, and yet for him they cannot be what
they are to those who want to base all their explanations on facts
accessible to the outer senses. He will point out that inherited
potentialities cannot of their own accord add up into a complete and
integrated personality, any more than the several metallic parts will
of their own accord assemble into the watch. And if objection is made
that the conjunction of the parents can surely have brought about the
combination, thus as it were taking the watchmaker's place, he will
answer: Look but with open vision, how altogether now a thing is the
personality of every child we see! This cannot possibly come from the
parents, for the simple reason that it is not there in them.
Unclear thinking may give rise to much confusion here. It is silliest
of all when those of the former way of thinking represent those of the
latter as disregarding and opposing well-established facts. For it
need never occur to them to deny the truth or value of the facts
alleged. They too can fully see that a mental or spiritual gift or
even bent of mind will be inherited in a particular
family, or that inherited potentialities, added and combined in a
descendant, have produced a man or woman of eminence. Readily will
they acquiesce when told that the most eminent name is seldom to be
found at the head but generally at the latter end of a line of
descent. But it should not be taken amiss when they derive from all
those things quite other thoughts than do those who will not go beyond
super-sensible data. For to the latter the following answer can be
made. Certainly a man bears the stamp of his forebears, for the
soul-and-spirit, entering physical existence through birth, derives
the bodily element from what heredity provides. But this is to say no
more than that an entity naturally bears the features of the medium in
which it is immersed! It is a quaint and no doubt a trite comparison,
yet to an open mind it is surely apposite: A man who has fallen into
the water will be wet, but his wetness is no evidence of his inner
nature. No more is a human beings' however obvious investment with
some of the characteristics of his forebears evidence as to the origin
of those which are uniquely his. Moreover this too may be said: If the
most eminent name comes at the end of a line of descent, it shows that
the bearer of the name required that very line of blood-relationship
to form the body needed in this life for his own individual
development and expression. It is no proof of the hereditary character
of what he individually was. Indeed to healthy logic it
proves, if anything, the reverse. For if individual gifts were
inherited, they surely would appear at the beginning of a line of
descent and be handed down from thence to the individual descendants.
That they appear at the end, is evidence that they are not hereditary.
Now it cannot be denied that many of those who believe in spiritual
causes also tend to make confusion worse confounded. They talk too
much in vague and general terms. To maintain that a man is the mere
sum-total of his inherited characteristics may indeed be like saying
that the metallic parts have assembled of their own accord into the
watch. Yet it must also be granted that many would-be arguments on
behalf of a spiritual world are as though one were to say: The
metallic parts of a watch cannot of themselves join up so as to drive
the hands forward; therefore there must be some spiritual entity
driving them forward. As against such a construction, the man
who answers: What do I care for `mystical' being of this kind? I
want to know the mechanical construction by means of which the forward
movement is in fact produced, is building on far better ground.
The point is not to be vaguely aware that underlying the mechanical
contrivance the watch, in this instance there is the
spiritual entity, the watchmaker. The thing of practical significance
is to get to know the thoughts in the mind of the watchmaker
thoughts which preceded the making of the watch. These thoughts are in
the mechanism and can be found there.
Merely to dream and spin fancies about the supersensible can only lead
to confusion and is least likely to satisfy opponents. They are quite
right in contending that the vague reference to supersensible beings
in no way helps one to understand the facts. Many opponents, it is
true, will make the same objection to the precise and clear
descriptions of spiritual science. But in this case it can be pointed
out how the effects of hidden spiritual causes are manifested in
external life. It can be said: Assume for once that what is claimed to
have been found by spiritual observation is actually true. Assume that
after death a man passed through a time of purification, when he
experienced in soul how a thing done by him in a preceding life was
going to be an evolutionary hindrance. While he had this experience,
there grew in him the impulse to make good the consequences of his
action. This impulse he brings with him into a new life; the presence
of it is a trait in his nature, leading him to the place and situation
where the needed opportunity is given. Think of all impulses of this
kind, and you have a cause for the particular human environment into
which the man was destined to be born.
Or take another assumption. Suppose once more: what spiritual science
tells is true. The fruits of a past life on Earth are embodied in the
spiritual seed of man. The Spirit-land wherein he sojourns between
death and a new earthly life is the realm where these fruits ripen, to
re-emerge in the new life transmuted into aptitudes and talents and
making him the man he is, so that his present character and being
appear as the effect of what was gained in a former life. Take this as
a hypothesis and with it candidly look out into life. If it is
consistent, in the first place, with a healthy recognition of the
outer facts facts accessible to the senses in their full
truth and import. At the same time it makes intelligible ever so many
things which, if one had to rely upon the outer facts alone, must
remain unintelligible to anyone whose mind and feeling do not incline
towards the spiritual world. Above all, it will put an end to that
inverted logic, of which a typical instance was the proposition that
because the most eminent name occurs at the end of a hereditary tree,
therefore the man who bears it must have inherited his gifts. The
supersensible facts ascertained by spiritual science makes life
intelligible to sound logic and straightforward thinking.
Still, the conscientious seeker after truth, without experience of his
own in the supersensible world yet looking for a deeper understanding
of the facts, may have another difficulty at this point, the force of
which should be admitted. He may contend: Surely we cannot assume that
a thing is true merely because it helps explain the otherwise
inexplicable. Needless to say, this objection will not trouble those
who know the thing in question by their own supersensible experience.
Later on in this book a path will be indicated which one may go along,
to learn to know by one's own experience not only the other spiritual
facts here described but the law of spiritual causation too. But for
those who do not want to take this path, the difficulty remains.
Moreover even for those who do, what will now be said in answer to it
may be of value. Rightly received and understood, it is indeed the
very best way of taking the first step.
Certainly we ought not to assume things of the existence of which we
have no other knowledge, merely because they give a satisfying
explanation of the otherwise inexplicable. But with the spiritual
facts here adduced the case is really different. To assume them has
not the mere intellectual consequence of making life intelligible
theoretically. When we receive them even as hypotheses
into our thoughts, we experience far more than this, and different in
kind. Think of a man to whom a great misfortune happens, from which he
suffers deeply. He can meet the occurrence in either of two ways. He
can experience the pain of it, give himself up to this emotion and
maybe even succumb to his distress. But he can face it in a different
way, saying to himself: In reality, it was I who in the past
life planted in myself the forces which have now confronted me with
this occurrence. I have inflicted it upon myself. He can now
kindle in himself all the feelings which this thought may carry in its
train. Of course the thought must be entertained with great
earnestness and intensity to have an adequate effect upon his life of
feeling. But anyone who manages to do this will make a very
significant discovery best illustrated by a comparison. Each of
two men, let us suppose, is given a stick of sealing-wax. The one
indulges in intellectual reflections upon its inner
nature. His thoughts may be profound, but if this inner nature
is in no way revealed he will very soon be told that they are vain
speculation. The other rubs the sealing-wax with a silken cloth and
demonstrates how it will attract small bodies. There is a vital
difference between the thoughts that passed through the first man's
head, giving rise to his philosophical reflections, and those of the
second man. The former are without factual consequence, whereas the
latter have led to a force of Nature a real and potent fact
being conjured forth from its hidden state.
Such are the thoughts of one who thinks how in a former life he
planted in himself the force that led him into a painful misfortune.
The mere idea that this was so kindles in him a real power a
power to meet the event quite differently than he could do without it.
It dawns upon him how inherently necessary, how essential was the
event which he could otherwise only have looked upon as an unfortunate
mischance. With direct insight he will realize: This thought was
right, for it has had the power to reveal to me the real state of
affairs. Inner experiments of this kind, actively repeated,
become an ever increasing source of inner strength, and by their
fruitful outcome prove their truth. The demonstration grows impressive
ever more so. In spirit and in soul, and physically too, the
experience is health-giving in all respects a positive and
beneficial influence upon one's life. A man becomes aware that with
such thoughts he takes his proper stand amid the ups and downs of
life, whereas if he were only thinking of the single life between
birth and death he would be giving himself up to illusions. Knowledge
of reincarnation fortifies his inner life.
Admittedly, this intimate and searching proof of the spiritual law of
causation can only be gained by each man for himself, in his own inner
life. And it is really possible for everyone. No-one who has not
gained it for himself can judge of its demonstrative power, while
those who have can hardly doubt it any more. We need not be surprised
that this is so. For where a thing is so bound up with a man's
individuality, his inmost being, it is but natural that it can only be
adequately proved by his own inner experience.
This does not mean however that because it answers to an inner
experience of the soul the question can only be settled by each man
for himself and therefore cannot be the subject-matter of a valid
spiritual science. True, everyone must have the experience himself,
just as everyone has to perceive for himself the proof of a theorem in
mathematics. But the pathway by which the experience is reached, no
less than the method of proving the mathematical theorem, is
universally valid.
Apart of course from actual observation in the supersensible, the
proof above described is undeniably the only one which by the potency
an fertile outcome of its thoughts stands firm in face of every fair
and rational approach. Other considerations may be of great
significance, and yet in all of them a sincere opponent may find
loopholes. One other thought evident enough to fair-minded
insight does however deserve mention. The very fact of
education that man is educable goes a long way to prove
that in the human child there is a spiritual being clad in a bodily
garment and working his way through into life. Compare man with the
animal. The characteristic properties and faculties of the animal are
apparent from birth onward a well-defined totality, of which
the plan is manifestly given by heredity and then develops by contact
with the outer world. See how the chick begins to fulfill the
functions of its life as soon as ever it is hatched. How different
with man! While he is being educated things which may well have no
connection whatever with his heredity meet him and come into relation
with his inner life. He proves able to assimilate and make his own the
effects of these external influences. As every educator is aware,
powers and faculties from the pupil's own inner life must come to meet
these influences; if they do not, schooling and education are useless.
An educator of sufficient insight will even mark the clear dividing
line between the inherited tendencies and those inner faculties of his
pupils which ray right through the latter, originating as they do in
former lives.
True, in this field we cannot offer proofs as literally
weighty as are the scientific proofs for which a balance
is used in a physical experiment. But we are dealing here with the
more intimate realities of life. To a sensitive thinker the kind of
evidence just indicated, intangible though it is, has a validity even
more cogent than that of tangible and ponderable data.
Animals too can of course be trained to develop special qualities and
aptitudes, as though by education. But if we once discern what is
essential, this is no valid objection. Quite apart from the fact that
transitions between one thing and another are everywhere to be found,
the effects of training do not merge into the animal's individual
being as in the case of man. We are even told how the skills and
aptitudes domestic animals acquire by their association with man or by
deliberate training can be inherited. In other words, the effect is
not individual but genetic. Darwin describes how dogs will fetch
and carry without previous training and without ever having seen
it done. Who would say the same of human education?
Now there are thinkers who see beyond the mistaken notion that man is
outwardly pieced together by mere hereditary forces. They rise to the
idea that a spiritual being, an individuality, precedes and helps to
form the bodily existence. But many of them are not yet able to
realize the fact of repeated lives on Earth, the fruits of earlier
lives playing a decisive part during an intermediate spiritual form of
existence. We will cite one of these thinkers, Immanuel Hermann Fichte
son of the great philosopher who in his
Anthropolgie (p. 528) sums up his observations as follows:
The parents are by no means the progenitors in the full sense of
the word. What they contribute is the organic material, and not only
this; also the intermediate qualities of heart and mind and
sensibility, shown in the temperament, in shades of feeling,
instinctive tendencies and the like, the common source of all which we
found in the imaginative power Phantasie using
this word in the wider sense already indicated. In all these elements
of a man's personality, the mingling and conjunction of the souls of
his parents is unmistakable. These we may justly regard as a simple
outcome of procreation, the more so since the act of procreation
as we were driven to admit is an event in the soul-life
too. Yet in all this the core and coping-stone of the individuality is
not yet contained. For as a deeper penetration shows, even these
subtler traits of heart and mind and feeling are but a sheath, an
instrument, a vestment to contain the essentially spiritual, ideal
potentialities of the man himself. True, they can further or it
may be hinder these potentialities in their development, but
they can never bring them forth out of themselves.
A little later on (p. 532) Fichte adds:
As to his archetypal spiritual form each human being pre-exists.
Spiritually seen, two human individuals are no more like one
another than are two animal species.
These ideas only go so far as to allow that a spiritual being enters
the physical, bodily nature of man to indwell it. But as they fail to
attribute the form-giving powers of this being to causes originating
in former lives, a fresh spiritual being would have to issue from the
Divine Source of all, every time a human personality arose. On this
assumption it would not be possible to explain the undoubted
relationship between the innate tendencies which work their way
outward from a man's inner being, and what comes to meet this inner
being from his external, earthly and social environment during the
course of his life. The inner being of man, springing for each single
one as it were, new-born from the Divine Fount, would
then confront what is to meet him in the earthly life as a complete
stranger. This will only not be the case as indeed we know it
is not if the man's inner being has already been connected with
this inner world and is not living in it for the first time. An
open-minded teacher and educator can attain this perception:
What I am bringing to my pupil out of the fruits of human life
on Earth is to a great extent foreign to his mere hereditary
endowment, and yet it somehow touches him as though he had already
been a participant partaking in the work to which the fruits
are due.
Only repeated lives on Earth taken together with the events in
the spiritual realm between, as shown by spiritual science can
give a satisfying explanation of the life of present-day mankind when
looked at in an all-round way. We say expressly, present-day
mankind. Spiritual research reveals that there was a time when
the cycle of man's earthly lives first began. Moreover the conditions
then obtaining for the entry of his spiritual being into the bodily
sheaths differed from those of today. In the next chapters we shall be
going back to that primeval state of man, and in so doing it will
emerge from the results of spiritual science how he evolved into his
present form, in close connection with the evolution of the Earth as
such. Then too it will be possible to indicate more fully how the
spiritual core of man's being enters from supersensible worlds into
the bodily vestments, and how the spiritual law of causation
how human destiny works itself out.
Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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