Overcoming Death through Knowledge
Prebirth and Postmortal Experiences of the Soul
Our
Connection with the Dead
Cologne, 19th June 1915
At
our Düsseldorf branch consideration the day before
yesterday we looked a little at that which one calls the
passage through the gate of death by the human being. It is
that which matters that the Western mental development is
penetrated with a knowledge which overcomes death, as it were,
through knowledge, overcomes it because it recognises death as
a transformation of life.
It
is a matter of course that just in our time, penetrated with
materialistic views, death must appear more and more like a
border of the world which the human being experiences. We can
easily imagine that this was substantially different in ancient
times; because, as we know, the human beings had leftovers of
an old dreamy clairvoyance in these times. This dreamy
clairvoyance was connected with an existence in the spiritual
worlds. Because in those times in which our souls were embodied
in such bodies in which still a clairvoyant existence was
possible in the spiritual worlds, our souls were connected with
the spiritual world. Death was to them at that time not a
significant, not a final phenomenon as it is in our times. But
this would become stronger and stronger if that knowledge did
not come bit by bit into our time which should be opened by
spiritual science. Hence, do not believe that this spiritual
science which we acquire does not have the greatest
significance already as spiritual science itself for the whole
experience of the human being.
Indeed, many of us will say: we strive for two things on our
way through the spiritual-scientific movement. First: to
penetrate that reasonably which spiritual science gives us.
Secondly: because we apply to our souls the
spiritual-scientific methods, as they are outlined to us, for
example, in the book
How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?,
we strive for getting the perception of the
spiritual world already during our physical incarnation. But
some will say: definitely only to some, only to few it is
allotted by their karma to reach the spiritual world
consciously in this incarnation. Indeed, everybody would and
does come into the spiritual world in certain sense who only
applies these rules; but noticing that he is in it; taking
notice on it is more difficult than entering it. Some people
are prevented from being aware in which way they are in the
spiritual world even if they are really in it. Because they are
unable to apply that fine, intimate attention on their
experience. One would like to say, everybody who applies the
instructions given in the book
How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?
enters the spiritual world with his self
after a relatively short time, but — he does not notice
it. Just concerning such a consideration I have to stress
repeatedly that the reasonable understanding of that which is
given in spiritual science does not depend at all whether
anybody himself beholds in the spiritual world.
We
have often said: the spiritual-scientific view is necessary, of
course, to get the facts of the spiritual world. If, however,
the facts are given, everybody can understand them if he uses
his unbiased healthy reason not clouded by prejudices of the
external materialistic world. We have to realise that it does
not suffice if we intend or persuade ourselves that we are
beyond the prejudices which the materialistic age gives.
Indeed, concerning our will, concerning our longing we are
beyond these prejudices of the materialistic time if we devote
us seriously to the spiritual-scientific movement. Since
basically nobody will confess honestly and sincerely to this
spiritual-scientific movement who is not penetrated in the
deepest inside by the longing for overcoming the materialistic
prejudices. But they stick in our ways of thinking firmly, and
that sticks especially firmly which is not directly a
materialistic prejudice but which is connected with the
materialistic prejudice. It is connected with the materialistic
prejudice, with the whole materialistic world view that the
human being cannot develop a comprehensive power of thinking in
a certain way. Our time strives for intelligence and logic, but
those who want to be at the head of the scientific or cultural
efforts of our time do not possess a lot of keen mind and
logic.
One
does not aim at the whole clearness of thinking in our time at
all. If one fully aimed at the clearness of thinking, one would
also be able to understand spiritual science completely. Who
thinks clearly cannot argue anything against that which
spiritual science has to bring forward — of course on the
whole; since the spiritual scientist can be mistaken as the
human being can generally be mistaken. Countless examples could
be given which show us that just our time is little inclined to
apply clear, keen thinking.
I
would like to give you an example only of our days. One could
read it always as a very common judgment of a really great man
[the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831)
in his unfinished work
On War
(1832)],
a very significant person. This judgment has been repeated, and
one of the German commentators on politics showed off
particularly presenting this judgment time and again. A great
man said once that war is nothing but a continuation of
political intercourse with the admixture of different means.
This appears to some thinkers, who think just in the sense of
our time, to be infinitely logic: war is a continuation of
politics with different means. Of course, nothing should be
argued against the significance of the man who said this. He
means with it that the peoples have political intercourse with
each other in a certain way, thereby they order their problems
together; if this politics has arrived at a point where it
cannot be continued, then — well, what then? — Then
just war continues politics. In this sense, the judgment of all
human beings can be justified and accepted immediately.
But
if one thinks a little, one finds out how one-sided such a
judgment is in most cases. Since this judgment is the same as
one says, for example: there are two human beings who are
friends or are in another relationship who always have got on
well, maybe, have loved each other endlessly, and start then
quarrelling. You could also say: quarrel is the continuation of
love. The quarrel is externally considered the continuation of
love. But about the nature of the quarrel one will have said
nothing particular if one knows that this quarrel is the
continuation of love. One has achieved nothing with it; of
course, one has not stated the least about war if one looks at
it, so that one says: war is the continuation of politics. It
is really that way that judgments which are, nevertheless,
rather one-sided judgments can appear tremendously significant
in this time.
Today a judgment is appreciated that expresses nothing
particular about the nature of the matter in question. However,
such a judgment not always needs to be futile. It can even be
very fruitful. But those who bear witness of our world view
should penetrate the veil of maya a little also concerning the
external life. Of course, one should not argue anyhow against
the judgment which one reads in every third newspaper column,
because it is a fruitful judgment. However, one would
experience something peculiar with the correctness of the
judgment if one wanted to examine it with a clear thinking.
This also holds true if one can read almost in every newspaper
column: we shall be victorious, because we must be victorious.
— One can argue nothing against the justification of this
judgment, against the fertility and the value of this judgment;
but if anybody who stands before a river and has to cross over
it says: I shall swim, because I must swim, — the
correctness of the judgment depends whether he is able to swim.
You can testify the correctness of the judgment of a
non-swimmer in this case with a clear thinking: I want to swim,
because I must swim. Which value does such a judgment have? It
has a high value, because there are forces, there is courage
and confidence, they penetrate the will. It is a judgment
motivating the will. It is not a judgment which recognises
anything, but it strengthens the will. That is why the judgment
is significant and important. Do not misunderstand such
matters. They are stated to show that a clear thinking
understanding the matters is something different than that
which is asserted so often. In our time, the materialistic ways
of thinking are exceptionally developed.
However, our judgment is mostly obscured if we have to examine
what the spiritual scientist says. It is true that everything
can be seen that the spiritual scientist says, even if one has
never looked into the spiritual world, if one applies a really
healthy, correct thinking. There is nobody who, also without
being clairvoyant, if he only had a healthy judgment, would
have to be an adversary of spiritual science. There are other
reasons in the nature of the human being, in the soul of the
human being to be an adversary of spiritual science. One of
these reasons is the following above all.
If
the human being perceives in the physical world, his physical
percipience is always supported by his physical, etheric, and
astral bodies. These human members were created in the course
of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, and were added to the
human being through the forces of the divine hierarchies.
Today, they are that which they have become in the past. The
human being is put in that which was prepared for him for long
times, when he enters his physical existence. All that supports
him when he perceives in the physical world. Whenever we
perceive, whenever we form a mental picture, an impression is
made in our physical body. We know nothing about it, but this
impression does take place in the physical body. That is why we
have a memory during the physical life. You have to imagine
this matter only correctly. If we put the question: why do we
have a memory in the physical life? — We must say:
whenever we form a mental picture, an impression on the
physical body is made.
This impression is even more or less humanlike. Any mental
picture which we form makes not only — like the
materialist-fantastically thinking human being means — an
impression here or there in the brain, but any mental picture
makes an impression on the whole human being. Any mental
picture which we form really delivers an impression reproducing
a kind of the human head and upper parts of the chest. It is
really true: if I now speak hundred syllables per minute to
you, you have formed about fifty human beings within yourselves
in these minutes, however, you have got rid of fifty human
pictures quickly, and it alternates quickly between these two
processes. You can imagine how many such human pictures you
have formed in yourselves when the hour of this consideration
is over. These human pictures are more or less identical in
their external figure, but incomparable on the other hand; no
picture is completely identical to the other. Any picture is
different from the other, even if just a little. It is a
childish idea if anybody believes if he has an impression of
his outside world and remembers it tomorrow that this
impression has sat in any form in him. It has not sat at all in
him, but a picture which is humanlike has remained in the human
being. Really, a humanlike picture remains of every impression
of the outside world.
If
you remember the impression again tomorrow, you transport your
soul into this human picture which is in you. The reason why
you see not this human picture, but remember the impression, is
that you read in your astral body. It is really a reading
activity, a subconscious reading activity. Exactly the same way
as if you want to write down something and read it later, you
describe not the letters, but that which the letters mean
tomorrow if you remember the experiences of today. You do not
look at the picture which originated in you, the human phantom
which lives there in you, but you interpret it. You transport
yourself into this human phantom in your soul, and your soul
experiences something different than this human phantom. It
experiences that which it experienced yesterday once again.
The
human being needs not to be very surprised about that, because
if you read Goethe's
Faust
— what do you deal with it? With a lot of paper and printer's
ink of any shape. This is materially the complete
Faust.
You would never have the Goethean
Faust
if your soul were not able to work
anything on that you have in paper and printer's ink before
yourself. If you were not able to decipher this, it would just
be paper and printer's ink. With regard to the external world
the materialists debate perpetually that that does not exist
which the spiritual scientist speaks about. But these
materialists are as clever as a human being would be clever who
says: what do you tell about the Goethean
Faust,
it does not exist at all, and there is only paper and printer's ink!
— This judgment about
Faust
is completely identical to the judgment which today the materialists
pronounce on the world. But that applies also to our memories.
Tomorrow, nothing of an impression of today is there in our
human being but the phantom, the image, and the soul has to
cope with all the remaining matters working on this phantom. As
well as from the paper and the printer's ink in our soul the
whole Goethean
Faust
appears, something appears from that which has remained as a
phantom in us. It is like a reanimation of the today's impression
if we remember it tomorrow.
But
this activity which must be carried out, so that we can
remember, is carried out for us by means of our wonderfully
formed physical body and our etheric body which were prepared
through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. They arrange that,
they act for us. The materialistically thinking human being
feels that. Now take into consideration that the spiritual
truth, which is gained, is gained without this help, that the
help of the external physical body is not enlisted. The forces
which work, otherwise, in the external body must come from the
inside of the soul; there must be worked from the soul. If one
has a spiritual view which is not managed by the external
world, we cannot transport ourselves into an internal phantom
which has remained if we want to remember it; for this is in
the body. There we must work for the whole matter with a much
bigger strength, without this support. This is nothing
especially miraculous. Imagine only how the difference, which I
mean, mirrors the matter in small details. Let us assume that
today somebody reads a poem, and he keeps this poem till
tomorrow, which he has read today. Then he can read it tomorrow
again, the day after tomorrow again. However, we suppose that
he does not keep it, and then he must say it by heart. You see
the difference: once we do something, as it were, that has
nothing to do with us; the external paper carries what we would
have to do, otherwise, from one time to the other; the paper is
a support to us. We must exert ourselves more if we reconstruct
the poem by heart. Thus somebody who lives in the spiritual
world has to exert his will more than somebody who relies on
the support of his body. However, this is connected with the
fact that everything that is gained in the spiritual-scientific
field, even what should be only understood generally, demands
big mental efforts. A materialist may be much more sluggish,
lazier than a spiritual scientist. This is the reason or at
least one of the reasons why the human beings are materialists.
They are not materialists, because they are forced by means of
a logic, but they are materialists from fear, but also from
sluggishness, because they want that anything that takes place
in the soul does not come into being by the internal forces of
the soul, but that it happens by that which is imprinted in
their bodies, which is recorded there.
These are matters which we have to consider if we want to see
the reasons why many people are adversaries of spiritual
science. Above all, however, it is difficult to manage with the
thinking completely if anything is to be reached that the human
being must still reach if he goes through the gate of
death.
The
day before yesterday, I have already pointed to that which is
essential if one goes through the gate of death crossing: this
is self-knowledge. Of course, this self-knowledge is not
anything easy at all. Some of you have already heard as I have
spoken about that that with regard to the external figures the
human beings make the biggest mistakes very often. There is an
often mentioned philosopher, who lived in Vienna; I do not mean
the Hamburg Maack who grumbles about theosophy, but Ernst Mach,
the philosopher to be taken seriously. He wrote an
Analysis of Sensations.
Therein he tells the following very naively:
I walked once in the street; suddenly I had to stop, because a
person met me, and I thought: this is a person with a very
unpleasant face, even with an intolerable face. Lo and behold,
I found out that I had passed a mirror, and the mirror was
hanging in such a way that I had seen myself. There I took
notice how little I was familiar with my own figure. —
When he saw himself, he took himself for a disagreeable human
being with an intolerable face. This is a philosophy professor,
a famous professor of the present. And to confirm that which he
had experienced he adds something else. When he was a professor
already for a long time, one day he went by train, arrived very
tired at a city and got in a bus. There he saw a man on the
other side getting in, and he thought: what a down-and-out
school master gets in! — Then, however, he saw on the
opposite side a mirror hanging, and he found out that he had
called himself a down-and-out school master. He draws attention
to the fact that he, as he says, knew the type more exactly
than his special figure.
It
is already hard to recognise oneself concerning the appearance
of the human being — with ladies it is perhaps easier,
because they more often look in the mirror, — but it is
still completely different if it matters the soul. There is
almost no other possibility of self-knowledge in our time than
to sharpen the knowledge forces we can take up from spiritual
science. The concepts, the mental pictures we take up from
spiritual science are suitable just in the best sense to
sharpen our self-knowledge. Everything is founded on
self-cognition generally speaking that we take up from the book
Occult Science in Outline.
Any mental picture we take up
from this book means, actually, to recognise ourselves, to know
what the human being is real. While we study how the human
physical, etheric and astral bodies were gradually created
during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, we get to know what
is in us. While we get to know what is in us, our powers of
imagination are sharpened to recognise ourselves much better
than it is possible otherwise.
To
which extent does this self-knowledge have significance for the
moment of death? As long as we stay here in the physical body,
self-knowledge is just knowledge. If we go, however, through
the gate of death, everything changes to willpower that we have
learnt as self-knowledge. The better we recognise ourselves,
the stronger a kind of willpower comes into being just when we
have taken off the physical body. Let us suppose for example,
that we have realised here that we were, we say, a choleric
person concerning certain things. You know that it is hard to
transform us completely in the physical life to take off the
violence even if we understand it. But at the moment when we
take off the physical body when we only know: you were choleric
— that becomes will. This will is directed to eliminate
the violence from our being. Any knowledge judgment becomes,
while we go through the gate of death, a will judgment; it
becomes willpower. Then something very significant takes place
that we can call — in certain sense — the reversal
of something that is experienced before the birth of the human
being that is forgotten, however, because the human being
cannot look back to the times which he went through before his
birth.
Let
us imagine, however, the human being would already be able to
do that which he develops in the Jupiter existence: if he were
about to gradually return from the spiritual world to an
incarnation, he would experience something in extremely strange
way like looking at his future figure, his future life. He
would also behold something of his physical figure. But he
would never penetrate that in this physical figure which would
appear to him in it like two points. Imagine that we would have
our physical figure like in a fog when we walk to birth. We
would see it as light, but there we would see impenetrable,
dark points, dark balls, still some other things, but just
these dark balls. Long before his physical birth, the human
being sees — in time, not in space — before
himself: you become this. He already sees how his physical
constitution is formed out of the nature of the spirits of
form. This appears to him as a light figure more or less, but
in it two dark balls are floating. When the human being lives
toward the physical life — he does this partially already
in the body of his mother — there he absorbs certain
forces from these surroundings which the mother forms then. He
feels being gradually linked with this light figure, and then
he senses, as if he were in these two balls inparticular. They
have appeared to him as impenetrable before, now he himself is
in it and feels the forces which come to him from all sides,
they flow into him. Then he pierces these two balls, the space
of the balls; the space loses its impenetrability.
These are the places where later the eyes are. If one
approaches the physical-earthly incarnation that way, it is the
eyes we cannot see but we can see by means of the eyes. They
are like impenetrable balls toward which we live. Then one
penetrates them in the last phase, before one enters the
physical world. If anybody consciously lived through this, that
would be, actually, a miraculous phenomenon. Imagine that the
human being says to himself, leaving the spiritual world and
entering the physical world: now you go with your soul toward
this physical figure. You find two dark balls there. You cannot
see through them with your present soul; this is full of
spiritual substance. — Then one gets the strength to make
transparent what was spiritually non-transparent first. If one
“sees first the light of day” as one says, these
spaces which were non-transparent are just the reason why one
sees. You yourselves cannot see the eyes; if you saw them, you
would not see the world.
When the human being goes through the gate of death, the sight
of death is such a miraculous phenomenon in the spiritual human
life after death, because he experiences something similar that
took place here with his eyes. Only that the whole human being
experiences it consciously. He has to get the feeling after
death: there you left behind the world. Up to now he had the
physical world in the eye as a physical experience, even that
which the etheric body still shows as a tableau at the end. Now
he goes through the gate of death with his self-knowledge,
which then becomes willpower. — Imagine now that the dead
would be here. He leaves behind his physical experiences. He
radiates his willpower, which he has acquired from his
self-knowledge. This radiating willpower which is acquired
through self-knowledge gets rid of that which prevents us from
looking into the spiritual environment.
(Aetherleib = etheric body, toter Mensch = dead soul,
Willenskraft = willpower)
As
well as we get rid of the clouding of the eye while going into
birth, so to speak, we get rid of that which prevents us from
looking into the spiritual world by means of this willpower. We
make ourselves transparent after death. This is the significant
event.
If
the human being goes through the gate of death, he has an
overview of his whole life like of a great tableau, as long as
he has the etheric body in himself. This stands before him. But
now he also gets the feeling: you see yourself. You are that
while you lived between birth and death, you yourself are
everything. — Now the complete strength of self-knowledge
stirs in him, which he has gained to himself, and pierces it as
I have described; the etheric body thereby leaves. Then it is,
as if a veil fell, and the spiritual world behind it comes to
the fore. It is this tremendous experience to go through the
gate of death and to have the complete last life before
oneself, because the etheric body has become free. Then the
soul gets the feeling: this last life is a veil which covers a
tremendous world to you which you could not see during life.
Now the willpower, coming from self-knowledge, fights against
this veil and removes it. While the veil tears, the spiritual
world behind it comes to the fore.
One
does not need to be anxious, because somebody could say to
himself: in our present time many people have done nothing at
all to get some self-knowledge. According to the judgment of
many people one can hardly be cleverer and more intelligent
than a present university professor of philosophy; this is the
ideal of the present intelligence. However, somebody can be
predisposed to such a small self-knowledge like that famous
man, even a philosopher, who is really a significant person.
Somebody could become faint-hearted and say: self-knowledge is
in a bad way. — Of course, if the matters were that way
that the human beings depend whether they only have that
willpower from self-knowledge which results from the life of
present time, then the human beings would be in a rather bad
way. In certain respects, the human beings of the present are
rightly very proud of the tremendous progress of knowledge,
which has been achieved. Think only how a doctor of present
time who knows any current trend of medicine proudly looks down
on those who were doctors not yet long ago. These all were
fools, he thinks, of course. With regard to the external
knowledge, people have achieved a lot of things in the course
of the last centuries and found out about the external world
how the external phenomena are connected and so on. Big
progress has been done. But with regard to self-knowledge, the
ancient times which we have gone through in former incarnations
were far ahead; so far ahead, actually, that the present human
being if he thinks materialistically has no idea what he should
do with that which comes from ancient times. Since everything
that the human beings today regard as old prejudices was
basically self-knowledge, while the souls of ancient times
experienced it. Only the last left-overs of self-knowledge are
reported.
The
human being living on earth knows nothing of his former
incarnations with the usual external consciousness. Indeed, we
know that there are people among the theosophists who after a
relatively short time know a lot of their former incarnations.
Once I got to know a group of people in a European city where
Seneca
[Seneca
(~1–65 A. D.), Roman philosopher],
Frederic II of Prussia
[Frederic II of Prussia (1712–1786)],
the German Emperor Joseph II
[German Emperor Joseph II (1741–1790)],
the Duke of Reichstadt
[Duke of Reichstadt (1811–1831),
Napoleon Franz Bonaparte von Reichstadt, son of Napoleon I.],
Madame Pompadour
[Madame Pompadour (Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson)
(1721–1764)],
Marie-Antoinette
[Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France (1755–1793)]
and still some other people were sitting together at a coffee
table. But apart from those who know so much about their former
incarnation, after they have learnt a little theosophy, people
do not know a lot, as everybody knows, or nothing at all about
their former incarnations with their everyday external
knowledge. Since, as true as it is that the human being knows
nothing of his previous incarnations by that which just the
present human cycle gives him, it is true that he has
everything for his will development after death that remained
to him from previous lives. There it is different between death
and a new birth. Whereas people know nothing about their
previous incarnations between birth and death here, they have
all the forces of their previous incarnations in themselves in
the life between death and a new birth, but also that which has
always been experienced between death and a new birth.
When the human being goes through the gate of death, so he has
not only that willpower which comes from self-knowledge that
the human beings mostly do not have today, but all the
willpower which do not come from the self-knowledge of this
life but from the self-knowledge, which he got in former times.
So that the human being when he goes through the gate of death
just is not lacking willpower which gets rid of this veil that
is woven by the own life. However, if the human being wanted to
gain new willpower in the course of the next millennia, this
self-knowledge of ancient times would be more and more
appreciated in the present era. That is why spiritual science
had to appear for the further human development. Since it is
the course of humankind that the human willpower still suffices
today that, however, now also the time begins when during the
earth development this willpower can be invigorated while the
human being familiarises himself with the spiritual world.
The
earth development of humankind would be exposed to a risk if
the human beings resisted up to the end of the earth
development from now on in every respect to take up anything of
spiritual science. Then, however, the human being would be less
and less able to perceive anything of the spiritual matters and
events over there in the spiritual world. He would be able to
do this less and less. He would be less and less able to
penetrate the veil of which I spoke. Thus you see which
significance self-knowledge transformed to willpower has. Here
this knowledge is a self-observation; over there it is
self-will which is pulling off the veil from the spiritual
world. Just in those who go through the gate of death one
perceives how important it is for them that they themselves
invigorate their willpower as I have explained now, the
willpower that comes from self-knowledge. That is why it is
rather significant that the human being, while he goes through
the gate of death, through these different stages, occupies
himself with that which is in him what is in his self what he
was during his earth-life.
If
anybody has community with a dead, then it is of big
significance to make this community especially fruitful that
one helps the dead to strengthen and fulfill his
self-consciousness. This is definitely meant that way: suppose
that anybody, who was here in the physical life with us, would
go through the gate of death. While we have lived with him, we
know how he was; we know what he has especially liked to do.
When he has gone through the gate of death, he is in urgent
need to summon up strong internal forces for everything that he
wills. These must flow out of his retrospect. We can help him
if we think of him how he appeared to us in life; if we pay
attention to that, if we send thoughts to him which
characterise him. Beside the different things which have
already been said about our occupation with the dead who have
passed from us, we can also help the dead showing them, as it
were, the image of their nature. Thus we take a certain strain
away from them developing that willpower which has to tear up
the characterised veil.
That is why it happened to me that the other phenomenon has
resulted of which I have already spoken to you the day before
yesterday. It has resulted to me when I had to speak at the
funeral of friends before short time that I felt it necessary
to express that which lives in the friends as their nature,
just at the funeral. There I spoke not out of memory, but I
spoke while my soul was transported completely into the other
soul, after this had already gone through the gate of
death.
If
you deal with a soul which has already gone through the gate of
death, then it is about that you transport yourself into this
soul. Here in the physical world, the object is there, you look
at it from without. In the spiritual world, you are with your
whole being in this psycho-spiritual element. In the individual
case of which I spoke the day before yesterday, it was just
possible to put myself in the soul of this person who had gone
through the gate of death and was characterised by me as a
person who for long years before her death occupied herself
with our world view who lived completely in it, so that she was
able to put into words her own contents, her nature, living in
spiritual science and taking up certain forces, as long as she
was in her etheric body. I managed to catch this from the dead
and I had to speak this at the funeral.
It
was different in another case. When I had to speak at the
funeral of our dear Fritz Mitscher who is especially dear to
the members of our branch here, I felt the necessity also to
transport myself in this soul who had gone through the gate of
death. But now the necessity arose to put into words that which
this soul was during life for his friends and fellowmen, who
were also members of our anthroposophical movement, to think
this together with this soul after death and to experience
together what motivates and increases that will which results
from self-knowledge. I had to say some things just at this
funeral which harmonise with that which our dear friend Fritz
Mitscher experienced in the times of his development, after he
had come to our spiritual-scientific movement, what he had
learnt, how his internal karma had driven him. The words which
I had to speak there are not my words, as I have said, they
came from the forces of his own soul, but formed so that they
expressed the essential part of the years which preceded his
death.
I
had to say that — not: I wanted to say what I had to say
there. Of course, these words were not his own words directly;
the concerning soul would never have said this from himself in
life. It is that which the other soul felt, nevertheless, who
is connected with the soul of the deceased, as well as one can
feel only with a soul who is already disembodied. I want to
inform you of these words which I had to speak at the
funeral:
A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.
Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.
You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction
You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.
For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.
Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to your life's true value.
A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.
A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.
Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,
Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.
A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Unlost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.
If
these words must not be taken so that they are spoken by the
soul, however, they were spoken in such a community with the
soul that after relatively short time this soul revealed
something that came now only from the soul; not at all from my
soul, but only from the soul who had gone through the gate of
death. Then this sounded in that way, and since that time these
words sound to me always:
For
me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.
Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.
When I heard these words for the first time — since that
time it has happened several times — from this deceased
soul, there I got on only — for that which I read out
there, is so written really word by word as it was heard in
connection with the other soul — there I only got on that
a dialog could come into being. At the cremation I had
said:
For
you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.
“You” and “yours” appear in these
stanzas. But it was not done by me anyhow. I noticed only, when
the words came back from the deceased soul that these words
were so formed that one may quote them just also in the first
person:
For
me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
You
see a dialog reaching beyond the grave, a kind of
communication.
With respect to this I would like to speak about something that
is often mentioned in our spiritual-scientific movement which
one cannot repeat enough. In the stanzas, which have been
spoken to a deceased soul, you find something that reminds you
of that which is expressed most significantly where it is
said:
Hear
our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.
Take such a thing not as bare words. This speaks of something
that is connected in the deepest sense significantly with the
whole being of our spiritual-scientific movement.
If
a soul has so striven like that about whom I speak here, so
that he wanted to penetrate that which he could learn of
knowledge, of experiences with the spiritual-scientific
impulses, and goes so early through the gate of death, then
such a soul can remain a loyal co-worker. Thus it was a little
bit like an entreaty when I called these words to this soul
that he may help us in our efforts for the future of earth. For
you can consider this as something sure: the abyss between the
living and the dead human beings must be bridged vividly
through our spiritual science in the course of the earth
development. We have to learn, just as we are together with
human beings living in physical bodies, to look at the dead
human beings not as dead, but as living among us, as living and
creating. Those who are the so-called dead are working with us
with forces available to them.
We
have to seize that vividly and not theoretically which impulses
spiritual science has to create and convert in us into the
vivid life which we want to insert to the cultural development
out of spirit. I have to say: concerning our external
civilisation one needs the assistance of those in future who
are in the spiritual worlds up there. Those who get entrance
for the spiritual-scientific movement here on earth need the
dead souls. That is why I said that we need the strength for
our work on earth from spiritual realms for which we thank the
dead friends. We make an entreaty, as it were, to the souls to
work with us on earth. I mean such souls who go on working with
the forces which are strengthened by that which they took up
here and penetrated themselves with that which they have taken
up in the spiritual worlds.
Sometimes it appears so symptomatically which difficulties and
obstacles our anthroposophical earth work does find. Among
various things you can observe time and again, I want to
emphasise one thing only. In a South German magazine, an
article appeared some years ago which caused a sensation,
because it was rumoured that a very significant philosopher had
written it. The editor of the magazine is called Karl Muth.
That Karl Muth has accepted an article of many pages in those
days. When my
Occult Science in Outline
was published,
he has brought this article, just resuming this book
Occult Science.
It would not have been so especially difficult to
me to eradicate the worst things of the article, the most
foolish assertions. Since with the truth of that great
philosopher it is as follows: many people regard him really as
a great philosopher. But he appears to some whom he approached
in life — he does not need to have approached them
especially near, to have sat opposite to them only once,
— clinging to them like a limpet. He appeared to me that
way, and I had to fight off him. But after he had written
postcard after postcard, letter after letter to me, he also
sent me this article as a manuscript. I could not resolve to
read the article, because it began already too foolishly. There
the author said, for example: Steiner calls that occult science
which he wrote there in his book. But there cannot be an occult
science at all, because this is the nature of science that it
is not secret, but is public. — So, an occult science is
contradictory to the nature of science itself. Thus it started.
Where one turned over a few pages, one got on such impertinent
follies that it was fatal to me to read on, to read the
manuscript. It still lies there somewhere. It is a folly,
because one needs only to be able to speak German to feel this
folly. This is just, as if anybody says: there are no natural
sciences. However, there are natural sciences. There is not a
secret science, of course, but there is an occult science. It
was too foolish, but the editor of the magazine thought that it
was an especially significant article. Many people read the
article, and regarded it as something very clever that was
written about spiritual science where it was criticised
thoroughly.
Now
the war came. That philosopher is no German, but now he counts
himself to the worst enemies of Germany. Now he writes a number
of letters to the same Karl Muth who in those days — you
forgive the trivial expression — licked his fingers that
he got the article of the famous philosopher. A lot of venom
has already been emptied over Germany and the German nation,
but anything more toxic, more dreadful has not been written,
actually, than that which this famous philosopher wrote in
letters to Karl Muth. The most horrible judgments and reviews
about Germanness and German nature are found there. Now the
following can be considered still as a good sign. The
philosopher concerned wrote, after he had spit venom,
unfortunately not with “occult science,” because
the censorship did not stop it crossing the border, so that it
arrived even in Munich, and Muth (Muth = courage)
found the courage to print this venom again; now, however, not
to print the “significant article of a significant
man” but — after years the same Karl Muth prints
this writing about the Germans and writes: of course, a man who
writes that way should be in the lunatic asylum! — You
see, Karl Muth needed this writing about the German nature to
get on that the man is a fool. Some years ago, however, he let
the same fool loose on our spiritual science. A reasonable
person could know this already in those days, but fools are
often regarded also as famous philosophers; it does not depend
on it. But you see which unfavourable conditions spiritual
science is exposed to. If the war had not come and Karl Muth
had not been taught that, actually, the dear man, this
professor Wincenty Lutoslawski, is a fool, he would have again
accepted an article annihilating spiritual science from the
feather of this “famous philosopher” at the next
opportunity.
You
also see that in our time human beings are not often inclined
to get on with their judgment which point of view they have to
take concerning spiritual science. I give this example only to
show — one could give many such examples — which
obstacles our spiritual-scientific movement is exposed to, that
even those who must be regarded later as fools are let loose on
it. Then the judgment may also be justified that some other
things which are said against this spiritual science are not
cleverer. Since where it could be proved once rather
strikingly, there it has been proved.
We
have to realise that we also need the forces of those who went
through the gate of death, and who, before they went through
this gate, took up that which is contained in the light of
spiritual science. We need them to enliven the
spiritual-scientific impulses. The abyss between the living and
the dead must be cleared away first on our spiritual-scientific
field above all. This is why something like an admonition must
appear time and again: We want to keep the consciousness that
we had souls being closer to us, as long as they walked in
their physical bodies among us, as it was before, only just
according to their other condition of life. We want to keep
this, even if the souls concerned have gone through the gate of
death. For it belongs to the nicest, to the most significant
what we can gain from spiritual science if we can look at those
who went through the gate of death as human beings living among
us, meeting us; as those meet us who live in their physical
bodies. This becomes an essential support, because now so many
souls go through the gate of death as young people on the
fields where something new prepares itself out of blood and
death, and deliver their unused etheric bodies to the spiritual
world.
The
human etheric body is prepared in such a way that it can supply
the human being with vital forces up to the highest age. If the
human being goes now through the gate of death in his youth,
the forces remain unused which could still have been used here
if the human being grew up to a higher age. Now we can look up
to the spiritual etheric world where the human being still
stays some time after he has left the physical plane. There are
just many youthful etheric bodies of those available who were
killed in action and went through the gate of death. These
etheric bodies do not dissolve immediately but keep holding
together and containing the forces which could have supplied
life for a long time.
These etheric bodies will be there, they will be forces which
can help the human beings when these look up longing with the
consciousness of spiritual science where that is contained in
unused etheric bodies. From above these forces join with those
who join consciously with these forces of the
spiritual-scientific consciousness. Feeling and sensing that,
we should turn to them. We have to lively bear witness to the
spiritual world. We should be able to say to ourselves: there
have to be human beings just in future, in the time which
follows this war, here on our earth who carry souls in
themselves which can look up at the spiritual world, so that
these unused etheric bodies are realities to them; that it
becomes reality to them through their knowledge of the
spiritual world. Then spiritual science will be up to that
which is not only knowledge, but real life; real life also
because of the destiny-burdened events of our time. Then
somebody can say: there are souls in the world who look up to
the etheric bodies above there which develop their unused
forces, and that is why they are able to take up these forces
and to work even stronger. These unused forces of the etheric
bodies of those who sacrificed themselves on the fields of
blood and death are fruitful for the souls on earth in
future.
For
this reason, we also want to think again of that cooperation
which can come into being between the human beings who are
inspired and spiritualised with spiritual-scientific knowledge
and look at that which remains of the etheric bodies from this
war, what can come into being from this internal interaction of
souls. We also want to write those words in our souls again
which I would like to speak now at the end of our branch
considerations, out of the whole interrelation of the
events:
From
the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.
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