LECTURE 3.
THE
LIVING AND THE
DEAD.
Berlin,
5th February, 1918.
The fact we have so repeatedly set
forth from different points of view: that the alternation of
waking and sleeping has a more profound significance in human life
than appears to outer observation — should form a subject for a
comprehensive study of the universe and a practical grasp of the
world in the ideal sense. To ordinary observation the apparent fact
is that man with his consciousness alternates between the conditions
of waking and sleeping. We know that this is only apparent, for we
have often agreed from various points of view that the so-called
sleep-condition lasts not only from falling asleep to waking, but
that in a certain part of our being it also continues from waking to
sleeping. We must really say that we are never completely, thoroughly
‘awake’ with our whole being. Sleep extends into our
waking hours. With one part of our being we are always asleep. We
might ask ourselves: With what part of our being do we really keep
awake during the so-called ‘waking’
time?
In the world of sense we are awake as
regards our perceptions, as regards all that we perceive by means of
our senses from waking to falling asleep. The characteristic of
ordinary perception is precisely that from a condition of detachment
from the external sense-world we pass over on waking to one of
amalgamation with it; then our senses soon begin to be active and
this wrests us from that dull condition which we know in ordinary
life as ‘sleep.’ Thus with our sense-perception we are
awake in the true sense of the word. We are already less awake in
respect of our life of ideas, as accurate self-observation will
prove, but sufficiently so to call it being awake. We must
distinguish the life of perception from that of actual thought and
ideas. When withdrawn from sense-perception, that is, not outwardly
related to it, we meditate, we are thereby awake, both in the
ordinary sense of the word and the higher; although this ‘being
awake’ purely in the life of ideas has always a shade of
dreaming — in the case of one man, more, of another, less.
Although with many people dreaming may well be intermixed with the
life of ideas, yet, taken as a whole, we can say that, when we form
concepts, we are awake.
We are not ‘awake’ when
we feel. Certainly, feeling wells up from an undefined,
undifferentiated soul-life, and because we ‘realise’
feeling, because ideas, that is, waking activities, are mingled with
it, we suppose that we are awake in our feeling; yet this is not
really the case. In reality, the activity of our feeling is exactly
the same as in ordinary dreaming. There is a profound relation
between the dream-condition and the actual condition of feeling. If
we were always able to illumine with ideas what we dream (the greater
part of our dream-life is lost to us), we should be as well
acquainted with the dream-life as with the life of feeling; for,
indeed, feelings and passions are actually present in the soul in the
same manner as the dream. No one can tell by his waking life what
actually takes place when he feels, or in that which he feels. It
surges up, as I said, from the undefined, undifferentiated life of
the soul and is illumined by the light of the concepts, but it is a
dream-life. This relationship of emotion and feeling to dreaming is
well known even to those who are not occultists; for example, the
prominent philosopher, Frederick Theodor Vischer, has often
emphasised the profound relationship between dreaming and feeling in
the soul-life of man.
Still ‘deeper down’ in
the soul-life is the real life of will. What does man know about what
actually takes place in his inner being when he says, ‘I will
take up a book,’ and, stretching out his arm, does so? Of what
takes place between muscle and nerve, of what goes on in the organism
and even in the soul, by which an impulse of will passes into
movement, into action, man is even less conscious than he is of the
events of deep, dreamless sleep. It is a fact that the actual essence
of our life of will is, in its turn, illumined by the life of ideas;
thus it appears to us as though we were conscious of it, but the real
entity of the will remains, even from waking to falling asleep, in a
condition of profound sleep.
Thus we see that, in the true sense
of the word, we are really ‘awake’ only as regards our
perception in the world of sense and in our life of ideas; even in
the waking condition, as regards the life of feeling, we are actually
asleep, we really dream; and as regards the life of will we are
always fast asleep. Thus the sleep-condition extends into that of
waking. Let us picture to ourselves how we pass through the world:
what we experience with our waking consciousness is but the
perception of the sense-world and our world of ideas; and, imbedded
in this experience, is a world in which our impulses of feeling and
will float, a world which surrounds us like the air, but does not
enter the ordinary consciousness at all. Anyone who thus approaches
the matter will, indeed, not be very far from recognising a so-called
super-sensible world around him.
Now all this has more pregnant
consequences. Behind what has been related are significant facts of
life as a whole. Anyone who knows the life of the human soul between
death and rebirth (made known in a more abstract form by the lectures on
‘The Inner Nature of Man, and Life Between Death and Rebirth,’
given in Vienna in the spring of 1914) will see that
in this world through which we wander in a sleeping condition, we are
living together with the so-called dead. The dead are always present.
They move and have their being in a super-sensible world. We are not
separated from them by our ‘real being,’ only by our
condition of consciousness. We are only separated from them as in
sleep we are separated from the things around us; we sleep in a room
and do not see the chairs and other things. Though we do not describe
it thus, yet as regards our feeling and will, we ‘sleep’
in the so-called waking condition among the dead, just as we do not
perceive the physical objects around us when we sleep. Thus we do not
live separated from the world ruled by the forces of the dead, we are
together with them in one common world. In our ordinary consciousness
we are only separated from them by the state of that
consciousness.
This knowledge of our common life
with the dead will be one of the most important elements which
Spiritual Science is to implant in the general human consciousness,
in the general civilisation of mankind for the future; for those who
believe that what takes place around them occurs only through the
forces perceived in the life of the senses, know nothing of the
reality; they do not know that the forces of the dead are always at
work, always present. Bearing in mind what I said in the first
lecture — that, in this material age, man has really quite a
false view of historical life because history in its actual impulses
is only dreamt or slept away, — we shall be able to form an
idea that the forces of the dead may live in what we dream or sleep
away of historical life. In a future time a study of history will
come which will reckon with the forces of those who have passed
through the gate of death, whose souls live in the world between
death and rebirth. A consciousness of the unity of all mankind,
including the so-called ‘dead,’ will have to give human
civilisation quite a new colouring.
The method of observation employed by
the spiritual investigator, who can make a practical application of
what has been said, will disclose many concrete details of this joint
life of the living and the so-called dead. If by his thoughts a man
could throw light upon the nature of his feeling and impulses of
will, he would have a continuously living consciousness of the
existence of the dead. This he does not at present possess. The
ordinary consciousness does not possess it because these things are
remarkably distributed within our conscious life. We might say that
for the ‘conception’ of a higher cosmic relationship,
there is a third consciousness, much more important than the
perception of the waking condition or the sleep condition. What is
this?
It is something lying between these,
and for the man of to-day is only momentary and passes him by; it is
the moment of waking and that of falling asleep. To-day, man does not
pay attention to his waking and falling asleep; yet in the general
human consciousness they are extremely important. How important they
are is disclosed when the unconscious experiences of the ordinary
consciousness are illumined by the experiences of clairvoyant
consciousness. Having studied in this way though many years of
preparation, we can quite impartially illumine such things by
super-sensible facts.
It is quite possible for clairvoyant
consciousness not only to become acquainted ‘in general’
with the facts of the super-sensible world, in which, for instance, we
abide between death and rebirth, but also to come in contact, into
correspondence with individual souls of the dead (although this is
not so easy as the former). This we know. I shall only add that this
observation is more difficult (to the ordinary scientific
understanding of super-sensible relations), merely because there are
more obstacles to overcome. Although few to-day succeed in
attaining general scientific results of the super-sensible world, it
cannot be said that it is extremely difficult to do so, for it is not
beyond the ordinary capacities of the human soul. It is more
difficult to come into individual relations with souls of the dead
because those who strive for it overlook the fact that in the
spiritual world the lower impulses of man can be wakened. I have
often described the reason. The higher faculties of the super-sensible
beings are connected with the lower human impulses (not with the
higher impulses of incarnate beings), as the lower impulses of
super-sensible beings are related to the higher spiritual qualities of
man. I described this as a significant mystery in the intercourse
with the spiritual world, a mystery by contact with which a man may
easily be shipwrecked; but if he can steer safely past this rock, if
he is able to have intercourse with the super-sensible without being
diverted from the world of spiritual experiences, such intercourse is
quite possible. It proves, however, to be very, very different from
what is usually regarded as ‘intercourse’ here in the
world of sense. Speaking quite in the concrete: if we talk to one
another here in the world of sense, we speak and the other answers.
We know that we produce our words through the vocal organs, the words
come from our thoughts. We feel that we are the creator of our words;
we know that we hear ourselves speaking, and when some one answers we
hear him; we listen and we hear him. We are profoundly accustomed to
such a connection because we are only conscious of having intercourse
in the physical world with other human beings. Intercourse with
discarnate souls is not like this. Strange as it may sound,
intercourse with discarnate souls is exactly reversed. If we impart
our own thoughts to the discarnate, we do not speak, but he speaks.
It is exactly as though when talking with some one, he were to say
what we were about to communicate; we do not say it, but he does. The
reply of the so-called dead does not come to us from outside, but
arises from our inner being, we experience it as inner life.
Clairvoyant consciousness has to get accustomed to this. We have to
get accustomed to the idea that we ourselves are in the other as the
questioner, and the one who replies is in us. This complete reversal
of the entities is necessary.
Anyone acquainted with such things
knows that this reversal is not easy; it contradicts everything to
which man is accustomed; for habits are formed in course of life. Not
only that; — it contradicts all that is inborn in man, for it
is inborn in us to believe that we ourselves speak when we ask a
question, and that the other is silent when we answer him. Yet what
has been said is the case in intercourse with super-sensible beings.
From this reversal of one's being which clairvoyant consciousness
experiences, we shall be able to observe that a good proportion of
the non-perceptibility of the dead rests upon the fact that they have
intercourse with the living in a way which appears to the living as
quite impossible, but to which they are only unaccustomed. The living
simply do not hear what the dead say to them from the depths of their
own beings and they do not pay attention when another being says what
they themselves are thinking, what they themselves
desire.
Now, it is a fact that of the two
conditions of consciousness which rush so quickly past the man of
to-day — those of waking and of falling asleep — the one
is adapted for the question only, the other only for the reply. The
peculiarity is that the moment of falling asleep is specially
favourable for putting the question to the dead; that is, for the
hearing of the question which we put to him. As we fall asleep, we
are in a receptive condition to put the question to the dead, that
is, to hear from him the question we wish to ask. We specifically
disposed for this on falling asleep. In our ordinary consciousness we
fall asleep immediately after, the consequence of which is, that we
ask the dead hundreds of questions and talk with them of hundreds of
things, but know nothing of it, because we immediately fall asleep.
This fleeting moment of falling asleep is of tremendous consequence
for our intercourse with the dead. So, too, the moment of waking
especially disposes us to receive the answers of the dead. If we did
not immediately pass over into sense-perception, but were able to
linger through the moment of waking, we should be specially adapted
to receive their messages. These messages would appear as though
arising from our own inner being.
Thus, there are two reasons why in
both cases the ordinary consciousness does not pay attention to
intercourse with the dead. The first is that immediately on
awaking or falling asleep we meet a condition which is calculated to
obliterate what we have experienced; the second, that when we fall
asleep, let us say, unusual, really ‘impossible’ things
occur. The hundred questions we can put to the dead — and do
put — vanish in sleep-life because we are quite unaccustomed to
‘hear’ what we ask instead of ‘uttering’ it.
Again, what the dead say to us on awaking, we do not judge as coming
from them, because we do not recognise it; we take it as something
arising within ourselves. This is the second reason why people are
not familiar with intercourse with the dead.
These general phenomena are, however,
sometimes broken through in the following way. What a man experiences
on falling asleep, as putting the question to the dead from himself,
continues, in a sense, during sleep. During sleep we look back
unconsciously to the moment of falling asleep, and through this fact,
dreams can be regulated. Such dreams can really be a reproduction of
the questions we put to the dead. Far closer than we suppose do we
approach the dead in our dreams, although what was experienced in the
dream was said at the moment of falling asleep. The dream draws it up
from the undifferentiated depths of the soul. A man may,
however, easily misconstrue this; he does not take the dreams —
if later he recollects them as dreams — for what they really
are. Dreams are really always a previous companionship with the dead
springing from our life of feeling. We have moved towards them and
the dream often gives us the questions we have put to them. True, it
gives us our subjective experience, but as though coming from
outside. The dead speak to us, but we really utter what they say
ourselves. It only appears as though they spoke. As a rule, it is not
messages from the dead that come to us in our dreams, but the
expression of our need of being with them, of our need of coming to
them at the moment of falling asleep.
The moment of waking conveys to us
messages from the dead. This moment is obliterated by the subsequent
life of the senses; but the fact does occur that, in waking, we have
something rising, as it were, from the inner being of the soul, of
which we could well be aware if our self-observation were more
accurate; it does not come from our ordinary ego, it is often a
message from the dead.
We shall succeed in understanding
these ideas if we do not form wrong thoughts about a connection I
shall now bring before your soul. You will say: The moment of falling
asleep is adapted for putting the question, that of waking for
receiving the answer from the dead; they lie far apart! We can only
judge rightly of this when we keep in view the relations of time in
the super-sensible world. There the saying is true, spoken with
remarkable intuition by Richard Wagner: ‘Time becomes
space.’ In the super-sensible world, time really does become
space, one point of space here, another there. Time is not past, but
only a point of space, near or far; time actually becomes
supersensibly space. The dead only gives his answer when he stands
somewhat further from us. That, again, is an unaccustomed thought;
but the past is not ‘past’ in the super-sensible world. It
is there, it remains, and with respect to the present, it is only a
question of placing oneself in another place as regards the past. In
the super-sensible world, the past is just as little done away with as
the house we left to come here to-night. It is in its place; so, too,
in the super-sensible world, the past is not gone but is in its place.
It depends upon ourselves, and upon how far we got with them, how
near or far we are from the dead. We can be very far or very
near.
Thus, because we not only sleep and
wake, but wake up and fall asleep, we are in a continuous
correspondence and contact with the dead. They are always among us,
and we do not only act under the influence of those living around us
as physical men, but under that of those connected with us who have
passed through the gate of death. I shall to-day bring forward facts
which from a certain point of view, may lead us farther and farther,
into the spiritual world.
We can distinguish between various
souls who have passed through the portal of death, as soon as we have
understood that there is such continuous contact with them. Since,
really, we always pass through the field of the dead, either on
falling asleep, when we ask them questions, or on awaking, when we
receive answers from them, our connection with them must also be
affected according as they died young or old. The facts underlying
the following are only evident to clairvoyant consciousness. That,
however, is only the ‘knowledge’ of it, the reality
always takes place. Every man is related to the dead, as shown by
clairvoyant consciousness. When the young — children or
juveniles — pass through the gate of death, it is seen that the
connection between the living and the dead is different from that of
older people, those dying in the twilight of their life. There is a
decisive difference. When we lose children, when the young are
apparently taken from us, they do not really leave us at all, but
remain with us. This is seen by clairvoyant consciousness by the fact
that the messages we receive on awakening are forceful and vivid when
the dead concerned died as children or young people. The connection
between those remaining behind and the dead is then such that we can
only say that a child or young person is not lost at all; he really
remains present. The young remain above all, because after death they
show a forceful need to work into our waking moments and to send us
messages. It is very remarkable, yet true, that human people who died
young have a very great deal to do with all connected with
waking. To clairvoyant consciousness it is specially interesting that
it is due to those who died in youth that a man in outer life feels a
certain devoutness, a certain religious inclination. A tremendous
amount in respect of devoutness is effected by the messages of those
who died early.
It is different with the souls of the
old, those advanced in physical years. What clairvoyance shows us
concerning these can be described differently. We may say that they
do not lose us; our souls remain with them. Observe the contrast. The
souls of the young we do not lose, they remain with us; the souls of
the old do not lose us, they take something of our souls with them,
as it were; — if we may use such a comparison. The souls of the
old draw us more to themselves, whereas the souls of the young draw,
rather, to us. Therefore at the moment of falling asleep we
have much to say to the souls of those who died old, and we can weave
a special bond with the spiritual world by adapting ourselves to
address the souls of the old. We can really do something with regard
to these things.
Thus we see that we stand in
continuous relation to the dead; we have a sort of
‘interrogation and reply,’ a mutual intercourse with the
dead. To qualify ourselves for questioning and, as it were, to
approach the dead, the following is the right course: Ordinary
abstract thoughts, those taken from materialistic life, bring us but
little in relation to the dead. The dead, if they belong to us in any
way, even suffer through our distraction in purely material life. If
we stand firm against it and cultivate what will bring us in relation
to them in conformity with our life of will and feeling, we prepare
ourselves well to put the appropriate questions at the moment of
falling asleep. These connections are particularly available in
so far as the dead were related to us in life. The relationship in
life forms and establishes what follows as relationship after death.
There is, of course, a difference whether I speak with another with
apathy or with sympathy, whether I speak as one who loves him or as
one who does not care. There is a great difference whether I talk
with someone as at a five o'clock tea, or whether I am specially
interested in what I know of him. When intimate relations are formed
between soul and soul, based on impulses of feeling and will, and if
one can retain such interest after the one has passed through the
gate of death, such eagerness to know what answer he will give, or if
one has the impulse to be something to that soul, if one can live in
these reminiscences of the other soul, reminiscences which do not
flow to it from the content of the life of ideas but from the
relations between one soul and another, then one is specially fitted
for putting questions to that soul at the moment of falling
asleep.
On the other hand, for the reception
of answers, messages, at the moment of waking, we are specially
adapted if we were capable and inclined to enter consciously into the
being of the dead person during his life. Let us reflect how,
especially at the present time, one man passes another by without
really learning to know him. What do we know of one another? There
are striking examples of marriages lasting for ten years, without
either knowing the other. This is so; yet it is possible (not
depending on talent but on love) to enter the being of another with
understanding, and thereby to bear within one a real world of ideas
from the other. This is a specially good preparation for
receiving answers from the dead themselves at the moment of
waking. That is why we are even sooner able to receive answers from a
child or young person, because we more easily learn to know a young
person than those who have become more individualised and grown
old.
Thus we can do something towards
establishing a right relation between the living and the dead. Our
whole life is, in reality, permeated with this relation. We, as
souls, are imbedded in the same sphere in which the dead live. The
degree to which we are religious is very strongly connected, as I
have said, with the influence of those who have died young; and were
it not that such work into life, there would probably be no religious
feeling at all. The best relation to the souls of those who died
young is to keep our thoughts of them more on what is general than
individual. Funeral services for children or young people should have
a ritualistic, universal character. The Roman Church, which colours
everything with the youthful, the child-life, and which, generally
speaking, would have liked to have only to do with children, to guide
child-souls, therefore, does not, as a rule, give
‘individual’ addresses for the young life closing with
death. This is specially good. We mourn for children in a different
way than we do for older people. Our grief for a child I should
prefer to call a sympathetic sorrow, for the sorrow that we feel for
a child that has passed from us by death is really in many respects
the reflection of the attitude of our own soul towards the being of
the child, which remains near us. We share in the life of the child,
the child itself takes part with his entity in our sorrow; it feels a
sympathetic sorrow. Our grief for an older person is different, it
cannot be called a sympathetic grief, it is ‘egoistic;’
it is best borne by the reflection that an older dead person really
‘takes us with him;’ he does not lose us if we try to
prepare ourselves to join him. Hence we form more
‘individualised’ memories of our older dead, we
bear them rather in thought, we can remain united with them in
thought, in the thoughts we shared with them if we try not to behave
as an uncomfortable companion. When we have thoughts which he cannot
accept, our dead friend retains us, but in a peculiar way. We remain
with him, but we can be a burden to him if he has to drag us along
without our entertaining any thoughts in which he can unite with us,
which he can perceive spiritually.
Let us reflect how concrete our
relations to the dead appear in the light of Spiritual Science, if we
are able to have in view the whole relationship of the living to the
dead. This will become very important to the humanity of the future.
Trivial as it may sound, for every age is a ‘time of
transition,’ yet our own age really is a period of transition.
It must pass into a more spiritual age. It must know what comes from
the kingdom of the dead, it must know that we are surrounded by the
dead as by the air. In time to come there will he a real perception
that when an older person dies we must not become an incubus to him,
as we shall be if we have thoughts which he cannot entertain. Just
think how rich our times may become, if we accept this life with the
dead as real. I have often said that Spiritual Science does not wish
to found a new religion, or to introduce anything sectarian into the
world; to think otherwise is entirely to misconstrue it. On the other
hand, I have often emphasised that the religious life can be deepened
by it, because it provides real foundations. Certainly, remembrance
of the dead, the service for the dead, has a religious side. On this
side a foundation for the religious life will be created, if that
life is illuminated by Spiritual Science. When seen in the right
light, these things will be lifted out of the abstract. For instance,
it is not a matter of indifference to life whether a funeral service
held is the right one for a young person, or whether it is more
suited for an old one. It is of far greater importance for the
general life of man whether right or wrong funeral services are held
than all the regulations of town councils or parliament —
strange as that may sound, — for the impulses working in life
come from the human individuals themselves when they are in right
relation to the dead. To-day people wish to regulate everything by an
abstract structure of the social order. They are pleased when they do
not need to think much over what they are to do. Many, even, are glad
if they are not obliged to reflect upon what they ought to think. It
is quite different when one has a living consciousness, not merely of
a vaguely pantheistic connection, but of a concrete one with the
spiritual world. One can foresee a permeation of the religious life
with concrete ideas when it is deepened by Spiritual Science.
‘Spirit’ was eliminated (as I have often related) from
Western humanity in the year 869 at the Eighth Ecumenical Council in
Constantinople. The dogma was then drawn up that Christians
must not regard man as consisting of body, soul and spirit, but of
body and soul only, though certain spiritual qualities were to be
ascribed to the soul. This abolition of the spirit is of tremendous
significance. It was dogma, — that in the year 869 in
Constantinople, it was decided that man must not be regarded as
endowed with ‘anima’ and ‘spiritus,’ but only
‘unam animam rationalem et intellectualem.’ The dogma
that ‘The soul has spiritual qualities’ was spread over
the spiritual life of the West in the twilight of the ninth century.
This must be overcome. Spirit must again be recognised. Trichotomy
— body, soul and spirit, — regarded as heresy in the
Middle Ages, must again be recognised as the true and exact view of
man's nature. Several things will be necessary to this end for those
who to-day naturally challenge all ‘authority,’ yet swear
that man consists of body and soul alone. Such are not only to be
found in particular religious persuasions, but also among the ranks
of those who listen to professors, philosophers, and others.
Philosophers, as can everywhere be read, distinguish only body and
soul, omitting the spirit. This is their ‘unprejudiced’
philosophy of life; but it rests upon the decision of the Church
Council in the year 869 not to recognise spirit; — that,
however, they do not realise. A well-known philosopher, Wilhelm Wundt
— a great philosopher by favour of his publisher, but at the
same time renowned, — of course divides man into body and soul,
because he regards it as ‘unprejudiced’ science to do so
— and does not know that he is simply following the decision of
the Council of 869. We must look into the actual facts if we wish to
see what takes place in the world of reality. If a man looks at the
actual facts in the domain especially mentioned to-day, his
consciousness will be opened concerning a connection with that
world only dreamed of and slept away in history. History, historical
life, will only be seen in the right light when a true consciousness
of the connection of the so-called living with the so-called dead can
be developed.
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