The
Questions of Life and the Riddle of Death
Part 1
Tübingen, 16 February 1913
This evening I would like to speak about important questions of
life from the viewpoint of the so-called spiritual science,
that is from a viewpoint which is not popular today and which
has exceptionally many prejudices against itself. Nevertheless,
I am allowed to say that often that which later became common
property of humanity in this or that area was unpopular at any
former time, and was exposed to prejudices. Hence, I want to go
over to the object without further introduction.
Spiritual science is concerned with an enclosing area of
worldview. However, if one surveys the contents of spiritual
science, everything amounts to answering two questions of
existence which do not arise in a separated area of science,
but appear everywhere in life. These are such riddles of
existence which not only stress the intellectual interest but
the deepest human interest; one is not only curious of the
solution of these questions, but one longs for their solution
because inner peace, viability, but also pain, doubt, trouble
are associated with it. We can summarise with two words what it
concerns: human destiny and human immortality — or we
could say, death.
The
human destiny puts big serious questions at every turn. We
realise that a human being enters into existence and worries
and efforts surround him, so that he will have a more or less
painful existence; or we realise that he shows low abilities
and predispositions, so that he cannot become any valuable
member of humanity. Against it, another human being enters into
existence without guilt or merit, early surrounded by providing
hands, so that an indeed happy existence will be his destiny.
We realise that with him also early abilities appear which let
him become a useful member of the society. Maybe you can reject
these questions with your intellect and you do not allow
approaching you. However, if our sensations speak in life if
our wishes must deal with the living conditions, then all
wishes and sensations emerge in the subconscious depths of
life, which wake the anxious longing after answers to such
questions. Perhaps you can feel not in the thirst for
knowledge, but in the positive or negative approach to life how
the soul urges to know something that is in the way that I have
suggested.
The
riddle of death approaches the human being particularly. What
people know about immortality does often not look scientific.
How much passion, how many prejudices are contained in this
question. Fear of death or the wish to extend the existence is
involved in the evaluation of the question and in the answer
that most people want to give themselves. When natural sciences
were about to emerge as a worldview, there were people who
completely denied the possibility that the soul would exist
after death, and one may say, among these deniers were many who
often outranked those morally who accepted immortality. These
persons said to themselves, we want to sacrifice what we have
worked during our life to the public. — These persons
regarded that as something morally higher than the selfish wish
to carry on the compiled. One cannot deny that such persons are
moral.
However, there is a viewpoint from which the question of
immortality must be put even quite scientifically if one does
not completely feel this scientificity today. If we practise
self-knowledge a little, we recognise that that which the human
being creates and which he becomes as a human being has a
personal individual character. With some introspection, you may
say, the best is so particular with every soul that we cannot
give this best to any public. If the consciousness of our soul
being were destroyed after death, the most valuable would be
lost not only to us, but also to the world economy. Should it
be true that the human being works hard for something that is
most valuable to him on earth and is destroyed at a moment? -
Such a thing does not happen in the universe. It happens that
the forces that are highly strained are incorporated into the
world economy. There the question becomes only scientific.
Thus, we have characterised both questions — the question
of the human destiny and that of human immortality. Today
spiritual science is unpopular because it is rather strange to
the habitual ways of thinking. One is used to counting on the
outer sensory observations and on the intellect that is bound
to the brain. However, with these means one cannot cope with
the real being of the human nature. Then the question arises,
are there other cognitive possibilities? Spiritual science just
wants to deliver to the general intellectual culture that there
are special methods to attain such cognitive faculties. To get
to know this we have to take a phenomenon as starting point
that is related to death that not enough is taken into account
because we do not use that as an opportunity to put questions
to which we are used. That which appears more seldom or in such
a way that it dismays us like death or destiny becomes a
riddle. However, the everyday consciousness passes an important
riddle, the riddle of sleep. We have to go through this riddle
if we want to approach the question of death.
Every day we see our consciousness sinking into nothing during
sleep. Let us take the fact of falling asleep completely apart
from scientific hypotheses. The limbs stop doing their
services, the soul feels maladjusted to the senses, to the
inner life that is bound to the physical body; then the
darkness of unconsciousness begins. There are many scientific
views about that; we do not want to mention them today,
although it would be very interesting which attempts one
undertakes in our time. However, we want to do
spiritual-scientific considerations.
At
first, that which spiritual science has to say about sleep.
From this hypothesis, the facts will arise as it were.
Spiritual science states that it is illogical to assume that
the whole day life with all its experiences sinks into nothing
and is made new in the morning. The experiences must still
exist somewhere. On the other hand, spiritual science has to
join the view that one can discover nothing in himself as
causes, why mental pictures should fulfil him as the whole wake
day life contains them in itself. Spiritual science considers
all that — the mental pictures, the memories et cetera of
the wake day life — as a spiritual-mental reality which
withdraws from the physical body and the etheric body during
sleep and enters into the spiritual world, so that the human
being is with his inner existence beyond the physical body.
Then the human being is in the spiritual world and in the
morning this spiritual-mental of the human being submerges
again in the body, in the senses, in the brain et cetera. Thus,
we have separated the human being during sleep as it were in a
bodily being and a spiritual-mental being; both combine again
after waking up.
The
materialist monist will argue how someone can sin in such a way
against the view of monism; you split the human being in two
parts. — You can argue that the chemist commits the same
sin if he separates water in hydrogen and oxygen; but there you
cannot forbid it to him. In no other way, we speak in spiritual
science of a duality of the human being. That who does not know
the methods of chemistry to recognise the existence of hydrogen
in the water could also state that the hydrogen does not exist.
Thus, somebody can also state that that does not exist which
leaves the body with sleep. It concerns that during sleep the
spiritual-mental of the human being is not aware of itself. For
the usual consciousness all that is not there if it has left
the body. Everything depends on the fact that the human being
can recognise that which has left the body as something
real.
One
reaches this with rules that the spiritual researcher has to
apply to himself. He reaches this while he puts himself in a
state that is similar to sleep, but it is different from it at
the same time. The sign of sleep is that idleness of the
senses, of the reason and, in the end, unconsciousness happens.
Could another state also happen now? Yes. For this purpose, we
assume what will prove true then; we assume, the human being
gets really rid of his body, so that in sleep this
supersensible being cannot experience itself in the usual
state. If we could cause anything by which this soul still
experienced itself, the movement of the limbs et cetera would
be excluded, but consciousness would still exist. One causes
this state by inner means, by meditation, concentration, or
contemplation.
In
the soul are forces that one only has to strengthen if complete
consciousness should replace the unconsciousness of sleep. One
attains this in such a way that the human being suppresses the
movement of the limbs arbitrarily, makes them as quiet as the
body is in sleep, then he excludes all outer impressions which
divert his thoughts. He must artificially cause this state
towards the outside world, and then he must exclude the
thoughts of the usual life. If this empty consciousness occurs
in the usual life, then the human being falls asleep. However,
long, patient exercises enable the person concerned to keep
[the consciousness] alive, and then it concerns that he moves
any mental picture in the centre of his consciousness
arbitrarily and fulfils his consciousness with it. The things
of the outside world are not suitable for that; symbolic images
are much better which we ourselves produce. Everybody may say,
to have such mental pictures is a crazy thing. However, it
matters what they cause in the soul.
Let
us imagine, for example, two glasses, one is empty, the other
contains some water. Now we imagine that we pour from the
latter perpetually water into the first glass and thereby the
latter does not become emptier but fuller and fuller. This is,
actually, a quite crazy image. However, it does not matter here
but that this image works allegorically for a deep secret:
love. Love is something with which we cannot cope with human
images. It is a secret. However, we can give one of its
qualities by that which the soul gives: it becomes richer and
richer. Love has the quality that we can express allegorically,
and there we find this specific what one is used in another
area.
Let
us take a round medallion as another example. With it, all
relations can be determined: that of radius, diameter,
circumference, area et cetera, but you can do that just as well
with a drawn circle. Since its regularities also apply to the
medallion. Mathematics shows such symbols of regularities
perpetually. The spiritual researcher does nothing else than
that he applies this mathematical method to a higher area not
only to thinking but also to life. We do not speculate about
these symbols, but it matters that all our impulses are
directed to them, and it concerns the power that we develop
there. Whereas the human being normally takes his mind off
things, we concentrate our soul life completely, even if only
for a few minutes. You have to continue these things for years,
then a particular result will arise: the human being feels now
that that which sank, otherwise, into unconsciousness becomes
active in him that it is something that was filled, otherwise,
with nothing at all.
You
have to open yourself to many such images. Then particular
experiences appear as pictures, as “imaginations;”
they shoot up before us, they face us. With it, you already
attain something that you have to treat, however, with caution.
Someone who stands on a materialist viewpoint will say rightly,
now you have brought it just as far as those who have
hallucinations and visions, which are of no value. —
Indeed, there is a cliff. People who experience such visions
will believe in them like in something real that is much more
real than the things that they see with their eyes. There are
people who invent the most logical system for their delusions
to keep them. There is a term, which explains all that, it is
the word “self-love.” Why does the human being
believe in these images? Because of self-love; because he
himself has developed them; because the person cannot help to
identify himself with that which he is internal. A spiritual
researcher has to bear this in mind. He has to have such strong
will so that he says to himself, what I see is only a
reflection of my being.
The
spiritual researcher has to be so strong that he can remove
this whole imagination by his will. If one has developed his
soul until then where the contents of the soul appear as
objects, then he has to be thrown back to nothing, and then one
can say, one prepares himself to get spiritual percepts. It
does not matter so much that you develop this or that vision,
but that you develop the usually slumbering soul forces. In
particular, a strong will belongs to it. The human being is
familiarised at first with the whole power of self-love. This
must be defeated. Here it concerns a heavy victory. You have to
extinguish what you have conquered.
The
way to self-knowledge makes the forces that one knows only as
inner ones work with the power of a natural phenomenon. The
soul forces work like natural elements. You face yourself as a
kind of nature. Then a certain experience takes place that one
calls the “encounter with the guardian of the
threshold.” It may take place in various ways. I would
like to give an example only, you feel something new that
drives through you like a lightning or you feel as if your body
is dissolved and still remains. You feel incapable to use your
body. This is a very important moment. You have the feeling as
if your hands are forged to your body and your brain is
something over which you do not exercise power that works
mentally as an obstacle. You must prepare yourself to endure
this moment. This preparation consists of the fact that you
strengthen your courage. You must experience this moment
fearlessly.
Some other experiences are attached to it which let us
recognise what it means to face the own body, the usual soul
forces like things. You recognise the meaning and vincibility
of self-love only now. Because for the usual experience this
moment cannot be endured without appropriate preparation, one
calls this experience the encounter with the guardian of the
threshold because good spirits stand before it as it were and
protect us against this experience.
It
depends on such experiences that you develop certain strictly
moral impulses. Thereby you acquire maturity to build
spiritual-scientific knowledge only on a healthy soul. Compared
with that which the spiritual researcher must experience before
he approaches the spiritual world, the objection is childish
that the spiritual researcher dedicates himself to any mania.
He knows the experiences of mania, the visions completely. He
knows how he has removed them from his soul. If he is able to
erase the results of self-love, a new world appears before him
completely objective; it is fulfilled with individual things
and beings, as well as the outer physical world is fulfilled
with individual things and beings.
Our
time tends quite strongly to accept something supersensible,
and one can notice how this trend becomes prominent. I want to
point only to an outstanding fact. Charles William Eliot
(1834-1926, American chemist), board of directors of the
Harvard University in America, held a lecture in 1909 where he
spoke about a kind of future religion which acknowledges the
supersensible on scientific basis. He said, people have always
acknowledged an absolute soul being which is not subject to
outer physical laws. — We find such a tip with many
scholars. However, such persons would like to stop at the tip.
They say, there is soul, soul, and soul. Yes, this is exact the
same way, as if one says about the most different plants and
animals: this is nature, nature, and nature. However, if the
spiritual researcher tells details of the spiritual world,
these persons become awkward. It is not enough to point to the
fact that there is spirit and soul. However, if one states that
there are beings and events in the spiritual worlds, then these
persons become awkward and say, these are pipe dreams. One
cannot say that everything that emerges before the spiritual
researcher is delusion. Since the spiritual researcher has
taken part in the experiences which enable him to
distinguish.
Nevertheless, in natural sciences it is exactly the same way;
one has to experience these things. If a human being has never
seen a whale fish, zoology cannot prove that there is a whale
fish. With it, some objections disprove themselves.
Schopenhauer characterised a part of his system with the fact
that he said, the world is my idea. — With it, he stated
that one cannot separate percepts from mental pictures.
However, there is an easy, even if trivial rebuttal. If we
imagine that we touch our skin with an iron piece of 900
degrees centigrade, we can imagine the pain probably in
thoughts, but an only imagined hot iron does not cause ache as
a real one does. There is a proof that is produced by life. The
same applies to the spiritual life; it must be experienced to
the end.
Somebody argued, with big thirst one can imagine the taste and
the refreshing effect of a lemonade. Yes — but one cannot
quench the thirst with this image. One is not allowed to use
intellectual games. The spiritual researcher must have advanced
so far that he can distinguish reality and speculative fiction,
as one has to distinguish reality and mental picture in the
physical world.
Thus, the human being enters into that world in which he is
every night after he has left his physical body where he is
also in the spiritual world, save that he has no inner
activity. By the exercises, his soul and mind become so strong
that it experiences itself and its environment.
Now
you start understanding that something spiritual forms the
basis of the human being. If you have experienced once how you
can be separated from the body how you do not exercise power
over this body and, nevertheless, your consciousness is
maintained, you understand something else. You understand that
this is something embryonic, nevertheless, that assists in the
creation of the body. Then one looks quite scientifically at
the human life in such a way as one sees a plant growing. If a
[living being] were born with the roots of a plant and died
after flowering, it would have no notion of the fact that the
seed which develops in the blossom starts a process again and
that you have to imagine the whole plant concentrated in the
seed. If you have recognised the human inside, you understand
the dictum of Goethe: in old age we become mystics. — The
rich soul life is like the seed of the plant.
We
look at a human being now who enters into existence at birth
how his abilities develop, and we realise at his death that he
has stored inner forces that he can no longer express with the
body. Thus, the inside enters into the spiritual world at
death; and if we see a human being born, we see him again
coming out of the spiritual world and moving in the lines of
heredity of father and mother. If we say, all qualities are
inherited from father and mother, it is like the old natural
sciences that believed that from mud even fish could originate.
Only Francesco Redi said that life can come only from life.
The
spiritual researcher knows the human spiritual core. If anyone
states that everything comes from father and mother, one has to
answer: this is an inexact observation. One has to say, that
which comes from former embodiments enters and attracts what
comes from father and mother to itself. All spiritual-mental
goes back to a former spiritual-mental. That means, we get to
the repeated lives on earth. We have already gone through many
lives. All that has a beginning and an end. We bring with us
what we have acquired as inner forces into this life, so that
we also work on the construction of our body. One can observe
that quite externally. One looks at the brain at birth and
observes how it develops then plastically. There the
individuality works its way out. In that we find ourselves if
we become spiritual researchers, we have acquired that in this
life.
Hence, the stupefying impression which a spiritual researcher
receives because he can change nothing of that which comes from
former lives. There the riddle of death and destiny faces us in
special way. If we suffer in a present life, we have prepared
it to ourselves in a former life. This could seem cruel.
However, let us suppose once that anybody has to experience in
the eighteenth year of his life that his father loses his
property. Now he has to learn something, this is very
disagreeable, and he can feel it as something extremely bad.
However, at the age of fifty years he will judge quite
different. Thus, the human being cannot always judge a
misfortune correctly, as long as he experiences it. We have to
say to ourselves, if we expose ourselves to distress and
misery: it is at the same time a condition of development. It
is only imaginary if one believes that this knowledge is
cruel.
How
does immortality face us now? Not like in many philosophies,
that one considers an infinite time line and speculates how the
human can last. No, we acquire something that concentrates in
the human life internally; the soul life concentrates, we carry
our spiritual core through the gate of death into the spiritual
world; connected with the body our destiny leads it to the next
life, and we use the next life again to enrich our inside.
Nevertheless, overall, life is ascending. The entire human life
consists of the life between birth and death and of that which
remains between death and new birth. The whole immortality
consists of that which life itself renders. We get to know life
as the creator of a new life, as the plant, which has the
guarantee in the seed that a new plant will originate. This is
a scientific consideration.
Admittedly, it is comprehensible that many prejudices exist
against it, but Francesco Redi also experienced that. One
wanted to burn him to death. This is the destiny of truth.
Today people are no longer burnt, but one refers to them as
fools. The fashion changes, the being has remained. Later these
“pipe dreams” are a given. Thus, it will happen
with truth: something spiritual-mental can originate only from
something spiritual-mental. Somebody who knows how it stands
with the investigation of the spiritual world understands that
these prejudices must arise. At first, people believe that
natural sciences are in danger. The following example serves as
explanation. We see a person; two others stand before him and
ask, why does this person live? — The one says, he has a
lung inside and air outside, hence, he lives; this is a
scientific fact. You cannot argue anything against it. The
other says, this is not the only reason. He fell into water
fourteen days ago, and I have pulled him out — this is
the reason why he lives.
Thus, spiritual science denies no observed scientific facts; it
says nothing against the theories of heredity, as far as they
do not disprove themselves. However, beside heredity the law of
destiny exists.
Spiritual science completely acknowledges natural sciences. The
misunderstanding consists only of the fact that natural
sciences often cross their borders and want to establish a kind
of spiritual science. Many people say, one has to comply with
that which the eyes perceive; natural sciences can count only
on it. Then one can ask whether Copernicus had new astronomical
perception.
No,
he rethought what one had thought earlier because of sense
perception. Copernicus had the courage and the mental power to
interpret the sense-perceptible anew. From it, there the new
astronomy originated which did not come about by sense
perception. Giordano Bruno broke through the sense perception,
while he did not regard the sky as a border. As well as the
blue vault of heaven originates from the limitations of the
human intuitive faculty, the firmament of the soul life
originates between birth and death. We stand
spiritual-scientifically at the place of Giordano Bruno.
Spiritual science breaks through the borders of birth and
death. As Giordano Bruno broke through spaces, spiritual
science breaks through times.
Galilei had a friend who was a follower of Aristotle and who
had discerned something incorrectly from Aristotle that the
nerves take the heart as starting point. He led him to a corpse
and showed that the nerves take the brain as starting point.
The friend said, yes, it seems so, but I read with Aristotle
that it is different, and I believe him more. — Today
people come and say, it sounds reasonable, but with Haeckel we
read it different. Here Schopenhauer's sentence counts: truth
always had to suffer from the fact that she appears paradoxical
if she enters into existence, because she cannot sit down on
the throne of the widespread error. Thus she looks up at her
guardian angel, the time, whose wing beats are, however, so
slow, that someone who has recognised the truth often dies in
the meantime.
We
have to understand that the objection is unjustified that only
the spiritual researcher can know something about the spiritual
world. To find the truth, one has to go through all that, but
spiritual research relates to spiritual science like that which
the painter has to learn to his picture. From the picture, we
can recognise something. One can understand what the spiritual
researcher has investigated if one only approaches what he has
to say with common sense. Then these truths give us joy of
life, they help us over helplessness and give us security.
One
beholds into the spiritual worlds not because one has something
of it, but because one has brought [the beheld] into ideas [and
concepts] which every other human being can understand. The
spiritual researcher does not have the results different from
the reader or listener. Thus, we get answer not only to
scientific questions but also to the riddles of life.
If
we could develop the human education in such a way that from
youth on the human beings grew up with these questions, in us
something would develop like a predisposition, like a seed or
core that offers the guarantee of future life. The vigour of
life becomes stronger and stronger, and if the outer forces go
to ruin, we feel the inner ones concentrating. The seed of the
plant could not feel different compared with the wilted leaves
as the spiritual that enters with its power through the gate of
death. This and not only science gives answers to life. They
console us in the heaviest situations. One has not to be a
spiritual researcher for that. As one can taste food without
being a chemist, not everybody has to be a spiritual
researcher. There must be only some. This becomes a steady
conviction in the soul so that one learns to treat the
hostility against it as Goethe said to the deniers of movement
in his Zahme Xenien III (collection of sayings). Goethe
answered out of common sense. One cannot easily disprove this
view philosophically.
Something hostile may happen;
Keep cool, remain silent;
And if they deny the movement,
Walk around them before their noses.
One
can apply humour to opponents; however, one has not only to
believe but also to know how it stands with truth. Thus,
spiritual science will familiarise itself with life, thus,
those who feel the inner strengthening of the soul and how it
adapts itself in life feel something similar as Goethe felt
towards the deniers of movement. Thus, we can summarise
everything that has arisen from our today's consideration in a
sensation towards the opponents of spiritual science:
Something hostile may happen;
Keep cool, remain serene;
And if they deny the spirit,
Do no longer ponder.
Yes, admit at last that they are right;
Since their mind is in poor condition.
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