LECTURE EIGHT
When with
the normal perception belonging to outer existence we study human
life in its relation to life in the rest of the Universe, we are
observing only the smallest part of world-existence that is connected
with man himself. In other words, what a man can observe if he is not
prepared to penetrate behind the mysteries of existence, can throw no
real light upon his essential nature and being. For when we look
around us with the ordinary organs of perception, with the organ of
thinking, we have before us only that which does not in any way
contain the deepest and most significant secrets of existence. This
fact will strike us most strongly of all if we succeed in developing,
even to a comparatively small extent, the capacity to view life and
the world from the other side, namely, from the side of sleep. What
can be seen during sleep is for the most part concealed from man's
present faculty of perception. As soon as a person goes to sleep,
from then until the moment of waking he really sees nothing at all.
But if and when in the course of development the time comes when
observation is also possible during sleep, most of what a man sees to
begin with is connected with him as a human being but remains
entirely hidden from ordinary observation. It is easy to understand
why this is so, for the brain is an instrument of judgement, of
thinking. Hence we must use or at least activate the brain when in
everyday life we want to think or form judgements, but for that very
reason we cannot see it. After all, the eye cannot see itself while
it is actually observing something, and the same holds good of the
whole organism. We bear it about with us but we cannot observe it in
the real sense, we cannot penetrate it to any depth. We direct our
gaze out into the world but in modern life we cannot direct this gaze
into our own being.
Now the greatest mysteries of existence are not to be
found in the outside world but within man himself. Let us recall what
we know from Spiritual Science, namely that the three kingdoms of
nature around us owe their existence to a certain retardation in
evolution. Mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom are,
fundamentally speaking, entities attributable to the fact that
something remained backward in the evolutionary process. Normal
progress in evolution has in point of fact been made only by beings
who have reached the stage of human existence during the Earth
period. When a man looks at the mineral, plant or animal kingdoms, he
is really observing in the world that which amounts in his own
existence to what he ‘remembers’, to the content of his
memory of his actual experiences; he is in fact contemplating what
has taken place in the past and still enjoys a certain existence. But
he is not experiencing the living, invisible soul-life of the
immediate present when he concerns himself only with his memory. The
memory with all its mental pictures represents something that has
been deposited in our living soul-existence, is fixed there. All this
is, of course, to be taken metaphorically, but the memories embedded
in the soul are not the direct, basic elements of its life. The same
applies to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms in outer nature.
The thoughts conceived by divine-spiritual Beings in the past live on
in these kingdoms and they continue into present existence, just as
our memory-pictures continue into our present life of soul. Hence we
have in the world around us, not the thoughts of the immediately
present, living, divine-spiritual Beings but the memory-pictures, the
preserved thoughts of the Gods.
As to the content of our memory, this may well be of
interest because with our memory we grasp a tiny corner of
world-creation, we grasp what has passed over from creation into
existence. Our memory-pictures are the first, the lowest, the most
fugitive stage of created existence. But when we waken spiritually
during sleep we see something quite different. We see nothing of what
is outside in space, nothing of the processes manifesting in the
mineral, plant and animal kingdoms or in the external aspects of the
human kingdom. But then we know that the essential realities which we
are there beholding are the creative, life-giving principles working
on man himself. It is actually as if everything else were blotted out
and as if the Earth, observed from the viewpoint of sleep, contained
nothing except Man. What would never be seen by day, in the waking
state, is revealed when contemplated from the viewpoint of sleep. And
it is then, for the first time, that knowledge dawns in us of the
thoughts which the divine-spiritual Beings kept in reserve in order
to work at the creation of man, at a level above that of mineral,
plant and animal existence.
Whereas through physical perception of the world we see
everything except the real being of man, through the spiritual
perception exercised from the viewpoint of sleep, we see nothing
except man — as a creation, together with happenings in the
human kingdom — that is to say, from the viewpoint of sleep we
see everything that is hidden from the ordinary perception of waking
life. This accounts for the element of strangeness that is present in
our vision when we are contemplating the world from the viewpoint of
sleep, in other words, when we become clairvoyant, having wakened
spiritually during sleep.
Now the human body — and here I mean the physical
and etheric bodies together — which lies in the bed during
sleep, this human body itself has a singular appearance, a
characteristic of which can be expressed in words somewhat as
follows. Only in the very first years of a child's life does this
human body as seen during sleep show a certain similarity with the
weaving life and activity in the other kingdoms of nature. The body
of a grown-up person, however, or of a child from a certain age
onwards, when seen from the viewpoint of sleep, reveals a constant
process of decay, of destruction. Every night during sleep the forces
of destruction are ever and again subjugated by the forces of growth;
what is destroyed by day is repaired during the night, but the forces
of destruction are always in excess. And the consequence of this fact
is that we die. The forces that are renewed during the night are
never the equal of those that have been used up during the waking
life of day, so that in the normal life of the human being a certain
surplus of destructive forces is always present. This surplus
accumulates and the natural death of old age ensues when the
destructive forces eclipse the upbuilding forces.
Thus when we observe the human being from the viewpoint
of sleep we are actually witnessing a process of destruction —
but without sadness. For the feelings we might have in our waking
life about this process of destruction are absent when we see it from
the viewpoint of sleep, because then we know that it is the
precondition of man's true spiritual development. No being who did
not destroy his body in some measure would be capable of thinking or
of developing an inner life of soul. No life of soul as experienced
by man would be possible if the process of growth were not opposed by
processes of destruction. We therefore regard these processes of
destruction in the human organism as the precondition of man's life
of soul and feel the whole development to be beneficial. Looked at
from the other side of life, the fact that man's body can gradually
be dissolved is felt to be a blessing. Not only do things look
different when viewed from the other side of life but all our
feelings and ideas are different; consciousness during sleep has
always before it the spectacle of the body in decline — and
rightly in decline.
Study of the life between death and rebirth, however,
affords a different spectacle. A certain connection with the
preceding life is experienced for a time after death. All of you are
aware that this is the case during the period of Kamaloka; even after
that period, however, the experience of connection with the previous
life continues for a time. But then, at a certain point during the
life between death and rebirth, a reversal of all ordinary vision and
perception takes place, a reversal far more radical than takes place
during sleep-consciousness. During existence on Earth we look out
from our body into the world that is not our body; from the point of
time to which I have just referred, between death and the new birth,
we direct hardly a gaze to the universe around us but look with all
the great intensity at what may now be called the human body; we
discern all its secrets. Thus between death and rebirth there comes a
moment when we begin to take special interest in the human body. It
is extremely difficult to describe these conditions and it can really
only be done with halting words. There comes a time between death and
the new birth when we feel as if the whole universe were within us
and outside us only the human body. We feel that the stars and other
heavenly worlds are within our being, just as here on Earth we feel
that the stomach, the liver, the spleen, are within us. Everything
that here, in life on Earth, is outside us becomes in that other life
an inner world, and just as here we look outwards to the stars,
clouds and so forth, in that other life we gaze at the human body. At
which human body?
To understand this we must be clear that the new human
being who at his next birth is to enter into existence, has for a
long time previously been preparing his essential characteristics.
Preparation for a return to the Earth begins a long time before birth
or conception. The conditions of central importance here are quite
different from those accepted by modern statistical biology which
assumes that when a human being comes into existence through birth he
simply inherits certain traits from his father, mother, grandparents
and the whole line of ancestors. Quite an otherwise attractive little
book about Goethe has recently been published, in which his
characteristic qualities are traced back to his ancestors. Outwardly
speaking, that is absolutely correct in the sense I have often
indicated, namely, that there is no contradiction between a
scientific fact that is correctly presented and the facts brought
forward by Spiritual Science. It is just as if someone were to say:
Here is a man; how comes it that he is alive? It is because he has
lungs inside him and there is air outside. Needless to say, that is
quite correct. But someone else may turn up and say: This man is
alive for an entirely different reason. A fortnight ago he fell into
the water and I jumped in after him and pulled him out; but for that
he would not be alive today! Both these assertions are correct. In
the same way, natural science is quite correct when it says that a
man bears within himself characteristics inherited from his
ancestors; but it is equally correct to attribute them to his karma
and other factors. In principle, therefore, Spiritual Science cannot
be intolerant; it is external natural science alone that can be
intolerant, for example, in rejecting Spiritual Science. Someone may
insist that he has preserved the characteristics of his own
ancestors. But there is also the fact that from a certain point of
time between death and rebirth a human being himself begins to
develop forces which work down upon his ancestors. Long before an
individual enters into physical existence there is a mysterious
connection between himself and the whole line of his ancestors. And
the reason why specific characteristics appear in a line of ancestors
is that perhaps only after hundreds of years a particular individual
is to be born from that ancestral line. This human being who is to be
born, perhaps centuries later, from a line of ancestors, regulates
their characteristics from the spiritual world. Thus Goethe —
to take this example once again — manifests the qualities of
his ancestors because he worked continuously in the spiritual world
with the aim of implanting into these ancestors qualities that were
subsequently to be his. And what is true of Goethe is true of every
human being.
From a specific point of time between death and rebirth,
therefore, a human being is already concerned with the preparation of
his later earthly existence. The physical body which a man has on
Earth does not by any means derive in all details from the physical
lives of his ancestors, nor indeed from processes that can operate on
the Earth. The physical body we bear is in itself fourfold. It has
evolved through the periods of Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth. Its very
first foundation was laid during the Old Saturn period; during the
Old Sun period the etheric body was woven into this foundation;
during the Old Moon period the astral body was added and then, during
the Earth period, the Ego, the ‘I’. As a result of these
processes the physical body has undergone many changes. Thus we have
within us the transformed Saturn foundation, the transformed Sun and
Moon conditions. Our physical human body is the product of
transformed physical conditions. The only part of all this that is
visible is what has come from the Earth; everything else is
invisible. Man's physical body is visible because he takes in the
substances of the Earth, transforms them into his blood and permeates
them with something that is invisible. In reality we see only the
blood and what has been transformed by the blood, that is to say, a
quarter of the physical human body; the other three-quarters are
invisible. In the first place there is an invisible framework
containing invisible currents — all this exists in the form of
forces. Within these invisible currents there are also the influences
exercised by one current upon another. All this is invisible. And now
this threefold entity is filled out, permeated by the foodstuffs that
have been transformed into blood. It is through this process that the
physical body becomes visible. And it is only when we come to deal
with the laws governing this visible structure that we are in the
earthly realm itself. Everything else stems from cosmic, not from
earthly conditions and has already been prepared when, at the time of
conception, the first physical atom of the human being comes into
existence. Thus what is later on to become the body of the human
being has been prepared in past ages without any physical connection
with the ultimate father and mother. It was then that the qualities
transmitted by heredity were first worked into the process of
development.
The human soul looks down upon what is thus being
prepared from the above-mentioned point of time onwards between death
and the new birth. It is the spiritual embryo, the spiritual seed of
life. This is what constitutes the soul's outer world. Notice the
difference between what is seen when we wake spiritually during sleep
and have clairvoyant perception of the human body undergoing a
process of continual destruction, and what is seen when our own inner
organism is perceived as outer world. The outer world is then the
inner man in process of coming into being. This means that we are
then seeing the reverse of what is perceived clairvoyantly during
sleep. During sleep we feel that our inner organs are part of the
outer world, but otherwise what we see is a process of destruction.
From the above-mentioned time onwards between death and rebirth our
gaze is focused upon a human body in process of coming into being.
Man is unable to preserve any remembrance of what he has seen between
death and rebirth, but the spectacle of the building of the wonderful
structure of the human body is veritably more splendid than anything
to be seen when we gaze at the starry heavens or at the physical
world with vision dependent in any respect upon the physical body.
The mysteries of existence are truly great, even when contemplated
from the standpoint of our physical senses only, but far greater
still is the spectacle before us when, instead of external perception
of our inner organs, we gaze at the human body that is in process of
coming into being with all its mysteries. We then see how everything
is directed to the purpose of enabling the human being to cope with
existence when he enters the physical world through birth.
There
is nothing that can truly be called bliss or blessedness except
vision of the process of creation, of ‘becoming’.
Perception of anything already in existence is trivial compared with
vision of what is in process of coming into being; and what is meant
by speaking of the states of bliss or blessedness which can be
experienced by man between death and rebirth is that during this
period he can behold what is in process of coming into being. Truths
such as these, that have been revealed through the ages and grasped
by minds adequately prepared, are indicated in words to be found in
the ‘Prologue in Heaven’ in Goethe's Faust:
Das Werdende, das ewig wirkt und lebt,
Umfass' euch mit der Liebe holden Schranken,
Und was in schwankender Erscheinung schwebt,
Erfistiget mit dauernden Gedanken.
May that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And Seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!
(Tr. Anna Swanwick, L.L.D.,
Bohn's Standard Library)
The difference between vision in the world between birth
and death and the world between death and rebirth is that in the
former we behold what is already in existence and in the latter what
is coming into being.
The thought might occur: Is a man, then, concerned only
with the vision of his own being? No, that is not the case. For at
the stage of coming into being this body is actually part of the
outer world; it is the manifested expression of divine mysteries. And
it is then that we realise for the first time why the physical body —
which after all is only maltreated between birth and death —
may be seen as the temple of cosmic mysteries, for it contains more
of the outer world than is seen when we are within it during earthly
existence. At that stage between death and rebirth what is otherwise
outer world is our inner world; what is otherwise called Universe is
now that of which we can say ‘I’ — and what we then
behold is outer world. We must not allow ourselves to be shocked by
the fact that when we are looking at our body — or rather the
body that will subsequently be ours — all other bodies which
are coming into being must naturally also be there. This is of no
significance because here it is simply a matter of number. In point
of fact, differentiation between human bodies that can be of interest
and importance to us has little significance until shortly before
human beings enter into physical existence. For the greater part of
the period between death and the new birth, when we are looking down
upon the body that is coming into being, it is actually the case that
the single bodies are differentiated only according to their number.
If we want to study the essential properties of a grain of wheat, it
will not make much difference whether we pick an car from a grain of
wheat in a particular field or go fifty paces farther on and pick one
there. As far as the essential properties are concerned, one grain is
as good as another. Something similar applies when between death and
rebirth we are gazing at our own body; the fact that it is our own
has significance only for the future because later on we are to
inhabit it on the Earth. At the moment it interests us only as the
bearer of sublime cosmic mysteries and blessedness consists in the
fact that it can be contemplated just like any other human body. Here
we stand before the mystery of Number which will not be further
considered now, but among many other relevant aspects there is this,
namely, that Number — that is to say, multiple existence —
cannot be regarded from the spiritual standpoint exactly as it is
from the physical. What is seen in countless examples will again be
seen as a unity.
Through the body we feel ourselves to be in the Universe
and through what in physical life is called Universe we feel that we
are living within our own Ego-hood. Such is the difference when the
world is contemplated at one time from this world and at another from
yonder.
For
the seer, the most significant moment between death and the new birth
is when the human being concerned ceases to concern himself only with
his last life and begins to direct his attention to what is in
process of coming into existence. The shattering impression received
by the seer when, as he follows a soul between death and the new
birth, this soul begins to be concerned with what is coming into
being — this shattering impression is due to the fact that the
soul itself at this moment experiences a severe shock. The only
experience comparable with it is the coming of death in physical
existence, when the human being passes over from life into being.
In the other case — although it is impossible to describe
it quite exactly — the transition is from something connected
with a life that ended in death to experience of the process of
‘becoming’, of resurrection. The soul encounters that
which bears a new life germinally within it. This is the moment of
death in reverse. That is why it is so immensely significant.
In
connection with these things we must turn our minds to the course of
human evolution on the Earth. Let us look back to an age, for example
the ancient Egypto-Chaldean epoch, when our souls, looking out
through physical bodies, did not see the stars merely as material
bodies in the heavens; spiritual Beings were connected with the stars
— although this experience occurred only in certain
intermediate states during the life between birth and death. The
souls of men were deeply affected by this vista and in those times
impressions from the spiritual world crowded in upon them. It was
inevitable that in the course of evolution the possibility of
beholding the spiritual should gradually cease and man's gaze be
limited to the material world. This came about in the Graeco-Latin
epoch, when men's gaze was diverted to an ever greater extent from
the spiritual world and limited to the world of the senses. And now
we ourselves are living in an era when it is becoming more and more
impossible for the soul to see or detect spiritual reality in the
life of the physical environment. The Earth is now dying, withering
away, and man is deeply involved in this process. Thus whereas in the
Egypto-Chaldean epoch men still beheld the spiritual around them,
they now see only what is material and actually boast of having
established a science which deals only with what is physical and
material. This process will go to further and further lengths. A time
will come when men will lose interest in the direct impressions of
the world of the senses and will concentrate attention on what is
sub-material, sub-sensory. Today, in fact, we can already detect the
approach of the time when men will be interested only in what is
sub-sensory, below the level of the sense-world. This often becomes
very obvious, for example when modern physics no longer concerns
itself with colours as such. In reality it takes no account of the
actual quality of colour but concerns itself only with the vibrations
and oscillations below colour. In many books today you can read the
nonsensical statement that a yellow colour, for example, is merely a
matter of oscillations, wave-lengths. Observation here is already
diverted from the quality of the colour and directed to something
that is not in the yellow colour at all but yet is considered to be
the reality. You can find books on physics and even on physiology
today in which it is emphasised that attention should no longer be
fettered to the direct sense-impression but that everything resolves
itself into vibrations and wave-lengths. This kind of observation
will go to further and further extremes. No attention will be paid to
material existence as such and account will be taken only of the
working of forces. Historically, one example suffices in order to
provide empirical evidence of this. If you refer to du Bois-Reymond's
lecture ‘On the Boundaries of Knowledge’,
given on 14th August, 1872, you will find a peculiar expression for
something that Laplace already described, the expression
‘astronomical knowledge of a material system’ —
that is to say when what lies behind a light- or colour-process is
presented as something only brought about by mathematical-physical
forces. A time will come when human souls — and some of those
who are being educated in certain schools today will have the best
possible foundations for this attitude in their next incarnation —
will have lost real interest in the world of light and radiant colour
and enquire only into the working of forces. People will no longer
have any interest in violet or red but will be concerned only with
wave-lengths.
This withering of man's inner spirituality is something
that is approaching and Anthroposophy is there to counter it in every
detail. It is not only our present form of education that helps to
bring about this withering; the trend is there in every domain of
life. It is in contrast to everyday life when with our Anthroposophy
we want to give again to the souls of men something that fertilises
them, that is not only a maya of the senses but springs forth as
spirit. And this we can do when we impart to human souls knowledge
that will enable them to live in the true world in their following
incarnations. We have to speak of these things in a world which with
its indifference to form and colour is in such contrast to what we
ourselves desire; for it is particularly in regard to colours that
the world of today is preparing souls to thwart what we want to
achieve. We must work not only according to the concepts and ideas of
everyday existence but with cosmological ideas. Hence it is not a
mere liking on our part when we arrange surroundings such as those to
be seen in this room [Dr. Steiner recommended that restful and
refreshing colours should be displayed in lecture halls and rooms
used for the presentation and study of Spiritual Science, also in
rooms for the sick.] but it is connected with the very nature of
Spiritual Science. Immediate response to what is presented to the
senses must again be generated in the soul in order that active life
in the spirit may begin. Now, in this incarnation, each one of us can
assimilate Anthroposophy in the life of soul; and what is now
assimilated is transformed into faculties for the new incarnation.
Then, during his life between death and the next birth, the
individual sends from his soul into his body that is coming into
being influences which prepare his future bodily faculties to adopt a
more spiritual view of the world. This is impossible for him without
Anthroposophy. If he rejects Anthroposophy he prepares his body to
see nothing but barren forces and to be blind to the revelations of
the senses.
And now something shall be said that enables a seer to
form a judgement of the mission of Anthroposophy.
When a seer today directs his gaze to the life between
death and the new birth of souls who have already passed beyond the
above-mentioned point of time and are contemplating the body that is
coming into being for a further existence, he may realise that this
body will afford the soul no possibility of Developing faculties for
the comprehension of spiritual truths. For if such faculties are to
be part of life in the physical body, they must have been implanted
before birth. Hence in the immediate future more and more human
beings will be devoid of the faculties needed for the acceptance of
spiritual knowledge — a state of things that has existed for
some time already. Before the seer there will be a vista of souls who
in previous lives deprived themselves of the possibility of accepting
any knowledge of a spiritual kind. In their life between death and
rebirth such souls can indeed gaze at a process of development, but
it is a development in which something is inevitably lacking —
that is the tragic aspect. These vistas lead to a grasp of the
mission of Anthroposophy. It is a shattering experience to see a soul
whose gaze is directed towards its future incarnation, its future
body, beholding a budding, burgeoning process and yet being obliged
to realise: something will be lacking in that body but I cannot
provide it because my previous incarnation is responsible. In a more
trivial sense this experience may be compared with being obliged to
work at something knowing from the outset that ultimately it is bound
to be imperfect. Try to be vividly aware of the difference: either
you can do the work perfectly and be happy in the prospect, or you
are condemned from the outset to leave it imperfect.
This is the great question: are human souls in the
spiritual world to be condemned in increasing numbers to look down
upon bodies which must remain imperfect, or can this be avoided? If
this fate is to be avoided, souls must accept during their life in
physical bodies the proclamation and tidings of the spiritual worlds.
What
those who make known these tidings regard as their task is verily not
derived from earthly ideals but from the vista of the entire span of
life, that is to say, when to life on Earth is added the period of
existence between death and the new birth. Herein is revealed the
possibility of a fruitful future for humanity, the possibility too of
militating against the withering of the souls of men. The feeling can
then be born in us that Spiritual Science must be there, must
exist in the world. Spiritual Science is a sine qua non for
the life of mankind in the future but not in the sense that is
applicable to some other kind of knowledge. Spiritual Science imparts
life, not concepts and ideas only. But the concepts of
Spiritual Science, accepted in one incarnation, bring life, inner
vitality, inner forcefulness. What Spiritual Science gives to man is
an elixir of life, a vital force of life. Hence anyone who regards
himself as belonging to a Movement for the promulgation of Spiritual
Science should feel Spiritual Science to be a dire necessity in life,
unlike anything that originates from other unions and societies. The
realisation of being vitally involved in the necessities of existence
is the right feeling to have in regard to Spiritual Science.
We have embarked upon these studies of the life between
death and rebirth in order that by turning our minds to the other
side of existence we may receive from there the impulse that can
kindle in us enthusiasm for Spiritual Science.
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