The Path of the Human Being through the
Gate of Death — A Transformation of Life
Hanover, 19th February 1915
It
is a time, in which in quick succession as a result of many
deaths the connection of the human being with the spiritual
world approaches us. It is the world the human being enters
when he goes through the gate of death. Under quite special
circumstances these quick successive, almost simultaneous
deaths face us. These special circumstances are given because
numerous earthly people go through the gate of death that could
have lived still for decades on earth under the circumstances
that one may assume for earthly people. And whenever the human
being goes through the gate of death prematurely as it were,
extraordinary conditions come also into being.
We
know that the human being going through the gate of death
leaves behind, hands over as it were what falls off as his
physical body from him to the earth element. We know that then
the so-called etheric body is considered as the second that,
however, also separates from the individuality. Then the
individuality, consisting of astral body and ego, passes the
spiritual regions between death and new birth. The etheric
body, however, keeps on working, detached from the ego and
astral body. This etheric body, which now enters the spiritual
world next to us, the etheric world, is different with each
human being. You may imagine that an etheric body of somebody
who passes the gate of death prematurely looks differently as
that of somebody who has lived his life till old age. For the
etheric body which has to go with an early deceased human being
through the gate of death would have the power to supply the
physical body with life under normal conditions still for many
years, decades. Now a force does not get lost in the spiritual
world just as little as in the physical world. This force which
supplies, otherwise, the physical body with life continues to
exist. So that we can say: if now thousands go through the gate
of death, nevertheless, almost every day, etheric bodies enter
into the elemental world which are still capable of surviving,
which have other forces in themselves than older etheric bodies
have. What happens now with these etheric bodies still capable
of surviving?
Yesterday, I spoke of the real folk-soul in the public lecture.
This folk-soul is a real being. It needs quite particular
forces just in our time. It needs such forces also at other
times, of course, but particularly in our time. This folk-soul
takes up these etheric bodies still capable of surviving. The
human being himself goes other ways with his ego and astral
body — those ways which prepare him then for his next
life on earth. But these etheric bodies separate from the human
individualities, they go over into the being, the substance of
the folk-souls. After such a destiny-burdened time as we now
experience we go towards a time when the folk-soul contains the
etheric bodies in itself — like forces living in it
— which have been handed over by those who have gone in
the battles through the gate of death. A time comes near when
the spiritual scientist can know that that is not lost which
was sacrificed on the altar of the big events. A time comes
near when effective strength emits from the folk-soul into the
individual souls, that simultaneously goes out from that which
in the first, second, third decades of youth numerous people
have taken up here on earth, which they could still have kept
for many decades, which they have handed over, however, to the
folk-soul. This is in the forces in future the folk-soul drips
into the individual souls; that is not lost.
Let
us take that really to heart. Imagine how our consciousness of
the connection with the spiritual may be enlivened in our
feeling life if we keep in mind that we can speak of the
folk-soul in future that the fruits of the sacrificial deaths
are in it as effective forces. That is particularly important
in the next time. In other times this would be different, for
the next time; however, it will be significant because of a
quite special reason.
We
lived in a bad time of materialism. The souls, who could not
approach spiritual science, were immersed in a strong aura of
materialism. To fight against this aura is the task of the
folk-soul in the next time. Forces will flow towards this
folk-soul for the fight of materialism by the fact that the
etheric bodies of the early dead linger on in this folk-soul,
just linger on as forces. These etheric bodies —
sacrificed on the altar of human evolution — will be the
strongest fighters against materialism.
So
we have to make a distinction between that which moves as a
single human being through the regions of the spiritual world
and remains united with the human individuality, from that
which the etheric body delivers on its detour to the general
community; which keeps on working in the spiritual general
community in the sense cited here, in the substance of the
folk-souls.
That may stamp itself especially deeply in our souls if we put
two human types concerning this spiritual difference before our
souls: the warrior killed on the battlefield who goes,
completely devoted to the task of his people, through the gate
of death — who as it were at the moment when he enters
the battlefield when he only resolves to enter the battlefield
must also resolve to face death. Compare this human type with
the ascetic. Just if you consider what the forces of the
etheric body signify in human life, you get an idea of the
difference of the warrior killed on the battlefield and the
ascetic. The ascetic works on himself. He tries to work on
himself in such a way that he overcomes the physical in himself
completely, that he becomes still free from this physical
during his lifetime. Since the ascetic works that way, a
significant transformation also takes place in his etheric
body. He uses up, so to speak, the forces of this etheric body
the strongest to incorporate them in his ego and astral body.
What makes the ascetic free from the physical, this is of
benefit completely for his individuality, and this serves the
transformation of his individuality. So that such a human being
who becomes an ascetic can serve humankind only on the detour
of that which he makes out of himself. He, however, who frees
himself from the physical body in early youth, because he has
to surrender to the requests of war, hands over the forces of
his etheric body to the general community; he incorporates them
to the general work. You have to feel this difference, it is a
significant difference. It points us again a little bit to that
which prevails as a reality in the human life. It is also
significant to look just at the path through the gate of death
concerning the etheric body.
At
the moment when the human being goes through the gate of death,
he is still united with his etheric body. We have often
described what happens to this. This connection with the
etheric body gives the human being the possibility to live in
all ideas that the last life aroused in him to merge completely
like in a mighty tableau in everything that the last life has
given him. But this is a kind of vision that lasts for a
relatively short time; it fades away with the liberation of the
etheric body from the ego and astral body. Yes, you can say, it
immediately begins to fade away after the moment of death. The
impressions become weaker and weaker which are still due to the
possession of the etheric body. Then that makes itself felt
which is authoritative after the physical death. What is
authoritative there is properly imagined only to a lower degree
by the people who want to get ideas about the life after death.
It is even difficult to coin words for those quite different
conditions, compared with the conditions we experience in our
physical bodies. One thinks simply that the human being after
he has gone through the gate of death has only again to get a
consciousness for himself. It is not really that way. The human
being experiences no lack of consciousness when he passes the
gate of death. On the contrary, his soul experiences a
superabundance of consciousness. He lives and weaves completely
in consciousness, and as well as the strong sunlight dazes the
eyes, he is dazed at first by consciousness, he has too much
consciousness. First, this consciousness must be dampened, so
that he can orientate himself in the life, into which he has
entered after death. This lasts for a longer time; more and
more moments happen in which the consciousness makes such an
orientation possible. The soul becomes conscious for a more or
less short time and then it again enters into a condition
similar to sleep as you may call it. Then such moments become
gradually longer and longer, the soul comes more and more in
such conditions, until it is able to orient itself entirely in
the spiritual world.
Also this makes difficulties to get clear ideas of the way how
the soul perceives his environment after it went through the
gate of death. We buried a dear anthroposophical friend in the
last week, and on account of the wish of the dead I had the
task to make a funeral celebration for her friends at the place
where she died. In the time I spoke and directed my words to
the dead person, the dead person was as it were like sleeping.
Then the heat had an effect, the flames seized the body, and at
this moment a moment of consciousness came over the soul, like
a moment of orientation. The dead had the whole image of the
funeral celebration and the funeral speech before herself, as
somebody has something spatial at the same time before himself.
Time becomes there really space. You do not see the past as you
see the past running in time during life, but you see the past
as something spatial before yourself. So that that which had
already run off, which had happened a quarter of an hour
before, then stood before the soul of the dead like the first
lighting up moment of consciousness. Then a state of daze came
again in the flooding light of consciousness to go in this
condition towards those other conditions in which the soul
gradually learns to orientate itself in the spiritual
world.
It
is important if we want to really get good ideas about the life
after death for ourselves that we understand these quite
different conceptions of time, that we see how there time is
not something of which one can say, it has passed, and one
remembers of the matters that happened in time, but the past
stands there. Like the desk stands there and this desk does not
go along with me when I go over there and look back at it, in
the same way that remains after death which happened, which can
be just only reminded, stands there; and the dead looks back at
it as one looks back in the body at the spatial objects. This
is very important to understand. Furthermore, that is of
particular importance to understand that we really remain in
connection, that our life on earth remains in connection with
that what we experience between death and a new birth; at least
it remains in close connection up to the point in time I called
midnight hour in my last mystery drama
[
The Soul's Awakening
in
Four Mystery Dramas,
volume 14 of Steiner's Collected Works
].
Nevertheless, I would not like to fail to give our friends
ideas of these relations to be difficultly described bit by
bit. At that which we as earthly people have experienced
between birth and death the soul, which has gone to death,
looks back — but not, as if that which one has
experienced there only would be there, but some conditions of
life of the dead play a part in a peculiar way. The condition
of life of the dead is not the same as the condition of life
between birth and death of living people. The condition is such
a one that the human being feels enclosed by his skin and looks
out into the world by means of his senses. As soon as one
enters as a dead the spiritual world, he/she has flowed out
into the whole spiritual world. The soul feels like fulfilling
the whole spiritual world bit by bit. What the human being has
experienced during his physical earth existence, he feels like
something that remains to him — not as a physical body,
of course, but as that which constitutes the form, the forces
of the physical body. This remains after death, but the soul
has it as somebody has the human eye in the physical body. As
you have the eye for seeing, you have then yourself, the life
on earth, which you have experienced, as a cosmic sense-organ
to perceive the world with it. What our eye is now for our
body, this is our life on earth for our spiritual life after
death.
Our
life on earth is implanted to us as it were as an eye, as a
sense-organ. You will understand gradually only after longer
meditation what significant, actually, is pronounced that our
life on earth becomes a sense-organ for our life between death
and a new birth. That resembles to the process when the human
being falls asleep and leaves the physical and etheric bodies
with his ego and astral body. When initiation comes into being
and the human being starts beholding in the spiritual world
outside his physical and etheric bodies, then he knows: in the
spiritual world you perceive like by means of a sense with the
spiritual part of your physical body, and you think in the
spiritual world with your etheric body. Your etheric body is
real like your brain in the spiritual world and your former
physical body is a sense-organ. However, you yourself are
poured out with all your vital forces over the spiritual
worlds. You have spread, you do not feel crowded together to
one place because of your skin, and you feel poured out,
extended over the spiritual world.
This is a quite different existence. With it is connected that
somebody who himself enters the spiritual world, either by
death, or by initiation, lives united with the other beings of
the spiritual world, with beings of higher hierarchies or with
human souls, which live between death and a new birth. However,
he lives united with them in such a way that he does not
experience them as you meet earthly men outside where you are
separated spatially from them. But he experiences them as being
contained in a common spiritual space, penetrating each other.
What another soul experiences one does not experience by the
fact that it says something, like with earthly people, but that
one settles in the other soul and witnesses its thoughts.
Hence, it is also that you can only be certain to experience
that in yourself really what, for example, a dead experiences
if you know: you are as it were in the dead, you do not only
report something that you hear after the model of something
which you experience on earth, but you hear: the dead himself
speaks through your being.
I
would also like to explain that to you by an example
[Lina Grosheintz-Rohrer].
One of our members has recently died. Still before the cremation I
felt the necessity to hear what this personality has to say
after her death. For she was still united with her etheric body
and could — as it were — express herself by her
etheric body in earthly way, however, she subsumed everything
that she had intensely witnessed of the anthroposophical world
view and had woven into her soul. So we deal with a personality
who had advanced in years, who has settled down in the last
time of her life really intensely and with all forces of her
heart into our spiritual-scientific world view. Then she went
through the gate of death. Now she had still her etheric body.
It was still before the cremation, and the etheric body was
still there as a means to express herself. This gave the
possibility to express myself still by earthly words because
the etheric body could experience them. And the liberation from
the body, from the earth existence, gave the possibility at the
same time to subsume the whole being, which had been engraved
by the heart in the soul. While it appeared to me how this
personality who has gone through the gate of death wanted to
pronounce her being — possibly during the second day,
after death had entered, — formed the words of which I
can inform you, words, which are to be regarded as words the
dead had experienced. So that you have to imagine that here,
during the second day after death, this being of the soul,
which had gone through the gate of death, was fulfilled by the
force of these words, expressed itself in the force of these
words. And if one transported oneself into this soul, this
being of the soul, this being of the dead expressed itself
through him in these words. Therefore, I could do nothing
better than to turn these words to the dead then just at the
funeral, because these were the words which she herself spoke
as it were to the friends, who surrounded her earthly rests. I
can assure you: I have added nothing to these words, but I have
tried to understand them from the being of the dead. Indeed,
then later this happens I have called the daze of consciousness
what you could call a kind of sleeping state. Now the dead
would not have been able to express her being because now she
missed the means of the etheric body. She will be able to do it
again after some time, but that would be impossible immediately
after death. The words read:
Into
cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;
Into
cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of the eternal life;
Into
depths of soul I will sink
Devoted meditation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;
In the
peace of God I strive thus
Amidst Life's battles and cares
To prepare myself for the higher Self;
Aspiring for work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
to fulfil my human duty;
May I
live then in anticipation,
Oriented toward my soul's star
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.
I
would like to put this before your souls as a clear example of
the mysterious course which the human soul takes just through
the point in time which separates the life between birth and
death from the life between death and a new birth, where
everything that was still external experience to us in the life
on earth becomes internal wealth of the soul and lives in us
that way. Here one takes on spiritual science still as
something external. Immediately after death, however, it
appears how it lives in the soul, yes, we say, as well as
muscular strength now lives in our physical bodies. You have to
feel that once if you want to grasp the internal sense, the
internal meaning of that which spiritual science can be for the
human soul. Then bit by bit you get a conception — you
must have patience — of the quite different relations in
the spiritual world. If we form words and concepts of the
relations in the sensory world, we can give symbols at most of
that what is in the spiritual world. You must work in patience
towards concepts and sensations and feelings which express that
fairly correctly and truly what the relations of the spiritual
world are.
The
logic of the life on earth — yes, there is only one logic
of the life on earth — is already sometimes rather
fragile for the life on earth. I have already stated how one
can pass the real facts using the logic of the life on earth. I
have often stated the example: assuming a person is walking
along a brook. We see him falling into the brook. We rush over
and find out that he is already dead. We see a stone where the
person has fallen into the brook, and can now form a quite
logical, but superficial judgment. We can say: the person has
tripped over the stone, has fallen into the brook and drowned.
He has died the death of drowning. — But this can be
quite wrong. If one examines the matter purely anatomically, it
can become apparent that the person had experienced a heart
failure; thereby he fell in the water. The heart failure is the
cause of his death. With the everyday correct logic we conclude
wrongly. Such conclusions — this would be noted, only by
the way — are made perpetually in human life and in
particular in science. Science is full of such conclusions
where cause and effect are mistaken.
But
the matter becomes important when questions of human destiny
are considered. We have experienced such a stroke of fate in
Dornach in autumn, which is instructive in the most important
sense. One evening the little, seven-year-old son of our
member, Theo Faiss, who was an exceptionally dear, bright
child, was reported missing. It was just during an evening
lecture. The mother searched for the child, it was not to be
found. When the lecture was over, one heard, actually, only
that the mother misses her boy, and one could imagine nothing
else that the death of the boy were in connection with a
removal van, which had toppled over. A member of our society
had let send his pieces of furniture in a removal van, and this
removal van had toppled over in the evening where the boy
stood. It was ten a quarter clock in the evening and we applied
everything to lift the carriage. The mobilised military met us
to help, to lift this removal van. The removal van was lifted,
and one found the boy crushed under the carriage. Now think, in
this area a removal van did never go generally before; nor
thereafter. The boy was here, one could state this later by all
possible things one calls incidents and chances, just in the
time — it has concerned only minutes, around a moment
— where the removal van toppled over. However, it was
strange that first of all those who were here where the
carriage had toppled over were only concerned to bring the
horses to safety. One had no idea that the removal van had
fallen on the little boy.
The
child was dead. The materialist view may say: well, the removal
van toppled over by chance there at this hour; the child got
under it and was crushed. The materialist view will say that,
of course. Before the spiritual view this is completely
nonsense. For that what is there is the karma of the child, and
this karma of the child steered all single circumstances. It
has also steered the removal van there just at the hour when
the child needed the death because the karma of the child
wanted it. The karma of the child had expired. We deal here
with the necessity to reverse cause and effect.
By
such relations and the view of them one is able to ascend bit
by bit to the real view of life which persuades us to reverse
that what the external appearance presents to the senses. We
must often turn around this. But the matter becomes quite
significant when one experiences after that what comes into
being by such a fact. The soul of a human being goes through
the gate of death. This soul was embodied for seven years in a
physical body. Why could the little Theo not have become also
seventy, eighty, ninety years, externally considered if the
karma had not made it impossible? An etheric body is there
which could have supplied life still for decades; an etheric
body which was really filled by forces of the eternal, of the
good. It was an excellent boy.
You
know that then the real individuality, the ego and astral body,
go on their way. But the etheric body frees itself, this
etheric body, in which all tender, nice forces are woven which
have developed in the childhood, in which, however, all forces
also live which come from the former incarnations. Now imagine
what you have before you facing such an etheric body. The
individuality comes from the former incarnations. It embodies
itself anew in this incarnation; it implies what comes from
previous incarnations. The life of this incarnation is as it
were the fruit, realising that what was cause in a life in
previous incarnations. Through the whole life these fruits
could have enjoyed life to the full. Then everything would have
gone into this etheric body what comes from the fruits of the
former incarnations. This has not happened. In return
everything is in this etheric body what still has causes in the
former incarnations. And now the strangest thing is: somebody
who tries to explore the aura of our Dornach construction finds
this etheric body of the little Theo in the aura of the Dornach
construction. There he is, there he hovers over, lives around
the Dornach construction. He who has to deal with the Dornach
construction or will still deal after that late autumn
afternoon in which the little Theo went through the gate of
death knows what has been changed in the spiritual aura of the
Dornach construction by the fact that that etheric body was
incorporated into this aura. This etheric body contains the
forces which would else have been used for decades for the
supply of a physical human body, and this etheric body is just
poured out in this aura of the construction.
So
mysterious are the ways that wisdom flooding through the world
has to experience with its creatures. There are only correct
ideas of the kind how the whole human life runs — to
which in the most remarkable sense the life between death and a
new birth belongs — if one goes into details of these
matters. Because our anthroposophical movement should really be
not anything abstract, but something in which we are with our
whole being, in which also those are who just belong to us, we
are also allowed to speak of such matters. We unite not only
like other societies with a certain program, but we want to be
with our whole souls in our spiritual-scientific movement. We
want to conceive this spiritual-scientific movement as a
concrete stream to which everybody belongs who really bears
witness to it in a feeling way. We can say: there we speak as
somebody just speaks in an enlarged family about the relatives
there or there. For that what touches us, so to speak, in an
informally familiar way gives us the highest, the most
significant, the most important explanations of the spiritual
world at the same time.
From such an attitude I would like to mention the death of one
of our friends who are just often affected by deaths in the
last time. Our infinitely dear friend Fritz Mitscher has
recently gone through the gate of death. The necessity arose to
me to subsume in words what the own soul felt, while it leant
to the soul, which has just gone through the gate of death.
Notice the difference between the preceding words which I have
read out to you, and the words which I want to read out to you
now. The words that I have read out just here are out of the
soul of the dead. The words which I will read out to you now
are stimulated in my own soul at the sight of the dead Fritz
Mitscher, who was still combined with his etheric body. It is
the impression which the dead made that is reported now in
these words. Perhaps, you know that Fritz Mitscher was already
as a young teacher at the most different place, especially in
Berlin, active for our Anthroposophical Society. And many of us
also know that he was just inclined in such a nice way to
combine everything that he could acquire of earthly science and
learning with the noblest, nicest anthroposophical
consciousness. This also expresses itself after his death when
in his whole being was combined what he was, and what shines
now again after his death from the soul relieved of the body
which still had its etheric body. And it seems to me that this
had to be expressed what Fritz Mitscher was after death with
the words, which I had to send on to him at the cremation.
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 soul's 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.
These are the words which were sent to the dead out of the
being of the dead. And then some time passed after these words
were spoken at the cremation, and out of the being of the dead,
not yet out of the well-organised consciousness, but like from
the being sounding, there the following words sounded now from
the dead in the night after the cremation.
For
me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within myself
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.
The
words sounded back that way. Only after that I myself found out
that two stanzas which are in the middle can be converted
immediately from “you” to “I” and from
“to you” to “to me.” I did not know
that before. Since I heard the stanzas as I read them to you
first. And now they came back from the being of the dead,
spoken by him:
That shows that as well as in the time in which the
consciousness does not yet have the shape which the soul has
then again after this time through the whole realm between
death and new birth, it shows as even in lively transformation,
in meaningful transformation the words come from the dead. You
have only to feel the spiritual-scientific world view becoming
really alive creating the connection between the physical and
the spiritual worlds. For it may run like a shiver through our
souls when we feel at such an example how the words are called
to the dead — and he returns them changed to us. Like we
feel on one side that they went to the dead because they
resound from him, not only like an echo, but meaningfully
changed by him.
These are matters that give us the certainty, the confidence
also for our present that the souls living here in earthly
bodies are connected with the spiritual powers weaving and
prevailing in the world. In this stream of prevailing and
weaving spiritual powers the deceased are woven, are in it,
because in it they experience their further postmortal
destinies.
If
we allow the connection of the physical and spiritual worlds to
have an effect on our souls, we can contemplate various things.
I pointed already once also here to the fact that with this
cooperation of the physical and spiritual worlds proceeding in
the concrete sense also the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha
comes near to us. We know that now we only start contemplating
the sense and meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha and Christ
Being by spiritual science completely. Up to now the human
beings did that by means of reason. And what did result from
this reason? If the effectiveness of Christ had depended in the
human earth-life on that what the human beings have understood
of it, the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse on earth could
had been not very strong. The human beings have understood
theological squabbling, all kinds of disputes in their reason,
that was they understood of Christianity. But Christ has had an
effect out of lively power.
I
have probably stated also here the example of the battle which
Constantine fought against Maxentius, by which the fate of
Europe was decided at that time. Thus Christianity was only
accepted, actually, and became then the ruling power in Europe.
This battle was not won through the art of strategy nor by the
armies of Constantine. Maxentius had to defend Rome. By looking
up in the Sibylline Books and by a dream, which he had, it was
put in his head that he should lead his army out of Rome. Then
he would destroy the enemies of Rome. His army was five times
stronger than that of Constantine, who approached Rome. Now he
really led his army out of Rome, strategically the most inept
what he could do. Since according to strategy everything spoke
well of letting his army in Rome and letting the hostile armies
approach. However, he led his army out of Rome. Also on the
side of Constantine who led his armies against Rome these were
not warlike-scientific reasons which gave him the strength, but
he also had a dream. The dream said to him: if you allow
bearing the monogram of Christ in front of your army, you will
defeat Rome. — At that time and still for later the whole
map of Europe was transformed through the victory of
Constantine with his weaker army. Also the spiritual life of
Europe has thereby become different. That what people could
understand in those days would not have been sufficient to
accomplish these achievements. The Christ Impulse had an effect
in the subconsciousness of the human beings, in that what lived
in the depths of the souls what people only could dream of,
what came up to them at most in dream pictures.
We
have a later, quite important example of the effectiveness of
the Christ Impulse with the Maid of Orleans
[Maid of Orleans (1412-1431)].
Who studies history really, not as one often studies history today,
but that one tries to recognise the real connections, he can know
that again the fate of Europe was absolutely determined for the
next centuries through that what the Maid of Orleans did.
Neither strategy, nor the wisdom of the politicians, but that
what the shepherd girl of Orleans did was vital for the destiny
of Europe, especially also for the destiny of France. Now,
however, the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid of Orleans,
through its Michaelic representative. It worked into the soul
of the Maid of Orleans. Her soul was completely infiltrated,
inspired by the Christ Impulse. Exactly in the same way as in
those days when the battle was decided between Constantine and
Maxentius the Christ Impulse worked, without people knowing
about it in their upper consciousness. The Christ Impulse also
worked there, when the Maid of Orleans sent the French armies
against the English armies. The whole continent would have
changed, also England if at that time France had not won. Also
England would not be that what she has become if she had not
been defeated. However, the subconscious forces which came up
in dream pictures caused the victory. The abilities of the Maid
of Orleans were inspired by them. So that you can say: what the
Maid of Orleans did was influenced through a more or less
unaware initiation. It is of course an unaware, you may also
say, an atavistic initiation. A clean psychic vessel had to be
seized just unconsciously, as it was the Maid of Orleans
through whom the Christ Impulse could work, by his Michaelic
representative — a clean vessel.
Let
us look at the matter more exactly. If anybody today goes
consciously through an initiation — there are rules for
that. The ABC is in my book
“How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?”
There are rules by
which one is able to develop gradually. One cannot speak of
such a conscious initiation in the case of the Maid of Orleans.
But a spirit which is otherwise not united with the human soul
had to take its place in this human soul, to permeate this
human soul. Especially favourable circumstances had to come
into being. A spirit of higher spheres cannot always intervene
in the souls who are enabled for it. Especially favourable
circumstances must occur, so that a single human being comes in
connection with higher worlds without initiation, without
conscious work on himself. Especially favourable circumstances
exist in the time when as it were the spirit of the earth is
particularly awake: in the time from the 25th December to the
6th January. When in summer the sun stands highest, when the
physical heat radiates mostly to the earth, then the conditions
of initiation are the worst because then the spirit of the
earth is sleeping. The spirit of the earth is the most awake in
the winter darkness, at the winter solstice.
Hence, it is not only a legend, but corresponds to a truth when
it is told in old legends that during the thirteen nights which
precede the 6th January certain particularly suitable souls
were initiated, so that they could go into the spiritual world,
that they could experience there what we call Kamaloka and
devachan. We here in Hanover probably remember that the legend
of Olaf Åsteson
[
Cosmic New Year. The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson.
Lecture (Hanover, 1st January 1912) in
The Connection Between the Human Being and the Elemental World
… volume 158 of Steiner's Collected Works]
was once reported who —
sleeping for these thirteen nights — went through the
whole way which can be the way through Kamaloka and devachan.
Olaf Åsteson tells then what he experienced during
these thirteen days.
If
the external physical darkness of the earth is the strongest,
the conditions are the most favourable to lead a soul into in
the spiritual world. It would have been the most favourable for
souls like the Maid of Orleans, who are initiated for the whole
humankind for such an action not by directly conscious
exercising but by especially favourable circumstances, if she
could have slept during the thirteen nights. Thus she could
have been brought into connection with the spiritual world; if
she could have accomplished that in a sleeping state. The Maid
of Orleans went really through such a sleeping state. For the
Maid of Orleans spent these thirteen days up to the 6th January
in the body of her mother in a condition in which the human
being still sleeps. Since the human being only wakes up for the
physical life when he is born and does the first gasp. With the
Maid of Orleans the last sleeping nights of the embryo fall in
the time of the thirteen nights, because she was born on the
6th January. There you have a deeply significant internally
historical connection. There you have the basis of the mission
of the Maid of Orleans, who was chosen to receive the
initiation as this clean soul before her first gasp during the
last thirteen nights of the pregnancy of her mother, in this
sleeping state, just under the especially favourable
circumstances of the earth-life. The calendar shows it simply
to you. Open the calendar: on the 6th January you find the
birthday of the Maid of Orleans. The calendar shows you how
here a deeply intimate connection exists between the physical
world and the processes in the spiritual world. Of course, it
was necessary that the soul of the Maid of Orleans was prepared
by her preceding incarnations. During the thirteen nights this
soul and that what could come from this soul made it possible
just at this point of the human development that the spiritual
world was able to influence the physical world.
The
spiritual world with its ingredients is always there. The
spiritual world is always among us. The ways of working in the
physical world are manifold, which the spiritual world selects.
And our consciousness of the connection with the spiritual
world becomes stronger and stronger, the more we express the
connections between the physical and spiritual worlds
especially deeply in such details, while such connections stand
vividly in front of our souls.
On
the other side, one must say: also that what happens here in
the physical world may prepare a kind of connection with the
spiritual world and our physical world. And if anybody who has
taken up that as intensely as Fritz Mitscher what flows through
our spiritual science, and then went across in the spiritual
world in the thirtieth year of his life — on the 26th
February his thirtieth birthday would be — and has
infiltrated his soul with that what can penetrate as a strength
into the soul by our spiritual science, then we have a powerful
individuality who will further stay together with us in the
spiritual world who is an assistant of the most immense kind.
And if you imagine how difficult the striving for spiritual
science is just in our time, in this time which is,
nevertheless, completely impregnated with materialism. Then one
may also say that he who is connected with all the fibers of
his life with the spiritual world has the biggest hopes for
those who can become spiritual assistants who become spiritual
assistants after they have laid down their physical bodies. One
does not need to say, of course, that the passage through the
gate of death is never allowed to be a personal decision, but
that it must be caused only by karma. These spiritual
assistants are those who give us consolation and hope if we see
how difficult it is, just in the present, to provide for our
spiritual-scientific movement because of the manifold
inhibitions. However, we know how higher spiritual forces have
an effect on earth, so that the current of the spiritual worlds
flows into the purposes of the physical earth. Thus the unused
forces of the human souls come up to the spiritual worlds to
work there just with their forces, combined with other forces.
Hence, I said the words to our Fritz Mitscher in my obituary
really from the bottom of my heart:
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.
When we try to advance our spiritual movement to its purpose
honestly, then we are aware that in the forces which we apply
here on earth also those forces are working which our friends
already brought through the gate of death into the spiritual
world.
We
summarise now all that also for the understanding of the
general situation of the world. On one side, the human souls
who go now due to the destiny-burdened events through the gate
of death carry their etheric bodies to the folk-souls. On the
other side, they carry everything that they have summoned up in
sacrificial devotion, while they have gone just by these events
through the gate of death with their individualities. And all
that will be poured out as effectiveness into the coming age.
It is the matter of the human beings who then experience peace
to produce the connection with that what will be there in the
spiritual world. Those who today experience as mothers and
fathers, as brothers and sisters or other relatives the death
on the battlefield of a human being dear to them can take up
the fact in their consciousness that with the etheric body
something extremely significant passes over into the general
effectiveness of the earthly humankind for the future. Not only
that they can know that the individualities go invigorated by
death to a later stronger life on earth, but they can also
know: that what the warrior after death has handed over to the
folk-soul weaves and lives really. Fathers and mothers, sisters
and brothers have those who have gone young through the gate of
death twice, one must say, now in the folk-soul and also as
individuality. This idea will only be of great value when it
has completely become feeling, so that one does not only speak
of immortality, but that one knows in the feeling: the dead are
there, are among us. If this bond is such a strong one that
also for our feeling death will be, actually, an untruth. Since
the dead can appear even more real than often in the physical
embodiment if he can take together everything of his being and
if he does no longer have his physical body as an obstacle.
Immense currents of consolation, currents of internal strength
of self-consolation go out from that what spiritual science can
give to the souls in lively consciousness and lively
sensations. When this is felt that way, then in particular
those who bear witness to spiritual science can look full of
consolation into the future. They can feel something like
twilight in the turn of an era during these present,
destiny-burdened events after which a time of sunny peace will
also follow. But important will be in the spiritual
effectiveness of this time of sunny peace that what is won
through the sacrificial deaths of so many people.
That can be made fruitful here on earth particularly creating a
bridge, a connection between the living human beings who are
incarnated in physical bodies here on earth and the souls who
are above and want to radiate down that which they have taken
with them. Here it is where the real understanding of spiritual
science knocks on our hearts and asks us to do that what we can
do from the consciousness we have gained by spiritual science
what we can do feeling, so that the great, destiny-exciting,
painful events of the present time, as far as we are concerned,
contribute to the fertility and welfare of humankind. Those who
know something about spiritual science can know feeling and
feel knowing by which means the bridge is built up into the
spiritual world: because the souls, who remained on earth, send
the thoughts and sensations which can be enkindled by spiritual
science. The horizon for that will be a horizon of peace.
Above, the souls will be who send down spiritual beams of
light. Below, human beings must be who have learnt to send such
thoughts and feelings out of their souls from below which are
stimulated by spiritual science. If there are really souls who
turn their senses conscious of spirit to the spirit land, then
the bridge will be built, then the time will have come when
just through such painful, destiny-burdened events, as they
happen in our time, an intimate bond must be woven between the
physical and spiritual worlds, for which we strive by our
spiritual science.
So
we summarise what should be our knowledge and our task and what
should arouse confidence in the words:
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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