Read&Write

My wife requested I write a post to help explain the fourfold human being and the “process” of what happens in death according to the teachings of both Anthroposophy and Rosicrucianism. I am no expert on these matters, certainly. This is my understanding of a topic fraught with fear, confusion and misunderstanding. What I share here is, more than anything, direct quotes from various sources. Because I view this subject as extremely serious, it is meant to, perhaps, help the reader to gain some relief in knowing there need not be a fear of death. And, though this material might appear confusing, it is my sincere hope it is not misunderstood.

Many will say that there is no way we could ever know what happens after death. But that is simply not the case. The church vastly simplified the subject, which, at the time – and even now – is just far too complex to convey in such a way for most to mentally “grip.” Indeed, the subject as it is presented here weighs heavily on the subject of reincarnation i.e. the cycle of birth-death-birth. Origen in the third century A.D. taught the pre-existence of souls, which, when expanded upon, involves just such a cycle. Though in his time he was considered and accepted as “one of the greatest teachers after the Apostles,” over a hundred years after his death he was anathema.

Reincarnation is also taught in the Bible, however it is “hidden” from plain view. I have no desire to argue or debate whether or not this – or reincarnation itself – is true. I know these Truths. These Truths have set me free in many ways. It is up to the reader to listen within and determine for yourself if these things ring true. Be aware, though. Truth is self evident – it is not relative, at least in the realm of the Spiritual. It may be true that my beard is graying, but that may not be true for you. But in the realm of real Reality, in the realm of capital-T Truth, such truths must be so for all.

The Fourfold Human Being

This material has been gleaned from a friend of mine’s website New Food Culture. This material is based on the works and teachings of Rudolf Steiner and his Anthroposophy (Spiritual Science). I have done minimal editing of the material here so as not to over-tax the reader’s mind, as this is meant as introductory subject material.

The human being is composed of four bodies with different basic functions. First is the physical body – that is, the outward physical form of the body – which is built up out of mineral substances and which is for that reason visible to us. Second is the invisible etheric body which enables our life processes and functions. The next invisible body is the astral body which enables us to have feelings and perceptions. The highest supersensible body is the ‘I’ or Ego, our essential self, which enables us to be conscious of ourselves as individual beings among other beings.

We share commonality with the rest of Mother Nature through these four bodies, each as a sort of stage of development. However, the “I” is unique to human beings in that this is the “body” that provides our commonality, or connection, to the Spiritual world i.e. to God. Let’s take a look at each body, how they might be described, and how each relates to the world around us. The following diagram provides a context for each of these bodies in relation to our physical body – the one we are most familiar with.

Four Bodies of Man in Relation to Four Kingdoms of Nature

“Man must be regarded as a being who consists not only of the physical body that is visible to the eye, but also of higher members – invisible bodies. The first invisible member, the ether body, is a much finer, more delicate body and cannot be perceived by the ordinary senses. It is the source of life not only in man, but also in the plants and animals. Another higher member is the astral body which enables man to have feelings and perceptions. He has this body in common with the animals, for they too have an astral body. But man has something which the animal has not, namely, self-consciousness, ‘I’-consciousness. Man, then, consists of the visible physical body and of three higher members: ether body, astral body and the ‘I’.” [1]

“We learn about the human body by means of our bodily senses, and our mode of observation can be no different than if we were learning about other sense-perceptible things. We can observe the human being in the same way that we observe minerals, plants and animals, and as human beings, we are related to these three other forms of existence. Like the minerals, we build up our bodies out of natural substances; like the plants, we grow and reproduce; like the animals, we perceive the objects around us and develop inner experiences based on the impressions they make on us. [2] Therefore, we may attribute a mineral, a plant and an animal existence to the human being.

The structural differences between minerals, plants and animals correspond to their three modes of existence. Just as we attribute mineral, plant and animal modes of existence to the human body, we must also attribute to it a fourth and distinctively human mode. Through the mineral mode of existence we are related to everything visible, through the plant-like mode to everything that grows and reproduces, and through the animal mode to all creatures that perceive their environment and have inner experiences based on outer impressions. But through the human mode, even with regard to the physical body, we make up a kingdom that is ours alone.” [3]

“Spiritual science reviews four basic phenomena which we can all recognize: form, life, sentience (a consciousness based on sense-experience) and selfhood (an awareness of the self). We may say:

• form we share with mineral, plant, and animal;
• life we share with plant and animal;
• sensory experience we share with the animal (instincts, desires, joy and pain, etc);
• thinking, that is, a reflective consciousness, an inborn sense of self or the ‘I am’ is something that we human beings alone, in the world of nature, possess.” [4]

“Within the manifest world it is the physical body in which man is of like nature with the mineral creation. Anything that distinguishes man from the mineral cannot properly be regarded as ‘physical body’. To clear and open-minded reflection the important fact will be that death lays bare the part of the human being which – after death – is of like nature with the mineral world. We can point to the corpse as to that part of man, which, after death, is subject to processes such as are also found in the mineral kingdom. While the same substances and forces are indeed at work in the physical body of man and in the mineral, during man’s life their activity is made to serve a higher function. It is only when death has taken place that they work identically with the mineral world. Then they appear, as indeed they must in accordance with their own nature, as the destroyer of the form and structure of man’s physical body.

Thus we are able clearly to distinguish what is manifest from what is hidden in the human being. Throughout the life of man something that is hidden must perpetually be battling with the mineral substances and forces in the physical body. The moment the battle ceases, the mineral form of activity makes its appearance. Although the hidden something which battles against the disintegration of the physical body can be observed by seership alone, in its effects it is plainly evident even to the kind of judgment which is restricted to the outwardly manifest. For its effects are expressed in the form and shape into which the substances and forces of the physical body are combined during life. When death has taken place, this form gradually disappears and the physical body becomes part of the mineral kingdom pure and simple. Supersensible perception can observe, as an independent member of the human being, what it is that prevents the physical substances and forces during life from going their own way, which would, as we have seen, lead to the disintegration of the physical body. We will call this independent member of man’s being the etheric body or life body.

The etheric body then, constitutes a second member of the human being. For supersensible perception it has indeed a higher degree of reality than the physical. The etheric body completely permeates the physical, of which it may be regarded as a kind of architect. All the organs of the physical body are maintained in their form and structure by the currents and movements of the etheric body. Underlying the physical heart there is an etheric heart, underlying the physical brain an etheric brain, and so on. The etheric body is in effect a differentiated body like the physical, only far more complicated. And whereas in the physical body there are relatively separated parts, in the etheric all is in living interflow and movement. Man has the etheric body in common with the plant world, just as he has the physical body in common with the mineral. Everything that is alive has an etheric body.

From the etheric body, the science of the supersensible advances to a further member of human nature – the astral body. And as in leading up to the etheric body attention had to be drawn to death, so, to form a conception of this further member of man’s nature, supersensible science points to the phenomenon of sleep. All the creative work of man depends – so far as the manifest world is concerned – on his activity in waking life. But this activity is only possible if he again and again derives from sleep a strengthening of his exhausted forces. In sleep, action and thought disappear; pain and joy vanish from conscious life. On awakening, man’s conscious powers well up from the unconsciousness of sleep as if from mysterious and hidden springs. It is the same consciousness which sinks into dark depths when man falls asleep, and then arises again when he awakens. To the science of the supersensible, what rouses life again and again from the unconscious state is the astral body.

As the physical body cannot maintain its form through the mineral substances and forces it contains, but needs to be permeated by the etheric body, so too the forces of the etheric body cannot of themselves become illumined with the light of consciousness. Left to itself, an etheric body would of necessity be in a perpetual state of sleep – or, we may also say, could only maintain in the physical body a vegetable form of life. An etheric body that is awake is illumined by an astral body. For outer observation the effect of the astral body disappears when man falls asleep. For supersensible observation however, the astral body still remains, but it is now seen to be separated from the etheric body, or lifted out of it. Man has his physical body in common with the minerals and his etheric body with the plants. In the same sense he is of like nature with the animals in respect of the astral body. The plant is in a perpetual state of sleep. Consciousness is only there when for example, through the effect of heat, the being inwardly experiences pain.

The fourth member which supersensible science attributes to the human being is the ‘I’ or ego of man. If the astral body were left to itself, pleasure and pain, feelings of hunger or of thirst would come and go in it, but one thing would never come about – namely, the sense of something permanent in all these things. Not the permanent itself, but that which has conscious experience of the perm­anent, is here called the ‘I’. With the awareness of something permanent and lasting in the changing flow of inner experiences, the feeling of ‘I’, of inner selfhood begins to dawn. The mere fact that a creature experiences hunger, for example, cannot give it the feeling of ‘I’. On every new occasion when the causes of hunger make themselves felt, hunger arises. The creature falls upon its food simply because the causes of hunger are there anew. The feeling of ‘I’ comes in when the creature is not merely impelled to take food by the renewed causes of hunger, but when a previous satisfaction (of hunger) gave rise to a sense of pleasure and the consciousness of the pleasure has remained (in the memory). Here it is not only the present experience of hunger but the past experience of satisfaction (of hunger with food) which provides the impulse (for its repetition).

The physical body disintegrates when it is not held together by the etheric; the etheric body falls into unconsciousness when it is not irradiated by the astral body. In like manner the astral body would ever and again have to let the past sink into oblivion, if the ‘I’ did not preserve the past and carry it over into the present. Forgetting is for the astral body what death is for the physical body and sleep for the etheric. Or, as we may also express it:

• life is proper to the etheric body
• consciousness to the astral body [5]
• and memory to the ego.” [6]

Here we need to clarify one seeming contradiction. Although the physical body provides the outwardly perceptible physical forms of minerals, plants, animals and human beings, this doesn’t mean that the physical body is the sole ‘architect’ of these physical forms. This is true only for the pure mineral bodies. In the case of living organisms, the etheric body contributes the etheric archetypes of the forms of the diverse living creatures. In the case of the animals and human beings, the astral body significantly contributes to the shapes of their bodies. And in the case of human beings the ego is the leading ‘architect’ of the human form.

This explains why the physical body – in spite of the fact that it is the source of our visible physical body – is the source of disintegration of this same body after the death. As is known from physics the mineral kingdom is heading towards so-called ‘warmth-death’, caused by the law of entropy which causes all physical energies to slowly disperse towards the uniform state of warmth. There is also the recognition that the living organisms combat this tendency of disintegration with the help of an organizing force, called ‘negative entropy’. This organising force is the outcome of the presence of the etheric body. Thus we have the mineral world with its substances that give us the visible physical form, but the power of preservation of this form comes from the etheric body. For that reason it is also called the life body.

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Death

Below is a very slim overview of the material found in the book Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, which you can find in the Scroll Library. It should be noted that Heindel used slightly different terms for the fourfold body of the human. I have used Steiner’s terminology to maintain the same line of thought from the material above. For the sake of “full disclosure”, here is the correspondence (Steiner –> Heindel):

• Physical Body –> Dense Body
• Etheric Body –> Vital Body
• Astral Body –> Desire Body (I maintained Heindel’s use of the term “Desire World”)
• “I” –> Ego (though both actually use these terms for the human self-consciousness interchangeably)

The Etheric body, Astral body, and mind withdraw from the physical body through the head and leave the physical body inanimate. They take with them a seed atom for the making of the next physical body and ego.

When the higher vehicles have left the physical body, they are still connected by a silver cord. It remains connected until the past life is reviewed, which is contained in the Astral body.

When the Cord Snaps

The body should remain undisturbed for at least three days while the Etheric body is still with the higher vehicles and they are still connected to the physical body by way of the silver cord.

Once the cord snaps the physical body is quite dead. When this happens there is a measurable amount of weight lost. This is the Etheric body, which is formed of the four ethers (chemical, life, light, reflecting – explanation of these can be found beginning on page 35 of the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception), which belong to the physical world.

Loud grief expressed by others at the moment of death presents a problem for the Ego (the “I” consciousness).

Cremation should be particularly avoided in the first three days after death, because it tends to disintegrate the vital body, which should be kept intact until the panorama of the past life has been etched into the desire body.

Once freed from the physical body, spiritual power is partially regained and the deceased is able to read the pictures of the previous life stored in the subconscious memory. The past life passes before his sight like a panorama, with the events presented in reverse order. Everything is remembered.

The man stands as a spectator before a panorama of his past life. He sees the pictures as they pass and they impress themselves upon his higher vehicles (bodies), but he has no feeling about them at this time. That is reserved until the time he enters into the Desire (Astral) world, which is the world of feeling and emotion. At present he is only in the Etheric region of the physical world.

The panorama lasts between a few hours to several days depending on whether the individual can remain awake.

When the endurance of the Etheric body has reached its limit, it collapses. This collapse terminates the panorama and forces the man into the Desire world. It’s not a collapse inter penetrating the physical body but the Etheric body hovers over it. It floats over the grave and decays in synch with the physical body. As he moves into the desire world he carries the seed atoms of the physical and Etheric bodies.

The Desire world

If a man dies leaving all worldly desires behind, the time spent in the desire world, working to shed the Astral body, would be greatly reduced. Desires live in the Astral body and desires, or ties to the physical world, are often augmented by a very intense longing to return. This actually binds the individual to to Desire world. Before the individual is able to move on to higher realms, he must be purified of such desires – ties and longings left behind in the physical world.

This process of purification takes on a type of suffering, the intensity of which is determined by many factors, both from an internal standpoint such as personal longing and the observance of circumstances post death. The desire world exists not separate from the physical world but integrated into it whereby the dead person, in the desire world, is able to see what continues in the physical world after they are gone. This is the “belief” expressed by the view of a person being able to go “where they want to” for “40 day’s”. Instead this is a period of purification from earthly desires before one can move on [7].

It is not an avenging Deity that makes purgatory or hell for us, but or own addictions to earthly life. According to the intensity of our desires will be the time and suffering entailed in their purging.

This is the law that is symbolized by the scythe of the reaper, Death; the law that says “whatsoever a man soweth, so shall he reap.” It is the law of cause and effect, which rules all things in the three worlds (Physical, Etheric, Astral), in every realm of nature – physical, moral and mental. Everywhere it works inexorably, adjusting all things, restoring the equilibrium wherever even the slightest action has brought about a disturbance, as all action must (as in Steiner’s Necessity and Freedom). The result may be manifested immediately or it may be delayed for years or for lives. Of note is the fact that this process is absolutely impersonal. There is in the universe neither reward nor punishment. This is the Law of Consequence.

Purgatory

In the Desire world the Law of Consequence operates in purging the individual of the baser desires and the correction of the weaknesses and vices that hinder their progress, by making the individual suffer in the manner best adapted to that purpose. If they have made others suffer, or has dealt unjustly with them, he will be made to suffer in that identical way (in order to fully understand the pain caused). Be it noted, however, that if a person has been subjected to vices, or has done wrong to others, but has overcome his vices, or repented (while still in the physical) and, as far as possible, made right the wrong done, such repentance, reform and restitution have purged him of those special vices and evil acts. The equilibrium has been restored and the lesson learned during that embodiment, and therefore will not be a cause of suffering after death.

Desire world life is lived three times as rapidly as in the physical world. This is an average dependent on their state upon death regarding desires.

Unlike the reverse panorama of the physical life in the Etheric world where there is no feeling evoked, in the Desire world all possible feelings are experienced. He experiences with a greater intensity of feeling all the suffering he caused others because he does not have a physical body to dull the feelings. Perhaps it is merciful that the time spent in this experience is so shortened – nature’s measures are just and true. The intensity of this experience is exacerbated if, during life, the person were ignorant or inattentive to the suffering and hardship he caused around him.

This sharp, clear-cut feeling becomes very important on subsequent lives. It stamps upon the seed atom of the desire body an ineffaceable impression of itself. The experiences will have been forgotten but the feeling remains, becoming the “still small voice” of one’s conscience.

This purgative process helps to quell the tendency to repeat the evil of the past and learn virtue and right action (see Steiner’s Eight Exercises). The tendency to repeat the evil of the past remains, providing the opportunity to exercise our own will to do right consciously. We must learn to do good regardless of what is done to us: to do good to others because we want them to do good to us is selfish (a perfect lesson for the Essene student – we must love even our enemies.

There is an inestimable benefit in knowing the method and object of this purgation- through such knowledge we are empowered to forestall it by living our purgatory here and now day by day, thereby advancing through it much faster. An exercise one can do daily that facilitates this advancement and aids the development of spiritual sight is thus: after retiring at the end of each day, review in reverse the events of the day. While doing this, pay particular attention to the moral aspects of your deeds, words, and thoughts. In short, we judge ourselves day by day and should endeavor to correct mistakes and actions. In this way we shall shorten or possibly even eliminate the necessity for purgatory and be able to pass to the first heaven directly after death. If we succeed in overcoming our weaknesses in this manner, we also make a material advance in the school of evolution.

One must not think that our daily review of the day should focus only on the negative moral aspects. We should also, with equanimity, recognize and approve of the good we have done and aspire to do even better.

Repentance and reform are also powerful factors shortening the purgatorial existence, for nature never wastes effort in useless processes. When we realize the wrong of certain habits or acts in our past life, and determine to eradicate the habit and redress the wrong committed, we are expunging the pictures of them from the subconscious memory and they will not be there to judge us after death. Even though we are not able to make restitution for a wrong, the sincerity of our regret will suffice. Nature does not aim to “get even,” or to take revenge. Recompense may be given to our victim in other ways.

The above is a most important teaching and is earnestly recommended.

The Borderland

Purgatory occupies the lower region of the desire world. The first heaven is in the upper region. However there is a central region, which is often referred to as a borderland between heaven and hell. In this Region we find people who were honest and upright; who wronged no one, but were deeply immersed in business and thought nothing of the higher life; people who were so obsessed with material matters or held the belief that death is the end of all and that there exists nothing outside the material realm. Both of these types experience the desire world as one of painful monotony. This is a most pitiable state for these individuals as the duration of their time in the Desire world is of the longest.

A few personal notes: One wonders how present humanity is to avoid such a state. There are those in the Spiritual Realm who’s “job” it is to help humanity. Unfortunately, for humanity, their efforts are restrained by the lack on our part of exercising our free will to first, live a spiritual life, but even more seek help “from above” to achieve success in doing so. This disconnect from Spiritual Realities has always been dangerous for the individual – as shared above. I personally am, in our current world (2021 AD) deeply concerned for humanity as a whole. We are on the road to a social cataclysm which makes the French Revolution appear as child’s play. If we do not, as a species, awaken as a whole in the very near future, even NOW, I fear we are already beyond help – from anyone anywhere. We are, then, quite alone. And there is no one coming to save us because we have ignored their Reality and have rejected the need for any such help.

The First Heaven

When the purgatorial existence is over the purified spirit rises into the first heaven, which is located in the three highest Regions of the Desire World, where the results of its sufferings are incorporated in the seed atom of the desire body, thus imparting to it the quality of right feeling, which acts as an impulse to good and a deterrent from evil in the future. Here the panorama of the past again unrolls itself backward, but this time it is the good acts of life that are the basis of feeling. When we come to scenes where we helped others we realize anew all the joy of helping which was ours at the time, and in addition we feel all the gratitude poured out to us by the recipient of our help. When we come to scenes where we were helped by others, we again feel all the gratitude that we then felt toward our benefactor. Thus we see the importance of appreciating the favors shown us by others, because gratitude makes for soul growth. Our happiness in heaven depends upon the joy we gave others, and the valuation we placed upon what others did for us.

The first heaven is a place of joy without a single drop of bitterness. The spirit is beyond the influence of the material, earthly conditions, and assimilates all the good contained in the past life as it lives it over again. Here all ennobling pursuits to which the man aspired are realized in fullest measure. It is a place of rest, and the harder has been the life, the more keenly will rest be enjoyed. Sickness, sorrow, and pain are unknown quantities. This is the Summerland of the spiritualists. There the thoughts of the devout Christian have built the New Jerusalem. Beautiful houses, flowers, etc., are the portion of those who aspired to them; they build them themselves by thought from the subtle desire stuff. Nevertheless these things are just as real and tangible to them as our material houses are to us. All gain here the satisfaction which earth life lacked for them.[8]

In time a point is reached where the result of the pain and suffering incident to purgation, together with the joy extracted from the good actions of the past life, have been built into the seed atom of the desire body. Together these constitute what we call conscience, that impelling force which warns us against evil as productive of pain and inclines us toward good as productive of happiness and joy. Then man leaves his desire body to disintegrate, as he left his dense body and vital body. He takes with him the forces only of the seed atom, which are to form the nucleus of future desire bodies, as it was the persistent particle of his past vehicles of feeling.

The Second Heaven

At last the man, the Ego, the threefold spirit, enters the second heaven. He is clad in the sheath of mind, which contains the three seed atoms—the quintessence of the three discarded vehicles.

When the man dies and loses his dense and vital bodies there is the same condition as when one falls asleep. The desire body, as has been explained, has no organs ready for use. It is now transformed from an ovoid to a figure resembling the dense body which has been abandoned. We can easily understand that there must be an interval of unconsciousness resembling sleep and then the man awakens in the Desire World. It not infrequently happens, however, that such people are, for a long time, unaware of what has happened to them. They do not realize that they have died. They know that they are able to move and think. It is sometimes even a very hard matter to get them to believe that they are really “dead.”[9] They realize that something is different, but they are not able to understand what it is.

Not so, however, when the change is made from the first heaven, which is in the Desire World, to the second heaven, which is in the Region of Concrete Thought. Then the man leaves his desire body. He is perfectly conscious. He passes into a great stillness. For the time being everything seems to fade away. He cannot think. No faculty is alive, yet he knows that he is. He has a feeling of standing in “The Great Forever;” of standing utterly alone, yet unafraid; and his soul is filled with a wonderful peace, “which passeth all understanding.”

In occult science this is called “The Great Silence.”

Then comes the awakening. The spirit is now in its home-World—heaven. Here the first awakening brings to the spirit the sound of “the music of the spheres.”

The work done by man in the Heaven World is many-sided. It is not in the least an inactive, dreamy nor illusory existence. It is a time of the greatest and most important activity in preparing for the next life, as sleep is an active preparation for the work of the following day.

Here the quintessence of the three bodies is built into the threefold spirit. As much of the desire body as the man had worked upon during life, by purifying his desires and emotions, will be welded into the human spirit, thus giving an improved mind in the future.

The life in the second heaven is an exceedingly active one, varied in many different ways. The Ego assimilates the fruits of the last earth life and prepares the environment for a new physical existence. It is not enough to say that the new conditions will be determined by conduct and action in the life just closed. It is required that the fruits of the past be worked into the World which is to be the next scene of activity while the Ego is gaining fresh physical experiences and gathering further fruit. Therefore all the denizens of the Heaven World work upon the models of the Earth, all of which are in the Region of Concrete Thought. They alter the physical features of the Earth, and bring about the gradual changes which vary its appearance, so that on each return to physical life a different environment has been prepared, wherein new experiences may be gained. Climate, flora, and fauna are altered by man under the direction of higher Beings, to be described later. Thus the world is just what we ourselves, individually and collectively, have made it; and it will be what we make it.

Thus we see that man learns to build his vehicles in the Heaven World, and to use them in the Physical World. Nature provides all phases of experience in such a marvelous manner and with such consummate wisdom that as we learn to see deeper and deeper into her secrets we are more and more impressed with our own insignificance and with an ever-growing reverence for God, whose visible symbol nature is. The more we learn of her wonders, the more we realize that this world system is not the vast perpetual motion machine unthinking people would have us believe. It would be quite as logical to think that if we toss a box of loose type into the air the characters will have arranged themselves into the words of a beautiful poem by the time they reach the ground. The greater the complexity of the plan the greater the argumental weight in favor of the theory of an intelligent Divine Author.

The Third Heaven

After a time comes the desire for new experience and the contemplation of a new birth. This conjures up a series of pictures before the vision of the spirit–a panorama of the new life in store for it. But, mark this well–this panorama contains only principal events. The spirit has free will as to detail. It is as if a man going to a distant city had a time-limit ticket, with initial choice of route. After he has chosen and begun his journey it is not sure that he can change to another route during the trip. He may stop over in as many places as he wishes, within his time limit, but he cannot go back. Thus as he proceeds on his journey, he becomes more and more limited by his past choice. If he had chosen a steam road, using soft coal, he must expect to be soiled and dusty. Had he chosen a road burning anthracite or using electricity he would have been cleaner. So it is with the man in a new life. He may have to live a hard life, but he is free to choose whether he will live it cleanly or wallow in the mire. Other conditions are also within his control, subject to limits of his past choices and acts.

The pictures in the panorama of the coming life, of which we have just spoken, begin at the cradle and end at the grave. This is the opposite direction to that in which they travel in the after-death panorama, already explained, which passes before the vision of the spirit immediately following its release from the dense body. The reason for this radical difference in the two panoramas is that in the before-birth panorama the object is to show the returning Ego how certain causes or acts always produce certain effects. In the case of the after-death panorama the object is the reverse, i.e., to show how each event in the past life was the effect of some cause further back in the life. Nature, or God, does nothing without a logical reason, and the further we search the more apparent it becomes to us that Nature is a wise mother, always using the best means to accomplish her ends.

But it may be asked, Why should we be reborn? Why must we return to this limited and miserable earth existence? Why can we not get experience in those higher realms without coming to Earth? We are tired of this dreary, weary earth life!

Such queries are based upon misunderstandings of several kinds. In the first place, let us realize and engrave it deep upon the tablets of our memory that the purpose of life is not happiness, but experience. Sorrow and pain are our most benevolent teachers, while the joys of life are but fleeting.

This seems a stern doctrine and the heart cries out passionately at even the thought that it may possibly be true. Nevertheless, it is true, and upon examination it will be found not such a stern doctrine after all.

Consider the blessings of pain. If we could place our hand upon a hot stove and feel no pain, the hand might be allowed to remain until it and perhaps the arm were burned away, without our knowing anything about it until too late to save them. It is the pain resulting from the contact with the hot stove which makes us snatch our hand away before serious damage is done. Instead of losing the hand, we escape with a blister which quickly heals. This is an illustration from the Physical World. We find that same principle applies in the Moral and Mental Worlds. If we outrage morality the pangs of conscience bring us pain that will prevent us from repeating the act and if we do not heed the first lesson, nature will give us harder and harder experiences until at last the fact is forced into our consciousness that “the way of the transgressor is hard.” This will continue until at last we are forced to turn in a new direction and take a step onward toward a better life.

Experience is “knowledge of the effects which follow acts.” This is the object of life, together with the development of “Will,” which is the force whereby we apply the results of experience. Experience must be gained, but we have the choice whether we gain it by the hard path of personal experience or by observation of other people’s acts, reasoning and reflecting thereon, guided by the light of whatever experience we have already had.

This is the method by which the occult student should learn, instead of requiring the lash of adversity and pain. The more willing we are to learn in that way, the less we shall feel the stinging thorns of “the path of pain” and the more quickly shall we gain “the path of peace.”

The choice is ours, but so long as we have not learned all there is to learn in this world, we must come back to it. We cannot stay in the higher worlds and learn there until we have mastered the lessons of earth life. That would be as sensible as to send a child to kindergarten one day and to college the next. The child must return to the kindergarten day after day and spend years in the grammar school and the high school before its study has developed its capacity sufficiently to enable it to understand the lessons taught in college.

Man is also in school–the school of experience. He must return many times before he can hope to master all the knowledge in the world of sense. No one earth life, however rich in experience, could furnish the knowledge, so nature decrees that he must return to Earth, after intervals of rest, to take up his work where he dropped it, exactly as a child takes up its work in school each day, after the intervening sleep of night. It is not argument against this theory to say that man does not remember his former lives. We cannot recall all the events of our present lives. We do not recollect our labors in learning to write, yet we have acquired a knowledge of the art of writing, which proves that we did learn. All the faculties we possess are a proof that we acquired them sometime, somewhere. Some people do remember their past, however, as a remarkable instance related at the end of the next chapter will show, and is but one among many.

Again, if their were no return to Earth, what is the use of living? Why strive for anything? Why should a life of happiness in an eternal heaven be the reward for a good life? What benefit could come from a good life in a heaven where everybody is already happy? Surely in a place where everybody is happy and contented there is no need for sympathy, self-sacrifice or wise counsel! No one would need them here; but on Earth there are many who need those very things and such humanitarian and altruistic qualities are of the greatest service to struggling humanity. Therefore the Great Law, which works for Good, brings man back to work again in the world for the benefit to himself and others, with his acquired treasures, instead of letting them go to waste in a heaven where no one needs them.

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That ends this rather lengthy post, but that is not the entirety of what the book offers. My intent was to provide an overview as an introduction to what, in Esoteric knowledge and wisdom, can be known on this subject. As a sort of summary, I created this infographic modeled after an image from the book.

 

 

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Footnotes

1. Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 19.01.1924; Cosmic Workings in Earth & Man
2. The soul body enables an animal or a human being to consciously experience the quality of the sense impressions inwardly. This inner sensing is then manifested in the feelings of pleasure or displeasure. When a plant reacts to the outer stimuli (e.g. sunflower following the movement of the sun, etc.) this does not mean that the sunflower feels the pleasure of sun-bathing as we do. If response to the outer stimuli were the proof of feeling life, then we would need to ascribe it also to all minerals which react to the presence of another mineral in a chemical reaction.
3. Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy, Anthroposophic Press, 1994 (1910)
4. Francis Edmunds, An Introduction to Anthroposophy, Sophia Books
5. The soul body enables perceptions, impressions and feelings related to them; for that reason it is also called ‘sentient body’. We need all this to be conscious of what is happening around us. However, the soul body doesn’t enable us to be conscious of our own existence; this we can reach only by means of thinking which is one of the basic functions of the ego.
6. Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science – An Outline, Rudolf Steiner Press
7. I’m not sure if this statement is meant to convey that this is untrue or not. When my mother died and my wife and I returned home (after several days and a plane flight) we experienced something “extraordinary” upon entering the house after being gone. You would have to understand the relationship my Mother had with Erin and I, but suffice it to say the atmosphere in the house was purified, holy if you will. It was unmistakable. There was a residual presence of something/someone “not of this world.” Just food for thought. The dead are indeed with us.
8. There are several pages hereafter that describe what the first heaven is like for the young child that dies. Suffice it to say, it is wonderful. You can read it in full in the book beginning on page 117.
9. In the several days immediately following Erin’s father’s death, she experienced “communication” from him while she was in her waking state. In part, the message she received from him is that he did not realize he was dead. At what stage of his “ascent” he was experiencing I cannot be sure. However, sometime later Erin had a dream where she talked with her father, Erin asking whether or not she was dead – to which her father responded that no, she was alive and it was he that was dead. Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture in 1918 titled The Dead are With Us, which is available on the RSArchive website. It ends with this quote: “The dead are in our midst — this sentence is in itself an affirmation of the spiritual world; and only the spiritual world can awaken within us the consciousness that the dead are, in very truth, with us.”

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