The Journey After Death

Appendix

1. The Moment of Death and the Period Thereafter, GA 168

   22 February 1916, Leipzig

   The time in which we live reminds us daily and hourly of death, this significant event in human life; it reminds us of man's passage through the portal of death. For only in the light of spiritual science does death become a real event in the true meaning of the word, because spiritual science shows us the eternal forces that are active within us, that pass through births and deaths and take on a special form of existence between birth and death, in order to assume another form of existence after their passage through the portal of death. In the light of spiritual science, death becomes an event, instead of being merely the abstract end of life (only a materialistic world-conception can look upon death as the end of life); it becomes a deep and serious event within the whole compass of human life. Even from our own ranks, dear friends of ours have left us in order to pass through the portal of death, chiefly as a result of the present historical events, but also for other reasons, and so it may perhaps be particularly appropriate just now to say a few things on death, on this great event, and on the facts of human life that are connected with it.

   Explanations have often been given in our spiritual-scientific lectures on the life between death and a new birth, so that we were able to gain many essential facts, particularly in regard to this subject. The course which spiritual science has followed up to now will have shown you that in every single case it can only speak of things from one definite standpoint, so that a more accurate knowledge can gradually be acquired by speaking of things repeatedly and throwing light upon them from many points of view. Today I shall therefore add to the facts that you already know in connection with this subject a few things that may be useful to our comprehension of the world as a whole.

   Through spiritual science, we consider, to begin with (and that is a good thing), the human being such as he stands before us, here in the physical world, as an expression of his whole being. We must depart first of all from the manner in which the human being presents himself to us in the physical world; and for this reason, I have frequently pointed out that we obtain, as it were, a general view of man's whole being if we contemplate him so that we first take, as a foundation, his physical body which we learn to know externally in the physical world through our senses and the scientific dissection of what we perceive through the senses. We then proceed by studying that form of organization which we designate as our etheric body: this already possesses a super-sensible character and cannot, therefore, be contemplated with the aid of the ordinary intellect, which is bound to the brain, and is consequently also inaccessible to our ordinary science. The etheric body is an organism having a super-sensible character, concerning which we may say that it was already known to men such as Immanuel Hermann Fichte, son of the great thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte, to Troxler and others. Indeed, man's etheric body can only be grasped through imaginative knowledge owing to its super-sensible character; but as far as imaginative knowledge is concerned, it can be contemplated externally, just as the physical-sensory body can be contemplated externally through our ordinary sensory knowledge.

   We then ascend in our contemplation to the astral body. The astral body in man cannot be contemplated in an external-sensory manner in the same way in which we contemplate the physical body through our external senses, or in the same way in which we contemplate our etheric body through our inner sense; the astral body is something that can only be experienced inwardly. We must experience it inwardly, and in order to experience it we must be within it. The same thing applies to the fourth member which must be grasped in the physical world, to the ego. With these four members of human nature we build up our whole being.

   Past lectures showed us that what we designate as man's physical body is a very complicated structure, formed during long periods of development, that passed through the stages of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon; also the evolution of the Earth contributed to this development of the physical body, from the very beginning of earthly existence up to our time. A complicated process of development therefore built up our physical body.

   That form of contemplation which is, to begin with, accessible to us in the physical world merely sees the external aspect of everything that lives within the physical body. Even ordinary science merely sees this external aspect. We might say: our ordinary physical contemplation and ordinary science, in the form in which it now lives in the world, merely know of the physical body as much as we would know of a house if we would only go round it outside, without ever going inside, so that we would never learn to know what it is like inside, nor what people live in it.

   Of course, those who stand upon the foundation of ordinary science, in the usual materialistic meaning, will argue: 'We are thoroughly acquainted with the interior of the physical body! We know what it is like, because we have frequently studied the brain inside the skull when dissecting corpses; we have frequently studied the stomach and the heart.' This interior, however, that can thus be studied from outside, this spatial interior, is not what I mean when I speak of man's inner being. Even this spatial interior is nothing but an external thing. Indeed, in the case of the physical body, this spatial interior is far more external than the real spatial interior.

   This must sound strange. But our sense-organs — you know this from other descriptions contained in our spiritual science were formed already during the Saturn period and we carry them on the surface of our body. Spatially speaking, they are outside. Nevertheless, they were built by forces that are far more spiritual than those that formed our stomach or everything that exists, spatially speaking, inside our body. What is inside our body is built up by the least spiritual of forces. Strange though it may sound, I must nevertheless point out that we really speak of ourselves in an entirely mistaken manner upside down, we might say. Since we live on the physical plane, it is natural to speak in that way; nevertheless the way in which we speak of ourselves is quite wrong. We should really designate the skin of our face as our interior, and the stomach as our exterior. This would lead us far closer to the truth! It would lead us closer to the real truth if we were to say: we eat in such a way that we send the food out of us; when we send food into our stomach, we really send it out, we do not send it into our body, as we generally say at the present time. The more our organs lie on the surface, the more spiritual are the forces from which they come; and the more they lie inside our body, the less spiritual are the forces that gave rise to them.

   The descriptions that were given so far in our spiritual science enable you to grasp this with a certain ease. If you carefully remember the descriptions of spiritual science, you will no doubt remember what it says in regard to the Moon stage of development, namely, that something split off during the Moon stage of development, and that something also split off during the Earth-development; it went out into the world's spaces from the Saturn, Sun and Moon stages of development. A very strange thing is connected with this splitting-off process, namely, we were turned inside out! Our inside became, our outside and our outside became our inside. During the Saturn and Sun periods, our human countenance, which is now turned towards the outer world, was really turned towards our inner being. Of course, this was only the case during the early stages of development; but even during a part of the Moon period, during the Moon existence, the foundation of the inner organs which we now possess was still formed from outside. Since that time, we have really been turned inside out, like an overcoat that can be turned. We should bear in mind that many super-sensible facts are connected with our physical body. Its whole structure is super-sensible; the super-sensible world has formed it, and when we look upon the physical body as a whole, it merely shows us its external aspect.

   If we now come to the etheric body, we shall find that it is neither visible nor accessible to the physical-sensory contemplation. But when the human being passes through the portal of death, it becomes all the more important. The time through which the human being now passes, the first days after his death, are particularly important as far as the etheric body is concerned. But we must learn to think differently, even in regard to the physical body, if we wish to grasp in the right way all that we encounter after our passage through the portal of death.

   You already know (for you can observe this even in the physical world) that when we pass through the portal of death we lay aside our physical body, as we generally say. We lay aside our physical body. Through decomposition or cremation (the only difference between these two processes lies in the length of time that they take up) the physical body is handed over to the elements of the earth. Now we might think that the physical body simply ceases to exist for those who have passed through the portal of death. But this is not the case, in this meaning. For we can hand over to the earth only those parts of our physical body that come from the earth itself. We cannot, however, hand over to the earth that part of our physical body that comes from the Old Moon existence, nor that part which comes from the Old Sun existence or from the Old Saturn existence. For those parts that come from the Old Saturn existence, from the Sun existence, from the Moon existence, and even from a great portion of the Earth existence, are super-sensible forces. These super-sensible forces contained in our physical body, of which only the external part is accessible to our sensory contemplation, as explained just now — where do these super-sensible forces go to after we have passed through the portal of death? As stated, we hand over to the earth, we return to the earth, only that part of our physical body — of that most wonderful structure which exists in the world, to begin with, as a form — we return to the earth only what the earth has given to the physical body. And where is the other part when we have passed through the portal of death? The other part withdraws from the one that sinks down into the earth, as it were, through the process or decomposition or cremation; the other part is taken up by the whole universe.

   If you now think of everything you can at all imagine in the environment of the earth, including the planets and the fixed stars, if you imagine this in the most spiritual form, this spiritually conceived idea would give you the place where the spiritual part of our physical body abides after death. Only a portion of this spiritual part, a portion contained in the element of warmth, separates and remains with the earth. But every other spiritual part of our physical body is borne out into the spaces of the universe, into the whole cosmos.

   Where do we go to when we abandon our physical body? Where do we dive down? Through our death, we go out with lightning speed into that which forms our physical body from out of all the super-sensible forces. Imagine that all the constructive forces that have worked upon your physical body, ever since the time of Old Saturn, were to stretch themselves into infinity in order to prepare the place in which you live between death and a new birth. Between birth and death, all this is drawn together, I might say, within the space enclosed by your skin; it is merely drawn together.

   When we are outside our physical body, we experience something that is of the utmost importance for the whole subsequent life between death and a new birth. I have often mentioned this. This experience is of opposite character to the corresponding experience during our life here, upon the physical plane. During our life upon the physical plane we cannot look back as far as the hour of our birth; we cannot look back upon it with the aid of our ordinary cognitive power. There is not one person who can remember his own birth, nor look back upon it. The only thing we know is that we were born, in the first place, because we have been told so by others, and in the second place, because all the other human beings that came to the earth after us were also born, so that we infer from this that we, too, were born. But we cannot pass through the real experience of our own birth.

   Exactly the opposite is the case with the corresponding experience after death. Whereas, during our physical life, the immediate contemplation of our birth can never rise up before our soul, the moment of death stands before our soul throughout our life between death and a new birth, if we only look upon it spiritually. We must realize that we then look upon the moment of death from the other side. Here, on earth, death has a terrifying aspect only because we look upon it as a kind of dissolution, as an end. But when we look back upon the moment of death from the other side, from the spiritual side, then death continually appears to us as a victory of the spirit, as the Spirit that is extricating itself from the physical. It then appears as the greatest, most beautiful and significant event. Moreover, this experience kindles that which constitutes our ego-consciousness after death. Throughout the time between death and a new birth we have an ego-consciousness that not only resembles but far exceeds that which we have here during our physical life. We would not have this ego-consciousness if we could not look back incessantly, if we would not always see — but from the other side, from the spiritual side — that moment in which our spiritual part extricated itself from the physical. We know that we are an ego only because we know that we have died, that our spiritual has freed itself from our physical part. When we cannot contemplate the moment of death, beyond the portal of death, then our ego-consciousness after death is in the same case as our physical ego-consciousness here upon the earth when we are asleep. Just as we know nothing of our physical ego-consciousness when we are asleep, so we know nothing concerning ourselves after death if we do not constantly have before us the moment of death. It stands before us as one of the most beautiful and loftiest moments.

   You see, even in this case we must set about thinking in an entirely different way of the spiritual world than of the sensory-physical world. If we indolently remain with the thoughts which we have in connection with the physical-sensory world, it will be impossible for us to grasp the spiritual in any way more precisely. For the most important thing after death is that the moment of death is viewed from the other side. This kindles our ego-consciousness on the other side. Here, in the physical world, we have, as it were, one side of ego-consciousness; after death, we have the other side of ego-consciousness. I explained just now where we should look for the super-sensible part of our physical body after death. We should seek this physical body in the shape of a relation of forces, of an organism of forces, as a cosmos of forces, within the whole world. This physical essence prepares the place through which we must pass between death and a new birth.

   Within our physical body, which is so small in comparison with the whole world, our skin really encloses a microcosm, something that is, in reality, a whole world. Trivially speaking, I might say that this world is merely rolled together and that afterwards it unrolls again and fills out the universe, with the exception of one tiny space that always remains empty.

   Between death and a new birth we really exist everywhere in the world; we live in it with that part which, here on earth, lies at the foundation of our physical body in the form of super-sensible forces. We are everywhere, except in that one place. This remains empty. It is the space enclosed by our skin, the space which we take up in the physical world. This remains empty.

   Yet we constantly look upon this empty space. That is to say, we look upon our own self, from outside; we look into a concavity. This remains empty. It remains empty to such an extent that a fundamental feeling rises up in connection with it. Namely, we do not contemplate things in an abstract manner, we do not simply stare at them, but our contemplation is connected with a powerful inner life-experience, with a mighty experience. It is connected with the fact that when we contemplate this emptiness, a feeling rises up in us, a feeling that accompanies us throughout our life between death and a new birth and constitutes a great deal of what we generally designate as our life beyond. It is the feeling that there is something in the world which must again and again be filled out by us. And then we acquire the feeling: 'I exist in the world for a definite purpose, which I, alone, can fulfil.' Thus we learn to know our place within the world. We feel that we are building stones, without which the world could not exist. This is what arises through the contemplation of that empty space. When we gaze at it, we are overcome by a feeling telling us that we stand within the world as something that forms part of it.

   All this is connected with the further development of our physical body. The more elementary forms of description only enable us to explain schematically, as it were, a reality of the spiritual world that really requires to be explained in the form of images. In order to rise gradually to those concepts which penetrate more deeply into the reality of the spiritual world, we must first have those images.

   We know that our next experience is a kind of retrospective memory that lasts for days. But this retrospective memory is inappropriately designated (but nevertheless with a certain right) as a retrospective memory, for we have before us now, for a few days, something that resembles a tableau, or a panorama, woven out of all we have experienced during our past life. It does not, however, rise up in the same way in which an ordinary memory rises up in our physical body. You see, the memories that live in our physical body are of such a kind that we draw them out of our memory. Memory is a force that is connected with our physical body. Our recollections rise up in the form of thoughts; through the power of memory we draw them out successively within the stream of time. But the retrospective memory after death is of such a kind that everything that occurred during our early life now surrounds us simultaneously, as if it were a panorama. Our life-experiences now rise up in the form of imaginations. We can only say that we now live, for whole days, within these experiences. What we experienced just before death and what we experienced during our childhood stand before us simultaneously in powerful pictures. A panorama of our life, a life-picture, stands before us and it reveals, simultaneously, in a woof woven out of the ether, what normally occurs successively within the stream of time. Everything that we now see before us lives in the ether.

   We feel, above all, that we are now surrounded by something that is alive. Everything within it lives and weaves. And then we experience that it resounds spiritually, that it shines forth spiritually and gives warmth spiritually.

   We know that this life-tableau disappears after a few days. What makes it cease and what is the essence of this life-tableau?

   If we study the true essence of this life-tableau, we must really say: everything that we have experienced during our life is woven into it. How did we experience these things? In the form of thoughts connected with our experiences. Everything that we experienced in the form of thoughts and concepts is contained in this picture of our life.

   In order to grasp this concretely, let us now say: during our earthly life we lived together with another human being, we spoke with him and, in speaking with him, his thoughts communicated with our thoughts. We received love from him, we allowed his soul to influence us and experienced all this inwardly. In this manner we shared the experiences of the person we lived with. He lived and we lived, and through him we experienced something. What we experienced through him now appears to us woven into this etheric life-tableau. It is the same thing that constitutes our memories. Think, for instance, of the moment, ten or twenty years ago, when you first met him and experienced something through him. Imagine that this memory now rises up before you, but that you do not remember it in the same way in which you would remember things during your ordinary life. The ordinary memories are grey and faded, but now you remember things in such a way that they rise up within you as LIVING memories; you see your friend standing before you in exactly the same way in which he stood before you during the real experience.

   Here, on earth, we are often very dreamy and what we experience upon the physical plane in a living and hearty manner becomes dulled and loses its vitality. But when we pass through the portal of death, when our experiences rise up before us in the life-tableau, they are no longer dull and lifeless but exist there in the original freshness and vitality which they possessed when we passed through them during our earthly life. In this form they become interwoven with our life-tableau; in this form we experience them after death for whole days.

   In regard to the physical world, we have the impression that our physical body falls away from us when we die; in a similar way we now have the impression that our etheric body too falls away from us after a certain number of days, but it does not fall away from us in the same way in which our physical body falls away, for it becomes interwoven with the whole universe, with the whole world. It lives in the world and stamps its impressions upon the whole world while we are experiencing our life-tableau. What we thus have before us in the form of a life-tableau has now been handed over to the external world: it lives in our surroundings and has been taken over by the world.

   During those days we have an important and impressive experience in this connection. For, after death, our experiences do not merely resemble the memories which we have during our earthly life but they are in every way substance for new experiences. Even the manner in which we grasp our ego, through the fact that we constantly look back upon our death, is a new experience, for our earthly senses do not enable us to experience anything similar. This can only be grasped through the knowledge of initiation. But even what we experience during the days in which we are surrounded by this life-tableau, by this etheric life that frees itself from us and becomes interwoven with the universe, even what we experience in this manner is impressive and lofty, it is an overwhelming and powerful experience for the human soul.

   You see, during our physical life on earth, we face the world: we face the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms. They enable us to experience what our senses are able to experience, what our intellect, that is bound to the brain, obtains through the sense-experiences, what our feelings, that are connected with our vascular system, experience: we experience all these things here on earth.

   But in reality, and from a loftier standpoint, we human beings are extremely great dunces (excuse this expression!), gigantic dunces, between birth and death. In regard to the wisdom of the great world, we are fearfully stupid if we believe that here on earth, when we experience something in the manner described and bear it along in the form of memories, everything is finished; we are fearfully stupid if we think that our experiences are finished when we take them up in this manner as human beings. For while we experience things, while we form concepts and feelings rise up in our experiences, the whole world of the Hierarchies is active within this process through which we acquire our experiences; the Hierarchies live and weave in it.

   When we face a human being and look into his eyes, then the spirits of the Hierarchies, the Hierarchies themselves, the work of the Hierarchies, live in our gaze and in what is sent towards us through the gaze of the other human being. Our experience merely shows us the external aspect of things for, in reality, the Gods work within our experiences. We think that we only live for our own sake; yet the Gods work out something through our experiences; they obtain from them something that they can weave into the world. We form ideas, we have feeling experiences; the Gods take them up and communicate them to their world. And when we die, we know that the purpose of our life is to give the Gods the opportunity to spin out of our life this woof coming from our etheric body and to hand it over to the whole universe. The Gods gave us the chance to live in order that they might spin out something for themselves, thus enriching the world.

   This is an overwhelming thought. Every one of our strides is the external expression of an event connected with the Gods; it forms part of that woof which the Gods use for their plan of the world and which they leave to us only until we pass through the portal of death. After our death they take it away from us and incorporate with the universe these, our human, destinies. Our human destinies are, at the same time, the deeds of Gods, and the form in which they appear to us human beings is merely their outward aspect. This is the significant, important and essential fact which we should bear in mind.

   What we acquire inwardly, during our earthly life, through the fact that we can think and have feelings, whom does this belong to after our death? Whom does it now belong to? After our death it belongs to the universe. We look back upon our death, and in the same way we now look back with that part which remains to us, namely, with our astral body and our ego, upon that which has become interwoven with the universe, with the world. During our earthly life we bear within us what thus becomes interwoven with the universe after our death; we bear it within us as our etheric body. But now it is spun up and becomes interwoven with the world. And we now look upon it, we contemplate it. After our death, we look upon it in the same way in which we experience it inwardly here on earth. It now lives in the world outside. Just as here on earth we see stars, mountains, rivers, so after our death we see, in addition to what our physical body has become with lightning speed, also that part of our own experiences which has become interwoven with the universe. That part of our own experiences which now incorporates with the whole world-structure is reflected in those members which we still possess, in our astral body and in our ego; it is reflected in the same way in which the external world is reflected here on earth in our physical organs and through our physical being.

   While this is reflected in us we acquire something that we cannot acquire during our earthly life, something that we shall only acquire later on, during the Jupiter period, in the form of a more external, physical impression. Now we acquire it spiritually, through the fact that our etheric being outside makes an impression upon us. This impression which is thus made upon us is, to begin with, a spiritual one; it is made in the form of images; in its image-character it is, however, the prototype of what we shall one day possess upon Jupiter: namely, the Spirit-Self.

   A Spirit-Self is therefore born to us through the fact that our etheric part becomes interwoven with the universe; this Spirit-Self comes to birth spiritually, not in the form in which we shall have it later on, upon Jupiter.

   The etheric body has now detached itself, so that we now have the astral body, the ego and the Spirit-Self.

   The astral body and the ego therefore remain to us from our earthly life.

   You already know that our astral body, in the earthly form in which it was subjected to us, remains with us for a long time after death. The astral body remains with us because it is permeated with all those things that only pertain to the earthly-human life, and because it cannot immediately expel this. We now pass through a time during which we can only cast off little by little what has become of our astral body as a result of our earthly life.

   You see, here on earth we can only experience, in regard to the astral body, one half at the most of everything through which we pass. We really experience only half of what takes place in every one of our experiences. Let us take an example. Imagine — this applies both to good and to evil thoughts and actions — but let us take as an example an evil action. Imagine that you say something bad to another person and that your words hurt him. When we say something unkind we only experience that part which concerns us personally; we only experience the feelings that prompted us to say those evil words. This is the soul-impression which we gather when we say bad and unkind things. But the other person to whom we addressed our unkind words has an entirely different impression; he has, as it were, the other half of the impression and feels hurt. The second half of the impression lives in him. What we ourselves experience during our physical life on earth is one thing, and what the other person experiences is another thing.

   Now imagine the following. After our death, when we pass backwards through our life, we must once more live through everything that other people, outside, have experienced through us. As we go backwards through our life, we experience the effects of our thoughts and actions. Between death and a new birth we therefore pass through our life by going through it backwards. And when we have gone back as far as our birth, we are ripe for the moment when also that part of our astral body may be cast off which is permeated with earthly things. It abandons us, and a new state of existence begins for us when we have cast off our astral body.

   The astral body always kept us connected, I might say, with the earth; it maintained this connection in all our experiences. When we pass through our astral body — not in a dreamy condition, but by living through our earthly experiences backwards — we are still connected with our earthly life; we still stand within our earthly existence. Now that we have cast off — but this is not the right expression; it is, however, impossible to use another one — now that we have cast off our astral body, we are quite free of all that pertains to the earth and we live in the real spiritual world.

   A new experience now sets in. This casting-off of the astral body is, again, merely one aspect of the whole experience; the other aspect is an entirely different one. When we have passed through our earthly experiences and no longer have our astral body, we feel, as it were, inwardly filled and permeated with — we cannot say with material — but with spirit; then we really feel that we are in the spiritual world and the spiritual world rises up within us. In former times it rose up before us in the outer world when we contemplated the universe and saw our own etheric body interwoven with the universe. But now it rises up within us; we now experience it inwardly. And our ego rises up within us as a prototype of what we shall possess physically only upon Venus; our ego rises up as a prototype of the Life-Spirit.

   We now consist of Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and ego.

   Just as here on earth we live in a rather dreamy state from our birth until that moment of our childhood in which we acquire self-consciousness, which is the earliest moment of life that we can recall, so we now lead a form of life that is fully conscious, indeed more conscious and higher than our earthly life. However, we experience a purely spiritual life, only when we have detached ourselves from our astral body, from our astral life, retaining only that part of our astral which permeates us inwardly. Consequently, we are, from that time onwards, spirits among spirits.

   Now another important and essential experience rises up. During our life in the physical world we carry on our work, do this or that thing and have experiences in connection with all these things. Our experiences are, however, not limited to the physical world; simultaneously and in connection with them, we also experience something else. Although the expression which I shall now use for these simultaneous experiences is just an ordinary, more general expression, let me nevertheless use this word; while we experience these things, we grow tired, we get used up. This is constantly the case: we grow tired. Although our weariness is eliminated for our next state of consciousness through the fact that we sleep, or rather, through the fact that we rest during our sleep, this elimination, or adjustment, is nevertheless only a partial one, for we know, of course, that during our life we gradually become used up, we grow older, and our strength gradually dwindles. Consequently, we also grow tired in a wider sense. When we grow older, we know that we cannot adjust everything by sleeping. Thus we wear out our strength, we grow tired, during our life on earth.

   Indeed, we are now able to view this problem from another aspect. After our preceding explanation, we can now advance this problem in a different way; we can ask: why do the Gods allow us to grow weary? The fact that here on earth we get tired and wear out our strength gives us something that is really most significant for our whole life. Let us, however, grasp the idea that we get tired, in a wider sense than the usual one. Let us place it clearly before our soul.

   You will grasp it best of all if you imagine it in the following way. Ask any one of those present: do you know anything concerning the interior of your head? Probably only a person who is suffering from a headache would answer that at the present moment he does know something concerning the interior of his head. He alone would feel what the inside of his head is like; all the others would not feel it.

   We can feel our organs only when they are not quite in order; we are then to some extent aware of their existence through our feelings. As a rule, we only have a more general feeling of our physical body, and this feeling increases when anything is out of order. But when we only have this general feeling, we know very little concerning the interior of our body. Those who suffer from bad headaches know a little more concerning the inside of their head than an anatomist, who is merely acquainted with the head's vessels. In growing more and more tired, during the course of our life, we acquire an ever stronger feeling in regard to the body's interior, its spatial interior.

   Consider the fact that the more weary we grow, the more the infirmities of life arise, for instance the infirmities of old age. Our life consists in that we gradually begin to feel and to sense our physical body. We learn to sense this physical part of our being because it becomes hardened within us and because it pushes itself, as it were, into our being. Just because it develops so slowly we regard it, I might say, as an insignificant feeling. Its real significance could be gauged if we could feel (excuse this trivial expression, but it conveys what I wish to say) in the pink of health, like an exuberantly healthy child, and immediately afterwards, for the sake of comparison, like an old man of 80 or 85, whose limbs have grown fragile. This would enable us to experience that feeling more strongly, simply because it develops so slowly. Yet growing weary is a real process. At first, it does not exist at all, for a child is full of exuberant vitality. But later on, fatigue gradually begins to drown the vital forces, and then the process of getting tired breaks through. We have the possibility of growing weary, and during this process (even though it only gives us, let us say, a dim feeling of our body's inner structure), during this process something takes place within us, something really takes place within us.

   Our life in the physical world only shows us the outer aspect of deep, significant and lofty mysteries. The fact that this dim, insignificant feeling of growing weary accompanies us throughout our life, so that we are able to feel the inner structure of our body, is merely the outer aspect of something that becomes interwoven with us; it is wonderfully woven out of pure wisdom, a complete woof of pure wisdom.

   While we thus grow weary during our life and begin to experience ourselves inwardly, a delicate knowledge becomes interwoven with us, a knowledge of the wonderful constitution of our organs, of our inner organs. Our heart grows tired, yet this weariness means that a knowledge of the heart's structure becomes interwoven with us, a knowledge of how the heart is built from out of the universe. Our stomach gets tired — most of all, when we spoil it by eating too much — yet during this process that tires the stomach, an image of wisdom from out of the cosmos is woven into us, and this image shows us how the stomach is built up.

   The lofty, wonderful structure of our organism, of this great work of art, arises within us in the form of an image. But this image only comes to life when we cast off that part of our astral body which is bound to the earth. What now lives within us, what now fills us as Life-Spirit, is the wisdom connected with our own being, it is the wisdom connected with the wonderful structure of our inner being and this wisdom now lives in us.

   Now begins a time in which we compare, as it were, what fills us in the form of Life-Spirit from out of the wisdom of our inner being with the etheric woof that has already been woven into the universe. Our task is now to compare how one thing fits in with the other, and we then build up, in the form of an image, our inner being, we give it the shape which it should have during our next incarnation.

   This is how we begin, but little by little our life approaches the Midnight, which you will find described in one of the Mystery Plays, in The Soul's Awakening. Particularly after the World-Midnight we are engaged in a work that consists in that we now participate in the world's creative work; we call into life what we afterwards enjoy here. During our life between death and a new birth we share in the work, we participate in the weaving of the Gods' images. We have the privilege of sharing in a divine task, in what the Gods aimed at when they placed man into the world. We are allowed to prepare our next incarnation.

   Of course, this is not only connected with processes that exclusively and egoistically concern our own being, for all manner of other processes take place as well. This may be evident particularly from the following:

   If we gradually succeed in experiencing, in spiritual contemplation, this wonderful process — which is, above all, far higher than the one which takes place on earth, when summer and winter alternate, or when the sun rises and sets and when all that takes place which occurs in the form of earthly work — then something occurs in the spiritual world finally leading to our earthly incarnation, to human existence. This is a lofty, heavenly process, which has not only an external significance but a deep significance for the whole world.

   We also encounter something else when we contemplate this process. It may sound strange to say this but, you see, the higher mysteries at first necessarily appear strange in the light of a physical-sensory contemplation. What rises up before our soul in connection with these mysteries must move us. The more it moves us, the better it is, for these things, the very nature of these things, should not approach our soul so that we remain dry and indifferent. They should not be taken up in such a way that we remain indifferent, dry and cool; but they should, instead, give us a soul-impression of the loftiness and greatness of the divine-spiritual world.

   We can say: if anybody would undertake to present a spiritual science in such a dry way that it does not take hold of our whole being, and so that we do not gain an impression of the loftiness and greatness of the divine-spiritual that pulses and weaves through the world — if, after all these descriptions, we would live on indifferently and dryly, then we would be born without heads, in accordance with the present conditions of the world and in spite of everything we know! We would be born without heads! The structure of our head is something that we are unable to build. In its whole structure the human head is such a lofty image of the universe that the human being would be unable to form it, even with the aid of that life-wisdom which is woven into him; he would be unable to prepare it for the next incarnation. All the divine Hierarchies must co-operate in this work. Your head, this slightly irregular and somewhat transformed sphere, is a real microcosm, a true image of the great world-sphere. Within it lives, within it is collected, everything that exists outside in the universe. All the forces that are active in the different Hierarchies co-operate in order to produce the head. And when we begin to shape our next incarnation, from out the wisdom which we collected during the process of growing weary, all the Hierarchies co-operate and influence this activity in order to embody in us, as an image of the whole wisdom of the Gods, what afterwards becomes our head.

   While all this occurs, our physical, hereditary stream is being prepared generations ahead here upon the earth. Just as after our death we can only hand over to the earth what comes from the earth, so our parents and grand-parents only give us that part of our being which pertains to the earth. Our earthly part is merely our exterior; it is merely the external expression within this earthly part. Woven into it is, in the first place, everything that we ourselves are able to weave in the manner described, and what all the Hierarchies of the Gods weave, before we gain a connection (through conception) with that which enwraps us and clothes us about when we enter the physical plane.

   I explained to you that the more of this lofty knowledge we take up in our feelings the better it will be for us. Just consider the fact: we use our head. In so far as we live in materialism, we generally have not the slightest idea that whole Hierarchies of Gods are at work in order to produce our head, in order to mould that which lies, spiritually, at the foundation of our head, so that we are able to live. If we grasp this, in the meaning of a spiritual-scientific knowledge, it will spontaneously be filled with feelings of gratitude and thankfulness towards the whole universe.

   Consequently, what we acquire through spiritual science should incessantly continue to increase and raise our feelings. In the sphere of spiritual science, our sentient life should more and more hold pace with our cognitive work. It is not good to remain behind with our feelings. Whenever we learn to know a new and higher portion of spiritual science, we should be able to unfold, I might say, more and more reverent feelings towards the world's mysteries, which finally lead to the mysteries of man. A true progress in spiritual science really lies in this purifying, spiritual warmth of our feelings.

   Let me mention one more thing, because it completes all that we have contemplated in this lecture. Here, in the physical world, we gradually grow accustomed to life by having, to begin with, the dull consciousness of childhood. At first we only recognize our mother and, little by little, we learn to know other people. As we grow accustomed to life in the physical world, we believe that we are constantly coming across new people. As far as our physical consciousness is concerned this is, in fact, true. But when we pass through the portal of death we have a real, true connection with all the souls that we encountered during our earthly life. They rise up again before our spiritual eye. The souls with whom we were connected during our earthly life and that crossed the portal of death before us, we find these souls, as it were. The words 'to find' really applies to physical conditions, but we may use it here to define that living way in which souls approach other souls. This 'finding' of the souls that crossed the portal of death before us should, however, be imagined in such a way that we approach them, as it were, in an opposite manner from the one in which we approach human beings here on the physical plane.

   On the physical plane we encounter human beings so that we first approach them physically, and then we gradually become acquainted with their inner being. Their inner being unfolds only when we penetrate into their inner life. Hence, what we experience inwardly in connection with a human being is the result of that which develops from out of our own inner life. When we ourselves have crossed the portal of death and encounter the souls that have passed through the portal of death before us, we know to begin with: there is that particular soul. We can feel it, we know that it is there. Now we must, however, surrender our whole inner being to the first impression that arises, to the first most abstract impression. Here on earth we should allow other human beings to exercise their influence upon us; but in the spiritual world we must surrender our inner being, and we must now build up the image, the imagination, ourselves. The imaginative element, what we can look upon, this we must gradually build up. You may have an idea of the soul's experiences after death if you imagine that you do not see it all, but that you take hold of it ... and as you gradually encompass it with your grasp, you form an image, you build up an image for yourself. You must therefore build up in inner activity the image of the soul whom you encounter. You realize, as it were: 'I am now facing a soul — what soul is it? It is the soul ...' (and this knowledge rises out of your own soul) 'towards whom I had the feelings of a son towards his mother.' And you begin to feel: 'I experience myself together with this soul.' Now you begin to build its spiritual form. You must be active within it, and then it develops into an image. Through the fact that you build this image together with the other soul, you are united with that dead person even before you begin to form its spiritual shape. In this manner you are united with everything with which you were united during your earthly life, that is to say, you now experience these things in their own world. You must discover them by awakening within you the power of vision, so that you may look upon them, but this requires activity on your part.

   It is not the same with souls that still dwell in their physical body, with souls that are still alive when we die. Even here on earth we encounter them in the form of images. After death we look down upon them on the earth and do not need to build up their image, for they already face us as images. The souls of those still on the earth may of course weave into these images something that can become spiritual warmth and nourishment for the dead, namely, the image which they are able to form through their thoughts for the dead, through their lasting love and memory, or — we know this, as spiritual scientists — by their reading something to the dead.

   You see, all this extends the human gaze so that it penetrates, really penetrates, into the real world. If this rises up before our soul, we begin to realize how little we know of the spiritual world. This was not always the case. Only the completely materialistic people of modern times boast of the great extent of their knowledge. But we know that in the past human beings were clairvoyant and that this ancient, atavistic clairvoyance was lost only because certain qualities had to be acquired which disappeared in the midst of an existence connected with a materialistic world. If a real materialist, a thoroughly materialistic thinker, approaches us, he will, of course, say: 'It is nonsense to speak of an ancient clairvoyance, or that people had a special knowledge in the past.' But if we would only open our physical eyes a little as we pass through the world, we would very soon discover the falsity of such an argument! It is not even so long ago that people used to know more than they do at the present time.

   You know, for we have often considered this matter — but let me mention it again at the conclusion of this lecture — that Lucifer and Ahriman have a share in our spiritual existence. We also know that in the Bible Lucifer is symbolized as a Serpent, as the Serpent on the Tree. The physical serpent, such as we see it today, and as modern painters always paint it when they depict the Paradise Scene, is not a real Lucifer; it is only his outer image, his physical image. The real Lucifer is a being that remained behind during the Moon-stage of evolution. He cannot be seen upon the earth among physical objects. If a painter wishes to paint Lucifer's real aspect he would have to paint him so that he can be grasped as an etheric form, through a kind of inner clairvoyant form of contemplation. He would then appear in the shape in which he works upon us; he would show that he is not connected with our head or with our organism in so far as these are exclusively formed by the earth, but that he is connected with the continuation of our head, with the spinal cord. A painter who knows something through spiritual science would therefore paint Adam and Eve, the Tree, and on the Tree the Serpent, but this serpent would only be a symbol and it would have a human head. If we were to come across such a painting today, we would assume that the painter has, of course, been able to paint this picture through spiritual science.

   Probably such a painting may even be found here in Leipzig; but people do not go about with open eyes, they go through the world with bandaged eyes. In the Art Gallery of Hamburg there is a painting of the Middle Ages by Master Bertram, setting forth the Paradise Scene. In that painting, the Serpent on the Tree is painted correctly, as described just now. That picture can be seen there. But other painters have also painted the Paradise Scene in that way. What may we gather from this? That in the Middle Ages people still knew this, they knew it to the extent of being able to paint it. In other words: it is not so long ago that human beings were pushed completely on to the physical plane.

   The course of man's spiritual history as related by materialistic thinkers, is, after all, nothing but an outer deception, because they think that man always had the aspect which he assumed in the course of the past few centuries, whereas it is not so long ago that he used to look into the spiritual world with the aid of his ancient clairvoyance. He had to abandon the spiritual world because he was not free, and in order to acquire full freedom and his ego-consciousness it was necessary that he should leave the spiritual world. Now he must once more find his way into the spiritual world.

   Spiritual science therefore prepares something very important and essential: namely, that we may once more penetrate livingly into the spiritual world. Again and again let us conjure up in our soul the necessity of feeling that this small number of men that is now living in the very midst of a materialistic world and is led through its karma to the possibility of grasping mankind's most important task for the future — that this small number of human beings is called upon to fulfil important, most important, tasks through its soul-life. We should realize without any pride, we should realize modestly and humbly, the great difference between a soul that is gradually finding its way into the spiritual world, and all the people outside, who have not the slightest idea of this, who are, above all, not willing to have any idea of it. This fact should not merely arouse in us discouraging and painful feelings, but produce feelings that incite us to continue our work with increasing energy and to work faithfully within the stream of spiritual science, to which we were led through our karma.

   When we were together last I also mentioned that when a human being passes through the portal of death before having lived through the whole of his life, then that part which is given to him in the form of an etheric body has not been used up completely. When a human being passes through the portal of death in his youth, then his etheric body might still have worked for years upon his physical body. But these forces do not get lost; they are still there. I also mentioned that in the present time, through the fact that every day and every hour death so numerously approaches mankind, many, many etheric bodies that might still have worked for a long time upon their physical bodies here on the physical plane are handed over to the spiritual-etheric world and hover in it. The forces that might, for decades, have provided for the physical body, become spiritual forces that co-operate in the spiritual development of humanity. Thus a time will come when these forces that constitute these etheric bodies, can be used for the spiritual progress of humanity; but this time will only come if here on earth there will be human souls who are able to understand this.

   When the terrible events of the present shall have passed over the earth and there will be peace once more, then the souls of those who are still living on the earth in human bodies will have the possibility of grasping something of the fact that all those who have gone into the spiritual world before their time have their etheric bodies in that world and that they can ray their forces into the earth. It will be necessary that this fact be grasped by these souls. These souls can then co-operate in that spiritual progress which is rendered possible particularly through the many deaths of self-sacrifice.

   Imagine what it would mean if spiritual science were to disappear, and if no one were to have any comprehension for all that is being prepared in the spiritual world through these deaths of self-sacrifice! Imagine what this would mean! In that case, all those forces would become the property of Beings who would use them for other purposes than those for which they should be used, in accordance with the plan and resolution of the Gods who follow the right course of development.

   This is an admonition that also comes from the events of our time, an admonition to the effect that we should stand fully within all that which constitutes the spiritual world. For even these events of our time have their spiritual aspect. What they reveal outwardly, in the form of blood, death and sacrifices, is the external expression of an inner spiritual course of events, which should, however, be grasped in the right spirit.

   Of this I wish to remind you again and again, with the words that conclude our present considerations:

   From the courage of the fighters,
   From the blood of battles,
   From the sufferings of the abandoned,
   From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
   Shall grow out a spiritual fruit,
   If souls lead, in spirit-consciousness,
   Their hearts and minds into the spirit-realm.

   https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/MomDea_index.html

2. Man's Life after Death in the Spiritual Cosmos

   28 August 1923, Penmaenmawr, Conwy County Borough, Wales

   If we wish to bring before our souls the nature of our experiences between death and rebirth, we must above all grasp the great difference between them and those of earthly life. Here on Earth we carry out whatever we do in such a way that once done, it separates from us — it no longer belongs to us. For example, we manufacture various things and they become detached from us. Most people get free of them by selling them. Hence we find that anything a man makes on Earth, as the outcome of his will, goes out into the world in such a way that he feels relatively — I say expressly, relatively — little connection with it. And the thoughts out of which he creates something on Earth slip back within him, into his inner being, where they either remain merely passive or become memories, habits, aptitudes.

   It is different between death and a new birth. There, everything a man achieves flows back to him, in a certain sense.

   Now we must remember that here on Earth we carry out the impulses of our will on things belonging to the kingdoms of nature — on the minerals, plants and animals. We more or less mould them, move them around, and even set other people into motion.

   In the spiritual world, between death and rebirth, we are among purely spiritual Beings, partly with those whose whole existence has been in the spiritual world, who have never been incorporated in earthly substance. Among such Beings belong the higher Hierarchies — the Angels, the Exusiai, the Seraphim and Cherubim. Other names may be preferred; but here, too, there is no need to quarrel over terminology. These particular names are old and venerable; they may well be used now for what we are rediscovering in spiritual realms.

   Between his death and rebirth, accordingly, a man dwells partly among such Beings, and partly with the souls of men who have cast off their earthly bodies and taken on spiritual ones; or with those souls who are awaiting their coming re-descent to Earth. This co-existence, it is true, depends somewhat on whether we are connected with such souls, whether we have formed a bond with them in earthly life. For those persons with whom we have not been in close contact on Earth have little to do with us in the spiritual world. I shall have more to say about this.

   Then, too, a man stands in relation to other beings who have never been so directly incorporated in earthly life as he was himself, for they are at a lower stage and not ready to take on human form. These are the elemental beings who live in the kingdoms of nature, in the plant kingdom, in the kingdom of the rocks, of the minerals, as well as in that of the animals. Thus, between death and rebirth, a man grows together with the whole spirit-populated world.

   I must add that these beings are perceptible to Inspired, Intuitive and Imaginative consciousness, for with these forms of consciousness one can see into the world where we live between death and a new birth.

   Because a man lives then in a quite different way, his whole mood and condition are changed. When here on Earth, for example — I am coming back to this same important theme — we make a machine, our action, the handling and fitting together of the parts, flow from our will and our thoughts. But all this becomes detached from us. When between death and a new birth we are in the spiritual world — where as souls we are continually active, always doing something — there shines out from our actions something we recognise as thoughts living in light. Here on Earth a thought stays with us; there, it shines out in everything we do, gleaming as a being of light. So that in the spiritual world we can never do anything without a thought springing from it. This thought is not like the thought of an earthly human being which he can often conceal, however harmful it may be, for it is a personal, individual thought. But in the life between death and rebirth the thought which springs out of things is a cosmic thought, expressing the response of the whole spiritual cosmic world to what we are doing.

   Now picture this to yourselves vividly. In the life between death and a new birth a man is active. Through his activity, every action by the soul, every grasping, one might say every touch, immediately changes into a cosmic thought, so that in doing anything we imprint it on the spiritual world. Then on all sides an answer rings back from the Cosmos; out of what we do there flashes up what the Cosmos says of it, and this cosmic verdict is final. But that is not all. In this flashing up of the cosmic world of thought, something else glimmers — other thoughts which we cannot say originate in the Cosmos. Thus we find the brilliantly flashing thoughts permeated by all sorts of dark thoughts, glimmering out of our surroundings.

   While the brightly gleaming thoughts from the Cosmos fill us with a profound feeling of pleasure, the glimmering ones — very often, though not always — carry something extraordinarily disquieting; for they are thoughts still working on from our life on Earth. If we have cultivated good thoughts during earthly life, they glimmer out, after death, from the radiant cosmic environment. If we have cherished bad thoughts, evil thoughts, they may be said to glimmer out towards us from the shining thoughts of the cosmic verdict.

   In this way we behold both what the Cosmos is saying to us and what we ourselves have brought with us to the Cosmos. This is not a world that detaches itself from a person; it remains intimately bound up with him. After death he bears within him his cosmic existence, and, as a memory, his last existence on Earth. His next task is to lay aside this earthly life and to accustom himself to a different way of living, so that he may become a cosmic being in the true sense. As long as we are in that region of spiritual experience which in my book, Theosophy, I called the soul-world, we are pre-occupied with this aftermath of glimmering earthly thoughts, earthly ways of life, earthly aptitudes. Because of this we make what we feel could be beautiful cosmic forms into grotesque ones, and so, under the guidance of these distorted cosmic forms during our passage through the soul-world, we wander on through the Cosmos until we are freed from everything binding us to the Earth. Then we can find our way into the realm called spirit-land in my book, Theosophy. We have then left behind the state of soul habitual to us in physical life on Earth, and we are able to act in perfect accordance with the admonitions of those spiritual Beings whose realm we have to enter as the only one where it is possible for us to be.

   You will see that a man does not take with him into the world after death anything that lives in his physical and etheric bodies. That is thrown off and sinks away into the Cosmos. He takes with him only what as Ego and astral body he has experienced within his physical and etheric bodies.

   Something of outstanding significance and importance follows from this. While a man is going about on Earth, he regards his physical body and his etheric body — of which he knows little, but at least he feels it in his powers of growth, and so on — as his own body, but he has no right to do so. Only his Ego and his astral body are his. Everything present in his physical body and etheric body — even while he is on Earth — is the property of the divine-spiritual Beings who live and weave within them, and continue their work while the man is absent in sleep. It would go badly with anyone if he had to care for his own etheric and physical bodies in continual wakefulness between birth and death. Time and time again he is obliged to hand over his physical and etheric bodies to the Gods — especially during childhood, for then sleep is the most important thing of all. Later in life sleep works only as a corrective; the really fructifying sleep is the sleep that comes to a child in the first years of its life. Thus the human being has continually to be yielding up both physical and etheric bodies to the care of the Gods.

   In past ages of human evolution this was so clearly perceived that the body was called the temple of the Gods, for so was its wonderful structure experienced. And in all architectural work — this can best be seen in oriental buildings, but also in those of Egypt and of Greece — the laws of the physical body and the etheric body were followed. In the very way the Cherubim are set on the temples of the East, in the attitude of a sphinx, or in the placing of pillars — in all this the work of divine-spiritual Beings in the human physical and etheric bodies has been made to live again. In the course of evolution, consciousness of this has been lost; and to-day we refer to the physical body as our own — with no notion of how unjustified this is — whereas as an earthly creation it belongs in reality to the Gods. Hence, when anyone to-day talks of "my body", when he speaks of the healthy functioning of his body as due to himself, it is just an instance of the prodigious arrogance of modern man — a subconscious pride, certainly, expressed with no awareness of it, but none the less deplorable. It shows how in speaking of their bodies as their own, people are really laying claim to the property of the Gods, and this pride is embodied in their very speech.

   ---

   To all these things attention must be drawn anew by Spiritual Science; it must show how a moral element is already mixed into our ordinary naturalistic life — and truly, as we have seen in the case just referred to, it can take a by no means healthy form. These matters show how, through genuine spiritual knowledge, our whole feeling life can be so transformed that, if Spiritual Science has been really understood, even ways of speaking can become different from the way in which people like to talk under the influence of purely materialistic thinking.

   In order to understand the further experience we have between death and rebirth, we must be able to recall what was said yesterday — that, on growing accustomed to the spiritual world, a man loses the physical aspect of the stars and in its stead there arises the spiritual counterpart of the brilliance of their rays which meet the eye physically. Just as the Earth is the dwelling-place of men who, with their Ego and astral body, live upon it as spiritual beings, so certain spiritual Beings dwell in every single star. And during his physical life a man is connected also with elemental beings dwelling in the kingdoms of the minerals, plants and animals. He is also connected through his ordinary bodily life with other human souls. Then, between death and a new birth, he is in connection with the dwellers on other stars, and his life is actually spent in experiencing the world of the stars through its spiritual counterpart, through life in common with the other divine-spiritual Beings dwelling there.

   We have already seen how, immediately after earthly life, we pass through existence in the soul-world, and how it is essentially a living backwards through all that we have slept through in unconscious imagery during our nights on Earth. One-third of the duration of a man's earthly life is thus spent in weaning himself from that which his glimmering thoughts carry into the thoughts of the Cosmos. Anyone who has lived to the age of sixty, say, on Earth, will therefore go through the soul-world in twenty years, while he is working his way out of everything connecting him with physical existence. Inwardly, during this time after death, he experiences his coming into relation with the world of the stars, and especially with the Moon. Yesterday I spoke of a man describing a circle, as it were, completing the first half between birth and death, and the return half in a third of that time. I would now add that he feels this circling to take place round the Moon-existence and the spirits belonging to it. As I pointed out yesterday, he is not conscious of returning to his birth, and so his movement is not actually a circle but a spiral, a progressive spiral.

   The reason why we do not simply circle round the Moon, but move on to approach another state of existence, is partly the onward driving force of the Mercury beings. These beings are rather stronger than those of Venus. Existence is urged forward by the Mercury beings, whereas through the Venus beings it is brought to a stop, as though completed. Hence the essential course of a man's passage through the soul-world is such that he feels himself taken up into the activity of Moon, Mercury, Venus.

   We must make a quite clear picture of this form of existence. Here on Earth we say: "As a man I have a head", activated chiefly by what might be called the middle brain — the pineal gland and so on. "In the middle of my body is my heart, and in my whole kidney system the organism for metabolism and movement." In the soul-world all this would have no meaning; we have laid it all aside. After death we say: "As a man I consist of what comes from the Moon-spirits on the Moon." This corresponds with saying on Earth: "I have a head." And whereas on Earth we say: "I have a heart in my breast" — which covers the whole breathing and circulatory system — in the soul-world we say: "I bear within me the forces of Venus." Again whereas on Earth we say: "I have a metabolic-limb system with all its organs," of which the chief is the kidney system, after death we have to say: "The forces coming from the Mercury beings live in me." Therefore on Earth we must say: "As man I am head, breast, lower body and limbs"; and after death: "As a man I am Moon, Venus, Mercury."

   This corresponds entirely with our true inner existence during life. For our whole physical existence here on Earth depends upon how head, heart, and digestive system work together — everything turns on that. The slightest movement of the hand involves the action of head, heart and digestive system, for continuous changes in the relevant substances come into play. Our whole earthly existence takes its course in head, heart, limbs — to put it in a very summary way. So in the soul-world the activity of the Moon, Mercury and Venus forces within us fills our whole existence. And through this we are in fact carried back to a time when human beings were experiencing natural existence in long past epochs of human evolution — epochs to which I have often alluded during these lectures.

   In those days people had a kind of instinctive vision, and I have already spoken here of certain types of this which can still be found. Even on Earth a man then had a presentiment of his connection, in life beyond the Earth, with Moon, Mercury and Venus. Why has this consciousness disappeared today? When anyone speaks of these deeply significant things which lie behind the veil of the physical world and can be spoken of only from the realm beyond the threshold, one naturally stirs up ill-feeling, or, to put it more elegantly, one arouses contemporary criticism. For to-day it is particularly difficult to put into words the truths of Initiation. It must either be done in such abstract concepts that people to-day will not realise what is meant, or terms that really belong to such truths must be used — and this makes many people downright angry. One can understand this anger, for they are being told about a world they want to be rid of, a world they fear and hate. But this cannot prevent a start being made in speaking honestly of these matters in civilised circles. Were one to show great consideration — though it would not help us much — towards the people who hate Initiation-knowledge — not of course any of those sitting here but those in the world outside — one would have to say: As a man grows accustomed to life in the soul-world, he finds himself in conditions resembling an earlier condition on Earth, when he had instinctive spiritual knowledge of the truth, and in this knowledge, lived the forces of the Moon. In that way one might perhaps have gone halfway, quite respectably, towards the materialistic concepts of to-day; but it would have been put far too abstractly. If one is not afraid of the criticisms that will of course come from materialistic thinkers, one has to speak differently and say: When people were going through a far-off prehistoric epoch in earthly evolution — of which more is to be said later — even on Earth they were in the company of spiritual beings who were in direct connection with the Cosmos rather than with the Earth itself. We can say that divine Teachers, not earthly ones, directed the Mysteries and instructed human beings then on Earth.

   In such remote ages these Teachers did not take on physical bodies of flesh, but worked in their etheric bodies upon men. So that the highest Teachers in the Mysteries, to whom physically incorporated men stood merely as servants, were etheric and divine; but they dwelt among men on Earth. Hence we are expressing something very real when we say: Once, in a long past period of human evolution, divine-spiritual Beings dwelt on Earth together with men. They did not always make their presence known if someone, let us say, was simply going for a walk, but they did reveal themselves if a person was led to them in the right way through the servants of the Mystery-temples. This happened only in the Mysteries, and through the Mysteries these Beings became companions of earthly men. Since then they have withdrawn from the Earth to the Moon, where they now dwell as if in a cosmic citadel, not perceptible from earthly existence, within the Moon's inner being. Thus, when considering this inner existence of the Moon, we have to look upon it as a gathering of those Beings who once, in etheric bodies, were the great Teachers of men upon Earth. And really we should never look at the Moon without saying: Our one-time Teachers on Earth are now assembled there.

   Nothing that comes to earthly men from the Moon is inherent in it, but only what is reflected by the Moon from the rest of the Cosmos. For the Moon reflects all cosmic activity in the same way that it reflects the light. Hence when we look at the Moon and see its light most clearly, this is really the least part of it. We are seeing a mirror of cosmic activities, not the inner life of the Moon.

   Within the Moon dwell those Beings who once lived on Earth, and it is only during man's life in the soul-world, after death, that he again comes under their influence. It is these Beings who, in accordance with the judgment of the far-distant past, work correctively on what a man has done on Earth. After death, therefore, in our epoch, a man actually comes once more into relation with these Beings who formerly, as divine-spiritual Beings, educated and instructed him and all mankind on Earth.

   ---

   When the human being has passed through this realm of the Moon, it is then his appointed task in the Cosmos to enter the Sun-existence. Whereas the first circle, the first completed spiral, has existence on the Moon for its central point, this spiral movement now takes a man a further step forward, and on leaving the realm of the Moon, he enters the realm of the Sun.

   Any spatial diagram illustrating this process can be no more than illusory, for it all takes its course in the one-dimensional, the super-sensible. However, as we must use earthly words, we can say: When a man has completed the first revolution in the realm of the Moon, he comes to the Sun realm, and the Sun, the spiritual Sun, then stands in the same relation to him as the Moon did previously. The man has now to become a being who — on entering what in my book, Theosophy, I called spirit-land, the spiritual realm of the Sun — must transform his previous Moon-, Venus-, Mercury-, existence. He must in actual fact become a different being. In earthly life he says: I am a being of head, heart, breast; a being of metabolism and limbs. Immediately after death he says: I am a being of Moon, Mercury, Venus. But then he can no longer say this, for it would mean his having come to a standstill in the spiritual world, between the soul-world and the real world of the spirit. He has now to go through a special metamorphosis even of his soul-spirit being and become what I may describe as follows: The Sun must be his skin. Everything around must be Sun. As here on Earth our physical body is wrapped in our skin, so now, on entering the life of the spirit, we have to be clothed in a skin consisting entirely of the Sun's spiritual forces.

   Now it is not easy to picture this, for on the Earth you think: There is the Sun, shining down upon us; the Sun is in the centre and sheds its rays all around. On entering the realm of the spiritual Sun we find the Sun to be no longer in a definite place — it is everywhere. A man is then within the Sun; it shines in upon him from the periphery, and is, in truth, the spiritual skin of the entity he has become. Moreover, within the realm of the spiritual Sun, we have what must be described as organs. In the same way that in earthly life we have head, heart, limbs, and, immediately after death, Moon, Mercury, Venus, so, after that, we have organs which we must attribute to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.

   These are then our inner organs, just as heart, pineal gland, kidneys, are on Earth. All this has gone through a metamorphosis into the spiritual and these new organs, not fully formed when first we leave the soul-world and enter the world of spirit, now have to be gradually developed. For this purpose we do not describe one circle only in the Sun-existence, as in our Moon-existence, but three. In the first circle the spiritual Mars organ is developed; in the second, the Jupiter organ, and the Saturn organ in the last circle. If we compare them with earthly periods of time, we find that these three circles are traversed much more slowly, about twelve times more slowly than the relatively fast Moon circle. And during this whole journey, while a man is living in the world of spiritual spheres and participating in its forces, he is continually active. Just as we are active here with the forces of nature, so there we are active with the forces, the Beings, of the higher Hierarchies, whose physical manifestation in the surrounding starry heavens is only an outer reflection, as with the Sun and Moon.

   In order to find his way from the realm of the Moon to that of the Sun, however, a man must have the guidance to which I have already referred. We have seen how, in the most ancient epochs of mankind, Beings lived on Earth who have since withdrawn, entrenching themselves, as it were, in the cosmic stronghold of the Moon. They are the Beings with whom a man, after death, first enters into a relationship. But these Beings have had successors who, in the epochs after the ancient Hyperborean period, appeared on Earth from time to time. In the East they have been called Bodhisattvas. Although they have always made their appearance embodied as men, yet they are the successors of the Beings now entrenched on the Moon, and their life is passed in community with these Beings. There lie the springs of their strength, the sources of their thoughts. And they were the Beings who once acted as the guides of mankind. Through the teaching they gave on Earth, men were enabled to have the strength, on coming to the end of their journey through the Moon-sphere, to pass over into the realm of the Sun.

   In future lectures we shall see how, in the course of man's earthly evolution, this has become impossible, and how the Christ Being had to descend from the Sun to carry out the Mystery of Golgotha so that mankind, through the teachings of that Mystery, should be given sufficient force to make the crossing from the soul-world to spirit-land, from Moon-sphere to Sun-sphere.

   In the ancient days of Earth evolution, the Moon-influence was closely connected with the Earth, and cared for its spiritual element, with the participation, direct or indirect, of the Bodhisattvas. Then, when the time was ripe, after the first third of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch had expired, the effects of the Mystery of Golgotha, the working of the Christ, came in. This work of the Christ was surrounded by the twelve-fold activity of the Bodhisattvas, indicated — though indeed it was a reality — in the twelve Apostles. Thus the Christ, incorporated in the body of Jesus, is the power who, coming from spiritual existence in the Sun, has now united Himself with the Earth.

   If we look up to the Moon with the desire to understand it, rather than merely to gaze at it with our soul and spirit clouded by materialism, and if we realise it to be a gathering of beings pointing to the past evolution of the Earth, then we must look up in the same way to the Sun. The Sun is a gathering of those Beings who point to the future of Earth-evolution and now also to the present, and whose great representative is the Christ, who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. Through as much as human beings absorb on Earth in their relation to that Mystery, so will their entrance into the spiritual land of the Sun be facilitated, so that they are enabled to take up inwardly the Mars organ in the sphere of Mars, the Jupiter organ in the Jupiter-sphere, and in the sphere of Saturn the corresponding Saturn organ. This is accomplished in threefold circles which take their course far more slowly than that of the Moon; yet this also underlies world-evolution. The complete fulfilment of what I have just been describing — the development into Mars man, Jupiter man, Saturn man — will come about only in the future. During our present epoch we can make only the circle of the Mars region after death, through the activity of world-forces; after that we are unable to do more than touch on the Jupiter region. We have to go through many earthly lives before being able — between death and rebirth — to enter fully the Jupiter region and, later still, that of Saturn.

   In order that man, though not yet able to enter the Jupiter region, may receive, between death and a new birth, something of the forces of Jupiter and also of Saturn, many planetoids are interspersed between Mars and Jupiter; in their outer aspect they are constantly being discovered by the astronomers. They make up the region which in its spiritual aspect is experienced by a man after death because he cannot yet reach Jupiter. They have the remarkable characteristic of being spiritual colonies, as it were, of beings from Jupiter and Saturn who have withdrawn there. And before a man is ripe for existence on Earth, he can find in this region of the planetoids, which are there for that purpose, a kind of preparatory substitute, before he is able to enter the region of Jupiter and Saturn. At present, therefore, by the time a man has gone through death and rebirth, he has achieved his Mars-organisation, and has absorbed those Jupiter and Saturn forces to be found in the colonised regions of the planetoids. With the after-effects of this — we still have to learn about them — the human being embarks on another earthly life.

3. Advice After the Death of a Dear Friend

   On December 31, 1905, Rudolf Steiner wrote to his esoteric pupil Paula Stryczek, who had turned to him for advice after the death of Anna Wagner (1847-1905):

   Dear Miss Stryczek,

   Let me say this to you on the occasion of this unhappy event.

   When a person dear to us crosses into the other worlds, it is especially important to send our thoughts and feelings without in any way giving the impression that we want her back, which would make life difficult for her in the new spheres she is entering. What we would send into her worlds is not our own sorrow, but our love for her. Don't misunderstand me; I do not mean that we must be hardened or indifferent. But it should be possible for us to look toward the dead person and think, "May my love accompany you and surround you." According to my insights, such feelings give wings to the dead person, whereas the feelings of many mourners (such as, ‘Oh, if you were only still here with us') become obstacles in her path. This is a general suggestion about how we ought to direct our feelings in such cases.

   In this particular case, let me advise you to take up some thoughts based on ancient occult traditions, although they are not yet fully accessible to me in good German.

   In inner stillness, say them to yourself three times a day, one of which should be immediately before you fall asleep, so you take them with you into the spiritual world. Ideally, you should fall asleep with the thoughts:

   May the offering of my love envelop you, cooling all heat, warming all cold.

   May my gift of light carry you upward on wings of love.

   It is important to have the right feelings when it comes to the words "heat" and "cold". They do not mean physical heat and cold but rather warmth and coolness of feeling, although it is not easy for someone still embedded in the physical heath to get an idea of what these qualities signify to the disembodied. A recently deceased person must first become aware that the astral element is still effective even though it cannot make use of physical tools. Many of our earthly aspirations are fulfilled by physical tools, and now those tools are no longer there. The soul experiences not having physical organs as something similar to – but only similar to – a burning thirst. That is the strong sensation of "heat" upon becoming disembodied. The same applies to what our will wants to do: it is accustomed to using physical organs it no longer has. On the soul level, this "deprivation" is comparable to a sensation of cold.

   Intervention by the living can be especially helpful with regard to these feelings, which are not exclusively the results of an individual life but are related to the mysteries of incarnation. That is why it is possible for us to come to the aid of a disembodied friend.

   There is still one more thing that I would ask of you: precede the above sentences by directing a few thoughts toward Mr. Wagner. Their content should be something like this:

   "her true love surrounded you until now and continues to surround you, unchanged.

   May she continue to hold you, in strength of spirit, just as she illumined you through her visible presence."

   I wanted to write to you today, but physical work obscures spiritual experience,and at the moment I have so much work to do on the physical plane that I cannot give you anything more specific than this general advice. Of course you should feel free to share these lines with anyone you see fit. I hope that many hearts will turn towards this personality who is dear to us.

   Please give my best regards to our dear Doctor and be assured of the same for yourself.

   Yours truly, Dr. Rudolf Steiner.

   Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 264 – Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der ersten Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule 1904 – 1914 (page 101-103)

   https://odysseetheater.org/GA/Buecher/GA_264.pdf#view=Fit

   This translation is from Peter Selg's book The Path of the Soul After Death, translated by M. Saar

   It is in the end of book notes (note 37)