The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Report in “Germany, Weimarische Landeszeitung”, Second Sheet, March 27, 1904

Theosophical lecture. On Friday evening, Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave the sixth of his theosophical lectures in the large recreation room on the subject of “Theosophy in the Gospels. An Easter Meditation”.

The speaker showed what deep meaning can be found in the legends and myths of different peoples when one seeks to get to the bottom of them from the point of view of an allegorical view of nature. At all times, the deep harmony between the striving human soul and the phenomena of nature was felt. When, with each new spring, the sun increases its power and coaxes the dormant germination forces of plants out of the womb of the earth, it was felt that a similar process of a spiritual nature takes place within man. The sun became a parable of the eternal spirit of the world, which is able to awaken the slumbering soul-germ in man when the time has come for him, to lure the spiritual man out of the physical. Of the many legends whose meaning can be found in this direction, the speaker highlighted the Argonaut saga. Jason is the symbol of the dying man. He obtains the fleece of the ram, which is the symbol of the power by which man ascends to the heights of spiritual life. Just as the sun is in the sign of Aries or the ram in spring and receives new strength through its union with this constellation, so man achieves his highest goal through union with the higher spiritual power, with the “lamb”, as a sign of divine power. Thus the course of the sun became the parable of human life, and the appearance of the spring sun the symbol of the resurrection of the human spirit from the bonds of sense life. Christ Himself therefore calls Himself the “Lamb of God” (John 1:29). What the old pagan myths expressed in their imagery – that man must celebrate an Easter of his inner being – is expressed in a sublime way in the greatest event of world history, in the appearance of the “Passover Lamb”, the Son of God. And what was previously only made accessible to a few in secret temple sites, in the so-called “consecrations” or mysteries, was brought by Jesus of Nazareth to all of humanity. For in his infinite compassion, he wanted that “blessed” should also become those who believed, even if they did not see. (John 20:29) By “seeing” is meant “initiation” into the mysteries, which only made it possible for the chosen ones to receive the truth in a pure form, while the others had to be satisfied only with the symbol, with the myth. Through Christ's sacrificial death, all were granted in the period that followed what previously had only borne fruit for a few. That is why Peter said in reference to the gospel in relation to the earlier mythical popular religions: “We have proclaimed to you the power and the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, not following carefully thought-out myths, but as eyewitnesses of his glory.” (2 Peter 1:16)

The speaker then gave a full explanation of the “miracle of Lazarus” to show how Jesus himself first underwent an initiation in the sense of the old mysteries. Only those who understand this account of the resurrection of Lazarus recognize that it is an Easter of the spirit, not an ordinary death, but the death of the sensual man in whom the spiritual man is awakened. Jesus says this Himself: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, even though he die, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25) The illness of Lazarus is a birth, namely that of the higher spiritual man from the earthly, sensual man. Again, this is witnessed by Jesus' word: “The sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be honored thereby.” (John 11:4) Christ thus showed before all people what He had explained as a theosophical teaching in the glorious conversation with Nicodemus (cf. John 3): “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (John 3,5) The speaker showed at various points in the Gospel how it is a proclamation of the “inner Easter of the human soul”, the message of the resurrection of the spiritual man. He argues that the most sublime truth of Christianity is found precisely when the Gospels are taken “literally”. One must only have prepared oneself through theosophy to really understand the deep “spirit” of the words of the scriptures. What the ancient myths have hinted at in pictures, the story of the suffering and resurrection of the Son of God has presented as an historical fact to all of humanity. From this point of view, the great intentions of the Sermon on the Mount are also revealed, which (in the correct translation) begins with the “theosophical” words (Matt. 5,3): “Blessed are those who long for the Spirit, for they will find the Kingdom of Heaven within themselves.”

If we reflect on the fact that we are familiarizing ourselves with this physical world here in the physical world, we will always come to the conclusion that we live in this world primarily through our physical senses, through our minds. We certainly also live within this physical world through our soul life, through the thoughts that arise in us, that remain in our memory, that make up our store of memories; we live in this world through our feelings and will impulses. It is quite understandable that it is quite unlikely for a person who has not yet dealt with spiritual-scientific questions in depth that an experience can take place that is quite different from that in the physical world; because it is clear that man initially knows the world only through thinking, feeling and willing. But there is another form of experience in the world through what we call initiation, which goes beyond the physical world. Basically, it is the same kind of experience as when a person passes through the gate of death and enters the time that lies between death and a new birth.

Now, it must be said that in most cases, what befalls a person when he is supposed to form an idea of the life between death and a new birth here in the physical body, is a feeling of a certain fear of the void in the soul. Let us be clear that this occurrence of fear is quite natural. For try to put yourself in the situation, purely physically, of having walked quite fast and coming to a deep precipice. This would give nothing more than a presentiment, a feeling: you cannot know what might happen in the next moment if you continued your steps. — This feeling can only then afflict the soul when the person has walked so fast that he can no longer stop himself. He says to himself: You have to take the next step. — The uncertainty of fear lives in the soul and this feeling can only be compared to the feeling that is always present in the depths of the soul, but is only not perceived because attention is focused on the physical world. This feeling tells him: What will happen to you if you leave everything you have become accustomed to? Man need only reflect that something like this can live in him subconsciously, and it also lives there, which can be expressed with the words: You cannot see or hear, because the instruments for this sensory activity have been taken from you; you cannot think either. These feelings are not realized, but they are in the soul, and what the person feels is a kind of numbing of himself over this feeling. As soon as it occurs, something else is called into the soul so that the feeling cannot come to consciousness. But with that one can also not make the right preparation, one cannot lift the veil that lies behind death. Today we want to enlighten ourselves about how our life is connected to the one after death.

In the physical world, we rightly speak of perceiving it through our senses. When man speaks of the senses, he actually speaks only of the senses that can be used in the physical world. They can only be used in the physical world because they are connected to the tools that are taken from us at death. Only the five senses are ever mentioned: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. However, these cannot be used in the disembodied state. It is necessary, if one wants to find a transition, that one must completely enumerate the human senses. What the human being misses in this enumeration is that he forgets himself in the process. But he still belongs to the physical world and he could not perceive himself here if he had no senses for it. There are initially few senses through which he perceives himself: the sense of balance, the sense of movement and the sense of life, but they are just as important as the other senses, the external senses. What is the sense of life? You can get an idea of it by considering the difference between feeling hunger and feeling satiety. If man did not understand himself inwardly, he would know nothing of his own corporeality, of well-being or malaise. Just as one speaks of the sense of sight, so one must speak of the sense of life.

But one must also speak of another sense. How impossible it would be for a person to feel if they did not feel the activity of their muscles and tendons. This is a perception of inner mobility. It is only somewhat obscured for humans because we see ourselves in the physical world with our physical eyes. You get the right feeling from the inner perception when you move in the dark; for example, the perception of the breathing process becomes more clearly apparent.

What we call the sense of balance is very necessary. It can be observed in children when they learn to walk and stand; little by little they feel their way into it. We have to get used to feeling that we are walking upright. This sense even has an organ; these are the three semicircular canals in the ear, which are perpendicular to each other. If they are damaged, a person falls over, and the lack of balance in some people comes from the fact that the inner sense of direction is damaged.

If we go further, we find other senses through which we can have a kind of self-awareness within us, but this is more difficult. We have to start from a certain contemplation that points to a state of consciousness that is no longer quite normal. It occurs in certain dreams. The following can occur in consciousness as a dream: a person is in terrible trouble, the helmsman has arrived. He dreams this in great detail, and it can be a long dream. It changes and then the rattling of wagons occurs; the fire brigade passes by. A fire has broken out. Outwardly nothing more has happened than the call “fire”. This word softly echoes the word “tax”, and it calls in the soul through the sound of the transition from the directly heard call “fire”, and that in turn gives birth to the sum of the annoying images of the dream. The dream runs terribly fast. You imagine the individual events in a timeline, which is why the dream seems so long. From this dream, we see the great importance of sounding in the soul body, especially when it is mixed with images, when the word plays a role. If we go deeper into the soul, we see that something completely different is actually going on. Only when a person is fast asleep does he not perceive things. Something would have happened even if the call for “fire” had not been heard at all, but now the call covers something and gives rise to the word “tax”. A fine veil is spun from the resonance of the word. In daytime life, the veil is terribly thick, but alongside the daytime perceptions, the subtle soul perceptions also occur. Only these are not perceived. In such a dream-vision we grasp the world-process as it presents itself to our soul, at one corner.

We have chosen this example deliberately because hearing, as it is now established in present-day humanity, is the sense that is closest to the supersensible senses. We are standing right on the border of the supersensible world and if we could cast off the two words, we would be able to experience true soul experiences.

This example shows how man stands before the spiritual world. But the two words hold him back. It is really the case that by far the greatest part of our dreams are spun from the echoes of the sense of hearing, because between hearing and thinking there lives an inner sense that has been completely atrophied for today's life. When one has immersed oneself in the spiritual world, this sense comes into activity. Between hearing and thinking lives this sense, which becomes conscious when one can hear the inaudible, when one has awakened the sense for rhythmic, melodic, harmonious sounds... (gap in the text.)

If one does not advance to a sense that has meaning only for the physical world, one stands before a sense of the supersensible world. In the physical world, this sense has split into the sense of hearing and the sense of perception. It comes to the fore when one comes to a kind of self-awareness. It comes to the fore best when one tries to develop an appreciation of music and poetry. However, it is better to approach it from the other side. In the outer physical life, the sense has atrophied.

From there, it goes further and further to what we call today: the human being comes to the idea of the self. We must be honest about this idea of the self. People express the self and have a certain inner support in the expression. They rightly believe that they are grasping the self by expressing it. This is the case. It is a kind of preparation for grasping the real higher self. This realization is extremely difficult, otherwise all philosophical endeavor would not be directed towards it. In my “Philosophy of Freedom” I have endeavored to make clear how one can arrive at this. All this belongs to self-perception. One must inwardly grasp it, whereby one addresses oneself as I. We therefore have senses by which we grasp the outer world, and others by which we grasp ourselves when we hear the soundless sounding.

Here in the physical, the well-known five senses are particularly developed. These have no significance for the initiate in the spiritual world. The other senses, through which man comes to self-awareness, are atrophied. They have great significance for man when he passes through the gate of death.

The first sense needed in the beyond is the sense that passes from the external musical to the internal musical. For this sense, the presence of the external auditory tool is not a hindrance. Today only the sense through the ear is being killed. In the physical world, one can perceive the power of the sense when musicians compose. The sense stands behind the musical creation. After death, it becomes a sense through which the person is made aware of his entire surroundings. We then experience music inwardly. After death, the sense becomes an external sense and one perceives for a time after death what goes through the world, because the world is permeated by rhythmic-musical harmony. A person who would not perceive this rhythmic-musical harmony would be like a person in the physical world who could not perceive the inorganic.

In my book 'Theosophy', in the description of Devachan, you will find how mutual life consists in the unfolding of the musical-rhythmic harmony. Indeed, the upper and lower are joined by the forward and backward, while we only know that we are walking upright through the sense of balance. We perceive the beings that are above and below, right and left. So the inner senses, which are now atrophied, expand and convey the spiritual world to us. Then the sense of balance develops into a sense of harmony and rhythm, and the sense of movement is added. When we are liberated from the whole apparatus of muscles and tendons, the sense that is otherwise concentrated through the physical body will spread and we will come to the possibility of being everywhere in the universe as we are in our own body through the sense of movement. In the spiritual world, the outer world is as in the physical world a muscle movement takes place in us. When a hand is held out to a child, the child understands and imitates the movement. The sense of movement awakens in the inner experience of the imitated movement.

Over time, one is thoroughly cured of some teachings that always suffer from the fact that they say: We live in ourselves. But there is no blood circulation in the supersensible world.

The sense of inner movement will be a very important sense when we have died, the sense of life will be important to us – if it cannot be claimed in an unpleasant way – because then we will no longer have headaches and no feeling of hunger.

The senses that have been atrophied here are particularly stimulated when we pass through the gate of death. We cannot perceive our own corporeality through our own corporeality, the eye cannot see itself and the brain cannot examine itself; so the organ that perceives something cannot be the same as that which perceives itself. Thus, what we have called the meaning of life must be separated out from the physical, and so it approaches the soul. It is not the case with the sense of balance that it mediates perception; rather, it expresses itself only symbolically in it.

These senses are actually the ones that are selfish by their very nature, because it is through them that man perceives his self. And we must not hide from ourselves the fact that what we take with us out of life is the more selfish part. So first of all we keep the more selfish part, and from this it becomes understandable that immediately after death, man passes into a rather selfish state. Just as a child brings its senses with it into physical existence and must first get used to the physical sensual world, so too, in the disembodied state, the human being must get used to the supersensible world. This takes quite a long time after death, and while he is learning to get used to his senses, all that remains to him at first is merely what has brought him together with the outside world here in the physical world, as a memory, and specifically as the more unpleasant part of the memory. The first memory lasts only a few days; it appears as a memory tableau that we are familiar with. Then it begins to change so that what is at its innermost here is connected in an inward way, so that the person becomes accustomed to asserting himself inwardly over everything he has experienced, because the possibility of perceiving ceases.

A concrete example: In some relationship of life we have lived together with a person. We pass away, he remains behind on the physical plane. We become more and more accustomed to retaining something from the inner being other than the memory. When we look at a dead person, we see that he knows what we experienced with him during his life on earth. With death, the thread now breaks and now the harrowing realization can be made that one meets dead people who say with the means of communication: “I lived there with this or that person. I know that he lives on, but I only know something about him until I die. That is a great pain. Now the dead person misses him. That is why the dead mainly mourn those they loved and cannot reach out to. It must be admitted that we can provide important services to the dead in this regard if we reach out to them. The external senses are taken from the dead, only what they have experienced in common with us lives in them. Yes, ordinary life actually offers nothing that could change this. It can only be changed if bonds are formed between the dead and the living. It is usually the case for the dead that we look up to the dead. (Gap in the text.) Now there is a common link between the dead and the living: it is what we think of supersensory thoughts. Spiritual thinking is this connecting link. I may emphasize that one can read to the dead about what concerns the supersensible worlds. When we have time, we sit down and go through in thought what the content of spiritual science is and in doing so, we vividly imagine that the deceased are with us. We thus spare them the torment of thinking that we are not there. We have achieved very good results within the anthroposophical movement by reading to the dead in our thoughts. This brings them together with us, and that is what they need and long for. There are two aspects to living together with the dead. The first is what has just been characterized, the lack of the people with whom one lived on earth. We can remedy this by reading to them. We should be together with the dead and bridge the circumstances of our existence. What does it matter to the dead if we read anthroposophy to them, even though they did not want to know about it during their lifetime? — is often said. But that is a materialistic objection, because the circumstances do not remain the same. For example, we can observe that two brothers are there. One of them is drawn to spiritual science, while the other becomes more and more angry about it. He talks himself more and more into a rage. But he does this only because he wants to numb himself to his inner longing for spiritual science. It is not easy to reach him in life, and it is not good to agitate for anthroposophy. In death, what the person has longed for most becomes apparent, and it is precisely such souls that can be given the very best by reading to them. Those who were interested in anthroposophy here will become more and more interested in it there. This is one thing.

The other thing to consider, especially in our time, is that when we enter the supersensible world in our sleep every day, we are in the same realm as the dead. Only we no longer know anything about it after waking up. How do most people go to sleep now? It can be said that when they have crossed the threshold of sleep, they have taken little spirituality with them. Those who have attained the necessary heaviness through the consumption of alcoholic beverages do not bring much of a spiritual nature into the spiritual world. But there are many nuances. We often hear: Yes, what is the use of studying spiritual science if you still can't see into the spiritual worlds? — Yes, if you only study it enough, you will take something with you into your sleep. Imagine a sleeping city, sleeping people, so the souls are disembodied. That which the sleeping souls represent for the spiritual world is still something different than that which they represent for the physical world. It is something similar for the dead. What we give the dead and what they absorb into consciousness is what they need for their life. And when we bring them spiritual thoughts, then they have nourishment; when not, then they are hungry, so that the sentence may be expressed: We can, through our cultivation of spiritual thoughts here on Earth, provide nourishment for the dead. We can leave them hungry when we bring them no spiritual thoughts. When the fields become barren, then they bring forth no fruits for the nourishment of men, and men can starve. The dead, of course, cannot starve, they can only suffer when the spiritual life on earth becomes desolate.

The fact of the matter is that here on earth, science follows different laws about the interrelationships, and one ideal is that through science, life as such can be scientifically grasped. But here on the physical plane one does not get to know life. All laws do relate to the living, but one cannot explore life with all this knowledge. For the supersensible world, one cannot get to know death with all research. For him who sees through things, it is nonsensical to believe that there is a death in the supersensible world. There are sleep-like states of consciousness and also a longing for death, just as we would like to understand life, but there is no death there. One should not believe that one could perish in the spiritual world, one cannot die there either. One cannot destroy one's consciousness either, which corresponds to dying here. But one can become lonely in the spiritual world.

It is about not being able to perceive the physical-sensory world. One only knows about oneself and nothing about other beings. That is what is called the suffering and pains of Kamaloka. What broadens human consciousness is the social life after death, and we also come into contact with the various beings of the supernatural world in social life.

One objection that may still be raised is to be resolved this evening in Erfurt. It is this: What is it like, since the dead are in the supersensible world after all? Can they learn anything from our reading to them about the supersensible worlds? — They cannot learn in the supersensible world what we do not give them from the earth. The thoughts must flow up from the earth. Anthroposophy is not taught in heaven, but on earth. People are not on earth to get to know only a vale of tears, but also Anthroposophy. It is often believed that one can also get to know anthroposophy after death, but this is a great mistake. What a person has experienced on earth, he must put down in the spiritual world after he has crossed the gate of death.