The Problem of Death III

February 7, 1915
Dornach

In connection with many painful events that have recently happened we

have been considering the Problem of Death.

I should like to call your attention today first to something of a more

general character which is connected with the problem and which can be
discovered through the means given us by Initiation Science. One must picture
to oneself that when the human being passes through the gate of death he
comes into a world which is quite different for him from what is often
imagined. It is a tendency in human nature which may very well be
understood, to picture the realm on the other side of death, the spiritual
kingdom into which we enter through the Gate of Death, as being similar to
the kingdom of the mind and senses in which we live between birth and death.
I say it is an understandable tendency to picture this kingdom on the other
side of death somewhat as a kind of continuation of the kingdom here. But one
is then in error. For it is difficult to find words from the treasures of our
speech which make it possible to characterise the experiences between death
and a new birth, words which are even in a slight degree adequate. I have, as
you know, often mentioned that our speech is calculated for the physical world
and we must, as it were, adjust our relation inwardly to the words if we wish to
make them words capable of expressing that which lies on the other side of
death.

Moreover the mode in which these words come forth from the soul when
the soul must characterise something which lies on the other side of death is
quite different from the mode in which words come forth from us in the world
of the mind and senses. This mode of expressing oneself about the spiritual
world, its beings and its phenomena is much more a self-surrender to this
spiritual world and a letting oneself be bestowed upon the words.

Such words as I have communicated to you in respect of persons who have

died were not formed as one forms words when one wants to bring something
to expression in the outer physical world, but they were so formed as if they
poured into one's soul from the being in question. So that the being gives
them, pours them in, and we now have the feeling that we are expressing
something or other that we see through these words, but we have throughout
the feeling: through us something is expressing itself, something that uses us
to a certain extent, as its organ, in order to express itself, in order to objectify
itself in spiritual speech. So it is quite a different proceeding, it is a self-
surrender with one's soul to the being with whom one is concerned, and such a
self-surrender that the being finds the possibility of expressing with our
instruments its own inner nature and its own inner experiences. When one
frames the word it is not like the adapting of oneself to something external,
but like a surrender of the word to the being in question, like a placing of the
word at this being's disposal, so that the being can then itself make use of our
words.

Thus it is quite a different method of placing oneself in objectiveness, from

the method here in the world of the mind and senses. One of the very first
conditions, therefore, of gaining a right relation to the spiritual world, is a
certain mobility of the inner nature, a certain adaptability to the most varied
individuals, a continuous possibility of going out from oneself and betaking
oneself into other individuals. If one really wants to express with a certain
surety of aim if I may put it thus that which is in the supersensible world
and lives therein, as is the case with one who has gone through the gate of
death, one must first and foremost be healed of what can be called the
earthly ego-delusion. One must have succeeded in thinking of oneself as little
as possible, in setting oneself as little as possible in the central point of the
universe. One must, if one has a strong predilection for speaking a good deal
about oneself, for brooding a good deal over oneself, conquer this tendency;
since this much speaking of oneself, much brooding over oneself, is actually
the very worst path to self-knowledge. If one has the tendency to speak much
of oneself, to judge everything so that first of all one is mindful of how one is
oneself placed in the world, and what one signifies to the world, if one has this
tendency, then one is badly fitted for finding oneself rightly in the spiritual
world or for bringing anything at all of the spiritual to expression.

One is most occupied with oneself in the spiritual sense when in the earthly
sense one is least so occupied, thinks about oneself least, for what in the
earthly sense is the most interesting of all to us, the connection of the world
with our own person, is for the spiritual world the most devoid of importance.
So we shall always find that the way into the true spiritual reality becomes
very difficult when at every opportunity we must find occasions, according to
our inner nature, to speak of ourselves, to speak of what we could be worth to
the world, if need be, and so forth less or more.

If we employ these methods in ordinary life, which is also ruled inwardly by

spiritual forces and impulses, we do not get on well. Here one can find the
most remarkable connections. I have met with people who for instance greatly
lamented that they found it extraordinarily difficult to get up, that the decision
to lift themselves up was very difficult. I have even made the acquaintance of
people who have calmly acknowledged that if there were no external
circumstance compelling them to rise, on the whole they would prefer not to
get up at all. One can always find an inner connection between the whole being
of man and such a predilection. These people as a rule would be those who tell
one much, very much about themselves, who have a great deal to say about
what is sympathetic or antipathetic to them, what they have come across in
this or that place, to their benefit or detriment ... and similar things. One who
desires to prepare himself properly for a really objective grasp of the spiritual
world must pay attention to such connections. For we must observe life if we
wish to enter into reality. And you may be quite sure of this: as human beings,
through our natural predisposition, there is nothing as a rule to which we are
less disposed, than to take life objectively. We are to nothing so much inclined
as to take ourselves in too much earnest and to observe outer life with too little
earnestness. One only struggles through quite gradually to words which can
then become really true guiding lines of life, and with great geniuses one can
often see how they go through a great deal, in order then to impress their
whole life-wisdom into a single word. Then this signifies something quite
different from what it would when spoken by just anyone in the ordinary daily
course.

I once drew attention it was in connection with the lectures which I held
in Norrkping to how easily one can utter the great, the impressive words of
the aged John: Children, love one another. But it means something quite
different if a foolish person, some youngster says it, or if John says it at the
end of a full life in which much, very much had been undergone here upon
earth.

It is not only a matter of whether the saying is true, but also from what
background of the soul it is spoken, from what background it arises. Goethe,
too, from a rich, full life, wrestled through to a beautiful saying, the deep
meaning of which one must fathom, though it cannot be understood as people
imagine, using it in every situation of life. To understand it thus is I should
like to use the paradoxical term far too simple, for to understand it thus is
possible for every child. But as it must be understood, as Goethe understood it
upon the foundation of a rich, and over rich life-experience I refer to the
words, Know thyself and live in peace with the world is not possible to
every child. But the linking together of these two sentences shows us that there
is no self-knowledge which does not really lead to the sentence Live in peace
with the world.
 I really wanted to review all these things as much as possible in detail since
they are far more important than you at first believe. But I must indicate them
and leave much to your own meditation. I should like only to point out that,
according to the statements of many persons there is a lack of material for
meditation. put there is really no lack of it, if one only has the goodwill to let
the meditation material be found in life, offer itself as such from life.

Now he who passes through the portal of death is directly, through this
fact, removed from all the illusory relationships in which he lives, in which he
is ensnared here, so long as he dwells in the physical body. He is removed
from them for they were forced upon him as we know through the fact of his
being incorporated in the physical body. He is above all removed from many
functions which had become sympathetic to him in the life between birth and
death, and which naturally, since he lacks the physical body, he can no longer
carry out after death. The whole mode of living, of the relation to the universe,
becomes a completely different one, and you can get an idea when you
meditate upon the Vienna cycle Life between Death and a New Birth, of the
quite different manner in which one must place oneself to the world if one
desires to make concepts about this life between death and a new birth. One
must only try, falteringly to coin the words which were sought for there, to
experience them quite intimately. In such matters this is imperatively
necessary.

I have already pointed out recently that the moment of death is really not to
be compared with the moment of birth into physical human life except
superficially. In the ordinary course of life, if one is not supported by
clairvoyant knowledge, one does not remember back to the physical birth in
the physical body. Through the capacities given us by the earth we remember
no further back than the fact of being born not even so far. If there are
people today who believe that they know everything through the senses, they
do not reflect that they cannot know the very origin of their earth-life through
sense-impressions. They can only know it by being informed about their birth
or by being told on the foundation of an often not consciously but in fact
unconsciously accepted inference. There are only these two methods of
knowing that one has been born if one has not the aid of clairvoyant forces;
to have it related to one, or to make a deduction, an inference other men
were born, I am similar to other men, therefore at some time I too was born. A
correct deduction.

And any other method of arriving at the fact of one's own birth with earthly
forces, except to be told about it, or to make this inference by analogy, any
other method than these two does not exist for the faculties of earth, so
already by the effort to come to a knowledge of our own birth we discover that
it is not possible to find a foundation for the truth of it in mere experience of
the senses. The moment of death is utterly dissimilar from the moment of
birth, for one can always behold the moment of death, whereas one cannot
with ordinary earthly faculties in the physical body behold the moment of
birth. In the spiritual world in the time between death and new birth one can
always behold the moment of death from the instant when one has brought it
for the first time to one's consciousness. There it stands although not perhaps
as we see it with its terror, from this side of life, but it stands there a
wonderfully beautiful event of life, as a coming forth of the soul and spirit
nature of the human being from the physical-sensible sheath, it stands there
as the liberation of the Willing and Feeling impulses from the fleeting, the
objective fleeting Thought-being.

That directly after death a person is not in a position to behold this moment
of death immediately, is connected with the fact that we have, not too little
consciousness, after death, after the entrance of death, but on the contrary,
that we have too much consciousness. Only remember what is said in the
Vienna lectures, that we find ourselves not in too little wisdom but in too
much wisdom, in an unending, overflowing wisdom pressing upon us from all
sides. To be without wisdom is impossible to us after death. This comes over
us like a light, flooding us from every direction, and we must first succeed in
circumscribing ourselves, in orientating ourselves, where to begin with if we
are not orientated. Thus through this circumscribing of the whole highly-
pitched consciousness down to the degree of self-consciousness which we can
bear in accordance with our earthly preparation for death, we come to that
which we call the awakening after death.

We awake directly after death too vividly, and we must first diminish this
awakening to the degree corresponding to the faculties which we have
prepared for ourselves through our experiences in our various earth-
incarnations. So it is a struggle to stand our ground in the consciousness
breaking in upon us from all sides.

And now comes something in which we must all both after death and
also if we would rightly enter Initiation first cure ourselves, as it were, of the
habits of the physical-sensible life. In order to be thoroughly understood I
should like to link this on to something. When we began in Berlin to carry on
our movement of Spiritual Science in quite a small circle, we were at first
joined by various people. We were at that time a very small circle. One day not
long after we had begun to work, a member of this circle came and explained
that he must withdraw again. He had seen that we were not on the right path,
for it was not a matter of seeking all the things that we sought, but of seeking
Unity. That was an idee fixe with this person. In a long conversation he
developed the fixed idea of Unity and then left us in order to seek unity. He
thought to arrive at the supersensible just through this seeking for Unity,
through this idee fixe of Unity. But the idea of oneness or unity is something
only resulting from the last abstractions of the outer physical life. This striving
after oneness is in fact the most material towards which one can strive. It is
precisely of this oneness-striving that one must be cured if one wishes to stand
correctly in the spiritual world. Here in the sense world it is so easy to say: we
must seek oneness everywhere, we must seek unity in the plurality, in the
multiplicity. But that is something which only has significance for the physical
sense world here. For when we pass through the gate of death then we do not
have multiplicity, but something which comes before our soul as an
overwhelming consciousness. When we have passed through the portal of
death we have nothing but oneness around us, continuous oneness. it is then a
matter of rightly finding plurality, multiplicity. We must strive there for
nothing else than to come out of oneness into multiplicity.

Now I should like to give you a correctly formed idea of how a person
comes into multiplicity out of oneness. Let us suppose that one passes through
the portal of death, enters into this world of surging spiritual life of wisdom.
One enters first into this world, which to begin with stupefies us when we
awaken there. We do not distinguish ourselves within it at all. So much is it
oneness that we do not distinguish ourselves in it, we do not make a
differentiation between ourselves and the universe, but rather we belong
completely to the universe; all is one.

But now let us answer the question, and I pray you to ponder not a little but
very much upon the answer that I will give. Now we reply to a question: What
actually is this oneness into which we are there received? Remember all the
beings of the higher hierarchies of which nine are known to you, or ten if we
count mankind. In each hierarchy is a whole host of beings. These all think. It
is not man alone who thinks. All the beings of these higher hierarchies think.
Consider therefore this whole host of beings in whom we are received when we
have stepped through the portal of death. They are around us, for in stepping
through the portal of death we are received by the complete fullness of being.
At first we do not perceive them. We are within them, but we do not perceive
them. That which surges around us at first is just this oneness. But what is this
oneness? It is the thoughts of all the hierarchies merging into one another.
What all the hierarchies think together; this thought-world of the hierarchies
indistinguished as to what one hierarch, what the other hierarch thinks; this
is the Light-Being of Thought that surges round us, this oneness.
 Therefore we live in the thoughts of the hierarchies flowing together to a
oneness. Therein we live.

And now what is the further course of our life after death? Our concern is to
gain a relation to the separate beings, to lift ourselves out of the ocean of
thought where all the thoughts of the hierarchies flow together, and to gain a
relation to the single beings, to the multiplicity. After death we must not only
gain a relation to the commingled unity of the surging Thought-essence of the
hierarchies for that is given to us, but we must work through so that we gain
a relationship to the single beings of the hierarchies. How do we gain this?

Now at first we are flooded with this ocean of the thoughts of the
hierarchies merging and flowing together. Through what we have acquired for
ourselves in our physical body there condenses at the gate of death to which
we look back, our own inner being lifting itself out of the material coverings.
That gives us strength of will. That gives a will-impulse of a feeling nature, and
a feeling-impulse of a will-nature. These we inwardly become aware of in
beholding the being which ascends from the body which we are after death.
Through this we are in the position to some extent of attracting our will-
rays. And when we place such a will-ray somewhere, which we create out of
the force of death, which is born with death, then we obliterate at another
place, and at a third place, etc. at various places through the strength of our
will-impulse we obliterate the thought-world surging around us. And
inasmuch as we obliterate it there comes to meet us in the hollow space of the
surging ocean of thought, if I may say so, the thought of a hierarch, the being
that lives within it in the spiritual world.

Whereas here in the physical world we exert ourselves to find a thought for
the thing which we see, in the spiritual world, where, as I have pointed out,
thought stands in profusion at one's beck and call, we must obliterate the
thought, drive it away. Then the beings approach us. We must be master of the
thoughts, then the beings approach us. And the strength to become master of
the thought, to cast the thought out of our field of sight, as it were, whereby
the being approaches us in the sea of the surging thought-world, this strength
we receive through the fact that as a beautiful beginning of our spiritual life
after death the vision of dying, of death itself, comes to meet us, and becomes
our teacher in the obliterating. For death becomes to us after death the teacher
of obliterating, the stimulator of that will force wherewith we must obliterate
the thoughts in the surging sea of light.

Herewith is indicated the entirely different manner in which the human

being stands to his surroundings after death and before; how he must proceed
in the world of the senses by establishing himself there, having the
atmosphere around him and then being obliged to wait until something comes
into the atmosphere. On the other hand, after death he must so proceed that
he has the Light-sphere of Thought around him and within it he must then
himself obliterate the thoughts that lie before him in his field of vision, in
which the beings concerned then appear to him. For here one has to do with
beings, as I have indicated in my book, The Threshold of the Spiritual World.
Thus one comes out of unity into multiplicity. Monism in the sense
understood by many people is only a world-concept for the Gate of Death. For
there in the most marked degree an urgent necessity arises for seeking
multiplicity. To seek oneness is a last fetter, a theoretical fetter of life as
understood by the senses.

But what is it then that we actually accomplish there? Well, it is an activity

by which we make room for the hierarchies to approach us. Our being, as you
know, is then spread over the whole universe (I have repeatedly spoken of
this,) and we make room by creating these hollow places, as it were, so that
what is objective to us after death, can appear. Never can what is objective in
the spiritual world appear to us if we take our own being into the spiritual
world; we can only discern the other in the spiritual world if on the spot where
the other is to appear we obliterate our own being; and that happens in this
way.

This is an inner characterization of the process which is also necessary if we

wish to reach the dead in the manner I described to you at the beginning of the
lecture, where one has to acquire the power of letting the dead speak, of letting
the dead express themselves. One must then try to drive away one's thinking
and feeling from where the dead is, to drive away oneself, and where one has
driven that away, impulses come forth from the depth of being which, without
our will, place the words in our mouth which must come to us if we wish to
express the objective being of one who is not incorporated in the physical
body.

You see, that which here in the physical world is in a way the weakest in
man, willing and feeling, (they are the weakest parts of the human soul and
the most unclear), over which we are least master, gains a special significance
if we are to perceive in the spiritual world. On the other hand, that which here
in the physical world is the strongest of all, thought-concepts we prefer to
live, as you know, in illusion and concepts, since there we can be most
dominant is the weakest in the spiritual world. One cannot make much
beginning there with illusions, for illusions still disguise for us this
overflowing oneness of thought-essence. Our concern is not an exercising of
the life of thought, but a development of our life of will and feeling, and this
too is the essential in meditation. In meditation it does not matter so
much what we picture, but, as I have emphasised repeatedly, to picture with
inner strength. it is a matter of inner energy, of feeling and sensation while we
meditate, that is, of a will element which we develop in meditation, and which
we develop more strongly if we have so to exert ourselves as in meditation
we ought to exert ourselves, spiritually exert ourselves. What is most opposed
of all to real progress in the spiritual world is the longing to dream, the longing
to form illusions about outer reality, because in this way we make our will
continually weaker and weaker. One makes the will weakest of all if one
cultivates the parasites of the life of idea, if one makes illusions for oneself
over all sorts of external things. Above all, the way into the spiritual world
does not draw near to us by our holding life at a distance, but by
understanding that not an impoverishment of the outer life, but only an
enrichment, can lead into the spiritual world. People would like so much to
grow into the spiritual world through weakness and not through strength. One
grows into the spiritual world by weakness if the outer world, the world of life,
does not interest one, when one cannot fulfill the Goethe maxim Know
thyself, and live in peace with the world.

I should like to point out before I go further in these studies of death, that
in all human activity of an artistic nature there must lie as foundation a
playing in of that activity of the human soul which is necessary for this
human soul after death. As regards artistic activity it is precisely the will-
element which must be impregnated into the artist from the spiritual world,
not so much the element of observation. In our age of the decay of art and
especially of artistic labour, the opposite is taking place. In our age of
degeneration that element is being elaborated even in the artistic world, which
makes the conceptual life more sophisticated. Therefore in our age, artists are
becoming more and more dependent on models and copies. They can do
extremely little if they have no models or copies. Hence in our age it will come
about more and more that the artist will isolate himself in his art. But it can
never reach real art if one isolates oneself in art. That is the opposite of what
ought to be.

What happens, then, if someone is creating a human being through art, in

painting or sculpture, and he does not occupy himself with the inner forces
which build up this human being, with the dynamic forces, but merely goes
out and gets a model and uses the model as one uses things in looking at
them? He is then departing from the real principle of artistic creation. Artistic
creation begins when one creates an inwardly willed picture of how the nose
stands out here, of how the forehead is vaulted there; one does not see the
things outwardly, but can penetrate into them inwardly. That is what matters.

And so in a special way it is also the case with nature. In nature it is a

matter of really living within the activities of nature. And here I will call your
attention to something which the human being immediately experiences when
he has passed through the portal of death, which here, in the physical world,
however, remains more or less unknown to him.

When we paint, we paint preferably that which is spread, one might say,
over the surface of things. We paint light and shade. We paint colours. Now
outer nature is furnished with light and colour from the fact that she does not
accept them, but throws them back. Over there is the object and it throws us
back light and colour. That is between us and the object. Mineral things are,
for instance, minerals, because they cannot receive light and colour, within,
because they reflect them externally. There within the colour, man lives with
his soul. After death he withdraws into it at once; there he knows himself in
light and colour, but here he does not know himself within them. When he
comes before the landscape as landscape painter, he must have something of
what is between him and the landscape, he must be able to rise into it, he
must, as it were, bring something into the physical world which only actually
becomes reality when the human being has passed through the gate of death.
This gives the similarity between artistic creation and the standing within the
spiritual world, although the artist is for the most part unaware that the
spiritual world pulsates and flows through him, nor is he conscious of the
necessity of being pulsated through by the spiritual world. Precisely on this
account the design of our building has been made as it has been made,
because we must pay attention as I have often said, just to what is not there,
not to what is there. Just the hollow forms which have been left free have to be
considered, not what is actually there. In so far, through carrying our stream
of Spiritual Science into the practical domain, a beginning has been made
which had to be made in our present epoch of culture.

You see, such inter-penetrations of the spiritual world into human life as
through, let us say, the Death Spectrum, were by no means so unusual in times
lying not so very far behind us. Today it is something unusual, and as a natural
gift it will become more and more unusual. It will occur less and less as a
natural gift. But the less the human being here in the physical world can form
some kind of connection with the spiritual manifoldness, the more he will be
fettered when he has passed through the gate of death. The possibility of
creating those hollow forms would entirely cease if mankind should quite lose
connection with the spiritual world, as must necessarily happen in the mere
external progress of world events. We know that the old clairvoyance must
become entirely lost. but if that inner relation to the spiritual world were not
to be re-established through Spiritual Science, a man would gradually lose the
possibility, after death, of actually living in the spiritual world, of having a real,
actual existence. Through the backward-survey of his life, which always
remains for him, where the beholding of death is something quite actual, he
would be spell-bound, almost as if confined in a prison.

Therefore in the case of those who, if I may say so, go through the gate of
death strengthened by Spiritual Science, it is to be seen that comparatively
quickly after death they gain freedom, free activity in the spiritual world.
Hence the point is for a man to replace by the strengthening of Spiritual
Science what was earlier given to him by natural aptitude the gaining of a
relation to the super-sensible, to spiritual phenomena.

If from a natural aptitude one can see something like a Death Spectrum
(and people in earlier times which do not lie so far behind us used always to
see the death-spectrum only it is a lost faculty) one sees this death-
spectrum through the separation from the body. This enables one to see the
single, individual phenomena. These single phenomena are carved out of the
oneness ... and that is the important thing ... this carving out of the oneness ...
to learn how to do this. But the possibility of learning how to do it is entirely
lost with the loss of the natural, atavistic clairvoyance, and it must be replaced
by growing into Spiritual science. It will be this strengthening given by
Spiritual Science, through which the necessary faculty for artistic creation in
every sphere will be called forth in the future. The sculptor, the painter, the
poet, will not be able to create if they do not strengthen themselves through
Spiritual Science. Today people are still afraid of this. But the fear which
comes to expression when a musician, a painter, a poet, says: Since I have to
engage in and struggle with all manner of things this kills the original artistic
creative power in me can be heard everywhere. This is only a fear of the
strength that is necessary if the domain of human art is really to last into the
future. Men are still afraid today of what in their inner being must come forth
precisely as the strongest force. Times will come in human evolution where
artistic faculties must ripen through the strengthening acquired through
Spiritual Science.

Then, at all events, there will be less of the scandalous thing that is
prevalent today, namely, that in very early youth and out of nothingness,
people vaunt themselves artists and are, in their own opinions, artists.
 When this kind of art does not succeed, they think it is entirely due to lack
of appreciation on the part of the world. This nonsensical state of things will
gradually cease. The art of the future will be an art of maturity and it will not
be until a comparatively late age in life that a man will feel inwardly mature
enough to engage in art. it will no longer be believed that in later life it is
impossible for a man to have the forces requisite for artistic creation forces
of youth as they are often called; far rather will it be found that only by the
deepening and strengthening acquired through Spiritual Science can the
forces that will lead to artistic creation in the future be liberated from the
inner being. But people are still afraid of these forces today. They are afraid of
what has to be attained. Many artists have a holy terror of this emergence of
the inner depths of their being, and when they hear that it is not the external,
earthly man, but the higher man within them who should be the creative
artist, they are thrown into the most utter confusion. It is difficult to imagine
more complete confusion than that of a certain modern artist when he realised
that it is the Genius in the inner man, the being who belongs to the spiritual
world, who is really the creator in the artist. An artist of modern times
expressed his holy terror of the spiritual world in approximately the following
words:

Genius is a terrible disease. In the heart of every writer there is a monster

who devours his feelings directly they have been born. Who will be victorious
the disease over the man or the man over the disease? A man must be great
indeed if he is to hold the balance between his character and his genius. If a
poet is not a giant, if he does not possess the strength of a Hercules, he must
either forfeit his heart or his talent.

The very flesh of one's soul, so to speak, creeps when such words are
uttered. For they are simply an expression of the holy terror which exists in
the human being in regard to things that are connected with the spiritual
world. Moreover the last sentence is quite consistent, although the author is
unaware of how consistent it is ... The fact that he speaks of giants, of
Hercules, is very characteristic. It is very significant that precisely these words
come into his mouth or rather into his pen.

So the view may actually be held that the human being must be victorious
by virtue of what he is in earthly life ... for this is contained in the words,
whereas true knowledge will reveal that the healthy genius within a man will
penetrate and take hold of him, will make him into its instrument.

Another modern writer refers and adds to the sentences I have just read, in
strange, extremely strange words. He says: Let us picture the tragic
destruction of Laocon as described in the Aenead. With natural horror and
repugnance the citizens of Troy witness the gigantic snakes strangling
Laocon and his sons. The spectators feel fear, compassion and certainly wish
to save the victims; however different their conditions of soul may be,
nevertheless the moment of will undoubtedly plays a very important part ...
but just imagine a sculptor in the midst of this shocked and excited crowd, a
sculptor who sees the terrible catastrophe taking place before his eyes as the
subject of a future work of art. Amid the general excitement of these shouting,
frenzied, praying people, he remains the unruffled observer. All moral
instincts in him are at this moment suppressed by the desire for aesthetic
experience.

This, forsooth, is supposed to be necessary for the creation of a work of art:

A crowd of people who are not artists stand there with deep compassion,
unable to help, and together with them, a simpleton, a dunderhead, who has
no inkling of the pain caused by it all. And this dunderhead is supposed to be
the true artist who is capable of portraying the scene; he stands there in his
stupidity merely as an observer: Things have come to such a pass at the
present time that people dare to demand of the artist that he shall be a
dunderhead when faced with life's phenomena, in order that he may be
objective. He must tear compassion and sympathy out of his heart; he must
become a dull-headed simpleton and only then, according to what is said here,
will he be able to depict something capable of interesting other human beings.

When people have it in them to evolve such a view of art, they cannot help
being seized by the most terrible of all Ahrimanic forces. Such a view denotes
the decadence of art that is produced by the fear and dread of spiritual reality.
People do not know that if a man wants to be an artist he must feel events with
still deeper sympathy, still deeper compassion and must be able, at a later
moment to look at the same events objectively out of this deep sympathy,
making us love them as we may love a being who is strange to us. Out of this
still deeper quality of sympathy we must be capable of art that is creative. The
perversion of outlook has reached such a point today that the opposite of truth
is trumpeted forth to the world as consummate wisdom. And I am convinced
that there are infinite numbers of people who consider this dullness very
clever and who regard this laudation of insensitive stupidity in the artist as the
final discovery of what art really is. Such is the present day and it is for us to
seek in Spiritual Science that support and strengthening which enable us to
realise that we ourselves are living in the world into which the human being
also enters, in the natural course of events, when he passes through the Gate
of Death.
 For us, art is related to death; it is related to the higher life: to be related to
death means to be related to higher life.

In order to enter the spiritual world we must in many respects be capable of

ideas and mental pictures quite different from those which must fill us for the
purpose of understanding the world we experience between birth and death.
We must pierce through Maya not only in such a way that we take this Maya to
be the same everywhere, thinking that when we have broken through it at one
point we are already in the spiritual world. The density of Maya is different at
different places in life. This we shall find when we confront diverse spheres of
life. Maya is woven out of different materials. Although it is Maya, it is
woven out of different materials at different places in life.

Suppose we get to know a child in its physical existence; we form ideas

about the being of the child, ideas built up from our experiences of meeting
the child in the physical body. There could be no greater error than to carry
this picture into the spiritual world for the purpose of really getting to know
this being when it has passed through the Gate of Death.

In the death of Theo Faiss, a terribly touching karmic event has happened
among us recently. It would be a false picture of him if we were merely to
enlarge the idea we formed of this child as we met him in the physical world, if
we were simply to project this picture into the spiritual world. In just such a
being the very greatest maturity can be observed soon after death. We can find
the forces which brought the child into the physical world through birth and
which have not been allowed by karma to live themselves out in the physical
world we can find these forces interwoven in the cosmic forces and we
gradually realise that a mature soul has struggles through death to cosmic
existence, is growing little by little towards the heavenly spheres. And when
such a soul was a child in the last incarnation we can perceive that this soul is
able, comparatively quickly, to develop to the point where it directs the forces
that are now merging into the cosmos. Then we learn to know the human
being as he is after death; it is as though with his own being he were directing
the forces which were contained in his death spectrum and are now weaving
themselves into the cosmos. Thus the human being grows into that creative
activity which we may call the heavenly creative activity. Then his feeling that
is coloured by will, and the element of will that is coloured by feeling, grow
together with the universe outside him. Just as when we, as children in the
physical body, gradually adapt ourselves with our sense-organs to the external
world, just as we then grow into the faculty of vision, so do we grow, after
death, into the essential realities we grow into the unfolding of will.
 If we allowed these things to work upon us in the sense of Spiritual Science,
we should observe, little by little, how the Maya of external life is woven with
different strengths at different places. Maya is difficult to pierce in cases like
the death of a little child, because most of the external manifestations disturb
what must replace them if we are to have a true picture of what the human
being is after death.

But there are also human beings with whom it is comparatively easy to
pierce through the warp and woof of Maya; it is easy because the truth of their
being has been able to connect itself deeply even with the Maya existing in
them in the physical world between birth and death. There are such men, men
who bring down treasures of inner, spiritual richness at their birth into the
physical world and who are able to weave into their being and life what they
have brought down from the spiritual world. They are those human beings
whom we needs must love because of what the Creators in their love have
made of them; often we do not ask why we love them; love for them is a matter
of course. Such human beings are like living witnesses to the spiritual world,
because even here in the physical world they are extraordinarily like their own
spiritual being, and because the web of Maya only through the existence of
love, of course, but through this very love can very soon be dispersed,
enabling us to gaze into the depths of the soul.

Our attitude to such human beings must have a certain delicacy, a certain
intimate delicacy because they have brought down a very, very great deal from
the spiritual world into physical existence and because then, after death, they
stand like living witnesses to the profound truth that the impulses of the
spiritual world live on in all the manifestations of this physical world. If we
behold such human beings after their death, it is as though they were wanting
to say to us: Thus were we before and the fact that we lived in such deep, and
inward truth is now confirmed when we have passed through the Gate of
Death. Thus do they stand as apostles of faith after death too, as apostles of
the faith which allows us to have belief in the life we spend here in the physical
world.

Since the death of our friend Sybil Colaxxa, she too stands there like an
apostle of the faith that the world in which we live is permeated with
spirituality. And here it is necessary to explain why the strange thing
happened in her case that the sight of her spiritual being confirmed what she
revealed through the sheaths of external life in the physical world to everyone
who knew and learned to love her. Hence the different tone in the words that
had to be spoken out of her soul; it was because her essential quality as an
individual was precisely that quality of which I have just spoken:
 ... Und es durchaseelte
diesse Wesen
Deine Stimme, die beredt
Durch des Wortes Art
mehr
Als in dem Worte selbst
Offenbarte, was verborgen Revealing what is latent
In deiner schnen Seele
weset ...
... And permeated are
these beings
Through thy voice so
eloquent
By the nature of the
Word
Rather than the Word
itself
Within thy noble soul.

Mark well that the presentation of the past, the use of the imperfect tense,
passes over into the present, the present tense, because observation of the life
in the body harmonised with the vision of the life after death. This is expressed
in the words themselves. Words that are coined out of the spiritual world
contain their own necessity. Thus the words had to be: This Being filled with
soul they voice, a voice which, eloquent more through the quality of the words
than the words themselves, revealed what lay hidden within that soul, and is
working on, existing. ... Existing therefore, not existed.
But this being,
Doch das hingebender Liebe
silently unveiling
Itself to sacrificing
Teilnahmsvoller Menschen
love
Sich wortlos voll enthullte:
Of sympathetic man;
(one can also say, Enthllt)
This being,
Dies Wesen, das von edler
proclaiming lofty,
stiller Schonheit
calm beauty
To the susceptible
Der Welten-Seelenschpfung
perception
Empfnglichem Empfinden Of World-Soul
kandete. creation.

(verkundet the present tense can also be used. Here the two periods of
time flow together.)

Now let us think of a soul like Fritz Mitscher, a friend who, to our great
pain, has died so recently. The nature of this soul can best be described by
those who knew him in words which may sound abstract and dry, but which
really do express it: he was an objective human being. Fritz Mitscher was an
absolutely objective human being. There can hardly have been any occasion
when he spoke about himself. Even if he ever did, it only seemed that he was
speaking of himself in describing his relations to something or other in the
external world. His I was practically never even on the horizon ... let alone at
the centre of what he said. It is natural for an elder person when he is speaking
with a younger one about all kinds of things in life to bring the conversation
back to himself, but it was characteristic of Fritz Mitscher that when
opportunity was there for him to speak of himself, he avoided it, and diverted
the conversation from himself to what he had experienced round about him,
describing it with the art he had acquired from Spiritual Science. In the true
sense of the word he was an objective human being. He did not think about
what hesignified to the world, about the position of his own I in the world.
His interests were all purely objective, interests which express themselves so
characteristically when a man is little concerned about the position he gains in
the world. Fritz Mitscher was one of those men who, from the very beginning,
was passionately eager, even in passing conversation, to convey to others with
absolute objectivity the truths he held most sacred; this eagerness was always
present because he was one of those who are interested in the cause itself and
not in the person and the position of the individual personality in the world.
And when he spoke before an audience he entered into the subject with the
greatest purity, never losing his way in the psychical impurity of speaking
about himself. It was this that was so characteristic of him. And it was this that
made him so eminently capable of grasping the world in such a way that
through the medium of the idea, the thought, the mental picture, he really
entered into the world; he did not become remote from the world but really
entered into it. And so through thought, through idea, he lived right into
world-connections, lived together with the world, lived in his I because he
spoke so little of himself and not only in his skin, but right into the heart of
things. it is really only human beings of this kind who truly understand ideals
in the world, life in ideas and in morals. To live in ideas and ideals is not
merely to have ideas and ideals; ideas and ideals are easily come by, they can
be picked as easily as blackberries. What matters is not that a man has ideas
and ideals, but that he has them in the purity of the life of thought, and human
beings without number shirk this purity. They flee from thought in hosts. My
dear friends, we need only call up the Imagination, the real imagination of
pure thinking, of the life in pure thought, in sense-free thoughts and ideas; we
need only picture this pure wellspring of soul-existence and then try to place
the specters of human beings around it, and we shall find that in whole hosts
they flee from this pure spring of the sense-free world of thought. They say:
But this is barren, dry, it is something that tears love out of one's heart, it is
cold, icy. And they flee in hosts; only a few stand steadfast in purity of soul.
These few are the true philosopher-souls, the men who are really gifted for
philosophy. And such men as Fritz Mitscher belong to them.

That is why it is almost a matter of course for such souls to grow into their
connections in the most natural possible way or, better said, for their karma
to bring them into these connections. In the case of Fritz Mitscher this was so
in a high degree. It could never be noticed in him that he sought any position
out of an intention formed in physical life. He always allowed himself to be led
to his tasks by the flow of karma. Here again you have those truly
philosophical natures who will always have to be led to their tasks rather than
that they will press forward to some task out of egotistical will. For these truly
philosophical natures know all too well in their deep feelings and in their
impulses too, that a man is, in reality, never ripe for a task, that only
immeasurable vanity can give rise to the belief that he is mature, and he
always anticipates in advance something that can only be achieved later on.
when a man has only a little of this attitude, he feels in his life something of an
inner calling. And the life then will be filled, as it were, with the: Know
thyself! Knowledge of the self is best attained when a man speaks and thinks
little of his I. his work and labours in life will then be permeated by the:
Know thyself, live with the world in peace!

Such was Fritz Mitscher's motto. A life like this continues in the spiritual
world and remains what it was, save that in the spiritual world the fruit grows
from the seed. In such cases we must abandon the point of view for it would
be unreal which would make us ask: What would have come out of such a
being if he had been able to stay longer in the physical world? This is an
unreal point of view. The real point of view leads us to the greatness, the
wonder of such a soul being taken up into the spiritual worlds. What this soul
is now called upon to achieve in the spiritual worlds is related to the
experiences between birth and death as the fruit of the plant to the seed, so
that the life here is actually revealed as a seed for the spiritual life after death.
And so when a being who has lived in objectivity is seen after death, words
which characterise this objectivity of outlook in life inevitably sink into the
soul, but they are words which also characterise the relationship to the
surrounding world, how the whole being stood right within the world. It was
necessary to speak of Fritz Mitscher in this way. The characteristic element in
these words was precisely this difference between the seed here and the plant
which develops in yonder world. This is how I explain to myself the words
being as they were
... Ein Verlust, der tief ... A loss that deeply
uns schmerzt, pains us,
so entschwindest du dem So you vanish from the
Feld, field
Wo des Geistes Where the Spirits earthly
Erdenkeime germs
in dem Schoss des in the lap of Soul-
Seelenseins existence
Deinem Sphrensinne Matured to vision of the
reiften ... spheres ...

Eine Hoffnung uns As a hope and as a

begluckend, blessing
You appeared upon the
So betratest Du das Feld,
field
Wo der Erde Where the earthly blooms
Geistesblten of Spirit
Durch die Kraft des Could to seekers be
Seelenseins revealed
Sich dem Forschen Through the powers of
zeigen mchten. the Soul.

LautrerWahrheitsliebe
To essential love of truth
wesen
War dein Sehnen
Your desire was related;
urverwandt;
Aus den Geisteslicht zu Creation from the Spirit
schaffen light
War das ernste Was your fervent aim in
Lebensziel, life
Dem du rastlos To which you restlessly
nachgestreby ... aspired ...

Eine Hoffnung uns As a hope and as a

begluckend, blessing
You appeared upon the
So betratest du das Feld
field
 Wo der Erde Where the earthly blooms
Gestesblten of Spirit
Durch die Kraft des Could to seekers be
Seelenseins revealed
Sich dem Forschen Through the powers of
zeigen mchten.. the Soul.

List to our Souls'

Hre unserer Seelen Bitte
petitions
Im Vertraun dir Sent to you with
nachgesandt: confidence;
Wir bedurfen hier zum Here we need for earthly
Erdenwerk labours
Starker Kraft aus Geistes- Vigorous pow'rs from
Landen, Spiritland
Die wir toten Freunden Which we owe to our
danken. dead friends.

Eine Hoffnung uns A firm hope for us a

begluckend, blessing
Ein Verlust, der tief uns A great loss that deeply
schmerzt: pains:
Lass uns hoffen, dass du Let us hope that far or
ferne-nah, near
Unverloren unsrem You may still ilume our
Leben leuchtest life
Als ein Seelen-Stern im A soul-star in the Spirit
Geistbereich. Sphere.

Fritz Mitscher was an individuality who became, in an outstanding degree,

what many of our dead friends have actually become since they entered into
the spiritual world. They become our most effective co-workers in the field of
the spiritual life we have to cultivate; they become those to whom we look
upwards with special gratitude when we have to think of the tasks of the
present and future spiritual evolution, tasks that can be fulfilled only slowly
and with difficulty within earth-existence with the forces that are incarnated
in physical bodies. In thinking of friends who have passed through the Gate of
Death, including our friend Morgenstern, it always seems to me to be right to
ask that they will remain among us in order that through their forces much
will be able to be done in our spiritual movement that it is impossible to do
with earthly forces alone.

It is this that must be sent as a last greeting from the Earth to such
individualities, and it must be expressed clearly and emphatically in
connection with Fritz Mitscher, a dear friend who with his youthful forces will
be our strong helper, a true consolation when consolation is needed. And it is
often needed.

Especially during the most recent period of our work, creative activities and
striving, so many things have made us realise how great are the hindrances of
the physical plane truly they are not imagined hindrances how stubbornly
the prejudices of human beings oppose what must be achieved among us, and
how violent the opposition often is.

We need only take one such example. People outside our stream of
Spiritual Science write pamphlets ... Truly I am not saying these things for
personal reasons, because I feel myself to be only a feeble instrument of the
spiritual movement that has to bear us ... Pamphlet after pamphlet is written
with the object of declaring that our adherents accept everything without
putting it to the test, accept it in faith and belief and confidence; it is suggested
that nothing exists among us except blind faith. Our movement is described by
the outside world as if all our adherents were credulous simpletons, simply
running after the confidence they feel. So it is in the outside world.

But within the precincts, this confidence if we mean a confidence that

exists in the deep foundations of souls and does not merely lie in words this
confidence is often by no means so conspicuous. There is a great contradiction
between what we are accused of in pamphlets and what ought to exist in such
rich abundance within the precincts of our society. There is yawning
contradiction! I say what I have to say here without criticism and above all
without bitterness, without in the least wanting to hit at any single personality
but concerning many things I said here in the autumn, it has been stated in
writings that Dr. Steiner hawks about his occult researches into such matters
meaning matters about which I have spoken ... he hawks about his occult
powers in connection with the things that were spoken about. If it has been
possible for such a thing to have been written, then it is a clear proof of the
fact that the element of which we are accused in the world is by no means so
firmly rooted in the deeper forces of the souls among us, although in many
ways it may exist in the upper maya of consciousness. Let it be said once and
for always that the teaching presented here is based upon no principle of
authority whatever, and belief in it as dogma is never demanded. It is given in
order that it may be tested in all details. But for anyone to set himself up as a
kind of judge as to what I myself should include in my occult investigations
and exclude from them this is a spiritual tyranny which most certainly is not
born of the element that must be present in the Society, although up to a
certain point it need not be present for the purpose of taking in spiritual
Science; this is a spiritual tyranny emanating from unconscious lack of
confidence. Confidence is not needed for the purpose of receiving teachings;
but confidence is needed for the realization that it is not for the spiritual
investigator to be told what he has to bring from the spiritual world but that it
must be Presumed that the representative of Spiritual Science knows himself
what he has to do; he has himself to decide what falls within the field of his
investigations. Confidence is needed here; this kind of confidence can never be
unprofitable to the movement, because it does not transcend the limits of the
personal and does not touch the teaching. But a fact like this denotes as
many similar facts denote that great obstacles and hindrances doexist and
that within our spiritual movement we must carry out as a duty far removed
from anything that looks like desire in our work what leads from insight
into inner necessity. This duty will always be done, however sourly, it is done
(sourly according to the ordinary meaning of the word.) But precisely when
we realise that we may give to our dear Dead a kind of personal charge to be
together with our forces, then there arises for our movement a feeling of
security which the physical world could never afford.

And so, in thinking of our beloved Dead, there flows into our movement
and into its impulses, something that is supersensible, not springing from
what we have here, something that could never, in the physical world itself,
give wings to our work. It is possible for supersensible impulses to flow into
the Maya of our society-activities, for us to feel secure because what we do,
contains not merely the forces of the physical plane but supersensible forces
too. Our beloved Dead have remained with us, although not in physical
existence, and we therefore feel security in work which feels itself to be within
the flow of spiritual evolution:
Hre unserer Seelen List to our Souls'
Bitte, petitions
Im Vertraun dir Sent to you with
Nachgesandt: confidence:
Wir Bedurfen hier zum Here we need for earthly
Erdenwerk labours
Starker Kraft aus Geistes- Vigorous pow'rs from
 Landen, Spiritland
Die wir toten Freunden Which we owe to our
Danken. dead friends.

So do we speak with reality of our beloved Dead as companions, co-

workers, as those who are invisibly among us. Thus concretely do we seize the
invisible being, giving the hand physically for the last time to the friend in the
visible world and then receiving this hand spiritually, after death from the
supersensible world. In this exchange of hand-clasps we have the symbol for
work within a Society that is not intended to be a mouthpiece for the physical
world but is to call the supersensible worlds too, into its activities. For such
work, for such activities, we want to build a centre on this hill. May there be a
home here for this work!