What if we were immortal? What if we could continue to learn and grow forever? If we could have time to do everything we needed and wanted to do? If we could stay with our loved ones forever?
Always, the promise of never-ending life entices us. Ironically, our lack of understanding death is exactly what is preventing us from knowing that we already are immortal. The presumption that we exist only within our bodies between birth and death keeps us from understanding the very basis of what it means to be human: that we are spiritual beings who occasionally occupy physical bodies before returning to our spiritual existence.
In these days of the pandemic, our focus has been turned to the death of thousands of people across the globe, and for some of us, a particular person we have known and loved. It’s a lot to take in. We may find some comfort in studying the moment of death itself. Direct knowledge of this moment, however, can be communicated to us only by a spiritual scientist who, as a result of extraordinary effort over the course of time – or lifetimes, has been initiated (see previous post Primary Source, Apr. 2020). Because fear of the unknown is natural for us; learning about the moment of death may help us look at it with more equanimity.*
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
The moment of death is of extraordinary significance. Death is something that most distinctly has two totally different aspects. Regarded here from the physical world it certainly has many sad aspects, many painful sides. However, here we really see death only from the one side; after our death we see it from the other. It is then the most satisfying and most perfect occurrence that we can possibly experience, for there it is a living fact. Whereas here death is a proof of how frail and transitory the human physical life is—when seen from the spiritual world it is actually a proof that the spirit continually wins the victory over everything non-spiritual, that the spirit is ever the life, the eternal, ever-unconquerable life.
Excerpt from: Spiritual Life Now and After Death: Forming Our Destiny in the Physical and Spiritual Worlds. Lecture on November 16, 1915, Berlin.
And:
From this side of life, death appears to be a dissolution, something in face of which the human being has a ready fear and dread. From the other side, death appears as the light-filled beginning of experience of the Spirit, as that which spreads a sun-radiance over the whole of the subsequent life between death and a new birth; as that which most of all warms the soul through with joy in the life between death and a new birth. The moment of death is something that is looked back upon with a deep sense of blessing. Described in earthly terms: the moment of death, viewed from the other side, is the most joyful, the most enrapturing point in the life between death and a new birth.
Excerpt from: The Problem of Death. Lecture I by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, February 5, 1915.
If we accept that the moment of death is profoundly different for those going through it than it is for us, we will be able to let them go with peace of mind. Of course, we will still feel the anguish that comes with the loss of people we know. Their passage from this world still has very real and lasting consequences for us. We may yet be filled with sorrow, but those who have died are immediately filled with joy.
In our next posts we will be exploring together the three days immediately following death and then the period of time in the spiritual world that lasts about1/3 of the time of our lives – the same amount of time we will have slept during our lifetime.
*Though out-of-body experiences during a near-death trauma have been reported by many (see previous post and links: Dying to Know, Jan. 2019), these reports are made, after all, by people who have returned from the moment of death. While these reports give evidence of our consciousness continuing after signs of life have ceased, we must rely on the reports of spiritual scientists such as Rudolf Steiner for answers about death itself.
If you have never heard of Rudolf Steiner or his work, you may find this film, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXKSSBHTLzU, featuring people who at the time (1991) were leaders working out of Steiner’s ideas within many disciplines such as science, mathematics, dance, architecture, education, bio-dynamic agriculture, etc. This work continues today.