Would we suffer in anguish when a loved one dies if we knew what awaited them in the spiritual world they are entering? Would we be inconsolable if we knew that they still exist, outside their physical bodies and that we will be reunited with them when we ourselves die?
When we study the human being using our methods of natural science, we have come so far that we can see the moment of conception when the sperm penetrates the egg, and we can see the moment of death when the last breath is exhaled. What natural science cannot see is where the human being is before its conception or after its last breath. Natural science has its limitations, and scientists and philosophers have all come up against the boundaries of our ability to penetrate these realms. With knowledge gained through spiritual science, however, we can experience the facts of our life before birth and after death, and when we open ourselves to the possibility, we can learn these things – we can know these things – so that this larger perspective grants us immeasurable solace.
We restore our reverence for life by understanding the life between death and a new birth. (See links below.)
We have discussed sleep and death, karma and reincarnation, heredity and destiny in several previous posts that provide much more detail than is being provided today. Today, we offer an overview, a framework, of a human life.
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
… Sleep is a helpful image for death because during sleep we are also withdrawn from the realm in which our destiny awaits for us. While we are sleeping, events in this realm continue without us, and for a while we have no influence on the course they take. Nevertheless, how we live the next day still depends on the effects of what we did the day before. In reality, our personalities are reembodied anew each morning in the world of our actions. It is as if what we were separated from during the night is spread out around us during the day. The same holds true for the actions we carried out in earlier incarnations. They are bound to us as our destiny … a human spirit can live only in the environment it has created for itself through its own actions. The ongoing course of events sees to it that when I wake in the morning, I find myself in a situation that I myself created the previous day. Similarly, my reincarnating spirit’s relationship to the objects in the surroundings sees to it that I enter an environment corresponding to my actions in the previous life.
From the above, we can form an idea of how the soul is incorporated into the overall organization of a human being. The physical body is subject to the laws of heredity. The human spirit, on the other hand, must reincarnate over and over again, and its law consists in having to carry the fruits of previous lifetimes over into the following ones. Our souls live in the present, although this life in the present is not independent of our previous lives since each incarnating spirit brings its destiny along with it from previous incarnations, and this destiny determines its present life.
What impressions our souls will be capable of receiving, which of our desires can be fulfilled, what joys and sorrows will be our lot, what other human beings we will meet—all this depends on what our actions were like in earlier incarnations of the spirit. People to whom our souls were connected in one lifetime will necessarily encounter us again in a later one because the actions that took place between us must have their consequences. Souls that have once been associated will venture into reincarnation at the same time. Thus, the life of the soul is a product of the spirit’s self-created destiny.
The course of a human life within the framework of life and death is determined in three different ways, and we are also therefore dependent on three factors that go beyond birth and death. The body is subject to the laws of heredity; the soul is subject to self-created destiny, or to use an ancient term, to its karma; and the spirit is subject to the laws of reincarnation or repeated earthly lives. The interrelationship of body, soul and spirit can also be expressed as follows: The spirit is immortal; birth and death govern our bodily existence in accordance with the laws of the physical world; and the life of the soul, which is subject to destiny, mediates between body and spirit during the course of an earthly life.
Excerpt from: Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos by Rudolf Steiner.
Until we are able to experience the spiritual world, we are confined to the limits of our senses. However, within these limits, we are able to elevate our thinking to understand the concepts of the spiritual world revealed by the initiates who do experience it. Rudolf Steiner is such an initiate; he was especially adept at putting into words what he experienced firsthand in the spiritual realms. He was extremely prolific with more than 6000 books, lectures and essays contained in his complete works.
Below is a list of posts that focus on the questions of sleep and death, karma and reincarnation. Reading the excerpts from Dr. Steiner’s work in each post gives us a glimpse into the processes which are invisible to us but nevertheless exist as facts of life.
Sleep:
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/while-you-were-sleeping;
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/more-sleep;
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/the-stuff-of-dreams;
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/the-final-sleep;
Karma and Reincarnation:
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/love-fate-relationship;
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/causeoreffect;
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/time-after-time;
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/our-last-moment;
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/panorama-of-life;
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/not-so-very-instant-karma;
https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/you-cant-always-get-what-you-want;