Life Between Death and Rebirth: The Active Connection Between the Living and the Dead (Cw 140)

This book is comprised of a series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in Germany in 1912 and 1913. Their content represents a kind of pre-war German metaphysical idealism that all but evaporated in later years. These lectures take place after the author had broken with the Theosophical Society to form his own movement (emphasizing more of a mystic Christianity than Buddhist and Vedic principles.)Steiner held to a belief in a literal existence of vast realms inhabited by the soul and spirit in the interval between death and rebirth (which he estimated at approximately 1000 years in duration.) He held that we could communicate with the deceased in these realms by an adjustment of consciousness. Indeed, he held that we on earth can be a positive spiritual support for those that are journeying through those realms- and, in turn, they can aid and support those of us still in earthly incarnation.Steiner held that after a human being passed through the portal of death; he becomes an evolving, expanding cosmic entity. He seemed to emphasize that not only do we continue to evolve spiritually after death, but also the amount that we can absorb in this state is dependent on our spiritual and moral development on earth. Once we had absorbed all we could in the cosmic realm, we would then contract, be reborn on earth, and start the whole evolutionary process over again- this time progressing a little farther than we did the last cycle.Steiner was well known as the editor of Goethe's scientific work. Perhaps this is why he held that while materialist science is able to point to the external causes, it couldn't grasp the inner spiritual origin of things. Yet everything has a spiritual foundation. He held that if science has a legitimate task to discover the physical causes of happenings, then spiritual science has the task of supplying the spiritual causes to phenomena- without excluding the reality of outer physical causes.One final note, while it is popular these days to link German mystical and occult thought with the Nazis, Steiner's thought was never perverted in such a manner. Steiner held that all human beings, regardless of race or national origin contained a divine spark. He held that his cosmic Christ had sown this spark in all peoples.