Up to now, we have been purified by our journey. We have faced many challenges. We have worked hard, and sometimes we felt like we hadn’t moved at all. Then we had a new start.
The meaning of “time” for the human race—how it accords with infinity and the relationship between time and the universe—is another issue studied by anthroposophical wisdom. Humans should familiarize themselves with these notions and relationships in order to contribute consciously to the flow of the world and human evolution.
Everyone has certainly experienced the notion of death during their lives one way or another. We have all undoubtedly felt sorry for the death of a friend or family member at some point, because death is an inevitable event. Sometimes we read obituaries in the press and even feel sorry for the death of someone we don’t know in person. It is impossible for people to avoid death because it is always around us.
Although we don’t have a deep knowledge of death, there is no doubt that it is a reflection of God’s will. It is commonly accepted that death is a command from God, just like birth. We are forced to accept that every living creature dies eventually. In other words, every person knows that he, like all other creatures in the world, will come to an end one day.
This knowledge generally manifests in the perception part of our consciousness when a spiritual depth occurs inside our souls after the death of loved one. This way, we feel the notion of death very strongly. During daily life, we usually don’t actively think about death. Instead, we tend to keep the knowledge of our mortality confined to our subconscious.
No one wants to miss out on the joy of life by continuously remembering that he or she will die one day, but this way of thinking might also be a misleading delusion. A man who tries to deny the fact that he is a mortal being, so as to not miss the joy of life, might act as if he were immortal.
Other delusions come along with this understanding, such as assuming and believing that we have plenty of time left in our lives. As a result, our thoughts and behaviors take shape according to this false belief. Expressions such as “Time is passing too slowly,” “I’m killing time,” and “Time is money” only reflect the delusional perspective of people who believe that death is still a distant event.
These kinds of expressions should be carefully studied because they might lead people to a state of “sleep.” For instance, although time is really very important and precious for all of us, it will never be money, but unfortunately, this is a common mistake we make. This particular mistake is the result of trying to satisfy our worldly needs for our entire lives and having a materialistic perspective deep inside our souls.
In fact, it is truly a waste of time to live your life running after worldly things because you have been influenced by expressions that are not relevant to spiritual reality. Of course we cannot ignore our materialistic needs, because we live in a physical world. However, a desire to possess more and collect more than you actually need makes you overly materialistic.
Anthroposophy explains how wishes and desires that make people more materialistic result from being in a “state of sleep,” and there are unholy spiritual beings behind this sleep. Acting with a driving force of wishing for more makes people serve these unholy spiritual beings whose intentions act against the evolution of the world.
A man who fails to internalize an awareness of mortality during his limited time in the world spends his life chasing after unnecessary materialistic goals and other worldly ambitions, despite his life being God’s gift to him. He fails to perform what is expected from him by The Divine Spiritual World, and even if he has some spare time, he will never spend it on a spiritual search because he doesn’t turn his eyes towards spirituality.
Anthroposophy explains how humanity was not like this at the start of its evolution. It grew apart from the Spiritual World as it gradually became one with the materialistic world. In fact, it did have a bond with the Spiritual World at the beginning of the world’s evolution.
Every person feels the necessity to search for God somewhere deep in his or her subconscious. However, he cannot find the strength and willpower in himself to put this inner knowledge into action. Therefore this urge constantly gets delayed. The matters of daily life distract us from becoming interested in spiritual issues, and this prevents us from focusing on spiritual research. Worldly duties, which we consider crucial to our lives, pile up in front of us. The reason for identifying ourselves with worldly matters is the nature of our egos and personalities in this world.
Karmic (fatalistic) factors come along with our souls and egos from our past lives, and our personalities develop according to the societal factors we were born into, making us prioritize worldly matters. In fact, we are the ones who cause these endless complicated worldly matters to pile up in our lives and force ourselves to sort them out.
When we look at individuals living in our society or even other nations, we observe they all share similar worldviews. As people in other countries have similarly materialistic worldviews, it gets even more difficult to dispel the illusion hiding behind these common perceptions and notions.
One of the major delusions that inhibits humanity’s spiritual improvement is accepting and embracing every opinion, notion, and tendency that society believes in without establishing if it is true or not. For instance, the modest lifestyles of past times have been replaced with a tendency to want more and more and be discontent with what we already have. This tendency has resulted in restlessness, unease, and nervousness, so unhappy people gradually drifted apart from moral values.
Humans tend to define themselves with this sort of materialistic views and notions, and this shapes and directs theirs lives. It is based on the fact that humans are in a state of sleep, dreaming in terms of their thoughts, emotions, and willpower. Even when awake, humans can be in a state of sleep (hallucinating), and the reason for this state of sleep that constantly affects the soul, making it permanent, is the dark spiritual influences. Anthroposophy explains all these influences as well.
Moreover, anthroposophy explains the importance of awakening human thought, emotion, and willpower to empower people’s spirits and egos. It clarifies how to reinforce the human bond with the Spiritual World and regain its spirituality. It also explains how the divine elements of humanity, which originated from the Spiritual World, are a kind of a “Seed” (a suppressive power) at the moment within the whole spiritual evolution, and they will take their real shape during the further stages of evolution.
However, knowing that our own powers—our thoughts, emotions, and willpower—will take their true and perfect shapes in future times after experiencing plenty of incarnations should not fool us into thinking there is plenty of time ahead of us.
After death, a person’s soul and self comes to life again after an average period of a thousand years. The human soul becomes involved in a close relationship with the Divine Spiritual Entities after death and makes efforts in the spiritual world to improve itself.
One of these important efforts is to establish the necessary karmic obligations to be sorted out when that person is incarnated in the world again. The human soul does this with the help of the entities in the spiritual world.
When all these efforts are internalized by the Higher Ego of the person, the person’s soul and self return to the world for a new life (reincarnation), with the help and guidance of the Divine Spiritual Entities.
During the typical 1,000 years spent in the spiritual world, circumstances in the physical world will have changed. It will be a new period with new and different civilizations. When the person returns to the world, he will have the chance to improve his personality in this new environment and fulfill his karmic obligations during this new life.
Impressions people receive through their sensory organs throughout their lives are turned into senses by the “Spirit of Sense” and retained in the memory as “fictive images.” Therefore, it is very important for the improvement of an individual ego that the spirit finds itself in an environment totally different to that of the previous life when it is reincarnated.
Each civilization and cultural period that occurs contains special conditions for each incarnated individual. The spirit should therefore spend its time very carefully while passing through this world, because the exact conditions of a particular lifetime will never be repeated. In this respect, every minute that we experience should be regarded as a way to elevate our consciousnesses.
A lifetime spent without any effort to constitute and develop a Higher Ego causes the soul to suffer more in the spiritual world and during its next incarnation, so the person falls behind in his evolution. In fact, every human being acquires some values from the general effects of a certain period of civilization within the spiritual evolution. However, this evolution not only includes humans but also the entities of the Spiritual World. That is why every human being should figure out why he exists in the physical world at a certain time and why he has been given the chance to become an individual with an ego.
Anthroposophy provides the necessary knowledge for the human spirit and ego to improve and gain spirituality according to the rules decided by the Higher Entities of the Spiritual World. Internalizing this knowledge makes us more conscious about not wasting our time in this life. Thus, the real spiritual aspect about spending our lives most efficiently in this physical world—which has been created with extraordinary effort, preparation, and devotion by the Spiritual World—is explained more clearly.
Anthroposophical wisdom is also needed to understand how temporary human life in this physical world accords with the eternity of the Spiritual World. Spiritual science explains that spiritual knowledge will not be lost after death, and this knowledge will be needed for the improvement of the Higher Ego as soon as the individual manages to digest the knowledge collected during his worldly life into a conscious part of his soul. This anthroposophical spiritual knowledge, which is to take part in the consciousness of the human soul, is in harmony with the pre-specified target of the universe. In this respect, it is important for the Divine Spiritual Entities that humans understand and internalize this knowledge. Records of the worldly and temporary experiences of a soul do not serve the Divine Spiritual World. On the contrary, they belong to powers that oppose the targets of the universe. As a matter of fact, this is a great loss for both human evolution and the Spiritual World.
Humans are mortal in their physical worldly lives, but should they freely internalize the spiritual knowledge of this world in order to create their Higher Egos, they can transmit the profits of their efforts toward the dimension of eternity. These individual efforts will also contribute to the “new status” of their Higher Egos in future.
Moreover, humans should certainly possess some spiritual light while in the physical world, and they should carry this light to the Spiritual World with their souls when dying. After death, they can then have productive encounters with the Divine Spiritual Entities of the Spiritual World.
Individuals who do not internalize any spirituality during their physical worldly lives, and thus have no light to carry with them, might possibly go through difficult times while passing through the Spiritual World, such as feeling lonely in the darkness.
The “time” granted to humans in this physical world will have an utterly different meaning and value for individuals who do their best to comprehend this anthroposophical knowledge and let it penetrate their egos.
