Here is more on the same subject, from a lecture held by Rudolf Steiner in
Oslo in November 1921 (reference below):

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In a man who has brought through death no idealistic thoughts or feelings,
no human love or true piety, something of the soul-and-spirit has perished
as a result of the antipathy and chilling reception meted out by the higher
world. A man who now again approaches the realm of the Archangels in the
right way has received into him the power to work effectively in his
subsequent life on Earth, to make proper use of his body; a man who has not
brought such experiences with him will be imbued by the Angels with a
longing for earthly life which remains more unconscious. A very great deal
depends upon this. Upon it depends to what people, to what language ­
mother-tongue ­ the man descends in his forthcoming earthly existence. This
urge towards a particular people, a particular mother-tongue may have been
implanted in him deeply and inwardly or more superficially. So that on his
descent a man is either permeated with deep and inward love for what will
become his mother-tongue, or he enters more automatically into what he will
have to express later on through his organs of speech.

It makes a great difference in which of these two ways a man has been
destined for the language that will be his in the coming earthly life. He
who before his earthly life, during his second passage through the realm of
the Angels, can be permeated with a really inward love for his
mother-tongue, assimilates it as though it were part of his very being. He
becomes one with it. This love is absolutely natural to him; it is a love
born of the soul; he grows into his language and race as into a natural
home. If however a man has grown into it the other way during the descent
to his next earthly life, he will arrive on the Earth loving his language
merely out of instinct and lower impulses. Lacking the true, inward love
for his language and his people, he will be prone to an aggressive
patriotism connected with his bodily existence. It makes a great difference
whether we grow into race and language with the tranquil, pure love of one
who unites himself inwardly with his folk and language, or whether we grow
into them more automatically, and out of passions and instincts express
love for our folk and our language. The former conditions never come to
expression in chauvinism or a superficial and aggressive form of
patriotism. A true and inward love for race and language expresses itself
naturally, and is thoroughly consistent with real and universal human love.
Feeling for internationalism or cosmopolitanism is never stultified by this
inner love for a language and people. When, however, a man grows into his
language more automatically, when through his instincts and impulses he
develops an over-fervid, organic, animal-like love for language and people,
false nationalism and chauvinism arise, with their external emphasis upon
race and nationality.

At the present time especially, it is necessary to study from the
standpoint of life between death and a new birth what we encounter in the
outer world in our life between birth and death. For the way we come down
into race and language through the stream of heredity, through birth,
depends upon how we encounter, for the second time, the realm of the
Archangels.

Those who try to understand life to-day from the spiritual vantage-point,
know that the experience arising in the period between death and a new
birth when man comes for the second time into the realm of the Angels, is
very important. All over the Earth to-day the peoples are adopting a false
attitude to nationality, race and language, and much of what has arisen in
the catastrophe of the second decade of the twentieth century in the
evolution of the Western people, is only explicable when studied from such
points of view. He who studies life to-day in the light of anthroposophical
Spiritual Science must assume that in former earthly lives many men became
more and more deeply entangled in materialism. You all know that, normally,
the period between death and a new birth is lengthy. But especially in the
present phase of evolution, there are many men whose life between their
last death and their present birth was only short, and in their former
earthly life they had little human love or idealism. Already in the former
earthly life their interests were merely utilitarian. And as a result, in
their second contact with the realm of the Angels between death and a new
birth, the seeds were laid for all that arises to-day in such an evil form
in the life of the West.

We shall have realised that man can only be understood as a spatial being
when it is known that his form and structure derive from the realm of the
fixed stars and his life-stages from the planetary spheres. As a spatial
being, man draws the forces that are active in him, not only from the Earth
but from the whole Cosmos. Now just as it is necessary to go beyond what is
earthly in order to understand man as a spatial being, so it is necessary
to go beyond life between birth and death in order to understand social
life, racial life on the Earth.

When we carefully observe the life of to-day we find that although men
claim their right to freedom so vociferously, they are, in reality,
inwardly unfree. There is no truly free life in the activities which
nowadays manifest such obvious forces of decline; instincts and lower
impulses are the cause of the misery in social life. And when this is
perceived we are called upon to understand it.

Just as a second meeting with the Archangels takes place, so when man once
again approaches earthly life, he enters into a more intimate union with
his Angel. But at first he is somewhat withdrawn from the realm of the
Angels. As long as he is in the realm of the Archangels, his Angel too is
more strongly bound with this realm. Man lives as it were among the higher
Hierarchies and as he draws near to a new birth he is entrusted more and
more to the realm of the Angels who then lead him through the world of the
Elements, through fire, air, water and earth, to the stream of heredity.
His Angel, leads him to physical existence on Earth. His Angel can make him
into a man who is in a position to act freely, out of the depths of his
soul-and-spirit, if all the conditions described have been fulfilled by the
achievements of a former earthly life.

But, the Angel is not able to lead a man to a truly free life, if he has
had to be united automatically with his language and his race. In such a
case the individual life also becomes unfree. This lack of freedom shows
itself in the following way. Instead of forming free concepts, such a man
merely thinks words. He becomes unfree because all his thinking is absorbed
in words. This is a fundamental characteristic of modern men.

Earthly life in its historical development, especially in its present
state, cannot be understood unless we also turn with the eyes of soul, to
the life which runs its course between death and a new birth, to the world
of soul-and-spirit.

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- Cosmic Forces in Man, II. The Soul Life of Man, Oslo, November 27th, 1921
( GA 209)

"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. " - Matthew 11:15


Tarjei
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