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experienced in the spiritual world as the complementary color. Thus a red stone appears greenish in the
spirit land and a green stone, reddish.
The other characteristics also appear In their complementary forms. Just as stones, earth masses, and
so forth, make up the solid land  the continental regions  of the physical world, so the structures
described above compose "the solid land" of the spirit world.  Everything that is life within the sense
world is the oceanic region in the spirit world. Life to the physical eye is manifest in its effects in
plants, animals, and men. Life to spiritual vision is a flowing entity that permeates the land of spirits
like seas and rivers.
A still better analogy is that of the circulation of the blood in the body, for whereas oceans and rivers
appear irregularly distributed within the physical world, there is a certain regularity, like that of the
circulation of the blood, in the distribution of this streaming life of the land of spirit beings.
This flowing life is heard simultaneously as a spiritual entoning.  The third realm of the spirit land is
its "atmosphere." What appears in the sense world as sensation exists in the spiritual realm as an all-
pervading presence like the earth's air. Here we must imagine a sea of flowing feeling. Sorrow and
pain, joy and delight flow through this realm like wind or a raging tempest in the atmosphere of the
sense world. Imagine a battle raging upon earth. Not only human forms confront each other there,
forms that can be seen with the physical eyes, but feelings stand forth opposing feelings, passions
opposing passions.
The battlefield is filled with pain as well as with human forms. Everything that is experienced there of
the nature of passion, pain, joy of conquest, is present not alone in its effects perceptible to the senses,
but the spiritual sense becomes conscious of it as atmospheric processes in the land of spirits. Such an
event in the spirit is like a thunder storm in the physical world, and the perception of these events may
be likened to the hearing of words in the physical world. Therefore it is said that just as the air
surrounds and permeates the earth beings, so do "wafting spiritual words" enclose the beings and
processes of the spirit land.
There are still other perceptions possible in this spiritual world. What may be compared to warmth and
light of the physical world is also present. What permeates everything in the spirit land, like warmth
permeating earthly things, is the thought world itself, only here, thoughts must be imagined as living,
independent entities. What is apprehended as thoughts in the physical world is like the shadow of what
exists in the land of spirits as thought beings.
If we imagine thought, as it exists in human beings, withdrawn from man and endowed as an active
entity with its own inner life, then we have a feeble illustration of what permeates the fourth region of
the spirit land. What man perceives as thoughts in his physical world between birth and death is only
the manifestation of the thought world as it is able to express itself through the instrumentality of the
bodies. But all such thoughts entertained by human beings, which signify an enrichment of the
physical world, have their origin in this region. One need not think here merely of the ideas of the
great inventors, of the geniuses. It can be seen how every person has sudden ideas that he does not owe
merely to the outer world, but with which he transforms this outer world itself.
Feelings and passions whose causes lie in the outer world have to be placed in the third region of the
spirit land. But everything that can so live in the human soul as to make him a creator, causing him to
transform and fructify his surroundings, is perceptible in its primeval, essential form in the fourth
sphere of the spiritual world.  What exists in the fifth region may be compared with physical light. It
is wisdom revealing itself in its innermost form. Beings belonging to this region shed wisdom upon
their environment, just as the sun sheds light upon physical beings. What is illuminated by this wisdom
appears in its true significance and meaning for the spiritual world, just as a physical object displays its
color when it is shone upon by the light.  There exist still higher regions of the land of the spirits,
descriptions of which will be found in a later part of this work.
After death, the ego is immersed in this world, together with the harvest that it brings with it from its
life in the sense world. This harvest is still united with that part of the astral body that has not been
thrown off at the end of the period of purification. Only that part falls away which after death was
inclined with its desires and longings toward physical life. The immersion of the ego in the spiritual
world, together with what it has acquired in the sense world, may be compared with the insertion of a
seed into the ripening earth.
Just as this seed draws substances and forces from its environment in order to develop into a new
plant, so, too, unfolding and growth is the very essence of the ego being embedded in the world of
spirit.  Within what an organ perceives lies hidden the force by means of which the organ itself is
created. The eye perceives the light, but without the light there would be no eye. Beings that pass their
lives in darkness develop no organs of sight. In this manner the whole bodily organism of the human
being is created out of the hidden forces lying within what is perceived with these bodily members.
The physical body is built up by the forces of the physical world, the ether body by those of the life
world, and the astral body is formed out of the astral world.
When the ego is now transplanted into the spirit land, it encounters those forces that remain hidden to
physical perception. In the first region of the spirit land the spiritual beings are perceptible who always
surround the human being and who have also fashioned his physical body. Thus in the physical world,
man perceives nothing but the manifestations of those spiritual forces that have also formed his own
physical body. After death, he is himself in the midst of these formative forces that now appear to him
in their own, previously concealed, form. Likewise, in the second region he is in the midst of the forces
composing his ether body. In the third region, forces stream toward him out of which his astral body
has been organized. The higher regions of the spirit land also now impart to him what composes his
form in his life between birth and death.
These beings of the spirit world now co-operate with what man has brought with him as fruit from the
former life and what now becomes a seed. By means of this cooperation man is built up anew as a
spiritual being. In sleep the physical and ether bodies continue their existence; the astral body and ego
are, to be sure, outside of these two bodies, but still united with them. Whatever influences the astral
body and the ego receive in this state from the spiritual world can only serve to restore the forces
exhausted during the waking period.
When the physical and ether bodies have been laid aside, however, and when, after the period of
purification, those parts of the astral body that are still connected with the physical world through their
desires are also laid aside, all that streams toward the ego from the spirit world now becomes not only
a perfector, but a recreator. After a certain length of time, which will be discussed in later parts of this
work, an astral body has formed itself around the ego; the former can again dwell in ether and physical
bodies befitting the human being between birth and death.
He can again pass through birth and appear in a new earth existence into which the fruit of the previous
life has been incorporated. Up to the time of re-forming a new astral body, man is a witness of his own [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]