The Little Book on Life After Death
Translated by an AI Model
Chapter One
Man lives on Earth not once, but thrice. His first stage of life is a perpetual sleep, the second an alternation between sleep and waking, the third an eternal waking.
In the first stage, man lives solitarily in darkness; in the second, he lives socially but separately alongside and among others in a light that reflects the surface to him; in the third, his life intertwines with that of other spirits into a higher life in the highest spirit, and he gazes into the essence of finite things.
In the first stage, the body develops from the germ and creates its tools for the second; in the second, the spirit develops from the germ and creates its tools for the third; in the third, the divine germ, which lies within every man's spirit and already here points beyond man into an afterlife that is dark to us but as bright as day to the spirit of the third stage, through premonition, faith, feeling, and the instinct of genius.
The transition from the first to the second stage of life is called birth; the transition from the second to the third is called death.
The path by which we pass from the second to the third stage is no darker than that by which we reach the first to the second. One leads to the external, the other to the internal contemplation of the world.
But just as the child in the first stage is still blind and deaf to all the splendor and music of life in the second, and its birth from the warm womb is hard and painful for it, and just as there is a moment in birth when it feels the destruction of its former existence as death before the awakening to the external new being takes place, so in our present existence, where our entire consciousness is still bound in the narrow body, we know nothing of the splendor and music and glory and freedom of life in the third stage, and easily mistake the narrow dark passage that leads us there for a cul-de-sac from which there is no exit. But death is only a second birth to a freer existence, in which the spirit bursts its narrow shell and leaves it to lie and decay, just as the child does its own at the first birth.
Thereafter, everything that is brought to us externally and, as it were, only from a distance by our present senses, will be permeated and felt by us in its inner being. The spirit will no longer merely pass by the mountain and grass; it will no longer, surrounded by all the joy of spring, yet be tormented by the melancholy that all this remains merely external to it, but it will penetrate mountain and grass and feel the strength of the former and the joy of the latter in growing; it will no longer struggle to generate a thought in others through words and gestures, but in the immediate interaction of spirits with each other, which are no longer separated by bodies but connected by them, will the joy of thought-generation consist; it will not appear externally to the loved ones left behind, but it will dwell in their innermost souls, as part of them, thinking and acting in and through them.
Chapter Two
The child in the womb has merely a body-spirit, the formative drive. The creation and development of the limbs, with which it grows out of itself, are its actions. It does not yet feel that these limbs are its property, for it does not use them and cannot use them. A beautiful eye, a beautiful mouth are merely beautiful objects it has created, unaware that they will one day be subservient parts of its self. They are made for a subsequent world, of which the child knows nothing yet; it expels them by virtue of an impulse dark to itself, which is only clearly founded in the mother's organization.[1] But just as the child, ripe for the second stage of life, sheds and leaves behind the organs of its previous creation, it suddenly sees itself as a self-sufficient unity of all its creations. This eye, this ear, this mouth now belong to it, and if it first created them according to a dark innate feeling, it now learns their precious use. The world of light, colors, sounds, scents, taste, and feeling now opens up to it only through the tools created for this purpose; well for it if it created them useful and capable.
The relationship between the first and second stages will recur, intensified, in the relationship between the second and third. All our actions and desires in this world are merely designed to create an organism that we shall perceive and utilize as our self in the next world. All spiritual effects, all consequences of the manifestations of power that emanate from a person during their lifetime and extend through the human world and nature, are already connected by a secret, invisible bond; they are the spiritual limbs of a person, which they cultivate during their lifetime, bound together into a spiritual body, an organism of restlessly expanding forces and effects, whose consciousness still lies outside them, and which, although inextricably interwoven with their present being, they only recognize as their own at its point of origin. However, at the moment of death, when a person separates from the organs to which their creative power was bound here, they suddenly gain consciousness of all that continues to live and work as a consequence of their former life's expressions in the world of ideas, forces, and effects, and which, having organically flowed from one source, still carries its organic unity within itself, but which now becomes vibrant, self-aware, self-powerful, and governs in humanity and nature with its own individual plenitude of power according to its own determination.
Whatever anyone has contributed during their life to the creation, shaping, or preservation of the ideas that permeate humanity and nature—that is their immortal part, which will continue to act in the third stage, even when the body to which the active force was bound in the second stage has long decayed. What millions of deceased people have created, done, and thought has not died with them, nor will it be destroyed again by what the next millions create, do, and think; instead, it continues to work within them, develops further within them with a life of its own, driving them towards a great goal that they themselves do not see.
Of course, this ideal afterlife appears to us merely as an abstraction, and the continued working of the spirits of deceased people in the living only as an empty concept. But it appears so to us only because we lack senses to grasp spirits in the third stage in their true being, which fills and permeates nature; we can only recognize the points where their existence connects with ours, the part with which they have grown into us and which appears to us precisely in the form of those ideas that have propagated from them into us.
Whether the ripple a sinking stone leaves in the water excites a new ripple around every stone still protruding from it, it remains a cohesive circle that excites and encompasses all; the stones, however, only know about the fragmentation of the circumferences. We are such ignorant stones, except that, unlike solid stones, each of us already creates a cohesive circle of effects around us during life, which spreads not only around others but into others.
Indeed, even during their lifetime, every person grows into others with their effects through word, example, writing, and deed. Already when Goethe lived, millions of contemporaries carried sparks of his spirit within them, from which new lights ignited; already when Napoleon lived, the power of his spirit penetrated almost the entire contemporary world; when both died, these branches of life that they had extended into the contemporary world did not die with them; only the driving force of new earthly branches ceased, and the growth and further development of these creations, emanating from one individual and collectively forming one individual again, now occurs with an equally inherent, though to us incomprehensible, self-awareness, as did their initial emergence. A Goethe, a Schiller, a Napoleon, a Luther still live among us, within us, as self-aware individuals, already more highly developed than at their death, thinking and acting within us, generating and developing ideas, each no longer confined to a narrow body, but diffused throughout the world they shaped, delighted, and ruled during their lifetime, and extending far beyond the effects we still feel from them with their self.
The greatest example of a powerful spirit that lives on and continues to work in the afterlife is Christ. It is not an empty word that Christ lives in his confessors; every true Christian carries him not merely by comparison, but truly alive within them; everyone who acts and thinks in his spirit is partaker of him, for it is only Christ's spirit that effects this action and thought in him. He has spread throughout all the members of his community, and all are connected by his spirit like the apples of a tree, like the branches of a vine.
"For as one body has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ" (1 Cor. 12:12).[2]
But not only the greatest minds, but every capable person awakens in the next world with a self-created organism encompassing a unity of infinite spiritual creations, effects, and moments, which will fill a greater or lesser scope and have more or less power of development, depending on how widely and powerfully the human spirit itself reached during its lifetime. But whoever clung to the soil here and only used their spirit to move, nourish, and entertain their matter, only an insignificant being will remain of them. And so the richest will become the poorest if they only spend their money to save their strength, and the poorest the richest if they spend their strength to honestly earn their living. For what everyone spends here, they will have there, and money there will only be worth what it has created of value.
The riddles of our present spiritual life, the thirst for the exploration of truth, which in part is of no use to us here, the striving of every righteous spirit to create works that only benefit posterity, conscience with remorse, which implants in us an unfathomable anxiety about bad actions that bring us no disadvantages here, all arise from forebodings of what all this will bring us in that world, where even the fruit of our smallest and most hidden activity falls to us as a part of ourselves.
This is the great justice of creation, that everyone creates the conditions of their future existence themselves. Actions are not repaid to man by external rewards or punishments; there is no heaven and no hell in the usual sense of Christians, Jews, and pagans, where the soul would go after death; it neither makes a leap upward nor a fall downward, nor a standstill; it does not burst, it does not dissolve into the general; but after having overcome the great stage disease, death, it develops calmly further on earth in and to a higher existence according to the unchangeable, every later stage building upon the foundation of the earlier, consistency of nature; and depending on whether man has acted well or badly, nobly or basely, diligently or idly, he will find in the next life a healthy or sick, a beautiful or ugly, a strong or weak organism as his property, and his free activity in this world will determine his position to other spirits, his path of destiny, his aptitudes and talents for further progress in that world.
Therefore be diligent and brave. For whoever walks slowly here will walk lame there, and whoever does not open their eyes will have a dim sight there, and whoever practices falsehood and wickedness will feel their disharmony with the choir of true and good spirits as pain, which will drive them in that world to improve and heal the evil they have incurred in this one, and will not let them find rest and peace until they have shed and atoned for even their smallest and last misdeed. And while the other spirits already rest in God, or rather live as partakers of his thoughts, they will still be driven in the tribulation and changeability of life on earth, and their soul's evil will plague people with ideas of error and superstition, leading them to vice and follies, and by remaining behind on their path in the third world to perfection, they will also hold back those in whom they live on their path in the second to the third.
However long the untrue, evil, and base may continue to operate and struggle for its existence against the true, beautiful, and right, it will ultimately be overcome by the latter's ever-growing power, destroyed by its own consequences that rebound with increasing force, and thus nothing of all lies, all malice, all filth will finally remain in the human soul. Only that which is true, beautiful, and good in man is his eternal, imperishable part. And if only a mustard seed of it is within him—and who would not be if none were—it will ultimately remain, purified of chaff and dross by the purgatory of life, which torments only the wicked, on the third stage, and, even if late, will still be able to grow into a magnificent tree.
Rejoice also, you whose spirit has been steeled here by tribulation and pain; the practice gained in the valiant struggle against obstacles to your progress will benefit you, and born more vigorously into the new existence, you will more swiftly and joyfully catch up with what your destiny caused you to miss here.
Chapter Three
Man uses many means for one purpose; God uses one means for many purposes.
The plant thinks it exists merely for itself, to grow, to sway in the wind, to drink light and air, to prepare scents and colors for its own adornment, to play with beetles and bees; — it is also there for itself, but at the same time, it is merely a pore of the earth, where light, air, and water meet and intertwine in processes important for the entire earthly life; it is there to transpire for the earth, to breathe, to weave it a green garment, and to offer humans and animals material for food, clothing, and warmth.
Man thinks he exists merely for himself, to enjoy himself, to work and create for his own physical and spiritual growth; — he is also there for himself, but at the same time, his body and spirit are merely a dwelling into which higher, foreign spirits enter, intertwine, develop, and carry out all sorts of processes among themselves, which are at once the feeling and thinking of man and have their higher meaning for the third stage of life.
Man's spirit is indistinguishably both his property and the property of those higher spirits, and what transpires within it always belongs to both at the same time, but in different ways.
Just as in this figure, which is not meant to be a likeness but only a symbol or analogy, the colorful (here appearing black) six-pointed star standing in the middle can be regarded as an independent entity, carrying its inner unity within itself, whose rays are all dependent on its center and thus uniformly connected, but on the other hand, it also appears to flow together from the interlinking of the six simply colored circles, each of which also has its own inner unity, and just as each ray of it belongs both to itself and to the circles through whose interlocking it arises, so it is with the human soul.
Man often doesn't know where his thoughts come from; something occurs to him; a longing, an anxiety, or a pleasure comes over him, for which he can give no account; a power compels him to act, or a voice warns him against it, without him being conscious of his own reason. These are impulses from spirits that think into him, act into him from a different center than his own. Their effects become even more evident in us when, in abnormal states (of sleepwalking or mental illness), the essentially reciprocal relationship of dependence between them and us has decidedly shifted in their favor, so that we only passively receive what flows to us from them, without any reaction from our side.
However, as long as the human spirit is awake and healthy, it is not the will-less plaything or product of the spirits that grow into it or from which it appears to have grown; rather, that which connects these very spirits, the invisible, primordially vital center full of spiritual attractive force, into which all converge, in which all intersect and through mutual interaction engender thoughts—this did not first arise from the intersection of spirits, but is inherent in man as his primordial property at conception; and free will, self-determination, self-consciousness, reason, and the foundation of all spiritual faculties are contained therein. But all of this lies within at birth like an unopened seed, only awaiting development into an organism full of vital individual reality. As soon as man enters life, foreign spirits sense it and press in from all sides, seeking to make his strength their own, to thereby strengthen a moment of themselves; but as they succeed in this, this moment simultaneously becomes the property of the human spirit itself, is engrafted into it, and contributes to its development.
The foreign spirits that have grown into humans are subject to the influence of the human will, albeit in a different way, just as humans are dependent on foreign spirits; humans can give birth to new things into the spirits connected within them from the core of their spiritual being, just as these can decisively influence their innermost self; but in a harmoniously developed spiritual life, no will has supremacy over another. Since each foreign spirit shares only a part of its self with the individual human, the will of the individual human can only have a stimulating influence on it, which lies with its entire remaining part outside the human; and since each human spirit encompasses a community of very different foreign spirits, the will of a single one among them can also only have a stimulating influence on the whole human, and only if the human with free will completely divests himself of his self to individual spirits, will he lose the ability to master them.
Not all spirits can indiscriminately unite in the same soul; therefore, the good and the evil, the true and the lying spirits contend for possession of it, and whoever wins the struggle keeps the field. The inner discord that so often takes place in man is nothing but this struggle of foreign spirits who want to win his will, his reason, in short, his innermost being for themselves. As man feels the unification of the spirits dwelling within him as peace, clarity, harmony, and self-assurance, he feels their struggle within him as unrest, doubt, wavering, confusion, and inner division. But he does not fall to the stronger spirits in this struggle as an effortless prize or sluggish prey; rather, with the source of self-active power at the center of his being, he stands between the opposing forces that seek to draw him to themselves, and fights for whichever side he chooses, and is thus able to decide the victory even for the weaker impulse, by adding his strength to it against the stronger. Thus, the self of man remains unharmed amidst the struggle of spirits, as long as he preserves the innate freedom of his power and does not grow weary of using it. If he nevertheless so often succumbs to evil spirits, it is because the development of power from within him is associated with difficulty; and thus, to become evil, it is often enough to be merely lazy and indolent.
The better a person already is, the easier it becomes for them to improve further; and the worse they are, the easier it is for them to become utterly corrupt. For the good person has already absorbed many good spirits who now ally with them against the lingering and newly pressing evil spirits, thereby sparing them the effort of developing strength from within. The good person does good effortlessly; their spirits do it for them. The bad person, however, must first suppress and overcome all evil spirits from an inner strength that resists them.
Moreover, like attracts like, and its opposite flees unless compelled. The good spirits within us entice the good spirits outside us, and the evil spirits within us attract the evil outside us. Pure spirits gladly enter a pure soul, and the evil outside us takes hold of the evil within us. Once good spirits have gained the upper hand in our soul, even the last remaining devil will soon flee on its own; it finds the good company unsettling. Thus, the soul of good people becomes a pure heavenly abode for blessed spirits dwelling together. But even good spirits, if they despair of wresting a soul from the overwhelming evil ones, abandon it to them entirely, and so it ultimately becomes a hell, a place solely for the torments of the damned. For the pangs of conscience and the inner destruction and restlessness in the souls of the wicked are pains that not only they feel, but with even bitterer woe, the damned spirits within them feel.
Chapter Four
In that higher spirits do not merely dwell in individual humans, but each branches out into several, they are the ones who spiritually connect these people, be it to one form of faith, or one truth, one moral or political endeavor. All people who share any spiritual community belong to the body of one and the same spirit and obey the idea that has entered them from it, like interconnected members. Often an idea lives in an entire people at once; often a mass of people is inspired to one and the same deed: that is a powerful spirit that overcomes them all, radiating into all epidemically. Of course, these connections do not happen solely through the spirits of the dead, but countless newborn ideas work from the living into the living; but all these ideas that go from the living into the world are already members of its future spiritual organism.
When two kindred spirits meet in humanity and grow together through their common moments, while at the same time determining and enriching each other through their diverse aspects, the societies, generations, and peoples in whom they first individually resided simultaneously enter into spiritual communion and are enriched by their spiritual possessions. Thus, the development of the third stage of spiritual life in humanity goes hand in hand with the development and progress of humanity. The gradual formation of the state, sciences, arts, human interaction, and the organization of these spheres of life into ever larger, harmoniously structured wholes is the result of this growing together of countless spiritual individualities, living and weaving in humanity, into larger spiritual organisms.
How else could those magnificent spheres take shape according to such immutable ideas from the confused, egoistic striving of individuals, who with their short-sighted eyes see neither the whole in the middle nor the middle in the whole, if not for the higher spirits, clearly seeing through the whole, working through the machinery, and as they all press around the common divine center and merge with their divine parts, also leading the people in whom they work united towards the higher goal.
But alongside the harmony of spirits that meet and unite in friendship, there is also a struggle of spirits whose essence is in contradiction, a struggle in which all that is caught in finite strife will ultimately consume itself, so that the eternal alone remains in its purity. Humanity also shows traces of this struggle in the conflict of systems, in the hatred of sects, in the wars and rebellions between princes and peoples, and among peoples themselves.
Into all these great spiritual movements, the mass of humanity enters with blind faith, blind obedience, blind hatred, and blind fury; they do not hear or see with the ears and eyes of their own spirit; they are driven by foreign spirits towards purposes and goals of which they themselves are unaware; they allow themselves to be led through slavery, death, and dreadful tribulations, like a flock following the impulse of higher spirits.
Certainly, there are also individuals who intervene in these great movements with clear self-awareness and inner independence, acting as leaders. But they are merely voluntary instruments for great predetermined purposes; through their free actions, they are capable of determining the manner and speed, but not the ultimate goal, of progress. Only those who recognized the prevailing spiritual direction of their time and aligned their free actions and thoughts with it have achieved great things in the world; equally great minds who resisted it have perished. The spirit, which sets better goals and knows better paths to them, has chosen the former as new centers of its moving power; not as blind tools, but as those who, by their own initiative and understanding, serve its rights and wisdom. The coerced slave does not render the better service. What they begin to serve God with in this life, they will continue in the next as participants in His heavenly dominion.
Chapter Five
Indeed, in many ways the spirits of the living and the dead may unconsciously meet, and in some, only consciously from one side. Who can follow and fathom this entire interaction? Let us simply say: they meet when they meet consciously, and the departed are where they are consciously present.
There is one means of conscious encounter between the living and the departed: it is the remembrance of the living for the departed. Directing our attention to the departed means awakening their attention to us, like a stimulus that strikes a living person, drawing their attention, as it were, to where it strikes them.
Our remembrance of the departed is, after all, only a consequence of their conscious life in this world, which has become conscious in us and turns back to them; their life in the next world, however, is guided by that of this world.
Even when a living person thinks of another living person, there may be a pull on their consciousness; yet it effects nothing, because that consciousness is still entirely bound within the confines of its narrow body. But consciousness, freed by death, seeks its place and follows the pull exerted upon it, the more easily and strongly, the more often and strongly it was exerted before.
Just as one and the same physical blow is always felt bilaterally by both the striker and the struck, it is one consciousness-blow that is felt bilaterally in the remembrance of a departed person. We err in believing only the earthly side of consciousness to be present, because we do not perceive the other side; and this error has consequences of error and omission.
A lover has been torn from his beloved, a husband from his wife, a child from its mother. In vain they search in a distant heaven for the piece of life torn from them, in vain they stretch their gaze and hand into the void for what has not truly been torn from them; only the thread of external understanding has been severed, because the external communication through the senses, in which both understood each other, has become an inner, immediate one through the inner sense, in which they have not yet learned to understand each other.
Once I saw a mother anxiously searching her house and garden for her still-living child, whom she carried in her arms. Even greater is the error of those who seek the departed in a distant void, when they only need to look within to find them by their side. And if she does not find it entirely there, did she have it entirely when she carried it externally in her arms? The advantages of external communication, the external word, the external glance, the external care she can no longer have and give; the advantages of the inner she can only now have and give; she only needs to know that there is an inner communication and advantages of such. One does not speak to, nor offer a hand to, someone one believes not to be present. But if you know everything correctly, a new life of the living with the dead will begin, and with the living, the dead will also gain.
Think only good of the departed — and it’s not just the thought of the deceased, the deceased themselves are present in that moment. You can inwardly conjure them, they must come; hold them fast, they must stay, just keep your mind and thoughts fixed on them. Think of them with love or hate, they will feel it; — with stronger love, stronger hate, they will feel it more intensely. Before, you merely remembered the dead; now you know how to use that memory; you can still knowingly gladden or torment a departed soul with your remembrance, reconcile with them or quarrel irreconcilably, not just knowingly for yourself, but for them too. Always do so with the best intentions; and now, also ensure that the remembrance you leave behind will benefit you in the future.
Blessed is he who leaves behind a treasure of love, respect, veneration, and admiration in the memory of others. What he left behind for this earthly life, he gains in death, by acquiring a comprehensive consciousness of everything the survivors think of him; thus lifting the bushel from which he only counted individual grains in life. This belongs to the treasures we should gather for heaven.
Woe to him whom curses, damnation, a memory full of terror follow. Those that followed him in this life catch up with him in death; this is part of the hell that awaits him. Every woe called after him is an arrow sent after him, penetrating his inner being.
Only in the totality of consequences that good and evil beget from themselves does justice find its completion. Indeed, the righteous, who are misunderstood here, will still suffer from this in the afterlife as from an external evil, and an unjust posthumous fame will benefit the unrighteous as an external good; so keep your reputation here below as pure as possible, and do not hide your light under a bushel. But among the spirits of the afterlife itself, misunderstanding ceases; what is falsely weighed below is rightly weighed above, and outweighed by an addition on the other side. Heavenly justice ultimately surpasses all earthly injustice.
Whatever awakens the memory of the dead is a means to call them forth.
At every feast we give for the dead, they ascend; they hover around every statue we erect for them; they listen to every song that sings of their deeds. A germ of life for a new art! How it had aged, how weary it was, always presenting the old plays to the old audiences anew. Now, all at once, as if above the parterre, with the lower layer of old spectators, a circle of boxes opens, from which they see a higher society looking down; and to create not as those below, but as those above would wish, is henceforth their highest goal; but those below should desire it as those above would wish it.
The mockers scoff, and the churches quarrel. There is a mystery, anti-rational for some, supra-rational for others, both because a greater mystery remained entirely hidden from both, from whose revelation finally flows simply and clearly what the understanding of the mockers and the unity of the churches failed on. For it is only a greatest example of a most general rule, in which they see an exception to all rules or above all rules.
Not merely with a body of flour and water does Christ enter the believers at his memorial meal; partake of it rightly with the thought of him, and he will be not merely with you, but in you with his thought; — the more you think of him, the more so; the stronger, with so stronger power will he strengthen you; but if you do not think of him, it remains flour and water and common wine.
Chapter Six
The longing that dwells in every human being, to meet again after death those dearest to them here, to interact with them and renew the former relationship, will be fulfilled to a more perfect degree than ever imagined and promised.
For in that life, those who were connected in this one by a shared spiritual element will not merely meet again, but will grow together into one through this element; it will become a shared soul-limb, belonging to both with equal consciousness.
For even now, the dead are intertwined with the living, just as the living are with each other, through countless such shared elements; but only when death unties the knot that the body draws around the soul of each living being, will the consciousness of this connection join the connection of consciousness itself.
At the moment of death, everyone will recognize that what their spirit received from those who passed before, or shared with them, still belongs to those spirits; thus, they will not enter the third world as a stranger, but as someone long-awaited, to whom all with whom they were connected here by a community of faith, knowledge, and love, will extend their hands to draw them in as a being belonging to them.
We will also enter into an equally intimate communion with those great deceased who traversed the second stage of life long before our time, and by whose example and teaching our spirit was formed. Thus, whoever lived entirely in Christ here, will be entirely in Christ there. But their individuality will not be extinguished in the higher individuality, but will only gain strength within it and at the same time reinforce that strength. For spirits that grow together through their shared moments each gain the other's strength for their own and at the same time define themselves through the related differences.
Thus, some spirits will mutually strengthen each other through large parts of their being, while others will only be connected by individual coinciding moments.
Not all these connections, founded on the commonality of a spiritual moment, will remain; but those will remain whose moment belongs to truth, beauty, or virtue.
Everything that does not carry eternal harmony within itself, even if it outlasts this life, will eventually disintegrate within itself and cause a schism among spirits who were, for a time, united by a reprehensible bond.
Most spiritual moments that develop in the present life and that we carry over into the next, indeed contain a core of the true, good, and beautiful, but enveloped by much added inessential, false, distorted, and corrupted matter. Spirits connected by such moments can remain united or separate; depending on whether they both agree to hold fast to the good and best within it and leave the bad to the evil spirits alone upon their separation from them, or depending on whether one grasps the good and the other the bad.
However, spirits who have once collectively grasped a form or idea of the true, beautiful, or good in its eternal purity, remain connected through it for all eternity and possess it in the same way as a part of themselves in eternal unity.
The grasping of eternal ideas by higher spirits is therefore a growing together of these spirits through these ideas into larger spiritual organisms; and just as all individual ideas are rooted in general ones, and these in more general ones, so ultimately all spirits will be connected as members to the greatest spirit, to God.
The spirit world in its perfection will therefore not be an assembly, but a tree of spirits, whose root is embedded in the earthly and whose crown reaches into heaven.
Only the greatest and noblest spirits, Christ, the geniuses and saints, are able to grow directly with their best part up to the inner height of God; the smaller and lesser ones root into them like branches into boughs and boughs into trunks, and thus are indirectly connected through them with what is highest in the Highest.
Thus, the departed geniuses and saints are the true mediators between God and humans; they partake in God's ideas, bringing them to people, and at the same time, they feel the suffering, joys, and wishes of humans, bringing these to God.
The cult of the dead, intertwined with the deifying nature cult, has been half-sister, half-divided since the very origin of religion; the most primitive peoples have retained the most of it, the most cultured have retained the highest of it, and where would there be a nation today that didn't preserve a large fragment of it as its centerpiece?
And so, in every city, there should be a temple to its greatest deceased, built adjacent to or within the temple of God, while Christ, as before, resides with God himself in the same chamber.
Chapter Seven
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
1 Corinthians 13:12
Here, man leads both an outer and an inner life; the former is visible and audible to all in gaze, word, writing, external actions, and works, while the latter is only perceptible to himself in inner thoughts and feelings. The continuation of the visible into the external is also visible, easily traceable; the continuation of the invisible remains invisible itself, yet it is not absent. Rather, with the external life of man, as its core, the inner life continues beyond the earthly man, to form the core of the man in the hereafter.
Indeed, what emanates from a person during their life, visible and palpable to the living, is not the only thing that emanates from them. However small and subtle a tremor or vibration that carries a conscious impulse in our head may be, the entire play of conscious impulses is carried by an inner play of our head; it cannot cease otherwise than by producing after-effects of its kind within us and finally beyond us; we simply cannot trace them into the external. Just as sounds cannot keep their play to themselves, it is carried beyond them, so too with our head; only the immediate part of it belongs to the sound and the head.
What an unspeakably complex play of high-order waves, originating in the play of our minds, may spread over the coarse, lower play that is perceptible to our eyes and ears outside, comparable to the finest ripples over the large waves of a pond, or drawings without thickness over the surface of a thick-knitted carpet, which derives all its beauty and higher meaning from them. The physicist, however, only recognizes and traces the play of lower-order waves outside and does not concern himself with the finer ones that he does not recognize. — If he does not recognize it, yet he knows the principle, may he deny the consequence?[3]
Thus, what has entered us from spirits through the after-effects of their externally perceptible earthly life does not exhaust their entire existence; rather, in a way incomprehensible to us, there exists in nature, in addition to this external part of their being, an inner, indeed the main part of their being. And even if a person had lived and died on a desert island, without ever having interfered in the lives of other people, they would still persist essentially in their inner being, awaiting a future development that they could not find in earthly interaction with others.
On the other hand, if a child had lived for only a moment, it could never die again. The smallest moment of conscious life already creates a circle of effects around itself, just as the shortest sound, which seems to die out instantly, creates such a circle that carries the sound infinitely beyond those standing near and listening; for no effect dies within itself, and each eternally generates new effects of its kind. And so, the spirit of the child, like that of the isolated person, will continue to develop from these conscious beginnings; only differently than if it had happened from an already developed beginning.
Just as man only in death gains full consciousness of what he has spiritually begotten in others, so too in death will he first attain full consciousness and use of what he has cultivated within himself. What he has gathered in spiritual treasures during his life, what fills his memory, what permeates his feelings, what his understanding and imagination have created, remains eternally his! Yet the whole connection of it remains dark on this side; only thought proceeds with a luminous lamp, illuminating what lies on the narrow line of its path, the rest remains in darkness. Never does the spirit here below become aware of its entire inner fullness at once; only as a moment of it entices something new for connection, does it emerge for an instant from the darkness and sink back into it the next. Thus, man is a stranger in his own spirit and wanders within it, following chance or laboriously seeking his way along the thread of conclusion, and often forgets his best treasures, which lie submerged in the darkness, covering the spirit's vast field, far from the luminous track of thought. But at the moment of death, when an eternal night covers the eye of his body, it will begin to dawn in his spirit. Then the center of the inner man will ignite into a sun, which will illuminate everything spiritual within him and at the same time, as an inner eye, perceive it with unearthly clarity. Everything he forgot here, he finds again there; indeed, he only forgot it on this side because it preceded him into the beyond; he now finds it collected again. In that new general clarity, he will no longer laboriously have to search for what he wishes to connect, and dissect into its characteristics what he wishes to separate, but with one glance, everything that is within him will be simultaneously perceived by him in its relations of unity and contradiction, connection and separation, harmony and discord, not merely in one direction of thought, but simultaneously in all.[4] As high as the flight and eye of the bird soars above the slow crawling of the blind caterpillar, which recognizes nothing but what its sluggish step touches, so will that higher mode of cognition rise above ours. And so, in death, along with man's body, his senses, his understanding, indeed the entire structure of his spirit calculated for this finitude, will perish, as forms that have become too narrow for his being, as limbs that are no longer useful to him in an order of things where he will possess, behold, and enjoy everything they would individually, laboriously, imperfectly create and disclose for him, all at once, directly within himself. But man's self will remain intact in its full expansion and development in that destruction of his temporal forms, and a higher life will take the place of that extinguished lower mode of activity. All the unrest of thoughts is appeased, for they no longer need to seek each other to find each other, and no longer need to move towards each other to become conscious of their relationship. But in return, a higher reciprocal life of spirits with spirits now begins; just as thoughts interact with each other in our spirit, so do they interact in the higher spirit, which, or whose all-connecting center, we call God, and our play of thoughts itself is only a ramification of this interaction. There will be no more need for language to understand each other, and no eye to recognize the other, but just as within us thought understands thought and acts upon it, without the mediation of ear, mouth, and hand, connects with it or separates from it without external bond and without partition, so secretly, intimately, and directly will the reciprocal life of spirits among themselves be. And nothing will remain hidden from one in the other.Then all sinful thoughts that crept in the darkness of the mind here, and everything that man would wish to cover within himself from his peers with a thousand hands, will become manifest to all spirits. And only the spirit that has been entirely pure and true here will be able to face the others in that world without shame; and whoever has been misunderstood here on Earth will find his recognition there.
And in its self-reflection, the spirit will perceive every flaw in its own being, every imperfection, every disturbing, disharmonious remnant from this life. It will not merely recognize these shortcomings but feel them with the same intensity of common sensation as we feel our physical infirmities. But just as thought purifies itself of untruth through thought, and as thoughts connect through their shared moments to form higher thoughts, each thereby completing what the other lacks, so too will spirits in their mutual interaction find the means for their progress towards perfection.
Chapter Eight
During its life, man interacts with nature not only spiritually but also materially.
Heat, air, water, and earth penetrate him from all sides and flow back out again, creating and changing his body. But as these elements, which outside of man merely exist side-by-side, meet and cross within him, they tie a knot that seals off man's bodily sensation, and with it everything more internal than this sensation, from the feeling of the outside world. Only through the windows of the senses can he still look and feel into the outside world from his bodily shell, and, as with small buckets, draw something from it.
But when man dies, that knot will loosen with the decay of his body, and the spirit, no longer bound by it, will now pour itself forth through nature with complete freedom. It will no longer merely perceive light and sound waves as they strike his eye and ear, but as they roll through the ether and air itself; no longer merely feel the breath of the wind and the surge of the sea against his body bathed therein, but roar within the air and the sea itself; no longer outwardly wander in the green of the forest and meadow, but feelingly penetrate forest and meadow with the people wandering within them.
Thus, nothing is lost to him in the transition to the higher stage, except tools whose limited service he can dispense with in an existence where he will fully and directly carry and feel within himself everything that, on the lower stage, approached him only individually and externally through that sluggish mediation. Why should we take eyes and ears with us into the next life to draw light and sound from the wellspring of living nature, when the wave-train of our future life will become one with the light and sound wave? But more!
The human eye is but a small sun-like speck on Earth and sees nothing of the whole heaven but tiny points. Man's desire to know more of the heavens is not fulfilled here.
He invents the telescope and thereby magnifies the surface and carrying capacity of his eye; in vain, the stars remain points.
Now he believes that what this world cannot grant, he will attain in the hereafter, finally satisfying his curiosity by reaching heaven and henceforth clearly beholding everything that remained hidden to his earthly eyes here.
He is right; but he does not reach heaven by growing wings to fly from one star to another, or even into an invisible heaven above the visible heaven; where in the nature of things were there wings for that; he does not come to know the whole heaven by being carried from one star to another in ever new births; no stork is there to carry the little ones from star to star; — his eye does not gain the capacity for the greatest celestial distances by being made into the largest telescope; the principle of earthly vision will no longer suffice; — but he attains all this by becoming, as a conscious part of the great celestial being that carries him, a conscious participant in its light-exchange with the other celestial beings. A new way of seeing! For us down here, none, because ours down here is none for heaven. In heaven, the Earth itself floats as a great eye, completely immersed in the light-seas of the stars and turning within them, to receive the wave-beats of all from all sides, which cross millions upon millions of times and yet do not interfere. With this eye, man will one day learn to see into heaven, as the wave-beat of his future life, with which he penetrates it, meets the external wave-beat of the ether that surrounds it, and penetrates the heavens with the finest beats.
Learn to see! And how much more will man have to learn after death! For let him not imagine that he will be capable of grasping the full heavenly clarity, for which the afterlife offers him the means, immediately upon entering. Even in this life, a child first learns to see and hear; for what it initially sees and hears is an incomprehensible spectacle, a sound devoid of meaning, at first even just a blinding, deafening, and confusing sensation; and the afterlife will initially offer nothing different to the new senses of the new child. Only what man brings with him from this life, the entire echo of memory of all that he has done, thought, and been in this life, will he see clearly illuminated within himself upon transition, yet he will initially remain only what he was. Nor should anyone believe that the glory of the afterlife will benefit the foolish, the lazy, the wicked, other than by making him feel the discord of his being and thereby finally compelling him to change his nature. Even into this present life, man brings an eye to behold the full splendor of heaven and earth, an ear to perceive music and human speech, an understanding to grasp the meaning of it all; what good does it do the foolish, the lazy, the wicked?
Just as the best and highest of this world, so too is the best and highest of the afterlife only for the best and highest, because it is understood, willed, and created only by the best and highest themselves.
Thus, only the higher being of the afterlife can gain an understanding of the conscious interaction of the essence that sustains him with other heavenly beings and even participate as an instrument in this interaction.
Whether ultimately the whole Earth, gradually drawing ever tighter circles, will return after eons of years into the bosom of the sun, from which it once escaped, and from there a solar life of all earthly creatures will begin, who knows; and why is it necessary for us to know it now?
Ninth Chapter
The spirits of the third stage will dwell in earthly nature, of which humanity itself is a part, as in a communal body, and all processes of nature will be to them what the processes of our body are to us now. Their body will encompass the bodies of the second stage of life as a communal mother, just as the bodies of the second stage encompass those of the first.
However, each spirit of the third stage has only that part of the common body as its own, which it has further developed and cultivated in the earthly realm. What has become different in the world through a person's existence than if he had not been there, is his further existence on the common root of all existence.
In part, these are stable institutions and works, in part continuous, self-circling and self-reflecting effects, just as the present body consists of stable elements and changeable ones that are anchored in the stable.
Now, however, all circles of existence that sustain the life of the spirits in the afterlife intertwine, and you ask how it is possible that so many cross without disturbing, erring, or confusing each other.
First ask, how is it possible that countless wave circles cross in the same pond, that countless sound waves cross in the same air, that countless light waves cross in the same ether, that countless memory waves cross in the same head, that finally the countless life circles of humans, which carry their afterlife, already cross in this world without disturbing, erring, or confusing each other. Rather, it is only through this that a higher life and weaving of waves, of memories, of those living in this world and finally in the afterlife, comes into being.
But what separates the consciousness circles that cross?
Nothing separates them in any particulars where they cross; they have everything particular in common; each has it only in different relations than the other; that separates them as a whole and distinguishes them in higher particulars. Ask again, what distinguishes or separates wave circles that cross; individually nothing; yet you easily distinguish them even externally as a whole; even more easily will circles that are internally conscious distinguish themselves internally.
Perhaps you have sometimes received a letter from a distant part of the world, written crosswise, both lengthwise and crosswise. What allows you to distinguish between the two writings? Only the coherence that each possesses within itself. Thus, the spiritual writings with which the page of the world is inscribed intersect; and each reads itself as if it alone occupied the space, and at the same time reads the others as those that cross it. Not just two writings, of course, countless ones intersect in the world; but the letter is only a faint image of the world.
But how can consciousness maintain its unity amidst such a vast spread of its substratum, how can it still exist before the law of the threshold of consciousness?[5]
First ask how it can maintain its unity in the smaller expanse of the body, of which the larger expanse is but a continuation. Is your body, is your brain a point? Or is there a center within it as the seat of the soul? No.[6] As it is now the soul's nature to knit the small coherence of your body, so it will be its nature in the future to knit the greater coherence of the greater body. God's spirit even knits the entire coherence of the world; — or would you seek God in a point too? — In the hereafter, you will only gain a greater share in His omnipresence.
But if you worry that the wave of your future life, in its expansion, will no longer reach the threshold it surpasses here, then also remember that it does not spread into an empty world, where it would sink irretrievably into the abyss, but into a world which, as God's eternal foundation, also underlies your own; for only on the basis of divine life can the creature live at all.[7]
Thus, the wren can easily fly over a mountain peak on the back of an eagle, which it would be too weak to do on its own, and finally, from the eagle's back, fly a little further than the eagle's general flight. But the great eagle, like the little bird, belongs to God.
But how can man, after the death of the body, do without the brain, so artfully constructed, which bore every movement of his spirit, and which, further developed by the movements of the spirit, bore them with ever greater strength and fullness. Was it built in vain?
Ask the plant how it can do without the seed when it bursts it to grow into the light, that which was so artfully constructed, and which, by the impulse of the inner germ, further developed within itself. Was it built in vain?
But where outside is there a structure as artful as your brain that would replace it in the hereafter, and where is there one that would even surpass it; yet the hereafter is supposed to surpass this world.
But is not your entire body already a greater and higher structure than eye, ear, brain, not above every part? — So, and unspeakably more, the world, of which humanity with its state, science, art, and communication is only a part, surpasses your small brain, the part of this part. Look, if you want to rise to a higher view, do not merely see the earth as a ball of dry soil, water, air; it is a greater and higher unified creature than you, a celestial creature, with more wonderful life and activity in its upper reaches than you carry in your small brain, with which you contribute only a tiny bit to its life. In vain will you dream of a life after you, if you do not know how to recognize the life around you.
What does the anatomist see when he looks into the human brain? A tangle of white fibers whose meaning he cannot unravel. And what does it see within itself? A world of light, sounds, thoughts, memories, fantasies, feelings of love and hate. So imagine the relationship between what you, standing externally to the world, see in it, and what it sees within itself, and do not demand that both, the external and the internal, resemble each other more in the whole of the world than in you, who are only a part of it. And only because you are a part of this world can you also see a part of what it sees within itself, within you.
And do you finally ask what allows our wider body, as we call it, to awaken only in the beyond, after we have already driven it into the earthly realm in this life, and it is already now the continuation of our narrower body?
The very fact that this narrower body falls asleep, indeed perishes. Nothing but a case of the same general rule that extends throughout this world, proof that it also extends beyond it. You doubter always want to conclude only from this world, so conclude.
The living power of consciousness never truly arises anew, never perishes, but like that of the body on which it rests, can only change its place, form, and mode of diffusion in time and space, only sink today or here to rise tomorrow or elsewhere, only rise today or here to sink tomorrow or elsewhere.[8] For the eye to awaken, for you to see with consciousness, you must let the ear sink into sleep; for the inner world of thought to awaken, you must let the outer senses sleep; a pain at the smallest point can completely exhaust the consciousness of your soul. The more the light of attention is dispersed, the weaker each individual part is illuminated; the brighter it strikes one point, the more all others recede into darkness; to reflect on something means to abstract from something else. You owe your wakefulness today to your sleep since yesterday; the deeper you fall asleep today, the more awake you will awaken tomorrow, and the more awake you have been, the deeper you will sleep.
But now, in this life, man always sleeps only a half-sleep, which allows the old man to awaken again, because the old is still there; only in death does he experience the full sleep that allows a new one to awaken, because the old is no longer there; yet the old rule is still there, demanding a replacement for the old consciousness, and for this, the new body as a continuation of the old; thus, a new consciousness will also be there as a replacement and continuation of the old.
As a continuation of the old! For what allows the body of the old man to still carry the continuation of the same consciousness that the body of the child carried, of which he no longer has an atom, will also allow the body of the beyond to still carry the same consciousness that the body of the old man carried, of which he no longer has an atom. This is because each subsequent one holds within itself the continued effect of the one that carried the previous consciousness and is thereby constructed. Thus, it is a principle that allows this earthly life to continue from today to tomorrow and from this world to the next. And can there be any other than an eternal principle of the eternal preservation of man?
And so, do not ask: what makes it so that effects you have produced in the external world in this life, which are beyond you, should belong to you more than any others that are beyond you? It is because those emanated from you much more than these. Every cause retains its effects as eternal property. In essence, however, your effects had never gone beyond you; they already formed, in this life, the unconscious continuation of your being, merely awaiting awakening to new consciousness.
As little as a person who has once lived can ever die, could he ever have awakened to life if he had not lived before; only that he had not lived for himself before. The consciousness with which the child awakens at birth is only a part of the eternally existing general divine consciousness, which has gathered itself in the new soul for itself. We can, of course, no more trace the living power of consciousness through all paths and transformations than the living power of the body.
But if you worry that human consciousness, because it is born out of the general consciousness, will also flow back into it, then look at the tree. It took many years for the branches to come out of the trunk; once they have come out, they do not go back into it. How would the tree grow and develop if that happened; the tree of life of the world also wants to grow and develop.
After all, this is the great art of inferring the hereafter from the here and now, not from reasons we don't know, nor from assumptions we make, but from facts we do know, to conclude the greater and higher facts of the hereafter, and thereby to strengthen, support, and bring into living relation with life the practically demanded faith, which depends on higher perspectives, from below. Indeed, if we didn't need faith, why support it; yet how could we need it if it had no support?
Chapter Ten
The human soul is diffused throughout its entire body, which immediately disintegrates when the soul departs; yet its light of consciousness is now here, now there.[9] Just now we saw it wandering back and forth within the narrow body, alternately illuminating the eye, the ear, the inner and outer senses, only to finally wander entirely beyond it in death, like one whose small house is destroyed, in which he has long walked to and fro, and who now moves into the wide open forever and begins a new journey. Death sets no other boundary between the two lives than to allow the narrow stage of wandering to be exchanged for the wider one. And just as in this present life the light of consciousness is not always and everywhere simultaneously where it can be successively and where it can scatter, so it will be in the future life. The stage of wandering is only immeasurably larger, the possible diffusion wider, the paths freer, and the vantage points higher, encompassing all the lower ones of this world beneath themselves.
Even in this present life, however, we see exceptionally, in rare cases, the light of consciousness wandering from the narrower body into the wider and returning home, bringing news of what is happening in distant space or, rooted in its wide connections, in distant time; for the length of the future rests on the breadth of the present. Suddenly a crack opens in the otherwise always closed door between this world and the hereafter, only to quickly close again, the door that will open completely in death, and only then should it open, never to close again. Nor is it good to merely peer through the crack beforehand. Yet the exception to the rule of this earthly life is only a case of the greater rule of life, which encompasses both this world and the hereafter.
It happens that the narrower body falls deeply enough asleep on one side to awaken on another beyond its limits in an unaccustomed way, and yet not so completely and deeply as never to awaken again. Or in the wider body, a point becomes so unusually strongly stimulated as to extend an effect exceeding the threshold into the narrower one from an otherwise inaccessible distance. Thus begin the wonders of clairvoyance, premonitions, and prophetic dreams; all fables, if the body of the afterlife and the afterlife itself are fables; otherwise signs of the one and omens of the other; but what has signs is present, and what has omens will come.
Yet these are not signs of healthy earthly life. This world is only to build the body of the afterlife for the afterlife, not to see and hear with its eyes and ears already. The blossom does not thrive if it is forced open before its time. And whether one can support faith in the afterlife through faith in these traces of its illumination into this world, one should not build upon it. Healthy faith builds on reasons and concludes in the highest perspectives of healthy life, as it itself belongs to its health and to the conclusion of its highest perspectives.
You had previously thought that the light form in which a deceased person appears to you in memory was merely your inner illusion. You are mistaken; it is he himself in the flesh, who, in conscious movement, enters not merely into you, but into you. The former form is still his soul's garment; only no longer burdened with his former solid body and moving sluggishly with it, but transparent, light, divested of earthly burden, now here, now there in a moment, following the call of everyone who calls the dead, or presenting himself to you of his own accord, then you must think of the dead. Indeed, one has always imagined the ethereal appearance of souls as so light, so bodiless, so independent of the confines of space, and thereby, not intending the right thing, yet hitting upon the right thing.
You've also heard talk of apparitions, no doubt. Doctors call them phantasms, hallucinations. And they are, for the living, yet at the same time, they are genuine manifestations of the dead, whom we thus name. For if the weaker memory-forms within us are such, how could the much stronger corresponding apparitions not be? Why, then, still argue whether they are one or the other, when they are both at once? And why fear apparitions in the future, if you don't fear the memory-forms within you, which they already are?
But there is still some reason for it. Unlike the forms you yourself summon, or those that quietly and peacefully enter the context of your inner life and help spin it further, these come unbidden, overwhelming you with an unassailable force, seemingly appearing before you, but actually entering into you, rather tearing at the fabric of your inner life than weaving it along. A morbid essence of both this world and the beyond. Thus, the dead should not commune with the living. It is already a half-death for the living to perceive the dead almost as clearly, as objectively, as they might perceive each other; hence the dread of the living before such an appearance of the dead. It is also a partial regression of the dead from the realm beyond death back into the realm beneath death; hence the legend—and is it not more than a legend?—that only spirits who are not fully redeemed, who are still bound to this world by a heavy chain, walk among us. To scare away the unfortunate one, call upon a better and stronger spirit for help; but the best and strongest is the Spirit above all spirits. Who can harm you under His protection! The legend also agrees that every evil spirit retreats at the invocation of God.
Meanwhile, in this realm of spiritual illness, faith itself threatens to sicken into superstition. The simplest way to protect oneself from the coming of ghosts remains not to believe in their coming; for to believe that they come is already to meet them halfway.
How they might appear to each other, I said. For the same phenomenon that is contrary to the order of this world is merely anticipated from the order of the afterlife. Light, full, clear, and objective, the inhabitants of the afterlife will appear to each other in a form of which we only have a faint echo, a dim outline in our memory of them, because they permeate each other with their whole full being, of which only a small part penetrates each of us when we remember them. Only that, in the hereafter as in this world, it will require attention directed towards the phenomenon to perceive it.
Now one might always ask: how is it possible that those who permeate each other so thoroughly can still appear so objectively and limited? But first ask, how is it possible that what enters you as the appearance of a living person and permeates your brain in the memory of a dead person—and nothing else is before your soul to build upon—still appears to you as an objective perception, as a limited memory? The effect itself, no longer limited, which is subject to memory, still reflects to you the limitation of the form from which it originally emanated. You do not know why in this world; how can you expect to know it in the afterlife?
And so I say again: do not conclude from reasons of this world that you do not know, nor from assumptions that you make, but from facts of this world that you do know, to the greater and higher facts of the afterlife. The individual conclusion can err; even the one we just made; therefore, do not cling to any single detail; the combination of conclusions in the direction of what we must demand above all conclusions and beyond all conclusions, will be the best support for our faith from below and guidance from above.
But if you grasped faith correctly from above, the entire path of faith we have ascended would easily descend to you.
Chapter Eleven
Oh, how easy everything would be for faith if man could only accustom himself to seeing more than just a word in the phrase, with which he has played for over a thousand years, that he lives and moves and has his being in God. Then, faith in God's and his own eternal life is only one; he sees his own eternal life as belonging to God's eternal life itself, and in the height of his future life over his present life, only a higher structure built upon a lower one in God, just as he already has such within himself; he grasps the higher in the small example and, in the connection of both, the whole, of which he is only a part.
The perception within you dissolves, and memory rises from it within you; your entire earthly life of perception in God dissolves, and a higher life of memory rises from it in God; and just as memories mingle in your mind, so do the spirits of the beyond communicate in the divine mind. Only one step above the step of the same staircase, which leads not to God, but upwards within God, who simultaneously holds the foundation and the summit within Himself. How empty was God with that emptily conceived word, how rich is God with its full meaning.
Do you even know how the beyond of perceptions is possible in your spirit? You only know that it is real; yet it is only possible in a spirit. Therefore, you can easily, without knowing how it is possible, believe in the reality of a beyond of your entire spirit within a higher spirit; you only need to believe that a higher spirit exists and that you are in it.
And again: how easy everything would be for faith if man could accustom himself to seeing truth in the second phrase, that God lives and moves and has His being in everything. Then it is not a dead, but a world made alive by God, from which man builds his future body and thereby builds a new house into God's house.
But when will this life-giving faith become alive?
That it gives life will make it alive.
Chapter Twelve
You ask about the 'whether'; I answered with the 'how'. Faith spares the question of 'whether'; but if it is asked, there is only one answer through the 'how'; and as long as the 'how' is not firm, the 'whether' will not cease to come and go.
Here stands the tree; many a single leaf may fall; but its root and its connection are firm and good. It will always sprout new branches, and always new leaves will fall; it itself will no longer fall; it will bear blossoms of beauty, and instead of rooting in faith, it will bear fruits of faith.
Postscript
The initial inspiration for the idea elaborated in this writing, that the spirits of the deceased continue to exist as individuals in the living, came to me through a conversation with my friend, Professor Billroth, then living in Leipzig, now in Halle. As this idea partly intersected with, and partly awakened, a series of related concepts within me, it has taken the form presented above and, through a kind of necessary progression, expanded into the idea of a higher life of spirits in God. In the meantime, its originator, both in the philosophy of religion in general and particularly in the doctrine of immortality, has taken a direction quite different from the one pursued here, and one that connects more directly to church dogma, which has even largely or entirely led him away from that fundamental idea. Therefore, while I felt I had to designate him as its creator, I no longer dare to name him as its representative. This philosopher's own views on the subject in question will be found developed in a work soon to be expected from him.
Printed by Spamer's Printing House in Leipzig