LECTURE 6.
FEELINGS OF
UNITY AND
SENTIMENTS OF
GRATITUDE; A
BRIDGE TO THE
DEAD.
Berlin,
19th March, 1918.
We have spoken on intimate questions
concerning the life of the human soul, questions calculated to
prepare us for concepts which extend to the relations of the
so-called living — that is, those inhabiting physical bodies
— to the disembodied souls, those living between death and
rebirth. The chief point in reviewing such a theme is to make
ourselves acquainted with certain fundamental concepts which
psychically indicate in the proper way how man should and can think
in such connections; for the reality of these relations does not
depend upon whether man living here on earth is conscious of any
relations with the dead, or with any being in the spiritual world at
all. This is obvious to anyone who thinks on these things; but it is
only right to make the ‘obvious’ clear, even in the
sphere of Spiritual Science.
Man always stands in relation to the
spiritual world; he is always in a certain connection with those of
the dead who are united with him by karma. It is most emphatically
one thing to speak of the ‘reality’ of this relationship,
and another to speak of the stronger or weaker consciousness we may
have of it. It is important for each one — even for those who
can only believe that such consciousness is utterly remote from them
— to learn what such consciousness says; for it tells each one
of realities in the midst of which he always stands. Precisely in
regard to the relations of the so-called living to the so-called dead
we must be clear, that this relation is in certain connections more
difficult to bring to consciousness than our relation to other beings
of the spiritual world. To attain, through seeing and perceiving, a
consciousness of the beings of the higher Hierarchies, to receive a
distinct revelation of them, is comparatively easier than to become
aware of a quite distinct relation to the dead, that is, to become
aware of them in the true, genuine way. This is for the following
reasons.
In the time spent between death and
rebirth, man passes through conditions very different from the
life-relations of the physical world. We need but refer to the course
of lectures on the life between death and rebirth to learn that the
ideas and thoughts must be entirely different from those we must
employ in speaking of the life in the physical world. Why are the
concepts we must then use so different from those customary in
ordinary consciousness? It is because in a sense man anticipates
between death and rebirth, certain conditions which will only become
Life-conditions during the next Earth-embodiment, — that of
Jupiter; man lives in such a way that what he now experiences between
death and rebirth anticipates — albeit in a subtler, more
spiritual form — the life-conditions of the Jupiter-evolution.
Since in his earth-life man has, in a sense, retained something from
the earlier embodiments of Moon, Sun and Saturn, so also he receives
something belonging to the future during his life between death and
rebirth. On the other hand, the beings of the higher
Hierarchies in so far as man can examine them with human
perception, are all united — united in an immediate, present
way — with the whole spiritual world, of course, but with the
spiritual world in so far as it is coming to fruition in some form at
the present time. They will, in coming ages, reveal the future.
Paradoxical as this may sound, yet it is true. It sounds paradoxical,
because the question may arise as to how the beings of the higher
world would exercise their activity on the dead, if the dead already
carry the future within them. Of course the beings of the higher
Hierarchies also carry the future within them and are able to form
it; but they do not do so without also forming something which is
distinctly, or directly characteristic of the present; what has been
said, however, is the case in respect of the dead. For this reason
the perception of what the higher Hierarchies accomplish, forms as it
were a preparation for becoming conscious of intercourse with the
dead. Not until man has brought about a more or less conscious
perception of the beings of the higher Hierarchies in his soul will
it be possible for him gradually to attain the power, through his
faculties of perception and feeling, of perceiving consciously
anything concerning intercourse with the dead. I do not mean by this
that man must grasp the higher Hierarchies clairvoyantly; but in so
far as Spiritual Science offers the possibility, man must understand
what flows into existence from the higher Hierarchies. In all these
things the understanding is the chief thing. If a man takes the
trouble to understand them by means of Spiritual Science, those
conditions of existence can certainly arise which call up something
of a union of the so-called living with the so-called dead. For the
understanding of this it is necessary to hear in mind the
following:
The spiritual world in which man
dwells between death and rebirth has its own special conditions of
existence; conditions which we can scarcely observe in our ordinary
earth-life, and which sound paradoxical when they are given to us as
a conception of life. Above all, it must be borne in mind that a man
who wishes to experience such things consciously, must acquire what
might be called a feeling of unity in common with all things in
existence. It is one of the necessary demands for the continuation of
man's spiritual evolution from the present time, from this disastrous
present time, that he should gradually develop this feeling. In
the subconsciousness of man this feeling, although of a lower kind,
is thoroughly established; but we must not become pantheistic,
prattling of a ‘Universal Spirit;’ we must not speak in
general of this feeling of unity, — but we must be clear in
concrete detail as to how we can speak of it, how it is gradually
built up in the soul; for it is a life-experience. Then the following
comes into consideration:
We have often heard that when
criminals, in whom instinctive subconsciousness works very
strongly, have committed some particular crime, they have a peculiar
instinct; they are drawn back to the place where they did it; an
indefinable feeling drives them back. Such things only express in
special cases what is common to man in respect of many things. When
we have done something, accomplished something, however seemingly
unimportant, something of it remains in us, something of what we have
grasped in the doing of it; a certain force remains in us from the
thing we have done, from the forces with which we have done it
something remains connected with the ego. This cannot be otherwise
expressed, although of course it is expressed as a kind of
imagination. A man cannot avoid forming certain connections
with all the beings he meets, and the things he grasps (not, of
course, physical things only), the things with which he has something
to do in life. We leave our own distinctive mark on all things, and a
feeling of being bound up with the things with which we have come in
touch by our deeds, remains in our subconsciousness. In the case of
criminals this comes to expression in an abnormal way, because there
the unconsciousness flashes up very instinctively into the
ordinary consciousness; but in his sub-consciousness every man has
the feeling that he must return to the place with which he has come
in touch by his deeds.
This also takes part in forming our
karma; our karma arises from this. From this subconscious feeling,
which at first presses into existence in a nebulous way, we have the
general feeling of unity with the whole world. Because everywhere we
leave our mark, we have this feeling. We can lay hold of it, sense
it, perceive it. For this, however, we must call to mind certain
intimacies of life. We must try, for instance, really to enter into
the idea: ‘I will go now across the street;’ we then walk
across, and afterwards we still imagine ourselves walking. By
continued exercises of this kind we call forth from the depths of our
soul the general feeling of unity with the world. And for one who
grows conscious of this feeling of unity, in the more concrete sense,
it so develops that he ultimately says to himself: There is after all
a connection, though an invisible one, between all things, as between
the members of a single organism. As each finger, each lobe of the
ear, all belonging to our organism, stands in connection the one with
the other, so there is a connection between all things and all that
happens, in so far as the occurrences take place in our
world.
The earth-men of to-day have as yet
no fully valid consciousness of this feeling of unity with all
things, this organic penetration into things, it remains in the
unconscious. In the Jupiter evolution this feeling will be the
fundamental one, and as we gradually pass from the fifth to the
sixth post-Atlantean epoch, we prepare for the formation of such a
feeling; so that the formation of this, which becomes necessary from
our own time on into the near future, must supply a special ethical
and moral foundation for mankind, which must be much more living than
is the case to-day. This is meant as follows:
To-day many think nothing of
enriching themselves at the expense of others. Not only do they live
thus without any moral self-criticism, they simply do not think about
it at all. Were they to reflect upon it, they would find that a man
lives far more at the cost of others than they had ever realised.
Indeed every man lives at the expense of others. Now the
consciousness will develop that a life lived at the expense of
others, signifies the same to the community as when any particular
organ develops at the expense of another organ, in an unlawful way,
and that the happiness of the individual is not really possible
apart from that of the community. That, of course, people do
not yet divine, but it must gradually become the fundamental
principle of true human ethics. People strive to-day, each one for
his own prosperity, not thinking that individual prosperity is
fundamentally only possible in common with that of all the rest. Thus
there is a connection between the feeling of community and the
feeling that the life of the whole community is an organism. That
feeling can greatly increase, it can develop an intimate perception
for the feeling of unity with all things around. If a man increases
this intimate feeling, he gradually becomes able to receive a
perception of what I described as the ‘light’ which is
thrown out beyond death into our evolution between death and rebirth,
which we perceive and from which we build our karma. I only just wish
to hint at this. When a man forms this feeling of unity he is able to
do yet another thing, namely, to live with the idiosyncracies,
situations, thoughts and actions of another as though they were his
own. This is connected in the soul-life with a certain difficulty in
so thinking into another that what the other does, thinks and feels
is felt as his own. Only, however, when a man thinks back profitably
to what he had in common with someone who has died, to whom he was
karmically united, is he ready to reach the discarnate man;
only when able to experience what he experienced in common with him
— even to the slightest detail — and to think as one
thinks when having this ‘feeling of unity.’ We picture it
to ourselves in this way. We think of something which took place
between ourselves and one who is dead; how we sat at table with him,
or anything else, however small; but it is only possible for
the soul to place itself rightly in this attitude for the attaining
of reality if we really have the feeling of unity, otherwise the
force in the soul is insufficient. We must understand that only from
a place over which we can thus throw this ‘feeling of
unity’ (speaking metaphorically), can the dead bring himself to
our consciousness. We can imagine it quite ‘spatially;’
we must of course preserve in our consciousness the fact that we are
only forming a picture of it; but it is a picture of a true reality.
We come back to what was said before; that we visualise a situation
with the dead, how we sat at table with him, walked with him, and
then we turn our whole soul-life in the direction of this thought. If
we can but develop in the thought a communion of soul with the dead
that is in accordance with the ‘feeling of unity,’ then
his gaze from the spiritual world can find the reality from these
thoughts, just as our thoughts can find the reality to which they are
directed. If we allow these thoughts of the dead to be present in the
soul, to the degree that they are filled with love, the psychic gaze
of the soul encounters the psychic gaze of the dead. Through that,
the dead can speak to us. He can only speak from the place upon which
the direction of our ‘feeling of unity’ falls. So are
these things connected. We learn, as it were, to feel our karma when
we gain an idea of how we leave behind everywhere the stamp of our
thought; we learn to identify ourselves with these things and thus we
develop the feeling that brings us into increasingly conscious union
with the dead. In this way it becomes possible for them to speak to
us.
The other requirement is that we can
hear, that we can really perceive it at the time of happening. For
this we must above all pay heed to what, so to say, lies as
‘air’ between us and the dead, so that he can speak to us
across it. Comparing it with something physical, if there were an
airless space between us, we should not be able to hear what is said;
air must act as an intermediary. There must be something between us
and the dead if they are to approach us. There must, as it were, be a
‘spiritual air,’ and we can now speak of the nature of
this spiritual air in which we live together with the dead. Of what
does it consist?
To understand this we must remember
what I have said in other connections of how the human memory comes
about; for these things are all connected. Ordinary psychology says
of human memory: I have now an impression from the outer world, it
calls forth a concept within me; this concept goes somehow into my
subconsciousness and is forgotten, but when any special occasion
arises, it comes back from the subconsciousness — and I
remember. Almost all psychologists, as far as the memory is
concerned, are of opinion that the reason why a concept arises in man
is because he receives an impression — quickly forgotten
— which sinks down into the subconsciousness, until some
incident brings it back into the consciousness. Man
‘remembers’ and thinks he has the same concept that he
first formed. This is an absolute error, — an error taught in
almost all psychology, but an error nevertheless, for what is thus
taught does not take place at all. When through an outer experience
we receive an impression which later we remember, it is not at
all the same concept we first formed that rises within us, but while
we are in the act of forming the concept, a second subconscious
process is going on. It does not come into consciousness during the
outer experience, but it takes place none the less. Through
processes of which we shall not speak just now, that which
takes place in our organism to-day, but remains unconscious,
takes place again to-morrow; and as to-day the outer impressions
called forth the concept, so to-morrow, what has been occasioned
below, calls forth a new concept. A concept I have to-day passes away
and is gone; it no longer moves in my subconsciousness; but if
to-morrow the same concept rises from my memory, it is because there
is that within me which calls forth this same concept; only it was
subconsciously generated. Anyone who supposes that concepts are taken
up by the subconsciousness, move about therein, and finally
arise again from the soul — if he wishes to remember after
three days anything that came to him, and which he has written down
in order not to forget — ought at once to realise that what he
wishes to remember is also in what he has written, and three days
later arises to him from the note-book. Just as there are only
‘signs’ in the note-book, so too in the memory there are
only signs which call forth again in a weaker degree what had been
experienced by him.
Anyone who commits to memory, or in
some other way tries to instil something into his mind which he
wishes to retain, anyone who crams — as we say when young
— knows quite well that perception alone is not sufficient; and
he will sometimes have recourse to very external aids to incorporate
something into the memory. Let us observe someone who wishes to
‘cram;’ let us see what efforts he makes to help this
unconscious activity which plays its part; he wishes somehow to
assist the subconscious. These are two very different things; one, to
incorporate something in the memory; the other, to call it forth. If
we can study men and observe their characters, we soon find that even
this shows that we have to do with two different kinds of people. We
find there are those who grasp things quickly, but have a terribly
bad memory; and others whose comprehension is slow but who have a
good memory, that is, a good imaginative faculty and power of
judgment. These two things are to be found side by side, and
Spiritual Science must make the matter clear.
When in life we perceive something
— and from early morning, from waking to falling asleep we are
always perceiving something of the world, — we are more or less
conscious of sympathy or antipathy with what we perceive; and, as a
rule, we are quite satisfied when we have grasped a matter. The
activity which leads to memory, however, is far more extensive than
that needed to grasp the impression. It takes place far more
subconsciously in the soul, and this subconscious process
taking place of itself, often contradicts in a noteworthy way what
takes place in us consciously. Often we may feel an antipathy towards
an impression made upon us. The subconsciousness does not feel this
antipathy; it generally feels quite differently from the ordinary
consciousness. The subconsciousness develops a remarkable
feeling towards all impressions. Although an expression taken from
the physical world and applied to the spiritual can only be
figurative, here it is quite suitable to say that the
subconsciousness develops a certain feeling of gratitude towards
every impression — irrespective of its nature. It is not
inaccurate to say that while we might see someone concerning
whom our conscious impression may be very unpleasant — he might
insult us to our very face — the subconscious impression would
still be a certain feeling of gratitude. The simple reason for this
feeling is that everything in life which approaches the deeper
element of our being enriches our life, really enriches it, including
all unpleasant experiences. This has no connection with the manner in
which we must consciously conduct ourselves towards our outer
impressions. The way in which we must consciously respond to
anything, has nothing to do with what takes place subconsciously; in
the subconsciousness everything leads to a certain feeling of
thankfulness; there we receive every impression as a gift for which
we must be grateful.
It is specially important to keep in
mind this fact which is taking place below the threshold of
consciousness. What works there and breaks into a feeling of
thankfulness, works in a similar way within us as does the impression
of the outer world which is to be remembered; it goes side by side
with the concept, and only the man who has a distinct feeling that he
dreams from waking to falling asleep, can be aware of these things. I
have shown in the public lecture on
‘The Historical Life of Man and its Problems’
that as regards our feeling and will we
continue to sleep and dream even in waking life. If we allow the
world to work upon us in this way, our impressions and concepts take
place incessantly, but beneath this we dream about everything and
this dream-life is far richer than we think. It is only eclipsed by
our conscious concepts as is a weak light by a stronger. We can, as
it were, by experiment, acquire an explanation of such relations by
paying attention to various intimacies of life. Let us try to make
the following experiment in ourselves. Suppose we are lying on a sofa
and wake up. Of course a man does not then observe himself, because
immediately afterwards the world makes various impressions upon him;
but it may happen that he lies quiet for a time after waking. Then he
may observe what he perceived before he awoke, and this he can
specially notice if someone has knocked at the door and not repeated
the knock; he can recall this, and when he wakes he knows that
something has happened; this is clear from the whole
situation.
When a man observes something in this
way, he is not far from the recognition of what spiritual
science has to verify — that we perceive unconsciously a far
wider range of our environment than is possible consciously. It is
quite true that if, on going into a street, we meet someone just
coming round the corner — whom therefore we could not have seen
before he appeared — we may feel that we had seen him before he
appeared; it frequently happens that we have a feeling that we had
seen something happening before it actually does happen. It is true
that first we have a psychic spiritual connection with what we
perceive later. It is actually so; only we are ‘deafened’
by the later sense-perceptions and do not observe what takes place in
the intimacies of the soul-life.
This again is something which takes
place of itself subconsciously, like the formation of memory or the
feeling of thankfulness in regard to all surrounding phenomena. The
dead can only speak to us through the element which passes through
the dreams interwoven with our life. The dead speak into these
intimate subconscious perceptions which take place of
themselves. If we are in a position to do so, we can share with them
the same spiritual psychic air; for if they wish to speak to us, it
is necessary that we take into our consciousness something of the
feeling of gratitude for all that reveals itself to us. If there is
none of this feeling within us, if we are not able to thank the world
for enabling us to live, for enriching our life continually with new
impressions, if we cannot deepen our soul by often realising that our
life is absolutely a gift, the dead do not find a common air with us;
for they can only speak with us through this feeling of gratitude;
otherwise there is a wall between us and them.
We shall see how many obstacles there
are in regard to intercourse with the dead, for, as we have seen from
other connections, it is dependent on our being karmically united
with them. We cannot arouse in ourselves this feeling of gratitude if
having lost them, we wish them back in life; we should be thankful we
did have them with us quite irrespective of the fact that we have
them no longer. Thus if we have not this feeling of gratitude with
regard to the beings whom we wish to approach, they do not find us;
or, at any rate, they cannot speak to us. The very feelings we so
frequently have towards our nearest dead are a hindrance to their
speaking to us. Other dead, who are not karmically united to us,
usually have more difficulty in speaking to us; but with those
nearest to us, we have too little of the feeling of thankfulness that
they have been something to us in life. We should not hold fast to
the idea that we have them no more, for that is an ungrateful
feeling, considered in the wider sense of life. If we clearly
understand that the feeling of having lost them weighs them down, we
shall keep in mind the whole bearing of this. If we have lost someone
we love, we must be able to raise ourselves to a feeling of
thankfulness that we have had him; we must be able to think
selflessly of what he was to us until his death, and not upon what we
feel, now we have him no more. The better we can feel what he was to
us during his life, the sooner will it be possible for him to speak
to us, to speak to us by means of the common air of
gratitude.
In order to enter more and more
consciously into the world out of which this comes, many other things
are necessary. Suppose we have lost a child. The necessary feeling of
gratitude can be brought about by picturing to ourselves how we
sat with him and played with him in such a way that the game was as
interesting as the child himself. When we can do this, we have the
appropriate feeling of companionship — as there is only
sense in playing with a child if one is as wholly a playfellow as the
child himself. That gives the necessary atmosphere for the feeling of
companionship. Thus, if we picture ourselves playing with the child
in a truly living way, the place is created upon which our gaze and
his can fall. If I am able to grasp what the dead says, I am in
conscious union with him. This can be brought about by many
things.
To many people thought is specially
easy. Some will say that that is not true. Still there are some to
whom thought is very easy; if it be found difficult then it is
really something different which they feel. The very people who take
it most easily, find it most difficult. This is because they are too
lazy to think. What is meant by saying this is that most people take
their thinking easily (one cannot say how easily because it is so
very easy to think), one can only say that they just think, they
acquire no concepts at all, that too would be
‘difficult.’ They just think, they grasp their ideas
— they have them and live in them. Then other things approach
— for example, spiritual science. Spiritual science is not
avoided by so many because it is difficult to understand, but because
a certain effort is needed to accept its ideas. People avoid effort.
Anyone who progresses in spiritual science gradually observes that it
necessitates an application of will to comprehend the thoughts;
that there is an expenditure of will in grasping thoughts as well as
in lifting a hundredweight, but people do not want to do this; they
think ‘easily.’ Anyone who makes a greater effort with
his thinking by thinking harder and harder, thinks with more
difficulty as it were, because he realises more and more that for a
thought to anchor itself within him, he must make efforts. There is
nothing more favourable for penetration to the spiritual world than
the fact that it becomes ever more difficult to grasp thoughts
— and he is the most fortunate in his progress in spiritual
science who can no longer apply the standard of easy thinking used in
ordinary life, but will say to himself: This thinking is really a
harrying undertaking! One must exert one's strength as though
thrashing with a flail. Such feelings can only be indicated, but they
can develop; it is favourable when they do. Much else is connected
with this, for instance, the fact that what many possess gradually
withdraws. Many are so quick with their thinking that it is only
necessary to mention one thought-complex and they grasp the
connection of the whole; they always have an answer ready. What
would conversations in drawing-rooms betoken, if thinking were
difficult! We can, however, observe that as we gradually become
acquainted with the inner relation of things, it becomes more
difficult to chatter and be ready with an answer; for that comes from
easy thinking. With advance in knowledge man becomes more Socratic,
so that he must strain every nerve to attain the right to express an
opinion.
This feeling, this effort of will, is
part of the comprehension of thought. It is related to another
feeling which we often have when we commit something to memory and
have to ‘cram’ — and cannot take in what we should.
We can experience the relationship between these two things —
the difficulty of retaining anything in the memory and the difficulty
of exerting an effort of will in order to understand anything. Man
can, however, exercise himself in this; he can apply what may be
called conscientiousness, a feeling of responsibility in regard to
his thinking. The following is to be found in many people. When from
a certain experience of life, a person says, for instance:
‘So-and-so is a good man,’ the other instantly retorts,
‘An awfully good man.’ How frequently an answer is in the
superlative. There is, of course, not the slightest reason why it
should be in the superlative, it is only the absolute lack of how we
ought to think; we have the feeling that we ought to have experienced
something, and we wish to express this. Of course such demands of
life should not be driven too far, otherwise in many drawing-rooms
the ‘great silence’ would commence.
This feeling, however, when awakened
from a feeling of responsibility towards thinking, from the feeling
that thinking is difficult, this is the basis of the possibility and
capacity to experience inspiration, for an inspiration does not come
as thoughts spring to most people; an inspiration comes when it is as
difficult as anything else which we feel to be difficult. We must
first learn to feel thoughts as ‘difficult,’ to feel the
retention of memory as something different from mere thinking; then
we shall be able to experience a feeling for that weak, dream-like
rise of thought in the soul which does not really wish to cling, but
to vanish, when thoughts arise which are difficult to grasp. We can
reinforce ourselves by developing a feeling of really living with the
thoughts. Just let us realise what goes on in our souls in order to
accomplish our purpose when we intend to go anywhere. As a rule a man
does not usually think about this, but he should reflect on what has
taken place in the world as a consequence of his having accomplished
his purpose and attained what he had in view. He should reflect upon
what has taken place in his soul. In reality a reaction has taken
place there. Often this may be even strikingly expressed; when a
mountain climber has to exert himself strenuously to reach the
summit of a mountain, and arriving at the top, breathing
laboriously, exclaims: ‘Thank God I am here!’ one feels
that a certain reaction has taken place in his feelings. In this
direction one can acquire an even finer perception, which continues
in the intimate life of the soul. This resembles the following
feeling. One who begins to call to mind a situation shared, with a
dead friend, and who begins to essay a common interest with the dead,
uniting himself with the thoughts and feelings of the dead, will feel
himself as being on a journey; and then comes a moment when he feels
as though coming to rest in his thought. He can first be active in
thought — then reaches a state of equipoise, he feels as though
he had stopped for a rest after having walked for a long time. This
is a great help towards the inspiration which such a thought can
give. He can also provide for inspiration through thought by making
use of the whole man instead of the higher consciousness only.
This of course leads to closer intimacies as regards this
experience.
Anyone who succeeds in drawing into
his consciousness that feeling of gratitude which would in an
ordinary way remain unconscious will at once observe that, unlike the
ordinary consciousness it works in such a way that one is able to
unite it with the whole man — at least as far as the arms and
hands. Here I must remind you of what I have already said about this
side of the human perception; how ordinary ideas are grasped by the
brain, but intimate ideas pass through it as through a sieve, into
the hands and arms which are really the organs for their reception.
This can really be felt. A man need not, of course, outwardly express
all this, but he can have the conviction that certain
experiences of life such as wonder and awe, can only be
expressed through the arms and hands. Fragmentary expressions of this
experience — e.g., that the unconscious impulse to
take part in these expressions quivers in the hands and arms —
are revealed when a man clasps his hands over the beauty of nature or
many other things that enter into his consciousness. Everything that
subconsciously happens to us comes partially to expression in
life. As regards what may be called ‘the desire of the hands
and arms to take their part in external expression,’ a
man can keep still; it is only necessary to move his etheric hands
and arms. The more we are conscious of this, the more we are able to
feel outer impressions sympathetically with our arm-organism, the
more we develop a feeling which can be expressed in this way:
‘When I see the colour red I am inclined to make certain
movements of the hands, for they are appropriate; when I see blue I
incline to other movements!’ The more a man is conscious of
this, the more he develops the feeling for inspiration for what
should develop in the soul, for what he should retain as impressions.
When we give ourselves up to playing with children, we lose ourselves
in the impression, but we find ourselves. Then comes inspiration, if
we have qualified ourselves and prepared the whole man to receive the
impression — when even in the case of plunging into our own
thoughts, the very fact of this submersion unites us in the
feeling in-common with the dead, so that when we awake, we can
remain united with the reality of the experience with the whole man,
as just described, and this unity is experienced in the feeling of
gratitude quivering into the hands and arms. Then the real spiritual
existence in which the dead live between death and rebirth,
holds intercourse with the living in such a way that we may say: We
find our dead when we can meet in a common spiritual place with a
common thought which he also perceives, when we can meet in this
‘thought-in-common,’ in a feeling of full companionship.
We have the material for this through the medium of the feeling of
gratitude; for the dead speak to the living out of the space woven by
the ‘feeling-in-common,’ through the air which is created
from the feeling of general gratitude common to the
world.
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