From the Contents of Esoteric Classes

EL, Berlin, 12-28-'04

A member of our esoteric school, Maria Strauch-Spettini, died today. We have a special relation to her that doesn't end at death. For us death is the transition to another life. The pain that some people feel at the death of a beloved person often has an egotistical character, because the loss of the person affects them. But such feelings don't help the deceased personality upwards. On the contrary, they take away some of the feathers of the garment that must bear the soul upwards. If we send feelings of unselfish love after the personality we thereby weave feathers into the garment. So when a personality dies we should suppress feelings of pain coming from the loss. Maria Strauch took in theosophical teachings well and her soul became weightier.

This weightiness draws upward because it contains value for eternity. Whereas the weight of material things pulls downwards. We connect ourselves with the three worlds properly by saying the soul syllable (AUM) in the right way.

We perceive physical reality through the five senses. If we imagine that we're lifted out of the body without the five senses into a very dark world-space, then our souls shine. If we imagine that our feelings are leaving us, then we've also left the astral world behind and we resound in the spiritual world in a full and unhindered tone towards all sides. In the physical world we're hindered by our karma, character and circumstances. In the spiritual world we can't pretend to be something we're not, we sound as we are. The spiritual world resounds in spheres.

Each of us has a name in the spiritual world that will be disclosed to us in the course of developments; it's not our earthly name. The spiritual world becomes revealed to us through intuition.

The world illumines me. — I illumine the world. — I am.

Imagine how light approaches me from outside, is absorbed by all of my skin's pores and streams to my heart, the seat of life. My soul shines again from within through the eternal values that I have absorbed. Say “I am” as strongly as possible and with the idea that God is in me, works in me and makes me into a God again. Let this trickle through the whole body. Ancient Hebrew esoterics said the word “I am” in the right way, and only prepared and worthy people were allowed to say it. We also have to work after death in the soul world and in devachan. The more thoughts of eternity we've taken in here the more effectively we can work. The two worlds have a different content than they did before, and men increasingly participate in the shaping of these two worlds.