Death, the Soul's Ascent, and Spiritual Resonance

GA 266I — 28 December 1904, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Marie Strauch, a member of our esoteric school, passed away today. We have a special relationship with her that does not end with death. For us, death is the transition to another life. The pain that some people experience when a loved one dies is often selfish because they are close to the person who has died. However, these feelings do not help the departed personality to ascend. On the contrary, they take away just as much from the feathers of the garment that the soul must wear to carry itself upward. When we send feelings of selfless love to the personality, we weave feathers into the garment. We must therefore suppress feelings of pain at the death of a personality. Marie Strauch took the teachings of theosophy well, and her soul had grown heavier.

This heaviness pulls upward because it contains eternal value. The heaviness of the material, on the other hand, pulls downward. By pronouncing the soul syllable correctly, we place ourselves in the right relationship to the three worlds.

In the physical realm, we perceive reality through the five senses. If we imagine ourselves lifted out of the physical body, without the five senses, the world space completely dark, then our souls shine. If we imagine that our feelings are leaving us, then we have also left the astral world behind us, and we resonate in the spiritual world in a tone that is full and unhindered in all directions. In the physical world, we are hindered by our karma, our character, and our circumstances. In the spiritual world, we cannot be anything other than what we are; we resonate as we are. The spiritual world resounds in spherical tones]. Each of us has a name in the spiritual world, which we will learn in the course of our development; it is not our earthly name. The spiritual world reveals itself to us through intuition.

The world shines for me. - I shine for the world. - I am.

Imagine [how] light comes to me from outside and is absorbed through all the pores of my skin and flows to my heart, the seat of life.
My soul shines again from within through [that] which I have absorbed into myself in terms of eternal value.
I am saying with all my strength and with the underlying thought that God is in me and working in me and making me God again.

Let it flow through your whole body.

The ancient Jewish esotericists pronounced the word “I am” in the correct manner, and only those who were prepared and worthy were allowed to say it.

We must also work after death, namely in the soul world and in Devachan. The more we have absorbed thoughts of eternity here, the more effectively we can work. The two worlds now have a different content than before, and human beings are taking an ever greater part in shaping both worlds themselves.