16. Life After Death

The so-called dead need the living, for otherwise they would only be able to behold themselves on earth, that is, their own life that has run its course. This explains the deed of love that we can perform for the dead by reading spiritually to them, not aloud, but in thoughts, by imagining the dead here with us in thought. In this way we can read to a number of dead at one and the same time, with or without a book, and thereby perform a considerable deed of love for them. The thoughts must be related to a spiritual content, otherwise they have no meaning for the dead. These thoughts create an external world for the dead that he can perceive. To think chemical laws and so forth has no sense because these laws are meaningless in the spiritual world.