On the Connection of the Living and the Dead

It is, as we might say, our soul's interest in the surrounding world which makes itself felt in this way. It belongs especially to the elemental world, and notably to our own etheric body. It is, above all, inherent in the forces of our etheric body, and it makes itself felt in this way. Sometimes we feel ourselves immediately ‘caught’ and interested. Such interest as is often woven from the very first moment between one human being and another is due to definite relationships which arise between the one—the one etheric human being—and the other, bringing about the play of imaginations hither and thither. We live with these imaginations and with our resulting sympathies, of whose effect and intensity we are often largely unaware, or aware only in the vaguest way. Indeed, when our everyday life is not wide-awake but runs along more or less obtusely, we often fail to observe them at all.