On the Connection of the Living and the Dead

We gaze upon an elemental world to which we ourselves belong by virtue of our etheric body, and with which we stand in manifold relations—specific relationships to such and such elemental beings. In the elemental world we make acquaintance with beings who are truly no less real than human beings or animals in the physical—beings, however, who never come to incarnation, but only to ‘etherization,’ so to speak, for their densest corporeality is ethereal. Just as we go about among physical people in this world, so do we constantly go about among such elemental beings, while other elemental beings—more remote from ourselves—are related in their turn to other people. A certain number, however, are more nearly related to ourselves, and one among them—related to us most nearly of all—acts as our organ of communication with the entire cosmic-elemental world. Now in the time immediately following our passage through the Gate of Death, when for a few days we still bear our etheric body with us, we ourselves become precisely such a being as these elemental beings are. In a manner of speaking, we ourselves become an elemental being. We have often described this process of the passage through the Gate of Death, but the more exactly we study it, the clearer the imaginations it provides. For the impressions we receive immediately after the passage of a human being through the Gate of Death always consist in imaginations—make themselves felt as imaginations.