On the Connection of the Living and the Dead

Still more mature—for everything that evolves, becomes ever riper and more mature—still more mature becomes that which lives in us when it no longer has to stop short at Inspiration but can become Intuition (in the true sense in which I used the word in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. Now Intuition can only be a being that has none other than a Spirit-body (to use this paradoxical expression). To work intuitively upon other beings—and, among others, upon those who are still incarnated here in the physical life—a human being must first have laid aside his astral body; that is to say, he must first belong entirely to the spiritual world. That will be decades after his death, as we know. Then he can also work down on other people through intuition—no longer merely through Inspiration as I described it just now. Not until then does he as ego—now in the spiritual world—work in a purely spiritual way into other egos. Formerly he worked by Inspiration into the astral body—or, via his etheric body, into the etheric body of man. But one who has been dead for decades past can also work directly as an ego—albeit at the same time he can still work through the other vehicles, as described above. It is at this stage that the human individuality grows ripe to enter no longer merely into the habits of people but even into their views and ideas of life. To modern feeling, full of prejudice as it is, this may be an unpleasant truth—very unpleasant, I doubt not. None the less it is true. Our views and ideas, originating as they do in our ego, are under constant influences from those long dead. In our views and conceptions of life, those who are long dead are living. By this very means, the continuity of evolution is preserved—out of the spiritual world. It is a necessity, for otherwise the thread of people's ideas would constantly be broken.