The Connection Between Humans and the Spiritual World

Returning to what I said earlier, that our relationship to the elemental world is different from our relationship to the ordinary physical world, I would first like to give an example that will confirm this: In the physical world, we form our relationships to this or that being out of free human will, at least apparently at first; we form our friendships and other relationships to the beings around us. In the elemental world, where we exist through our etheric body, this is not immediately the case in the same way, but rather we stand more or less in a closer relationship to certain other elemental beings throughout our entire life. Thus, we can truly compare our relationship as independent elemental beings — which we are through our etheric body — to a number of other elemental beings that actually accompany us throughout our entire life with the relationship of the sun to the orbiting planets. Our own etheric body is a kind of solar elemental being, and it is accompanied by a number of elemental beings that belong to it as the planets belong to the sun, so that these elemental beings together with it form a kind of sevenfold being, just as the planets form a kind of sevenfold being with the sun according to older views.