The Connection Between Humans and the Spiritual World

So, because we are ethereal beings, we stand in an elemental world, and a certain system is more closely related to ourselves. This system, that is, those elementary beings, etheric beings, which accompany us, are also those who, through their powers, because they are arranged in a certain way, when we pass through the gate of death, first pull our etheric body out of our physical body and then transfer it, and thus the human being himself, into the elementary world. This elemental world, as I have already indicated, can be perceived through imaginative cognition. In this elemental world there are a number of beings that can be called nature spirits. But at first there are also all the human beings who have passed physically through the gate of death, but only for a short time, as we know, only a few days. Then what we call the etheric body is handed over to the elemental world. It is laid down like a second corpse. But one must not believe that this second body, which has been laid aside, is now hastily destroyed in the elemental world. That is not the case. Rather, it dissolves, so to speak, in the elemental world, but this dissolution, this becoming thinner and thinner, does not mean that it is not perceptible to beings who are capable of imaginative perception. Above all, this elemental body, this etheric body, is always perceptible to those who have themselves passed through the gate of death. Man has laid down this elemental body and now lives on between death and a new birth, but he remains in constant connection with this discarded etheric body. It is not like the physical body, with which the human being loses all connection when he has laid it down; with the elemental body, the opposite is true: the human being retains his connection, and this connection that the human being has with his elemental, etheric body can also continue down into the physical world.