The Connection Between Humans and the Spiritual World

Now, as human beings live through the time between death and a new birth, they develop more and more, so that they can also directly influence the world here from themselves. And from a certain point in time, we perceive the influence of the departed dead, as if their rays of energy were penetrating our soul life. But these rays, this direct influence, cannot enter directly into our imagination, into our thoughts, but rather live themselves into our habits, into the way we are, into the way we conduct ourselves here; into this flows what works down from the spiritual worlds and what comes to us from those who have passed through the gate of death before us. We must only be clear that such interaction between the dead and the living is bound to many different conditions. The dead person is in an environment where there are beings like themselves, that is, soul beings, all the entities belonging to the higher hierarchies down to the human being, and through their discarded etheric body, which acts as a mediator, they can also have perceptions of the people who are, in a sense, veiled from them by the physical body; but he penetrates this veil with the help of his etheric body. Those who have passed through the gate of death are subject to the conditions under which one lives in the soul world and the spirit world, and they must submit to them. Now I need only point out one main thing, and you will understand what is actually meant here. We know that Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces are at work in the world in which we live in the most diverse ways. If these Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces did not exert their attraction on us, then what is expressed in human beings as wrong or evil actions would not exist in the world. The Luciferic and Ahrimanic must have an effect on human beings; they must give human beings the opportunity to follow them.