The Connection Between Humans and the Spiritual World

Now, at least one such spiritual year, that is, thirty Earth years, must have passed before the soul, when it has reached a normal age of seventy to eighty years, can enter not only into the habits, but also into the whole way of looking at things, into the whole spiritual life of those who have remained here or who have voluntarily joined them. But in this way, the dead also influence our lives in a very comprehensive manner. It is absolutely true that we carry within us, in relation to the entire spiritual nature in which we are embedded, the impulses of people who died long ago, which continue to influence us. This is what brings about the connection between the future and the past, that such a harmony between the dead and the living takes place. Just as the indirect revelation of the dead through the etheric body they have shed acts upon imaginative knowledge, so what enters into habits in the manner described acts upon inspirative knowledge, and what I have described last which can only take effect after a person has gone through a spiritual year, has an effect on intuitive knowledge when it is to become conscious. But it has a continuous effect. I would say that the meaning of evolution can only be understood correctly if one consciously takes such things into account.