3. Our Life with the Dead

Here in the physical world man is, as it were, the crown of creation—many like to emphasize this; he feels himself as the highest of all beings. The minerals are the lowest, then the plants, then the animals, and then man himself He feels that he belongs to the highest kingdom. It is not thus with the dead in the spiritual realm; the dead feels himself connected with the Hierarchies above him, the Hierarchies of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, etc. As man here in the physical world feels, in a certain sense, that the physical kingdom of man evolves and grows out of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, so the departed one feels himself sustained and carried by the Hierarchies above him, in the life between death and a new birth.