3. The Living and the Dead

Anyone acquainted with such things knows that this reversal is not easy; it contradicts everything to which man is accustomed; for habits are formed in course of life. Not only that;—it contradicts all that is inborn in man, for it is inborn in us to believe that we ourselves speak when we ask a question, and that the other is silent when we answer him. Yet what has been said is the case in intercourse with super-sensible beings. From this reversal of one's being which clairvoyant consciousness experiences, we shall be able to observe that a good proportion of the non-perceptibility of the dead rests upon the fact that they have intercourse with the living in a way which appears to the living as quite impossible, but to which they are only unaccustomed. The living simply do not hear what the dead say to them from the depths of their own beings and they do not pay attention when another being says what they themselves are thinking, what they themselves desire.