13. The Three Realms of the Dead: Life Between Death and a New Birth

I would like to say that one such attempt was made just before the outbreak of this world catastrophe in the Vienna lecture cycle, (see Note 10) in which I spoke about life between death and a new birth in relation to the inner forces of the soul. Today I would like to draw your attention above all to a domain that in a certain respect is and must be the primary concern for the human being in his earthly life. It must be a primary concern that this very domain is closed to the experience of souls who have gone through the portal of death. Think how much we have, as earthly human beings, through mental pictures that come to us from the mineral and plant realms. To these mental pictures must be added all the impressions and mental pictures that come to us from heavenly space: the starry sky above us, the sun, the moon. Since they enable us during our earthly life to have physical images as perceptions, they belong precisely to what I am now calling mineral nature. This mineral nature, and essentially—I say, essentially—the plant nature as nature, are excluded from what souls will perceive between death and a new birth.