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

One can thus say that this realm entered by the dead as their second realm gradually widens. Later (this is always relative: for one it happens sooner, for another later) more distant karmic relationships are added to immediate ones. I mean this in the following way. When a dead person has spent a certain time in his life between death and a new birth, the circle of his experiences has widened and stretched beyond those souls—be they on earth or over yonder—with whom he had had particularly close karmic relationships. These souls now have karmic relationships apart from those of the dead person. It is like this: person A has a certain relationship with person B but not with person C. One sees how the dead person A lives with B as I have described and expands his experiences beyond B. Later it comes about that B becomes a go-between to person C. Previously A had had no relationship to C, but now he acquires that relationship directly through B's having a karmic relationship to C. Through this, the second realm slowly, gradually expands over an extremely large area. One becomes ever richer, as it were, in such inner experiences, experiences of strengthening or weakening the will, experiences that gradually accustom us to the realm of the dead—or living souls—after we ourselves have gone through the portal of death.