The Dead are with Us

First of all, I will tell you something that may seem to have no meaning for man so long as he has not developed his clairvoyant faculties; but when we think it over, we shall realise that it concerns us closely, leading on as it does to matters in actual life. Those who are able to have intercourse with the dead as the result of developed clairvoyance, realise why it is so difficult for human beings to know anything about the dead through direct perception. Strange and grotesque as it may seem, the whole form of intercourse to which we are accustomed in the physical world has to be reversed when intercourse is set up between the Earth and the dead. In the physical world, when we speak with a human being from physical body to physical body, we ourselves are speaking, When we speak, we know that the words come from us; when the other man speaks to us, we know that the words come from him. The whole relationship is reversed when we are speaking with a dead man. The expression ‘when we are speaking’ can truthfully be used, but the relationship is reversed. When we put a question to the dead, or say something to him, what we say comes from him, comes to us from him. He inspires into our soul what we ask him, what we say to him. And when he answers us or says something to us, this comes out of our own soul. It is a process with which a human being in the physical world is quite unfamiliar. He feels that what he says comes out of his own being. In order to establish intercourse with the dead, we must adapt ourselves to hear from them what we ourselves say, and to receive from our own soul what they answer.