How the Spiritual World Interpenetrates the Physical

Materialism is rampant in our times, it puts its stamp on earth-life more than we realize. In our day particularly, materialism is so strong that those beings of the higher Hierarchies whose task it is to carry on the progress of Cosmic evolution actually cannot rescue all the souls who have to-day become materialistic. These must not be left behind, they must be saved; yet their salvation can only be accomplished by the death of certain souls at an early age, who take with them into the spiritual world the forces which would otherwise have been used in the course of their earth-life, and which they then transmute so that they may help the beings of the higher Hierarchies who are working for the redemption of the materialistically-minded souls. Persons who have thus died early in life, are a wonderful help to the higher beings. Now in the case of the soul to which I am referring, something special resulted. She brought with her into her latest incarnation the powers which could not be fully used in her earlier life, poured them as it were into her body, which became weak and ill because of the penetration of these forces. The soul was too powerful for the body; it really contained very great powers. This person died at the above mentioned early age, and, with the forces which instead of being weakened by age remained at their youthful strength, she passed through the gates of death into the spiritual world, still possessing the fund of strength which would have served a long life in that incarnation, and filled to overflowing with earthly force would have so poured itself into the body, as to bring the same into relationship with the external world. Instead she was able to take up spiritual ideas enthusiastically and thus to bring a great supply into the spiritual world. When we trace this individual, who was dear to a large number of our friends, we may learn a great deal from her. What we see in her is, that at a definite time (in this case about the Third or Fourth Century A.D.) certain forces appeared on the path of human evolution which could not be brought to fulfillment then, and that the work to be done through these forces must be taken up later—we have to look back to what belongs to an earlier period and is preserved by certain individuals for a later life. Now when we look for this individual during her life after death we observe direct results—we see that the powers which have lain dormant for a time, reserved for a coming period, now burst forth and are preparing for humanity's future. Thus we see how a later life must be linked with an earlier one, when talking of human evolution. We could not know certain things, of which it may be said that what had existed in the third and fourth epochs had to be revived in the fifth post Atlantean times, unless we could see into the spiritual worlds and say: ‘There we see an individuality who, by means of a short life on earth, acquired faculties which shine forth like a revival of something that has been lost to human life.’ A great inflow of strength comes to the spiritual investigator on observing such individuals in their life after death.