IV. The Spirit in the Spiritland After Death

The seventh region of the “Spiritland” leads to the boundary of the “three worlds.” The man stands here in the presence of the “Life-kernels,” which are transplanted from higher worlds into the three which have been described, in order that in them they may fulfil their tasks. Therefore when a man is at the boundary of the three worlds he recognises himself in his own life-kernel. This means that for him the problems of these three worlds have been solved. He has a complete survey of the life of these worlds. In physical life, the powers of the soul through which it has in the spiritual world the experiences here described, remain unconscious under ordinary circumstances. They work in their unconscious depths upon the bodily organs, which bring about the consciousness of the physical world. That is precisely the reason why these powers remain imperceptible to this world. The eye too does not see itself, because forces are at work in it which make other things visible. If we would judge as to how far a human life running its course between birth and death can be the result of preceding earthly lives, we must take into consideration the fact that a point of view which itself lies within this same life, and which we should naturally accept in the first instance, can yield no possibility of judgment. For such a point of view, for instance, an earth life might appear full of suffering, imperfect, and so on, while precisely in this form it would be seen, from a point of view lying outside this life, to be in its suffering, in its imperfection, the natural outcome of previous lives. By treading the path of knowledge, as this is described in the next chapter, the soul sets itself free from the conditions of bodily life. Thus it can perceive in a picture the experiences which it undergoes between death and a new birth. Perception of this kind makes it possible to describe what happens in the “Spiritland,” as has here been done in outline. Only when we keep in mind the fact that the whole disposition of the soul is different in the physical body from what it is in periods of purely spiritual experience, only then shall we rightly understand the description here given.