Gustav Theodor Fechner

The booklet
from
Life after death

"However, it is always happy when his

Roots continues to expand and its existence
sees others intervene. "
Schiller on April 4, 1797 to Goethe.

In the island publishing house to Leipzig

First chapter
Man does not live on earth, but three times. His first stage of life is a constant
sleep, the second a change between sleep and waking, the third an eternal watch.
In the first stage, man lives lonely in darkness; on the second, he lives socially but
separately beside and between others in a light that reflects on him the surface on the
third, his life ties up with that of other spirits to a higher life in the highest spirit, and
looks into the essence of the finite things.
At the first stage, the body develops from the germ and creates its tools for the
second; on the second, the mind develops from the germ and creates its tools for the
third; on the third, the divine germ develops, which is in every human spirit, and here
already points out a day-light beyond, for the spirit of the third stage, a day-bright
beyond through the foreboding, faith, feeling and instinct of the genius over man.
The transition from the first to the second stage of life is called birth; the transition
from second to third is called death.
 The path from which we move from the second to the third stage is no darker than
that from which we pass from the first to the second. One leads to the outer, the other
to the inner looking of the world.
But how the child on the first stage is still blind and deaf for all the splendor and all
the music of life on the second and his birth from the warm womb comes to him hard
and hurts, and how there is a moment in birth where it is The destruction of its former
existence feels as death, before the awakening to the outer new being takes place, so
in our present existence, where our whole consciousness is still bound in the narrow
body, we know nothing of the splendor and the music and the glory and freedom of
life on the third level and easily hold the narrow dark corridor that leads us there, for
a blind sack, from which there is no exit. But death is only a second birth to a freer
being, whereby the mind lets its close shell burst and lie and rot,
Thereafter, everything that is brought to us externally and, so to speak, only from
afar, with our present senses, will be penetrated and felt by us in its inwardness. The
spirit will no longer pass by the mountain and grass; it will no longer be tormented,
surrounded by all the bliss of spring, but saddened by the fact that all this remains to
him only outwardly, but he will penetrate mountain and grass, and that strength to
feel its air growing; he will no longer struggle to produce a thought in others through
words and gestures, but in the direct action of the spirits on each other, which are no
longer separated by the bodies, but joined by the bodies, the air of thought-generation
will exist; he will not appear outwardly to the loved ones left behind,

second chapter
The child in the womb only has a body-spirit, the instinct for education. The
creation and development of the limbs with which it grows out are its actions. He
does not yet feel that these limbs are his property, for he does not use them and can
not use them. A beautiful eye, a beautiful mouth are for him merely beautiful objects
that are created, ignorant that they will once be servile parts of his self. They are
made for a next world, of which the child knows nothing; It rejects it by virtue of its
own dark drive, which is clearly grounded only in the organization of the
mother. 1)But just as the child matures to the second stage of life, stripping away the
organs of his previous work and leaving them there, he suddenly sees himself as the
self-sufficient unity of all his creations. This eye, this ear, this mouth are now his
own, and when it first created them by a dark native feeling, it now learns to know its
delicious use. The world of light, colors, sounds, fragrances, tastes and feelings are
only now beginning to appear in the tools created for him, and probably for him, if
they have made them useful and efficient.
1)The physiologist can be said more significantly: the creative principle of the child before birth is not in what
will survive after birth of him, what is now only the dependent, the creature, but in what of the child the birth
remains behind and will be ruined, like the body of man in death (placenta cum funiculo umbilicali, velamentis
ovi eorumque liquoribus), from his activity, as his continuation the young man grows out.
 The ratio of the first stage to the second will increase again in the ratio of the
second to the third. All our action and will in this world is calculated only to create
for us an organism which we shall see and need as our self in the following
world. All spiritual effects, all the consequences of the expressions of power which
emanate from him during his lifetime and pass through the human world and nature,
are already connected by a secret, invisible bond; they are the spiritual limbs of man,
which he drives during his lifetime connected to a spiritual body, to an organism of
restlessly expanding forces and effects, the consciousness of which is still beyond
him and which therefore, though inseparably spun together with his present
being, but only in the starting point of the same for being recognizes. But at the
moment of death, when man separates himself from the organs to which his creative
power was attached, he suddenly receives the consciousness of everything that
survives as a result of his earlier manifestations of life in the world of ideas, forces,
effects. sustains and, as a source organically escaped, also carries within itself its
organic unity, which, however, now becomes alive, self-conscious, self-sufficient,
and manages its own destiny in humanity and nature with its own individual
perfecting of power.
Whatever has contributed to the creation, creation, or preservation of the ideas of
mankind and of nature during his life, is his immortal part, which will continue to
work on the third stage, though the body, on the working force the second was
knotted, long rotten. What millions of dead people have created, acted, thought, did
not die with them, nor is it again destroyed by what the next millions create, act,
think, but it continues to act in them, evolves into them in their own lives, drives
They look for a big goal that they do not see themselves.
To be sure, this ideal continuance of life appears only to us as an abstraction and
the continuing effect of the spirit of the deceased in the living only as an empty
thought-thing. But only because of this does it seem to us that we have no senses to
grasp the spirits on the third level in their true being, which fills and penetrates
nature. Only the points of connection of their existence to ours can we recognize, the
part with which they are have grown into us and appear to us just under the form of
those ideas that have been propagated by them in us.
Whether the circle of waves, left by a sinking stone in the water, causes by its
impact a new wave-circle about every stone that still protrudes from it, remains
nevertheless a coherent circle, which excites all and carries in its circumference; but
the stones only know about the fragmentation of the circumference circles. We are
such ignorant stones, except that we, unlike solid stones, even in life, strike a
coherent circle of effects around us that spreads not only to others, but to others.
In fact, even during his lifetime, every human being with its effects in others grows
through words, examples, scriptures and deeds. Already as Goethe lived, millions of
fellow-travelers had sparks of his spirit in them, on which new lights were set, even
as Napoleon lived, his spirit penetrated into almost the whole world; when both died,
these branches of life, driven into the world, did not die; Only the impetus of new
branches on this side is extinguished, and the growth and development of this
spontaneity emanating from an individual and forming an individual in its entirety,
now takes place with a self-conscious self-consciousness, which, of course, we can
not grasp. There still lives a Goethe, a Schiller, a Napoleon, a Luther among us,
The greatest example of a mighty spirit that lives on and continues in posterity is
Christ. It is not an empty word that Christ lives in his confessors; every true Christian
carries him not only comparatively, but truly alive; everyone participates in him, who
acts and thinks in his sense, for it is only Christ's Spirit that acts and acts in him. He
has spread through the whole limbs of his congregation, and all cling to his spirit like
the apples of a tribe, like the vines of a vine.
"For as a body is, and yet has many members, and all the members of one body,
though many are, yet they are one body, and therefore also Christ" (1 Corinthians
12:12). 2)
2) Many biblical parallel passages are summarized in "Zendavesta" III, p. 363 ff. And the "Three Motives and
Grounds of the Faith," p. 178.

But not only the greatest spirits, but every able-bodied man awakens in the
following world with a self-created organism, a unity of infinite spiritual creations,
effects, and moments, which will perform to a greater or lesser extent and will have
more or less evolving power after the spirit of the human continued to grow stronger
during his lifetime. But he who clung to the soil here, and only needed his spirit to
move, nurture, and enjoy his material, will leave only a meaningless being. And so
the richest will become the poorest, if he only expends his money to save his strength,
and the poorest of the richest, if he exerts his power to win his life honestly. Because
what everyone is doing here, he will have there,
The riddles of our present intellectual life, the thirst for the study of truth, which
partly pervades us here, the aspiration of every right mind to create works that are
only for posterity, conscience with repentance, which gives us an unfathomable fear
implanting bad actions, which do not bring us any detriment here, are the result of
unimaginative foresights, which all this will bring to us in that world, where even the
fruit of our smallest and most hidden activity falls to us as part of our self.
That is the great righteousness of creation, that everyone creates the conditions for
his future being. The acts are not repaid to man by external reward or
punishment; there is no heaven and hell in the ordinary sense of Christians, Jews and
Gentiles, where the soul would come after death; it does not make a leap up or down,
nor a stoppage; it does not burst, it does not dissolve into the general; but after having
survived the great stage-illness, death, it quietly develops further in one and to a
higher being, after the immutable, every later stage, above the ground of the earlier
constructive consistency of nature on earth; and depending on whether man was good
or bad, noble or wicked, diligent or idle,
 Therefore be sprightly and brave. For those who walk slowly here will be lame
there, and those who do not open their eyes will have a stupid face there, and those
who practice falsehood and wickedness will feel their disharmony with the chorus of
true and good spirits as pain that still bothers them in that world will do to mend the
evil and heal what he is in debt to, and will not let him rest and rest until he has also
stripped off and atoned for his least and last iniquity. And if the other spirits long
rested in God, or rather live as partakers of his thoughts, he will still be driven around
in the tribulation and changeability of life on earth, and his soul evil will plague
people with ideas of error and superstition, they lead to vice and follies,
However long the untrue, the evil, and the common will continue to work and
wrestle with the true, the beautiful, the right, it will ultimately be conquered by its
ever-growing power, destroyed by its own consequences, which will spring back with
increasing force, and so on nothing of all lies, of all malice, of old filth in the soul of
man can finally be left. Only that is the eternal imperishable part of man, what is true,
beautiful and good in him. And if only a mustard seed of it is in him - but in whom
none would be, that would not be - then at last it will be cleansed of chaff and cinders
left by the purgatory of life on the third stage, tormenting only the evil, and, albeit
late, still able to grow to magnificent trees.
Rejoice also, you whose spirits here are tempered by tribulation and pain, you will
benefit from the practice found here in the fierce battle with the obstacles against
your progress, and more vigorously born into the new existence, you will catch up
quicker and more joyfully What your fate made you miss here.

third chapter
Man consumes many means for a purpose; God serves a means for many purposes.
The plant thinks it is just for itself, to grow, to rock in the wind, to drink light and air,
to prepare scents and colors for its own jewelry, to play with beetles and bees; It is
also there for itself, but at the same time it is only a pore of the earth, in which light,
air, and water meet and involve in processes, important for all earthly life; she is there
to exhale for the earth, to breathe, to weave a green dress on her, and to provide cloth
and clothing to people and animals.
Man thinks he is merely for himself, to enjoy himself, to work and to create for his
own physical and spiritual growth; He is also there for himself, but at the same time
his body and mind are but a dwelling in which higher, alien spirits enter, become
entangled and develop, and drive among themselves all kinds of processes which are
at the same time the feeling and thinking of man and their greater significance for the
human being have third stage of life.
The mind of man is indistinguishable at the same time his property and the property
of those higher spirits, and what goes on in it always belongs to both at the same
time, but in different ways.
 As in this figure, which should not be an image, but only a symbol or allegory, the
standing in the middle standing colorful (here black shining) six-rayed star as a self-
contained, its inner unity in itself, whose rays all of Its dependence on its center is
uniformly connected with it, but on the other hand it merges again with the
concatenation of the six simply colored circles, each of which has its own inner unity,
and like every ray of it both to itself and to the circles through which they intermesh
arises, belongs, it is with the human soul.

Man often does not know where his thoughts come from, he can think of
something; it transforms him into a longing, anxiety or pleasure, of which he can not
give an account; a power urges him to act, or a voice admonishes him without his
being aware of his own reason. These are attacks of ghosts who are thinking into him,
acting on him from a different center than his own. Even more striking are their
effects in us when, in abnormal states (of sleepwalking or mental illness), the actual
interdependence between them and us has decided in their favor, so that we receive
only passively what passes to us from them, without retroactive effect on our side.
But as long as the human mind is awake and healthy, it is not the willless play or
product of the spirits that grow into it or out of which it appears to grow; but that
which unites these spirits, the invisible, vital center full of spiritual attraction, into
which all converge, in which all intersect and testify to each other through reciprocal
intercourse, did not originate only through the intersection of the spirits, but is to man
as innate property in procreation innate; and free will, self-determination, self-
consciousness, reason, and the ground of all mental faculties are contained
herein. But all that lies at birth in it as in an unresolved germ, only waiting for the
development into an organism full of vital individual reality. As soon as man has
entered into life, the alien spirits feel it, and they come in from all sides and seek to
make his power theirs, in order to strengthen for them a moment of their own, but in
doing so, at the same time, becomes Moment property of the human spirit itself, it
becomes conceited and contributes to its development.
The alien spirits which have grown up in man are as well, albeit in a different way,
subject to the influence of the human will, than man is dependent on foreign
spirits; he can just as well, from the middle of his spiritual being, incarnate new
things into the spirits connected with them, as they can influence the depths of his
inner being; but in the harmoniously developed spiritual life no will has superiority
over the other. Since every alien mind has only a part of its self in communion with
the individual human being, the will of the individual person can only have a
stimulating influence on him, which lies with his whole remaining part except
man; and since every human mind includes a community of very different alien
spirits,
Not all spirits can unite indiscriminately in unity in the same soul; therefore the
good and the wicked, the true and the false spirits fight over their possession, and
those who win in battle keep the field. The inner conflict that so often finds its place
in man is nothing but this struggle of strange spirits who want to win over their will,
their reason, in short their innermost essence. Just as man perceives the unification of
the spirits who dwell in him as peace, clarity, harmony, and safety of himself, he feels
his struggle in himself as restlessness, doubt, wavering, confusion, and division of his
inner being. But not as an easy prize or lazy prey he falls to the stronger spirits in this
dispute, but with the source of self-sufficient power in the center of his being, he
stands between the opposing forces, who want to attract him, and argues with which
part he wills, and so he can decide victory for the weaker impulse by giving it to him
his strength against the stronger provided. Thus, even in the midst of spiritual
conflict, man's self remains safe, as long as he preserves the innate freedom of his
strength and never tires of using it. If he so often succumbs to the evil spirits, it is
because the development of force from within him is associated with hardships; and
so, in order to get angry, often enough, just to be lazy and casual. And so he is able to
decide the victory for the weaker drive, by giving him his strength against the
stronger. Thus, even in the midst of spiritual conflict, man's self remains safe, as long
as he preserves the innate freedom of his strength and never tires of using it. If he so
often succumbs to the evil spirits, it is because the development of force from within
him is associated with hardships; and so, in order to get angry, often enough, just to
be lazy and casual. And so he is able to decide the victory for the weaker drive, by
giving him his strength against the stronger. Thus, even in the midst of spiritual
conflict, man's self remains safe, as long as he preserves the innate freedom of his
strength and never tires of using it. If he so often succumbs to the evil spirits, it is
because the development of force from within him is associated with hardships; and
so, in order to get angry, often enough, just to be lazy and casual. It is so because the
development of power from within is bound up with hardships; and so, in order to get
angry, often enough, just to be lazy and casual. It is so because the development of
power from within is bound up with hardships; and so, in order to get angry, often
enough, just to be lazy and casual.
The better man is, the easier it becomes for him to become even better, and the
worse he is, the more easily he spoils himself altogether. For the good man has
already absorbed many good spirits, who now join forces with him against the
backward and newly pressing evil spirits, and spare him the development of strength
from within him. The good does the good without effort; his spirits do it for him; but
the bad man only has to dampen and overcome all the evil spirits who strive towards
him through his inner strength.
In addition, relatives seek and relate to relatives and flee their opposite, if they do
not force it. The good spirits in us attract the good spirits beyond us, and the evil
spirits in us lure the evil beyond us. Gladly pure spirits enter into a pure soul, and evil
in us takes us apart from evil. Once the good spirits have taken over our souls, the last
devil, who is still left behind, soon flees by himself; he is not at ease in good
society; and so the soul of good people becomes a pure heavenly dwelling for blissful
spirits living together in it. But even the good spirits, when they despair of denying
the overpowering evil a soul, leave it to them alone, and so it becomes a hell, a place
just for the torments of the damned. For the pain of conscience, and the inner
destruction and restlessness in the soul of the wicked, are pains that do not feel these
alone, but, with still bitter woe, the damned spirits in them.

Chapter Four
As the higher spirits dwell not merely in individuals, but by each branching into
several, they are the ones who connect these people in a spiritual way, be it a form of
faith, or a truth, a moral or political aspiration. All people who have any spiritual
fellowship with each other belong to the body of one and the same spirit, and obey
the idea that has entered into them, like connected members. Often an idea lives on in
one people at a time, often a crowd of people is inspired by one and the same act: that
is a powerful spirit that overcomes them all, radiating epidemically into all of
them. Of course, not only by the spirits of the dead do these connections, but
countless newborn ideas work from the living to the living; but all these ideas, which
go from the living to the world, are already members of his future spiritual organism.
If two related spirits in humanity meet and grow together through their communal
moments, while at the same time mutually determining and enriching each other
through their various species, the societies, genders, peoples, to which they first exist
individually, enter into spiritual fellowship and enrich them through her intellectual
property. Thus the development of the spiritual life of the third degree in humanity is
inseparable from the development, the progress of humanity, hand in hand. The
gradual formation of the state, of the sciences, of the arts, of human intercourse, the
organization of these spheres of life into ever larger, harmoniously articulated whole,
is the result of the growing together of countless spiritual individualities living and
weaving in humanity,
How else do those great spheres want to develop themselves after such immutable
ideas from the confused egoistic impulses of the individual who, with their short-
sighted eye in the middle, do not see the circumference and circumference of the
center, if not the higher spirits that clearly look through the whole through the
transmission, and all pushing around the common divine center, flowing together
with their divine parts, including the people in whom they work, united to the higher
goals.
But in addition to the harmony of the spirits, who meet and hate each other in a
friendly manner, there is also a struggle of the spirits whose essence is at odds, a
struggle in which everything confounded in finite discord will rub off, leaving the
eternal alone in its purity , Mankind also shows traces of this struggle in the strife of
the systems, in the hatred of the sects, in the wars and outrages between the princes
and peoples and the peoples among themselves.
In all these great spiritual movements the masses of men enter with blind faith,
with blind obedience, with blind hatred, with blind rage; she does not listen and does
not look with the ears and eyes of the own mind; she is driven by strange spirits for
purposes and ends of which she herself does not know; she is led by slavery and
death, and terrible tribulations, like a flock following the impulse of the higher spirits.
Of course, there are also people who act with clear self-confidence and with inner
independence acting and guiding in this great movement. But they are only voluntary
means for great predetermined purposes; indeed, by their free action, capable of
determining the manner and speed, but not the goal of progress. Only they have
worked great things in the world, which have recognized the spiritual direction of the
present in which they lived, and guided their free action and thought in that
direction; probably just as great human spirits that resisted her have perished. The
spirit, who sets the better goals and knows better ways to do so, has chosen to find
new centers of his moving power; not as blind tools, but as such, those who, out of
their own impulse and with their own understanding, serve their rights and their
wisdom. Not the forced slave performs the better service. But with what they begin to
serve God on this side, they will continue to lead on the other side as a partaker of his
heavenly rule.

Fifth chapter
In some ways the spirits of the living and the dead may unconsciously meet, on
some even consciously from one side. Who can track and fathom all this traffic? Let
us briefly say that they meet when they meet with consciousness, and the deceased
are there where they are with consciousness.
A means gives the most conscious encounter between the living and the
deceased; it is the memory of the living to the dead. Turning our attention to the dead
means awakening their attention to us, as a stimulus that strikes a living attracts its
attention to where it meets it.
After all, our memory of the deceased is only a consequence of our conscious life,
which has become conscious of itself, turning back to it, but the otherworldly is led as
a result of this worldly existence.
Even if a living thinks of a living, it may draw a train to its consciousness; but he
does not work because his consciousness is still tied up in the bonds of his narrow
body. The consciousness unleashed by death, however, seeks its place, and follows
the course which is uttered, the easier and the stronger, the more often and the more
strongly it has been uttered before it.
Just as one and the same bodily blow is always felt on both sides by both the
beating and the defeated, it is only a stroke of consciousness that is felt bilaterally in
the memory of a deceased person. We are mistaken, only holding the side of this side
of the conscious side because we do not feel the otherworldly; and this error has
consequences of error and neglect.
The beloved, a spouse's wife, and a mother's child have been snatched from a
lover. In vain do they seek in a distant sky the piece of life torn away from them,
vainly stretch out their eyes and eyes into what is not really torn off from them; Only
the thread of external understanding has been torn off, because from the
communication conveyed by external senses, in which the two understood each other,
an inner immediate has become through the inner sense, in which they have not yet
learned to understand each other.
Once upon a time, I saw a mother searching for her still-living child with fears in
the house and garden, which she carried in her arms. Even greater is the error of those
who seek the deceased in a distant void, after which they only have to look inside to
find it with them. And does she not quite find it there, did she really have it, since she
carried it outwardly in her arms? The benefits of external communication, the
external word, the external view, the external care can no longer exist and give; the
benefits of the inner only now have and give; she just needs to know that there is
internal communication and advantages of such. One does not speak with the one, the
hand does not reach the one that one thinks is not there. But if you are all right, a new
life of the living will begin with the dead,
Thinks of a deceased only right - and not just the thought of the deceased, the
deceased himself is there at the moment. You can summon him inwardly, he must
come, hold him, he must stay, keep only meaning and thought on him. Think of him
with love or hate, he will feel it; - with stronger love, stronger hatred, he will feel it
stronger. Otherwise you probably remembered the dead; now you know how to use
it; You can knowingly enchant or plague a deceased with your memory, reconcile
with him or argue irreconcilably, not just knowingly, even him. Tuts always in the
best sense; And now it also ensures that the memory of what you leave behind will
make you pious in the future.
Probably the one who left behind a treasure of love, respect, worship, admiration in
the memory of the people. What he has left behind for this worldly life, he wins with
death, gaining the collective consciousness of everything that the remnant thinks of
him; With that, he lifts the bushel, of which he only counts individual grains in
life. This is one of the treasures we should collect for heaven.
Woe to what curses, curses follow a memory full of terror. Those who followed
him in this world, catch him in death; that belongs to the hell that awaits him. Every
woe that is called to him is an arrow sent to him, which penetrates into his interior.
But only in the totality of the consequences which the good and the bad give out of
themselves does justice become complete. The righteous who are misunderstood
must surely suffer from it in the hereafter as from an external evil, and the
unrighteous will receive an unjust fame as an external good; so keep your call as pure
as possible here, and do not put your light under the bushel. But among the spirits of
the beyond, misunderstanding ceases; what is weighed down wrong is weighed up
right, and outweighed by an allowance on the other side. Heavenly justice finally
surpasses all earthly injustice.
Whatever keeps the dead alive is a means of summoning them.
At every festival, which we give to the dead, they ascend; they hover around every
statue we set for them; with every song that sings their deeds, they listen with
them. A life-sprout for a new art! how old was she, how tired to show the old
spectacles to the old spectators over and over again? Now suddenly a circle of lodges
opens above the ground floor with the lower layer of the old spectators, from which
they see a higher society looking down; and not to create, as those below, but as the
ones above want it, henceforth is their highest goal; but those below should want it as
they want it above.
The scoffers mock and the churches quarrel. There is a mystery, one for one, one
for others, one for the others, both because one and the other have completely hidden
a greater mystery, from whose revelation flows at last simple and clear, from which
the minds of the scoffers and the unity of the churches have failed , For only one
greatest example of a most general rule is what they see as an exception to all rule or
above all rule.
Not only with a body of flour and water does Christ enter the faithful at his
memorial meal; Enjoy it rightly with the thought of him, and he will be with his
thought not only with you, but in you; The more you think about him, the more; the
stronger, with so much strength, he will strengthen you; but you do not think of it, it
remains flour and water and common wine.

Sixth Chapter
The longing that inhabits every human being, to meet them after death, to reunite
with them, and to renew their former relationship, will be fulfilled in a more perfect
degree than ever had been anticipated and promised.
For not only in that life will those who were united in it by a common spiritual
element, but in one will grow together through this element; it will become a
common soul member to them, which belongs to both with equal consciousness.
For already now the dead are fused with the living, like the living themselves
among themselves, through innumerable such common elements; but only when
death dissolves the knot which the body draws around the soul of every living thing,
will the consciousness of the connection also appear to connect consciousness.
Everyone will realize, at the moment of death, that what his spirit received from, or
shared with, those who were formerly dead still belongs to those spirits, and so he
will not enter the third world like a stranger, but like one long awaited, to whom all
with whom he was linked here through a community of faith, knowledge, love, will
reach out to him to draw him as a being belonging to them.
 In the same intimate communion we will also come with those great dead who,
long before our time, wandered through the second stage of life, and on whose
example and doctrine our spirit was formed. So whoever lived here completely in
Christ, will be there completely in Christ. But his individuality will not go out in the
higher individuality, but only gain strength in it and at the same time strengthen that
power. For what spirits grow together by their same moments, each of them gains the
power of others to their own, and at the same time determines themselves through the
various things that are connected with it.
Thus, some spirits will reinforce each other through large parts of their being,
others will only be linked by individual coincidental moments.
Not all these connections, based on the communality of a spiritual moment, will
remain; but those will remain whose moment belongs to truth, beauty or virtue.
Anything that does not bear the eternal harmony, even if it survives this life, will
finally disintegrate and cause a splitting of the spirits, which for a time were thereby
united into a reprehensible bond.
Most of the spiritual moments which develop in our present life, and which we take
over into the following, bear in themselves a kernel of the true, the good, and the
beautiful, but shrouded in by much addition of the insignificant, the false, the wrong,
and the corrupt. Which spirits are connected by such moments, which can remain
connected or separate; as soon as they both unite to hold fast to the good and the best
and leave the bad to the evil spirits, when divorced from them, or according to which
one takes the good, the other the bad.
But those spirits who have at one time jointly taken possession of a form or idea of
the true, the beautiful, or the good in their eternal purity, remain united through them
for all eternity, and possess them in the same way as part of themselves in everlasting
unity.
The grasping of the eternal ideas of the higher spirits is therefore a growing
together of these ideas into larger spiritual organisms; and like all individual ideas in
general and these in more general roots, all spirits will ultimately be connected as
limbs with the greatest spirit, with God.
The spirit world in its perfection will therefore not be an assembly, but a tree of
spirits whose root has grown into the earthly and whose crown reaches into the sky.
Only the greatest and noblest spirits, Christ, the genii and saints, are able to grow
right up to the inner height of God with their best parts; the smaller and lesser roots
are rooted in them like branches in branches and branches in stems, and thus are
indirectly connected by them with that which is the highest in the highest.
Thus the dead genii and saints are the true mediators between God and men; At the
same time they participate in the ideas of God, lead them to the people, at the same
time they feel the suffering, the joys and desires of the people, and lead them to God.
After all, the cult of the dead has half-twined, half-divided, with the idolatrous cult
of nature right at the origin of religion; the most rude peoples have retained the most,
the most educated of them the highest, and where today was there still one who did
not preserve a great fragment of it as their chief.
And so, in every city, there should be a temple of its greatest dead, cultivated in or
built into the temple of God, while allowing Christ to dwell with God Himself in the
same room as before.

Seventh Chapter
"We now see through a
mirror in a dark word, but
then face to face, now I
recognize it piecemeal,
but then I will recognize
it, as I am known."
l. Cor. 13, 12.

Here, at the same time, man leads an external and an inner life, the first of all
visibly and audibly in view, in word, in writing, in external actions and works, the last
only audible to himself in inner thoughts and feelings. From the visible, the
continuation to the outside is also visible, easily traceable; the continuation of the
invisible remains invisible itself, but it is not lacking. Rather, with the outer life of
man, as its core, the inner continues to develop beyond this worldly man to form the
core of the otherworldly.
In fact, what is visible and tangible to man during his life is not the only thing that
emanates from him. As small and fine as a trembling or vibration is carried by a
conscious movement in our head, the whole play of conscious impulses is carried by
an inward play of our head, it can not be extinguished except that they have effects of
their kind in us and finally generated beyond us; we just can not track it into the
outside. As little as the sounds can keep their playing to themselves, it is carried over
them, so little is our head; only the next of it belongs to the lute and the head.
What unspeakable play of waves of high order, which originated in the game of our
heads, may spread over the crude low-pitched play, which is audible to our eyes and
ears, like finest ripples over the great waves of a pond, or drawings without thickness
over the surface of a thick-meshed carpet, which has all the beauty and importance of
them. The physicist, however, only recognizes and pursues the play of the low-order
waves outside, and does not care about the finer things he does not recognize. - If he
does not recognize it, but he knows the principle, may he deny the consequence? 3)
3)Although the play of nerves can be traced back to chemical or electrical processes, if one does not see it as a
play of vibrations of the last particles in it, one will have to arouse it or be led by it, whereby the unpredictable
plays a more important role than this Like to play weighable. Vibrations, however, can only seemingly
extinguish by spreading into the environment, or, if so by the passing of their living force into so-called
elasticity, temporarily extinguishing, but by the law of preserving the power of revival in any form.
 Thus, what has entered into us of the spirits through the effects of their externally
perceptible life on earth, nor their entire existence; but in nature, incomprehensible in
nature, there is still an inner, indeed the main, part of its essence to this outer part of
its essence. And if a man had led his life on a desert island and decided to intervene
without ever having intervened in other people's life, he would nevertheless persist in
his innermost being, awaiting a future development which he could not find in his
intercourse with others.
If, on the other hand, a child had only lived for a moment, it would not die again
forever. The smallest moment of conscious life is already beating around in a circle of
effects, as the shortest sound, which at the moment seems extinguished, beats those
which carry the sound out to infinity over the near and the hearer; for no effect is
extinguished in itself, and each bears forth for ever new effects of its kind. And so the
child's mind will continue to evolve from these conscious beginnings, as that of the
lonely man; just different, as if it had happened from an already advanced beginning.
Just as man acquires the full consciousness of what he mentally begets in others
only when he dies, so in death will he first attain full consciousness and use of what
he has driven into himself. What he accumulates during his life in spiritual treasures,
what fills his memory, what permeates his feelings, what his mind and his
imagination created, remains eternal! But the whole context of this remains dark on
this side; only the thought passes through a bright traffic light and illuminates what
lies on the narrow line of his path, the other remains in the dark. Never will the mind
at once become aware of its full inner fullness; only when a moment of it lures in a
new one to link, it emerges from the darkness for a moment and then sinks back again
in the next. Thus man is a stranger in his own mind, and errs in it, following his own
way, or laboriously seeking his way by the thread of the end, and often forgets his
best treasures, sunk away from the luminous trace of thought in the dark, that of the
spirit wide field covers. But at the moment of death, where an eternal night covers the
eye of his body, it will begin to begin in his mind. Then the center of the inner man
will burn into a sun, which will illuminate everything spiritual in him, and at the same
time will see through as an inner eye with supernatural clarity. He finds everything
that he forgot here, yes, he forgot it on this side only because he went ahead to the
hereafter; Collected, he finds it again.4) As high as the flight and eye of the bird
hovers above the slow crawl of the blind caterpillar, which sees nothing but what its
lazy step touches, that higher cognition will rise above ours. And so in death, with the
body of man, his sense, his understanding, and even the whole construction of his
mind, calculated on this finiteness, will perish, as forms too narrow for his nature, as
members, which no longer serve him in one The order of things, where he suddenly
has in himself, looking and enjoying everything that they must individually,
painstakingly, imperfectly create and open up to him. But man's very self will remain
intact in its full expansion and development in that fragmentation of its temporal
forms, and in place of that extinct lower activity will come a higher life. Calmed is all
restlessness of thoughts, which no longer need to search to find each other, and no
longer move to each other in order to become aware of their relationship. But for this
there begins a higher alternating life of spirits, with spirits, like thoughts with one
another in our spirit, those together in the higher spirit, whose or their all-linking
middle we call God, and our mind-game itself is only a branch of this
communication. It will no longer require any language to understand each other, and
not one eye to recognize the other, but how in us the thought understands the thought
and acts upon it, without mediation of ear and mouth and hand, to associate with or
separate from it without a foreign bond and without a partition, so secretly, intimately
and abruptly will the changing lives of the spirits be among themselves. And no one
else will remain hidden in the other. There are old sinful thoughts that crept here in
the darkness of the mind, and everything that man wants to cover in himself before
his peers with a thousand hands, become manifest to all spirits. And only the Spirit,
who has been quite pure and true here, will be able to face the others without shame
in that world; and whoever was misjudged here on earth will find his approval
there. Those who crept here in the darkness of the mind, and all that man wants to
cover in himself before his peers with a thousand hands, become manifest to all
spirits. And only the Spirit, who has been quite pure and true here, will be able to
face the others without shame in that world; and whoever was misjudged here on
earth will find his approval there. Those who crept here in the darkness of the mind,
and all that man wants to cover in himself before his peers with a thousand hands,
become manifest to all spirits. And only the Spirit, who has been quite pure and true
here, will be able to face the others without shame in that world; and whoever was
misjudged here on earth will find his approval there.
4)Even when approaching death in this world (by anesthesia, or at the moment of just imminent (drowning, or
asleep) approximations come to this clarity of the mental content at once, of which examples in "Zendavesta"
III., P 27 and (cases of imminent drowning) in Fechner 's Zentralbl., For Naturwiss and Anthropologie 1853,
pp. 43 and 623.

And even in its own nature, the mind, in its self-examination, will see every gap
and what remains unfinished, disturbing, disharmonious in it from this life, and not
only will it recognize these defects, but will feel with the same strength of public
feeling as we do our physical ones infirmity. But how in us the thought of thought
purifies itself of what is untrue in it, and how the thoughts are joined by their
common moments to higher thoughts, and each one thereby complements what is
lacking, so do the spirits to find in their intercourse the means of their progress to
perfection.

Eighth chapter
During his life, man does not only mentally, but also materially with nature.
Warmth, air, water and earth penetrate him from all sides and flow back out of him
on all sides, creating and changing his body; but when they, who only go side by side
outside of man, meet and intersect in him, they make a knot that closes the bodily
feeling of the human being, and thus at the same time, everything that is more inward
than the feeling, from the feeling of the outside world. It is only through the windows
of the senses that he is able to look into and feel out of his bodily case into the outside
world and make something out of it with little buckets.
But when man dies, with the decay of his body, that knot will break loose, and the
spirit, no longer bound by it, will now pour itself through nature with complete
freedom. He will no longer merely feel the waves of light and sound as they strike his
eye and ear, but, as they do in the aether-and-air-seas themselves, no longer feel the
rush of the wind and the balance of the sea against his body bathed in it but rushing in
the air and the sea itself; no longer outwardly walking in the forest and meadow
green, but feelingly penetrate forest and meadow with the people walking in it.
Thus nothing is lost to him in the transition to the higher stage, as tools whose
limited service he can miss in an existence where he will completely and abruptly
carry and feel all in himself, which on the lower level only through that lethargic
mediation met individually and externally close. What else should we take into the
future life of the eye and the ear, to draw the light and the sound from the Borne of
the living nature, as the wave of our future life will be one with the wave of light and
sound? But more!
The human eye is only a small, sun-drenched spot on the earth and has nothing in
the sky but bright spots. The desire of man to know more about heaven is not fulfilled
here.
He invents the telescope and thus increases the area and the carrying capacity of his
eye; in vain, the stars remain dots.
Now he means that what the here- and-now can not afford to obtain in the hereafter,
to finally satisfy his curiosity by going to heaven and from there on seeing everything
that was hidden from his earthly eyes.
He's right; but not by this does he go to heaven, that he has wings, to fly from one
star to the other, or even into an invisible heaven, over the visible sky; where are the
wings in the nature of things? not by doing so does he become acquainted with the
whole heaven, that he is gradually carried from one star to the other in ever new
births; no stork is there to carry the little ones from star to star; - not by this does his
eye gain the bearing power for the greatest celestial expanses, that it be made the
largest telescope; the principle of earthly seeing no longer suffices; But by doing so
he arrives at everything, that as the otherworldly conscious part of the great heavenly
being which bears him, he consciously acquires in the light traffic with the other
celestial beings. A new vision! none here for us, because none of us here is for
heaven. In the heavens the earth itself floats as a great eye, completely immersed in
the seas of light of the stars, and turns in receiving the waves of all from all sides,
which crosses millions and millions of times, yet does not bother. With this eye, man
will once learn to see the heavens, when the waves of his future life, with which he
penetrates them, meet the outer waves of the ether that surrounds them, and pierce
them with the finest blows through the heavens. which crosses millions and millions
of times and yet does not bother. With this eye, man will once learn to see the
heavens, when the waves of his future life, with which he penetrates them, meet the
outer waves of the ether that surrounds them, and pierce them with the finest blows
through the heavens. which crosses millions and millions of times and yet does not
bother. With this eye, man will once learn to see the heavens, when the waves of his
future life, with which he penetrates them, meet the outer waves of the ether that
surrounds them, and pierce them with the finest blows through the heavens.
Learning to see! And how much will man have to learn after death? For he may not
think that he will be able to master the whole heavenly clarity, to which the hereafter
offers him the means, as soon as he enters. On this side, too, the child learns to see, to
hear; for what it sees and hears at first is incomprehensible illusion, is sound, in
which there is no meaning, at first only glare, stupefaction and confusion; nothing
else, however, may initially offer the afterlife to the new senses of the new
child. Only what man brings with him from this world, the whole memory echo of all
that he has done on this side, thought he sees himself clear in the passage, yet at first
he only remains what he was. Nor do you think that the glory of the hereafter is for
the foolish, the lazy, to benefit the bad other than to make him feel the discordant
nature of his nature, and thereby at last to compel him to reverse his nature. Already
in the present life the man brings an eye to look, the whole splendor of the sky and
the earth, to hear an ear, the music and human speech, a mind, the sense of all to
grasp; what does the foolish, the lazy, the bad, pardon?
Like the best and the highest of the world, even the best and highest of the hereafter
are only there for the best and the highest because they are understood, wanted and
created only by the best and the highest.
Thus it is only the higher man of the hereafter who gains the understanding for the
conscious intercourse of the being that carries him with the other heavenly beings and
himself enters into this intercourse as a tool.
Whether the whole earth at last, drawing ever narrower circles, will return after
eons of years into the lap of the sun, from which it will once escape, and from there a
sun-life of all earthly creatures will begin, who knows? and why not that we already
know it?

Ninth chapter

The spirits of the third degree will dwell in the earthly nature, of which humanity
itself is a part, as in a communal body, and all the processes of nature to them be the
same to us, what now the processes of our body. Her body will embrace the bodies of
the second stage of life as a common mother, just as the second-stage bodies embrace
those of the first.
But only every third-generation spirit has developed from the common body as its
own part, which he has developed further in the earthly kingdom. What has become
different in the world through a human being, as if it had not existed, is its further
existence on the common root of all existence.
 Partly they are fixed institutions and works, partly continuous, circulating, and
rebounding effects, just as the present body consists of something solid and
changeable, which has its roots in the feast.
But all the circles of existence which carry the life of the otherworldly spirits now
clash, and you ask how it is possible for countless people to cross each other without
being disturbed, mistaken, confused.
First of all, how is it possible that innumerable circles of waves intersect in the
same pond, that countless waves of sound intersect in the same air, that innumerable
waves of light intersect in the same ether, that innumerable waves of memory
intersect in the same head, that finally the countless circles of life Of the people who
carry their hereafter, they already cross on this side without being disturbed, mistaken
and confused. On the contrary, it is only through this that a higher life and weaving of
waves, of memories, of this world, and finally of the otherworldly, come about.
But what separates the circles of consciousness that intersect?
Nothing separates them in any detail in which they intersect; they have everything
in common; each one has it only in other relationships than the other; this separates
them altogether and distinguishes them in greater detail. Again, ask what ripple
circles crossing or distinguishing; nothing at all; but you easily distinguish them
externally as a whole; Even more easily are circles which are conscious internally
even internally distinguish themselves.
Perhaps sometimes you have received a letter from a distant part of the world,
crossed by length and by traverse. What makes you distinguish both writings? Only
the connection that each has in itself. Thus the spiritual writings intersect, by which
the leaf of the world is described; and each reads itself as if it had the place alone, and
at the same time reads the others as those who cross it. Not only two writings, of
course, countless intersect in the world, but the letter is also only a faint picture of the
world.
But how can consciousness retain its unity in so great a spread of its foundation as
it still possesses before the law of the threshold of consciousness? 5)
5)This experiential law of the relationship between body and soul consists in the fact that consciousness
everywhere disappears when the bodily activity, to which it depends, falls below a certain degree of strength
called the threshold. By now, as it spreads more, it can also easily sink below it by weakening it. Just as the
whole consciousness has its threshold, which forms the divide between the sleep and the waking of the whole
man, so also everything special in the consciousness, on which it rests, that during the waking this soon this
soon turns up in the consciousness or extinguishes, according to the special activity what it depends on,
exceeds or falls below the special threshold. Comp. (Elements of Psychophysics chapter 10. 38. 39 and 42.

Ask first how it can preserve its unity in the smaller expansion of the body, the
continuation of which is the great only. Is your body, is your brain a point? Or is there
a center in it as the seat of the soul? No. 6) As it is the nature of the soul to make the
small connection of your body, in the future it will be its essence to make the larger of
the larger body. God's spirit even links the whole context of the world; - or did you
also want to seek God in one point? - In the hereafter, you will gain only greater part
of its omnipresence.
6) Comp. on this, elements of psychophysics, ch. 37, and Atomic Studies Ch. 26th

But if you take care that the wave of your future life in its spread no longer reaches
the threshold that it surpasses on this side, then also remember that it does not spread
into an empty world, because it would probably drip into the abyss without salvation.
but into a world which, as the eternal substructure of God, at the same time supports
your being; for it is only through the divine life that the creature is able to live. 7)
7)In order not to let an apparent contradiction of the above consideration with the psychophysical doctrine of
the wave of mixtures (about which the most illustrative in Wundt's Philos., Stud, IV, pp. 204 and 211) exist, the
following remark is made: if the pphchophysical wave of life composed of components of the most varied kind
People, in order to use this short expression, to propagate themselves into a world containing only different
components, would, of course, be presumed to be, by their spread, below the threshold of mixing in
question. But since the psychophysical wave-sea of the world contains among its other components also those
which are similar to those of the wave of life of man, and of different heights or intensities, including those of

Thus, the wren on the back of the eagle can easily fly over a mountain peak, for
which he would be too weak for himself, and finally fly over from the back of the
eagle on the general flight of the same still a piece. But God is the great eagle like the
little bird.
But how can man miss the death of the body, of the brain, of the artfully built,
which carried every impulse of his spirit, which, carried on by the impulses of the
spirit, carried them in ever greater strength and abundance. Was it built for free?
Ask the plant how it can forfeit the seed, if it goes beyond the same, to grow into
the light, of the artfully built, which, through the drift of the inner germ, develops
itself further into itself. Was it built for free?
But where is there an artful construction outside, like your brain, which replaced it
in the hereafter, and even someone who outdid it; but the hereafter is supposed to
outdo this world.
But is not your whole body already a larger and higher structure than eye, ear,
brain, not over every part? - So and unspeakably more outstrips the world, of which
humanity with state, with science, with art and with traffic is only one part, your little
brain, the part of this part. Look, if you want to raise yourself to a higher view, not
just a ball of dry soil, water, air in the earth; she is a greater and higher unified
creature than you, a celestial creature, with wondrous life and weaving in her upper
space, as you carry in your little brain, bringing with it only a tiny thing to her life. In
vain you will dream of a life for you if you do not know the life around you.
What does the anatomist see when he looks into the human brain? a tangle of white
fibers whose meaning he can not decipher. And what does it look like? a world of
light, sounds, thoughts, memories, fantasies, feelings of love and hatred. So think of
the relation of what you see externally in the world, and see in it, and what it sees in
itself, and do not require that both the exterior and the interior, on the whole, look
more like the world than in you, that's just her part. And only that you are part of this
world also makes you see part of what it sees in you.
And do you at last ask, what will our other body, which we call it, only awake
beyond, after we have driven it on this side into the earthly kingdom, and it is already
the continuation of our narrower body?
The very fact that this narrower falls asleep, indeed passes away. Nothing but a
case of the same general rule that goes through the whole world, evidence that it goes
beyond that. You doubters always want to close only from this world, so close.
The living force of consciousness never truly re-emerges, never sinks, but, like that
of the body on which it rests, can only change its place, form, or mode of diffusion in
time and space, sinking here today or here only to rise tomorrow or elsewhere. only
rise today or here to sink tomorrow or elsewhere. 8) For the eye to wake, you see with
consciousness, you must lower the ear to sleep so that the inner world of thought
awakens, the outer senses sleep; a pain at the smallest point can completely exhaust
the consciousness of your soul. The more the light of attention dissipates, the weaker
the individual becomes enlightened by it, the brighter it meets one point, the more all
the others step into the darkness; Reflecting on something means abstracting from
something else. Your wakefulness today, you owe your sleep since yesterday, the
deeper you sleep today, the more alert you will wake up tomorrow, and the merrier
you have watched, the deeper you fall asleep.
8)It is undeniable that this, the so-called law of (conservation of force in the body area analogous law,
somehow together with the same by the fundamental relation of the spiritual to the physical, without this
relation is already clarified, or the law of the conservation of the power of consciousness already
psychophysical from the law of the conservation of physical strength, so long as the fundamental nature of the
psychophysical activity itself is not clarified, the law must therefore be inferred from facts as they follow
above, and gain, without being fully and universally proved, but a probability by which it makes Apercus such
as the one in question applicable.

Now, on the other hand, man basically sleeps only half a sleep, which awakens the
old man because the old one is still there; only at death the full sleep that awakens a
new, because the old is no longer there; but the old rule is still there, which demands
a replacement of the old consciousness, and the new body as a continuation of the
old; so there will be a new consciousness as a substitute and continuation of the old
one.
As a continuation of the old! For whatever gives the body of the old man the
continuation of the same consciousness, which the child's womb bore, from which he
no longer has an atom, will also allow the body of the hereafter to bear the same
consciousness as that of the old man's wore, of which he has no atom left. That is it,
that every one who follows holds in its stead the continuation of that which carried
the former consciousness, and is thereby built. So it is a principle that lets the life of
today on this morning in tomorrow and from this world into the hereafter
continue. And can there be any other than the eternal principle of the eternal
continuity of man?
And so do not ask: what does it matter that effects that you have begotten on this
side in the external world, which are beyond you, more than any other, which are
beyond you, still belong. That's what makes them go out of you, rather than
these. Every cause retains its consequences as eternal property. Basically, however,
your consequences never went beyond you; even on this side they form the
unconscious continuation of your being, which only awaits awakening to new
consciousness.
As little as one person can ever die, who once lived, he could ever have come to
life had he not lived before; only that he did not live for himself before. The
consciousness with which the child awakens at birth is only a part of the ever-present
universal divine consciousness, which is taken together in the new soul. To be sure,
we can scarcely pursue the living power of consciousness through all paths and
changes, as the living bodily force.
But if you take care that the human consciousness, born out of the general
consciousness, will also flow back into it, look at the tree. It took many years before
the branches came from the tree; Once you come, do not go back inside. How did the
tree grow and develop if it happened? but the tree of life of the world also wants to
grow and develop.
After all, this is the great art of concluding from this world to the hereafter, not of
reasons we do not know, nor of assumptions that we make, but of facts we know to
infer the greater and higher facts of the hereafter and thereby to consolidate and
sustain the practically demanded, higher-level beliefs from below, and bring them
into vivid connection with life. Yes, we did not need faith, what support it; but as he
needs, he would have no support.

Tenth Chapter
The soul of man has poured out through his whole body, as soon as he
disintegrates, he disintegrates; but her consciousness is soon here soon. 9) Only now
did we see it wandering in the narrow body now and then, alternately illuminating the
eye, the ear, the inner and the outer sense, to finally wander beyond death in death,
like the one whose little house is destroyed, in which he lasts long gone back and
forth, forever pulling in the distance and a new hike begins. Death puts no other
divide between the two lives than that it lets the narrow scene of the journey be
exchanged for the other. And just as little in the present life is the consciousness light
always and everywhere at the same time, where it can be successively and where it
can disperse, it will be in the future life. The scene of the hike is only unspeakably
greater, the possible spread further, the paths more free and the viewpoints higher,
understanding all the lower ones of the world below.
 9)With scientific expression one will be able to say: Consciousness is everywhere and awake when and where
the bodily, so-called psychophysical activity subject to the spirit exceeds that degree of strength called the
threshold. (See note.) According to this, consciousness can be localized in time and space. The peak of the
wave of our psychophysical activity fluctuates, as it were, from one place to another, with which the
consciousness light changes its place, only that during this worldly life it fluctuates only occasionally within
our body, even a limited part of this body, and completely in sleep sinks below the threshold, above which he
ascends again in waking. Elements of Psychophysics II, Chap. 40 and 41.

Even in our present life, however, we see in exceptional cases, in rare cases, the
light of consciousness wandering from one's own body to the other and returning
home, bringing news of what happens in a distant space or, in its broad context, in a
distant time; for the length of the future is based on the breadth of the
present. Suddenly, a gap opens in the otherwise closed door between this world and
the afterlife, to quickly close again, the door that will open completely in death, and
only there to open, never to close again. Also, do not be religious, only to look
through the column before. But the exception to the rule of life on this earth is only
one case of the greater rule of life, which at the same time embraces this world and
the hereafter.
It happens that the narrower body falls asleep on one side deep enough to wake up
to others beyond its limits in an unfamiliar way, and yet not so very and deeply, never
to awaken. Or, in the wider body, one point is excited so unusually strongly to extend
into the narrower one an effect that exceeds the threshold from an otherwise
inaccessible distance. Thus begin the wonders of the bright face, the hunches, the pre-
existing dreams; all fables, if the otherworldly body and the life beyond are
fables; otherwise sign of the one and sign of the other; but what signs has is there,
and what sign has come will come.
But they are not signs of healthy life in this world. This world has to build the body
of the hereafter only for the hereafter, not to see and hear it with its eye and ear. The
flowering does not flourish, which one breaks before the time. And whether one can
support the belief in the hereafter by believing in these traces of his shining into this
world, one should not rely on it. The good faith is founded on reasons and ends in the
highest aspect of the healthy life, by itself belonging to his health and to the
conclusion of his highest points of view.
Since then you have thought that the light form in which a deceased person appears
in your memory is merely your inner appearance. You are wrong; He himself is
bodily in conscious walking with it not only to you but enters into you. The former
figure is still his soul-dress; only now no longer complaining with his former firm
body and walking slowly with it, but transparent, light, stripped of earthly burden,
now here at this moment now, following the call of each, calling the dead or putting
himself before you, then must you think of the dead. Also, the otherworldly
appearance of the souls has always been thought so easily, so bodilessly, so
independently of the space barriers, and thus, although the right does not mean, the
right but met.
 Also, you probably heard talk of ghosts. The doctors call them phantasms,
hallucinations. They are also for the living, but at the same time real appearances of
the dead that we call them. For if the weaker forms of remembrance are already in us,
how should it not be so much stronger corresponding phenomena. So why argue,
whether they are one or the other, if they are at the same time one and the other. And
why, in the future, you still fear ghost appearances when you are not afraid of the
memory figures in you who are already there.
But not the reason is missing. Unlike those called by you, or in the context of your
inner life of themselves quietly and peacefully entering, helpful in it with puzzling
figures, they come unseen, come over you with not defensible strength, seemingly in
front of you, really kicking you, on the fabric of your inner Rather, life is a thousand
rather than a continuation. A morbid entity at the same time of this world and the
hereafter. The dead should not be alive with the living. It is already half the death of
the living, to see the dead nearly as clearly, as objectively as they may look at one
another; hence the horror of the living before such appearance of the dead; it is at the
same time half a sinking back of the dead from the kingdom over the death into the
realm under the death; therefore the legend - and if not more than legend? - that only
ghosts who are not completely redeemed, who are still hanging with a heavy chain on
this side of the world To scare the unfortunate call for a better and stronger spirit; but
the best and strongest is the spirit of all spirits. Who has something in his
protection? Again the saying is true that before the call of God every evil spirit gives
way.
In the meantime, in this area of mental illness, the faith itself threatens to become
superstitious. The easiest way to save oneself from the coming of ghosts is to remain
unbelievable; for they believe that they are coming, that is, meeting them halfway.
How they may appear to each other, I say. For the same phenomenon, which is
contrary to the order of this world, is only anticipated from the order of the
hereafter. Light, full, clear and objective, the inhabitants of the hereafter will appear
to each other in the form of which we have only a faint echo, a dawning outline in
their memory, because they interpenetrate each other with the whole full being, of
which only a small part penetrates into each of us at the memory of her. Except that
on the other side, as well as on the side of the apparition, attention will be needed to
have it.
Now one may always ask: how is it possible that those who penetrate one another
seem so objective and limited? But first ask, how is it possible that what comes to
you as a manifestation of a living and penetrates your brain in the memory of a dead
person - and nothing else is in the nature of your soul to base it - is objectively, as an
intuition, to you Memory still seems limited. The self-limited effect that is subject to
memory still reflects the limitation of the form from which it initially emerged. You
do not know from this world why; How can you want to know about the hereafter?
And so I say again: do not conclude from reasons of this world that you do not
know, nor from assumptions that you make, but from facts of this world that you
know, to the greater and higher facts of the hereafter. The single conclusion can be
wrong; also the one we just did; so do not cling to any particulars; the unification of
the inferences in the direction of what we have to demand, above all, in the end and
in the end, will be our best support from below and guidance upward.
But if you took the faith right from above, it would be easy for you to fall down the
whole path of faith that we have taken up.

Eleventh chapter
Yes, how easy it would be for the faith, man could only get used to, in the word,
with which he plays for more than a thousand years, that he lives in God and weaves
and is to see more than one word. Then the belief in God and his own eternal life is
only one, he sees his own eternal life as belonging to the eternal life of God himself,
and in the height of his future over his present life only a higher structure over a
lower one in God, as he himself already has such in itself; he grasps at the little
example the higher, and in the context of both the whole, of which he is only the part.
The intuition in you erupts, and the memory rises from it in you; your whole world-
view-life in God melts away, and a higher memory life rises from it in God; and like
the memories in your head, the spirits of the hereafter are in the divine head. Only
one step above the step of the same staircase, which does not lead to God, but up into
God, which at the same time has the bottom and the top. How empty was God with
that empty-minded word, how rich is God with his full sense.
Do you know how the beyond of the intuitions is possible in your mind? You only
know that it really is, but only in one mind is it possible. So you can easily, ignorant
as you can, believe in the reality of a beyond of your whole mind in a higher mind,
you just have to believe that there is a higher mind and that you are in it.
And again: how easy it would be for faith if man could get used to seeing a truth in
the second word, that God lives and weaves in all things. Then it is not a dead world,
but a living world through which man builds his future body and thus builds a new
house in God's house .
But when will this living faith become alive?
That he brings to life will bring him to life.

Twelfth Chapter

You asked for the ob; I answered with the how. Faith spares the question of the
Ob; but if it is done, there is only one answer to this through the how; and as long as
the how is not fixed, the ob will not stop to go and come.
Here is the tree; many a single sheet of it may fall; but its reason and its context is
firm and good. He will always drive new branches and ever new leaves will fall; he
himself will not fall anymore; will carry flowers of beauty, and instead of rooting in
faith, bear fruits of faith.

postscript
The first suggestion of the idea expressed in this paper, that the spirits of the
deceased survive as individuals in the living, came to me through a conversation with
my friend, Professor Billroth, now living in Halle, now in Halle. By partly
intervening in, and in part awakening, some of my ideas in a series of related ideas,
the Idea has shaped itself in a prominent manner, and, by some sort of necessary
progress, has expanded into the idea of a higher life of spirits in God. In the
meantime, as in the philosophy of religion in general, especially in the study of
immortality, its origin has taken a very different direction from the one pursued here,
and one which follows directly from the ecclesiastical dogma, and which has for the
most part or completely removed it from that basic idea I, as I thought I had to
designate him as creator of the same, but no longer dare to call her
representative. One's own views of this subject will be developed in a work soon to
be expected of it.