During his lifetime man has not only spiritual but also material
relations with nature. Heat, air, water, and earth press upon him from
all sides, and go out from him back again, creating and transforming
his body; but as these elements, which outside of man only operate
side by side, meet and mingle in him, they form a combination, that
of man’s bodily sensation, and at once this bodily sensation cuts off
man’s inner being from the sensations of the outer world. Only through
the windows of the senses is man able to look out from his bodily frame
and realize the outer world and, as it were, in small handfuls to draw
something from it.
But when man dies, with the destruction of his body that combination
is loosened, and, released from its bondage to it, the soul will now
return to nature with full freedom. He will no longer be conscious of
the waves of light and sound only as they strike eye and ear, but,
as the waves roll forth into the sea of ether and the sea of air,
he will not merely feel the blowing of the wind and the wash of the
waves against his body, but will himself murmur in the air and sea; no
more wander outwardly through verdant woods and meadows, but himself
consciously pervade both wood and meadow and those wandering there.
Therefore nothing is lost to him in the transition to the higher stage,
except implements, the limited use of which he can dispense with in
an existence in which he will carry and perceive within himself fully
and directly all which in the lower stage came to him only fitfully and
superficially through their dull mediation. Why should we take over
into the life to come eye or ear to obtain light and sound from the
spring of living nature, when the current of our future life will merge
as one with the waves of light and sound. Even more!
The human eye is only a little radiant spot upon the earth, and only
gets the impression in the firmament of points of light. Man’s longing
to know more of the universe is not here gratified.
He discovers the telescope and magnifies with it the surface, and so
the capacity of his eye; in vain, the stars still remain little points.
Now he believes that he will attain in the next world what this life
cannot grant, the final satisfaction of his curiosity; that once in
heaven he will immediately perceive all that has been hidden from his
earthly eyes.
He is right; but he does not reach a heaven because he receives wings
to fly from one planet to another or even into an unseen heaven over
the visible one; where in the nature of things could wings exist to
that end? He does not learn to know the whole universe, by being slowly
borne from one planet to another in ever-repeated birth; no stork is
there to carry children from one star to another;--his eye does not
gain the capacity for the infinite ethereal depths by being made
into a great telescope; the principle of earthly sight will no longer
suffice;--yet he will attain to all, in that, as a conscious part of
the other life in the great heavenly existence that holds him, he wins
a place in its high fellowship with other divinely illuminated beings.
A new vision! Not for us here below, because no one of us has reached
that plane. In the firmament the earth itself swims like a great eye
wholly immersed in the vast star spaces, and swinging around therein,
to receive from all sides the impact of waves which cross each other
millions and millions of times and yet cause no disturbance. With
this eye will man some time learn to discern the heavens, while the
forward surging of his future life, with which he pierces it, meets
and presses against the wave of the surrounding ether, and with finest
pulsations penetrates the universe. Learn to see! And how much will
man have to learn after death! For he must not think that, at the
first entrance, he will possess the whole divine perception for which
the future life will offer him the means. Even here the child first
learns to see and hear; for what he sees and hears in the beginning
is uncomprehended appearance, is mere sound without meaning--at first
indeed only bewilderment, astonishment, and confusion; and nothing
different does the new life offer to the new child at first. Only what
man brings with him from this life, the composite echo of memories
of all he has done and thought and been here, does he see, in the
transition, all at once clearly lighted up within itself, yet still he
remains primarily only what he was. Neither does any one think that the
glory of the other world shall result otherwise to the foolish, the
idle, and the bad, than to make them feel the discord of their lives,
and to emphasize the necessity for reform. Already in the present life
man brings with him an eye to behold the whole glory of heaven and
earth, an ear to hear music and the speech of man, an understanding to
grasp the meaning of all this; what does it avail to the foolish, the
indolent, and the bad?
As the best and the highest in this life so is also the best and the
highest in the other only there for the best and the highest, because
alone by such understood, wished for, and acquired. Therefore, the
higher man of the next world alone can gain a comprehension of the
conscious intercourse in the existence into which he has passed with
other divine beings, entering with them himself into this fellowship.
Who knows whether the whole earth, revolving in an ever slowly
narrowing orbit, will not return to the heart of the sun from which it
came, after eons of years, and then a sun life of all earthly creatures
will begin; and where is the need of our knowing this now?