thought. So this experience can lead to a pure impersonal question of knowledge. But then soon there will be a feeling that the thought of death is not significant in itself, but only because it can shed light on life. You will inevitably come to the view that the mystery of life can be known through the essence of death.
The fact that the soul demands the continuation of its existence, should in any case make it distrustful of all the opinions that it creates for itself about this continuation. For what matter does the phenomena of the world have to do with what the soul feels. Even if, according to her demands, she feels herself meaningless, forced to think that she can, like a flame arising from fuel substances, flare up from the substance of your body and then fade away again. It could still be so, even if it felt like nonsense. When the soul turns its gaze to the body, it must reckon only with what it can reveal to it. It seems as if laws operate in nature that bring substances and forces into the cycle of change, and as if these laws dominate the body and after a while draw it into this general cycle.
This idea can be turned in any way: from the point of view of the natural sciences, it is, perhaps, applicable, but in relation to true reality, it is completely impossible. It can be found that this thought alone is scientifically clear, sober, and everything else is only subjective faith; it's easy to imagine. But with true impartiality, it cannot be stopped. And that's the whole point. What is important is not what the soul feels with its being as necessary, but what the external world reveals, from which the body is borrowed. This outer world absorbs its substances and forces after death. And in it they then follow the laws, for which it is completely indifferent what happens in the human body during life. These laws (of a physical and chemical order) apply to the body in the same way as to any other lifeless object of the external world. It is impossible to think otherwise than that this indifferent relation of the external world to the human body comes not only with death, but that it is already so during life. The idea of ​​the participation of the sensual external world in the human body can only be gleaned from the thought: everything that is in you the bearer of your external feelings, the mediator for those events by which your soul lives, the world perceived by you affects the way this idea of ​​yours shows you, that extends beyond your life. Any other conception of the relation of the sensible external world to the body makes one feel in itself untenable in the face of reality. The notion that the actual participation of the external world in the body is revealed only after death does not contradict anything that is actually experienced in the external and internal world. The soul does not feel anything unbearable at the thought that its substances and forces are subject to the course of events in the external world, which have nothing to do with its own life. With a complete and unprejudiced giving of oneself to the life of the soul she cannot discover in her depths a single desire arising from the body, which would make the thought of decay after death painful for her. Only the idea that substances and forces returning to the external world could carry away with them the languishing soul could become unbearable.
To attribute to the outside world a completely different participation in the life of the body during life than after death is meaningless. Such a thought would constantly be repelled by reality, while the idea of ​​the perfect identity of the participation of the external world in the body during life, as well as after death, is a completely sound idea. When the soul has accepted this thought, it feels itself in complete harmony with the revelation of reality. She feels that, thanks to these representations, she does not come into conflict with the data of reality, which speak for themselves and to which no artificial thought can be attached.
They do not always realize what a wonderful consonance the natural, healthy feeling of the soul is with the revelation of nature. This may seem so self-explanatory that it is as if it is not worth paying attention to, and yet this seemingly insignificant phenomenon can illuminate a lot. There is nothing unbearable in the idea that the body will disintegrate into its elements, but senselessness lies in the idea that the same will befall the soul. Whoever perceives this thought quite consciously will feel it as an immediate certainty. But so think both those who believe in immortality and those who deny it. The latter, perhaps, will say that the laws that operate in the body after death contain also the conditions for its administration during life; but they are mistaken if they think that they can actually imagine that these laws are in a different relation to the body as the bearer of the soul during life than after death.
In itself, only the idea is possible that the special combination of force that is revealed in the body is just as indifferent to the body - the bearer of the soul, as is the combination that determines the processes in the dead body. This indifference exists not in relation to the soul, but in relation to the substances and forces of the body. The soul experiences itself in the body; the body lives with the external world, in it, through it, and for it the spiritual has no other meaning than the events of the external world. One must come to the view that the heat and cold of the external world have blood circulation is as important as the fear or shame experienced by the soul.
So, first of all, you feel in yourself the laws of the external world acting in that very special combination that is reflected in the formation of the human body. You feel this body as part of the outside world. But you remain alien to its internal combination. External science is now partly elucidating how the laws of the external world intersect in that very special being that is the human body. It can be expected that in the future this knowledge will advance more and more. But in how the soul should think about its relation to the body, nothing can change the advance of knowledge. On the contrary, it will have to show more and more clearly that the laws of the external world are in the same relation to the soul before and after death. It is an illusion to expect that with advances in the knowledge of nature it will become clear from the laws of the external world how the processes occurring in the body determine the life of the soul. These processes will always be those which the soul feels as something as external to it as what happens in the body after death.
Therefore, in the external world, the body must appear as an interaction of forces and substances, existing and explainable in itself as a member of this external world. Nature produces the plant and decomposes it again. She dominates the human body and destroys it in her being. When a person approaches nature with such reflection, he can forget himself and everything that is in it, and feel his body with him as part of the external world. When he thinks in this way about his relation to himself and to nature, he experiences in himself what may be called his physical body. SECOND MEDITATION The meditator tries to get a true idea of ​​the elemental or etheric body.
Through the idea which the soul must form to itself of the fact of death, it may be brought into complete uncertainty about its own being. This will happen if it thinks that it cannot know anything about any other world than the world of external senses, and about what the mind can know about this world. Ordinary mental life turns its gaze to the physical body. She sees how it passes after death into the general circulation of nature, not taking part in what the soul experiences before death as its own being. True, she may know (of previous meditation) that the physical body has the same relation to her during life as after death, but this does not lead her further than recognizing the inner independence of her own experience before death. What happens to the physical body after death is shown to her by observation of the external world. For inner experience there is no such observation. As it is, this life of the soul cannot look beyond the limit of death. If the soul is not able to form ideas for itself that go beyond the limits of the world that the body takes into itself after death, then it has no opportunity to look into anything else on the other side of death, except as an empty "nothing" in relation to everything. spiritual.
For it to be otherwise, the soul would have to perceive the outer world by means other than the outer senses and the intellect associated with them. They themselves belong to the body and are destroyed along with it. What they say can never lead to anything other than the conclusion of the first meditation.