consider from now on as your former "I", can be called the "I body" or "thought body". The word "body" in this connection must be understood in a broader sense than what is usually called "body". "Body" here means precisely everything that you experience with yourself and about which you do not say that it is you, but only that you have it with you.
And only when the clairvoyant consciousness has reached the point that it can experience everything that it has hitherto designated as itself as a collection of memory representations, can it acquire in the true sense and some experience of what is hidden behind the phenomenon of death. For it has now reached the essence of a truly real world, in which it feels itself to be a being capable of fixing, as it were in a kind of memory, what it experiences in sensible existence. In order to be able to continue to live out its being, this experience in sensible being needs a being who can fix it in the same way that the “I” of memory representations usually fix it in sensible being. Supersensible cognition reveals that man has an existence in the world of spiritual beings, and that it is he himself who preserves his sensuous existence in himself as a memory. To the question: what will become after death with everything that I am now, clairvoyant research answers this way: you will be what you keep from yourself by virtue of your being as a spiritual being among other spiritual beings.
Human knows the nature of these beings, and within it, his own. And this knowledge is direct experience. By means of it one learns that spiritual beings, and with them also one's own soul, have a being for which the being of the senses is a transient revelation. If for ordinary consciousness it turns out - in the sense of the first meditation - that the body belongs to a world whose true participation in the body is revealed in its decomposition after death, then clairvoyant observation shows that the essence of the human "I" belongs to a world with which it is connected by quite different ties than the body is connected with the laws of nature. The bonds by which the "being of the self" is connected with the spiritual beings of the supersensible world remain in their innermost essence untouched by birth and death. In the sensuous life of the body, these bonds are revealed only in a special way. What manifests itself in this life is an expression for supersensible relationships. But inasmuch as man as such is a supersensible being—as he is to supersensible observation—then even in the supersensible the connection of the human soul with another soul does not suffer damage from death. And to the fearful question that confronts the ordinary consciousness of the soul in primitive form: will I see after death those whom I knew in sensual life as related to me? -- a valid research commissioned by experience to judge in this area must answer with a resounding "Yes".
Everything that has been said here about the experience of the essence of the soul as a spiritual reality in the world of other spiritual beings can become visible due to the strengthening of the soul life, which has already been mentioned more than once. But this experience can also be helped by developing some special sensations in oneself. In ordinary life in the sensual world, a person relates to what he perceives as his fate in such a way that he feels one thing as sympathetic, the other as antipathetic. If one looks at oneself with complete impartiality, one will have to admit that these sympathies and antipathies are among the strongest that a person can experience. A simple thought, such as the fact that everything in life is necessary and that one must endure one's fate, can already greatly contribute to a calm mood in life. But in order to achieve anything in the understanding of the true essence of man, it is necessary even more. This reflection will render the best service to the life of the soul; but it can often be seen that everything that has been crossed out in this way in the sense of sympathies and antipathies has disappeared only for immediate consciousness. It has hidden itself in the deeper depths of the human being and is lived out as a spiritual mood, or as a feeling of fatigue, or some other bodily sensation. True spiritual balance in relation to fate is achieved only by doing the same thing in this area as when you repeatedly and intensely surrender with thoughts or sensations to strengthen the soul in general. It is not enough to reflect, leading only to rational understanding; what is needed is an intensified coping with such reflection, its long-term storage in the soul and, at the same time, the removal of sensory experiences and other life memories. Thanks to this exercise, you come to some basic spiritual mood in relation to your life destiny. One can basically expel from oneself the antipathies and sympathies in this area and in the end look at the Approach of all events that happen to a person in the same way as a completely outside observer looks at a stream of water falling from a rock and breaking below. This does not say that one must thus achieve an insensible relation to one's fate. Whoever comes to the point where he looks with indifference at everything that happens to him, he, of course, is no longer on a fruitful path. After all, a person cannot be indifferent to the outside world in relation to everything that does not affect his own soul as fate. He looks at what is happening before his eyes, with joy or disgust. The one who strives for supersensible knowledge should not seek indifference to life, but the transformation of the participation that his "I" initially takes in everything that concerns him as fate. It is quite possible that, thanks to this transformation, the brightness of the life of feelings will even increase, and not weaken. In ordinary life, tears come up about many things that concern one's own soul, fate. But you can reach such a point of view that in your own failure you will experience the same vivid feeling that you experience in the failure that has befallen another. Humanу легче бывает достигнуть такого рода переживания по отношению к случаям, постигающим его в его жизни, нежели, например, по отношению к to their abilities. For it is no longer so easy to achieve the same joy from the thought that another has some ability as you have it yourself. When a thought directed at itself tries to penetrate into the deepest bowels of the soul, then much egoistic joy can be revealed there about what you yourself are capable of. An intensified, repeated (meditative) reviving, with the thought that it is in many respects indifferent to the course of human life whether a certain faculty belongs to oneself or to someone else, can lead far in the matter of acquiring a true calm in relation to what is felt to be the inner self. life destiny. Soое внутреннее, мысленно-сильное укрепление душевной жизни, если только оно происходит правильно, никогда не может повести к тому, что просто притупишь чувство по отношению к своим способностям: напротив, оно преобразит его. You will feel the need to act according to these abilities.
And this already indicates the direction that such a strong mental strengthening of spiritual life takes. You learn to recognize in yourself something that appears to the soul in its own depths as a kind of second being. This opens up especially clearly when you connect with it thoughts that show how a person in ordinary life causes this or that in fate. For it can be seen that this or that would not have happened to you if you yourself had not acted in a certain way in the past. What happens to a person today is often the result of what he did yesterday. To move your soul experience further than it is at this moment, you can look back at what has been experienced hitherto. At the same time, one can find everything that will show us how we ourselves prepared all the later events of our destiny. In such a reverse view of life, one can try to reach the moment when consciousness awakens in the child to such an extent that he remembers in later life what he experienced earlier. If you direct such a reverse look, linking with it that mental mood that excludes all ordinary, egoistic sympathies and antipathies in relation to the events of fate, then, having reached the specified period in the memory of the child’s life, you will take such a position in relation to yourself that you say: that's when, probably, the first opportunity came for you to feel in oneself and consciously work on one's spiritual life; but this "I" of yours existed before, it worked in you, though without your knowledge, and even this brought you for the first time to your faculty of knowledge, as well as to everything else that you know about. What cannot be comprehended by any rational reflection is achieved by the above-described attitude towards one's own life destiny. You learn to look at the events of fate with peace of mind; you see without embarrassment how they approach you; but you see yourself in the being that