Rudolf Steiner at his lecture: The Dead Are With Us describes two fundamental laws for the communication with the dead:
1. The communication with the Dead is reflected on the physical plane through the blood and nervous systems.
2. The way of communication with the Dead is opposite to the sensory way of communication.
“Actual communication with an individual who has died is possible but difficult, because it demands scrupulous care on the part of the one who seeks it. Control and discipline are necessary for this kind of communication with the spiritual world, for it is connected with a very significant law. The very same thing that we recognise in men on Earth as lower impulses is, from the other, the spiritual side, higher life; and it may therefore easily happen when the human being has not attained true control of himself, that he experiences the rising of lower impulses through direct communication with the dead.
When we make contact with the spiritual world in the general sense, when we acquire knowledge about our own immortality as beings of soul and spirit, there can be no question of the ingress of anything impure. But when it is a matter of contact with individuals who have died, the relation of the individual dead — strange as it seems — is always a relation with the blood and nervous system. The dead enters into those impulses which live themselves out in the system of blood and nerves, and in this way lower impulses may be aroused.
Naturally, there can only be danger for those who have not purified their natures through discipline and control. This must be said, for it is the reason why it is forbidden in the Old Testament to have communication with the dead. Such communication is not sinful when it happens in the right way. The methods of modern spiritualism must, of course, be avoided. When the communication is of a spiritual nature it is not sinful, but when it is not accompanied by pure thoughts it can easily lead to the stimulation of lower passions. It is not the dead who arouse these passions but the element in which the dead live.
For consider: what we here feel as ‘animal’ in quality and nature is the basic element in which the dead live. The kingdom in which the dead live can easily be changed when it enters into us; what is higher life in the yonder world can become lower when it is within us on Earth. It is very important to remember this, and it must be emphasised when we are speaking of communication between the living and the so-called dead, for it is an occult fact. We shall find that precisely when we are speaking about this communication the spiritual world can be described as it really is; for such experiences reveal the complete difference of the spiritual world from the physical world.
First of all, I will tell you something that may seem to have no meaning for man so long as he has not developed his clairvoyant faculties; but when we think it over, we shall realise that it concerns us closely, leading on as it does to matters in actual life. Those who are able to have communication with the dead as the result of developed clairvoyance, realise why it is so difficult for human beings to know anything about the dead through direct perception. Strange and grotesque as it may seem, the whole form of communication to which we are accustomed in the physical world has to be reversed when communication is set up between the Earth and the dead.
In the physical world, when we speak with a human being from physical body to physical body, we ourselves are speaking, When we speak, we know that the words come from us; when the other man speaks to us, we know that the words come from him. The whole relationship is reversed when we are speaking with a dead man. The expression ‘when we are speaking’ can truthfully be used, but the relationship is reversed. When we put a question to the dead, or say something to him, what we say comes from him, comes to us from him. He inspires into our soul what we ask him, what we say to him. And when he answers us or says something to us, this comes out of our own soul. It is a process with which a human being in the physical world is quite unfamiliar. He feels that what he says comes out of his own being. In order to establish communication with the dead, we must adapt ourselves to hear from them what we ourselves say, and to receive from our own soul what they answer.
Thus abstractly described, the nature of the process is easy to grasp; but really to become accustomed to the total reversal of the familiar form of communication is exceedingly difficult. The dead are always there, always among us and around us, and the fact that they are not perceived is largely due to lack of understanding of this reversed form of communication. On the physical plane we think that when anything comes out of our own soul, it comes from us. And we are far from being able to pay intimate enough attention to whether it is not, after all, being inspired into us from the spiritual environment. We prefer to connect it with experiences familiar on the physical plane, where, if something comes to us from the environment, we ascribe it at once to the other person. This is the greatest error when it is a matter of communication with the dead.”
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
THE SPIRITUAL
