18. Earthbound
The word is used frequently. But who really understands what one is saying with it? “Earthbound” sounds like a terrible punishment. Most people feel a faint horror and fear for those who are still earthbound. Yet the meaning of this word is not as terrible as it seems. Granted, there is much that is dark which can cause one person or another to become earthbound, but it is most often quite simple things that lead to being bound to the earth.
Let us take, for example, this case: The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation!
A child in the family asks a question about the afterlife or about God, something he has heard in school or church. The father brusquely dismisses him with the remark, “Oh, go away with that nonsense! When I’m dead, that’s the end of me.” The child pauses, growing doubtful. The dismissive comments of the father or mother are repeated; he hears the same from others, and at last it adopts their view.
Now comes the hour when the father must cross over. To his dismay he realizes that he has not ceased to exist. A fervent wish then awakens in him to let his child know this truth. This wish binds him to the child. However, the child neither hears nor feels his presence, as he now lives in the conviction that his father no longer exists; this belief stands like a firm, impenetrable wall between him and his father’s efforts.
The father’s anguish at having to watch his child now following the wrong path because of his influence – driven further and further away from truth – the fear that this child, on that wrong path, cannot escape the dangers that come with spiritual decline and, above all, will be much more vulnerable, now acts as a kind of punishment for him for having led the child onto this path. Rarely does he succeed in imparting this knowledge in any way. He must watch as the false idea is passed from his child to the next generation, and so on, all as a consequence of his own transgression. He cannot free himself until one of the grandchildren recognizes the right way, walks it, and exerts a beneficial influence on the others, through which he is gradually released and can begin to think of his own ascent.
Another case: A habitual smoker takes the strong urge to smoke over with him; because it is an intuition, it is therefore spiritual. This urge becomes a burning desire, and the thought of its satisfaction holds him where that satisfaction can still be sought... on earth. He finds it by following smokers and partaking with them in their sensations. If such souls are not already bound elsewhere by heavy karma, they may even feel quite comfortable; rarely do they become conscious of any “punishment.” Only someone who perceives the whole of existence recognizes the punishment in the unavoidable reciprocal effect whereby the soul concerned cannot rise higher as long as the desire for satisfaction, constantly vibrating in the “experience”, keeps him attached to those people on earth still living in flesh and blood, through whose sensations alone it can attain co-satisfaction.
The same applies to sexual gratification, with drinking, even with a special fondness for food. Here too, many are bound by this fondness for rummaging around in kitchens and cellars, so that they can then be present when others enjoy the food and to be able to experience at least a small part of the enjoyment. Taken seriously, of course, it is “punishment”. But the urgent desire of the “earth-bound” prevents them from feeling it; instead, it drowns out everything else, preventing any yearning for the noble or higher from becoming so strong that it becomes their main experience, freeing from others and elevating them.
They are not even aware of what they are actually missing until this desire for satisfaction – which can only ever be a small partial satisfaction through others – wears off and fades away like a slow weaning. This allows other sensations still dormant within them, less strongly driven, gradually come to the fore and then take first place, immediately becoming experiences and thus becoming the power of reality. The nature of the sensations that come to life then brings them to where the homogeneous kind is, either higher or lower, until these too, like the first, gradually releases by weaning, and the next that is still present comes to the fore. In this way, over time, comes the purification of all the many impurities he brought over with him.
Will one at some point get stuck at a final sensation? Or does the power of sensation become impoverished? No! For when at last the lower sensations have been gradually outlived or discarded, and the soul rises higher, a permanent longing for ever higher and purer things awakens, and this drives steadily upwards. This is a normal course!
Yet there are a thousand incidents. The danger of falling or getting stuck is much greater than in flesh and blood on earth. If you are already higher up and give in to a lower sensation, even for a moment, that feeling becomes immediate experience and thus reality. You become denser and heavier, sinking down into regions of similar nature. Your horizon narrows, and you must laboriously work your way up again, if it does not happen to you that you sink still deeper, ever deeper. “Watch and pray!” is therefore no empty saying.
Now, while you are still clothed in a physical body, the ethereal part of you is protected, anchored firmly. But when the loosening comes – the so‑called death and decay of the body – you are without protection and will, in your ethereal form, be irresistibly drawn by what is of similar nature, whether low or high; you cannot escape it. Only one great driving force can help you upward: your strong will for the good, the noble, transformed into yearning and feeling and thus into experience and reality according to the Law of the Ethereal World, which knows only intuition.
Therefore, prepare yourself, begin even to cultivate this will now, so that, when the transformation comes (which could happen at any time), it is not drowned out by too powerful an earthly craving! Guard yourself, mankind, and keep watch!
