40. Death

 
Everyone, without exception, believes in death! Everyone is convinced that it will happen. It is one of the few facts about which there is no dispute and no ignorance. Despite the fact that all people expect to die at some point from childhood on, the majority always try to ward off the thought of it. Many even become violent when it is mentioned in their presence. Others carefully avoid visiting cemeteries, stay away from funerals and try to erase any impression as quickly as possible if they do encounter a funeral procession on the street. There is always a secret fear that they might suddenly be surprised by death. A vague fear prevents them from approaching this unalterable fact with serious thoughts.
 
There is hardly any other event that, despite its inevitability, is so often pushed aside in thought as death. But there is hardly any process in earthly life that is so significant, apart from birth. It is striking that man wants to occupy himself so little with the beginning and the end of his earthly existence, while he seeks to attach deep meaning to all other events, even to quite trivial things. He researches and ponders over everything that happened in between more than over that which would bring him enlightenment about everything: the beginning and the end of his earthly life. Death and birth are so closely connected because one is the consequence of the other.
 
But how little seriousness is attached to procreation! It is only in very rare cases that anything worthy of a human being can be found. It is precisely in this process that people prefer to equate themselves with animals and yet are unable to maintain their innocence. What results consequently is a position below the animal. For the actions of the animal corresponds to the level, which it occupies in Creation. Man, however, is either unable or does not want to keep to the level befitting to him. He descends unfailingly lower and lower and is then surprised when, in various relationships, the entire human race gradually goes downhill. Even the customs of marriage are all geared to regard the marriage covenant as a purely earthly affair. In many cases it even goes so far that serious minded people want to turn away in disgust from explicit details pointing only to the desire for earthly relationships. The wedding celebrations in low as well as in the best of circles have in many cases degenerated in most cases into downright debauches, which all parents, conscious of their high responsibility, would have to forbid their children to attend with the strictest severity. Young men and maidens, who do not feel welling up within themselves disgust by these customs and allusions during such festivities and therefore their own sense of responsibility for their action by failing to stay away, are in any case already to be counted on an equally low level, and can therefore no longer be taken into consideration in any assessment. It is as if in this, too, man tries to deceive himself with a poisoned intoxication about something he does not want to think about.
 
When earthly life is then built on such frivolous foundations, as has already become the custom and practice, it is understandable why one also tries to deceive oneself about death by making a desperate effort not to think of it. This suppression of all serious thoughts has a close correlation with one’s own debasement associated with procreation. The undefined fear, which runs like a shadow through the whole of human life on earth, arises to a large extent from the full consciousness of all the blatant injustice of reckless acts, which are degrading to man. And if they cannot at all find peace in any other way, they cling convulsively and artificially to the self-deception that either death is the end of it all, thus fully demonstrating their consciousness of their inferiority and their cowardice before any responsibility, or to the hope that they are not much worse than other people.

But all these imaginings do nothing to change this fact, that death is approaching them. With every day, with every hour, it comes closer! It often pitiful seeing when, in the last hours, the majority of those who have rigidly tried to deny a responsibility in them living on, begin to ask great, anxious questions, which prove how they suddenly become mistaken in their conviction. But then it is of little use to them, for it is again only cowardice which, just before the great step out of earthly life, makes them suddenly see the possibility of a continuation of life and with it a responsibility. But anxiety, dread, and cowardice and no more than defiance does, do not permit the diminution or detachment of the unconditional interrelation of all actions. Understanding, that is, coming to realization, does not happen in this way either. Even in the last hours of life, fear plays an evil trick on dying people’s intellect, which they have so often tested in their earthly life, in that it would like to make the person suddenly and quickly become pious in the usual cautious way, as soon as the detachment of the still-living ethereal being from the physical body has reached such a large extent so that the force in the life of the intuition in this detachment equals to the strength of the intellect, to which it was so far being forcibly subjected.
 
They gain nothing from it! They will reap what they have sown in thoughts and actions in their life on earth. Not the slightest thing is thereby improved or even changed! Irresistibly they get drawn into the wheels of the strict operating Law of Action and Reaction involved, in order to experience in the Ethereal World all that they did improper, that is, thought and acted out of false conviction. They have all reason to fear the hour of detachment from the earthly dense material body, which for a time was a protective barrier for them to the ethereal processes. This protective barrier was left to them as a shield and covering for a while, so that behind it they could change much for the better in undisturbed tranquillity and even completely change what would have had to hit them hard without this protection.
 
It is doubly sad, indeed tenfold sad, for him who, in reckless self-delusion, staggers in an intoxicated state through this time of grace of an earthly existence. The fear and anxiety of many is therefore well-founded.
 
Quite different it is with those, who did not waste time, who, at the right time, even if at a late hour, but not through fear and anxiety, enter the path of spiritual ascent at the right time. They take their serious striving with them as a staff and support over into the Ethereal World. Without fear and anxiety they are able the step from the World of Dense Matter to the World of Ethereal Matter, which for everyone is inevitable, since everything that is transient, like the dense physical body, must one day pass away. They are able to welcome the hour of this detachment, because for them it is an unequivocal progress, no matter what they have to experience in the ethereal life. Good things will then bring them happiness, and what is difficult will be made surprisingly easy for them, for the power of good volition will help them more powerfully than they have ever imagined.
 
The process of death itself is nothing more than birth into the Ethereal World. Similar to the process of birth into the Dense Material World. After the separation, the ethereal body is connected with the gross material body for a while after its dissolution as if by an umbilical cord, which is all the less firmly attached the higher the person born into the Ethereal World has already developed his soul during his life on earth towards the Ethereal World as a transition into the Kingdom of his God. The more he chained himself to the earth by his own volition, and therefore to the World of Dense Matter, and therefore wanted to know nothing of the continuation of life in the Ethereal World, all the more firmer this cord will be tied by his own volition, this also binds him to the dense material body, as well as to his ethereal body, the garment his spirit in the Ethereal World needs. But the denser his ethereal body is, all the more heavier it is according to the established law, and all the more darker it must also appear. Due to this great similarity and close affinity to all dense matter as well, he will also find it very difficult to release himself from all dense matter, so that it may happens that such a one must also feel the last dense-material bodily pains emphatically, as well as the entire decay process of decomposition. He is also not insensitive to cremation. After this connecting cord has been finally severed, however, he sinks down in the Ethereal World, to the level where his environment has the same density and heaviness. There, in the same heaviness, he will also find many like-minded souls. But the fact that it is worse than on earth in the gross material body, can be explained, because in the Ethereal World all intuitive perceptions live out fully and unrestrained.
 
It is otherwise with humans, who have already began the ascent to all that is nobler in their earthly existence. Because they carry this conviction of these steps into the Ethereal World alive within themselves, the detachment is also much easier. The ethereal body and with it the connecting cord not being tight, this difference in their mutual foreignness with the gross material body also makes the detachment take place very rapidly, so that during the so-called death-struggle or the last muscle twitching of the gross material body, the ethereal body has been standing beside it all along, if one can speak at all of a death-struggle in the normal death of such a person. The loose, leaky condition of the connecting cord does not allow the ethereal human being standing next to it to feel any pain, as this light connecting cord in its leaky condition cannot transmit pain from the dense material to the ethereal side. This strand also break apart this major connection more quickly owing to its extreme delicateness, so that the ethereal body becomes completely free in a much shorter time, and then floats upwards to the region which consists of the same fine and luminous nature. There, too, it will only be able to meet kindred spirits and receive peace and happiness in the heightened good intuitive life. Such a lighter and less dense ethereal body naturally appears brighter and luminous, until at last it becomes so highly refined that the pure-spirit residing in it begins to break through radiantly before it enters into the pure-spirit-beings as fully light radiating body.
 
But let those who are staying with a dying person be warned not to break out into loud lamentation. If the pain of separation is shown too strongly, the human being in the process of detachment or perhaps already standing next to him ethereally, can thus be gripped, and hear or feel it. If this awakens in him pity or the desire to say words of comfort, this desire reattaches him again more firmly with the need to make himself understood by the pain-stricken mourner. He can only make himself understandable with the aid of the brain. But this endeavour pulls him in close connection with the gross material body bit by bit, and subsequently, not only that the ethereal body that is still in the process of detachment unites itself again more closely with the gross material body, but also that a ethereal human being who is already standing beside it and who has been detached is once more drawn back into the gross material body. The end result being the reexperience of all the pain from which he has already been released. The afresh detachment is then much more difficult and can even last for several days. Then the so-called prolonged death struggle arises, which becomes really painful and difficult for the one who wants to break free. The blame for this lies with those who called him back from natural development through their self-serving pain. Through this interruption of the normal course, a new, violent binding took place, even if it was only through the feeble attempt to assemble to make oneself understood. And it is not so easy to again loosen this unnatural binding, for those who are still completely unaware of it. He cannot be helped in this, since he himself wanted the new bond. This binding can easily occur, as long as the gross material body has not yet completely cooled down and the connecting strand exists, which often only severs after many weeks. This is an unnecessary torment for the one passing over, an inconsiderateness and crudeness on the part of the bystanders. For this reason, absolute calm should prevail at the place of death, a dignified seriousness befitting the momentous hour! People who cannot control themselves should be forcibly removed, even if they are the nearest relatives.