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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

III. SLEEP AND DEATH

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Thus do all things in the spiritual environment of the ego find expression in a world of coloured rays. As their origin is of a different kind, it goes without saying that these colours of the spiritual world are also of a somewhat different character from physical colours. A similar thing is true of other impressions received by man in the world of sense. But it is the sounds of the spiritual world that most nearly resemble the impressions of the sense-world; and the more at home a man becomes in the spiritual world, the more he realizes it as a life of self-determined motion, which may be compared with the sounds, and the harmony of sounds, of the physical world. Only he does not feel the tones as something approaching an organ from outside, but as a force streaming forth into the outer world through his ego. He feels the sound just as in the sense-world he feels his own speech or song, only he knows that in the spiritual world these sounds, streaming out from him, are at the same time the manifestations of other beings, who are pouring themselves into the world through him.

A still higher manifestation takes place in the spirit-land when the sound becomes the "spiritual word." Then there streams through the ego not only the pulsing life of another spiritual being, but such a being itself communicates its own inner nature to the ego; and then, when the spiritual word streams through the ego, two beings live in one another, without that separating element which every companionship in the sense-world must carry with it. And this is really the nature of the communion of the ego with other spiritual beings after death.

There are three regions in the spiritual world, which may be compared to the three divisions of the physical sense-world. The first region is in a certain respect the "solid land" of the spiritual world, the second the "sphere of ocean and river," and the third the "atmospheric region." That which assumes physical form on earth, so that it can be perceived by physical organs, in accordance with its spiritual nature, is to be seen in the first region of the spirit-world. There, for instance, may be seen the force that fashions the form of a crystal. Only what is there revealed is the opposite of that which appears in the sense-world. In that world the space which is filled by a mass of rock appears to spiritual sight as a kind of hollow space; but round about this hollow is seen the force which fashions the form of the rock. The colour of the rock in the sense-world appears in the spiritual world as its complementary colour; thus a red stone is green when seen from the spirit-world, a green stone is red, and so on. Other qualities also appear in their opposites. Just as stone, masses of earth, and like materials make up the solid land--the continental region of the world of sense--so do the structures described above compose the solid land of the spiritual world.

All that is life in the sense-world belongs to the ocean-region of the spiritual world. To the physical eye, life appears in its effects in plants, animals, and men. To spiritual vision, life is a flowing substance, like oceans and rivers, diffused through the spirit-world. A still better comparison is that of the circulation of the blood in the body; for whereas seas and rivers are seen to be irregularly distributed in the physical world, a certain regularity in distribution of the flowing life reigns in the spirit-world, as in the circulation of the blood. This "flowing life" is simultaneously heard as spiritual sound.