People we know who have “died” are still around us. They didn’t go to a far-away heaven somewhere off in space. They didn’t cease to exist just because they died. In fact, they are busy in their lives between death and rebirth. We’ve already discussed in previous posts the phases people go through once they’ve left their physical bodies at death, so now we can expand our understanding to recognize that once people are on the other side, they have many things that occupy them while going through each phase. One of the things that occupy our loved ones after they die is their desire to have contact with us.
How do we go about deepening our relationship with someone who has died? Love for them will draw us closer, prayers and thoughts will draw us closer, and remembering our moments together will draw us closer as long as we harbor spiritual thoughts at least occasionally. If we are completely mired in the materialistic world, they will not find us. This may seem unnecessarily harsh, yet if we think about it, it makes sense. Once we believe our loved ones still exist after they die, we are acknowledging there is a spiritual world.
Acquiring a deeper more conscious relationship requires efforts the results of which we may not achieve in this lifetime. We should start on the path anyway; we have nothing to lose. Because here’s the thing: the person who died misses us just as we miss them.
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say.
… Here on earth, by means of our souls and bodies, we have the most varied kinds of relationships with the physical world, as well as with the spiritual world that underlies it. Likewise, between death and a new birth we exist in relationship with the facts, happenings, and beings of a supersensory world. Human beings have an occupation or activity in the physical world between birth and death; likewise, they have activities—occupations as it were—between death and a new birth. What we can learn about human life and human activity between death and a new birth will lead humanity more and more toward what we may call the overcoming of “the abyss” that, especially in our materialistic times, separates those who live on earth from those whom we call “the dead.” In this process, communication and a mutual entering-into-relationship will increasingly come to be established between the living and the “dead.”
Naturally, those who die before others with whom they had relationships on earth often gaze back from the spiritual world at those they loved who remain here. This being the case, we may ask whether such souls living between death and a new birth can perceive human beings who live here on earth between birth and death… Seers can often have a kind of heart-wrenching experience with souls who feel fettered when they think of those they left behind. Such souls feel that they cannot get through, cannot look down on those earthly souls.
They are fettered not by their own essential being, but by the other souls left behind…
Investigation into why a soul in the spiritual world cannot perceive souls who remain on earth reveals that, because of the circumstances of our time, those souls who have remained on earth have been unable to take in or allow any thoughts to live in them that might otherwise become visible and perceptible to a soul who has passed through the gate of death.
There is a great difference among souls here on earth, depending on their makeup. Imagine a soul living here in the physical body who, between awaking and going to sleep, is concerned only with thoughts taken from the material world. Such a soul—filled entirely with thoughts, concepts, ideas, and sensations taken solely from the material world—cannot be perceived at all from the world between death and rebirth. No trace of it can be seen. But a soul filled with spiritual ideas such as those provided by spiritual science—a soul glowing and illuminated by spiritual ideas—is perceptible from the other world. Consequently, no matter how good they may be as human beings, the souls left behind who are immersed in materialism are not real to the world beyond and cannot be perceived. This makes a shocking, terrible impression upon the seer.
Excerpt from: Occult Research into Life Between Death and a New Birth, Lecture II: The Establishment of Mutual Relations between the Living and the So-called Dead by Rudolf Steiner, Stuttgart February 20, 1913.
Steiner is clear that we ourselves must direct our own efforts to contact those who have died before us; we cannot rely on mediums or seances or drugs like ayahuasca. Our first step is to direct our thoughts to spiritual content at some point every day. Though it is unlikely that we will experience direct, conscious contact early on, we may experience the comfort and good will that arises with our efforts to become closer to those we love who have died. All these efforts are felt by those to whom we direct them.
In the September post we will discuss some of the things it is possible to learn from those who have died and they from us. We will also look at specific practices we can undertake that work to open lines of communication.