The little book of life after death

by Gustav Theodor Fechner

The better the man already is, the easier it is for him to become still better; and the worse he is, so much the more easily is he quite ruined. For the good man has already harbored many good spirits, which are now associated with him against the evil ones remaining and those freshly pressing for entrance, and are saving for him his interior strength. The good man does good without weariness, his spirits do it for him; but the bad man must first overcome and subdue by his own will all the evil spirits which have striven against him. Moreover, kin seeks and unites itself to kin, and flees from its opposite when not forced. Good spirits in us attract good spirits outside us, and the evil spirits in us the evil outside. Pure spirits turn gladly to enter a pure soul, and evil without fastens upon the evil within. If only the good spirits in our souls have gained the upper hand, so of itself the last devil still remaining behind in us flees away, he is not secure in good society; and so the soul of a good man becomes a pure and heavenly abiding place for happy indwelling spirits. But even good spirits, if they despair of winning a soul from the final mastery of evil, desert it, and so it becomes at last a hell, a place fit only for the torments of the damned. For the agony of conscience and the inner desolation and unrest in the soul of the wicked are sorrows which, not they alone, but the condemned spirits within them also, feel in still deeper woe.

CHAPTER IV

WHILE the higher spirits not only dwell in individual men, but each extends itself into many, it is they who unite these men spiritually, whether of one form of faith or truth, of one moral or political leaning. All men who have any spiritual fellowship with each other belong to the body of one and the same spirit together, and follow the ideal which has thereby been born within them, as members one of another. Often an idea lives at one time in a whole nation, often is a mass of men moved to one and the same action; that is a mighty spirit which seizes them all in one contagious influence. Not alone, indeed, through the spirits of the dead do these alliances occur, but countless new-born ideas flow from the living to the living; all these ideas, however, which go forth from the living into the world are already parts of its future spiritual organism.

Now when two kindred spirits meet in human life and are merged together through their common sentiments, while simultaneously, through their differing traits, they mutually influence and enrich each other, at the same time the associations, races, nations, to which each first belonged, enter into spiritual association and enrich each other through their spiritual possessions. So the development of the third stage of life in mankind goes on hand in hand inseparably with that of the progress of humanity. The gradual formation of the state, of sciences, of the arts, of human intercourse, the growth of this sphere of life to an ever-increasing harmoniously constructed whole, is the result of this union of innumerable spiritual individualities which live in humanity and fashion it into great spiritual organisms.

How otherwise could these glorious realms, based upon such unalterable principles, be formed out of the tangled egotism of individuals, who, with their short-sighted eyes, from the centre could see no circumference, and at the circumference could discern no centre, if the higher spirits, seeing clearly through the whole, did not control the machinery, and, while they all press around the common divine centre, and so in their godlike part meet together, also lead the men whom they influenced, united on to higher goals.

But beside the harmony of spirits which meet and fraternize amicably, there is also a conflict of those whose existence is in disagreement, a struggle which will at last wear itself out, so that the eternal in its purity shall alone survive. Traces of this warring of forces are manifested by mankind in the rivalry of systems, in sectarian hatred, in wars and revolutions between princes and people, and the nations among each other.

The mass of men enter into all these great spiritual movements with blind faith, blind obedience, blind hatred and rage; they hear and see nothing with their own spiritual ears and eyes; they are driven by alien spirits toward objects and goals of which they themselves know nothing; they allow themselves to be led through slavery, death, and terrible affliction, like a flock following the call of the higher leadership.

There are, indeed, men who engage in this great agitation, acting and leading with clear consciousness and deep purpose. But they are only voluntary means to great predestined ends; being able, indeed, through their free action to determine the quality and rapidity, but not the goal of progress. Those only have had great influence in the world who have recognized the spiritual tendency of the time in which they lived and have directed their free action and thought into that tendency: equally strong men who have resisted it have been overthrown. Every one who has set before him higher aims, and knows better ways thither, has chosen a new central point for his motive power; not as a blind tool, but as one who from his own impulse and understanding serves righteousness and wisdom. The brow-beaten slave does not render the best service. But in whatever way men begin to serve God here they will carry further there, as partakers of His divine glory.

CHAPTER V

IT is, indeed, possible for the spirits of the living and the dead to meet unconsciously in many ways, and also consciously only on one side. Who can pursue and trace out this whole line of communication? Let us say briefly: they meet together when in mutual consciousness, and the dead are present wherever they are so consciously.