izes upon desires of a sensual
nature which however are not rooted in the spirit. Revelations of this
kind which occult science is bound to make with regard to such events may
appear hopeless and terrible. It may seem a fearful thing that a hope for
the realization of which sense-organs are required, should after death be
transformed into despair, and that a wish that can be fulfilled only by
the physical world should be changed into torturing deprivation. Yet we
can hold such an opinion only as long as we fail to realize that the
wishes and desires seized by the "consuming fire" after death do not, in a
higher sense, represent forces beneficial to life but destructive to it.

By means of these forces the ego binds itself to the sense-world more
closely than is necessary, in order to draw from it all the experience it
requires. For the sense-world is a manifestation of the hidden and
spiritual world which lies behind it; and the ego could never attain
spiritual happiness through the bodily senses, which are the only form in
which the spiritual can be manifested, unless it utilized the senses to
seek the spiritual element in sense-experience. Nevertheless, the ego
loses sight of the true spiritual reality in the physical world to such an
extent that it experiences sensual desires irrespective of the needs of
the spirit. If sense pleasure, as the expression of the spirit, serves to
raise and develop the ego, any pleasure which is not an expression of the
spirit warps and impoverishes it. Even though such a desire finds the
means of its gratification in the sense-world, still its destructive
effect upon the ego is thereby in no way diminished; but it is not until
after death that its disastrous effects become apparent.

For this reason a man may, by gratifying such desires, create, during his
life, new and similar desires, wholly unaware that he is enveloping
himself in a "consuming fire." What becomes visible to him after death is
only what already surrounded him during his life, and by thus becoming
visible it at once appears in its salutary and beneficent effect. A human
being who loves another is certainly not attracted merely by that part of
him which is perceptible to the physical senses--the only part which is cut
off from observation after death--but after death, just that part of the
dear one then becomes visible for the perception of which the physical
organs were only the means. The one thing, in fact, which woul