iritual
product of life, its fruit. This product is of a spiritual nature. It
contains everything spiritual which is revealed through the senses, yet
this spiritual treasure could not have been gathered save by life in the
sense-world.

This spiritual fruit of the sense-world becomes after death the ego's own
inner world. With it the ego enters a world, which consists of beings who
reveal themselves in the same and only manner in which man in his
innermost depths, can become conscious of his own ego. As a plant seed,
which is the essence of the whole plant, grows only when buried in another
world, the earth, so now that which the ego brings from the sense-world
gradually unfolds itself as a seed under the influence of the spiritual
environment in which it has been planted. Occult science can, of course,
only portray in pictures what happens in this "spirit-world;" still those
pictures present themselves as absolute reality to the clairvoyant's
sight, when he investigates invisible happenings, corresponding to those
which are visible to the physical eye. Whatever of that world can be
described, may be visualized by comparison with the world of the senses
for although it is of a purely spiritual nature, it nevertheless resembles
the physical world in certain respects. Just as, for instance, in the
physical world, a color appears when some object impresses the eye, so in
the spirit-world a color appears to the ego when a being acts upon it. But
this latter phenomenon is perceived in the same manner as the ego can be
perceived inwardly between birth and death. It is not as though the light
outside fell within upon the man, but as though another being directly
affected the ego, causing the latter to picture this influence in a
colour-form.

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