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 ocean