“Many things are possible,” said G. “But it is necessary to understand that man’s being, both in life and after death, if it does exist after death, may be very different in quality. The ‘man-machine’ with whom everything depends upon external influences, with whom everything happens, who is now one, the next moment another, and the next moment a third, has no future of any kind; he is buried and that is all. Dust returns to dust. This applies to him. In order to be able to speak of any kind of FUTURE LIFE there must be a certain crystallization, a certain fusion of man’s inner qualities, a certain independence of external influences. If there is anything in a man able to resist external influences, then this very thing itself may also be able to resist the death of the physical body. But think for yourselves what there is to withstand physical death in a man who faints or forgets everything when he cuts his finger? If there is anything in a man, it may survive; if there is nothing, then there is nothing to survive. But even if something survives, its future can be very varied. In certain cases of fuller crystallization what people call ‘reincarnation’ may be possible after death, and, in other cases, what people call ‘existence on the other side.’ In both cases it is the continuation of life in the ‘astral body,’ or with the help of the ‘astral body.’ You know what the expression ‘astral body’ means. But the systems with which you are acquainted and which use this expression state that all men have an ‘astral body.’ This is quite wrong. What may be called the ‘astral body’ is obtained by means of fusion, that is, by means of terribly hard inner work and struggle. Man is not born with it. And only very few men acquire an ‘astral body.’ If it is formed it may continue to live after the death of the physical body, and it may be born again in another physical body. This is ‘reincarnation.’ If it is not re-born, then, in the course of time, it also dies; it is not immortal but it can live long after the death of the physical body. Fragments: Two
At one of the following meetings of the group G. continued, in reply to a question, to develop the ideas given by him before on reincarnation and the FUTURE LIFE. Fragments: Two
“There was a question here about the FUTURE LIFE, about how to create it, how to avoid final death, how not to die. Fragments: Six
“For this it is necessary ‘to be’ If a man is changing every minute, if there is nothing in him that can withstand external influences, it means that there is nothing in him that can withstand death. But if he becomes independent of external influences, if there appears in him something that can live by itself, this something may not die. In ordinary circumstances we die every moment. External influences change and we change with them, that is, many of our I’s die. If a man develops in himself a permanent I that can survive a change in external conditions, it can survive the death of the physical body. The whole secret is that one cannot work for a FUTURE LIFE without working for this one. In working for life a man works for death, or rather, for immortality. Therefore work for immortality, if one may so call it, cannot be separated from general work. In attaining the one, a man attains the other. A man may strive to be simply for the sake of his own life’s interests. Through this alone he may become immortal. We do not speak specially of a FUTURE LIFE and we do not study whether it exists or not, because the laws are everywhere the same. In studying his own life as he knows it, and the lives of other men, from birth to death, a man is studying all the laws which govern life and death and immortality. If he becomes the master of his life, he may become the master of his death. Fragments: Six