Gustav Theodor Fechner

“ That alone is the eternal, imperishable part of a man that is to him true, beautiful, and good. And if only a grain of mustard-seed of it is in him—there could be no one without it—so, purged of chaff and dross through the purgatory of life, afflicting only the imperfect, it will survive in the third stage, and, even if late, be able to grow into a noble tree. ”

“ This is the great justice of creation, that every one makes for himself the conditions of his future life. Deeds will not be requited to the man through exterior rewards or punishments; there is no heaven and no hell in the usual sense of the Christian, the Jew, the heathen, into which the soul may enter after death. It makes neither a spring upward nor a fall downward, nor comes to a standstill; it does not break asunder, nor dissolve into the universal; but, after it has passed through the great transition, death, it unfolds itself according to the unalterable law of nature upon earth ”

“ As little as a man can ever die who has once lived, so little could he be awakened to life had he not lived before; it is only that he had not lived as an individual. The consciousness with which the child awakes at birth is only a part of the eternal, pre-existing, universal, divine consciousness which has concentrated itself in the new soul. We can indeed as little follow the ways and the changes of the living force of consciousness as those of the vital energy of the body. ”

“ So, and unspeakably more, the world, of which mankind with its state, its knowledge, art, and traffic is but a part, exceeds your little brain, the part of this part. If you would rise to a higher point of view, only see in the earth, not merely a ball of dry earth, air, [85] and water; it is a greater and higher harmonious creation than you, a divine product, with a more wonderful life and action in its substance than you carry in your little brain, with which you contribute but an atom to its life. In vain you will dream of an after-life, if you fail to recognize the life about you. ”

“ The soul here below never realizes all at once the entire depth of its fulness; only when one of its impulses draws another into union with itself does it emerge for an instant from the darkness, only to sink back again in the next. So man is a stranger to his own soul and wanders [62] about within it as he may, or wearily seeking the way to his life’s end, and often forgets his best treasures, which, aside from the glowing path of thought, lie sunken in the darkness which covers the wide region of his soul. ”

“ But in the moment of death, in which an eternal night darkens the eye of his body, light will begin to dawn in his soul. Then will the centre of the inner man kindle into a sun which illuminates his whole spiritual nature, and at the same time penetrates it as with an inner eye, with divine clearness. ”

“ Spirit, and he discerns the reality of ultimate things.
In the first stage the body is developed from the germ and evolves its equipment for the second; in the second the spirit unfolds from its seed-bud and realizes its powers for the third; in the third is developed the divine spark which lies in every human soul, and which, already here through perception, faith, feeling, the intuition of Genius, demonstrates the world beyond man—to the soul in the third stage as clear as day, though to us obscure. ”

“ In the firmament the earth itself swims like a great eye wholly immersed in the vast star spaces, and swinging around therein, to receive from all sides the impact of waves which cross each other millions and millions of times and yet cause no disturbance. With this eye will man some time learn to discern the heavens, while the forward surging of his future life, with [73] which he pierces it, meets and presses against the wave of the surrounding ether, and with finest pulsations penetrates the universe. Learn to see! And how much will man have to learn after death! ”

“ The plant thinks it is in its place for its own purpose, to grow, to toss in the wind, to drink in light and air, to prepare fragrance and color for its own adornment, to play with beetles and bees. It is indeed there for itself, but at the same time it is only one pore of the earth, in which light, air, and water meet and mingle in processes important to the whole earthly life; it is there in order that the earth may exhale, breathe, weave for itself a green garment and provide nourishment, raiment [23] and warmth for men and animals. ”

“ Have the best constantly in mind, and be careful only that the memory that you yourself are to leave behind shall be a blessing to you in the future. Well for him who leaves behind him a treasure of love, esteem, honor, and admiration in the memory of men. Such enrichment is his gain in death, since he acquires the condensed consciousness of the whole earthly estimate concerning him; he grasps in full measure the bushel, of which in life he could count but a few kernels. This belongs to the treasure which we are to lay up in heaven. ”

“ The least impulse of conscious life surrounds itself with a circle of influences, just as the briefest tone, which in a moment seems to die, throws out vibrations which reach out into infinity, beyond those standing near by and listening; for no influence expires in itself, and each produces others of its kind into eternity. And so will the soul of the child go on developing from this conscious beginning like that of the man left in isolation, only otherwise than as if beginning from an already advanced development. ”

“ If you fear that the wave of your future life will not in its extension reach the threshold which here it surmounts, remember that it does not spread itself into an empty world,—then, indeed, [82] would it sink helplessly into an abyss,—but into a realm, which, as the eternal foundation of God, at the same time becomes the foundation of your life, for only in virtue of the divine life is the creature able to live at all. ”

“ The creation of both went on so hand in hand during a period of daily companionship, that they seem to echo and re-echo in my memory like intermingled melodies. Simple as their charm is, may they have a duration even beyond that of the music of the future; for sound drowns beauty, yet beauty outlives sound, and what begins loud cannot so end. ”

“ 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 ”

“ One beloved person is parted from another, a wife from a husband, a mother from a child. In vain do they search in a distant heaven the part of their lives that has been torn from them; in vain they reach out into the void with eye and hand after that which in reality has never been taken away from them; because out of the exterior relations of mutual adjustment and understanding, the threads of which are now broken, has sprung out of the [42] depths of interior consciousness a deep and unobstructed union, as yet unfamiliar and unrecognized. ”

“ On the physical side we say that the brain-process that corresponded to it altered permanently the future mode of action of the brain.
Now, according to Fechner, our bodies are just wavelets on the surface of the earth. We grow upon the earth as leaves grow upon a tree, and our consciousness arises out of the whole earth-consciousness,—which it forgets to thank,—just as within our consciousness an emphatic experience arises, and makes us forget the whole background of experience without which it could not have come. ”

“ Every one in the moment of death will perceive that he still has a place and belongs in the company with those gone before, from whom through common interests he has received help, and so will not enter into the third world as a strange guest, but like one long expected, to whom all with whom he was here united through a common faith, knowledge, and love, will stretch out their hands to draw him to themselves as a partaker of their existence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why should we take over into the life to come eye or ear to obtain light and sound from the spring of living nature, when the current of our future life will merge as one with the waves of light and sound. ”

“ Death makes no division between the two lives except to allow the exchange of the narrower scene of action for the wider. And as little as the light of consciousness is always and everywhere the same in this life, where it can be so interrupted and dispersed, so will it be in the future life. ”

“ Neither does any one think that the glory of the other world shall result otherwise to the foolish, the idle, and the bad, than to make them feel the discord of their lives, and to emphasize the necessity for reform. Already in the present life man brings with him an eye to behold the whole glory of heaven and earth, an ear to hear music and the speech of man, an understanding to grasp the meaning of all this ”

“ The earlier form is still its spiritual raiment; only, no longer fettered with its former dense body and wandering inactive in its company, but transparent, light, divested of its earthly burden, for the moment it is now here, now there, following the voice of each one who calls to the dead, or of itself appearing to you, to suggest the thought of the dead. Indeed the common conception of the appearance of souls in the future life has always been of light, immaterial forms, independent of the limits of space, and so, though unintentionally, the truth has been reached. ”

“ Suddenly a rift shows itself in the otherwise forever closed door between this life and the other, to close again quickly—the door, which will wholly open in death, and only then will open never more to be closed. ”

“ The problems of our present spiritual life, the thirst for the discovery of truth, which here seems to profit us but little, the striving of every genuine soul to accomplish things which are merely for the good of posterity, conscience, and the repentance that arouses in us an unfathomable distress for bad actions, even though they bring us no disadvantage here, rise from haunting presentiments of what all this will bring to us in that world in which the fruit [17] of our slightest and most hidden activity becomes a part of our true self. ”

“ Yet his individuality will not be extinguished in the higher one, but only gain in power from it, and at the same time reinforce the strength of the higher. For those souls which have grown together as one through their moments of sympathy, gain force each from the other for itself, and at the same time confirmation as individuals through the union of their diversities. ”

“ What an infinitely complex play of subtle waves having their origin in our [58] minds may spread itself over the gross lower realm of action, perceptible to the outward eye and ear, like the fine ripples on the large waves of a pond, or the flat designs on the surface of a closely woven carpet, which takes from them its whole beauty and higher meaning. The physicist, however, recognizes and follows only the action of the lower exterior order, and does not concern himself with the finer, which he does not perceive. ”

“ Although our memory of the dead is but a new consciousness, in retrospect, of the results of their known life here, yet the life on the other side will be led conformably to that in this world.
Even when one living person thinks of another, a conscious mutual impulse may be aroused: but it is inoperative because of the still present confines of the body. Once released, however, by death, that consciousness seeks its own realm and is then borne upon a current the more swift and strong, as it has previously been exerted and manifested with frequency and power. ”