In proportion to the ability of the people of this civilization to receive
something into their souls out of the world of thought thus created, were
they able to escape Ahriman's clutches during earthly life, and thereby
elude him in the life after death, during which they were to be prepared
for a new earth-life. The power of Ahriman in earthly life tends to make
the physical sense-existence appear to be the only one, and thus to bar
the way to any vista of a spiritual world. His power in the spiritual
world leads man to complete isolation, and to the concentration of all his
interest upon himself. Those who, at the time of death, are in Ahriman's
power, are born again as egoists.

It is now possible for occult science to describe life between death and a
new birth as it is, provided the Ahrimanic influence has, to a certain
degree, been overcome. It is in this sense that it has been described by
the author in the first chapter of this book as well as in other writings.
And it must be described in this way if that which can be experienced by
man during this form of existence is to be visualized and if he has
attained to purely spiritual perception for that which really exists. The
degree to which the individual experiences this, depends upon the extent
to which he has overcome the Ahrimanic influence.

Man is approaching nearer and nearer to what it is possible for him to
become in the spiritual world. How this progress is thwarted by other
influences must however be clearly brought out in our consideration of the
course of human evolution.

During the Egyptian period Hermes taught the people to prepare themselves
during earth-life, for communion with the Spirit of Light. But because at
that time human interests, between birth and death, were already so
constituted that it was only possible to a slight degree to see through
the veil of the physical sense-world, therefore the spiritual vision of
the soul after death was also clouded and the perception of the world of
light remained dim.

The obscuration of the spiritual world after death reached a climax in the
souls who passed into the disembodied state out of a body belonging to the
Greco-Roman civilization. During their earthly life they had brought to
perfection the cultivation of physical sense-existence, and had thus
condemned themselves to a shadowy existence after death. Hence the Greek
felt life after death to be a shadowy existence, and it is not mere
rhet