One way of torturing the dead, one way of failing to show them love, is to participate in spiritualist seances. For this forces them to manifest in a particular language. The dead person is expected to speak a particular language, for even with table-rapping the signs have to refer to a particular language.
What is done to the dead by forcing them to express themselves in a particular language might very well be compared with pinching someone living in the flesh with red-hot tongs. So painful for the dead are spiritualist seances which expect them to express themselves in a particular language. For in their normal life the dead are striving to free themselves from the differentiations between languages.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 174 – The Karma of Untruthfulness – Volume Two: LECTURE TWENTY-THREE – Dornach, 22 January 1917
Translated by Johanna Collis
This lecture is not available at rsarchive.org. This book is still being sold and marketed by the publisher, Rudolf Steiner Press.
Previously posted on February 29, 2020
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