Life panorama

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The life panorama or life tableau appears to man at the moment of death or at moments of great nearness to death, when the etheric body detaches itself from the physical body or at least loosens very much. This panoramic view of life contains the whole fruit of the past earthly life. Unclouded by the physical body, the etheric body, which is the actual carrier of memory, then releases its treasure of memories. The etheric body turns itself inside out and begins to expand into the cosmos. The life panorama can therefore only be experienced in the first three days after death.

How the life panorama is formed

„Now let's take a closer look at what this experience is like. I will make a schematic drawing for this purpose. Let us assume that the physical body of the human being is characterised by this schematic drawing; the etheric body or the formative forces body is characterised by this schematic drawing (hatched in yellow). We only experience what I have characterised with this, this coherent structure of physical and etheric body, when we are in the interior after waking up. We actually always experience it from within. And so that we can become aware of this as precisely as possible, I would like to draw it in the following way. For my own sake, I will indicate in green the part of the etheric body that appears to be inside. The physical body is in any case discarded at death, so we need look less at it. And I will indicate that which is directed outwards from the etheric body with this red line.

Plate 8
Plate 8

I have just said that we only experience this structure of the etheric body from within after waking up; so in a sense we only experience that which shines inwards in the green. We do not experience that which shines outwards in the red. When we have passed through the gate of death and enter into a certain connection with the etheric body with our I and our astral body, this connection happens in the following way. You must now imagine that the whole etheric body turns like a glove when you turn over what is otherwise against the skin with all your fingers and thus turn the inside out. So that what is drawn red on the outside in the earthly state I must now draw as the inner part, and what is drawn green on the inside I must draw green on the outside. The whole etheric body turns around within itself. But this turning round is connected with an immeasurably rapid enlargement of the etheric body. It grows, it becomes immense, it expands immeasurably into the universe, so that I would have to make the drawing like this (large green circle).

And while we used to be in there with our I and our astral body, we are now (red circle) facing the etheric body, which is expanding into the cosmos, but we are looking at it from its other side. That which we previously carried about us without meaning, that which was outwardly red for us, is now turned inwards. That which was previously turned inwards and which alone had meaning for us during our life on earth, is now turned outwards, it no longer concerns us, it is dispersed into the universe. But in this green - schematically represented, of course - is contained all that we have had within us during our life on earth as a coloured, sounding and so on world.

Plate 8
Plate 8

As the green goes, as it were, through the turn of the etheric body to the other side, we lose it completely, and we get a quite different world as an impression. We must not imagine that we can still have the same world after death that we had during our life on earth. This world goes away. To imagine, for instance, that we could experience after death, for my sake in a different condition, the content of life on earth, that is quite wrong, it does not correspond to the facts. What we experience through the turning of the etheric or formative force body is, of course, of gigantic magnitude compared with the content of life on earth, but it is something quite different. First of all, because the outside is now turned inwards, we experience the whole formation of our earth-life in powerful impressions which are different from the impressions of the senses. We do not experience the blush of the rose, but we experience how we have formed the blush of the rose in us as an idea. There it begins not to be so calm as it is in physical earth-life. There, in earthly life, in a rose garden, the roses are so pretty next to each other, and each one gives rest, and one feels oneself weaving in there in the rest. Now the rose garden becomes something quite different, now the rose garden becomes events in time. And how we have let our gaze gradually wander from one rose to the next, how we have formed the idea of the first rose, the second, the third rose and so on in our inner being, this, how in living becoming, in lightning-like waves and weaving one rose after the other comes into being, but not as roses but as ideas that take place, this now appears as our inner life as in a sea of events. And so something stands before us that we did not see during our life on earth: the becoming of this life on earth, the gradual emergence of this life on earth. We know how our soul has developed since childhood. That which we left completely unnoticed during our life on earth is now taking place within us. It is as if we had stepped out of ourselves, become a second being, and watched how we first gradually formed the simple conception of childhood, the more complicated one of later age, and so on. We see the emergence of this whole earth-creature according to its inner side. We see how from hour to hour this earth-life, this earth-existence, is formed. Yes, we gain the impression that this whole life on earth is actually formed by the cosmos. For all that we perceive there grows into the immeasurable, into the cosmic, and we become clear through the fact that we grow outwards that now also what has been formed in us in earth-life is formed in by the cosmos.“ (Lit.:GA 225, p. 136ff)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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