I-Feeling

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The I-feeling or self-feeling, usually called ego-feeling, arises primarily from the fact that the soul, in which the [[I}} lives, experiences itself during the earthly incarnation within the physical body; we thereby learn to grasp ourselves as a personality. After death, this function is taken over by the memory of the physical body:

„Let us only consider this fact quite carefully, that we are stuck here in the physical body with our ego and our astral body; also in the etheric body, but let us now remain with the physical body. When we sleep, when we go out, we are not stuck inside, as I have often described. But then we also lose our ego-consciousness, even the consciousness of the astral body in the normal state. And we only regain it when we press ourselves, as it were, into the physical body. This pressing into the physical body has the effect, between birth and death, that we actually feel ourselves as a soul, I could also say that we feel ourselves as an I-penetrated soul. At death the physical body dissolves into earthly matter. This is now significant. When we are asleep, the desire to return to the physical body lives in us constantly - I have already mentioned this several times. This desire dominates us from the moment we fall asleep until the moment we wake up; in a way, we long for the physical body again. If we have discarded it in death, then we cannot long to return to it, we cannot press ourselves back into it. But from this it follows that we cannot develop this desire to return to the physical body. This desire, which we have from the time we fall asleep until we wake up, is now gone. Something else takes the place of this desire. It is replaced by the thought of our physical body that arises in our astral body and especially in our ego. We now look at our physical body. It lives in our consciousness. It becomes a content of our consciousness. And the dissolution of our physical body into its elements causes us to carry the consciousness of our physical body through the time that passes between death and a new birth.

Through this, however, we know ourselves, as it were remembering our physical body, as one I the whole time between death and a new birth. Thus the knowledge of the physical body takes the place of the possession of the physical body. A state of consciousness, an appearance of consciousness takes its place. This whole feeling of the physical body, which we have from birth to death, is replaced after death by the consciousness of our physical body. And through this consciousness, that is, through a purely spiritual state, we are further sufficiently connected with life on earth.“ (Lit.:GA 163, p. 124f)

We owe the awakening of the I-feeling to a great extent to language; in particular, the name is an expression of our earthly personality. Even the Egyptians felt that the name, Ren, was part of the being itself and was thus also an important component of the cult of the dead, because only those whose name is pronounced live on after death. The name was seen in close relation to the ka, the etheric body of the human being, which is the bearer of memory.

„With the name itself one understood - one only compares this with the old Sanskrit meanings - the entity as it expresses itself, as it reveals itself outwardly, just as man reveals himself in his body.“ (Lit.:GA 325, p. 41)

„We owe a great deal in our I-feeling, that we feel ourselves to be a personality, precisely to language. And the feeling can even rise in the human being to something like a mood of prayer: I hear speaking in the language around me, the power of the I flows into me through language! - If you have this feeling of the sacredness of the calling of the I through language, then you will also be able to awaken it in the children through the various measures. And then you will not awaken the I-feeling in the children in an egoistic way, but in a different way. For the I-feeling can be awakened in the child in two ways. If one awakens it wrongly, it works precisely to kindle egoism; if one awakens it rightly, it works to kindle the will, precisely to selflessness, precisely to life with the outer world.“ (Lit.:GA 294, p. 65f)

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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