Consciousness of the dead

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The consciousness of the dead is different from that of the earthly embodied human being. What the human being has clearly consciously experienced on earth very soon fades to a faint memory in the life between death and new birth. In significant imaginations, however, in the first third of the post-death life, all that he has unconsciously lived through in earthly life unfolds. In the second third, the meaning of these images is revealed through inspiration. In the last third, through intuition, the human being feels himself transferred into his whole soul and spiritual environment and thereby prepares himself for his rebirth on earth. An echo of these intuitions is the child's ability to imitate in the first seven years of life.

„But at the moment when one has freed oneself from the physical in the inner experience, one knows what it is like for the human being when he lives his life without his physicality. And in the picture the fact of passing through the gate of death, of dying, comes before the soul. Once one has recognised what it means to grasp oneself in one's spiritual powers independently of the body, then one also knows what one is in spiritual existence when one has laid aside the body and has passed through the gate of death. And one also gets to know the environment that is then present for the human being. One learns to recognise how with the body, when it is discarded, that which connects us with the sense world falls away from us. What remains, however, is that which first formed us as human beings, the soul-spirit of the human being. This is how we learn to recognise the experiences we have had with other people. But that which was in these sense experiences, how soul found itself to soul, what lived itself out in the relationships to other people, to those nearer and farther away, what took place in space and in time, one learns to recognise the eternal-spiritual, how it strips off the earthly form of experience. And then the soul experiences all the more that which has been in it spiritually in relationships with other people. And that which is otherwise only the object of faith becomes cognitive certainty.“ (Lit.:GA 231, p. 27f)

„Everything that passes unnoticed by the ordinary consciousness is then unrolled when the human being has passed through the gate of death. And I would like to call that which the human being initially experiences over a long period of time the unrolling of the images. It is essentially a going through of experiences of the imaginative consciousness that the man goes through. A large, large number of images are unrolled about life scenes of which we have brought very little consciousness to ourselves. And of that which we have brought to our consciousness here, that which has also been little touched by consciousness is unrolled. The other things that were clearly conscious here appear more as memories after death, like memory images, like recollection; but those things that have been little observed here unfold as in present-day images.

Today it is particularly important to me to point out that the first third of life between death and a new birth has essentially to do with this unrolling of images, has essentially to do with a life in imaginations. We can help these imaginations by establishing a connection between us who are left here and those who have passed through the gate of death as karmically connected with us. - Then comes the second third, in which this spiritual-emotional human life is more filled with inspirations. Here it becomes clear to the human being what significance the images he first experienced have in the whole world context, how he places himself in the world context through these images. For everything that the human being experiences has significance for the world context. One must not believe that it is indifferent to have once met a person whom one has perhaps paid little attention to, to have been near him. It is unfolded in pictures, and what significance it has in the whole world event comes to revelation in inspirations in the second third of life between death and a new birth.

In the last third, life is mainly a life of intuitions. There man has to put himself in the place of what is in his spiritual-soul environment. There the man lives as if submerged with his consciousness in that which is in his spiritual-soul environment. And it is precisely in this last third, through this immersion, that he prepares for immersion in the physical body after birth or conception. The intuitions in the last third of life between death and a new birth are the initiation of that intuition which is then, of course, subconscious or unconscious, which consists in man's immersion in the body which is handed down to him in the hereditary current of parents, grandparents and so on. And something remains for the human being when he has now passed from the spiritual-soul world into the physical world. If you consider that man has lived for a long time in spiritual-soul intuitions and is accustomed to living in them, he will still want to hold on to this habit when he has entered the physical body. Indeed he does. For what is - read it in the booklet "The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science" - the main striving of the soul in the first seven years of life up to the change of teeth? I said: addiction to imitation. The child always tries to do what is done in its environment; it does not start from its own intentions; it puts itself into the actions of those who live in its environment and imitates them. This is the echo of the intuitions in the last third of life between death and a new birth.“ (Lit.:GA 174b, p. 312ff)

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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