The Human Being's Journey Through the World of the Senses, Soul and Spirit

Then, when this tableau of memories has come to an end, when it has gradually faded, for it shows a gradual darkening, the person feels something like certain forces withdrawing within him and something that was previously in his nature being expelled. That which is expelled is now a second corpse of man, an invisible corpse; it is that in man which he cannot take with him from his etheric or life body through the following experiences in the spiritual world. While the physical body has already been rejected and returned to its physical substances and forces, the etheric or life body is now being pressed out and distributed into that world which we call the ether world, which in turn is a nothing for the one who can only see and think materialistically, but which interweaves and interlives everything for the one whose spiritual eyes are open. Now, however, something remains of this expressed etheric or life body, which can be described as an essence, as an extract of everything that has been experienced. It is, as it were, the experiences of the last existence between birth and death, crowded together into a germ, which now remain united with what the person is. So the fruit of the last life, compressed, remains.