The Ego-consciousness of the So-called Dead

You already know (for you can observe this even in the physical world) that when we pass through the portal of death, we lay aside our physical body, as we generally say. We lay aside our physical body. Through decomposition or cremation (the only difference between these two processes lies in the length of time that they take up) the physical body is handed over to the elements of the earth. Now we might think that the physical body simply ceases to exist for those who have passed through the portal of death. But this is not the case, in this meaning. For we can hand over to the earth only those parts of our physical body that come from the earth itself. We cannot, however, hand over to the earth that part of our physical body that comes from the ancient Moon existence, nor that part which comes from the ancient Sun existence, or from the ancient Saturn existence. For those parts that come from the ancient Saturn existence, from the Sun existence, from the Moon existence, and even from a great portion of the Earth existence, are super-sensible forces. These super-sensible forces contained in our physical body, of which only the external part is accessible to our sensory contemplation, as explained just now,—where do these super-sensible forces go to, after we have passed through the portal of death? As stated, we hand over to the earth, we return to the earth, only that part of our physical body, of that most wonderful structure which exists in the world, to begin with, as a form,—we return to the earth only what the earth itself has given to the physical body. And where is the other part, when we have passed through the portal of death? The other part withdraws from the one that sinks down into the earth, as it were, through the process of decomposition or cremation; the other part is taken up by the whole universe.