Fourth Lecture

One must now be particularly aware of the significance of the very first experience that a person undergoes when he passes through the gate of death. This looking back at the last life has a great, an enormous significance for the whole of the subsequent experience between death and a new birth, and we can realize this significance if we think about how we actually come to our sense of self in physical life on earth; not to our self, but to our sense of self. We know how we come to the I from our study of spiritual science: the spirits of form give us this I by advancing us from a moon-based existence to an earth-based existence. But this I is initially subconscious. It becomes conscious through being reflected in the physical body. How is it reflected here on the physical plane? Well, you know that even in the ordinary dream experience you can see it: The I only very rarely becomes clearly aware of itself in the dream experience; the I becomes blurred with the experiences, with the images of the dream that emerge. How do we experience I-consciousness during waking hours? Become aware of how this I-consciousness is actually connected to all external perceptions and all external experiences. When we move our hand through the air like this, we feel nothing. But in the moment when we push through the air, we feel something. But we actually feel our own experience, feel what we experience through our fingers. It is by touching the outside world that we become aware of our self. And in another sense, we actually become aware of our self when we wake up, in that we descend from the consciousness of sleep into our physical body, we collide with our physical body. In this collision with the physical body, the consciousness of self is actually summoned to the soul.