Fourth Lecture

The situation is quite different in the time between death and a new birth. Just as little as one can look back in normal consciousness to one's own birth, so much one always looks with this remembered panorama of life to the moment of one's death. And just as birth fades away for earthly consciousness, so too does the event of death always stand in retrospective consciousness before the soul life between death and a new birth, but now viewed from the other side. Here on the physical plane, man sees the experience of death only from one side. There are many gruesome aspects to it. But one should not conclude from this that it is now terrible for the one who lives on to have to look back forever at the experience of death. Seen from there, this is the most beautiful, greatest, most significant experience that a human soul can ever have, because it always shows in a radiant way how the spirit conquers material existence. This continuous review of the experience of death has an invigorating, uplifting and elevating effect on all consciousness. It is mainly through this experience of death that the soul says to itself: I live here in the spiritual world, with the spiritual world. The fact that the soul has the strength to say this makes this experience of death of immense importance for the life that begins after death.