Our Thought Life in Sleep and Wakefulness and in the Afterlife

When a person passes through the gate of death, they go through states that I have often described to you, which are also recorded in our literature, and which you are familiar with, at least from certain sources. If we examine precisely and exactly to which individual members of the human being our thinking and our imagining actually adhere, we come to the conclusion that we need the physical body for earthly thought formation. The physical body is really what must be set in motion when human beings have thoughts as earthly human beings. Furthermore, in order to achieve this goal, to have thoughts, the etheric body must also be set in motion. But these are precisely the two members of human nature that, between falling asleep and waking up, remain lying in bed, unconscious, as we perceive it. However, if we attain a certain development of consciousness, a certain training of our soul, which then enables us to see physical things from a spiritual point of view, we come to realize that human beings think all the time while they sleep. Human beings never cease thinking during their earthly life, if we consider the whole human being.