Our Thought Life in Sleep and Wakefulness and in the Afterlife

When we pass through the gate of death, we lay down our physical and etheric bodies. And accordingly, the experience is such that in the first few days after passing through the gate of death — the laying down of the etheric body takes only a few days — the human being feels as if his thought life is being absorbed by the world. He has only a fleeting glimpse of his earthly life. It is as if he sees his earthly life as his world in living images. The past earthly life stands before the soul as if with a blow when the soul is completely freed from the physical body and the etheric body, when the passage through the gate of death has taken place. But this process, this transition, continues for several days, so that after the physical body has been laid aside, the etheric body slowly dissolves into the general world ether. During this time, there is the impression that there is first a living, sharply contoured overview of earthly life. Then it becomes weaker and weaker, but at the same time more cosmic, until finally, after a few days, it melts away from the human being.