Our Thought Life in Sleep and Wakefulness and in the Afterlife

But with this, everything that is most valuable in earthly life departs from the human being in these few days. Everything we think about the things of the world, everything we think about our entire earthly environment, everything that fills our ordinary consciousness melts away from us, melts away within a few days. And to the same extent that this content of earthly life melts away, to the same extent that which the human being has always unconsciously experienced in the sleeping state emerges. Consciousness now spreads over this. It begins to become conscious. If we had no experiences during sleep, our life as conscious life would come to an end three or four days after death. For what we consider to be our most valuable possessions during our earthly life melt away, and out of this darkening, fading consciousness emerges what we have always experienced in the sleeping state, what has remained unconscious.