VI. The Connection Between the Higher Aspects of the Human Constitution and the Physical Body — The Effects of Opium and Alcohol

As for your other question about the man who drank alcohol all his life and now, before his end, began to become very pious and ate the pious chocolate and sugar – you say: the last days before his death – well, this phenomenon can easily be understood when compared to numerous others that occur throughout life. I have met many people who have grown old. As they grew old, for example, they saw their handwriting become more and more shaky. The handwriting became shaky; they could no longer write properly, and it was precisely in their handwriting that they had grown old. They might have had a handwriting in which they wrote, let's say, Lehfeld (clear, distinct), and then they wrote: Lehfeld (shaky). But then, in the last days before their death, it turned out that they could write in a certain clear handwriting again; they could suddenly write well again. I have met many people who had regained their former ability to write clearly before their death. It has also been observed in numerous cases – I am not just sharing my own observations in this area, but well-attested observations that have been made – that people who have learned some language as a child – as a child they may have been in some foreign country, learned a language and forgot it again; that does happen; let us assume that as a forty- or fifty-year-old man, they had absolutely no opportunity to communicate with anyone else in this language – suddenly, a few days before their death, they begin to speak this language quite understandably again. It came out again! Yes, you see, these are very significant phenomena. What is actually going on here? This is what happens: when a person dies, his physical body, that is, one part of his being, remains on earth; it dissolves into the earth, is destroyed by the earth. I have already told you that the next part of the human being, the etheric body, gradually dissolves into the general cosmic ether a few days after death. And then, the astral body and the real self remain for the human being to pass through the spiritual world. They then pass through the spiritual world.