10. Between Death and Rebirth of the Human Being

This is also related to what appears as the new consciousness. What we have as our ordinary consciousness, as our ordinary waking consciousness between birth and death, is stimulated by our encounter with the objects of the outside world. We do not do this in sleep, when we do not have our ordinary consciousness; but we also encounter the outside world with our hearing and our eyes, and this gives us our everyday consciousness. Just as consciousness in ordinary life is stimulated by interaction with the outside world, so our consciousness after death is developed by the fact that the human being knows itself to be connected with what I have described as the thought experience after death, which is receding. And this is also the stimulation of consciousness after death, which consists in the soul retaining the feeling: Your thoughts have gone into the distance, you must seek them! With this I could characterize the impression that the soul then experiences, and which forms the force that stimulates spiritual consciousness after death: You must seek your thoughts that have gone into the distance! This knowledge of the departed thoughts forms part of self-consciousness after death. We will see shortly what role this kind of self-consciousness continues to play.