10. Between Death and Rebirth of the Human Being

If one tries to investigate scientifically how long this period lasts, one comes to the conclusion that life in the first years of childhood has no influence on these years after death, the content of which has just been described. Life from birth to the point at which we later remember, when we learn to experience our self-awareness internally, this time is initially meaningless for these years, and even the life that follows in our mid-twenties is more or less insignificant for the individual in terms of the length of that state of soul I have just described; so that one must assume that the time between the third, fourth, fifth years of life and the mid-twenties, the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth years, is the average number of years that the soul lives through as just described, that the soul has its self-awareness through knowing: Your world of thoughts has gone with your life experiences; it is now in the distance. You have a connection, a kinship with this thought experience, and you must find it again, for it is what has made you what you are in your earthly life; but it has receded. You face these life experiences, transformed in your thoughts, as you would an external life that you know is there. And the other world that one experiences after death, when this world of thoughts has departed, one experiences in such a way that one experiences it in the strengthened will and feeling within oneself.