10. Between Death and Rebirth of the Human Being

From these experiences, the soul itself develops the strength to reconnect with earthly life. I must mention, however, that in the second half of existence between death and new birth, life again proceeds in circles, cyclically. Here we must again distinguish between the time of life in the outer world, where we see our former friends and relatives, our ideals, and so on, experiencing them, as it were, objectively from the outside, and then that other time when we are separated from them, when we have them only within ourselves. This alternates again with necessity for the soul, just as in ordinary life waking and sleeping, day and night alternate. And from the forces that develop in the soul through the sight of everything I have just characterized, the soul develops the ability to first form the archetype of the new earthly life in a spiritual-soul way. What we have had to send on as life experiences transformed into thoughts, we do not yet see immediately when we enter the second half of life between death and rebirth. But it is in the creative will and in the creative feeling that the soul perceives this life as an increase in strength; and this increase in strength causes something like the archetype of a new life to crystallize out of the surrounding spiritual substance. For in the spiritual world there is a different relationship between perception and soul experience than in the physical world. In the physical world, we perceive the outside world; it is then present in our thoughts, but the thoughts are passive. When we experience the spiritual world in the manner described, when we see the soul remnants of our past life, of those close to us, of our former friends, of our ideals, in the spiritual world, this forms a force that lives through us and interweaves with us; it makes us strong. And this strengthening is the same thing that drives us to a new life on earth. — You will excuse the fact that some expressions have to be chosen in such a way that they are unusual; but then, unusual circumstances are being described for ordinary life.