48. Where and How Can one Find the Spirit?

What can be called the dissolution of the form of the physical human body occurs at death. When a person dies, what remains before our eyes, before the external senses, is a physical body; this now disintegrates into the physical and chemical substances that are within it. But it is no longer a human body, it is a corpse; and while a stone retains its form through the forces and substances at work in it, the human body will disintegrate and dissolve the moment it is left to its own physical and chemical substances. Spiritual science shows us that from the moment of its formation until the moment of death, an enduring fighter lives in our body, as it does in every living being. This fighter continually works to prevent the physical body from disintegrating during our lifetime. Just as we see the astral body floating out of what remains in bed when the person falls asleep in the evening, so we see that which remains in the physical body during sleep floating out at death. In this way, death differs from ordinary sleep. That which we find in life as a fighter against the disintegration of our body, we call the etheric or life body in relation to the physical, and the difference between sleep and death now becomes clear to us.