5. Natural Death and Spiritual Life

And that is why it also happens that at the same moment that the life processes increase in the ordinary physical life – let us say in fever or abnormal, morbid conditions – that then the human consciousness also turns into the morbid; that a person can only have a healthy consciousness when the life forces, the effervescent, warm life forces, are kept in check by the forces of death. Thoughts, as we have them in ordinary life, are placed in the powers of mind and will that are bound to the living; they are placed in these by the fact that the powers of death are placed in human life. The conscious powers of thought of physical life are bound to death and dying, are inwardly connected, most intimately, with these powers of death and dying.