IV. The Descent to a New Birth

Now comes a moment of extreme importance, equally as important as the moment after death when the whole of the past life is seen as a memory-picture. When the human being passes into his etheric body but has not yet acquired his physical body—it is a brief moment but of supreme importance—he has a pre-vision of his coming life, not in all its details but only as a survey over what his future life has in store for him. He can say to himself (but he forgets it when he actually incarnates) that he has a happy or an unhappy life in front of him. It may happen, if a human being has had many unfortunate experiences in a previous life, that he now gets a shock and is hesitant to enter into the physical body. The result of this may be that he does not come right down into the physical body and so the connection between the several bodies is not fully established. This produces idiocy in the coming life; it is not always the cause of idiocy, but frequently so. The soul rebels, as it were, against physical embodiment. Such a human being cannot make right use of his brain because he is not properly incarnate in it. He can only use his physical instrument aright when he allows himself to be born into it in the full and proper sense. Whereas in other circumstances the etheric body extends only slightly beyond the physical body, in the case of idiots portions of the etheric body are often to be seen as an etheric sheen extending far beyond the head. Here is a case where something that is left unexplained by physical observation of life, is explained through Spiritual Science.