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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

III. SLEEP AND DEATH

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For there are beings which feed on passions and desires of a worse kind than those of an animal nature, because they do not expend themselves on objects of the senses but seize upon the spiritual element and drag it down to a sensual level. Therefore the forms of such beings are more hideous, more horrible, to spiritual sight than are the forms of the fiercest animals, in which after all only passions rooted in the senses are incarnated. And the destructive forces of these beings immeasurably surpass any destructive rage existing in the animal world as perceived by the senses. Occult science must in this way enlarge man's view so as to include a world of beings standing, in a certain respect, lower than the visibly destructive animal world.

When man has passed through the world of purification after death, he finds himself in a world the contents of which are spiritual, and which also creates in him longings which can be satisfied only by spiritual things. But even now man distinguishes between that which properly belongs to his ego and what forms the environment of that ego--one might say, its spiritual outer world. Only that, of which he becomes sensible in this environment, pours in upon him in the same way that the perception of his own ego poured in upon him during his sojourn in the body. Whereas man's environment in the life between birth and death speaks to him through his bodily organs, after death when all the bodies are laid aside the language of his new environment penetrates directly into the innermost sanctuary of the ego. Man's whole environment is now filled with beings of a like nature with his ego, for only an ego has access to an ego. Just as minerals, plants, and animals surround man in the sense-world, and compose it, so, after death, is he surrounded by a world composed of beings of a spiritual nature.

Yet he takes something with him into this world which is not part of his environment there; it is what the ego has experienced in the world of the senses. First of all, the sum of these experiences appeared, as a comprehensive memory-picture, immediately after death, while the etheric body was still united to the ego. The etheric body itself is then, indeed, laid aside, but something of the memory-picture remains with the ego as an everlasting possession. Just as though an extract or essence were made out of all the events and experiences which a man encounters between birth and death, so might we describe that which is left behind. It is the spiritual product of life, its fruit. This product is of a spiritual nature. It contains everything spiritual which is revealed through the senses, yet this spiritual treasure could not have been gathered save by life in the sense-world.

This spiritual fruit of the sense-world becomes after death the ego's own inner world. With it the ego enters a world, which consists of beings who reveal themselves in the same and only manner in which man in his innermost depths, can become conscious of his own ego. As a plant seed, which is the essence of the whole plant, grows only when buried in another world, the earth, so now that which the ego brings from the sense-world gradually unfolds itself as a seed under the influence of the spiritual environment in which it has been planted. Occult science can, of course, only portray in pictures what happens in this "spirit-world;" still those pictures present themselves as absolute reality to the clairvoyant's sight, when he investigates invisible happenings, corresponding to those which are visible to the physical eye. Whatever of that world can be described, may be visualized by comparison with the world of the senses for although it is of a purely spiritual nature, it nevertheless resembles the physical world in certain respects. Just as, for instance, in the physical world, a color appears when some object impresses the eye, so in the spirit-world a color appears to the ego when a being acts upon it. But this latter phenomenon is perceived in the same manner as the ego can be perceived inwardly between birth and death. It is not as though the light outside fell within upon the man, but as though another being directly affected the ego, causing the latter to picture this influence in a colour-form.

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