One of the greatest thinkers and teachers of last century, Steiner gave many lectures to medical students, study groups, trade groups and more. His books and lectures are collected on www.rsarchive.org. This is from a lecture entitled Relationships between the Living and the Dead
“In any case, however, the way in which we are united with the earth, through warmth, is the materialistic way. The fact that even our physical body remains connected with the earth, has a great, an essential, importance for the one who has passed through the gate of death. He passes into the spiritual world. He leaves his body to the earth. This is an experience, an event, for the so-called dead. He has the experience: — “Your body passes away from you”. We must realise that this is an experience.
What is an experience? Well, you can form a conception of what it is, if you consider the experiences on the physical plane. It is an experience, if you have some new sensation, or feeling which you have never had before, and you learn to understand this. You have added something to your soul which you did not possess before a new concept, a new perception.
courtesy https://www.rsarchive.org/
But now imagine such a small experience increased into a very great one. It is something mighty, something unfathomably mighty, that the human being experiences, which gives him the possibility between death and birth to see, to realise, to grasp the fact that he lays this physical body aside, that he gives over to the planet which he is leaving. It is a very great experience, an experience which naturally cannot be compared with any experience on earth — a mighty experience. The value of an experience lies in the fact that something remains in our soul as a result, as a consequence, of this experience. We may, therefore, ask the question: — What then remains as a result, as a consequence of this experience of the falling away of the physical body from the entirety of our being?
Indeed, if we were not able to have this experience when we pass through the gate of death, of knowingly participating in the falling away of our physical body, we should never be able to develop an Ego-consciousness after death. The Ego consciousness is aroused after death through this experience of the falling away of the physical body. For the dead it is of the greatest significance that he is able to say: — “I see my physical body slipping away from me and disappearing.” And, on the other hand: — “I see growing within me, out of this event, the feeling — I am an Ego.”
We may express this with the paradox words: — “If we were unable to experience our death from the other side, we would not have an Ego-consciousness after death.”
Just as the human soul entering existence through birth or, let us say, through conception — gradually becomes accustomed to the use of the physical apparatus and thereby acquires the Ego-consciousness within the body, so does the human being acquire the Ego consciousness after death, from the other side of existence, through the fact that he experiences the falling away of the physical body from the whole human being.
Consider now, for a moment, what this means. When we contemplate Death from the physical side of existence, we may say that it appears to us as the end of existence — as that which has beyond it, as far as the physical outlook is concerned, “Nothing”. Viewed from the other side, Death as such is a most wonderful thing, which can ever anew stand before man’s soul. For it signifies that man can always have the feeling of the victory of spiritual life over physical life. And just as long as we can always have before us the conception of our birth here, in physical life — for no one can have the conceptual nature of his birth through physical means alone, indeed, no one knows anything about his birth through his own physical experience — just so surely do we always have before us, when we become fully conscious after death, a direct experience of the event of our death.
At the same time, this event of our death contains nothing which is in any way depressing; on the contrary, this death event, viewed from the other side, is the greatest, most wonderful and beautiful event which can appear before our soul. For it always places before us, in its entirety, the greatness of the idea that in the spiritual world, consciousness, self-consciousness is the result of death — that death stimulates this self-consciousness, in the spiritual world.”
