The soul that has crossed the threshold of death
looks upon what we as earthly human beings
have experienced between birth and death—
but not as if what one experienced then were simply there
but much of the state of being of the dead person
also exerts an influence in a particular way.
The state of being of a dead person
is not like that of someone living between birth and death.
The state of being of someone living between birth and death
is such that he feels himself enclosed within his skin
and looks out at the world through his senses.
As soon as one enters the spiritual world as a dead person,
one flows out into the whole of the spiritual world.
One gradually feels oneself filling the whole spiritual world.
And what one has experienced during physical Earth-existence
one senses to be something that continues to belong to one—
not, of course, as a physical body
but as what constitutes the form, the forces of the physical body.
This one retains after death,
but in such a way as the human eye inhabits the physical body.
Just as one has the eye for seeing,
so does one have oneself,
the earthly life that one has lived through,
as a cosmic sense-organ in order to perceive the world.
What our eye is now for our body,
our earthly life is for our spiritual life after death.
Rudolf Steiner
The Mystery of Death