The physical senses are not responding to anything in front of it, but subtler senses coming from the etheric body are making us aware of something that has passed. From that aspect, the etheric body acts as a bridge between the physical and non-physical realm, the body and the soul. It is part of what is known as the human aura.
In essence, physical senses only capture what is immediately present, but remembrance is an activity of the soul.
In thought-retrospect one visualizes correctly, but one is not held to the sensory course of events.
As the preserver of the past, the soul continually gathers treasures for the spirit. "I remember" — that is, I experience something that is itself no longer present. I unite a past experience with my present life.
The same soul faculty operating when we recollect and evaluate the past (hindsight), is active when we project into the future (foresight). This is a view of the karmic consequences of any course of action, informed by past experience. This new clairvoyance is referred to in Steiner's work as "etheric vision."
There will be people, for instance, who, while carrying out some deed, suddenly become aware—there will be more and more cases of this from now on, during the next 3,000 years—of an urge to refrain from what they are doing, because of a remarkable vision.
The emergence of etheric vision in the upcoming age will allow humanity to experience a vision of Christ. This is the true reappearance of Christ, which takes place in the etheric plane, not the physical plane as is falsely believed.
Christ Himself is present in the power of Memory.
Memory is closer to the deeper natural basis of man than reason.
Just as some people did not recognize the incarnation of Christ in a physical body, there is the same possibility for the reappearance of Christ to go unnoticed in the etheric plane. Without developing the right inner mood of soul, this event can pass one by as it did for many thousands of years ago.
Did all those living at the time when Christ Jesus worked on earth know that such an important event was taking place? Just reflect that Tacitus—the great historian, mentions the Christians as an almost unknown sect. A hundred years after Christ he only mentions the Christians as a sect living in a side-street in Rome, whose teacher was a certain Jesus
...In short, important events can take place in the evolution of man, without contemporaries noticing that anything has happened. The most important things may come about and pass unobserved if people do not cultivate the understanding for them. They would then miss the experience...‘Change your hearts! The Kingdoms of Heaven have approached!’ That was the proclamation of John the Baptist and of Christ Jesus Himself. They hinted to those who had ears to hear that something most important was occurring.
The preparation for this event requires a change in the way we perceive reality, via cultivation of our memory and foresight. This cyclical view of time and consequence, as opposed to mechanical causality and strict linear thinking, will bring about an energizing of our etheric body. I write more about this in Destiny and the Christ.
Everything that becomes human property to the extent that a person can remember it again and again, is based on a change in the etheric body.
Our life's memory is stored in the etheric body, therefore it is also known as the time-body. Our linear sense of time is subjected to the dense physical body, where the constant stimuli of the external physical world is continually drawing us out of memory, until we can retreat away and make sense of what we have experienced.
Upon death, the etheric body (life body) detaches itself and we see the Tableau of Life. Also in some near death experiences, one's life flashes before their eyes.
The life panorama or life tableau appears to man at the moment of death or at moments of great nearness to death, when the etheric body detaches itself from the physical body or at least loosens very much.
This panoramic review of life contains the whole fruit of the past earthly life. Unclouded by the physical body, the etheric body, which is the actual carrier of memory, then releases its treasure of memories. The etheric body turns itself inside out and begins to expand into the cosmos.
It is the life principle, which coheres the cells in a living organism and differentiates life from lifeless matter. This principle is what distinguishes the plant kingdom from the mineral kingdom. Plants have an etheric body, and are alive, as opposed to minerals.
The energy that inhabits matter and becomes its life force is ka. With both arms open wide to open the chest, the heart cavity opens fully to the divine. Sometimes the ka was viewed as the double of a person or a god.
Logical reason, the power of arithmetical combining, on which everything rests that is produced today, were totally absent among the first Atlanteans. On the other hand, they had a highly developed memory...
