In An Outline of Esoteric Science, Steiner explains that all living things—plants, animals, and humans—have a subtle etheric body that makes life possible. At the time of death, the etheric body separates from the physical body and the physical body decays following the laws of inorganic chemistry. Is this true? What becomes of the etheric body following death?

Here again is this term "etheric body" which we would recommend replacing with "consciousness." So each thing you can perceive with your ordinary senses, whether living or seemingly inanimate objects, all have consciousness, and that is because there is a purpose behind the existence of everything in the universe. There is logic here if you think about this for a moment. If dead bodies decay and are no more, would there be a benefit for us to create something that is dead and lifeless, a blob of matter with no particular function or utility, even as only a foundation or springboard for something with a greater purpose and power present within it? This is why everything in creation has consciousness; the physical matter is simply a location, a kind of container and representation, in physical form, of what that consciousness is all about. This is why a rock and its consciousness look like a rock, whereas a person and its consciousness look like a person, they are truly different in purpose and not so much in composition. Each has consciousness as well as a material or physical embodiment within the physical plane where each resides. Consciousness cannot be destroyed; its link to things can be broken; physical matter can be transformed through energy of various kinds to change its properties. This may prevent its connection to the consciousness intended for it to hold, as when an animal or person is killed and the consciousness must leave, eventually, and journey forth leaving that so-called "matter" behind because it is no longer of use. The ability to connect and animate it or experience its existence in a less obvious role, as with a rock, is thus precluded. If you subject a rock to the blast of an atomic bomb, it will likely disintegrate into a form of energy that is disorganized so it cannot reform into a rock again but will dissipate and join the elemental energy of the ether—this vast web of consciousness. So here we ourselves use the word "ether" because there is a basic understanding within physics of an energy field that has been renamed the "zero-point field." So there is some wisdom in bridging the connections to current applied knowledge, to some degree at least, to help inform where the interconnections lie and help the scientific community gain a better understanding of the arena of consciousness than has developed heretofore. We would say, in general terms, that whenever there is death or destruction of something in the physical, its consciousness will go elsewhere, often to rejoin with other consciousness. It may retain its knowledge, awareness, and learning through its connection to the akashic records of all that happens, but it will live on. Because consciousness is immortal, as is energy, both can be reworked and repurposed, but that will only happen for particular reasons. This is why we have told you your soul is immortal, that it has a purpose, and we intended in your creation for you to live forever as a part of us, because we do not wish to die any more than you do, so if we take part of ourselves to create you, it is because we intend to keep you going and not lose you along the way. It is the same with the physical realm and the consciousness it contains. That is an extension of ours as well, with a different purpose behind it, and so it has different ways of acting, and this will also determine where it goes and what it does and how it can interact with other forms of consciousness, and so on. But you can appreciate, from this discussion, how reducing these phenomena to a discussion of consciousness having various forms, functions, and purposes creates a kind of unifying theory and description that will help people. And especially the scientific community, being so backward in understanding where they need to go to begin to make sense of things more completely and break out of the stranglehold of the materialist view of things, thinking only of the tangible, like particles and waves, that are physical properties that can be observed and measured with conventional tools in the physical.