Rosicrucian Esotericism
GA 109
6 June 1909, Budapest
4. Man Between Death and Rebirth
Yesterday we heard about what takes place at the moment of death, how the etheric body, the astral body and ego bearer pass out of the physical body and the tableau of memory is arrayed before the soul. An intrinsic feature of this tableau is that the events present themselves simultaneously and provide a review in the form of a kind of panorama. The essential point, however, is that it is perceived as a picture. Events in physical life are connected with happiness or pain but there are no such experiences during the first few days after death. The tableau of memories is an entirely objective picture. Let us try to make this clear by means of an example. We see ourselves in a fatal, agonizing situation and follow the course it takes, but there is no experience of pain. It is like a picture at which we are looking, which, let us say, depicts martyrdom. We do not feel the pain that is involved, but merely see the event objectively. The same applies to the memory tableau after death. It appears directly the etheric body emerges, frees itself from the physical body and then dissolves in the universal cosmic ether. The extract, or essence containing the fruit of the past life, remains.
There now begins for the soul an essentially different period, the period of breaking its attachment to the physical world. The best way to think of this is to remind ourselves that for an occultist, urges and desires are realities. What is contained in the astral body is not nullified after death when the physical body has been laid aside, but all the urges and desires are present. An individual who was a bon vivant during his life does not, at death, lose his desire for tasty foods, for desire clings to the astral body and he has lost only the physical equipment of palate, tongue and so forth, by means of which his greed can be satisfied. His condition—the same applies in different circumstances—is comparable with that of someone suffering from terrible thirst without any possibility of quenching it. He suffers from these longings and from having to forego the prospect of satisfaction. The purpose of this suffering is to realize what it means to have desires that can be satisfied only through physical instruments. This condition is called kamaloka, the realm of desires, where habits are broken. It lasts for a third of the time spent by a human being between birth and death; perhaps it may be possible later on to go into the matter with greater exactitude. So if somebody dies at the age of sixty, it can be said that he spends twenty years, a third of his past life, in kamaloka. As a rule, therefore, kamaloka lasts until a man has rid himself of all the desires that still link him with the physical plane. This is one aspect of the period of kamaloka, but we will study it from still another.
What a human being experiences in the physical body is of value to him because he evolves to higher and higher stages as the result of what he achieves on earth. That is the essential point. On the other hand, between birth and death there are many inducements for individuals to create hindrances to their development, for example, everything that we do to injure our fellowmen. Every time when, at the cost of our fellowmen, we provide satisfaction for our own aims or embark for self-seeking reasons on a project that in some way affects the world, we create a hindrance to our development: Suppose we give someone a box on the ear. The physical and moral pain connected with it is a hindrance to our development. This hindrance would cling to us for all our subsequent lives in future epochs if we did not expunge it from the world. During the kamaloka period an impetus is given to a man to get rid of these hindrances to his development. During the period of kamaloka the individual concerned lives over his whole life in backward order, three times as quickly. The significant characteristic of the astral world, of kamaloka, is that things appear as mirror images; this is the confusing element for a pupil when he enters the astral world. For example, he must read the number 346 as 643; he must reverse everything when he is looking into the astral world. So it is, too, in the case of all passions.
Suppose that as the result of genuine training or of pathological conditions, someone becomes clairvoyant. To begin with he sees his own urges and passions streaming out of him; they appear to him in the form of varied shapes and figures and approach him in rays from all sides. Whoever becomes clairvoyant in the astral realm, either in a well-regulated or irregular way, immediately sees these figures, which in the form of goblins or demonic beings, rush upon him. This is a distressing experience, especially for individuals who become clairvoyant but know nothing of it. It will become less and less infrequent because we are living today in a stage of evolution when in a number of people the eyes for sight of the spiritual world are opening. This must also be said in order that those who have the experience shall not be alarmed. Spiritual science is there in order to lead human beings into the spiritual world. For many who become clairvoyant this process is fraught with much unhappiness of soul because they are ignorant of the facts and conditions. They see things in the astral world as mirror images and they see other things too in the spiritual world. In the physical world, when a hen lays an egg, you see the hen first and then the egg; astrally you see the process of the egg going back into the hen. Everything is experienced in reverse order.
Think of a man who dies at the age of sixty and then, in kamaloka, comes to the point when, at the age of forty he gave someone a box on the ear. Now, in kamaloka, he experiences everything that the other person experienced; he is literally within the body of the other. Thus, a man lives his life in backward order to his birth. But he does not experience pain only, he also experiences the happiness, the joy he has given to others. Little by little the soul discards the hindrances to its development and evolution and must be thankful to the wise guidance that makes compensation possible. Together with the will to make compensation, the soul receives something like a token, an impulse of will, to make reparation for what hinders its development, and in the coming life it is able to do this. We realize, therefore, that the objective tableau is something altogether different from the retrospective experiences in kamaloka. In kamaloka a man experiences exactly what the other person felt as the result of his behavior; he experiences the other side of his own deeds. But not only has this cross to be experienced. What has been experienced here (in physical life) as pain, is experienced in yonder world as happiness and joy—happiness and joy, therefore, as the opposite of what they were in the physical world. The purpose of kamaloka is to impart to the soul what the tableau of memory cannot impart, namely, the experiences of pain and joy in retrospect.
When kamaloka has been lived through, a kind of third corpse is discarded. The physical corpse was the first to be discarded, then the etheric corpse, which dissolves in the cosmic ether, and now the astral corpse is laid aside. This astral corpse comprises whatever from a man's astral body has not yet been purified and regulated by his ego. What was once his as the bearer of his urges and passions and has not been transformed and spiritualized by his ego, frees itself after the period of kamaloka. On his further path the human being takes with him an extract of his astral body: firstly, the sum total of all the good will impulses, and secondly, what he has transformed through his ego. Whatever urges he has ennobled into beauty, goodness and morality form the extract of his astral body. At the end of the kamaloka period the human being consists of the ego and around it he has laid, as it were, the extracts of the astral body and of the etheric body, the good impulses of will.
There now begins for a man a new condition, namely a life free from sorrow, the spiritual life of Devachan. It is encouraging when the occultist experiences these truths as realities and then finds them again in the sacred records and scripts. An example is this sentence in the New Testament: “Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” This is an indication of the experience of living the course of life in backward order; it is an example of a sublime moment when studying the sacred records of religion. You must understand me correctly here. An occultist does not swear by any original record or authority. The facts of the spiritual world alone are conclusive as far as he is concerned, but the value of the original records dawns upon him anew. Spiritual science is not based upon any original record or religion but upon the investigation of spiritual facts. The foundation of all spiritual science is objective investigation. Then, if the content of the original records proves to be identical, the occultist will be in a position to value them truly.
Life now begins in Devachan, in the Spiritland, the “World of the Spirit.” This spiritual world can at all times be seen; although it is actually entered for the first time at death, it is always present. Later on we shall hear about the methods by means of which it can be observed. It is difficult to describe this spiritual world because our words are coined for the physical world. Hence, it can be described only by using analogies. Here, in our terrestrial world, we have the solid earth upon which we move about, fluidity, a sphere of air and the whole permeated by warmth. You can form an idea of the Spiritland by means of analogy. A solid land can be found there, formed in a remarkable way. It is the “continental” region of Devachan, containing the archetypal forms of everything mineral. You know that where a mineral appears, a clairvoyant sees nothing in the space concerned; the space is hollowed out and round-about the mineral are the spiritual forces that appear to clairvoyant sight rather like etheric figures of light. Try to visualize a crystal. When consciousness is raised into the spiritual world, the physical substance is not the important thing; what is important are the spiritual forces visible round about it. The crystal cube presents itself to the clairvoyant in negative. The forms in our physical world form a solid soil in Devachan. There is, of course, a great deal else in Devachan. All life on earth and its distribution among the different plants, animals and humans appears to the seer as the fluid element of the spiritual world, like the sea and water systems of our earth. This flowing life in Devachan cannot, however, be satisfactorily compared with our rivers and seas but far rather with the blood that flows through the human body. This is the “oceanic” and the “fluid” region of Devachan. The solid and fluidic regions do not appear in stages but in a relationship similar to that between land and sea here on earth.
The third region is comparable with our air. This region of Devachan is formed of that of which our feelings and those of animals consist. It is the sum total of whatever is present in the astral realm. Flowing pain, flowing joy is the substantiality in Devachan that can be compared to the air on earth. Picture to yourselves a clairvoyant looking from Devachan at a battle. Watching it physically you would see soldiers, guns and so forth, but the clairvoyant would see more than the physical figures of human beings and physical weapons. He would see the passions of the fighters arrayed in opposition. From Devachan you would see what is present in the souls of those involved in the battle, how passion is hurled against passion. Like a terrible tempest raging among high mountains—that, approximately, is how such a battle would appear to a clairvoyant looking from Devachan. But loving feelings are also seen from there; they pervade the airy sphere of Devachan like a sound of wonderful sweetness. Thus we have named three regions—solid, flowing and airy—and have compared them with those of our earth.
Just as warmth pervades the three lower regions in our physical world, so does one common element pervade the three regions of Devachan that have been named. What pervades everything is the substance of our thoughts, which live there as forms and beings. What the human being experiences here in the way of thoughts is only a shadow image of the thoughts in their reality. Think of an outstretched canvas with living beings and figures behind it; on the canvas, however, you would be able to see only their images. This is exactly how the thoughts familiar to man in the physical world are related to what thoughts are in Spiritland. There they are beings with which one can associate and which pervade the whole sphere of Devachan as states of warmth. It is into this world that a man passes. During this life after death he has a definite feeling of the moment when he enters Devachan.
It must also be stated that to the extent to which the human being in kamaloka has broken away from physical connections, to that extent his consciousness lights up again. After the clear tableau of his life, a darkening of consciousness begins during postmortem existence, its intensity depending upon the strength of desire for physical life. But the more the human being breaks his attachment to physical things, the clearer does his darkened consciousness become. In Devachan a man's experiences are conscious, not dreamlike; all events are experiences in Devachan. We will speak later of how the relevant organs are formed.
A human being knows with exactitude when he enters the spiritual world. The first impression he has of Devachan is that he is seeing the form of the physical body of the previous life outside his ego, his “I.” This body is, of course, incorporated into the “continental” region of the spiritual world and belongs to the solid land of Devachan. When in physical life, you say, “I do this,” you affirm that you are living in your physical body and hence say “I” to it; not so in Devachan. You are then outside the physical body but in its form you become conscious of it when you enter Devachan and you say to it, “That art thou!” You no longer say “I” of your physical body. This is an incisive, significant event for the soul, which now realizes, “I am now no longer in the physical but in the spiritual world.” Hence you no longer speak of your physical body as “I,” but you say, “That art thou!” These words from the Vedanta philosophy, Tat twam asi, are based upon this experience. Utterances of this kind in Eastern philosophy represent facts of the spiritual world. When the Vedanta teaches the pupil to meditate on the “That art thou,” it means that already in this life, he should awaken in himself those ideas and conceptions that will arise in him when he enters Devachan. Genuine meditative formulae are actually “photographs” of facts of the spiritual world, and the Tat twam asi is the boundary sign or signal that one is about to enter the spiritual world. We learn gradually to contemplate objectively, without sympathy or antipathy, what is connected with our own physical lives, like pictures at which we gaze.
The soul's experiences in connection with the flowing life of Devachan are again different. In the physical world, life is distributed among the many individual beings. In Devachan, life manifests as a single whole. We encounter there the one all-embracing life, and perception of it is of great intensity, for in this uniform life experiences are not contained as abstractions. Just think of how everything introduced into life by the great founders of religion is in turn received by man into his astral and etheric bodies; such truths are experienced again in Devachan as a source of exaltation. What had flowed from the founders of religion into the individual incarnations—and the most valuable knowledge is seated in the etheric body—is an experience facing you in Spiritland. Everything that had streamed into the physical life is present before you in great, impressive pictures. You experience in Devachan what unites human beings and promotes harmony among them; what divides us, what is alien to us here, we bring into unison in yonder realm. The pleasures and sufferings in which we are so strongly involved here are made manifest to us there as wind and weather. We experience in pictures or images around us what we formerly experienced inwardly; it is now the airy sphere around us. What we feel personally in physical life is experienced in yonder world in connection with the totality. We only feel joy in connection with the totality of joy, pain in connection with the totality of suffering. Thus, the importance of our personal joy and suffering for the totality is made manifest. Such is the knowledge concerning joy and suffering that we acquire in the life after death. We live there with thoughts that are realities.
Now we ask how man's being is affected by this life within the whole in Devachan. Let us clarify this by means of a comparison. What enables man to have sight in the physical world? The fact that light comes to him and forms the organ for its reception. Goethe said with deliberate purpose, “The eye is formed by the light for the light.” The truth of this is confirmed by the fact that if animals go to live in dark caves, their eyes may degenerate, and other organs, for instance, the organs of touch that are essential there, develop greater sensitivity. The organ of perception is created by the relevant external element. If there were no sun there would be no eye; the light has produced the eye. Our organism is a product of the elements surrounding it; everything physical in us has been created by the surrounding world. Similarly, in Devachan the spiritual organs in man are built by the spiritual environment. During the time in Devachan, a man takes in something from the life of his environment, and from the elements around him builds for himself a kind of spirit organism. In Devachan he feels always as if he were a being in process of becoming, in whom member after member of his spirit organism is coming to birth. Now think of this. All awareness of productivity is accompanied by a feeling of blessedness, as indeed is the case in physical life, too! Think of an artist, or an inventor. This growing and becoming give rise to a feeling of blessedness in a human being as he passes through Devachan, and there he creates for himself the spiritual archetype of a man. He has already often done this whenever he sojourned in Devachan after death, but every time there is built into this archetype, as something new, what the man has taken with him into Devachan as the fruit of his last life, as an extract in his etheric body.
When man entered Devachan for the first time, he had already created spiritually an archetype that then densified to become physical man. Now, when he has lived through many incarnations, he takes with him every time into Devachan the extract of the past life, and then, in accordance with it, he creates the archetype of a new man. This operation takes a long time; today we will speak of it only in general terms.
Thus, it is by no means fortuitous that the human being appears on the earth in successive incarnations and passes through Devachan ever and again. The earth reveals a different countenance to him each time and new experiences are available in external culture and through relationships of every kind. The soul does not return to the physical plane until new experiences can be offered there. I will give you in figures later on the length of time between two incarnations; it is the time needed by the human being for the creation of his new archetype. Once it is created, this archetype has the impulse every time to appear on the earth again. This archetype is, after all, the human being himself. It is not easy to describe this impulse so we will take an example. Someone has a particular thought and also the urge to give expression to it. The impulse has led the thought to take on physical form.
The power to shape and elaborate the archetype that has been created by himself in Devachan does not yet lie within the power of human will. In the present cycle of life, man cannot yet direct his reincarnations himself; he needs lofty spiritual beings to guide him to the parents who are able to provide the physical body that is suitable for the archetype. These beings direct him to the people and the race best suited to the archetype. If the time for the reincarnation has come, man surrounds himself first of all, in keeping with the archetype created in Devachan, with astral substance. This actually forms itself and shoots in, as it were. The process of being directed by higher beings to the parental pair now begins. Because the physical body to be provided by the parents can be only approximately suitable for the astral body and ego, these higher beings meanwhile incorporate into the individual concerned the etheric body through which the best possible adjustment is achieved between the earthly and what comes from the spiritual world. Of this incorporation of the etheric body and of the physical birth we will speak tomorrow, but we now realize today that at birth, when the human being appears again on the earth, the course of the process is the exact opposite of what takes place after death. At birth the astral body is incorporated, then the etheric body and finally the physical body, whereas at death the human being first lays aside the physical body, then the etheric body and lastly the astral body.
When a human being receives the etheric body, something happens to him analogous to what takes place when he goes through the gate of death. Then he had a backward view of his past life, now he has a preview, a prophetic view of the life he is about to begin. This is of great importance for him. It takes place at the moment when the etheric body is being incorporated. The moment then vanishes from his memory. He does not see particular details but a picture of the life's possibilities. This preview can be disastrous for him only to the extent to which he is shocked by it, which means that he struggles against entering into the physical body. If the entry is as it should be, the etheric body and the physical body harmonize; in cases where there is a shock they do not. The etheric body then does not pass in its entirety into the physical body, but especially around the head projects outwards. It cannot then mould the organs of intelligence properly. Some cases of idiocy are due to this, but by no means all, emphatically not all.
Physical life becomes intelligible through the spiritual life behind it. This recognition will help us to dedicate our knowledge to the service of altruistic life.
Der Mensch zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt
Gestern haben wir uns vor die Seele geführt, wie der Moment des Todes verläuft, wie der Ätherleib mit dem Astralleib und dem IchTräger heraustritt aus dem physischen Leibe und das Erinnerungstableau vor der Seele steht. Bei diesem Tableau zeigt sich eine Eigentümlichkeit. Es ist nämlich so, daß die Ereignisse wie gleichzeitig vor der Seele stehen und wie eine Art Panorama einen Überblick gestatten. Das Wesentliche davon ist aber, daß man es wirklich wie ein Bild empfindet. Im wirklichen physischen Leben sind die Ereignisse mit Freude und Schmerz verbunden; diese Empfindungsinhalte sind in den wenigen Tagen nach dem Tode fort. Es ist dieses Erinnerungsbild ein objektives Gemälde. Versuchen wir es uns klarzumachen an einem Beispiel. Wir sehen uns in einer recht fatalen, schmerzlichen Situation drinnen, wir erleben sozusagen deren Verlauf, aber das Schmerzliche dabei bleibt weg. Es ist wie ein Bild, das wir betrachten und das etwa einen Gemarterten darstellt: wir empfinden den Schmerz nicht wirklich, sondern schauen ihn nur objektiv an. So ist es mit dem Erinnerungsbild nach dem Tode. In dem Momente tritt es ein, wo der Ätherleib zum großen Teil heraustritt, sich von dem physischen Leibe loslöst und dann im allgemeinen Weltenäther sich auflöst. Und zurück bleibt von ihm der Extrakt, der die Frucht des verflossenen Lebens enthält. - Jetzt beginnt für die Seele eine wirklich wesentlich andere Zeit, die Zeit des Abgewöhnens von dem Hängen an der physischen Welt. Vorstellungen davon machen wir uns am besten, indem wir uns sagen: Für den Okkultisten ist die Summe von Trieben und Begierden etwas Reales. Das nun, was im astralischen Leibe vorhanden ist, das hört nach dem Tode mit dem Ablegen des physischen Leibes nicht auf, sondern all diese Triebe und Wünsche sind da. Wer in diesem Leben ein Feinschmecker gewesen ist, der verliert im Tode nicht die Lust an den leckeren Speisen, denn die Lust haftet am Astralleibe, und nur die physischen Werkzeuge, Gaumen, Zunge und so weiter hat er nicht mehr, womit er die Gier befriedigen kann. Wir können seine Lage vergleichen - weil auch die Sache aus einem andern Grunde so ist — mit einem Menschen, der furchtbaren Durst hat und keine Möglichkeit, ihn zu löschen. Er leidet diese Begierden, er leidet unter der notwendigen Entbehrung der Erfüllung dieser Begierden. Der Sinn dieses Leidens ist, zu fühlen, was es heißt, Begierden zu haben, die nur mit physischen Werkzeugen befriedigt werden können. Kamaloka: Abgewöhnung, «Ort der Begierden» nennt man diesen Zustand. Er dauert, vielleicht können wir noch genauer darauf eingehen, ein Drittel der Zeit, die der Mensch zwischen Geburt und Tod zubringt. Stirbt also jemand mit sechzig Jahren, so kann man sagen, zwanzig Jahre, ein Drittel seines verflossenen Lebens bringt er in Kamaloka zu. In der Regel dauert also Kamaloka so lange, bis er sich all die Begierden, die ihn noch an den physischen Plan knüpfen, abgewöhnt hat. Das ist eine Seite der Kamalokazeit. Aber wir wollen Kamaloka auch noch von einer andern Seite betrachten.
Das, was der Mensch im physischen Leibe erlebt, ist von Wert für ihn, weil er auf dem Wege jener Erfahrungen sich immer höher und höher entwickelt durch das, was er auf Erden leistet. Das ist das Wesentliche. Andererseits bieten sich zwischen Geburt und Tod für den Menschen zahlreiche Anlässe, sich Hindernisse der Entwickelung zu schaffen. Dazu gehört alles das, was von unserem Tun dem Mitmenschen schadet. Jedesmal, wenn wir uns auf Kosten unserer Mitmenschen irgendeine eigennützige Befriedigung verschaffen, oder irgend etwas Eigensüchtiges unternehmen, das aber zusammenhängt und irgendwie eingreift in die Welt, schaffen wir ein Hindernis für unsere Entwickelung. Wir geben jemandem eine Ohrfeige: der physische und moralische Schmerz derselben ist für uns ein Entwickelungshindernis. Dieses Entwickelungshindernis würde uns für alle folgenden Zeiten und Leben anhängen, wenn wir es nicht aus der Welt schaffen würden. Der Mensch erhält nun in der Zeit des Kamaloka einen Anstoß, diese Entwickelungshindernisse aus dem Weg zu schaffen. Nun spielt sich die Kamalokazeit so ab, daß der Mensch sein ganzes Leben zurückerlebt, und zwar wird er es dreimal so schnell rückwärts durchleben. Das ist überhaupt das Merkwürdige der astralischen Welt, des Kamaloka, daß die Dinge alle wie Spiegelbilder erscheinen. Und das ist auch das Verwirrende für den Schüler bei seinem Eintritt in die astralische Welt. Die Zahl 346 zum Beispiel muß er 643 lesen. Er muß alles umkehren beim Schauen in der astralischen Welt. So ist es mit allen Dingen, die sich auf die astralische Welt beziehen. So ist es aber auch mit allen Ihren Leidenschaften. Nehmen wir an, es wird jemand durch Schulung oder pathologische Zustände hellschend, so sieht er zuerst die eigenen Triebe und Leidenschaften, die von ihm ausströmen, ihm erscheinen in Form von allerlei Figuren und Gestalten, und in Radien von allen Seiten auf ihn zukommen. Wer regulär oder auf unregelmäßige Art sehend wird im astralen Raum, der sieht zuerst diese Gestalten, die als Fratzen oder dämonische Gestalten auf ihn eindringen. Das ist eine sehr fatale Sache, besonders für solche, die sehend werden und jenes Eigentümliche noch nie gehört haben. Es wird das immer weniger selten werden, weil wir heute gerade in einem Entwickelungszustande begriffen sind, wo einer Anzahl von Menschen sich das Auge für die geistige Welt öffnet. So soll auch dies gesagt werden, damit sich jene, denen es passiert, dann nicht fürchten. Denn Geisteswissenschaft ist dazu da, um dem Menschen Führer in die geistige Welt zu sein. Für viele, die hellsehend werden, hängt damit viel seelisches Unglück zusammen, weil sie unwissend sind über alle diese Tatsachen und Zustände. Sie sehen also alle diese Dinge im Spiegelbilde in der astralischen Welt, Sie sehen auch anderes in der geistigen Welt. In der physischen Welt sehen Sie, wenn das Huhn ein Ei legt, erst das Huhn und dann das Ei, astralisch schen Sie den Vorgang, wie das Ei in das Huhn zurückgeht. Es wird also alles zurückerlebt. Denken Sie sich, man stirbt mit sechzig Jahren und kommt dann in Kamaloka an den Punkt, wo man mit vierzig Jahren dem andern eine Ohrfeige gegeben hat: jetzt erlebt man in Kamaloka alles das, was der andere durch uns erlebt hat, man ist förmlich in der Natur des andern darinnen. So lebt man sein Leben zurück bis zu der Geburt. Aber nicht nur Schmerz, auch Freude erlebt man, die Freude, das Glück, das man andern zugefügt hat. Stück für Stück legt die Seele so dasjenige ab, was ihre Entwickelungshindernisse sind. Und sie muß der weisheitsvollen Lenkung dankbar sein, die ihr die Möglichkeit des Ausgleichs gibt. Denn sie nimmt mit dem Willen, das wieder gutzumachen, jedesmal so etwas davon auf wie eine Marke, einen Willensimpuls, das wieder gutzumachen, was für sie Entwickelungshindernisse sind. Und sie kommt im kommenden Leben in die Lage, das zu tun. Wir sehen also, das objektive Tableau ist etwas ganz anderes als das Rückerleben in Kamaloka. In Kamaloka erlebt man sehr genau das, was der andere empfunden hat bei unserem Verhalten, man erlebt die andere Seite der eigenen Taten. Aber es ist nicht bloß dieses Kreuz dort zu erleben, sondern das, was man hier als Schmerzen erlebt hat, es ist dort Lust und Freude. Man erlebt also Lust und Leid als das Gegenteil von dem, was es in der physischen Welt war. Gerade dazu ist Kamaloka da, um der Seele das zu geben, was das Erinnerungstableau nicht gibt: das Zurückerleben von Schmerz und Freude.
Ist nun das Kamaloka durchlebt, so wird eine Art dritter Leichnam abgelegt. Zuerst war es der physische Leichnam, dann der ätherische, der sich im allgemeinen Weltenäther auflöst, und jetzt ist es der astralische Leichnam. Dieser umfaßt alles das von des Menschen astralischem Leibe, was er noch nicht von seinem Ich aus geläutert und geordnet hat. Das, was er einst mitbekommen hat als Träger seiner Triebe und Leidenschaften, und was er nicht vom Ich aus umgearbeitet, vergeistigt hat, das löst sich los nach dem Kamalokazustand. Mit nimmt der Mensch auf seiner weiteren Bahn einen Extrakt vom Astralkörper: erstens die Summe all der guten Willensimpulse, und zweitens alles das, was er vom Ich aus umgewandelt hat. Alles, was er veredelt hat von seinen Trieben: das Schöne, das Gute, das Moralische, das bildet den Extrakt seines astralischen Leibes. Der Mensch besteht nun am Ende der Kamalokazeit aus dem Ich, und um dieses gleichsam herumgelagert hat er den Extrakt des astralischen Leibes und des Ätherleibes, die guten Willensimpulse.
Nun beginnt für den Menschen ein neuer Zustand, der des leidfreien, geistigen Lebens, des Devachans. Es ist für den Okkultisten sehr erhebend, wenn er solche Dinge als Tatsachen erlebt und sie dann wiederfindet in den heiligen Urkunden und religiösen Schriften. Die Stelle im Neuen Testament ist eine solche, die da lautet: «So ihr nicht werdet wie die Kindlein, so könnet ihr nicht in die Reiche der Himmel kommen.» Hier ist hingedeutet auf das Zurückleben bis zur Geburt: das sind solche große Momente, die man den religiösen Urkunden gegenüber haben kann. Sie müssen mich recht verstehen: der Okkultist schwört auf keinerlei Urkunde und Autorität, für ihn sind einzig die Tatsachen der geistigen Welt maßgebend, aber die Urkunden, sie werden ihm objektiv wieder wertvoll. Die Theosophie ist nicht aufgebaut auf irgendeine religiöse Urkunde, sondern unmittelbar auf die Erforschung von geistigen Tatsachen. Die Grundlage aller Geisteswissenschaft ist die objektive Forschung; wenn dann die Urkunden Ähnliches enthalten, dann wird sie der Okkultist erst recht entsprechend werten können.
Jetzt beginnt das Leben im Devachan, im Geistgebiet. Diese geistige Welt, sie ist immer zu beobachten, sie ist immer da; der Tote tritt eben erst in sie ein, aber sie ist immer da. Die Methoden, durch die man sie wahrnehmen kann, werden wir später kennenlernen. Diese geistige Welt ist sehr schwer zu beschreiben, da unsere Worte eben für die physische Welt geprägt sind. Es kann daher nur vergleichsweise eine Vorstellung davon gegeben werden. Hier in unserer irdischen Welt finden wir feste Erde, wir wandern darauf herum, Flüssiges, das Wasser, einen Luftkreis, und das Ganze durchdrungen von Wärme. So etwa können Sie sich vergleichsweise auch das Geistgebiet vorstellen. Es gibt ein Festland dorten, das auf sehr merkwürdige Weise gebildet ist, das Kontinentalgebiet des Devachans: da ist alles Mineralische in seinen Formen enthalten. Sie wissen, daß der Hellseher da, wo das Mineral fest ist, nichts sieht im Raume, der Raum ist ausgespart, und außen herum sind die geistigen Kräfte für den hellseherischen Blick, etwa wie ätherische Lichtfiguren. Stellen Sie sich einen Kristall vor: was von der physischen Materie ausgefüllt ist, das ist für das Bewußtsein, wenn es sich in die geistige Welt erhebt, nicht das Wesentliche, sondern der Geist des Kristalls, die Kräfte, die außen herum an ihm sichtbar sind. Wie ein Negativ stellt sich der Kristallwürfel dem Hellseher dar. Was an physischen Formen in unserer Welt ist, das ist ein fester Boden im Devachan. Vieles andere ist noch darinnen im Devachan. Alles das, was an Leben auf der Erde ist, pflanzliches, tierisches und menschliches Leben, und wie es da in den verschiedenen Wesen verteilt ist, das erscheint dem Seher wie das flüssige Element der geistigen Welt, wie Meer- und Flußgebiet. Das flüssige Leben, das dort strömt, das können wir aber in der Anordnung nicht gut vergleichen mit unseren Flüssen und Meeren, viel eher mit dem Blute, wie es den Menschenleib durchströmt. Das ist das ozeanische und das Flußgebiet des Devachans. Nicht ab- oder aufsteigend, nicht stufenförmig erscheint dieses feste und flüssige Gebiet dort, sondern in einem ähnlichen Verhältnis wie hier Land und Meer.
Das dritte Gebiet ist vergleichbar unserem Luftkreis. Gebildet ist derselbe im Devachan aus dem, woraus unsere und die tierischen Empfindungen bestehen. Er ist die Summe alles dessen, was im Astralischen lebt. Fließender Schmerz, fließende Lust, ist die Substantialität, die im Devachan das bildet, was hier die Luft ist. Denken Sie sich, der Hellseher sähe sich vom Devachan aus eine Schlacht an. Wenn Sie sie physisch anschauen, so sehen Sie Kämpfer, Kanonen und so weiter, der Hellseher sieht aber mehr als die physischen Menschengestalten und die physischen Instrumente, er sieht, wie sich die Leidenschaften der Kämpfenden gegenüberstehen. Was in den Seelen lebt, das würden Sie da sehen: wie Leidenschaft auf Leidenschaft prallt. Gleich einem furchtbaren Gewitter, wie es im Hochgebirge wütet, so etwa nimmt sich eine solche Schlacht aus für den Hellseher vom Devachan aus. Doch auch liebreiche Empfindungen nimmt der Mensch dort wahr: wie ein wunderlieblicher Ton durchziehen diese das devachanische Luftgebiet. - Also drei Gebiete: Festes, Flüssiges und Luftiges des Devachan haben wir sie vergleichsweise mit denen unserer Erde genannt.
Wie Wärme die drei unteren Gebiete bei uns durchzieht, so durchzieht auch ein gemeinschaftliches Element die drei genannten Gebiete des Devachan. Und das, was dort alles durchzieht, das ist die Substanz unserer Gedanken, die dort als Formen und Wesen leben. Das, was hier der Mensch an Gedanken erlebt, das ist nur ein Schattenbild der wirklichen Gedanken. Denken Sie sich eine Leinwand ausgespannt und dahinter lebendige Wesen und Gestalten, auf der Leinwand aber würden Sie nur deren Abbilder sehen können. Genau so verhalten sich die Gedanken, die der Mensch in der physischen Welt kennt, zu dem, was die Gedanken im Geistgebiet sind. Dort sind sie Wesenheiten, mit denen man verkehren kann, die wie Wärmezustände den ganzen Raum des Devachan durchziehen. In diese Welt tritt der Mensch ein. Sehr genau empfindet es der Mensch in diesem Leben nach dem Tode, wenn er in das Devachan eintritt.
Noch haben wir zu erwähnen, daß in demselben Maße, als der Mensch sich in Kamaloka die physischen Zusammenhänge abgewöhnt, auch sein Bewußtsein sich wieder aufhellt. Nach dem scharfen, klaren Bild der Überschau über sein Leben tritt im nachtodlichen Leben eine Umdüsterung seines Bewußtseins ein, je stärker der Wunsch nach dem Physischen wird. Aber je mehr sich der Mensch das Hängen am Physischen abgewöhnt, desto mehr hellt sich das umdüsterte Bewußtsein auf. Und im Devachan erlebt der Mensch bewußt, nicht etwa traumhaft, die Ereignisse und alle Erlebnisse des Devachan. Wir werden noch darüber sprechen, wie sich die Organe dafür bilden.
Der Mensch weiß es genau, wenn er die geistige Welt betritt. Der erste Eindruck des Devachan ist der, daß er den physischen Leib des vorigen Lebens in seiner Form außerhalb seines Ich sieht. Dieser Leib ist ja einverleibt dem Kontinentalgebiet der geistigen Welt; er gehört zu dem Festland des Devachan. Im physischen Leben, da sagen Sie: /ch mache das. — Sie konstatieren, daß Sie in Ihrem physischen Leibe leben und sagen daher «Ich» zu ihm; nicht so im Devachan. Da sind Sie außerhalb des physischen Leibes, aber er wird Ihnen in seiner Form bewußt in dem Moment, wo Sie das Devachan betreten, und da sagen Sie zu ihm: Das bist du! - Nicht mehr sagen Sie nun zu Ihrem physischen Leibe Ich. Das ist ein einschlagendes, sehr bedeutsames Ereignis für die Seele, bei dem ihr klar wird: nicht mehr in der physischen, sondern in der geistigen Welt, da bin ich jetzt. Darum sprechen Sie Ihren physischen Leib nicht mehr mit Ich an, sondern sagen: Das bist du! - Auf dieses Erlebnis geht auch in Wahrheit der Spruch aus der Vedantaphilosophie zurück: Tat twam asi — das bist du. - Alles, was so in der morgenländischen Philosophie gesagt wird, das sind Tatsachen der geistigen Welt. Wenn die Vedanta also den Schüler lehrt zu meditieren über das «Das bist du», so bedeutet das nichts anderes, als daß er in sich schon in diesem Leben jene Vorstellungen wachrufen soll, die ihm dann beim Betreten des Devachan aufgehen. Wahre Meditationsformeln sind nichts anderes als Photographien von Tatsachen der geistigen Welt. Und das «Tat twam asi» ist der Grenzstein, die Marke, die einem anzeigt, daß man in die geistige Welt eintritt. Des weiteren lernt man da nach und nach kennen, objektiv zu betrachten das, was mit dem eigenen physischen Leben zusammenhängt, ohne Sympathie und Antipathie, wie Bilder, die man sich beschaut.
Ein anderes nun wieder sind die Erlebnisse der Seele gegenüber dem fließenden Leben des Devachan. In der physischen Welt ist das Leben verteilt auf die vielen individuellen Wesen. Als ein Ganzes dagegen erscheint das Leben im Devachan. Das eine, allumfassende Leben tritt einem da entgegen, und die Empfindung, die man davon hat, ist eine ungeheuer starke, denn in diesem einen Leben sind die Erlebnisse ja nicht darinnen als etwas Abstraktes. Denken Sie doch, wie alles das, was die großen Religionsstifter hineingelegt haben ins Leben, wie das von dem Menschen wiederum in seinen Astralleib und in seinen Ätherleib hineingelebt wird: das alles wird als etwas Erhebendes wieder erlebt im Devachan. Was ausgeflossen ist durch die großen Stifter und eingeflossen während der einzelnen Verkörperungen - und gerade die wertvollsten Erfahrungen sind hineingelegt in den Ätherleib -, dem stehen Sie im Geistgebiet als einem Erlebnis gegenüber. Alles, was eingeflossen ist in das physische Leben, Sie haben es in großen, gewaltigen Bildern vor sich. Sie erleben das, was die Menschen eint. Was sie harmonisiert, das erleben Sie im Devachan; dasjenige, was uns hier trennt, was uns fremd ist, das bringen wir dort in Einklang. Und das, woran wir hier innerlich so stark beteiligt sind, Lust und Leid, erscheint uns dort wie Wind und Wetter. In Bildern erleben wir es um uns herum, was wir früher in uns erlebten: es ist jetzt der Luftkreis um uns herum. Das ist wichtig, daß wir das, was wir im physischen Leben persönlich erfühlen, dort im Zusammenhang mit dem Ganzen erfahren. Nicht anders empfinden wir Freude, als im Zusammenhang mit der gesamten Lust, nicht anders Schmerz, als im Zusammenhang mit dem gesamten Leid. So zeigen sich unsere Lust und unser Leid, wie sie in ihrer ganzen Tragweite für die Gesamtheit wirken. Solche Erfahrung von Lust und Leid gewinnen wir in dem Leben nach dem Tode. Mit den Gedanken leben wir dort wie mit den Dingen.
Und nun fragen wir: Was bewirkt das in der Wesenheit des Menschen, wenn er so in allem darinnen lebt im Devachan? Wir wollen uns das durch einen Vergleich klarmachen. Wodurch sieht der Mensch in der physischen Welt? Dadurch, daß Licht auf ihn eindringt und ihm das Organ dafür bildet. Goethe sagt nicht ohne Absicht: Das Auge ist vom Licht für das Licht gebildet. - Die Richtigkeit dieser Tatsache ist aus dem zu ersehen, daß, wenn Tiere in dunkle Höhlen einwandern, ihre Augen verkümmern und andere Organe, etwa die Tastorgane, die dort nötig sind, sich feiner ausbilden. Das Organ der Wahrnehmung wird gebildet durch das äußere Element. Gäbe es keine Sonne, so gäbe es kein Auge, das Licht hat das Auge geboren. Unser Organismus ist ein Ergebnis der um ihn herum befindlichen Elemente, alles, was wir an uns physisch haben, das ist aus der Umgebung um uns herum gebildet. Und ebenso werden im Devachan aus der geistigen Umgebung heraus die geistigen Organe dem Menschen angebildet. Und der Mensch nimmt fortwährend im Devachan etwas vom Leben seiner Umgebung auf und baut sich aus den Elementen seiner Umgebung eine Art Geistorganismus zurecht. Er fühlt sich dort fortwährend als ein Werdender, dem Glied um Glied seines geistigen Organismus entsteht. Und nun bedenken Sie, daß alle Wahrnehmung einer Produktivität als Seligkeitsgefühl empfunden wird und auch im physischen Leben mit einem solchen verbunden ist! Denken Sie an den Künstler, den Erfinder. Dieses Wachsen und Werden nun, Stück für Stück, das empfindet der Mensch beim Durchwandern des Devachan als ein Seligkeitsgefühl. Und so bildet er sich dort das geistige Urbild eines Menschen heraus. Ein solches hat er sich schon oft gebildet, jedesmal, wenn der Mensch nach seinem Tode im Devachan verweilte, aber jedesmal wird als Neues das hineingearbeitet, was der Mensch als Frucht seines letzten Lebens, als Extrakt in seinem Ätherleib mit ins Devachan genommen hat.
Als der Mensch das erste Mal das Devachan betrat, da hat er sich schon ein Urbild des Menschen geistig aufgebaut, und dieses verdichtete sich dann zu dem physischen Menschen. Jetzt, da er durch viele Inkarnationen hindurchgegangen ist, nimmt er jedesmal den Extrakt des verflossenen Lebens mit und darnach bildet er sich dann das Urbild eines neuen Menschen. Diese Arbeit dauert lange, wir wollen heute das nur im allgemeinen erwähnen. Es ist also nicht zwecklos, daß der Mensch in aufeinanderfolgenden Inkarnationen auf der Erde erscheint und immer wieder den Durchgang durch das Devachan vollzieht. Jedesmal trägt für ihn die Erde ein anderes Antlitz, und Neues bietet sich ihm dar in der äußeren Kultur und in bezug auf alle möglichen Verhältnisse. Die Seele erscheint nicht früher auf dem physischen Plan, als bis sie Neues hier lernen kann. Die Zeit, die zwischen den Reinkarnationen liegt, will ich Ihnen in Zahlen dann noch angeben; so lange braucht der Mensch auch, um sein neues Urbild aufzubauen. Ist es aufgebaut, so hat jedesmal dieses Urbild den Impuls, wieder auf der Erde zu erscheinen, dieses Urbild, das ja eigentlich der Mensch selber ist. Es ist nicht leicht, diesen Impuls zu beschreiben. Nehmen Sie ein Beispiel. Jemand hat einen Gedanken, und nun hat er auch den Drang, denselben auszudrücken: Es hat der Gedanke von dem Impuls her die physische Form angenommen. Heute liegt die Kraft dazu, sein im Devachan geschaffenes Urbild auszugestalten, noch nicht in der Willkür des Menschen. In diesem Lebenszyklus kann der Mensch noch nicht seine Reinkarnationen selbst leiten, er braucht höhere geistige Wesenheiten, die ihn hinleiten zu dem Elternpaar, das imstande ist, den geeigneten physischen Leib für das Urbild zu geben. Sie leiten ihn hin zu dem Volke und der Rasse, die am besten zu ihm für dieses Urbild paßt. Ist der Zeitpunkt der Wiederverkörperung gekommen, so umgibt sich der Mensch zunächst, nach Maßgabe dessen, was er als Urbild im Devachan ausgebildet hat, mit astraler Substantialität, und zwar bildet sich das wie von selbst: diese schießt sozusagen an. Nun beginnt die Hinleitung durch höhere Wesenheiten zu dem Elternpaar. Und da nur ungefähr entsprechend passend zu dem Astralleib und Ich gefunden werden kann der physische Leib, den die Eltern geben, so wird von diesen Wesenheiten der Ätherleib dem Menschen dazwischen einverleibt, durch den dann die möglichste Anpassung zwischen dem Irdischen und dem aus der geistigen Welt Gegebenen geschieht. Von dieser Angliederung des Ätherleibes und von der physischen Geburt wollen wir dann morgen sprechen. Aber das sehen wir heute schon: Bei der Geburt, bei dem Wiedererscheinen auf der Erde macht der Mensch den umgekehrten Weg zurück wie nach dem Tod. Zuerst gliedert sich jetzt der Astralleib an, dann der Ätherleib und zuletzt der physische Leib. Beim Tode legt er zuerst den physischen Leib, dann den Ätherleib und zuletzt den Astralleib ab.
Und wenn der Mensch den Ätherleib erhält, geschieht mit ihm etwas Ähnliches, wie wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes geht. Da hat er einen Rückblick auf sein vergangenes Leben gehabt, jetzt hat er eine Vorschau, eine prophetische, auf das Leben, das er nun betreten will. Das ist sehr bedeutungsvoll für ihn. Es geschieht in dem Augenblick, wo der Ätherleib sich eingliedert. Der Moment verschwindet ihm dann wieder aus dem Gedächtnis. Es sind nicht Einzelheiten, die er da sieht, sondern es ist ein Bild der Lebensmöglichkeiten. Diese Vorschau kann ihm nur insofern verhängnisvoll werden, als er dadurch einen sogenannten Schock erhält, das heißt, er sträubt sich, in das physische Leben einzutreten. Beim regulären Eintritt deckt sich der Ätherleib und der physische Leib; in solchen Fällen, wie bei einem Schock, nicht. Da geht dann der Ätherleib nicht ganz in den physischen Leib hinein, besonders am Kopf bleibt er herausragend, und daher kann er dann die Verstandesorgane nicht richtig herausarbeiten. Ein Teil der Fälle, wo Idiotie auftritt, rührt davon her, aber durchaus nicht alle; das sei extra betont.
So wird uns das physische Leben begreiflich durch das geistige, das dahintersteht. Und diese Erkenntnis wird uns helfen, unser Wissen in den Dienst des hilfreichen Lebens zu stellen.
Man Between Death and Rebirth
Yesterday we considered how the moment of death unfolds, how the etheric body with the astral body and the ego carrier emerges from the physical body and the memory tableau stands before the soul. This tableau reveals a peculiarity. It is as if the events stand before the soul simultaneously and allow an overview like a kind of panorama. The essential thing, however, is that one really experiences it as an image. In real physical life, events are associated with joy and pain; these feelings disappear in the few days after death. This memory image is an objective painting. Let us try to clarify this with an example. We find ourselves in a rather fatal, painful situation; we experience its course, so to speak, but the pain remains absent. It is like a picture we look at that depicts a tortured person: we do not really feel the pain, but only look at it objectively. This is how it is with the memory image after death. It occurs at the moment when the etheric body largely emerges, detaches itself from the physical body, and then dissolves into the general world ether. What remains of it is the extract that contains the fruit of the past life. Now a truly different time begins for the soul, the time of weaning itself from its attachment to the physical world. We can best imagine this by saying to ourselves: For the occultist, the sum of drives and desires is something real. Now, what is present in the astral body does not cease after death with the shedding of the physical body, but all these drives and desires are still there. Those who have been gourmets in this life do not lose their appetite for delicious food in death, for the appetite clings to the astral body, and it is only the physical instruments, the palate, the tongue, and so on, that are no longer available to satisfy the craving. We can compare his situation—because the matter is also so for another reason—with a person who is terribly thirsty and has no way of quenching his thirst. He suffers from these desires; he suffers from the necessary deprivation of the fulfillment of these desires. The meaning of this suffering is to feel what it means to have desires that can only be satisfied with physical tools. Kamaloka: Weaning, “place of desires” is what this state is called. It lasts, perhaps we can go into this in more detail later, one third of the time that a person spends between birth and death. So if someone dies at the age of sixty, one can say that they spend twenty years, a third of their past life, in Kamaloka. As a rule, Kamaloka lasts until they have renounced all the desires that still bind them to the physical plane. That is one aspect of the Kamaloka period. But let us also look at Kamaloka from another angle.
What a person experiences in the physical body is valuable to them because, through these experiences, they develop higher and higher through what they accomplish on earth. That is the essential thing. On the other hand, between birth and death, there are numerous opportunities for people to create obstacles to their development. This includes everything we do that harms our fellow human beings. Every time we obtain some selfish satisfaction at the expense of our fellow human beings, or undertake something selfish that is connected with and somehow interferes with the world, we create an obstacle to our development. We slap someone in the face: the physical and moral pain of this is an obstacle to our development. This obstacle to development would remain with us for all future times and lives if we did not remove it from the world. During the time of Kamaloka, human beings receive an impetus to remove these obstacles to development. The Kamaloka period unfolds in such a way that human beings relive their entire life, and they do so three times as fast in reverse. This is the strange thing about the astral world, the Kamaloka, that everything appears like a mirror image. And this is also what confuses the student when he enters the astral world. For example, he must read the number 346 as 643. He must reverse everything when looking at the astral world. This is the case with everything that relates to the astral world. But it is also the case with all your passions. Let us assume that someone becomes clairvoyant through training or pathological conditions. He first sees his own instincts and passions emanating from him, appearing to him in the form of all kinds of figures and shapes, coming toward him in rays from all sides. Those who become clairvoyant in the astral space, either regularly or irregularly, first see these figures, which appear to them as grotesque or demonic figures. This is a very unfortunate thing, especially for those who become clairvoyant and have never heard of this peculiarity. It will become less and less rare, because we are currently in a state of development where the eyes of a number of people are opening to the spiritual world. This should also be said so that those to whom it happens will not be afraid. For spiritual science is there to be a guide for human beings into the spiritual world. For many who become clairvoyant, this is connected with a great deal of mental unhappiness because they are ignorant of all these facts and conditions. So you see all these things in the mirror image in the astral world, and you also see other things in the spiritual world. In the physical world, when a chicken lays an egg, you first see the chicken and then the egg, but in the astral world you see the process of the egg returning to the chicken. So everything is relived. Imagine you die at the age of sixty and then arrive in Kamaloka at the point where you slapped someone in the face when you were forty: now, in Kamaloka, you experience everything that the other person experienced through you; you are literally inside the other person's nature. In this way, you relive your life back to the moment of birth. But you experience not only pain, but also joy, the joy and happiness you brought to others. Piece by piece, the soul thus discards those things that hinder its development. And it must be grateful to the wise guidance that gives it the opportunity to make amends. For with the will to make amends, it takes up something of this each time, like a mark, an impulse of the will to make amends for what are obstacles to its development. And in the next life it comes into a position to do so. We see, then, that the objective tableau is something quite different from reliving the past in Kamaloka. In Kamaloka, one experiences very precisely what the other person felt as a result of our behavior; one experiences the other side of one's own actions. But it is not just a matter of experiencing this cross there; what one experienced here as pain is pleasure and joy there. One experiences pleasure and suffering as the opposite of what they were in the physical world. This is precisely what Kamaloka is for: to give the soul what the memory tableau does not provide: the reliving of pain and joy.
Once the Kamaloka has been lived through, a kind of third corpse is discarded. First there was the physical corpse, then the etheric corpse, which dissolves into the general world ether, and now there is the astral corpse. This encompasses everything in the human astral body that has not yet been purified and ordered by the ego. That which he once received as the bearer of his instincts and passions, and which he has not transformed and spiritualized from his ego, dissolves after the Kamaloka state. On his further path, the human being takes with him an extract from the astral body: first, the sum of all the good impulses of will, and second, everything that he has transformed from his ego. Everything they have refined from their instincts: the beautiful, the good, the moral, forms the extract of their astral body. At the end of the kamaloka period, human beings now consist of the ego, and around this, as it were, they have the extract of the astral body and the etheric body, the impulses of good will.
Now a new state begins for the human being, that of a suffering-free, spiritual life, the Devachan. It is very uplifting for the occultist when he experiences such things as facts and then finds them again in the sacred documents and religious writings. The passage in the New Testament is one such passage, which reads: “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” This refers to living back to the time of birth: these are the great moments that one can experience in relation to religious documents. You must understand me correctly: the occultist swears by no document or authority; for him, only the facts of the spiritual world are authoritative, but the documents become objectively valuable to him again. Theosophy is not based on any religious document, but directly on the investigation of spiritual facts. The foundation of all spiritual science is objective research; if the documents contain similar things, then the occultist will be able to evaluate them accordingly.
Now life begins in Devachan, in the spiritual realm. This spiritual world can always be observed; it is always there. The dead only enter it, but it is always there. We will learn later about the methods by which it can be perceived. This spiritual world is very difficult to describe, since our words are shaped by the physical world. Therefore, only a comparative idea of it can be given. Here in our earthly world, we find solid earth, we walk around on it, liquids, water, a circle of air, and the whole thing permeated by warmth. You can imagine the spiritual realm in a similar way. There is a mainland there, formed in a very strange way, the continental area of Devachan: everything mineral is contained there in its forms. You know that where the mineral is solid, the clairvoyant sees nothing in space; the space is hollowed out, and around it are the spiritual forces visible to the clairvoyant gaze, like ethereal figures of light. Imagine a crystal: what is filled with physical matter is not the essence for consciousness when it rises into the spiritual world, but rather the spirit of the crystal, the forces that are visible around it. The crystal cube appears to the clairvoyant like a negative. What exists in physical form in our world is solid ground in Devachan. Much else still remains in Devachan. Everything that exists in life on earth—plant, animal, and human life, and how it is distributed among the various beings—appears to the seer as the liquid element of the spiritual world, like the sea and rivers. However, we cannot easily compare the liquid life that flows there with our rivers and seas; it is much more like the blood that flows through the human body. This is the oceanic and river region of Devachan. This solid and liquid region does not appear to rise or fall, nor is it stepped, but rather in a similar relationship to land and sea here.
The third region is comparable to our air circle. It is formed in Devachan from that which constitutes our and the animals' sensations. It is the sum of everything that lives in the astral. Flowing pain, flowing pleasure, is the substance that forms in Devachan what is air here. Imagine that the clairvoyant sees a battle from Devachan. When you look at it physically, you see fighters, cannons, and so on, but the clairvoyant sees more than the physical human forms and physical instruments; he sees how the passions of the combatants confront each other. You would see what lives in the souls: how passion collides with passion. Like a terrible thunderstorm raging in the high mountains, this is how such a battle appears to the clairvoyant from Devachan. But the human being also perceives loving feelings there: these permeate the Devachan air like a wonderful sound. So we have compared the three realms of Devachan to those of our earth: solid, liquid, and air.
Just as warmth pervades the three lower realms here, so a communal element pervades the three realms of Devachan. And what pervades everything there is the substance of our thoughts, which live there as forms and beings. What humans experience here as thoughts are only shadows of the real thoughts. Imagine a canvas stretched out with living beings and figures behind it, but on the canvas you can only see their images. This is exactly how the thoughts that humans know in the physical world relate to what thoughts are in the spiritual realm. There they are beings with whom one can interact, who permeate the entire space of Devachan like states of heat. This is the world into which human beings enter. Human beings perceive this very clearly in this life after death when they enter the Devachan.
We should also mention that as human beings in Kamaloka become detached from physical connections, their consciousness also becomes clearer. After the sharp, clear picture of the overview of his life, a darkening of his consciousness sets in during the afterlife, the stronger the desire for the physical becomes. But the more the human being weans himself of his attachment to the physical, the more the darkened consciousness brightens. And in Devachan, the person consciously experiences, not in a dreamlike state, the events and all the experiences of Devachan. We will talk more about how the organs for this are formed.
The person knows exactly when they enter the spiritual world. The first impression of Devachan is that they see the physical body of their previous life in its form outside of their ego. This body is incorporated into the continental area of the spiritual world; it belongs to the mainland of Devachan. In physical life, you say, “I will do that.” You state that you live in your physical body and therefore say “I” to it; this is not the case in Devachan. There you are outside the physical body, but you become conscious of it in its form the moment you enter Devachan, and then you say to it: That is you! You no longer say “I” to your physical body. This is a striking, very significant event for the soul, in which it becomes clear to it: I am no longer in the physical world, but in the spiritual world. That is why you no longer address your physical body with “I,” but say, “That is you!” The saying from Vedanta philosophy, “Tat twam asi — that is you,” also goes back to this experience. Everything that is said in Eastern philosophy is a fact of the spiritual world. So when Vedanta teaches the student to meditate on “That is you,” it means nothing other than that he should already awaken within himself in this life those ideas that will then dawn on him when he enters Devachan. True meditation formulas are nothing more than photographs of facts of the spiritual world. And “Tat twam asi” is the boundary stone, the mark that indicates that one is entering the spiritual world. Furthermore, one gradually learns to view objectively that which is connected with one's own physical life, without sympathy or antipathy, like pictures that one looks at.
The experiences of the soul in relation to the flowing life of Devachan are something else again. In the physical world, life is distributed among many individual beings. In Devachan, however, life appears as a whole. One encounters the one, all-encompassing life, and the sensation one has of it is immensely powerful, because in this one life the experiences are not contained as something abstract. Just think how everything that the great founders of religion have put into life is lived by human beings in their astral and etheric bodies: all of this is experienced again as something uplifting in Devachan. What flowed out through the great founders and flowed in during the individual incarnations—and it is precisely the most valuable experiences that are placed in the etheric body—you encounter in the spiritual realm as an experience. Everything that has flowed into physical life is before you in great, powerful images. You experience what unites human beings. What harmonizes you, you experience in Devachan; what separates us here, what is foreign to us, we bring into harmony there. And what we are so strongly involved in here, pleasure and suffering, appear to us there like wind and weather. We experience around us in images what we used to experience within ourselves: it is now the circle of air around us. It is important that we experience there, in connection with the whole, what we personally feel in physical life. We do not feel joy other than in connection with all pleasure, nor pain other than in connection with all suffering. In this way, our pleasure and suffering reveal themselves in their full significance for the whole. We gain this experience of pleasure and suffering in the life after death. With our thoughts we live there as with things.
And now we ask: What effect does this have on the essence of the human being when he lives thus in everything in Devachan? Let us clarify this by means of a comparison. How does the human being see in the physical world? Through light entering him and forming the organ for it. Goethe says, not without reason, that the eye is formed by light for light. The truth of this fact can be seen from the fact that when animals migrate to dark caves, their eyes atrophy and other organs, such as the organs of touch, which are necessary there, develop more finely. The organ of perception is formed by the external element. If there were no sun, there would be no eye; light gave birth to the eye. Our organism is a result of the elements surrounding it; everything we have physically is formed from the environment around us. And in the same way, in Devachan, the spiritual organs are formed in humans from the spiritual environment. And in Devachan, humans continually absorb something of the life of their surroundings and build up a kind of spiritual organism from the elements of their environment. There they feel themselves continually becoming, their spiritual organism developing limb by limb. And now consider that all perception of productivity is experienced as a feeling of bliss and is also connected with such a feeling in physical life! Think of the artist, the inventor. This growth and becoming, piece by piece, is what human beings experience as a feeling of bliss as they wander through Devachan. And so they form the spiritual archetype of a human being there. He has already formed such an archetype many times, each time he has lingered in Devachan after death, but each time something new is incorporated into it, something that the human being has taken with him into Devachan as the fruit of his last life, as an extract in his etheric body.
When man first entered Devachan, he had already built up a spiritual archetype of man, and this then condensed into the physical human being. Now, having passed through many incarnations, he takes with him each time the extract of his past life, and from this he then forms the archetype of a new human being. This work takes a long time; we will only mention it in general terms today. It is therefore not pointless for human beings to appear on Earth in successive incarnations and to pass through Devachan again and again. Each time, the Earth presents a different face to them, and new things are offered to them in the outer culture and in relation to all kinds of circumstances. The soul does not appear on the physical plane until it can learn something new here. I will give you the time that lies between reincarnations in numbers; this is how long it takes for the human being to build up his new archetype. Once it is built up, this archetype always has the impulse to reappear on earth, this archetype, which is actually the human being himself. It is not easy to describe this impulse. Take an example. Someone has a thought, and now they also have the urge to express it: the thought has taken physical form from the impulse. Today, the power to shape the archetype created in Devachan does not yet lie in the will of the human being. In this life cycle, humans cannot yet guide their own reincarnations; they need higher spiritual beings to guide them to the parents who are capable of providing the appropriate physical body for the archetype. They guide them to the people and race that best suit them for this archetype. When the time of reincarnation has come, the human being first surrounds himself with astral substance according to what he has developed as his archetype in Devachan, and this forms as if by itself: it shoots up, so to speak. Now the guidance by higher beings to the parents begins. And since the physical body provided by the parents can only be found to correspond approximately to the astral body and the ego, these beings incorporate the etheric body between them and the human being, through which the greatest possible adaptation between the earthly and the spiritual world takes place. Tomorrow we will talk about this incorporation of the etheric body and physical birth. But we can already see this today: at birth, when reappearing on earth, the human being retraces the reverse path taken after death. First, the astral body attaches itself, then the etheric body, and finally the physical body. At death, the physical body is shed first, then the etheric body, and finally the astral body.
And when the human being receives the etheric body, something similar happens to him as when he passes through the gate of death. There he had a review of his past life, now he has a preview, a prophetic one, of the life he is about to enter. This is very significant for him. It happens at the moment when the etheric body is incorporated. The moment then disappears from their memory. It is not details that they see, but rather a picture of life's possibilities. This preview can only be disastrous for them insofar as it causes them to experience a so-called shock, meaning that they resist entering physical life. During normal entry, the etheric body and the physical body coincide; in cases such as shock, they do not. The etheric body does not then enter the physical body completely, but remains protruding, especially at the head, and is therefore unable to develop the organs of the intellect properly. Some cases of idiocy originate from this, but by no means all; this should be emphasized.
Thus, physical life becomes understandable to us through the spiritual life that lies behind it. And this insight will help us to put our knowledge at the service of a helpful life.