The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. The Land of Spirits

[ 1 ] We are at a crucial point in the development of the spiritual human being between death and a new birth, at which the human being passes from the so-called realm of the soul into the realm of the spirit. As we heard last time, at this point the human being has become free from everything that binds them, everything that keeps them attached to physical-material existence. All the desires, cravings, and passions that incline toward physical, material existence have fallen away from the spiritual human being. They no longer hinder him in his further development, and this spiritual human being then passes through that long period which, using a German expression, could be called the “spirit realm,” and which is usually referred to in theosophical literature as Devachan. Deva means a divine being, a being that has its reality only in this realm of existence; one that does not have a physical body, but a body consisting solely of the substances of this spirit realm. Man has, as it were, been a companion of these beings in a higher region.

[ 2 ] We must not—and I cannot emphasize this enough—imagine that this Devachan is to be found somewhere else in space. This spirit realm is all around us; it fills our world much as the air fills the physical world everywhere. It simply cannot be perceived by those people who are capable of using only their physical senses. When the physical senses are closed and the spiritual eye is opened, the world around us shines with a new radiance. It takes on new qualities. One then sees things that one did not see before. Just as what I described eight days ago as the astral, or soul world, exists only for the corresponding soul organs, so does the spirit world exist for the spiritual eye.

[ 3 ] It is difficult to form a picture of this realm of reality. You can imagine how difficult this is, for our language is not designed for these higher realms of existence. Our words are adequate only for what exists in everyday life. Every word is assigned to a concrete object. Yet we must make use of these words if we wish to describe the entirely different worlds to which we ascend. Therefore, I can only speak in terms of comparison, using a more symbolic language to describe this to you. This realm is ever present around us, and it lies before the open eye of the seer. It shines around him, just as it shines upon a human being when not only the physical body but also all those astral qualities—such as desires, instincts, and passions—that chain him to physical existence have melted away from him, just as snow melts from a boulder when the sun shines upon it.

[ 4 ] The only thing a human being knows of this spiritual realm during his physical existence is his thought. But thought is only a faint reflection, a shadow of this spiritual realm. Even people who are attached to the physical world usually say that thought is not reality. One also hears people say that something is “just a thought.” But for those who know how to immerse themselves in the world of thoughts, who understand the significance of the life of thought, who know how to live in the life of thought just as ordinary people live in our world—for them, the life of thought takes on a completely different meaning. The spirit world can communicate with human beings in no other way than through thought. Thought life corresponds to this higher spiritual reality. And those who are able to look into this spiritual reality learn to distinguish within it. For them, the realms of this higher reality are distinct, just as here on our Earth the various parts of it are distinct to the physical eye. What I am saying is figurative, but it corresponds to the facts. Just as we have the solid earth’s crust on our Earth, consisting of rocks, stone, and what we call the solid land, so too does a very specific realm in the spirit world correspond to this. And then, what we call the oceans, the waters of the Earth, corresponds to another specific realm; and the Earth’s atmosphere corresponds to a kind of atmosphere in Devachan. But these three realms of Devachan stand in a very specific relationship to the experiences on our Earth. Everything you can experience in the physical world—the physical objects around you, everything you can see with your eyes and perceive with your senses—forms, so to speak, the solid crust, the mainland of Devachan. There you see, in spiritual form and as archetypes, everything you perceive here with your physical eyes.

[ 5 ] But this archetypal realm appears quite differently. When you look at a physical human being, a certain portion of space is filled by their physical form. You see nothing else of the person around them. For the seer, however, the so-called aura is superimposed, as we described it last time. In the spirit realm or in Devachan, it is quite different. What one sees there relates to the physical image of the human being in the same way that the image on the photographic plate relates to the reality captured by the photographic plate. Everything that is filled with physical matter is, in the spirit realm, a hollow space, so to speak, left vacant. And when the human being descends again into the physical world, the hollow space fills up once more with physical matter. And where there is nothing in the physical world, there is radiant existence, radiant organization. That is why it shines through in many things, which the early Christian initiates then called the higher light of the Aeons. This is what organizes the human being and connects him to the spiritual world. Thus, in the spiritual realm, the human being is not present where he is present in the physical world. He is present precisely outside of himself, outside the physical space he fills.

[ 6 ] When the seer enters the spiritual world, he sees everything that appears empty to the physical eye—the space surrounding objects—filled with a higher reality. This space is then filled with a brilliant and radiant light. This light is entirely different from the light that constitutes the soul aura. After all, the human being is not merely this soul aura. This aura, in turn, is permeated by a higher aura. While the soul aura glows with a faint, dim light, this higher spiritual aura—which remains visible even after the human physical body has perished—shines with a radiant light, not merely a glimmer; it is therefore not merely something that glows, but something that blazes. It also has a very special characteristic that distinguishes it from the astral aura. This is that one can see through the spiritual aura, whereas one cannot see through the astral aura. Every spiritual realm is completely transparent to that which is in the spirit world.

[ 7 ] This is the lowest part of this spirit realm that I have just described. When the seer ascends to even higher regions, he experiences what is called the all-one life. This all-one life flows through all forms; it is the fluid element of the spirit realm. Just as the sea or a river appears to us with its distinctive colors when we look at a river or the ocean, so does the all-one life appear to us as the ocean or river of the spirit realm; it shines in colors that can only be compared to the colors of fresh peach blossoms. In this all-one life, you will not find such irregular formations in rivers and oceans as here on Earth, but rather very regularly formed ones, so that the comparison would be much better with the heart and its blood vessels.

[ 8 ] The third thing that can be experienced is what I would like to call the “air circle” of this land. This air circle, however, is composed of what we here on Earth might call “sensations.” It is, so to speak, the air-like world of sensation that completely permeates the space of the spirit realm—what is perceived here—that is, the air circle; it appears in such a way that one is able to perceive the sole sensation of the entire Earth. But this sensation approaches us from the outside, like the wind or the storm, like lightning and thunder in the physical atmosphere. There is no longer our own feeling and sensation. There, the human being has shed these personal feelings. What all others feel approaches him there. He feels at one with what others feel. That which is suffering and pain flows through this spiritual world like thunder and lightning. You can well imagine that insight into this world gives a completely different understanding of what reality actually is. Anyone who has once looked into this surging sea of human and animal suffering and human and animal joy, who has seen what it actually means to suffer and to rejoice, what it means for passions to rage and rage, has a different conception of the world’s war and peace, a completely different conception of the “struggle for existence.” Of this, the human being also experiences something between death and a new birth.

[ 9 ] And then there is an even higher realm. These realms should not be imagined as places one moves from one to another. They are all within one another; they completely interpenetrate one another. A fourth realm has only a very distant connection to our Earth. While in the three realms I have mentioned we can perceive qualities that relate to our Earth, those of the fourth realm have only a distant connection to what we perceive on Earth. Here we already come into contact with higher beings, with beings who may never have incarnated on this Earth. Here one encounters those forces that already extend beyond the physical. That which a human being accomplishes from the purely ideal, from pure thought, from a purely benevolent disposition, from love—that which a human being accomplishes beyond the realm of the physical—stems from forces that become visible in this realm. These realms of Devachan constantly surround the human being, constantly influence the human being. The one who possesses intuition and inventiveness creates things that are not mere reflections of our Earth; he thus creates something that is carried into our Earth from a higher realm. This originates from this fourth realm.

[ 10 ] One need not believe that what we are not aware of does not exist in this sphere. We must not believe that if an individual does not perceive these things, they do not exist. Those who are born with a special genius bring it with them from their sojourn in this region of Devachan.

[ 11 ] We have thus reached the boundary which, as we have seen, is only remotely connected to our earthly life, but which contains that which lends our earth a higher radiance and is destined to be carried directly down into sensory existence—an existence that is itself still dependent on sensory existence. Human beings cannot create a work of art or construct a machine unless they orient themselves toward physical reality. In the case of a work of art, they must study the material.

[ 12 ] The other three regions of Devachan, which lie even higher, are regions that have an even more distant connection to the Earth—regions that, so to speak, shine over from a completely different world. And when a human being ascends into this region—either as a seer or in the time between death and a new birth—they draw from this region everything that might be called the heavenly spark that the human being brings into this world. It is that which appears to him as the Divine, as the higher Spiritual, as the truly Idealistic, which penetrates from the higher world and can enter the physical world only through him as higher morality, higher religiosity, and finer spiritual science. All wisdom, all the higher splendor of existence that man, as it were, as a messenger of God, brings into this physical world, he draws from these three higher realms of Devachan.

[ 13 ] Let me emphasize once again that what I have described are states of consciousness, so that a person can even remain in the same place in their contemplation while the various regions of Devachan light up around them and appear to them as a reality far richer than the reality that the physical eye can see, the physical ear can hear, or the physical hand can touch. I would like to use the comparison again and again with a person who cannot be aware of their physical eyes and ears. I already referred last time to the interesting book containing the biography of the blind and deaf-mute American Helen Keller. There we gain a glimpse into a spiritual life that is of a completely different nature. Just imagine how the world would appear to you if you had no ears and no eyes. Such were Helen Keller’s abilities. Yet today she has completed a university education and possesses a level of education equal to that of someone who has graduated from university. We see here how Helen Keller has created a wealth for herself even within the physical world—a wealth that, in essence, has a completely different character and is of a completely different nature than what the physical human being otherwise possesses. She herself says: “People who believe that all our sensory impressions come to us through the eye and the ear have been surprised that I notice a difference between the streets of the city and the paths in the countryside. They forget that my entire body reacts to the surroundings. The din of the city whips up my entire nervous system. The discordant, turbulent noise with its shrill impressions, the simple clatter of machines, is all the more torturous for the nerves because my attention is not distracted by colorfully changing images, as it is with other people.” Even for this peculiarly organized nature, the world around her is quite different. And it is even more different now, when at the moment of death—the seer can describe this because, through his mystical contemplation, he is able, in a certain sense, to pass through the gate of death—the physical eye is no longer the mediator, when impressions from the outside no longer reach us through the physical ear.

[ 14 ] Imagine you are armed with a glass that is tinted red and makes everything appear in a reddish hue. This gives the world a quality that it immediately loses when you remove the red glass. Just as you remove the red glass, so too do you relinquish everything that your eyes and ears perceive from the environment at the moment of death. And what the human being, as it were, perceived of the spiritual world in the surroundings through the veil or tinted lens with which his eyes and ears were veiled, now appears to him—shining forth, if I may borrow a phrase from Goethe—from a rich, diverse, manifold world. What flares up in the astral world, I described last time. Now, when the human being has shed the desires, cravings, and passions that caused him to spend a time in the astral world, he enters into new states. Then the veil falls from his astral eyes, and he enters the world which, just as our physical world is illuminated by the sun, is permeated by what the Christian mystics have called the light of the Aeons—that light which can also shine forth from within the human being when he has opened his spiritual eye. This light permeates the entire spiritual world. Over periods of time that may be longer or shorter, the human being passes through the states between death and a new birth that I have described to you. The human being truly comes to know the realms of the spirit world, comes to know what it means when physical matter disappears. Where physical matter once was, there are now voids. There is nothing there. Entirely different realms of existence now come into view.

[ 15 ] In Indian Vedanta philosophy, there is a particular mantra that mystics repeat to themselves over and over again. This mantra is practiced everywhere in the relevant languages, and it goes: “That is you.” — When the mystic repeats this to himself over and over again, he means that a human being is truly not merely what is physically enclosed within his skin. A human being could not exist as an isolated entity in the universe; he is connected to forces and levels of existence that lie outside his physical body, so that wherever he looks, there is a reality to which he belongs. And just as he himself is a part of this reality, so is every other human being a part of this reality. There, the human being experiences that, at the core, he is nothing other than a leaf on a great tree. And this tree signifies humanity. Just as a single leaf withers when it falls from the tree, so the individual human being would perish if he were to separate himself from the tree of humanity. But of course he cannot do that! The physical human being simply does not know this; on this level, however, it becomes a reality for him. If a person comes into the world with a mindset that is not merely materialistic, that does not cling solely to sensory-physical existence, then he will come into contact with the spiritual world. And the more he rises to an idealistic outlook, the more he is able to sense something higher, the more he will be able to live out his life in this world of the spirit. In this world, the human being is bound up in manifold physical relationships: here the human being is bound up in family, tribe, race; there he has his friends. All of these are relationships in the physical world. He experiences these relationships anew in the spirit realm. There, in the spirit realm, the nature of friendship becomes fully clear to him. There, the sense of belonging, the feeling of attachment to his homeland, becomes clear to him to a greater degree. There, the significance of these relationships in the physical world is fully realized. He now lives within the world of archetypes. The more he has focused his attention here on one of these connections, the more he has to live out in the realm of the spirit world, while here in the physical body he is confined by physical reality. Just as a plant, when planted in a crevice in the rock, cannot unfold in all directions, so it is with the human spirit.

[ 16 ] Here, within the physical body, these qualities are restricted. Only a small part of what a person possesses in terms of love for friends, family, country, and so on comes to the surface. But if a person can unfold like a plant in an open field, then—once no longer confined within the physical body—his essence will also be able to live freely and return with increased strength. Whoever has lived out a sense of family in the higher sense will experience it here in an intense way and will then re-enter life with a very special sense of family.

[ 17 ] In this realm, human beings experience what I have described as the “one life.” They experience the fluid element in the spirit world. There, when we as seers gain insight, we see how slowly the one who has already developed a sense on this earth for the “all-one life”—which weaves and flows through all beings—begins to brighten. That is to say, to develop religious piety. The devout person lifts their sense to the “all-one life” that flows through everything. The human being freely lives out this religious, devout sense in this second region of Devachan. Strengthened and invigorated, this sense finds expression at the time of the new birth. Here we see the human being rising above the barriers set for them in this incarnation in physical life. We see how the Hindu and the Christian, each in their own way, experience the “all-one life” in Devachan, once the barriers have fallen and a greater unity has been established in this realm.

[ 18 ] The third realm is where we become aware of the archetypes of suffering and pleasure, joy and pain; where this element surrounds us, just as the physical earth is surrounded by the atmosphere. When a person becomes attuned to this realm, they learn to develop a sense of selfless devotion to all that suffers in the world, to all that can rejoice in the world. Sensual pleasure and sensual pain no longer weigh them down. They no longer perceive a difference between their own pain and the pain of others, but rather they know what pleasure and pain are in and of themselves. In this way, we learn to recognize in his reality what comes to us as suffering and pain. Here we come to know the great philanthropists; all those who can appear as the geniuses of philanthropy, the geniuses of charity, the great creators of philanthropic networks of compassion and goodwill, of human solidarity in the world, are included in this third realm and acquire their abilities there.

[ 19 ] In the fourth realm, human beings take in that which they bring to fruition through their intuition, inventions, and discoveries, making use of earthly powers and abilities as well as the properties of earthly things. Here are those who, as artists, great inventors, or in other ways through flashes of genius, a comprehensive view of the world, and profound wisdom, serve their fellow human beings in the new life. Depending on whether a person has already developed these or those qualities in this life, the work of the consciousness in Devachan naturally takes longer. It is a state of supreme bliss. Whatever limited and hindered him on Earth has fallen away from him. He now freely unfolds his abilities. All obstacles have been removed. This possibility of spreading his wings in all directions, so that his heightened powers may then flow back into the physical embodiment and in this way enable him to act all the more effectively and energetically on Earth; this possibility is felt by the human being, and it appears to him as a state of supreme bliss. This bliss has been described by the religions of all times as heavenly bliss. Therefore, Devachan also appears in various religions as the so-called Kingdom of Heaven.

[ 20 ] The time spent in Devachan is not the same for everyone. The uneducated savage, who has experienced little of this world and has made little use of his mind and senses, will have only a brief stay in Devachan. Devachan is essentially there to allow the human being to work through what they have learned in the physical world, to freely unfold it, and to transform it into something new. The human being who stands on a higher level of existence, who has gathered rich experiences, will have much to process and will therefore have a long stay in Devachan. Only later, when they can look into these states, will the stays become shorter again, to the point where the being can proceed to a new incarnation immediately after death, because the person has already lived out what needs to be lived out in Devachan.

[ 21 ] There are even higher stages beyond Devachan, which a person will enter once they have already attained a higher level of spiritual development. We must imagine—and this is also figurative—that between death and a new birth, every human being traverses that region of the spirit realm which lies beyond the context of all earthly matters, and that Devachan extends into far higher realms of existence, from which the human being draws the divine powers that they bring into this world as a messenger of the gods. The divine messengers originate from this realm. Even the uneducated person, however quickly they may pass through it—because they have little to seek there, because they have little to unfold there—must spend at least a short time between death and a new birth in this land of Devachan, which is freest from all earthly bonds. There, all earthly heaviness has fallen from him. There he partakes of the breeze that blows toward him from the divine world, which permeates him between death and a new birth. Those who have attained a higher plane of existence linger here longer. Here they gain the ability to descend once more to Earth with special wisdom and special spiritual powers, in order to help their fellow human beings as higher-order individuals.

[ 22 ] The leaders of humanity remain in this realm for a long time. Even those who have already departed from the world can be found here—beings whom theosophical literature calls Masters, those beings whose development has far surpassed what still clings to modern humans. The longer a person can enjoy the company of these beings between death and a new birth, the purer, nobler, and more moral they become upon returning to the earthly stage. And the more they have ensured on this earth that they have become pure, noble, and idealistic, the longer they can partake of the atmosphere that prevails in these regions of Devachan.

[ 23 ] This is the path that the human being must traverse on its pilgrimage: between death and a new birth. These are, therefore, states of consciousness, not different places. When a person journeys through these realms, they are not moving from one place to another. Rather, one could say that they fade away, but only in the same way that the external physical world fades away when you close your eyes and cover your ears. But just as it becomes dark and silent around you in that case, so in this case it becomes light and clear and bright around you, and a new world dawns.

[ 24 ] What can be said about the time a person must spend in this Devachan can, of course, only be determined by experience. Only those who have some kind of experience in this realm can speak about it—those who can recall their own past incarnations or who, as seers, can consciously gain insight into the luminous world of the spirit.

[ 25 ] The length of time a person spends in Devachan varies greatly depending on their stage of development. However, it is possible to estimate the time a person spends in the heavenly world. It can be calculated by multiplying the person’s earthly lifespan—that is, the time between birth and death—by a number between twenty and forty. The duration depends on the level of development the person has attained, but also on the length of their physical life. If a child dies shortly after birth, you need only multiply the duration of life by twenty to forty, and you will obtain the duration of their stay in Devachan. Those who have lived a long life have long and significant stages to undergo in Devachan and also have much to experience of what is called in mysticism the blissful sensations of Devachan. This life in Devachan differs quite fundamentally from anything that the physical eyes—or indeed the physical senses in general—can even imagine.

[ 26 ] But however approximate the concepts and words I have used to describe this realm may have been, I have nevertheless tried to describe it as faithfully and as accurately as possible. These realms themselves do not—not in their substance, not in their very essence—belong to the deepest nature of the human being. This deepest nature of the human being—what Giordano Bruno calls the monad, the highest spiritual-living force within the human being—originates from even higher worlds. We will speak a little about these even higher worlds in the next lesson, which will deal with the basic concepts of theosophy. Then we will also speak about the way in which human faculties must develop in order to gain a glimpse into these higher worlds. The mystic not only describes what he sees there, but he is also able to describe how a person can come to this, how they can develop their faculties to take a closer look into these worlds. Today, in conclusion, I would like to make just a few more remarks.

[ 27 ] It is common for those who first hear about the described realm of Devachan to say that this realm is an illusion, something illusory; because it resembles its shadow image—thought in physical life—it must also have a less real existence than our physical world. But that is not the case. “For those who have gained insight into this higher world, it has become clear that there are far stronger, far higher realities there than in our physical reality. One only comes to know physical existence in its true meaning when one is able to see it in the light of these higher worlds. Just as a piece of steel may lie before you without your suspecting that it harbors electrical or magnetic forces, so too may an object of the physical world extend before you without your suspecting that it contains a much higher being. That is why those who have known something of the world of color and sound describe it in the most vivid colors and depict the sounds that reach their spiritual ear in the most wondrous language. The ancient Pythagoreans spoke of the music of the spheres. No one but those who have insight into this world of Devachan knows what the music of the spheres is. Many believe it to be something pictorial, something symbolic. No, it is something of the highest reality. From the spiritual world, the rhythmic melodies of the cosmic forces of the universe resound toward us. The cosmic forces are rhythmically structured, and we hear that rhythm when we are able to use the “Devachanic ear,” and that indescribable bliss sets in, which the mystic is able to perceive. When everything in this world fades away, when everything that resounds through the senses withdraws from his attention, then he describes what the impression of Devachan is.

[ 28 ] This is what a person must go through between death and a new birth. There, they are a seed for the new rebirth. They are the mustard seed that survives through the Devachan period into a new incarnation. The German mystic Angelus Silesius, who spoke so many beautiful, poignant words in his *Cherubimic Wanderer*, also described in this wonderful mystical book, in a short, clear, and meaningful verse, the feeling and the whole being of how the spirit survives death to a new birth as a tiny seed preparing itself for a new existence, in order to then unfold new and higher powers. What every mystic knows—that the heart, radiating spiritual light, is capable of shining—is expressed by Angelus Silesius in these words:

My spirit is like a mustard seed;
His sun shines through it,
And so it grows, like God,
with joy-filled delight.