The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Beings of the Astral World

[ 1 ] An old writer, Olympiodoros, tells occasionally in a discussion of a work of Plato about the Hades journey of Odysseus. We know that in a great Homeric epic, the "Odyssey", we are told that Odysseus also descended into the underworld. Whoever understands the language of the Greek initiates who wrote such things, will know that the descent into the underworld always means the initiation into the mysteries, the crossing of the gate of death already during life. In our particular case it also means getting to know the astral world. So this descent of Odysseus into the underworld means nothing else than that Odysseus gets to know the world of the astral. Among other things, we are told that Odysseus saw three deceased persons in the underworld: Tityos, Sisyphus and Tantalus. He saw the first, Tityos, lying on the ground with two vultures eating at his liver. The Tantalos he saw standing by a lake suffering burning thirst; when he bent down to drink, the water dried up so that he could not reach it. He also suffered from hunger. Above him was a tree with apples; but when he tried to reach it, it slipped away. These are pictures to show us what forms man's desires take in the astral world after death, how man is attached to desires and how they are acted out. The first, Tityos, is lying on the earth and an evil force, a vulture, is gnawing at his liver. This indicates that he has been attached to the lower, sensual life and that this lower, sensual life cannot bring satisfaction in the long run. Sisyphus, the greedy one, is tormented by the fact that he can never satisfy his desires, which always arise anew. Tantalos hangs on the images of a fantastic imagination and must savor the eternally unsatisfactory of such an imagination.

[ 2 ] There are given images for our astral life. To whom the eye is opened for the astral world, he can speak only in such pictures. The seer knows how little the words of our daily life are sufficient to describe what he sees in the astral world. Our language can only be a very meager means of expression to put into words what is to be told about. That is why I will hardly be able to give you anything else today than pictures, as a pictorial idea of the beings which become known to the one whose vision is opened. These are beings that populate our space, even if we do not perceive them in physical life. The astral world is full of colors, which the seer sees like an external reality. He who directs his gaze only to the outer appearance of man and sees only in it the whole essence of man, is like one who would say that a man has disappeared when he has entered the door of a house and is now no longer visible. We know that he still exists and is only covered by the wall of the house. And just as the wall of the house covers him, so the physicality of man covers what we are now talking about; it covers it because it is invisible to the ordinary senses. So also beings that have no physical corporeality are present in the astral space, although they do not become visible to the physical eye. And you all are present in the astral space as well as in the physical space.

[ 3 ] The first thing that man comes to know when he enters the astral space, that is, what he sees when the astral eye is opened to him, is: he finds himself enveloped in the astral body. It is this astral body in which all the desires, passions, sensations and so on are surging. There we see clearly what otherwise lies closed in human nature. Everything hidden becomes visible when we look at this human aura. From it flows out in wave-like movements with a certain luminous power what I have called the astral, man's entire sentient nature.

[ 4 ] I would like to mention some details which will show you how some things which we otherwise find incomprehensible become immediately understandable. One can often see that certain people, when they stand at an abyss, show an insurmountable eagerness to plunge into it, although they resist it with all their strength. Or one can see what thoughts run through a man's soul when he has a knife in his hand. All these things have their deep foundation in the human astral body. They are based on the fact that in the astral we have a completely different being than we encounter in the human exterior. But they are subject to fate, to karma. Whoever has certain desires in life, has gone through experiences in a previous life, which can be deeply pushed into the background by the present mind. However, they are dormant in the astral body. Suppose someone has participated in a cruel war in a previous life; there you will see in his aura how, through his karma, all these cruelties have been built into his astral body, with which he now has to fight hard battles in the present physical life. Just as threads are spun between a previous life and the present, so threads are spun from the present to later lives. All this the seer sees. He sees how a person's karma is formed, and he also sees, for example, how a person out of prudence tries to suppress an inclination or how he represses feelings. The seer sees down to the bottom of the soul. Those who have the gift of seeing do not consider it a desirable gift that brings joy in all cases, mainly when people have feelings that they had better not have. And for the beginner, the chela, it is often fatal, because easily he is attracted by all that he now sees.

[ 5 ] Then we find in the astral space the essence of man's waking and sleeping. What does it mean: waking and sleeping? This is something that the ordinary man accepts without having a precise and definite concept of it. What lives in us is something that man does not immediately recognize in our present epoch. The higher self rests in man. He thinks and acts out of the higher self. But man of the fifth root race [the present epoch] does not see this higher self. Everything that consciousness offers us is only a reflection of the higher self. Man sees himself only as a reflection, his brain is the mirror. What the brain throws back as a mirror image is not the real human being; this slumbers deep within us and cannot be seen directly. It is the physical body alone that can tire; it ceases its activity as a mirror during sleep. The higher self, whose reflection is the outer man, does not tire, it only withdraws more or less from the physical. While the body sleeps, freed from the outer physicality, it leaves the outer man and can perform its activity in the astral space. The seer sees this activity in the astral space.

[ 6 ] The man of the present stage of development leaves his body in sleep. He wanders, sometimes at great distances from his physical body, in the astral world and there meets other beings of the astral world and exchanges with their thoughts. But when man wakes up, he does not remember this. This has to do with his present stage of development. However, the development can become one higher and higher. The student who learns under the guidance of a so-called master can gradually make his consciousness a continuous one, an ongoing one. Then he will be able to bring the experiences of the night to his consciousness as a memory in his waking state. When the disciple, the chela, has reached a continuous consciousness, then he remembers what he received in the astral world. These cognitions of the chela are not learned in the physical world, but they are experienced in the astral world and brought into his physical life. This is what Plato means when he speaks of recollection of higher states of soul.

[ 7 ] The consciousness, which in the average man continually breaks off, the chela is able to make into a permanent one, when he has attained the gift of having his reflection arise, produce, not merely in the physical body, but in the higher elements of human nature. Out of the solid, physical body arises for the average man the mirror image of his self; one can also say: he becomes conscious of himself. He who has reached the higher stage becomes conscious of his self not merely in the physical, but in the astral; it shines out to him from the astral. Thus, on the astral plane, you will meet above all the chelas, the disciples, who are able to bring their consciousness up into the astral region. To bring up the consciousness into the astral region is that which also forms the content of the theosophical teaching and the content of the instruction which a highly evolved master gives to his disciples. This intercourse between master and chela takes place in the astral space. A translation of the teaching in the astral into physical words, into physical sentences is what theosophy is able to offer.

[ 8 ] Thus, we have already met two kinds of entities that we meet in the astral space: Masters and disciples. In addition, there are those people who are also psychically developed but have not had regular lessons, the somnambulists, who have an ambiguous consciousness. They know that there are people for whom it is possible, without having received instruction from a master, to make very special perceptions at certain times, perceptions that are independent of their senses. But only for the one who enters the astral region through theosophical training, there is no error. The theosophist knows how to distinguish what comes from pathological states and what are deeper truths. If we follow the somnambulist in the awake and in the trance state, we see that the soul can step out of the body and become seeing. But we would not believe a word of the somnambulist if we did not have evidence that this undisciplined seeing can coincide with the seeing of the seer. The student who has developed continuous consciousness, who sees astral things as he sees tables and chairs, knows also that the somnambulists in their special states sometimes behold true things. They have the ability to temporarily lift their self out of corporeality and thereby see what cannot be seen with the ordinary senses. These temporarily body-liberated souls are the third that you can meet as inhabitants of the astral space. The fourth thing we encounter in the astral world is something not very pleasant, it is the destroyers and devastators in the astral.

[ 9 ] I have often mentioned that our physical world was preceded by another, the fruits of which we enjoy. We can call our earth the cosmos of love, where man is trained in love until he will have reached the highest level in our round. When we survey this development and direct our gaze to what will be there in the future, we know that the earth is a school of love development. But we must also look at what has already existed in an earlier state. Our world body was born out of another one. The earth was preceded by another world body, the old moon, on which that was prepared which we need to go through our earthly course. From what man has gone through, his physical organs have been formed. On the former planetary state, the cosmos of wisdom, he has built up the human feeling, the feeling organs. The body of sensation was built up then.

[ 10 ] At that time, when we humans began our development, the ability of sensation was woven into our physical organism. Consider what wisdom is added to the chemical constitution of the physical body by the weaving in of sensations and feelings. To purify these sensations and feelings, to refine them into moral sensations, into moral feelings - that is the task of our earthly life. Just as we on earth have the task to form moral sensations and feelings, so it was at that time on the cosmos of wisdom, which preceded ours, the highest task of the beings to create a wise structure of the sense organism. The beings had to devote themselves to the formation of sensuality. Through infinite wisdom the functions of the senses have come into being.

[ 11 ] Now consider that in the different successive cosmic states the beings have different tasks. To make these different tasks understandable, think of a piano maker and a piano player. The piano builder must devote himself with love and devotion to the construction of the piano, so he has a different task from the one who is to play on your piano. Both the piano builder and the piano player have their specific task, and both bring about good in their place. But if the builder of the piano also wanted to saw and plane and hammer in the concert hall, he would only have a destructive effect there. Yes, he is no good there, however great he may be as a master of piano construction.

[ 12 ] In the astral world, too, there are beings of this kind who have attained a high degree of skill in the construction of the sensual organism, but who have not discarded this tendency in the transition to another stage of development. They are masters in building up the sensual matter, but they are as little good in our present development as the piano maker in the concert hall. They have a destructive, devastating effect, they work in the wrong place as evil spirits, because they are attached to forces which man needs as "substructure", but they do not lead the development of man further. These beings can have a high development, but they have an inclination that no longer fits into our development, therefore they can become dangerous to the chela, the beginner who is only learning to look in the astral world, because he can be attracted by these beings and thereby go astray.

[ 13 ] There are also other beings in the astral world, such that do not descend into a physical embodiment and come to manifestation only in the astral space. They cannot be perceived by the one who has only the view for the physical-bodily. These beings are noble, and their aspiration is directed only to the goal of human development. They do not have human desires, they are not attached to the earthly, they have worked out that stage of development through which they have become helpers of mankind. They are not epicureans, yet we find them in the astral space, for they are waiting here for their future destiny.

[ 14 ] In order to understand how this happens and what significance it has, we must make clear in a few words what will then be the subject of the sixth lecture: the state in the Kamaloka. When the human being leaves the physical body, the same is given to the earth; also the life force is discarded. Then he enters the astral world, the realm of desires. Man goes through a period in this astral world, then passes into devachan, and then descends again to embodiment. This is the normal [post-mortal] development of man, that he passes through two worlds, the world of the astral and the world of the purely spiritual, in order to become mature again afterwards for the next embodiment. In this next embodiment he then enjoys the fruits of the former life. "God does not allow him to be mocked. For what a man sows, that shall he also reap."

[ 15 ] Consider that the higher-evolved one could have a rich harvest in the spiritual world. But he is free to return to earth after a short time and help those who have fallen behind in their spiritual development. Thus he can renounce the spiritual stay in the Devachan and wait until a master instructs him a new embodiment. We meet these figures among the so-called disembodied ones.

[ 16 ] Visible only to the most highly developed of our time are still higher beings, who rarely stay in the astral world, because they have their home in still higher regions, on still higher levels of the spiritual world. When the chela evolves, he acquires the ability to have consciousness not only in the astral, but to have consciousness also in the still higher world, in the spiritual or devachanic world, which is higher than the astral world. In this higher world the self is mirrored to him. Man experiences himself in the higher spiritual regions as the mirror image he sees in the physical world. The beings, which belong here, are visible only for highly developed ones. Also these beings can renounce what is to be understood as the highest task of our earthly existence, they can renounce the "Nirvana". Such a being can renounce nirvana, it can return to the earthly world, to which it itself did not need to return at all, in order to help people. Such beings are called nirmanakayas. They are able to descend from the spiritual world into the astral and into the physical world, and in order to have a "point of attack" there, they take on an astral body. They do this to help people. These are the Nirmanakayas, which we can meet in the astral world, although rarely. I am speaking here of such entities, which are not visible to physical eyes, but only to those eyes that can receive impressions from the astral space. If the eyes can perceive impressions in the astral world, then they can perceive there Nirmanakayas and also such human beings who are between death and the next embodiment. I will talk about this in the next lecture.

[ 17 ] In the astral world we also meet beings which are incomprehensible especially to the beginner. These are entities which are of the highest inner mobility and assume different forms and shapes and show their connection with the world in a completely different way than the human astral body. The human astral body has a closed form within limits, it has certain contours. The astral body of animals does not have such definite outlines. The astral bodies of animals look quite different. They do not belong to a single being, but for whole groups of animals there are group souls. As it were, the individual physical animals hang on a common trunk, and from these individual animals then a kind of strands lead to the group souls, which move the animals. You can also discover certain animal forms, which cannot be encountered in the physical, in the astral. These astral bodies are nascent human beings who are forming and further developing their astral bodies in order to form a suitable vehicle for those who come down from the spiritual world.

[ 18 ] However, these are not yet all entities of the astral world. We also meet in the astral world entities of a nature difficult to describe, entities whose size we cannot survey, entities of a size as if they extended over our whole planetary system. These entities, which span the whole earth, clearly show that they have something to do with our earthly development, but earthly man can only with difficulty form an idea of them. These entities, which exist in the most different variations, are connected with the whole of our development. They went through a development in the earlier rounds of the earth's development. Three rounds preceded our earth and three rounds will follow. These entities, which were called "Devas" in the oldest and even more spiritual religions, will have reached a higher development when our earth will have reached its goal. They are thought to be human-like, because people cannot form a proper idea of them. However, the people who know something about them will find it indicated how the cosmological development is going on.

[ 19 ] When a "cosmos" begins to develop in the first, second and third round, then it is like a child develops in the first three years of life. It is indicated with it, as it were, the way which it will take in the life. Only then comes that which is the actual task of the cosmos; we call this the "truth" of the cosmos. On our present earth the truth has come to light; the three preceding rounds of the path of development represent the "way". The "truth" is the outer manifestation of this "way" in our present earth development. We will go through the third part of the development, the "life", when we will have penetrated our souls more and more by the truth. We will learn to recognize the truth, but the truth will become our life; then we will no longer need to gain the truth. Now this is still necessary to lead us to a moral and ethical life. But in the future, this truth will permeate us, it will be our life blood. Therefore, the one who is a representative of the truth flowing through the cosmos has taken this triple into his consciousness and has expressed it in the words: "I am the way, the truth and the life.