The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. The World of the Spirit, or Devachan II

[ 1 ] If, dear attendees, the ideas that Theosophy seeks to awaken regarding the actual spiritual world—the so-called Devachan world—are considered highly improbable, it may be replied that there is absolutely nothing new or strange about the Theosophist pointing to this higher world, which exists beyond our sensory realm. Today, in order to delve a little deeper into this Devachan world, I would like to begin my remarks with the words of a German thinker who is well known to all of you, who had a great influence on his time, who understood how to speak of higher worlds not merely in a dreamy manner, but who, through the power and fire of his words, knew how to intervene in the events of his own time: Johann Gottlieb Fichte. We all know what power he drew from the supersensible world, which made his mouth overflow with fiery speech, with which he inspired the youth of his time to participate in the events that were necessary at that time. We are familiar with the “Addresses to the German Nation,” which are an act that does not belong to a dreamlike world, but to immediate reality. When Johann Gottlieb Fichte delivered the introductory lectures on the Science of Knowledge in Berlin—the ripest fruit of his research and reflection—he began before his students with the following sentence:

[ 2 ] “This teaching presupposes an entirely new inner instrument of perception, through which a new world is revealed—one that does not even exist for the ordinary person. This is not to be understood as some kind of exaggeration or rhetorical phrase uttered merely to make great demands, with the quiet hope that less might be granted—but it is to be understood literally, just as it is stated.”

[ 3 ] Fichte introduces this view of the supernatural world—at a time when no one had yet conceived of any theosophical society—by stating that we are dealing with manifestations of a sensory faculty that is absent in the ordinary person. He goes on to explain:

[ 4 ] “Imagine a world of people born blind, who therefore know only those things and their relationships that exist through the sense of touch. Go among them and speak to them of colors and the other conditions that exist only through light for sight. Either you are speaking to them of nothing, ... or, for some reason, they wish to make sense of your teaching: in that case, they can understand it only in terms of what is known to them through touch.”

[ 5 ] Entirely new circumstances would arise, however, if someone born blind were to regain their sight through surgery. The comparison is accurate in terms of higher vision. What Fichte does not express is that every human being actually possesses this tool and merely needs to develop it. All that is required is good will to have the spiritual world revealed to oneself. Anyone who is spiritually blind can be made to see. This must be emphasized so that it becomes clear that the spiritual world is accessible to anyone who wishes to seek it out. The communications made on this subject are intended only to point toward what is to be given later.

[ 6 ] The first step is to begin by obtaining a description of the spiritual world. As theosophists know, one way to gain insight into this world is through description. We are not dealing with a world located in some other part of the cosmos, but with a world that surrounds us everywhere, that is present all around us. At every point in our world, this spiritual world is simultaneously present. When we speak of the spiritual world or of Devachan, it is not a matter of journeying into another world, but rather of opening the senses, of attaining a different state. One might object that such a state is something extraordinary in human beings, that one cannot form a conception of it, and that nothing similar can be found in human life. That is not correct; the rest of life flows quietly on without such a radical upheaval occurring. In fact, however, a transition such as the one that transforms a person who perceives through the senses into a seer takes place for every human being once during their life; it is just that they are unaware of it. Everyone sitting here has already undergone a similar radical revolution of consciousness once in their life. We must simply not count life from the moment of perceiving the external world, but from the very first state of the embryo in the mother’s womb. If we consider the human being from the very first state in the mother’s womb, then such a transformation has taken place for everyone. The state of consciousness of the human embryo, its faculty of perception, is entirely different from that of the later human being. Whoever understands how to observe this knows what is happening to the human being in the first months of existence before birth; they know that the human being’s faculty of perception has already changed radically [at birth]. The embryo possesses a faculty of perception that differs significantly from that of the human being who sees the light of day and possesses waking consciousness. For the human embryo perceives in a manner that we describe as astral perception. The human embryo thus possesses astral perception. Only later does the outer, waking consciousness develop. The human being evolves from astral life to the life of waking consciousness. A similar transformation, something like a new birth, is the opening of the so-called devachanic sense, which is bestowed upon the seer so that he may perceive a new world. The human embryo does indeed perceive the dark currents in the astral world. It perceives the emotions prevailing in its environment. You can see this in the effects of existing conditions on the embryo in the womb. This transformation, this transition of the embryo’s astral consciousness into waking, sensory consciousness, occurs once in every human being.

[ 7 ] It is, therefore, the world in which we live that is revealed to us in this new state of consciousness. What we perceive in this world is at first incomprehensible to us; we are gradually led to perceive this Devachan or spiritual world. Just as with a child, when the senses open up in the first days of life, so it is with perception in Devachan. A world opens up to us that reveals itself in shimmering hues—initially incomprehensible to us—and in a succession of the most varied tones. At first, one does not know how to interpret these colors and tones, which do not belong to our physical world and differ significantly from the colors and tones of our physical world, until one has come to know their meaning and context in this spiritual world. Those who enter this world on their own often do not know how to cope. It sometimes happens that a person’s devachanic sense is suddenly opened; such a person then drifts helplessly about in this world of spiritual existence. Only those who are guided into this world by someone who was previously a seer—and who can methodically introduce them to this spiritual world—learn to understand the meaning of these phenomena. They then learn to structure the sequence of tones and colors and to combine them, just as we combine consonants and vowels into a meaningful word. The tones and colors of the spiritual world appear to us like vowels and consonants, and when we learn what the vowels and what the consonants signify, we gain the ability to learn to spell and read. We learn that a certain kind of being, living here in the spiritual world, communicates through this language of colors and sounds. This is the course of instruction offered to the chela, the disciple, who must enter these higher worlds in order to partake of these higher truths. We then come to understand that it is not a random combination, a haphazard arrangement of the appearance of colors, tones, and forms, but rather that what appears to us is the expression of spiritual beings for whom this is their language. Once we have learned the letters and how to read them, a whole new world opens up to us.

[ 8 ] I have suggested that a world lower than the Devachan world is integrated into our physical world, the one we first become acquainted with—that is, the astral world. To the student, it sometimes merges with the Devachan world. At first, one cannot distinguish precisely what belongs to the astral world and what belongs to the Devachan world. Only gradually does one learn to distinguish between them. Today I would like to use an example to show how one can learn to distinguish between what is astral and what belongs to the Devachan world, the spiritual world, which is our true home.

[ 9 ] The human being, as we encounter him in the physical world, is only a part of the human being. In truth, to the seer, the human being is a being who possesses aspects of his existence quite different from those that appear to the physical eye. I am speaking of what is called the human aura. The human aura is something that is an essential part of the whole human being. In the eighth issue of *Lucifer*, I described part of this human aura in the introduction. It is something that appears to the seer just as the ordinary, physical form appears to the human sensory eye. The physical form is only the middle part of the human being, which rests, so to speak, within an oval-shaped cloud of mist. This cloud of mist, the aura, belongs to the human spirit body just as much as to the physical human being. It is much larger than the physical human being, on average perhaps twice as long and three to four times as wide. What appears to the seer’s eye as a continuation of the physical body consists of light formations and color formations of the most varied kinds. This human aura, this body of light, does not appear as indefinite clouds more or less structured by colors, but rather as a kind of mirror image, as an imprint of what is taking place within the human being. Human passions, instincts, and drives are imprinted in this aura; everything we call inner life is imprinted in it. Contemporary physics should actually find it most understandable that we speak of this, for what does the physicist say? There are vibrating movements of the ether; this vibrating movement transforms what is outside into color. - It is the same with our inner world. Within us are present drives, instincts, and passions that emanate from every human being who stands before us, and just as this appears before us as color, so too do our thoughts, sensations, and feelings appear to us, translated through the spiritual eye as a colored aura.

[ 10 ] Just as the physical world appears to the physical eye as color, so the spiritual world appears to the spiritual eye in a wondrous display of color, only on a higher plane. This reveals an immense fluidity of color. We see human beings surrounded by an oval body of light in which they float, and which does not appear static but rather as if flowing, streaming, radiating, and dissipating at a certain distance from the person. In the Devachan realm, which appears to be in constant motion, the human being possesses a fundamental color within themselves. A person’s enduring mood, as well as enduring character traits, reveal themselves in the aura through a persistent color tone, formed by clouds that flow through it in waves. We see how wave-like currents flow through the aura from bottom to top, darting through it like flashes of lightning, how the aura is permeated by blue-red, brown-red, and beautiful bluish colors. We see the most manifold and varied colors, which change according to different occasions. Go to church and observe the auras of the worshippers. There you will find quite different color tones than in a gathering where political passions or human egoism assert themselves. You will see the moods of the soul, brought about by daily needs, radiating in formations of brick-red and carmine-red color; sometimes they will have a darker shade. And when you go into a church and observe the worshippers, you will see the blue, indigo, violet, and rose-red colors playing. And if you examine the aura of a person who lives in the world of thought, contemplating scientific problems, you will see shining within their aura the thought-forms that reflect thoughts untouched by any passion.

[ 11 ] When we learn to interpret what is revealed in the aura, we see, on the one hand, the moods and temperament that live within a person and what is taking place in their consciousness; on the other hand, we see all ideas—from the most mundane to the highest and most spiritual, right up to feelings of devotion to God and the most sublime compassion—reflected in the aura. At first we cannot discern anything, but we learn this gradually and notice that there are two strictly distinct formations within the aura. First, there are cloud-like formations with indefinite outlines that flow in more from the periphery of the skin. We learn to distinguish these cloud-like formations from the manifestations that emanate more from the heart, chest, and head and that have a radiant character. These radiations always emanate from an inner center. We thus learn to distinguish the cloud-like formations from those that have a radiant character. The cloud-like aspect, which shifts from brown to dark orange, comes from the physical, from the lower nature of the human being, from the passions and drives. Thus we distinguish in the aura the spiritual part from the lower, astral part. We learn to understand the most common colors. The aura of today’s Europeans usually has green hues that often transition into yellow. This green represents the actual intellectual aspect, the aspect of consciousness; it thus expresses the fundamental mood of the soul life of today’s Europeans. In a person who is in a trance, you make the curious observation that all green tones disappear from the aura. So anyone who knows how to perceive the aura will have no trouble distinguishing a pretender from someone who is truly in a trance. Likewise, a doctor experimenting with hypnosis in a clinic—we regard this as something impermissible, but it does happen sometimes—could distinguish quite precisely whether the test subject is deceiving him or whether they are truly in a state of trance or hypnosis, if he can observe the disappearance of the green color in the aura. The green tones in the aura also disappear in a person who has fainted, and they likewise always disappear in the aura of a sleeping person.

[ 12 ] The ability to see the astral aura is the first faculty to develop in the seer. Relatively soon, the seer perceives this manifestation of the human being and learns to distinguish the astral aura from the mental aura. The radiant aura comes from the Devachan world; it is spirit and belongs to that which goes with the human being beyond death. It is that which originates from the true spiritual home. That which shifts from brownish to greenish tones belongs to the transitory; the human being sheds it along with the physical body or in Kamaloka, to then enter the actual spiritual world. This is a higher form of perception, a higher form of spiritual sense, when the Devachan sense opens up to us. The Devachanic world differs quite fundamentally from the physical world. The physical world is immobile and dead, whereas the Devachanic world is characterized by a complexity and a lightness of movement without equal. It is a world that is constantly in motion within itself, existing in a state of perpetual activity.

[ 13 ] Now the student who strives for higher development must learn to find his way within this Devachan world. When we perceive things in the physical world, they remain as they are, and our perception adapts to them. The table, the chair—they remain still; they do not conform to my perceptions, but rather my perception must conform to the table and the chair. It is not so in the spiritual world. In Devachan, there are no such static things; and therefore a tremendous responsibility rests upon the one who consciously enters Devachan. We must be clear that every thought that flashes through our brain is a real, actual process in the Devachan world. The thought in the outer, physical world is merely a shadow of reality compared to the thought in Devachan. The real thought does not live in our brain. It is not a shadow, a reflection that appears in our consciousness, but rather a being that lives in Devachan. In truth, our thoughts are beings that belong to the spiritual world. When you form a thought, you bring about a change in the Devachan world. To make this clear, I would like to show you, using an example, what happens in the Devachan world when you form a thought. The person to whom the Devachan sense is open sees not only shadows of thoughts, but sees the essence of the thought itself as a real object. Imagine that you are harboring a thought, a thought that relates to another person. The thought becomes visible to the seer; the thought radiates like a light wave emanating from a source of light; and just as a flame radiates light in all directions, so does the thinking entity of the human being radiate in all directions. And just as light spreads in the physical world, so do the rays of thought spread in the Devachan world, so that we can indeed see how thoughts radiate from every human being. Therefore, you will also understand why Christ is depicted with a crown of rays. This is not some fantastical notion, but rather corresponds to a perception in the realm of higher vision.

[ 14 ] When thoughts radiate, they are first present in space, and they spread throughout space, just as light radiates and spreads throughout space. Let us take a specific thought; if it is conceived in such a way that it is directed solely at you, that it concerns only you, then it radiates accordingly. But if it relates to another person, then in Devachan it appears as if light were striking an object and being reflected back from it; and just as an object illuminated by light appears illuminated, so does the person in question appear illuminated by the world of thought. When someone radiates a thought that relates to another person—let us assume, for example, the wish that the other person may recover—then we can see this thought radiating out, just as we see light spreading in all directions. But this thought, which relates to a specific person, does not simply flow through the Devachan space; rather, it seeks to realize itself in the person’s immediate surroundings. This thought then flows toward the person to whom it relates. These are processes that you can perceive in the Devachan world. You can perceive how a person’s sublime thoughts are caught up in the Devachan space and form into a kind of floral structure, into beautiful geometric figures such as do not exist on Earth. Although it may seem fantastical, all of this is true reality for those who can observe in Devachan. Whoever learns to move in Devachan learns to consciously send out their thoughts and to become aware of the harvest they will reap through these thoughts. They learn that every thought in Devachan is a fact, and they strive to produce only beneficial effects with their thoughts. The uninitiated send their thoughts blindly into Devachan, while the initiate learns to give form to thought. This is what gradually becomes clear to the student.

[ 15 ] I would like to draw your attention to something in particular. Last time I mentioned that there are, as it were, two divisions to be observed in Devachan. First, a lower division, the Rupa-Devachan, which is the world of the Devachanic continent, the Devachanic sea, and the Devachanic atmosphere; these are, in essence, thoroughly permeated by sensation. Then I described the Akashic substance, the pure etheric substance of Devachan. All of these constitute the lower regions of Devachan. Then come the three higher regions of the Arupa-Devachan. In these higher regions dwell the highest spiritual beings: the Dhyani-Chohans, the planetary spirits, and so on. Among these high spiritual beings are also those we know as Mahatmas, the spiritual guides of humanity. They have attained such a high stage of development that they can instruct the rest of humanity and impart to it the great truths of existence. To the person whose Devachanic sense is open, who is capable of observing in Devachan, communication with these advanced human brothers also becomes possible. He learns to understand the language in which they communicate with one another, and he also learns to speak with them. It then falls to him to translate these messages, received in this way, into everyday language. Such a teaching, translated into everyday language, is what we proclaim as theosophical truths. Originating from highly evolved human brothers, flowing down from the highest spiritual worlds, these were conveyed to us by individual suitable personalities. But now that we have learned to “read,” we understand the age-old mysteries of the world’s existence. In order to translate them into the ordinary language of everyday life, we must learn to look up to these high spirits, to the Masters whom we call Mahatmas in Theosophy.

[ 16 ] It is of particular interest to observe how the Chela relates to these Masters in the Devachan world. I have already described how thought functions in Devachan, how it flows out to hasten toward its destiny. This is not the case, or at least not in the same way, with the thoughts that the chela reverently sends up to the Masters or Mahatmas to ask them for insights into deeper truths. The thought that the chela sends up to the spiritual guides takes a very special path, distinct from that of other thoughts. It is as if this thought does not flow fully upward to the destination to which it is directed. This thought, this call for insight into the higher worlds, first flows into the region I have referred to as the Akashic realm. Then the thought returns to the disciple, but not as it ascended, rather enriched, permeated, and infused with what emanates from the Master. This is what is meant when it is always emphasized that the Master is the higher Self of the human being. In a certain sense, our own thoughts speak to us again when we enter into communion with these higher-developed human spirits. Nothing foreign is to be brought into us; the Masters do not wish to make us slaves, not even slaves in spirit. The Masters therefore send us not their own thoughts, but our own, so that we may recognize that it is the substance we ourselves have radiated. These are individual processes experienced by those who, as incarnated beings, are able to move within Devachan between birth and death; whose sense of Devachan is already open here in the physical realm; who can lift the spirit out of the shell of physicality.

[ 17 ] In the Devachan world, we also find a large number of lower beings who are regular inhabitants there: these are the temporarily disembodied, that is, those who are between two incarnations. Between two incarnations, human beings spend a long time in Devachan.

[ 18 ] Today I have described to you the experiences that a person in the Devachan may undergo while still in the body; next time I would like to describe to you what a person undergoes in the Devachan when disembodied—that is, the course of the stay in the Devachan between two lives. This will significantly complete the picture for us; and when you then add this picture to today’s, you will be able to grasp the world of Devachan with a clearer understanding. You will understand many things that initiates say, even though they are not expressed in everyday language or in our literature as what they actually are. Up until the 19th century, initiates spoke only in hints. These hints have always been understandable to those whose minds were open to them. For those who know the world of causes, the words of an initiate—who is not usually recognized as such—Goethe—will be properly understood. Goethe himself said that he had woven into the second part of his *Faust* many things that only the initiate can understand. And he has pointed out in mystically clear language what the earthly, the sensually perceptible, is for him: that it points to a higher world, of which it is an expression. If we understand this correctly, then we will know that Goethe, as an initiate, drew higher knowledge from the supersensible world, and then we will understand what he meant by the words: “/p”

All that is fleeting
Is but a parable;
The inadequate,
Here becomes an event;
The indescribable,
Here is accomplished.

[ 19 ] The Theosophical Movement aims to gradually describe what many have considered “indescribable.”