The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The World of the Spirit or Devachan III

[ 1 ] In the lectures about the astral world, I have tried to show what path the human soul has to travel after passing through the gate of death. This path through the world of the soul - or the astral world, as it is called in theosophical literature - is relatively short. The longest part of the time it takes for the human soul to travel from one incarnation to the next, it spends in the spiritual world, in what is called in Theosophy Devachan, the land of the gods. I will use the expression 'spirit land' or 'spirit world' for 'Devachan'. We must see to it that we gradually introduce German expressions. And if we know that by the so-called spirit realm we mean nothing other than what is “Devachan” in Theosophy, we will be able to communicate.

[ 2 ] In the astral world, the soul has to purify itself of what chains it to the earthly, of the drives, passions and instincts that are necessary for earthly life but cannot possibly cling to the human soul on its further journey. After it has freed itself from all this, it passes through the actual spirit land. If one wants to understand what it means to pass through the spiritual realm, one must realize this. I have often emphasized that Theosophy does not turn away from earthly activity, does not point to some other world, on the contrary: it makes it clear that the main task of man during his embodiment here on earth lies in bringing this earthly existence to ever greater and greater perfection. Man has to bear the fruit of what he can experience in the higher world into the earthly sphere; he has to apply in the physical embodiment what he observes in the meantime between two embodiments. For this physical embodiment, the task of the earth and of man is to be perfected in such a way that what has been perfected can be carried up into higher realms. It is our task to work on earthly perfection, for this earth, according to the cosmic plan of the earth, is not to remain as it is, but is to become a higher world. And that which will enable it to be received into a higher world, that is what people are to bring about in it; that is why they must return to the spiritual realm from time to time. Man is to work on earth to lead it to its goal, which is spiritual. To do this, he must enable himself to work spiritually. He must return again and again to this state of living purely spiritually in the spiritual world, in order to occupy himself from there with the intentions and goals for earthly life. What we experience in the spiritual world, we carry into earthly life. Just as in building a house the first and most important thing does not happen on the building site, where the bricks are laid together, but in the architect's chamber, where the building plan is worked out, and just as the workers only only realize what the architect has worked out, so the first and most important thing that we bring from the transcendental world are the goals, the intentions, the plans to apply them within the physical world.

[ 3 ] The most important thing is done during the earthly embodiment. From time to time, the spirit withdraws to get to know the actual basis of earthly existence. That is the purpose of the stay in Devachan or the spiritual realm. When a person dies, he first leaves his body, then goes through a state of unconsciousness; he passes through the astral world and finally awakens in the spiritual realm. There he has to develop everything he has practiced in the earthly world. To continue with the same image, we have to imagine that the human being works like an architect who designs the plan for a house. Once the architect has made a plan, he also becomes aware of the imperfections and mistakes in the plan during its material realization; he is a learner, and in the same way, the human being also learns during his embodiment. Just as the architect recognizes, uses and applies the experiences and observations he has made during a first construction to a later one, so too does the human being transform his experiences and observations into more perfect insights and then, enriched with these insights, enters into the new embodiment. That is the meaning.

[ 4 ] From a kind of unconsciousness, the person wakes up in devachan [between death and a new birth]. He then has to go through the different stages. In each of these stages, a very specific set of abilities is formed. We have come to know seven stages. I will let them pass before our mind again and at the same time indicate what the mind has to accomplish at each stage. I have explained that the lowest region is the realm of archetypes. But this is to be understood figuratively; it is a state. Within this world we find the archetypes for everything that confronts us in the sensual world. I have said that in the spiritual world we live within the spiritual just as we live within the sensory world with our senses, and we feel the spiritual world as we feel the sensory world with our senses, as we hear and see this sensory world and so on. What is a thought in this earthly world is a living entity in the spiritual world. What passes through our minds as a thought is only the shadow of a spiritual being. This spiritual being appears to us as a thought because it has to penetrate the veil of physical corporeality. Man impresses his thoughts and ideas on the world, and through them he makes the earth more perfect. In the spiritual world, these thoughts are things between which man walks. And just as we walk among physical things here, as we push against them and touch them, so we walk among thoughts in the spiritual world. The archetypes of the sense world are to be found in the lowest region of the spiritual world. There we are in the “workshop” where the sense objects are “made”. We see there the archetypes of the physical forms of plants, animals and human beings. We have to think about what we see. These thoughts remain in the background like a shadowy outline, and man does not believe in the reality of thoughts because they have such a shadowy existence. Just as the clock is created in the way its inventor first wore it in his head, so every thing is created according to the thought, and the nature of thought appears to us in the spiritual realm.

[ 5 ] Thus the whole material world that we see here appears to us in the spiritual realm in its archetypes. We see everything there as it is made, we see how the plant, the animal sprouts from the animal and plant-creating power. We learn to see what is here from a different perspective; we see, as it were, the spiritual negative opposite the physical positive. We enter the world, the description of which must appear fantastic to one who has no feeling for it, but which is infinitely more real than the physical world for one whose senses are awakened to this world. It is the world of archetypes, the world of causes. A spiritual transformation takes place in us, which becomes more and more intense the more we become at home in this world.

[ 6 ] I would like to characterize the journey through this world for you. It is significant because it sheds light on this world, a light of unspeakable significance. Our own physicality, the body we call our own, appears to us as a thing among things; it appears to us as belonging to the external reality. We see how it arises and passes away. Thus the archetype of our body appears to us as a link within the external reality; we feel that we are facing it. We no longer say to the body, “This is me,” but we know that it belongs to objective reality. And one gets to know a sentence from the highest Indian Vedanta wisdom, the sentence: You must recognize that you yourself are a link in the whole great thing - “This is you.”

[ 7 ] We see what builds our body as if we were stepping on a rock. It is something completely alien. We learn from experience to understand the sentence, “That is you.” And when we practise this sentence, it is nothing more than a memory of what we have experienced earlier in the spiritual realm. We bring this memory into consciousness and experience a faint reflection of the spiritual world in the physical world. But this removes us from the world of the senses and lifts us into higher spheres. We feel ourselves to be spiritual beings; we know that we are a member of the Primordial Spirit, a ray emanating from it, as it were. We know this from direct knowledge.

[ 8 ] The second principle of Vedanta wisdom is also directly fulfilled in the first region of Devachan: “I am Brahman”. “Brahman” refers to the original spirit. When a person has come to feel that they are a part of this original spirit, they say: “The original spirit lives in me, I am the spirit”. “I am the original spirit” is an immediate experience that the soul has even in the lowest region of the spirit world. This is the meaning of life in the first region of Devachan.

[ 9 ] I have described the second region as the one where the archetypes of all life on our earth are found. When we observe life in our earthly world, we find it built into individual beings, into plants, animals and humans. But the life of these plants, animals and humans is one great, living unity. It comes from the common source of life. The archetype of this life, which lives here on earth in its reflection, flows there like an ocean through all beings in the spirit realm. The occultist knows that this flowing life has a rosy color, like a rosy ocean; as a fluid element, it flows through all beings in the spirit realm. This streaming, rose-red, liquid life permeates and pulses through all life in the spirit world. When the person has passed through the first region of the spirit world, they then identify with this flowing life in the second stage. Then they get to know the flowing life as their own being.

[ 10 ] To fully understand this, let us again consider what it means to live in these regions [in the time between death and rebirth]. One lives for an exceptionally long time in the first region of Devachan. In the physical world, we are born into very specific circumstances determined by the physical nature of the earth. We are born into a country, into a family, so that through physical ties we acquire this or that friend. We establish, through physical circumstances, something that makes up the content of everyday life: life in the family, life in the tribe, in the nation – that is karma. Everything that comes from physical circumstances, we get to know and judge in its archetypes in the first region of the spiritual realm. And the abilities that we acquire through practice in family life, in the lives of friends, and so on, these receive their full development in the first region of Devachan. They are increased and trained so that we can return to this earth for a new incarnation with these increased and trained abilities. Therefore, we experience that people who see their whole task in the circumstances of daily life, who do not get beyond their immediate surroundings, their business and so on, have a long life in this first region of devachan.

[ 11 ] Those who already have a certain preparation stay in the second region of devachan. This is created through higher education within earthly life itself. Man learns to recognize that the things of earthly life are transitory and only expressions of eternal origins. He learns to recognize the unity in all life and to look up to unity in awe. When the simple savage sees divine qualities in objects and regards them as a symbol of the divine, this already goes beyond everyday circumstances. In this region, man learns to recognize the creation and activity of the deity. There we see the followers of the various religions developing devotional feelings as they approach their gods with humility and reverence. Having passed through this second region, the human being reaches his embodiment with a higher degree of devotion. We see people who have a sense of the underlying unity of all things dwelling in this second region for a long time. We see them becoming familiar with the unity of all existence, and we see how these spirits, when they return to earth, become leading religious figures. These people see that the interests of the individual can no longer be separated from the interests of the community. This sense of community life is developed in the second region of Devachan.

[ 12 ] Let us ascend to the third region. Here we no longer find the archetypes for what lives in earthly existence, but we do find the archetypes of the soul's existence itself. Here are the archetypes of all desires and instincts, of all sensations and feelings and all passions, from the lowest passion to the highest pathos. For all this there are purely spiritual archetypes, and they are in the third region of Devachan. Just as all life in the second region, in the third region all feeling, all suffering and so on forms a great unity. The instincts of one being are not separate from the instincts of another being. There the “That's you” has already been carried out. We can no longer distinguish between my feeling and your feeling, as we do in the limited conditions of sense existence. The suffering of the other is just like our own. We perceive the “sighing of the creature”. We perceive every pleasure and every pain, whether it is ours or someone else's. We say to everything: That is you. — We sympathize with everything. I have described this region as the atmosphere, as the aerial sphere of the spiritual land. Just as our earth is enveloped by the physical atmosphere, so the spiritual continent is enveloped by this aerial sphere, by the spheres of sorrow and misfortune, by the archetypes of human passions, like storms and thundering thunderstorms that are discharging. When we live in the third region of Devachan, we learn to understand the words of an inspired person and recognize what it means to unite with the “sighing of creatures who await adoption as children”. This develops another side of our feelings, we get to know earthly feeling from a different side, not as a selfish individual feeling, but in such a way that we have developed meaning, compassion for all beings in this third region. What we develop in our embodiment in terms of selflessness and goodwill towards our fellow human beings is the memory of this third region of Devachan; that is what we bring with us from this third region. Philanthropists, the geniuses of human benevolence, develop their abilities there; they undergo a long life in the third region of Devachan.

[ 13 ] How do these three regions of Devachan relate to our earthly world? In the first region we find the archetypes of physical things, in the second the archetypes of life, in the third the archetypes of the soul world, of drives, instincts and passions. We find what we need to work within our earthly lives in the spiritual realm.

[ 14 ] The fourth region is a kind of pure spirit land, but not in the full sense of the word. If we want to understand the difference between the fourth region and the lower three regions, we must realize that, however much creative power we bring with us into the physical world, we are dependent on what is already present on earth. We are like a potter who imprints his thoughts on the clay. In our desire to realize messages from the spiritual realm here on earth, we are dependent on the clay of the earthly world. We must adapt to what already exists. We must study what already exists in the world as physical forces and as physical matter. We must take as our guide the suffering and the feelings of pleasure and displeasure that our fellow creatures experience. We must bring with us from the spiritual realm what we find here. We create only an image of what is in the spiritual realm.

[ 15 ] The fourth region contains the archetypes for what man creates as a kind of original work within the world, what he creates beyond what already exists. Everything that art and science have produced, everything we know as technical inventions, everything that would never be there without the influence of the human spirit, that can be found as an archetype in the fourth region of Devachan. Those who take part in the cultural progress of their time, in scientific endeavor, in the expansion of state institutions, in the perfection of that which is born freely from the spirit, that which is not bound to the soul: all of these are fertilized by what they experience in the fourth region of Devachan. We imprint what we experience there on sensual reality and thereby transform it. If we ask ourselves whether this fourth region is independent of the earthly region, we have to say: in a way — because the person who comes from it brings something with them that is not yet there. But it is dependent again, because the human being can only ever stand at a certain level of perfection, and he can only develop what humanity is ripe for. The fourth region of Devachan is connected to earthly existence in such a way that, on the one hand, it is free, but on the other hand, it is dependent on a certain [level of earthly] existence.

[ 16 ] When we ascend to the fifth region of the spirit land, we are completely free from the fetters of earthly existence. Then we are free and capable of development in all directions. Then we have the element in our environment in which our actual, true, real home is. In this higher region we experience the actual intentions that the world spirit has with earthly development. We partake in the intentions of the world spirit. All things become eloquent. We learn what the divine world spirit has in store for the plants, the animals and human beings; we become acquainted with the perfect form of that which the created world reflects only imperfectly. What we experience are the purposes, the intentions, the goals – the goals that flow from the eternal, we get to know them here. And when we return to the physical world, strengthened and invigorated by it, then we are messengers of the divine intentions, then we carry out that which, as truly spiritual, as independent spiritual, is to be added to this world.

[ 17 ] Now you can easily imagine that what can be drawn from this region depends on how much the self has developed during its embodiment in the physical life. If a person shows no inclination to rise to higher intentions, if he clings to the everyday and cannot grasp what is eternal, then he will only have a brief flash in the fifth region of Devachan. And the one who, within earthly life, has little attachment to earthly things, who reflects in free thought about earthly existence, who practices works of compassion and charity without selfish interest, has acquired the right in this existence to dwell for a longer time in the higher regions of Devachan. This enables him to develop in a higher sense that which is free spiritual activity. Here he receives that which flows from the eternal, the divine. Here the self absorbs the world of thought, unlimited by earthly imperfection.

[ 18 ] Every incarnation is only an imperfect reflection of what a person actually is. The spiritual self is in the spiritual realm, and by moving into the human body, into the human soul, it can only realize a weak image of what it actually is at heart. When the human being returns home to his true self, to his original nature, when he gets to know the fifth region, his view expands beyond his own incarnations, and he is able to see his past and his future. He experiences a flash of memory of his past incarnations and can put them into context with what he can accomplish in the future. He surveys the past and the future with a prophetic eye. Everything he accomplishes seems to flow from the eternal self. This is what the self acquires in the fifth region of the spirit land. That is why we call this self, insofar as it lives in the fifth region and becomes aware of its own being, the cause-bearer of the human being, which carries all the results of the past life into the future. That which reappears in the various embodiments is the body of causes, and that is the case until the human being moves on to higher states, where higher laws apply than those of re-embodiment. Since the beginning of planetary life, we have been subject to the law of reincarnation. The causal body is that which carries the result of a previous life over into future lives, which enjoys the fruits of what has been worked out in previous lives.

[ 19 ] When, after a series of such earthly pilgrimages, the true spiritual self or causal agent has embodied itself in the physical body and now lives in the spiritual realm in such a way that it is able to move in the spiritual realm as freely as the sensual man moves among sensual things — because that is an experience we have: learning to move in a way that seems much more initiative and higher than within the sensual reality — then we move up to the sixth region of Devachan, then we acquire the right to spend certain periods between two lives in the sixth region. In the sixth region, the human self is already living out its deeper essence from within; there it lives out what we call life in the spiritual, in the eternal self. There it lives out what draws directly from the source of the divine self. There the human being learns to feel at home in the spiritual realm as the physical human being feels at home in the physical world. The laws of the spiritual world become so familiar to him that he regards himself as belonging to them. In this sixth region, the human being learns that he comes to this physical world as a messenger of the pure divine; he no longer takes the intentions for what he needs to work in the physical world from the physical world itself; he carries out the plans of the divine world order himself: he creates out of the spiritual, he works out of the spiritual. But that is not why he is a stranger on earth, nor does he act like a stranger; he has acquired a free and unbiased attitude in this sixth region. When he appears in the physical world as a messenger from the spiritual world, his work is all the more fruitful because he is not attached to the things of this world; and because he judges them with complete objectivity, he will do the right thing. His action will be an action of the divine order of the world itself, an expression, a revelation of the divine order of the world itself.

[ 20 ] In this sixth region of the spirit land, the human being also enjoys the company of those exalted beings that I spoke of last time, who are involved in the plan of the divine order of the world. Their view of divine wisdom is open and unobscured. The human being who has developed to the sixth region can understand what they say to him about the divine plan of the world. When he returns to the earthly plan, he is able to determine the direction and goals of his life himself. Then he acts out of himself, he can consciously work in the future; then he is able to become an initiate here on this earth. The one who is capable of becoming an initiate has first, through deeds that are not connected with the earthly through selfishness, but that he has done in selfless sacrifice, gained the right to live in the intermediate state between two embodiments in the presence of the spirits and to become familiar with the powers and treasures of the spiritual country. When he returns to embodiment, his memory is open to his previous embodiments, he sees that he has already lived here and there, and he determines the future of his next embodiment – although not in every detail, because that cannot be determined. Those who have experienced such things in the intermediate state between their embodiments in the spiritual realm are the aspirants for initiation into the mysteries; they are those who are accepted into the secret schools and there learn the wisdoms that they have to proclaim to the world so that they may follow the path of progress.

[ 21 ] These are the ones who can affirm from personal experience that the teachings of Theosophy are truths and facts. But they are also the ones who have the duty to proclaim to others, as often and as well as they can, what has become an incontrovertible truth to them, and to stir up in them the high feeling and strength that leads people further up the ladder of knowledge. He who is able to believe in re-embodiment, who knows that it is a possibility, has already reached the first step. He who believes, even if only vaguely, that re-embodiment is possible, can expect that this thought will develop within him into a realization of the truth, for faith, when it is a living power at work in the human soul, works wonders in the human soul. Those who do not know how that works which comes out of spiritual depths call such people visionaries and dreamers because they are not aware that they create out of a much deeper consciousness than their own. But the course of the world is a continuous embodiment of what dreamers and idealists have thought.

[ 22 ] Only he can reach the seventh stage who has been an initiate in this life, who has grasped the meaning of the mysteries, who can contribute to the construction and the plan of the divine world order. After he has fulfilled his task in the lower regions, he enters directly into the highest region, from which the source of existence comes, where all life impulses and existential currents flow. Only the initiate has the right to claim the seventh stage of Devachan or the spiritual realm.

[ 23 ] We have seen that man's task lies in this earthly world and that we must not withdraw from it. But what lies in this world must be fertilized by the experiences we have in the spiritual realm, which we recognize as messages that we have to carry out in our earthly lives. In order to be able to work all the more confidently, we must regard life as a school; we must make life a lesson for us. We must observe how, as it were, the rays of the higher life flow into the earthly world. We will continue our discussion on this next time.