The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture XIII

[ 1 ] This lecture is intended to be one that fits between the others, shedding light on some of the topics covered in the other lectures. Today we will talk about the work and nature of the devas.

[ 2 ] It is very difficult to speak of gods or devas in the present day, because even those people who still hold a positive religious standpoint and still have faith in the gods no longer have a living relationship with these divine spiritual beings. This living relationship with gods, that is, with beings who stand high above human beings, has disappeared in the course of materialism. In particular, in the course of materialistic development, which took place in the cycle from the turn of the 15th to the 16th century up to our time, this living connection with the gods has disappeared. It makes little difference whether a person takes a Darwinian-materialistic standpoint or whether he or she still speaks of the gods in a more or less religious way. It is much more important to awaken the consciousness within oneself that one has risen from lower stages of existence and will continue to rise to higher stages. One must feel that one has a kinship with everything below us and everything above us.

[ 3 ] The doctrine of the gods was first systematized by the disciple of the Apostle Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite. However, it was not written down until the 6th century. The scholars therefore deny the existence of Dionysius Areopagita and speak of the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, as if ancient traditions had only been compiled in the 6th century. The true facts can only be ascertained by reading the Akashic Records. However, the Akashic Records teach that Dionysius really lived in Athens, that he was initiated by Paul and received from him the task of establishing the teachings of the higher spiritual beings and imparting them to special initiates. Certain high teachings were never written down at that time, but were only passed on through oral tradition. The teaching about the gods was also given in this way by Dionysius to his disciples, who in turn passed it on. The direct disciple was then deliberately named Dionysius again, so that the last person to write down the teaching about the gods was one in a line of people who were all called Dionysius.

[ 4 ] This teaching about the gods, as given by Dionysius, comprises three times three members of the divine beings. The highest three are:

[ 5 ] Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones.

[ 6 ] The next level comprises:

[ 7 ] Dominions, Powers, Authorities. The third level comprises:

[ 8 ] Primordial forces or beginnings, archangels, and angels.

[ 9 ] Whenever the Bible says “in the beginning,” it refers to the primordial forces or beginnings. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” that is, the God of the beginning, who stands on this level, created the heavens and the earth. - It was one of the primordial forces of the third division of the hierarchies.

[ 10 ] Above the seraphim are divine beings of such sublimity that human comprehension is insufficient to grasp them. The third level is followed by the fourth hierarchy:

[ 11 ] Man, as the tenth in the whole series.

[ 12 ] The names of the hierarchies are not proper names, but names for certain levels of consciousness in the great universe, and the beings move from one level to another. Eliphas Levi saw this clearly and emphasized that these names refer to ranks, to hierarchies.

[ 13 ] The same Dionysius who compiled the doctrine of the gods also developed the principle of church organization. The ecclesiastical hierarchy was intended to be only an outward reflection of the inner hierarchy of the world. This grandiose idea could only have been implemented when the time was ripe to understand all this in its proper form. Dionysius left his disciples with such a teaching about the church that, if it could have been published, it would have represented a powerful, magnificent organization. At that time, attempts were made to pass on the teachings in such a way that the thread was never broken from one teacher to another, who then also carried on the name. Therefore, it is not so surprising that Dionysius wrote down the teachings in the 6th century. However, these teachings could not find general acceptance because humanity was not yet ready for them. Thus, they are like a kind of testament.

[ 14 ] The further back we go, the more vivid concepts people had of beings that stand above humans.

[ 15 ] Now let us develop an idea of how human beings — ordinary human beings of our average culture today — encounter the gods. After death, human beings first go through Kamaloka, the state in which they gradually detach themselves from the habits of earthly life and become free from desires. The stay in Kamaloka is essentially only terrible and gruesome in the early stages. Then the human being goes through the Kamaloka period in which they have to purify themselves from the finer connections with the earthly world. This stay in Kamaloka is not only important for the human being, but the activity of the human being in the higher Kamaloka states can, as we shall see, also be used in the rest of the world. After Kamaloka, he passes into the Devachan state, in which he works out everything that is necessary to build a new etheric body with the abilities he has acquired. On the Arupa plane of Devachan, they must lay down everything they have acquired on the physical plane. That is why the Greek priests in esotericism called the soul a bee, the Arupa plane a beehive, and the physical plane a flower field.

[ 16 ] However, human beings do not need to be inactive in the higher realms. While passing through Kamaloka and the lower Devachan plane, it might seem that they have nothing else to do but to allow what they have begun earlier to mature. But human beings are not inactive there either, so that it is important for the whole world that they go through these states.

[ 17 ] The new incarnation of man only has a purpose if, in a new incarnation, man encounters conditions that are significantly different from the previous ones. Normally, man returns when the conditions are so different that he finds them completely new, so that he builds something completely new. This happens in the world period after the sun has moved from one constellation to the next. For example, around 800 BC, the sun was first in the constellation of Aries in the spring until about 1800 AD. Now, at the beginning of spring, it is in the constellation of Pisces. Two thousand six hundred years pass before it moves from one constellation to another. During this time, conditions change quite thoroughly. Reincarnation is connected with these times. During this time, a person is usually incarnated once as a male and once as a female individual. In one incarnation, one is actually only half a human being. A male and a female incarnation belong together. Due to the very different physical conditions on Earth, a new incarnation is not pointless. For example, if a person was incarnated at the time of Homer (constellation of Aries or the Lamb, Jason, the Golden Fleece), they went through something completely different then than they would go through now.

[ 18 ] These incarnations would seem to be a completely mechanical process. But there is nothing external that is not caused internally. We must get into the habit of talking about the concrete spirit everywhere, seeking it out and seeing what is really happening.

[ 19 ] If one looks at the flora and fauna of Europe, one can distinguish three belts in our world period: a western, a middle, and an eastern one. The eastern belt coincides with the Slavic peoples, the middle belt with the Germanic peoples, and the western belt with the Romance peoples. The materialist believes that people have adapted to circumstances, but this is not the case. The peoples have created their own physical conditions. The spirit of the people first works on the soil, the plants, and the animals, into which it empathizes. The soil of Western Europe has been prepared by the Romance peoples, that of Central Europe by the Germanic peoples, and that of Eastern Europe by the Slavic peoples. In this way, people first build the house in which they will later live. Now we ask: When does man work on the outer configuration of the earth? As everything else on earth is a destiny prepared by man himself, this is also partly the case here.

[ 20 ] In Kamaloka, man is actually busy working in the animal kingdom. There, people work on what is called the transformation of species. The natural scientist calls the force that brings this about adaptability. But in everything that is called adaptation, the activity of human beings on the other side of existence is hidden. Everything that appears as transformation in the animal kingdom, everything that influences and changes animal instincts so that animals transform themselves, is done by human beings in Kamaloka who are preparing for their next incarnation. There, humans work on their own house for the following incarnation. In Kamaloka, humans work on the fauna, and in Devachan, on the flora. The transformation of the plant world is the effect of the Devachanic forces. And the physical world, which also changes, the external conditions of nature, are influenced by the Arupa plane [upper Devachan]. There, humans are co-workers in the rock kingdom, in the mineral kingdom of the earth. One must already have some occult powers to be able to make such observations in the right place. It is no coincidence that miners in particular make such observations underground. The fact that Novalis was a person so well known for his interest in the occult is related to the fact that he was a mining engineer.

[ 21 ] When one considers that human beings develop powers in the supersensible realms but do not yet have full consciousness there, one understands that these powers are guided by higher beings, the devas. A distinction is made between different levels of devas: astral, rupamental, and arupamental. Astral devas have the astral body as their lowest limb, just as we have the physical body. Like humans, astral devas consist of seven limbs. They therefore have a seventh limb that is higher than the Atma. The devas are all structured according to the same principles as humans. With development up to the higher planes, a being also gains conscious power over the corresponding lower planes. Today, humans only control the mineral kingdom on the physical plane. There they can build something themselves. But they cannot yet build a plant or an animal. In the mineral kingdom, they have the composition clearly before them. On the next level, they consciously bring forth plants (fifth round), then animals (sixth round), and finally they consciously bring forth themselves (seventh round).

[ 22 ] The beings we call devas can do much more than the humans of the seventh round. They can use the areas that lie beneath their own world. They can form the body they need for a specific purpose for a short time. Thus, an astral deva can, if it wants, incarnate physically for a certain time.

[ 23 ] We can only form certain ideas about the work of the devas if we start from the work of human beings. Human beings are, to a certain extent, free and arbitrary in their actions. However, human beings do not work together harmoniously, which is why the various forces that emanate from them must be harmoniously ordered. There must be an overall effect resulting from what human beings do. This overall effect must be used for the benefit of the world. The beings who bring about this overall effect are the devas. They also regulate collective karma. The moment human beings unite for any common purpose, they have a collective karma that binds them together and brings them together, creating a collective thread of karma.

[ 24 ] In Russia, there was the sect of the Duchoborzen (spirit fighters), who possessed a deep religiosity. In a naive but very beautiful form, they had theosophical teachings. These people have been driven out and now have no visible influence on the outside. Materialists will say: What purpose did this serve? The Duchoborzen have perished! — But all those who were united in the Duchoborzen sect will be held together in their reincarnation by a common bond in order to pour out what they have learned into humanity later on. This is how the groups that come together influence humanity in subsequent incarnations. The idea they lived by then flows back out into the world. The same idea can then be found again in such a group in a deeper form. For example, the Manichaean sect existed in the Middle Ages. The secret of the Manichaeans was that they had recognized that in the future there would be two groups of people, the evil and the good. In the fifth round, there will no longer be a mineral kingdom, but instead a kingdom of evil. The Manichaeans knew this. They therefore made it their task to educate people now so that they could later become educators of evil people. From time to time, great deepening has taken place in the Manichaean sect.

[ 25 ] We must distinguish between the individual wills of individual people and the powers behind them in order to unite these individual wills into a collective will. This is how we arrive at collective karma.

[ 26 ] The Rosicrucians spoke of beings that belong to groups of people. The physical body belongs to each individual human being alone, but the astral body already belongs to a group. In one part of the astral body, one is connected to a group soul. What humans cannot yet do, the devas do today. The devas also work on the astral body. The devas are working even more intensively on the work that humans are doing today in the etheric body. We have seen that human powers are used for the animal kingdom in a part of Kamaloka. But they are guided by the devas. Then the human being is increasingly on the path to attaining Devachan.

[ 27 ] A special kind of devas are the planetary spirits, the Dhyan-Chohanic beings, who have already reached the stage that humans will only reach much later. They are at the stage that humans will reach in the sixth and seventh rounds. A planetary spirit is involved in the creation of the individual parts of planetary development.

[ 28 ] Human beings are now active on the physical, astral, and devachanic planes. Everything is activity. What, then, is the significance of the planetary spirits for human beings in a particular state? The planetary spirits have performed the activities that human beings now perform on previous stages, on previous planets. What they absorbed at that time, they now have within themselves as wisdom. This enables them to become the teachers of the next planetary stage. Those devas who were active in the formation of the Earth were not yet able to recognize the laws; only the higher stage of wisdom could do that. Above the stage of wisdom is the stage of will, of volition, of effect. The spirits of wisdom (Kyriotetes) and the spirits of will (Thrones) are the actual leaders of planetary development.

[ 29 ] In the time when man was still an astral being, before the Lemurian period, the devas worked within him and already formed what later emerged in him. Before the Lemurian epoch, an image of the human environment arose within the human being. The feeling of sympathy and antipathy also arose within him as an image. This was something that the devas allowed to arise within him. At that time, he was ruled by the entire regency of the devas. Then he took over the reign to a certain extent himself. At that time, he was a serving member in the rule of the devas. Now, however, he is to a certain extent forsaken by God. Only in the part where he is not forsaken by God do the devas still work within him. The chela consciously allows the world that man knew in images in the pre-Lemurian era to revive within himself. At that time, desires and passions confronted humans as auric formations, in which the thoughts of the Devas lived; but everything was in a state of deep, twilight consciousness. Now, after losing all this, humans had to fight to consciously see the outside world. The further development of the chela consists in consciously reconquering all this. In doing so, he retains his full consciousness. Mediumship, on the other hand, is a relapse into the past.

[ 30 ] What human beings experience on the physical plane is the skeleton of their creation, the foundation for the following periods of development. Through contact with the outside world, they develop the abilities that will later shape their planetary activity, after they themselves have become planetary spirits.

[ 31 ] In our words, we create the foundation for the future planet. What we speak today will truly be there as a foundation, just as rocks and stones form the foundation of the earth. Experiences are involved in one area so that they can evolve in another area. An individuality is divine to the extent that it can exhale what it has inhaled. The devas are devas at the moment when they can give back what they have previously taken in.

[ 32 ] Ancient wisdom is what has been taken in earlier and is now being given back. Therefore, it is theosophy, insofar as the gods themselves were once the teachers of human beings.

[ 33 ] Karma is the law. The deva is the realizer of the law. The angels of the cycle realize the law under which groups of people are subject. The individual in a group acts instinctively. The deva guides the soul of the people; he is actually the soul of the people. The soul of the people is not an abstraction, but a living spirit.