The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] When speaking of the insights of higher realms of existence, which are known to the initiated but are not yet accessible to ordinary people today, an obvious objection is often raised to this discussion of supersensible facts. It is: What are you, who claim to possess higher knowledge, telling us about higher worlds? What significance does this have for us, who cannot ourselves see into supernatural worlds? | To this I reply with the beautiful words of a young contemporary who has become known in the widest circles through her fate: Helen Keller. She became blind and deaf in her second year of life. At the age of seven, this child was still like a kind of animal. Then a loving soul, a brilliant teacher, came along, and today, at the age of twenty-six, Helen Keller is probably one of the most educated members of her people. She has delved into the sciences and has an astonishing breadth of knowledge; she is not only familiar with classical and modern poets, but also knows and studies philosophers such as Plato, Spinoza, and so on. And she, to whom the world of light and sound is forever closed, has a moving courage to face life and a deep joy in the beauty and splendor of the world. Some sentences from her book on “Optimism” are etched in our souls. She says: Oh, night and darkness surrounded me for years, and a soul was found that taught me, and instead of night and darkness, peace and hope came. Another passage: “I have conquered heaven through thought and feeling. Only one thing could be given to this soul—not sight or hearing, for the sensory world remains closed to her, reaching her only through the knowledge of other people—but the sublime thoughts of the great geniuses have flowed into her soul, and through the knowledge of those who know, she has a share in a world that you all know.”

[ 2 ] This is the situation of someone who only hears about higher worlds through the communications of others and cannot see into these higher worlds themselves. Such a comparison teaches us the significance of communications from higher worlds, even if we cannot yet see them ourselves. But there is something else before our soul. Helen Keller must say to herself: I will never see the world myself. — But every human being can say to themselves: I too will see the higher worlds when my spiritual eyes are opened. — The spiritual eyes and ears of the soul can be opened for everyone, if only they have the necessary patience and perseverance.

[ 3 ] How long will it take before I gain insight? — others ask. The eminent thinker Subba Row gave a beautiful answer to this question. He said: One person achieves it in seventy incarnations, another in seven incarnations, one in seventy years, another in seven years, another in seven months, in seven weeks, in seven days, in seven hours. — Or higher knowledge comes, as the Bible says, “like a thief in the night.” Every spiritual eye can be opened if the person has the necessary energy and patience. That is why everyone can draw joy and hope from the messages of others, because what we hear about the higher worlds are not theories, not something unrelated to our lives. It is something that brings us two things that we must have in life if we want to grasp it properly: strength and security. And we gain both to the fullest extent: strength from the impulses of the higher worlds, security when we know where human beings come from and where they are going, when we become aware that we are visibly creatures of the invisible world. But only those who also know about the other two worlds truly know the visible world.

[ 4 ] The three worlds are:

1. the physical world, the setting for all human beings
2. the astral or soul world
3. the devachanic or spiritual world.

[ 5 ] These three worlds are not spatially separated from each other. We are surrounded by the things of the physical world, which we perceive with our external sense organs; but the astral world is also in the same space with us. Just as in the physical world, we also live simultaneously in the other two worlds, the astral and the devachanic worlds. Wherever we are, the three worlds are also there. We simply do not yet see the higher worlds, just as a blind person does not see the physical world. But when the soul senses are opened to a person, the new world with its new qualities and new beings emerges for them. When they gain new senses, they also gain new things.

[ 6 ] If we now proceed to a closer examination of these three worlds, we can say: The physical world does not need to be characterized in any special way. Everyone knows it, and everyone learns the physical laws that apply in it.

[ 7 ] He learns about the astral world after death, or he lives in it now as an initiate. The student whose senses are opened to the astral world is initially confused, because what appears there cannot really be compared to anything in the physical world. Many things have to be learned from scratch. The astral world is characterized by a number of properties. One property that is particularly confusing for the student is that everything appears reversed, as if in a mirror image, so that he has to get used to seeing things in a completely different way. For example, he has to learn to read numbers backwards. We are used to reading a number so that when it says 3, 4, 5, we read 345; in the astral world, we have to read it the other way around, 543. Everything is reversed into a mirror image. This is very important to know. This also applies to higher things, for example moral things, which also appear in mirror image. People don't really understand this at first. Many people today complain that they see themselves surrounded by evil black figures that threaten and frighten them and the like. This is a phenomenon that already affects many people today and about which most people know nothing. In many cases, it is the person's own instincts, desires, and passions that live within them, specifically in what we call the astral body. Ordinary people do not see their own passions, but through special processes in the soul and brain, they can become visible to them; however, they then appear as if in a mirror image. Like someone who looks in the mirror and sees objects around them, they see the mirror images of their own instincts and so on around them. They then see everything that flows out of them flowing back into them. Another phenomenon is that time and events go backwards. For example, in the physical world we first see the hen and then the egg. In the astral world, on the other hand, we first see the egg and then the hen that laid it. In the astral world, time moves backwards; first we see the effect and then the cause. Hence the prophetic gaze; no one could foresee future events without this backward movement of time events.

[ 8 ] It is not worthless to learn about these peculiarities of the astral world. Many myths and legends of all peoples have dealt with this with wonderful wisdom, for example, the legend of Hercules at the crossroads. It is said that he once found himself standing before two female figures, one beautiful and enticing, promising him pleasure, happiness, and bliss, the second simple and serious, speaking of hardship, hard work, and renunciation. The two figures are vice and virtue. This legend correctly tells us how, in Hercules' astral, his own two natures appear before him, one urging him toward evil, the other toward good. And these appear in the mirror image as two female figures with opposite characteristics: vice beautiful, voluptuous, beguiling; virtue ugly and repulsive. Each image appears reversed in the astral realm.

[ 9 ] Scholars attribute such legends to the spirit of the people. This is not true. Nor did these legends arise by chance. The great initiates shaped them according to their wisdom and communicated them to the people. All legends, myths, all religions, all folk poetry serve to solve the riddles of the world and are based on the inspirations of the initiates.

[ 10 ] The insights of the higher worlds bring us impulses and forces for life, and through them a foundation for morality is attained. Schopenhauer says: “Preaching morality is easy, justifying morality is difficult.” Without a real justification, however, one will never truly embrace morality.

[ 11 ] Many people say: What use are the insights of higher worlds to us if we just become good people and have moral principles! But in the long run, moralizing will have no effect, whereas the knowledge of truth will establish the right morality. The moralizer is like a person who lectures the stove on its duties of heating and warming, but does not give it any coal. If one wants to establish morality, one must give the soul “fuel,” and that can only be done through the knowledge of truth.

[ 12 ] There is a saying in occultism that can now be revealed: Every lie is murder in the astral world! This is a very meaningful saying, the importance of which can only be understood by those who have knowledge of the higher worlds. How lightly people speak: Oh, it's just a thought, a feeling that remains in the soul; I mustn't slap someone, but a bad thought does no harm. There is no saying more untrue than: thoughts are duty-free, for every thought, every feeling is a reality, and if I think that someone is a bad person or that I do not love them, then for those who can see into the astral world, it is like an arrow, like a lightning bolt, which moves like a shotgun pellet toward the other person's astral body and damages it. Every feeling, every thought is a being, a form in the astral world, and for those who have insight into this world, it is often much worse to see someone having bad thoughts about their fellow human beings than to see them physically harming them. Making this truth known is establishing morality, not preaching. When you tell the truth about a person, a thought form is created that the seer can recognize by its shape and color and that strengthens the life of your neighbor. The thought that contains a truth goes to the entity to which it refers and promotes and enlivens it. So when I think a truth about my fellow human being, I strengthen his life; if I tell a lie about them, I pour a hostile force upon them that has a destructive, even deadly effect. Therefore, every lie is murder. Every truth forms a life-promoting element, every lie a life-inhibiting element. Those who know this will be more careful with regard to truth and lies than those who are only preached to that they should always tell the truth.

[ 13 ] The astral world is mainly composed of forms and colors. These also exist in the physical world, but we are accustomed to always seeing colors connected to an object on the physical plane. In the astral world, these colors float freely in the air like images of flames. There is a phenomenon in the physical world that is reminiscent of these floating colors, and that is the rainbow. But the astral color images are freely movable in space; they vibrate like a flood of colors, a sea of colors in ever-changing, diverse lines and forms.

[ 14 ] Gradually, however, the student comes to recognize a certain similarity between the physical and astral worlds. At first, this glow, this sea of colors, appears to him to be ownerless, so to speak; it does not adhere to objects. But then the flakes of color come together and attach themselves, not to objects, but to beings. Whereas before only a floating form was seen, now spiritual beings, called gods or devas, reveal themselves through these colors. Spiritual beings express themselves in them. A world of beings that speaks to us through colors is the astral world.

[ 15 ] The astral world is the world of colors; even higher is the devachanic, the spiritual world. When the student gets to know the spiritual world, he notices this in a very specific process; he learns to understand a profound word of Indian wisdom, Tat tvam asi, which means: That is you! Much has been written about this. The student only learns the true meaning when he enters the Devachan world from the astral world. There, in a moment, he sees his physical form outside of himself and says: That is you. Whereas he used to say to himself: That is me, he now sees his physical form outside of himself and says: That is you. At that moment, the human being is in the Devachan world. For them, another world clearly and distinctly joins the world of colors: the world of sounds, which in a certain sense was already there, but did not have this meaning. The Devachan world is the world of sound. Pythagoras described this sound as the music of the spheres. One hears the bodies of the worlds moving in their orbits. One perceives the harmony of the worlds; everything lives in sound. Goethe, as an initiate, lets the sun sound, revealing the secret of Devachan. When Faust is in heaven, in the spiritual world, surrounded by devas, the sun sounds, the spheres sound:

The sun sounds in the old way
In brotherly spheres, singing in competition,
And completes its prescribed journey With a thunderous roar.

[ 16 ] He means the spirit of the sun, which really sounds when one dwells in the Devachan world. We can see that Goethe means this from the fact that he sticks to the image. In the second part of Faust, when Faust is transported back to this world, it says:

Resounding to spiritual ears
The new day is already born.
Rock gates creak and rattle,
Phoebus' wheels roll with a clatter,
What a din the light brings!
It drums, it trumpets,
Eyes blink and ears are astonished,
The unheard is not heard.

[ 17 ] One hears the devachanic world and sees the astral world. Upon entering the devachanic world, the astral world remains fully intact for the student, but it changes for him. When one first enters the devachanic world, it offers a strange sight: in the devachanic world, one sees everything in negative, as on a photographic plate. Where there is a physical object, one sees nothing; what is physically bright is black there, and vice versa. Everything is seen in complementary colors: yellow instead of blue, green instead of red. In the first region of Devachan are the archetypes of the physical world, insofar as it is not endowed with life, i.e., the archetypes of minerals and, further, those of plants, animals, and humans, insofar as their physical forms are concerned. It is the region that forms the basic framework of the spirit world. It can be compared to the solid land of our physical earth; hence it is called the “continental mass” of Devachan. A person standing before an initiate appears dark where he physically fills the space, but surrounded by a radiant shell.

[ 18 ] As the senses become more refined, the archetypes of life appear, and everything that is life flows like water on Earth. Here, one cannot see a mineral because it has no pulsating life, but one can see plants, animals, and humans. Like blood in the body, all life flows in Devachan. This second division is called the “seas” of Devachan.

[ 19 ] In the third division, the “air circle,” everything that lives in the physical realm in terms of feelings and sensations, pleasure and pain, flows along.

[ 20 ] The physical structures are, as it were, the solid continental foundation in Devachan. Everything that has life in it is sea. Everything that means pleasure and suffering is contained in the air circle of Devachan. The content of everything that is suffered and enjoyed on earth is represented here, that is, everything animal and human. A battle, for example, appears to the initiate on the Devachan plane as fiery, flashing lightning, as mighty thunder, one might say, as a violent thunderstorm. But it is not the physical effects of the battle, but the passions of the opposing armies that appear to the initiate as heavy clouds with thunder and lightning.

[ 21 ] The fourth division of Devachan goes beyond everything that would already exist without human beings. It contains all the original thoughts that live in human beings, through which they bring something new into the world and influence it, regardless of whether they are the thoughts of a scholar or an uneducated person, a poet or a farmer. These thoughts do not have to be great inventions; they can also be part of everyday life.

[ 22 ] After these four divisions, one stands at the border of the spiritual world. Just as the sky appears to us at night as a hollow sphere surrounded by a ring of stars, so it is with this border of Devachan. But this is a significant border; it is called the “Akashic Records.” Everything that human beings have ever done and accomplished, even if it is not recorded in history books, remains inscribed in that imperishable history book at the border of Devachan, which is called the Akashic Records. Everything that has ever been accomplished by conscious beings in the world can be found there. If, for example, the seer wants to know something about Caesar, he takes some minor detail from history as a starting point in order to have a fixed point on which to concentrate. He does this mentally; then images appear around him of everything Caesar did, what happened around him, how he led his legions, fought his battles, and won his victories. But this occurs in a remarkable way; the seer does not merely see an abstract text, but rather, as in silhouettes, everything passes by in images. It is not what happened in the room that is being played out, but something entirely different. When Caesar won his victories, for example, he thought; everything that happened around him also lived in his thoughts, just as every movement of the arm also lives in the thoughts. The Akashic Records show the intentions, that is, what Caesar imagined and thought when he commanded his legions, as well as their mental images. It is a faithful reflection of everything that has happened; everything that conscious beings have ever experienced is recorded there. The initiate can thus read the entire human past. But he must first learn how to do so. These Akashic images speak a confusing language because Akasha is something alive. But one must not confuse the Akashic image of Caesar with the individuality of Caesar. That may already be embodied again. Confusion easily arises when one gains access to the Akashic records through external means. They often play a role in spiritualist séances. The spiritualist believes he sees a deceased person, but it is only his Akashic record. An Akashic image of Goethe, for example, may appear as he was in 1796; the uninformed person confuses it with Goethe's individuality. This is all the more confusing because this image is alive, answering questions, and not only those that were asked at the time, but also completely new ones that were not asked. These are not repetitions, but answers, just as Goethe might have given them at the time. It is quite possible that this Akasha image of Goethe even composes a poem in the style and spirit of Goethe at that time. Akasha images are truly living entities.

[ 23 ] These facts are so wonderful, but they are facts.