The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] We have seen how, in death, the human being leaves behind first the physical body, then the etheric body, and finally the lower astral body as corpses. What remains for the human being after shedding these three bodies? The memory image that appears before the soul after death disappears at the moment when the etheric body lifts itself out of the astral body; it sinks, so to speak, into the unconscious, disappearing as an immediate soul impression. But something important remains: the image fades, but the fruit remains. Like a kind of extract of power, the entire yield of the last life remains in the higher astral body and rests there.

[ 2 ] However, human beings have already gone through this process many times. At each death after their various incarnations, the memory image appeared before their soul and left behind this so-called extract of power. Thus, one life after another has added an image. A human being who incarnated for the first time had the first memory image after death, after the second incarnation the second image, which was already richer than the first, and so on. In these combined images we have a kind of new element of the human being. Before the first death, the human being consisted of the four bodies; when he dies for the first time, he takes the first image with him. After reincarnation, they not only have the four parts of their being, but also this product of their previous life. This is the causal body. The human being now consists of five bodies: the physical, etheric, astral, ego, and causal bodies. Once this causal body is there, it remains; but it has only been composed from the fruits of previous lives. Now we can understand the difference between individual human beings. Those who have lived many times, who have already gone through many incarnations, have added many pages to their book of life, are highly developed, and have a rich causal body; the others have only passed through a few lives, have therefore gathered fewer fruits, and therefore possess a less developed causal body.

[ 3 ] What is the meaning of this repeated appearance of human beings on earth? If the incarnations were unrelated, then this would of course be meaningless. But this is not the case. Let us consider the different living conditions experienced by a person who lived a few centuries after the birth of Christ and who is incarnated again today. Today, a person's life from the age of six to fourteen is already filled with the acquisition of knowledge: reading, writing, and so on. Today's human beings have completely different opportunities to cultivate and develop their personalities. Incarnations are arranged in such a way that a person only reappears when they enter into new circumstances, encounter completely different opportunities and possibilities for development, and this is always the case after a few centuries. How greatly the earth has developed in every respect! A few thousand years ago, this area was covered with primeval forests inhabited by wild animals. People lived in caves, clothed themselves in animal skins, and understood only in a primitive way how to make fire and manufacture tools. How different it is today! This is how the face of the earth changes in a relatively short time. A person who lived at the time of the ancient Germanic peoples had a completely different view of the world than someone who learns to read and write here today. With the changed Earth, he learns completely new things and acquires them.

[ 4 ] How long does it take for a person to appear in a new incarnation? What factors does this depend on? The answer can be found in the following consideration. We must look at what is connected with the change of the Earth.

[ 5 ] Throughout the ages, certain beings have always enjoyed special veneration as sacred symbols. In Persia, for example, twins were worshipped until 3000 BC. From 3000 to 800 BC, the sacred bull Apis was worshipped in Egypt and, at the same time, the Mithras bull in the Near East. From around 800 BC, another animal came to the fore, the ram or lamb, and with it arose the legend of Jason, who brought the Golden Fleece from the sacred ram of Asia, from across the sea. It goes even further. The lamb was so sacredly revered that Christ referred to himself as the “Lamb of God,” and the first Christian symbol was not the cross on which the Savior hung, but the cross with the lamb.

[ 6 ] All this represents three successive cultural states, and this is connected with significant events in the heavens. The sun's path across the sky follows a certain zone, the zodiac, and the remarkable thing is that the sun, which rises at a certain point in the zodiac at the beginning of spring, moves further and further within a certain epoch, so that in a period of 2160 years it moves from one constellation to another. Thus, in the year 3000 BC, the sun rose in the constellation of Taurus in the spring, even earlier in the constellation of Gemini, and about 800 years BC in the constellation of Aries.

[ 7 ] This point therefore moves a little further each year, and after 2160 years it enters the next constellation, and the peoples chose as a symbol of their worship the sign in the sky where the sun rises in spring, and offered their worship to it. If we could still understand the powerful feelings and sublime moods that the ancients associated with this moment when the sun entered a new constellation, then we would also understand the significance of the moment when the sun entered the constellation of Pisces. But our materialistic age cannot do that.

[ 8 ] What did the people of that time see in this process? The ancients saw it as the embodiment of the power of nature. In winter it lay dormant, and in spring it was ‘awakened’ again by the sun. The constellation in which the sun appeared in spring, which gave the sun new power, was perceived as something worthy of worship. The constellation thus symbolizes the awakening power. The ancients knew that something very important was connected with such an advance of the sun, because the sun's rays then fall under completely different conditions. And indeed, such a period of 2160 years means the onset of completely different conditions on earth. This period of time is now spent by man in Devachan in order to come from death to a new birth. Occultism has always recognized these 2,160 years as a period in which conditions on Earth change in such a way that human beings can reappear to experience something new.

[ 9 ] So 2160 years pass between two incarnations. However, it should be noted that during this period of 2160 years, human beings actually appear twice, so that on average, a thousand years constitute the actual period between two incarnations. This is because, as a rule, one incarnation of a human being is male and one is female. It is incorrect that a male and a female incarnation alternate every seven times. The experiences of a soul are very different depending on whether it was incarnated as male or female; that is understandable. Therefore, it appears once as male and once as female in the period of 2160 years. Then the human being has had all the experiences that he or she can have in the given circumstances. He or she has had the opportunity and possibility to add a new page to his or her book of life. Such radical changes on Earth and in earthly circumstances are a learning period for the soul. That is the meaning of reappearance, of reincarnation.

[ 10 ] The fruit of the memory image, the causal body, and the purified astral body remain with the human being; he never loses them again. Upon entering Devachan, he takes the causal body and a part of his astral body with him, namely the purified part, because what he has worked for remains with him in Devachan and forever. Now they go through their Devachan period. The savage, of course, has done little work on their astral body and takes only a small flame with them into Devachan; their memory images belong to them more unconsciously. Francis of Assisi, on the other hand, has attained a perfectly structured astral body and lives with it in Devachan. When a person has shed the lower astral body, they see themselves in a certain way as standing outside themselves. This is the moment when they enter Devachan. Devachan has, as it were, four divisions, which we can call:

1. the continents
2. rivers and seas
3. the air, the etheric space
4. the region of spiritual archetypes.

[ 11 ] In the first part, the continents, one sees everything in a negative image, as if on a photographic plate. Everything that has ever been and still is physical on earth, everything that has ever been and still is physical minerals, plants, and animals on this earth, appears as negative forms. And when you see yourself negatively among these negative forms, then you are in Devachan. What is the point of seeing yourself like this?

[ 12 ] You see yourself not just once, but gradually, as you looked in previous lives, and this has a profound meaning. Goethe says: The eye is formed by light for light. By this he means that light is the creator of the eye, and that is correct. We understand this when we see how the eye degenerates due to a lack of light. Certain animals, for example, once migrated into caves in Kentucky. They no longer needed their eyesight because the caves were dark. Gradually, they lost their eyesight and their eyes atrophied. The flow of fluids turned to another organ that they now needed more. Why did they lose their eyesight? Because their world was without light. The absence of light took away their vision. So if there were no light, there would be no eyes. Light itself contains the creative forces for the eye, just as the world of sound contains the creative forces for the ear. In short, the entire body, all organs, were formed by the creative forces of the universe.

[ 13 ] What has the brain built up? If there were nothing to think about, there would be no brain. There are powerful laws of nature; Kepler and Galileo directed the mind toward these laws. Who created the organ of the mind? The wisdom in nature!

[ 14 ] Human beings enter the earthly world with a certain perfection of their organs. But in the meantime, new circumstances have arisen, which I now process with my mind. However, everything I experience is creative. The eyes I already have and the mind I already possess were formed in previous incarnations. When I enter Devachan after death, I find, as I said, the image of the body as it was in my last life, and I still have within me the fruit of the memory image of my last life. I can now compare how I developed in different lives, how I was before I had the experiences of my last life, and what I can become when I add the experiences of my last life. Then I form a new body in my mind, one that is a step higher than my previous body.

[ 15 ] On the first stage in Devachan, the human being corrects the image of their previous life: they use the fruits of their previous life to prepare the image of their body for the next incarnation.

[ 16 ] On the second stage of Devachan, life pulsates as reality, as it were, in rivers and streams. During earthly existence, the human being has life within them, but it could not be perceived; now they see it flowing by, and they use it to enliven the form they created on the first stage.

[ 17 ] On the third stage of Devachan, the human being has around him everything that was previously within him in terms of passions, feelings, and emotions; it confronts him here like clouds, thunder, and lightning. He now sees all this objectively, as it were, he learns to recognize and observe it like the physical on earth and gathers his experiences in relation to the soul life. By seeing these images of spiritual life, one can incorporate spiritual characteristics and animate the body formed on the first stage. That is the meaning of Devachan. Humans must advance one stage in Devachan; in this way, they prepare the image of their body for the next incarnation. That is one of the tasks that humans have in Devachan.

[ 18 ] But human beings still have many tasks in Devachan. They are by no means only concerned with themselves. Nor do they do all this without consciousness. Human beings live consciously in Devachan, and the assertion to the contrary in theosophical books is false. But how does this work?

[ 19 ] When a person sleeps, the astral body has left the physical and etheric bodies, and then the person has no consciousness, but only as long as the astral body has to do its usual work: namely, to repair and harmonize the worn-out and tired physical body; for as long as this is the case, the person is without consciousness. But when a person dies, the astral body no longer has to perform this activity, and to the same extent that it is freed from its activity on the physical body, consciousness awakens in it. During life, consciousness was obscured and restrained by the physical power of the body during the day, and at night it had to work on this physical body. When the forces are freed after death, certain organs immediately emerge on the astral body. These organs are the seven lotus flowers, or chakras. Thus, the two-petaled lotus flower arises at the root of the nose, between the eyebrows. Clairvoyant artists knew this and gave their works of art the symbol for it: Michelangelo formed his “Moses” with two horns. The other lotus flowers are distributed in the following way:

the sixteen-petaled lotus flower near the larynx,
the twelve-petaled lotus flower near the heart,
the eight- or ten-petaled lotus flower near the pit of the stomach,
a six-petaled and a four-petaled one further down.

[ 20 ] These astral organs are barely visible in ordinary people today, but when they become clairvoyant, or in mediums in a trance state, they stand out sharply in vivid, bright colors and move.

[ 21 ] The moment the lotus flowers move, the person perceives the astral world. The difference between physical and astral organs is that the physical sense organs of the human being are passive; they allow everything from the outside to affect them. The eye, ear, and so on are initially in a state of rest; they must wait until something is presented to them, such as light, sounds, and so on. In contrast, the spiritual organs are active; they cling to the object like a clamp. However, this activity can only awaken when the forces of the astral body are not needed elsewhere; then they flow into the lotus flowers. Even in Kamaloka, as long as the lower parts of the astral body are still connected to the human being, clouding still takes place. But when the astral corpse has been cast off and only what has been permanently acquired remains, that is, at the gate of Devachan, then these astral sense organs are fully awakened, and in Devachan the human being lives with these sense organs in a highly conscious state. It is not correct when theosophical books say that the human being sleeps in Devachan, nor is it correct that he is only concerned with himself or that he does not find the circumstances he spun on earth continued there; rather, a genuine friendship based on spiritual communion continues there with greater intensity. The intimacy of friendship nourishes the spiritual community in Devachan, enriching it with new forms. This is precisely what nourishes the soul in Devachan. Man's relationship to nature, a noble, aesthetic enjoyment of nature, is also nourishment for the life of the soul in Devachan.

[ 22 ] As I said, this is what people live on there. Friendships are, as it were, the furnishings with which they surround themselves. Physical circumstances on earth often interfere with these relationships. In Devachan, the way two friends are together is determined only by the intensity of their friendship. So establishing such relationships on earth means providing experiences for life in Devachan. Thus, physical living conditions present themselves as real experiences in Devachan.