The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] The day before yesterday we described the region and the worlds which man has to pass through after death, after everything that still binds him to the physical instrument of this world has been discarded in Kamaloka or, as we say in Rosicrucian theosophy, in the elemental world. We have also described the so-called Rupa-Devachan or the realm that has been called the heavenly or inspiring world. We have seen that this region, the actual spirit world, shows a four-part structure similar to that of our physical world. We have the continental area, which is interspersed with a kind of ocean and river area, but which we can better compare to the form of the blood circulation in the human organism. We have seen that in Devachan, as an analogy to the atmosphere of our earth, in the so-called air circle, everything that is found in the joys and sufferings, in the pains and plagues that pervade the souls of the beings in the physical world is found, although far more extensively, because there are many other beings living there that are not incarnated in physical bodies. We have finally seen that in the fourth realm, everything that is original, from the smallest idea to the highest achievements of the inventor and the artist, can be found as a model. There is the real driving force that moves our earth forward. But in addition to these components of the actual spiritual world, we also find what connects our earth to even higher worlds.

[ 2 ] So far, we have only discovered what relates to our earthly development; we have not yet discovered what goes beyond that. Those who receive an initiation get to know what our earth has always been and will become and what connects it to other worlds outside our system.

[ 3 ] What we encounter in Devachan, in this so-called rational world, is particularly important. It is what we are accustomed to calling the Akashic Records. Not that it is produced in devachan, it is produced in a still higher realm, but when one has reached devachan, one can begin to see what is called the Akashic Records.

[ 4 ] What is the Akashic Records? We get the best idea of this if we realize that everything that happens on our earth or anywhere else in the world makes a lasting impression on certain subtle essences, which can be found by the cognizant person who has undergone an initiation. It is not an ordinary chronicle, but one that could be described as a living one. Let us suppose that a person lived in the first century AD. What he thought, felt and willed at that time, and what found expression in his deeds, has not been erased, but is preserved in this subtle essence. The seer can “see” it. Not as if it were written in a history book, but as it actually happened. How one moves, what one has done, how one has traveled, for example, can be seen in these spiritual images. One can also see the impulses of the will, the feelings, the thoughts. But we must not imagine that these images look like imprints of the physical personalities here; that is not the case. To use a simple image: when you move your hand, the human will is everywhere in the smallest parts of the moving hand, and this willpower, which is hidden here, can be seen. What is now spiritually active in us and has flowed out in the physical, that can be seen there in the spiritual.

[ 5 ] For example, let us visit Caesar. We can follow everything he has done. But let us realize that we can see more of Caesar's thoughts in the Akasha Chronicle. If he has set out to do something, you can see the whole sequence from the moment of decision until the point where the deed is carried out in life. It is not easy to follow a specific event in the Akasha Chronicle; you have to help yourself by connecting with things that you have experienced externally. If the seer wants to follow something from Caesar and he remembers a historical date as a point to which he can tie in, then the other thing arises with ease. The historical dates are often unreliable, but sometimes they are a help. When the seer turns his gaze back to Caesar, he really sees the acting person of Caesar as if he were a ghost, as if he were standing before him, speaking to him. But if the person who has any kind of story does not know exactly in these higher worlds, various things can happen to him when he turns his gaze into the past.

[ 6 ] The Akashic Records can be found in Devachan, but they extend down into the astral world, so that images of the Akashic Records can often be found in it like a mirage. However, they are often incoherent and unreliable, and this is important to bear in mind when conducting research into the past. One example should suffice to indicate the danger of these confusions. If, in the course of the evolution of the Earth, we go back through the information in the Akashic Records to the times when Atlantis existed before the great flood came and washed it away, we can follow the events in this ancient Atlantis. The same events were repeated again later in a different form. Long before the Christian era, events took place in northern Germany, in central Europe, east of Atlantis, before Christianity spread from the south, which are a repetition of the Atlantic events. It was only afterwards, through the influences that came from the south, that the population became independent. Here is an example of how easily one is exposed to error. If someone follows the astral images of the Akasha Chronicle, not the devachanic images, then he may mistake these repetitions of the old Atlantean events. This has actually occurred in Scott-Elliot's data about Atlantis, which is perfectly correct when tested in relation to the astral images, but no longer when applied to the devachanic images of the real Akasha Chronicle. This had to be said sometime. The moment one recognizes the source of the errors, one can easily come to a true appreciation of the data.

[ 7 ] Yet another source of error can arise when relying on information from mediums. Mediums, if they have the appropriate mediumship, can see the Akashic Records, although usually only their astral reflections. Now there is something peculiar about the Akashic Records. When we visit a person, he behaves like a living being. When we visit Goethe, he answers not only with words that he spoke at the time, but he answers in the Goethean sense. It may even happen that Goethe says verses in his style and sense that he did not write himself. The Akasha image is so alive that it continues to work as originally in the mind of the person. Therefore it may happen that it is confused with the human being himself. The mediums believe that they are dealing with the dead person who lives on in spirit, while it is only his astral Akashic image. Caesar's spirit may already be embodied again on earth, his Akashic image answers in the sessions. It is not Caesar's individuality, but only the lasting impression that Caesar's image has left in the Akasha Chronicle. This is the source of the error in numerous mediumistic sessions. We must distinguish between what remains of the human being in his Akasha image and what continues to develop as the individuality. These are very, very important things.

[ 8 ] After the human being has left Kamaloka, he has weaned himself from all the activities that require the physical instrument. He enters the area that has just been described. This is a very important time that is now beginning for him. We must realize what is happening to the person.

[ 9 ] Everything that the person has ever thought, felt and experienced here, he encounters in devachan in the form of the things around him. First, one sees one's own physical body in its archetype. Just as we walk over rocks, mountains and stones here on earth, so one walks there over all the forms that are present here in the physical world; so one also walks there over one's own physical body. This is virtually a characteristic of man after death, that he has his own physical body as a thing outside himself. From this he recognizes that he has come up from Kamaloka into Devachan. Here he speaks to his body: “That's me!” There he sees it and says, “That's you!” The Vedanta philosophy has its students meditatively practice this “That's you!” So that through exercises of this kind they have an understanding of saying to their body, “That's you!” Furthermore, you see all around you what you have experienced here on earth. If a person harbors revenge, unkindness, all kinds of bad feelings against his fellow human beings, then these bad feelings come to him like a cloud outside of himself, and that is a lesson for that person. He can learn what all of this means and what its effect is here in the world.

[ 10 ] We must realize clearly what is happening to man. Consider the physical human being here on earth. How did his organs, for example his eyes, come into being? There was a time when there was no eye. It is formed from light. The light has formed the eye out of the physical organization. The light is the cause of the eye. This is how the things that surround us create the organs of the physical world. On earth, they create organs in physical bodies and substances; in Devachan, the things that surround us work on our soul-being, so that everything that a person has acquired here, good and bad feelings, is found there in his environment, working on his soul and thus creating the soul organs. If one has been a good person here, then the good qualities live in the devachanic air there. They work in the spiritual, they create organs. These organs serve as architects, as formers for the new construction of the physical body at a new birth. Thus, what the person had inside, because it is transferred to the outside world in Devachan, works for the next birth. It prepares the forces that rebuild the human body.

[ 11 ] But do not think that man has nothing to do but just take care of himself; he also has other very important things to work on in Devachan. We can get an understanding of this if we look at the development of our earth for a short time. Let's look back a few millennia! If we look at the same areas, how different they looked then! Different plants, different animal forms, there was even a different climate. The earth's surface is constantly changing in its natural products. In Greece, for example, what once sprouted on the soil of ancient Greece could not arise again. This is precisely how the earth develops, that the face of the earth is constantly changing.

[ 12 ] It takes a very long time after a person has died before they are born again. When a person appears on Earth for the first time, they do not find the same thing. They are supposed to experience something new; they are not born twice into the same form of Earth. A person remains in the spiritual realms until the earth offers him completely new realms. This makes sense. He learns something completely new, and as a result, he develops quite differently. Let us look at a Roman boy, for example. He did not live as a schoolboy does with us. And when we are born again, we will again find completely different conditions. This is how it goes from incarnation to incarnation. While man is in the areas just described, the face of the earth is constantly changing.

[ 13 ] Who is active there, who changes the physiognomy of the earth? — we ask ourselves. At the same time, we come to the answer to the question: What does man do in the meantime? From the spiritual worlds, man himself, under the guidance of higher beings, is working on the transformation of the earth. It is the people themselves between death and new birth who do this work. When they are born again, they meet the face of the earth differently, in a form in which they themselves have worked. We have all worked in this way.

[ 14 ] If we ask: Where is Devachan, where is the spiritual world? — I answer: It is all around us. — It is really so. So all the souls of the people who have been dismembered are around us. They are working around us. While we are building cities, constructing machines, people who are between death and a new birth are working around us from the spiritual realm.

[ 15 ] When we, as seers, visit them, we can find, if we do not perceive the light merely with our senses, the dead people within the light. The light that surrounds us forms the body of the dead. They have woven a body out of light. The light that washes around the earth is material for the beings that live in Devachan. When we see a plant outside that feeds on sunlight, it receives not only physical light, but in truth the activity of spiritual beings, and among them are also these human souls. They themselves shine as light upon the plants, they hover around the plants as spiritual beings. When we look at the plants with our mind's eye, we say: The plant enjoys the influence of the dead human beings who hover around it and who work and weave in the light around it. — And if we now observe how the plant cover on the earth changes, and ask: Who has brought about this change? — we say: The dead human beings work in the light that surrounds our earth; there is really a devachan. In this realm of light we enter after the Kamaloka time. That is concrete truth. Only he knows about Devachan in the sense of Rosicrucian theosophy who can point out where dead people can really be found.

[ 16 ] As the eye of the seer develops, he often has a peculiar perception. When he stands in the sun, his body stops the light. He casts a shadow. When he looks into this shadow, it is often the first moment when he discovers the spirit. The body stops the light, but not the spirit, and in the shadow cast by the body, one can discover the spirit. That is why primitive peoples, who have always had clairvoyance, also call the shadow the soul. They say: shadowless – soulless. In a novella by Adalbert von Chamisso, this idea unconsciously underlies the plot: the man who has lost his shadow has also lost his soul, that is why he is so sad.

[ 17 ] Such is the work of human beings between death and a new birth in Devachan. It is truly no idle resting; they are working on the development of the earth from Devachan, and so we understand how the world is becoming. It is not, as is often said, as if people were living in blissful rest, in a dream; life there is much more active than here on earth.

[ 18 ] When a person has transformed the activities he performed in his last life into spiritual powers, when he has experienced all the experiences in the devachanic external world so that they have taken effect on him, then he is ready to descend from devachan to a new physical birth. Then the world attracts him again.

[ 19 ] The first thing a person encounters when they descend from devachan is the astral realm, which in Rosicrucian theosophy is called the elemental world. This gives them a new astral body. If iron filings are sprinkled on a piece of paper and a magnet is moved underneath it, then forms and lines are formed according to the forces of the magnet; and in exactly the same way, the astral substance, which is distributed irregularly, is drawn in and ordered according to the forces that are in the soul and that correspond to what this soul has worked for in previous lives. In this way, the human being groups together his astral body himself. These nascent human beings, who only have an astral body, are seen by the seer as beings that look like a bell shape opening downwards. They shoot through the astral plan at tremendous speed. It is hard to imagine the speed with which they flit through space.

[ 20 ] Now these nascent human beings must receive an etheric body and a physical body. What has happened so far, up to the building of the astral body, depended on themselves, on the forces they themselves have developed. But how the etheric body is formed does not depend on the person alone in the present course of development, but in relation to this formation the person depends on external beings. Therefore, the person always has a suitable astral body; but it is not always the case that this astral body fits completely into the etheric and physical body. Hence the disharmony and dissatisfaction in life. The reason that nascent human beings are always wandering around is that they are looking for suitable parents who can give them the best opportunity to acquire an etheric and physical body that is in harmony with their astral nature. It can only ever be the relatively best and most suitable parents who can give them this. During this search, entities are at work that attach the etheric body to the astral body and that are similar to what are often called folk spirits. This is not the incomprehensible abstraction that the folk spirit is usually seen as; for the spiritual observer of the world, it is something as real as our soul, which is embodied in our body. A whole nation does not have a physical body, but it does have an astral body and the beginnings of an etheric body. It lives as if in an astral cloud, and that is the body for the national spirit. These are the guides of the etheric formations around the human being, and so the human being is no longer in control of himself.

[ 21 ] Now comes an extraordinarily important moment, just as important as the moment after death, when one sees one's entire past life as a memory. When the human being slips into his etheric body and does not yet have his physical body – this is only a brief moment, but of the utmost importance – he has a preview of the next life; not of all the details, it is only an overview of all that lies ahead in the future life. He can tell himself — he will forget it again at the time of re-incarnation — that he has a happy or an unhappy life ahead of him. Now it happens that when a person has had many bad experiences in a previous life, he is shocked and does not want to enter the physical body. This can have the effect that he really does not completely enter it and so the connection between the different bodies is not completely established. This then results in idiots in this life. This is not always the reason for idiocy, but it is common. The soul, as it were, resists being physically embodied. Such a person cannot use his brain properly because he is not properly connected to it. Only when a person allows himself to be properly born into his physical tool can he use it properly. While the etheric body otherwise only protrudes very weakly, one can often see parts of the etheric body of idiots as an aetheric glow that extends far beyond the head. We have a case here where something that, according to its physical observation, leaves life inexplicable is explained by spiritual science.