The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism V

[ 1 ] Today we will be dealing with the question of what characterizes the human being during his stay in devachan between death and re-embodiment. To answer this, we first need to form an idea of what the human being actually achieves by what he initially does for himself during the time he passes through this spiritual world. We can most easily get an idea of this if we visualize the relationship between two things: namely, the relationship between what we experience and what becomes of what we experience, and this initially in the time between birth and death. Consider all that you have to go through when you learn to write, for example. You would have difficulty keeping in mind all the skills you had to absorb before you learned this noble art of writing. Think of all the admonitions and perhaps also the anger of the teachers. All this has passed before your soul, and what has remained of it all? The ability to write. Everything else has faded away, and what remains is the art of writing. This is how it is in life in general, and not only in the life between birth and death, but in the whole universal life through the physical and supersensible worlds.

[ 2 ] We can get an idea of how what has just been said also works in the supersensible worlds. Take Mozart, for example: he was still a very young boy when he heard a long piece of music in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome that, according to an old tradition, had never been allowed to be written down before, and he wrote it down afterwards entirely from memory. What a memory that took! And he was able to do it as a young boy! What does the materialist say to that? He will be very reluctant to believe that an ox grows out of a piece of soil if he is led to believe that something like an ox can develop without a natural mode of development. He says: There are no miracles – and he is absolutely right about that. But he becomes terribly superstitious and believes in miracles when it comes to spiritual things! The materialist simply accepts a fact such as the one just described from Mozart's life and, without deeper reflection, puts it down to heredity. And yet, in this case, it would be just as much of a miracle as the emergence of an ox from a piece of earth if its true connection could not be explained by spiritual science. It is possible for a person to train an excellent memory by repeatedly turning his mind to a subject. Just as perfection develops gradually from imperfection, so too can a memory be developed, but it would be a miracle if a memory like Mozart's had developed out of nothing! Spiritual science answers that here too memory has developed gradually in accordance with nature. There is no escape for the materialist when he wants to explain something like this: either he must believe in miracles or he must admit that the abilities that arise in this way prove that they were already there in a previous life and have taken the completely natural course. Reincarnation is therefore nothing more than a logical consequence of such trains of thought. And those who, according to the materialistic point of view, assume that such a perfect memory as that of young Mozart can arise out of nothing, should also draw the consequences from their point of view and assume that, for example, frogs develop out of mud without further ado, as science assumed before Francesco Redi.

[ 3 ] So anyone who looks at logic in spiritual science says: just as an oak tree arises from a seed and develops little by little, so too do our soul abilities develop little by little , and when a person enters one life with such highly developed abilities as Mozart, for example, this gives us irrefutable logical proof that the person has acquired these abilities little by little in previous lives on earth. This gives us a handle to understand the destiny of man in the spiritual world.

[ 4 ] The point is that the experiences of one life transform into abilities for the next life. Everything that is a predisposition in this life, we brought with us as the fruits of experiences from previous earthly lives. Therefore, one must consider the process of devachan in order to fully understand how abilities for the next life arise from the experiences of this one.

[ 5 ] Thus, when we live our lives here on earth, we experience a great deal every day, and all these experiences appear in the tableau described earlier, directly after death, the soul's eye; but the abilities that we have acquired from all these experiences remain with us as essence, and this essence, which remains with him for all subsequent times, the person then takes with him into the spiritual world.

[ 6 ] When the person enters the devachan, he perceives the areas as we described them yesterday: the continental area, which consists of the archetypes of all earthly forms; the marine area, which consists of all life; the aerial area, which consists of all soul-related aspects, such as desire, suffering, joy, pain, and so on. From the continent, man first perceives the image of his own physical body, and from the air, he naturally perceives first of all what has happened in his own soul in the past life in terms of joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain and passions. This means that he perceives again all the experiences of the previous life, but now quite differently than in the previously described passage through the Kamaloka period. There it was an inner experience for the person for the purpose of getting rid of the habit. But now all these experiences are spread out before his soul as the outer world for a long, long time. There he experiences the peculiarity of his physical life in the river region of Devachan, and he experiences all mental experiences as in the aerial region of the heavenly world.

[ 7 ] It is important and of great interest to realize how everything you have experienced in the course of a lifetime - perceptions of the world, pleasure, pain and so on - is around you in the spiritual world as an external world. It is not sad that the pains are spread around us there. That is not sad at all, because all suffering is there around us like thunderstorms here in the physical world, and all joyful experiences are there like wonderful cloud phenomena. And precisely what we ourselves have experienced inwardly is not there, as it is here, inwardly in us, but in this external form in our environment, just as a picture of nature spreads. It is around us as if it were around us in pictures, sounds or atmospheric phenomena; it is objectified as a heavenly being. That, for example, the pains radiate towards us, I said, is not sad, just as it is not sad here in life when lightning and thunder surround us; for he who sees the connection knows what we owe to the pains. Those who have experienced suffering and pain will always say that although joys and pleasures are gratefully accepted, they would never want to do without pain and suffering. We owe all our wisdom to the suffering and pain of past lives on earth. The face that appears in this life with the expression of wisdom is so because it has felt the cosmic connection as pain in previous lives.

[ 8 ] I already said that everything we experience here during our life on earth is spread out around us in Devachan in images and so on. What is the significance of this? It is easier to understand if you realize how the environment here affects people. You all know Goethe's saying: “The eye is formed by light for light.” What does that mean? Our eye must be there to see the light. The world would be dark and gloomy if it were not for the eye within us. But where does the organ come from? Light itself has formed it, just as the absence of light causes the eye to degenerate again. This observation could be made directly, for example, in the animals that had migrated to the caves of Kentucky. Light is the cause of vision. In the early days, man was not endowed with eyes because he still lived under very different conditions; in the early days of the earth's development, the sun was not yet visible to an external sensory eye. Let us think of what is told us in the saga about Niflheim. The more man lived in the sunlight, the more this sunlight gradually formed the eye. And in the same way, all the other sense organs have developed; sounds have formed the ear, warmth the sense of warmth. If there were no hard objects, there would be no sense of touch. The external world is the creator and designer of our entire body. This is very important for practical life, as is the case with all theosophy, which is always relevant to practical life. It is also extremely important for education, because education can only be truly successful if the educator is able to look deeply into the nature of the human being. The physical body develops until the permanent teeth have come through, the etheric body until the age of fourteen or fifteen, and the astral body until the age of twenty-one. All this must be known if one is to intervene practically and not fancifully in education. If, then, the predisposition of the physical body is particularly important up to the age of seven, then these physical impressions, that is, everything that the child perceives with his sense organs, must be taken into account deeply and thoroughly in the education. Whatever is neglected in this child's body in terms of forms and predispositions of the physical organs up to the age of seven is lost for all times of life.

[ 9 ] This last sentence provides medicine in particular with an enormous amount of guidelines for appropriate treatment, including, for example, rickets. How is it that this disease occurs precisely during this period of life? Precisely because that is when the child is forming its body, and that is why these symptoms manifest themselves in the form of crooked bones, bad teeth, incorrect skull shape and so on. However, that is also why the child is still able to correct these incorrect forms to match the norm, especially in the period up to the change of teeth. We see that with proper treatment, even the most crooked legs can become perfectly straight, and that even with the worst milk teeth, a perfectly healthy second set of teeth can develop. However, crooked legs that are not corrected by the age of seven will remain for life.

[ 10 ] The brain, too, is in the process of developing its plastic forms until the age of seven, and whatever is not developed in these fine formations, in the development of form, is lost forever. And since the physical brain is the instrument through which the mind expresses itself, it is of the utmost importance that this instrument be developed as finely as possible, or rather, that it be assessed in the first seven years. For even the greatest mind cannot work with an imperfectly developed brain, just as the greatest pianist cannot play well on a piano that is out of tune. Especially with regard to brain development, spiritual science provides very important guidelines for both education and medicine. It is precisely here that one very often encounters a complete misunderstanding of the facts in modern medicine. Just as rickets manifest themselves in the malformation and misshapen nature of the bones, they also very often manifest themselves at the same time in a malformation of the glandular system and in the mucous membranes; that is to say, children affected by rickets very often show the symptoms of swollen glands, adenoid growths and so on. And as a third manifestation of the disease, it is very often observed in these children that they also suffer from mental retardation, that they fall behind at school, become inattentive, and even downright stupid. But in reality this is the same deficient development of the physical brain, namely of the so-called cortex substance, which must be developed in its finest organization precisely in these years and which, like the other phenomena, is based on a lack of development. Now, in such a case, the modern physician, as a result of his entire modern scientific education and attitude, is only too inclined to do exactly the same as today's natural science, and, with complete disregard for the deeper spiritual causes, simply to string the emerging external phenomena together as cause and effect, like pearls on a chain. What is the consequence? The facts are: rachitic bones, adenoid growths, a decline in attention and receptivity. The immediate conclusion is: children who have adenoid growths become mentally weak as a result of these – so these growths must be removed. The growths are therefore surgically removed. If this conclusion were correct, then every child treated in this way should respond by a lessening and disappearance of inhibitions on the part of the brain. But what is observed in the vast majority of cases after such treatment? That the intervention has only a very temporary, illusory effect, and that the growths have grown back again in a very short time. If, however, the disease is properly treated at the root – and this is very well possible, but it would take us too far from the topic here – then both the crooked bones and the growths of the mucous membranes and glands, as well as the sluggishness of the brain, will disappear.

[ 11 ] After this digression, let us return to the subject. Thus, the correct physical forms are ignited and shaped by the external world. In reality, the child is only a sensory organ until the age of seven. Everything it perceives with its senses, it processes, and so too, above all, everything it sees and hears in its immediate surroundings. Until it changes teeth, the child is therefore an imitative being, and this extends to its physical organization. This is, of course, something quite natural. The child takes in its entire environment through the sense organs. It also practises using its limbs. It sees how the father, the mother and so on do this or that and simply imitates it. This goes into every movement of the hands and legs. If, for example, the mother or father is fidgety, the child is likely to be fidgety in countless cases; if the mother is calm, the child will naturally be calm too. So you have to try to create the right counteraction through the right environment.

[ 12 ] In order for the child to receive the right guidelines for the development of his physical brain, it is absolutely necessary that, in addition to sensory impressions, the imagination is stimulated. Therefore, it is imperative to give the young child the simplest possible toys. Thus a natural child will always reach for the old doll that is made out of a rag, no matter how “beautiful” a doll it has. Only the brainwashed children of our age are raised with “beautiful” dolls. What is the reason for this? The child must use its imagination to reshape the object in its imagination so that it resembles a human figure, and this is precisely a healthy exercise for the brain. Just as the arm is strengthened by gymnastics, so the brain is trained by this exercise.

[ 13 ] The colors in the environment are also important, and they have a completely different effect on young children than on adults. Today, it is widely believed that green has a calming effect on a child. This is absolutely wrong. A fidgety child should be given a red environment, and a calm child a green or blue-green one. The effect of red on a child is as follows: If you look at a bright red and then quickly look away at a white paper, you see the complementary color: green. This is the tendency to produce the complementary color. The child also tries to do this; it tries to unfold the activity that causes the complementary color internally. — That was an example of how the environment works. And so the whole environment – in addition to many, many other things that we will discuss later and in other places – plays an extraordinarily important role in the formation of the child's physical body from birth to the change of teeth, in the formation of the etheric body from the seventh to the fourteenth year, of the astral body from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, and so on. Indeed, the influence of the environment on the individual is felt throughout life. The saying, “Tell me what you deal with and I'll tell you who you are,” is based on this insight, because “what I deal with” means “what is going on in my environment.” This environment therefore has a strong influence on me. This applies especially to the period of the formation of the astral body from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, and it is an almost everyday experience that a young person in these years is easily corrupted astral by his environment.

[ 14 ] And as here in physical life, so it is also in life in Devachan. Just as, for example, a person here is constantly under the influence of the elements, so too, of course, in Devachan. And this brings us back to the example at the starting point of this reflection on Mozart. Just as here on earth man is constantly under the influence of the external atmosphere, so also in Devachan, and there the atmosphere is formed from all the soul life, our own and that of our fellow human beings. All this soul life has a constant effect on man and thus the talents develop precisely there, that they attract the astral forces of their environment that are akin to their soul and allow them to have an effect on them. Thus Mozart was born with his tremendous memory for music because he had gathered experiences tending in that direction once in his previous life and then had them work on him for a long time in the Devachan. We live through the higher education of our innermost being through our surroundings in the Devachan, thus indirectly through all the experiences of our previous life. So all abilities are the fruits of previous lives, and they have been further developed in devachan. And that is precisely the feeling that makes man blissful in devachan. What we are now able to do, we have hatched in devachan. And that is the feeling in this whole interim period of devachan life. The feeling that clings to every creation is bliss.

[ 15 ] Here we often feel pain, but in devachan even pain is bliss because there we become aware that we acquire wisdom through pain. Even a materialistic scholar has found this out. In a treatise, 'Mimic of Thought', he says, 'Every wise face shows the expression of crystallized pain.' From the pains of the previous life, man indeed produces talents and wisdom for the next life through his experiences in Devachan. And the feeling of producing is the feeling of infinite bliss.

[ 16 ] You can see a pale reflection of this here with the hen brooding. Translated into the spiritual and infinitely increased, you have the feeling of continuous, infinite bliss between Kamaloka and rebirth, because that is when man works out all his talents and abilities for the next life. Everything becomes a source of blissful existence.

[ 17 ] Thus we have seen that the one source of bliss in devachan is that all the bonds that are formed here in life are experienced again there in devachan, and that even all these relationships are experienced in their spiritual part with tremendous intensity. And the other source of bliss is the aforementioned production, this creating for the next life.

[ 18 ] When the spiritual researcher now turns his attention to this actual activity of the human being in Devachan, he realizes that this activity of producing is not only important for the individual person himself, for his own future organization, but that the person has important work to do in helping to create and work on the progress of all further earthly development. It is a mistake to believe that we are only dealing with ourselves there in Devachan. As a blissful spirit in the realm of the spirits, how are we involved?

[ 19 ] The activity of the dead contributes to the development of this earth. One could easily ask: Why be born again and again once we have gone through the experiences of an earthly life? Isn't that useless?

[ 20 ] But it is not like that. No human being is ever born again in vain. The individual lives on earth are so far apart that we always have new experiences and things to go through. After all, centuries pass between two embodiments, and when we return, the earth has changed radically. Let us assume that we have been on earth in the second century after Christ and are now re-embodied. What did the earth look like then? Even descriptions of an area from much later, from the Elbe, the Weser for example, would still be quite different; here in this area, in Hessen-Nassau, there were still primeval forests.

[ 21 ] When a person is reborn, he experiences something completely different than in his previous life. In the various lives on earth, we experience the development of the earth itself, precisely because we are embodied over and over again. And then there are the changes brought about by the respective cultures. What a Roman boy could learn, and how very different is the education of boys today! All these experiences are, as we have seen, so tremendously important. So there is a deep meaning to the fact that man must come back again and again.

[ 22 ] Now we ask ourselves: Who changes the face of the earth? In fact, it is the dead themselves who live in the spirit realm and who, through the power they have there, work on this transformation of the earth themselves. Just as people work on the outer earth here, so the dead work on the spiritual archetype of this physical earth. It is they who send their powers into this physical world and who work on the transformation. Admittedly, there are leaders and higher beings who take the lead. And in this realm, which is right among us, the dead are working on the transformation of the face of our earth.

[ 23 ] Why was I born here today? Because I prepared the bed for myself here, so to speak, into which I was born. The forces that are reshaping both the seas and the Earth's surface are those of our dead. We know that what is now the Atlantic Ocean used to be a vast stretch of land, and the dead have also contributed to this transformation; and these forces work in a natural way and are by no means miraculous.

[ 24 ] Insight into these things brings us, with absolute logic, to understand the importance and necessity of our work in the spiritual realm. If one only knows how to interpret the phenomena correctly, then one can even say how this work is done. People here breathe in the air; without air they could not breathe. It is similar with the dead, except that, just as air works here, light works there. In the spread out light, the initiate sees the beings of the dead. For example, for the seer, plants are surrounded by the spirits of the deceased, and it is the spirits of the dead that accomplish this by transforming and growing the plant with the light. We shall all in the spiritual world hover over the earth and build upon the plants.

[ 25 ] The world becomes larger and more significant for our gaze when we consider it in connection with spiritual beings. We ourselves are literally the transformers of this earth.

[ 26 ] Finally, a few words that may help us to understand certain subtleties of culture. Occasionally, the seer finds confirmation in his own observations of phenomena in the history of ancient peoples that had previously been a mystery to him. It is a well-known fact, for example, that primitive peoples initially have clairvoyance and see many things that we are unaware of. These primitive peoples often see something in the shadows that has to do with the soul. Now the clairvoyant comes back to this in his observations. They learn, for example, when they look at the shadows that you cast yourself, to see your spiritual emanations first. If you hold back the physical light, you see the spiritual in the shadow space. This has been preserved in esoteric science, and many have utilized it without knowing what they were doing, for example Chamisso in his “Peter Schlemihl”. This is a man who has lost the shadow and is very unhappy about it. But it is a spiritual fact that in the shadow the soul becomes visible, and therefore the man without a shadow is the man without a soul. There are hundreds of examples like this. We will only truly learn to understand the world when we get to know its spiritual foundations. That is why spiritual science is not for those who brood, but for those who really want to work practically. Not because we want to withdraw from the visible, but because we want to understand the visible all the better.

[ 27 ] The higher facts relate to the visible world as magnetism does to iron. We only really get to know iron when we also get to know magnetism. We shall see from a few examples that it is precisely for practical life that what we get to know in the spiritual world becomes fruitful.