The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. About the Higher Worlds

[ 1 ] At the request of your chairman, we will speak today about a topic that requires certain prerequisites on the part of the audience, and is therefore intended in a certain sense for advanced anthroposophists. In the following public lectures, we will have the opportunity to take into account those who have heard little about the foundations of the anthroposophical worldview, and some things that may require clarification in the internal lectures will, at least in part, be clarified in the public lectures. When I speak of advanced anthroposophists, my dear friends, please do not take this to mean that one must have learned a great deal theoretically in order to be advanced in the field of spiritual science; that is not what matters. What matters is not so much a world of such theories within the soul, but rather a certain training of our world of feelings, our emotional world, a certain attitude, one might say, which one gradually acquires when one works again and again in an anthroposophical circle.

[ 2 ] Those who have worked extensively within this circle for many years, or who have been active in another such circle, will think back to the time when they first heard something of what anthroposophical spiritual science has to say to humanity, and they will remember that much of what came to them then as a first message seemed not only improbable, but perhaps confusing, fantastic — if not worse. But in the course of time, those who drew closer and closer to the anthroposophical worldview became accustomed to a certain world of sensations and feelings that makes it possible to accept things communicated from the higher worlds just as we accept accounts of facts that happen on the physical plane, in the physical world. What one might call proof for spiritual scientific communications is not to be found in the same field as proof for recognized scientific truths. Such reasoning would not be of much use. The proof that emerges for those who become familiar with the anthroposophical worldview lies in the entire intimate transformation that the soul life undergoes. And long before a person is fortunate enough to ascend to the perception of the spiritual worlds through the application of spiritual scientific or occult methods, a premonition, a premonition develops within them of the truthfulness and deep foundation of what is communicated about these higher worlds. Much of what can give us an idea of how human beings can ascend to the higher worlds, how they can perceive these higher worlds with their own spiritual sense organs, will be brought to your attention in the next lecture, “What is Self-Knowledge?” Today we would like to engage in a more narrative discussion of these higher worlds and their connection to our physical world.

[ 3 ] From your previous anthroposophical work, you are all familiar with two other worlds besides our own, the so-called astral world and the so-called devachanic world, which is called the heavenly world by the religions known in this country, and which is actually the spiritual world. You know these worlds primarily as realms that human beings must pass through between death and a new birth. You know that first the astral world is passed through as Kamaloka, and then the human being enters a purely spiritual world, the Devachan, where he matures for a new birth, in order to descend again after a certain time to a new earth life, a life in the physical world.

[ 4 ] However, it is not enough to imagine the astral and Devachan worlds as certain realms that humans pass through between death and a new birth, for these worlds are constantly around us. We live not only in the physical world, but also in the astral or soul world, which surrounds us with its beings and realities. One can describe this astral or soul world by saying that it permeates our physical world like water soaks a sponge. The difference between these two worlds and our physical world is only that our physical world is perceived through the instruments of our body, and that these higher worlds are initially hidden from human perception because we have not developed the organs of perception for them. As real as they are within our world, their effects continually play into our world. And much of what happens in the physical world would be easier for humans to explain if they knew about the spiritual astral and devachanic worlds behind it, if they knew that there are beings around us and facts that cannot be grasped or understood with our senses. The astral world contains not only facts that occur super-sensually in our environment; it also contains beings who, if we may say so, are just as embodied in the substance of this world as human beings, the self-conscious human beings, are connected here in the physical world with flesh and blood. The difference between these beings and those just described is that they do not take on physical bodies so dense that they can be seen with our physical eyes. Their coarsest body is the astral body.

[ 5 ] Now, when we speak of beings that have the astral body as the lowest member of their spiritual organism, just as human beings have the physical body as the lowest member of theirs, we must immediately point out how those whose clairvoyant consciousness is open, who can therefore see these beings, perceive them. These beings differ very significantly from the beings of our various natural kingdoms that exist on the physical plane. Here we are surrounded by minerals, plants, animals, and human beings. If we want to identify a characteristic feature of these beings of the various natural kingdoms, it is the permanence, the enduring nature of their form. You will recognize a person you saw today tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or even years later because their outer form has remained constant. The same is true of animals, plants, and minerals. This is not at all the case with beings that are only embodied on the astral plane. They have a constantly changing form, a form that changes every moment in many beings, because the form that is perceived on the astral plane is an exact imprint of the inner soul experiences and soul activities of these beings.

[ 6 ] Just imagine, when you look at your soul in the morning, when you have just received a joyful letter, and the good news has filled your soul with joy and delight, and this feeling is, so to speak, alive in your soul, imagine now, if your outer form changed every time in accordance with your soul life, how different these images would look compared to the afternoon, for example, when you receive news of a death, or in the moments when anger and fear shake you to the core. If your outer form were to change every time and express what is going on in your soul, then you would have a picture of what is happening on the astral plane. Hence the confusing, fleeting, and constantly changing forms of astral beings. So you must imagine that when clairvoyant consciousness turns its attention away from the physical plane, it is surrounded by such an astral world of images. Of course, not everything that happens there can be described; only details can be sketched out.

[ 7 ] Life on the astral plane is much richer than on the physical world. You need only imagine that in the astral world there are light images that do not adhere to any external object, that they have a certain form that is either light or less light, less luminous or clouded, that they change at every moment, and that they are nothing other than an expression of souls, let us say, that live on the astral plane. But these light bodies do not merely show light and different color formations, but also all other sensory impressions similar to those of the physical world; only these are not perceived with the external organs, but with the spiritual organs of the soul.

[ 8 ] There is now a difference between the perception of a light body on the astral plane and that of a color or a light body on the physical plane. In contrast to what appears there as light, consciousness does not have the feeling that it is outside of it, but rather the feeling that you live in it. This is quite difficult to imagine at first, because you must think that at the moment when clairvoyant consciousness dawns in a person, the person feels something else than just that space is filling with astral facts and beings; rather, they feel as if they are growing, as if they are becoming larger and larger. The consciousness expands: “This is me” extends beyond the skin. That is the essence of clairvoyant consciousness. He feels as if he is spreading out and crawling into what he perceives, so that he lives within these luminous bodies and feels sensations of warmth and cold; he also tastes. All these sensations, which he initially knows from the sensory world and which are linked here to the external, limited body, flow and flit through the space, and above all, something else appears. Here in the physical world, human beings naturally have the feeling that only that which is spatially connected with a being belongs to that being. You would be very surprised if some physical being ran into a room, followed by another, and someone claimed that the two belonged together, even though there was no connection between them. You would consider them to be separate beings, because you would never regard spatially separate bodies in the physical world as one being. In the astral world, it is quite the case that what is not spatially connected is a being, and you have no other standard for recognizing that it is a being than that, let us say, you are inside and now have the consciousness that these two completely separate members belong to one entity. What is confusing, then, is that clairvoyant consciousness is not always the same, and that what belongs together cannot always be seen as such. Yes, it can go even further: you can see a being that appears to you as a series of separate spheres, here a luminous sphere, far away a second one, then a third, fourth, and so on. From this you will see that things look completely different on the astral plane than they do here.

[ 9 ] But there is something that is connected with the human being itself and that, in this connection with the human being, simultaneously expresses all the peculiarities of the astral world as effects on the human being; this is the human being's own astral body. This is the third member of his being, which you have learned has a self-limited form in a certain sense. During life between birth and death, however, one can see that the astral body essentially appears as a kind of oval cloud in which the physical and etheric bodies are embedded. The body is a kind of egg shape, on the outer boundaries of which there are constant undulating movements, so that there can be no question of regularity. The astral body has a relatively fixed, stable form as long as it is inside the physical body. As long as this is the case, this form remains. Already during the night, when the astral body withdraws, it begins to adapt itself to the soul body. One can already see how a person who lives with evil feelings during the day shows a different form at night than a person who has lived with good feelings during the day. In general, however, the form of the astral body remains intact during the night because the forces of the physical and etheric bodies are very strong and continue to have an effect even at night, preserving the astral body in its form, but only in its essence.

[ 10 ] But when a person dies, after the end of their physical life, and first casts off the physical body and then also casts off that part of the etheric body that is to be cast off, then the astral body already shows a changing form during the Kamaloka period. This body is completely adapted in its form and appearance to the life of the soul, so that a person who has lost his body in death with ugly feelings shows a repulsive form, while a person who has died with beautiful feelings shows beautiful, sympathetic forms of the astral body. It can go so far that people who are completely absorbed in sensual desires and cannot rise to any noble feelings or impulses actually take on the form of all kinds of grotesque animals for a time after death, not such as live on the physical plane, but such as only resemble them. Now, those who have experiences on the astral plane and can follow the forms that present themselves to clairvoyant consciousness know which image corresponds to a soul with noble content and which to one with ignoble content; they can therefore experience and see everything in the forms. I have already said that this astral human body does not show absolutely definite inner and outer forms, but that this is only the case within certain limits. Even in physical life, especially in that part of the body that leaves after falling asleep, the astral body adapts in a certain way to what the soul experiences. And from certain formations and configurations that the astral body takes on, one can see what is going on within the human being and what he is experiencing.

[ 11 ] I would like to tell you a little about some of the things the soul can experience, namely how the astral body is seen. Suppose a person is talkative, curious, or prone to sudden anger or other similar, let us say, vices. These vices express themselves in a very specific way in his astral body. For example, if a person is plagued by anger, irritation, especially if they are quick-tempered, then lumpy formations appear in their astral body, condensations caused by the astral body. It becomes impure. These condensations give rise to rather ugly snake-like extensions, which also differ in color from other substances. This can be easily observed in people who are quick-tempered. When people are talkative, this is particularly evident in that the astral body shows all kinds of densifications that could be characterized by saying that the densifications exert pressure in all directions within the astral body. When people are curious, this shows up in the astral body by it forming folds; certain parts become wrinkled and limp, and certain parts hang down toward each other, so to speak; there is a general slackening. You see, then, that this astral body of the human being shares in a certain way the general characteristics of the astral world, that it adapts its form to the inner soul experiences of the human being.

[ 12 ] Now, when we explore the astral world in general, we first encounter certain beings of which human beings, who know only the physical world, cannot really have any idea. Above all, the physical world appears to them in a completely different way than it did before. For example, we find the group souls of animals as very special beings. The human being as we encounter him here has an individual soul, each of which has an I-being. Animals do not have an I-being in the same way. In animals, the forms that are alike, that is, all lions, all tigers, all turtles, have what can be called a common, group soul. And you must imagine that an ego lives on the astral plane, regardless of where the animals live in the physical world. All are embedded in an ego that is a real personality on the astral plane, and there you can encounter this personality, this group soul, just as you would encounter a human being here.

[ 13 ] An example: Take bird migration, when the birds begin to migrate from the northern regions to the equator. Anyone who does not observe these truly extraordinary, wise bird migrations superficially will be amazed at how much of what we call intelligence is involved in such a migration. Some migrate to one region, others to another; they face dangers, they land where they have to land. Ordinary physical consciousness sees only the flocks passing by. But clairvoyant consciousness sees the group soul, the workings of the personalities who guide and direct what is happening. In fact, it is such astral personalities who guide and direct the whole. It is these group souls that first appear to us as a population of the astral world. The diversity that prevails in the group soul of animals on the astral plane is infinitely greater. It should be mentioned in passing that there is room for everyone on the astral plane because beings there interpenetrate each other; for the law of impenetrability applies only to the physical plane. However, they feel the influences there when they are penetrated, both good and evil; in their inner experience they feel the passing through. They can therefore pass through each other; they can also live in one and the same place. The law of interpenetration prevails there.

[ 14 ] But this is again only a part of the astral population, albeit one that we only recognize in the full, true sense when we grasp it completely. Do not believe that someone who is, let us say, attentive to how it is embedded in the astral world and how his consciousness is directed toward this group soul already has a concept of a group soul of some animal form. That is not enough. Here we are confronted with the vivid realization that what is spatially separated belongs together, so that for every animal group soul that wisely guides the whole, we have a counter-image, and a terrible one at that. This is what animal nature consists of: it points upward to the astral world, but then points downward to that part of the astral world where ugliness and adversity reign, so that for each animal group we have a light figure and an ugly figure, which has separated itself from the light figure as the evil, ugly thing that was once within it. Now you can see how the old images and works of art arose from a higher knowledge. Today, we recognize as individuality only that which lives in human beings. And therefore, if we want to represent something higher, we can only resort to the imagination. This was not always the case. Back then, when a large part of humanity, especially those who were artistically active, had a certain clairvoyant consciousness or at least traditions of clairvoyance, people always depicted what they actually found in the higher worlds. And so, in the stories you know about Michael with the dragon or Saint George with the dragon, you have a wonderful representation of the conditions that clairvoyants always find on the astral plane with regard to animal forms. It elevates them to a higher form of creation that is wise and far surpasses the wisdom of human beings. But this wisdom has been achieved by casting out the evil side of such beings from the astral realm. You see this evil form in the hostile dragon. When the clairvoyant looks up from the living form, he sees everything that is arranged for the living form by the higher being, who is wise but does not know love. But this development of the light soul form has only been achieved by trampling underfoot the evil qualities that were in the form of being. Man has achieved his present nature by still mixing good and evil in his karma today, whereas moral distinctions between good and evil cannot be applied to animals. But the concept of the light-filled being is linked to the upward movement, and that of the fallen being to what has been overcome. Ancient art has mostly created in meaningful symbols, and what has been created there is nothing more than the result of clairvoyant observations. This will only be understood when the astral archetypes are recognized again.

[ 15 ] The plant world also offers something peculiar on the astral plane. When the clairvoyant observes a plant as it roots in the ground and develops leaves and flowers, he first sees the plant consisting of the physical body and the etheric body. The animal also has the astral body. Now you may ask: Do plants have no astral body at all? It would be wrong to claim that; it is just not inside them as it is inside animals. When clairvoyant consciousness looks at the plant, it sees, especially at the top where the flowers are or are developing, the whole plant immersed in an astral cloud, a bright cloud that surrounds and envelops the plant, especially in those parts where it blooms and bears fruit. Thus, the astrality descends, as it were, onto the plant and envelops part of it. The astral body of the plant is embedded in this astrality. And the peculiar thing about this is that if you imagine the entire plant cover of the earth, you will find that the astral bodies of the plants border one another and form a whole, enveloping the earth like physical air, like plant astrality. If plants had only an etheric body, they would grow in such a way that they would only produce leaves and no flowers, because the principle of the etheric body is repetition. When a repetition is completed and a conclusion is to be formed, an astral body must be added.

[ 16 ] You can see how the etheric and astral bodies work together in the human body itself. Think of the successive rings of the spine. There, ring is linked to ring. As long as this happens, the etheric principle is mainly at work in the organism. At the top, where the bony skull capsule enters, the astral prevails, for there the astral has the upper hand. So the principle of repetition is the principle of the etheric, and the principle of completion is that of the astral. The plant would not be completed at the top in the flower if the astral of the plant nature did not descend into the etheric.

[ 17 ] If you follow a plant as it grows through the summer and then bears fruit in the fall and begins to wither, that is, when the blossoms begin to die, the astral then withdraws from the plant and rises upward again. This is particularly beautiful to observe. While the physical consciousness of human beings can rejoice in the blossoming of plants in spring, when field after field is covered with magnificent flowers, there is another joy for the clairvoyant consciousness. When the annual plants die off toward autumn, it glows and flits upward like flitting figures that emerge as astral beings from the plants that have nourished them throughout the summer. Here again is a fact that confronts us in a poetic image that cannot be understood unless clairvoyant consciousness can be traced here. Here we are already in an intimate realm of astral consciousness. But among the peoples of ancient times, where such intimate clairvoyants existed, this vision was already present in autumn. Among the clairvoyant peoples of India, you find depicted in art the wonderful phenomenon of a butterfly or a bird flying out of a flower calyx. This is another example of how something rises up in art that is based entirely on clairvoyant consciousness from those distant times when either clairvoyant consciousness was at work in the artists or was regarded as a tradition.

[ 18 ] An astral body is therefore also present in plants. Animals have a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. We have found the animal's ego in the group soul. We have now spoken of the astral body of the plant, which we have characterized as a withdrawing being when the plant withers. Does the plant also have an I? Yes, there is the same thing for plants as we call the group soul in animals, only here there is the peculiarity that all plant I's are oriented toward a single place on Earth, namely the center of the Earth. It is as if the Earth were irradiated from all sides by the group I's of all plants, and that is why the plant grows toward the Earth. However, this ego cannot be observed on the astral plane. There, the clairvoyant finds the animal group souls. He also finds those double beings, as we saw in the symbol of Michael with the dragon. He also finds what has now been described, but he would search in vain for the plant egos on the astral plane. They are only in the higher, in the actual spiritual world, in the coarser, lower parts of the Devachan, in the Rupa-Devachan. There are the actual plant souls, the plant I's, and they are all so intertwined that they are all in each other with their actual centers, united in the center of the earth.

[ 19 ] The question may now arise: The physical plane, the astral plane, and the devachanic plane are actually intertwined, so that the clairvoyant is spatially located nowhere else than where the physical human being is located; how, then, can one actually distinguish one from the other? It can be said briefly what distinguishes the physical plane from the astral plane. The physical plane is there as long as one sees, hears, and feels, and when human beings develop inner abilities, then astral beings become distinguishable between and within the physical. Where such beings enter our consciousness that cannot be perceived with physical organs, there begins the astral plane. But when does the devachanic plane begin? Now, it is possible to indicate boundaries between the astral and devachanic planes, even though they blur into one another; there is definitely an outer and an inner possibility of recognizing the ascent from the astral to the devachanic plane. The outer possibility is as follows: when a person develops their clairvoyant consciousness, they must first have moments in life when they leave the physical world in a certain sense. This is already a higher degree of human development when they see, so to speak, simultaneously the physical world and then, penetrating it, the astral world, for example, seeing the physical body of an animal and the astral body of an animal. But this can only be achieved at a certain stage of development, after one has gone through something else, namely, that one does not see the physical world when one sees the astral world.

[ 20 ] This living into the astral world at the beginning of human development is shown by the following. A person is in a certain place. They hear all kinds of things around them, see objects, touch them, taste them. When a person gradually becomes clairvoyant and lives in the astral world, these sensory impressions first begin to move further and further away from them, so that sounds seem to be farther and farther away and then disappear completely. The same happens with tactile perceptions: gradually, the person no longer feels what is otherwise touched as something immediate; they penetrate bodies with certain feelings, feel their way into them. The same applies to the world of colors, the world of light; the person expands, lives their way into this world of light. Thus, what constitutes the sensory world withdraws from the human being, and in its place appear the phenomena discussed earlier. The first thing to observe here is that where the astral world is truly entered by the human being, the perceptions of sound, the auditory perceptions, the world of sound, are completely extinguished, so to speak. For a time, these are completely absent in the astral world. The human being must, so to speak, go through this abyss of living in a soundless world. However, this world is distinguished by the fact that it contains manifold impressions, namely a differentiated world of images. As he rises higher in his development, he learns something that is completely new to him, namely what can be described as a spiritual counterpart to the world of sound. Within the astral world, he first learns what appears as spiritual hearing. This is, of course, difficult to describe.

[ 21 ] Now suppose the following: You see a luminous figure. Another comes toward it; they approach and pass through each other. A third comes, crosses their path, and so on. Now, what presents itself to you is not merely seen with clairvoyant consciousness, but it also gives you the most varied feelings in your soul. Thus, feelings of spiritual pleasure may arise in you, then again displeasure, but the most diverse feelings arise when the beings pass through each other, or when they approach or move away from each other. And so the soul that is becoming clairvoyant lives itself in, so that the interaction on the astral plane is gradually permeated and imbued with sublime or contradictory feelings of a purely spiritual nature. This is the spiritual music that is perceived. But the moment this occurs, one is already in the realm of Devachan. Thus, Devachan begins outwardly where the soundlessness begins to cease, which is partly a terrifying soundlessness on the astral plane. For human beings have no idea what it means to live in an infinite soundlessness that not only offers no sound, but also shows that it has none within itself. The feeling of deprivation in the physical world is a trifle compared to the feelings of the soul when it senses the impossibility that something can sound out of the infinitely expanding space. Then come the possibilities of perceiving the interaction of beings, their harmony and disharmony, and the world of sound begins. This is Devachan, viewed externally in its forms.

[ 22 ] The soul's perception can also indicate the transition from the astral world to Devachan in another way. In the physical world, human beings accompany things in their souls according to their character. One person passes by a picture and feels nothing, while another stands in front of it and feels a world of bliss. People pass each other; one says of the other that he is the right one and, by virtue of his soul's peculiarity, sees that he belongs to the other and feels a flash of joy. This is actually very soon no longer the case in the higher worlds. There, human beings demand the experiences of a world of feelings with an inner necessity, and there you cannot pass by certain experiences of the astral and devachanic planes coldly or soberly, but certain experiences demand of you a devotion, a complete involvement; others, on the other hand, repel you.

[ 23 ] This is what can be dangerous for those who are not properly prepared, because they have to live in constantly changing sensations, which under certain circumstances can destroy them inwardly, tear them apart inwardly, and therefore have a harmful effect on their health. There they can notice from stage to stage in which world they are. While in the astral world, they experience mainly two nuances of feeling in the most varied ways. One is particularly strong when the person is in the region of the astral world we call Kamaloka immediately after death. There, they have not yet detached themselves emotionally from the physical world; they long for it and desire it. Take, for example, a gourmet who craves delicious food. After death and after passing into the astral world, he still has the desire, but no longer the physical organs. Therefore, he craves greedily for what only the tongue and palate can offer a human being. Therefore, what he experiences in his soul becomes the most tormenting nuance of this feeling, the feeling of deprivation. Deprivation is something that stands on one side of our emotional world when we are in the astral world. Once you have developed your consciousness, you learn not to experience the agonizing deprivation that a dead person feels, but the feeling of searching for something, the feeling of deprivation, will also overcome the clairvoyant if there is nothing else to maintain balance. If he enters the astral plane unprepared or not properly prepared, this will become apparent. The soul has no rest and no peace; a restlessness, a restlessness will drive the soul from one thing to another. There is only one way to avoid this: the opposite emotional nuance must be developed, and in all secret schools this emotional nuance is prepared: renunciation. One prepares oneself for a proper life in the astral world through everything that can be described in a certain way as renunciation. If you deny yourself even the smallest thing here, it is quite true that you are, so to speak, placing a stone in the stairway to the astral plane. A calmer view of the astral world is achieved by preparing oneself through the emotional world of renunciation. While the feeling of desire makes the astral world a world of pain and displeasure, what one achieves through renunciation is that one can observe the structures and beings of the astral plane more and more clearly, so that one no longer has to waver between desire and renunciation. These are the emotional nuances in the astral plane, and as long as these are predominantly active in the soul, one is in the astral plane.

[ 24 ] Then new emotional experiences of the soul arise. Above all, where the soul crosses the boundary of the Devachan world, the feeling of bliss, of blissfulness, asserts itself. Even if one were to enter Devachan unworthily, that is, if one were to enter there before death through some spell or black magic, one would very soon be swimming in a sea of bliss of lesser or higher degrees. Now one might say that it is strange that even entering Devachan unworthily should bring bliss. That is true, but in a certain sense it also has its disadvantages, is the answer. This feeling of bliss flowing out and flowing in is inseparably linked on the devachanic plane with something else, namely with the loss of the self, of self-consciousness, of the inner ego force. We would melt away if another nuance of feeling did not come into play. This is what is called in the Secret Science the feeling of sacrificial devotion, of the capacity for sacrifice.

[ 25 ] In the astral plane, therefore, we find deprivation and renunciation, and in the devachanic plane, bliss and the willingness to sacrifice. And it is strange but true that if, on the devachanic plane, human beings did not have the feeling, “You must devote yourself to what is around you,” but wanted only to enjoy bliss with their ego, they would melt away in the sea of devachanic beings. But if he is imbued with the feeling, “I want to sacrifice myself, I want to let out what I have acquired,” then he preserves himself in Devachan from dissolving, from passing away. The highest feeling of love, of creative love, must be present as a second nuance of feeling in Devachan. And this is something that also makes it understandable to you how the work in Devachan takes place between death and a new birth. When a person comes from Kamaloka, where he has initially lived in deprivation and shortened the duration of his stay by learning to renounce, into Devachan, he must immediately begin the work of his next incarnation. Slowly, they build up the archetypes of their next earthly life. They will build it up all the better if they have learned to add to the feeling of bliss that inevitably arises the sacrificial devotion of their being to what surrounds them. To the extent that they sacrifice themselves with their soul, to that extent the archetype of their future personality is built up. If he were unable to do so, he would either disappear completely or take an extremely long time to return to earthly existence. Thus, we see, so to speak, how the soul finds its limits externally in forms—during the transition from the silent, luminous astral world to the sounding Devachan world—but much more important is how it lives itself into the other world internally. These are a few indications of the conditions of the higher worlds that humans enter when observing the ancient Greek saying, “Know thyself!” Much more could be added, but only a small part of what characterizes the higher worlds can be given here. In this way, one gradually becomes accustomed to them, and as one becomes accustomed, one also learns to recognize their effects on the physical world, and thus this world also becomes increasingly transparent.