The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] We have seen how, upon death, a human being first leaves behind the physical body, then the etheric body, and finally the lower astral body as corpses. What, then, remains of the human being after shedding these three bodies? The image of memory that appears before the soul after death vanishes the moment the etheric body separates from the astral body; at that point, it sinks, so to speak, into the unconscious, disappearing as an immediate spiritual impression. But something important remains: the image fades, but the fruit remains. Like a kind of concentrated essence, the entire harvest of the life just passed remains in the higher astral body and rests there.

[ 2 ] But human beings have gone through this process many times before. With each death following their various incarnations, the image of memory appeared before their soul and left behind this so-called “extract of power.” Thus, one life after another has added an image. A person who incarnated for the first time had the first memory image after death, the second image after the second incarnation—which was already richer than the first—and so on. In these combined images, we find 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 possess not only the four constituent parts but also this accumulation of experiences from previous lives. This is the causal body. The human being now consists of five bodies: the physical, the etheric, the astral body, the “I,” and the causal body. Once this causal body is formed, it remains; but it has been composed from the fruits of past lives. Now one understands the difference between individual human beings. Those who have lived many times—that is, who have already undergone many incarnations—have added many pages to the book of their lives; they are highly developed and possess a rich causal body; the others have passed through only a few lives, have therefore gathered fewer fruits, and consequently 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, this would certainly be meaningless. But that 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 has now reincarnated. Today, a person’s life from the ages of six to fourteen is already filled with the acquisition of knowledge: reading, writing, and so on. People today have entirely different opportunities to cultivate and develop their personalities. Incarnations are arranged in such a way that a person reappears only when they enter new circumstances, finding entirely different opportunities and possibilities for development—and this has always been the case after a few centuries. How rapidly the Earth is developing in every respect! A few thousand years ago, this region was covered with primeval forests inhabited by wild animals. People lived in caves, clothed themselves in animal skins, and knew only primitive ways of making fire and crafting tools. How different it is today! This is how the face of the Earth changes in a relatively short time. A person who lived in the time of the ancient Germanic tribes had a completely different view of the world than someone who is learning to read and write here today. As the Earth changes, he learns entirely new things and makes them his own.

[ 4 ] How long does it take for a human being to appear in a new incarnation? What factors does this depend on? The answer becomes clear from the following consideration. We must examine what is connected to the changes taking place on Earth.

[ 5 ] Throughout history, certain beings have always been particularly revered as sacred symbols. For example, in Persia, the twins were worshipped as far back as 3,000 years before the birth of Christ. From 3,000 to 800 B.C., the sacred bull Apis was worshipped in Egypt, and at the same time, the Mithraic bull was worshipped in the Near East. From about 800 B.C. onward, another animal came to the fore—the ram or the lamb—and this gave rise to the legend of Jason, who brought the Golden Fleece from the sacred ram in Asia, from across the sea. It goes even further. The lamb was revered as so sacred 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 bearing the lamb.

[ 6 ] All of this corresponds to three successive cultural states, and this is connected to significant celestial events. The sun’s path across the sky follows a specific zone, the zodiac, and what is remarkable is that the sun, which rises at a specific point on the zodiac at the beginning of spring, gradually shifts forward within a given epoch, so that over a period of 2,160 years it moves from one constellation to another. Thus, in the year 3000 B.C., the Sun rose in the spring in the constellation of Taurus; even earlier, it rose in the constellation of Gemini; and approximately 800 years before Christ, it rose in the constellation of Aries.

[ 7 ] This point thus shifts a little further each year; after 2,160 years, it enters the next constellation, and the peoples chose as a symbol of their veneration the sign in the sky where the sun rises in the spring, and offered their worship to it. If we could still understand today the powerful emotions and sublime moods that the ancients associated with this moment—when they witnessed the sun’s entry into 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.

[ 8 ] What did people back then see in this process? The ancients saw in it the embodiment of a natural force. In winter, it lay bound in slumber, and in spring it was “awakened” again by the sun. The constellation in which the sun appeared in spring—the one that gave the sun new strength—was regarded as something worthy of veneration. The constellation thus symbolizes the life-giving force. The ancients knew that something very important was connected with such a progression of the sun, for the sun’s rays then strike the Earth under entirely different conditions. And indeed, such a period of 2,160 years signifies the onset of entirely different conditions on Earth. Humanity now spends this period in Devachan in order to pass from death to a new birth. Occultism has always recognized these 2,160 years as a period during which conditions on Earth change to such an extent that human beings can reappear to experience something new.

[ 9 ] Thus, 2,160 years elapse between two incarnations. However, it must be taken into account that during this period of 2,160 years, the human being actually appears twice, so that, on average, a thousand years constitute the actual period between two incarnations. This happens because, as a rule, one of a person’s incarnations is male and one is female. It is incorrect to say that male and female incarnations alternate every seven times. A soul’s experiences vary greatly depending on whether it was incarnated as male or female; that is, of course, understandable. Therefore, over the course of 2,160 years, it appears once as male and once as female. By then, the person has had all the experiences possible under the given circumstances. Thus, he has had the opportunity and the chance to add a new page to the book of his life. Such radical changes on Earth and in earthly conditions serve as a period of learning for the soul. This 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 person; from then on, he never loses them again. Upon entering the Devachan, he takes the causal body and a part of his astral body with him—specifically, the purified part—for what he has earned remains with him in the Devachan and forever. Now he goes through his time in the Devachan. The savage, of course, has done little work on his astral body and takes only a tiny flame with him into Devachan; his memory images belong to him more unconsciously. St. 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, he sees himself, in a certain sense, standing before himself as if outside of himself. That is the moment when he enters Devachan. Devachan has, as it were, four sections, which we can call:

1. The continents
2. Rivers and seas
3. The air, the etheric realm
4. The realm of spiritual archetypes.

[ 11 ] In the first part—the continents—everything is seen as a negative image, much like on a photographic plate. Everything that has ever physically existed on Earth and still exists here—all the physical minerals, plants, and animals that have ever been and still are on this Earth—appears as negative forms. And when one sees oneself as a negative figure among these negative figures, then one is in Devachan. What is the meaning of seeing oneself in this way?

[ 12 ] We see ourselves not just once, but gradually, as we appeared in past 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 atrophies due to a lack of light. Certain animals, for example, once took refuge in caves in Kentucky; they no longer needed their eyesight because the caves were dark. Gradually, they lost their eyesight; their eyes atrophied. The flow of vital fluids was redirected 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 eye. The creative forces for the eye are found in light itself, just as the creative forces for the ear are found in the world of sound. In short, the entire body, all the organs, were formed by the creative forces of the universe.

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

[ 14 ] Human beings enter the earthly world with a certain degree of physical perfection. But new circumstances have since arisen; I now process these with my spirit. Yet everything I experience is creative. The eyes I already possess, the intellect I already possess, have been formed by my 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 carry within me the fruit of the memory of that last life. I can now compare how I developed in various lives, what I was like before I had the experiences of my last life, and what I can become when I add the experiences of my last life to them. Based on this, I then form in my mind a new body that is one level higher than my previous one.

[ 15 ] On the first level of Devachan, therefore, the person corrects the image of their previous life: drawing on the fruits of their past life, they themselves 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, a person has life within them, but could not perceive it; now they see it flowing by, and they use it to animate the form they created on the first stage.

[ 17 ] On the third stage of Devachan, a person finds all around them everything that was once within them—passions, feelings, and emotions; they confront them here like clouds, thunder, and lightning. He now views all of this, as it were, objectively; he comes to know and observe it just as he does the physical world on Earth, and gathers experience regarding the life of the soul. Through this perception of the images of the soul’s life, one can internalize the soul’s characteristics; one can animate the body formed on the first stage. This is the purpose of Devachan. In Devachan, a person must advance one step further; in this way, he prepares for himself the image of his body for the next incarnation. This is one of the tasks a person has in Devachan.

[ 18 ] But the human being still has many tasks to perform in Devachan. He is by no means preoccupied solely with himself. Nor does he do all this unconsciously. The human being lives consciously in Devachan, and the claim 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 the person has no consciousness—but only for as long as the astral body must perform its usual work: namely, to repair and harmonize the worn-out and fatigued physical body; for as long as this takes, the person remains unconscious. But when a person has died, the astral body no longer has to perform this activity, and to the same extent that it is freed from working on the physical body, consciousness awakens within it. After all, during life, their consciousness was darkened and restrained by the physical power of the body during the day, and at night they had to work on this physical body. Now, when the forces are set free after death, very specific organs immediately emerge in the astral body. These organs are the seven lotus flowers, the chakras. Thus, the two-petaled lotus flower emerges at the root of the nose, between the eyebrows. Clairvoyant artists have known this and incorporated this symbol into their works of art: Michelangelo depicted his “Moses” with two horns. The other lotus flowers are distributed as follows:

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 are located further down.

[ 20 ] These astral organs are barely discernible in the average person today, but when a person becomes clairvoyant, or in the case of mediums in a trance state, they stand out clearly in vivid, luminous colors and move.

[ 21 ] The moment the lotus flowers move, a person perceives in the astral world. The difference between physical and astral organs lies in the fact that the physical sense organs of human beings are passive; they allow everything from the outside to act upon them. The eye, the ear, and so on are initially in a state of rest; they must wait until something is presented to them—light, sounds, and so on. The spiritual organs, by contrast, are active; they grasp the object as if with a claw. However, this activity can only awaken when the forces of the astral body are not being used for other purposes; only then do 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, a certain cloudiness still persists. But once the astral body has been cast off and only what has been permanently acquired remains—that is, at the gate of Devachan—these astral sense organs have awakened to full activity, and in Devachan the human being lives with a high degree of consciousness through these sense organs. It is incorrect when Theosophical books state that the human being sleeps in Devachan, nor is it correct that he is concerned only with himself or that he does not find the relationships he established on Earth continued there; rather, a genuine friendship founded on spiritual communion continues there with even greater intensity. The intimacy of friendship nourishes the spiritual communion in Devachan, enriching it with new forms. This is precisely what nourishes the soul in Devachan. Likewise, the human being’s relationship with nature—a noble, aesthetic enjoyment of nature—is nourishment for the life of the soul in Devachan.

[ 22 ] As mentioned, this is what sustains people there. Friendships are, as it were, the furnishings with which they surround themselves. Physical circumstances on Earth often enough interfere with these relationships. In Devachan, the nature of the relationship between two friends is determined solely by the intensity of their friendship. Thus, establishing such relationships on Earth means providing experiences for life in Devachan. In this way, the physical circumstances of life manifest as real experiences in Devachan.