The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today’s lecture will focus on the conditions that a person must fulfill if they wish to develop the powers and abilities that lie dormant within them and to gain their own experience and insight into the higher worlds. In the articles “How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?” you have gained an insight into many of the requirements a person must fulfill if they wish to walk the path of knowledge and ascend into the higher worlds. However, these articles can only provide details. Even if they were expanded threefold, or even tenfold in scope—there is an infinite amount to say about everything in this field! It will therefore always be useful to provide further explanations in this or that direction. One can only illuminate these matters from a certain perspective at any given time, and one must adhere to the principle of supplementing what has been gained from one perspective by illuminating it from another. Today, let us set ourselves the task of briefly outlining, from a certain perspective, some of the conditions of the path of knowledge and the conditions for ascending into the higher worlds.

[ 2 ] You may recall the hints given in the interpretation of Goethe’s “Fairy Tales.” The point is that human beings possess various kinds of spiritual faculties, and that spiritual ascent depends, on the one hand, on the development of these faculties—that is, of thinking within oneself, feeling within oneself, and willing within oneself—and, on the other hand, on the human being bringing these three into the proper balance with one another through the method of exercises. Will, feeling, and thinking must always be developed in precisely the right measure, in accordance with an understanding of the individual spiritual goals of life. For a particular goal, for example, the will must recede while feeling must come to the fore more strongly; for another goal, thinking must recede; and for yet another goal, feeling must recede. All these soul forces must be developed in the right proportions through occult exercises. The ascent into the higher worlds is linked to the development of thinking, feeling, and willing.

[ 3 ] Above all, it is a process of purification—a purification of thought. This is necessary so that thought is no longer dependent on external sensory observation, which can be obtained on the physical plane. But it is not only thinking; feeling and willing, too, can become powers of cognition. In ordinary life, they follow personal paths. Sympathy and antipathy follow paths tailored to the individual personality. Yet they can become objective powers of cognition. This may sound unbelievable to modern science. It is easy to believe this about thinking—especially imaginative thinking directed toward sensory observation—but how could people possibly admit that feeling could become a source of knowledge when they see how one person feels one way about the same thing while another feels another? How could one assume that something so fluctuating, so dependent on the individual personality as sympathy and antipathy, could become decisive for insight—and that they could be disciplined to such an extent that they might grasp the innermost essence of a thing? That thought does this is easy to understand; but that even when we are faced with a thing and this thing arouses a feeling within us, this feeling can exist within us in such a way that it is not the sympathy or antipathy of the individual that speaks, but rather that it itself can become a means of expression for what lies at the very core of the thing—that seems hard to believe. Furthermore, the idea that the power of the will and desire can also become a means of expression for the inner essence seems, at first glance, downright frivolous.

[ 4 ] Just as thinking can be purified and thereby become objective, so that it becomes a means of expressing the facts in both the sensory and the higher worlds, so too can feeling and willing become objective. However, this point must not be misunderstood. Feeling, as it exists in modern human beings in everyday life—in its immediate emotional content—does not become a means of expressing a higher world. This feeling is something personal; the occult exercises given to the student are aimed at cultivating this feeling—that is, at changing and transforming it. Through this process, feeling does indeed become something different from what it was when it was still personal. However, one must not believe that, once one has attained a certain level on the occult path through the training of feeling, one can then say—from the perspective of a person capable of insight—“I have a being before me and I feel something of this being”—and that what one experiences in one’s feeling is a truth or an insight. The process is a much more intimate and inner one that transforms feeling through occult exercises. This is expressed in the fact that the person who has transformed their feeling through these exercises arrives at imaginative knowledge, so that a spiritual content is revealed to them in symbols that are expressions of the facts and beings present in the astral world. Feeling is transformed; it becomes imagination, so that astral images arise within the person, expressing to them the events of the astral realm. The person does not see, as in the physical world—for example, a rose covered with colors—but rather in symbolic images; indeed, everything presented to us in occult science is presented in images. Such as the black cross adorned with roses. All such symbols are intended to express a specific fact and correspond to astral facts just as what we see in the outer physical world corresponds to physical facts. Thus, one develops the feeling but perceives through the imagination.

[ 5 ] The same is true of the will. Once one has attained the level that can be achieved through training the will to a certain degree, then when a being approaches one, one does not say, “It awakens a capacity for desire within me,” but rather, once the will is developed, one begins to perceive that which is the subject of the sounds in Devachan.

[ 6 ] Feeling develops within us, and astral vision through imagination is the result. Will develops within us, and the experience of devachanic events through spiritual music—the harmony of the spheres—from which the innermost nature of things resounds to us: that is the result. Just as one develops thinking and thereby attains objective thinking—which is the first stage—so too does one develop feeling, and a new world will open up at the stage of imagination. And in the same way, one develops the will, and through inspiration comes the knowledge of the lower Devachanic world; finally, through intuition, the higher Devachanic world opens up before the human being.

[ 7 ] Thus we can say: As human beings rise to the next stage of existence, images present themselves to them; however, we no longer use these images in the same way as our thoughts, so that we ask: How do these images correspond to reality? Rather, things reveal themselves to him in images consisting of colors and forms, and through the imagination, human beings must themselves unravel the essences that are thus symbolically revealed to them. In inspiration, things speak to us; there we need not ask questions or unravel them in concepts—that would be a transposition of the theory of cognition from the physical plane—but rather the innermost essence of things itself speaks to us. When a person approaches us and expresses their innermost essence to us, this is different from when we are faced with a stone. We must unravel the stone and reflect on it. With a human being, there is something we do not experience directly; rather, we experience their essence in what they say to us: they speak to us. So it is with inspiration. It is not a matter of conceptual, discursive thinking; rather, one listens to what things say; they themselves express their essence. It would make no sense to say: “If someone dies and I meet them again in Devachan, will I know whom I am meeting there, since the Devachanic beings must look different and cannot be compared to what exists on the physical plane?” - In Devachan, the being itself reveals what kind of being it is, just as if a person were not only to tell us his name, but were constantly to allow his essence to flow toward us. This flows to us through the music of the spheres; misrecognition is no longer possible.

[ 8 ] Now, this provides a certain point of reference for answering a question. It is very easy to fall into misunderstandings due to the various descriptions found in spiritual science, and one might easily believe that the physical, astral, and devachanic worlds are spatially distinct from one another. We know, of course, that wherever the physical world is, the astral and Devachanic worlds are also there; they are intertwined. Now one might raise the question: If everything is intertwined, then I cannot distinguish the three worlds as I would in physical space, where everything exists side by side. If the hereafter is contained within the here-and-now, how then do I distinguish the astral and devachanic worlds from one another?—One distinguishes them in this way: as one ascends from the astral to the devachanic, the totality of images and colors becomes infused with sound in their forms to the same degree that one ascends into the devachanic. That which was previously spiritually luminous now becomes spiritually resonant. There is also a difference in the experience of the higher worlds, so that one who ascends can always recognize, based on specific experiences, whether he is in this world or that one.

[ 9 ] Today we will characterize the differences in the experience of the astral and devachanic worlds. Thus, it is not only through the fact that the astral world is perceived through imagination and the devachanic world through inspiration, but also through other experiences that we know which world we are in.

[ 10 ] One aspect of the astral world is the period that a person must experience immediately after death, which is referred to in spiritual science literature as the Kamaloka period. What does it mean to be in the Kamaloka? We have often attempted to describe, through various explanations, what it means to be in the Kamaloka. I have often cited the characteristic example of the gourmet who yearns for the pleasure that only the sense of taste can provide. The physical body is shed and left behind at death, as is the etheric body for the most part, but the astral body still remains, and the person retains the qualities and powers they possessed while living within the physical body. These do not change immediately after death, but only gradually. If a person had a longing for delicious food, this longing—this craving for pleasure—remains, but after death they lack the means to satisfy it, for the physical body with its organs is no longer there. They must do without that pleasure, and they crave something they must do without. This applies to all true Kamaloka experiences, and these consist of nothing other than life—the state within the astral body—where the person still longs for satisfactions that can only be fulfilled through the physical body. And because he no longer has the physical body, he is compelled to refrain from striving for and craving these pleasures: this is the time of weaning. Only then is he freed from it, when he has torn this longing out of the astral body.

[ 11 ] Throughout this entire Kamaloka period, there is something living within the astral body that can be called deprivation—deprivation in the most varied forms, nuances, and distinctions; this is the essence of Kamaloka. Just as light can be differentiated into shades of red, yellow, green, and blue, so too can privations be differentiated into the most varied qualities, and the characteristic of privation is the hallmark of the human being who is in Kamaloka. Yet the astral plane is not merely Kamaloka; it is far more comprehensive. But a person who has lived only in the physical world and experienced only its contents would never, at first—whether after death or through other means of experiencing the astral world—be able to experience the other parts of the astral world if he has not prepared himself. At first, he cannot experience the astral world in any way other than through deprivation.

[ 12 ] Anyone who ascends to the higher worlds and realizes, “I lack this or that, and there is no prospect of obtaining it”—that person experiences the content of consciousness in the astral world. Even if a person were able to use occult means while still in the physical body to enter the astral plane, they would still have to suffer deprivation in the astral world.

[ 13 ] How, then, can one train oneself so that one not only comes to know the part of the astral world that is expressed through deprivation—the phase of deprivation—but also experiences the astral world in the best sense, that is, experiences the part that truly expresses this world in the good and best sense? By cultivating the opposite of deprivation, a person can enter the other part of the astral world. Therefore, the methods that awaken within a person the forces opposed to deprivation will be the ones that lead the person into the other part of the astral world. These must be given to the person. These are the forces of renunciation. Just as with deprivation, renunciation, too, is conceivable in manifold nuances. With even the smallest act of renunciation we impose upon ourselves, we take a step forward in the sense that we evolve toward the good side of the astral world. If one denies oneself even the most insignificant thing, this is a cultivation of something that contributes significantly to experiencing the good aspects of the astral world. That is why occult traditions place so much emphasis on the student tentatively abstaining from this or that, on practicing renunciation. Through this, he gains access to the good side of the astral world.

[ 14 ] What is the result of this? Let us first consider the experiences in the Kamaloka. If we imagine someone leaving the physical body through death or other means, that person will lack the physical instruments of the body. Consequently, that person will inevitably lack the means for any kind of satisfaction. Deprivation sets in immediately, and this appears as an imaginative image in the astral world. For example, a red pentagon or a red circle may appear. This is nothing other than the image of what enters a person’s field of vision and corresponds to the deprivation just as, in the physical world, an object on the physical plane corresponds to what is experienced in the soul as a mental image of it. If one has very base desires, very lowly cravings, then horrific animals confront the person when they are out of the body. These dreadful animals are the symbol of these basest desires. But if one has learned self-denial, then at the moment one leaves the body through death or initiation, the red circle—because one permeates the red with the feeling of self-denial—dissolves into nothing, and a green circle emerges. Likewise, the beast will vanish through the forces of self-denial, and a noble form from the astral world will appear.

[ 15 ] Thus, a person must first transform what is objectively given to him—the red circle or the hideous beast—into its opposite through the developed powers of renunciation, through self-denial. Renunciation conjures forth from unknown depths the true forms of the astral world. Thus, no one who wishes to ascend into the astral world in the true sense should believe that the active participation of their soul forces is not necessary. Without this, they would reach only a part of the astral world. They must renounce even all imagination. Whoever renounces, renounces, and that is what conjures forth the true form of the astral world.

[ 16 ] In Devachan, one experiences inspiration. Here, too, there is an inner distinction regarding those parts of Devachan that a person cannot experience passively after death. In Devachan, a certain cosmic context means that not as much harm has yet been done. The astral world contains the terrible Kamaloka, but Devachan does not yet have it. This will only be the case in the Jupiter and Venus states, when, through the use of black magic and the like, it will have passed into a state of decadence. Then, of course, something similar to what exists today in the astral world will develop in Devachan. Here in Devachan, therefore, the situation is somewhat different in the current cycle of development.

[ 17 ] What is the first thing a person encounters when he ascends along the path of knowledge from the astral world to Devachan, or when he follows the path of the ordinary person and is led upward after death—what does he then experience in Devachan? They experience bliss! That which differentiates itself from the nuances of color into tones is, under all circumstances, bliss. In Devachan, at the present stage of development, everything is a process of bringing forth, of producing, and—in terms of knowledge—a spiritual hearing. And bliss is all production; bliss is all hearing of the harmony of the spheres. In Devachan, a person will experience nothing but bliss, pure bliss. Whether he is guided upward through the ladder of human development by the Masters of Wisdom and the Harmony of Feelings through the means of spiritual knowledge, or—in the case of the ordinary person—after death: he will always experience bliss there. This is what the initiate must experience once he has progressed this far along the path of knowledge. But it is inherent in the world’s further development that it must not remain at the level of mere bliss. That would merely signify an intensification of the most refined spiritual egoism. The individuality of the human being would absorb only the warmth of bliss within itself, but the world would not progress in this way. Thus, beings would be formed who harden themselves spiritually within themselves. For the healing and progress of the world, therefore, the one who enters Devachan through the exercises must not only be given the opportunity to experience all the nuances of bliss in the music of the spheres, but must also develop within himself feelings that are the opposite of bliss. Just as renunciation stands in contrast to deprivation, so does the feeling of sacrifice stand in contrast to bliss—a sacrifice that is ready to pour out what one receives as bliss, to let it flow into the world.

[ 18 ] Those divine spirits whom we call the Thrones had this sense of self-sacrifice when they began to take part in creation. When they poured out their own substance on Saturn, they sacrificed themselves for humanity-to-be. What we have today as matter is the very same substance they poured out on Saturn. And in the same way, the Spirits of Wisdom sacrificed themselves on the ancient Sun. These divine spirits ascended into the higher worlds; they did not merely passively accept the experience of bliss, but through their passage through Devachan, they learned to sacrifice themselves. They did not become poorer through this sacrifice, but richer. Only a being who lives entirely within matter believes that sacrifice causes one to wither away—no, developing oneself higher and richer is linked to self-sacrifice in the service of universal evolution.

[ 19 ] Thus we see that human beings ascend to imagination and inspiration and enter that sphere where their entire being is permeated by ever-new nuances of bliss, where, so to speak, they experience everything around them in such a way that it not only speaks to them, but where everything around them becomes an absorption of the spiritual tones of bliss.

[ 20 ] The ascent to a higher capacity for knowledge consists in the transformation of all the emotions that a person experiences, and occult training consists of nothing other than the rules and methods given to us by the Masters of Wisdom and the Harmony of Feelings—rules and methods that have been tested by millennia of experience—through which a person’s feelings and will are transformed, leading them to higher insights and experiences. By gradually cultivating and transforming the content of his feelings and will through occult practice, the student attains these higher abilities.

[ 21 ] Anyone who is deeply involved in the spiritual science movement should not be indifferent to whether they have been a part of it for three, six, or seven years. This has significance. The student must realize the feeling of experiencing this inner growth through its inner laws. The point is that we direct our attention to it; otherwise, its effects will pass us by.