The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Life Between Two Reincarnations

[ 1 ] Yesterday, we were able to discuss a number of things with a somewhat larger group regarding the paths that lead into the higher worlds. Today, perhaps, we may be permitted to say a few words about the higher worlds themselves; specifically, we will focus on one of the most important chapters in the realm of the supersensible worlds and take a look at the processes that take place within the human being between death and a new rebirth. This is one of the most important chapters in the realm of higher life because it concerns the most fundamental facts and processes of human development; and since the physical existence of the human being is connected and interwoven with significant processes in those worlds, one must penetrate these mysteries if one is to understand the human being at all.

[ 2 ] I would like to begin immediately by describing human life between death and a new birth, but in order to understand what happens during this interim period, we must first consider the nature of the human being. For those who have long been engaged in anthroposophical matters and studies, what will be explained in the introduction is likely nothing new. But we must nevertheless examine these things very closely from the outset in order to prepare ourselves for a complete understanding of the descriptions that follow.

[ 3 ] For anthroposophical spiritual science, the human being is not merely a material entity as it appears to the external senses—one that we can touch with our hands and that is bound to the physical world by physical laws. Spiritual science shows that this physical body of the human being is only a part of his entire being; indeed, the human being shares this physical body with the mineral world. If we look around in nature, everything that appears to be lifeless, mineral nature consists of the same substances from which the human body is composed. The same physical processes are at work in a stone and in the human body, but there is a great difference between the processes of ordinary, lifeless physical bodies and the human being. An external physical body, such as a stone, has a form, and it retains its form until an external process—such as being shattered or some other force—destroys that form. The human physical body, on the other hand, or that of any other living being, is destroyed at death by the inherent laws governing physical and chemical substances, and in this case, the human body becomes a corpse.

[ 4 ] Spiritual science now shows us that in the state between birth and death—that is, during our physical lifetime—there is a second aspect of the human being that continuously struggles against the decay of the physical body. We call it the etheric body or life body. It is within all of us. If this second aspect were not present in human beings, the body would at every moment follow only the physical forces; it would disintegrate. The fighter against this decay is the etheric body or life body. Only in the event of death does this life body separate from the physical body. Human beings share this life body with every other living being; animals have it, and plants, too, have such a constant fighter. In them, too, there must be such a constant fighter against decay.

[ 5 ] If the physical body has been described as the first element of living beings and the vital body as the second, then human beings possess a third element beyond this second one. We are able to understand this through reason alone, through logic. Let us suppose that a person is standing before us. Is there nothing more in the space he occupies, in the hand he uses, than what has been mentioned so far? Oh, there is something more within him than bones and muscles, than all manner of chemical components that we can see with our eyes and touch with our hands. And each of us knows quite well that there is something more within him. This “something more” is the sum of their suffering and their joy; everyone is familiar with this “something,” for it is the totality of sensations and feelings that unfold from morning to night, throughout their entire life. There is an invisible vessel for these sensations, and we refer to it as the human astral body or sensory body. This astral body, imperceptible to the human physical eye, is significantly larger than the physical body. To the clairvoyant consciousness, it appears as a light-radiating cloud in which the physical body is embedded. Human beings share this third aspect of their being with animals, for animals, too, possess an astral body.

[ 6 ] But there is also a fourth element in human nature—the crown of the earthly realm, the crown of human nature. We can grasp this fourth element when we trace an intimate movement of the human soul. There is one thing within a human being that can never approach him from the outside. It is this one name, the simple name “I.” Only from the deepest depths of the soul can this name, this designation “I,” resound. No other human being can ever say “I” to a fellow human being. A person can say this only to themselves; it can come only from within them, from their own deepest innermost being—and here something entirely different, something divine, begins to resound through the name “I.” All the great religions have also sensed that there is something sacred in the “I.” This is also clearly evident in the Old Testament. There, the name “I” is synonymous with the name of God. Only the priest was permitted to utter the name of God on particularly solemn occasions, during especially solemn religious services; and when he reverently pronounced the name “Yahweh” in the temple, the name “Yahweh” meant nothing other than “I” or “I am.” This was meant to signify that God Himself expresses Himself within the human being. And only that being whose nature reveals the divine essence can utter this word in the soul to his own soul. The revelation of God in the human being is a fourth aspect of human nature. But we should not now think that we are God Himself. It is a spark from the ocean of divinity that flashes within man. Just as a drop from the ocean is not the ocean itself, but only a drop from it, so the “I” of man is not God, but a drop from the divine substance: God begins to speak in the human soul.

[ 7 ] Only the priest was permitted to utter Yahweh, the holy name, on particularly solemn occasions. To give voice to this divine essence within the human soul—so that a person can say, “I am”—is the crowning achievement of creation. This “I”-bearer, the fourth member of human nature, makes humankind the foremost among the beings visible in earthly creation. That is why, throughout the ancient mysteries, people spoke of the sacred fourfold nature, whose first member is the visible physical body, whose second member is the etheric body or life body, whose third member is the astral body or feeling body, and whose fourth member is the “I.” These are the four members we shall first consider. And human life and human consciousness depend on the way in which they are connected to one another.

[ 8 ] Only in daily consciousness, while awake, do the four members of human nature interpenetrate one another. There we have the physical body, permeated by the etheric body—which is finer and somewhat larger, extending beyond the physical body. Then we have the astral body, the bearer of our sensations, which permeates the etheric body and, like a large, shining oval, surrounds the physical body connected to the etheric body. And then we have the I-body. However, the four aspects of human nature interpenetrate one another only during wakefulness. When a person sleeps, the astral body emerges together with the bearer of the “I,” while the physical body, connected to the etheric body, remains in bed. In the morning, or when the person awakens, the first two of the four aspects descend again and reunite with the other two.

[ 9 ] What, then, does the astral body do at night in an ordinary person? It is not idle. To the clairvoyant’s eye, it appears as a spiral-shaped cloud, and currents emanate from it that connect it to the physical body lying nearby. When we fall asleep in the evening feeling tired, what is the cause of this fatigue? The fact that the astral body uses the physical body during waking hours and thereby wears it out manifests as fatigue. But throughout the night, while we sleep, the astral body works to eliminate this fatigue. This is the source of the refreshment we gain from a good night’s sleep, and from this we can gauge how important truly healthy sleep is for human beings. It properly restores what has been worn down by waking life. The astral body also repairs other forms of damage during sleep, such as illnesses of the physical body and the etheric body. Not only have you observed this from your own life experience—in yourself and in others—but you have also learned that every sensible doctor says that, in certain cases, sleep is an indispensable remedy for recovery. This is the significance of the transitional state between sleeping and waking.

[ 10 ] Now let us turn our attention to an even more important transitional state: that between life and death. While it was shown earlier that, as soon as sleep sets in, the astral body—with the “I”—leaves the physical body connected to the etheric body, in ordinary life a separation of the etheric body from the physical body almost never occurs, except in certain exceptional cases, which will be discussed later. It is only at death that, normally, the physical body is separated from the etheric body for the first time. Now, then, at death, it is not merely the astral body that, as in sleep, leaves the fourfold human being together with the “I”; rather, the three components—the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I”—leave the physical body, and on the one hand we have the physical body, which remains behind as a corpse, is immediately attacked by physical-chemical forces, and falls prey to decay; on the other hand, we have a union of the etheric body, the astral body, and the bearer of the “I.”

[ 11 ] This naturally raises the question of how anyone could possibly know how those conditions unfold at the time of death. Well, if you followed yesterday’s public lecture, you will understand that those people who are able to see into higher spheres are also in a position to report on the conditions after death. And for every person, there are means available and paths offered to acquire such abilities, which is why it is also possible to know what a person experiences when they pass through the gate of death. If any facts are reported that cannot be immediately verified by everyone, then only the one who truly knows can determine their accuracy. But if those who are ignorant were to object to the one who knows, claiming that even he cannot know anything, the accusation of arrogance would lie entirely with those who know nothing and yet claim that nothing can be known. Thus, only the one who knows can determine what can be known.

[ 12 ] When a person has passed through death, they initially have the feeling that they are growing into a world in which they become larger and larger, and that they are no longer, as in this physical world, outside of all beings, no longer facing all other things, but rather, in a sense, within them, as if they were slipping into all things. In the moments immediately following death, you feel no “here” or “there,” but rather an “everywhere”; it is as if you yourself were slipping into all things. Then a total recollection of your entire past life comes to you, standing before you in all its details like a vast tableau. This recollection cannot be compared to even the clearest recollection of a past life as you know it in earthly life; rather, this tableau of memories suddenly stands before you in its full grandeur. What is the reason for this? It is because the etheric body is, in truth, the bearer of memory. As long as the etheric body was still contained within the physical body during earthly existence, it had to act through the physical and was bound by physical laws. There it is not free; there it forgets, for there all memories that do not immediately pertain to what the person is currently experiencing are set aside. At death, however, as explained earlier, the etheric body—the bearer of memory—becomes free. It no longer needs to act through the physical body, and therefore memories suddenly arise in an unbound manner.

[ 13 ] In exceptional cases, this separation of the physical and etheric bodies can also occur during one’s lifetime. For example, in life-threatening situations, such as drowning or falling from a height—that is, in cases where consciousness undergoes a severe jolt or shock due to the terror involved. People who have been subjected to such a shock sometimes recount that, for a few moments, their entire life appeared before them like a tableau, so that long-forgotten experiences from their earliest years suddenly resurfaced from oblivion with complete clarity. Such accounts are not based on delusion but on truth; they are facts. At that moment when the tableau of memories flashes before them, something very special happens to the person; however, during such a shock, consciousness must not be lost. For at that moment of a fall or some other fright that caused the shock, something occurs that a clairvoyant can see. Not always, but sometimes, the part of the etheric body that fills the head region emerges, either wholly or in part, from the head; and even if this happens only for a moment, it nevertheless frees up the memory, because in such a moment the etheric body is liberated from physical matter—the obstacle to uninhibited memory.

[ 14 ] We can also observe a partial separation of the etheric body on other occasions. When you press or bump any part of your body, a peculiar, tingling sensation sometimes arises, and we tend to describe this sensation by saying that the limb has “fallen asleep.” Children who try to describe the sensation they experience have often been heard say, “It feels like seltzer water in my hand.” What is this? The actual cause is that the corresponding part of the life body has been temporarily withdrawn from that limb. A clairvoyant person can then perceive the separated part of the etheric body near the physical body, as if it were a copy of it. For example, when a person falls, the corresponding part of the etheric body is pushed out of the head by the force of the fall.

[ 15 ] At the moment of death, this tableau of memories immediately emerges with full intensity because the entire physical body is left behind. The duration of this tableau of memories after death is also known. It lasts three to four days. It is not easy to explain the reasons for this. This duration varies from person to person and roughly corresponds to that person’s ability to stay awake for that length of time during their lifetime without falling asleep.

[ 16 ] After that, something else happens. What happens then is that a kind of second corpse breaks away. For the human being now also leaves behind the etheric body; yet he retains a certain extract, an essence, of it, and this is what the human being takes with him and retains for all eternity. Now, after shedding the etheric body, the period of Kamaloka, the Kamaloka state, begins for the human being. If you wish to understand what kind of state this is, you must bear in mind that, after leaving behind the physical and etheric bodies, the human being still retains the astral body and the “I” from among its four members; and the question now arises for us as to the nature of the astral body with which the “I” now enters the Kamaloka period. The astral body is the bearer of pleasure and pain, of delights and desires; therefore, these do not cease when the physical body is shed; only the possibility of satisfying the desires ceases, since the instrument for satisfying them—the physical body—is no longer available. Everything that a human being was as a sentient being in the physical body does not cease to be. A person retains all of this in their astral body. Let us imagine an ordinary desire, and for the sake of simplicity, let us choose one of a rather mundane nature—for example, the desire for a delicious meal. This desire is not centered in the physical body but in the astral body. Therefore, this desire is not cast off with the physical body; it remains. The physical body was merely the instrument by which this desire could be satisfied. If you have a knife to cut with, the knife is the instrument, and you do not lose the ability to cut when you put the knife away. Thus, at death, only the tool for enjoyment is laid aside, and that is why a person initially finds themselves in a state in which all their various desires are present—desires that must now be laid aside, or rather, that one must learn to lay aside. The time during which this happens is the Kamaloka period. It is a time of trial, and it is very beneficial and important for a person’s further development. Imagine for a moment that you were suffering from thirst and found yourself in a region where there was no water—and, of course, no beer or wine, no beverage of any kind whatsoever. You would suffer from a burning thirst that cannot be quenched. In a similar way, a person experiences a certain sense of thirst when they no longer possess the instrument with which they alone were able to satisfy their desires.

[ 17 ] Kamaloka is a period of weaning for human beings, during which they must renounce their desires in order to adjust to life in the spiritual world. This period in Kamaloka lasts for a longer or shorter time for each person, depending on how quickly they are able to renounce their desires. This depends on how a person has already learned to control their desires during their lifetime, and how they have learned to both enjoy and forgo things in life. However, there are pleasures and desires of a lower and higher nature. We call those pleasures and desires—the satisfaction of which the physical body is not the actual instrument—higher pleasures and desires, and these do not belong to the category of those that a person must wean themselves from after death. Only as long as a person still has something that draws them back to physical existence—lower pleasures—do they remain in the astral life of the Kamaloka period. When nothing draws him back down into that period of weaning, he has become capable of living in the spiritual world, and a third body emerges from the human being. A person’s stay in this Kamaloka period lasts approximately one-third of their lifetime.

[ 18 ] It therefore depends on how old a person was when they died—that is, how long they lived in their physical body. However, this Kamaloka period is by no means always a dreadful or unpleasant one. In any case, it makes a person more independent of physical desires, and the more a person has already freed themselves from such desires during their lifetime and cultivated an interest in contemplating spiritual matters, the easier this Kamaloka period will be for them. It makes them freer, so that they come to be grateful for this Kamaloka period. The feeling of deprivation in physical life becomes a source of bliss in the Kamaloka period. Thus, opposite feelings arise, for everything one has learned in life to gladly do without becomes a source of pleasure during the Kamaloka period. When, as already mentioned, the third body departs from the human being, everything that the person no longer needs in the spiritual world drifts away with it—the astral body. These astral bodies are visible to the clairvoyant, and it takes twenty, thirty, or forty years for them to dissolve. Since such astral bodies are constantly present, they occasionally pass through the bodies of the living—through our own bodies—especially at night, when our astral bodies are separated from our physical bodies during sleep; this is the source of certain harmful influences that a person may receive. Just as an extract—a certain essence—remains for the actual human being for all eternity after the departure of the etheric body, so too does a certain essence remain for him for all eternity after the departure of the astral body, as the fruit of his last incarnation.

[ 19 ] And now begins for the human being the time of Devachan, the entry into the spiritual world, into the home of the gods and all spiritual beings. When a person enters this world, they experience a feeling comparable to the liberation of a plant that grew in a narrow crevice in the rock and suddenly shoots up toward the light. For when a person enters this heavenly world, they experience within themselves perfect spiritual freedom, and from then on they enjoy absolute bliss. For what, in fact, is the period of Devachan? You can form an idea of it if you consider that here the human being makes preparations for a new life, for a new reincarnation. In the physical world—in this lower world—the human being has experienced so much, and they have, of course, carried these experiences over with them. They have absorbed them within themselves as the fruit of life, which they can now freely process. During the Devachan period, they form an archetype for a new life. This takes place over a long, long time. It is a process of shaping one’s own being, and every act of creation, every act of producing, is linked to bliss. You can get an idea of how every act of creation is linked to bliss by observing a hen incubating an egg. Why does she do this? Because she takes pleasure in doing so. In the same way, it is a pleasure for the human being to weave the fruit of the past life into the plan for a new life through creative work in Devachan.

[ 20 ] In the chain of reincarnations, human beings have indeed lived through many lives, but at the end of a life they are never the same as they were at the beginning of that life. In this life, confined within the physical body, they must, of course, remain entirely passive. But now that they are freed—freed from the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—they weave an archetype into the core of their eternal being, and this weaving is perceived as bliss, as a feeling that cannot be compared to anything they could ever experience as bliss in the physical world. His life is bliss in the spiritual world. But do not think, however, that physical life has no significance in this spiritual world. When bonds of love and friendship have been forged from soul to soul during life, death removes only the physical aspect, but the spiritual bond remains and forges lasting, indestructible bridges from soul to soul, which condense into effects within the archetypes. These effects can then be lived out in the physical realm during subsequent reincarnations. The same is true of the relationship between mother and child. A mother’s love for her child is the response to the child’s prenatal love for the mother, to whom the child felt drawn through a longing for reincarnation precisely because of the kinship of souls between them. What then unfolds in life—in the shared incarnation experienced by mother and child—forms new, spiritual bonds that endure. And everything that bound soul to soul is already woven into the spiritual life you will encounter when you enter the spiritual world after death. Thus, life between death and a new birth is such that what was done in the preceding physical life continues to have an effect. Indeed, even the favorite pastimes to which a person was devoted in life continue to have an effect. But after death, a person becomes freer and freer, because they become a preparer for the future—for their own future.

[ 21 ] Does a person do anything else in this afterlife? Oh, he is very active in this afterlife. Here, one might ask why a person is reborn there in the first place, and why he returns to this Earth at all, if he can also be active in the afterlife. Well, this is because reincarnations never occur in such a way that a person is unnecessarily reborn in the course of them. There is always something new for him to learn; earthly conditions have always changed to such an extent that he enters into entirely different circumstances in order to gain experiences for his further development. The face of the Earth, the regions, the animal kingdom, the vegetation—all of this is constantly changing in a relatively short time. Think back a hundred years. What a difference compared to today! It was not so long ago that, as is the case with us today, every person learned to read and write by the age of six. In ancient times, there were highly educated people who stood at the head of the state and could neither read nor write. Where are the forests and animal species that filled the land five hundred years ago, which is now crisscrossed by railroads? What were the areas like where our great cities stand today—what were they like a thousand years ago? For it is only then that a person is reborn; it is only then that they enter a new rebirth—when circumstances have changed to such an extent that the person can learn something new. Trace the centuries to see how the face of the earth is transformed, torn down, and rebuilt by the intellectual powers of human beings. But there are also many other changes taking place that the outer intellectual powers of human beings cannot influence. The vegetation and the animal world are changing before our very eyes; they disappear, and other species take their place. Such changes are brought about from the other world. A person walking across a meadow may well see a bridge being built over a stream, but he cannot see how the vegetation is being established. The dead are responsible for this. They are at work reshaping and transforming the face of the Earth in order to create a new setting for a new reincarnation. After a person has been occupied in this way for a long, long time with the preparations for a new reincarnation, the moment approaches when it is to take place. What happens now? What does a person do when he steps into his new rebirth? At this time, the person is in his Devachan, and there he feels that he must first attach a new astral body to himself. Then, as it were, the astral substance surges toward him from all directions, and depending on his individual nature, it crystallizes, so to speak, around him. You must imagine it this way: just as iron filings are drawn by the force of a magnet and arrange and group themselves around it, so does the astral substance arrange itself around the reincarnating “I.” But then it is still necessary to select a suitable pair of parents, and so the human being is guided toward this or that pair of parents—but not merely by obeying his own force of attraction. For here, exalted beings intervene and are at work; they have taken on the task—in accordance with the current state of human development—of arranging these relationships karmically with correctness and justice. So if, on occasion, the parents and children do not seem to be a good match, this does not necessarily mean that there is anything wrong or unjust about the situation. Perhaps the benefit lies in the fact that a person is placed in the most complicated circumstances and must come to terms with the strangest situations in order to learn from them.

[ 22 ] However, the sequence of these recurring reincarnations is not endless. There is a beginning, and there is also an end. Once, in the distant past, human beings had not yet descended into incarnations. At that time, they did not yet know birth and death. They led a kind of angelic existence, uninterrupted by such drastic changes in their condition as those we now know as birth and death. But just as surely, a time will come for humankind when it will have gathered a sufficient amount of experience in the lower worlds to have attained a sufficiently mature, serene state of consciousness, enabling it to work in the sublime upper worlds without being compelled to descend again into the lower worlds.

[ 23 ] After hearing the accounts presented here regarding repeated earthly lives, some people fear that the feeling of parental love might be compromised if a mother learns that her child is not entirely flesh of her flesh—for there is something in this child that is not of her, and is therefore foreign. Yet these bonds that unite parents and children are by no means subject to chance or lawless. These are not new bonds. They already existed in previous lifetimes and once existed as well in kinship and friendship ties. These bonds of love also unite them permanently in the higher worlds in eternal reality, and all human beings will one day be embraced in eternal love, even if they no longer descend into the cycle of reincarnation.