The Rudolf Steiner Archive

36. The Connection Between Life in the Physical World and Existence in the Astral World and Devachan

[ 1 ] The connection between our physical world and the neighboring worlds is little understood. Our perspective is limited to the world of the senses and the mind. Those who aren’t interested in this ask: Why should I care about other worlds? The better we do in this world, the better it will be for us later. Others say: People of a different sort—priests and the like—take care of that. And they leave it to others to worry about.

[ 2 ] Evidence of this—namely, of what is said to come from other worlds—is not believed; it cannot be proven. It is significant how a person’s position in the physical world relates to their destiny in the astral world and in Devachan.

[ 3 ] One’s fate after death depends on three spiritual faculties: thinking, feeling, and willing. In ordinary life, the will serves only to satisfy personal needs. Much mental energy is directed toward material needs. Another kind of will goes beyond this, whereby what is willed is not personal. What comes from the spiritual world completely transforms the will. Only in this way can we help people so that the spiritual enters their souls. Then we are doing the will of the gods, of the spiritual beings! It all comes down to willing the will of the gods.

[ 4 ] A compassionate millionaire often makes people worse off because he cannot attune himself to the souls of those to whom he wishes to give. Through organizations, providing aid is as convenient as possible—more convenient than directly witnessing misery. The society into which we are placed after death depends on the nature of our will. If we live only to satisfy ambition and personal desires, then we will find ourselves in Kamaloka together with beings of a lower order. This will be torment and agony for us. It is a spell that compels us to remain in this company. But if we are devoted to the ideas and tendencies of the spiritual world, then after death we will be reunited with higher beings.

[ 5 ] It is difficult for the spiritual researcher to find this or that personality after death; it is with reluctance that he descends into the lower regions. Our will determines, especially in the early stages, our sojourn in the Kamaloka. Great historical figures driven solely by personal ambition and the impulses of likes and dislikes find themselves confined after death with the lowest beings of the most dreadful kind. If they were exposed only to that confinement, they would have blocked their own path to further development—which is actually not even possible—for human beings are not yet evil enough for that. They can improve their fate in later times. The spiritual world karma still affords the opportunity to experience, to some extent, what it means to be confined. Thus, we are brought into solitude before death.

[ 6 ] In another way, human beings determine their own destiny through their thoughts and ideas. We have concepts only of what exists in the physical world—our age is pushing in that direction. People would most like to see God in physical form; they want everything to exist only in the physical world. Photographs direct our eyes toward the physical and sensory. They want to see, to grasp something.

[ 7 ] In the esoteric science, one reads about the warmth of Saturn and the warmth of blood. The materialist focuses solely on the physical, sensory object. Even the gods could not depict Saturn in a sensory image (in the Skioptikon). Saturn is still a body of warmth today. Even the gods can only symbolize Saturn through what he is not at all. Thus, a person who thinks solely in physical terms will, after death, know that the spiritual world exists, but without perceiving it—remaining in perpetual darkness, unaware of it. But supersensory thoughts form the organs needed to perceive the spiritual world; otherwise, the spiritual gaze becomes clouded and darkened. Through visual images, people now seek something for their eyes, so that they remain blind to the spiritual world. Then the human being is plunged into the lower world, which he cannot even perceive. This is the kind of loneliness that we on Earth can only approximate. From this arise feelings of fear and hatred. Hatred has a consuming quality. This is the fate of people who do not wish to reflect on the supersensible world.

[ 8 ] The third is feeling. This, too, takes two forms in people who are guided by the physical and are affected—pleasantly or unpleasantly—by things in the sensory world. There are fewer and fewer people who can feel anything for what lies beyond the sensory world. Art in any form conveys a sense of what is not directly connected to the sensory world. There is a spiritual mood that cannot be conveyed on stage. There it is on a downward slope. This is how one can preserve the ability to feel for what cannot be seen in the sensory world. Classical German poets awaken delight in the spiritual world. Realistic art on stage presents only what can be seen with the senses. The stage has only three walls, but in realistic art, one pretends as if there were four real walls. [...] Everywhere, the opposite prevails in order to prepare the ground for true art. True art is an imprint of the spiritual world, but it need not be schematic. Works such as Raphael’s Disputa and the Sistine Madonna are exceptions. They offer a glimpse of what lies beyond the sensory.

[ 9 ] The spiral around the flower stalk: The caduceus is present in every flower. Planets, too, move forward in spirals. When it is not only the planets but the Sun itself that exerts its influence, it brings about the blooming of flowers. Thus, a flower is a reflection of the macrocosm, of the spirits of movement. The dynamis—virtutes—are present in each individual plant. Linnaeus classified plants according to their internal organs; he still had a sense of this. St. John’s wort has stamens in three clusters; spiritual forces act as a trinity. The yellow flower of St. John’s wort is full of points of light within the petal. [...]

[ 10 ] In this way, one can attune oneself to the spiritual that flows down from heaven, permeating and illuminating the earthly; it is present in every single speck of dust. In this way, one can rise from the merely sensory to the spiritual.

[ 11 ] Faust experiences the full bitterness of being bound to the mundane, moving from pleasure to desire—but also in the opposite direction, through his ascent into the spiritual world. Schiller says in the poem “The Artists”: “Only through the morning gate of beauty do you enter the realm of knowledge.” And Goethe writes about Schiller: “Behind him, in formless appearance, lay that which subdues us all: the mundane.”—Whoever has learned to feel beauty in spiritual form in this way has accomplished much.

[ 12 ] In The Secret Science, the evolution of Saturn and the Sun are described differently, even in the length of the chapters. The connection of the whole should be sensed. A learned “ignorant” found errors in the inconsistent style. The manner of presentation is an artistic shaping of insight. The nature of our feeling is determined by sensory images and by what cannot be seen: to spread ideas across broad expanses. On this depends the urge toward death, to consciously enter Devachan through one’s own power. Feelings should also be directed toward the concrete spiritual realm. Many people take pride in their pantheism. This stems from their upbringing and scholarship, from the science of our time, and also from the way people speak of the universal spirit. These people have often been incarnated as Native Americans. — In his diary, Hebbel recounts the story of the student who did not understand Plato because [the student] was the reincarnated Plato. - Scholars are not reincarnated Platons and Aristotles.

[ 13 ] Pantheism is reminiscent of the “Great Spirit” among the Native Americans. These are people who do not seek the spiritual in every thought, as it manifests itself in particular ways. One should immerse oneself in the concrete thoughts that the Deity held before the earthly state; one should be filled with enthusiasm for the description of Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon; one should feel the Sun’s glory through its warmth and be compressed within oneself by Saturn’s warmth. The Sun is like life springing forth in all directions. The expanding Sun is depicted in the description of the Sun in Esoteric Science. Through internalization and through egoism in relation to the Moon: becoming meaningful and, in that meaning, the possibility of egoism. Then we prepare ourselves not merely to be dragged along like a sack, but through feeling and sensations toward the spiritual world. Then we look out from the Kamaloka into the vast blue expanse of the heavens, through the foreboding of Devachan, into which we are transported. Otherwise, there is terrible torment, even in Devachan. (This presumably means that one cannot be conscious during the Devachan period.)

[ 14 ] “A useless life is an early death.” Then one returns to the material world as soon as possible to obtain the tools needed to acquire organs. Only in the physical world is it possible to educate oneself. The earthly world is the school for consciousness in the spiritual world. In our time, many people are preparing themselves to be as blind as possible in the spiritual world. Everything depends on the person himself.