Introduction to the Basics of Theosophy

GA 111 — 25 September 1907, Hanover

V. The Interrelationship of Human Beings in Devachan and on Earth

Just like plant seeds, human beings take a multitude of seeds with them to Devachan, in order to develop them there anew. All the powers that rebuild the body are contained there; the archetypes of the human being are also found there.

Long ago, the physical eyes were formed by the light. The light drew out the eyes, they are products of the light. Before that, man was still blind; the food juices, which otherwise provided the strength to feel, grasp, scratch and so on, were transformed to form organs for seeing. In this way, the ear was formed for sound, the nose for aroma.

The archetype of the etheric body arises out of the watery region of Devachan. The archetype of the astral body arises out of the aerial region of Devachan. Out of these regions man creates the foundations for his physical shell. The time between death and birth teaches the reasons why he must come again and again. Man must always gain different experiences, otherwise it would be useless for him to come to the same earth. This is constantly changing. A million years ago, people could not live here in Germany because of the tropical heat. In our present homeland, there were the animals and plants of the equator.

About twenty thousand years ago, there was an ice age in the North German lowlands that extended down to Bavaria. After the birth of Christ until the fourth century, Germany was still a land without culture. From a chronicle of an archbishop of Bremen, one can read that the people in the east, in the Mark, drink blood and have other barbaric customs. The children of the Greeks and Romans were educated differently than those of the Germans. Man does not enter the scene of the earth again until it has changed and he experiences a completely new situation. There is always something new to experience, and the earth always shows a new face. Peoples who had their spiritual life through the secret schools of high teachers retained certain feelings for the transformation of the earth; they knew that these transformations were connected with events in the starry sky.

The point in the spring sky where the sun rises keeps moving. We are in the constellation of Pisces. At the time of Jesus' birth, the sun had been rising in the constellation of Aries for eight hundred years; two thousand one hundred and sixty years before that, it had been rising in the constellation of Taurus, and before that in the constellation of Gemini and Cancer. Thus, in about two thousand one hundred and sixty years, the sun passes through one constellation after another until it completes its cycle.

After the Atlantean world, the Indian epoch emerged, under the sign of Cancer, which is a spiral-shaped vortex and represents the Indian cult. The Persian epoch was ruled by Gemini, the Babylonian, Assyrian and Egyptian epochs by Taurus. Each new solar sign brought a savior. Eight hundred years before Christ, the nations hoped for the Lamb, hence the words of John the Baptist about Christ: “This is the Lamb of God.” The saga of the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, which Jason brought, also belongs here.

It is often said that nature does not make leaps. But it does make huge leaps. A newborn child is a huge leap, and a plant's root, stem, leaf and flower are huge leaps! It meant a huge leap from the old Atlantic culture to the Indian one. In nature, everything is formed in a whirling manner, so Indian culture curled up into the Atlantic one. When the sun has passed from one constellation to another, the earth has always received a new face.

The Indians under the sign of Cancer always longed back to the deity, their ancient home; the Persians had to distinguish light and darkness in the sign of Gemini, the Egyptians worshiped the sacred bull. The time between two incarnations varies greatly because people's intimate circumstances differ. On average, there are two incarnations in a solar sign, one male and one female, in the same individual. In the overall process of development, there are as many male as female incarnations. Only in exceptional cases do up to seven incarnations of the male sex follow one another, when special tasks need to be fulfilled.

From the natural basis of motherly love an ethical bond develops. The networks that are woven from soul to soul on earth are much more intimate and lasting in the spirit world because the body as an obstacle no longer exists. The reunion there has its deepest satisfaction, the souls do not live next to each other, but in each other; time and space have ceased to exist.

What work does a person do in devachan? He would be a poor world citizen, and it would be sad if he only wanted to rebuild himself as well as possible for the next incarnation. He has something important to do there, to work on shaping the world. It is wrong to imagine the stay in the spirit world as idleness.

The hereafter is all around us, we can already be blissfully happy here; disincarnated, man works there on the transformation of the earth; what he then encounters again, he himself [helped to transform], he prepares his own bed. The forces of nature are only the outer, visible tone, which cannot be without spiritual impact.

Consider the flowers in a meadow bathed in sunshine. With an open [spiritual] eye, you can see the radiance of the etheric body around the flowers, and in the sunlight that falls on them, you can see the departed working on the flowers. It is our cosmic, divine duty to help with planetary evolution in joyful devotion. If we were to shirk this duty, we would be like a brick in a building that does not want to be integrated and causes the house to collapse.

If we were to indulge in a world-hostile asceticism, we would destroy the divine building. Every incarnation is important as a link in the being. There is nothing arbitrary about the personality. The limbs and the ego are nothing more than what man has acquired piece by piece.

Everything around us is valuable, we are called upon to ennoble even the smallest thing to the greatest. Every life is the pearl of a string that we must consider to be of infinite value.

When the human archetype has been formed, the astral body envelops it. Just as iron filings are drawn by the force of a magnet, so the astral substance forms around the I.

New souls are always pushing to be embodied. Bell-like figures rush through the astral plane with extraordinary speed, which is an expression of their power. This is followed by the selection of parents; this often drives them from one end of the earth to the other, hence their haste. At the moment when the nascent human being reaches the place where he fits best, higher beings attach the etheric body to the astral body. As soon as these bodies are reconnected, the person experiences the opposite of their retrospective account of their death, they see their new life in front of them. The soul can be horrified by what is about to happen. Some people are so frightened that they prevent higher beings from integrating. Then the etheric body hangs down partially from the head, and people become idiots.

It is delicate to talk about this, but the future child is already with its parents before conception and is incorporated into the small germ until about the seventeenth day after conception. The etheric body is then already active, and the higher members have a determining effect on the future person from there.

From his last stay in the realm of purification, man took with him the desire to make up for the pain he caused others and felt as an inhibition. That is the brand that puts man in a position to make amends for what he has done. Attractions, sympathy and antipathy, proceed from Kamaloka and form the causes of destinies. Through the causes of the laws we are led to the strict laws of karma. The occultist can investigate how destinies are interwoven. Example: Five femal judges killed a person. In a previous life, this person was an Indian chief and killed the five others.