# Introduction to the Basics of Theosophy

## GA 111 — 7 March 1908, Amsterdam

### XXI. The Astral World and Devachan

When a person has developed their spiritual faculties through meditation and concentration and consciously enters the astral plane, they see a completely different world. They see a world of images, a world of symbols around them. Usually, the astral world is viewed too sensually, that is, it is felt and described by the clairvoyant, who is still new to this, much like a material, sensually perceptible world. In addition, he often mistakes mirror images of the etheric realm for astral images; some descriptions of the astral world are not much different from mirror images of this etheric realm. In the astral realm, everything is seen in colors: if a hostile being approaches us, the clairvoyant sees an orange-yellow color image; if it is a being that is sympathetic to us, the color image is indigo blue. Everything is seen the other way around, as in a mirror image, and this also applies to time. For example, you first see the chicken and then the egg from which it hatched; or you first see the flower and then the root of the plant. The same happens with our soul life: The passions and desires that emanate from a person come towards him on the astral plane as animal-like beings from space, as snakes, wolves and so on, depending on the nature of the feelings and desires. Every noble desire and feeling that is held back by circumstances on earth comes towards him there in magnificent color images. Man, immersed in materialism, and in many cases highly gifted personalities whose thoughts, however, go no further than the world of sensory perception, see here the emptiness of their ideals. The artist, the scholar who loves his art and science for the pleasure they give him, and does not place them in the service of the development of humanity towards the spiritual ideal, sees here the vanity and futility of his aspirations. The knowledge of the higher realms that Theosophy gives us must provide us with the means to advance the spiritual development of humanity.

We will now move on to the experiences on the astral plane after death. Death differs from sleep only in that not only the astral body but also the etheric body with the higher bodies leaves the material body.

Otherwise, the physical body is never left by the etheric body between a person's birth and death if they do not undergo certain states of initiation. The most important moment for a person after death is the moment immediately after dying. This moment can last for hours, sometimes days. In this state, the life of the last incarnation passes by as a memory. The peculiar thing about this memory panorama is that when looking at these life memories from the cradle to the grave, all subjective feelings of joy and pain have disappeared. It is as if one is looking at the life story of someone else, so impersonal is one's relationship to it. The same phenomenon is experienced when, due to a sudden shock – for example, falling into an abyss or being in danger of drowning – an instantaneous separation of the physical and etheric bodies occurs. The etheric body, not the astral body, is the carrier of our memory. As long as the etheric body remains attached to the astral body, the memory image of our last incarnation remains with us. This depends on the duration of our ability to stay awake during our life in the material body. If we can stay awake for three days, then the etheric body will remain connected to the astral body for three days. As soon as the etheric body lets go of the astral body, the panorama of memories disappears. But as a fruit, as a seed for a future incarnation, an essence of these life experiences remains, which is stored in the causal body.

From each life, one brings one's experiences as the essence of life in the causal body; each life increases the power of the content of that life essence. This is the cause of the diversity of innate abilities that each person brings into their new life as a result of their previous lives, whereby their life will be rich or poor according to their abilities and predispositions. To understand the life of the astral body after it has separated from the etheric body, we must first take a look at the astral world and its conditions. The astral body is the body of desires. The seat of our desires and passions lies in the astral body. The material body is only the tool of the astral body to live out its desires and passions in the material realm. At death, the material body, the tool of desires, falls away, but the desires remain. This is where the burning fire of lust and desires in the Kamaloka period arises.

The Kamaloka period, the time you spend in the lower part of the astral plane, will be shorter or longer depending on whether we have desired more strongly and coarsely during our life on the material plane. On average, the Kamaloka period lasts one-third of our lifetime on the material plane. The peculiar thing about the Kamaloka period is that one relives one's life again, but now from back to front: one begins with the last life experience and goes back at triple speed to the time of childhood. While the memory of one's life in the etheric body [immediately after death] was without joy or pain, one now relives all the joys and pains of one's past life again, but in reverse, which means that one experiences everything one has done to others, the suffering and the joy, oneself. These memories remain as impressions in the astral body, to fulfill our karma in future incarnations, in which we are born with the same personalities to whom we have done good or evil in previous incarnations. Now [after the Kamaloka period] the astral body is released. When the person has left his material, etheric and astral bodies, he reaches the state that is mystically expressed in the Bible with the words: Unless you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

We must now study the devachanic world. It is just as varied as our material world. There, as here, we can speak comparatively of a continental area, an ocean area and an air area (atmosphere or aura), which permeate each other. The continental area contains the archetypes of the material world, insofar as they are not animated with life, that is, the material forms of minerals, plants, animals and humans.

Imagine a limited space filled with material bodies. Seen with a devachanic gaze, the material forms disappear, but a radiance around the bodies begins, while the space occupied by the material bodies forms an empty space, a negative or shadow image. Animals and humans, seen in this way, appear as negative images: Blood appears green, which is the complementary color of red. The entire material world is present in this way as an archetypal image in the devachanic realm.

The second realm, the oceanic realm, consists not of water but of flowing life that permeates the entire devachanic realm, just as the bloodstream permeates everything in the human body. The unique substance, the “Pran”, which flows here [on earth] in separate animal and human bodies, forms an eternally flowing stream of life in the devachan, the color of peach blossoms. This element is the creative force of everything that appears on earth as a living being. In Devachan we see that the life that animates us all is indeed a unity.

The third realm can best be characterized by saying that everything that takes place here [on earth] in the soul in terms of inner feelings of joy or pain, passion or anger, is revealed there as an atmospheric phenomenon. The silent longing of a human soul can be perceived there like a gently whispering wind; an outburst of passions like a storm wind; a battlefield caused by the outbursts of hatred, anger and lust for murder causes a heavy thunderstorm with rolling thunder and bright lightning strikes. Just as the earth is surrounded by its aura, so the devachan has around it, scattered about, all the feelings that are nurtured or expressed here on earth.

The fourth region of devachan has no direct connection with the lower worlds. The archetypes found there are beings that rule over the archetypes of the lower devachanic realms and bring them together. They are therefore more concerned with organizing and grouping the archetypes that are subordinate to them. A greater power emanates from this realm than from the lower three.

In the fifth, sixth and seventh regions of Devachan, we find the creative forces of the archetypes. Those who can ascend this far learn about the underlying objectives of our world. The archetypes are still present here as soul-inspired germ cells, ready to take on the most diverse forms when they enter the lower realms. The ideas through which the human spirit appears in the material world are a reflection, a shadow image of these germs of the higher spiritual world. The harmony of the spheres of the devachanic realm is here translated into spiritual language. Here one begins to hear the spiritual word, whereby things express their inner being not only in tones and sounds, but also in words. They say their “eternal names” to [the human spirit.

We will only understand the value of the stay in Devachan when we follow the soul's pilgrimage through the three worlds in brief. As long as a person lives in his body, he works and creates in the material realm, but he works there as a spiritual being. What his spirit creates is expressed in material forms; as an emissary of the spiritual world, he must inspire the material with his spirit. However, as long as he is bound to the material body, his spiritual life cannot fully develop. He must repeatedly return to the devachanic realm to gain new spiritual strength and new insights into the goal and striving of the soul and the world. Thus the material world is at the same time the place for creating and for learning, that is to say: [the human being] must learn about the properties of matter in the material world and know how to make them subservient to revealing the spirit. In Devachan, what has been learned and the experiences of the material realm are transformed into spiritual qualities. The person works on themselves in order to better fulfill their life's work with each re-embodiment. Thus, their gaze is always directed towards the earth, their current place of work, in order to bring it ever closer to perfection.

What he has thought on earth, he experiences in Devachan. There, the human being lives between thought images that are reality there. One sees the world of thought in action, creating and forming thoughts and sending them to earth. Among the thought images that one sees there is also the thought image of one's own body. One no longer feels related to one's body at all, but completely identifies with the spirit and asks oneself: Who are you? One learns to see one's body as part of a greater whole; one learns to understand the unity of everything that surrounds us. Thus, from the devachanic realm, one views one's entire life as if from a higher vantage point from the outside. The fruits of life experiences are collected here in the causal body so that they can be transferred to the following incarnations. One looks back on many past incarnations and strives to incorporate one's life experiences into the life plan for future incarnations. The past and the future are illuminated for a moment in a bright light before the person descends again to a new incarnation.