Introduction to the Basics of Theosophy

GA 111 — 26 March 1909, Rome

XXVII. Introduction To Theosophy II

Today we will continue to talk about what happens at death, when the human being enters into a new existence. We have already seen that the human being retains an extract of the life body, and we will see how important this extract and its absorption into the higher members is. Now we want to consider the astral body. It remains what it was before death, and retains all its good and bad qualities, its instincts, passions, and so on. What are the dead person's first sensations in their astral body?

When the life body, which still represented a connection with the physical world, has dissolved, the dead person, if he is not clairvoyant and has never risen above the circle of his own selfish interests in earthly life, will awaken after a first period of complete unconsciousness awaken in a painful state, in which he is aware that he is alive, but with the deceptive sensation of still having his physical body, just as a person still feels an amputated limb of his physical body and yet is aware that he cannot use it. On the other hand, however, the astral body, freed from the physical bond, vibrates in full power and strength, so that the person feels his urges, passions, and so on, to an increased extent, and suffers tremendously from not being able to satisfy them due to the lack of the appropriate tools. For the instincts are in reality inherent in the astral body and not in the physical body, and the astral body can only satisfy them through enjoyment. If, for example, a person is a gourmet, he retains the desire for fine food even though he lacks the palate. The same applies to the other sense organs.

Then there is the feeling of loneliness, which is caused by the fact that the person cannot perceive anything of the new world around him. But gradually he begins to perceive. First of all, it is auditory perception, because the astral world is eminently a world of sound. Then perceptions of light are added. It is important to note that while in physical life we see the things around us illuminated by light, in the astral life, on the other hand, man himself begins to shine like a small sun. When we observe him there, we see him at first as if shrouded in a dark cloud. This cloud is formed from that part of the astral body that contains the passionate elements and that must be shed at the end of life on the astral plane.

Life in the astral world usually lasts a third of the previous earthly life, although there are exceptions, for example for very intelligent people who are completely entangled in materialistic beliefs, whose life on the astral plane can last for centuries. It should be noted, however, that the perception of time there is different from ours. When the astral life is complete, the person leaves behind his third corpse. We are surrounded by such corpses, which hover around us and even penetrate into us. They are the ones that can be made visible through mediumistic powers or somnambulists at spiritualistic séances. The Christian religion calls life in the astral world “purgatory,” and in India it is called “Kamaloka”. as

When we speak of supersensory worlds, we need not fall into the error of imagining them as spatial planes, as they are often called, one above the other. In reality, they are states of consciousness and different modes of perception in a single space. The length of time spent in Purgatory or Kamaloka depends on the intensity of the individual's desires and passions. It is a time of purification. Unfortunately, we do not always try to shorten it. However, those who are already capable of spiritual pleasures on earth will have a shorter Kamaloka. Artistic pleasures, such

the contemplation of Raphael's or Michelangelo's works of art, make life in the spiritual world accessible to us. But the same cannot be said of art that only seeks to glorify the physical form and has no uplifting effect at all. Furthermore, Kamaloka life is also shortened by noble deeds and by a life devoted to the search for truth and knowledge.

One peculiarity of the astral life, which is rarely mentioned in occultism, is that it runs backwards. At first, the initiate is completely confused because everything in that world is reversed and appears as if reflected in a mirror. So a number, for example 345, is read as 543. It is particularly disconcerting and confusing that this also applies to time, so that the past appears to us after the present as if it were the future. For example, you will see the chicken crawling back into the egg it came from. As for our lives, we go through it backwards as well, starting with the day of our death and ending with the day of our birth. In contrast to the panorama that the life body presented to us, however, the perceptions of the astral body do not leave us indifferent, and they are always accompanied by the feelings that go with them.

For example: If a person has died at the age of eighty and has caused another person pain when he was fifty, and if he has now reached his fiftieth year in his retrograde Kamaloka life, he feels the pain because he identifies himself with his victim.

But the same applies to experiences of joy. If a person did not experience joy, he would later find many obstacles in his path. But as it is, we learn that every evil must be made good. If this were not so, evil would never leave us, and union with God would be impossible.

In this way, then, we purify ourselves. And when we reach our childhood, we have come to the threshold of the heavenly world. This is what the Holy Scripture means when it says: Unless you become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Through purification, the fog that obscured the astral body lifts, and it then shines in all its glory. The self with the purified astral body enters devachan.

Has it always been like that? We know that humanity lived on earth in a certain way during the Egyptian period, in a different way during the Indian period, and so on, and that our time is also quite different from the Greek period. So is there also a history for the other world? Yes, most certainly: the soul life of an Indian from two thousand years ago was quite different from ours. He had no interest in the physical world. For him, people, animals, plants, etc. were all Maya, a dream. He wanted to decisively deny this world, which was an illusion to him. During this life, he was already in the spiritual world, and after death he did not feel disoriented at all. But humanity has not retained this tendency to flee from the physical world.

The ancient Persians, taught by Zoroaster – not the one in history, but a much greater one – learned to love life and take an interest in the physical world, while the Indians only ever thought of Brahma behind the stars. Zoroaster taught that man must live and work here on earth, but at the same time direct his mind upwards. He preached that mankind must work the material, physical world in order to unite with the great spiritual aura of the sun. He called this Ahura Mazdao, later it was called Ormuzd.

Meanwhile, however, humanity lost its direct and conscious connection with the Primordial Light, and its life on earth – and also after death – darkened. This darkening was already very great during the Egyptian-Chaldean period and reached its peak in Greek times. The Greeks placed the center of life entirely in the physical world. If we look at a Greek temple, we see that it is harmoniously built according to spiritual dimensions. It can stand there, abandoned and lonely, and yet we feel that it lacks nothing, even if there are no people inside, because the deity to whom it was dedicated could dwell in it and truly did so, filling it completely. If, on the other hand, we look at a Gothic church, we really feel a void. The souls of the faithful are needed to bring it to life. Seen clairvoyantly, the Greek temple appears only as a black spot in its astral form. That is why people in those days could not bring anything with them when they passed through the gate of death; they were not at all prepared for life after death. The life after death was the realm of shadows for them, which they feared so much that they said: Better a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shadows. Man found himself alone in the spiritual world at that time. In contrast, the astral form of the Gothic church appears quite different; it is completely luminous and offers the eye the point of connection between the two worlds. Let us now follow the story of the spiritual world.

After the classical period, an immensely important fact takes place in it, which all the great teachers of mankind had previously proclaimed. The seven great Rishis of India had said: Our wisdom reaches to a certain point, but no further. After this point comes an entity that will redeem humanity. Zarathustra also had an inkling of this entity, and Hermes [Trismegistus] showed the Egyptians a being who was ready to come - Osiris - and would come with a divine mission.

Before this important fact, which we will discuss later, took place, another, equally important one occurred, namely, the appearance of the Buddha six hundred years earlier. We know that he came from a royal family and that his attention was drawn to the suffering of humanity by seeing a sick person, an old person, and a corpse. In evil, in old age and in death, he saw only suffering; likewise in unsatisfied desire. The whole of life seemed to him to be suffering, so that he wanted to educate humanity to flee from life. He left his family, his relatives, his possessions and devoted himself entirely

the search for the path to this liberation. Thus the so-called truths of life arose in his soul. [But six hundred years later, with the great event of Golgotha, we see that everything has changed significantly.

What did a corpse on a cross mean for the new community? This corpse had become the true sign of salvation and bliss! Nothing like this has ever occurred in the history of humankind, and it happened only through the Mystery of Golgotha. If there had been a Hellscher when the Mystery of Golgotha was consummated and the blood of Christ ran from the five wounds, he would have seen how the Christ penetrated like an arrow of light into the realm of the dead and transformed it from a realm of darkness into a realm of light.

At that moment, the substance of the astral body of the earth received the Christ principle and began to shine; which is also what happens to us the more we approach the Christ. In the past, man brought nothing with him from the earth; now he can love life [because the human elements have been formed by the elements of Christ]. The clairvoyant sees nothing of the Greek temple on the astral plane, but he does see the Gothic church and the works of art by Raphael and Michelangelo, and so on. What he sees there is infinitely more beautiful and sublime than what is physically present here on earth. The same can be said of the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. When we experience them, we appropriate a large part of the spiritual world.

Later we will see how the dead in heaven live on in the light of Christ.