Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 15 April 1905, Karlsruhe

2. The Life of Souls between Death and New Birth

We want to deal with a question that can only be discussed in a circle of advanced Theosophists, the question: Do human souls have a history between physical death and a new birth, just as they have a history on the physical plane? Can something take place in the astral, in the devachan, which we can call history? We must answer this question with “yes”. And even if the history beyond the boundary of death is quite different from that which takes place on earth, it is still closely connected with the life of the souls on the physical plane.

We have to trace the development of the souls back to the old times of Atlantis. The individual souls had once detached themselves from the bosom of the Godhead and had descended into the physical bodies, but even in our ancient Atlantean ancestors these souls felt themselves to be strangers on earth, and when they returned to the heavenly world during sleep or at death, they felt this to be bliss, a return to their true home. Their consciousness in the physical bodies was dull and dim, and they therefore felt constricted and uncomfortable in them. It was the same with the first sub-race of our present race, the ancient Indians. They, too, regarded the spiritual world as their true home, [as] the goal of their longing.

The souls descended deeper into matter in the next sub-race, the Persian. Here, humans settled more into the earth, learning to cultivate and love it.

In the third sub-race, the Egyptian, the souls had already become so accustomed to physical life that they regarded the physical body as something very valuable. This is expressed by the Egyptians in the custom of mummifying the physical body. This artificial preservation of bodies effectively had the effect of making it difficult for the separated souls to separate from earthly conditions in order to ascend to higher worlds.

The souls were most entangled in earthly life during the Greco-Roman epoch. Life in the physical seemed to them to be the only thing worth striving for, and they felt directly unhappy in the devachan, in the heavenly worlds, as insubstantial shadows. The desolate descriptions from the Greek underworld are no figments of the imagination, but the true expression of the deepest feelings of the soul of this people so attached to the beauties of the earth. The saying of a Greek general: “Better a beggar on earth than a king in the underworld” expressed the mood of the entire people. The Greeks used all their artistic gifts to express them in sculptural representations. The Greek statues, the marvelous temples are of high artistic perfection, and yet: when, for example, the Scher stands before the ruins of the temple of Paestum, he can still enjoy the beauty of the forms, the structure, but in the spiritual realm, a void hovers over the whole, which he clearly feels and which recurs over all Greek works of art. This is because the Greeks had completely lost their sense of the spiritual. As beautiful as their creations on earth were, their souls were incapable, even unskilled, for the work that awaited them in the Devachan.

The messengers between the souls in and out of the body have always been the seers. What they brought down from the devachan to the souls on earth was always of great value to them. And Buddha and many others were able to tell many beautiful things from those worlds that were of use to people.

The reverse was far more difficult. The seers could not tell the deceased Greeks, who led their desolate existence in the shadows, about the glories of the earth; they would only have increased their pain by doing so.

Then a great event occurred that suddenly changed life in the Devachan and made it more colorful. The Mystery of Golgotha was not only of the most far-reaching significance for the physical development of mankind on earth, but also for the life of the souls in the Devachan. Christ actually appeared among the dead, and since then, since this great spiritual impact, the souls again feel more the beauty of the heavenly worlds, they again become more adept at living in them.

When people on earth seek living contact with the Christ, their [existence in] devachan becomes more and more richly structured, [so] the heavenly worlds become their home again. The unfolding of a rich spiritual life can be perceived by the shearer above a Christian cathedral - in contrast to the Greek temple. The appearance of Christ on earth has a transforming effect on the whole world. He floods the shadow world with his light and his life. And when the initiates now come to the [departed] souls, they can bring them a message from the physical plan, the message of the Mystery of Golgotha. This world event, which had a transforming effect on our earth, also flowed through the shadow world and transformed it back into a light home.

Through the great initiates, who have to bring the message of the spiritual to the physical plan, even dwelling within the physical body - they communicate in the higher worlds not only with the souls of men, but with high spiritual beings, with the gods, who are the leading powers; with them they live, from their wisdom they carry down to the physical plan, [they are] the messengers of the gods and givers of truth to men. The one event that could transform the shadow world into heaven gives their messages more and more power and penetration: the world event of the Mystery of Golgotha.