The Origin and Goal of the Human Being

GA 53 — 17 November 1904, Berlin

The Spirit World

We are at an important point in the development of the spiritual human being between death and a new birth, in which the human being passes from the so-called soul realm into the spirit realm. As we heard last time, at this point the human being has become free from everything that binds him, that attaches him to physical, material existence. All the desires, cravings, and passions that incline toward physical, material existence have fallen away from the spiritual human being. They no longer distract him in his further development, and this spiritual human being then goes through that long period which could be described with a German expression as the spirit realm, and which is usually called Devachan in theosophical literature. Deva means a divine being, a being that has its reality only in this realm of existence; that does not have a physical body, but a body that consists only of substances from this spirit world. Man has been, as it were, a companion of these beings in a higher region.

We must not form a mental image — and I would like to emphasize this again and again — that this Devachan is to be found somewhere else in space. This spirit world is all around us, it fills our world in much the same way as air fills the physical world everywhere. It can only not be perceived by those people who are only able to use their physical senses. When the physical senses are closed and the spiritual eye is opened, the world around us shines with a new splendor. It takes on new qualities. We then see things that we did not see before. Just as what I described eight days ago as the astral, or soul world, is only available to the corresponding soul organs, so the spirit world is available to the spiritual eye.

It is difficult to form a picture of this realm of reality. You can imagine how difficult this is, because our language is not designed for these higher realms of existence. Our words are only appropriate for what exists in everyday life. Every word is assigned to a sensory object. But we must use these words if we want to describe the very different worlds to which we ascend. Therefore, I can only use comparative language, a more symbolic language, to describe this to you. This land is always around us, and it lies before the open eye of the seer. It shines around him, just as it shines around human beings when not only the physical body but also all those astral qualities such as desires, instincts, and passions that chain them to physical existence have melted away from them, like snow melting from a rock when the sun shines on it.

The only thing that human beings know of this spirit realm during their physical existence is their thoughts. But thoughts are only a faint reflection, a shadow image of this spirit realm. People who are attached to the physical world usually say that thoughts are not reality. One also hears people say that something is “just a thought.” But for those who know how to live in the world of thoughts, who know the meaning of thought life, who know how to live in thought life as ordinary people live in our world, thought life takes on a completely different meaning. The spirit world can communicate with humans in no other way than through thought. The life of thought corresponds to this higher spiritual reality. And those who are able to look into this spiritual reality learn to distinguish within it. For them, the areas of this higher reality are separated, just as here on our earth the different parts of it are separated for the physical eye. What I am saying is figurative, but it corresponds to the facts. Just as we have the solid crust of the earth, which consists of rocks, stones, and what we call solid land, so there is a very specific area in the spirit world that corresponds to this. And then there is another specific area that corresponds to what we call the oceans, the waters of the earth; and the air circle of the earth corresponds to a kind of air circle in Devachan. But these three areas of Devachan have a very specific relationship to the experiences on our earth. Everything you can experience in the physical world, everything you can experience as the physical objects around you, everything you can see with your eyes and perceive with your senses, forms, so to speak, the solid crust, the mainland in Devachan. There you see everything in its archetypes in a spiritual way, everything that you perceive here with your physical eyes.

But this archetypal land appears quite different. When you look at a physical human being, a certain part of the space is filled with their physical organization. You see nothing else of the human being around them. For the seer, however, the so-called aura, as we described it last time, is attached. In the spirit world or in Devachan, it is quite different. What one sees there relates to the physical image of the human being in the same way that the image on the photographic plate relates to the reality that is captured by the photographic plate. Everything that is filled with physical matter is a hollow space in the spirit world, so to speak, left empty. And when the human being descends back into the physical world, the hollow space is filled again with physical matter. And where there is nothing in the physical world, there is radiant existence, radiant organization. That is why it shines through in some things, which the early Christian initiates called the higher eon light. This is what organizes human beings and connects them with the spiritual world. Thus, in the spirit world, human beings are not present where they are present in the physical world. They are present outside themselves, outside the physical space they fill.

When the seer enters the spiritual world, he sees everything that appears empty to the physical eye around him filled with a higher reality. This is then filled with a shining and radiant light. This light is a completely different light from that which composes the soul aura. Man is not only this soul aura. This aura, in turn, is permeated by a higher aura. While the soul aura glows in a glimmering light, in a dull light, this higher spiritual aura, which remains visible even after the physical body of the human being has fallen away, shines in a light that is not merely glimmering; it is not merely something glimmering, but something flaming. It also has a very special quality that distinguishes it from the astral aura. This is that one can see through the spiritual aura, whereas one cannot see through the astral aura. Every spiritual realm is completely transparent to that which is in the spirit world.

This is the lowest part of this spirit realm that I have now described. When the seer rises to even higher regions, he experiences what is called the all-one life. This all-one life flows through all formations; it is the fluid element of the spirit realm. Just as the sea or a river with its peculiar colors appears to us when we look at a river or the ocean, so the all-one life appears to us as an ocean or river of the spirit realm. It shines in colors that can only be compared to the colors of fresh peach blossoms. In this all-one life, you will not find such irregular formations of rivers and oceans as here on earth, but rather very regular formations, so that the comparison would be much better with the heart and its blood vessels.

The third thing that can be experienced is what I would like to call the air circle of this land. This air circle, however, is composed of what we here on earth can call sensations. It is, so to speak, the air-like world of sensations that completely permeates the space of the spirit world, which is perceived here — that is, the air circle; it appears as if one is able to perceive the sensations of the entire Earth. But this sensation comes to us from outside, like the wind or the storm, like lightning and thunder in the physical atmosphere. There are no longer our own feelings and sensations. Human beings have shed their own feelings there. What all others feel comes to them. They feel at one with what others feel. Suffering and pain flow through this spiritual world like thunder and lightning. You can well imagine that insight into this world gives a completely different understanding of what reality actually is. Those who have once looked into this sea of human and animal suffering and human and animal joy, who have seen what it actually means to suffer and rejoice, what it means for passions to rage and rage, have a different concept of war and peace in the world, a completely different concept of the “struggle for existence.” Human beings also experience something of this between death and a new birth.

And then there is an even higher realm. These realms are not to be conceived in the mental image of moving from one place to another. They are all intertwined, they completely permeate each other. A fourth realm has only a very distant connection with our earth. While we can perceive qualities in the three realms I have listed that relate to our earth, those of the fourth realm have only a distant connection with what we perceive on earth. Here we already come into contact with higher beings, with beings who may never have been incarnated on this earth. Here we encounter forces that already transcend the physical. What human beings achieve out of pure idealism, out of pure thinking, out of a purely benevolent disposition, out of love, what human beings achieve beyond the physical realm, comes from forces that become visible in this realm. These realms of Devachan constantly surround human beings and constantly influence them. Those who have intuition and inventiveness create things that are not images of our earth; they create something that is brought into our earth from a higher realm. This comes from this fourth realm.

We should not believe that what we are not aware of does not exist in this sphere. We must not believe that if an individual human being does not perceive these things, they are not there. Those who come into the world with a special genius bring it with them from their stay in this realm of Devachan.

We have thus reached the boundary which, as we have seen, is only remotely connected with our earthly life, but which contains what gives our earth a higher splendor and is destined to be carried down directly into sensory existence, which also depends on sensory existence. Human beings cannot create works of art or construct machines unless they are guided by physical reality. In the case of works of art, they must study the material.

The other three regions of Devachan, which lie even higher, are regions that have an even more distant connection with the earth, regions that shine over from a completely different world, so to speak. And when a person ascends to this realm, either as a seer or in the time between death and a new birth, they draw from this realm everything that one might call the heavenly spark that a person brings into this world. It is what appears to him as the divine, as the higher spiritual, as the truly idealistic, which penetrates from the higher world and can only enter the physical world through him as higher morality, higher religiosity, and finer spiritual science. All wisdom, all higher splendor of existence that man, as a messenger of God, brings into this physical world, he draws from these three higher realms of Devachan.

Once again, let me emphasize that what I have described are states of consciousness, so that a person can even remain in one and the same place in their contemplation, while the various areas of Devachan light up around them states of consciousness, so that a person can even remain in one and the same place in their contemplation, while the various regions of Devachan light up around them and appear to them as a much richer reality than the reality that the physical eye can see, the physical ear can hear, or the physical hand can touch. I would like to use the comparison again and again with a person who cannot be aware of their physical eyes and ears. Last time, I already referred to the interesting book with the biography of the blind and deaf-mute American Helen Keller. There we see into a spiritual life that is completely different. Just imagine how the world would appear to you if you had no ears and no eyes. Such were the abilities of Helen Keller. But today she has completed a university degree and has an education equal to that of someone who has graduated from university. We see how Helen Keller has created a wealth for herself within the physical world that is fundamentally of a completely different nature, of a completely different essence than that which physical human beings otherwise possess. She herself says: "People who believe that all sensory impressions come to us through the eyes and ears have been surprised that I notice a difference between the streets of the city and the paths in the countryside. They forget that my whole body reacts to the environment. The noise of the city whips up all my nerves. The discordant, turbulent sounds with their shrill impressions, the simple clattering of machines, are all the more torturous for my nerves because my attention is not distracted by colorful, changing images, as it is for other people." For this peculiarly organized nature, the world around her is already quite different. And it is even more different now, when at the moment of death—the seer can describe this because, through his mystical contemplation, he is able to pass through the gate of death in a certain sense—the physical eye is no longer the mediator, when the impressions from outside no longer reach us through the physical ear.

Imagine you were armed with a glass that is colored red and makes everything appear in a reddish hue. This gives the world a quality that it immediately loses when you remove the red glass. Just as you remove the red glass, so you give away everything that your eyes and ears make of the environment at the moment of death. And what man has, as it were, in the veil or hue with which his eyes and ears were afflicted, from the spiritual world in his surroundings now appears to him, shining forth, if I may use a Goethean expression, from a rich, diverse, manifold world. I described last time what flares up in the astral world. Now, when human beings have shed the desires, cravings, and passions that caused them to spend time in the astral world, they enter into new states. Then the veil falls from their astral eyes, and they enter a world which, like our physical world, is illuminated by the sun, radiated by what Christian mystics have called the light of the eons, that light which can also shine from within the human being when they have opened their spiritual eye. This light permeates the entire spiritual world. In periods of varying length, human beings pass through the states between death and a new birth that I have described to you. Human beings really get to know the realms of the spirit world and learn what it means when physical matter disappears. Where physical matter once was, there are now empty spaces. There is nothing there. Completely different realms of existence now appear.

In Indian Vedanta philosophy, a saying that mystics repeated over and over again is particularly practiced. This saying is practiced everywhere in the corresponding languages, and it is: That is you. — When the mystic says this to himself over and over again, he means that human beings are truly not just what is physically enclosed in their skin. Human beings could not exist as individual beings in the universe; they are connected to forces and levels of existence that lie outside their physical bodies, so that wherever they look, there is a reality to which they belong. And just as he himself is separated from this reality, so is every other human being separated from this reality. Man experiences that he is basically nothing more than a leaf on a large tree. And this tree represents humanity. Just as a leaf withers when it falls from the tree, so would the individual human being perish if he wanted to separate himself from the tree of humanity. But they cannot do that! The physical human being simply does not know this; but on this level it becomes reality for them. If a human being comes into the world with a disposition that is not merely materialistic, that is not merely attached to sensual-physical existence, they will come into contact with the spiritual world. And the more they rise to an idealistic disposition, the more they are able to sense something higher, the more they will be able to live out their lives in this world of the spirit. In this world, human beings are enclosed in manifold physical connections: here they are enclosed in family, tribe, race; there they have their friends. All these are connections in the physical world. He experiences these connections again in the spirit world. There, in the spirit world, friendship becomes completely clear to him. There, the feeling of belonging, the feeling of attachment to his homeland, becomes clear to him to a greater degree. There, he lives out what connection means here in the physical world. He now lives within the world of archetypes. The more he has turned his mind to one of these connections here, the more he has to live out in the realm of the spirit world, while here in the physical body he is enclosed by physical reality. Just as a plant planted in a crevice in a rock cannot unfold in all directions, so it is with the human spirit.

Here in the physical shell, the qualities are restricted. Only a small part of what he has in terms of love for friends, family, country, and so on comes out. But when a person can unfold like a plant in an open field, when they are no longer enclosed in their physical shell, their essence will also live out freely and then return with increased strength. Those who have experienced family spirit in a higher sense live it out here in an intense way and will then return to life with a very special family spirit.

In this realm, the human being experiences what I have described as the “alone life.” He experiences the fluid element in the spirit realm. There, when we gain insight as seers, we see how slowly the one who has already developed a sense on this earth for the “all-one life” that weaves and drives all beings becomes enlightened. That is, developing religious piety. The devout person raises their sense to the “all-one life” that flows through everything. The religiously devout sense is freely lived out by the human being in this second realm of Devachan. Strengthened and fortified, this sense is expressed at the new birth. Here we see the human being rising above the barriers set for them in this incarnation in physical life. We see how Hindus and Christians experience the “all-one life” in Devachan in their own special way, when the barriers have fallen and a greater unity has been established in this realm.

The third realm is where we become aware of what the archetypes of suffering and pleasure, joy and pain are, where this element surrounds us, just as the physical earth surrounds the air circle. When human beings become accustomed to this realm, they learn to develop a sense of selfless devotion to everything that suffers in the world, to everything that can rejoice in the world. They are no longer oppressed by sensual pleasure and sensual pain. They no longer know any difference between their own pain and the pain of others, but they know what pleasure and pain are in themselves. In this way, we learn to recognize in its reality what comes to us as suffering and pain. Here we get to know the great philanthropists; all those who can appear as the geniuses of philanthropy, the geniuses of charity, the great creators of philanthropic connections of compassion and benevolence, of human community in the world, are included in this third realm and acquire their abilities there.

In the fourth realm, human beings take in what they realize through their intuition, inventions, and discoveries, using earthly powers and abilities and the properties of earthly things. Here are those who, as artists, great inventors, or in some other way, with flashes of genius, with a comprehensive view of the world, with comprehensive wisdom, make themselves of service to their fellow human beings in their new life. Depending on whether a person has already developed certain qualities in this life, the work of consciousness in Devachan naturally takes longer. It is a state of supreme bliss. Whatever limited and inhibited them on earth has fallen away. They now freely unfold their abilities. All obstacles have fallen away. This possibility of spreading one's wings in all directions, of then allowing one's heightened powers to flow back into the physical embodiment and in this way to be able to act all the more energetically and vigorously on earth; man feels this possibility, and it appears to him as a state of supreme bliss. Religions of all times have described this bliss as heavenly bliss. That is why Devachan appears in various religions as the so-called kingdom of heaven.

The time spent in Devachan is not the same for all people. The uneducated savage, who has experienced little of this world, who has used his mind and senses only a little, will have only a short stay in Devachan. Devachan is essentially there to work out what the person has learned in the physical world, to develop it freely, to make it suitable for something new. The person who is on a higher level of existence, who has gathered rich experiences, will have much to process and will therefore have a long stay in Devachan. Only later, when they can look into these states, will the stays become shorter again, to the point where the being can proceed to a new incarnation immediately after death, because the person has already lived out what is to be lived out in Devachan.

There are even higher stages beyond Devachan, which the human being will enter when they have already ascended to a higher level of development. We must form a mental image — figuratively speaking — that between death and a new birth, every human being enters that realm of the spirit world which lies beyond the connection with all earthly things, and that Devachan extends into far higher realms of existence, from where human beings draw the divine powers that they bring into this world as messengers of the gods. The messengers of the gods come from this realm. Even the uneducated person, however quickly he may pass through it because he has little to seek there, because he can develop little there, must spend at least a short time between death and a new birth in this land of Devachan, which is freest from all earthly bonds. There, all earthly heaviness has fallen away from him. There they partake of the breeze that blows over to them from the divine world, which permeates them between death and a new birth. Those who have reached a higher plane of existence linger here longer. Here they gain the opportunity to descend back to earth with special wisdom and special spiritual powers in order to help their fellow human beings as higher-minded individuals.

The leaders of humanity linger in this realm for a longer period of time. Those who have already departed from the world can also be found here, beings whom theosophical literature calls masters, beings whose development far exceeds that of contemporary humans. The longer a person can enjoy the company of these beings between death and a new birth, the purer, nobler, and more moral they will be when they return to the earthly stage. And the more they have ensured that they have become pure, noble, and idealistic on this earth, the longer they can partake of the air that blows in these parts of Devachan.

This is the path that the human being must travel on their pilgrimage between death and a new birth. These are states of consciousness, not different places. The human being does not go from one place to another when they wander through these regions. Rather, one could say that they fade away, but only in the same way that the outer physical world fades away when you close your eyes and block your ears. But just as in that case it becomes dark and silent around you, in this case it becomes light and clear and bright around you, and a new world dawns.

What can be said about the time a person has to spend in this devachan can, of course, only be decided on the basis of experience. Only those who have some kind of experience in this area, those who can remember their own previous incarnations or who can consciously gain insight into the luminous world of the spirit as seers, are able to say anything about it.

The length of time a person spends in Devachan varies greatly depending on their stage of development. But it is possible to estimate the time a person spends in the heavenly world. This can be found by multiplying the person's earthly life, i.e., the time between birth and death, by a number between twenty and forty. The time depends on the level of development the person has reached, but also on the length of their physical life. If a child dies soon after birth, you only need to multiply the time of their life by twenty to forty, and you will get the time they spend in Devachan. Those who have a long life have long and important states to go through in Devachan and also have much to experience of what in mysticism is called the blissful sensations of Devachan. This life in Devachan differs very significantly from anything that the physical eyes or the physical senses in general can imagine.

But as approximate as the concepts and words I have used to describe this realm may be, I have tried to describe it as faithfully and accurately as possible. These realms themselves do not belong — not in their substance, not in their actual essence — to the deepest nature of human beings. This deepest nature of human beings, what Giordano Bruno calls the monad, the highest spiritual life in human beings, originates from even higher worlds. We will talk about these even higher worlds in the next lesson, which will deal with the basic concepts of theosophy. Then we will also talk about the way in which human abilities must develop in order to gain a glimpse into these higher worlds. The mystic not only describes what he sees there, but he may also describe how human beings can achieve this, how they can develop their abilities to gain a closer look into these worlds. Today, in conclusion, I would like to make just a few remarks.

It is common for those who first hear about the described realm of Devachan to say that this realm is an illusion, something illusory; because it resembles its shadow image, the thoughts in physical life, it must also have a less real existence than our physical world. But that is not the case. "For those who have gained insight into this higher world, it has become clear that there are much stronger, much higher realities in it than in our physical reality. One only learns to understand the true meaning of physical existence when one is able to see it in the light of these higher worlds. Just as a piece of steel can lie before you without you suspecting that it contains electrical or magnetic forces, so an object of the physical world can extend before you without you suspecting that it contains a much higher entity. That is why those who have known something of the world of colors and sounds describe it in the most vivid colors and also describe the sounds that reach their spiritual ears in the most wonderful language. The ancient Pythagoreans spoke of the music of the spheres. No one but those who have insight into this world of Devachan knows what the music of the spheres is. Many think it is something figurative, something symbolic. No, it is something of the highest reality. From the spiritual world, the rhythmic melodies of the cosmic forces of the universe resound to us. The cosmic forces are rhythmically structured, and we hear that rhythm when we are able to use the “devachanic ear,” and then that indescribable bliss occurs which the mystic is able to perceive. When everything in this world falls away, when everything that sounds through the senses withdraws from his attention, then he describes what the impression of Devachan is.

This is what human beings must go through between death and a new birth. There they are a seed for the new rebirth. They are the mustard seed that survives through the devachan period to a new incarnation. The German mystic Angelus Silesius, who spoke so many beautiful, powerful words in his “Cherubic Wanderer,” also described in this wonderful mystical book, in a short, clear, and meaningful saying, the feeling and the whole being of how the spirit survives death to a new birth as a seed that prepares itself for a new existence in order to then develop new and higher powers. What every mystic knows, that the heart radiating spiritual light is capable of shining, Angelus Silesius expresses in the following words:

My spirit is a mustard seed;
His sun shines through it,
So it grows, like God, with joyful delight.