---
ga: 88
title: "Re-embodiment Questions"
date: 1903-08-24
location: Berlin
words: 665
---
# On the Astral World and Devachan

## GA 88 — 24 August 1903, Berlin

### 15. Re-embodiment Questions

I must first say something that is important for understanding evolution and re-embodiment. Every personality, every individuality must live through the devachan up to the Arupa sphere in order to obtain the continuous, unified 'thread [through several earth lives].

A personality as exalted as Nicholas of Cusa was already active in ordinary life from the Arupa sphere. Although every person acts from the Arupa sphere, only a few are aware of it. The higher a person has raised himself in the Arupa sphere in the time between two earthly lives, the more the divine breaks through in him. Cusanus wrote a work about not-knowing out of higher knowledge: De docta ignorantia. Ignorantia means not-knowing, and not-knowing here is equivalent to higher beholding. In his books he stated the following: There is a kernel of truth in all religions, we need only look deeply enough into them. He also stated that the earth moves around the sun. He said this out of intuition. Copernicus only had this realization in the 16th century, Cusanus already in the 15th century. Such an incarnation as that of Cusanus is to be considered in connection with his later embodiment. Cusanus already points on the one hand to future theosophy and on the other hand to future modern natural science. This had an influence on his following incarnation. It was Nicholas Cusanus who reappeared in Copernicus.

It is possible that the memory of past embodiments, which is lost in an incarnation, may be reawakened later, perhaps after one or more incarnations. The means of the causal body can only be used when one awakens in the plane above the causal sphere (in devachan). Every human being must be drawn down from Devachan back into the physical sphere by a force in order to learn abilities there that he has not yet developed. In the highest Arupa level, the person gets to know these forces and thereby gains influence over his later incarnation. He then also takes his life into his own hands to a certain extent. He is an example of regular development.

However, an incarnation does not depend solely on one's own development, but also on the benefit and significance for the whole evolution. The succession of personalities of higher individualities is no longer irregular. For the less developed, embodiment is still irregular. For highly developed individualities, salient qualities will emerge. These include

> 1. a reverent looking up to the Higher,  
> 2. a calm love for God,  
> 3. becoming in God.

As an example of a regular development of an individuality, we can consider a contemporary of Jesus, Philo of Alexandria. His individuality reappeared as Spinoza and then as Johann Gottlieb Fichte. So here we have one continuous individuality in three personalities. If you read Fichte without knowing about this, you will understand very little. But with this knowledge, you will find that his words are written in fire. All these great minds have undergone a regular development.

*Postscript by the editors:*

H. P. Blavatsky writes in volume III of the “Secret Doctrine”, section XLI:

“As an example of an adept... some medieval Kabbalists cite a well-known personality of the 15th century – Cardinal de Cusa; as a result of his wonderful devotion to esoteric studies and the Kabbalah, karma led the suffering adept to seek intellectual respite and rest from ecclesiastical tyranny in the body of Copernicus.”

Rudolf Steiner presents this in more detail in the lectures of January 21, February 15 and March 7, 1909 (in “The Principle of Spiritual Economy,” GA 109/111, pp. 1 6, 52/53 and 290), in which he says that the astral body of Nicholas of Cusa has been transferred to Nicholas Copernicus, although Copernicus' I was quite different from that of Cusanus.

Rudolf Steiner also talks about Spinoza and Fichte in the lecture of June 5, 1913 in Helsingfors (GA 158).