On the Astral World and Devachan

GA 88 — 25 November 1903, Berlin

5. The Character of the Astral Processes

In the previous lecture I spoke of the beings that are to be found in the astral world. I characterized the inhabitants of this world by distinguishing them into those who are presently embodied and those who are not presently embodied. Today I would like to talk about the events in the astral space, and I would like to characterize in general how we should imagine the events there. Of course, we can only give a very general sketch, because the world we encounter here is so overwhelmingly large that everyone who enters this world once is overwhelmed by the abundance of phenomena, so that no one could possibly describe the whole astral world from his own experience. Just as no one has seen the whole physical earth, no one has seen the whole astral world. Since the diversity of the astral world is far greater than that of the physical earth, you will be able to imagine that there are many things in the astral of which the individual cannot give an account. However, the individual can describe a small piece.

I count to the processes in the astral space also the meetings with entities, which we cannot meet in the physical world or only quite exceptionally. The astral space is, so to speak, a place where beings of different worlds can meet. It is just as people can meet each other in the earthly career, as a person can once meet another who lives in a completely different place, perhaps travels a short distance together with him, loses him again and then no longer meets him. As this is on a small scale, so it can also occur on a large scale, and so we can explain many things from the astral world.

We as human beings have not been from the beginning in such a way that we have embodied ourselves in the world in a physical body between birth and death, but we have made it in a kind of cosmic development that we have to go through three stations: through the physical life between birth and death, through the life in the Kamaloka and through the life in the Devachan. Not all beings pass through these stages, and we human beings have also had a time preceding ours, in which we were much closer to the astral world with our beingness. Before we had acquired the ability to embody ourselves physically, we were beings who lived purely in the astral world and who had astral senses. Out of the astral senses only our eyes and ears developed in the course of millions of years to the physical form which they have today. We were astral beings, and we will be astral beings again in the course of our evolution.

We are now in the fifth root race of the fourth round, which is the fifth epoch of mankind of the fourth round of earth evolution. We have evolved through four previous epochs and will re-embody in three following ones. Then this form of our planet, which it has now, will be replaced by another form, and we humans will also have another form instead of our earthly form. We will then no longer reincarnate in the same way as we do today. We will again be astral beings, entities which do not use the senses we have now, but we will be entities which act astrally. Soul beings we were, soul beings we will be again when the physical globe will have fulfilled its task. Through seven so-called "races" we pass, often through bad states, and in the future we will again be in an astral state and lead a completely different existence. We used to be purely passive beings, devoted to the impressions of the outside world, before our physical body had condensed into the physical core, through which it became possible to set physical muscles in motion to perform earthly actions. We will transform ourselves again, from passive to active entities. Everything that we have absorbed earthly, that we have processed, will have ripened as fruit in us; we will be active beings, activity beings.

Because we still carry something of our former astral form around with us, because something of it belongs to our astral body, and because past and future interpenetrate in us, that is why we also live in the astral world today. And we can develop our spiritual eye in such a way that we become sighted in the astral world just as the average person is sighted in the physical world. People are not aware of this because their spiritual eye is not open. But the disciple's eye is gradually opened. Whoever has gone through the training can expect that the spiritual eye will be opened to him so that he can see what is described in the theosophical teaching.

We are citizens of the physical world and the astral world. In the astral world, the disciple also encounters beings who do not belong to our earth, never have belonged to it, and never will belong to it. These beings have undergone other developments, they come from a completely different side of the world, they cross our astral plane. They have to make only one way stretch through the astral space together with us. They are, as it were, like the comets that pass through our planetary system. Such entities are strangers to our human-terrestrial development; their development in the astral world will be quite different from ours. They will meet with us only for a short time and then continue their development in a way that has nothing to do with ours.

These are facts of which the mystical writings of all times speak. In these entities, to which the mystical writings have given different names, nothing else is represented than those inhabitants of the earth who go through their development apart from our development, so-called elemental beings, elemental spirits. For these entities, what they experience through human beings is as strange as what a human being experiences when entering the astral space is strange to him. They behave mostly rejecting what approaches them from the physical world. The chela will experience the most manifold temptations through these beings, he can be attracted by these elemental spirits and thereby easily be diverted from the path marked out for him. These entities show sympathies or antipathies with what they encounter from our human sphere. It was not always so. In an earlier epoch they were not so antipathetic to physical men. Now, however, these beings have a great antipathy to everything that comes from the physical world.

These phenomena of the astral world have often been described figuratively. Today, some of them are considered as folk superstitions and people do not know that the expressions in the ancient scriptures are based on truths. Gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders were called in the Middle Ages these beings which never have a physical existence. Of course, it is easy to say something about these things, but only he speaks about them with full sense of responsibility who knows to distinguish what is superstition and what is reality. Superstition occurs at different levels. There is not only superstition, which is attached to us when we believe in some phenomena that are not really there. No, superstition can also be present in the greatest scholars, even in those who believe they have explored nature in all directions. The belief in matter can also be a superstition. The second stage of seeing, spiritual seeing, must be reached by the student in order to be able to distinguish what is physical reality and what is delusion. Then he also learns to recognize what in the literature [about elemental beings] is due to reality and what is only fantastic stuff.

You need not imagine the elemental beings as particularly highly developed; they do not go through birth and death as man does. The fewest have gone through something which would be even similar to a human development. Such developments are also not in front of most of them. Some come - like comets - from other planets, disappear again and continue their existence somewhere else. What these entities accomplish is not without influence on the people. Some things are going on in the human astral body, which go back to effects of these beings. Only to him who can see in the astral space, such processes, which can take place in the human astral body, are explainable.

There are also such entities on the astral plan, which are higher than human beings. Religions that know something about esotericism speak of such higher entities; the Indian religion, for example, speaks of devas. Also in the Christian religion one spoke of such beings. Gradually, Christianity has lost this knowledge, but there are still circles that know these beings. The devas take on a certain "physicality". Just as man takes his physical body from the natural elements, and just as our physical body is the lowest element possible for us, so the lowest body of the kama devas is the astral; it is composed of astral matter -- according to their stage of development. Other devas we call rupa devas. They live in the devachan, through which we pass between death and and a new birth. The materiality of the rupa-devas is the mental body, that of the arupa-devas the causal body. The causal body has to do with what draws us from embodiment to embodiment. That which is physical materiality passes away, passes away; the corpse is returned to the earth, to the chemical and physical forces. The astral body and the lower mental body also dissolve after death. There remains only the one soul in us, which returns again and again in a new embodiment, when the one development has reached the goal, in order to enter then into a new development. This one soul is woven from the material of the causal body, in which we can have the recollection of former lives and recognize the whole development in it. Who knows these facts, knows that Buddha did not give a picture when he spoke: I remember past lives, I remember how I was born there and there, how I helped there and there, had children there and there, I remember world stands, world passes through which I passed, and so on. - That spoke this highly-developed individuality, which has anticipated the development, to which the people will come only in the sixth round, in which the human being will have a purely spiritual existence. Buddha has already developed this; he attained the ability to see the higher states. Ordinary people will attain this only later. Everyone will one day see all his past states of development passing by. This is because something always remains, namely the finest materiality of the causal body. And from this materiality the higher kinds of devas, the arupa devas, are formed. These are the three kinds of devas we can meet in the astral: Kama devas, Rupa devas, Arupa devas. First we meet those who are made of astral matter; but the other devas also have the ability to entwine themselves with astral matter so that they can be seen by astral seers.

By the fact that such a person can move freely in the astral space, thereby he can get in touch with the devas; an exchange of thoughts takes place. The development to higher knowledge, the development to the adept, to the master, consists in reaching what is called in individual occult writings: "The adept makes the gods subservient to himself." The adept gradually comes to do deeds in these higher worlds, and among the helpers of his deeds are not only human beings, but also such beings who never enter our earthly spheres. The intelligence of some devas, however, is lower than the wisdom of the budhi, the self-sacrificing love and wisdom-filled creative power. Man can come into possession of such a degree of this power that he rises above most of the devas we meet. Then he makes them serve him. Some of what happens is that the adepts have their helpers in these deva beings who never come into our physical spheres.

Until the 15th century people possessed knowledge of them; but in the 14th, in the beginning of the 15th century all traces of communications about the devas are lost; no more was talked about these things in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries; nobody had any knowledge of these things, except in very intimate circles. It was the time when the power of the mind was being developed. Today it is possible, at least to some extent, to speak again of these truths concerning the devas, about which absolute silence has prevailed for centuries; it is possible because the development of humanity is currently heading towards events in the spiritual realm that are great and significant, and because people must face things in such a way that they are prepared. The next thing that will happen very soon can be characterized by saying that people will overlook the background of good and evil to a much greater extent than they do today. They will look deep into the threads that the powers spin, they will see the fabric of the world, which will appear to people of the present time as a network of good and evil. This truth will be a realization of infinite significance. And now there is already the possibility of acquiring this knowledge of good and evil.

These are great things that have been spoken of now; there are now other things that are taking place in the astral. I will tell you something about that now. Man must be aware that in every moment of his life he also lives in the astral realm. Just as physical facts can be seen with physical eyes, so it can be seen in the astral realm that, for example, a wish that arises in you emanates like a cloud. Every wishful thought emanates from you like a force and flows out into the astral realm. Such thoughts are like lightning-like formations, others like fine cloud-like formations. Whatever power is in the thoughts forms itself into arrows or into pleasant cloud formations; rays and star formations also form. Everything takes shape and form the further it goes away from us. Everything is protean in nature; everything changes its shape and color. By color and form, one can recognize exactly what thoughts a person is sending out into space. If you send a thought filled with anger, it goes out from you like a bolt of lightning through the air, to the astral body of another person; this can be observed. It depends on the intensity of the desire whether the thought shoots quickly through the astral space, and it depends on the character of the desires in which colors they appear. Thoughts of a violent nature appear brownish red to bloody red; thoughts of a calm, contemplative, benevolent nature appear in an intense bluish to violet color. You can see sharp, logical thoughts as yellow star formations that intertwine. The chela learns to consciously evoke such thought forms in the astral realm by getting to know the laws of the astral and mental worlds. The chela knows exactly how the thoughts he sends out work in the astral realm. This is chela development: becoming more and more aware of these facts and only sending out thoughts for the benefit of humanity. This is one of the profound truths that Theosophy leads people to.

The processes in the astral realm are processes that always surround us, that take place in our environment. They are higher facts than those of our physical world. In the time between death and a new birth, the human being passes through these higher worlds. The chela can consciously enter these regions even before he dies. The development of man in Kamaloka, that is, what awaits man when he crosses the threshold of death, will be the subject of a separate consideration. Today I only wanted to touch on those things that are not related to this particular chapter. I have left out everything that can be discussed in connection with Kamaloka and Devachan. Next time we will hear the sixth and final lecture in this series.

I have shown that man has descended from higher worlds and that he in turn goes to higher worlds. Some things happen here that have their causes in the higher worlds. The teaching of a chela also takes place in a higher world. The chela may receive teaching in the physical world, but this is not the most important thing. More important is the teaching that takes place in the higher spheres. Things happen to people in the higher spheres that people are not aware of in their ordinary lives. The rational person can only know about these worlds if they are first reported to him. Receiving reports about them is a way of looking into the higher worlds. It is not unnecessary to first hear something about these higher worlds. What is told sinks into the spiritual of man and will in any case come to life in the future life. What is sown today as seed will bear fruit in the future. That was a saying of Paul, the Christian initiate: God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.