Man, Nature and the Cosmos

GA 91 — 17 June 1905, Berlin

1. The Three Worlds

We know three worlds: the physical, the astral and the devachanic. The physical one is known to all people: the world we perceive with the five senses. - Not so the astral, it is the world of all drives, desires, passions and so on. Man must receive guidance in order to know his way around it. If a person gets a glimpse of the astral completely unprepared, he will not find his way around in it. The best comparison is the seal impression: What is sublime in the physical, that forms the recess in the astral and vice versa, what is recess here, is sublime there. Everything is a reflection of reality. The numbers are seen in reverse: 364 here is 463 there. It is much more complicated with the space formations: One sees a sphere as if one had the eye in the center of the sphere. All colors are seen in their opposite, what is red here is green there, yellow here becomes indigo there, black becomes white. The opposite color is always the one whose covering creates white.

Time actually runs backwards. One does not live towards the future, but towards the past. The peoples have expressed in the myths this astral way of looking at things. The myths of Chronos devouring his children can be understood only by those who have astral vision: The children in turn return to the womb of that from which they emerged. Uranos means the mental world, Chronos the astral, and Zeus the physical world. The myths originate from the initiates, who went out from the pre- and postexistence. They form the spirit through legends and fairy tales. What man cannot grasp in one life, he will grasp in the next. Also moral and spiritual conditions appear in the mirror image. What man feels belongs to the astral. And when he observes his own urges, they also appear to him in the mirror image. When a desire moves outward, it appears [there] as when it approached [one]. Like an animal that wants to snatch a thing from him when he takes it away. Thus he sees a whole animal world rushing at him: it is all the desires, cravings, and passions that man exudes.

The dream is a kind of memory of astral experiences; dreams are often nothing but mirror images of one's passions. Curiosity, for example, is always a certain current in the astral. The legend of the midday woman who visits the workers in the field and always quizzes them. Human curiosity expresses itself especially in the fact that man wants to know something about his past and future. The reflection of inquisitiveness is magnificently expressed in [the riddle of] the Cadmean Sphinx. The whole earth development of man lies in the answer: Man walks on four legs, on two legs, on three legs. Man walked on fours as a single-sex being in the Lemurian time. On two he goes in the present, on three he will go in the future. Both feet and the right side with the arm will disappear; instead there will be a highly developed left arm.

Evolution proceeds in such a way that certain beings evolve upward and have side shoots that come in decadence. In those who lag behind, the astral body is stronger; in those who advance, the mental body.

The reflection of development is retardation: regression. From the [retarding] forces of the astral, development is arrested. Thus, on the astral one must translate everything into its mirror image. This could not be understood in the beginning of the theosophical movement. The Master tried to make it clear to Sinnett, through the plant, which is surrounded by a mass, into which the plant pushes off.