Man, Nature and the Cosmos

GA 91 — 6 August 1905, Haubinda

9. Colors and Sounds

If one wishes to characterize higher worlds, one must use words which are of little use, since these are intended for the sensuous world. But there are certain common qualities in all worlds: Colors, sounds, certain forces. We want to speak first about certain colors; these are known to us in the physical world only in spatial things. Even there, where they are present without objects, they become noticeable only through the objects. Only in the borderline cases of the physical life one can see colors without object, for example the rainbow. The colors in the astral world are not bound to a fixed, spatial limit. They are still psychic, are the expression of the being at which they are. A sensual passion expresses itself differently than a highly striving thought. Here is immediate harmony. The color floats freely, but it is connected with what it expresses. It is not exterior color, but interior color. The bell, for example, does not care whether it is yellow or green, it does not affect its tone.

When one gets beyond the astral world, there are also colors, but they are not only inner colors, but they are creative, bring themselves forth; they are radiant colors. Now, when man rises into the mental space, he first loses the ability to perceive the mental colors in the same way. That is why one speaks of the sounding world. On the other hand, the ability to perceive sound occurs. Only when one again gets even higher, one perceives the radiant colors. When the human being has again made his way to the color, he is in the Arupa.

If we could take color from a physical object and carry it with us like a thin layer and bring it to Devachan, the color would shine there. That is why Devachan is also called the 'world of radiant colors'. If you want to communicate something to a fellow human being here, you tell him through sound. In Devachan it would shine in the corresponding color. Such a world, where all beings live in radiant colors, is called the 'first elementary realm'. When the matter of these beings becomes a little denser, descends into the Rupic, they begin to make themselves felt through sounds. This is the 'second elemental realm'. The beings that live in it are very mobile. In the 'third elemental realm', form is added to the rest. The inner color is shaped; passion shows itself in lightning form, lofty thoughts in plant form. In higher realms, they are sparks and glimmers; here they are forms of monochrome and sounding worlds.

All our beings have passed through three elemental realms. Gold, copper and so on have now passed into the mineral kingdom. Gold did not look the same in the lunar round as it does now: a star shining on different sides, through which one could reach. By a similar process, water, when it freezes into snow, becomes a small crystal. The metals are the condensed forms of the third elementary kingdom. Therefore metal is not internally uniform, but internally shaped - Chladnian sound figures. According to lines and figures the whole mineral kingdom is animated, and in the third elementary kingdom it was colored. By the fact that the forms solidify, surface becomes, and now the colors arise on the surface.

So we have:

1st elemental realm - realm of radiant colors
2nd Second elemental realm - realm of free tones
3rd elemental kingdom - kingdom of colored forms
4th mineral kingdom - kingdom of colored bodies

The physical world contains all three elemental kingdoms as coagulated within itself. Sound is much more related to the interior of a being than color. The latter is more surface. The radiating colors are still more inwardly connected. [The self radiating of the first elementary kingdom.]