Devachan: The Spiritual Worlds Between Incarnations

GA 94 — 1 July 1906, Leipzig

Lecture IV

Today we will describe Devachan, namely the sum of experiences that humans have there between death and a new birth. One must not think that this world is located somewhere else in space. It is always around us. It is just that ordinary humans do not have the organs to perceive the facts in it. It must also be remembered that our language and expressions are only suited to the physical world. Therefore, the higher worlds can only be described in comparisons. Where there is an object in the physical world, in Devachan one finds the corresponding space as a hollow space, and where there is nothing in the physical world, in Devachan there is something luminous, radiant, resonant, and so on. This could be compared to a photographic negative. The physical object would fit exactly into the hollow space. It is remarkable that this is only the case with natural objects, while objects artificially formed by humans are present in Devachan as positives. Everything that is made of solid mineral substances, including the mineral parts of plants, animals, and humans, is present in the first region of Devachan in negative form, as a hollow space. This is, as it were, the solid foundation of Devachan: the continent of Devachan. The counter-images of the physical-mineral thus form the continental area of Devachan.

Everything that is life here, everything that makes plants and animals beings capable of growth, can be compared in Devachan to the ocean. This is the second region of Devachan. There one finds flowing, streaming life. And there is great regularity in this streaming life, in these oceans of Devachan. One could compare it to the circulation of blood in the human body.

The third region is the air, the atmosphere of Devachan. It contains everything that is called sensation and feeling here. Just as the wind blows here, so one can perceive streams of pain there. Every calamity that takes place here in the physical world becomes audible. A battle, for example, appears to the clairvoyant who perceives in Devachan as a terrible thunderstorm that discharges itself in lightning, thunder, and storm.

In the fourth region, one finds all the fruitful and valuable ideas that have ever been thought by human beings. Just as the starry sky surrounds us here, so there one finds a wonderful star script. It can be read as the so-called Akashic Records. All ideas connected with human actions are inscribed there for eternity and can be read. But there are even larger writings in Devachan. Every animal, every plant, every crystal is based on a thought. All of this is engraved in Devachan.

In the fifth region of Devachan, man finds his true essence. “Tat tvam asi – that is you,” the great central word of Vedanta philosophy, resounds there.

In the continental region of Devachan, humans gradually overcome the importance they attach to their own bodies. They learn to compare their own physical existence with all other physical existence in a selfless manner. With each incarnation, humans become a little more selfless. The first region of Devachan is the high school of this perfection. In the second, the oceanic realm of Devachan, humans experience the unity of all life each time they pass through it. Only gradually, with the advent of theosophical thinking, can the insight into the unity that lies in all things also dawn. Even after reincarnation, we retain a faint inkling of this flowing universal life. In the third realm, in the atmosphere of Devachan, the initiate, and the human being between death and new birth, perceives all suffering and all joy in the form of wonderful atmospheric phenomena and in the sounds of lightning and storm. Because the human being is then outside these soul stirrings, he views them objectively and can recognize their full meaning. Enriched with this insight, with this devachanic experience, he then returns to a new earthly life. When the human being has reached a certain point in his inner development, he receives the memory of his past earthly lives. This is only a question of development. Everyone will eventually reach this stage. Through the frequent repetition of devachanic experiences, their images become so deeply imprinted that the power of memory is sufficient.