Death, Karma, and Rebirth: The Soul's Journey Between Lives

GA 94 — 3 July 1906, Leipzig

Lecture VI

Today we want to follow human beings from their death to a new birth and see how what comes from their past life is transplanted into the next. After death, human beings leave their physical bodies behind as corpses and surrender them to the earth. The etheric body, astral body, and ego withdraw from them. At this moment immediately after death, the entire past life from birth to death appears before the soul as if in a long series of images. However, this tableau of memories does not quite resemble the experiences themselves that one had here. For there, the experiences were linked to feelings and emotional impressions, and the soul was inwardly interested in them. Now, however, all these experiences appear before the soul as a sum of external, objective experiences. All the suffering and joy that were once associated with them are now silent. This picture of life stands before the soul like something foreign. The moods are missing. I then see myself and my relatives in an objective panorama of images. This image remains before the soul until the etheric body separates from the astral body. The etheric body then becomes the second corpse that the human being leaves behind. This etheric body gradually dissolves into the general world ether. If, as a clairvoyant, one observes a person with a crude emotional life in this state, one will notice that it takes a long time for their etheric body to dissolve. With an idealist, on the other hand, it happens quickly. However, one will see almost no dissolution at all when observing a secret student or even an initiate after death.

After the dissolution of the etheric body, the human being consists of the astral body and the I. The images of the panorama of life are of great importance, for they now become forces that are imprinted on the astral body. They are transformed as if they were a kind of nourishment for it. From this sum of forces grows the causal body, which is the fifth member of the human being. This is what the human being retains during the devachan period and throughout all incarnations. When the human being first incarnated — we no longer have to deal with such conditions now — he consisted of only four members: physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I. The causal body was only present in a very embryonic form. They carried it with them until the next incarnation. And with each incarnation, the causal body grew. The images of memory are imprinted on the causal body each time, enriching it and making it more diverse. After passing through Kamaloka, the human being has an ego and a causal body and is clothed in his astral body. Before that, he must relive his entire past life in every smallest action, down to the smallest detail. He must pause at every experience of this past life and relive it in reverse. Only then can he enter Devachan.

The purpose of reliving one's past life in every detail is to truly understand one's own actions by experiencing their effects on oneself. For now, with every action, the human being experiences the state of mind of the person against whom the action was directed. They experience the pain and joy they have caused other people from within. There is nothing that one has done to others that does not become one's own experience in Kamaloka. The saying applies here: What you sow, you will reap.

Take an example of this retrograde experience: vivisection. This is closely related to the materialistic direction of current science. A doctor in the Middle Ages would have considered it very foolish to study life by cutting up living bodies and destroying life. At that time, many people, especially doctors, were still clairvoyant and could therefore see through the physical body. However, this clairvoyant power was lost, and because people could no longer see into the interior of the organism, they began to cut it up and dissect it. But those who vivisect cut into living life. After death, karma, the law of cause and effect, comes into play. The intention that leads to vivisection is less important in this context. The vivisector must experience the consequences of his actions on himself. All the individual pains he has inflicted on animals, he must now endure and go through himself in Kamaloka. The scientific intention will only be woven into his karma later.

This retrograde experience causes all the evil attached to the human personality to be eliminated. When this process is complete, the human being leaves behind the astral body as the third corpse and continues to live with the ego and causal body. The discarded astral body is actually unnecessary for the further states of the human being. Let us take another look at the effects of Kamaloka life on the soul. If someone has caused suffering to another, they experience it themselves in Kamaloka: they experience the effect it had on the other person. By going through this, they are warned for the future. These experiences that the human being has in Kamaloka are lasting and are deeply engraved on the soul. But they leave their astral corpse behind. These astral corpses are always visible to clairvoyants on the astral plane. They dissolve only slowly. Later, the soul enters the devachanic world. There, the person is able to process everything they have absorbed in Kamaloka, everything they have engraved upon themselves.

All the experiences we have had become forces in the continental region of Devachan. In the atmosphere of Devachan, human beings experience what once arose in them as feelings and emotions. After they have recognized the emotional effects of their own deeds, these emotional experiences flow into them and become abilities. All the experiences of an earthly life reappear in later earthly lives as abilities and talents. In this process of transforming experiences into abilities, human beings experience a feeling of unreserved bliss. It is like the feeling of the brooding hen, translated into the spiritual realm, a feeling of warmth that awakens new life, which flows through human beings there.

When everything stored in the causal body has been transformed into abilities, the human being begins the return journey to earth. It is extremely interesting to observe these beings returning to earth clairvoyantly. The clairvoyant perceives bell-shaped structures that shoot off in all directions at incredible speed in the astral plane. These formations are created when a person returning from Devachan surrounds themselves with new astral matter. This is a gathering of astral matter around the core of the human being, which could be compared to the following: Imagine a box containing iron filings with a magnet underneath. The filings arrange themselves according to the lines of force of the magnet. Like the magnet, the human being returning from Devachan attracts astral matter from various directions of the astral plane, and this matter arranges itself according to the nature of the human being. This state of scattering before a new incarnation lasts only a short time, usually measured in hours. The bell shape is the general form, in which all color nuances are found. In this state, the human being consists of the I and the causal body and now forms a new astral body from the astral matter, which corresponds exactly to what the human being has developed in the devachan. His entire disposition thus takes on a coloration corresponding to his transformed experiences.

After that, the new etheric body must attach itself. With astral matter, it is as if it attaches itself all by itself. With etheric matter, it is different. There are beings that initially have nothing to do with the individuality of the human being. They help in the formation of the etheric body. They are called Mahadevas. They also have a certain significance for human beings in other respects. Human beings are not as much the rulers of their physical bodies as they believe. Other beings also dwell and are active in their three bodies. Only in their fourth limb, the I, are human beings completely at home. The Mahadevas also belong to such beings that live in human beings; they influence the etheric body and are able to give human beings the right etheric body. Other beings then guide them to the parents who, according to hereditary conditions, best suit the abilities and characteristics of the reincarnating human being in terms of the family and the physical human germ. Only in the rarest of cases does the newly incarnated human being fit completely into their new physical body, which often leads to many inner conflicts. In our present time, it is only ever possible to find a physical body that is approximately suitable. The moment a suitable place of incarnation is found, the Lipikas, elemental beings, guide the human being to a suitable family, and only at the moment of fertilization does the astral body become clothed with the etheric body. Just as the Mahadevas are related to the etheric body, the Lipikas are related to the physical body. All these processes usually take only a few moments. In the first weeks after conception, only the causal body is active and effective in the human germ. Around the seventh week, the etheric body begins to take effect, and from the seventh month onwards, the astral body approaches the human being with its powers.