III. The Law of the Astral Plane: Renunciation. The Law of the Devachanic Plane: Sacrifice

Today we will characterize the differences between experiencing the astral world and the world of Devachan. It is not only that the astral world is known through Imagination and the devachanic through Inspiration, but we also know through other differences, too, which world we are in. A part of the astral world is the time during which a human being has to live through directly after death, which in anthroposophical literature we call the period of Kamaloca. What does it mean to be in Kamaloca? We have often tried to show this by description. I have often given the characteristic example of the epicure, who pines for the enjoyment that only the sense of taste can give him. With death, the physical body is stripped off and left behind, and so, too, the etheric body to a great extent, but the astral body is still present with its qualities and forces. These do not change immediately after death, but only gradually. If a person has longed for dainty foods, this longing remains, this pining for the enjoyment, but after death the soul lacks the physical instrument with which to satisfy it. The physical body with its organs is no longer there, and the soul must do without the enjoyment; it pines for something that it must go without. This holds good for all the Kamaloca¬experiences that consist, really, in a condition within the astral body when the soul still longs for the satisfaction that can be fulfilled only through the physical body. And because the soul has this no longer, it has to rid itself of the striving for these enjoyments; it is thus the period of becoming “disaccustomed”. The one who has died is freed from it only when this longing has been torn out of the astral body.