The Astral World
Lecture III
The Law of the Astral Plane: Renunciation
The Law of the Devachanic Plane: Sacrifice
Berlin October 26, 1908
Today's lecture is to deal with the conditions that
we must fulfill if we want to develop the forces and faculties slumbering
within us and come to an experience and observation of the higher worlds.
In the articles in the Journal “Lucifer-Gnosis” How
does one attain knowledge of the Higher Worlds? [Now in book form],
you have a picture of much that a human being has to fulfill when treading
the path of knowledge, when wishing to press up into the higher worlds.
You remember the indications
that were given in the interpretation of Goethe's Fairy Tale. We
are concerned with the fact that human beings have soul forces of various
kinds, and that from their development—that is, of thinking as such,
of feeling as such, and of willing as such — depends our ascent on
the one hand, and on the other hand our need to bring these into the right
proportion by means of exercises. Willing, feeling and thinking must
always be brought to development in exactly the right measure in knowledge
of the different goals of spiritual life. For a definite goal, willing,
for example, must step back, while feeling must come more strongly to the
fore; for another goal, thinking must retreat, and again for another goal,
feeling. All these soul forces must be perfected
through occult exercises in the right proportion. The ascent into the
higher worlds is connected with the development of thinking, feeling
and willing.
Above all, it is a matter
of refining and purifying thinking. That is necessary in order that
thinking may no longer depend on the external sense-perceptions that
can be gained on the physical plane. Yet, not only thinking but also
feeling and the will can become forces of knowledge. In ordinary life,
they go on personal paths; sympathy and antipathy take their way in
accord with the individual personality, yet they can become, forces
of knowledge. This may sound unbelievable for modern science! One can
believe it more easily of thinking, especially of the descriptive thinking
directed to sense-observation, but how can people admit that feeling
can become a source of knowledge when they see how one person feels
so, and another feels so, about the same things?
How can one admit that anything
so vacillating, so dependent on personality as sympathy and antipathy
can become an authority for knowledge and can be so far disciplined
that they could grasp the innermost nature of a thing? That thought
does so can be easily understood, but that when we confront something,
and it arouses a feeling in us, this feeling can be of such a nature
that not personal sympathy or antipathy speaks, but that feeling itself
can become a means of expression for the inmost being of the thing —
that seems hardly credible! And further, that the force of will and
desire can also become means of expression for the inner nature —
that above all, seems simply frivolous.
In the same way, however,
as thinking can be purified and become objective, and hence a means
of expressing facts in both the sense-world and the higher worlds, so,
too, can feeling and willing become objective. Yet, there must be no
misunderstanding. Feeling, as it exists in the ordinary life of modern
man—in its direct content of feeling, does not become a means
of expression of a higher world. This type of feeling is personal. The
object of the occult exercises received by the student is to train feeling,
alter and transform it, so that it becomes different from what it was
when it was still personal. Yet, when a certain stage has been reached
on the occult path through the development of feeling, one must not
believe that one can state with knowledge: I have a being before me,
and I feel something of this being — not that what one has there
in feeling is a truth, a piece of knowledge.
The process that transforms
feeling by way of occult exercises is a much more intimate and inward
one. One who has changed feelings through exercises comes to Imaginative
knowledge, so that a spiritual content reveals itself in symbols. The
facts or beings of the astral world express themselves by symbols. Feeling
becomes something different; it becomes Imagination, and astral pictures
light up that express what is taking place in astral space. One does
not see as one sees a rose, for instance, in the physical world with
its color; one sees in symbolic pictures, and in fact, all that is brought
before us in occult science is seen in pictures. The black cross with
the wreath of roses and all such symbols are to bring to expression
a definite fact, and they correspond just as much to astral facts as
what we see in the physical world corresponds to physical facts. One
therefore develops feeling, but knows in Imagination. And it is just
the same with the will.
When one has reached the
stage that can be reached to a certain extent through occult training,
then if a being confronts one, one does not say, “It awakens in
me a power of desire,” but one begins to perceive the nature of
sound in Devachan.
Feeling is developed in
us and astral vision in Imagination is the result. Will is developed
in us, and the result is the experience of what comes about in devachanic
spiritual music, the sphere-harmony from which there streams to us the
inmost nature. Just as one perfects thinking and attains to objective
thinking, which is the first step, so does one develop feeling, and
a new world will emerge at the stage of Imagination. In the same way,
one trains willing and there results in Inspiration the knowledge of
Lower Devachan, until at length in Intuition there opens before us the
world of Higher Devachan.
We can say, therefore, that
as we lift ourselves to the next stage of existence, we are presented
with pictures, but pictures that we cannot use as we use our thoughts.
We do not ask, “How do these pictures correspond to reality?”
Things are clothed in pictures of form and color, and through Imagination
we must ourselves “unriddle” the beings who are showing
themselves to us in symbols. In Inspiration, the things speak to us.
There, we need not question nor try to find a solution in ideas that
would be a carrying-over of the theory of knowledge from the physical
plane. Rather, the inmost being of the thing itself speaks to us. When
a human being confronts us, expressing his or her inmost nature to us,
it is different from when we stand before a stone. We have to "unriddle"
the stone and ponder about it.
With people, it is different;
we experience their being in what they say to us. That is how it is
in Inspiration. There, in Inspiration, it is not an abstract discursive
thinking, but one listens to what the things say; they themselves express
their being! It would have no meaning for someone to say, “When
someone dies and I meet him again in Devachan, shall I know whom I meet?”
For devachanic beings must look different and cannot be compared with
what is on the physical plane. In Devachan, the being itself says what
being it is, as if human beings should tell us not only their names
but also let their natures flow out to us continually. That streams
to us through the sphere-music and a non-recognition is not possible.
Now this is a certain opportunity
for answering a question. Misunderstandings can very easily arise through
the various theosophical presentations, and one can easily think that
the physical, the astral and devachanic worlds are distinguished from
one another spatially. We know, in fact, that where the physical world
is, there is also the astral and the devachanic — they are in
one another. Now the question could be asked, “Well, if everything
is in one another, I cannot distinguish them as in physical space, where
everything is side by side! If the ‘other side’ is in ‘this
side’ how do I distinguish the astral world and the devachanic
world from each other?” One distinguishes them through the fact
that when one ascends from the astral pictures and colors to the devachanic
world, the colors resound. What before was spiritually luminous becomes,
henceforth, spiritual resounding. In experiencing the higher worlds
there are also differences, so that when we rise up to these worlds,
we can always recognize by definite experiences whether we are in this
or that world.
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.
During the whole Kamaloca
period, something lives in the astral body that can be called “privation”
— deprivation in most varied forms, nuances and differences; that
is the content of Kamaloca. Just as light may be differentiated into
red, yellow, green, blue tones, so can privation be differentiated into
the most varied qualities, and the characteristic of privation is the
sign of the one who is in Kamaloca. However, the astral plane is not
alone Kamaloca, but is far more comprehensive. Nevertheless, a human
being who has lived only in the physical world and experienced solely
its contents would never be able to experience the other parts of the
astral world — whether after death or through other means —
unless the soul had prepared itself. It can experience the astral world
in no other way than through deprivation! One who comes up into the
higher worlds and knows: “I am deprived of this or that and there
is no prospect of supporting it,” experiences the consciousness
of the astral world. Even if such a one had been able through occult
means to enter the astral plane out of the body, he or she would always
have to suffer privation there.
Now, how can one so develop
and perfect oneself that one learns to know not only the part expressed
in privation, the phase of feeling a lack, but that one experienced
the astral world in the best sense — the part that is really brought
to expression in the good, the best sense? A human soul can come into
the other part of the astral world through the development of that which
is the counterpart of deprivation! Therefore, the methods that awaken
the forces in a human being that are opposed to privation will be the
ones that will bring the soul into the other part of the astral world.
These are the forces of renunciation. Just as privation can be conceived
in manifold nuances, so, too, can renunciation. With the smallest renunciation
that we take upon us, we make a step forwards in the sense that we evolve
upwards to the good side of the astral world on the path of sacrifice.
When one renounces the most
insignificant thing, it is an inculcation of something that contributes
essentially to experiencing the good side of the astral world. Hence,
in occult traditions so much weight is laid on the test carried out
by the pupil of denying oneself this or that, the exercise of renouncing.
Through this, the pupil gains entry into the good side of the astral
world.
What is brought about in
this way? Let us first remember the experiences in Kamaloca. Let us
think that someone leaves the physical body, either through death or
in some other way; then the physical instruments of the body are lacking
to that person, who thus entirely lacks the power to satisfy some desire.
Deprivation is felt, and this arises as an imaginative picture in the
astral world. For instance, a red pentagon or a red circle appears.
This is nothing but the image of what appears in the soul's field of
vision and corresponds to the privation, just as in the physical world
an object corresponds to what one experiences in the soul as concept
of it. If someone has very low desires, then terrible beasts confront
that person when out of the body. These frightful beasts are the symbols
for the very debased desires. If one has learnt renunciation, however,
then in the moment when through death or initiation one is out of the
body, the red circle changes into nothing, because one permeates the
red with the feeling of renunciation, and there arises a green circle.
In the same way, through the forces of renunciation, the beast will
vanish, and a noble image of the astral world will appear.
So what is given to one
objectively — the red circle or horrible animal — he or
she must change into its opposite through the developed forces of renunciation
and resignation. Renunciation conjures out of unknown depths the true
forms of the astral world. No one must believe, therefore, that if he
or she wants in the true sense to lift oneself up into the astral world,
the co-operation of one's soul forces is not necessary. Without this,
one would attain to only one part of that world. Renunciation is essential
— even all Imagination. One who gives up claims and renounces
— this is what conjures forth the true form of the astral world.
In Devachan, one has Inspiration.
And here, too, there is an inner difference for the parts of Devachan,
which the soul cannot experience passively when experiencing them after
death. Through a certain universal relationship, so much harm has not
yet been done in Devachan; the astral world has the fearful Kamaloca
in it, but Devachan has not that yet. That will first come about in
the Jupiter and Venus conditions, when through the use of black magic
and the like, a decadence will have set in. Then, in Devachan, an element
will develop similar to what exists today in the astral world. Here,
in Devachan in the present cycle of evolution, the situation is somewhat
different. What first appears before a human being ascending on the
path of knowledge from the astral world to Devachan, or when as a simple
human being one is led there after death — what does such a
one experience in Devachan? Bliss is experienced! That which changes
from the color-nuances into tones — that under all circumstances
is bliss. At the present stage of evolution, all in Devachan is a bringing
forth, production, and in respect of knowledge, a spiritual hearing.
And all producing is blissfulness; blissfulness is all-hearing of the
sphere-harmony! The human being in Devachan will experience pure bliss
— nothing but bliss.
When a human being is led
upwards through the methods of spiritual knowledge, through the leaders
of human evolution, the Masters of Wisdom and the Harmony of Feelings,
or in the case of the ordinary human being after death, such a one will
always experience bliss there. That is what the initiate must experience
when he or she has come so far on the path of knowledge. But it lies
in the future evolution of the world that it may not remain at mere
bliss. That would signify an enhancement of the most refined egotism;
the human individuality would always take into itself the warmth of
bliss, but the world would not progress. In this way, beings would be
developed who would harden in their souls. For the welfare and progress
of the world, therefore, it must be possible for someone who through
exercises enters Devachan, not only to experience all nuances of bliss
in the sphere-music, but must also develop in oneself the feeling of
the opposite of bliss. Just as renunciation is the counterpart of deprivation,
so is the feeling of sacrifice related to bliss: sacrifice
that is ready to pour out what is received as bliss — to let it
flow out into the world.
Those divine Spirits, whom
we call the Thrones, had the feeling of self-sacrifice when they began
to play their part in the Creation. When they poured out on Saturn their
own substance, they sacrificed themselves for the newly-arising humanity.
What we have today as substance is the same as they streamed out on
Saturn. And in the same way, the Spirits of Wisdom sacrificed themselves
on the Old Sun. These divine Spirits have ascended into the higher worlds;
they have taken in the experiences of bliss not only passively, but
by passing through Devachan they have learnt to sacrifice themselves.
They have not become poorer through the offering, but richer. Only a
being living entirely in materiality, thinks that it loses itself through
sacrifice; no, a higher, richer development is linked with sacrifice
in the service of universal evolution.
So we see that the human
being ascends to Imagination and Inspiration and enters that sphere
where the whole being is permeated with ever-new nuances of bliss, where
the soul experiences everything around it, in such a way that everything
not only speaks to the soul, but that all around the soul becomes
an absorption of the spiritual tones of bliss.
The ascent to the higher
powers of knowledge is attained through the transformation of one's
whole life of feeling. And occult training has this sole purpose: that
through the rules and methods that have been given us by the Masters
of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings, and which have been proved
and tested for thousands of years, the human being's feeling and will
are so transformed that he or she may be led up to higher knowledge
and experience. When pupils gradually develop and transform the content
of their feeling and will through occult methods, they attain to these
higher faculties.
It should not be a matter
of indifference to one who is within the Movement of Spiritual Science
whether he or she has belonged to it for three or six or seven years.
That has a definite significance. The feeling of a shared experience
of this inner growth through its inner law must become real to the student.
We must direct our attention to it; otherwise, its effects pass us by.
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