LIFE BETWEEN TWO INCARNATIONS

Breslau, December 2, 1908

Yesterday we were able to discuss a few things about the ways leading into the higher worlds in front of a somewhat larger circle. Today it may be permitted to say something about the higher worlds themselves, and we want to pick out one of the most important chapters from the field of the supersensible worlds and take a look at the processes which take place with man between death and a new rebirth. This is one of the most important chapters from the field of higher life because it concerns the most fundamental facts and processes of human development, and since the physical existence of man is connected and interwoven with significant processes in those worlds, one must penetrate into these mysteries if one wants to understand the human being at all.

I would like to begin immediately by describing the life of man between death and a new birth, but in order to be able to understand what is happening in this interim, we must first consider the nature of man. For those who have been engaged in anthroposophical matters and studies for some time, what will be explained in the introduction should not be anything new. But we have to consider these things very carefully from the outset in order to prepare ourselves for a complete understanding of the descriptions that follow.

For anthroposophical spiritual science, the essence of the human being is not merely that essence of a material kind which appears to the outer senses, which we can feel with our hands and which is bound to the physical world by physical lawfulness. Spiritual science shows that this physical body of man is only a part of his whole beingness, and indeed man has this physical body in common with the mineral world. We can look around outside in the natural world and see that everything which is apparently dead, mineral in nature, consists of the same substances of which the human body is built. In the stone and in the human body the same physical processes appear, but there is a great difference between the processes of the ordinary, lifeless physical bodies and the nature of man. An external physical body, such as a stone, has a form, and it retains its form until an external process, such as a smashing or other violence, destroys the form. The human physical body, on the other hand, or that of another living being, is destroyed at death by its own law of physico-chemical substances, and the human body in this case is a corpse.

Spiritual science now shows us that in the state between birth and death, that is, during our physical lifetime, a second member of the human being is still present as a continuous fighter against this decay of the physical body. We call it the etheric body or life body. It is in all of us. If this second member were not in man, the body would at every moment follow only the physical forces; it would decay. The fighter against this decay is the etheric body or life body. Only in case of death this life body separates from the physical body. Man has this life body in common with every other living creature; the animal has it, and the plant also has such a perpetual fighter. In them, too, there must be such a perpetual fighter against decay.

If the physical body has been described as the first, the life body as the second member of living beings, man has a third member beyond this second member. Already with the intellect alone, with logic, we are able to see this. Let us assume that a man stands before us. In this room he occupies, in this hand he uses, is there nothing more than what has been mentioned so far? Oh, there is something more in it than bones and muscles, than all kinds of chemical components, which we can see with our eyes, touch with our hands. And each of us knows it also quite exactly that something more is in it. This something more, that is the sum of his suffering and his pleasure; this something everyone knows, because it is everything that runs in sensations and in feelings, from morning to night, throughout the whole life. There is an invisible carrier of these sensations, and we call it the astral body or sensation body of man. This astral body, which is not perceptible to the physical eye of man, is considerably larger than the physical body. For the clairvoyant consciousness it is recognizable as a light-emitting cloud in which the physical body is embedded. Man has this third limb of his being in common with the animal, for the latter also possesses an astral body.

But then there is a fourth member in the human being, the crown of the earthly kingdom, the crown of human nature. We can catch sight of this fourth member when we trace an intimate movement of the human soul. There is one thing in man that can never approach him from the outside. It is this one name, the simple name "I". Only from the deepest depths of the soul can this name, this designation "I" sound out. Never can another person say "I" to a fellow human being. Only to himself can man speak this; only out of him, out of his own deepest inner being can it come, and here something quite different, something divine begins to sound out through the name "I." All great religions also felt this, that in the I there is something sacred. This is also clearly recognizable in the Old Testament. There the name "I" is synonymous with the name of God. Only the priest was allowed to pronounce the name of God on particularly solemn occasions, at particularly solemn services, and when he reverently sounded the name "Yahweh" in the temple, the name "Yahweh" meant nothing other than "I" or "I am." That the God himself expresses himself in the human being, it should mean. And only that being can pronounce this word in the soul to its soul, in whose nature the God-being reveals itself. The revelation of God in man is a fourth member of the human being. But we should not think that we are God himself. It is a spark from the sea of the Godhead that flashes in man. Just as a drop from the sea is not the sea itself, but only a drop from it, so the I of man is not a god, but a drop from the divine substance: the god begins to speak in the human soul.

Only the priest was allowed to pronounce Yahweh, the holy name, on particularly solemn occasions. To make this God-being sound in the soul of man by the fact that man can say: "I am", that is the crown of creation. This I-bearer, the fourth member in the human nature, makes man the first among the beings that are visible in the earthly creation. Therefore, everywhere in the ancient Mysteries they spoke of the sacred four-foldness, the first member of which is the visible physical body, the second member of which is the etheric body or life body, the third member of which is the astral body or sentient body, and the fourth member of which is the ego. These are the four limbs we want to consider first. And on the way they are connected with each other depends the human life, the human consciousness.

Only in daytime consciousness, in waking, do the four members of human nature interpenetrate. There we have the physical body interpenetrated by the etheric body, only finer and somewhat larger, projecting beyond the physical body. Then we have the astral body, the carrier of our sensations, penetrating the etheric body and surrounding the physical body, which is connected with the etheric body, like a large shining oval. And then we have the ego-body. But the four members of human nature interpenetrate each other only when awake. When man sleeps, the astral body comes out with the ego-body, while the physical body, connected with the etheric body, remains in bed. In the morning, or when man awakes, the former two of the four limbs descend again and rejoin the other two.

What does the astral body do in the ordinary human being during the night? It is not inactive. It appears to the clairvoyant's eye like a spiral cloud, and currents emanate from it which connect it with the physical body lying there. When we fall asleep tired in the evening, what is the cause of this fatigue? The fact that the astral body uses the physical body during the waking hours of the day and thus wears it out, appears as fatigue. But all night long, during sleep, the astral body works on the elimination of fatigue. This is where the refreshment of a good night's sleep comes from, and from this it can be seen how important a really healthy sleep is for man. It restores in the right way what has been worn out by the waking life. The astral body also repairs other damages during sleep, for example, diseases of the physical body and also of the etheric body. You will not only have observed it from your own life experience in yourself and in other people, you will also have experienced that every sensible doctor says that in certain cases sleep is an indispensable remedy for recovery. This is the meaning of the alternating state between sleeping and waking.

Now let us proceed to consider an even more important alternate state, that between life and death. If it was shown earlier that as soon as sleep sets in, the astral body with the I-bearer leaves the physical body connected with the etheric body, then in ordinary life a separation of the etheric body from the physical body almost never occurs, at most in certain exceptional cases, which will be mentioned later. Only in death does a separation of the physical body from the etheric body normally take place for the first time. Now, in death, not only does the astral body leave the four-membered human being with the ego, as in sleep, but the three members, etheric body, astral body and ego, leave the physical body, and on the one hand we have the physical body, which remains as a corpse, is immediately attacked by the physico-chemical forces and falls prey to destruction; on the other hand we have a connection of etheric body, astral body and ego-bearer.

Here the question is obvious, how someone can know at all, how these relations develop at death. Well, if you have followed yesterday's public lecture, you will understand that those people who are able to see into higher spheres are also able to report about the conditions after death. And for every human being means are open and ways are offered to acquire such abilities, that is why there is also the possibility to know what the human being experiences when he passes the gate of death. If about any facts is reported, which are not immediately controllable by everyone, then about their correctness only he can decide who really knows. If, however, on the part of the ignorant, the reproach would be made to the knower that he could not know anything either, then the reproach of arrogance would lie entirely on the side of those who know nothing and thereby claim that one cannot know anything. So only the knower can decide what one can know.

When man has passed through death, he first has a feeling that he is growing into a world in which he is getting bigger and bigger, and that he is no longer outside of all entities as in this physical world, not facing all other things, but as it were inside of them, as if he were crawling into all things. At the moment immediately after death you do not feel a here and there, but an everywhere; it is as if you yourself slipped into all things. Then a total recollection of your whole past life occurs, which stands before you with all its details like a great tableau. This recollection cannot be compared with a recollection of the past life, however good it may be, as you know the recollection in earth life, but this tableau of recollection stands there all at once in its full size. On what is this based? It is due to the fact that the etheric body is in truth the carrier of memory. As long as the etheric body was still in the physical body during its existence on earth, it had to work through the physical body and was bound to the physical laws. There it is not free; there it forgets, because there all memory steps aside, which does not belong directly to the very nearest, which the human being experiences just now. In death, however, as was explained earlier, the etheric body, the bearer of memory, becomes free. It no longer needs to work through the physical, and therefore the memories suddenly appear in an unbound way.

In exceptional cases this separation of physical and etheric body may occur even during life. For example, in cases of danger to life, drowning, falling, that is, in such cases where the consciousness receives a great shock from the fright. People who have been subjected to such a shock sometimes tell that for a few moments their whole life stood before them like a tableau, so that the vanished experiences of their earliest life suddenly reappeared from oblivion with full clarity. Such narratives are not based on deception, but on truth; they are facts. In that moment of flashing of the memory tableau something very special happens to the person; only in such shock the consciousness must not be lost. In that moment of crash or other shock, which has given rise to the shock, something occurs, which the clairvoyant can see. Not always, but sometimes, the part of the etheric body which fills the region of the head emerges wholly or in part from the head, and even if this happens only for a moment, the memory is thereby released, because at such moments the etheric body is freed from physical matter, the obstacle to uninhibited memory.

We can also observe a partial exit of the etheric body on other occasions. When you press or poke any limb of the body, a peculiar tingling sensation sometimes occurs, and we are wont to denote this feeling by saying that the limb has fallen asleep. Children who want to describe what kind of feeling they have, have often been heard to say the expression: I feel in my hand like seltzer water. What is that? The actual cause is that the corresponding part of the life body is lifted out of this limb for a while. The clairvoyant can then perceive the lifted-out part of the etheric body like a copy of the physical human body near it. Thus, for example, in the case of a fall, the corresponding part of the etheric body is pushed out of the head by the falling movement.

In death this memory tableau occurs immediately with full strength, because the whole physical body is left. The duration of this memory tableau after death is also known. It is three to four days. It is not easy to give the reasons for this. This duration is different for each person and corresponds approximately to the ability of the person in question, how long he could have endured in life to stay awake without falling asleep.

After that, something else occurs. What happens then is that a kind of second corpse comes out. Man now leaves behind the etheric body, but he retains a certain extract, an essence, and man takes it with him and keeps it for all eternity. Now, after leaving behind the etheric body, the Kamaloka time, the Kamaloka state, begins for man. If you want to make clear what kind of state this is, you must consider that man, after he has left behind the physical and etheric body, has still kept the astral body and the ego of his four members, and the question now arises for us, what is the meaning of the astral body, with which the ego now lives into the Kamaloka time. The astral body is the bearer of pleasure and pain, of pleasures and desires, therefore these do not cease when the physical body is discarded; only the possibility of satisfying the desires ceases, since the instrument for the satisfaction of the desires, the physical body, is no longer available. Everything that man was as a sentient being in the physical body does not cease to be. Man keeps all this in his astral body. Let us think of an ordinary desire, and for the sake of simplicity let us choose one of a quite banal kind, for example the desire for a delicious dish. This desire has its seat not in the physical but in the astral body. Therefore, this desire is not discarded with the physical body; it remains. The physical body was only the instrument with which this desire could be satisfied. If you have a knife to cut with, this is the instrument, and you do not lose the ability to cut when you put the knife away. Thus, at death, only the instrument for enjoyment is discarded, and therefore man is initially in a state in which all his various desires are represented, which must now first be discarded or rather learned to be discarded. The time in which this happens is the Kamaloka time. It is a time of testing, and it is very good and important for the further development of man. Imagine that you are thirsty and you are in a place where there is no water, no beer, no wine, no drink of any kind. There you suffer burning thirst that cannot be quenched. Similarly, man suffers a certain thirsty feeling when he no longer possesses the instrument with which alone he was able to satisfy his desires.

Kamaloka is a period of abstinence for man, because he has to give up his desires in order to live in the spiritual world. This period of Kamaloka lasts longer or shorter time for a person, depending on how he manages to get rid of his desires. It depends on how a person has already become accustomed to regulating his desires in life, and how he has learned to enjoy and renounce in life. But there are pleasures and desires of a lower and higher kind. Such pleasures and desires, for the satisfaction of which the physical body is not the actual instrument, we call higher pleasures and desires, and such do not belong to those which man has to get used to after death. Only as long as man still has something that pulls him towards the physical existence - lower pleasures - so long he remains in the astral life of the Kamaloka time. Then, when nothing draws him down after that period of weaning, when he has become capable of living in the spiritual world, a third corpse emerges from the human being. The stay of the human being in this Kamaloka time lasts approximately as long as one third of the lifetime.

Therefore, it depends on how old man was when he died, that is, how long he lived in the physical body. However, this Kamaloka time is by no means always a gruesome or unpleasant one. In any case, man becomes more independent of the physical desires, and the more he has already made himself independent in life and has acquired interests in looking at spiritual things, the easier this Kamaloka time will be for him. He becomes freer through it, so that man becomes grateful for this Kamaloka time. The feeling of deprivation in the physical life becomes bliss in the Kamaloka time. Thus, the opposite feelings occur, for everything that one has learned to gladly do without in life becomes enjoyment in the Kamaloka time. When then, as has already been mentioned, the third corpse emerges from the human being, then with this, the astral body, everything that the human being cannot use in the spiritual world in the future disappears. For the clairvoyant these astral corpses are visible, and it takes twenty, thirty to forty years until they have dissolved. Since such astral corpses are continually there, they occasionally pass through the bodies of living people, through our own bodies, especially during the night, when our astral bodies are separated from the physical bodies in sleep, and from this come certain harmful influences which man can receive. Just as for the actual human being after the exit of the etheric corpse an extract, a certain essence remains for all eternity, so also for him after the exit of the astral corpse a certain essence remains for all eternity as fruit of the last embodiment.

And now begins for man the time of Devachan, the entrance into the spiritual world, into the home of the gods and all spiritual entities. When man enters this world, he experiences a feeling that can be compared to the liberation of a plant that grew in a narrow crevice and suddenly grows up to the light. For when man enters this heavenly world, he experiences within himself perfect spiritual freedom, and he henceforth enjoys absolute bliss. For, what is actually the time of Devachan? You can get an idea of it if you consider that here man makes the preparation for a new life, for a new incarnation. In the physical world, in this lower world, man has experienced and lived through so much, and he has taken these experiences with him. He has taken them into himself like a fruit of life, which he can now freely process within himself. He now forms an archetype for a new life in the devachan time. This happens during a long, long time. This is a creation of one's own being, and every creation, every production is connected with bliss. That every producing, every creating is connected with bliss, you can get an idea of that if you look at a chicken hatching an egg. Why does it do that? Because it feels a pleasure in doing so. So it is also a pleasure for the human being to weave in the Devachan the fruit of the past life into the plan for a new life.

In the chain of incarnations man has already gone through many lives, but at the end of a life he is never again the same as he was at the beginning of this life. In this life, forced into the physical body, he must behave quite passively. Now, however, when he is liberated from the physical body, from the etheric body and from the astral body, he weaves an archetype into the eternal core of his being, and this weaving is perceived as bliss, as a feeling that cannot be compared with anything he can ever experience as bliss in the physical world. His life is bliss in the spiritual world. But do not think that the physical life has no meaning in this spiritual world. If in life bonds of love and friendship have been established from soul to soul, then only the physical falls away with death, but the spiritual bond remains and creates lasting, indestructible bridges from soul to soul, which condense into effects in the archetypes. These are then able to live out in the physical in the following incarnations. It is the same in the relationship that exists between mother and child. The love of a mother for her child is the answer to the prenatal love of the child for its mother, who felt attracted to this mother by her longing for incarnation. What then takes place in life, in the jointly experienced embodiment between mother and child, forms new, soul ties, which remain. And everything that bound soul to soul is already woven into the spiritual life that you find when you enter the spiritual world after death. Thus, the life between death and a new birth is such that what was done in the previous physical life continues to have an effect. Yes, even the favorite occupations to which a person was attached during his life continue to have an effect. But man becomes freer and freer after death, because he becomes a preparer for the future, for his own future.

Now, does man do something else in this hereafter? Oh, he is very active in this hereafter. Here someone could raise the question, why man is born again and why he comes back to this earth at all, if he can also be active in the hereafter. Well, this happens because the incarnations never occur in such a way that man is unnecessarily reborn in their course. He can always learn something new, the earthly conditions have always changed in such a way that he comes into completely changed conditions in order to make experiences for his further development. The face of the earth, the regions, the animal kingdom, the plant cover, all this changes continuously in relatively short time. Think once hundred years back. What a difference compared with today! It was not so long ago that every human being learned to read and write at the age of six. In ancient times, there were highly learned people at the top of the state who could neither read nor write. Where are the forests and animal species that five hundred years ago filled the land that is now crisscrossed by railroads? What were the localities like where our great cities are today, what were they like a thousand years ago? For then only man is reborn, then he enters into a new rebirth only when the conditions have changed in such a way that man can learn something new. Follow the centuries, how the face of the earth is changed, torn down and built up by the mind forces of the people. But there are still many things changing that the outer mind forces of man cannot work on. The plant cover and the animal world, they change before our eyes; they disappear and other species take their place. Such changes are brought about from the other world. A person walking across a meadow may well see a bridge being built across the stream, but he cannot see the plant cover being built up. This is done by the dead. These are active in reshaping and reworking the face of the earth, in order to create for themselves the changed scene for a new incarnation.

After the human being has been busy with the preparations for the new incarnation for a long, long time, the time is approaching when it is to take place. What happens now? What does man do then when he steps into his new rebirth? At this time man is in his Devachan, and there he feels that he must first attach a new astral body to himself. Then, so to speak, the astral substance shoots up to him from all parts, and according to his peculiarity it crystallizes around him, so to speak. You must imagine it in the same way as the iron filings are subject to the attraction of a magnet and arrange and group themselves around it, so the astral substance arranges itself to the reincarnating I. Then, however, it is still necessary to choose a suitable pair of parents, and thus man is led to this or that pair of parents, but not merely in obedience to his own force of attraction. For here highly exalted beings intervene and are active, which today still, appropriate to the present state of development of man, have taken over the work of arranging these relationships karmically in correctness and justice. So, if occasionally the parents do not seem to be right with the children and to the children, then it is not necessary that there is something wrong or unjust. This is perhaps sometimes the good thing, that man gets into the most complicated conditions and has to put up with the strangest circumstances in order to learn through them.

However, the sequence of these repetitive reincarnations is not an endless one. There is a beginning and also an end. Once, in the distant past, man did not yet descend to embodiments. He did not know birth and death. There he led a kind of angelic existence, not interrupted by such drastic changes of his condition as they are present today as birth and death. But just as surely there will come a time for man when he will have accumulated a sufficient sum of experiences in the lower worlds to have acquired a sufficiently matured, clarified state of consciousness to be able to work in the sublime upper worlds without being forced to submerge again in the lower worlds.

After listening to the here presented relations about repeated earth lives, some people believe to be afraid that the feeling of parental love could be impaired by the fact that a mother hears that the child is not absolutely flesh of her flesh, because there is something about this child that is not of her, thus something foreign. But these bonds which embrace parents and children are by no means subject to chance and lawless. They are not new bonds. They were already present in previous lives and once existed in kinship and friendship ties. These bonds of love unite them permanently also in the higher worlds in eternal reality, and all people will once be embraced in eternal love, even if they will no longer descend into the cycle of incarnations.