Arupa

Arūpa (Pali, Sanskrit: अरूप, from rūpa "form" and a "not, negation") means as much as not formed, formless, thus standing for complete formlessness or shapelessness. In this sense, only higher, purely spiritual creative states are formless. In theosophical teachings, the higher Arupa-Devachan, in which the sources of creative, still formless thoughts lie, is distinguished from the lower Rupa-Devachan, in which the thought-forms that underlie our world are to be found.

The Arupa condition is also called the first of the seven Conditions of Form that every Condition of Life passes through during the development of the world. Its higher metamorphosis is the seventh and highest condition of form, the so-called archetypal condition of form.

„The arupa condition and the archetypal condition are essentially different from the other five conditions. Actually, in reality, the form condition begins on the rupa plan. On the arupa plan there is no form yet, only the disposition to it, and on the archetypal plan the form gives itself its form, it is there entirely life. Therefore, the first and the seventh conditions of form are actually conditions of life, in which the seventh is always that of the status nascendi (emergence) of the following first, or in which the seventh (the archetypal) has become that which was in the status nascendi in the first. The archetypal condition of form is one in which the form has become life, and the arupic one is one in which the form is still life. Actually, therefore, we have only five prajapatis of form, because two of the seven already belong to the higher prajapatis of consciousness. One could perhaps say that conditions of life and conditions of form are only condensed states of consciousness, or the passive side of active consciousness, or the actual negative side of the world picture, while consciousness is the positive side. So the first and the last of the prajapatis of the states of form already belong to the higher hierarchy of the prajapatis of consciousness.“ (Lit.:GA 89, p. 178)

Literatur

• Rudolf Steiner: Bewußtsein – Leben – Form , GA 89 (2001), ISBN 3-7274-0890-1 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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