The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture Eighteen

[ 1 ] We have said repeatedly in the course of these lectures that Christianity forms the decisive center of human development. All religions have their right to exist and were partial revelations of the Logos, but none has changed the face of the world as much as Christianity. One can sense this influence, for example, in the words of the Gospel: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Those who have not seen are those who had no knowledge of the mysteries. Through Christianity, an essential part of the ancient mysteries became public, such as the main commandments of morality and the immortality of the soul through resurrection or rebirth.

[ 2 ] Before Christianity, one could see the supersensible truth in the revelations, the rites, the dramatic performances of the mysteries. But now one was allowed to believe in it thanks to the divine person of Christ. At all times, however, there was a difference between the esoteric truth known to the initiates and its exoteric form, as adapted to the masses and expressed throughout all religions. The same is true of Christianity. What is written in the Gospels is the good news proclaimed to the general public. But there was a deeper teaching, and this is contained in the Apocalypse in the form of symbols.

[ 3 ] There is a way of reading the Apocalypse that can only be made public in our time. But it was cultivated in the Middle Ages in the occult schools of the Rosicrucians. Little importance was attached to the historical side of the book, that is, the manner of its composition, the question of its author, in short, everything that today is the sole focus of theologians who want to find only historical facts in this book. Today's critical theology knows only the outer shell of this book and ignores its core. The Rosicrucians adhered to its prophetic side, its eternal truth.

[ 4 ] Occultism is generally not concerned with the history of a single century or a single period, but with the inner history of human evolution as a whole. When it delves into the first manifestations of our planetary system, when it goes back to the plant and animal state of man, its horizon expands over millions of years to a future deified humanity. By then, the earth itself will have changed substance and form. But how can we guess the distant future? Is prophecy possible? It is possible because everything that is to happen physically already exists in embryo, in the womb of the archetypes whose thoughts form the plan of our evolution. Nothing appears on the physical plane that was not first foreseen and preformed in broad outlines in the realm of Devachan. Nothing happens in the depths that did not first exist in the heights. That is the way things come to pass. It depends on the freedom and initiative of individuals.

[ 5 ] Esoteric Christianity is not based on vague and sentimental idealism, but on a concrete ideal drawn from knowledge of the higher worlds. It is the knowledge possessed by the author of the Apocalypse, the great seer of Patmos, who revealed the future of humanity from a Christian perspective.

[ 6 ] Let us try to view this future according to the laws of world creation, as we have outlined above. Among the Rosicrucians, the student was first revealed some visions from the past and some from the future. Then he was given the Book of Revelation to interpret these visions. Let us do the same and consider how human beings have gradually become what they are and what future lies ahead of them.

[ 7 ] We have spoken, for example, of the ancient Atlantic continent and of the Atlanteans, whose etheric body was far more developed than their physical body and who only had their first sense of self at the end of their culture. The successive post-Atlantean cultures were:

[ 8 ] First: the pre-Vedic culture in South Asia, in India. This was the beginning of the Aryan cultures.

[ 9 ] Second: the epoch of Zarathustra, encompassing the culture of ancient Persia.

[ 10 ] Third: Egyptian culture, the era of Hermes, followed by the Chaldean and Semitic cultures. The first seeds of Christianity were sown in the bosom of the Hebrew people during this era.

[ 11 ] Fourth: The Greco-Latin cultural epoch, which witnessed the birth of Christianity.

[ 12 ] Fifth: A new epoch is preparing itself at the time of the migration of peoples and the conquests. The heritage of Greco-Latin culture is taken over by the races of the north: the Celts, the Germanic peoples, the Slavs. This is the epoch in which we still live today. It is a slow transformation of the Greco-Latin cultural heritage by the powerful element of the new peoples, under the mighty impulse of Christianity, with which the leaven of the East, brought to Europe by the Arabs, has mixed. The real goal of this cultural epoch is to adapt human beings completely to the physical plane by developing their reason and practical sense and immersing their intellect in physical matter in order to understand and master it. Under this hard work, this amazing achievement, which has now come to an end, man has momentarily forgotten the higher worlds from which he originates. By comparing our spiritual constitution with that of the Chaldeans, for example, it is easy to see what we have gained and what we have lost. When a Chaldean magician looked at the sky, which for us is merely a problem of celestial mechanics, he had a completely different idea, a completely different feeling, indeed, one could say, a completely different experience than we do. Where the modern astronomer sees nothing but a soulless machine, the magician felt the deep harmony of the heavens as a divine, living being. When he looked at Mercury, Venus, the moon, or the sun, he saw not only the physical light of these celestial bodies, he perceived their souls as those of living beings, and he felt his own soul in connection with these great souls of the firmament. He perceived their influences as attraction and repulsion, as it were, as a wonderful concert of divine currents of will, and the symphony of the cosmos resounded within him as a harmonious echo of the human microcosm. Thus, the music of the spheres was a reality that connected man with the heavens. — The superiority of the modern scholar is rooted in his knowledge of the physical world, of material matter. Spiritual science has descended to the physical plane. We know that well. But now it is a matter of regaining knowledge of the astral plane and the spiritual world through clairvoyance.

[ 13 ] This descent into matter was necessary so that the fifth epoch could fulfill its mission. Astral and spiritual clairvoyance had to be veiled so that the intellect could develop in the field of the sensory world through precise, meticulous, mathematical observation of the physical world.

[ 14 ] But we must supplement natural science with spiritual science. Here is an example: Ptolemy's map of the heavens is usually contrasted with that of Copernicus, with the former being declared erroneous. This is wrong. Both are equally true. Only Ptolemy's map refers to the astral plane, and on this plane the Earth is at the center of the planets, and the Sun itself is a planet. Copernicus' map refers to the physical plane, where the Sun is at the center. All truths are relative, depending on time and place. Ptolemy's system will be rehabilitated in a subsequent epoch.

[ 15 ] After our fifth epoch, another will come, the sixth, which will relate to ours as the spiritually minded soul relates to the rationally minded soul. This epoch will develop genius, clairvoyance, and the creative spirit. What will Christianity look like in this sixth epoch? For the ancient priests of pre-Christian times, there was harmony between science and faith. Science and religion were one and the same thing. As the priest gazed at the firmament, he knew and felt that the soul was a drop of water that had fallen from the heavenly ocean and been carried down to earth by the immeasurable currents of life that permeate space. Today, when our gaze has descended to the physical plane, faith needs a sanctuary, a religion. Hence the separation of science and faith. The devout worship of the person of Christ, the God-man on earth, has for a time taken the place of secret science and the mysteries. But in the sixth epoch, the two currents will unite. The mechanical science of the physical plane will rise to the height of spiritual creativity. This will then be gnosis, or spiritual knowledge. This sixth epoch, radically different from ours, will be preceded by great, cataclysmic catastrophes. For this epoch will be as spiritual as ours was materialistic, but this transformation can only take place through physical upheavals. Once again, everything that takes shape during the sixth epoch will bring about the possibility of a seventh epoch, which will mark the end of these post-Atlantean cultures and will know living conditions completely different from ours. This seventh epoch will end with a revolution of the elements, similar to the one that brought an end to the Atlantean continent, and the state that will then emerge will be one whose spirituality will have been prepared by the last two post-Atlantean periods.

[ 16 ] In total, these Aryan cultures thus comprise seven great epochs. We are slowly seeing the laws of development unfold. Human beings always carry within themselves what they subsequently see around them. Everything that currently exists around us originated in a previous evolution, back when our beings were still connected to the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun. This cosmic being, from which present-day human beings and all the kingdoms of nature have sprung, is called Adam Kadmon in Kabbalah. This type of human being contained all the diverse forms of human beings that currently represent the peoples and races.

[ 17 ] What human beings possess today as their inner soul, their thoughts and feelings, will also manifest itself outwardly and become their environment. The future rests in the breast of human beings. It is up to them to make the choice to turn it into a good or a bad future. Just as it is true that humans once left behind what today constitutes the animal world, so too will the evil that is within them today form a kind of degenerate humanity. At present, we can still more or less hide the good or evil that is within us. A day will come when we will no longer be able to do so, when this good or evil will be indelibly written on our foreheads, on our bodies, and even on the face of the earth. Then humanity will split into two races. Just as we encounter rocks or animals today, we will then encounter beings of pure malice and ugliness. In our day, only the clairvoyant can read the goodness or moral ugliness in beings. But when the features of the human face become an expression of their karma, people will divide themselves according to the current to which they obviously belong: depending on whether the lower nature is defeated in them or whether it triumphs over the spirit. This distinction is already beginning to take effect gradually.

[ 18 ] If one wants to understand the future from the past and work towards realizing the ideal of this future, one can see the lines beginning to emerge. A new race will form, which will be the link between the people of the present and the spiritualized people of the future. However, one must distinguish between the development of races and that of souls. It is up to the freedom of each soul to develop into this outer form of a race whose character corresponds to the good that it embodies. Only through the freedom of will and the effort of soul individuality will one belong to this race. Belonging to a race will no longer be compulsory for a soul, but the result of its development.

[ 19 ] The meaning of the Manichean teaching is that souls should prepare themselves from now on to transform the evil that will appear in full force in the sixth epoch into good. Indeed, it will be necessary for human souls to be strong enough to avert the evil that will come to light through a spiritual alchemy of good.

[ 20 ] When the development of our planet Earth then goes through the previous phases of its development in reverse, first a union of the Earth with the Moon will take place, then a connection, a reunification of this mixed world body with the Sun. The reunification with the Moon will then coincide with the height of evil on Earth. In contrast, the union of the Earth with the Sun will mark the dawn of bliss, the reign of the elect.

[ 21 ] Humanity will bear the sign of the seven great earthly phases. The book with the seven seals, spoken of in the Apocalypse, will be opened. The woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, refers to the time when the Earth will be reunited with the Sun and the Moon. The trumpets of the Last Judgment will sound, for the Earth will have reached the devachanic state, where sound, not light, will reign. The end of the Earth's development will be marked by the Christ principle, which will permeate all of humanity. Having become like Christ, people will gather around him like the multitudes around the Lamb, and as a result of this development, the New Jerusalem will arise, representing the crowning glory of the world.