The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] We shall now be dealing with a very significant and very profound anthroposophical theme over the next few days. Before we begin our reflections, let me express the deepest satisfaction that we are able to do so here, in front of friends from so many different parts of Germany and Europe, on this deep and meaningful 'topic'. Above all, we express our gratitude to our dear friends in Nuremberg, who are no less happy than the one who speaks to them, for maintaining anthroposophical life together with the friends from out of town for a relatively long time here in this city. In this city, in particular, alongside the most ardent striving for knowledge of the great spiritual-scientific truths, there has always been a strong and deeply felt sense of what an anthroposophical attitude and a truly anthroposophical life is. This anthroposophical life can only be understood if the spiritual-scientific teachings are not just something that occupies us theoretically, but when they become something that spiritualizes, enkindles and elevates our own life to the deepest depths of the soul, but which also entwines us more closely with our fellow human beings, with the whole world. It means a great deal for a person to feel that everything that confronts us externally in the sensual world, in the sensual-visible existence, can appear like the outer physiognomy of an underlying invisible, supersensible existence. For the one who introduces anthroposophy into his life, the world with all that is in it becomes more and more a physiognomic expression of divine-spiritual being. When he looks at the world of the visible around him, it is as if he penetrates from the features of a human face to the heart, to the soul of the human being. In the face of everything that confronts him externally in mountains and rocks, in the plant cover of the earth, in animals and people, in the face of everything that confronts him in all the world around us, in all the occupations of people, it will be as if it has a physiognomic expression, as if it were the expression of an underlying divine-spiritual existence. And from this new life springs up and permeates him, and another, noble kind of enthusiasm fires what he wants to undertake.

[ 2 ] Let me recall just one small symptomatic example from my last experiences on one of my lecture tours. The example I want to give shows how world history, when viewed as an expression of the divine-spiritual, appears significant everywhere, speaking a new language to us everywhere. A few weeks ago in Scandinavia, I was able to perceive how everything in the whole life of our European North still betrays an echo of the ancient existence of the Nordic world, where all spiritual life was permeated by the consciousness of the beings that stand behind the Nordic figures of the gods in myth. One would like to say that in those countries, echoes of what the initiates of the Druid mysteries communicated to their disciples as the old Nordic spiritual life can be heard in everything that comes across. There one becomes aware of how the magical breath of that spiritual life permeates the Nordic world, and one sees something like the expression of beautiful karmic connections. One sees, as I was allowed to do in Uppsala, how one is placed in the midst of all this, when one has before one the first of the Germanic Bible translations, the Ulflas Codex. It came to Uppsala through a very special kind of karmic entanglement. It was previously in Prague. It was captured during the Swedish War and brought to Uppsala, and there it now lies, a symbol of what permeates the one who is able to look a little deeper into the ancient mystery being. This mystery-filled nature, this penetration into the spiritual world within the ancient European cultures is permeated and imbued with a common, strange trait, which those who received the initiation in those ancient times sensed more deeply. It went through their hearts like a tragic train when it was made clear to them that they could look into the secrets of existence, but that something would come in the future that would seem like a complete solution to the riddle. Over and over again they were pointed to the fact that a higher light should shine into that knowledge that one could explore in the old mysteries. It may be said that in all these old mysteries there were prophetic indications of what was to come in the future, of the appearance of Christ Jesus. The tone, the spirit of expectation, the mood of prophecy lay in this Nordic mystery being.

[ 3 ] We must not force or push such a sentence as I am about to utter, nor press it into too sharp a contour. It should only express symptomatically what lies at the basis as a deeper truth. But there is something in the saga of Siegfried, in what remains of the traditions of the old Germanic mysteries, something like a secretive sense of that attitude. When we are pointed to the fact that Siegfried is truly the representative of the ancient Nordic initiation, when we are pointed to the fact that where he is vulnerable there lies a leaf, that this point is on his back, then he who is able to feel such things symptomatically feels: This is the place where something else will lie in the human being when that wound, which the initiates of the ancient Nordic mysteries could still suffer, can no longer affect him. — The place is to be covered by the cross. There it shall lie, the cross of Christ Jesus; there it did not yet lie with the initiate of the ancient Nordic mysteries. This is indicated in the old mysteries of the Germanic peoples in the Siegfried saga. And so it is even there still symptomatically hinted at how the old initiations of the Druids, the Drotten, are to be thought of in harmony with the mysteries of Christianity. This is reminiscent of the way in which the first Germanic Bible translation was placed in the Nordic world like a physiognomic expression. And the fact that it is like a karmic chain may be symbolized to you by the circumstance that once eleven leaves were stolen from this Silver Codex, and that the later owner of the same felt such pangs of conscience that he did not want to keep these eleven leaves, but returned them. As I said, we should not press and push such things, but take them as pictorial representations of those karmic complications that find expression in the physiognomy of the first Germanic translation of the Bible in the Nordic world. And as here this event of history, so everything that comes our way in life, great and small, is deepened and illuminated with a new light through the anthroposophical attitude, which manifests itself in the fact that we see in everything physically perceptible the physiognomic expression of a supersensible spiritual reality.

[ 4 ] May we be imbued with the conviction that this is the case during this course. And from such a conviction may the spirit and the feelings flow that are to flow into our soul and penetrate our hearts during the twelve apocalyptic lectures. It is within this spirit that we want to approach this course, which takes the deepest document of Christianity, the Apocalypse of John, as its starting point, because it is to this document that the deepest truths of Christianity can truly be connected in a casual way. For this document contains nothing less than a large part of the mysteries of Christianity; it contains the deepest part of what we have to describe as esoteric Christianity. It is therefore no wonder that of all Christian documents, this one in particular has been most misunderstood. From almost the very beginning of the Christian spiritual movement, it has been misunderstood by all those who did not belong to the actual Christian initiates. And it has been misunderstood in the most diverse periods, always in the sense and style in which these different periods thought and were minded. It has been misunderstood by those times which, one may say, thought in a spiritual-materialistic way, by those times which great religious movements have forced into one-sided fanatical party politics, and it has been misunderstood in more recent times by those who, in gross, most sensual materialism, believed they could solve the riddles of the world.

[ 5 ] The high spiritual truths that were proclaimed at the starting point of Christianity and that were brought to the vision of those who could understand them, are hinted at, as far as this can be done in a writing, in the Apocalypse of John, in the so-called canonical Apocalypse. But already in the early days of Christianity, the exoteric were little suited to understand the deep spiritual that is meant in esoteric Christianity. And so it came about in the very earliest times of Christianity in the exoteric that things which take place in the spiritual for the development of the world, which are recognizable and visible to those who can see into the spiritual worlds, that such purely spiritual processes should take place outwardly in the material cultural life. And so it came about that while the writer of the Apocalypse expressed the results of his initiation, his Christian initiation, in it, the others understood it only exoterically and were of the opinion that what the great seer had seen and what the initiate knows, that it takes place spiritually recognizable in millennia, must take place in the very near future in the outwardly sensual-visible life. Thus the view arose that the scribe meant something like a descent of Christ Jesus taking place in the physical clouds in the near future. When that did not occur, the deadline was simply extended and it was said that, with the appearance of Christ Jesus, a new era had begun for the earth in contrast to the old religiosity. But it will take a thousand years – and now this was again understood in a sensual way – and the next events, which are described in the Apocalypse, will take place in a physical and sensual way. So it came about that when the year 1000 arrived, many people were waiting for the approach of some power hostile to Christianity, an Antichrist who was supposed to appear in the sensual world. And when that did not happen either, a new extension was set, so to speak, but at the same time the whole prediction of the Apocalypse was elevated to a certain symbolism, whereas the crude exoteric had imagined this prediction to be quite tangible. With the rise of a materialistic world view, these things were elevated to a certain symbolism. Symbolic hints were seen in external events.

[ 6 ] Thus, in the twelfth century, the man who died at the beginning of the thirteenth century, Joachim of Floris, came up with a remarkable explanation of this mysterious document of Christianity. He was of the opinion that there is a deep spiritual power in Christianity, that this power must come more and more to the fore, but that external Christianity has always externalized this esoteric Christianity. And so, in the view of many, this man's view came into its own, according to which something anti-Christian, something hostile, was to be sought in the papal church, in this externalization of the spirituality of Christianity. And in the following centuries this view was particularly nourished by the fact that great importance was attached to the spiritualism of Christianity, to the cozy spiritual element in certain religious orders. Thus Joachim of Floris found adherents within the Franciscan circles who saw in the Pope something like the symbolization of the Antichrist. Then, in the age of Protestantism, this view was adopted by those who saw in the Roman Church an apostate from Christianity and who saw salvation in Protestantism. They saw the Pope all the more as the symbol of the Antichrist, and the Pope got even by seeing the Antichrist in Luther.

[ 7 ] Thus, the Apocalypse was understood in such a way that each party used it to support their own views and opinions. The other party was always the Antichrist, and the party to which one belonged was identified with true Christianity. This continued until modern times, when modern materialism arose, which cannot be compared, even in its crudity, to the materialism I have described to you for the first centuries of Christianity. For in those days there was still a spiritual belief, a certain spiritual conception. People just could not understand it because they had no initiates among them. There was a certain spiritual sense, because even if people imagined in a grossly sensual way that a being would descend in a cloud, it still required a spiritual belief. Such a spiritual life was no longer possible with the crude materialism of the nineteenth century. The thoughts that a true materialist of the nineteenth century had about the apocalypse can be characterized something like this: No man can see into the future, for I myself cannot. Another cannot see anything other than what I see. To talk about there being initiates is an old superstition. There is no such thing. So what I know is considered the norm. I can hardly see what will happen in the next ten years, so no man can say anything about what is to happen over millennia. Consequently, if the writer of the Apocalypse wants to be taken as an honest person at all, he must have meant something that he had already seen, because I only know about what has already happened and what is conveyed through documents. So the writer of the Apocalypse could not see anything else either. What can he therefore tell? Only what had happened up to his time. Consequently, it is self-evident that in the events of the Apocalypse, in the conflicts between the good, wise, and beautiful world and the ugly, foolish, and evil world, that in that dramatic confrontation one has nothing to see but something that the man himself experienced, that had already happened. — Thus speaks the modern materialist. He means: the apocalyptic describes things as I describe them.

[ 8 ] What was the most terrible thing for a Christian in the first centuries? This most terrible thing had to be the beast that rears up against the spiritual power of Christianity, against true Christianity. Unfortunately, some people have now heard the bells ringing a little, but have not felt the real clash.

[ 9 ] Within certain esoteric schools, there was a kind of numerical writing. Certain words that one did not want to communicate in ordinary writing were expressed in numbers. And, like many other things, something of the deep secrets of the Apocalypse was also mystified into numbers, especially that dramatic event into the number 666. It was known that numbers had to be treated in a special way, especially when it was pointed out so thoroughly as with the words: “Here is wisdom.” “The number of the beast is 666.” With such references, one knew that certain letters had to be substituted for numbers in order to know what was meant. Those who had heard something but really knew nothing, in their materialistic view, figured out that if you substitute the letter 'N' for the number 666, you get the word 'Nero' or 'Caesar Nero'. And today you can read in a large part of the literature that deals with the unveiling of the Apocalypse: “In the past, people were so foolish that they read all kinds of things into this passage, but now it is a solved problem. Now we know that nothing else is meant than Nero, “Caesar Nero”, and it is clear that the Apocalypse was written at a time when Nero had already lived, and that the writer wanted to say with all this that Nero was the Antichrist; that therefore what lies in this dramatic element is an intensification of previous elements. Now one must only investigate what happened immediately before. Then one comes to understand what the apocalypticist wanted to describe. It is reported that earthquakes occurred in Asia Minor when the battle between Nero and Christianity raged. So these are the earthquakes that the apocalypticist mentions at the opening of the seals and at the sound of the trumpets. He also speaks of plagues of locusts. That's right, it is stated that during the time of Nero's persecution of Christians, there were also plagues of locusts. So he talks about those. — So the nineteenth century managed to reduce the most profound document of Christianity to a material description of what can be found through the materialistic view of the world. This should only be said to indicate how thoroughly this most profound and significant document of esoteric Christianity has been misunderstood.

[ 10 ] And now we will save everything that needs to be said about the historical nature of the Apocalypse for the time when we have grasped what lies in the Apocalypse, that is, we will postpone it until the last lectures. For anyone who has already familiarized themselves a little with anthroposophy, there can be no doubt that the introductory words of the Apocalypse already point to what it is meant to be. We need only remember that it says: “The one from whom the content of the Apocalypse originates has been transported to an island solitude, which has always been imbued with a kind of sacred atmosphere, to a place of ancient mystery culture. And when we are told that the same one who gives the content of the apocalypse was in the spirit and that he perceived what he gives in the spirit, this may initially be an indication to us that the content of the apocalypse comes from a higher state of consciousness, which man reaches through the development of the soul's ability to create, through initiation. What cannot be seen and heard within the world of the senses, what cannot be perceived with the outer senses, is contained in the way in which it could be communicated to the world through Christianity, in the so-called secret revelation of John. Thus, in the Apocalypse of John, we have before us the description of an initiation, a Christian initiation. We need only briefly recall what initiation is. We will delve deeper and deeper into this topic, into the question: What takes place during initiation? — and we will address the question: how does initiation relate to the content of the Apocalypse? — But first we will sketch something in rough strokes, and only then will we go on to paint the details.

[ 11 ] Initiation is the development of the forces and abilities slumbering in every soul. If one wishes to form a picture of how this takes place in reality, then one must, above all, clearly visualize what the consciousness of the modern man is like; then one will also recognize how the consciousness of the initiate differs from that of the modern man. What then is the consciousness of the modern man like? It is a changing one. Two very different states of consciousness alternate with each other: one during waking hours and one during nightly sleep. The consciousness we have in waking hours consists of perceiving sensual objects around us and linking them through concepts, which can only be formed by a sensual tool: the human brain. Then every night the astral body and the ego emerge from the lowest links of the human being, from the physical and etheric bodies, and with that, for the consciousness of today's human being, the sensory objects around him sink into darkness, and not only that, because until the reawakening, what is called complete unconsciousness is present. Darkness spreads around the human being. For the astral body of man today is organized in the normal state so that he is unable to perceive for himself what is in his environment. He needs instruments. These instruments are the physical senses. Therefore, in the morning, he must descend into the physical body and make use of the sensory tools. Why does the astral body see nothing when it is in the spiritual world during the night's sleep? Why does it not perceive? For the same reason that a physical body, in which there is no eye or ear, could not perceive physical colors and physical sounds. The astral body has no organs for perception in the astral world. The physical body was in the same situation in the dim and distant past. It did not yet have what was later worked into it in a plastic way as ear and eye. The external elements and forces chiseled it out, formed eyes and ears for it, and thus this world became manifest to it, which was also secret for it before. Let us imagine that the astral body, which is today in the same position as the physical body used to be, could be treated in such a way that organs could be incorporated into it in the same way that sunlight has plastically worked the physical eyes, and the world of sound the physical ears, into the soft mass of the physical human body. If we imagine that organs could be worked into the plastic mass of the astral body, then the astral body would be in the same position as the present physical body. That is why it is important to work into this astral body, like a sculptor molding clay, the organs of perception for the supersensible world. That must be the first step. If man wants to become seeing, his astral body must be treated like a mass of clay by the sculptor: organs must be worked into it. This was in fact what was done at all times in the schools of initiation and in the mysteries. The organs were worked plastically into the astral body.

[ 12 ] What then is the activity by which the organs are plastically worked into the astral body? It might occur to someone that one must first have this body before one can work the organs into it. One could say: If I could take out the astral body and have it before me, then I could work the organs into it. — That would not be the right way, and above all, it is not the way of modern initiation. Of course, an initiate who is able to live in the spiritual worlds could, when the astral body is outside at night, work in the organs like a sculptor. But that would mean undertaking something with the human being of which he himself knows nothing; it would mean interfering with his sphere of freedom, excluding his consciousness. We shall see why this must never be done, and this for a long time and especially in modern times. Therefore, even in such esoteric schools as the Pythagorean or ancient Egyptian, everything had to be avoided that might have caused the initiates to work from the outside on the astral body, which was taken out of the physical and etheric bodies of the person to be initiated. This had to be avoided from the very first approach to the subject. The first step towards initiation had to be taken in the human being in the quite ordinary physical world, in the same world in which the human being perceives with his physical senses. But how to do that, since it was precisely physical perception, when it entered into earthly evolution, that drew a veil over the spiritual world, which man could perceive earlier, even if only in a dull consciousness. So how to act from the physical world on the astral body?

[ 13 ] Here we must picture to ourselves what it is like with this ordinary sensory perception of the day. What happens during the day when a person perceives? Think about your daily life, follow it step by step. At every step, impressions of the external world reach you. You perceive them, you see, hear, smell, and so on. The impressions of this or that work rush at you all day long, and you process them with your intellect. The poet, who is not himself an inspired person, interweaves them with his imagination. That is all true. But all this cannot at first lead to the supersensible-spiritual, which is behind the sensual and material, becoming conscious to man. Why does it not become conscious to him? Because all this activity that man exercises in relation to his environment does not correspond to the astral body of man as it actually is today. In the distant past, when the astral body that belonged to man saw the images of astral perceptions rising up, those images of lust and suffering, of sympathy and antipathy, the inner impulses were present, the spiritual impulses that arose in man and formed organs. These were killed at the time when man became capable of allowing all influences from outside to flow towards him. Today it is no longer possible for something to remain in the astral body from all the impressions that man receives during the day that is malleable and plastic for him. The process of perception is as follows: throughout the day, impressions of the outside world reach us. These act through the physical senses on the etheric body and astral body until the I becomes aware of them. In the astral body, the effects of what is exerted on the physical body are expressed. When light impressions take place, the eye receives impressions. The light impression gives an impression to the etheric and astral bodies, and the I becomes aware of this impression. The same applies to impressions on the ear and the other senses. This whole daily life therefore has an effect on the astral body throughout the day. The astral body is always active under the influence of the outside world. Now it emerges in the evening. It has no powers within itself to become aware of the impressions that are now in its surroundings. The old powers of perception in the very distant past were killed during the first perception of the present sensory world. At night it has no powers because the whole life of the day is unsuitable for leaving anything in the astral body that could have a formative effect on it. All the things you see around you have an effect on the astral body. But what is effected there is not able to create formations that could become astral organs. This must be the first step of the initiation: to let something be done to the human being during the day, to let something take place in his soul that continues to have an effect when the astral body is drawn out of the physical and etheric bodies at night. So imagine, figuratively speaking, that while a person is fully conscious, he is given something to do, something to let play out, and that this something is chosen and structured in such a way that it does not cease to have an effect when the day is over. Think of this effect as a sound that continues to resound when the astral body is out; this continued resonance would then be the forces that now worked on the astral body in such a way, working so plastically, as the external forces once worked on the physical body. That was always the first step of initiation: to let man do something during the day that would resonate in the night. All that has been called meditation, concentration and the other exercises that a person has undertaken during his day-time life are nothing more than soul activities that do not die away when the astral body goes out, but that continue to resonate and become formative forces in the night in the astral body.

[ 14 ] This is called the purification of the astral body, the purification of that which is not appropriate for the astral body. That was the first step, which was also called catharsis, purification. It was not yet work in supersensible worlds. It consisted of exercises for the soul that the person did during the day, like training for the soul. It consisted of acquiring certain ways of life, certain attitudes, a certain way of treating life so that it could resonate and work on the astral body until it had transformed itself, until organs had developed in it.

[ 15 ] When the human being had reached the point where these organs had been incorporated from the astral body, the next step was for everything that had been shaped into the astral body to be imprinted in the etheric body. Just as a seal imprint is left on sealing wax, so everything that was worked into the astral body had to leave its imprint in the ether body. This imprint is the next step of initiation: it was called enlightenment. For at the same time, a significant moment had come in the initiation. A spiritual world appeared in the environment of man, just as the sensual world was there before. This stage is characterized at the same time by the fact that the processes of the external spiritual world do not express themselves as physical-sensual things do, but in images. At this stage of enlightenment, the spiritual world first expresses itself in images. The human being sees images. Think of the old initiate of whom I spoke yesterday, who saw the soul of the ethnic group. When he was ready, he first saw this group soul in images. Think, for example, of an initiate like Ezekiel. When the illumination began for him, spiritual entities approached him as folk or group souls. He felt himself in their midst. Group souls in the form of four symbolic animals approached him.

[ 16 ] Thus, the spiritual world first approached man in meaningful images. That was the first step. Then came the further penetration into the etheric body. What was initially present as a kind of seal impression was followed by a further penetration into the etheric body. Then what has been called the music of the spheres begins to be added to the images. The higher spiritual world is perceived as sound. After the higher initiate has perceived the spiritual world in images through enlightenment, he begins to listen spiritually to the sounds that can be perceived by the spiritual ear. Then comes the later transformation of the etheric body, and there we encounter something else in an even higher sphere. You can still hear sounds if, for example, there is a screen here and someone is speaking behind it whom you cannot see. It is something like that with the spiritual world. At first it appears in pictures, then it is transmitted as sound, and the last veil is lifted – as if we were to remove a screen behind which someone is standing and speaking: we see the person themselves –: We see the spiritual world itself, the beings of the spiritual world. First we perceive the images, then the sounds, then the beings and finally the life of these beings. One can only hint at what is in the so-called imaginative world by using images from the sensory world as symbols. One can only give an idea of the harmony of the spheres by comparing it to sensory music. What can be compared with the essential expression on the third step? Only what today makes up the innermost part of the human being, his work in the sense of the divine will of the world, can be compared. If a person works in the sense of the will of those spiritual beings that advance our world, then the being within him will become similar to these beings, then he will perceive in this sphere. That which in him resists world evolution, that which holds back the world in its progress, he perceives as something that must be eliminated in this world, that must fall away like a last veil.

[ 17 ] Thus man perceives first a world of images as the symbolic expression of the spiritual world, then a world of the harmony of the spheres as the symbolic expression of a higher spiritual sphere, then a world of spiritual entities, of which today he can only form an idea by comparing them with the innermost part of his own being, with that which works in him in the sense of good forces or in the sense of evil spiritual forces.

[ 18 ] The person to be initiated goes through these stages and these stages are faithfully depicted in the Apocalypse of John. The starting point is the physical world. What is said is what needs to be said first with the means of the physical world, in the seven letters. What one wants to do within the physical culture, what one wants to say to those who work in the physical world, one says to them in letters. For the word that is expressed in the letter can have its effect within the sensual world. The first stage gives symbols that must be related to what they express in the spiritual world: after the seven letters comes the world of the seven seals, the world of images, the first stage of initiation. Then comes the world of the harmony of the spheres, the world as perceived by the one who can hear spiritually. It is depicted in the seven trumpets. The next world, where the initiate perceives entities, is represented by what appears as entities at this level and what strips away the shells of the forces that are the opposite of good. The opposite of divine love is divine wrath. The true nature of divine love, which advances the world, is perceived in this third sphere by those who have shed their earthly garments for the physical world – the seven bowls of wrath.

[ 19 ] Thus the person being initiated is led step by step up the initiation spheres. In the seven letters of the Apocalypse of John, we have what belongs to the seven categories of the physical world in the seven seals, what belongs to the astral-imaginative world in the seven trumpets that which belongs to the devachanic higher world, and in the seven bowls of wrath that which must be cast off if man wants to rise into the highest spiritual, which is to be achieved first for our world, because this highest spiritual is still connected to our world.

[ 20 ] Today we only wanted to present the outer structure of what the Apocalypse of John is. These are few and fleeting lines that could indicate to us that the Apocalypse is a book of initiation. Tomorrow we will begin to take the first steps towards executing this fleeting drawing.