The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] With the exception of a few circles that have recently decided on a different explanation, it is generally accepted in materialistic science that our present solar system originated from a kind of primordial nebula that extended beyond the Neptune limit that is, to the orbit of the outermost planet of our solar system. And there, it is assumed, our sun and the planets moving around it gradually formed through a process of condensation. As I said, a few explainers today have a slightly different view, but they do not yet offer anything significant for us who stand on the ground of a spiritual worldview. So our sun would have formed with the planets revolving around it. In schools, a cute comparison has always been made, and is still made today, to illustrate how an entire planetary system can be created through rotation. You take an oily substance that floats in water and shape it into a sphere. Then you cut a small piece of paper that you can push through the sphere along the equator so that it is divided into two halves. You stick a pin into the top and then put it in water so that it floats. When you rotate this small sphere, you will see how a drop first separates and orbits the larger sphere like an outer body, how a second and third drop separate, and finally a large drop remains in the middle, around which many smaller ones revolve. A miniature planetary system! — people say. Why, they wonder, could our solar system not have been created from that primordial nebula by such a process of separation, if we can now reproduce it in such a miniature solar system?

[ 2 ] This comparison usually seems incredibly plausible to people, and now they understand how Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury once split off from such a primordial nebula. But the whole story, not just the comparison, but the whole view in general, stems from the short-sightedness of all present-day thinking. For the men in question, who are sometimes quite learned and who present this comparison so plausibly, forget one thing: that they themselves are there turning the needle! Now, self-forgetfulness is very good in certain areas of life, but in this case, the experimenter has forgotten the most important thing, without which the drop of oil would not spin at all. At the very least, the scholar who is equipped with such superstition—the Kant-Laplace system is named after this superstition—should have at least a little bit of consistency in his thinking. He should at least assume that at some point in the past, some being placed a giant chair in outer space and set a giant axis in motion. That would be the minimum assumption. But human thinking has gradually become so accustomed to considering only the material that one no longer even notices the contradiction in such a comparison.

[ 3 ] In fact, there is a certain truth in this so-called Kant-Laplace world system, even if this truth behaves differently than the materialistic explanation presents it. There is a certain truth in it because, to the clairvoyant eye, everything that our present solar system contains actually appears to have emerged from such an original nebula. But anyone who is capable of genuine historical research will realize that the merit of Kant and Laplace's hypothesis stems from occult traditions. This was forgotten when the word “occultism” became something to be feared like children fear the bogeyman. But what really happened in the formation of our solar system did not happen without the influence of spiritual beings and powers. Matter does nothing without spiritual beings underlying it.

[ 4 ] It would take us too far afield today to attempt to give a complete explanation of our solar system based on yesterday's discussion. We will leave aside planets such as Saturn, Jupiter, and so on, and consider only what is of primary importance for our human life and human development.

[ 5 ] In fact, there was once such a primordial nebula, and in it, as if dissolved, were all the parts of our solar system. But connected to this primordial nebula, so that they belonged to it, were the beings we got to know in the course of yesterday's consideration. For example, all the beings that had passed through the 24 stages of human evolution were connected with that world nebula, that cosmic nebula. Other beings were also connected with it. They all dwelt in that primordial nebula, which, if one does not think of it in connection with these beings, is a fantastic abstraction. The way the materialistic chemist imagines it, for example, is impossible. It exists only in thought, separated from reality. In reality, it exists in such a way that it is inhabited by a series of spiritual beings. For when that primordial nebula rose to its new visibility, all the beings that once inhabited the old Saturn were connected to it, and they then passed through the various stages of development through the Sun and Moon up to the Earth, where, after a long interval, the Earth's primordial nebula rose, so to speak. And the other beings, whom we first encountered on the Sun, were also connected with this primordial nebula. And these beings, the whole chorus that was within it, that permeated this primordial nebula, are the ones who brought about the movements. For it is the beings who create their own stage.

[ 6 ] For example, there were beings who needed a completely different place to live than humans if they wanted to go through the development that was appropriate for them. The humans who lived on the old moon as the ancestors of the present humans first had only a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. With these three members of their being, they emerged from the so-called Pralaya at the beginning of Earth's development, like a plant from a seed. As this whole system was in the beginning, it was unsuitable for the beings who had brought with them the predispositions for today's human beings. If the speed of development that our solar system had in the beginning, when it emerged from the cosmic dawn, had been maintained, human beings would not have been able to develop. It would have been a development as if you were born now and then, in a very short time, were already old men. If the speed of development that was inherent in the sun had been maintained, you would all age rapidly. You would not be able to make that slow passage through the decades as you actually do. After a short time, you would have white hair. No sooner would you have been children than you would already be old men.

[ 7 ] This could not be allowed to happen. There were therefore beings who needed a faster pace. These beings participated only in part of the development, then took the world body that today stands in the sky as the sun, and made this sun their dwelling place. They drew the sun's matter out with their being. For this sun, which today sends its light to us, is just as inhabited by spiritual beings as our earth. With every ray of sunlight that descends, the deeds of those spiritual beings descend to earth who, in the course of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, have brought themselves to the point where they can undergo such rapid development as is taking place on the sun today. High, exalted beings are connected with this solar existence at the beginning of our Earth's development, and they split off. And what then remained behind, you must imagine as if you had mixed together the present moon and the present Earth in a large pot, and this mixed Earth and moon initially orbited the sun for a time.

[ 8 ] Thus, before we reach the point we referred to yesterday as the incarnation of the human being, we must first note the separation of the sun from the earth, that is, from the present earth plus the present moon. The beings who are the spiritual guides of earthly events remained on the sun. When they came over from the moon, there were seven such beings. Genesis calls them Elohim, spirits of light. They underwent their development together with the Earth for a while and then withdrew from the Sun so that they could now work on the Earth from the Sun. These Elohim, these spirits of light, were seven in number. Six of them were such that they connected their existence with the actual cosmic sun. One separated himself from them, one whom the Old Testament calls Yahweh. He separated himself and remained connected to the earth for the time being. He guided and directed the earth's development from within, while the others worked from without. This was the case for a while.

[ 9 ] But already from what was indicated yesterday about the old moon, you will understand that the departure of the sun was connected with a condensation of everything that remained as the earth plus the moon. There came a period in the development of the earth when all beings, and not only the substance, underwent a coarsening. The beings who later became human beings, for example, who were still very soft and delicate at that time, underwent a coarsening by taking on hideous instincts. A coarsening of the whole of life took place.

[ 10 ] But development could not remain this way if human beings were to come into being. A coarsening would have occurred, everything would have become denser and denser, and human beings would have frozen into mummies. Human beings would have become mummified, and you would very soon have had a planet on which something like not exactly beautiful, but human-like mummies, like statues, would have accumulated. The Earth would have become mummified. Another event had to occur. Precisely through the government of the cosmic spirit Yahweh, that which you now see as the moon, as this burnt-out moon slag in the sky, was separated from this total mass of Earth plus moon. Not only the coarsest substantial components were separated, but also the coarsest entities. Thus, the departure of the sun had first prevented humans from developing too rapidly, and the departure of the moon now prevented humans from developing toward decay, densification, and mummification.

[ 11 ] Thus, the earth was separated from the whole mass, and now the course of human development is guided over the earth under the influence of these two heavenly bodies, which does not mean, of course, under the influence of the heavenly bodies themselves, but of their essences, the six sun spirits and the moon spirit, which had separated itself for the salvation of humanity. And it is guided in such a way that these two forces essentially keep each other in balance. Through the emergence of both the sun forces and the moon forces, the right pace of human development was achieved.

[ 12 ] Consider, to illustrate this point, that only the sun were effective for human beings. You know that human beings go through many, many incarnations on Earth. They began with their first incarnation on Earth and continue to receive new bodies until they reach their final incarnation. Human beings go through a series of incarnations. Through this process, they develop slowly and ascend from one incarnation to the next. Humans entered the surface of our Earth as true spiritual babies. Since the separation of the sun and moon from our Earth, they have risen to their present level. All these souls will return in other bodies until the end of Earth's development. Now imagine that only the sun were effective for humans. Then humans would have to go through everything they experience in so many incarnations in a single one. The right tempo in the many incarnations is brought about by the external balance of forces between the sun and the moon.

[ 13 ] In the time when the sun and moon stepped out, modern humans gradually began to emerge. The first seeds of modern man are sown. This was at a time when man was by no means walking around on this earth as he does today. You must not believe that when the moon was outside, man walked around on this earth in flesh and blood as he does today. First, all the forms that had existed before reappeared, as if in a repetition. And when the Earth was freed from the sun and the moon, it looked roughly like the old moon, and was even softer. And if an eye organized like today's had looked at the Earth, it would not yet have been able to see human beings. On the other hand, there were certain other beings who were not mature enough to wait for the later time. While the stage of development was still incomplete, they had to evolve, had to take on physical form, so that certain forms of lower animals could already be seen in physical condensation some time after the moon left the earth. Man had not yet descended, not even the higher mammals. Man was still a spirit being, still hovering around the Earth as a spiritual being. From the environment of the Earth, he took on the finest matter. Gradually, man condensed to such an extent that he was able to descend to where the Earth had already become solid and individual islands had formed.

[ 14 ] We see, then, that the first humans appeared relatively late and that they were of a completely different nature than humans today. I cannot describe to you the forms of those humans who, so to speak, first crystallized out of the spiritual realm. Even though you have already had to endure much that is difficult to believe about yourselves, you would be too shocked if I were to describe to you the grotesque appearance of the bodies in which your souls were incarnated. You would not be able to bear such a description. At a later time, however, when these things, which are only now beginning to enter human consciousness through the anthroposophical spiritual stream, increasingly conquer human consciousness, then this will have to be revealed, and it will have an enormous success and an enormous significance for the whole of human life. For only when human beings learn how they developed physically, how the organs that are now present gradually emerged from completely different forms, will they feel the strange relationship between organs in the human body that today seem to be far apart. They will understand the correspondence that exists between certain organs, for example between the appendix and the windpipe, which in their earlier form had grown together in those strange shapes. Everything that man is today is the unrolled past, taken apart in the most varied ways. Organs that are separate today were once fused together, but they have retained their relationship. This relationship is often evident in diseases, where it becomes apparent how the disease of one organ necessarily entails that of another. Those who really study medicine will make all sorts of discoveries that today's medicine, which is just a collection of notes, can't even dream of. That's when medicine will really learn something about true human nature. All this just to show how different the human form used to be.

[ 15 ] Only gradually did the solid parts become integrated into this human form. Originally, even when the human body had already descended, there were no bones. The bones developed from soft, cartilage-like things that ran through the human body like strands, and these in turn had arisen from very soft substances, and these soft substances from liquid ones, these from airy ones, the airy ones from ethereal ones, and the ethereal ones from astral ones, which had condensed from spiritual substance. In the end, everything material sprang from the spiritual. Everything is preformed in the spirit. It was only in the period we have already indicated as the Atlantean period that human beings gradually developed their skeletal system, which had already been predisposed earlier.

[ 16 ] Now we must take a closer look at these Lemurian humans so that we can better understand the writer of the Apocalypse. I need only point out that in the early days, when the moon was away from the earth and humans descended, humans were of a completely different nature in terms of their willpower than they were later. The willpower of humans at that time had a magical effect. Humans could influence the growth of flowers through their will. When humans exerted their will, they could quickly make a flower grow, an ability that today can only be achieved through an abnormal development process. Therefore, at that time, the entire natural environment was dependent on the nature of human will. If it was good, it had a calming effect on the waves of the water, on the storms, and on the fiery formations that prevailed in the surrounding area at that time, for the earth was then largely volcanic in nature. Man had a calming effect on everything through a good will, and a destructive effect through an evil will. Entire islands could be destroyed by evil will. Thus, human will was completely in harmony with its environment. Essentially, the land masses where humans lived at that time were destroyed by the evil will of humans, and only a small portion of the people of that time—here we must again distinguish between racial and soul development—saved themselves into the period that we can describe accurately because we can find words in our language that can reproduce the clairvoyant perception.

[ 17 ] After this catastrophe, we come to the ancient Atlantean era, a time when the human race developed mainly on a continent that now forms the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, between present-day Europe and America. At that time, human beings lived under completely different physical conditions, under completely different circumstances altogether. In the beginning, they were entirely different beings who perceived things very differently from humans today. We have already pointed this out in the first lecture and again later. Today, we would like to point out once more this completely different way of seeing things that people had at that time.

[ 18 ] Human beings still had a kind of ancient clairvoyance because the structure of their limbs was different from today. The etheric body was not yet so closely connected to the physical body. The etheric body of the head extended far out from the physical body. It was not until the last third of the Atlantean epoch that the protruding etheric body receded and took on the form of the physical human head of today. Because these ancient Atlanteans were so completely different in form from modern humans and different in the structure of their limbs, their entire conscious life, their entire soul life, was also different. And here, if we want to understand the apocalyptic writer correctly, we must touch upon a very important but also very mysterious chapter.

[ 19 ] If you were to come to this ancient Atlantis, you would find that it was not surrounded by such pure air as the Earth today, but by air that was saturated with fog and water masses. This air becomes clearer and clearer as Atlantis develops. But the fog is strongest where the aforementioned highly developed Atlantean culture unfolded. That is where the worst fog was, and out of this fog the foundation for later cultures developed. Atlantis was covered far and wide with such fog. There was no such distribution of rain and sunshine as there is today. Therefore, what you know as the rainbow could not develop in ancient Atlantis. You can search the whole of Atlantis and you will hardly find one. Only when the condensation of the water led to flooding, when the flood had passed over the earth, could the rainbow physically come into being. And here you have a moment when spiritual science will inspire you with the highest reverence for religious documents. For when you are told that after the flood, Noah, the representative of those who saved the human race, was the first to see the rainbow, this is truly a historical event. After the flood, humanity saw the first rainbow. Previously, it was physically impossible.

[ 20 ] There you see how profoundly, how literally true the religious documents are. Today, some people are tormented when you say that religious documents are literally true. Some quote a proverb that is true, but which is quoted by the complacent not as a true saying, but out of convenience. It is the saying: The letter kills, but the spirit gives life. From this they derive the justification for no longer looking at what is written in the documents at all, for no longer having to want to recognize what is really written there, because that is the killing letter, they say. And so they let their minds shine, fantasizing all sorts of things. These people may be very witty in their explanations, but that is not what matters. What matters is that we really see what is written in the documents. “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life” has the same meaning in mystical language as Goethe's words:

And as long as you do not have this,
This: Die and become!
You are only a dull guest
On the dark earth.

[ 21 ] This phrase does not mean that if you want to lead someone to higher knowledge, you must kill them — it means that human beings must rise to spirituality precisely through the culture of the physical world. — So too is the letter the body of the spirit, and first one must have it and understand it, then one may say that one can find the spirit out of it. The letter, the understood letter, must then die, so that the spirit may rise from it. That word is not an instruction to fantasize arbitrarily about what is written in religious documents. Precisely when we recognize the true meaning of this rainbow, for example, as we have described it, something enters our soul like a deep reverence for religious documents, and we gain an understanding of how, through this deepening of our perception through the anthroposophical worldview, human beings progress to a true, genuine feeling and a true understanding of the will behind religious documents.

[ 22 ] Now let us look back to ancient Atlantis. We have already said that human beings lived there in a different state of consciousness, that their memory was different from what it is today. But the difference is even more considerable. If we go back far, not just to the end of Atlantis, but to its beginnings, we find that human consciousness was very different from what we have today.

[ 23 ] Let us once again bring to mind what is there today. During the day, human beings use their senses. In the evening, they fall asleep. The physical body and the etheric body lie in bed, while the astral body and the I emerge. The sphere of consciousness darkens. Modern man sees nothing, hears nothing. In the morning, when the astral body with the ego submerges into the physical and etheric bodies, physical things reappear. How was it in the first Atlantic epoch? Let us take the moment when, in the morning, man submerged into the physical and etheric bodies. At that time, they did not have a physical world around them as we do today. All the objects you see today with clear boundaries would have appeared to them as if surrounded by an aura, with colored edges, completely blurred, just as you cannot see the lights on the streets clearly in a thick fog in the evening, but instead see such colored edges around the lights of the lanterns. That is how it was in ancient Atlantis. All objects were seen only blurrily, nothing with the boundaries and surfaces of today, everything as if shrouded in misty colors. Only gradually did what are now fixed boundaries emerge. If we had had a rose in front of us in the early days of ancient Atlantis, we would have seen a misty formation rising up, with a pink circle in the middle, and only gradually would the outer colors have spread across the surface. Objects only acquired clear outlines later on.

[ 24 ] So you see, the physical environment is now completely different from what it was in ancient Atlantis. It was also different when you stepped out of your physical body in the evening and, let's say, fell asleep. Actually, it was not falling asleep in the modern sense. However, the whole world of nebulous physical structures remained beneath you, but a spiritual world opened up. Without fixed boundaries, you lived in a spiritual world. The spiritual beings were your co-inhabitants. Thus, day and night alternated with each other in the first Atlantean period. When people submerged themselves in their physical bodies, they had only vague, blurred images of the physical world, but when they left their physical bodies at night, they had the opportunity, albeit somewhat blurred, to live spiritually among spirits, to walk among spirits. And above all, the entire sensory life of human beings was also different in the ancient Atlantean era. If you had, say, stepped out of your physical and etheric bodies, you would not have felt tired or in need of rest. You would not have found rest either; you would have had to enter the spiritual world, which was the sphere of activity. When morning came, however, you felt a need for rest, and you sought out, so to speak, your bed, which was your own body. There you lay quietly. You withdrew into your own body and rested during the day.

[ 25 ] In the early days of Atlantis, things were therefore quite different from how they are now. The Atlantean era progresses in such a way that human beings gradually live their way out of completely opposite states into later ones. They live their way over to the extent that their etheric body is increasingly drawn into the physical body. In the last third of the Atlantean era, the etheric body was drawn into the physical body. Before this event, human beings felt themselves to be awake in the spiritual world above. But as such, they did not say “I” to themselves; they did not have self-consciousness. When they left their physical and etheric bodies to enter the brightness of the night, they felt themselves to be members of the spirituality that was above, feeling, as it were, sheltered in their old group soul. Each time it became bright around them in the night, but they felt themselves to be dependent. Just as our fingers belong to our ego, so did human beings feel that they belonged to the group souls that are seen clairvoyantly as described in the four heads of the lion, ox, eagle, and human being in the Apocalypse of John. Human beings felt themselves transported into one of these group souls. And only when he was in his physical shell did he feel that he had something of his own. For the fact that man became an independent being came from his ability to enclose himself in his body. However, he had to pay for this enclosure in his body by the gradual darkening of the spiritual world, which withdrew completely from him. But in return, the world he saw below, when he was in his physical body, became brighter and clearer. With this, it dawned on him more and more that he was an I, that he carried self-consciousness within himself. He learned to say I to himself.

[ 26 ] If we want to characterize what happened at that time, we imagine the human being crawling out of his physical shell, as it were, into the spiritual world. There he is among spiritual-divine beings. There, his name, that which he is, sounds to him from outside. To one group, the word that was the word for that group in the original language sounds, to the other, the word for the other group. Man could not name himself from within; he had to receive his name from outside. When he crawled out of his physical shell in this way, he knew what he was, because it was called into his soul. Now that he was learning to perceive his physical surroundings in his body, he learned to feel himself as an “I,” he learned to feel within himself the divine power that had previously been called to him from outside. He learned to feel God within himself. The one closest to him, this God who at the same time hinted at his I, he called Yahweh, who was the I-conductor. Man first felt the power of this God rising up in his I.

[ 27 ] This was connected with external events. When the ancient Atlantean submerged himself in his physical body in this way, he probably also looked out into the sky, and there he saw, as I have said, not a real rainbow, but something like a circle of color formed where the sun later appeared. The sun did not yet penetrate with its power, but it worked through the mist. Hindered and held back by the mist, it worked its power on the earth. It emerged more and more, so that everything that has been described, this rising of the outer consciousness, was connected with the emergence of the sun from the mist. What was up there, where the six other spirits who, together with Yahweh, were to guide the development of the earth had their dwelling place, gradually emerged and shone down in its deeds upon the earth.

[ 28 ] What had happened to man? Man, in his actual soul, in his spirit, when he had left his body, when it was night, so to speak, had entered into an inner, astral brightness, for which the outer sun is not necessary. This brightness surrounded him. It was the same light from powerful spiritual beings that later shone down physically from the sun. As he became more and more enclosed in his physical consciousness, the gate of inner vision was closed. Darkness surrounded him when he left his physical and etheric bodies at night and entered the spiritual world. To the same extent that he shut himself in, the outer light rose, representing the deeds of the spiritual beings of the sun. The light of the spiritual beings shone down outwardly upon the earth. Man prepared himself to regard the outer light as something material. The light shone into his now darkened inner being, but at first it was not understood by his darkness.

[ 29 ] This is a world-historical, cosmic process. In those days, human beings purchased their self-awareness through spiritual darkness. Thus, human beings grew out of the brightness of the group soul. But this was only the very first dawn of individuality. It took a long, long time before individuality truly came to human beings. The last Atlantean period passed; the flood broke in. The post-Atlantean period began, and the ancient Indian culture passed away. Self-awareness had not yet developed. Then came the Persian and Egyptian-Babylonian periods. Human beings gradually matured and developed self-awareness. Finally, the fourth period arrived. Something of tremendous importance took place, for which everything that had happened before was a preparation.

[ 30 ] Imagine yourself lifted up from the earth to a distant star and looking down on the earth with clairvoyant eyes. You would see that this earth, as a physical body, is only a physical body and that it has an etheric body and an astral body, just as human beings do. The Earth also has all of this. You would see the Earth surrounded by its aura, and you would be able to follow the development of the Earth's aura from that star over thousands of years. You would see this Earth enclosed by all kinds of colors: in the middle, the physical core, and around it, the aura flowing in various forms and colors, with the most diverse structures within this spiritual atmosphere of the Earth. You would see these colors and forms change in manifold ways over the course of thousands of years, but a moment would come, a moment of great importance: the entire aura would take on a different form and color. The earth would appear in a new light, at first seen from the outside. And this happens with tremendous speed, so that one must say: From this moment on, a fundamental transformation has taken place with the Earth; the Earth's aura has been completely transformed. — What moment is this? It is the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer on Golgotha. This moment is a most important one, the most important moment in the entire evolution of the Earth. The moment when the blood flows from the wounds of the Redeemer is the same moment when the aura of the earth is being transformed. A completely new force enters, the force that is the most important impulse for the development of the earth, for which everything we have seen so far was only preparation.

[ 31 ] For the chemist, the blood on Golgotha is the same as any other blood. But this blood is completely different. It means that the matter of the blood flows down to the earth and that the spirit corresponding to the blood fills the earth's aura with new impulses and new forces that have significance for the future development of humanity. From there, the forces that transform the earth radiate out, from there they radiate through human beings. Only a small part of what flowed in at that moment has been fulfilled to this day. More and more, people will learn to understand what the earth became through that moment at Golgotha, what human beings can become in the consciousness they have attained in the manner described since Atlantis.

[ 32 ] What has man achieved since Atlantis? Two things: self-consciousness and the ability to see outside in the external world. What was once open to him, the spiritual world, has closed itself off. Truly, these earlier human beings saw what later myths tell us: Wotan — Mercury, Jupiter — Zeus, they saw all these figures at night. They were in their midst at night. The gate to these spiritual beings has closed. In return, man has conquered the world around him. The spirits have withdrawn from him. Everything he could see at that time has receded. In earlier times, he saw the divine when he slipped out of the shell of his physical body; now he had to see the divine within his body when it appeared before him. This means nothing other than that we must accept the divine in a physical, visible form, because human consciousness had become so oriented toward physical seeing. Therefore, the divine itself had to take on a physical form. That is why the divine appeared once in the course of time in a physical body. It had to appear in this way because human beings had advanced to this stage of perception. It had to be given to their perception in this way so that they could understand it. And all the phenomena that had previously occurred for other stages of development had to come together in that greatest event of Earth's development, which will shed light on all the future that we will now reveal from the Apocalypse: in that event which physically appeared as drops of blood streaming down to the earth; which, when perceived clairvoyantly, rises as something that changes the aura of the earth. The power that flowed in there will continue to work together with the earth into all future times. With this, something new was implanted into the soul of the earth, into the spirit of the whole earth. What the Christ principle is became connected with the earth at that time, and the earth became the body of this Christ principle, so that it is literally true: “He who eats my bread treads upon me.” When man eats the bread of the earth, he eats the body of the earth, and that is the body of the earth spirit, which has been connected with the earth since that event on Golgotha as the Christ spirit. And man walks around on this earthly body, and that is the body of the earth spirit, which has been connected with the earth since that event on Golgotha as the Christ spirit. body of the earth, and that is the body of the earth spirit, which since that event on Golgotha has been connected with the earth as the Christ spirit. And man walks around on this earthly body, he tramples on this body. Everything is to be understood literally, if we first enable ourselves to understand the wording in its true sense.

[ 33 ] For someone like the writer of the Gospel of John, everything he knew, everything he could grasp through clairvoyant vision, became a call to understand the greatest event in the evolution of the earth. What he could learn clairvoyantly, he said to himself: I must use it to understand the form of Christ and its effect. — To use all secret science to explain the event of Golgotha was the tendency of the one who wrote the Apocalypse. He wanted to see nothing else in what he was able to learn in the secret science than a serving wisdom to understand this event, which he has placed before our souls in such a magnificent way and of which we shall see what it has become for him.