The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] Now that it has been repeatedly stated that our seven stages of culture will come to an end through a war of all against all, we must imagine such a war of all against all in a completely different way than we have been accustomed to imagining wars up to now. We need only consider what the basis, the actual cause of this war is. This basis or cause is the prevalence of egoism, selfishness, and selfhood in human beings. And we have now progressed so far in our considerations that we have seen what a double-edged, sharp sword this human ego is. Those who do not understand that this ego is a double-edged sword will hardly understand the whole meaning of human and world evolution. On the one hand, this ego is the cause of people hardening within themselves, of wanting to use everything that is available to them, both external things and inner goods, in the service of their ego. It is this ego that causes all human desires to be directed toward satisfying this ego as such. How this ego strives to appropriate a part of the common property of the earth as its own, how this ego strives to drive all other egos out of its domain, to wage war against them, to fight them: that is one side of the ego. But on the other side, we must not forget that this ego is at the same time what gives man his independence, his inner freedom, what elevates man in the truest sense of the word. His dignity is founded in this ego. It is the predisposition to the divine in man.

[ 2 ] This concept of the ego causes difficulty for many people. It has become clear to us that the human ego has developed out of a group soul, out of a kind of comprehensive All-Ego, from which it has differentiated itself. It would be wrong for human beings to desire once again to lose their I in some kind of universal consciousness, in some kind of collective consciousness. Everything that causes human beings to strive to lose their I, to merge with a universal consciousness, is a product of weakness. Only those who know that, having attained this ego in the course of cosmic evolution, it is now irretrievable, understand the ego, and human beings must strive above all for the strong power to make this ego ever more inner, ever more divine, if they understand the world mission. True anthroposophists have nothing of that phrase in them which repeatedly emphasizes the merging of the I into an All-I, the melting together into some kind of primordial mush. The true anthroposophical worldview can only set as its ultimate goal the community of independent and free I's, of individualized I's. This is precisely the mission of the earth, expressed through love, that the I learns to stand freely opposite the I. No love is perfect that arises from compulsion, from being chained together. Only when each I is so free and independent that it cannot love is its love a completely free gift. This is, so to speak, the divine plan for the world: to make the ego so independent that it can freely offer love to God as an individual being. It would mean leading people by strings of dependence if they could be forced in any way, even remotely, to love.

[ 3 ] Thus, the ego will be the pledge of man's highest goal. But at the same time, if it does not find love, if it hardens within itself, it becomes the tempter that plunges him into the abyss. Then it is that which separates people from one another, which calls them to the great war of all against all, not only to war of peoples against peoples—for the concept of peoples will then no longer have the meaning it has today—but to war of individuals against individuals in the most diverse areas of life, to war of classes against classes, of castes against castes, of sexes against sexes. In all areas of life, the ego will become a bone of contention, and therefore we can say that the ego can lead to the highest on the one hand and to the lowest on the other. That is why it is a sharp, double-edged sword. And the one who brought full self-consciousness to human beings, Christ Jesus, is symbolically and rightly depicted in our Apocalypse as the one who has the sharp, double-edged sword in his mouth.

[ 4 ] We have presented it as a great achievement of humanity that it has been able to rise to this free concept of the self precisely through Christianity. Christ Jesus brought this I into its full extent. Therefore, this I must be expressed precisely by the sharp, double-edged sword that you know from one of our seals. And that this sharp, double-edged sword comes from the mouth of the Son of Man is understandable, for when man learned to express the I with full consciousness, he was given the ability to ascend to the highest and descend to the lowest. The sharp, double-edged sword is one of the most important symbols we encounter in the Apocalypse. (First seal.)

[ 5 ] If we are now clear about what came to us at the end of the last consideration, that our present culture will be followed by the one characterized in the epistles by the city of Philadelphia, we must remember above all that from this sixth stage of culture those human souls will be taken who have to pass over into the following age. For then, after the war of all against all — as we have often emphasized — what is being prepared in the souls of people in our time will be lived out in their faces. The so-called seventh stage of culture will be of very little importance. We are therefore living in the fifth stage of culture, followed by the sixth, from which a number of people will emerge with a full understanding of the spiritual world, imbued with that spirit of brotherly love that follows directly from spiritual knowledge. The ripest fruit of our present culture will appear in this sixth epoch. And what follows will be that which is lukewarm, neither warm nor cold. What follows as the seventh stage is, so to speak, something like an overripe fruit in the entire culture, something that survives the great war of all against all, but contains no principle of progress within itself.

[ 6 ] This was also the case when our culture came into being. Let us think back to the time before the Atlantic flood. We have said that it was in the last third of the Atlantic period, when people were still living on the land that is now covered by the Atlantic Ocean, that a small group formed near what is now Ireland, which had reached the highest level of culture in Atlantis and then set out for the East, from where all later cultures originated. Let us really visualize this: let us imagine this patch of earth that today forms the sea to the west of Ireland, and let us imagine a stream of people migrating eastward from there, from which a multitude of tribes then spread out to populate Europe. Everything that exists in the European population came from there. The most gifted part of the Atlanteans moved to Central Asia; from there, the various cultures we have described spread to us. So you see that our present culture has its origins in a small group of Atlanteans.

[ 7 ] But this Atlantean culture also had seven successive stages, just as our culture has seven stages, which we know as the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian-Jewish, the Greek-Latin, our own, and two more. And it was in the fifth stage of the Atlantean culture that this migration began, so that the most select population of ancient Atlantis, which forms the basis of our culture, was taken from the fifth Atlantean race — in Atlantis we may speak of races. This was followed by a sixth and a seventh race. These were, so to speak, the lukewarm races. They also survived the great flood, but there was no living, sprouting power in them. They were to the fifth culture what the bark, which is woody and hardened, is to the juicy stem. Thus, the two races that followed the original root race were incapable of development; they were, so to speak, overripe.

[ 8 ] You can still see remnants of these old, overripe races today, especially in the Chinese people. The Chinese people are characterized by the fact that they did not join what was revealed in the fifth race, the root race. At that time, when the etheric body entered the physical body, it was when human beings received the first inclination to say “I.” They had missed this period. They had, however, developed the high culture that is well known, but it was not capable of further development. The fifth Atlantean race sent its culture bearers everywhere, who created new, ever more perfect and growing folk cultures. Yes, everything grows, from the ancient Indian culture to our own. The sixth and seventh races of Atlantis had become hardened and had therefore reached a stationary state. As I said, Chinese culture is a remnant of this. It cannot break out of itself. It had inherited a wonderful ancient Atlantean heritage in ancient Chinese culture, but it could not go beyond its peak. Nothing remains unaffected by other things. You can look at ancient Chinese literature: it has been influenced from all sides, but its basic character is clearly Atlantean. This inward-looking attitude, this inventiveness and stubbornness, never able to go beyond a certain level, all stems from the character of Atlantis.

[ 9 ] Just as it was with the fifth race, which produced those capable of education, and with the sixth and seventh, which fell into decline, so it will be in our time. Now we still live with all our longing for the sixth culture, for what must be described as arising from the spiritual marriage between the West and the East. The sixth cultural stage will be the foundation for what will emerge as new cultures after the great war of all against all, just as our cultures emerged after the Atlantean era. In contrast, the seventh cultural stage will be represented by the lukewarm. This seventh stage will carry over into the new era just as the sixth and seventh races of the Atlantean era carried over into our era as hardened and rigid races. After the war of all against all, there will be two currents among human beings: on the one hand, those from Philadelphia with the principle of progress, inner freedom, and brotherly love, a small group composed of all tribes and nations; and on the other hand, the great mass of those who will be lukewarm, the remnants of those who are now lukewarm, the current of Laodicea. And after the great war of all against all, it will be a matter of gradually bringing the evil current over to the good through the good race, through the good current. This will be one of the main tasks after the great war of all against all: to save what can be saved from those who, after the great war, will have only the desire to fight one another, to live out their egoism to the utmost. Within the sphere of occultism, provision is always made in the world for all such things.

[ 10 ] Do not regard it as a harshness of the plan of creation, not as something about which one can argue with the plan of creation, that humanity will be divided into those who stand on the right and those who stand on the left. Rather, regard it as something that is supremely wise in the plan of creation. For consider that it is precisely because evil separates itself from good that good will gain its main strength in good, for after the great war of all against all, good will have to make every possible effort to draw the evil back over to its side during the period when this is still possible. This will not be an educational task as educational tasks are today, but occult forces will be at work, for in this next great period, human beings will know how to set occult forces in motion. The good will have the task of working on their brothers and sisters of the evil current. And all this is being prepared in the occult world currents. But the deepest of all occult world currents is the least understood. The world current that is preparing this says the following to its disciples: People talk about good and evil, and they do not know that it is necessary in the world plan for evil to reach its peak so that those who must overcome this evil may use the power they gain in overcoming evil to bring about an even greater good. But the most select people must be prepared to live through the age of the great war of all against all, when they will be confronted by people who will have the signs of evil on their faces. They must be prepared for the fact that as much good power as possible must flow into humanity. It will still be possible for the bodies, which will have become somewhat softened after the great war of all against all, to be transformed by the converted souls, by the souls who will still be led over to the good during this last period. Much will be achieved by this. The good would not be such a great good if it did not grow in this way through the overcoming of evil. Love would not be so intense if it did not have to become such a great love in order to overcome even the ugliness in the faces of evil people. This is being prepared in advance, and the disciples are told: Therefore, you must not believe that evil is not part of the Creator's plan. It is part of it, for through it the great good will one day come about.

[ 11 ] Those who are prepared in their souls by such teachings so that they may one day solve this great educational task are the disciples of that spiritual movement called Manichaeism. Manichaeism is usually misunderstood. Wherever you hear or read anything about it, you hear phraseological speech. It is said that the Manichaeans believed that from the beginning of the world there were two principles, good and evil. This is not so, but rather it is the teaching that has just been explained to you. Such a doctrine and its implementation for the future, and the disciples who are instructed in such a way that they can fulfill such a task in future incarnations, is what is meant by the name Manichaeism. Manes is that high individuality that is incarnated on earth again and again, who is the guiding spirit of those who are there to convert evil. When we speak of the great leaders of humanity, we must also remember this individuality that has set itself this task. Even though this principle of Manes has had to recede into the background in the present, because there is little understanding of spiritualism, this wonderfully glorious Manichean principle will win more and more disciples the more we move toward an understanding of spiritual life.

[ 12 ] Thus you see how the present humanity will live over into the new, later time beyond the war of all against all, just as that ancestral race of Atlanteans lived over into our time and founded our culture. In seven successive stages, humanity will unfold after the great war of all against all. And we have already seen how what is said about the unsealing of the seven seals in the Apocalypse of John indicates to us the character of the successive seven root cultures, the seven cultural stages after the great war. Then, when this culture, which today's human beings can only see as initiates in the astral world and in its symbolism, has come to an end, a new period will begin for our Earth's development, in which new forms will appear. And this new period, which will follow the one just described, is symbolized for us in the Apocalypse of John by the seven trumpet blasts. Just as the culture after the great war of all against all is characterized by the seven seals, because the seer today can only see it from the astral world, so the cultural stage that follows it is characterized by the trumpet blasts, because human beings can only perceive it from the actual spiritual world, where the sounds of the spheres resound. Just as man perceives the world in images and symbols on the astral plane, so he perceives the world in the inspiring music of the spheres in Devachan, and in this Devachan lies, so to speak, the summit of what will be revealed following the great war of all against all.

[ 13 ] So, if we represent this once again, in the diagram opposite, we have our seven cultural stages in the line a-b, with the ancient Indian culture as the first, the ancient Persian as the second, the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian-Jewish as the third, the Greek-Latin as the fourth, and our own as the fifth cultural stage of the post-Atlantean era. Line IV would be the Atlantean period, a the great flood that brought it to an end, and b the great war of all against all. This is followed by a culture of seven stages (VI), represented by the seven seals, and then a culture of seven stages, represented by the seven trumpets. This is where the limit of our physical Earth's development lies.

[ 14 ] Now, the Atlantean culture, the culture that preceded ours, was also preceded by cultural stages. For ours, which follows the Atlantean, is already the fifth cultural stage on our Earth. It is preceded by four cultural stages. However, we can hardly call the first one a cultural stage. Everything is still finely ethereal and spiritual, everything is still such that, if it had continued to develop in this way, it would not have become visible to the sense organs of our kind at all. The first stage of culture developed when the sun had not yet moved away from the earth. Conditions were completely different then; one cannot speak of anything that resembled our things. Then follows a period characterized by the sun moving away, then one characterized by the moon leaving the earth. This is the third stage, which we call the ancient Lemurian period. This is when the present human being appeared on our Earth in its very earliest beginnings, which I have indicated to you were such grotesque bodily forms that you would be shocked if you were to hear them described. This Lemurian epoch was followed by the Atlantean and finally our own.

[ 15 ] So you see that we have seven cultural stages on our Earth, seven periods of development of the Earth. We look back on two of them as completely unlike our time, on a third as having taken place partly in a place between present-day Africa and present-day Asia and Australia, in ancient Lemuria. There was again a small group among the people of that time, which included the most advanced. This group was the very last of the races. So, the very last of the Lemurian races had a small group that was able to emigrate and later founded the seven races of the Atlanteans. The last of the Lemurian races founded the Atlantean races. The fifth of the Atlantean races founded our culture. The sixth of the unholy cultures will found the future culture after the great war of all against all, and the very last of these cultures will have to found the one that is indicated by the seven trumpets.

[ 16 ] And after this culture, what will happen? Our Earth will have reached the end of its physical development. All things and beings on our Earth will have changed. For if we must say that in the sixth period of time, people will bear their good and evil on their faces, then we must say all the more of the seventh period that human beings in their form and all beings in their form will be an expression of good and evil to a much higher degree than in the sixth period. Everything that is matter will bear the stamp of the spirit. Nothing, nothing in this seventh period will be such that it can be concealed in any way. Even for the inhabitants of the sixth period, it is not possible to conceal anything from those who have the eyes to see. The evil will express evil, the good will express good. But in the seventh period, it will not even be possible to conceal what is in the soul through language. The thought will no longer be a silent thought that can be hidden. When the soul thinks, it will also let the thought sound outward. It will then be as this thought already is today for the initiated. For the initiated, the thought sounds today in the Devachan. But this Devachan will have descended into the physical world, just as the astral world will have descended into the physical world in the sixth period. Today, the sixth period can already be found in the astral world, the seventh in the heavenly world. The sixth period is the descended astral world, that is, the images, expressions, and revelations of it. The seventh will be the descended heavenly world, the expression of the same. And then the Earth will have reached the goal of its physical development.

[ 17 ] Then the earth will be transformed into an astral heavenly body. Everything that exists on earth as a being will be transformed into an astral heavenly body. The physical substance disappears as physical substance; it passes into the spirit, into the astral substance, in that part which has found the possibility of becoming spiritual. So you see: all those beings on earth who have found the possibility of expressing the good, the noble, the intellectual, the beautiful in their outer material form, which will show in their faces an imprint of Christ Jesus, which will show in their words an expression of Christ Jesus, which will sound as sounding thoughts, all of these will have the power to dissolve what they have in themselves of physical matter, as lukewarm water dissolves salt. Everything physical will pass over into an astral world sphere. But that which has not yet reached the point of being an expression of the noble, beautiful, intellectual, and good in the material, in the physical, will not have the power to dissolve matter. For that, matter will remain, it will harden into matter, it will retain its material form. At this point in the Earth's development, an ascent into the spiritual realm will take place with pure beings who will live in this astral realm and who will separate from themselves to form another material sphere, a sphere that will contain the beings who are unsuitable for ascension because they are unable to dissolve matter.

[ 18 ] Thus our Earth will live toward its future. Thus it will become increasingly refined in its matter, as the soul gradually refines this matter from within until it receives the power to dissolve it. Then the time will come when the indissoluble will be driven out into a special sphere. Seven periods will pass while that which has hardened in matter is being driven out, and the force that drives it out will be the opposite of the force that has driven the good beings upward. What will cause matter to dissolve? It is the power of love gained through the Christ principle. Beings become capable of dissolving matter by taking love into their souls. The warmer the soul becomes through love, the more intensely it can act on matter. It will spiritualize the whole earth, astralize it, and transform it into an astral sphere. But just as love dissolves matter like lukewarm water dissolves salt, so the opposite of love will press down, again through seven stages, everything that has not become capable of fulfilling this earthly mission.

[ 19 ] The opposite of divine love is called divine wrath. That is the technical term. Just as this love has been imprinted in the course of the fourth stage of human culture, just as it is becoming warmer and warmer through the last stages of our time, through the sixth and seventh, so on the other side grows that which hardens matter around itself: divine wrath. And this working of divine wrath, this expulsion of matter, is hinted at in the Apocalypse of John through the pouring out of the seven bowls of divine wrath. Imagine how the whole thing will be, figuratively speaking: the earth will become finer and finer in its matter, and human beings will also become more and more spiritual in their matter, and the coarsest parts will only be visible in the fine parts, like shells, such as those shed by reptiles or snails. Thus, the hard parts will become more and more attached to the refining matter. In the last period, the period of the trumpet blasts, you would already see with clairvoyant eyes how human beings consist of fine bodies, of spiritualized bodies, and how those who have hardened themselves, who have preserved within themselves the material principle that today is the most important component of matter, will fall like husks into this material sphere, which will remain after this period, which is indicated by the trumpet sounds.

[ 20 ] This is what the Apocalypse of John gives us as prophecy. And it is important that we empathize with this prophecy with our soul so that it has a fiery effect on our will. For what will man have made of himself when this sixth and seventh period are over? What will man have made of his body? When we look at the human body now, it is not yet the expression of the inner soul. But more and more, the body will become an expression of what the soul experiences within itself. Through this, the outer physical body becomes an expression of goodness, in that human beings take in the highest message, the highest teaching that exists on this earth, and this highest of teachings is the message of Christ Jesus on earth. The highest thing that can be given to us is the message of Christ Jesus. We must take it in, and not just with our minds. We must take it into our innermost being, just as we take food into our physical body. And as humanity develops through this stage of culture, it will take more and more of the good news into its inner being, and it will have to regard the acceptance of the message of love as the result of the Earth mission. The Gospels, the “Book,” contain the power of love, all the power of love. And the seer can say nothing else than: I see in my mind's eye a time when what is in the Gospels will no longer be in a book, but will be absorbed by human beings themselves.

[ 21 ] Our earthly development is based on two things. Our earth was preceded by what we call the cosmos of wisdom, and that was preceded by what we call—the word does not mean much, but we must use it because it has become customary—the cosmos of strength, of power. Wisdom and strength are what the earth has inherited from earlier stages of development, from the old moon and the old sun. We will see how this is also expressed in our Earth's development by the fact that we name the first half of Earth's development after the representative of the sun's power, Mars. For now we need only consider that within our Earth's development we have in Mars that which implanted iron into the Earth. We see in Mars the bringer of strength. And in that which dominates the second half of Earth's development, we have the representative of the old lunar development, Mercury, which incorporates into the Earth the old inheritance of the Moon, wisdom. Thus, Earth's development is composed of the Mars and Mercury developments. It has inherited two strong, powerful forces. What it has inherited from the cosmos of strength is expressed in Mars, and what it has inherited from the cosmos of wisdom is expressed in Mercury. The Earth itself is to bring about love through its mission. This love is to reveal itself gloriously as the result of Earth's development. This is a very profound thought of the apocalyptic writer. This is the profound thought that also ties in with the entire rest of Earth's development. (See the fourth seal image.)

[ 22 ] Once again, let us go back with me to the earliest Atlantean time, to the time when, as we have said, the air was still mixed with water. Man was still built for water. It was only in the middle of Atlantis that he was ready to tear himself away from the water and set foot on solid ground. Until the time when the earth was in the middle of its development, we must regard water as the vehicle of human development, just as we later regard solid earth. Solid earth became the scene of human life only late in the process, so to speak. It is only half true to speak of the whole of Atlantis as a dry land. In many respects it was not covered by the sea, but by something intermediate, like air densely filled with water, and this water-air belonged to the element in which man lived. Only later did he become capable of living in the open air and standing on solid ground. This is relatively recent. So when we look at the development of the Earth, we can say symbolically: on one side we have earth and on the other side we have water. That is the earlier time. And out of the water emerges one of the forces until the first half of the development, and out of the earth emerges the other of the forces. Until the middle of the fourth period, we speak of the Mars forces, of the forces that, so to speak, the water gives, and we speak of the Mercury forces in the later time, when the solid earth provides the supporting forces. This fits in well with the idea that human beings are supported in their entire earthly mission by two pillars, the two pillars that you saw symbolically in the hall at the Munich Congress. These two pillars represent the two parts of the earthly mission, the two legacies that human beings have received from earlier times. And above them is symbolized that which is to be achieved through the earth itself: love, which lives and reveals itself gloriously, supported by these inheritances.

[ 23 ] This is how the apocalyptic writer truly describes it as it appears to the human being who ascends into spiritual regions. Therefore, what we encounter when we look beyond the earth, what we encounter at the moment when the earth's substance dissolves its matter into the spiritual, is symbolically indicated by what we see in the fourth seal. Of course, it must now appear reversed, because it represents the future. We see the two forces which the earth has inherited from the cosmos of wisdom and strength, and everything that appears to us as the fulfillment of the earth's mission appears as the power of love that human beings develop, and the whole appears to us as the personification of the future human being, so that the human being of the future, supported by these two forces, permeated by this power of love, symbolically confronts us here. The message of love, the book he has before him, is a book that not only has an effect from the outside, but which he is to devour. There we see before us the powerful image that appears to us here. “And I saw another angel” — that is, a being who is depicted in this way because he already stands above the present human being — ‘coming down from the spiritual spheres,’ as the seer sees him, ”clothed with a cloud, and his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.” These are the two forces we have spoken of, which the earth has received as its inheritance. “And he had a little book open in his hand; and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot upon the earth.” And John said to the angel, “Give me the little book.” “And he said to me, ‘Take it and eat it; and it will be bitter in your stomach, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.’ And I took the little book from the angel's hand and ate it; and it was sweet in my mouth like honey.”

[ 24 ] Here we have what must be told us as the sensation that arises in the seer when he directs his gaze to the point where the earth passes from the physical-material into the astral-spiritual, where the earth mission is accomplished. And when the seer sees this, he learns what is really connected with this message of love that has been brought in as an impulse on the fourth cultural stage: he learns already in his present life, as the apocalyptic writer learned, what bliss is and what can be held before humanity as bliss. But he learns it in his present body; for even if a being, however high, wanted to live with human beings, it would have to incarnate itself in flesh. And in some respects, it is precisely because the present body offers the spirit the opportunity to ascend to higher realms that it also offers the opportunity to suffer. So while the soul of the seer, as described by the apocalyptic writer, can ascend to spiritual regions to receive the gospel of love and can feel bliss as sweet as honey in the spirit, the seer still lives in a present body, and accordingly he must express that the ascent in the present body in many respects brings about the opposite of that bliss. He expresses this by saying that the little book, even though it was sweet as honey when he swallowed it, causes him fierce pains in his belly. But this is only a small reflection of what it means to be “crucified in the body.” The higher the spirit rises, the more difficult it becomes for it to dwell in the body. And that is the symbolic expression of these pains: “to be crucified in the body.”

[ 25 ] We have thus sketched what will happen within our earth's evolution, what lies ahead for human beings in the earth's evolution. We have come to the point where human beings are being transformed, transformed into the astral, where the best parts of the earth will disappear as physical earth and pass into the spiritual, where only something like a separate part will fall into the abyss through divine wrath. And we will see that even then the last step has not yet been climbed, from which there would be no salvation, although that which asserts itself in the abyss is marked by the most terrible symbols: by the seven-headed and ten-horned beast and by the two-horned beast.