The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Eight days ago, we began by presenting some ideas for understanding the language of John: how to read the Apocalypse, what lies behind some of its mysterious expressions, for example, behind the lamb as the beast with seven eyes and seven horns. Then we tried to explain the beast with two horns and the number 666 as an example of how we must immerse ourselves in this mysterious book. Today we want to once again focus on the meaning of this book.

[ 2 ] The documents of the New Testament are initiation documents. Using individual parables as examples, we have seen what a profound meaning they contain. All the parables have shown us that the deepest possible meaning of world development is expressed in pictorial form in the Gospels. Someone might ask why there are contradictions in the individual Gospels, why they are not the same. In my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, I have already explained what is necessary in this regard. The Gospels are not documents of the biography of Jesus Christ, but documents of initiation. The Apocalypse, however, is the deepest document. Augustine used the following words: What we now call the “Christian religion” is the ancient true religion. What was the true religion is now called the Christian religion.

[ 3 ] We understand this word when we consider the central statement of Christianity: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:29). Through Christianity, something entirely new has come into the world. The teachings are also found in other religious systems. But in the circles that understood what “Christ” is, the main value was never placed on the content of the teachings. The content of the teachings can also be proven from other documents of earlier times; Christ is precisely what this individuality of humanity means. We can most easily understand this by taking a look at the ancient initiation centers.

[ 4 ] Until the time of Christ Jesus, only a few chosen ones were initiated. After severe trials, they were admitted to the teachings of the higher worlds, as they now stand in my book “Theosophy.” One had to wait a long time before being introduced to the higher degrees of vision. Only the most initiated knew the tradition of the initiation process. If someone wanted to become a disciple, they had to take this first step, then this second step, and so on. The initiation was completed when the disciple had gone through the preparatory stages and was led up by the wise man into the mysteries themselves. This happened in a kind of state of consciousness called “ecstasy,” in a state of being outside the physical body. It was associated with a dulling of consciousness, but at the same time with a vision of the spiritual worlds. Through inner training brought about by will impulses, meditation, and purification of the passions, the student was brought to the point where he could take the final step. Then, for three and a half days, the initiator put him into a state similar to the one we enter when we fall asleep in the evening. The external sensory impressions disappeared. In our case, nothing replaces the visual and auditory impressions that disappear in the evening, but a new world appeared to the initiate. He was surrounded by a new world, a world of astral light. Not the darkness, nothing of what modern man experiences during sleep, appeared there. The darkness was permeated by a spiritual light and beings who embody themselves within the spiritual light. These beings became visible in the astral light. Then, after some time, the astral world, flooded with light, began to resound in the harmony of the spheres. What could previously only be seen began to be heard; it was pure spiritual music. Outer music is only a shadowy reflection of the sounds of the spheres, which are heard by the seer who also perceives the inner being of spiritual entities. When we enter a room and there are people there who begin to speak, they reveal their inner selves to us. It is the same in spiritual worlds. First the beings become visible, then the inner being of the beings speaks to us. This is the harmony of the spheres.

[ 5 ] Then, when the initiate was brought back to physical vision, he felt completely transformed, like a new person. Everyone who returned in this way uttered a certain phrase that was typical. It was: “My God, my God, how you have glorified me!” (cf. Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34).

[ 6 ] Thus he returned, a herald of the spiritual world from his own experience, from his own adventures. He was then regarded as a messenger from the spiritual worlds. What they had experienced until they entered the spiritual worlds was precisely prescribed, step by step.

[ 7 ] Even if the initiation rites were not precisely written down, there were initiation canons in which all the steps were prescribed. Whether according to the Egyptian Hermetic teachings, the Persian school, the Greek mysteries, the Druid or Drotten mysteries, everywhere there were typical, traditional rules about what had to be experienced by those who wanted to become initiates: namely, they had to experience that life in the spirit will conquer death. These initiation books contained what had to be gone through.

[ 8 ] Wherever the lives of the great apostles of religion and worldview are described, typical, similar traits always appear. The lives of Orpheus, Pythagoras, Hermes, and Buddha have many common traits that are important in all great religious heroes. Where does this come from? External researchers have believed that one borrowed from the other. But that was not the case. However, all these typical religious heroes had gone through these stages up to the highest stage of initiation. In ancient times, there were no biographies that took the outer life into account. The further back we go in time, the less value we find placed on the outer. In the case of the greatest heroes of humanity, nothing was said at all about what they experienced outwardly on the physical plane. Their lives were entirely devoted to initiation. When their initiation was recounted, their lives were recounted. The main thing about a Hermes or a Buddha was what he experienced up to the point of initiation. Since the stages of initiation were similar everywhere, it was necessary to obtain a spiritual description of the lives of the great initiates.

[ 9 ] What had previously only been experienced in secret had become historical fact in Christianity. Hermes had lived through what could be described about him in the inner mysteries, in places hidden from the profane gaze.

[ 10 ] In Christianity, what had previously taken place in the mystery centers was now experienced for the first time as an external physical event. The life of Christ is the same life that had been experienced by all the initiates when they first lifted their etheric bodies out of their physical bodies. Everything that was physically experienced by Christ Jesus on the physical plane, they had experienced in the etheric. The last words were also these: “My God, my God, how have you glorified me!” They had previously experienced in the etheric body what Christ Jesus now experienced in the physical body. Thus it came about that the prophecies of the prophets were fulfilled. This unique event forms the greatest turning point in our world history and divides it into two parts.

[ 11 ] The evangelists did not write an external biography, but took the existing canonical initiation books. All four Gospels are to be regarded as initiation writings from four different perspectives. But since the initiation is described in the same way everywhere, the four Gospels agree on the most important points. We can describe the life of the initiate if we regard it as a life dedicated to initiation. It would have seemed unholy to the evangelists to give an external historical biography of Christ Jesus. They had to take the building blocks for their writings from the mystery books themselves. In this way, what the prophets had foretold was fulfilled to a certain extent.

[ 12 ] The Apocalypse represents, in a certain sense, a new kind of initiation, showing how the ancient mysteries were transformed into the Christian ones. When we look back at the ancient mysteries, we see in them a more or less uniform feature. It consisted in the following: whether we go to Egypt, Persia, or India, whether we delve into the Orphic or Eleusinian mysteries, we find agreement in one feature: a prophetic reference to One who is to come. This trait was also present in the Nordic European mysteries: there was an ancient initiate who was called “Sig.” The Drotten mysteries in Russia and Scandinavia and the Druid mysteries in Germania all originated from an initiate named Sig, who was the founder of the Nordic mysteries. What happened in the mysteries has been preserved in the various myths and legends of the German people and other Germanic peoples. The myths and legends are pictorial representations of what was experienced. The Siegfried saga most clearly reveals the trait that points toward an end. It is expressed, mythologized, in the Twilight of the Gods. This is the trait found in all Nordic mysteries.

[ 13 ] In all mysticism, the image of the feminine was used for the soul, which Goethe also uses in the “Chorus mysticus.” It is the eternal in man, the divine soul, that draws man upward. Just as in ancient Egypt and Persia, initiation was described as the union of the soul with the spiritual, so it was also described here in the North. Here in the North, it was best understood that man proves himself on the battlefield. Those who were respected in the North were honored as warriors who fell on the battlefield; they were the ones who entered eternal life, while the others died a straw death. The fallen warriors were received by the Valkyries, their own souls; union with the Valkyrie was union with the eternal. Now, it is said that Siegfried had already united with the Valkyrie here on earth; this indicates that he was an initiate. The meaning of the story that Siegfried experienced union with the Valkyrie already on earth is that he was an initiate. This legend tells us something about the death of Siegfried. When one experienced initiation in the ancient mysteries, one was told: We can bring you to a certain point... only another can bring you further — this other is Christ Jesus —; everything we can give you will be obscured when he comes who brings the new initiation. Siegfried is vulnerable to Hagen on his back because what will be there in that place when the one who will replace the old initiation comes has not yet been placed there. This place will one day be made invulnerable when the cross has been placed there. This is how the Nordic mysteries pointed to Christ Jesus.

[ 14 ] In all ancient mysteries, people looked to the one who was to come, who would live on the physical plane to establish a new world order. What was to happen through the impulses he gave is the new initiation. We find a description of this in the Apocalypse. It tells how the initiation will take place until Christ Jesus returns in a new form. The Apocalypse is a reference to the time when the organ for receiving Christ will have been developed. The time until the return of Christ Jesus is described in the Apocalypse. We understand the individual words when we put ourselves in the mindset of someone who has experienced such an initiation. Let us remember here the words of Christ—if we understand them, we will also understand the Apocalypse—the words: “Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) — Christ directs his gaze from the past to the present, because for him there is an eternal present.

[ 15 ] If we want to understand what this means, we need only remember the fourfold human being. It consists of four members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. When the I shines forth in the course of evolution, the astral body and the etheric body change, and finally the physical body also changes: this I is there for eternity; it is born out of the womb of higher spirituality. Whether we look into the past or into the future, this I is the eternal. If we consider the individual human being, we may ask ourselves: What changes has his ego undergone? If we look back to the great Atlantean flood, and then further back, we do not find the ego in a body like the one we have now; at that time, it was in a state in which we were not yet able to think as well as we do now. When we look into the future, we find the I in ever more perfect bodies, which we cannot yet imagine in their perfection through our thinking. We cannot now form any idea of the perfection of thinking, the purity of feeling, and so on in future bodies. Those who are initiated must use the form of the human being as it is at the present time. Even Christ had to use the form that was customary at that time; but when we look deeper behind it, we see in him a stage of development that humanity will only reach in the distant future. Christ Jesus was the firstborn among those who can overcome death.

[ 16 ] Let us compare the two types of development. Now man is born, goes through a life cycle, dies, passes through an astral state, through Devachan, and is then reborn. If we go back to the beings that existed before the middle of the Lemurian period, they are beings that do not die and are not reborn. They continually change their shells, as we do between physical birth and physical death. Then a certain revolution takes place. The spiritual and physical life alternate in the present human being. With the group souls of animals, it is so that they shed the individual animals, but they themselves do not perish.

[ 17 ] When we try to imagine the highest being, the one who was as highly developed in the beginning as the others will be at the end of their development, we have the image of Christ: He was the I that was already as perfect in the beginning as man will be at the end. “Grace be with you, and peace from him who is, and who was, and who is to come...” (Rev. 1:4) He is the first and the last.

[ 18 ] This is how the one who gives the revelation to John is described. It is a Christian book; this is proven by the passage that says: “...and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. He loved us and washed us from our sins with his blood, and made us kings and priests to God and his Father, to him be glory and power forever and ever! Amen.” (Rev. 1:5-6)

[ 19 ] Christianity represents the highest possible individualization of man, the freedom of man as an individual. At the beginning of the human race, we see small communities bound together by blood ties. Those who share the same blood love one another. Then Jesus Christ comes and extends all communities of people to the whole of humanity. All folk religions are overcome by him. Christianity is a world religion. In it there are only human beings; Christianity knows only human beings. Christianity could never speak of a community of religions, but only of a community of human beings. A time began when the secret mysteries became accessible to all through the mystery of Golgotha, which is placed at the center of the world. All those who are there as chosen priests and kings are gradually ceasing to exist. Reference is made to a final state in which everyone is a priest and a king, to a state that sweeps away all differences and makes people equal to one another. That is why the Apocalypse says: “... and has made us kings and priests before God and his Father...” (Rev. 1:6)

[ 20 ] The book represents a real initiation, an ascent, initially through learning on the physical plane. This stage is represented by the seven letters to the seven churches. The seven letters represent what must first be learned. Then follows a number of images that lead us to the astral plane. Then we see groups of beings transforming themselves in the astral light: “...and he who sat there was like a jasper stone, and a rainbow was around the throne, like an emerald stone.” (Rev. 4:3) - “And before the throne there was a sea of glass, like crystal...” (Rev. 4:6) The transparency indicates the nature of astral light. In astral light, one sees through objects; they appear glassy. The entire astral world is like a sea of glass.

[ 21 ] Then follow the four beasts, which represent the human group souls. They were full of eyes, both inside and out, and did not rest day or night...: because there is constant movement in the astral world and because the astral eyes are everywhere and everything is transparent to them, both inside and around them.

[ 22 ] We see, then, how first the secrets of the physical plane are described, and then the astral imaginations emerge from the closed book. They appear to us in images.

[ 23 ] When the seer has perceived the spiritual beings in the astral light for a while, they begin to sound. When the sixth seal is opened, this is described in the sounding of the trumpets. This is the devachanic state: the seer becomes clairaudient, his clairaudient ear is opened.

[ 24 ] Then follows the stage where the seer expands his consciousness over the whole world. This is indicated by the devouring of the book. It expresses the ascent into the region of the higher spiritual worlds.