The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First lecture

[ 1 ] We have often said that theosophy should not be regarded as something new. Other, external currents of knowledge often want to be something new; but theosophy wants and should be the expression appropriate to our time for the striving for wisdom that has existed throughout the ages. Theosophy sees in all temporal revelations different forms of a primordial wisdom that flows through all ages.

[ 2 ] The Apocalypse, which is one of the oldest documents of Christianity, has been explained in various ways throughout the Christian era, and these various explanations have always borne the character of the subjective views of the different epochs. On the whole, however, if we cast a quick glance over the centuries of Christian development, we can already see in earlier times the germinating materialistic sense approaching this book. We find that the mistake was soon made of seeing in the images of the Apocalypse certain events in the development of the earth and of humanity, such as the descent of the promised Messiah into the world or even the establishment of a heavenly kingdom on this world in the physical sense. When the following ages fulfilled and revealed nothing of all this, people in various parts of the West believed that they had been mistaken in their calculation of time and postponed the fulfillment of the prophecy further and further. Around the 12th and 13th centuries, people began again to interpret the Apocalypse more inwardly. Thus, at that time, people began to see more and more the kingdom of the Antichrist in the externalization of Christianity. The Roman Church itself became for many the expression of this kingdom of the Antichrist; the Roman Church, on the other hand, saw the same thing in Protestantism.

[ 3 ] In more recent times, which are so completely filled with materialistic thinking, it was said that the writer of Revelation could not possibly have known anything about the future, but that he was describing events that had already taken place. Thus, it was believed that in the beast with two horns he saw a great enemy of Christianity, such as Nero. When there is further talk of earthquakes, swarms of locusts, and so on, it is easy to prove that such things happened in those regions at that time. Now, this is called “objective research,” and yet it is completely biased by subjective opinion.

[ 4 ] Theosophy should now become an instrument for us to understand the Apocalypse spiritually again and thereby penetrate its meaning. Now one might think that this explanation by theosophy is also subjectively colored like all other explanations. In a certain sense it is, but there is a difference between it and the other explanations. The external historians want to be objective, but they can only be subjective. We, however, want to explain subjectively in the sense that we are conscious, in all modesty, that the wisdom of the world is always in harmony with progressive development, with the progress of time. If we do what is right for our time, this will be a force that will continue to have an effect in the future. Theosophy must not become dogmatic. What we teach today as Theosophy will not change in its essence, but only in its forms. When the souls of today are reborn, they will be just as ready in future times to take on other, higher, future forms of spiritual life. Our explanation of the Apocalypse will become outdated; future times will go beyond it. But the Apocalypse itself will not become outdated. It is far greater than our explanations and will find even deeper, even higher explanations.

[ 5 ] Let us place before our souls the first lines of the Revelation as they truly are. We are told that the mystery of Jesus Christ is given to us in signs, that these signs are to be interpreted, and that the writer attempts to interpret as much of the signs as possible according to his abilities. The Apocalypse was written with a different intention than the Gospel of John. It is a personal experience when the writer tells us that he is describing the revelation of Jesus Christ, the appearance of Christ. It is therefore something similar to Paul's experience before Damascus, the mystery of Paul. Paul is the one who did the most to proclaim and spread Christianity, even though he was not one of the disciples who witnessed the events in Palestine or their tragic outcome: the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. We know that the Gospels describe how all this entered the hearts of the people of that time. Paul had also heard about everything that is written in the Gospels. Paul knew the events in Palestine well, and yet he could not have imagined that the man who died on the cross was the promised Savior or Messiah. The Messiah cannot end up like a common criminal, Paul said to himself. It is difficult to understand Paul unless one takes a deeper look into his soul and into what lived in him as a Jewish initiate. He knew that the Redeemer, the Messiah, had foretold himself in the burning bush, in the fire on Mount Sinai. Christ Jesus refers to this when he says: “But if you do not believe his” — Moses' — “writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:47) Christ is saying that he previously announced himself through external means, through the power of the elements, but that he then revealed himself through his life, suffering, and dwelling in the human body, descending, so to speak, from the fire of Sinai. Paul, the Jewish initiate, knew the Christ who had been foretold, for behind the mystery of Moses lies the following: in the time of the Old Testament and in the ancient Jewish secret teachings, as in all times, there were mysteries and initiates. Let us adhere to the principle that initiation must also adapt to the circumstances of the time. If we consider it in this light, we must begin by imagining human beings as presented by theosophy or spiritual science: as four-membered beings, endowed with the physical body, which humans share with minerals; with the etheric body, which they share with the plant kingdom; with the astral body, which the animal kingdom also has; and finally with the I or ego. As human beings stand before us, they consist of these four members. During the day they are connected with each other, but during the night the ego and the astral body are in the spiritual world. Thus, modern human beings perceive nothing during the night. If human beings now develop themselves to a higher spiritual level of perception, they must apply certain methods of inner development. Those who wish to ascend to the higher worlds must allow meditation and concentration to work on their souls and immerse themselves in certain things, one of which, among hundreds, is the Rosicrucians.

[ 6 ] When modern human beings sleep, everything they experience during the day cannot make such a strong impression on their astral body that it continues to have an effect during the night. When modern normal human beings fall asleep in the evening, their daytime life is as if it had been erased. But it's different for the initiation student, even if they don't notice anything about the transformation of their astral body for a long time. When they start practicing meditation and let the exercises prescribed in occult schools work on them, the clairvoyant sees completely different currents, different forms and organs in the meditator, whereas in ordinary people there is something disorganized and chaotic. This shows itself as the effect of the exercises, even if the student himself does not notice it for a long time. His astral body becomes a different being, even if the meditation is still very short. Previously, the astral body was chaotic, and everything the person did was drowned out by the impressions of the day. Only the rules of occult training provide something that drowns out all everyday impressions. This is why this transformation of the soul was called purification or catharsis. The student becomes purified, while in ordinary people the astral body continues to be chaotic and disordered.

[ 7 ] Now, however, the teacher must also make the student aware of what the spiritual world around him is. In order for what happened in the astral body to be transmitted to the etheric body, the following was done with the student in earlier times. When the student was ready, when he had reached the level of initiation, so to speak, he had to spend some time, usually three and a half days, lying down, during which the initiator brought him into a state of complete lethargy or death. The etheric body was then lifted out, and the astral body pressed everything it had prepared through the occult exercises into the etheric body. Otherwise, the physical body is an obstacle to bringing what a person experiences in the spiritual world into their consciousness. At this moment, when the initiator removed the etheric body from the physical body, enlightenment occurred and the enlightened person now experienced the spiritual world, and after three and a half days he was an initiate who could tell of the spiritual worlds.

[ 8 ] We can find the same process in the mysteries of various peoples. But for the initiates of the Old Testament, the initiation was different, for they experienced once again what Moses had experienced on Mount Sinai. Thus they could tell the people that the Messiah would appear, that the Messiah would come forth from their own people, that he would embody in his own flesh the principles of the entire evolution of humanity. This was the highest moment of initiation, when the enlightened Hebrew was allowed to experience that Christ would arise in the future. Paul knew all this as a Jewish initiate; nevertheless, before the event at Damascus, he could never believe that the one who died on the cross was the same person.

[ 9 ] Now Paul tells us that he was born prematurely, that is, he was an initiate by grace. He emphasizes that he did not receive his initiation through gradual training; but he is nevertheless closer to the spiritual world than those people who have descended deeper into matter. Thus he was able to experience what the “crown of life,” the last act in the Old Testament initiation, was: the coronation through the appearance of Christ. In a blaze of light, he saw what the Old Testament initiates had always experienced; what they had experienced as a future event, he now saw as an apparition that told him that this being was the same as the one who had lived and died in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. He now knew: the Messiah, the Christ, is already here.

[ 10 ] That Christ was to come was the greatest event of the ancient initiation. That He had died and yet lived, connected with earthly existence and continuing to work in human evolution, we see in all of Paul's letters. He saw this event as something that had already become present.

[ 11 ] Let us now consider all other initiations that were not ancient Hebrew or Christian. There it was known that in ancient Atlantean times, human beings had a form that was completely different from today's. The etheric body is the formative element of the physical body; through initiation, one could always see what lay at the foundation of the physical body as the etheric body. In the spiritual world, one had to renounce the image of the physical human body; one saw only the etheric body of the human being.

[ 12 ] In ancient Hebrew initiation, however, the physical human being was always seen as crowned with spiritualization and transported into the spiritual world. And Christ was understood as such a human being, as the first real human form that would ever be seen from the physical world into the spiritual world. Thus, in the Hebrew initiation, it was seen how in the distant future, through the “Son of Man,” the Christ, the physical form would be sanctified and purified. That is why Paul knew that what appeared to him as a human form before Damascus could be none other than Christ.

[ 13 ] The apocalyptic writer describes the same thing when he speaks of the “Son of Man.” He calls the seven churches the “seven stars” and the “Son of Man” the spiritualized, purified form in the physical body, not only in the etheric body, but the physical image of man transfigured and sanctified.

[ 14 ] Thus he presents to us the same thing that Paul saw before Damascus, and he explains what the impulse of this Christ event was to mean for the whole of humanity. He speaks to us of the seven churches in seven letters or epistles to the churches as the task of the seven post-Atlantean cultures; and he depicts the seven cultures that will follow our fifth main age in the seven seals; but he depicts the seven cultures of the seventh great main age in the seven trumpets.

[ 15 ] What is happening in today's culture can be seen in the physical world. But what is happening in the sixth great epoch can be experienced in advance in the images of the astral world. The seventh great epoch, on the other hand, can be experienced in the tones of the harmony of the spheres, in the devachanic world. It is experienced as a consequence of the Christ impulse.

[ 16 ] Thus, the Apocalypse is the representation of what the Christian initiate experienced: the description of Christian initiation, a picture of the experiences of someone who is initiated in the Christian sense and who has understood what came into the world through Christ.