The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] In the seven epistles or seven letters of the Apocalypse, the great main age of the post-Atlantean cultures is described, from the mighty Atlantean water catastrophe to the event known as the war of all against all.

[ 2 ] We will now look at some important passages from the letters to show the scope of the apocalyptic writer's overview. He comes from a time when many things were taken for granted that today may seem forced to the ordinary consciousness.

[ 3 ] The leading power of these cultural epochs is presented as holding the seven stars in its hand. Looking at the cultural epoch that regarded the outer world as Maya or illusion, we find the choir of the seven holy Rishis pointing up to Vishva Karman; the apocalyptic writer sees this as the being who holds the wisdom of the seven stars in his hand. Above all, the apocalyptic writer must look into the future. But since he is speaking to the descendants of the Atlantean cultural epochs, he speaks by referring to what lived in their memory. Thus he calls the Nicolaitans the representatives of black magic, who are excluded from this community, which has preserved the “first love.” He says that those who have always guarded themselves against becoming entangled in matter will develop into the future. Those who hear these admonitions will easily find their way back to the spiritual world.

[ 4 ] And now he speaks to the people of the second cultural epoch, the Zarathustra period, to the followers of the great Zarathustra, who have laid down their wisdom in the teachings of Hermes, which preserve for us an echo of the Zarathustra teachings. Everywhere it is pointed out that people should not develop a love of wandering and that they should learn to love physical and sensual life. They should look up to the sun as the expression of the sun spirit and to the stars as the bodies of the spirits that populate space. This was Zarathustra's concern: to show the material physical as an expression of the spirit. Thus, working the soil should be like working into the physical body of God, who stands behind the physical world and to whom the group of ancient Hebrews, who paralleled the original Persian culture, also looked up. They, too, had a Zarathustra service; this is indicated in Abraham's encounter with Melchizedek.

[ 5 ] We can see that remnants of this second cultural epoch have remained. We know how powerfully the great Zarathustra warned that people should work the earth, but not become slaves to matter. He called this power, which wants to make people believe that only physical matter exists, Ahriman, the Ahrimanic powers. Through him, the danger arises that people will grow too fond of physical life.

[ 6 ] In Hebrew wisdom, Ahriman was given two names joined together: Mephiz-Tophel, Mephistopheles, who calls out to Faust, who believes in the spirit and is on his way to the “mothers,” that is, to the spiritual world: “You are coming to nothing.” Like Faust, those who seek the spirit call back to the materialists: “In your nothingness I hope to find the whole.” Thus the apocalyptic must say: “Fear not... some of you will be woven by Tophel into the prison of matter” (cf. Rev. 2:10) — these are those who have become too closely interwoven with matter.

[ 7 ] We know how man must descend to earth through various incarnations; there he lived such lives in the sensual body. Every life on earth is always followed by one in the spiritual world. One day this ring of reincarnations will be closed. The profound meaning of incarnations, if we want to understand the second letter of the Apocalyptic writer correctly, is that human beings should attain self-consciousness, consciousness of the I.

[ 8 ] How much else did the soul see in ancient Indian times, what did the soul see later in other incarnations! Today we perceive things quite differently than in earlier incarnations. As the soul ascends from stage to stage, we gain the concept of what we call history. The thinking human being must say to himself: There is a history of life in the spiritual world. We usually describe life in Devachan and Kamaloka only in general terms, because we cannot describe life between death and a new birth in more detail in elementary theosophical teaching. And yet it is different each time, depending on the various cultural epochs, for the soul always had something different to experience. We can only describe this history in individual characteristic features.

[ 9 ] Let us look back to ancient Atlantis; there, during their life on earth, human beings were still within their spiritual-soul home. But in ancient India, human beings were only there during the night and when they passed through the gate of death. In this original home, it then became light and bright around them. To the same extent that human beings grew to love this physical world more and more, they lost their vision of the spiritual world; it became darker and darker for them.

[ 10 ] During Egyptian culture, humans were already so deeply rooted in the physical world that they had to be taught to live here in such a way that they could find Osiris over there; only in this way could the disciples still perceive the light between death and a new birth. The teaching of the “Book of the Dead” and the “Judges of the Dead” is to be understood in such a way that only through connection with the Osiris light, the Osiris impulse, could human beings hope that the spiritual world would be light and bright for them.

[ 11 ] Let us now look at the Greek-Latin period, when people who had become so fond of physical matter were able to create ideal figures in the physical world. That is why a person of that time could say, “Better to be a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shadows.” It is not merely a legend that people entered darkness when they descended into Hades. Humanity was in danger of losing itself in the sensual world. Therefore, the God who descended into this sensual world, into the realm of the senses, had to redeem it.

[ 12 ] Through the veil of sensuality, Zarathustra proclaims Ahura Mazdao. In the burning bush, Jehovah proclaimed himself to Moses through the veil of sensuality. Then the same power proclaimed itself as Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. And then something happened that has significance not only for the physical world, but also for the spiritual world.

[ 13 ] At the very moment when the blood flows from the wounds of the Redeemer, Christ appears in the underworld to the souls who stand between death and a new birth. Down in the material world, the blood flows, and as it flows, the realm of the dead begins to grow brighter and brighter. As our culture now rises toward a spiritual understanding of the fact of Golgotha, the brightness grows.

[ 14 ] History is everywhere, in the physical and in the spiritual; the entire post-Atlantean cultural development has the purpose of guiding humanity through the physical world, but keeping alive within it the belief in the spirit. It is always the same principle that manifests itself in successive cultural epochs.

[ 15 ] What the apocalyptic writer turns his vision to is that there are people who become one with matter, who use up the spiritual powers they possess as an ancient inheritance without joining themselves to Christ. Such a person would gradually lose the Devachan, the Kamaloka would last longer and longer, and the person would be bound, connected to the heaviness of the earth.

[ 16 ] Today, only black magicians do this; ordinary people cannot yet close themselves off from all wisdom. But the apocalyptic writer must put everything into perspective in order to point out that it is the impulse of Christ that saves them. The second epistle therefore says that this would be the “second death” — the “spiritual death,” as Paul calls it. Because we are referred to the second cultural epoch in the second letter, this admonition had to come; in the first cultural epoch, it did not yet need to be addressed to humanity.

[ 17 ] In the second letter, the leading spirit characterizes itself as “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” (Rev. 1:8) Certain symbols that always mean the same thing prevail in all occultism. In ancient Egyptian times, importance was attached to the formation of wisdom through the word; this is where science first appears in strictly defined words. The Indian world did not yet attach any importance to science, nor did the Zarathustra culture. That is why this human divine power of the word is symbolized everywhere by the “sword”; we find the sword everywhere as a symbol of the humanization of divine power. “And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: Thus says he who has the sharp two-edged sword.” (Rev. 2:12) But it is through knowledge that man is most tempted to black magic.

[ 18 ] In the Bible, man experiences the divine power flowing to him as “manna.” Let us now take the full characteristics of the period: Jehovah reveals himself on Sinai in the burning bush. “Then Yahweh said to Moses, 'I am who I am. And he said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: ‘I Am has sent me to you.’” (See Exodus 3:14) With this, man was told: I Am has sent me to you! Yahweh is the name of the ineffable God. The name “I” can never be heard by man from outside; it is the intimate name of God, which man was only allowed to receive in a sacred manner in his heart. It was written on the altar of the tabernacle. Therefore it is said: “To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on it...” (cf. Rev. 2:17) Those who received the I learned through inner spiritual power to recognize the name with the hidden manna. Through Christ revealing Himself in the human body on earth, people were to learn not to despise physical existence as the ascetics did; they were to learn that this earth has something to give them. Therefore, one should not extinguish the thirst for existence, but only purify one's desires. The West should say to itself: “Here people are working; here hands are being used, and what is achieved here will be taken through the gate of death.” We do not want to tell miracles, but through legends make clear to ourselves what has been given to humanity as a teaching of wisdom.

[ 19 ] Thus we hear that the Buddha had an important disciple named Kassapa, who was the one who had the greatest task of spreading the Buddha's teachings. Legend has it that he did not die, but disappeared into a cave, where his physical body was kept until the day when the Maitreya Buddha would appear; then the mortal remains of Kassapa would be touched by the fire of heaven and dissolved.

[ 20 ] Let us think about this teaching. How will people in the future be able to understand the teachings of Maitreya Buddha? Through the fact that the mortal remains of the Savior of Golgotha will be carried up to heaven by himself after three and a half days. This means that those who connect themselves with the Christ impulse will take with them and carry over into the spiritual world what they have achieved as the fruit of their lives.

[ 21 ] And so we will see how, through connection with the Christ principle, all the fruits of earthly existence are carried upward. Oriental teachings have always foretold Christ, even in their legends. Because we are learning here in the fourth period how the earthly-physical passes directly into the spiritual world, this is represented to us by being told that he had “eyes like a flame of fire” (Rev. 1:14), and we are told, “His feet are like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace” (Rev. 1:15); and later it says, “And all flesh shall see that I have sent him...” (Rev. 2:23). Here we are told that it is Christ who brings us the “I am.” One must read this inconspicuous little word. It means that the principle that lies in the “I am” becomes the Savior who leads people out of the material world. Thus, one can explain it word for word, line by line.

[ 22 ] What is written in the fifth letter (Rev. 3:1-6) is of particular concern to us. It says that we have received the secret of the name through the teaching of the unfolding of the earth, which is given to us by the “masters of wisdom and the harmony of feelings.”