The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A seer such as the writer of the Apocalypse can already see the future evolution of humanity in the astral world. What will enter into evolution after the war of all against all is already being prepared. Those human beings called to carry evolution into the future, beyond the war of all against all, are already being prepared through the wisdom taught in Theosophy. In far-reaching ways, the spiritual stream of wisdom will become increasingly effective.

When the clairvoyant can observe the modern human being, it sees the etheric body extending a little bit beyond the upper part of the physical body. The etheric body of a man is feminine and the etheric body of a woman is masculine. The astral body, on the other hand, is a flowing structure, variable in terms of color and form, changeable according to the inner life. If we raise our hand the impulse to do so comes from the astral body. When we walk, when we cry or laugh—that is caused by an impulse in the astral body having influence over the physical body. However, what has the most essential influence on human beings is their I. The I works in an altogether roundabout way through the astral body.

In ancient Atlantean times and in the Lemurian age, human beings were not only able to stretch out their different bodies, but they could also extend and “puff” them up. At that time the physical body was only a very small inclusion; on the other hand, the etheric and astral bodies were gigantic. The astral body might look like one kind of animal but was constantly changing and soon resembled another. Human beings constantly changed their physical form according to the desires and impulses living within them. The air then was filled with thick foggy mists much thicker and water-filled than our mountain fog. The human physical body had the most varied colorings and forms; one could already see in its gelatinous substance indications of the physical organization, for example the blood system and the skeleton. Toward the end of Atlantis the air was cleared of thick watery masses. Only then could human beings become the creatures of air and earth that we are today. Atlanteans did not see the sun at all the way it is seen today; it was seen as the mighty ring of the sun. Because the air was never free of water, there were never any rainbows. Only after the separation of water and air were rainbows possible. The entire process of the Atlantean flood is portrayed in the story of Noah and the rainbow. (Genesis 9:12–17)

It was also necessary for the beings on the earth to pass through their stages of evolution at very different times. If a portion of humanity in the early stages of Atlantis had not wanted to descend into a “densified” physical body, then the human form would have remained as it was—with all the instincts, desires, and passions still expressed in the physical form. However, there were beings that became solid, hardened at that time. Animals are nothing more than beings that entered into a hardened, dense condition too early. What the human being carries in the astral body today in terms of desires and passions has come to expression in the physical body of the various animals. Each of the groups of animals developed a particular instinct, and is “congealed” or solidified in it. During the Lemurian age it was the mammals; they are human passions that have congealed into a rigid form. What we carry within ourselves presents itself as a picture in the various animals. With human beings, the instincts have been gradually refined and we can hide them in our heart. The lowest instincts of the human being were first to fall into the physical world during eruptions of natural forces in the earlier times of Lemuria. The apes represent, so to speak, the last lower instincts to fall or be pushed into physical matter before the soul of the human being was itself hardened in matter. With some animals, horses for example, we still find today as a peculiarity the etheric body of the head extending beyond the physical head. That was the case with Atlantean human beings. A certain point in the human etheric body moved into the corresponding part of the physical body only in the last third of the Atlantean age. Only then were human beings able to develop a physical form appropriate for the spirit.

There are sixteen groups of human instincts and passions and so too, are there sixteen groups of animals. Zoology will one day understand how these sixteen groups were gradually “precipitated out” of the spiritual world. We can easily say how the various parts of the mammal groups were created. The formation of hoofs, for example, occurred when, in a very special way, animal nature closed off from the outer world. Claws were created through aggression. The hoofed animals express a very different stage of evolution than animals with claws. We see just such a contradiction expressed in the forms of the centaur and the sphinx.

This is portrayed in the second part of Faust, a very important book from the occult point of view. The Sphinx encounters Mephistopheles and laughs at him because of his horse hooves, which are a sign of a hardened nature, a nature that has egotistically closed itself off from the world.

If we cut our finger we feel pain; this shows us the bearer of feelings, the astral body. Earlier, when the human being's entire nature was still soft, the hair growth was also permeated by astral forces. We are told of Esau that he was covered with hair; he was still retarded in his development and in his power of judgment. For this reason Jacob could trick him, because Jacob had already come further in the development of his power of judgment, of his I. There are forces again working outward in human beings today. The more the I has mastery over the astral body, the more the physical body can also be molded and transformed. Today we have our karma within us like a life account, with a balance of everything we have prepared in our various incarnations. But because the human being's physical nature expresses very little of the I, we carry our karma inwardly and unmediated. But later it will show itself on the human face. Humankind will evolve in the future so that its karma is carried on the countenance. No longer will the fact that a human being is born into a specific race or in a specific climate be decisive for external appearances. There will be rather a class of good people and a class of evil people. Let us understand Paul correctly, who said: “I live, but it is no longer I who live, but Christ in me.” (Gal. 2:20) What is called “receiving the Yahweh-Christ being” will later show itself in human beings externally. Today it is still possible to be a rogue and yet hide it; but in the future, human beings will carry the mark of their inner life on their foreheads.

Let us look at the human being after the war of all against all. We can think of him or her as someone with radiant, good features and a noble benevolent expression. This will become the fate of those who have taken in spiritual impulses at the right time. All moral, intellectual, and spiritual forces will, in the future, confront us visibly in the external features of a human being. What is taken in today will be sealed into souls. After the seventh age, after the war of all against all, they will be unsealed.

That is what the writer of the Apocalypse sees in the seven seals that will gradually be broken. The book with the seven seals is not intended to be like our books or like ancient scrolls. What is intended is a succession of events. The succession of epochs is the concept of the Apocalyptic “books” as, for example, the Evangelist Matthew speaks of the succession of generations, of the lineage of Jesus of Nazareth. Orders of succession are created in this way. The book tells us that the power of the lamb can break the seals.

That gives us an idea of what is intended with the seven seals.

We have seen that in our age we can write into our souls what will later appear in the human being externally. Just as seven successive cultural epochs can be listed in our time, so too, the seven ages of human evolution that will follow the war of all against all are portrayed to the writer of the Apocalypse, who can see into the future. He sees these seven ages in the seven seals. But he distinguishes clearly the first four ages. Every time a seal is opened one of the four horses with its rider appears to him.

The Apocalypse presents a clairvoyant vision of seven future ages. They are astral pictures of what one day will be. Human beings who will have taken in something of spiritual culture will have overcome their lower nature. They will then rule over the human instinctive nature. What human beings have overcome is expressed in the seal in the form of a horse. They will be victors over their lower nature through what they will have made of their souls. They will master their lower natures just as a rider masters a horse.

Everything we have experienced since the time of ancient India will appear again after the war of all against all. As epochs are repeated, the ancient Indian age will reappear first. Back then everything in the physical world appeared to the human being as illusion, as maya. At that time the soul became mature enough to achieve victory over everything in the sensible world. The fruit of this Indian age appears to the writer of the Apocalypse in the picture of the white horse. It is characteristic of the soul of the ancient Indian that the external world, material culture, appears as yet untouched by human hands. The rider with a bow is as innocent as bright sunlight. Like a conqueror he has earned the right, after the war of all against all, to be conqueror over his lower nature. But the lower nature is still present. The human being has grown together with it. This is portrayed in the second seal as the red rider. Here the soul no longer appears in a white garment of innocence. Thus, the victorious rider cannot serve as a picture of the human being in this age. He appears to us as one bringing the fruits of egotism. After the war of all against all he no longer appears in a white garment. Once again he takes peace away from the earth; once again he shows himself with a sword in the battle for existence.

Then we are shown the fruit of the third age, the Egypto-Chaldean culture, during which humankind learned to count and to calculate. The human being continued to descend deeper and deeper into matter, into the darkness of the lower nature. This is seen in the black horse with a rider holding scales. Weighing, measuring, and counting are expressed to the writer of the Apocalypse as a black horse, and the human soul is the rider with the scales. State institutions for the allocation of property according to intelligent social laws did not exist among human beings in the Persian culture. There were no such institutions in ancient India or ancient Persia. In ancient India, people still had faith in their Atlantean incarnations. In ancient Indian times, people saw their position in life as the consequence of what they had prepared in ancient Atlantis. They told themselves that they were in a certain caste because of the karma of humankind; they looked up to the higher castes and considered this to be a just arrangement according to the karma of individuals. But this division into castes was made increasingly impossible by the evolution of the human I. Distribution of property and goods began to be calculated chiefly through the use of intelligence in the Egypto-Chaldean age. Therefore, the fruit of this third age appears as the black horse and the rider with the scales, with which all thinking and human intelligence are weighed. In this way, what will appear as the fruit of our seven cultures after the war of all against all appears symbolically to the writer of the Apocalypse.

In the Greco-Latin culture, the fourth age conquered the beauty of the physical world. The Greeks idealized nature in their art; they beautified existence. How beautiful Greek sculpture and architecture appear to us in comparison to Egyptian art, to the Sphinx, to the Pyramids. But the Greeks became so fond of physical-sensible existence that the spiritual world became dark for them. Only through the event of Golgotha did light again penetrate into what for them had become absolute shadows. The soul had been completely thrown into chains in this fourth age. But the lower nature experienced a beautification; it received, so to speak, a cover of beauty and art. That is quite properly what is characteristic for the souls of this most beautiful age of the kingdom of earth. But for the souls themselves the fruit of this age means the same thing as death. From this age, which has given them mastery over external physical nature, the souls of human beings will reap the fewest fruits.

Then we come to the fifth age, when the Yahweh-Christ principle also illuminates souls between death and a new birth. Here souls become more alive. What happens in this fifth age? Through what a soul can assimilate through the Christ impulse, the astral body becomes brighter and more filled with light. We can imagine how an astral body that is permeated by the light of the I, that is totally illuminated by the I, appears when seen clairvoyantly. It appears to the writer of the Apocalypse after the war of all against all as a white garment. In the fifth age after the war of all against all, the soul will appear with an aura that is already illuminated by the light of Christ. [Gap in manuscript]

Those who already took up the Christ principle in the first era of Christianity suffered a great deal in terms of external physical martyrdom. But things are coming to a head in this fifth age. Through the Rosicrucian-Theosophical spiritual stream, the Christ impulse will be taken into selves that are increasingly selfless—and taken in with increasing understanding. Its followers will achieve, through spiritual development, ever higher stages of spiritual life.

But another stream sharply opposed to this is working, through a certain cultivation of the I, to drive the I constantly deeper into materialism. Its goal is that materialism should finally conquer the human personality. A result of this impulse is that all external, practical life is detached from the individual, becomes materialized. This happens, for example, through the activity of capital in joint stock companies, which is increasingly detached from any individual human personality. The personal diligence and hard work of individual human beings will become increasingly unimportant. Stocks or shares in companies are the path to materialization in this branch of practical human life.

We see materialism increasingly getting the upper hand. More and more the tendency will be that the spiritualized human personality will have to contradict the prevailing materialism. At the end of our age, this sharp opposition to materialism will appear as a humanity that has been outwardly vanquished. The people who will be put to death for the sake of the Word will have to suffer much. But they will be the most important cultural force after the war of all against all.

With the community at Philadelphia the sixth age will begin. Except for these spiritual human beings the rest of humankind will be entirely wrapped up in the social life, submerged in the materialism that will be constantly growing stronger. People will master the forces of nature to a high degree, as we have seen with wireless telegraphy and aeronautics. It is not without consequences whether the air is filled with spiritual thoughts or with thoughts of material needs. This will engulf our entire planet. We are looking into an age when humanity will intrude in large measure into air and light-filled space. What will be the fruits of this age? Seen in their true form it can be said that these electromagnetic waves will work back into the forces of the earth during a certain age. Then, according to good and evil, earthquakes and earth tremors will appear as the effects of human deeds. “When he opened the sixth seal I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth ...” (Rev. 6:12) When the feelings of human beings are carried into the air, they change all of nature and something like a meteor shower appears. In this way human beings unleash the forces of nature, but their achievements do not go unpunished. When we see this, it appears at the same time that humanity finds its own destruction within these unleashed forces of nature. But those who unite themselves with the spirit appear as the sealed human beings. Such people must take into themselves the teachings that concern the spirit and can reach humanity.

What human beings take into themselves as spiritual substance and teaching will be their soul and spiritual life blood in the future. It will be the light that will ray forth from them as spirit. The human being stands firmly as on two feet—one foot on the Atlantean, the other on the post-Atlantean culture, as it were: on water and on earth. But humankind must take in wisdom, like swallowing a book. This figure points toward the spiritual world, he gives the book to the writer of the Apocalypse. He is supposed to swallow it. It will be indigestible for the lower human being but like honey for the higher, when it is not read but swallowed. Human beings equipped with modern logical thinking who have also become clairvoyant through occult training can also experience what the writer of the Apocalypse described. They can see the visions of the writer of the Apocalypse in the Rosicrucian seals. The seal with the two pillars is portrayed in the tenth chapter of the Apocalypse.

We have seen how the writer of the Apocalypse indicates that in the fifth age, after the war of all against all, people will appear in white garments, that the sixth age is characterized by the earth's enduring great tremors and earthquakes as the result of materialism, and that spiritual human beings will be the sealed ones.

We must point out that just as the angels or angeloi underwent their human stage in earlier planetary incarnations, humanity must also ascend through its development. What confronts us today as nature is the achievement of the gods. In the future, the human being will also accomplish divine spiritual deeds. We are speaking of the time when the human being will already have begun to work with magic from the periphery of the earth out of the realm of the invisible. However, in contrast to the sealed human beings there will also be those who have chained themselves to matter. These materialistic people will have been pushed down. This is why the writer of the Apocalypse sees the spiritualized people hovering above with the others bound to matter below. He sees this very clearly the moment the seventh seal is broken to reveal a vision of the future.

Then comes the next epoch of seven ages. Here the writer of the Apocalypse sees devachan and hears it prophetically proclaimed in the blowing of trumpets. Human beings will look down upon the earth itself as it becomes increasingly material; only the coarsest humankind will have consciously reacquired clairvoyance. In the age of the trumpets the Lemurian age will resurrect; human beings will be close to God, they will have completely spiritualized themselves. In the Lemurian age the earth still existed entirely within the element of fire. Human beings lived in fire before descending into a dense bodily nature—this will be repeated in a spiritual state. When the seventh trumpet sounds forth a kind of blessed state will come upon humanity. Then we come to a repetition of the time when the sun was separated from the earth. The human being, together with the earth, will have advanced to the time when the sun again unites with the earth. The earth will pass over into what is called an astral state. Human beings able to live in the astral world will raise up the finer part of the earth and then be united with the sun. The portion of the earth that has remained coarse will be united with the moon to form a new kind of moon. The kind of conditions prevailing during the Hyperborean age will enter in again, but at a higher stage of evolution. This is characterized by the woman clothed with the sun and having the moon at her feet. The beasts that rise up out of the sea or fall from heaven also belong to this whole stream of evolution that is pictured, as if captured in a moment of time. (Rev. 12:1–13:10)

Zarathustra also referred to the Christ being, who has been working in the central regions of the earth from the event of Golgotha onward. After working on the earth from the sun in earlier times, he has united with the planet earth. It is the power of Christ that has descended from the sun and retrieved the useful part of earthly humanity, uniting it with the sun again. But he has an adversary—every such being has an adversary. Christ is the good spirit, the intelligence of the sun; the adversary is the demon of the sun. Certain forces that are constantly working on the human astral body come forth from the demon of the sun. This demon of the sun is the opponent of the Christ spirit and is called Sorat. Earlier, in cabalistic sections of occultism, the custom of writing letters with numbers prevailed. The letters of the name Sorat, the demon of the sun, have the value 666. In the picture found at Rev. 13:11 – 18 the sun demon becomes visible.

It has two horns like a lamb. The writer of the Apocalypse describes the sign of the beast. Already at the beginning of the Apocalypse he clearly stated he was describing everything in signs and then adds: Wisdom is necessary in order to solve this riddle. In this way, the number of the beast has been explained in occult schools by real experts who do not explain it materialistically. We hear how the worst and coarsest elements are thrown out and how the noblest, spiritualized portion of humanity remains united with the sun. The newly spiritualized human body can then again be a temple for the soul.

In our survey of the evolution of our planet we have seen that the earth will again be spiritualized, that human beings can participate in this evolution and that they will again be able to return to the sun. Evolution leads to a constantly increasing spiritualization, to a higher condition, to the devachanic state. All those beings who are too stuck in their materialization will not be able to participate in this spiritual earth. First, everything must pass over into an astral condition. But the coarse, material elements of humankind and the base substances in the lower kingdoms enter with human beings into a kind of lower astral world. This could be called the sub-physical astral world. We have, then, devachan, the astral world, the physical world, and the lower astral world. This lower astral world is also working in opposition to our evolution today. It is ruled by the spirit Mammon,¹ that is, the spirit of hindrances. He is a power of the lower world.

All the beings who cannot rise up into the higher world must go down into this lower world. All the higher beings, after the age of the seven trumpet calls, will enter into a state of the earth united again with the sun.

Certain beings have passed through their human state on every incarnation of the earth: the angels during the moon stage, the archangels on the old sun, the good Asuras, also known as archai or primal beginnings, on old Saturn. There are also beings who did not complete their development. Such beings existed, for example, on the moon; these beings were then transplanted to the earth. They were higher than the human being but, at that time, had not yet reached the stage of humanity. These are the luciferic spirits. They have entangled the human being ever deeper in matter; they became connected to humankind in the Lemurian age. The human being would have gone through his evolution in a higher sphere if the luciferic spirits had not united with that evolution. But human beings can thank them for something good: their freedom. The luciferic spirits made, so to speak, a sacrifice for the good of humankind when they united their evolution with the earth and remained behind.

But Saturn, Sun, and Moon occurred before the middle of the earth's evolution. Those beings who remained behind before the midpoint have made an offering, a sacrifice. However, those who remain behind from now on, after the middle of the earth's evolution, merely represent a hindrance, not a sacrifice. The luciferic spirits have also brought humanity something positive. They have permeated the human astral body and thereby have brought us to independence.

If we consider that the human physical body was prepared for the human being during the ancient Saturn state, the etheric body during the Sun state, the astral body during ancient Moon, then we see how, in its way, this physical body is the most perfect member. It is the most evolved. If we could look into the miraculous structure of the physical heart, or the brain that is structured and organized with so much wisdom that physical science has not yet solved the riddles it presents, we would recognize this. The astral body is, indeed, a higher member but far less perfect; the etheric body has been perfected more than the astral but less than the physical. The I is the least perfect of all. For example, how little does the I understand the structures of the physical body. This is even precisely described in the Bible where it is said: “... then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being ...” (Genesis 2:7) This happened during Lemurian times. At that time luciferic beings worked into the astral body of the human being. However, it was just by doing this, by slipping into the astral body that they caught up with what they themselves had neglected in the past. What they should have accomplished on the Moon they went through vicariously within the human being.

When the sun will have again united with the earth, then human beings—through the fact that they will have purified their instincts, desires, and passions—will redeem the luciferic beings. The luciferic beings who do not go on to the Sun remain in their original condition. They then appear as expelled into the evil, lower astral world. This is the ancient snake and it emerges as the first dragon. Therefore, when the earth enters the sun, a dragon appears. But there are yet other beings left behind: such human beings who could not prevent themselves from dropping back into animality, who remain slaves to their animal instincts. While the other human beings go to the sun, these will form an evil power over and against the higher. These form the second monster, and the writer of the Apocalypse says in his exact fashion: The luciferic dragon appears in heaven because he comes from higher worlds; the second beast arises from the sea—this consists of the souls of animalistic human beings who have remained behind. (Compare: (Rev. 12:3–13:10)

We have still a third vision, that of the black magicians. They do not remain stuck in animality; they develop spiritual abilities. In full consciousness they have turned away, and provide a bodily incarnation for Sorat. That will be the incarnation in flesh of the demon of the sun.

But then we see how the earth emerges from the sun yet again in the future. If the spiritual human beings were to remain united with the sun forever, then the other human beings who, without guilt, had remained behind in animality would never he saved. So, these spiritualized people come forth once more and unite with what has fallen out of evolution in an attempt to save these backward souls. When the earth began its existence as “earth” it had to briefly repeat the Saturn, Sun, and Moon conditions once again. It went through recapitulations of those conditions before it became the present-day earth. Now, when actual earth conditions prevail, it must prophetically mirror the future embodiments of Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. In this way the earth goes through seven states during its actual earth condition. These states are usually called “rounds.” During the prophetically mirrored Jupiter state, the earth will actually unite with the sun. On this Jupiter-Earth all the great cultural ages will appear again—with the seven intervals between them—but they will be far less sharply delineated. On this Jupiter-Earth, many beings still have the possibility of being saved, even the black magicians.

This will also be the case on the Venus-Earth, when we have a sixth planetary interval. Here also the beings that have remained behind will stubbornly struggle against help; but this Venus-Earth will at last be decisive.

Then, on the Vulcan-Earth, nothing more can be saved. On the Venus-Earth the last moment for salvation has come in the last sub-epoch. That is why the ancient cabalists formed the word “Sorat,” because the number 666 is contained within it. That is also the number of those human beings who, out of their own cunning free will, have become black magicians by placing spiritual forces in the service of their own egotism.

The first dragon is not a human being. It came out of the spiritual world. The second dragon is ascribed to animalistic nature but in a fundamental sense the Bible ascribes this number of the third group to human beings. So the number 666 is not a sign of the beast but a human number.

The Apocalypse is an outline of the whole of evolution. Venus-Earth is portrayed to clairvoyant sight in such a way that there is not much hope for those left behind. Human powers at that time will not be capable of very much. That is why everything appears so desolate and the worst vices will reign there in the most depraved ways. They must be expelled during the Venus state of the earth. On the Jupiter-Earth there are still many, many who will allow themselves to be saved and who will unite with the sun.

But during the Venus-Earth evil must be overcome and driven into the abyss; that is the “Fall of Babylon.” (Rev. 17–18) The people who have been saved can develop themselves further to a new sun state. What has been cleansed and purified will arise for the Vulcan-Earth.

Human beings today are already creative on the earth. They can force the lifeless forces of nature to serve them. They can build cathedrals, they can sculpt marble. Today they are masters of lifeless nature. Even though Raphael's paintings of the Madonna are falling to dust, even though the external physical world is passing away, what the human being achieves in terms of art during the evolution of the earth will one day resurrect in a different form. The crystals we see today were once forms worked out by human beings during the old Moon embodiment of the earth, in a way similar to how we create and form artistically today. What the spirits once achieved in infinite ages of time now grows out of the earth; today it rises up. So, too, the matter of Raphael's Madonnas will also rise up. In the distant future, everything that human beings now create will rise again with the brightness of crystals. The place that humanity has prepared and will find waiting is called the “New Jerusalem” by the writer of the Apocalypse. A new world will arise, inhabitable by human beings who will have achieved the requisite state of maturity. In a new state, in the Jupiter existence, they will find the place where, out of love and out of human work, peace will reign.

• 1. Through Ahriman.

We cannot discuss everything that could be said in connection with the Apocalypse, for then we would have to speak for years. In these lectures we can only give a kind of sketch, and some explanations that can help us understand this mighty work. Today we would still like to point out some particularly important things. We begin by returning to a specific question of human evolution.

Every age between the Atlantean catastrophe and the great war of all against all has its own unique task for our development. In a new incarnation a human being never has the same task as in the last one. From incarnation to incarnation new tasks approach us, and so this post-Atlantean evolutionary age has worked on human beings in a special way. The whole epoch of earth evolution exists to make human beings fit particularly to develop the human I. In the last third of the Atlantean age, human beings were first equipped to draw the I toward the physical head. That is, the I, the spiritual basis for the experience of self that was only like a seed at the time, was pulled “down” toward the physical body, specifically, toward the human head. But the most significant impulse to have an effect on the I came through the event of Golgotha. All the preceding epochs had already worked in that direction. When we look back at the last third of Atlantean evolution we see that a certain point in the etheric head and the physical head did not then coincide, whereas today the etheric body of the head is approximately the same as the physical head. Because of this, human beings gradually came to develop their I, their sense of self. The rest of Atlantean evolution was used to make the human being fit to be a proper bearer of the I. Even at the end of Atlantean culture the brain was entirely soft, more or less like that of a hydrocephalic today, as part of an atavistic inheritance. The physical brain could only become firm enough through the arrival of the etheric brain. Still, even when the etheric head had fully entered the physical head in the ancient Indian age, it was not yet possible for this head to be a perfect bearer of the I. For this reason the ancient Indians longed for the spiritual world and had to be educated so that the I could gradually develop in them.

To begin with, the human being consists of the four members: physical body, etheric body, astral body, and the I. However, if we wish to investigate post-Atlantean evolution more precisely, we must also consider the ninefold aspect of the human being. This is the difference between the oriental and the northern mystery teachings. The I works to transform the astral body into manas or spirit-self, the etheric body into budhi or life-spirit, and the physical body, through breathing, into atma. In other words, the I transforms the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body. But before this can happen consciously, it must have taken place through higher beings.

Today the conscious transformation of these members occurs only in schools of initiation. For example, in the last third of the Atlantean age the physical body was transformed to the point that it could be a bearer of an I, but this occurred unconsciously. What was transformed in the astral body is called sentient soul, the etheric body transformed in this way is called the intellectual soul, and the physical body thus unconsciously transformed is the consciousness soul. And only when human beings have developed the consciousness soul can the spirit-self gradually—and at first, unconsciously—be woven into them.

In the cultural epochs of our earth evolution, manas is gradually being formed and slipped into the astral body. After it has been prepared in the last third of the Atlantean age, the consciousness soul must again be transformed by the Yahweh-Christ principle in the next cultural epoch.

In the ancient Indian age the etheric body was permeated by the I, which by then had moved into the human being. In the ancient Persian age the astral body was permeated by the I, in the Egyptian age the I permeated the sentient soul; in the Greco-Latin age the intellectual soul was permeated by the I, in our culture, the I permeates the consciousness soul. In the age of “Philadelphia” the I will permeate the spirit-self, or manas. Then the human beings who, through theosophical-spiritual teachings, have made themselves capable of recognizing Christ will be in a position to see him in a new form of existence—in his delicate etheric body—for he will come again.

The I will be educated through wisdom, through Theosophy, so that it receives manas or spirit-self and will be able to recognize Christ again. Theosophical teachings have been given to humankind not in order to agitate for Theosophy but rather because they were necessary.

In the age represented by the seven seals something like a shower of meteorites will occur, caused by increasing materialism, and some human beings will ascend to a spiritual state. What the spiritualized human beings have acquired through their efforts in our post-Atlantean age will completely permeate them within. When, in the age of the sixth seal, everything that the human being has in terms of sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul has been worked into the other members, human beings will have achieved the ability to create an external imprint of their inner life in their gesture, features, in their whole life. Because they have worked on their development they will be able, in the fourth, fifth, and sixth ages in the epoch of the seals, to use these three soul forces—the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls—to permeate and work on themselves in order to take in manas.

When the human being has gone through a cycle fully, so that nothing more remains to be done, this is characterized in occultism with a “0” or zero. Therefore, human beings will have permeated the three with four. For the next age, this permeation of the three with the four is expressed by multiplying three by four; they have gone through three cycles, that is through three zeros. This is expressed thus: twelve with three zeros: 12,000. “Then I saw another angel ascend from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, ‘Do not harn the earth or the sea or the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads.’ And I heard the number of the sealed, one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed, out of every tribe of the sons of Israel, twelve thousand sealed out of the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand of the tribe of Reuben ...” (Rev. 7:2–5) Then the various groups of people who have matured will be united in the community of Philadelphia for mature brotherhood when every soul will feel for others. All those who have been separated out of the various groups can now be multiplied together because they will live within one another. Their life together will be such that they will not disturb one another, such that one soul will work into another soul in complete harmony. Twelve times 12,000 gives the number 144,000.

These are the people who will constitute human society in the age of the sixth seal. The writer of the Apocalypse knows the secrets of all evolution, and he tells them in a language generally little understood. He does this because human beings will be able to develop their consciousness soul precisely through the exertion of energy required to penetrate such riddles. What today is presented as Theosophy is appropriate for the present age. In later ages an entirely different form of wisdom will be given. The souls who are preparing themselves by taking in Theosophy will take in new forms of wisdom in the next age. What is exoteric culture today was mystery wisdom in ancient times.

In all the ancient mysteries there was a last stage wherein the student experienced the mystery of Golgotha. Therefore, the coffin in which the student experienced the crucifixion, the laying in the grave—and out of which, experienced the resurrection—this coffin was given the shape of the cross. Since the mystery of Golgotha, this fact has become exoteric.

The conservative attitude has always been opposed to making the esoteric exoteric. Hence, Christ was seen as someone who makes the esoteric manifest. But when the time for it has come, the esoteric must always be made manifest. Had we been able to follow the writer of the Apocalypse to the place where he spoke to his disciples, we would be able to hear what is spoken to us today.

In the age when the sixth seal is broken the “people of twelve” will appear. The salvation of the “great whore of Babylon” will also occur in the sixth age. In this sixth age the earth will have repeated the Saturn, Sun, and Moon stages, as well as the earth condition itself and Jupiter-Earth. On Venus-Earth the earth will finally have the five rounds behind it. Then the sixth state will have come. Nevertheless, the Vulcan state for the chosen will not be present yet. For this reason we read [“And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come ...”] “... five are fallen ...” and the remnant that has maintained itself: “... one is ...” and the seventh: “the other has not yet come.” (Rev. 17:10) We see how we again find the messages of the writer of the Apocalypse in Theosophy.

But those who have proven themselves to be immature in the age of Venus-Earth, who have placed themselves under the rulership of Sorat, must now isolate themselves on a special sphere of earth while the other seven proceed downward and again upward. Thus the colony of Sorat falls away. The black magicians inhabit this eighth sphere, which goes to the left and away, and the beast gives a home to all that thus falls away: that is the eighth state. In this way we can find all the teachings of Theosophy in the Apocalypse.

The more humanity advances, the more energy is necessary in order to spiritualize those who have been left behind. For this reason those who are the most deeply initiated, Moses and Elijah, are called. Powerful forces are needed. Because they were already deeply initiated, they will be able in that distant future to stand so high that they will be able to work in a very special way. However, karma is a law to which all are subject; therefore, those who were initiated before the event of Golgotha must make up for the following.

The three and a half days required for initiation in ancient times were lost days in the initiates' development. Initiates had to leave their bodies during these three and a half days. Therefore, the I could not work on the transformation of its physical body, its etheric body, and its astral body. For this reason, in the future they must leave their physical body to the external world for three and a half days. Hence, we read, “For three days and a half ... gaze at their dead bodies.” (Rev. 11:9) Even the deeds that are sacrifices for humanity must find their cosmic compensation.

In this way spiritual seers have spoken to other spiritual seers through the millennia and we find all of this again even unto the names in the Apocalypse. As Paul said, “... it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) This, too, we find again in the Apocalypse. The I is permeated by Christ. The one who can fructify the I with his name is the Christ: “... and he has a name inscribed which no one knows but he himself.” (Rev. 19:12)

We are also told that the earth will be spiritualized in the New Jerusalem. There will be no external sun present then; the corresponding spiritual beings will provide the light. We read, “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it ...” (Rev. 21:23)

The writer of the Apocalypse always shows the evolution of humankind in pictures. He sees the leader who was first proclaimed as Vishva Karman, and then as Ahura Mazdao, and he points to him, to Christ.

In order to illuminate what is found in the Apocalypse, we must refer to the transformation of organs that are developed in human beings into other forms. They now have the ability to change their forms.

The heart muscle is distinguished from other muscles under our voluntary control by the fact that the heart is an involuntary muscle, and yet is striated in the same way as voluntary muscle. The heart is on the way to becoming an organ with entirely different functions. We see this indicated in the structure of the muscle.

What comes forth from the voice box will become increasingly powerful. What we speak forth in order to express our thoughts shapes the air—already now it forms it according to how we think. But the word will become increasingly powerful. One day the human being will create the human being's equal through the word that comes forth from the larynx. The one who has the sword coming forth from his mouth is an indication of the being who is the alpha and the omega.

The lamb, who will be the lord over the lower nature, forms one of the seals. Sorat is as if expelled in the eighth sphere by the woman who shows us another seal of the Rosicrucian. The seer can also see this in the spiritual world. In this way, these Rosicrucian seals have an awakening effect when we meditate upon them with understanding.

We have seen how we must understand ancient religious texts literally, taking them at their word. Theosophy is the only possible commentary for the Apocalypse and it should prepare the community of Philadelphia. It is therefore within the plan for the evolution of the earth that Theosophy exists. Therefore, at various locations on the earth, great individualities are at work to give Theosophy to those able to receive it.

In the course of these lectures we have said repeatedly that Christianity constitutes the decisive midpoint of human evolution. All religions have their right to exist—they were partial revelations of the Logos—but none has changed the face of the world as much as Christianity. One can feel this influence in the words of John's Gospel, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (John 20:29) The words, “those who have not seen,” refer to those people who had no knowledge of the mystery religions. An essential part of the ancient mysteries is made public through Christianity, for example, the most important commandments concerning morality, and the teaching concerning the immortality of the soul through resurrection or rebirth.

Before Christianity, one could see super-sensible truth in the revelations, rites, and dramatic presentations of the mysteries. Now, however, one can believe in the super-sensible thanks to the divine person of Christ. There had always been a difference between the esoteric truth known to initiates, and its exoteric form—appropriate for the great masses—which came to expression through the various religions. The same holds true for Christianity. What is found in the Gospels is the new good tidings, promulgated for all to hear. But there was a deeper teaching. It is contained in the Apocalypse in the form of symbols.

There is a way to read the Apocalypse that can be made public only in our time. It was cultivated in the Middle Ages in the occult schools of the Rosicrucians. At that time historical questions concerning the book were considered unimportant. These were questions concerning its composition and the identity of the author; in short, all that which occupies the sole interest of theologians today, who seek nothing more than historical facts in this book. Modern critical theology knows only the external shell of this book and ignores the kernel. The Rosicrucians stayed with the prophetic aspect, the eternal truth of the book.

Occultism is not usually concerned with the history of a single century or a single era, but rather with the inner history of human evolution as a whole. This is true when it delves into the first manifestations of our planetary system, when it looks into the distant past at the vegetative and animal conditions of humanity, and when its perspective expands over millions of years forward to a future when humanity will have become divine. The earth itself will have changed then both in form and substance. But how can the future be guessed? Is prophecy really possible? It is possible because all that is to take place physically in the future already exists in seed form in the womb of the archetypes whose thoughts form the plan for our evolution. Nothing appears on the physical plane that was not already planned and preformed in general outline in the region of devachan. Nothing happens in the depths that did not exist before in the heights. That is the way things are realized. They depend upon the freedom and initiative of the individual.

Esoteric Christianity is not based on vague and sentimental idealism but rather on a concrete ideal that originates in knowledge of higher worlds. This is the knowledge that the writer of the Apocalypse had, the great seer of Patmos, who sketched the future of humankind in Christian perspective.

Let us consider this future according to the laws of world creation just described. The Rosicrucians first revealed to their pupils some visions from the past and the future. Then the pupils were given the Apocalypse to interpret these visions. Let us do the same and observe how humanity has become what it is, and what future will open for it.

We have, for example, spoken of the ancient Atlantean continent and of the Atlanteans whose etheric body was far more developed than their physical body. Their preliminary consciousness of self, their I-consciousness, came to them only at the end of their culture. The successive post-Atlantean cultures were: First, the pre-Vedantic culture in southern Asia, in India. That was the beginning of the Aryan cultures; second, the epoch of Zarathustra, including the culture of ancient Persia; third, the Egyptian culture, the epoch of Hermes, to which are attached the Chaldean and Semitic cultures. The first seeds of Christianity were sown during this age in the womb of the Hebrew peoples; fourth, the Greco-Latin cultural epoch that experienced the birth of Christianity; and fifth, a new epoch was prepared at the time of the mass migrations and wars of conquest in the fourth through the sixth centuries.

The legacy of the Greco-Latin culture was taken over by the northern races: Celts, Germans, and Slavs. This is the epoch in which we are now still living. It is a slow transformation of the Greco-Latin cultural heritage brought about through the powerful element of the new peoples under the mighty impulse of Christianity. This impulse has also been mixed with the leaven of the East brought to Europe through the Arabs. The actual goal of this cultural epoch is to adapt the human being fully to the physical plane. This occurs when our reason, our practical commonsense is developed and our intellect delves into physical matter in order to understand and master it. In the course of this hard work, this astonishing achievement that has culminated in our time, human beings have momentarily forgotten the higher worlds of their origin. By comparing our spiritual soul constitution with that of the Chaldeans, for example, it is easy to see what we have won and what we have lost. When Chaldean magicians observed the heavens, which present for us nothing more than a problem in celestial mechanics, they had an entirely different idea, an entirely different feeling, one could say, a totally different experience than we. Where a modern astronomer sees nothing more than a soulless machine, the ancient magicians felt the harmony of the heavens depths as a divine, living being. When they observed Mercury, Venus, the moon, or the sun, they saw not only the physical light of these heavenly bodies, they perceived the planets' souls as belonging to living beings, and they felt their own souls in connection with these great beings of the firmament. They perceived the influence of heavenly bodies as attraction and repulsion, like a wonderful concert of streaming, flowing divine will; and the symphony of the cosmos sounded forth in the magicians like a harmonious echo of the human microcosm. In this way the music of the spheres was a reality that united human beings with heaven.

The superiority of the modern scholar is rooted in knowledge of the physical world, of matter. Spiritual science has descended to the physical plane we know so well. However, we must now be concerned with again achieving knowledge of the astral plane through clairvoyance.

This descent into matter was necessary for the fifth epoch to fulfill its mission. Astral and spiritual clairvoyance had to be veiled so that the intellect could develop itself on the field of the sense world through minute, mathematical observation of the physical world.

Now we must supplement natural science with spiritual science. Here is an example: Ptolemy's map of the heavens is usually placed next to that of Copernicus and then the former is declared to be false. This is, however, not true. They are equally justified. Ptolemy's map is concerned with the astral plane wherein the earth forms the center point of the planets and the sun is itself a planet. Copernicus's map is concerned with the physical plane where the sun is in the middle. All truths are relative according to time and place. Ptolemy's system will be rehabilitated in an epoch yet to come.

After our fifth epoch another will come, the sixth, which will be related to ours as a spiritually minded soul is related to a rationally inclined soul. This epoch will bring genius, clairvoyance, the creative spirit, to development. How will Christianity appear in the sixth epoch? There was a harmonious union of science and faith for the ancient priests of the pre-Christian age. Science and faith were one and the same thing. When the ancient priests observed the firmament they knew and felt that the soul was a drop of water that had fallen from the heavenly ocean and had been led down to earth by immeasurable rivers of life that flow through space. Today, when our sight is directed only to the physical world, faith needs a free space, a religion. For this reason science and faith are separated. The faithful reverence of the person of Christ, the god of the human being on the earth, has for a certain time taken the place of occult science and the mysteries. But the two streams will be united in the sixth epoch. The mechanical science of the physical plane will be elevated to the heights of spiritual creative power. That will be gnosis or spiritual knowledge. This sixth epoch will be radically different from ours. Great, tumultuous catastrophes will precede it, for the sixth epoch will be just as spiritual as ours is materialistic, but such a transformation can only occur through great, physical upheavals. Everything that will be formed in the course of the sixth epoch will call into existence the possibility of a seventh epoch which itself will form the end of these post-Atlantean cultures and will know completely different conditions of life from our own. This seventh epoch will end with a revolution of the elements, similar to the one that brought an end to the Atlantean continent. The condition of the earth that will then appear will have a spirituality prepared through the last two post-Atlantean epochs.

The Aryan cultures encompass seven great epochs. We see the laws of evolution slowly unfolding. Human beings always carry within themselves what they will see around them in future times. All that presently exists around us actually came forth from us in preceding ages when our being was still united with the earth, the moon, and the sun. This cosmic being, from which the present human being together with all the kingdoms of nature have arisen, is called in the Kabbala, “Adam Kadmon.” All of the manifold forms of men and women presently represented by ethnic groups and races were contained in this human archetype.

What human beings possess today as their inner soul life, their thoughts, their feelings, will similarly be revealed externally and become the environment in which people live. The future resides in the hearts of men and women. The choice is ours to decide for a future of good or of evil. Just as it is true that the human being once left behind something that then became the world of animals, so too, what is evil in the human being will one day form a kind of degenerate humanity. At the present time we can more or less hide the good or evil within us. A day will come when we can no longer do this, when the good or the evil will be written indelibly on our forehead, on our body, and even on the face of the earth. Humanity will then be split into two races. In the same way that we encounter boulders or animals today, in the future we will encounter beings of pure evil and ugliness. When a human being's facial features become an expression of that individual's karma, then people will separate themselves according to the stream in which they apparently belong. Everything depends on whether human beings have conquered the lower nature within them or whether this lower nature has triumphed over the spirit.

Beginning in the past we can see the lines of a future reality beginning to form. To the extent that we are prepared to understand the past and to work in the present we can realize the ideal of this future reality. A new race will be formed that will constitute the connecting link between present-day humanity and the spiritualized human being of the future. But one must distinguish between the evolution of races and the evolution of souls. It lies within the freedom of every single soul to develop itself toward this external form of a race, whose character corresponds to the good that it will incarnate. Individuals will belong to this race only through the exercise of their free will and through a great exertion of their soul forces. Membership in a race will no longer be forced upon a soul, but rather it will be the result of an individual's evolution.

The meaning of Manichean teaching is that, from now on, souls should prepare themselves to transform into good the evil that will appear in its full strength in the sixth epoch. Indeed, it will be necessary for human souls to become strong enough to protect, through a spiritual alchemy, the good from the evil that will come to light.

The evolution of our planet earth will lead it back through the former phases of its development in reversed order. First the earth will unite with the moon, then a union—a reunion—of this mixed-world body with the sun will occur. The reuniting of the moon with the earth will coincide with a high tide of evil on the earth. In contrast to this, the union of the earth with the sun will mark the beginning of blessed happiness, the reign of the chosen people.

Human beings will bear the mark of the seven great phases of earth evolution. The book of the seven seals spoken of in the Apocalypse will be opened. The woman dressed in the sun and with the moon under her feet is related to the time when the earth will be united again with the sun and the moon. The trumpets of the last judgment will sound forth, for the earth will have arrived in a devachanic condition, where tone, not light, will rule. The end of earthly evolution will stand in the sign of the Christ principle that will permeate all of humankind. Human beings will have become similar to Christ; they will gather around Christ like a multitude around the lamb, and the New Jerusalem will arise as the fruit of this evolution. It represents the crowning of the world.

The inflation of pictures and of sounds during the twentieth century is greater than at any other time in the history of humankind, whereas a conscious relationship to seeing and to hearing seems to be diminishing rapidly. Human beings drown in pictures and sounds, becoming dulled in the process, and yet experiencing an uncanny feeling if only the natural world surrounds them and all grows silent.

Rudolf Steiner draws attention to the fact that although the gesture of this hunger for pictures appears today in a distorted form, it nevertheless indicates a future condition in which humanity will have developed the “conscious picture-consciousness” that at the present time only spiritually advanced human beings can call upon. In this state human beings will be able to perceive in totally awakened consciousness not only what appears to the physical senses but also the spiritual configuration that lives behind and in a thought, for example, or a feeling or even a will impulse.

Inwardly, human beings tend to sense their own spiritual future, and this tendency often lies behind artistic impulses that seek to express the deeper secrets in human and divine existence. Through many centuries since St. John, “the disciple whom the Lord loved,” received the Revelation on the island of Patmos from the resurrected Christ Jesus, artists have depicted the content of these Revelation pictures in many forms, such as in the seventy-four miniatures of the Trier Apocalypse from the ninth century and the well-known Dürer Apocalypse. And yet the Apocalypse of St. John has remained essentially undeciphered for modern consciousness, although it seems clear that it contains mysteries concerning the past and future evolution of humanity.

From 1901 to 1909, Rudolf Steiner gave lectures in which he illuminated many aspects of the Revelation of St. John. The lectures on this theme from 1907, contained in the present volume, were held just prior to the large international Congress of the Theosophical Society in Munich. It was during this congress that it became clear to all members that Rudolf Steiner's spiritual direction and intentions were deeply and decidedly connected with esoteric Christianity. In these lectures, in those of 1909 in Oslo, also printed here for the first time, as well as in the lectures in Nürnberg in 1908, “The Apocalypse of St. John,” Rudolf Steiner serves human beings at the end of the twentieth century as a timely revealer of mysteries that must be grasped soon if humankind's earthly and spiritual development is to progress in an upward direction. We can be grateful that these lectures of 1907 and 1909 to the English-speaking world have become available through this translation so soon after the first publication in German. They hold many a key which may unlock crucial doors for an understanding of the final years of the twentieth century.

December 1992
VIRGINIA SEASE
Goetheanum, Switzerland

Although the struggle between good and evil is described throughout the Bible, perhaps the most dramatic and esoteric images of this battle are contained in the Apocalypse. John the Evangelist, to whom these visions were entrusted at age ninety-seven, had been preparing for them all his life. Known to the high priests as Lazarus, a brilliant young nobleman in Jerusalem, he was educated in the wisdom of the Jewish traditions. He was then the first to be initiated by Christ when, at age thirty-three, he was raised from the dead at Bethany. Later known as the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” he was the only one of the twelve disciples strong enough to be present at Christ's crucifixion. His work and suffering on behalf of the nascent Christian church through the next sixty years eventually led him to imprisonment on the island of Patmos during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian (A.D. 81–96).

The visions recorded in the Apocalypse were given to him during this imprisonment with instructions that he write them down for others. They are intended to encourage, admonish, instruct, strengthen, and inspire us in the great battle against evil that will continue into the distant future. As in any protracted battle, knowledge of the adversary's plans, indeed, knowledge of one's own leaders' strategic intentions, is essential. In the past the Apocalypse has sometimes been used to inspire fear and to motivate human souls to strive to be better Christians. But such use constitutes misuse. Fear is a tool of the adversary powers, not of Christ and his followers. The Apocalypse received by John is nothing if not a Christian book, and when properly understood, expands our conception of Christianity to cosmic proportions again.

It reveals in images, that is, a kind of picture language, the deepest secrets of earthly and human evolution. John was instructed to pass these images on to humanity so that, through knowledge, we can be better equipped to evolve spiritually and meet the unfolding power of the adversaries. The images themselves contain the power of the Word, the Logos himself, the power of all becoming and evolving. Taken into the soul they transform; over time they can initiate. This is the connection between the Apocalypse and the work of Rudolf Steiner, who said that simply hearing and reading the results of anthroposophical research can gradually transform the human soul and awaken in us the ability to perceive the spirit.

Rudolf Steiner's writings and lectures on the Bible in general and the Apocalypse in particular involve a dimension of our humanity that is underappreciated in traditional religious streams: the dimension of human knowledge. In the ancient past it was known that knowledge of spiritual realities was attainable, although only by initiates. Today, only knowledge of the physical world is considered valid, while people interested in spiritual things must be satisfied with faith. However, faith alone cannot make sense of the Apocalypse, and traditional Christian theologians are not sure what to do with the book. Its source is non-earthly. It is prophecy, but unlike Old Testament prophecy, we cannot look for its fulfillment in the New Testament. The thinking behind it derives from a source either beyond or preceding the modern, scientific mind.

But when modern methods of science, exact thinking and observation, are applied to spiritual questions, then knowledge of the spirit is possible. In his basic books Rudolf Steiner describes the spiritual scientific method with its three steps of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. The results of this method are found throughout Steiner's work. They include, among other things, descriptions of the evolution of the earth including its future. This description of future events provides the basis for Steiner's lectures on the Apocalypse. For this reason, a general knowledge of anthroposophy and Steiner's terminology is required to understand these lectures.

This requirement is especially pressing since these lectures are not transcriptions of complete stenographic reports. They have been reconstructed from notes hand written by individuals who attended the lectures. Hilde Stockmeyer took notes during the first Munich lecture while Mathilde Scholl was responsible for the other three. The notes by an unknown auditor that form the basis for the German edition of the lectures held in Kristiania (Oslo) are the most fragmentary. They are stylistically uneven, with frequent omissions and gaps in the manuscript. The lecture of June 14, 1907, held in Paris comes to us through notes taken by Edouard Schuré. Because of their brevity these lectures are, in a sense, incomplete. The reader would do well first to read Steiner's most comprehensive lectures on the Apocalypse, held in Nürnberg¹ and refer to them again while reading the present lectures. Although there is little contained in these present lectures not already mentioned in Nürnberg, this new volume is quite useful just because of its brevity.

The lecture of May 21, 1909, contains what is probably the earliest mention of Christ's reappearance in Steiner's work. While describing the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch from the point of view of the development of manas, the transformed astral body, Steiner says that those who have made themselves capable of recognizing Christ will see him in his etheric body, “for he will come again.” A few months later, on January 25, 1910, the second coming of Christ was predicted for the twentieth century. Eight days hence, on February 2, 1910, it was narrowed down to the decade between 1930 and 1940. We can see from this sequence an example of the way in which Steiner apprehended facts from the spiritual world. After first perceiving some spiritual reality he could narrow his focus and inquire even more closely with his clairvoyant consciousness.

Eventually Steiner pointed to the year 1933 for the appearance of Christ in the etheric, an event made possible only through the expiration of Kali Yuga and through the evolution of certain faculties of the human soul. Human beings will become increasingly able to perceive the surrounding world of formative forces. At first this perception is a “delicate seed that can be trampled to death by brutal materialism.”

But the year 1933 appears to have brought something quite other to humanity. Emil Bock in his book the Apocalypse² describes how Rudolf Steiner speaks in 1924 of the work of Christ's opponent, the demon of the sun, called “the beast” in the Apocalypse. In order to grasp the etheric event of Christ's reappearance, it is necessary to encounter the beast, the adversary of humankind who “rises up” in 1933. Steiner considered the simultaneous appearance of Christ and the Antichrist to be a first in world history. The double aspect of the year became apparent: the renewal on a wide scale of Paul's experience of Christ on the way to Damascus, and the opening of the abyss of evil. Human beings have been driven by the struggle against evil in all its forms to the very brink of existence, where they have perceived Christ. Although Steiner almost always stressed the positive, he could certainly also describe the negative, dark aspects of any subject under investigation. The “war of all against all,” for example, is given a full description in the Nürnberg cycle, and is also mentioned here. This great culmination of egotism known as the war of all against all, is to take place at the end of the seventh post-Atlantean epoch, which would place it three to four thousand years from the present. Because of misunderstandings concerning Steiner's statements on the dates for this war, it is important to point out that he did not say this war would occur at the end of the twentieth century. He spoke only of conditions at the end of our century that would be similar to a war of all against all.

He did say, however, that the working of Sorat, the two-horned beast described in chapter 13 of the Apocalypse, was connected to the number 666 and therefore, we could expect an intensification of his influence around the year 1998. Sorat's influence is not to be confused with the war of all against all, or with the incarnation of Ahriman, an event projected to take place in the early part of the third millennium. For a complete discussion of the nature and timing of these events, as well as a clear distinction between the three adversaries of human evolution—Lucifer, Ahriman, and the Asuras—the reader should refer to three outstanding articles by Hans-Werner Schroeder which appeared in the Newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society in America, Summer 1979, Spring 1980, and Summer 1980. Many questions that might arise in reading these lectures will find their answer there.

A note concerning the translation: The terms for intervals of time—period, epoch, age, culture, time, times, and so on—are not used in a consistent, technical manner. Steiner himself did not employ the German terms in this way. The seven post-Atlantean cultural epochs, for example, are designated by a variety of German words: Kulturperiode, Kultur, Zeitraum, Kulturepoche, Zeitepoche, Zeit, and so on. In any given context, readers must discern for themselves which particular time-cycle is meant. It did not seem right to impose a rigid terminology upon Steiner when he himself avoided one.

In the New Testament it says that the second coming of Christ will occur in the realm of the clouds. What Steiner's lectures make clear is that some of these clouds will be very dark, bringing thunder and lightning.

James H. Hindes

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, The Apocalypse of St. John, 4th rev. ed (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1977).
• 2. Emil Bock, The Apocalypse of St. John (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1951).

When a person who has concerned himself for some time with the world conception of spiritual science permits the various thoughts, ideas, and knowledge he has thereby acquired to work upon him, this knowledge suggests to him the most manifold questions. Indeed, one develops oneself as a spiritual scientist through associating such questions—which are in reality questions of sensation, feeling (Gemuet), and character, in short, questions of life—with the ideas of spiritual science.

These ideas do not serve merely to satisfy our theoretical or scientific curiosity. Rather, they elucidate the riddles of life, the mysteries of existence. Indeed, these thoughts and ideas become truly fruitful for us only when we no longer merely think, feel, and sense their content and significance but when, under their influence, we learn to look differently at the world about us. These ideas should permeate us with warmth; they should become impulses in us, forces of feeling (Gemuet) and mind. This they do increasingly when the answers that we have obtained to certain questions present us in turn with new questions, when we are led from question to answer, and the answer gives rise to further questions, and so on. In this way we advance in spiritual knowledge and in spiritual life.

It will be some time yet before it will be possible to reveal in public lectures the more intimate aspects of spiritual life to present-day humanity, but the time is approaching when the more intimate questions can be discussed within our own groups. In this connection it will continually happen that new members of the Anthroposophical Society may be taken by surprise by one thing or another and may be shocked. We would never progress in our work, however, if we were not to advance to discussion of the more intimate questions of life out of the depths of spiritual scientific research and knowledge. Today, therefore—though it may give rise to misconceptions on the part of those of you who have immersed yourselves in spiritual life for only a comparatively short time—we shall once more bring before our souls some of the more intimate facts of spiritual knowledge.

Without doubt, a significant question arises before us when we do not merely consider abstractly the idea of reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives, but when instead we allow ourselves to become thoughtfully absorbed in contemplation of this fact of spiritual life. Then, with the answer given to us in reincarnation, which provides such valuable fruit for our lives, there will in turn arise fresh questions. We may, for example, raise the following query: if a person lives on earth more than once, if he returns again and again in new embodiments, what can be the deeper meaning of this repeated passing through life? As a rule, this is answered by saying that we undoubtedly keep ascending higher in this way, and, through experiencing in later earthly lives the fruits of previous lives, we finally perfect ourselves. This, however, still represents a rather general, abstract opinion. It is only through more exact knowledge of the whole meaning of earthly life that we penetrate the significance of repeated lives on earth. If, for example, our earth were not to change, if man were to keep returning to an earth that remained essentially the same, then indeed there would be little to learn through successive embodiments or incarnations. On the contrary, their real meaning for us lies in the fact that each of these incarnations on earth presents us with fresh fields of learning and experience. This is not so apparent over short periods, but if we survey long stretches of time, as we are able to do through spiritual science, it becomes obvious at once that the epochs of our earth assume quite different forms and that we continually face new experiences.

Here we must realize something else, however. We must bear in mind these changes in the life of the earth itself, for if we neglect something that should be learned, something that should be experienced during a certain epoch of our earthly evolution, then, although we will come again into a new incarnation, we will have missed something entirely; we will have failed to allow something to stream into us that we should have allowed during the preceding epoch. As a result we will be unable in the succeeding period to employ our forces and faculties in the right way.

Speaking still quite generally, one can say that during our time something is possible on earth, almost anywhere on the globe, that was not possible, for example, during the previous incarnations of the people who are living now. It seems strange, but this fact is nonetheless of definite, indeed, of great significance. In the present incarnation it is possible for a certain number of persons to come to spiritual science, that is, to take up such conclusions of spiritual research as can be taken up today in the field of spiritual science. Of course, it may be regarded to be of trifling significance that a few people should come together who allow the discoveries of spiritual research to stream into them. Those who find this of little import, however, do not understand at all the significance of reincarnation and of the fact that one can take something up only during a particular incarnation. If one fails to take it up, one has missed something entirely and will lack it then in the following incarnations.

We must above all impress it upon our minds that what we learn today through spiritual science unites with our souls and that we bring it with us again when we descend into the next incarnation.

We will endeavor today to gain an understanding of what this means for our souls. Toward this end we must link together many facts of spiritual life, which are more or less new or even entirely unknown to you, with much that you already know from other lectures and from your reading. To begin with, we must go back to earlier periods in the evolution of humanity. We have often looked back to earlier periods of our earthly evolution. We have remarked that we are now living in the fifth period after the great Atlantean catastrophe. This fifth period was preceded by the fourth or Greco-Latin period, in which the Greek and Latin peoples indicated the principle ideas and feelings for the earth-will. This, in turn, was preceded by the third or Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian period, and this by the ancient Persian, which followed the ancient Indian. If we delve even further into antiquity, we come upon the great Atlantean catastrophe that destroyed an ancient continent, an ancient mainland, Atlantis, which once extended into the place where today lies the Atlantic Ocean. This cataclysm gradually engulfed the continent and thereby gave our solid earth its present countenance. Then, going further back, we come upon still earlier periods that existed before the Atlantean catastrophe; we arrive at those civilizations and conditions of life that developed on this Atlantean continent, the civilizations of the Atlantean races. Even earlier conditions preceded these.

If one considers what history tells us—and it does not, indeed, reach very far back—one can fall quite easily into the belief (although this is, even in relation to shorter periods of time, an entirely unfounded belief) that things on earth have always appeared as they do now. This, however, is not the case. On the contrary, conditions on our earth have altered fundamentally, and the soul conditions of human beings have also changed to a tremendous extent. The souls of the persons sitting here were incarnated during each of these ancient periods in bodies that were in keeping with the various epochs, and they absorbed what was to be absorbed in these periods of earthly evolution. With each succeeding incarnation, then, the soul developed new faculties. Our souls were entirely different from what they are today—perhaps not so noticeably different during the Greco-Latin era, but in the old Persian period they differed greatly from those of today, and still more in the ancient Indian period. In those ancient periods, our souls were endowed with quite different faculties, and they lived under quite different conditions.

Today, therefore, in order that we may clearly understand each other with reference to what follows, we shall call before our mind's eye as distinctly as possible the nature of our souls in the age, let us say—so as to be dealing with something full of significance—after the Atlantean catastrophe, when they were incarnated in the bodies that were possible on earth only during the first Indian civilization. We must not understand this first Indian civilization as having been of value only in India. The Indian people were at that time merely the most advanced, the most important, but the civilization of the whole earth derived its characteristic qualities from what the leaders indicated to the ancient Indians.

If we consider our souls as they were at that time, we must first say that the kind of knowledge human beings have today was as yet utterly impossible. At that time there was no such clearly defined consciousness of self, no such clearly defined I-consciousness. It had hardly occurred to human beings that they were I's. To be sure, the I already existed as a force in human beings, but knowledge of the I is something different from the force of the I, from its effectiveness. Human beings were not yet endowed with such an intimate inner life as they now have. They possessed instead entirely different faculties, for example, what we have often called an ancient, shadowy clairvoyance.

When we consider the human soul as it was during the daytime in that period, we find that it did not actually feel itself to be an I; instead, man felt himself to be a member of his tribe, of his people. Just as the hand is a member of the body, so the separate I represented, as a member, the whole community formed by the tribe, the people. Man did not yet perceive himself as an individual I, as he does today; it was the tribal-I, the folk-I, on which he fixed his attention. One thus lived during the day not knowing clearly that one was a human being. When evening came, however, and one passed into sleep, consciousness did not become totally darkened as it does today, but instead the soul during sleep was able to perceive spiritual facts. One thus perceived in one’s environment, for example, facts of which the modern dream is only a shadow—spiritual events, spiritual facts, of which the dreams of the present day are as a rule no longer true representations. Such were the perceptions of the human beings of that time, so that they knew that a spiritual world existed. To them the spiritual world was a reality, not through any kind of logic, through anything that required proof, but simply because each night they found themselves within the spiritual world, though only with a dull and dreamlike consciousness.

That, however, was not the essential thing. Besides the conditions of sleeping and waking, there were also in between states during which the human being was neither wholly asleep nor wholly awake. At such times the I-consciousness abated even more than by day, but at the same time the perception of spiritual events, that dreamlike clairvoyance, was substantially stronger than during the night. There were thus intermediate states in which human beings lacked consciousness of self, to be sure, but in which they were endowed with clairvoyance. In such states the human being was as though entranced, so that he knew nothing of himself. He was not able to know, “I am a man,” but he clearly knew “I am a member of a spiritual world in which I am able to perceive; I know that there is a spiritual world.” These were the experiences of the human souls of that time, and this consciousness, this life in the spiritual world, was much clearer still in the Atlantean period—very much clearer. When we survey this, therefore, we look back to an ancient era of dim, dreamlike clairvoyance for our souls, which gradually diminished during human evolution.

If we had remained at the stage of this ancient, dreamlike clairvoyance, we could not have acquired the individual I-consciousness we have today. We could never have known that we are human beings. We had to lose that awareness of the spiritual world in order to exchange it for I-consciousness. In the future, we shall have both at the same time. While maintaining our I-consciousness, we shall all gain once more what amounts to full clairvoyance, as is possible today only to one who has traveled the path of initiation. In the future, every person will be able once more to look into the spiritual world and yet feel himself as a human being, as an I.

Picture to yourselves again what has taken place. The soul has passed from incarnation to incarnation. At first it was clairvoyant; later, the consciousness of becoming an I grew ever more distinct and with it the possibility of forming one's own judgments. As long as one still looks clairvoyantly into the spiritual world and does not feel oneself to be an I, it is impossible to form judgments, to combine thoughts. The ability to form judgments gradually emerged, but in exchange the old clairvoyance diminished with each succeeding incarnation. A person dwelt less and less in those states in which he could look into the spiritual world. Instead, he became acclimated to the physical plane, cultivated logical thinking, and felt himself as an I; clairvoyance thereby gradually receded. The human being now perceives the outer world and becomes ever more entangled in it, but his connection with the spiritual world becomes more tenuous. One can therefore say that in the distant past man was a kind of spiritual being, because he associated directly with other spiritual beings, was their companion, so to speak; he felt that he belonged with other spiritual beings to whom he can no longer look up with normal senses today. As we know, there are also today, beyond the world that immediately surrounds us, other spiritual worlds inhabited by other spiritual beings, but the person of today cannot look into those worlds with his ordinary consciousness. Earlier, however, he dwelt in them, both during the sleeping consciousness of the night and in that intermediate state of which we spoke. He lived in the spiritual world and had intercourse with these other beings. He can no longer do this normally. He has been, as it were, cast out of his home, the spiritual world, and with each new incarnation he becomes more and more firmly established in this world of the earth below.

In the sanctuaries of spiritual life and in those fields of knowledge and science in which such things were still known, it was always taken into consideration that our incarnations have passed through these different earthly periods. They looked back to an ancient period, even before the Atlantean catastrophe, when human beings dwelt in direct contact with the gods, or spirits, and when they naturally had entirely different feelings and sensations. You can imagine that the human soul must have had quite different sensations in an age when it knew certainly that it could look up to the higher beings and when it was aware of itself as a member of that higher world. It has thus learned to feel and to sense entirely differently.

When you consider these facts, you must picture to yourselves that we can learn to speak and to think today only if we grow up among humankind, because these faculties can be acquired only among human beings. If a child were to be cast upon some lonely island and were to grow up there, lacking association with human beings, he would be unable to acquire the faculties of thinking and speaking. We thus see that the way in which any being develops depends in part on the kind of beings among which it lives and matures. Evolution is affected by this fact. You can observe this among animals. It is known that dogs removed from association with human beings to some place where they never meet a human being actually forget how to bark. As a rule, the descendants of such dogs are unable to bark at all. Something depends upon whether a being grows up and lives among one kind of being or another kind. You can therefore imagine that it makes a difference whether you dwell on the physical plane among modern human beings or whether you—the same souls, as it were—lived earlier among spiritual beings in a spiritual world that can no longer be penetrated by the normal vision of today. At that time the soul developed differently; the human being had within him different impulses when he dwelt among the gods. The human being developed one kind of impulse among men and another kind when he dwelt with gods.

A higher knowledge has always known this; such a knowledge has always looked back to that time when human beings were in direct intercourse with divine-spiritual beings, on account of which the soul felt itself to belong to the divine-spiritual world. This, however, also engendered forces and impulses in the soul that were divine-spiritual in a totally different sense from the forces of today. At that time, when the soul still operated in such a way that it felt itself to be a part of the higher world, a will spoke out of this soul that also derived from the divine-spiritual world. One could say that this will was inspired, because the soul dwelt among the gods. This period when man was still united with the divine-spiritual beings is spoken of in the ancient wisdom as the Golden Age or Krita Yuga. We must look back to a time preceding the Atlantean catastrophe to find the greater part of this age.

Afterward, a time followed when human beings no longer felt their connection with the spiritual world so strongly as during Krita Yuga, when they felt their impulses to be less determined by their association with the gods, when even their vision began to grow dimmer regarding the spirit and the soul. They retained the memory, however, of having dwelt with the spirits and the gods. This was especially distinct in the ancient Indian world. There they spoke quite easily of spiritual matters; they could call attention to the outer world of physical perception and yet, as we say, recognize the maya or illusion in it, because human beings had had these physical perceptions for only a comparatively short time. That was the situation in ancient India. The souls in ancient India no longer saw the gods themselves, but they still saw spiritual realities and lower spiritual beings. The higher spiritual beings were still visible to a few people, but a living companionship with the gods was obscured even to these. Will impulses from the divine-spiritual world had already disappeared. It was still possible, however, to glimpse spiritual realities during particular states of consciousness: during sleep and during the intermediate state we have already mentioned. The most important realities of the spiritual world, however, which had previously been a matter of experience, had become merely a sort of knowledge of the truth, like something that the soul still knew distinctly but that had only the effect of knowledge, of truth. To be sure, human beings were still in the spiritual world, but their assurance of it was less strong in this later time than it had been before. This is known as the Silver Age or Treta Yuga.

Following this came the period of the incarnations in which human vision became more and more cut off from the spiritual world, became more and more adjusted to the immediate outer world of the senses and accordingly more firmly entrenched in this world of the senses. This period, during which emerged the inner I-consciousness, the consciousness of being human, is known as the Bronze Age or Dvapara Yuga. Although human beings no longer had the lofty, direct knowledge of the spiritual world belonging to earlier periods, at least something of the spiritual world still remained in humanity in general. One could perhaps describe this by comparing it to human beings of the present day who, when they grow older, retain something of the joy of youth. It has indeed fled, but once having experienced it, one knows it and can speak of it as something with which one is familiar. Similarly, the souls of that time were still somewhat familiar with what leads to the spiritual worlds. This is the essential feature of Dvapara Yuga.

A period followed when even this familiarity with the spiritual world ceased, when, as it were, the doors of the spiritual world were closed. Thereafter, human vision became so confined to the outer world of the senses and to the intellect that elaborated the sense impressions that they could now only reflect upon the spiritual world. This is the lowest means by which something about the spiritual world can be known. What human beings now actually knew from their own experience was the physical, sensible world. If human beings wished to know something of the spiritual world, they had to accomplish this through reflection. This is the period when human beings became the most unspiritual and accordingly the most attached to and rooted in the world of the senses. This was necessary in order that consciousness of self might gradually attain the peak of its evolution, since only through the sturdy opposition of the outer world could man learn to distinguish himself from the world and to sense himself as an individual being. This last period is called Kali Yuga or the Dark Age.

I should like to emphasize that these expressions can also be used to refer to more extensive epochs. The designation of Krita Yuga, for example, may be applied to a much broader period, since before the Golden Age even existed, the human being participated with his experience in still higher spheres; hence, all these still earlier periods might be included in the term “Golden Age.” If one is moderate, so to speak, in one's claims, however, if one is content with that measure of spiritual experience that has been described, it is possible to divide in this way what has occurred in the past. Definite periods of time can be assigned to all such eras. To be sure, evolution moves forward slowly, through gradual stages, but there are certain boundaries of which we may say that prior to this, such a thing was primarily true, and after this some other condition of life and consciousness prevailed. Accordingly, we must calculate that, in the sense in which we first used the term, Kali Yuga began approximately in the year 3101 BC. We thus see that our souls have appeared repeatedly on earth in new incarnations, during which human vision has become increasingly shut off from the spiritual world and at the same time ever more restricted to the outer world of the senses. We thus see that our souls actually come with each new incarnation into new conditions from which something new can always be learned. What we can gain from Kali Yuga is the possibility of becoming established in our I-consciousness. This was not possible previously, because the human being had first to absorb the I into himself.

When souls have neglected in a given incarnation what that particular epoch has to offer, it is very difficult to make up for the loss in another epoch. They must then wait a very long time before it becomes possible to make good the loss in a certain way, but we certainly must not depend on this chance. Let us, therefore, remember that something essential took place at the time when, as it were, the doors of the spiritual world were made fast. That was the period in which John the Baptist worked, as well as the Christ. It was essential for this time, which had already witnessed the passing of 3,100 years of the Dark Age, that the people living then had all incarnated several times, or at least once or twice, during this Dark Age. I-consciousness had become firmly established, memory of the spiritual world had already evaporated, and, if human beings did not wish to lose all connection with the spiritual world, they had to learn to experience the spiritual within the I. They had to develop the I in such a way that this I, within its inner being, could at least be sure that there is a spiritual world, that man belongs to this spiritual world, and that there are also higher spiritual beings. The I had to make itself capable of inwardly feeling, of believing in, the spiritual world.

If, in the time of Christ Jesus, someone were to have expressed what was indeed the truth in that period, he might have said, “Once upon a time human beings were able to experience the kingdom of heaven outside of their own I's, in those spiritual distances they reached when they emerged from their lower selves. The human being had to experience the kingdom of heaven, the spiritual world, at a distance from the I. Now this kingdom of heaven cannot be so experienced; now the human being has changed so much that the I must experience this kingdom within itself. The kingdom of heaven has approached man to such an extent that it now works into the I.” John the Baptist proclaimed this to humanity, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” that is, approaches the I. Previously, it was to be found outside of man, but now man must embrace in the very core of his being, in the I, a kingdom of heaven now come near at hand.

Precisely because in this Dark Age, in Kali Yuga, man was no longer able to go forth from the world of the senses into the spiritual world, the divine being, the Christ, had to come down into the physical, sensible world. This is the reason that Christ had to descend into a man of flesh, into Jesus of Nazareth, in order that through beholding the life and deeds of Christ on the physical earth, human beings in physical bodies might gain a connection with the kingdom of heaven, with the spiritual world. The period when Christ walked upon earth thus fell in the midst of Kali Yuga, of the Dark Age, when human beings who comprehended their time and did not live in it in a dull and unenlightened way could say to themselves, “It is necessary that the God should descend among human beings in order that a connection with the spiritual world that has been lost can be won again.”

If there had been no human beings at that time capable of understanding this, capable of establishing an active soul connection with the Christ, all human connection with the spiritual world would gradually have been lost and human beings would not have accepted into their I's the connection with the kingdom of heaven. If all the human beings living at such a crucial time had persisted in remaining in darkness, it might have happened that this significant event would have passed by them unnoticed. Then human souls would have become withered, desolate, and depraved. To be sure, they would have continued to incarnate for a time without the Christ, but they would not have been able to implant in their I's what was necessary for them to regain their connection with the kingdom of heaven. It might have happened that the event of the appearance of Christ on earth could have been overlooked by everyone, just as it passed unnoticed, for example, by the inhabitants of Rome. Among these it was said, “Somewhere in a dingy side street lives a strange sect of horrid people, and among them lives a detestable spirit who calls himself Jesus of Nazareth and who preaches to the people, inciting them to all kinds of heinous deeds.” That is how much they knew of Christ in Rome at a certain period! You are perhaps also aware that it was the great Roman historian, Tacitus, who described Him in some such way about a hundred years after the events in Palestine.

Indeed, it is true, not everyone realized that something of the utmost importance had taken place, an event which, striking into the unearthly darkness as divine light, was capable of carrying human beings over Kali Yuga! The possibility for further evolution was given to humanity through the fact that there were certain souls who comprehended that moment in time, who knew what it meant that Christ had walked upon the earth.

If you were to imagine yourselves for a moment in that period, you could then easily say, “Yes, it was quite possible to live at that time and yet know nothing of the appearance of Christ Jesus on the physical plane! It was possible to dwell on earth without taking this most significant event into one's consciousness.” Might it not then also be possible today that something of infinite importance is taking place and that human beings are not taking it into their consciousness? Could it not be that something tremendously important is taking place in the world, taking place right now, of which our own contemporaries have no presentiment? This is indeed so. Something highly important is taking place that is perceptible, however, only to spiritual vision. There is much talk about periods of transition. We are indeed living in one, and it is a momentous one. What is important is that we are living just at the time when the Dark Age has run its course and a new epoch is just beginning, in which human beings will slowly and gradually develop new faculties and in which human souls will gradually undergo a change.

It is hardly to be wondered at that most human beings are in no way aware of this, considering that most human beings also failed to notice the occurrence of the Christ event at the beginning of our era. Kali Yuga came to an end in the year 1899; now we must adapt ourselves to a new age. What is beginning at this time will slowly prepare humanity for new soul faculties.

The first signs of these new soul faculties will begin to appear relatively soon now in isolated souls. They will become more clear in the middle of the fourth decade of this century, sometime between 1930 and 1940. The years 1933, 1935, and 1937 will be especially significant. Faculties that now are quite unusual for human beings will then manifest themselves as natural abilities. At this time great changes will take place, and Biblical prophecies will be fulfilled. Everything will be transformed for the souls who are sojourning on earth and also for those who are no longer within the physical body. Regardless of where they are, souls are encountering entirely new faculties. Everything is changing, but the most significant event of our time is a deep, decisive transformation in the soul faculties of man.

Kali Yuga has run its course, and now human souls are beginning to develop new faculties, faculties that—because this is precisely the purpose of the age—will cause souls, seemingly out of themselves, to exhibit certain clairvoyant powers that were necessarily submerged in the unconscious during Kali Yuga. There will be a number of souls who will have the singular experience of having I-consciousness and at the same time the feeling of living in another world, essentially an entirely different world from the one of their ordinary consciousness. It will seem shadowy, a dim presentiment, as it were, as though one born blind were to have been operated on and had his sight restored. Through what we call esoteric training, these clairvoyant faculties will be acquired much more readily, but because humanity progresses they will appear, at least in rudimentary form, in the most elementary stages, in the natural course of human evolution.

It might easily happen in our epoch (indeed, more easily than has ever been the case before) that human beings would not be able to comprehend such an event that is of the utmost significance for humanity. It could be that they would fail to grasp that such a thing is an actual glimpse into the spiritual world, though still only shadowy and dim. There might, for example, be so much wickedness, such great materialism on earth that the majority of humanity would not show the slightest understanding but would consider those people who had this clairvoyance as fools and would clap them into insane asylums along with others whose souls develop in a muddled fashion. This epoch could pass by humanity without notice, as it were, although we are letting the call sound forth today, even as John the Baptist, as the forerunner of Christ, and Christ Himself once let it resound: A new age is at hand, in which the souls of human beings must take a step upward into the kingdom of heaven!

It could easily happen that this great event might pass by without the understanding of human beings. If, then, in the years between 1930 and 1940, the materialists were to triumph and say, “Yes, there have indeed been a number of fools but no sign of the great happenings that were anticipated,” it would not disprove what we have said. If they were to triumph, however, and if humanity overlooked these events, it would be a great misfortune. Even if they were unable to perceive the great occurrence that can take place, it will nonetheless occur.

The event to which we refer is that human beings can acquire the new faculty of perception in the etheric realm—a certain number of human beings to begin with, followed gradually by others, because humanity will have 2,500 years in which to evolve these faculties increasingly. Human beings must not miss the opportunity offered in this period. To let it pass unheeded would be a great misfortune, and humanity would then have to wait until later to make up the loss, in order ultimately to develop this faculty. This ability will enable human beings to see in their surroundings something of the etheric world, which up to now they have not normally been able to perceive. The human being now sees only man's physical body; then, however, he will be able to see the etheric body, at least as a shadowy image, and also to experience the relationship of all deeper events in the etheric. He will have pictures and premonitions of events in the spiritual world and will find that such events are carried out on the physical plane after three or four days. He will see certain things in etheric pictures and will know that tomorrow, or in a few days, this or that will take place.

Such transformations will come about in human soul faculties, resulting in what may be described as etheric vision. And Who is bound up with this fact? That being Whom we call the Christ, Who appeared on earth in the flesh at the beginning of our era. He will never come again in a physical body; that event was unique. The Christ will return, however, in an etheric form in the period of which we have been speaking. Then human beings will learn to perceive Christ, because through this etheric vision they will grow upward toward Him Who no longer descends as far as into a physical body but only into an etheric body. It will therefore be necessary for human beings to grow upward to a perception of Christ, for Christ spoke truly when He said, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.” He is here; He is in our spiritual world and those who are especially blessed can perceive Him always in this spiritual-etheric world.

St. Paul was convinced through such perception in the event of Damascus. This same etheric vision will be cultivated as a natural faculty by individual persons. To experience an event of Damascus, a Paul event, will be an increasing possibility for human beings in the coming period.

We thus comprehend spiritual science in a completely different sense. We learn that it imposes a tremendous responsibility upon us, since it is a preparation for the concrete occurrence of the reappearance of Christ. Christ will reappear because human beings will be raising themselves toward Him in etheric vision. When we grasp this, spiritual science appears to us as the preparation of human beings for the return of Christ, so that they will not have the misfortune to overlook this great event but will be ripe to seize the great moment that we may describe as the second coming of Christ. Man will be capable of seeing etheric bodies, and among these etheric bodies he will also be able to see the etheric body of Christ; that is, he will grow into a world in which the Christ will be visible to his newly awakened faculties.

It will then no longer be necessary to prove the existence of Christ through all sorts of documents, because there will be eye-witnesses to the presence of the living Christ, those who will experience Him in His etheric body. Through this experience they will learn that this being is the same as the One Who consummated the Mystery of Golgotha at the beginning of our era and that this is the Christ. Just as Paul was convinced near Damascus that this was the Christ, so there will be human beings who will be convinced through experiences in the etheric realm that Christ truly lives.

The greatest mystery of our time is this one concerning the second coming of Christ, and it takes on its true form in the way I have described. The materialistic mind, however, will in a certain way usurp this event. What has just been said, namely, that all genuine spiritual knowledge points to this time, will often be proclaimed in the coming years. The materialistic mind today corrupts everything, however, and so it will come about that this sort of mind will be unable to imagine that the souls of human beings must advance to etheric vision and with it to Christ in the etheric body.

The materialistic mind will conceive of this event as another descent of Christ into the flesh, as another physical incarnation. There will be a number of persons who in their colossal conceit will turn this to their own advantage by letting it be known among human beings that they are the reincarnated Christ. Accordingly, the coming period may bring us false Christs. Anthroposophists, however, should be people who will be so ripe for spiritual life that they will not confuse the second coming of Christ in a spiritual body, perceptible only to a higher vision, with such a reappearance in a physical body. That will be one of the direst temptations that will beset humanity. To help humanity overcome this temptation will be the task of those who learn through spiritual science to raise themselves to a comprehension of the spirit—of those who do not wish to drag the spirit down into matter but to ascend into the spiritual world themselves. It is in this way, therefore, that we must speak of the second coming of Christ and of the fact that we raise ourselves up to Christ in the spiritual world by acquiring etheric vision.

Christ is always present, but He is in the spiritual world; we can reach Him if we raise ourselves into that world. All anthroposophical teaching should be transformed in us into the strong wish to prevent humanity from letting this event pass by unnoticed but rather, in the time remaining at our disposal, gradually to educate a humanity that may be ripe to cultivate these new faculties and thereby to unite anew with the Christ. Otherwise, humanity would have to wait a long time for such an opportunity to be repeated—indeed, until another incarnation of the earth. If humanity were to ignore this event of the return of Christ, the vision of Christ in the etheric body would be limited to those who, through esoteric training, prove themselves to be ready to rise to such an experience. But the momentous event—the possibility that these faculties might be acquired by humanity in general and that this great event might, by means of these naturally developed faculties, be understood by all human beings—would be impossible for a long time to come.

We thus see that there is indeed something in our epoch that justifies the existence and the activity of spiritual science in the world. Its aim is not merely to satisfy theoretical needs or scientific curiosity. Spiritual science prepares human beings for this event, prepares them to relate themselves in the right way to their period and to see with the full clarity of understanding and cognition what is actually there but that may pass human beings by without being brought to fruition. This is its aim!

It will be of utmost importance to grasp this event of Christ's appearance, because other events will follow upon this. Just as other events preceded the Christ event in Palestine, so, after the period when Christ Himself will have become visible again to humanity in the etheric body, will those who previously foretold Him now become His successors. All those who prepared the way for Him will become recognizable in a new form to those who will have experienced the new Christ event. Those who once dwelt on earth as Moses, Abraham, and the prophets will again become recognizable to human beings. We shall realize that, even as Abraham preceded Christ, preparing His way, he has also assumed the mission of helping later with the work of Christ. The human being who is awake, who does not sleep through the greatest event of the near future, gradually enters into association with all those who, as patriarchs, preceded the Christ event; he unites with them. Then appears once more the great host of those toward whom we shall be able to raise ourselves. He who led humanity's descent into the physical plane appears again after Christ and leads man upward to unite him once more with the spiritual worlds.

Looking far back into human evolution, we see that there is a certain moment after which humanity may be said to be descending even further from its fellowship with the spiritual world and entering more and more into the material world. Although the following image has its material side, we may nevertheless use it here: man was at one time a companion of spiritual beings, his spirit dwelt within the spiritual world and, by reason of the fact that he dwelt in the spiritual world, he was a son of the gods. What constituted this constantly reincarnating soul, however, participated increasingly in the outer world. The son of the gods was then within man, who took delight in the daughters of the earth, that is, in those souls who had sympathy for the physical world. This, in turn, means that the human spirit, who had previously been permeated by divine spirituality, sank down into the physical world of the senses. He became the mate of the intellect, which is bound to the brain and which entangled him in the sense world. Now this spirit must find the path by which he descended and, climbing upward again, become once more the son of the gods. The son of man, which he has become, would perish here below in the physical world if he were not to ascend once more as son of man to the divine beings, to the light of the spiritual world, if he were not in the future to find delight in the daughters of the gods. It was necessary for the evolution of humanity that the sons of gods should unite with the daughters of men, with the souls that were fettered to the physical world, in order that, as son of man, the human being would learn to master the physical plane. It is necessary for the human being of the future, however, that, as the son of man, he shall find delight in the daughters of the gods, in the divine-spiritual light of wisdom with which he must unite himself in order to rise once again into the world of the gods.

The will shall be enkindled by divine wisdom, and the mightiest impulse toward this will arise when, for him who has prepared himself for it, the sublime etheric figure of Christ Jesus becomes perceptible. The second coming of Christ will be, for human beings who have developed clairvoyance naturally, the same as when the etheric Christ appeared to Paul as a spiritual being. He will appear once more to human beings, if they come to understand that these faculties that will arise through the evolution of the human soul are to be used for this purpose.

Let us use spiritual science so that it may serve not merely to satisfy our curiosity but in such a way that it will prepare us for the great tasks, the great missions of the human race for which we must grow ever more mature.

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Rudolf Steiner's Answers to Questions in Connection with the Preceding Lecture

When things are spoken of such as those we have discussed today, when we attempt to shed light upon the more intimate mysteries, let us not regard them thoughtlessly as one is likely to listen to certain things today, but let us be quite clear that anthroposophy should become for us something totally different from mere theory. Of course, the teaching must be there; how would one be able to rise to such thoughts as have been uttered here today if it were not possible to absorb them in the form of teaching? What is essential, however, is that it should not remain teaching but rather be remolded in our souls into traits of feeling (Gemuet) and character, into an entirely different disposition, and that it should thus make totally different human beings of us. It should guide us in making the right use of our incarnations, so that we may be able during their course to develop into something entirely different.

In trying to say not a word too much nor a word too little, I have not made more than fleeting reference to important subjects. What was said, however, is significant not only for those souls who will be incarnated on the physical plane in the period between 1930 and 1940 but also for those who will then be in the spiritual world, between death and a new birth. We must realize that souls in the spiritual world have an influence on the world of the living, though the latter may be quite unaware of it. Through the new Christ event, however, this relationship between those who are embodied here on the physical plane and those who are already in the spiritual world will become increasingly conscious. Cooperation between physically embodied human beings and spiritual beings will then be possible. This should already have been implied in our having visualised the reappearance of the prophets to human beings on earth.

Therefore, you must picture to yourselves that, when these great moments arrive in the future of humanity, human beings will work together with one another more consciously in the physical and in the spiritual worlds. Today this is not possible because of the lack of a common language. People here in the physical world use in their speech words descriptive only of physical things and physical conditions. Human beings between death and a new birth, however, live in a world quite different from the one immediately surrounding us, and they speak a different language. Of all that is spoken in our world, the dead can receive only what is spoken in spiritual science. Thus, in anthroposophy, we are concerned with something that will be increasingly intelligible to the dead. What we say in this province also benefits those who are between death and a new birth.

Humanity is ripening toward a time when the influences of the spiritual world will be felt ever more widely. The tremendous occurrences of the coming period will be discernible in all worlds. Even the human beings between death and a new birth will have new experiences in the other world as a result of the new Christ event in the etheric world. Unless they have prepared themselves on earth to do so, however, they will no more be able to understand these events than will the human beings now incarnated on earth; they must have prepared themselves rightly to receive the events of this important moment. It is essential for all the souls now incarnated (regardless of whether or not they will still be embodied then) that they shall have prepared themselves for these significant coming events by taking up anthroposophical truths. Should they fail to do this, they will have to wait. If they have not received with their earthly consciousness what anthroposophy or spiritual science has to give, they will have to wait until they are again incarnated to have the possibility of receiving corresponding teachings here on earth. There are things that can be learned or experienced only on earth. One could say, for example, that in the spiritual world it is impossible to gain any knowledge of death, and a God had to descend to the physical world to be able to die. One cannot in any other world learn what the Mystery of Golgotha actually is in the same way as here in the physical world. We have been led down into the physical world to acquire what can only be acquired here. Christ descended among human beings because only here in the physical world could He give evidence to them, by causing them to experience something in the Mystery of Golgotha, of what was to bear far-reaching fruit in the spiritual world. The seeds, however, must be sown here in the physical world.

Our lectures at group meetings would contribute little to our progress if we could not occasionally speak about the more intimate processes of the spiritual life of humanity. What we should strive for in our groups is a preparation for the attainment of higher spiritual truths. At the same time, we must not think that such a preparation consists merely in learning theories or ideas. What we call preparation for the attainment of higher truths should really consist in a certain state of feeling and sensation in our soul. Through the life in our groups and through the fact that we meet from week to week, our souls should gradually mature to the point at which they become receptive even to those elements of spiritual science that descend—or, if you like, ascend—from the more general truths, which we are already in a position to communicate through exoteric lectures to the greater public, to the concrete facts of life.

Let us then dedicate this particular evening especially to such a preparation of our souls, that is, to such a preparation of feeling within our souls. There are certain things that should be brought before our souls this evening, things that, to be sure, we shall understand at first only slowly and gradually but that we can begin to feel and divine if we acquire the necessary degree of maturity through our life in the groups. It must be taken for granted in this case that such truths will be received with corresponding delicacy, that they will be received as a priceless treasure of soul, not as something we believe we can readily place before an unprepared audience. We shall gradually ascend in our considerations from the known to the unknown.

A question intrudes even upon the mind of one familiar with the elements of an anthroposophical world conception: is there any sense or purpose in the fact that the human soul appears again and again in successive incarnations or embodiments on earth? One may accept the abstract truth of reincarnation, yet such an abstract truth basically can help us little in life. Truths acquire a significance in our lives only when they can be transformed, recast, in our souls into warmth of feeling, into the light that shines forth within us in such a way that it leads us onward along the path of life. For this reason, the abstract truth of reincarnation acquires significance for us only when we are able to know something more precise and intimate concerning the sense and significance of the successive incarnations of human beings. This will be one of the questions with which we shall occupy ourselves today.

The other question is: what particular significance is contained for us in the fact that we are in a position, during our present incarnation, to absorb anthroposophy into our souls, to bind anthroposophical truths with our innermost life? We shall see that today these two things will unite harmoniously.

You have often heard that two successive incarnations of a human being do not succeed each other in an arbitrary way but that when the human being has passed through death and out of one earthly life he returns to a new earthly life only when it affords him the opportunity to learn something new about the earth and to unite this with his soul life. This can be understood, of course, only by one who does not limit his study of the evolution of the earth to a period extending over a few centuries or millenia. Only one who surveys the whole evolution of the earth is in a position to comprehend things in the right way. Regarding outer physical conditions, we shall learn to comprehend, even if we limit ourselves to outer sources, that the very countenance of the earth has changed during the course of relatively short periods of time.

If, for instance, you read the description of the regions in which we are now living to see how they must have looked at the time when Christ was walking about on earth, you will find the entire countenance of this region has changed during the course of relatively few centuries. You might then ask yourselves how much the moral and other conditions of civilization may have changed during the course of these few centuries. Try for a moment to call before your soul what a child used to learn at the beginning of our era and what a modern child learns today; try to imagine all this, and then recall from what you have learned through anthroposophical teachings that we are able to look back to a remote past when the countenance of the earth presented an entirely different appearance. Then, for the most part, continents that exist today did not yet exist, but there was an immense, extensive continent in the place occupied today by the Atlantic Ocean. Think of all that must have taken place throughout the course of long periods of time in order to change in this way the countenance of the earth to what it is today.

If you call all this before your soul, you must say to yourselves that there is the possibility for souls to experience something new from each existence on earth, always to receive new fruits, and then to unite these fruits with their own lives in order to pass through a spiritual life between death and a new birth. When the conditions have changed so that something new can be learned and it is worthwhile to descend again to earth, these souls actually come again in a new incarnation.

It is not merely a play of forces and beings active behind phenomena that brings man down again and again into new incarnations; it is a case, rather, of every incarnation contributing a new force and faculty as a new member within the divine plan representing the totality of human life. Only when we survey life in this way does the law of repeated lives on earth acquire true meaning. At the same time, we must also ask ourselves if it is not possible to miss some opportunity. Is it not possible that there is something that depends upon whether or not we make the most of any one incarnation or embodiment in the right way? If we could simply be sure that we would have a repetition of our present life in the next incarnation, many people could argue, “I have plenty of time because I shall live many more times.”

If one considers the most important facts of life, however, and knows that what the earth can give us during a definite period of time cannot be experienced again during another period, one will realize that it is indeed possible to miss opportunities; one can then acquire an inner sense of obligation and responsibility to make use of each incarnation, each earthly embodiment, in the right way. We shall come to see more exactly how we can make use of these incarnations if we now take a small glance backward, with the help of what spiritual investigation offers us. I shall now speak to you about certain facts that are already familiar to you, but I shall then extend them to include something that is unknown to most of you who are sitting here. What you already know is the fact that during our earlier incarnations our souls possessed entirely different faculties from those they possess today. Those faculties by which modern humanity lives and works did not always exist. If we ask ourselves what is especially active in the human soul today, we must answer by saying that it is the capacity to receive through the senses, in an exact way, the outer facts of the world. Man possesses a self-conscious reasoning power, a self-conscious power of judgment, which he is able to apply to sense perception and by means of which he can combine what he perceives through the senses, in this way obtaining a picture of the world through his cognition.

We know, however, that when the human being continues to develop his soul through the methods described in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, (see Note 1) he becomes capable of perceiving another, a spiritual environment around him. We know that there is a spiritual eye that can be opened and that higher super-sensible faculties, dormant in the average human being today, can be awakened. We know that there was a time when every human being could perceive the spiritual world, but we know also that the time will come when the spiritual world will again be able to stream into our souls, just as light and color stream into the eyes of a blind man who has been operated on and had his sight restored. This light and color already existed in his environment but could not stream into him because the organs capable of admitting them were not yet opened.

We thus have today a humanity that can look into the spiritual world only through an abnormal development or by following special methods. The normal state for modern man is to be able to perceive the things of the world through his outer senses and to combine his perceptions through his reason or intellect, which are connected with the physical brain.

Humanity has not always been the same as it is today, however. We may look back to a remote period in human evolution and find, if we have opened the clairvoyant eye to the records we call the “Akashic Chronicle,” that the normal faculties of the human soul were entirely different at that time. In ancient times all human beings had a kind of clairvoyance, not the kind that one may acquire today through the methods referred to above but a clairvoyance of an entirely different sort; we must describe it as a vague, dreamlike, twilit clairvoyance. This clairvoyance existed especially under certain abnormal conditions. Even then, it came by itself; it was not necessary to call it forth by unusual methods. We would have to go back to a very remote past, it is true, if we wished to find a humanity endowed with constant clairvoyance, but even then it was only during certain intermediary states, between sleeping and waking, that man Always possessed a certain clairvoyance. The further back we go, the more we find this form of clairvoyance.

You will remember that, in tracing our way back through the various ages of civilization, we also come to particular epochs of human culture. We are now living in one period of civilization that was preceded by another that we designate as the Greco-Latin. This was preceded by another period, named after its leading nations, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian epoch. This was preceded by the one we designate as the ancient Persian; still further back, we come to what we call ancient India. This last is a civilization to which only the clairvoyant eye can look back. The period that produced the Vedas arose in much later times as a weak echo of that sublime wisdom that was given to the world by the Seven Holy Rishis during the earliest primeval Indian civilization. Now, if we go even further back than this, we find the great Atlantean catastrophe that so transformed the countenance of our earth through cataclysms of water and fire that the Atlantean continent gradually disappeared. In its place arose what today forms Africa and Europe on one side and America on the other. We might go still further back, in which case the ancient records of the Akashic Chronicle would show us that human beings dwelling upon this ancient Atlantean continent possessed entirely different faculties of soul from ours, faculties that would appear almost incredible to modern man because they were far too remote from anything he knows today.

During all these different periods, our own souls already existed; they existed in different bodies, and each time they possessed different faculties. If we were able to look back, we should find that our souls were then endowed with a high degree of clairvoyant receptivity. Especially during certain intermediary states between sleeping and waking, they were witnesses of a spiritual world; they were able to look into a spiritual world. You would find, if you could look back, that you yourselves at that time could see the facts and beings of the spiritual worlds. In those days there was no temptation, no possibility, for human souls to deny the spiritual world, because they saw the spiritual world, because it was only during a few hours of the day that they turned toward the physical world. The objects of the outer physical world were not as yet arranged visibly in the same way as they were in later periods. Hence, when human beings were in the intermediary state between sleeping and waking, they were surrounded by a world that they had to experience as spiritual, that filled them with the conviction that this was the world of man's origin. He descended from this world in order to acquire something in the physical world that he could not have acquired in the spiritual world above.

What is it that man has been able to acquire in this outer world that he was not also able to have in the spiritual world? What this spiritual world lacked was the possibility of evolving self-consciousness, the possibility of saying “I” to oneself. This is what humanity lacked. The human being was outside his own self during the most important moments of his life, as in a state of being enraptured, and in this state he did not even know that he was an independent individuality possessing an inner life of his own. He was given up entirely to the spiritual world. To learn to experience himself as an I was possible for man only here in the physical world; only here could he attain a real consciousness of self. With this self-consciousness is inseparably connected what we call the power of judgment, our modern thinking and our modern faculty for perception. The human being was compelled, therefore, to sacrifice his former relationship with the spiritual world, his former dim clairvoyance, in order to acquire the possibility of distinguishing himself as an I from his surroundings and through this coming to the I, to self-consciousness. In the future, the human being will acquire again, in addition to his consciousness of self, this capacity to look clairvoyantly into the world of spirits. The portal of the spiritual world has been closed to him in order that man might become a self-conscious, inward, spiritual being—in order that he might ascend to the consciousness of self and be able thereby to enter the spiritual world again as an independent being.

There was once, therefore, an ancient time in which man looked upon surroundings that were entirely different from those he knows today. What do we see today when we look out upon our physical surroundings? We see the world of minerals, plants, animals, and the physical shapes of our fellow human beings. This is what surrounds us; this is the world to which we first belong, the world that is opened to us between birth and death. Into that world from which stems this physical world and which lies behind it we can penetrate only through the gifts of clairvoyance; clairvoyance, as we have said, is not one of the normal faculties of a human being of our day, although in those ancient times it was available under certain conditions to everyone. While in this clairvoyant state, the human being became familiar with the spiritual world. He perceived there the spiritual beings and spiritual facts about which we hear through spiritual science; they do actually exist and cannot be looked upon as nonexistent simply because the normal perception of our day cannot see them. In the same way, light and color surround a blind person, though he may not be able to perceive them.

These spiritual beings were at one time the companions of the human being, and he could say to himself, “I belong to a spiritual world; I belong to it as a spirit-soul being. In the same way that my spirit-soul being lives in this world, so there are in it also such beings as I see about me during my clairvoyant states.” Man was a companion of spirit-soul beings during those distant ages of an ancient past. The insight into—the world and knowledge that looked back into these conditions has always been able to distinguish clearly, even today, the various stages through which man has passed in the course of different periods of time. First, there was the stage when he was still entirely within the spiritual world, when he scarcely descended with consciousness into the physical, sensible world but felt himself as belonging entirely to the spiritual world, so that he drew all his forces from this spiritual world. Spiritual knowledge distinguished this stage from those following it, during which this force gradually disappeared and in its stead there arose first the capacity to perceive sharply outlined objects in the outside world, then the elaboration of these impressions through logical thought and judgment and at the same time the definition of the I, of self-consciousness.

Oriental philosophy, which was able to see into these conditions because it still possessed remnants of the ancient sacred teaching of the Rishis, continued to have special designations for the various periods of human evolution. For the most ancient times of all—for those clairvoyant periods of human evolution when this clairvoyance ascended into the highest regions of the spiritual world, to beings that we must picture to ourselves as the highest of those connected with our world—the designation Krita Yuga was used; this was later called the Golden Age.

Another epoch followed, during which human beings already could see much less of the spiritual world; the influences of the spiritual world upon man were no longer so strong and alive as they had been. This period was originally called Treta Yuga, later on, the Silver Age. During this epoch, human beings living between birth and death obtained their certainty of the spiritual world in yet another way. Their immediate experiences of the spiritual world were unclear, it is true, but to compensate for this they could remember the time that preceded their birth when they had lived together with the spiritual beings. This period, therefore, was one in which the human being was still as certain of the existence of the spiritual world as is the case today when he has grown old and cannot deny that he has passed through his youth. This age was designated as Treta Yuga by the wisdom that knows about such things. Later on, it was replaced by the less clear expression, Silver Age. All of these ancient expressions have at the same time their deep significance, and it is really childish when modern science explains them in the way it does, since it has not the faintest idea of the realities from which these designations flow.

This Silver Age was followed by an age in which there still existed a clear knowledge, a kind of true knowledge of the spiritual world; yet by that time the human being had already descended sufficiently deeply into the physical, sensible world to be able to choose between the two worlds and to have his own convictions concerning them. The old clairvoyance became darker and darker during this third age, the Iron Age or Dvapara Yuga. Nevertheless, it still existed to a certain extent in a twilit state and the human being could, as a result of his own conviction, connect himself more or less with the spiritual world. He had formerly experienced this spiritual world, and this he still knew during the Iron Age.

Then came the age we designate with an Oriental expression, Kali Yuga, the Dark Age. This was the age during which the portal of the spiritual world gradually closed completely to the faculties of the human soul. Through the fact that human beings had to depend increasingly upon their perceptions in the physical, sensible world, they were also able to cultivate within this world their feeling of self, their feeling for the I, their I-consciousness. This age began at a comparatively late date, about 3100 BC, and it continued into our own times.

It is our purpose to study this today in such a way that we can distinguish these different ages so that we may understand our most important tasks in this present incarnation.

We must go back as far as the Atlantean time if we wish to trace the beginnings of Krita Yuga. Treta Yuga, however, still partly coincides with the time of the Holy Rishis, that is, with the Indian civilization but in part also with the ancient Persian civilization. Dvapara Yuga coincides in turn with later epochs of civilization, that is with the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian times, and a certain degree of ancient, dim clairvoyance still existed in those days. The moment in time in which the portals of the spiritual world began slowly and gradually to close, so that humanity had to limit itself to the physical plane, began with the year 3101 before Christ Jesus walked on earth. Thus we see an age beginning about 3,000 years before the Christ event, an age that has gradually made us into what we are today. When we know that it is during this age that the most important deed in the whole evolution of the earth took place—the deed of Christ—we can then appreciate the full significance of this deed.

What, then, were human beings like in this age of Kali Yuga as Christ descended to the earth? They had already been for more than 3,000 years in an evolution that had limited them to the physical world; it had limited them between birth and death to absorb only what could be offered to them in this physical world, what appeared to them in this physical world. Had this evolution continued, man's I-consciousness would have grown ever stronger, to be sure, but solely in an egotistical direction. Man would have become an indulgent being, a being full of desires; he would have enclosed everything coolly within his I. Had something else not occurred, he would have lost completely the consciousness that there is a spiritual world. What was it that occurred just at that time? The whole significance of what occurred arises before our souls when we once understand that there are times of transition in the evolution of the earth. Many persons who merely speculate or who merely indulge in an abstract philosophy, or in the cultivation of any other sort of ideology, call every age a time of transition.

Indeed, one may find that almost every period as far back as one can go with the help of the printing press (and how much has been printed!) has been called a time of transition. One who stands upon the foundations of spiritual science will not be so free with the use of this word, because only those times can be called periods of transition in which something takes place that is really more essential and decisive than what takes place in other ages.

There is a statement that has been taken for granted by official science but that anthroposophists should learn to realize is without meaning: “Nature makes no leaps.” This sounds objective, yet it is senseless, because nature continually makes leaps. If you follow the development of a plant, you find that there is a leap whenever something new appears in the course of its development. A leap takes place from the regular leaf formation to the blossom, from the calyx to the petals, from the petals to the stamen, and so on. After nature has developed gradually for some time, it makes further leaps; indeed, all existence makes leaps. Therein lies the essential nature of evolution, that crises and leaps take place. It is one of those commonplaces resulting from the terrible laziness of human thinking when human beings say that “nature makes no leaps”; in reality it makes many leaps.

Spiritual life especially proceeds in leaps. Great and significant leaps take place in the course of spiritual development. Life then moves gradually forward until significant spiritual leaps again take place. One such tremendous leap in the life of humanity—one that was important not only for those who were with Christ—took place at the time when He walked on earth. In this sense we may call the age when Christ lived and taught in Palestine an age of transition. Please do not say that such a leap, such a passage as this, must be noticed easily by everyone. No, indeed! The most essential events occurring in an age may remain completely concealed from the eyes of those who are alive, and they may pass people by completely unnoticed. We know that such an event once took place, leaving not a trace as it passed completely unnoticed by millions of human beings. We know that the important Roman writer, Tacitus, in a passage in one of his works, described the Christians as a secret and unknown sect, and we also know that one hundred years after Christianity had spread over the southern regions of Europe, strange tales were related in Rome concerning it.

There were thus many circles in Rome at that time that knew nothing about Christianity except that it was a disturbing sect that existed in some remote back street and was led by a certain Jesus who incited people to all kinds of misdeeds. This was one of the versions that circulated in Rome even a century after Christianity was already in existence. It shows us how the most significant of all events, not only for that time but also for the whole of human evolution, passed without a trace, unnoticed by a vast number of human beings. We must be able to picture the fact that, while human beings are noticing nothing, absolutely nothing, the most important and significant event may be taking place. When people say, therefore, that we are living in a time when nothing essential, nothing important is taking place, it does not prove that they are right.

It is indeed a fact that today we are living again in an age of transition in which the most important spiritual events are taking place unknown to large numbers of our contemporaries, yet going on nevertheless. It is this fact that we should make clear to ourselves: we can indeed speak of ages of transition, but we should not use these words too freely. What was the essential characteristic of that age of transition in which Christ Jesus appeared? It is expressed in those significant words that one must only learn to understand in the right way. It was expressed in the prophecy of John the Baptist, quoted later by Christ: “Change the disposition of your souls; the kingdoms of heaven are at hand.” A whole world is contained in this saying, and it is precisely this same world that is so intimately connected with the most important of events that was consummated at that time for the evolution of humanity as a whole.

Through the natural evolution during Kali Yuga, human beings had gradually attained power of judgment and I-consciousness, but they had become incapable of acquiring again, out of this I-consciousness and through their own powers, the connection with the spiritual world. John the Baptist said, “The time has come when your I must be so trained that this I can penetrate completely into the depths of your soul, that it can find within itself the bond with the kingdoms of heaven,” for the human being normally is no longer able to ascend outside of himself in the clairvoyant state into a spiritual world. The kingdoms of heaven had to descend as far as the physical world. They must now reveal themselves in such a way that the I can recognize them through the ordinary consciousness of self, through the sense for truth inherent in ordinary self-consciousness. “Change the inclination, change the former disposition of your soul, so that you can believe that your soul life is capable of being kindled into warmth within itself, within the I, and that you are able to grasp, by observing everything that takes place about you, that there is a spiritual world. You must learn to comprehend the spiritual worlds in your I, through your I. They have descended and are near at hand. They must no longer be sought in a world of rapture outside of consciousness!”

It was for this reason that Christ had to descend and to appear in a human physical body, because man's disposition of soul was attuned to the comprehension of the physical plane. God had to come to human beings upon the physical plane because, through the cultivation of the I and through the closing of the portal leading to the spiritual world, they were no longer capable of approaching the gods in the old way. Herein lies the greatness of the event that took place at that time: that through the natural evolution of human faculties, the old relationship with the spiritual worlds was lost and the attainment of I-consciousness was achieved, but that it was also possible as a result of this to gain consciousness of these spiritual worlds within the physical world. Christ thus became the mediator of the spiritual worlds for those human beings who have reached such a stage of development that they can, in the I that lives on the physical plane, gain the connection with the spiritual world. “Change the disposition of your souls; do not believe any longer that the human being can ascend normally to the spiritual world by being enraptured; rather believe that through the development of capacities inherent to the I, and with the help of Christ, you can find the path leading into the spiritual worlds. Only in this way will humanity now be able to find the spirit.”

Today we are again living in a similar age, since Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, had run its course by 1899, and once again new dispositions of soul, new soul faculties, are slowly being prepared in a similar way. It is quite possible that our contemporaries, the human beings living in our age, may sleep through this. We shall learn gradually to recognize what is to take place for all humanity during the age that began with the close of Kali Yuga. It is our task today to see to it that this transitional event may not pass us by unnoticed and without effect upon the progress of humanity.

Kali Yuga came to an end only a few years ago; 1899 is the approximate date of its termination. We are now approaching a time when, in addition to the already evolved self-consciousness, certain clairvoyant faculties will again evolve quite naturally. Human beings will have the strange and remarkable experience of not knowing what is really happening to them! They will begin to receive premonitions that will become reality, and they will be able to foresee events that will actually take place. Indeed, people everywhere will gradually begin actually to see, although only in shadowy outline and in its first elements, what we call man's etheric body. The human being of today sees only the physical body; the capacity to see the etheric body will gradually be added. People will have learned that this etheric body is a reality, or they will think it is an illusion of their senses, since such a thing, so they will say, does not exist. Things will come to a point at which many people who have such experiences will ask themselves, “Am I really mad?”

Although it will be only a small number of people who will develop these faculties during the next few decades, spiritual science is something that will spread, because the responsibility one feels is for something that in reality is taking place; it must take place in accordance with the natural course of events. Why do we teach spiritual science? Because phenomena will appear in the near future that only spiritual science will be able to grasp and that will remain misunderstood if spiritual science is not there.

These faculties will develop relatively quickly in the case of a small number of human beings. It is quite true, to be sure, that through an esoteric training man may ascend, even today, far beyond what is preparing itself on a small scale for humanity. At the same time, that to which man can ascend in our day by his own efforts, through appropriate training, is already being slightly prepared in small beginnings for all of humanity. It is something about which it will be necessary to speak, whether one understands it or not, during the years 1930 to 1940. Only a few decades separate us from that moment in time when such phenomena will have begun to be more frequent.

By that time, however, something else will also take place for those human beings who will have acquired these faculties. For them, the proof will be yielded of one of the most powerful sayings contained in the New Testament, and it will deeply move their souls. In these souls will arise the words, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” that is to say, if we translate it correctly, “even unto the end of the earth eons.” This expression says to us that Christianity is not merely what books once described it to be or what was learned in recent times. These words tell us that Christianity is not merely what is embraced today in the form of this or that dogma but that it is something living, which contains within it the vision and experience of revelations, something that will unfold with ever-increasing strength. We stand today only at the beginning of the working of Christianity, and anyone who has really united himself with Christ knows that ever-new revelations will spring forth from it. He knows that Christianity is not giving way but that it is growing and becoming, that it is something living, not dead.

One who undertakes spiritual development today can even begin already to experience the truth of this expression, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the ages of the earth.” He is with us and hovers about the earth in spirit form. Previous to the event of Golgotha, the clairvoyant was unable to find Christ in the atmosphere of the earth. Only after the event of Golgotha did Christ become visible in the atmosphere of the earth, because it is since that time that He has been present there. One who was experienced in clairvoyance during pre-Christian times knew that the time would come in which this would occur. He knew that it was not yet possible to find in the astral sphere of our earth what one calls the Christ, but the time will come when the clairvoyant eye will be opened and will be able to see Christ in the earthly sphere. He knew that a great change would take place regarding earthly clairvoyance, yet he was not sufficiently advanced to be convinced by the events in Palestine that these events had already taken place. No physical events could convince him that Christ had already descended to the earth.

One thing alone could convince him: when he saw Christ clairvoyantly in the atmosphere of the earth. Through this he became convinced that the descent of Christ to the earth, which was expected in the mysteries, had actually been consummated. What Paul experienced as the presence of Christ in the atmosphere of the earth is what modern man may train himself to experience clairvoyantly through an esoteric schooling; this is also what single persons here and there will be able to experience through a natural clairvoyance, as I have already characterized it, beginning with the years 1930 to 1940. Then it will continue through long periods of time as something that has become entirely natural to humanity.

The event of Damascus will repeat itself for many persons, and we can designate this event as a return of Christ, a return in the spirit. Christ will be present for all those who will be able to ascend as far as the vision of the etheric body. He descended only once in the flesh, at the time when He lived in Palestine, but in His etheric body He is always present within the etheric atmosphere of the earth. Because human beings will be able to develop etheric vision, they will also be able to behold Him. The return of Christ thus will come to pass for humanity through the fact that human beings will advance to the faculty of beholding Christ in the etheric. This is what we may look forward to in our time of transition. It is the task of spiritual science to prepare human souls so that they may be able to receive Christ, Who has come down to them.

We see that by this time we have already taken account of the second question we posed. We have seen that it makes good sense to use our incarnations well, but we have also seen that the best use to make of our present incarnation is to prepare ourselves for that insight that will become for us the future of Christ. We must learn to understand in the right sense this return of Christ. We shall then also be able to understand how great the dangers are that are connected with it. This is what I must now explain to you.

The most sublime experience possible for humanity is now in store for human beings in what I have described to you as the return of Christ in the spirit. Yet modern materialism will continue to be so powerful that even such a truth will be interpreted in a materialistic way. This materialistic interpretation will transform itself into reality. This truth will be interpreted as a return of Christ in the flesh. False Christs, false messiahs, will walk about on the earth in the not too distant future, persons who will claim to be the returning Christ. Anthroposophists, however, should be those who are not deceived by such materialism that believes Christ can descend again to earth in the flesh. They know that the Dark Age has come to an end, that age in which human beings needed, for the development of their I-consciousness, the life within physical matter without insight into the spiritual worlds. Man must now develop himself so that he can ascend again to the spiritual sphere where he will be able to behold Christ living and ever-present in the etheric.

Humanity will be granted a period of about 2,500 years in which to develop these faculties; 2,500 years will be at his disposal to attain etheric vision as a natural, universal human faculty, until human beings advance again to another faculty in another time of transition. During these 2,500 years, more and more human souls will be able to develop these faculties in themselves. It will make no difference whether they are then living their lives between birth and death or whether they are dwelling in the spiritual world after death. The period of human life between death and a new birth will also be passed differently if human souls have experienced the reappearance of Christ. The life after death will also change as a result of this experience. This is why it is so important for the souls now incarnated to be well prepared for the Christ event that is to take place during this century. It is just as important for those who are incarnated here on earth in a physical body as for those who will already have passed through the portal of death and will be living the life between death and a new birth. It is of the greatest importance for all souls alive today to be prepared for this event and thus to be well armed against the dangers.

When we speak in this way, we feel what anthroposophy should and can mean to us, how it should prepare us to fulfill our task by seeing to it that a sublime event such as this not pass humanity by, leaving no trace behind. If it were to pass without leaving a trace, humanity would forfeit its most important possibility for evolution and would sink into darkness and gradual death. This event can bring light to human beings only if they awaken to this new perception and thereby open themselves also to the new Christ event.

This will be repeated again and again in the near future; at the same time, it must also be stated repeatedly that the false prophets would be able to prevent the good and the great were they to succeed in spreading the opinion that Christ would appear again in the flesh. If anthroposophists were to fail to grasp this, it would be possible for them to fall prey to that illusion that would enable false messiahs to arise. These false messiahs will appear; they will count on souls that are so weakened by materialism that they cannot imagine anything but that when Christ appears again, He must necessarily appear in material substance, in the flesh. This misinterpretation of the prophecy is an evil thing, and it will appear in the form of a dangerous temptation for humanity. It is the task of anthroposophy to protect human beings from this temptation. This cannot be emphasized too strongly for all who have ears to hear. We can see by this, moreover, that anthroposophy has important things to say; we do not merely “pursue” anthroposophy because we are curious to know all kinds of truths but because we know that these truths must be used for the salvation and gradual perfecting of humanity.

Christ will later appear to humanity in many forms. The form that He chose for the events in Palestine was chosen by Him because, at that time, human beings were dependent upon the faculty of unfolding their consciousness on the physical plane and, through this, conquering the physical plane. Humanity is called upon to develop ever-higher faculties, however, so that the course of evolution may be able, again and again, to make new leaps.

Christ will be there in order that He can be experienced also on these higher stages of knowledge. Christianity is in this connection not at the end but at the beginning of its influence. Humanity will continue to advance from stage to stage, and Christianity will also be there at every stage in order that it may satisfy the deepest requirements of the human soul throughout all future ages of the earth.