The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we saw to what extent the Apocalypse of John prophetically points to the cycle of human development that lies between that great upheaval on our Earth—which various peoples refer to as the Flood and which geologists characterize as the Ice Age—and that epoch we call the war of all against all. The period between these two epochs encompasses everything to which the apocalyptic book with the seven epistles prophetically points—this book that reveals to us the beings of past times so that we may deduce from them what should inspire our will and our impulses for the future. And we have seen how, within the spiritual movement in which we stand, we ourselves should regard the words of the so-called fifth epistle as a call to act and to work. We have seen how it is pointed out that we are to follow that being with the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. And we have seen how, through this spiritual movement, the next period is being prepared—represented by the church of Philadelphia—the period in which, among all those who have understood the call, that brotherly love throughout the whole earth, as described in the Gospel of John, is to prevail. This will be followed by yet another, the seventh sub-period, characterized by the fact that, on the one hand, we are shown all that is wrong with the church representing the seventh period—that which is lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, that which could not warm itself to spiritual life and must therefore fall away— and on the other hand, those are shown who have understood the call—who will form the following of the One who says, “I am the Amen”—that is to say: “I am the One who unites within Himself the goal of human existence, who contains the Christ principle within Himself.”

[ 2 ] We will now set aside for a later time everything that remains to be added for a further explanation of the individual epistles and for a justification of the individual names of the cities. Today we wish to proceed with our examination of what is presented to the human being when he enters the next stage of initiation. We have considered the seven sub-periods of our human cycle, and we have said that this entire cycle, with its seven sub-cycles, is itself a small cycle within a large, comprehensive cycle of time that likewise contains seven distinct epochs. Our cycle of seven time periods was preceded by the Atlantean cycle, during which the races—whose echoes still exist today—developed. Our present cycle—that is, its seventh subcycle—will be immediately followed by another period, also consisting of seven parts. The present cycle is indirectly preparing the way for this period as well. So we can say: Gradually, our culture will evolve into a culture of brotherly love, in which a relatively small portion of humanity will have understood spiritual life and will have prepared the spirit and mindset of brotherly love. — This culture will then, in turn, single out a smaller portion of people, and they will survive that event which will have such a destructive effect on our cycle—the war of all against all. Amid this generally destructive force, there will be individuals everywhere who stand out from the rest of humanity—who are at war with one another—individuals who have understood the spiritual life and who will form the foundation for a new, different epoch: the epoch of the sixth period.

[ 3 ] This is also how things unfolded as we transitioned from the fourth era into our own time. Anyone who can trace the course of time with clairvoyant insight—having passed through the eras we have considered—the Greco-Roman, the Egyptian-Babylonian, the ancient Persian, and the ancient Indian—and having also passed through the time of the Great Flood—will then enter the Atlantean era. We need not examine it in detail, but we must at least understand how this Atlantean culture developed. Here, too, the majority of the Atlantean population was not yet ready to evolve further and was unable to make the transition into our time. A small portion, living in a region near present-day Ireland, developed into the highest cultural flowering of the Atlantic land and moved eastward. We must be clear that this is only the main current. Peoples have always migrated from west to east, and all the later peoples in European regions—in northern and central Europe—all of them originated from that movement that proceeded from west to east. However, under the guidance of a great leader of humanity, the portion of the population that had reached the highest cultural flowering was the most advanced. They settled in Central Asia as a very small tribe of chosen people, and from there the colony spread to the cultural regions we have mentioned; from there the cultural current flowed to ancient India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and so on.

[ 4 ] You might well ask: Isn’t it a terribly harsh thought that entire masses of people remain immature and fail to develop the abilities to flourish, and that only a small group is capable of passing on the seed of the next culture? — But this idea will no longer be frightening to you if you distinguish between racial evolution and soul evolution. For no soul is condemned to remain within any one race. The race may lag behind, a community of peoples may lag behind, but the souls transcend the individual races. If we wish to visualize this very precisely, we must tell ourselves: All souls that now inhabit the bodies of civilized countries were once incarnated in Atlantean bodies. There, some continued to develop in a corresponding manner. They did not remain in the Atlantean bodies. Because they had developed further, they were able to become the souls of bodies that were also more advanced. Only those souls that had remained behind as souls had to take up residence in bodies that had remained at a lower level of development. If all souls had advanced accordingly, the backward race would either have remained in very small numbers, or their bodies would still have been inhabited by newly arriving, less developed souls. For there are always souls capable of inhabiting bodies that have lagged behind. No soul is bound to a body that has lagged behind unless it binds itself.

[ 5 ] The relationship between the evolution of the soul and that of races is preserved for us in a marvelous myth. Let us imagine one race following another, one cultural community following another. The soul that fulfills its earthly mission in the proper way is incarnated within a race. It strives within that race, acquiring the abilities of that race so that it may be incarnated in a higher race the next time. Only those souls who perish within the race—who do not strive to rise above physical materiality—are, so to speak, held back within the race by their own heaviness. They reappear a second time in the same race, and possibly a third time in the bodies of races of the same form. Such souls have a retarding effect on the physical race. This has been beautifully preserved for us in a legend.

[ 6 ] We know, of course, that human beings advance along the path of their earthly mission by following the great leaders of humanity who set their goals. If they reject these leaders and do not follow them, then they must remain behind their race; they cannot rise above it. Let us imagine a person who has the good fortune to stand before a great leader of humanity—let us imagine, for example, such a person standing before Christ Jesus himself, who sees how he performs all manner of miracles to lead humanity forward, but who wants nothing to do with this ascent and who rejects the leader of humanity. Such a person, such a soul, would be condemned to remain within the race. And if we take this thought to its logical extreme, such a soul would have to reappear again and again within the same race—and we have the legend of Ahasver, who must reappear again and again within the same race because he rejected Jesus Christ.

[ 7 ] The great truths of human evolution are presented to us in such bronze tablets of wisdom. We must distinguish between the evolution of the soul and the evolution of the race. No soul has had to remain in old bodies undeservedly, and no soul will remain in the bodies of our age undeservedly. The souls who will hear the voice calling them to move forward will survive the great period of destruction—the war of all against all—and appear in new bodies, bodies of a completely different kind than those of today. For it is very short-sighted to imagine, for example, the Atlantean bodies of human beings as being like today’s bodies. Over the course of millennia, human beings also change in their outward appearance, and the human being who will emerge after the great war of all against all will be shaped quite differently from today’s human being. Today, human beings are shaped in such a way that, in a certain sense, they can conceal both their good and their evil within themselves. True, a person’s physiognomy already reveals a great deal, and those who are skilled in this art can read much from facial features. Yet even today, it is possible for a villain to smile sweetly with the most innocent expression and be taken for a man of honor. And the reverse is also possible: that the good impulses living within the soul remain unrecognized. It is possible that everything that dwells in the soul—whether cleverness or stupidity, beauty or ugliness—is hidden behind the general physiognomy characteristic of this or that type of person. Such will no longer be the case in the era that will follow ours, after the great war of all against all. It will be written on a person’s forehead and in their entire physiognomy whether they are good or evil. A person will bear the innermost essence of their soul as a physiognomy on their face; indeed, their entire body will be a reflection of what lives within their soul. How a person has developed within themselves—whether they have cultivated the good or the evil impulses—will be written on their forehead. And after the great war of all against all, there will be two kinds of people. Those who had previously strived to follow the call to spiritual life, who pursued spiritualization and the ennoblement of their soul-spiritual life—they will bear this soul-spiritual life on their faces and express it in their gestures and the movements of their hands. And those who have turned away from the spiritual life—as represented to us by the church in Laodicea, who were lukewarm, neither hot nor cold—will carry over into the next age as those who delay human evolution and preserve the backward forces of development. They will bear the evil passions, drives, and instincts—hostile to the spiritual—on their ugly, unintelligent, malevolent-looking faces. In their gestures and in the way they handle everything they do, they will form an outward reflection of the ugliness that dwells within their souls. Just as people have divided themselves into races and cultural communities, so will they split into two great currents: the good and the evil. And it will be evident in their appearance—they, as individuals, will no longer be able to deny—what they have made of their souls.

[ 8 ] If we look back at how humanity has developed so far in the course of our Earth’s history, we will find that this future development, as just described, is entirely consistent with it. Let us look back to the origin of our Earth’s development, after Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, and a longer intervening period had passed. That is when the Earth emerged anew from the darkness of the cosmos. Back then, in the earliest period of Earth’s development, there were no other creatures on Earth besides human beings. Humanity is the firstborn. Humanity was entirely spiritual. For incarnation consists of a process of densification. Let us imagine a mass of water that could float freely. Through some process within this mass of water, parts of it crystallize. First, let us imagine a small portion of the water crystallizing into ice, and then that the same process repeats itself over and over. And now let us imagine that a portion of the body of water has released the small ice particles that have crystallized out, so that these small ice particles are now separated from the entire body of water. Since each small ice particle can grow only as long as it remains within the entire body of water, once it has fallen out of this body, it remains at the stage it has reached. Let us imagine a portion of the water mass separated as small ice particles; let us further imagine the freezing of the water mass continuing, and at the next stage, new water masses forming adjacent to the small ice clumps, which then in turn fall out, and so on, until finally a very large portion of the water mass crystallizes out and takes on the form of ice. This latter portion has extracted the most from the parent water substance; it has been able to wait the longest before separating from this parent water substance.

[ 9 ] Such is the nature of evolution. The lowest animal beings were unable to wait; they left their spiritual mother substance too early and have therefore remained at an earlier stage of evolution. And so the lower beings, as they ascend step by step, represent stages of evolution that have come to a standstill. Human beings waited until the very end; only then did they leave their spiritual-divine mother substance and descend as a dense mass into a physical form. The animals descended earlier and have therefore remained stagnant. We will see later why this happened; for now, we are interested in the fact that they descended and have retained earlier stages of evolution. What, then, is an animal form? A form that, had it remained connected to the spirit from which it emerged, would have evolved all the way up to present-day humanity. But as it is, they have remained stagnant; they have abandoned the spiritual seed, they have split off, and today they are in decline, representing a branch of the great tree of humanity. In ancient times, humanity, so to speak, contained the animal nature within itself but split it off as side branches. All animals, in their various forms, represent nothing other than individual human passions that have solidified too early. What humanity still possesses spiritually in its astral body today is physically represented by the individual animal forms. Humanity has preserved this in the astral body until the very latest period of earthly existence. That is why it was able to ascend to the highest level.

[ 10 ] Even now, human beings have something within them that, like the other animal forms, must branch off downward from the general course of evolution. What human beings possess within themselves—the predispositions toward good and evil, toward wisdom and folly, toward beauty and ugliness—represents the possibility of either an upward ascent or of falling behind. Just as the animal form has evolved, so too will the race of the wicked, with their ugly faces, emerge from the advancing human race, which is moving toward spiritualization and achieving humanity’s ultimate goal. Thus, the future will not only see animal forms—which are embodied reflections of human passions—but will also harbor within a race what human beings now hold within themselves as part of evil: what they can still conceal today, but which will later come to light. What will primarily emerge in the future will become clear to us through a line of reasoning that may seem strange to you.

[ 11 ] We must realize that this separation of animal forms was indeed necessary for humankind. Every animal form that has separated itself from the general stream in the past signifies that humankind has taken another step forward. Imagine that all the qualities scattered throughout the animal kingdom were once present in humankind. Humankind has purified itself of them. This enabled it to evolve to a higher level. If we have a cloudy liquid before us and allow its coarser elements to settle as sediment, the finer elements remain on top. In the same way, the coarser elements in the animal forms—which humanity could not have needed for its present stage of development—have settled out like sediment. By casting these animal forms aside as its elder brothers in its evolutionary lineage, humanity has reached its present height. Thus, humanity ascends by separating the lower forms from itself in order to purify itself. And humanity will continue to rise by once again separating out a natural kingdom—the kingdom of the evil race. Thus does humanity ascend. And every quality that human beings possess today they owe to the fact that they have set aside a particular animal form. Anyone who looks at the various animals with the eye of a clairvoyant knows exactly what we owe to each individual animal. We look at the form of the lion and say to ourselves: If the lion did not exist, then human beings would not possess this or that quality; for by separating it from themselves, they have acquired this or that quality. — And so it is with all the other forms of the animal world.

[ 12 ] Now, all five epochs of human development—the various cultural stages from ancient India up to our own—actually serve to develop intelligence, reason, and everything associated with these two faculties and powers. None of this existed in the Atlantean era. Memory was present, as were other qualities, but developing intelligence—along with everything that goes with it, including the focus of our gaze on the external world—is the task of the fifth epoch. Those who direct their clairvoyant gaze toward their surroundings ask: To what fact do we owe the fact that we humans have become intelligent? What animal form did we set aside in order to become intelligent? — As strange and grotesque as it may seem, it is true: if the animals represented by the nature of the horse were not around us, human beings would never have been able to acquire intelligence.

[ 13 ] People still felt this in earlier times. All the intimate relationships that exist between certain human races and the horse stem from a feeling comparable to the mysterious feeling of love between the two sexes—a certain sense of what humans owe to this animal. That is why, when the new culture emerged in ancient India, it was the horse that played a mysterious role in worship and in the service of the gods, and all customs associated with the horse can be traced back to this fact. If you look around among peoples who were still close to the ancient clairvoyance—the ancient Germanic peoples, for example—and see how they have mounted horse skulls in front of their houses, this leads you back to this awareness: humanity has transcended the state of unintelligence by separating itself from this form. There is a deep awareness that the attainment of wisdom is connected to this. You need only recall Odysseus and the wooden horse of Troy. Oh, there is deep wisdom in such legends—much deeper wisdom than in our science. It is no coincidence that such a type—the horse type—is used in legend. Human beings evolved from a form that, so to speak, still contained within itself what is embodied in the horse, and in the figure of the centaur, art has depicted a human being as he was connected to this animal, to remind us of the stage of human development from which he has evolved—from which he has broken free—to become the human being of today.

[ 14 ] What took place in ancient times to lead to our present-day humanity will repeat itself on a higher level in the future. However, this does not mean that the same events must necessarily unfold in the physical world in the future. For those who become clairvoyant at the boundary between the astral and devachanic planes, it becomes evident how humanity increasingly refines and develops what it owes to the separation from its animal nature. He will bring about the spiritualization of intelligence. What today is mere intellect, mere cleverness, he will elevate to wisdom and spirituality after the great war of all against all. Those who will have reached the goal by then will experience this. What was able to develop in humanity as a result of the separation of the horse-nature will bear fruit.

[ 15 ] And now let us imagine a clairvoyant who looks into the future of humanity. What will he see? Everything that humanity has prepared through the seven cultural epochs—for its soul was incarnated in past cultures and will be in future ones as well—all of that will be embodied in a subsequent epoch and will survive the great war of all against all, entering into the more spiritual age. In each epoch, humanity absorbed what was to be absorbed. Think back with your soul to how you lived in ancient Indian culture. There you absorbed the wonderful teachings of the holy Rishis; even if you have forgotten them, you will remember them later. And you have moved on from one incarnation to the next. You were able to learn what the Persian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman cultures made possible. That is within your soul today. Today it does not yet manifest in the face as an outward expression. You will continue to live into the time of Philadelphia; you will continue to live into the time that will be ruled by the Amen, and more and more a human community will develop that will reveal in people’s faces what has been preparing itself throughout our eras. What is already at work in your soul—what you have absorbed during the Indian epoch—will manifest in your physiognomy during the first sub-epoch of the next period, following the great war of all against all; and what humanity has assimilated during the ancient Persian epoch will transform the face in the second stage, and so on, stage by stage. Everything that you, as you sit here now, take in with your souls—the spiritual teachings of today that connect with your souls—will bear its revealed fruits in the time after the great war. Today you unite what the seven spirits of God and the seven stars bestow with the life of your soul. You carry it home. No one will be able to read it in your faces today, nor even centuries from now, but after that great war of all against all, it will come to light. Then a fifth era will dawn, and you will bear its image on your faces. What you have now worked out for yourselves—what your thoughts and feelings are at this moment—will be written on your foreheads.

[ 16 ] Thus, following the great war of all against all, what is now hidden within the soul will gradually emerge and reveal itself. Let us imagine the dawn of the great war: The soul that has heard the call—the one the Christ Principle has sounded from period to period—will live on into all that is hinted at in the Epistles. Throughout seven epochs, what these epochs could offer has been laid within it. Let us imagine the soul as it waits, as it waits to pass over. It is sealed seven times. Each cultural epoch has placed a seal upon it. Sealed within it is what the Indians have inscribed upon the soul; sealed within it is what the Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans have inscribed upon the soul; and what our own cultural epoch is inscribing upon it. The seals will be broken—that is, the things that have been inscribed will become outwardly apparent after the great war of all against all. And the principle, the power that leads people to the point where the true fruits of our cultural epochs appear on their faces—this principle, this power—we must see in Christ Jesus. Seven seals must be broken from a book. What is this book? Where is it?

[ 17 ] Let’s clarify what a book, or a Bible, is in the sense of Scripture. The word “book” appears in the Bible only in very few places. This should not be overlooked. It appears when you open the Old Testament to Genesis 5:1: “This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God; He created them male and female,” and so on. Then, no matter where you turn, you won’t find the word “book” again until the first Gospel, chapter 1: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac was the father of Jacob,” and so on. Once again, the genealogies are listed. It enumerates what flows through long lines of descent. And once again, the term “book” appears here in the Book of Revelation. It appears where it is said that the Lamb alone is worthy to open the book with the seven seals. The term “book” is always used consistently, never differently. Now, one must simply understand the texts literally. This does not refer to a book in the sense we understand it today. Rather, the term “land register” has preserved the ancient meaning of the word “book.” The word “book” is used in contexts where entries are made sequentially, each dependent on the one before it—that is, where property is registered so that it can be passed down through inheritance. We are dealing with such a document, which establishes a foundation for that which is passed down. In the Old Testament, the word “book” refers to a document in which the lineages—which are inherited through blood—are recorded. It is used there in no other sense than that of recording lineages. Similarly, it is later used in the first Gospel to refer to the recording of genealogical lines. Thus, what follows one another in time is written down in a “book.” The term “book” never refers to anything other than the recording of what follows one another in time—roughly in the sense of a chronicle or history.

[ 18 ] The Book of Life, which is now being compiled within humanity—in which, from one cultural era to the next, what each era imparts is inscribed in the human ego—this book, which is written in the souls of human beings and which will be unsealed after the great war of all against all, is also what is meant here in the Apocalypse. In this book will be recorded the entries of the cultural epochs. Just as entries have been made through the generations in the genealogical records of ancient books, so it is here as well—only now what is recorded is what human beings acquire spiritually. And since they acquire through wisdom what is to be acquired in our era, the progress of this development will gradually be depicted imaginatively through the symbol corresponding to wisdom. Because humanity lived through the Indian epoch in a mood in which it turned away from the physical world and raised its gaze toward the spiritual, it will triumph over the physical-sensual in the first epoch following the war of all against all. Humanity will be victorious by appropriating what has been inscribed in its soul during the first epoch. And furthermore: What emerged in the second cultural epoch—the overcoming of matter by the ancient Persians—will appear to us in the second epoch following the war of all against all: the sword, which signifies the instrument for conquering the external world. What humanity assimilated during the Babylonian-Egyptian cultural epoch—when it learned measurement, when it learned to measure everything justly—appears to us in the next period following the great war of all against all as that which is symbolized by the scales. And the fourth period reveals to us what is most important—that which humankind has acquired in the fourth period of our cycle through Christ Jesus and his appearance: spiritual life, the immortality of the “I.” The fact that everything not suited to immortality—everything destined for death—will fall away must become evident in this fourth period.

[ 19 ] Thus, everything that has been prepared during our time periods comes to light one after another, and it comes to light through the symbol that corresponds to the intellect. If we read about the breaking of the first four seals in the sixth chapter of the Book of Revelation, we will see that what is revealed here expresses to us, step by step in powerful symbolism, what will one day be made manifest. “And I looked, and behold, a white horse”—this is the indication that spiritualized intelligence is emerging—“and the one sitting on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, ‘Come!’ — And behold, another horse came out, a red one, and the one sitting on it was given the power to take peace from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another”—so that what is unworthy of participating in humanity’s ascent might perish—“and he was given a great sword. And when it opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come!’ — And I looked, and behold, a black horse, and the one sitting on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice among the four living creatures say: ‘A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny’—measure and penny, to point to what humanity has learned within the third period: the fruits are carried over and unsealed. And in the fourth epoch, Christ Jesus appeared to overcome death, and the revelation of this achievement is made clear: “And when He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, ‘Come!’ — And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and the one sitting on it was named Death, and Hades followed him.” “Behold, a pale horse”: all of this falls away, decays into the realm of the wicked; but those who have heard the call, those who have overcome death, participate in spiritual life. Those who have understood the “I Am” and His call—these are the ones who have overcome death. They have spiritualized their intellect. And now what they have become can no longer be symbolized by the horse. A new symbol must emerge for those who have understood how to follow the call of the One who possesses the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. They now appear under the symbol of those clothed in white, who have taken on the garment of immortal, eternal spiritual life.

[ 20 ] And we are now told how everything that ascends into goodness and everything that descends into evil comes to pass. This is clearly explained to us. “And when He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony they had borne. And they cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘O Lord, You who are holy and true, how long will You not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ — And each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to rest a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was complete”—that is, to be killed outwardly and to come to life again in the spiritual realm. How is this expressed?

[ 21 ] Let us consider what becomes of the external sensory world in a true anthroposophical life. How did we describe the seven stars? We went back to Saturn and showed how the physical human body came into being, how it was formed from heat. We have seen how the Sun emerged. In our minds, we have traced the contours of this world. For us, the Sun is not merely a physical Sun; it is the bringer of life, which will appear as spiritual life in its highest form in humanity’s future. For us, the Moon is the element that holds back the stormy pace of life and slows humanity down as much as is necessary. Thus we see spiritual powers in the sun and the moon. And what we assimilate as anthroposophical wisdom also appears to be correctly symbolized in the future era: the sun and the moon appear before our spiritual gaze as that which has built us up as human beings. Symbolically, the outer physical sun and the outer moon disappear and become like human beings, but in elemental form. “And I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, and the moon became like blood.” All of this is the symbolic fulfillment of what we seek in spiritual life.

[ 22 ] Thus we see that significant images foretell for the coming period what is being prepared during this period. Today we carry within us, invisibly, that transformation which we undergo with the sun and moon when the physical is transformed into the spiritual elements. When the clairvoyant gaze turns toward the future, the physical does indeed disappear, and the symbol of humanity’s spiritualization appears before us.

[ 23 ] Today we have outlined, in somewhat bold strokes, what the seven seals and their unveiling in the Book of Revelation are meant to tell us. We must, however, delve even deeper into this; then much of what might seem improbable to us today will become completely clear. But we can already see how the powerful images the seer beheld—of the present and future of human development—are internally coming together, how they extend into a more distant future, and how this gives us ever stronger impulses to live into the future ourselves and to take up the task of spiritualizing human life.