The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Twelfth Lecture

[ 1 ] Anyone who reflects with feeling on the ideas presented to us at the end of yesterday’s meditation might feel a certain sense of foreboding regarding the fate of humanity in the future. Yesterday, a picture of this human future must have been set before your soul—a picture that, on the one hand, is indeed grand, mighty, and filled with bliss; a picture that corresponds to the existence of that future human being who has grasped the mission of our present time on Earth, who has taken in the Christ Spirit, and who has thereby been able to keep pace with the necessary spiritualization of our Earth— a magnificent, blissful image of those human beings whom exoteric Christianity usually calls the “redeemed” or, using a term that is not entirely accurate, the “chosen ones.” But the opposite image, too, must have been presented to your soul, that image of the abyss in which humanity finds itself—a humanity that was unable to receive this Christ Spirit, that has become stuck in matter, that has, so to speak, excluded itself from the process of spiritualization moving into the future, that has fallen out of the spiritualized Earth and, in a certain sense, is heading toward a terrible fate apart from it. When the beast with seven heads and ten horns stares up at us from the abyss, seduced by the other terrible being, the two-horned beast, this image certainly strikes us as terrifying and horrifying, and some might ask: Is it not harsh and unwise of Providence to lead a number of people toward such a terrible fate, to condemn a number of people, as it were, to the abyss of evil?

[ 2 ] And the question might arise: Wouldn't it have been more fitting for a wise providence to have averted this terrible fate from the very beginning?

[ 3 ] In response to these questions, one can initially offer a somewhat abstract, somewhat theoretical answer; and for those who can sense this theoretical aspect, it actually means a great deal: It is extraordinarily wise that Providence has ensured that this terrible fate can exist as a possibility for a number of people. For if it were impossible for a human being to plunge into the abyss of evil, then what we call love on the one hand and freedom on the other would also be beyond human reach; for the occultist, freedom is inseparably linked to the concept of love. Freedom would be impossible for human beings, and love would be impossible for human beings, if this descent were not possible. A human being who did not have the possibility of choosing good or evil of his own free will would be a being led on a leash toward a good that must necessarily be attained; he would not have the choice to select the good out of a full, internally purified will arising from a love that springs from freedom. For a human being who could not possibly choose to follow the monster with the two horns, it would also be impossible to follow God out of a love that springs from within. It was the intention of wise Providence to grant humanity—as it develops throughout our planetary system—the possibility of freedom, and this possibility of freedom could be granted under no other condition than that human beings themselves must make the free choice between good and evil.

[ 4 ] But that is, one might say, merely an empty theory, and people are only slowly coming to not only express such things in words and find them as a kind of explanation in moments of reflection, but also to feel them in their hearts. Rarely do people today rise to the thought: I thank you, O wise Providence, that you have made it possible for me to offer you a love not forced upon me by you, but one that springs freely from my heart; that you do not compel me to love you, but have given me the choice to follow you. — Of course, a person would have to rise to this level of feeling if they could truly feel this theoretical explanation.

[ 5 ] But one can also offer another form of comfort—or rather, another source of reassurance—based on a clairvoyant view of the world. For it was already mentioned yesterday that only those who are already somehow entangled today in the tentacles of the two-horned beast—the great seducer into the arts of black magic—possess an almost irreversible predisposition toward the abyss. And even for those people who fall prey to the arts of black magic today, there will still be an opportunity in the future to turn back. But for those—and for the time being, these are the majority of people—who do not even find themselves in a position to fall prey to any arts of black magic at all, there is likely a certain predisposition toward definitive evil in what follows the great war of all against all, but the possibility of turning back in the future and turning toward the good will be much greater than the compulsion to follow evil without exception.

[ 6 ] It is clear from the lectures that for those people who are turning today to a spiritual worldview in order to live beyond the Great War and into the sixth period—which is symbolized by the unsealing of the seals—it is possible for that group to embrace the Christ principle. They will be able to absorb the spiritual elements that are being laid the foundation for in the time designated by the Church of Philadelphia; they will be able to live out their lives in the coming era with a strong predisposition toward spiritualization. Those who are turning to a spiritual worldview today are absorbing tremendous potential to embark on the upward path. It must not be underestimated how important it is that even today a number of people are not deaf to the proclamation of the so-called anthroposophical worldview, which consciously brings the first seeds of spiritual life into humanity, whereas in the past this happened unconsciously. This is what is important: that this group of people is absorbing the first conscious seed for the upward movement.

[ 7 ] But the fact that a small group is setting itself apart today to establish a great brotherhood that will endure into the time of the seven seals—this very fact provides guidance precisely for those other people who today still turn a deaf ear to the proclamation of the anthroposophical worldview. For we still have many incarnations of the present souls to go through until the great war of all against all, and again until the decisive point after the great war. And even afterward, during the time of the Seals, we will have to undergo many transformations, and people will have opportunity after opportunity to open their hearts to the spiritual worldview that flows through the anthroposophical movement today. There will be opportunity after opportunity, and you must not believe that the opportunities in the future will be only like those that exist today. Oh, the way in which we are able today to proclaim the spiritual worldview to others is still very weak. And even if a person were to speak today in such a way that his voice resounded directly like the fire of the spirit, that would still be something weak compared to the possibilities that will exist in later, more highly developed bodies for pointing fellow human beings toward this spiritual movement. As humanity as a whole continues to develop higher and higher in the times to come, entirely different means will emerge through which the spiritual worldview will be able to penetrate hearts, and even the most fiery words of today will be insignificant and weak compared to what will be at work in the future to give all those souls the opportunity for a spiritual worldview—souls who today still live in bodies in which no heart beats for this spiritual worldview.

[ 8 ] We are at the beginning of the spiritual movement, and it will grow; and there will be much obstinacy and much hardening of heart involved in closing off hearts and souls to the powerful impressions of the future. Those souls who live in bodies today and whose hearts are open to hearing and feeling the anthroposophical worldview are thereby preparing themselves to live in bodies in the future in which they will be given the strength to serve their fellow human beings—those who, until then, have not had the opportunity to feel their hearts beating within themselves in this way. We are merely the preparers of the preparers; nothing more at this point. The spiritual movement is but a tiny flame today, and it will grow into a mighty spiritual fire in the future.

[ 9 ] When we place this other image before our soul, when we truly feel it through and through, then a completely different feeling, a completely different way of understanding this fact, will arise within us. Today, this is what we call black magic, to which people can, in a certain sense, fall—consciously or unconsciously. Those who today simply drift through life day by day, who are not at all touched by the spiritual worldview, who live in their comfortable, everyday complacency and say, “What do I care what these dreamers of anthroposophy are talking about?”—they have the greatest likelihood of falling into the circles of black magic. For them, the reality is that they are merely missing an opportunity today to one day help their fellow human beings in their efforts to attain spiritual life. As far as they themselves are concerned, not much can be lost yet. But those who today begin to approach spiritual life in an improper way are, in fact, taking into themselves, right from the very beginning, the seeds of something that could be called black magic. And there are only very few individuals who have already fallen prey to black magic in that terrible sense in which one must actually speak of this hideous art of humanity.

[ 10 ] You will best understand that this is indeed the case if I merely give you very subtle hints about how black magic is practiced in a systematic way, and then you will see that you can look around among all your acquaintances and find no one whom you could suspect of already being inclined toward such arts today. Everything else is, in essence, nothing but sheer amateurism, which will be very easy to root out in the coming years. It is bad enough that in our time certain things are sometimes touted to take advantage of people and so on—things that, in a certain sense, also mark the beginning of black magic. It is also bad that certain views are gaining ground which, even if they do not belong to black magic at all, still constitute a certain temptation. These are views that dominate the world today in certain circles and can indeed take root among materialistic ideas; yet, although they are by no means harmless, they will not prove insurmountable for the coming eras. Only once a person begins, so to speak, to master the ABCs of black magic do they set out on the dangerous path toward the abyss. And this “ABC” consists in the fact that a person who becomes the disciple of a black magician is urged to consciously take a life, to inflict as much pain as possible upon that life—above all through the act of killing—and to feel a certain satisfaction in inflicting that pain. If the intention is to stab or cut a living being with the aim of deriving bliss from its pain, then therein lies the ABCs of the black arts. Anything beyond that cannot be touched upon. But you will find it dreadful enough when you are told that the novice in black magic must cut and stab into living flesh—not as the vivisectionist cuts—which is already a terrible thing in itself— yet the essence of vivisection finds its overcoming in the vivisectors themselves, in that they will have to feel upon themselves in Kamaloka the pains they inflicted upon their victims, and will therefore abandon vivisection in the future—but whoever systematically cuts into flesh and derives satisfaction from it begins to descend the slippery slope of black magic. And this opens the possibility for them to draw ever closer to that being, the two-horned beast.

[ 11 ] We need only imagine this being—which we have characterized as the two-horned beast—as a seductive being of a completely different nature than that of human beings. It originates from other world periods, has adopted the inclinations of other world periods, and will feel deeply satisfied when it encounters beings such as these evil beings, who have refused to accept inwardly what can flow from the Earth as good. This being has been unable to derive anything from the Earth. It foresaw the Earth’s development, but it said to itself: I am not advanced enough with the Earth to be able to gain anything from earthly existence. — This being could have gained something from the Earth only if it had been able to gain dominion at a specific moment—namely, when the Christ Principle descended to Earth. If this Christ Principle had been nipped in the bud at that time, if the Christ could have been overcome by the Adversary, then indeed it would have been possible for the Earth in its entirety to have fallen prey to this Sorat Principle. That was not the case, and so this being must content itself with the outcasts who did not incline toward the Christ principle—those human beings who have remained stuck in the material world. They will be its legions in the future.

[ 12 ] Now, in order to understand these hosts even more clearly, we must familiarize ourselves with two concepts that, in a certain sense, can serve as a key to specific chapters of the Apocalypse. We must familiarize ourselves with the terms “first death” and “second death.” What is the first death, and what is the second death of the human being or of humanity? We must form a precise picture of the concepts that the author of the Book of Revelation associated with these words. To do this, we must once again bring to mind the fundamental truths about human existence.

[ 13 ] Consider the human being of today, just as you yourself are one. From the moment he wakes in the morning until he falls asleep at night, he consists of four aspects: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I.” We also know that during their earthly existence, human beings work on the lower aspects of their being from the perspective of their “I,” and that they must succeed in bringing the astral body under the control of the “I” during their earthly existence. We know that the Earth will be succeeded by Jupiter, its next incarnation. When humanity reaches Jupiter, it will stand before us as a different being. This Jupiter human will have worked through his astral body from the perspective of his I. And if we say today that the Earth human standing before us in the waking state has developed, first of all, a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an “I,” then we must say of the Jupiter human that he will have developed a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an “I,” but he will have transformed his astral body into the spiritual self. He will live on a higher level of consciousness, a level that can be characterized as follows. That ancient, dim, pictorial consciousness of the Moon—which was still present even in the earliest stages of Earth consciousness—will return in its images as clairvoyant consciousness, but it will be endowed with the human “I,” so that with this Jupiter consciousness, human beings will be as logically reflective as they are today with the Earth’s daytime consciousness.

[ 14 ] The Jupiter human will thus, in a certain sense, be a lower-level clairvoyant. A part of the spiritual world will be open to him. He will perceive the joys and sorrows of his surroundings in images that arise within his imaginative consciousness. This Jupiter human will therefore live under entirely different moral conditions. Imagine that, as a Jupiter-type person, you have a human soul before you: the pain and joy of that soul will arise as images before your soul, and the images of the other soul’s pain will torment you; and if you do not alleviate the other soul’s pain, you will find it impossible to reconcile the other soul’s pain with your own well-being. Oh, the images of suffering would be a torment for the Jupiter-type with heightened consciousness if he did nothing to alleviate this suffering and thereby also dispel his own tormenting images, which are nothing other than the expression of the suffering around him. The well-being and misfortune of the individual will not be possible without that of the other.

[ 15 ] Thus we see how human beings are gaining a completely new state of consciousness in addition to their present consciousness, the “I”-consciousness. If we want to understand the significance of this for the evolution of the world, we must once again bring the sleeping human being before our inner eye. During sleep, their physical and etheric bodies lie in bed, while the “I” and the astral body are outside. At night—to put it somewhat imprecisely—they simply leave their physical and etheric bodies behind. But because the human being is able to free himself from his physical and etheric bodies at night, and because he can live in a spiritual world at night, this creates the possibility that he can, precisely here in this earthly existence, work transformatively on his astral body from the perspective of his I. How does this effect come about?

[ 16 ] If we want to describe it vividly, we can say: Let’s consider a person in their waking state. Let’s assume that, alongside his professional work and duties, he finds—even if only for a short time—the opportunity to devote himself to higher contemplation, to make his own the great impulses that flow, for example, from the Gospel of John, from the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Let us suppose that he thus allows the great images presented to him through the Gospel of John to arise within himself, and that he is always filled with the thought: Back then, at the beginning of our era, there lived in Palestine a being whom I wish to follow. I want to organize my life so that everything can stand before this being, so that I can regard myself as a person who has taken this personality as his ideal. — In doing so, however, we need not think only of the Gospel of John in a narrow-minded way. There are many other ways to immerse oneself in what can fill the soul with such images. And even if, in a certain sense, we must describe the Gospel of John as the greatest work to have emerged within humanity—one capable of exerting the most powerful influence—we may still say: The person who devotes himself wholeheartedly to the teachings of Vedanta or immerses himself in the Bhagavad Gita or the Dhammapada will also have ample opportunity, in subsequent incarnations, to attain the Christ principle precisely through what he has thus absorbed. — Let us assume, then, that a person fills their soul with such images and ideas during the day; their astral body will then be permeated by these thoughts, feelings, and images, and they will form forces within their astral body, producing the most varied effects within it. When the person then steps out of his physical and etheric bodies at night, these effects remain within the astral body, and the one who has been able to immerse himself during the day in the images and feelings of the Gospel of John has created something in his astral body that manifests as a powerful effect within it at night. Thus, we must say, the human being today influences his astral body during his waking consciousness.

[ 17 ] Only the initiate can become aware of these effects today; but human beings are, after all, gradually evolving toward this awareness. Those who will reach the goal of Earth’s evolution will then have an astral body completely permeated by the “I” and the spiritual content they have acquired; they will possess this consciousness as a result, as a fruit of Earth’s evolution, and will carry it over into Jupiter’s evolution. We would like to say that when the Earth era has come to an end in this way, humanity will have attained abilities symbolically represented by the building of the New Jerusalem. There, humanity will already be able to glimpse into that world of images belonging to Jupiter; the spiritual self will then be fully developed within them. That is the goal of Earth’s evolution. So what is humanity to attain in the course of Earth’s evolution? What is the first goal? The transformation of the astral body. Oh, this astral body, which today is always freed from the physical and etheric bodies at night, will in the future appear as a transformed part of the human being. Into it, the human being carries what is given to them on Earth. But that would not yet be sufficient for Earth’s development. Imagine that every night a human being would emerge from the physical and etheric bodies and every night would imbue their astral body with what they have absorbed during the day, yet the physical and etheric bodies would remain entirely unaffected by this—even then, the human being would still not achieve the earthly goal. Something else must occur. It must be possible for a human being, throughout Earth’s evolution, to imprint—again and again—at least into the etheric body what he has thus taken in. It is necessary that this etheric body also be able to receive effects from what the human being develops within the astral body.

[ 18 ] Human beings are not yet able to work into this etheric body on their own. On Jupiter, once human beings have transformed their astral bodies, they will become capable of working into this etheric body as well. Today, however, they cannot do this; today, they still need helpers, so to speak. On Jupiter, human beings will become capable of beginning the actual work on the etheric body. On Venus, they will work on the physical body; that is the part that is most difficult to overcome. Today, however, human beings must still leave both the physical and the etheric bodies behind in bed at night and step out of them. Yet in order for the etheric body to begin receiving its influences—so that human beings gradually learn to work into it—they need a helper. And this helper, who makes this possible, is none other than the Christ-Beings, whereas we refer to the Being who helps the human being to work into the physical body as the “Father.” But until the helper comes who makes it possible to work into the etheric body, the human being cannot work into his physical body: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” No one acquires the ability to work into the physical body who has not passed through the Christ principle. Thus, when human beings reach the goal of earthly evolution, through the ability to transform their astral body by their own efforts, they will also have the ability to act all the way down into the etheric body. This is due to the living presence of the Christ principle on Earth. Had this principle not united with the Earth as a living force, had it not entered the Earth’s aura, then what is formed in the astral body would not be able to take shape within the etheric body. We see, then, that anyone who closes themselves off by turning away from the Christ Principle deprives themselves of the opportunity to work into their etheric body in the way that is already necessary during the Earth’s evolution.

[ 19 ] Thus, we will be able to characterize in a different way the two types of people who stand before us at the goal of Earth’s evolution: There are those who have taken in the Christ principle, who have thereby transformed their astral bodies and, with Christ’s help, have also been able to transform their etheric bodies; and there are others who have not reached the Christ principle, who were also unable to change anything in their etheric bodies, for they could not find the Helper, Christ.

[ 20 ] Now let us take a look at this future of humanity. The Earth is becoming spiritualized; that is to say, human beings must completely lose something that they now regard as belonging to them in their physical existence. We can form a picture of what happens to human beings in this regard if we simply consider the ordinary course of their life after death. After death, a person loses their physical body. It is due to this physical body that a person has desires and inclinations tied to ordinary life, and we have described what a person experiences after death. Let us take the example of a person who particularly loved some delicious food. In life, they can obtain that pleasure; after death, they cannot. Yet the desire does not cease, for it is rooted not in the physical body but in the astral body. But since the physical instrument is now lacking, so too is the possibility of satisfying this desire. Such people look down from the Kamaloka into the physical world they have left behind; they look to see what among all that is down in the physical world might still give them pleasure, but they cannot enjoy it because they lack the physical instrument to do so, and this gives rise to that burning thirst within them. This is the case with all desires that remain in a person after death and are oriented toward the physical world, because they can be satisfied only through physical means. This is how it is every time after death: Each time, a person sees his physical body fall away, and because something of this physical body has remained with him, it still draws him toward the ordinary world of our physical plane; and until he has weaned himself from this in the spiritual world, he will experience a time of burning desire.

[ 21 ] Now imagine the last earthly incarnation before the spiritualization of the Earth—the shedding of the very last physical body. The people living on Earth today will have progressed so far through the Christ principle that, in a certain sense, shedding this very last physical body will pose no particular difficulties for them. But they will still have to leave something behind, for from the spiritualized Earth has vanished once and for all that which can bring joy from the objects of this Earth. Think of the final death that is possible in Earth’s evolution—the final shedding of the physical body. This final death of incarnations is what is called the “first death” in the Book of Revelation. And those who have taken in the Christ principle view this physical body, so to speak, as a shedding shell. For them, the etheric body is now what matters. With the help of Christ, it is organized in such a way that it is, for the time being, adapted to the astral body, so that it no longer has any desire or craving for what lies down there in the physical world. It is only through all that has been brought into the etheric body with the help of Christ that human beings now continue to live in the spiritualized Earth. They have created harmony between their astral body and their etheric body. The Christ principle has created precisely this harmony.

[ 22 ] In contrast, there are others who have not internalized the Christ principle. These others do not possess such harmony. They, too, must lose their physical body, for there is no physical body in the spiritualized Earth at first. Everything physical must first be dissolved. What remains is a craving for the physical, the unpurified spiritual, the spiritual that has become hardened in matter. An etheric body remains behind—one that Christ has not helped to adapt to the astral body, which is subordinate to the physical body. These are the people who will feel a burning passion for physical sensuality. They will feel an unquenched, burning passion in their etheric body because of what they had in their physical life and what they must now do without. Thus, in this coming time, after the physical body has dissolved, we will have people who live in their etheric body as in a member of their being that resonates harmoniously with the astral body, and we will have others whose etheric body lives in disharmony because they have a craving for what has been shed by the physical body.

[ 23 ] And then, as development progresses, a state arises in which the spiritualization of the Earth advances to such an extent that there can no longer be an etheric body. Those whose etheric body is completely in harmony with their astral body shed this etheric body without pain, for they remain in their astral body, which is filled with the Christ-essence, and they perceive the shedding of the etheric body as a necessary step in their development. For they feel within themselves the ability to rebuild it on their own, because they have taken Christ into themselves. But those who, within this etheric body, harbor a longing for what has passed cannot retain this etheric body even when everything becomes astral. It will be taken from them, torn from them, and they now experience this as a second dying, as the “second death.” This second death passes unnoticed by those who have harmonized their etheric body with their astral body by assimilating the Christ principle. The second death has no power over them. The others, however, experience the second death as they continue on into that subsequent astral form. Then humanity will be in that state where those who have reached the goal of evolution have completely permeated their astral bodies with Christ. They are ready to pass on to Jupiter; on our Earth, they are drawing up the plan for Jupiter’s evolution. This is the plan known as the New Jerusalem. They live in a “new heaven” and a “new earth”: this is Jupiter.

[ 24 ] This new Jupiter will be accompanied, as by a satellite, by those who are excluded from life in the spiritual realm, who have experienced the second death, and who therefore have no possibility of attaining Jupiter consciousness. So we have, on the one hand, those who have advanced to Jupiter consciousness—who have attained Manas—and, on the other hand, those beings who have cast off the forces that would have granted them this consciousness. These are the ones who first attained Earth ego-consciousness on Jupiter; they thus stand, so to speak, as human beings stand today on Earth with their four limbs. But such a human being can develop only within the Earth; only the Earth has the environment—the soil, the air, the clouds, the plants, the minerals—that is necessary for the human being if they wish to achieve what can be achieved within the four limbs. Jupiter will be structured quite differently; it will be a “new Earth.” The soil, air, and water will be different, every being will be different, and there will be no possibility of leading a normal life for beings who have only just attained Earth consciousness. They will be the beings who have fallen behind.

[ 25 ] But now comes something that, in turn, serves to reassure us. Even on this Jupiter, there is still one last possibility: through the powerful influence wielded by the more advanced beings, to once again persuade those who have fallen into this state to turn back—and to bring a number of them to repentance. It is only during the Venus incarnation that the very last decision—the irrevocable decision—will be made. When we reflect on all of this, the thought we discussed recently will take on a different hue. It will not evoke fear or anxiety, but only this one aspiration: I will do whatever is necessary to fulfill the Earth mission.

[ 26 ] When we bring all of this to mind in the proper way, a vast, awe-inspiring picture of humanity’s future unfolds before us, and we begin to sense the depth of the enlightened soul of the apocalyptic writer who recorded what we have just been able to stammer our way toward understanding from the Book of Revelation in these reflections. Every word of the apocalyptic writer is significant—indeed, every turn of phrase. We need only strive to understand them clearly. Thus, in line with yesterday’s reflection, we are directed in 666 to the beast with the two horns, and then a curious phrase is spoken: “Here is wisdom! Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.” An apparent contradiction, but one of the many contradictions that can certainly be found in every occult text and meditation. For you can be certain that a meditation which proceeds so smoothly that one cannot find any contradiction using ordinary, everyday human understanding certainly does not stand on occult ground. What unfolds in the world is not as shallow and trivial as what the human mind—ordinary intelligence—perceives as free of contradiction. One must simply delve deeper into the depths of human contemplation; then the contradictions will vanish. Anyone who observes a plant as it grows from root to fruit—how the green leaf transforms into a petal, the petal into the stamens, and so on—might say: Here we have contradictory forms; the petal contradicts the stem leaf. —But whoever looks more deeply will perceive the unity, the deeper unity within the contradiction. So it is with what the intellect can perceive in the world. It sees contradictions precisely in the deepest wisdom. Therefore, we should not be troubled when we encounter an apparent contradiction here in the Apocalypse: “Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.”

[ 27 ] We must once again consider what enables human beings to become susceptible to being seduced by the two-horned beast. We have pointed out that, since the middle of the Atlantean epoch, human beings have, so to speak, slept through their higher spiritual development. This period of slumber is the present age. Yet it was necessary. If it had not occurred, what we today call “intellect” in our modern sense would never have come into being. People before our time did not possess this. They acted on the basis of different impulses. Their visions drove them to act without reflection. Humanity has lost this ancient gift of clairvoyance, and in exchange has acquired the intellect and descended into the material world. As a result, a veil was woven before the spiritual world; yet at the same time, humanity acquired the intellect. This can be a significant obstacle to spiritual development. Ultimately, nothing else will be able to prevent humanity—to thoroughly prevent it—from reaching the Christ principle other than this deluded intellect, this deluded intelligence. And if those who will ultimately fall prey to the two-horned beast could look back on what actually played the worst trick on them, they would say: Although the predisposition toward the abyss came only later, what has darkened the Christ principle for me is the intellect. — Oh, let the one who possesses this intellect consider the number of the beast! For it is precisely because man has become human—that is, has been endowed with this “I”-mind—that he can fall prey to the beast 666. For the number of the beast is at the same time the number of a human being, and that it is the number of a human being can be understood by no one other than the one who possesses reason: it is the number of that human being who has allowed himself to be led astray by his own reason. — Such profound truths are contained within these things.

[ 28 ] As you can see, the apocalyptic writer offers you much if you take to heart the individual insights we have shared. He offers much of what we today call anthroposophical truths. He delivers what he promises. He leads people to a vision of what is to come: to a vision of the beings and powers that guide the world. He leads us to the spirit revealed to us on the first seal, and to the figure revealed to us on the last seal. There one sees how the regularity of the New Jerusalem is expressed to him through clairvoyance. That is the visionary aspect of it. The regularity of the New Jerusalem is expressed here; in chapter 21, you can see how this New Jerusalem is described, so to speak, as a cube (verse 16). To describe what is depicted in this final image would take us too far afield. (See the image of the seventh seal.)

[ 29 ] Now it is necessary for us to point out the purpose for which the Apocalypse was written. Of course, I would have to speak at length if I were to describe in detail why it was written. But you should at least take home one hint—a hint that emerges from a very specific passage in the Book of Revelation. The author of the Apocalypse says that a time will come when that high level of consciousness will indeed have developed, when people, in a heightened state of consciousness, will see the beings who guide the world—the beings who were characterized by the Lamb and by the appearance of the Son of Man with the flaming sword. We are pointed to this in words that already contain within them that sense of reassurance of which we have spoken. The apocalyptic writer, who is a deep clairvoyant, knows that in ancient times people were endowed with a dim form of clairvoyance. We have, after all, described this and seen how people back then were, so to speak, companions of the divine spiritual world, how they themselves saw the divine-spiritual world. But who lost this gift of vision—who? We must now pose this as an important question. We have seen that, essentially, it was those people who were led out onto the physical plane, into physical life, at the time when the second half of the Atlantean epoch began, who lost it. People looked upon the solid forms of our Earth, upon the finite objects of our Earth. The ancient clairvoyance disappeared. People became self-conscious, but the spiritual world closed itself off from them. The forms that in ancient times permeated the air like a sea of mist disappeared; the air became clear, the ground unobstructed. People stepped out onto the open earth. This happened relatively late; it coincides with the attainment of the present intellect, of humanity’s current self-awareness.

[ 30 ] And now let us recall what we have said about this Earth. We recall that we have set the great moment of Golgotha before our souls. If anyone back then had viewed the Earth from afar with clairvoyant vision, they would have perceived, at the very moment the blood flowed from the Savior’s wounds, that the entire astral aura of the Earth was transformed. The Earth was permeated by the Christ force. Through this event, the Earth will one day be able to reunite with the Sun. This power will grow. It is the power that preserves our etheric body from the second death. Christ is becoming more and more the Earth Spirit, and whoever is a true Christian understands the words: “Whoever eats my bread tramples me underfoot”; such a person regards the body of the Earth as the body of Christ. The Earth, as a planetary body, is the body of Christ—though, admittedly, only in its infancy. Christ will first become the Earth Spirit; He will unite completely with the Earth. And when the Earth later unites with the Sun, the great Earth Spirit, Christ, will be the Sun Spirit.

[ 31 ] The body of the Earth will be the body of Christ. And human beings must work this body. They began doing so when they emerged onto the Earth; they have worked this Earth with their own powers. In all traditions, one can find something that is given little attention because it is poorly understood. For example, in the Persian tradition, it is said that ever since that time—since they stepped out of clairvoyant consciousness—human beings have become beings who have pierced through the Earth. While human beings live in the phase of piercing the earth—that is, working the earth—during this time, that is, while they are piercing the body of Christ, they do not see the guiding forces in clairvoyant consciousness, above all not Christ, face to face. But the apocalyptic writer points to the time when not only the clairvoyants of that era will see the spiritual, but when humanity will once again have reached the stage that enables it to see the Christ-being itself. All beings will see him, and even those who pierced him will see him; those who had to undergo part of their development by cultivating the earth, by piercing the earth, will see the Christ. For such words are such that they lead those who gradually learn to unravel them deep into the world of the mysteries, into the language of the Apocalypse.

[ 32 ] So what did the author of the Apocalypse intend to write, and what did he intend to portray? This question is answered by briefly referring to the origins of the Apocalypse. Where is what is written in the Apocalypse first found? If you were to go back to the mysteries of ancient Greece—the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries—or to the mysteries of the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, and Indians, you would find the Apocalypse everywhere. It has existed; it was there. It was not written down, but it was passed down from one generation of priests to the next, through the generations of initiators, whose memory was so vivid that they could master such rich material. Even in much later times, their memory was still far superior to ours. Just recall the singers of the Iliad, how they traveled about and were able to recite their songs from memory. It has not been that long, relatively speaking, since memory has declined so much. In the Mysteries, these truths were not written down, but they were passed down from generation to generation of initiates.

[ 33 ] What was the purpose of the Apocalypse? Its purpose was to serve as a guide for the one who led the disciples to initiation. At that time, the person upon whom the initiation was to be performed was led out of his physical body and remained as if dead. But once he had been taken out, the initiator allowed him, in his etheric body, to see what could later be perceived clairvoyantly in the physical body through the Christ impulse. Thus, the ancient initiates were the prophets who could point to Christ. And they did so—they were able to do so—because Christ was revealed in this Apocalypse as something that would appear in the future. Never before had the event of Golgotha taken place, in which a human being in a physical body would have lived out the entire drama of initiation before the eyes of history.

[ 34 ] So where was the opportunity to comprehend this event at Golgotha? At a certain level, the initiates had comprehended it outside their physical bodies. What took place at Golgotha had already occurred in a different state of consciousness. There could have been thousands of people, and the event at Golgotha could have passed them by. What would it have meant to them? The death of an ordinary condemned man! The ability to comprehend what took place on Golgotha existed only where the content of the Mysteries was known. The initiators could say: “The one we have shown you during the three and a half days, the one the prophets have announced to you—you can comprehend him if you draw upon the means provided by the Mysteries.”

[ 35 ] The apocalyptic writer had absorbed the oral tradition of the Mysteries; he told himself: If I immerse myself in what one could experience in the Mysteries, then Christ will appear to me. — Thus, the Apocalypse was nothing new, but its application to the singular event of Golgotha—that was something new. That was the essential point: that for those who had ears to hear, there was a possibility, with the help of what is written in the Apocalypse of John, to gradually arrive at a true understanding of the event of Golgotha. That was the apocalyptic writer’s intention. He derived the Apocalypse from the ancient mysteries; it is an ancient and sacred book of humanity and was given to humanity only outwardly through the disciple whom the Lord loved and to whom He had bequeathed, in His will, the task of proclaiming His true form. It is to remain until Christ comes, so that those endowed with an enlightened consciousness may grasp it. It is the great teacher of the true event of Golgotha. It has given humanity the means to truly understand the event of Golgotha.

[ 36 ] At the beginning of the Apocalypse, the apocalyptic writer says—I have tried to translate the first words exactly as they must be translated if they are to be correct—: “This is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to his servant to illustrate in brief how the necessary events are to unfold. This was set forth in signs and sent by his angel to his servant John, and he has put it into writing.” He wants to describe it “briefly.” What does that mean? It is as if he were saying: If I wanted to describe to you in detail everything that will take place from now until the culmination of Earth’s evolution, then I would have to write a great deal. I want to present it to you in a brief outline. — The translators, who were unable to penetrate the spirit of the Apocalypse, then translated this to mean: “to show what is to happen in a short time.” They believed that what takes place there, what is described there, is to happen in a short time. But it is meant to say: what is taking place there is to be described in a brief outline. The original text contains a phrase that, as a correct translation, fully permits the interpretation I have attempted to convey accurately in the introduction to Images of Occult Seals and Pillars.

[ 37 ] Now, in a series of reflections, we have said a great deal about this ancient and sacred document of the human race, and a great deal about what the Lord has revealed to humanity as its mysteries through the disciple whom he loved. Perhaps through this you have come to sense that this Apocalypse is a profound book, full of wisdom, and perhaps at times during these reflections you have felt daunted by the fact that so much of it is so difficult to understand. Now, at the end of our reflections, I would like to tell you one thing: Everything I have been able to tell you corresponds exactly to the intentions of the author of the Apocalypse and has always been taught in this way in the schools that have preserved the author’s original intent. But this is not everything—far from everything—that could be said, and one can delve much deeper into the truths and the underlying foundations of the Apocalypse. And if we were to penetrate to all the depths, then what I have been able to tell you would appear to you as something that could only be characterized as an initial, superficial presentation. There is no other way; at first, one can only give a superficial presentation. One must work through this. One must begin with the elementary; then, once one has gone a short distance, the depth will reveal itself. For there lies much, much beneath the surface, which it was possible to lift the veil on just a little, to reveal just a little. And if you continue along the path that you have, in a certain sense, begun by turning your attention to the exposition of the Book of Revelation, you will gradually enter into the depths of spiritual life. You will enter depths that cannot be expressed at all today, because they could not be brought to consciousness—simply because no one yet has ears to hear them. First, through explanations such as those that have now been given, the ears must be prepared to hear. Then, gradually, those ears will be there—ears that can hear the word that flows so deeply through the Book of Revelation. So if you have taken in some of what could be said, be aware that only the very surface could be presented, and of that, only a few remarks. Let this serve as an impulse to penetrate ever deeper and deeper into what can only be glimpsed through these lectures. If I myself were to say only what can be said about the surface, I would have to give you lectures for many, many more weeks. These lectures could be nothing more than a stimulus, and whoever perceives them in such a way that they say to themselves, “I must penetrate deeper and deeper”—that person will have truly taken these lectures to heart.