The Apocalypse of John - 1. lecture by Wolfgang Peter

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Video - 1. lecture -▷ All lectures on the Apocalypse by Dr. Wolfgang Peter anthro.wiki

MAIN TOPIC This lecture focuses on insights into the spiritual vision of John, written on the island of Patmos, which he communicated to the seven churches (Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea) in a missive. According to the account of the Apocalypse of John, it was dictated to the evangelist John by the Christ to encourage and admonish the churches. According to Rudolf Steiner, the seven churches represent the seven cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean period. Patmos was closely connected with the mystery site of Ephesus, where all the Christian centres were located in the beginning. John translated his experienced imagination into sensual images. In a highly differentiated mental experience, it unfolded like a panorama in which he could wander around spiritually.   ■   ▷ next page

Transcription 1. lecture The apocalypse of John by Ghislaine, Susanne and Elke (December 2022)

Introduction 0:00:36

So my dears, I think we'll just start. No one missed anything, so even those of you who weren't here last time, you didn't miss much. We've basically just dealt with the beginning of John's Apocalypse, we've basically had the first sentence and we've tied some things in with that.

So the question we have had is: Who is this John who writes this Apocalypse of John and who also wrote the Gospel of John, that is, the Evangelist John, how did he become this person who was able to write these things? And we have come to the conclusion, according to Rudolf Steiner, that it is in truth about the resurrected Lazarus. You may know that this is described in the Bible in the New Testament, the raising of Lazarus as a raising of the dead, as they say, which is in reality an initiation process. An initiation process that in a way is similar to what was more or less common since Egyptian times. We then also spoke at some length about the Egyptian initiation. There, the initiation students had to go through long and difficult examinations before they were admitted to the central initiation experience. These trials repeatedly led them into life-threatening' situations, that was such an important point. The will powers were trained, it was also trained that he really walks on the border of death always, in a way, during these examinations - and when the initiate was found ripe for the great examination, then he was actually put into a death-like state for three days or three and a half days. This was done by meditations, also by certain means given to them, drugs, if you like, which produced a seemingly dead state, you might say. For the aim of the initiation was, after all, to be able to report something out of the spiritual world, to be able to experience something there and to be able to report from there.

The initiation in ancient Egyptian culture 0:03:14

So the problem is, how do you get there, how do you get to experiences beyond the threshold. The way that was done in Egyptian culture by name, but basically in all advanced cultures at that time, was just to really put the human being in this dead-like state for three and a half days. About three and a half days. If you know Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of how life after death takes place, then you know that the three and a half days approximately after death one experiences a review of the past life on earth. Like in a large life panorama, this picture of the past life appears to one and one now really recognises all that one has done in this life, one really gets to know oneself in a certain way. You see this picture with a very interesting distance, so like a beautiful panorama, you can say, so even the negative events you see in their meaning for life and what you also take away through it in a certain way. So that is a very sunny, a very happy experience. That is - as a side note - for example, the descriptions that one finds in Islam, given by Mohamed, where he speaks of the joys of paradise, they refer above all to the experience of this life panorama, that is, this very happy experience in the three days after death. So there is nothing unpleasant about it for the person who has crossed over. Only, what one does not yet experience here, or what one does not yet get, is an immediate insight into the real spiritual world. It is still memory of earth life. This is connected with the fact that the life-forces which have animated us during the whole earth-life, have animated the body, that during these three days or three and a half days they still remain in a certain closer connection, So the etheric body of the human being - the life forces are this etheric body of the human being, the etheric body is also the carrier of memory, the actual carrier of memory - it remains in a certain compact form during these three and a half days and then begins to dissolve. The dissolving means it connects with the world ether and then this panorama disappears in a certain way.

And only then, when this panorama disappears, does the actual view into the soul world begin, at first not yet into higher spiritual worlds, but at least into the soul world. So there one has only really gone over the threshold, so properly. And that means that when, for the purpose of initiation, one finally transfers the human being to such a death-like state, one must once get over these three/three and a half days - or at least get to this threshold - so that one can get an insight into the spiritual world or, more precisely, into the world of the soul at all, because before that one only experiences the review of earthly life. Retrospection means that one can basically move freely in this life panorama, look at various events in life, so to speak, and view them from a higher vantage point, so to speak. But that is not yet the actual spiritual. So you have to get over this limit of three/three and a half days, but in the Egyptian initiation you had to be very careful that the connection to the physical body, which is now lying there as if dead, was often really put into a sarcophagus for the purpose of initiation, that the connection to this physical body does not completely break off. Because if it is completely severed, the life is completely out, the soul is completely out, the spiritual is completely out and this connection is severed, then no way back is possible. Then death really occurs. And the Egyptian initiation was mainly set up in such a way that the priesthood, which supervised this initiation process, - these were usually twelve priests who were around the person to be initiated and supervised this state - that they could observe exactly when the last possible moment was, that they had to bring him back. So they brought him back mainly by letting the sunlight fall on him in the right way. So through the light they woke him up, but also of course through recitations and the like, through incenses that were made, through waking explanations. And then you had to bring him back very quickly - and the initiation disciple was trained, rehearsed, to report quickly now what he saw over there. It's kind of like waking up from a dream in the morning. If you don't immediately record what happened in the dream, it's usually gone and you can't remember it. Because dream experiences, even less soul-spiritual experiences, cannot be recorded with our normal memory.

So you can't actually hold on to an imagination, a real imagination - and that is an imagination that the human being has in the initiation to begin with - you can't hold on to it with the memory. At the most, one can try to come back to such an experience. If you want to have it again, you actually have to go there again and see it again. What I can remember very well is when I now, at the moment of waking up or coming out, as it was with the Egyptian initiation, put it into words and tell it. I can remember these words. And it is not only the initiate who remembers these words for the rest of his life, but also the priesthood that surrounded him. By hearing them once, they have remembered these words. And it must be said that this initiation disciple did not speak an everyday language, but he spoke it in a cultic language, that is, with certain rhythms, which are in it. It was the Egyptian language in terms of the words, but the way it was formed, we would say today it was poetic, it was cultic and that immediately impressed itself on the memory. It is these exalted priestly ways of speaking and to a certain extent it still resonates today. It sticks differently, has a different effect. But nevertheless, it is a translation of the soul-spiritual experience into an earthly language. You have to think, even in the life after death, the language that we spoke here on earth disappears. It disappears very quickly. Not immediately after the three and a half days, but very soon it is gone. It is, if you like, a spiritual language that you then speak, but that is then only an auxiliary term to call it language, it is another experience. That is to say, the initiation disciple had to "get over" these three and a half days, then he could have the experience from "over there", that is, from beyond the threshold - and at the moment of waking up he could bring this experience in. Bringing in for himself und for the priesthood that surrounded him.

The Initiation of Lazarus 0:11:52

And something similar happened with the Initiation of Lazarus.' Only the starting point was different. This Lazarus has not now been put into such a death-like state by a priesthood or by anyone else, but he has - one could say - fallen into this state by himself. I say of his own accord, but I must add to that, it was in a way the after-effect of the words of the priest with whom he had a great deal of intercourse. I must add to this, Lazarus was a very important man in Jerusalem, a very rich man and very well known. So known throughout Jerusalem, and he also confessed to be a follower of the Christ. He experienced what the Christ spoke so intensely that he fell into this death-like state of his own accord as an after-effect of this experience. He even fell so deeply into this state that the people around him believed that he had died and then laid him in the grave. And when the Christ then learns that Lazarus has died, he takes his time and does not go straight to Lazarus in Bethany to raise him. He simply waits. He waits for two days and nothing happens. And then he goes on his way - and on the fourth day, only at the very last possible moment, on the fourth day, that is really very late, he wakes Lazarus with the words "Lazarus come out". In a figurative sense, these were the words of awakening, as the Egyptians also spoke them, of course in the Egyptian language. And Lazarus now brought a lot of experiences with him and from the aftermath of these experiences arose, for example, the Gospel of John, arose also in a certain way the Apocalypse of John, but that is still a deepening stage in a certain way. Of course, one can now ask oneself, why is he now called John and no longer Lazarus? He was not called John before. Last time we tried to find out where that came from. You have to know that relatively shortly before the raising of Lazarus, John the Baptist was beheaded by order of Herod; you certainly know the story. And the point is that after the death of John - the Baptist now - this John the Baptist became something like a kind of guardian spirit or community spirit of the twelve apostles. Among the twelve apostles were also the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, so also a John, but John Zebedee.

So among these twelve apostles John the Evangelist is not to be counted at first, but it is now therefore this: The spirit of this John the Baptist becomes in some way something like an inspiring community soul and community spirit of this circle of twelve, of these twelve apostles, and the whole thing then condenses even further. There is then the transfiguration of Christ. So that is also shortly before the raising of Lazarus, there condenses this effect John the Baptist on the apostles, now on three very specific apostles, on the two sons of Zebedee and on Peter. That is, he is now only the community spirit of these three, if you like. They thereby attain a higher possibility of knowledge. The rest of the apostles could not have experienced the transfiguration, which is a spiritual experience, only these three could. And at the raising of Lazarus, if you like, the last condensation takes place. There is now a very intimate communion of Lazarus, who is raised, who passes through this initiation, and a connection with the spirit of John the Baptist.

For this one must know that with every initiation, when it happens, always a man on earth cooperates here with at least one spiritual being, which is over there. There is no other way. One must come to a very concrete connection with a spiritual being from over there. You don't just go into the spiritual world. It's teeming with spiritual beings, you look at it. But it only works if you have a very, very intensive relationship with a very specific spiritual being with whom you are fatefully connected or come into contact. And that is in this case this connection between Lazarus here on earth with John the Baptist, who is over there. And after this John the Baptist, Lazarus gets his initiation name John. So that explains why we have a Gospel of John and this John, however, is not the John Zebedee, but another one. But this resurrected Lazarus/John participates in the last supper. He is always mentioned in the Gospel as the disciple whom the Lord loved. So he who rests in the bosom of the Lord, rests at his breast, who is not mentioned by name, but who is there, so to speak, at the same time one of the twelve apostles and at the same time the resurrected Lazarus, who is called John because he is connected with John the Baptist. But now he is also - at this moment at least - the apostle John, namely during the Last Supper. That's when this circle of twelve is really completed. That is to say, John Zebedee was in a certain sense until then the representative for the resurrected Lazarus, who has now become John. And this is, so to speak, the final form of the circle of twelve, the twelve apostles.

The Christ and the Kingdom of Death 0:19:28

It's quite interesting because this whole event around the Christ really condenses, most condenses in this final moment beginning with Maundy Thursday. Yes, perhaps with the whole of Holy Week before, but especially with Maundy Thursday, and then also with the experience of Good Friday. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross is also the moment of the fullest incarnation. You have to think that the incarnation of Christ begins with John's baptism, three years earlier, and is a gradual process. It didn't happen all at once, you don't have to believe that the Christ was already fully incarnated with the baptism of Jordan, but it is a process that goes on until the last minute, until the last minute. Then it is accomplished. So when the words of Christ on the cross are "It is finished", that is exactly what is meant, that the incarnation has now been completed and Christ has become fully human. Immediately at the moment of death. It is something very important that this incarnation in its fullness, in all its fullness, basically takes place in a single moment. There it is complete. That is also the moment when he goes through death, the Christ - and basically descends into the realm of death. We know Holy Saturday is the descent into the underworld, the descent into hell, if you like, the descent into the realm of the dead, into the realm of death. Something that is not normally possible in the ages. Man was still ahead of the angelic beings, archangels, primal angels, etc., and also ahead of the Christ, all other spiritual beings, in going into the kingdom of death, into this darkness, into hell, if you like, into the kingdom of the dead. We were the ones who had experience of it, a certain experience at least. But all the other spiritual beings, who are above us, up to the Christ, did not know the kingdom of death. In the spiritual world, death does not exist. It is a very special kingdom, and the fact that the Christ has just completed his humanity on Golgotha, makes him able to descend into this kingdom of death.

It is also said very clearly in the text of the Apocalypse, I may read it out. I have to find the passage quickly... Yes, so it's still in the first chapter, towards the end of the first chapter, and now John has a Christ encounter. In fact, it's the trigger for the whole writing of John's Apocalypse. For one must also think, what does Apocalypse of John mean? These are the first words with which it begins: ''Apokalypse Jesu Christu' is actually what it means. The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ - and apocalypse means unveiling, revealing. So it is about the unveiling of the nature of Jesus Christ. That is the content of the Apocalypse. And we also pointed out last time that the Christ is very much connected with our human ego. We will have to work this out much, much more precisely in the next lecture or lectures. The Apocalypse has something to do with the unveiling of the nature of our ego. And what significance the Christ has for that. So what John describes here is really an encounter with the Christ and then he says:

"When I saw him, I fell down at his feet and was as dead.

Falling down at his feet and being as dead is again an image for the fact that he is actually experiencing something that is over the threshold, beyond the threshold. So it's not a sensual event, but a spiritual experience, that he has. And then it goes on:

"But he (that is, the Christ) laid his right hand upon me, and said, Fear not. I am the first and the last and the living. I was dead."

Please note the "I was dead," says the Christ. No spiritual being could have said that about man until then. None of these beings were ever dead. "I was dead, yet I carry the life of the world through all the eons. Mine is the key to the realm of death and shadows". So, the Christ has the key to the kingdom of death and shadows. This is also something very important.

The Shadow Forces in the Kingdom of Death 0:26:19

We will hear it a little later in the Apocalypse then of the key of David. The key of David is the key to the spiritual world. And we as human beings, if we strive spiritually accordingly, have access in a sense to both keys. We can open or close the gate to the spiritual world.' We can open and close the gate to the world of death, to the world of shadows. This is related to our human freedom - or it is based on the fact that we can open these gates in a certain sense by our own power. That is the essential passage for us for the time being. This "I was dead, yet I carry the life of the world through all the eons. Mine is the key to the realm of death and shadows. And it is precisely into this realm of death that John himself also went, that is, Lazarus/John in the course of his initiation. That is the path through which one must pass. It has to be said that especially in the initiation process, this encounter with the realm of shadows is quite important. It is not as a rule the case that when one goes normally over the threshold, that is, through death, that one experiences too much of this realm of shadows immediately after death. If one passes through in the state of initiation, that is, in this death-like sleep, then one is very much confronted with this realm. Very clearly. And also with all the shadow sides that exist there and the temptation forces that are connected with it. One experiences these very strongly and it is precisely for this that the initiation student had to prepare himself very intensively in the Egyptian initiation. This test is actually the Ahrimanic side that one encounters in order to get through it. So that means that these were often very gruesome experiences that this initiation student had to go through over and over again for years - and they increased more and more. Only when they had endured this were they deemed ready to really go through the last great test, into the three-day sleep of death.

'In the Apocalypse, of course, all kinds of elements of that are now also in there, related to this dark world of death. This revelation of the nature of Jesus Christ reveals at the same time the spiritual world that is above us. But it also reveals that which rests below us or works below us, ferments below us, whatever you want to call it. That is precisely the very special position that we have as human beings, this spiritual being that we are as human beings, that we stand between the spiritual world that is above us and the world of death that is below us. Exactly on the border. If you want to have a picture of it: The surface of the earth on which we stand is exactly the borderline. That's where it goes up - and that's where it goes down. We have to deal with both realms. In the Egyptian initiation, and in the ancient Oriental initiation in general, it was mainly a question of gaining knowledge of the light side, that is, the side above us, because the power to deal with the dark side was not yet very strong. So we already had certain experiences which anticipate something that we must experience to a much greater extent today if we want to go into the spiritual world. For the person who today wants to have real spiritual experiences or is ripe to have them... Whoever today wants to have such insights and also wants to have them in a healthy way must or must not shy away from the confrontation with the dark forces.

Dante's Divine Comedy - Descent into the Realm of Shadows and Ascent 0:31:28

This is part of the reason why Dante depicts this subterranean realm so drastically and so intensely' in his Divine Comedy. Basically, what Dante describes there is also an initiatory experience. There he shows very clearly how the way to the upper spiritual world, that is, what he also calls paradise, that the way leads through the underworld. That the right way is not a direct ascent to paradise, that one would fail there, that in reality one would already come to a world of light, but it would be the Luciferic world. It would not be the real spiritual world, but it would be "the world of the Luciferic entities". They are also spiritual entities, but spiritual entities that are in a certain way retarded, that is, that have not developed their full spiritual powers. That is to say, if man were to incorporate himself into this realm, he would also ultimately block off his future path, or at least slow it down. In pre-Christian times it was not yet so problematic. But in the post-Christian time it becomes problematic. That is, we have to pass the test of going through the underworld, if you will. That's why Dante describes so clearly in his Divine Comedy: the way goes down to the centre of the earth. That is an image, of course. It is not a matter of descending with crampons, of drilling into the earth, but of going spiritually into the depths. Descending into the dark depths also of our own being and the dark depths also of the earth world. One must therefore think that our earth itself has this double form. On the one hand, a variety of light-filled spiritual forces, high spiritual forces, but there are also dark forces in it. Down there in the earth, there is the realm of Ahriman. There is the realm of the spirits of darkness, if you like. Lucifer hovers a little above it, but Ahriman and even stronger adversary forces live down there. And that's where you have to go through.

In Dante's words, the path leads "through the centre of the earth". Then the ascent begins. Interestingly enough, he goes very quickly, scurries up a few corridors and ends up on the surface of the earth and comes out at Purification Mountain. And the Purification Mountain is what leads them into what's called the Purgatory, Purgatory if you will. So that is the first supersensible realm that leads beyond the earth. And that is exactly the area in which the Luciferic entities essentially live. There we have to purify ourselves from all these luciferic forces in order to be able to ascend into the real paradise and the real spiritual world. That is then the third part of Dante's Divine Comedy. But this applies to all forms of Christian initiation in a certain way. These stages are in there somewhere, it is hardly where it is so clearly stated as in Dante, so systematically. But it is also in the Apocalypse. There is also the confrontation with the very, very dark forces. That's why there are also images in it that seem very frightening to us at first glance. But in reality they are only an expression of a purification process that we have to go through. If we did not go through it, we would not gain insight into the spiritual world.

The New Jerusalem - a New Earth 0:35:47

The view is opened in the Apocalypse of John especially then to the so-called New Jerusalem.' The New Jerusalem is thus a kind of new planetary state, which will one day become our earth. When we as humanity and the earth as a whole has gone through a certain evolution, sometime in the future the earth as the planet as we know it now will die, pass away, be destroyed. It must be destroyed, just as ultimately our physical body must be destroyed one day - and then the New Jerusalem will be. Rudolf Steiner often calls it in his lectures.... refers to it as the New Jupiter that will come. It is a kind of new planet, which of course will be different from our Earth. It is still some distance away, we still have a little time before we get there, but there we will be moved into a new higher spiritual state. But we will be ripe to pass into that higher spiritual state. Into a state that is in some ways comparable' to what today's angelic beings possess. It will be different from our present angelic beings, but in terms of spiritual potency it will be comparable to them. And then, above all, we will not have such a body as we have today - and above all under different conditions. An important moment in the Apocalypse of John is also given where John speaks of the so-called first death and the so-called second death. It's quite late in the Apocalypse, so you ask yourself, what is it with the first death and the second death? I don't want to go into it in detail today. But it has to do with the fact that we finally lay down our physical body there. In every conceivable form and will not get it back in this form, that we have to learn to live without it. So, the first death has to do with finally discarding the physical body forever. And the second death is about finally discarding the associated etheric body. This does not mean that later on we will no longer have anything etheric, but not in the form we have it now. This will be discussed in much more detail in a later lecture, but here it is as a suggestion.

The seven churches and the number seven 0:38:54

I have now repeated quite a lot of what we discussed last time. Now we should go a little further and look at what is described in the Apocalypse. I'll just read a short piece and then explain it. In the first chapter, even before the passage I have read to you, John addresses his "words to the seven churches in Asia". So seven Christian churches in Asia - there were certainly more churches - they are the seven, if you like, leading churches, so at least in the spiritual sense leading, in the external sense it was another chapter. The number seven will be encountered very often in the Apocalypse of John, the Apocalypse of John works a lot with numerical rhythms, they play a very important role. Where the number seven occurs, one can always be attentive to it, it has something to do with a temporal development, with an evolution, with a developmental series. The number seven is also the number of the etheric for example. The etheric forces, the life forces, have something to do with time. Life takes place in time and life freezes when nothing changes. Then death has occurred. After death, decay always follows. But no longer a living development.

So, when the number seven plays a role, a living development is always meant. So, for example, the human body renews itself about every seven years. This is one of the reasons why Rudolf Steiner in Education often speaks clearly of these seven-year cycles that the human being goes through: that the child enters school at the age of seven, with the change of teeth, that puberty occurs at the age of fourteen, that new spiritual forces awaken, that then the twenty-first year of life is very important, that the I begins to emerge quite clearly. And so it goes on - again and again in cycles of seven', which, however, are no longer so clearly noticeable externally. But if you look at it a little more closely, they are there too. On the outside, however, they are connected with the fact that the body physically renews itself every seven years and in the course of about seven years has completely replaced itself materially. Rudolf Steiner has always pointed this out, but it has often been taken for an old wives' tale. You know that scientists always believe nothing at first, they are always sceptical - perhaps that is also their virtue. But if they are thorough, they can be proven wrong. It is indeed the case that in recent years, through systematic investigations, medical, biological, chemical investigations, it has actually been possible to prove that the substances in the human body renew themselves on average every seven years. There are some that take a little longer, there are some that renew more quickly, but if you take the average, it really is every seven years.

So basically, after seven years there is nothing left of us that was there seven years ago. Materially, we have become something completely new, but we have retained our forms to some extent, at least in such a way that we are usually recognisable after seven years. You can get a little older, you change a little, but we clearly recognise the human being. So the form, that is the etheric forces that renew this form again and again, they go through this whole period of seven, but the physical is renewed again and again. Basically physically, we don't just die once at the end of life, but into each seven-year period we basically, materially, put a corpse down. Scattered into the world. It happens quite inconspicuously, with every breath, with every food we take in and excrete again, with what we sweat out and the like. With all this it goes away, with the scales on the skin, where something constantly flakes off, something always goes away again. So we are completely new people materially after seven years. And behind this is ultimately a rhythm of the etheric body. In truth, it is this rhythm that brings about these seven-year cycles. With many sub-rhythms that also play a role. Today, in the sciences, one is already investigating - there is a discipline that has developed in this way since the middle of the twentieth century and now more and more clearly in the last few years, that is chronobiology. Chronobiology deals with the rhythms that work in the human body and also in animals. And many exciting things have been discovered - and among other things, the daily rhythm plays a major role, but also seven rhythms, for example seven rhythms as a quarter of a month. The month is again connected with the lunar rhythm, the daily rhythm, which is connected with the rotation of the earth, the lunar rhythm is connected with the moon's orbit. It has its subdivisions and a quarter of them are about seven days. That is also not accidental that we have a seven-day week. It is very wise. You could do the calendar quite differently too, but then it would no longer be in harmony with these natural rhythms. These natural rhythms, behind which in truth stands the etheric body. That is behind them - or the etheric world in general. Cosmically, it is the etheric world, in us it is the etheric body, that is, the internalisation of these rhythms. There are x rhythms in the body, i.e. very, very fast ones that vibrate nervously so to speak - I say nervously deliberately, because that is very much connected with the nervous system. - and there are much longer rhythms that go more leisurely and that renew us as far as the metabolic processes within seven years.

Development in Time and Timelessness 0:46:18

So, John has a lot to do with these forces and that is why he speaks very often of the seven number and that is why he speaks of the seven churches. That is the reason. That is the real reason, because these seven churches - one could say - represent certain stages of development. So they represent seven stages of development, which together make a great whole. Yes, I might read a bit of it:

"John to the seven churches in Asia:

May grace and peace be yours from him who

who is and who was and who is to come,

and from the seven creative spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ.

From him who is, and who was, and who is to come - that is, he who has spanned all time in essence, the past, the present and the future, who spans the bow.

In the spiritual self, time and temporal development no longer play the role they do here in our life on earth. In a certain sense we go into the realm of eternity, of timelessness - and yet there is movement in there. That seems paradoxical, how does a movement go when there is no more time? One can just, how shall I put it, in what we call time, here call time, basically move freely, move freely. That actually already begins in the ether world. The experience in the etheric world is already such that we can move freely in time. That is, we can go back, not just look back simply, but really go back - etherically. But we can also go into the future, take a look, so to speak, into the future at least. How this future that we experience in the etheric then also materialises in the physical is another chapter. The etheric world is much, much richer than the physical world - and the physical is actually a dead thing, a'died out of the etheric world. And that is, the physical manifests as something etheric dies, but much other etheric continues. And the etheric includes the future, everything that continues in the etheric world. And one thing keeps dying out, so to speak, and manifesting here as something physical. What we can survey today in the etheric is all this fullness that flows from us into the future or goes into the future. What we cannot decisively foresee is each individual physical event that dies out. So what exactly is going to die, we don't foresee that in the etheric. But we can at least see a certain line, a certain direction in which the whole thing is going. We also see that certain things have to happen, namely as compensation for what has happened in the past.

Repeated Earth Lives and the Freedom of Man 0:50:06

I must now make the connection to another sub-topic, so to speak, namely the subject of reincarnation and karma. You know, if you are already familiar with Anthroposophy, that we speak of repeated earth lives. Man does not live only once on earth, but he lives repeatedly on earth. That is to say, when he dies, he passes for a time first through the soul world, then through the spiritual world, in order to descend again after a shorter or longer time to a new incarnation. Simply because this earthly existence offers us the many possibilities for development that we could not exhaust in an incarnation. Or we are not spiritually so far that we would manage to complete our earthly development in a single incarnation. We need a little longer. We have to go through a few times. We are students who may have to go through the class a few times. We can naturally excel during our earthly incarnation. In a sense, the spiritual beings, who are above us, cannot make mistakes.

So you might say, Well, then I'd like to be like that too, that would be great. Yes, but then we wouldn't have the freedom. With this a great word is said, because it already says that even the angelic beings who are above us - and also the higher angelic beings who are above them, up to the highest angelic beings - do not have the freedom that man has. They fulfil out of self-evidence the will of God, if you want to put it in our words. That is to say, the high spiritual that is above them flows into them, they absorb it and out of that they act. Without error. That is wonderful. Basically nothing can go wrong. But - they don't have the possibility of free decision-making. Basically, they don't even come up with the idea. Actually, the possibility for freedom had to be created in the world by the highest spiritual source, that is, by the divine self, and this is connected with the ability of error, not to follow what flows down from the spiritual world. What distinguishes us as human beings is that we cannot follow the spiritual world. One could now say, well, that can't be the ideal of man, that we now rebel against the divine. Well - yes and no. It is the prerequisite that afterwards, when we have rebelled against it, we can turn to the spiritual again in freedom. This gives it a completely different quality. We fill ourselves with the spiritual, not because we cannot do otherwise, but we fill ourselves with it because we want it, out of completely free will, we open ourselves to it. But that means that then a spiritual lives in us that is comparable to the supreme spiritual world from which everything flows. That is to say, in us, in our I, a source opens up, which is really, yes one must say so, consubstantial with the highest divine. Even if it is, so to speak, the small edition of it, the miniature edition, and we only experience this in individual moments, perhaps once in one incarnation or perhaps not at all in five incarnations, but once there is a moment when we are consubstantial with the highest Divine. Where we are the embodiment of the divine. Where we are consubstantial with Christ.

The Enigma of the Ego 0:54:52

There is the beautiful Pauline word that Rudolf Steiner mentions very often and usually gives in the form: 'Not I, but the Christ in me'. One could very easily misunderstand this word by saying: I give up my free will and the Christ shall now do for me or through me. But that is not what is meant. In the "not I" is meant my little "everyday ego". - because that is not our ego - we have to cross that out. So, whether we love a roast pork or are grumpy because of our personal circumstances, that of course has nothing to do with the spiritual world. That stands in our way. So this ego, the "I want, I want, I have to, I need, you really have to get rid of that. But our actual ego, we will not actually experience in its concrete form in everyday life. We do know that we have an I, but that is already all we know of it in everyday consciousness. It has nothing to do with how we were born, what kind of education we have, how much money we have, that doesn't matter at all. It really has nothing to do with our ego. You have to get there first, to the conscious experience of your own self. But this is a great moment to experience that we have one. Children usually experience it around the third year. There comes this flash: "I am one I". Many can't remember it later in life. Sometimes it resurfaces later in life, in old age, the memory, just as memories of earlier childhood like to resurface in old age. But some people never forget this experience.

I can remember the experience incredibly well and in all its details. It was sometime in November, maybe it was even on my third birthday, if it wasn't on my third birthday, then it was around St. Nicholas Day, my parents were there, my maternal grandmother, uncles, aunts, there was a fireplace behind me, it was already quite dark. Suddenly I looked at everything around me with big amazed eyes and realised, I am something else. I will never forget that. It was like a shock, I can't say whether it was shattering - no, it certainly wasn't shattering - I didn't know that - but it was just so insistent that it kept coming back. And I have to say, the older I get, the more clearly it's there.

There are also moments like that later in life. So Rudolf Steiner describes how he experienced it in his twenty-first year, that is, when the ego becomes even more awake. I must read it out one day. It's quite interesting. He was reading the philosopher Schelling, who also describes this experience. And then Steiner describes how he had this experience himself. He was also sure that he also had this experience. So, one can have this I-experience on different levels. It is not to be compared with the everyday ego that we have. To have this ego experience, that has something to do with the apocalypse. Apocalypse of Jesus Christ means at the same time apocalypse of one's own I, namely at the moment when I and Christ are consubstantial. At the moment when one has such an experience, this unity of essence is there. Only for a moment, then it disappears again - or at least is not in our consciousness. In reality, it's already there somehow, but we can't make ourselves conscious of it again, maybe not make ourselves conscious of it for years, not make ourselves conscious of it until the end of our lives. But in this one moment it is there. That is what is meant by this Pauline word: "Not I, but the Christ in me". It could be formulated in the same way: "Not my little I, but the real I in me". It is actually exactly the same.

Repeated Earth Lives - Errors and Correction 1:00:18

Let's go back to the seven churches to Asia. It was a bit of a trip. Yes, one thing I wanted to say with this, I wanted to say this but had lost sight of it. It's related to the repeated earth lives, that we have to go through. Because our ego only develops further through these many earth lives. We can only acquire the consciousness of our own self through many earth lives. But we also make mistakes on earth, we are not like the angels above us, that the spiritual simply flows into us and we implement it, but we can err, we can make mistakes - and thereby burden ourselves with a task, namely by making these mistakes, we change the course of the world in a certain way. It is up to us to correct it again. Above all, we ourselves are damaged by it. The Christ helps us to correct the mistakes that remain in the world in a certain way. But what we destroy in ourselves by making mistakes - mistakes, after all, also mean that we ultimately put our ego in danger or scratch it - in the next incarnation or in the incarnation after that, when our strength has grown a little, we have to correct this mistake, you can say. That is what is connected with our karma, with our destiny. Our karma is nothing other than our ego striving to repair the damage it has done to itself, to work on it. We have to, otherwise we would get nowhere. That is, who sends our destiny, our karma, that is ultimately ourselves. Our real I. No one else. We don't need to complain to anyone. We can only be happy that the Christ, by working with and in our I, but in a very individual way, helps us to carry this karma, that he gives us the strength also, gives our I the strength. But always only to the extent that we really struggle for it, that is never just something that is given, but always something that we have to do. That is very important. So, that's the karma we carry with us, which is related to our error, to our possibilities of error. But that's exactly what we mature from. That is why the path is given for many earth lives. That we can experience all this and thereby learn to become free beings.

The seven creative spirits and the development of man 1:03:33

But let us now really return to the seven churches.

"John to the seven churches in Asia:

Grace and peace be unto you,

from him who is and who was and who is to come,

and from the seven creative spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ.

The seven creative spirits: well, who are the seven creative spirits? Essentially, they are those spiritual forces or those spiritual beings who have created our body shells and who have prepared that these spiritual shells, these body shells - yes, there I have already anticipated the word spiritual shells - can one day be transformed into spiritual forces. So, what are these body shells: the physical body, the etheric body, that is, the life forces, then the astral body, which makes us a sensitive, conscious being. Iin the etheric body we are actually still asleep, in the astral body we at least dream. That is exactly what we have in common with the animals. So, the animals also have a certain consciousness, but that is still dream-like, this consciousness. If we had only this consciousness, this astral consciousness, we would not be very awake. We would not recognise ourselves as I. That is to say, the fourth thing that comes in a certain way is the I or the I-bearer, as Rudolf Steiner often calls it, which is, so to speak, the bodily prerequisite for an I to be able to incarnate. Incarnation means that the I completely penetrates the bodily envelopes and thereby makes the bodily envelopes altogether the I-bearer, but that is this fourth principle. The I, which now incarnates by unfolding its spiritual powers, reshapes the astral body, the etheric body and finally the physical body - through its spiritual powers, through the individual spiritual powers that lie within each ego. The astral body, which was first given by the spiritual beings, we transform into what Rudolf Steiner calls the spirit self or our higher self. Our real I becomes richer to the same extent that this higher self, this spirit self, is formed. This is, so to speak, a power that our ego has at its disposal. In the Orient it is also called "Manas". Manas has to do with meynen, to think. Man, also the word man is connected with it. It is an old Indo-Germanic word. The word man also comes from it, incidentally. There is another word that comes from it that you find in the Bible, which is the manna. When the Moses goes through the wilderness with the Israelite people, the manna is given to him. It is nothing other than the powers of this spiritual spirit that come down in a certain way to the Israelite people as a whole, at that time not yet to the single individual, but to the national community.

If we transform the etheric body through the power of the ego, then the etheric body becomes the life spirit. This power of the life spirit then lives within our ego. This means that just as the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body surround our ego from the outside, our ego encloses the spirit self and the life spirit within itself - figuratively speaking. They belong to the component of this I. In the highest form, for example, it means that if I take only the spirit-self, that is, the transformed astral body, then it means that our I has become capable of creating an astral body out of nothing. It is something different from the way we now normally envelop ourselves with an astral body during our incarnation on earth. For the most part, it is only bestowed upon us by the spiritual world - and that will happen as long as we are not able to create one ourselves out of nothing. That is then actually our real astral body. But then we call it no longer astral body, but spirit self. It is then ours alone.

The aim of all initiation processes that have been taking place on earth since Egyptian times or that lead into the future in some other way is to form as much as possible of this spirit self. So, apart from the fact that we are forming our I here on earth at all, the people who are really progressing spiritually are those who are already forming a good part of the spirit self. It then becomes a task on the so-called New Jupiter - or what John calls the New Jerusalem, of which I have spoken today - will be to form this spiritual self fully. But we should already have a certain part of it at the end of the earth's evolution, then we will at least be counted among the spiritually developed human beings. Yes, the life spirit is therefore the transformed etheric body. We will not be able to do this alone during the evolution of the earth, to transform the etheric body into the life-spirit. The etheric body to the life-spirit - we can co-operate in this, we can co-operate above all, or we can bring things further in the direction through the help of the Christ. In that case it is really the help of the Christ. That is, something that cannot be accomplished by our ego. For example, the word "grace" is very important for this. This is a gift that the Christ gives us. As for the spirit self, that is already our own responsibility. That is the endowment with the Holy Spirit, you can call it. But this Holy Spirit is then our Holy Spirit. It is not something that hovers over us or directs us from outside, but something that ultimately belongs to our I, then it has only become real spirit-self, what we are now developing during the development of the earth, that we owe to our I alone. But what we are already bringing forth in life-spirit, at least in a preliminary form, we need the help of the Christ for.

The physical body and our ego-consciousness 1:12:07

And a fortiori, we then even need the father forces' for this, but these are mediated by the Christ, in order to even spiritualise something of our physical body. Sounds paradoxical. What is a spiritualised physical body? That sounds like a contradiction right now. One must think, what is the task of the physical body in which we are now normally embodied on earth, the physical and material body? Physical and material are not exactly the same thing. The material is actually what fills the physical form. If, for example, the Luciferic temptation had not come, that is, if we had not come under the influence of the adversary forces, then we would not have such a physical body as we have today in truth. It would have been invisible to sensual eyes.

There are a whole lot of physical beings that are not visible to our eyes. For example, there are elemental beings' that certainly have a physical body and yet are not visible to us with sensual eyes. There are whole realms of physical worlds out there that are not visible to us because they are not material. So, our physical body becomes visible through the material. But what does this physical body give us precisely through the fulfilment with the material and through the problematic that is connected with it? It is precisely through the material that the whole physical body tends to decay. The material has this principle of decaying within. If the etheric body is no longer inside and constantly renews these substances, in these seven-year cycles we have spoken of, then it simply decays, just as the corpse decays with death. So, by itself, our physical body cannot keep its form. That is because we have this luciferic impact. Through the fulfilment with the material, our actually not perfect invisible physical body was actually damaged. This made it visible. Through this it became mortal. But through this we also got our I-consciousness - and get it precisely through being mortal.

Our I-consciousness wakes up at the processes - also in life - when they are processes of decay. For example, with every nerve impulse that passes through, something dies in the brain. It is then excited again, but actually something dies there until death, until a salt-like state in the nerves. That is precisely why the brain is an instrument with which we can acquire consciousness. For this very purpose we need the physical-material brain. Not for thinking, actually. Thinking is not a function of the physical brain. We need the brain to become aware of these thoughts, which are actually etheric forces. As a rule, we are not yet so far today that we can experience the etheric, which is not sensually visible, but only leaves its trace in the sensual - then in the growth forces - so that we can experience this consciously at all, these image forces, these etheric forces, it must be mirrored in the physical brain and it is mirrored when these decay processes take place precisely in the brain. Then, when it is regenerated again or at least largely regenerated, the consciousness is already gone again. That's when the dying process must take place, that's when we become awake. We have death, the constant death that accompanies us since birth in truth, to which we owe consciousness - that is a prerequisite for it - and namely our ego-consciousness in particular.

Imagination - Experiencing in the spiritual 1:16:35

Of course, this also includes an astral body and an etheric body, but this ability to die through the material body is very important for our consciousness. That is why we have it and why we need it. We will need it until our consciousness has become capable of getting along without the help of these dying processes. That is, when this consciousness can now look for another counterpart, another mirror, when it no longer needs this physical mirror', when it can, for example, mirror itself in the etheric, that is, in the life forces. So this mirroring in the life forces, when we come into this life world, then we actually acquire another consciousness, a consciousness with which we can already look a little into the spiritual world. That is the consciousness in which we experience imaginations, images. And now we make huge inverted commas around the word images - I will come back to this - images of the spiritual world. They are living images. You can't describe these images like an oil painting, an old painting on the wall, because it's a moving image that changes continuously. You can't really capture it at all. There is a movement in it - we have already discussed the paradox - a movement that takes place in timelessness. The movement arises from the fact that we can look at this picture from different perspectives, can go through it and, if I translate that into the sensual, then a temporal development series, a temporal event becomes out of it. But in the etheric, I can go forwards, backwards, take branches, move freely at any time. At the same time, in meditation, when one really gets to a real imagination, so that time no longer plays a role, a real imagination, it is experienced in complete timelessness. I think, if I remember correctly, in the first lecture we had, that is, we already had two lectures, I mentioned briefly in the first lecture once that one can experience this. Because especially when you do a meditation with today's consciousness, it's not like you're completely out of it and just floating in another world, but we still keep besides the consciousness here for the sensual world, even if you don't direct your concentration to it, but it remains there. I remain aware that I am in the physical world with my body. I don't go into a dream-like consciousness where I'm lifted out and just float completely above it, somewhere. One can really notice under certain circumstances, when there is a clock somewhere on the table, that I have an incredibly intense imagination, that is, a moving image, as we have discussed, an incredibly rich image. Inwardly, one definitely has the feeling that what I am experiencing is hours long, that it is something very, very long that is unfolding and unrolling before me - and when I look at the second hand of the clock, it seems to stop. So, what I experience inwardly like hours or days, outwardly no time passes. So that is experienced in an instant, measured against our external time. Similarly, in dreams, in truth, it can also happen sometimes. It is often the case when such a dream is triggered by something, when waking up especially it is the case when one comes into the sensual world. For example, the morning sun comes in through the window, even when the eyelids are closed, the senses somehow take it in without the sunlight coming to our consciousness. We are still inside the dream and in the dream suddenly a huge fire breaks out, a huge fire, and there you experience a long story: the fire brigade comes, there are dramatic scenes that take place so that the inhabitants in the house can be saved and you think, that took two hours now. You wake up and look at the sun that has just come around the corner, that has just appeared, almost at the same moment. So actually, these dream images also unfold in timelessness, basically. This consciousness, this imaginative consciousness is connected with the fact that when we no longer need the physical body as a mirroring apparatus for consciousness, then we mirror in the living etheric body, then we go out of the time stream and can move freely in time.

The Soul World and Time 1:22:26

In the astral world, in the soul world it is still different, there is a very special paradox, time seems to come towards us. Future, it seems time moves in reverse. That is very important, because that is the way in which creative impulses come into the world. One must always, so that something can manifest creatively in the physical world, there must be a physical time stream that goes from the past into the future, that is, that we know in normal life. There must be the etheric, where timelessness, above all mobility, prevails in time - and something must come from the future, actually from the end of the process of development - and where the stream from the past and the stream from the future collide, it becomes our momentary present. Something is happening there.

With every event that takes place in the world, it is never only a consequence of the past, as is often believed in natural science, because they only have the physical-sensual means at their disposal, therefore they only know this stream of time that comes from the past and goes into the future and they can only deduce what will perhaps happen in the future from what has happened in the past. With simple things, you can even predict it: How a stone falls down, you can predict that quite well as a physicist, unless something disturbing comes along, if a bird flies by or something; but otherwise, most real events,' which happen in the world, cannot be predicted, because they are not only determined by the past, but are co-determined, half of them, so to speak, at least half, by what steers us from the future. That has to come together. That is to say, when we move on into the imagination or from the imagination, then something enters that goes beyond this picture consciousness and that shows us something of the future. Something showing where this development is going because this goal actually comes towards us, in a way. We have to look at the beginning and at the end in order to be able to understand the present moment of development at all. These two currents have to come together.

I will now read to you in between sentences from the Apocalypse, where this is also indicated to a certain extent, very clearly. Again, where basically the Christ speaks or at least the angel speaks through the Christ. There it says:

"I am the Alpha and the Omega."

This is meant in Greek, the beginning and the end. The first and the last letter in the Greek alphabet, the Alpha and the Omega.

"Thus says the Lord our God, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Commander of the universe."

This is all in there. He who is, and who was, and who is to come. The present, that's where it starts with the present, he who is. So that's important, to keep it in view too, so the order is not random, because the experience always begins in the present moment. The moment is at the same time, the whole of eternity is in it at the same time. From here, I look to both sides, to what was there, so I look back, so I also look at what determines my destiny, because - as far as we humans are concerned - it also contains all the mistakes that we have made and that we have to repair in the future, that is, what we have to work on. We also see something that we are heading towards, namely our ego, our individual ego. Each individual ego has a special nuance. It is not that we all have exactly the same goal. We all together perhaps contribute to an even higher goal, that's how you might outline it. You will also find that in there in the words.

The Spiritualisation of the Physical Body - Goal of Human Evolution 1:28:22

Now I come back to the seven Creator Spirits in connection with the physical bodies of man. I have not yet told you what becomes of the physical body when it is spiritualised. Now I hope that you have gained a little impression that it is also possible to spiritualise the physical - and that is not to be equated simply with the material-physical, what we know as our body. That there is also an invisible physical in fact, that it is in truth the actual physical. If we succeed, with the help of the Christ and with the help of the Father forces, in restoring this originally spiritual, but in such a way that it now completely fits our I, then we produce our highest spiritual, which we can now once attain, that Rudolf Steiner so aptly calls the spiritual man. That is the highest spiritual thing that we can develop at all, as far as we can grasp it at all, that lies precisely in the spiritualisation of the physical. The physical must not be held in low esteem, but one must see that the greatest task of man lies in at least collaborating in the spiritualisation of this physical. This is also connected with the resurrection of the Christ. The resurrection powers of the Christ, which, however, could not come into effect without the effect of the Father, are connected with the transformation of the physical body into spiritual people. The fact that it really succeeds completely means that we are then able, out of our own strength, out of our own I, to bring forth such a high, such a spiritualised physical body. But this is certainly no longer a body that is material. We will then not walk around on a material globe or other sphere - or however it may be shaped - in a material body, but that will be just the highest spiritual that will then enter. For this you must think, why is it actually the highest spiritual and how else is it connected with the material?

I mean, the physical is the most difficult thing to work on. In the soul, we can already work a little today, at least to some extent, to bring forth the spiritual self, consciously or unconsciously. An artist, when he is really creatively active, creates a new work in his soul and then realises it, outwardly too, but for that he must experience it once in the soul, then he is creatively and spiritually active. Then he is active out of his spiritual self. That is, he transforms the astral, the soul, into real spirit-self. This spirit-self or this little spark of spirit-self that he has in himself, he has created it himself out of his ego. Out of nothingness, basically. He has taken it from nowhere else, from nowhere outside, but from himself.'

It is much more difficult to create etheric forces out of nothing, that is, to unfold life-spirit. That is already much more difficult. We cannot yet do that on the whole, but we need the help of the Christ to be able to do it. We don't even need to talk about the physical, we can do almost nothing there ourselves, namely consciously above all. In order for it to become our own, we must be able to do it consciously, that is, consciously transform the physical body into this high spiritual man. That is only rudimentarily the case.

'On the physical only the highest spiritual hierarchies can really work even today, namely the Christ and the Father Divinity, which is then behind it. But very high angelic beings work as executing organs. For example, the "thrones" are in the leading position. They are in the upper group of three hierarchies. Above them are only the zodiacal beings, the cherubim and then the seraphim, who are basically connected with the whole cosmos, beyond the visible universe - and even beyond the visible, at least for our eyes beyond the visible. So these are very, very high spiritual entities that stand behind the physical. In the spiritual, no matter who can work today, so to speak. The angelic entities that are closely connected with us, the actual angels, they all cannot do that. But we are about to reach the point where we will be able to create a complete physical body. It will then no longer be called a physical body, but it will be called a spiritual person. It is he who will make our highest consciousness possible.

Today we have only a mirror image,' because today we will also be most conscious at the physical, but through the substance, which is basically contaminated. On the etheric body we cannot yet become self-conscious. We cannot yet do that. If we had only ego and astral body, we would know nothing of ourselves, nothing at all. It is precisely in the physical that one can develop the highest consciousness. This is just as true for the spiritual man. That is to say, the spiritual man is the highest spiritual limb that we can acquire. How it goes on then is another chapter, that is not our subject.

Now I have made a huge insertion' just to explain a little bit what the seven number is all about, these stages of development. We have come via these seven stages of human development or these seven members of the being, via the physical body, via the etheric body, via the astral body, via the I, which stands in the middle, up to the spiritual members of the being, which we can acquire by our own strength: the spirit self, the life spirit, the spirit man. That has to do with the seven number. And to these we have come, simply because it was of seven churches that John speaks, to whom he addresses himself and to whom he now writes a letter in a certain sense, to the seven churches. In doing so, he mentions the seven creative spirits. I read the short passage again.

"John to seven churches in Asia:

May grace and peace be yours,

from him who is and who was and who is to come,

and from the seven creative spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ.'

The seven creative spirits are precisely the spiritual beings who help to create our seven members of being. For in general, that we also have to bring forth the higher spiritual members of being, which we actually have to bring forth ourselves - because only then are they ours - they still have to be prepared. That is, so to speak, if you express it in earthly terms, a model for it. That must be prepared once. These seven creative spirits are working on this. It would go too far to say which angelic beings they are. They are also high angelic beings, very high. You should not be surprised that the thrones, for example, have something to do with preparing the physical body and also the spiritual man, that they have their hands in it, because they are able to work into the physical, for example. Just as a small hint.

On the spiritual vision of John on Patmos 1:37:53

Now I want to read something to you at the end of the lecture, namely also from the first chapter, what now John writes in detail to these seven churches:

"I, John, your brother and companion in destiny both in all trials and in inner kingship and in the enduring power which we possess as those who are united to Jesus, was on the island of Patmos. There I was to be made partaker of the divine word of the world and to be made worthy of the witness of the passion of Christ.

"Of the passion of Jesus" it says in the translation. The translation, by the way, is the translation of Emil Bock, one of the founding pastors of the Christian Community. So, on the island of Patmos he has this spiritual vision. He describes very clearly an imagination and how this imagination, however, was translated into sensual images. He cannot communicate the image in any other way than translating it into sensual words. He now describes it like this, which is very typical:

"On the Lord's day I was transported into the spirit realm and heard behind me a tremendous voice like the sound of a trumpet.

This is often so in spiritual experiences, that one has the feeling "behind me is this" and my first test is, do I turn around or not? Do I have the courage to turn around, because if I have the courage to turn around, then it means that I'm going over the threshold in a way. And that is a kind of death experience. One must also be aware that it is a death experience. And it is also connected with, how shall I say, with the unpleasant side of death, that is, to feel this loss in the physical-physical world - without getting out of the body completely. You really have the experience of going through death. Without that you don't cross over the threshold. That is, the first test is: do I dare to turn around now or not. Of course, this has nothing to do with the outer physical turning around, but in the spiritual world. That is to say, the turning is to let go of everything that is sensual in order to turn towards the spiritual. This mighty voice like the sound of a trombone. Incidentally, trombone means - and since we are talking about sound - that inspiration already plays a part in the emergence of the imagination. In truth, every spiritual experience begins even at a higher level, with intuition. I have to become one with a spiritual being in order to enter the spiritual world at all. That is intuition. But it does not become conscious immediately. It is, so to speak, the prerequisite and forms the unconscious underground.

The next stage is inspiration. If you have a real spiritual experience, then you have at least an echo of this inspirational experience, without being able to fully grasp its content, that you hear a voice like a trombone, which is loud and powerful and devastating, but you don't really understand it at that moment.

The third and last thing is actually only the imaginative image that builds up - and this image is not a sensual one at first, but it is, you could say, a kind of highly differentiated mood of the soul that you experience. I will perhaps talk about this in more detail another time. There is not enough time now. It is actually a highly differentiated soul experience that one has, which one can now survey like a panorama, which is in motion, which changes, and in this experience one can, so to speak, wander around mentally. That is the actual imagination. But John has to describe it as a mental image. So he hears this voice and he goes on saying or writing:

'" And she said, Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches. To Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamum, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.

So these are the seven churches. Ephesus, the first, with which John was very closely associated, by the way, that is, in the period long after the events in Palestine, after the death of the Christ on the cross. The island of Patmos, by the way, is very close by, on the coast of Asia Minor, and on the mainland, relatively close by, is Ephesus and the mystery site of Ephesus. That is again an advantage, that there was a mystery site there, an important one. In the beginning, the important Christian centres were all located where the ancient mystery sites were - so this mystery site of Ephesus was closely connected to Patmos or vice versa, Patmos was in a way an offshoot of the mysteries of Ephesus. So, there are seven churches and the voice speaks this now and John goes on to write:

"And I turned to see him whose voice spoke to me. And when I turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the candlesticks a figure like that of the Son of Man.

So the Christ appearing in human form.

"Clothed in a long-waisted robe,

the breast girded with a golden girdle,

with a white head, whose hair shone like white wool and like snow,

"with eyes as if they were flames of fire.

"with feet like gold ore glowing in the fire,

"with a voice like the sound of great rivers of water.

"in his right hand he held seven stars.

from his mouth came forth like a sharp two-edged sword,

and his countenance shone like the sun in all its power.

This is quite a powerful experience. The sensual image is a tired imitation of what is really behind it in the imagination. But it points the way. And how powerful that was comes out further:

"and when I saw him, I fell down at his feet and was as if dead. But he laid his right hand upon me and said - we have already read this today - Fear not. I am the first and the last and the living. I was dead, yet I carry the life of the world through all the eons. Mine is the key to the realms of death and shadows. Write down what you see, the present and the future. The secret of the seven stars you see in my right hand and the seven golden candlesticks is this. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks are the seven churches themselves.

This ends the first chapter of the Apocalypse and with that I would like to close for today from my side.

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Literature references

Rudolf Steiner, Alexandra Riggins: The Seven Apocalyptic Seals, Triskel Verlag 2005, ISBN 978-3-905893-02-1;

Rudolf Steiner: Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity, GA 8 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-0080-3;

Rudolf Steiner: The Apocalypse of John, GA 104 (1985), ISBN 3-7274-1040-X;

Rudolf Steiner: From the Pictorial Scriptures of the Apocalypse of John, GA 104a (1991), ISBN 3-7274-1045-0;

Rudolf Steiner: Lectures and Courses on Christian Religious Work, V: Apocalypse and Priestly Work, GA 346 (2001), ISBN 3-7274-3460-0;

Emil Bock, The New Testament, Translation in the Original Version, Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-8251-7221-X.