The Apocalypse of John - 1. lecture by Wolfgang Peter

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This lecture focuses on insights into the ‘’‘vision of John’‘’, written on the island of Patmos, which he shared in a letter to the seven churches (Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea). According to the Book of Revelation of John, it was dictated to the evangelist John by the Christ in order to encourage and admonish the communities. According to Rudolf Steiner, the seven churches represent the seven cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean era. Patmos was closely connected with the mystery centre Ephesus, where all the Christian centres were initially located. John (John the Evangelist) translated his experienced imagination into sensual images. In a highly differentiated spiritual experience, it unfolded like a panorama in which he could wander around spiritually.

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Transcription of the 1. lecture of the Apocalypse of John

by Ghislaine, Susanne, Elke (December 2022)

Introduction 0:00:36

So, my dear friends, I think we'll just start. No one has missed anything. So even those who were not there last time have not missed much. Basically, we have only dealt with the beginning of the Apocalypse of John. Basically, we had the first sentence and have linked a lot to it.

So the question we had is: ‘’‘Who is this John who writes this Apocalypse of John and who also wrote the Gospel of John?’‘’ So the evangelist John - how did he become the person who was able to write these things? And we came to the conclusion, based on Rudolf Steiner's indications, that it was in fact ‘’‘the resurrected Lazarus’‘’. You may know that. It is described in the Bible in the New Testament, ‘’‘the raising of Lazarus’‘’ as a, in a certain sense, ‘’‘raising of the dead’‘’, as it is called, which in truth is ‘’‘an initiation process’‘’. An initiation process that in a certain sense is similar to what has been customary since Egyptian times. We then also spoke at length about the Egyptian initiation. In those days, the ‘’‘initiation students’‘’ had to undergo long and difficult ‘’‘examinations’‘’ before they were admitted to the ‘’‘central initiation experience’‘’. These examinations repeatedly led them into ‘’‘life-threatening’‘’ situations. That was such an important point. The ‘’‘willpower was trained’‘’, and it was also trained that he really walks at the ‘’‘edge of death’‘’ in a certain way during these tests - and when the initiate was found to be ready for the great test, then he was actually put in a ‘’‘dead-like state’‘’ for ‘’‘three days’‘’ or three and a half days. This was done through ‘’‘meditation’‘, and also through certain substances that were given to them, “”’drugs‘’‘ if you will, which could have induced a state of apparent death, one might say. Because the goal of the initiation was to be able to “”’report from the spiritual world‘’, to be able to experience something there and to be able to report from there.

Initiation in ancient Egyptian culture 0:03:14

The problem is: how do you get there, how do you experience something beyond the threshold? The way that was taken in Egyptian culture, but basically in all advanced civilisations at that time, was to actually put people into this state that is similar to death for three and a half days. For about three and a half days. If you are familiar with Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of what happens after death, then you know that ‘’‘about three and a half days’‘’ after death, you experience ‘’‘a review of your past life on earth’‘’.

This image of one's past life appears before one as if in a great ‘’‘panorama of life’‘’, and one realises what one has done in this life, one really gets to know oneself in a certain way. You see this image from a very interesting distance, like a ‘’‘beautiful panorama’‘’, you could say, so you can even see the ‘’‘negative events’‘’ in their ‘’‘meaning for life’‘’ and what you take away from them in a certain way. So it is a very ‘’‘sunny’‘’, a very ‘’‘joyful experience’‘’. As a side note, these are, for example, the descriptions that can be found in ‘’‘Islam’‘’, ‘’‘given by Mohammed’‘’, where he speaks of the ‘’‘joys of paradise’‘’, which refer primarily to the experience of this life panorama, that is, these very happy experiences in the three days after death. So there is nothing unpleasant for the person who has passed over. The only thing that one does not yet experience or receive is a direct insight into the real spiritual world. It is still a ‘’‘memory of earthly life’‘’. This is connected with the fact that the ‘’‘life forces’‘’ that have animated us during our entire earthly life, that have animated the body, remain in a certain ‘’‘closer connection’‘’ during these three days or three and a half days. 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 bearer of memory’‘’, the actual bearer of memory - remains in a certain compact form during these three and a half days and then begins to dissolve. Dissolving means that 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, initially not yet into higher spiritual worlds, but at least into the soul world. So only then have you really ‘’‘crossed the threshold’‘’ properly. And that means that if you ultimately put a person in a state similar to death for the purpose of initiation, you have to get through these three or three and a half days - or at least get to ‘’‘this border - so that you can get any insight into the spiritual world or, more precisely, into the soul world’‘, because before that you only experience the “”’review of earthly life‘’'. Looking back means that you can basically move freely in this panorama of life, so to speak, you can look at different events in life and observe them from a higher perspective, as it were. But that is not yet the actual spiritual. So you have to get over this boundary three/three and a half days, but you had to be very careful at the Egyptian initiation ‘’‘that the connection to the physical body’‘’, which now lies there like dead - often really put into a sarcophagus for the purpose of initiation - that the connection to this physical body ‘’‘does not break off completely’‘’. Because if it is completely severed, if the life is completely out, the soul is completely out, the spiritual is completely out and this connection is severed, then there is no way back. Then death really occurs. And the Egyptian initiation was set up in such a way that the ‘’‘priesthood,’‘’ which ‘’‘oversaw this initiation process’‘’ - there were usually twelve priests who were around the person being initiated and monitored this state - that they could observe exactly when the last possible moment was ‘’‘when they had to bring him back.’‘’ So he was brought back mainly by letting sunlight fall on him in the right way. So through the ‘’‘light’‘’ he was ‘’‘woken up,’‘’ but also, of course, through recitation and the like, through incense that was burnt, through awakening explanations. And then he had to be brought back very quickly - and the initiation student was ‘’‘trained’‘’ and practised ‘’‘to report quickly what he had seen over there.’‘’ It's a bit like waking up from a dream in the morning. If you don't immediately write down what happened in the dream, it's usually gone and you can't remember it anymore. Because you can't store dream experiences, or even less spiritual experiences, in our normal memory.

So you can't really hold on to an ‘’‘imagination,’‘’ a real imagination - and that is an imagination that a person has in the initiation at first - with your memory. At most, you can try to get back to such an experience. If you want to have it again, you actually have to go back there and see it again. What I can remember very well is when I wake up or come out of it, as it was in the Egyptian initiation, and put it into words and tell it. I can remember these words. And not only the initiate has to remember these words for a lifetime, but also the priesthood that surrounded him. They have kept these words in their memory after hearing them once. And it must be said that this initiate did not speak in everyday language, but rather ‘’‘in a ritual language,’‘’ that is, ‘’‘with certain rhythms,’‘’ which are inherent in it. It was the Egyptian language in terms of the words. But the way it was formulated, we would say today, ‘’‘it was poetic, it was ritualistic,’‘’ and that was immediately impressed on the memory. It is this ‘’‘elevated priestly way of speaking’‘’ and to a certain extent it has remained with us to this day. It is absorbed differently, it has a different effect. But nevertheless, it is a translation of the spiritual experience into an earthly language. One must bear in mind that even in the life after death, ‘’‘the language’‘’ that we have spoken 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 one then speaks, but that is then only an auxiliary term to call it ‘language’, it is a different experience. This means that the initiate had to ‘’‘get over these three and a half days’‘’, then he could have the experience of ‘over there’, that is, from the other side of the threshold - and at the moment of waking up he could bring this experience in. Bring it in for himself and ‘’‘for the priesthood,’‘’ which surrounded him.

The Initiation of Lazarus 0:11:52

And something similar also happened during the ‘’‘initiation of Lazarus.’‘’ Only the starting point was different. This Lazarus was not put into a death-like state by a priesthood or anyone else, but rather he - one could say - ‘’‘fell into this state on his own.’‘’ I say ‘on his own’, but I must also add that it was in a certain way the after-effect of the words of the priest with whom he had a lot of contact. I must also say that ‘’‘Lazarus was a very important man in Jerusalem, a very rich man’‘’ and very well known. He was known throughout Jerusalem, and he also made a name for himself as a follower of Christ. He experienced what Christ said so intensely that, as a result of this experience, he fell into this death-like state of his own accord. He fell into this state so deeply that the people around him thought he had died and laid him in the grave afterwards. And when the Christ then learns that Lazarus has died, he ‘’‘takes a very long time’‘’ and does not go to ‘’‘Lazarus in Bethany’‘’ to wake him up. He simply waits. He waits for two days, but nothing happens. And then he sets off - and only on the fourth day, at the very last possible moment, on the fourth day, which is really very late, does he wake 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 Egyptian. And Lazarus now brought with him a great deal of experience, and ‘’‘the Gospel of John, for example, arose from the after-effects of these experiences,’‘’ and also, in a certain sense, ‘’‘the Apocalypse of John,’‘’, but that is a deeper level in a certain sense. Of course, you might ask why he is now called John and no longer Lazarus. He was not called John before. We also tried to find out where that came from last time. To do so, you have to know that relatively shortly before Lazarus was resurrected, John the Baptist was beheaded on the orders of Herod; you are sure to 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 protective spirit or community spirit of the twelve apostles.’‘’ The twelve apostles also included 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 initially, but now the following is the case: 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, these twelve apostles, and the whole thing then becomes even more condensed. There is then the transfiguration of Christ. This is also shortly before the resurrection of Lazarus, when ‘’‘this effect of John the Baptist's is concentrated’‘’ on the apostles, now on three very specific apostles, ‘’‘the two sons of Zebedee and Peter.’‘’ That means that he is now only the community spirit of these three, if you will. They thereby attain a higher level of knowledge. The other apostles would not have been able to experience the transfiguration, which is a spiritual experience, only the three of them could. And with the raising of Lazarus, the last condensation takes place, if you will. A very close bond is created between Lazarus, who is resurrected and goes through this initiation, and the spirit of John the Baptist.

It is important to know that ‘’‘at every initiation’‘’, when it happens, ‘’‘a person on earth’‘’ always works together ‘’‘with at least one spiritual being,’‘’ who is on the other side. It cannot be any other way. One has to come to a very concrete connection with a spiritual being from the other side. One does not simply enter the spiritual world. It is teeming with spiritual beings, one looks at that. But it is actually only possible if one gets a very, very intense relationship with a very specific spiritual being, with whom one is connected by fate or comes into contact with. And in this case, it is ‘’‘this connection between Lazarus here on earth and John the Baptist,’‘’ who is over there. And Lazarus gets his initiation name John after this John the Baptist. So this explains why we have a ‘’‘Gospel of John’‘’ and why this John is not John Zebedee, but someone else. But this resurrected ‘’‘Lazarus/John takes part in the Last Supper.’‘’ He is always referred to in the Gospel as ‘’‘the disciple whom the Lord loved.’‘’ That is, the one who rests in the Lord's bosom, who rests on his breast, who is not named, but who is, so to speak, 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. And now, at this moment, he is also the apostle John, namely during the Last Supper. This is when the circle of the twelve is finally completed. That is to say, John Zebedee was, in a certain sense, the representative of the resurrected Lazarus, who has now become John. And this is, so to speak, the final form of the ‘’‘circle of the twelve, the twelve apostles.’‘’

The Christ and the realm of death 0:19:28

It is quite interesting because all of this event really condenses around the Christ, most of all condenses in this last moment ‘’‘beginning with Maundy Thursday’‘’. Yes, perhaps with the whole of Holy Week before that, but especially with Maundy Thursday, and then of course with the experience of ‘’‘Good Friday.’‘’ With the death, the ‘’‘crucifixion of Jesus Christ,’‘’ there is also the moment of the fullest incarnation. One has to think that the incarnation of Christ begins with the baptism of John, three years before, and is a gradual process. It did not happen in one fell swoop; you don't have to believe that Christ was fully incarnated at the time of his baptism in the Jordan, but it is a process that continues until the last minute, until the last minute it is completed. Then it is accomplished. So when the ‘’‘Christ's words on the cross are “It is finished”’‘’, that is exactly what is meant, namely, ‘’‘that the incarnation has now been completed’‘’ and Christ has become fully human. Immediately at the moment of death. It is very important that this incarnation takes place in its full fullness, in its entirety, basically ‘’‘in a single moment.’‘’ That is the moment when he passes through death, the Christ - and descends into the realm of death. We know that Holy Saturday is the descent into the underworld, the descent into hell, if you will, the descent into the realm of the dead, into the realm of death. Something that is not normally possible in the times. Before the angelic beings, archangels, original angels, etc., and even before Christ, human beings preceded all other spiritual beings in entering the realm of death, in entering this darkness, in entering hell, if you will, in entering the realm of the dead. We were the ones who had experience of it, at least to a certain extent. But ‘’‘all the other spiritual beings,’‘’ who are above us, up to the Christ, ‘’‘did not know the realm of death.’‘’ In the spiritual world, there is no death. It is a very special realm, and the fact that ‘’‘the Christ completed his humanity on Golgotha’‘’ also enables him to descend into this realm of death.

It is also very clearly stated in the text of the Apocalypse, which I will perhaps read out. I have to find the passage quickly... Yes, it is still in the first chapter, towards the end of the first chapter, and there ‘’‘John has a Christ encounter.’‘’ In truth, it is ‘’‘the trigger’‘’ for the whole writing of the Apocalypse of John. Because you have to think about what ‘Apocalypse of John’ means. These are the first words with which he begins: ‘Apocalypse of Jesus Christ’ is what it actually says. The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ - and Apocalypse means as much as ‘’‘revelation, manifestation’‘’. So it is about the revelation 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 closely connected with our human ego. We will have to work on this much more precisely in the next lecture or lectures. The Apocalypse has something to do with ‘’‘revealing the essence of our ego.’‘’ And what significance Christ has for this. So what John describes here is really an encounter with Christ, and he then says:

‘’«When I saw him, I fell at his feet and was dead.»‘’

Falling at his feet and being dead is another image for the fact that he is actually experiencing something that is beyond the threshold, on the other side of the threshold. So it is 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 on 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 a human being until then. None of these beings had ever been dead. ‘’‘I was dead, yet I carry the life of the world through all the aeons. The key to the realm of death and the shadows is mine.’‘’ So, the ‘’‘Christ has the key to the realm of death and the shadows’‘’. That is also something very important.

JOHN THE BAPTIST APOSTLE The spirit of John the Baptist became something like an inspiring community soul and community spirit of the circle of twelve apostles [1 | 0:19:28]

CHRIST'S DEATH As the only higher spiritual being, the Christ knows death. Therefore he said: ‘’‘Mine is the key to the kingdom of death and the shadows’‘’ [1 | 0:19:28]

The Shadow Powers in the Realm of Death 0:26:19

A little later in the Apocalypse, we will hear about the Key of David. ‘’‘The Key of David is the key to the spiritual world.’‘’ And we as human beings, if we strive spiritually, have access to both keys in a certain way. 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 connected 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. This ‘’«I was dead, yet I carry the life of the world through all the aeons. The key to the realm of death and the shadows is mine»‘’. And it was precisely into this realm of death that John himself went, that is, Lazarus/John‘’‘ in the course of his “”’initiation.‘’' This is the path that one has to go through. It should be said that this encounter with the ‘’‘realm of shadows’‘’ is particularly important in the initiation process. It is not usually the case that when one passes over the threshold in a normal way, that is to say, through death, one experiences too much of this realm of shadows immediately after death. If one passes through in the state of initiation, that is to say, in this sleep similar to death, then one is very much confronted with this realm. Very clearly. And also with all the shadowy sides that exist there and the temptations that are associated with them. These are experienced very strongly and it was precisely this that the Egyptian initiates had to prepare themselves for very intensively. This test, that 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 initiate had to go through again and again over the years - and they increased more and more. Only when they had endured this were they ‘’‘found ripe’‘’ to really go through the last great test, the three-day sleep of death.

Of course, all kinds of elements associated with this ‘’‘dark world of death’‘’ are now included in the ‘’‘Apocalypse’‘’. This revelation of the nature of Jesus Christ also reveals the spiritual world that is above us. But it also reveals the world that lies below us, or works among us, or simmers among us, however you want to call it. This is the very special position we have as human beings, this spiritual being that we are as human beings, that we stand between the spiritual world above us and the world of death below us. Exactly on the border. If you want an image of it: ‘’‘The surface of the earth’‘’ on which we stand is exactly ‘’‘the border line.’‘’ It goes up there - and down there. We have to concern ourselves with both realms. In the Egyptian initiation, and in the initiation of the ancient Orient in general, the main aim was to gain ‘’‘knowledge of the light side,’‘’ that is, the side that lies above us, because the power to deal with the dark side was not yet very strong. So people had certain experiences that foreshadowed something that we basically have to experience to a much greater extent today if we want to enter the spiritual world. For the person who wants to have real spiritual experiences today or is mature enough to have them... Anyone who wants to have ‘’‘such insights’‘’ today and also wants to have them ‘’‘in a healthy way’‘’ must or ‘’‘should not be afraid of confronting the dark forces.’‘’

FREEDOM OF MAN As human beings, if we strive spiritually, we can open or close the door to the spiritual world. This is connected with our human freedom [1 | 0:26:19]

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

This is one of the reasons why Dante (Dante Alighieri) describes this subterranean realm so ‘’‘drastically and so intensely’‘’ in his ‘’‘Divine Comedy’‘’ (Divine Comedy) describes this subterranean realm so ‘’‘drastically and so intensely’‘’. Basically, what Dante describes there ‘’‘is also an initiation experience.’‘’ He shows very clearly how the path to the upper spiritual world, that is, what he also ‘’‘refers to as paradise,’‘’ leads through the underworld. That the right way is not a direct ascent to paradise, that one would fail there, that one would in fact come to a bright world, but it would be the Luciferic world. It would not be the real spiritual world, but it would be ‘’‘the world of Luciferic beings.’‘’ They are also spiritual beings, but spiritual beings that have ‘’‘in a sense remained behind,’‘’ that is, they have not developed their full spiritual powers. This means that if a person were to integrate themselves into this realm, they would ultimately also block or at least slow down their path to the future. In pre-Christian times, it was not yet so problematic. But in the post-Christian era, it becomes ‘’‘problematic’‘’. That means that ‘’‘we have to pass the test of going through the underworld’‘’, if you will. That is why ‘’‘Dante’‘’ describes it so clearly in his «Divine Comedy»: the path goes down to the centre of the earth. This is of course a metaphor. It is not about descending with crampons, drilling into the earth, but ‘’‘going down spiritually.’‘’ Descending ‘’‘into the dark depths of our own being’‘’ and the dark depths of the earthly world. So we have to think that our earth itself has this dual nature. On the one hand, a multitude of ‘’‘light-filled spiritual forces’‘’, high spiritual forces, but there are also ‘’‘dark forces’‘’ in it. Down there in the earth, that is the realm of Ahriman. That is the realm of the spirits of darkness, if you will. Lucifer hovers a little above it, but Ahriman and even stronger opposing forces live down there. And that is exactly where you have to go through.

In Dante's version, the path leads ‘’‘through the centre of the earth.’‘’ Then the ascent begins. Interestingly, it happens very quickly, he scurries up a few levels and lands on the surface of the earth, emerging at the ‘’‘Mountain of Purification’‘’. And the Mountain of Purification is what leads him to the so-called ‘’‘Purgatory’‘’, ‘’‘to the Fiery Furnace’', if you will. So this is the first supernatural realm that leads beyond the earth. And this is precisely the realm in which the Luciferic beings essentially live. There we must then ‘’‘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 the third part of Dante's Divine Comedy. But this applies to all forms of Christian initiation in a certain way. These stages are somewhere inside, it is hardly where it is expressed as clearly as in Dante, so systematically. But it is just as much in the Apocalypse. There you also find the confrontation with the very, very dark forces. That is why there are also images that seem very frightening 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 get an insight into the spiritual world.

The New Jerusalem - a new earth 0:35:47

In the Book of Revelation, the view is opened above all to the so-called ‘’‘New Jerusalem.’‘’ The New Jerusalem is ‘’‘a kind of new planetary state,’‘’ which will one day become ‘’‘our earth’‘’. When we as humanity and the Earth as a whole have gone through a certain development, at some point in the future the Earth as the planet as we know it will die, perish, be destroyed. It must be destroyed, just as our physical body must ultimately be destroyed - and then the New Jerusalem will arise. ‘’‘Rudolf Steiner often calls it’‘’ in his lectures... he calls it ‘’‘the New Jupiter’‘’, which will come. This is a kind of new planet that will of course be different from our Earth. It is still a long way off, we still have a little time to go, but there we will be ‘’‘transferred to a new, higher spiritual state’‘’. But we will be mature enough to enter this higher spiritual state. A state that is in some ways ‘’‘comparable’‘’ to what ‘’‘today's angelic beings’‘’ possess. It will be different from our present-day angelic beings, but in terms of spiritual potency it is comparable to them. And then, above all, we will not have a body like the one we have today - and above all under different conditions. An important moment in the Book of Revelation is also given where John speaks of the ‘’‘so-called first death and the so-called second death’‘’. It is quite late in the Apocalypse, so one wonders what the first and second death are. I don't want to go into detail about this today either. But it has to do with the fact that we will finally lay down our physical body there. We will lay it down in every conceivable form and will not get it back in this form, so we have to learn to live without it. So, ‘’‘the first death’‘’ has to do with ‘’‘finally laying down the physical body forever.’‘’ And ‘’‘the second death’‘’ means finally ‘’‘laying down the corresponding etheric body.’‘’ That does not mean that we will then no longer have anything etheric, but no longer in the form that we have now. We will discuss this in more detail in the next lecture, but for now, this is just a suggestion.

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

I have now repeated a lot of what we discussed last time. Now we should move on a little and look at what is described in the Apocalypse. I will just read a short passage and then explain it. So in the first chapter, before the passage I read to you, John now addresses his ‘’‘words to the seven churches in Asia’‘’. So seven Christian communities in Asia - there were certainly more communities - they are the seven, if you will, leading communities, at least in the spiritual sense, in the outward sense it was a different chapter. We will encounter the ‘’‘number seven’‘’ very often in the Apocalypse of John, the Apocalypse of John works a lot with ‘’‘number rhythms’‘’, they play a very important role. Wherever the number seven occurs, we can always be aware that it has something to do with a temporal development, with an evolution, with a series of developments. 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 becomes rigid when nothing changes any more. Then death has occurred. After death, decay always follows. But no longer a living development.

So when the number seven plays a role, it always refers to a living development. For example, the human body renews itself about every seven years. This is one of the reasons why ‘’‘Rudolf Steiner often speaks clearly in his education’‘’ about these ‘’‘seven-year cycles’‘’ that people go through: that ‘’‘the child’‘’ enters school at the age of seven, with the change of teeth , that puberty begins at the age of fourteen, that new spiritual forces awaken, that the twenty-first year of life is very important, that the ego begins to emerge very clearly. And so it goes on - again and again in ‘’‘seven-year cycles’‘’, which are no longer so noticeable externally. But if you look a little more closely, they are there too. Externally, they are connected to the fact that ‘’‘the body physically renews itself every seven years’‘’ and that, over the course of about seven years, it has ‘’‘completely exchanged its material’‘’. Rudolf Steiner always pointed this out, but it was often dismissed as an old wives' tale. You know that scientists never believe anything at first, they are always sceptical - that is perhaps also their virtue. But if they are thorough, they are open to being taught otherwise. It is actually the case that in recent years, through systematic medical, biological and chemical research, it has been possible to prove that the substances in the human body renew themselves on average every seven years. Some take a little longer, some renew themselves more quickly, but if you take the average, it really is every seven years.

So, in terms of our material substance, nothing that was there seven years ago is still there. We have become something completely new in terms of our material substance, but we have retained our forms to a certain extent, at least to the extent that we are usually recognised again after seven years. We can get a little older, we change a little, but we are still clearly recognisable as human beings. So the form, that is to say the etheric forces that renew this form again and again, they go through this whole ‘’‘seven-year period’‘’, but ‘’‘the physical is renewed again and again.’‘’ Basically, physically speaking, we do not die only once at the end of our lives, but in every seven-year period we basically, materially speaking, discard a corpse. Scattered into the world. It happens quite inconspicuously, with every breath we take, with every piece of food we eat and then excrete again, with what we sweat out and so on. All of this is shed, with the scales on our skin, where something is constantly being shed, something is always being lost. So, materially speaking, we are completely new people after seven years. And ‘’‘behind it all is ultimately a rhythm of the etheric body. It is this that in truth,’‘’ causes these seven-year cycles. With many sub-rhythms that also play a role. Today, science is already investigating - there is a discipline that has developed in this way since the middle of the twentieth century and has become increasingly clear in recent years, and that is ‘’‘chronobiology’‘’. Chronobiology is concerned with the rhythms that operate in the human body, and also in animals. And many exciting things have been discovered - among other things, the daily rhythm plays a major role, but so do seven-day rhythms, for example the seven-day rhythm as a quarter of a month. The month is again connected with the ‘’‘moon rhythm’‘’, the daily rhythm, which is connected with the rotation of the earth, the moon rhythm is connected with the moon's orbit. It has its subdivisions and a quarter of it is about seven days. It is also not by chance that we have a ‘’‘seven-day week’‘’. It is very wise. The ‘’‘calendar’‘’ could be organised in a completely different way, but then it would no longer be ‘’‘in harmony with these natural rhythms.’‘’ These natural rhythms are actually based on the etheric body. It is behind them - or the etheric world in general. From a cosmic point of view, it is the etheric world; in us, it is the etheric body, the internalisation of these rhythms. There are x rhythms in the body, very, very fast ones that vibrate very ‘’‘nervously’‘, so to speak - I say nervously on purpose, because it is very strongly “”’connected to the nervous system‘’‘ - and there are much longer rhythms that go more leisurely and renew us right down to 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 often speaks of the number seven and that is why he also speaks of the seven churches (Seven Letters to the Churches). That is the reason. That is the real reason, because these ‘’‘seven churches’‘’ are - one could say - ‘’‘representatives of certain stages of development’‘’. So they represent seven stages of development that together make up a whole. Yes, I'll read a bit of it out:

‘’«John to the seven churches in Asia:‘’
‘’Grace and peace be yours from him,‘’
‘’who is and who was and who is to come,‘’
‘’and from the seven spirits of creation before his throne and from Jesus Christ».‘’

From him who is and who was and who is to come - well, he basically spanned ‘’‘the whole time’‘’, the past, the present and the future, ‘’‘drawing the bow.’‘’

In the spiritual self, time and temporal development no longer play the same role as they do here in our earthly lives. In a sense, we enter the ‘’‘realm of eternity, of timelessness’‘’ - and yet there is movement in it. That seems paradoxical: how can there be movement if there is no time? Basically, you can move freely, as I should say, in what we call time, here as time. This actually begins in the ‘’‘etheric world’‘’. The experience in the etheric world is such that we can ‘’‘move freely in time’‘’. This means that we can go back, not just look back, but really go back - in an etheric way. But we can also go into the future, take a look, so to speak, into the future at least. How this future, which we experience in the etheric, is then realised in the physical, is another chapter. The etheric world is much, much richer than the physical world - and ‘’‘the physical’‘’ is actually something that has died, something that has ‘’‘died out of the etheric world’‘’. And that means that the physical manifests itself when something etheric dies, but much other etheric continues. And the etheric encompasses the future, everything that continues in the etheric world. And one thing dies out again and again, so to speak, and manifests itself here as something physical. What we can see today in the etheric is this whole abundance, which, from our point of view, flows or goes into the future. What we cannot foresee is every single physical event that dies out. So we cannot see exactly what will die in the etheric. But we can see at least 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 happened in the past’‘’.

Repeated earthly lives and human freedom 0:50:06

I now have to make a connection to another sub-topic, so to speak, namely the topic of ‘’‘reincarnation and karma’‘’. As you know, if you are already familiar with anthroposophy, we are talking about ‘’‘repeated earthly lives.’‘’ Human beings do not live on earth just once, but repeatedly. This means that when they die, they first pass through the ‘’‘soul world’‘, then through the “”’spiritual world‘’, and then descend again after a shorter or longer period of time to ‘’‘a new incarnation’‘’. Simply because this earthly existence offers us so many opportunities for development that we could not exhaust in a single incarnation. Or we are ‘’‘not spiritually advanced enough to be able to complete our earthly development in a single incarnation.’‘’ We need a little more time. We have to go through it a few times. We are pupils who may have to repeat a few years. Of course, we can distinguish ourselves during our earthly incarnation. In a certain sense, ‘’‘the spiritual beings above us’‘’ cannot ‘’‘make any mistakes.’‘’

You could say: ‘Well, I'd like to be like that too, that would be great.’ Yes, but then we would not have ‘’‘freedom’‘’. This is a big word, because it says that even the angelic beings that are above us - and also the higher angelic beings that are above them, right up to the highest angelic beings - do not have the freedom that human beings have. They ‘’‘fulfil’‘’ God's will as a matter of course, if you want to put it in our terms. That means that the higher spiritual beings that are above them flow into them, they absorb it and ‘’‘act on it. Without error.’‘’ That is wonderful. Basically, nothing can go wrong. But - they have no free decision-making ability as a result. They don't even get the idea. Actually, the highest spiritual source, that is, the divine self, had to create the possibility for freedom in the world, and this is connected with the ability not to follow the error that flows down from the spiritual world. ‘’‘What distinguishes us as human beings is,’‘’ that we ‘’‘can't follow’‘’ the spiritual world. You could say that this cannot be the ideal of a human being, that we should now rebel against the divine. Well, yes and no. It is the prerequisite for us to be able to turn to the spiritual again in freedom after we have rebelled against it. This gives it a completely different quality. We fulfil ourselves with the spiritual, not because we cannot do otherwise, but because we fulfil ourselves with it because we want to, ‘’‘out of our own free will’‘’. But that means that a spiritual element lives in us that is comparable to the highest spiritual world from which everything flows. That means that a source ‘’‘opens up in us, in our I,’‘’ that is truly, one has to say it like this, ‘’‘of the same essence’‘’ ‘’‘as the highest divine being.’‘’ Even if it is, so to speak, the small version of it, ‘’‘the miniature version,’‘’, and we only experience it in individual moments, perhaps once in an incarnation or perhaps not at all in five incarnations, but there is a moment when we are of the same essence as the highest divine. When we are the embodiment of the divine. When we are ‘’‘of the same essence as Christ’‘’.

The mystery of the self 0:54:52

There is a beautiful ‘’‘Pauline saying’‘’ that Rudolf Steiner often mentions and usually says in the form: ‘’‘Not I, but the Christ in me’‘’. This word could easily be misunderstood if we were to say: ‘I give up my free will and let Christ do things for me or through me.’ But that is not what is meant. The ‘not I’ refers to my little ‘’‘everyday ego’‘’ - which is not our true self - and we must eliminate it. So whether we love a roast pork or are grumpy because of our personal circumstances has nothing to do with the spiritual world. That gets in our way. So this ‘’‘ego, this “I want, I want, I have to, I need”’, that's what we actually have to get rid of. But ‘’‘our real self,’‘’ we will not really experience in its concrete form in everyday life. We know that we have an ego, but that's all we know about it in our everyday consciousness. It has nothing to do with how we were born, what education we have, how much money we have, it doesn't matter at all. It really has nothing to do with our ego. You have to get to ‘’‘the conscious experience of your own ego’‘’. But it's a great moment to experience that we have one. Children usually experience it around the age of three. Then it hits them: ‘I am an I’. Many people can no longer remember this later in life. Sometimes it reappears later in life, in old age, just like ‘’‘memories of early childhood’‘’ tend to resurface in old age. But some people never forget this experience.

I can remember the experience incredibly well and in great detail. It was sometime in November, maybe even on my third birthday. If it wasn't on my third birthday, then it was on St Nicholas‘ Day. My parents were there, my maternal grandmother, uncles, aunts, behind me was a fireplace that was lit, it was already quite dark. Suddenly, I looked around me with wide, astonished eyes and realised, “”’I'm something different.‘’' I'll never forget it. It was like a shock, I can't say whether it was devastating - no, it certainly wasn't devastating - I didn't know that - but it was just so emphatic that it kept coming back to me. And I have to say, the older I get, the clearer it is.

There are also such moments later in life. Rudolf Steiner describes how he experienced this in his twenty-first year, when the I becomes even more awake. I'll have to read that out one day. It's quite interesting. He read about it in the works of the philosopher ‘’‘Schelling’', who also describes this experience. And then Steiner describes how he had this experience himself. He was also sure that he had had this experience. So, you can have this experience of the self at different levels. It is not to be compared with the everyday ego that we have. Having this experience of the self has something to do with the apocalypse. The ‘Apocalypse of Jesus Christ’ is also the ‘Apocalypse of one's own self’, namely at the moment ‘when I and Christ are one in essence’. 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 it is not in our consciousness. In reality, it is somehow already there, but we cannot make ourselves aware of it again, perhaps not for years, not until the end of our lives. But in that one moment it is there. That is what Paul meant when he said: ‘It is not I, but Christ in me.’ You could also formulate it in the sense of: ‘It is not my little self, but my real I in me.’ It is actually exactly the same.

Repeated earthly lives - mistakes and correction 1:00:18

Let's go back to the seven churches in Asia. It was a bit of a detour. Yes, there was something I wanted to say, but I lost sight of it. It has to do with the ‘’‘repeated earthly lives,’‘’ that we have to go through. It is only through these many earthly lives that our ego develops further. We can only acquire an awareness of our own self through many lives on earth. But ‘’‘we also make mistakes on earth,’‘’ we are not like the angels above us, where the spiritual simply flows into us and we implement it, but we can err, we can make mistakes - and thus take on 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 suffer as a result. 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 - because mistakes also mean that we ultimately put our ego in danger or scratch it - in the next incarnation or the one after that, when our strength has grown a little, we have to correct this mistake, you could 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 do it, otherwise we would not get anywhere. That means that we ourselves are ultimately the ones who ‘’‘send our fate’‘’, our ‘’‘karma’‘’. 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 bear this karma’‘’, that he also gives us ‘’‘strength’‘’, gives our I strength. But always only to the extent that we ‘’‘really struggle for it,’‘’ it is never just something that is given, but always something ‘’‘that we have to do’‘’. That is very important. So, that is the karma that we carry with us, that is connected with our error, with our possibilities of error. But it is precisely ‘’‘on that that we mature.’‘’ That is why the path is given for many earthly lives, so that we can experience all this and thereby learn to become free beings.

The Seven Creator Spirits and the Development of Humanity 1:03:33

But let us now return to the seven churches.

‘’«John to the seven churches in Asia:‘’
‘’Grace and peace be with you,‘’
‘’from him who is and who was and who is to come,‘’
‘’and from the seven creator spirits before his throne and from Jesus Christ».‘’

The seven creator spirits: Well, who are the seven creator spirits? Essentially, they are those spiritual forces or those spiritual beings who created our ‘’‘bodily shells’‘’ and prepared them so that these spiritual shells, these bodily shells - yes, I have already used the word ‘spiritual shells’ - could one day be transformed into spiritual forces. So what are these bodies: the ‘’‘physical body’‘’, the ‘’‘etheric body’‘’, that is, the life forces, then the ‘’‘astral body’‘’, which makes us a sentient, conscious being. In the etheric body, we are actually still asleep, and in the astral body, we are at least dreaming. This is exactly what we have in common with animals. So, animals also have a certain consciousness, but it is still dream-like, this ‘’‘consciousness.’‘’ If we only had this consciousness, this astral consciousness, we would not be very awake. We would not recognise ourselves as an I. That means that the ‘’‘I’‘’ comes in a certain way as the fourth, or the ‘’‘I-bearer, as Rudolf Steiner often calls it,’‘’ which is, so to speak, the physical prerequisite for an I to be able to incarnate. Incarnation means that the I completely permeates the body shells and thus ‘’‘makes the body shells’‘’ into ‘’‘I-bearers,’‘’ but that is the fourth principle. The ‘’‘I’‘’ that is now incarnating, by unfolding its spiritual forces, ‘’‘shapes the astral body, the etheric body and finally the physical body’‘’ through its spiritual forces, through the individual spiritual forces that lie within each I. The astral body, which was initially given by the spiritual beings, is transformed into what Rudolf Steiner calls the ‘’‘spirit self’‘’ or our higher self. Our real I becomes richer to the extent that this higher self, this spirit self, is formed. This is a power that our I has at its disposal, so to speak. In the East, it is also called ‘’‘manas.’‘’ Manas has to do with meynen, thinking. The word ‘’‘man’‘’ is also related to it. It is an old Indo-Germanic word. The word ‘’‘man’‘’ also comes from it, by the way. There is another word that comes from it, which can be found in the Bible, namely ‘’‘manna.’‘’ When ‘’‘Moses and the Israelites journey through the desert’', they are given manna. This is nothing other than the powers of this spirit self, which in a certain sense descend upon the Israelites as a whole, not yet upon the individual at that time, but upon the community.

When we transform the etheric body through the power of the I, then the etheric body becomes the ‘’‘life spirit’‘’. This power of the life spirit then lives within our I. That is to say, just as the body sheaths - the physical body, etheric body, astral body - surround our I from the outside, so our I envelops the spirit self and life spirit within itself - figuratively speaking. They are part 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 when we wrap ourselves in an astral body during our normal incarnation on earth. For the most part, it is only lent to us by the spiritual world - and this will continue to happen as long as we are not able to create one for ourselves out of nothing. That is then actually our real astral body. But then we no longer call it an ‘’‘astral body, but a spirit self.’‘’ He is then completely ours.

The aim of all the 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, in addition to the fact that we are developing our I here on earth, the people who are really making spiritual progress are those who have already developed a good part of the spirit self. It will then be the task of the so-called ‘’‘New Jupiter’‘’ - or what John calls the ‘’‘New Jerusalem’‘’, which I have discussed today - to fully develop this spirit self. But we should already have a certain part of it at the end of the earth's development, then we will at least be among the spiritually more developed people. Yes, the life spirit is the transformed etheric body. We will not be able to transform the etheric body into the life spirit on our own during the development of the Earth. We can work on it, we can work on it above all, or we can bring it a little further in the direction of ‘’‘the help of the Christ.’‘’ In this case it is really the help of the Christ. That means something that cannot be accomplished by our ego. For this, for example, the word ‘’‘grace’‘’ is very important. This is a gift that Christ gives us. As far as the spirit self is concerned, that is already our own responsibility. This is the ‘’‘endowment with the Holy Spirit’‘’, as one might call it. But this Holy Spirit is then our Holy Spirit. This is not something that remains above us or directs us from outside, but something that ultimately belongs to our I. Only then has it become a true spirit self, which we are now developing during the development of the earth, and we owe this solely to our I. But what we are already producing in terms of life spirit, at least in a preliminary form, is something for which we need the help of the Christ.

The physical body and our consciousness of self 1:12:07

And then we will even need the ‘’‘Father forces’‘’ to do this, which are conveyed 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. We have to think about what the physical body, in which we are now normally embodied on earth, the physical and material body, is for. Physically and materially are not exactly the same thing. ‘’‘The material’‘’ is actually what fulfils the physical form. If, for example, the Luciferic temptation had not come, that is, if we had not come under the influence of the ‘’‘opposing forces’‘’, then we would not have had the kind of physical body that we have today. It would have been invisible to the senses.

There are a great many physical beings that are not visible to our eyes. For example, there are ‘’‘elemental beings’‘’ that definitely have a physical body and yet are ‘’‘not visible to us with our physical 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 problems that are associated with it? It is precisely through the material that the whole physical body tends to decay. The material has this principle of decaying from within. When the etheric body is no longer present to constantly renew these substances, in these seven-year cycles that we have spoken of, then it simply decays, just as the corpse decays with death. So, our physical body cannot maintain its form by itself. This is because we have this ‘’‘Luciferic impact’‘’. By being filled with matter, our actually imperfect invisible physical body was actually damaged. ‘’‘This is how it became visible. This is how it became mortal.’‘’ But this is also how we have gained our consciousness of self - and we gain it precisely because we are mortal.

Our consciousness of self awakens in 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 re-energised, but actually something dies until death, until a ‘’‘salt-like state’‘’ in the nerves. This is precisely why the ‘’‘brain’‘’ is an instrument with which we can acquire ‘’‘consciousness’‘’. To do this, 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 at the stage where we can consciously experience the etheric, which is not visible to the senses but only leaves its trace in the senses - then in the growth forces - in order to experience these formative forces, these etheric forces, it has to be reflected in the physical brain and it is reflected when these ‘’‘decay processes’‘’ take place in the brain. Then, when it is regenerated again, or at least regenerated to a large extent, then the consciousness is already gone again. The dying process must take place there, that is when we become aware. We have ‘’‘death’‘’, the constant death that has in truth accompanied us since birth, ‘’‘to which we owe our consciousness’‘’ - that is a prerequisite for it - and in particular ‘’‘our I-consciousness’‘’ is especially to be owed.

Imagination - Experiencing in the Spiritual 1:16:35

Of course, an astral body and an etheric body are also part of it, 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 able to do without the help of these dying processes. That means that when this consciousness can now seek out another counterpart, another mirror, when it no longer needs this physical ‘’‘mirror’‘’, when it can, for example, reflect itself in the etheric, that is, in the life forces. This mirroring in the life forces, when we enter this world of life, then we actually acquire a different consciousness, a consciousness with which we can already look a little into the spiritual world. This is the consciousness in which we ‘’‘experience imaginations’', pictures. And now we put huge quotation marks around the word “pictures” - I will come back to this - pictures from the spiritual world. They are living pictures. ‘’‘These images cannot be described’‘’ like an oil painting, an old painting on the wall, because it is a moving image that changes continuously. You can't really capture it at all. There is 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 image from different perspectives, go through it and, if I translate that into the sensual, then a temporal series of developments, a temporal event, emerges from it. But in the etheric I can go forward, backward, take detours, so I can move freely. In meditation, when you really get to a true imagination, where time no longer plays a role, a true imagination, that is experienced ‘’‘in complete timelessness.’‘’ I think, if I remember correctly, I briefly mentioned in the first lecture we had, we had two lectures, that you can experience that. Because when you do ‘’‘meditation’‘’ with today's consciousness, it's not that you're completely out of it and just floating in another world, but ‘’‘we still retain’‘’ ‘’‘consciousness here for the sensory world’‘’ even when you're not focusing on it, but it remains there. I remain aware that I am in the physical world with my body. I don't enter a dream-like state of consciousness where I am lifted out and simply float above everything, somewhere. You can really notice, under certain circumstances, if there is a clock on the table somewhere, that I have an incredibly ‘’‘intense imagination’‘’, that is, a moving picture, as we have discussed, ‘’‘an incredibly rich picture’‘’. You have the feeling that what I am experiencing is something that lasts for hours, 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 be standing still. So what I experience internally as hours or days, externally no time passes. So it is ‘’‘experienced in an instant,’‘’ measured in terms of our external time. It can happen in dreams, too, in reality. It often happens when a dream is triggered by something, especially when you wake up and enter the sensory world. For example, the morning sun comes in through the window, even with your eyes closed, your senses somehow perceive it without us being aware of the sunlight. We are still in the dream and suddenly a huge fire breaks out in the dream, a huge fire, and there you experience a long story: the fire brigade arrives, there are dramatic scenes unfolding so that the residents in the house can be rescued and you think that it has been going on for two hours. You wake up and look at the sun, which has just come around the corner, which 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 to 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 different, there is a very special paradox, time seems to come towards us. Future, it seems that ‘’‘time moves in reverse.’‘’ This is very important, because this is the way in which creative impulses enter the world. In order for something to manifest itself creatively in the physical world, there must be a physical time stream that goes from the past to the future, which is what we know in normal life. The etheric must be there, where timelessness, above all mobility, reigns in time - and something must come from the future, actually from the end of the development process - and ‘’‘where the stream from the past and the stream from the future collide,’‘’ it becomes our momentary ‘’‘present’‘’. Something happens there.

With every event that takes place in the world, it is never just a consequence of the past, as is often believed in the natural sciences, because they only have physical and sensory means at their disposal, which is why they only know this stream of time that comes from the past and goes into the future, and they can only deduce from what has happened in the past what might happen in the future. With simple things, you can even calculate it in advance: A physicist can easily predict how a stone will fall if nothing else interferes, such as a bird flying past or something like that. But otherwise, ‘’'most real events ,‘’‘ that happen in the world, “”’you can't predict,‘’' because they are not only determined by the past, but are also determined, half of them, at least half of them, by what is heading towards us from the future. These two things have to come together. This means that when we move on from imagination or ‘’‘imagination,’‘’ something comes in that goes beyond this pictorial consciousness and shows us something of the future. Something ‘’‘shows us where this development is going,’‘’ because this goal actually comes towards us, in a sense. We have to look at the beginning and the end in order to be able to understand the current moment of development at all. These two currents have to come together.

I'll now read you a few sentences from the Apocalypse, where this is also hinted at to a certain extent, very clearly. Again, where basically Christ speaks, or at least the angel speaks through Christ. It says:

‘’‘I am the Alpha and the Omega.’‘’

In Greek, this means 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 ruler of the universe’.‘’

It's all there. ‘’‘He is, who was and who is to come.’‘’ The present, that's where it starts, ‘he who is’. So it's important to keep that in mind, the order is not random, because the experience always starts in the present moment. The moment is also, in which the whole eternity is also inside. From here, I look to both sides, to what was there, that is, back, and thus also to what determines my fate, because - as far as we humans are concerned - it also contains all the mistakes we have made and which we must correct in the future, that is, what we must work on. We also see something towards which we are heading, namely our self, our individual self. Every individual self has a special nuance. It is not the case that we all have exactly the same goal. We ‘’‘all contribute together’‘’ to perhaps ‘’‘a higher goal’', that's how you could perhaps outline it. You can also find that in the words in there.

The spiritualisation of the physical body - the goal of human development 1:28:22

Now I'll come back to the seven creator spirits in connection with the human body. I have not yet told you ‘’‘what happens to the physical body when it is spiritualised’‘’. Now I hope that you have gained a little impression that the physical can also be spiritualised - and this is not to be equated simply with the material-physical, which we know as our body. That there is also ‘’‘an invisible physical’‘’, that it is ‘’‘in truth the actual physical.’‘’ If we succeed, with the help of the Christ and the help of the father forces, in restoring this originally spiritual, but in such a way that it now fits our ego completely, then we create our highest spiritual, which we can now achieve, which Rudolf Steiner so aptly calls the ‘’‘spiritual human being’‘’. This is the highest spiritual that we can develop, as far as we can see, and it is precisely in the spiritualisation of the physical. We must not underestimate the physical, but we must see that the greatest task of humanity lies in at least working towards the spiritualisation of this physical. This is also connected with the ‘’‘resurrection of Christ’‘’. The resurrection forces of Christ, which could not have come into effect without the Father's activity, are connected with the transformation of the physical body into a spiritual being. For it to be truly successful 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 any other sphere, however it may be formed, in a material body, but rather the highest spiritual will enter. To understand this, you have to ask yourself why it is actually the highest spiritual and how it is otherwise connected to the material.

I think that the physical is the most difficult to work with. In the soul, we can already work a little today, at least to some extent, to bring forth the spirit self, consciously or unconsciously. ‘’‘An artist,’‘’ when he is really creative, ‘’‘creates a new work in his soul’‘’ and then realises it, outwardly too, but to do that he has to ‘’‘experience it in his soul first’‘’, then he is creatively active in a spiritual way. Then he is active out of his spiritual self. That means, ‘’‘he transforms astral, soul into real spiritual self.’‘’ This spirit self or this spark of spirit self that he has within him, he has created from his own I. Out of nothing, basically. He has not taken it from anywhere else, from anywhere outside, ‘’‘but from within himself.’‘’

It is much more difficult to create etheric forces out of nothing, that is, to ‘’‘unfold the spirit of life.’‘’ That is much more difficult. On the whole, we are not yet able to do that, but we need the help of the Christ to be able to do it. We don't even need to talk about the physical, because we ourselves create almost nothing there, especially consciously. In order for it to become our own, we have to be able to do it consciously, that is, consciously transform the physical body into this high spiritual being. This is only beginning to happen.

Only the highest spiritual hierarchies can really work on the physical, namely ‘’‘the Christ and the Father-Godhead’‘’, which is behind it. But very high angelic beings work with them as executive organs. These include, for example, the ‘’‘thrones’‘’ in a leading position. They are in the upper group of three hierarchies. Above them are only the beings of the zodiac, the ‘’‘cherubim’‘’ and then the ‘’‘seraphim’‘’, who are basically connected to the whole cosmos, through the visible universe - and even beyond the visible, at least for our eyes beyond the visible. These are therefore very, very high spiritual beings who are behind the physical. ‘’‘In the soul, anyone can work today, so to speak’‘’. The angelic beings that are closely connected to us, the actual angels, they all cannot do that. But we are approaching a time when we will be able to ‘’‘create a complete physical body for ourselves’‘’. It will no longer be called a physical body, but a spiritual human being. It is this that will enable us to achieve our ‘’‘highest consciousness’‘’.

Today we have ‘’‘only a mirror image,’‘’ because we are most conscious of the physical, which is basically polluted by the material. We cannot yet become self-aware of the etheric body. We are not yet able to do that. If we only had the I and the astral body, then we would know nothing about ourselves, absolutely nothing. ‘’‘It is precisely in the physical that one can develop the highest consciousness.’‘’ This applies equally to the spiritual being. That is to say, the spiritual being is the highest spiritual element that we can acquire. What happens next is a different chapter, and is not our subject.

I have now made a huge ‘’‘interjection’‘’ just to explain a little bit about the significance of the number seven, and these stages of development. We have come across these seven stages of human development or these seven constituent parts of the human being, via the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, the I, which stands in the centre, and up to the spiritual constituent parts, which we can acquire through our own efforts: ‘’‘the spirit self, the life spirit, the spiritual human being’‘’. This has to do with the ‘’‘number seven’‘’. And we have come to these, simply because it was of seven churches that John speaks, to which he turns and to which he now writes in a certain way, to the seven churches. In doing so, he mentions the seven creator spirits. I'll read the short passage again.

‘’‘John to the seven churches in Asia:’‘
’‘Grace and peace be yours,’‘
’‘from him who is and who was and who is to come,’‘
’‘and from the seven spirits before his throne and from Jesus Christ.’‘’

‘’‘The seven spirits before his throne’‘’, these are the spiritual beings that ‘’‘help to create our seven members of the human being’‘’. Because, in general, the higher spiritual elements of our being, which we actually have to create ourselves - because only then are they ours - still have to be prepared. That is, so to speak, if you put it in earthly terms, ‘’‘a model for it’‘’. It has to be prepared once. These seven creator spirits work on it. It would be too much to go into which angelic beings they are. They are also high angelic beings, very high. You should not be surprised that, for example, ‘’‘the thrones have something to do with it,’‘’ yes, with the physical body and ‘’‘also with the preparation of the spiritual being,’‘’ that they have a hand in it, because they are able to work into the physical, for example. Just as a small hint.

The Revelation of John on Patmos 1:37:53

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

‘’«I, John, your brother and companion in all trials, as well as in the inner kingdom and in the persevering strength that we possess as those who are united with Jesus, was on the island of Patmos. There I was to be made partaker of the divine word of the world and worthy of bearing witness to the suffering of Christ.‘

’The suffering of Jesus’ is what it says in the translation. The translation is by ‘’‘Emil Bock’‘, one of the “”’founding priests of the Christian Community‘’‘. So, “”’on the island of Patmos he had this spiritual vision.‘’‘ He describes very clearly an “”’imagination‘’‘ and how this imagination was “”’translated into sensual images‘’'. He cannot communicate the image in any other way than by translating it into sensual words. He describes it in a very typical way:

‘’«On the day of the Lord, I was transported into the spiritual realm and heard a mighty voice behind me like the sound of a ‘’‘trombone’‘’».‘’

It is often the case ‘’‘in spiritual experiences,’‘’ that you have the feeling «there is something behind me» and my first test is whether 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 am in a sense crossing the ‘’‘threshold’‘’. And that is ‘’‘a kind of death experience’‘’. You have to be aware of that, it is a death experience. And it is also connected with, how shall I put it, with the unpleasant side of death, that is, to feel this loss in the physical world - without completely leaving the body. You really have the experience of ‘’‘going through death’‘’. Without that ‘’‘you cannot cross the threshold’‘’. That means that the first test is: do I dare to turn around or not. Of course, this has nothing to do with physically turning around, but rather in the spiritual world. That means that the ‘’‘turning around’‘’ is to ‘’‘let go of everything that is sensual in order to turn to the spiritual’‘’. This mighty voice like the sound of a trumpet. Incidentally, the word ‘trombone’ means - and since we are talking about sound - that ‘’‘inspiration’‘’ is already playing a part in the development of the imagination. In fact, every spiritual experience begins at an even 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. However, it does not become immediately conscious. It is, so to speak, the prerequisite and forms the unconscious background.

The next stage is ‘’‘inspiration.’‘’ When 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 just loud and powerful and shattering, but you don't really understand it at that moment.

The third and last thing is actually ‘’‘the imaginative image,’‘’ that builds up - and this image is not a sensual one at first, but rather, you could say, ‘’‘a kind of highly differentiated mood of the soul’‘’ that one experiences. I will perhaps come back to this in more detail another time. There is no more time now. It is actually a ‘’‘highly differentiated spiritual experience’‘’ that one has, which one can now ‘’‘overlook like a panorama’‘’, which is in motion, which is changing, and in this experience one can, so to speak, wander around spiritually. That is the real imagination. But John has to describe it as a spiritual image. So he hears this voice and he continues to say or write:

‘’« She said: Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches. To Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamon, to Thyatira, to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea ».‘’

So these are the seven churches. ‘’‘Ephesus’‘’ (Ephesos), the first, with which John was, incidentally, ‘’‘very closely connected,’‘’ that is, in the period long after the events in Palestine, after the death of Christ on the cross. The island of Patmos, incidentally, is very close, on the coast of Asia Minor, and Ephesus and the mystery centre of Ephesus are relatively close on the mainland. That is also an advantage, that there was a mystery centre there, an important one. ‘’‘The important Christian centres’‘’ were all initially located where ancient mystery centres were also located - so this ‘’‘mystery centre’‘’ of Ephesus was closely connected to Patmos, or rather the other way round, Patmos was in a sense ‘’‘an offshoot of the mysteries of Ephesus.’‘’ So, there are seven churches and the voice speaks now and John continues to write:

‘’"And I turned to see the one whose voice was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw ‘’‘seven golden lampstands’‘’ and in the midst of the lampstands a figure like that of the Son of Man.‘’‘

So the Christ appears in human form.

’‘’Clothed with a long flowing robe,‘’
‘’girded at the breast with a golden girdle,‘’
‘’with a white head, the hair of which shone like white wool and like snow,‘’
‘’with eyes as if they were flames of fire,‘’
‘’with feet as if they were of gold ore that has been heated in the fire,‘’
‘’with a voice like the the sound of great waters,‘’
‘’in his right hand he held ‘’‘seven stars’‘’,‘’
‘’out of his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword,‘’
‘’and his countenance was like the sun in its strength."

It is a very powerful experience. The sensual image is a pale shadow of what really lies behind it in the imagination. But it points the way. And how strong that was, comes out further:

‘’‘and when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. But he laid his right hand on me and said -’' we have already read this today “”- Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last and the Living. I was dead, yet I carry the life of the world through all the ages. Mine is the key to the realms of death and the shadows. Write down what you see, the present and the future. The mystery of the seven stars that you see in my right hand, and of the seven golden lampstands,‘’ ‘’is this. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches themselves.‘

With that, “”’the first chapter of the Apocalypse‘’' ends, and I would like to close for today.

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The Apocalypse of John - 1. lecture by Wolfgang Peter

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