The Apocalypse of John - 122. lecture by Wolfgang Peter

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- 122. lecture -

Find more lectures from the apocalypse of John by Wolfgang Peter here: The apocalypse of John - all lectures by Wolfgang Peter

Main Topic

Through the 20th weekly verse of the Anthroposophical Soul Calendar we are reminded to connect with our destiny in ever increasing awareness and to recognise in what confronts us from outside - seemingly independent of ourselves - the work of our great I supported by our angel and to follow his beckoning.

In doing so, the path will always zigzag and, in addition to highs, will also present us with lows that are felt to be sorrowful, which will stimulate our everyday I to build our spirit self through conscious and deliberate work on the astral, which will come together on the New Jerusalem to form a rich spirit self world for all of humanity, if we do not allow ourselves to be lured by black magic powers in the direction of the soratic realm.

It is also already time to begin to devote ourselves to working on the etheric forces: A small step in this direction can succeed, for example, with the playful changing of our handwriting, which we can consciously individualise and transform into the expression of our real I.

Transcription of the 122. lecture (by Ghislaine and Susanne on 23 August 2022)

Welcome and introductions to the 20th verse of the week 0:00:36

And here we go. Dear ones, I welcome you warmly to the 122nd lecture on the Apocalypse. Now I have to be very careful not to lose count, a little bit up or down. In addition, there is the 20th verse of the week; it continues the theme that we have always had now, but a very great admonition is now inside, at least that is how I feel it:

This is how I first feel my being,

"Being far from the world.

In itself, extinguishing itself

And building only on its own ground

In itself, would have to kill itself.

So that means, our little I, our ego, if you will, would have to kill itself, if it did not constantly get the influx from the great spiritual world, thus the impulses, the world-keynote, of which we have spoken. So, the real spiritual, our own spiritual - also from our real I - comes to us from outside. And the question is, to what extent we can internalise that and to what extent we can lift it into consciousness. If not, we are actually spiritually deadened, basically. So we would then come in a direction which, yes, is ultimately related to the soratic entities. Then, in the extreme case, we would be completely cut off from our real I' and would only have this little bit that we have today in our normal day consciousness', which for most of us really fills the whole consciousness at first; but our real being' is not to be found in there, or only to a limited extent, as an image, as a reflection. - in any case not in its reality. In its reality we always experience it where we actively encounter the world, go towards it, basically, and deal with the world in an active way, that is, with the world outside.

Whereby this acting is in the broadest sense. It is also in the way I look at things, the way I listen to things, to people, to animals, to the sounds of the wind, because, all this requires an active will process, in truth, if we really want to grasp it consciously, what is coming towards us. Because in truth: we dream yes quite strongly also in sensory perception. We are not really fully awake inside. You notice that immediately when you try to remember: What was it all about? Then you realise what you didn't see consciously. It's gone. It flits through consciousness for a second and is gone. We don't really grasp that at all. But in this whole stream of the sensual world, which we experience with all our senses... Rudolf Steiner speaks of twelve senses that we have. What flows towards us also flows towards us with the spiritual. We only have to learn to recognise it as such. But that is precisely not this weak reflection that we have in the momentary sensual experience, but the deeper that is behind it. And with that, our own being also comes to meet us. And in every encounter a moment of destiny can open up for us in that we take hold of what we encounter and make something of it. And that can be every look at a flower, a stone, wherever, the encounter with an animal, with a plant, with a human being - of course especially there. But all that brings us closer to our real being. That is very important.

And leading us there, slowly leading us there, begins in school actually at the latest from puberty, where one takes care that - one can no longer say children - the young people, do not always occupy themselves too much broodingly with themselves, but that they ignite their ideas, their enthusiasm, their capacity for enthusiasm that they have, in what surrounds them, in the world out there. If they are completely within themselves and only concentrate on their moods, their lusts and desires, then they are basically cut off from their real spiritual. Then they see at most that, which, well, is mainly fed by the double or other things. And you can't recognise him in his true form if you don't also have the other perspective.

The double reveals itself for what it is - in its true, real shape' - only there, where I can illuminate it with the light of the real I. And for this I must actually go out into the world, basically, really occupy myself with the world and with the very encounters that are daily to me and absorb them awake. That is now the great task of our consciousness soul age.

Finding my true gift and recognising my actual calling, to which I can only call myself - example instrument maker 0:06:09

And that is, I think, for many, many people today still very, very difficult to imagine, because, I think, most people will think: "Well, what I experience inside of me, what I times think about myself or what, that is already my real I, that is I. I would like this, I have such and such preferences, I have learned such and such skills." Now I say "learnt" deliberately, although it is not yet the question whether these are the real abilities are' that lie within one. Perhaps they are behind it. Someone, I don't know, may have learned to be a carpenter, outwardly, but that is not at all his real impulse behind it. He learned it because nothing else offered itself or something else. But perhaps it helps him to deal with the wood; then it can be interesting to find his true talents. Maybe he will say at some point: "Well, actually I don't know that I want to be a carpenter, but I want to be an instrument maker. That's it, because music moves me so much inside, but I don't want to be on stage somewhere with it or stand among people with it, but my passion is building instruments." Then perhaps I already have quite a good preparation for it through the carpentry trade that I learned and only later realise what my actual calling is, to which I call myself, in truth. No one else is calling me there.

And we are often in life, often a large part of our life perhaps... it is certainly like that for many people, in, I say, in "jobs', which are not their real calling and which of course serve to maintain life and earn the money that is necessary for that. And that's what we need. And you often have to make compromises, but it is necessary, to find yourself, that at some point you grasp this core, that you recognise it. - and that happens from the opportunities that come to you. So, for example, someone who has started the carpenter's trade or perhaps has practised the trade for a few years: perhaps he meets some instrument maker or what. And that's suddenly the great epiphany: "This is what I really want." And at that moment you know it: "This is what I really want." Then if I keep at it... I mean, there's such fleeting enthusiasm sometimes, "Ah, that was great to do." And then after a week I'm already "fuck it" again, then of course it wasn't. But it can be. And if I then just take it and actually put all my energy into it and do it, because I want to build instruments, good instruments. And the money just comes by the way. But that's not the motivation, not the real motivation. I do it because I want to do it as well as I can somehow, to give an artist the possibility to put his musical expression into it - and that is possible with a good instrument in a different way than with a, well, average instrument, let's say. So, that's how life goes. But then we find that which is the source of our everyday ego in the end, but if we stop at the everyday ego alone, then it is basically on a dying, descending branch. Then life just lives along somehow, but not much develops inside.

And our spiritual I, the spiritual reality... I think I've said this many times: The real is that which is not yet. I can't measure that physically - not at all. That is my next impulse to do something. Then I realise something. And in the moment it is there, it actually already dies out, actually already dies. It's already waiting for the next impulse that's inside. So, now with the instrument maker, with the next move' perhaps, that he makes. And with each something dies out, at last a great instrument dies out, but that is then finished. At that moment, he can hand it over to the musician and he can enliven it with his playing. But as an instrument itself, alone, it doesn't live on, it lives on as long as he works on it. As long as it is in the process of becoming. And then perhaps it will be taken hold of on a higher level by the musician who plays it, who handles it properly - and which then will certainly have a beneficial influence on the instrument.

Less fortunate encounters with musical instruments can also give fortune winks...0:11:06

If someone just kind of noodles over the whole thing, then he probably ruins it and damages it somehow. He doesn't have to tear off the strings and so on, which could still be replaced, but... I have to confess right away, I'm not speaking from my personal practice. My encounters with musical instruments have been rather unfortunate, although I love music deeply and am unfortunately not musical at all. I think I am preparing something for later, in this incarnation it will only be possible in a very, very reduced way. I take great pleasure in it, but the ability doesn't go along with it. But in any case, the encounter with the two musical instruments I had: the recorder at school; I didn't manage to bring out more than one tone, no matter which holes I closed or didn't close, it was always the same wrong tone. The end. So I was mercifully released from that because it was just annoying anyway. And the next thing was, I got a guitar. I had it for one day. It was hanging behind the door - and then I opened the door that same evening with a bit of a bang, it made a noise, and the neck of the guitar was off. And then I thought to myself, "Well, so with the musical instruments, that's not yours." I let it go, because it was a pity about the instrument. So that's how it can work. There are also hints that some things, where you get the idea, "I have to do that", don't work out. And then you should also pay attention to the hints of fate, that maybe that's not the right thing to do.

In the background of the 20th week saying: desires and real will - what we really want comes to us unexpectedly, but we have to seize it in doing 0:12:56

But these are the differences between the desires that one has, and the real will that is behind them' - the real creative, where you really go your way. And we are often like that because of what we see... we see something: "Yes, that's great, I'd like to do that too." But that's completely external, that has nothing to do with it. The point is, what we really want, that really comes quite unexpectedly. At a certain moment in life, something comes across you or I see something in a shop, for example, the musical instrument, and then I say, "I want to learn that." It works for him. It didn't work for me, but it works for him and he starts to play it and that's his total passion, that's what he actually lives for. And he does the rest on the side, somewhere. So, it can be quite interesting.

And that's why it's so important to listen to these impulses. Then we avoid that we actually have to kill ourselves within ourselves, because if this influx doesn't come, then... Our Viennese poet Nestroy would say: he vegetates. "He's a vegetable. He lives, but he does not really live his life. He is physically alive, he has his sympathies and antipathies, but he doesn't have this strong impulse or he doesn't feel it so strongly: "I want to develop every day!"' You don't have to say it so directly. I mean, the musician, when he grasps this and with every time he plays, when he just rehearses with it, he takes such a step. And there is the reality of one's own I inside, exactly in this doing, every day the grasping. And perhaps because he still has to have another job at the beginning, he gets up at five o'clock and plays for an hour, simply to become more and more familiar with the instrument. It's often a long way.

Because, there are artists' who are great, who bring it as an investment already from a previous life, thereare also others who bring it from a deficiency situation, precisely because they lack the ability to grasp it and know: "Now in this incarnation I want to work on it."' That is, they may not know it consciously yet, but they do. And that is the reality of their I that is inside. So that's - at least that's how I see it - a little bit as the background of this 20th week saying. I'll read it again:

This is how I first feel my being,

"Being far from the world.

"In itself, extinguishing itself

"And building only on my own ground

In itself, would have to extinguish itself.

So, this "in itself" just now goes to the little I' first of all: And that therefore belongs to be revived day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, with every breath'. And we can.

In the way we breathe, speak, walk, gesticulate, attack things, lies our real I: we can consciously change what is unconsciously going on, right down to the physical 0:16:13

We can. It's not such spectacular things'. Nobody has to become a virtuoso on the violin or anything like that. It is in the way we breathe, in the way we speak, in the way we walk, in the way we gesticulate, in the way we attack things: with what delicacy or with what force or whatever. Therein lies our real I. So basically in all the things that we are normally not so fully aware of. Because, who knows exactly how they are walking. Who has a clear awareness of how he walks, what the characteristic of his walk is? We learned it as a child, in the phase where we don't yet have this I-consciousness, that is, in the first three years of life, where everything is basically already laid out. The rest then follows, except - unless I begin it quite consciously, to relearn walking, to put it on a higher level. It can be in different ways, I don't know, for example, that I try it as a dancer or something like that - or try it in eurythmy. Then the movements become different. And there I am with the consciousness. I am consciously acquiring it. I am actually doing something that I do unconsciously as a child: With at least a certain consciousness, I learn it anew. And then the whole characteristic of the gait changes and all that. And this is now no longer something where something works unconsciously, but now I can raise it to consciousness. I mean, the child in the first three years of life, when it begins to stand up and so on, its real I is also working inside. Only the child knows nothing about it. And later, in our everyday consciousness, we don't know anything about it either. But the real I has a massive effect insideand thus builds into the physical body that we get a very specific way of walking and so on.

The language, which comes next, gets a very specific characteristic. But I can modify it later, work on it; I can then bring out - often consciously - what is inside the language. When I listen to so many people today, I think to myself: The voice you show me, the voice you let me hear, is not yet your real voice. It is only a shadow of it. It's still very, very hidden." So, few people today, I have made the experience, dare - but this happens unconsciously - dare to really put their whole being into the language. The result is a kind of sober, relatively unshaped speech; yes, for external communication, to communicate something, that's enough. But for a contact from person to person, where it really goes from the innermost core to the innermost core, that is not enough. Language, for example, is an important means that can help: a carrier of this impulse. In language, the whole being can express itself, the very individual being.

On stage: with the role personality we take on something of its essence and make it our own 0:19:37

And when I speak it myself like this, now this is not artificial language or anything. You know, now in the lectures or what, I also don't use any special artificial language. I use the Viennese dialect, I am sometimes clearer, sometimes less clear, but I still try to be completely inside. It's different on stage, you have to make it bigger. But even there one must actually be completely inside - and at the same time but also serve the role. That is a very interesting moment. And that only works if you, so to speak, integrate this characteristic of the role personality into your own being, but make something of it. And therefore every actor, if he plays the role well, will play it differently than anyone else. And yet it will be true to the role. So, that's quite interesting. It's both. And you take something with you just for your I' through that too and appropriate it, in the truest sense of the word, in the sense of making it your own. And you carry something of that with you, you carry something of that with you throughout your life. And it's the same with the walk, for example on stage. The first thing I notice when I rehearse a role is: "You're walking differently now. Aha, now it's starting to get interesting." So, the text has taught me to walk differently, and from that I slowly realise what the role actually is, what it's really like. The sentences that are in there don't interest me at all in the beginning. I simply speak them, but I try not to brood over them, but I let them work in me. It's just something, a text, it came to me, it's my fateful event, so to speak - even if I myself said I wanted to play it. It doesn't matter, it's still my fateful event, it comes towards me and it does something to me. And at the same time it happens in such a way that I internalise it and take something of it with me and at the same time serve the role. So it's quite interesting.

In everyday life: from encounters from person to person we take something of the essence of the other and can make it our own through the impulse - without copying it 0:21:53

And but it is also like that in the encounter between people. The very important thing: you take something with you from the other person, you actually take the whole other person with you, you become richer in your own being by simply taking this impulse now as an impulse, seizing it and making something of your own out of it. That doesn't mean that you become a copy of the other person, not at all. I mean, then it is a sign that one has not internalised it, but has actually externalised it, basically. You more or less outwardly imitate something: "Oh, that's so chic, the way he walks. That's how I try to walk too." It's not that. It's actually about observing the other person... but with such a broad awareness (Wolfgang makes a wide movement with his hands), not: How does he put his fingers or something, I would never think of that, but I try to experience him as a whole in his form of movement. And that begins to speak to me and work in me. And I take hold of that and suddenly realise: "Aha, by really following that inwardly, I take something of it with me - and yet it becomes my own." But I found something new. And so we are constantly giving each other suggestions in truth. And these are things where I fear so little conscious attention is paid today. We can learn so much from each other, take so much away and we become richer, because it is always an impulse from which our own I makes something. And it grows from that. "It grows from that". Not copying, not simply taking over one to one, but taking the impulse, seizing it and making something out of it yourself. In this way, the dimension, so to speak, grows more and more. The power of the I becomes greater and greater, the power over oneself. One simply has more resources at one's disposal - in one's soul, in one's life forces, yes, even quietly into the physical.

Working of the life forces into the physical: married couples can become more similar to each other over the years 0:24:06

One can sometimes see this; whereby it' then goes more into the outer, but it can nevertheless also be very inner. Couples who become more like each other as the years go by: When they have been married for thirty, forty, fifty years like that, there is a certain resemblance. But it's not - if it's going well - not as simple as "one picture is like the other", but you notice that there's a community right down to the physical, right down to the face. There is something that one has accepted, but made one's own, really made one's own. And that is especially exciting when the two partners were actually very different when they were young - and nevertheless a certain rapprochement comes about. Perhaps you often have to look more closely to notice that. But it is quite interesting.

Letting the mind rest and simply observing: looking over the face and gestures in their movement previous incarnations 0:25:13

So, in these traces you can really see in the sensual reflection, so to speak, how the I intervenes and does. You just have to open your eyes to it. You have to become awake. A little, how shall I say, let the mind rest, not immediately judge anything, but simply observe, with a little wide focus - and let it work. It is not the finished picture that I see in front of me, but the face in its movement, the gestures in their movement. That's what makes it. I think I've already told you this several times: Rudolf Steiner often received suggestions to look in a previous incarnation of a person, from the gestures, from the movement of the hands. There is so much there. Because we really do think with our hands, with our gestures above all, or also how we grip... in a somewhat weaker form, of course, also through the step - but especiallythrough the hands we think our destiny. It's inside. So basically, if you could read the gestures over the whole life, the whole fate of the human being lies within. And you can also... in a single moment it can come to light. It may only be a hand movement, but it contains the whole fate. So, you don't have to follow it from childhood to the highest age, it can be in a single movement... that can be the trigger, that it clearly shines, what it is. Or the way one pronounces a certain word, it can be inside that. It's the little gestures we make. It's all connected.

It is very strongly connected: the gesture with the arms, the larynx, that's where it really goes, the collarbones there towards the larynx, that's a level that belongs together, belongs together very, very strongly. (Wolfgang shows with his hands the connection between larynx, collarbones and arms.) So, to meet each other on such a level, there is an infinitely exciting field, something to discover. And you don't have to go there with the intention: "Well, I'm going to take a close look at him now, then tomorrow I'll know where he comes from, which incarnation he comes from, where he was". I actually have to forget that completely. I'm usually enlightened when I don't even think about it, but am simply fascinated by the way he uses his fingers, his hands - and all of a sudden, shhh, it's like a ping, an impulse. So, you have to be able to wait. You have to go there without any particular purpose, without I want to know now. If I go there, "I want to know now, who was he", then nothing comes out. That's even better. Or it comes out a fantasy of your own - and you can play out your fantasy to the hilt. The greatest robber stories come out of it, which are everything but true. That is "pure deception". So the best thing is really to be able to wait. And the characteristic of these real insights - is that suddenly, when you don't think about it at all, you suddenly get the impulse "from a single movement or a single word" that someone says. Out of such little things, actually. And just then, "when you don't suspect it at all". Maybe you thought to yourself ten years ago: I'd like to know where he comes from - but you didn't. Then one has completely forgotten about it; again, sometime and sometime, shhh, the impulse comes - and it's there.

Recognising the I in its beauty: the outward expression of the individual being with all its experiences 0:29:15

And this will become more and more important for the future if we really want to become a community of humanity - and in a way we should. Because then we will simply... at the latest, yes, in the next cultural epoch, earlier it will probably only be in individual cases, but then we will come so far that we can really speak of a humanity - and where we feel so connected, basically, really with all people, in a certain way. And we can learn that now. We can now learn the first impulses in the small encounters, so to speak, that we may have in our close circle. But it can also be with someone you only meet in the tram, and we are fascinated by their attitude or the way they walk or something else. It can be something like that. So, it's a great virtue to simply look at it without prejudice and to, how shall I say, enjoy seeing it. Even if it is perhaps, in inverted commas, an ugly person - just so under the classical categories. In reality, there is nothing ugly. The only ugly thing is where the real I does not express itself in the countenance, in the movements and so on. That is ugly. But according to external standards, this can be a person who is considered beautiful, even and well-formed; that is, well-formed in terms of shape. Can look like that - and still lack the strong impact of his very special individuality inside. He is the type of the beautiful, so to speak. And a person can actually have many wrinkles on the outside at first glance, be ugly, have a crooked face and anything else - and if you look closer, you can see the beauty of this face, because his I, his being, is really expressed inside. So, that puts all external concepts of beauty into perspective. Beauty is there when the individual being expresses itself on the outside, even in the struggles he may have gone through. When the outward is ugly, perhaps many life struggles show themselves in the incarnation, perhaps also in a previous incarnation. And then you see this struggle, this, so to speak, struggle to bring out his form. And then all the struggles are actually also written on his face; just perhaps from the earlier incarnation - and they express themselves. So, "nothing is in there by chance".

Only where there is a "model face" that is like a "dozens face", but is considered beautiful, then it can be that only a few traces of it are "visible". One can distinguish. But of course it can... Not so that now people say: "Oh, "if someone is really beautiful", well, he's not an individuality, he hasn't worked on himself". That's not true either. It could also be that this is exactly what lies within his being. Then it expresses itself in the fact that in a previous life he once had a very, very harmonious incarnation somewhere, where also soul-wise everything in that life fitted, somewhere. All this is not coincidental. All this is not coincidental. And it doesn't mean that in the next incarnation he will be beautiful again. Maybe in the life where he is very beautiful or what, he has many inner soul struggles - and these will express themselves in the next life. And then it may not look so beautiful by today's standards, the countenance. But it will perhaps in a certain way look wise through the experiences he has had.

Where the I works in life, it goes through ups and downs: with some they are outwardly visible, others wrestle in the heaviest struggles of the soul 0:33:24

Because, as you know, we have already spoken about this, the real experiences' that we make are often also connected with suffering, with pain, with obstacles, with mistakes, with misconduct, which, however, are nothing bad in the big picture. I mean, how can I say it, the Bible says, and especially the New Testament says it very clearly, that Christ prefersa converted sinner' - in the sense that he has found his way - "than one who has never done anything in his life". But he never really did anything good or anything special, he was always just a good boy. So, "that alone is not enough for anything". That is to say, he remains on the level basically - or almost on the level, it doesn't quite work anyway, because at the moment when one has an I, it doesn't work completely without development, but it can be smaller or larger. But if someone develops little, then he will do nothing good, nothing particularly good, nothing particularly bad, he will just be good, live his life, take care of his family, with moderate enthusiasm perhaps - or still, it is just part of his duties, he just does it - but it is a life that goes through no ups and no downs. So a life in which the I works on itself always goes through ups and downs in some form or other.

'This need not be outwardly, outwardly visible at once. So that doesn't mean that one stroke of fate after the other... ah, accident and again the next brick already falls down and then another illness comes and then the wife and the second wife and the third wife leaves you... It doesn't have to be that dramatic. Outwardly, life can often go quite wonderfully, but inwardly he has the most difficult battles of the soul, because he struggles with himself, because he notices, for example, "Oh, there are so many dark things inside me. And I often notice it in little things. I may not have had anything spectacular go wrong, but still, I notice that there and there and there... I'm dissatisfied with it. It's not living up to who I actually am." And that can weigh you down, but then you have to go through it.

And others need' just the outer obstacle for that, where they then perhaps completely miss the mark and really do something bad. So up to murder or whatever. All of us sitting here in this room or even with you outside, all of us have already committed murders in some incarnation. There is not a single person who has not gone through that - and done all kinds of gruesome things. We all have. You only have to go back a little further into the past, then definitely. And yet it's not an obstacle to getting on the right path, to getting on the right path. The path is a diversion. Always. Always the diversions is the shortest way. And that can zig, zag, zag, go back and forth, there a nonsense, there a nonsense, there a very bad thing, there, well, not so bad, there again a capital bad thing, but eventually you find it. At some point you find it. And one has learned from each one, in truth. Learned from each - or with each stumble is the chance to learn. That is the important thing. So, please, don't dwell on the weaknesses you have, on the mistakes you've made, knowing "Ah, if I get into a situation like that, I'd surely make that mistake again." Yes, maybe! I might make it ten more times - and fall in. "But the eleventh time I've got it. Even if it's only in the next incarnation but one. But then I'll have moved on.

Fate always leads us into the situations where we can develop still lacking powers 0:37:44

And I mean, of course, the other way around, that doesn't mean, Well, every weakness I have, it has to come out and I have to make every mistake the same. But if it happens, it happens. And that's a push that gives me the drive again - at least in depth - "Grrr, you've got to go on, try again, try again, try again." And, guaranteed, one always comes back to a similar situation that challenges this very weakness again Fate leads us there. And if we are too good, so to speak, then - because the adversaries help us - then we go around it, then we go around again exactly where this could happen. And with that, however, our development is slowed down. So, it's not our guardian angel who then leads us around and says: "Well, look, you could do something stupid there, go that way". (Wolfgang is hinting at a way out of this.) No, these are the adversaries right now; but the guardian angel helps us to get back into the situation - and in the hope that this time we will learn to deal with the situation properly by our own efforts. But not to simply bypass it. That's not coping with these forces, that's shirking them, yes, how shall I say, cowardly shirking them. It's that kind of being good, which is not the point. Doing good does not always mean being good. Not at all. Not at all.

And that's why I would like to appeal to... so, not to flagellate and punish yourself all the time. It is of no use either. In the Middle Ages, it was so common to flagellate oneself then: because one had some bad thought, I flagellate myself every evening and feel the lust, in truth, because that can be very pleasurable. It hurts a lot, but it is well known that lust and pain are very close together. Very close together. It can change from one moment to the other. Even in torture situations, it can turn into a lustful situation for the tortured person. So it is quite paradoxical. And since with these self-flagellations - or similar things - it is then downright pleasurable to experience the pain: "Oh, how great I am!" But that doesn't help anyone. With that I have done nothing, nothing to stop the cause of it. Not really. I have at most perhaps now laid a path for myself that I now perhaps avoid doing it for the next few years and, yes, look that I give a wide berth to the next temptation to do it again. So that means I see it coming, but I just manage to close my eyes and pass by. That doesn't solve the problem, quite the contrary. Quite the opposite. Then it is in the depths. At the bottom the force becomes stronger, the force that drives me there. These are the adversaries. That is then the Lucifer or the Ahriman, whatever, depending on what it is about, but whose forces grow in secret, in the dark, so to speak. That's where they grow. And then we don't cope with the problems, we go around them. So, to take fate upon oneself means, when such a situation comes, to face it again and then try to deal with it better. There is no way around it. That is the test ultimately of it. And that guides our destiny, if it means well with us; but then it does not mean that it spares us these trials.

Basically, the greatest fate is the one that gives me a test every day. It doesn't have to be such a major one that I'm laid up for the next ten years. But how big the hurdle is depends on my nature anyway, because our I - with the help of our angel - is so wise that it only ever expects of us what is manageable.

One step: "I love the one who desires the impossible." To desire the impossible is to take a step beyond one's previous possibilities. One step. Even if it is a very small step. It doesn't matter at all. That is where our I is. Our I is always active where it makes the impossible possible. So that which one has never managed before, which was not yet in the realm of one's abilities, to bring that down in such a way that I will manage it someday. Then I took this step - and even if I need five attempts, ten attempts, perhaps even ten incarnations, it doesn't matter at all. The perspective out of the spiritualhas this huge expanse and this huge expanse that goes, yes, ultimately over the whole seven cosmic stages of development.

We can already take the first steps towards the development of the spirit-self on the New Jerusalem 0:43:18

You will now rightly say, "Yes, but the I actually only came' in the middle, that is, now during our earth development." But we work up everything that is before, and make everything our own that we had before as a gift... that was prepared as a gift for us, so that we can incarnate on earth as we are today: So, on the Old Saturn the physical body. On the Old Sun the Etheric Body. - The sun and the etheric body are very strongly connected, they also have a meaning for the future, when we will unite with the sun again, then we will live inside in the etheric.

Then the old moon', the astral body, from which something new will emerge, our spirit self, where we basically build our own astral world, at first a small one, but one that is becoming larger and larger - and we as humanity together build a spirit self world. So an astral world created by human beings. This is the New Jerusalem that is being spoken of. That will be the actual element, this New Jerusalem - or this New Jupiter - of the next cosmic incarnation of our Earth. So there it is above all about this soul world, which is already in part... as far as human beings have just created it - have taken on the character of the spirit self - and where human beings are the ones who have creatively realised this anew, out of nothing, through the small, little, tiny steps that we are already taking now.

From our own fire held back and from mental slaps in the face we can gain strength for the I 0:45:08

With every step we take, the very first thing we do is work on our psychic somewhere. If we manage, yes, for example, not to strike immediately out of an outburst of anger, but, yes, I do feel the anger boiling, but I manage to hold back. Also: maybe I only shout once, but I don't slap the other person right away, well, then it's already a step, then I have already transformed some of the power. And in the end, I will feel that there is an impulse that I don't like, I see that what comes towards me from the other person is deeply unpleasant, but I can keep my fire in check and can say: ''Now I'll take a look first at what's really going on with him'. Is he just really bad and I have to defend myself, so to speak, against him? Is there a negative influence? Or is he just completely different from me and therefore deeply unsympathetic to me? And then I very quickly think: "My God, he has exactly the abilities that I completely lack. That's why he irritates me so much. I don't really have anything in common with him on the soul-astral level, because he has completely different abilities that I lack. So, actually, he is a most interesting person. Actually, I must get to know him." I have to manage to get into a conversation with him somehow, and without him constantly telling me: "Bah, unsympathetic, I don't like him, every word I hear makes me want to slap him". Well! No!

Every word that actually just gives me a slap, that is mentally speaking, is actually something I should take and look at now: What can I do with it? What do I make out of it for myself? Not the same as what he has, but there is the power inside, now to bring out'other spiritual things in myself out of nothing. - in my individual way. So, also the encounter with the opponents, with the unsympathetic people, that can often bring one incredibly further.

Sympathetic people: learning to look behind the sympathies at the foreign and to absorb impulses from them 0:47:25

Of course, even the people who are likeable to me have many facets that we don't have ourselves and where there is also a lot to discover, but there it can also often be that we are content with: Oh, the likeable sides, I drink them into myself, but they basically flow through me. I feel pleasantly touched by his presence. But that's about it. What's interesting are the things I don't like to look at, maybe because they're different from me. He may have something on the surface that appeals to me a lot, but there are other things lurking in the depths with everyone, which are quite different. That are completely different. That are not visible on the surface. Those are the interesting things. So, to recognise, so to speak, in the other person, who is so likeable to me, that which is perhaps not so likeable to me at first sight, because it is foreign to me. So, it is also a great art to look behind this sympathy in friendships that often arise so naturally, that certainly have a karmic cause, but are also based on this sympathy: Where is the stranger, the complete stranger inside? People often say: "Well, I am completely at one with him. So, we are a team, we walk on the same line." The question is whether that is really already out of the I - or whether that is only the common soul characteristics that connect us. And then the interesting thing would be to really get to know the individuality of this other person, to discover the - I don't want to say "dark" sides - the "other" sides in him, where I say: "Pah, he is actually a complete stranger to me. We are actually complete strangers there. I feel completely different in that area. Completely different." That's where it gets really interesting. That's where it gets really interesting. So, the harmony that is inherently there doesn't have to be the sign that you really get ahead together.

I mean, it can be when people are very, very developed, then the area they share together can be very large. And that is good. So, I don't mean to diminish that. That is good. But there, too, it is important - probably with much less inner disgust - to discover: "Okay, but he still has other facets, too. And those are particularly interesting.

There are also friendships - and they are often "very good friendships" - where the person is completely different. - where the person is completely different, where you might often get into arguments and you shout at each other: "Grrr, well, I see it completely differently. So what you're saying is nonsense. If everyone did it the way you do, it would be a catastrophe", and then at some point the argument is over - and you can get on well with each other again and "something remains of the impulse". "Maybe it's not so stupid after all, the other way he's going". And I can take something with me'.

In the relationship of animal and human enriching each other 0:50:45

Gell, tomcat! (Wolfgang's tomcat is just passing by.)

You can always take something with you. Yes, even from the animals. You can learn a lot from the animals', especially as far as soul-astral qualities are concerned, that is, above all, what astral qualities are. Every animal as a species, but also as a single specimen, as a single individual, has very, very great peculiarities. And you can take something away. And by the way: the animals also take something with them from what we develop in ourselves spiritually. There is a certain exchange. Of course, the animal cannot consciously grasp this, but something flows to the group soul through it and it is enriched by a new dimension.

Spiritual places from which we can draw new things out of nothing exist everywhere and at every moment 0:51:32

So, there really are so many infinite places where we can, in every minute... Places, I mean, "spiritual places'. That's not there, not there on earth. This is everywhere I am awake in life. This can happen anywhere. There are things to discover everywhere from which I can learn every moment, learn in the sense of creating out of nothing. That is, just looking through the surface a little bit and discovering things that are surprising' to me for once, perhaps also alienating, that can be very good. So, it is quite good, even when people who understand each other very well also recognise: "But actually you are also quite strange to me. You are quite different in a deep structure, somewhere." You have to be, because the I is quite individual - and it is quite different. And there is the potential from where the impulses come that can give me something new. Maybe that's what makes it difficult at the beginning, when you... In general, when you live more unconsciously and live very much out of sympathies and antipathies, (that) makes it difficult at the beginning. When you start to try it out a bit, you stumble over and over again. Then you realise how strange everyone around you is. Basically you notice: what I understood well on the surface, when I look a little deeper "näh, nein, Brrr, I don't like at all." Upsets me terribly or makes me sad or I feel dragged down or whatever. Or I feel unjustifiably pulled up all the time and realise, "Actually I want to, but I can't go with you yet. You always want to fly with me - and I have to learn to walk first." So, then this all can be irritating. But that's where the path goes.

And that's where we actually always have, really every minute of our lives, opportunity to create out of nothing. We do it. We do it every now and then. Since we are I-people, we do it every now and then anyway. But now it is only a question of becoming aware of this doing, which we have been doing anyway for eternities - or at least for long times... so in any case since the earthly life of the Christ it has in any case begun to become intensive and more and more conscious, but we do it.

The strangeness already begins in ourselves: what does my everyday consciousness know about the real I? 0:54:13

I do it, even if most of us are not yet aware of it. And the strangeness' also begins basically already in relation to one's own real I. When I compare my everyday consciousness, what I know about myself: I am such and such, born there and there, have such and such preferences; this tastes good to me, that doesn't taste good to me; I like to listen to music, I don't like to listen to music; I like people who are like this and like that, I like people who have a sunny disposition....

For example, a melancholic person won't say that, he'll say: "I love it when he makes a sad face sometimes" and he thinks everything is terrible, then I start to feel sorry for him - and then I'm actually fine. Then I start to feel good. Because nothing hurts a melancholic more than that everything around him is cheerful. That doesn't suit him. The whole world is crooked.

Just as it is the other way round for a sanguine: He can't stand a sad mood, that hurts him, so he must, if he wants to develop, also seek out such situations and consciously face them - and not just walk past them again, quickly give them a wide berth. These are "the adversaries" that lead us there.

And they lead us more and more away from our real I. That is their task in a certain way, so that we can say by our own strength: "Well, that's not it. I am a stranger to myself. The way I am in my everyday consciousness, that's not me. That is not really I. That is not it." And then, at some point, the doppelganger phenomenon can still come, because, then I can say: "Actually, my everyday person, he is perhaps totally unsympathetic to me, in truth." That's where it starts, the I'm dissatisfied, I'm dissatisfied, dissatisfied. It's not like, actually, yes, I am, but actually it's a horrible person, what is it?"'

Then slowly that starts to separate - and I see myself from a higher point of view. Then there is more clarity. And that begins with us now once in the spiritual. That we recognise this in the soul - and that will continue into the life forces. That will be a further step, that we also recognise in the life forces: ''We are imperfect.' We have received a certain treasure of life forces, also what in the sense - that is, if I look far back into the past - in the sense of our karma somewhere, has been assigned to us, what suits us, but what we have not yet ourselves attained as life spirit, as Buddhi, as it is so beautifully called, attained.

In a certain way, the Buddha was already able to attain it in pre-Christian times, but still in a different way than is possible now in post-Christian times. Precisely because'this freeI-consciousness' - as it has been possible since the Mystery of Golgotha - was in principle not yet possible at that time. Not even for such a high initiate as the Buddha was. And since he has not really incarnated on earth in a fully valid way since then, but has only been approaching in this way, but is very much active on earth, the development, for example, which an initiate like the Buddha also takes part in, is different from the people who acquire it today, who today acquire for once the power to transform their soul and perhaps to begin to work here and there into the life forces.

To consciously and willingly change habits of life and thus work into the life forces: Example manuscript 0:58:14

So, for example, we work very strongly into the life forces where we consciously and willingly change life habits. So, you can practise this, for example' by changing your handwriting. That is one of the exercises that Rudolf Steiner gives us. So, we got used to a certain handwriting, we learned it somehow at school. Then slowly our "personality", that is, basically "our little I inside" has already developed. But that is not yet our real I. Now we can begin to play once with changing the handwriting. On a trial basis. That doesn't mean that I have to do it every day in all the documents I sign. If I suddenly do everything differently: "That's not your signature". The policeman says: "Well, that's not your signature, you're a forger", because then you really have the impression that someone else wrote that. Yes, it was really written by the I, perhaps in an unguided way somewhere, but in it the awake I expresses itself - more than in the original handwriting. Of course, there is also something of our real I in there, but also a great deal of all the ego forces that are fed by the adversaries. And so it is much more blurred there. And in the beginning we will perhaps somehow try things out, because it's not like I know from my head "Well, wait, I have to write my A differently now, I have to do it this way or that way." No, but I try out all sorts of things and maybe at some point it clicks into place, at some point I say to myself: "Ah, but that's really mine now."' And that also means... then of course I can...

Rudolf Steiner also mentions this time and again: "There are people who write off the cuff. They are actually not at all involved in the activity. It's almost automatic. They just write, they are concentrated on the content they want to write - but the pen runs by itself. They don't even really look awake: what's happening? They don't live with their writing, with the writing that's being created. But then also the full I' is not completely there, but then a lot of the ego is inside the writing. Yes, that's enough, it can be a very beautiful scripture. So, just because the ego is in it doesn't mean that the writing is ugly, not at all, it can even be very, very beautiful. But it says nothing about the individual. Under certain circumstances, this beautiful, perfect writing may not be the expression of his ego at all, but rather a style that he has adopted and reproduces.

Calligraphy: the meditative art of writing leads from inspiration to imagination 1:01:14

I mean, that's also... yeah, the art of writing is something really great. I mean, even if it is being lost more and more today. It is still particularly cultivated in the East, in Asia it is still very cultivated, be it with the Japanese or the Chinese or so. But there, too, it is of course becoming less and less. But there are still people who do it. And then today... Nevertheless, something is changing, because the people who used to... when these writings, these wonderful calligraphies or what, were created, there was something inside: To put the "expression of the group I" into it. There it was not yet the individual I, there it was not the individual, but - yes, sure, still somehow a little coloured by the personality, which it is, but in such a way that it is not disturbing - but the main impulse came from the group I. Today it becomes inevitable there too... even if you follow all the rules of how to do the calligraphy, it gets more and more the individual touch. That too can be developed. And the beauty of it is to learn to have this leisure, not just scribble this writing - something from the wrist - but really to paint it, to be completely involved in the process where it comes into being. For the Chinese, for the Japanese, for those who cultivated it strongly, it was actually a very strong meditation to do that. And there they basically hear, they see... but it actually comes from the inspiration, becomes imagination - and that imagination is put on paper and from that comes the character that's there. All characters were actually a reading of spiritual writing. Inspiration becomes a kind of imagination, also an image.

And inspiration means, now I have all the pictures there underneath each other or next to each other or whatever. So, with the Chinese it actually goes from top to bottom, originally at least. This is expressed quite clearly: the characters come down from heaven to earth. And in Hebrew or in Arabic, which write from right to left, it is: it comes to me from outside still. It's not quite from so high up anymore, but it comes from outside. Westerners: our writing goes from left to right, away from me. There is already that inside: I do it. The impulse comes from me. There in Hebrew, I still bring it in from the outside - and it comes to me. Now it goes away from me. Which doesn't mean that I don't now, when I for example write Hebrew, nevertheless now also, by bringing it in, put my individual impulse into it at that moment. I receive something and yet grasp it in an individual way.

A highly recommended exercise: playing with your own writing 1:04:49

So, these are very, very interesting things that you can observe there and where you can learn a lot. So, this is a highly recommended exercise: with the writing, to play with your own writing simply once, on a trial basis. How could I write it differently? How could I paint it, perhaps, or something else? It's not primarily about how beautiful it is right away, or what. It's not about: "Ah yes, I have a lousy - pardon the word - lousy handwriting that nobody can read. I'm just trying to write more beautifully now." It's not primarily about whether it's more beautiful and legible, that's certainly also a virtue, to write beautifully and legibly, no question. It makes it a bit easier for other people, and sometimes easier for oneself, because it can be like: "Blimey, with my claw, I can't read this any more, what have I actually written there? It's terrible." I confess, I'm always going through... I'm shredding it in such a way that I think to myself: what does that mean, what was I trying to do? And then I have the phases where I love just writing beautifully again, because I simply see what a joy it is to write it beautifully. And then the increase: but now do it differently, design it differently, start to design it freely, play with it, try it out. There, the text as such is unimportant in essence, but the way I do.

Or start to take a brush, paint it once with ink or something. See what comes out. But it doesn't have to be successful right away. You don't have to be a great calligrapher. I mean, it's not for nothing that you have to learn it for a long time to make it really beautiful and precise. In the old sense, according to all the rules that were connected with it, because many, many, many generations have learned one after the other, more and more, more and more finely, to bring it in. It's not like it's just there right away. Yes, maybe in the beginning there were a few masters, they had it. They had it. But those who followed had to work a long time to reach the level that was there at the beginning. It is quite interesting.

Ancient scriptures: from the spiritual seeing of the characters in inspiration down to the practical application in everyday life 1:07:17

Only it is often the case that, when an impulse comes into a culture, the most important thing is already there at the very beginning. And the rest is' then a bit of refinement and that it spreads to more and more people who can take hold of it who also gain some of the ability - maybe even in the next cultural epoch. I mean, with the Egyptians there were still very few who were scribes, who were allowed to write the hieroglyphs at all, so they were all initiates, higher initiates, smaller initiates, whatever, but in any case they had to be so far advanced that they could really look mentally at these characters and see them in context. That is, there was also an inspiration involved. It wasn't just a matter of dictation. Those were the really important texts. Although it is also interesting... well, in the Scriptures, also in Egypt or elsewhere, there were always two levels: The first level was not at all the one from above, but it was the very practical, the commercial, for practical life; so and so many barrels of oil are there, were sold at so and so much; I don't know: for so and so many sacks of wheat or something they were exchanged. That is recorded. How many are in the storehouse in there now? How many are there? So, these are actually the first texts that have been handed down that come out of the practical. It comes down to earth somewhere.

Let's take cuneiform for example, or something: one had the feeling with cuneiform writing, it's like the sun's rays, which strike and leave their trace in the stone, in the wood, in the clay tablets - in the clay tablets above all they leave their trace. But then - especially strongly with the Egyptians or whatever - the higher spiritual really enters and lives in the images and in the characters. But they had to have the prerequisite of also knowing the earthly, because nevertheless... So especially in the hieroglyphs - or where you see it - there are of course also very earthly-sensual things that become symbols. So, a bird or something... for example, the bird Ba for the astral body and things like that - so quite characteristic things are also in there.

Or something interesting about the figures, above all, the etheric body: the arms at the top of the head are bent, they are bent arms at the head, because the human being who is active with the head is constantly reaching out etherically into the etheric world and from there he brings in his thoughts. And the Egyptian culture, which actually had not yet developed this thought life, had the task of preparing exactly that. And the initiation, 'the Egyptian initiation, is the initiation into thought. That is the goal.

From ancient Egypt to our consciousness soul age: working on the sensation soul leads to transformation into the intuition soul - working on the consciousness soul transforms it into the imagination soul 1:10:53

Thus already, at least among the leading initiates, an anticipation of later cultural epoch, the Greek-Latin. There it was to become more and more widespread, and it was. First through the Greeks, but there it was partly only a very elite class that could cultivate this ability, that had the leisure to be able to concentrate on it. But with the Romans, it becomes very practical. There, thinking is part of everyday life in a very practical way. And the more precisely it works, the better you can regulate external things. But the Egyptians still knew: Yes, actually, I gesticulate, reach out with my etheric tentacles, so to speak, into the etheric world. And in the etheric world these thoughts live. Living these thoughts. Living thinking, means I reach into the living etheric world and bring that in. Of course, this also has an invigorating effect on the whole person who does it, because it really does bring in etheric forces in a very real way. It brings in in the sense that he learns to feel the etheric - this is all expressed very figuratively now - but these etheric forms, which are at the same time sounds, whatever you want to call them, and to imitate them inwardly and to make them his own. And with this I - first of all in the Egyptian time still quite unconsciously - also continue to work on my etheric body. Whereby the main task lies in working in the soul, in the soul of feeling. But in the sentient soul lives actually very high spiritual on the other side, because in the future - in the future - from the sentient soul, by transforming it, becomes the intuition soul. Out of the sentient soul. So that which actually leads us into the spiritual at the highest. For this we must transform the sentient soul.

Today we are working mainly on the consciousness soul, and it is a question of transforming it into the imagination soul, that is, of becoming really spiritually seeing. That is the path that our consciousness soul is taking. And we are already in the middle of the age - since the beginning of the 20th century - where this can begin, should begin, on a larger scale. Where many people also have it, stop... more than one thinks namely, but perhaps not yet fully conscious (have) - but they gesticulate around there and bring something in and that lives in them. And they are transforming the consciousness soul now. So what they do in the etheric they don't get so much, but they walk around the consciousness soul to the imagination soul; that is, they learn to paint in the soulic, if you like. Painting very much in the figurative sense. So, one must not imagine it too much in sensual colours, so to speak.

Painting in writing: a strong contribution to the transformation of the astral, but one which, through the machine age, confronts us with new challenges from Ahriman and demands a new individual impulse 1:14:38

But painting is therefore the activity that is very strongly connected with the transmutation of the astral, that is where it expresses itself most strongly. I mean, there are other areas too, of course, where this is inside, but it is especially inside painting. But that can also be "painting in writing". That is also painting'. Even if you do it with a pen, with a pencil; it's more beautiful with a pen, with ink, with a quill, it's even more beautiful there. So it's basically a pity that this is hardly cultivated any more. Not even in schools. In former times there was the Schönschreiben'. Well, today everyone will say: "Plemplem, who writes today at all?" Today, people only type on the computer. And that's what you need in daily life. Whether I write more beautifully or halfway legibly: that will be enough. That's enough for a job. Yes, for the exterior it's enough, no question. And of course the burden - or the challenge - for the pupils, for the children today, is that they should actually get to know both. Both. If they only write beautifully now, but can't cope with the keyboard, then they are not in our time either. They should be able to do both in the end. Be able to do both.

That's something quite, basically, ahrimanic, something quite dead. And yet I am now learning through the buttons to play with the Ahriman, so to speak, and to give him my impulses. It really depends on which thoughts, which words I let flow into it, which become text. Then it makes a difference. And I deal with this keyboard instrument, which is basically quite unhealthy. Steiner says this again and again: "Typewriting" "goes to the heart", "because it totally disturbs the rhythm of the heart". Yes, nevertheless, we are faced with the challenge today to acquire this, just in daily life. And please, who doesn't do that today? I think there are very few people today who don't... even if it's only on their mobile phone, that they tap somewhere. Almost everybody has. So, "we are virtually forced by the development of time to deal with it".

But on the other hand, don't forget: Where does this actually come from? Because I learn to deal with and get to know the ahrimanic. Simply by doing that, I encounter the ahrimanic. And when, for example, I really want to translate something that comes from the spiritual into a text and write it on the computer, I have to, so to speak, overcome the barrier, this ahrimanic barrier, in order to bring it in - nevertheless to have it inside. And still to have it in the text, although the characters that come out are not mine, but are ready-made letters that someone has designed. I may be able to choose from a hundred thousand typesets, but none of them is mine. There is nothing individual in it, but some standard model, something group-like is actually inside. So everyone writes in "Arial" or "Times New Roman" or whatever all the fonts are called. It doesn't matter. You can also write it in "Anthroposophic Style" or whatever; there are also anthroposophic fonts. Yes, all justified, but then it is not my anthroposophical script either, but the (mine) is with every time when I write the "A" again, again a little bit different and in each lies just my momentary impulse. When I do this through the ahrimanic medium, I have to make sure that in the composition of the text as such neverthelessmy very individual impulse is inside: in the way I write it - or I only write in a very clichéd way, as one writes such texts. But: how do I do it in terms of style? Does my individuality lie in the style or not, for example? It is insanely difficult. It is insanely difficult. Because it forces you into such narrow limits. (Wolfgang forms a narrow gap with his hands.)

Finding mastery from limitation 1:19:12

But it is in limitation that the master shows himself. We learn most where we have the fewest resources at our disposal,to express that' - because that is where the narrowest limits are. If we still manage to bring something in, then the really big things come. So, I don't know, if I as a painter only have two colours at my disposal and a dirty brush and I still make something out of it. If I have a whole paint box anyway, all the things, it's much easier to do something. But if someone manages to get something out of the restriction, then the achievement is much, much greater. That is perhaps a bit of this thing but to realise that it is good for us to always be pressed by the adversaries, indeed not to develop our abilities. But that is also an opportunity. But that is also an opportunity. And especially the Ahriman is the one who always constricts us. Lucifer is the one who prefers to give us the whole paintbox. Well, then we won't develop any further. We'll just throw in everything there is, painstakingly mix something together or something... "No, there are so many colours in there anyway." I find it relatively easy to do that, I draw on the whole range. But to limit myself to one, two colours and to make something out of them and still tell the whole story that lies within. Seen as an exercise now. That doesn't mean that a great painter doesn't use a really big paint box. Please, I did not say that. I mean, the real master is the one who then in the fullness also (He doesn't just let it run rampant, but perhaps he does use more colours, but still only the most necessary. And not another bit on top, another thing, then it becomes Luciferian. One more dot on it and one more thing, that's the Lucifer. The Lucifer seduces us again by saying, "Ah, there, spread the whole palette before you and draw from the full." You can almost do what you want, it will always... at least it will be beautifully colourful in any case.

Abstract art: of monkey paintings and artworks designed by the I-impulse 1:21:58

I mean, since today, yes, not so much goes to representational pictures any more, it may already be enough that you take a few tubes of paint and smear on it and declare it to be a work of art, find yourself a good gallery owner who is resourceful and says "This is the new master. The coming master", puts it up - and immediately ten thousand euros for the little picture and everyone looks: "What? Him?" And then they all buy it and maybe he doesn't have a strong impulse. He just took whatever colours he had, arbitrarily, and put them on. "Monkeys can do that too. There are wonderful ones... at first glance it doesn't look bad at all. If you love abstract art, the monkey paintings can be wonderful. And they also express something of "what the monkey experiences mentally". There is actually something of it inside. The I is not really inside, but there is a mental experience inside - and that can actually be quite exciting, to see something like that. But when a person paints, his I-impulse should be inside, his individual handwriting. And that's the question of whether it's in the paint or not. That may well be. Put side by side, at first glance, there may not be much difference.

And yet: one basically speaks of chaos, arbitrariness, because there is no or little spirit behind it - and in the other a full individuality speaks through the whole'. And that is just as "modern" at first glance. (Wolfgang draws a picture frame in the air.) I don't know, how does it belong hung up? Like this - or do I have to turn it upside down? Or is it upright after all? I don't know. It can be difficult. You know I love such pictures when they are good. But it's like this, at first sight you don't know where is up and down. Yes of course, because it actually goes out of the spatio-temporal world already, somewhere. It doesn't depict anything representational. It doesn't depict anything where below is heaviness and above is lightness, but it is actually entirely in lightness. Of course, it is realised here with matter, but it is the attempt to actually show a world that is not of this world - at least not of the outer world, but which is one step higher. Which is one step higher. So above all, what is in the colours, it is the astral, which is then very strongly expressed. So the colours of the aura, if you like, try to translate into sensual colours. I mean, in the real aura it's not like you have a colourful Christmas tree around you. That would be another wrong interpretation, so if you look at the word... I'm not clairvoyant. How come I still don't see the Christmas tree with the colourful thing around it? You can wait endlessly. And if it really appears like that, then it's certainly a hallucination. Well, a hallucination in the sense that you see something that is neither physically nor mentally there, but is a product of your imagination. Or, to put it more correctly, a product of fantasy into which one has got carried away. If it is anything, it is perhaps an expression of one's own state of mind, which is reflected in it. It's usually already in there somehow, but you don't recognise it as such.

Our path to the New Jerusalem: transforming the astral into the individual spirit self out of the free I and thus building a completely new soul world 1:25:46

So, there are so many fields to discover where one can find the I. So, this work on the astral, to transform it into the spirit self as a real prerequisite for the New Jupiter, for the New Jerusalem: that is the essential thing. That is the world in which we then live, by all means also live as etheric beings. Certainly not in some physical body like we have now, but where we have found ourselves to such an extent that we can become conscious of ourselves, not lose ourselves, even if we don't have a physical body as we know it now. So where we will live in a totally different way. Becoming life. Living thus as etheric beings, mainly etheric beings, but with a very strongly already self-designed spirit self. That is to say, what our astral is, is then to a greater part - an ever increasing part - already really individually created by us. And we are already working on that. Every time I don't just let "my" "soul movement", as it comes out of the ego, flow through me, but "where I form it through my I", I am a little bit there. - I am a little bit at it - and once I give a little form to the impulses that so instinctively want to come out of it, I am already working on it and creating - creating really new, individual soul. And that is an unbelievable enrichment of the soul world. Or if you want to call it, the spirit-self world that is outside - but we can actually call it spirit-self world because it is then shaped by our I. And that is still. And that is something else than when the higher hierarchies do it through us. Of course, they also have something like a spirit self. But since their I does not have the freedom of man, it has quite another quality. They are such facets there that arrange themselves into an overall picture, you might say. One can say, if the impulse is still - as it is for these entities - flows down to them from the divine source above, then the whole divides itself: And this angel has the ability, the angel has that ability. That is butnot actually something that arose individually out of the freedom of his I, but he has gratefully received what is as spirit-filling. He does something with that, but he cannot individualise it in the form, out of freedom, that we can. That is to say, the spirit-self that we build into the world still has a quite different quality. And also that which will then emerge as a common spirit-self world, as this New Jerusalem, that is therefore a completely - actually once in essence - a completely new soul world, which is created out of the spirit of human beings. - completely new. It didn't exist before. It is nothing, nothing recycled, so to speak, from the old soul world, but a new soul world with "new soul qualities".

But perhaps you can see from this that the way there leads via these very, very small steps that we already take every day anyway. We have all already developed something of the spiritual self in the few moments when we once, yes, consciously, half-consciously, or where we in any case did justice to our I, where we really acted from our I - and not only where the ego leads us with our sympathies and antipathies, but where we somehow intuitively know: "I have to do this now. And now... I could get angry with him, but now I have to take a step back and reach out to him", for example. That's already a blatant example, but it can be on a very small scale. Or where I consciously do not use a bad word or an angry response, even if it's just a rude encounter that comes up, but instead take it back and transform it. The important thing is to transform, not just suppress, then it is not yet solved, but when I transform it and succeed in saying: Yes, okay, I know, there came the impulse, I don't like that one, everything doesn't suit me, but actually it is also interesting what he says. Actually, it is a stimulus for me. I haven't seen it from that point of view. I don't actually have to fight at all." And suddenly the impulse that comes out of the ego, with its antipathy, is gone and I see it as enrichment. There can be moments like that in life - I certainly hope so. They happen again and again, but even then it's often the case that we're sometimes not conscious enough to really realise it. It's so fleeting and yet it's there. We do it.

The light spirit self and its dark counter-image leading into the soratic world via the path of black magic 1:25:46

We have been doing it for some incarnations; for two or three incarnations at least. Every human being. Practically every human being. There is' therefore no one who has not already developed a trace of the spirit self. And with that we build a new world. If we don't do it, if we let ourselves be diverted from that and only follow these ego-impulses, which are essentially then fed by the adversaries, then we build the counter-world. Then we are ultimately building the world, which becomes the robbery of the soratic entities. That is the crossroads that is there today. And both are happening. How shall I say, it happens the development of the right spirit-self and its dark counter-image. That it is a very dark counter-image is based on the egoistic will to power, if you like, which is stirred up by the adversaries and which serves to build up this power potential, a power, force potential for the soratic world. Because the point is that these soratic entities are in truth also dependent on us, because their world also becomes so big or so small, depending on how many people join in and how strong their impulses are that they give to this world. So, one could really call it a counter-image, this kind of a dark spirit-self or "spirit-not-self" - or I don't know what to call it, this denial of the real I; because we as I-beings nevertheless now have the power to create something new', but we can also create it in such a way, that we make it a gift to these soratic entities - and then it is the dark side.

That is the way of black magic. And that is always so, if I can develop it in one direction, I also have in principle the power to develop it in the other direction. That is always the decision that I have to make: Where do I take it. This decision will become more and more conscious with time. So, there is the still untransformed astral, Lucifer, Ahriman and the Asuras are involved - and somewhere the sting of the Soratians also comes. But as long as we still work unconsciously, that is just our ordinary ego. But I can also go astray and work more and more consciously and purposefully - especially out of a drive for power - in the direction of the soratic beings. So, that always has something to do with striving for power also. And that means striving for power, domination over people. Now it's not about external violence, but "spiritual domination over people, over fellow human beings". - and then to arrange them all in a hierarchical scheme; of course, where you yourself are as high up as possible. That is the other thing. And with that, forces that would actually be capable of working in the direction that is good for us, that is, in the direction of the free I, are diverted in the other direction. And these are the things that will be lost for all time for the further development of humanity. - sooner or later - just at the latest by the time 6-6-6, that is, in the 6th cosmic stage of development, 6th sub-cycle and from that again the 6th sub-cycle; until then the decision is made. So, for example, what we are working on now - or what people are working on today - in the negative direction, there is still no final word that the soratic entities will get it. It is only becoming more and more difficult to change it in the other direction. And that can only happen through the people who have also created this negative. So that means they themselves must then transform into the new, into that which leads in the right direction for us.

We have to get away from the classical scheme of good and evil: the efforts of the black magicians to lure us into their path even now - and the way back is very, very tedious 1:36:34

I mean, yes, it's really the decision now, above all, I say it so deliberately, to.... I have to get away a bit from the classical good and evil scheme, dark there, light there. Basically, it's two paths going diametrically different directions and you know, I've said this many times, what the soratic entities want: They actually want a perfect world which shall endure for all eternity as it is. In which there is indeed movement, but no real change any more, but the goal is to become perfect, that is, like perfect clockwork, if you will. Where everything runs well, where everyone has their defined place inside, from which one basically can no longer get away - neither up nor down. Namely, if we as human beings were to enter this realm there - or some perhaps will - then ultimately now, during the earth's evolution, they will ultimately have the possibility up to the state 6-6-6, that is, on the so-called New Venus, in the 6th sub-state and there again in the 6th sub-state, up to there, to form that and then to hand it over - precisely if they decide for the soratic world. But then nothing can be changed, with that their place is defined. If they bring in a lot of strength, a lot of power, so to speak, then they are one of the upper cogs, one of the leading cogs, and if they bring in less, then one is more at the bottom. But this place can no longer be changed. That is... and therefore the...

Essential decisions are already being made now, especially during our earth's development. So, a lot is already predisposed. And that's why people who now try to consciously follow a black magic path try to be there as early as possible to mark out their field. I mean, people who only really go astray later on will be small cogs, if they can't conquer a higher place there right now through some capital deed they commit. That is, it goes but more purposefully to start now and to seduce other people - that is also the very, very essential thing of this black magic - others to also this, knowing or not knowing first of all, to go this way. That may well be ignorant for a long time - until they are somewhere in a situation, where they wake up, and perhaps see: Well, now I have already walked a hundred kilometres in the wrong direction. And the way back is very far. And then the question arises: "But the destination is only ten metres away anyway. Do you want to go there? Or do you want to go back the hundred kilometres against all odds and keep coming across other people and opponents who say, "Well, there's the way, there, stop, there, stop," who get in the way, who don't want you to go back, who make it difficult for you? That's the trick then. And the worst thing is that other people are often seduced by being victims - and they are victims of these people who are already more advanced on the black magic path - "they are made victims without noticing it right away. Without noticing it right away. They themselves only notice much later that they have actually been led in a completely different direction - and then they may no longer have the strength to turn back from their own. And that can very quickly turn into exactly the other thing: "Okay, then, so to speak, fuck it, I'll just go that way and make sure that I pull others down enough. Because now it's just a matter of getting a higher position in the hierarchy. And I get that by bringing as many others as possible onto this path. So that also means that there is a huge danger that - just like in the outside world - it is very easy for victims to become perpetrators. This can happen very often.

The heavy legacy of abuse: from victim to perpetrator - or changing strengths and strengthening the I 1:41:45

So, I don't know, parents who abuse children, and then the abused children do it to theirs the same way. It can happen a lot. I mean, the happier way is for One to say, "Well, not that with mine." But there's a very strong impulse inside. It's actually easier to pass on all my hatred, my anger, my suffering about, that I've experienced. This is the much easier way. Because, you have to think, that's an immense potential of power that's in there. Especially when you experience such abuse over years, it builds up... and that is the even more reprehensible and the much worse than the external pain that you suffer. What happens is that inside this potential for violence is simply nurtured in the broadest sense. That's what happens to the victims. That's what happens to the victims. That they are actually fed with the negative forces, with the negative feelings. They are cut off from everything beautiful, from everything light. And then they basically only have these bent soul forces, except under certain circumstances - and now this can be also very strong, then exactly the opposite happens -that there is a strong I that now says - so to speak, at some point - more than ever: I am fighting all my life with the inheritance, that I am now dragging along through these abuses that happened to me, but I am sticking to it. I'll keep at it. And then the I becomes immensely strong and the light shines stronger and stronger. And then all of a sudden, at some point, I can begin to turn this potential of power, which was actually built up negatively, into the positive within me, because, nevertheless, the powers that are built up with it are in truth completely neutral. They are not good and they are not evil. They are evil because they are used in the wrong place. They are used, for example, when a person is increasingly led away from his I, when his ego is increasingly darkened and hardened by all the fear, by the pain he goes through, but there is an immense power in it that can be used in both directions: for good and for evil. The point is that it is simply an immensely strong astral-soul power potential - and quite different from any such fleeting feelings of pleasure or anything else: "I like that, I don't like that, ah, I feel good." That's not even a mail whisper. That's something really weak. I mean, where such things happen, enormous forces are built up. And, please, I don't want you to misunderstand me again and say: All right, then as many people as possible should experience abuse, then they have the best chance of getting ahead. I mean, it's just not that simple. Because "many people fail"... - And that can have an effect over many incarnations, because it takes an immense amount of strength, and that doesn't mean that it's all right that so many experience such misfortune and that the I can develop well because of it. That's not what I'm saying.

Connect our everyday consciousness more and more with our great I: Do we manage to look for the challenges we grow from on our own? 1:45:25

I mean, the healthiest way is that I just really during a basically normal life, let's put it this way - so not too good and not too bad - look for the challenges by which I grow by my own strength, look for the tasks, that is, be awake, where my I says: "This is mine. This is my task." I mean, I say this very consciously now: often the impulse is not quite awake yet, but you have the feeling: "I have to do this." And you still do it almost instinctively. But it is then not the impulse out of the astral, but really out of the I. Some special task that doesn't - seemingly - seem to be on the usual path of one's life at first and takes some branching off - and that can be just the right thing. As I said, the path doesn't go soo to the destination, but it goes this way and then it goes that way again and then it goes this way and that way - and then at some point it goes there' (Wolfgang points in completely different directions). In the beginning, as a child, unconsciously, we know the goal, in general, from the prenatal, when we come, we know that exactly, we know the goal exactly. Only the real path in life doesn't go that way. And which detours these are, that is basically not predictable. It is predictable that we will face certain - by fate - but how we seek them out, when we seek them out, where we seek them out exactly, we are already individually involved in that. The guardian angel only helps us, sometimes gives us a little push so that our I becomes awake enough - our real I - to recognise the situation. Only the art is to connect our real, our great I with the consciousness that we have downstairs, to take in more and more of what is upstairs also, but to feel that it is actually the much greater. Then I can begin to really watch myself in a certain way.

That is to say, to really carry in the earth-consciousness the consciousness of the great I. And that leads inwardly to soul struggles, quite clearly, because the ego wants something completely different: "No! I don't like him, I don't want him, no way!" So, there is, how shall I say, the confrontation, as our 19th century Viennese folk poet Nestroy puts it: "Who is stronger, me or I? Now I want to know!" Yes, we are constantly in the middle of this conflict and it is good if we become aware of it. And we have enough to do with that. We don't need to wrestle with who else, but wrestle with our own ego and, how shall I say, convince it to go differently, and so on. And there you have to teach the ego once: "You, what the adversaries whisper to you may not be the best thing in the world. It may seem good to you, but there are quite other things to be gained." Then it goes together. So, basically, it's a question of this flowing together, that the soul, in which the ego also lives itself out, that this is transformed into the spirit self. That is to say, then our earthly-soully, yes, still in this life and in the next incarnations - that is, still while we go to earth - will then also become more and more the inner life, that is, our everyday life, will also become more and more the expression of our real I. Then we can connect both with each other. Connect both with each other. As a result, our ego does not become smaller, but larger and includes more and more, takes more and more into its shell. Then it's not: "No, no, I want that, but the neighbour can't have that", but where I begin to rejoice: he also has something beautiful like that and I rejoice in it. And not, as the saying goes, "Envy has sharp eyes. "What! He has a car, his car is ten centimetres bigger, that annoys me, it annoys me every day when I see that. But wait, I'll show you, in ten years I'll have one too, it's three metres bigger." Then I come along with, I don't know, what kind of monster. Or faster or further or more beautiful or whatever. I learn to rejoice that my fellow human being, my neighbour, or anyone else, has a full and beautiful life too. - and above all, I rejoice in the fact that they are going their way. His way. Not the way I imagine life to be, but that he is perhaps going a completely different way. And we can still perhaps take some steps together. But we also know that everyone has a completely different field. And what I can't do yet, you can already do there. I can learn from it and do it in my own way at some point. So, we are all working on that.

So, you all don't have to worry about, How do I do this, and thing. We're doing it. We're doing it. So, the art is - again said - just to become more conscious for the future that we are doing it. That we do it. Because, then, with our consciousness, with our earthly consciousness, we also manage to grasp what our real I wants - and which in our consciousness also has the angel, who accompanies us, who overlooks this and who helps our I, our real I, so that below, that the little ego becomes aware, here and there, that it nevertheless stumbles once in the right direction - even if it is only quite unconsciously. Actually, one wants something completely different, but nevertheless I stumble there and say: "Uahh! I didn't want to go there at all, but wait, yes, aha, it's... yes, I got through after all." And after ten years you realise: I have learned something from it. And then I'm even grateful for it, even if at that moment the ego said, "Uhhh, I don't want to!" So, that's how it works. Yes.

Transforming the soulish, the etheric and the physical: our development to the spirit man at the end of the cosmic stages of development - Part I 1:52:51

So, transformation of the soulish', transformationof the ethericand sometime - well, not sometime - spiritualisation also of the physical. The essential foundations for this are also laid now during our earth evolution, although we will only be so far along at the last cosmic state of evolution, that is, at the seventh, that we will thus have spiritualised the physical' completely - in a completely individualised form.

Insertion for explanation - physical need not be material: making traces of natural elemental beings visible 1:53:33

Whereby, please, always bear in mind: Physical and material or mineral is not quite the same. We have often spoken of this. For example, the whole' elemental beings, the nature elementals, have all a physical body' - and yet they are not material. They can leave their traces in the material, so it's true that sometimes like that... root dwarfs or what really leave their traces in the way, for example, the roots grow or what. And a skilful wood carverliberates, so to speak, a portrait of this elemental being from it. Not that it really looks like that anywhere, because it is not sensually visible, but the characteristics of this being are somehow depicted inside. Because it is precisely this root being that has left these traces inside - and a good carver sees this, sees it somewhere, frees it, so to speak, from what is disturbing, and brings it out. It's not as if he simply models it according to his wishes: "Oh, I'll do this or that now", but he brings out what's in the root. And that is a trace of this active elemental being, for example. And he doesn't even have to have a conscious imagination of it, but in his actions, as he carves it, it's inside. His real I recognises the elemental being, the ego below perhaps suspects it a little, but his real I leads at the moment that he really brings it out. And we are all doing something in that direction again and again. So it's all about nurturing that.

Transforming the soul, the etheric and the physical: our development up to the spirit man at the end of the cosmic stages of development - Part II 1:55:41

So really through all the stages, that is transforming the physical into the so-called spiritual man. So that which we have received as the first predisposition - already on the so-called Old Saturn' - to bring it to maturity as a completely spiritualised physical thing - in the end. And spiritualised means in that case: Expression, perfect expression of our I. It has nothing at all to do with material-material, but to develop physical forces of form that are completely individualised. Transforming the ethereal into the life-spirit, we will succeed in doing that a little earlier. That is to say, to make our life forces into something of our own. And then, we are already working on that - and we will then continue to work very intensively on the next cosmic stage of development: the astral into a spirit-self. Each person for himself, but all together as humanity to a whole spirit-self astral world. Or the black magicians in the other direction. They work just to a counter-spiritual, dark astral world, but also created out of the I. And they can only do this with the help of human beings. That is why these soratic entities are so upon us... they lurk so upon us. Because, out of the freedom to create something there, which they can then take in there, we can. They themselves cannot do it in that form.

And "the centre", the pivot around which everything revolves, "is the human I". And if we go through that, then we have the picture again with the Kabirs, which I discussed the time before last, I think, well, or that was the last time, I can't remember now: The 'gods of becoming', which are already known from Greek mythology, just 'which correspond to these seven stages, so 'the physical, the etheric, the astral, these are the first three Kabirs, which are mostly mentioned. Then sometimes a fourth is mentioned, we read in Faust, "the fourth did not want to come. He was the right one who thought for them all." 'There's the I-insert in there, and then it goes on. "Are actually of their seven. Where have the others gone? They are to be enquired for in Olympus, that is, in the spiritual world. These are the spiritual members of man's being, that is, the spirit-self, the life-spirit and the spirit-man, then we are only... then, then we have become man in the full sense, at the end of this development. And then it starts. "Then comes the eighth, which nobody has thought of yet." Because, then we'll be ready to build a new, a whole new world - right into the physical. That's the next thing, and that's a path, I think, that's worth taking. And what Rudolf Steiner did so magnificently - which I am not aware of anywhere else in such a form, in such clarity, I must say quite honestly - that so far this goal is set, somewhere, and that in so many places it is so clearly expressed that this is the great spiritual task, which man can achieve if he wants to. And - it depends on us, nothing else.

fade-out 1:59:44

I look at the clock and see it's nine. I will leave it at that for today. I hope there weren't too many dark impulses today, that there was a bit more light once inside, but we'll surely learn to love the dark sides too. Well, until next time. From the participants: "Love evil well". Exactly, "loves evil well". Until the next time. Until the next time. Thank you very much to the viewers also in the livestream. I'll say goodbye. Thanks for being there. See you next time. Have a good evening everyone.

Key words

The 20th verse of the week continues the theme of the last few weeks with a great admonition: our ego would have to kill itself if it did not constantly receive the influx from the great spiritual world, the world-celebration - In our daily consciousness we experience only a reflection of our real being - We encounter the I in its reality where we are actively active - We are still very much dreaming in our sense perception - With everything that flows to us through the senses, spiritual things also flow to us and with them, in the depths, our own being as well - Every encounter can open up a moment of destiny for us - At the latest in adolescence, enthusiasm should ignite in the environment - We only recognise the double with the light of the real I - the learned skills are not always the real skills - finding my true calling - recognising my true vocation: finding the source of our everyday self so as not to remain on a dying branch - the real is that which is not yet there - Wolfgang's unfortunate encounters with musical instruments: heeding beckoning fates - the differences between desires and real will - what we really want comes unsuspected - listening to the impulses in order not to have to "kill ourselves" - "I want to develop myself every day!" in this doing is the reality of our own I - working out of the situation of lack into the reality of the I - it is a matter of reviving the little I with every breath: it is not such spectacular things - our real I lies in the way we breathe, speak, walk, gesticulate, attack things: all that we are not normally so fully aware of - the characteristics of my gait: unconscious things can be consciously relearned and changed - the characteristic of my speech: do I show my real voice? - in language the whole being can express itself and thus come into contact with the Other from person to person - On stage: integrate the characteristics of the role personality into one's own being and make something of it our own - in encounters between people: taking something from the other as impulse, but not becoming a copy - waking observation of the other: experiencing him as a whole in his form of movement - learning from each other, thus allowing the power of the I to grow and build up more and more resources - creating into the physical: Married couples can become more and more like each other externally over decades of living together - Letting the mind rest and opening the gaze: observing in the other how the I, for example, intervenes in gestures - looking into previous incarnations: through the hands we think our destiny - meeting and recognising each other on the exciting plane that brings together the gestures of the arms, larynx and collarbones - the "enlightenment" demands to be able to wait and comes quite unexpectedly in a sudden impulse - becoming a community of humanity: beginning to learn now in the small encounters - the ugly can only be where the I cannot express itself - Beauty is there when the individual being expresses itself in the outward: nothing is accidental - harmonic incarnations, inner soul struggles: all experiences find expression in lives - a converted sinner is dearer to the Christ than a man who has always been only good, for he remains on the old level - when the I works on itself in life, it always goes through ups and downs - some go through heaviest soul struggles, others need outer obstacles to learn - always the diversions is the shortest way - our weaknesses are challenged again and again until we have learned by our own strength - the adversaries try to lead us around the obstacles, not our guardian angel - flagellating and punishing oneself does not solve the problem, but lowers it into the depths where the adversaries are - of the desire to experience pain - the greatest fate is the one that gives me a trial every day - "Him I love who desires the impossible": the one small step - building the great spirit self on the New Jerusalem: we can already take the first small steps - holding my fire in check and thus transforming forces - Mental slaps in the face: what can I make of it? - Sympathetic people: looking behind the sympathetic and finding the strange - very good friendships and yet often quarrels: I can take something from this - learning from the animals in reciprocity - "Spiritual places" are everywhere I am awake: Impulses that can give me new things - every minute gives us opportunity to create out of nothing - The strangeness already begins in relation to our own real I - what is good for the melancholic - What situations the sanguine should seek out - The adversaries always try to take us away from our real I - the doppelganger encounter: actually, my everyday person is totally unsympathetic to me - a further step: we realise that we are also imperfect in the forces of life - of the transformation of the life forces into the life spirit, the Buddhi - Working into the life forces: consciously willfully changing life habits using the example of the manuscript - expressing the I in the manuscript - the art of writing - Calligraphies: expression of the group ego - Painting calligraphies: meditation in which inspiration becomes imagination - In Chinese: the characters come from above downwards, from heaven to earth - in Arabic and Hebrew: the characters come in from outside - in Western: I do it - recommended exercise: playing with your own writing - writing with a brush - new impulses in a culture: the most important thing is already there right at the beginning - the hieroglyphs were only allowed to be written by the initiates of the Egyptians who could also see the characters spiritually - the second level of scripture: the practical, the commercial - with the Egyptians earthly sensual things become symbols: bird Ba for the astral body - Depiction of the etheric body: figures with bent arms at the head stand for the fetching of thoughts from the etheric - Egyptian initiation: initiation into thinking - to Living Thought - From the Sentient Soul Becomes the Intuition Soul - Transforming the Consciousness Soul into the Imagination Soul: Learning to Paint in the Soulful - Painting and its connection with the transformation of the astral - Writing can also be painting - at the computer: playing with Ahriman - Rudolf Steiner: machine writing disturbs the rhythm of the heart - overcoming the ahrimanic in writing in individual textual composition - we learn most where we have the fewest resources: Examples from painting - abstract art: monkey paintings and paintings designed by the I impulse - abstract art goes out of the spatio-temporal world - work on the astral is a prerequisite for the spirit-self-world on the New Jupiter - On the New Jupiter we will live as ethereal beings - our spirit-self created by ourselves will enrich the soul-world as something completely new - the spirit self of the higher hierarchies is completely different: it was not created by a free I, but out of their spirit filling - the small steps towards the spirit-self: e.g. transforming angry responses, not suppressing them - seeing the other as enrichment - The right spirit-self and its dark counter-image which we make a gift of to the soratic entities - the path of black magic: striving for spiritual dominion over fellow human beings - at the time 6-6-6 - getting away from classical good and evil - the soratic world: a perfect world in which everyone has their unchanging place - soratic world: essential decisions are already made during our earth evolution - walking black magic paths and seducing others to follow them consciously or unconsciously: the way back is very far and full of power-sapping resistance - victims can become perpetrators - suffered abuse: Passing on Suffering or Strengthening the I with the Tremendous Powers Contained Within - the healthiest path of development: to seek by my own strength the challenges by which I grow - We shape our own destiny, but the detours that lead to the goal are not predictable - carrying into our earth-consciousness the consciousness of the great I - "Who is stronger, me or I?" - letting our ego grow bigger so that it takes more and more into its shell: rejoicing in a fulfilled, beautiful life of the neighbour - becoming more aware in the future that we are doing "it": to grasp what our real I and our accompanying angel want - Transforming the soulish and ethereal and spiritualising the physical - Physical is not the same as material or mineral - Elementals have a physical body that is not material: a woodcarver can get the portrait of a root dwarf out of the root - Towards the spirit-soul astral world on the next cosmic stage of development? Or to the counter-spiritual, dark astral world? - the seven Kabirs in Faust are "the gods of becoming" - the eighth (Kabir) that no one has thought of yet: ready to build a new world up to the physical - Rudolf Steiner has repeatedly expressed in hitherto unique clarity the great spiritual task of man and his goal

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Thematic reading suggestions

Rudolf Steiner on the change of handwriting:

Rudolf Steiner: Nervousness and Iness (lecture given in Munich on 11 January 1912; GA 143).

The lecture has also been published as a single print with commentary by Frank Meyer:

Rudolf Steiner: Nervosität und Ichheit - Stressbewältigung von Innen, Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Basel 2015, ISBN 978-3-7274-5274-1.