The Apocalypse of John - 1. lecture by Wolfgang Peter
Main topic
The Apocalypse is a spiritual revelation and the guide for man's development until the end of earth's evolution and the new birth on the New Jerusalem
Key words
John the Evangelist - Review of life on earth - John the Baptist - Lazarus - Old Egyptian Initiation - Raising of the Dead - The events of Holy Week - Apocalypse of Jesus Christu - Christ has the key to the kingdom of death and shadows - Key of David - Dante's Divine Comedy - The New Jerusalem and the New Jupiter - the First and Second Deaths - the number of seven, cycles of seven - Chronobiology and metabolic processes - Development of man - Reincarnation and karma - Freedom of man - The Ego and the Everyday Ego - the Seven Creator Spirits and the Seven Churches - the Spiritualisation of the Physical Body - the I-Consciousness, the Material and the Reflection on the Physical - Resistant forces - Decay processes and death - Development into a Spiritual Man - Imagination, inspiration and intuition
To the film
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You can find more lectures from the Apocalypse of John by Wolfgang Peter here: Lecture Series Apocalypse of John by Wolfgang Peter
Transcription 1st lecture Apocalypse of John by Ghislaine and Susanne
Introduction 0:00:36
So my dears, I think we'll just begin. No one missed anything, so even those of you who weren't there last time, you didn't miss much. We've basically just dealt with the beginning of John's Apocalypse, we've basically had the first sentence and we've tied some things in with that.
So the question we have had is: Who is this John who writes this Apocalypse of John and who also wrote the Gospel of John, that is, the evangelist John, how did he become this person who was able to write these things? And we have come to the conclusion, according to Rudolf Steiner, that it is in truth about the resurrected Lazarus. You may know that this is described in the Bible in the New Testament, the raising of Lazarus as a kind of raising of the dead, as they say, which is in reality an initiation process. An initiation process that in a way is similar to what was more or less common since Egyptian times. We then also spoke at some length about the Egyptian initiation. There, the initiation students had to go through long and difficult examinations before they were admitted to the central initiation experience. These trials repeatedly led them into life-threatening' situations, that was such an important point. The will powers were trained, it was also trained that he really walks on the border of death always, in a way, during these examinations - and when the initiate was found ripe for the great examination, then he was actually put into a death-like state for three days or three and a half days. This was done by meditations, also by certain means given to them, drugs, if you like, which produced a seemingly dead state, you might say. For the aim of the initiation was, after all, to be able to report something out of the spiritual world, to be able to experience something there and to be able to report from there.
The initiation in ancient Egyptian culture 0:03:14
So the problem is, how do you get there, how do you get to experiences beyond the threshold. The way that was done in Egyptian culture by name, but basically in all advanced cultures at that time, was just to really put the person in this dead-like state for three and a half days. About three and a half days. If you know Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of how life after death takes place, then you know that the three and a half days approximately after death one experiences a review of the past life on earth. Like in a large life panorama, this picture of the past life appears to one and one now really recognises all that one has done in this life, one really gets to know oneself in a certain way. You see this picture with a very interesting distance, so like a beautiful panorama, you can say, so even the negative events you see in their meaning for life and what you also take away through it in a certain way. So that is a very sunny, a very happy experience. That is - as a side note - for example, the descriptions that one finds in Islam, given by Mohamed, where he speaks of the joys of paradise, they refer above all to the experience of this life panorama, that is, this very happy experience in the three days after death. So there is nothing unpleasant about it for the person who has crossed over. Only, what one does not yet experience here, or what one does not yet get, is an immediate insight into the real spiritual world. It is still memory of earth life. This is connected with the fact that the life-forces which have animated us during the whole earth-life, have animated the body, that during these three days or three and a half days they still remain in a certain closer connection, So the etheric body of the human being - the life forces are this etheric body of the human being, the etheric body is also the carrier of memory, the actual carrier of memory - it remains in a certain compact form during these three and a half days and then begins to dissolve. The dissolving means it connects with the world ether and then this panorama disappears in a certain way.
And only then, when this panorama disappears, does the actual view into the soul world begin, at first not yet into higher spiritual worlds, but at least into the soul world. So there one has only really gone over the threshold, so properly. And that means that if, for the purpose of initiation, one ultimately transfers the human being to such a death-like state, one must once get over these three/three and a half days - or at least get to this threshold - so that one can get an insight into the spiritual world or, more precisely, into the world of the soul at all, because before that one only experiences the review of earthly life. Retrospection means that one can basically move freely in this life panorama, look at various events in life, so to speak, and view them from a higher vantage point, so to speak. But that is not yet the actual spiritual. So you have to get over this limit of three/three and a half days, but in the Egyptian initiation you had to be very careful that the connection to the physical body, which is now lying there as if dead, was often really put into a sarcophagus for the purpose of initiation, that the connection to this physical body is not completely broken off, because if it is completely broken off, the life is completely out, the soul is completely out, the spiritual is completely out and this connection is severed, then no way back is possible. Then death really occurs. And the Egyptian initiation was set up in such a way that the priests who supervised the initiation process, who were usually twelve priests who were around the person to be initiated and supervised this state, could observe exactly when the last possible moment was, that they had to bring him back. So they brought him back mainly by letting the sunlight fall on him in the right way, that is, by waking him up with the light, but also, of course, by recitation and the like, by incense, by waking him up with explanations. And then they had to bring him back very quickly - and the initiation disciple was trained, rehearsed, to now quickly report what he had seen over there. It's like waking up from a dream in the morning. If you don't immediately record what happened in the dream, it's usually gone and you can't remember it. Because dream experiences, even less soul-spiritual experiences, cannot be recorded with our normal memory. So you can't actually hold on to an imagination, a real imagination, and that is an imagination that a person has at first in the initiation, you can't hold on to it with your memory, you can at most try to come back to such an experience. If you want to have it again, you actually have to go there again and see it again. What I can remember very well is when I now, at the moment of waking up or coming out, as it was with the Egyptian initiation, put it into words and tell it. I can remember these words. And it is not only the initiate who remembers these words for the rest of his life, but also the priesthood that surrounded him. By hearing them once, they have remembered these words. And it must be said that this initiation disciple did not speak an everyday language, but he spoke it in a cultic language, that is, with certain rhythms that are in it. It was the Egyptian language in terms of the words, but the way it was formed, we would say today it was poetic, it was cultic and it immediately impressed itself on the memory. It is this exalted priestly way of speaking and to a certain extent it still resonates today. It sticks differently, has a different effect, but nevertheless, it is a translation of the soul-spiritual experience into an earthly language. You have to think, even in the afterlife, the language we spoke here on earth disappears. It disappears very quickly. Not immediately after the three and a half days, but very soon it is gone. It is, if you like, a spiritual language that is then spoken, but that is then only an auxiliary term to call it "language", it is a different experience. That means that the initiation student had to get over these three and a half days, then he could have the experience from "over there", that is, from beyond the threshold - and at the moment of waking up he could bring this experience in. Bring it in for himself and for the priesthood that surrounded him.
The Initiation of Lazarus 0:11:52
And something similar happened with the initiation of Lazarus. Only the starting point was different. This Lazarus has not now been put into such a death-like state by a priesthood or by anyone else, but he has - you could say - fallen into this state of his own accord. I say "of his own accord", but I must add that it was in some way the after-effect of the words of the priest with whom he had a great deal of contact. I must add that Lazarus was a very important man in Jerusalem, a very rich man and very well known, that is to say, known throughout Jerusalem, and he also confessed himself to be a follower of the Christ. He experienced what the Christ spoke so intensely that, as an after-effect of this experience, he fell into this death-like state of his own accord, fell so deeply into this state that the people around him believed that he had died and then laid him in the grave. And when the Christ then learns that Lazarus has died, he takes his time and does not go straight to Lazarus in Bethany to raise him. He simply waits. He waits for two days and nothing happens. And then he goes on his way - and only on the fourth day, at the very last possible moment, on the fourth day, that is really very late, he wakes Lazarus with the words "Lazarus come out". These were, in a figurative sense, the words of awakening, as the Egyptians also spoke them, in the Egyptian language, of course. And Lazarus now brought a lot of experiences with him and from the aftermath of these experiences, for example, the Gospel of John came into being, the Apocalypse of John also came into being in a certain way, but that is still a deepening stage in a certain way. Of course, one can now ask oneself why he is now called John and no longer Lazarus. He was not called John before. Last time we tried to find out where that came from. You have to know that relatively shortly before the raising of Lazarus, John the Baptist was beheaded by order of Herod; you certainly know the story. And the point is that after the death of John - the Baptist now - this John the Baptist became something like a guardian spirit or community spirit of the twelve apostles. The twelve apostles also included the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, so also a John, but John Zebedee.
So among these twelve apostles John the Evangelist is not to be counted at first, but it is now therefore as follows: The spirit of this John the Baptist becomes in some way something like an inspiring community soul and community spirit of this circle of twelve, of these twelve apostles, and the whole thing then condenses even further. There is then the transfiguration of Christ. So this is also shortly before the raising of Lazarus, this effect of John the Baptist on the apostles is condensed, now on three very specific apostles, on the two sons of Zebedee and on Peter. That is, he is now only the community spirit of these three, if you will. They thereby attain a higher possibility of knowledge. The rest of the apostles could not have experienced the transfiguration, which is a spiritual experience, only these three could. And at the raising of Lazarus, if you like, the last condensation takes place. There is now a very intimate communion of Lazarus, who is raised, who passes through this initiation, and a connection with the spirit of John the Baptist. One must know that with every initiation, when it happens, a human being on earth always works together here with at least one spiritual being who is over there. There is no other way. One must come to a very concrete connection with a spiritual being from over there. One does not simply go into the spiritual world. It is only possible if you have a very, very intensive relationship with a very specific spiritual being with whom you are fatefully connected or come into contact. And in this case it is this connection between Lazarus here on earth with John the Baptist, who is over there. And after this John the Baptist, Lazarus gets his initiation name John. So that explains why we have a Gospel of John and this John is not John Zebedee, but another one. But this resurrected Lazarus/John participates in the Last Supper. He is always mentioned in the Gospel as the disciple whom the Lord loved. So he who rests in the bosom of the Lord, rests at his breast, who is not mentioned by name, but who is, so to speak, at the same time one of the twelve apostles and at the same time the resurrected Lazarus, who is called John because he is connected with John the Baptist and who is now also - at this moment at least - the apostle John, namely during the Last Supper. That's when this circle of twelve is really completed. That is to say, John Zebedee was, in a certain sense, until then the representative for the resurrected Lazarus, who has now become John. And this is, so to speak, the final form of the circle of twelve, the twelve apostles.
The Christ and the Kingdom of Death 0:19:28
It is quite interesting because this whole event around the Christ really condenses, most condenses in this last moment beginning with Maundy Thursday, yes perhaps with the whole Holy Week before, but especially with Maundy Thursday, and then just further with the experience also with Good Friday. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross is also the moment of the fullest incarnation. You have to think that the incarnation of Christ begins with John's baptism, three years before, and is a gradual process. It didn't happen all at once, you don't have to believe that the Christ was already fully incarnated with the baptism of Jordan, but it is a process that goes on until the last minute, until the last minute. Then it is accomplished. So when the words of Christ on the cross are "It is finished", that is exactly what is meant, namely that the incarnation has now been completed and Christ has become fully human. Immediately at the moment of death. It is something very important that this incarnation in its fullness, in all its fullness, basically takes place in a single moment. There it is complete. That is also the moment when he passes through death, the Christ, and basically descends into the realm of death. We know Holy Saturday is the descent into the underworld, the descent into hell, if you like, the descent into the realm of the dead, into the realm of death. Something that is not normally possible in the ages. Man was still ahead of the angelic beings, archangels, primal angels, etc., and also ahead of the Christ, all other spiritual beings, in going into the kingdom of death, into this darkness, into hell, if you like, into the kingdom of the dead. We were the ones who had experience of it, a certain experience at least. But all the other spiritual beings who are above us, up to the Christ, did not know the realm of death. In the spiritual world there is no death. It is a very special kingdom, and the fact that the Christ completed his humanity on Golgotha means that he can descend into this kingdom of death.
It is also expressed very clearly in the text of the Apocalypse, I will perhaps read it out. I have to find the passage quickly... Yes, so it is still in the first chapter, towards the end of the first chapter, and there John now has a Christ encounter. In fact, it is the trigger for the whole writing of the Apocalypse of John, because you have to think, what does "Apocalypse of John" mean? These are the first words with which it begins: "Apokalypse Jesu Christu" is actually what it means. The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ and Apocalypse means as much as unveiling, revealing. So it is about the unveiling of the nature of Jesus Christ. That is the content of the Apocalypse. And we also pointed out last time that the Christ is very much connected with our human ego. We will have to work that out much, much more precisely in the next lecture or lectures. The Apocalypse has something to do with this, with the unveiling of the nature of our ego. And what significance the Christ has for this. So what John describes here is really an encounter with the Christ and then he says:
"When I saw him, I fell down at his feet and was as dead".
Falling down at his feet and being as dead is again an image for the fact that he is actually experiencing something that is beyond the threshold, beyond the threshold. So it is not a sensual event, but a spiritual experience that he has. But then it goes on:
"But he (that is, the Christ) laid his right hand upon me, saying, Fear not. I am the first and the last and the living. I was dead."
Please note the "I was dead," says the Christ. No spiritual being could have said that about man until then. None of these beings were ever dead. "I was dead, yet I carry the life of the world through all the eons. Mine is the key to the realm of death and shadows". So, the 'Christ has the key to the kingdom of death and shadows. This is also something very important.
The Shadow Forces in the Kingdom of Death 0:26:19
We will then hear it a little later in the Apocalypse about the key of David, the key of David is the key to the spiritual world. And we as human beings, if we strive spiritually accordingly, have access to both keys in a certain way. We can open or close the gate to the spiritual world. We can open and close the gate to the world of death, to the world of shadows. This is connected with our human freedom - or it is based on the fact that we can open these gates in a certain sense by our own power. That is the essential passage for us for the time being. This "I was dead, yet I carry the life of the world through all the eons. Mine is the key to the realm of death and shadows". And it was precisely into this realm of death that John himself went, that is, Lazarus/John in the course of his initiation. That is the path through which one must pass. It has to be said that this encounter with the realm of the shadows is very important, especially in the initiation process. It is not usually the case that when one passes normally over the threshold, that is, through death, that one experiences too much of this realm of shadows immediately after death. If one passes through in the state of initiation, that is, in this death-like sleep, then one is very much confronted with this realm. Very clearly. And also with all the shadow sides that exist there and the forces of temptation that are connected with it. One experiences these very strongly and it is precisely for this that the initiation student had to prepare himself very intensively in the Egyptian initiation. This test is actually the Ahrimanic side that one encounters in order to get through it. So that means that these were often very gruesome experiences that this initiation disciple had to go through again and again over years - and they increased more and more. Only when they had endured this were they considered ready to really go through the last great test, the three-day sleep of death.
In the Apocalypse, of course, there are now also all kinds of elements of this, which are connected with this dark world of death. This unveiling of the nature of Jesus Christ reveals at the same time the spiritual world that stands above us, but it also reveals that which rests below us or works below us, ferments below us, however you want to call it. That is precisely the very special position that we have as human beings, this spiritual being that we are as human beings, that we stand between the spiritual world that is above us and the world of death that is below us. Exactly on the border. If you want to have a picture of it: the surface of the earth on which we stand is exactly the borderline. That's where it goes up - and that's where it goes down. We have to deal with both realms. In the Egyptian initiation, and in the ancient oriental initiation in general, it was mainly a question of gaining knowledge of the light side, that is, the side above us, because the power to deal with the dark side was not yet very strong. So we already had certain experiences that anticipate something that we basically have to experience to a much greater extent today if we want to go into the spiritual world. For the person who wants to have real spiritual experiences today or is ready to have them... Whoever wants to have such insights today and also wants to have them in a healthy way, must or must not shy away from the confrontation with the dark forces.
Dante's Divine Comedy - Descent into the Realm of Shadows and Ascent 0:31:28
This is part of the reason why Dante depicts this subterranean realm so drastically and so intensely in his Divine Comedy. Basically, what Dante describes there is also an initiation experience. There he shows very clearly how the path to the upper spiritual world, that is, what he also calls paradise, that the path leads through the underworld. That the right path is not a direct ascent to paradise, that one would fail there, that in reality one would already enter a world of light, but it would be the Luciferic world. It would not be the real spiritual world, but the world of the Luciferic entities. They are also spiritual entities, but spiritual entities which are in a certain way retarded, which therefore have not developed their full spiritual powers. That is to say, if man were to incorporate himself into this realm, he would also ultimately block off or at least slow down his path to the future. In pre-Christian times it was not yet so problematic, but in post-Christian times it becomes problematic. That is, we have to pass the test of going through the underworld, if you will. That's why Dante describes it so clearly in his "Divine Comedy": the path goes down to the centre of the earth. That's an image, of course. It is not a matter of descending with crampons, of drilling into the earth, but of going spiritually into the depths. Descending into the dark depths of our own being. And the dark depths of the earthly world as well. So you have to think that our earth itself has this double form. On the one hand, it has a variety of luminous spiritual forces, high spiritual forces, but there are also dark forces in it. Down there in the earth, there is the kingdom of Ahriman. There is the realm of the spirits of darkness, if you like. Lucifer hovers a little above it, but Ahriman and even stronger adversary forces live down there. And that's where you have to go through.
With Dante, the path leads through the centre of the earth. Then the ascent begins. Interestingly enough, he goes very quickly, scurries up a few corridors and ends up on the surface of the earth and comes out at the mountain of purification. And the mountain of purification is what leads them into the so-called purgatory, into purgatory, if you like. So that is the first supersensible realm that leads beyond the earth, and that is precisely the realm in which the Luciferic entities also essentially live. There we must purify ourselves of all these Luciferic forces in order to be able to ascend into the real paradise and the real spiritual world. That is then the third part of Dante's Divine Comedy. But this applies to all forms of Christian initiation in a certain way. These stages are in there somewhere, it's hardly where it's so clearly stated as in Dante, so systematically, but it's in there just as much in the Apocalypse. There is also the confrontation with the very, very dark forces. That's why there are also images in it that seem very frightening to us at first glance, but in reality they are only the expression of a purification process that we have to go through. If we did not go through it, we would not gain insight into the spiritual world.
The New Jerusalem - a New Earth 0:35:47
The view is opened in the Apocalypse of John above all then to the so-called New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is a kind of new planetary state that will one day become our earth. When we as humanity and the earth as a whole have gone through a certain development, at some point in the future the earth as the planet as we know it now will die, pass away, be destroyed; must be destroyed, just as ultimately our physical body must one day be destroyed - and then the New Jerusalem will be. Rudolf Steiner often calls it in his lectures, calls it the New Jupiter that will come. It is a kind of new planet, which will of course be different from our Earth. It is still some distance away, we still have a little time before we get there, but there we will be moved into a new higher spiritual state, but we will be ripe to pass over into that higher spiritual state, a state that is in some ways comparable to what the present angelic beings possess. It will be different from our present angelic beings, but in terms of spiritual potency it will be comparable to it. And then, above all, we will not have such a body as we have today - and above all under different conditions. An important moment in the Apocalypse of John is also given where John speaks of the so-called first death and the so-called second death. It's quite late in the Apocalypse, so you ask yourself, what is it with the first death and the second death? I don't want to go into it in detail today, but it has to do with the fact that we finally discard our physical body there, discard it in every conceivable form, and we won't get it back in this form either, that we have to learn to live without it. So, the first death has to do with finally discarding the physical body forever. And the second death means finally discarding the etheric body that belongs to it. That doesn't mean that we won't have anything etheric later on, but not in the form we have it now. This will be discussed in much more detail in a later lecture, but here it is as a suggestion.
The seven churches and the number seven 0:38:54
I have now repeated quite a lot of what we discussed last time. Now we should go a little further and look at what is described in the Apocalypse. I'll just read a short piece and then explain it. In the first chapter, even before the passage I read to you, John addresses his words very specifically to the seven churches in Asia. So seven Christian churches in Asia - there were certainly more churches - they are the seven, if you like, leading churches, so at least in the spiritual sense leading, in the external sense it was another chapter. The number seven will be encountered very often in the Apocalypse of John, the Apocalypse of John works a lot with numerical rhythms, they play a very important role. Where the number seven occurs, one can always be attentive to it, it has something to do with a temporal development, with an evolution, with a developmental series. The number seven is also the number of the etheric, for example. The etheric forces, the life forces, have something to do with time. Life takes place in time and life freezes when nothing changes. Then death has occurred. After death, decay always follows. But no longer a living development.
So, when the number seven plays a role, a living development is always meant. So, for example, the human body renews itself about every seven years. One of the reasons why Rudolf Steiner often speaks clearly in education about these seven-year cycles that the human being goes through is that the child enters school at the age of seven, with the change of teeth, that puberty occurs at the age of fourteen, that new spiritual forces awaken, that the twenty-first year of life is very important, that the ego begins to emerge quite clearly. And so it goes on - again and again in cycles of seven, which, however, are no longer so clearly noticeable externally, but if you look at it a little more closely, they are also there. On the outside, however, they are connected with the fact that the body physically renews itself every seven years and in the course of about seven years has completely replaced itself materially. Rudolf Steiner has always pointed this out, but it has often been taken for an old wives' tale. You know that scientists always believe nothing at first, they are always sceptical - perhaps that is also their virtue. But if they are thorough, they can be proven wrong. It is indeed the case that in recent years, through systematic investigations, medical, biological, chemical investigations, it has actually been possible to prove that the substances in the human body renew themselves on average every seven years. There are some that take a little longer, there are some that renew more quickly, but if you take the average, it really is every seven years.
So basically, after seven years there is nothing left of us that was there seven years ago. Materially, we have become something completely new, but we have retained our forms to some extent, at least in such a way that we are usually recognisable after seven years. You can get a little older, you change a little, but we clearly recognise the human being. So the form, that is the etheric forces that renew this form again and again, they go through this whole period of seven, but the physical is renewed again and again. Basically, physically speaking, we don't just die once at the end of life, but in each seven-year period we basically, materially speaking, lay down a corpse. Dispersed into the world. It happens quite inconspicuously, with every breath, with every food we take in and excrete again, with what we sweat out and the like, with all that it goes away, with the scales on the skin, where something constantly flakes off, something always goes away again. So we are completely new people, materially speaking, after seven years. And behind this is ultimately a rhythm of the etheric body. In truth, it is this rhythm that brings about these seven-year cycles. With many sub-rhythms that also play a role. In the sciences today, there is already a discipline that has been developing since the middle of the twentieth century and has become increasingly clear in the last few years, that is "chronobiology". Chronobiology deals with the rhythms that work in the human body and also in animals. And many exciting things have been discovered - and among other things, the daily rhythm plays a major role, but also seven rhythms, for example seven rhythms as a quarter of a month. The month is again connected with the lunar rhythm, the daily rhythm, which is connected with the rotation of the earth, the lunar rhythm is connected with the moon's orbit. It has its subdivisions and a quarter of them are about seven days. That is also not accidental that we have a seven-day week. It is very wise. One could make the calendar quite differently, but then it would no longer be in harmony with these natural rhythms, these natural rhythms, behind which in truth stands the etheric body. That is behind it - or the etheric world in general. Cosmically, it is the etheric world, in us it is the etheric body, that is, the internalisation of these rhythms. There are x rhythms in the body, i.e. very, very fast ones that vibrate quite nervously, so to speak - I deliberately say nervously, because that is very strongly connected with the nervous system - and there are much longer rhythms that go more leisurely and that renew us right down to the metabolic processes within seven years.
Development in Time and Timelessness 0:46:18
So, John has a lot to do with these forces and that is why he speaks very often of the seven number and that is why he speaks of the seven churches. That is the reason. That is the real reason, because these seven churches are - you could say - representatives of certain stages of development. So they represent seven stages of development, which together make up a great whole. Yes, I might read a bit of it:
"John to the seven churches in Asia:
Grace and peace to you from Him who is and who was and who is to come,
from him who is, and who was, and who is to come,
and from the seven creative spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ."
"From him who is, and who was, and who is to come, that is, he who has basically spanned all time, the past, the present and the future, who spans the arch.
In the spiritual self, time and temporal development no longer play the role they do here in our earthly life on earth. In a way, we enter the realm of eternity, of timelessness - and yet there is movement in there. That seems paradoxical, how does a movement go when there is no more time. One can just, how shall I put it, in what we call time, call it here time, basically move freely, move freely. That actually already begins in the ether world. The experience in the etheric world is already such that we can move freely in time. That is, we can go back, not just look back simply, but really go back - etherically. But we can also go into the future, take a look, so to speak, into the future at least. How this future, which we experience in the etheric, then also materialises in the physical, is another chapter. The etheric world is much, much richer than the physical world - and the physical is actually a dead thing, a thing that has died out of the etheric world, and that means that the physical manifests itself in that something etheric dies, but much other etheric continues. And the etheric encompasses the future, everything that continues in the etheric world. And one thing keeps dying out, so to speak, and manifesting here as something physical. What we can survey today in the etheric is all this fullness that flows from us into the future or goes into the future. What we cannot decisively foresee is every single physical event that dies out. So what exactly is going to die, we don't foresee in the etheric. But we can at least see a certain line, a certain direction in which the whole thing is going. We also see that certain things have to happen, namely as compensation for what has happened in the past.
Repeated Earth Lives and the Freedom of Man 0:50:06
I must now make the connection with another sub-topic, so to speak, namely the subject of Reincarnation and Karma. You know, if you are already familiar with Anthroposophy, that we are talking about repeated lives on earth. Man does not live only once on earth, but he lives repeatedly on earth. That is to say, when he dies, he passes first through the soul world for a time, then through the spiritual world, and then descends again after a shorter or longer time to a new incarnation. Simply because this earthly existence offers us the many possibilities for development that we could not exhaust in an incarnation. Or we are not so far advanced spiritually that we would manage to complete our earthly development in a single incarnation. We need a little longer. We have to go through a few times. We are students who may have to go through the class a few times. We can naturally excel during our earthly incarnation. In a sense, the spiritual beings who are above us cannot make mistakes.
So you might say, 'Well, then I'd like to be like that too, that would be great'. Yes, but then we wouldn't have the freedom. This is a big word, because it already says that even the angelic beings who are above us - and also the higher angelic beings who are above them, up to the highest angelic beings - do not have the freedom that man has. They fulfil the will of God as a matter of course, if you want to put it in our terms. That is to say, the high spiritual that is above them flows into them, they absorb it and out of it they act. Without error. That is wonderful. Basically nothing can go wrong. But - they don't have the possibility of free decision-making. Basically, they don't even come up with the idea. The highest spiritual source, the divine self, had to create the possibility for freedom in the world, and this is connected with the ability to make mistakes, not to follow what flows down from the spiritual world. What distinguishes us as human beings is that we cannot follow the spiritual world. One could now say, well, that can't be the human ideal, that we now rebel against the divine. Well, yes and no. It is the prerequisite for us to be able to turn to the spiritual again in freedom after we have rebelled against it. This gives it a completely different quality. We fill ourselves with the spiritual, not because we cannot do otherwise, but we fill ourselves with it because we want it, because we open ourselves to it of our own free will. But that means that then a spiritual lives in us that is comparable to the supreme spiritual world from which everything flows. That means that in us, in our ego, a source opens up that is really, yes, one has to say it, consubstantial with the highest divine. Even if it is, so to speak, the small edition of it, the miniature edition, and we only experience this in individual moments, perhaps once in one incarnation or perhaps not at all in five incarnations, but once there is a moment when we are consubstantial with the highest Divine. Where we are the embodiment of the divine. Where we are consubstantial with Christ.
The Enigma of the Ego 0:54:52
There is the beautiful Pauline word that Rudolf Steiner mentions very often and usually gives in the form, "Not I, but the Christ in me". One could very easily misunderstand this word by saying: "I give up my free will and the Christ shall now do for me or through me". But that is not what is meant. In the "not I" is meant my little "everyday ego". - because that is not our ego - we have to cross that out. So, whether we love a roast pork or are grumpy because of our personal circumstances, that of course has nothing to do with the spiritual world. It stands in our way. So this ego, the "I want, I want, I have to, I need", you really have to get rid of that. But our actual ego, in reality, we will not experience it in its concrete form in everyday life. We know that we have an I, but that is all we know of it in everyday consciousness. It has nothing to do with how we were born, what kind of education we have, how much money we have, that doesn't matter at all. It really has nothing to do with our ego. You have to get there first, to the conscious experience of your own self. But this is a great moment to experience that we have one. Children usually experience it around the third year. There comes this flash: "I am one I". Many can't remember it later in life. Sometimes it resurfaces later in life, in old age, the memory, just as memories of earlier childhood like to resurface in old age. But some people never forget this experience.
I can remember the experience incredibly well and in all its details. It was sometime in November, maybe it was even on my third birthday, if it wasn't on my third birthday, then it was around St. Nicholas Day, my parents were there, my maternal grandmother, uncles, aunts, behind me there was a fireplace that was lit, it was already quite dark. Suddenly I looked at everything around me with wide, wondering eyes and realised I was something else. I will never forget that. It was like a shock, I can't say whether it was devastating, no, it certainly wasn't devastating - I didn't know that - but it was just so insistent that it came up again and again, and I have to say that the older I get, the more clearly it is there.
There are also moments like that later in life, so Rudolf Steiner describes how he experienced it in his twenty-first year, that is, when the I becomes even more awake. I must read it out one day. It's quite interesting. He was reading the philosopher Schelling, who also describes this experience, and then Steiner describes how he had this experience himself. He was also sure that he also had this experience. So, one can have this I-experience on different levels. It is not to be compared with the everyday ego that we have. Having this ego experience has something to do with the Apocalypse. The apocalypse of Jesus Christ means at the same time the apocalypse of one's own ego, namely at the moment when ego and Christ are one in essence. At the moment when one has such an experience, this unity of essence is there. Only for a moment, then it disappears again - or at least is not in our consciousness. In reality, it is already there somehow, but we cannot make ourselves conscious of it again, perhaps not make ourselves conscious of it for years, not make ourselves conscious of it until the end of our life. But in this one moment it is there. That is what is meant by this Pauline word: "Not I, but the Christ in me". It could be formulated in the same way: "Not the little me, but the real me in me". It is actually exactly the same.
Repeated Earth Lives - Errors and Correction 1:00:18
Let's go back to the seven churches to Asia. It was a bit of a trip. Yes, one thing I wanted to say with this, I wanted to say this but had lost sight of it. It has to do with the repeated earth lives we have to go through. Because our ego only develops further through these many earth lives. We can only acquire the consciousness of our own ego through many earthly lives. But we also make mistakes on earth, we are not like the angels above us, that the spiritual simply flows into us and we implement it, but we can err, we can make mistakes - and thereby burden ourselves with a task, namely by making these mistakes we change the course of the world in a certain way. It is up to us to correct it again. Above all, we ourselves are damaged by it. The Christ helps us to correct the mistakes that remain in the world in a certain way, but what we destroy in ourselves by making mistakes - mistakes also means that we ultimately put our ego in danger or scratch it. In the next incarnation or the one after that, when our strength has grown a little, we have to correct this mistake, you can say. That is what is connected with our karma, with our destiny. Our karma is nothing other than our ego striving to repair the damage it has done to itself, to work on it. We have to, otherwise we would get nowhere. That is, who sends our destiny, our karma, that is ultimately ourselves. Our real self. No one else. We don't need to complain to anyone. We can only be happy that the Christ, by working with and in our I, but in a very individual way, that he helps us to carry this karma, that he also gives us the strength, gives our I the strength. But always only to the extent that we really struggle for it, that is never simply something that is given, but always something that we have to do. That is very important. So, that's the karma we carry with us, which is related to our error, to our possibilities of error. But that's what we mature from. That is why the path is given for many earth lives. That we can experience all this and thereby learn to become free beings.
The Seven Creative Spirits and the Development of Man 1:03:33
But let us now really return to the seven churches.
"John to the seven churches in Asia:
Grace and peace be unto you,
from him who is, and who was, and who is to come,
and from the seven creative spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ."
The seven creative spirits: Well, who are the seven creative spirits? Essentially, they are those spiritual forces or those spiritual beings who created our body shells and who prepared that these spiritual shells, these body shells - yes, there I have already anticipated the word spiritual shells - can one day be transformed into spiritual forces. So, what are these body shells: the physical body, the etheric body, that is, the life forces, then the astral body, which makes us a sensitive, conscious being, in the etheric body we are actually still asleep, in the astral body we at least dream. That is exactly what we have in common with the animals. So, animals also have a certain consciousness, but it is still dream-like, this consciousness. If we only had this consciousness, this astral consciousness, we would not be very awake. We would not recognise ourselves as I. That is to say, the fourth thing that comes along in a certain way is the I or the I-bearer, as Rudolf Steiner often calls it, which is, so to speak, the bodily prerequisite for an I to be able to incarnate. Incarnation means that the I completely permeates the bodily envelopes and thus makes the bodily envelopes as a whole the I-bearer, but that is this fourth principle. The I, which now incarnates by unfolding its spiritual powers, reshapes the astral body, the etheric body and finally the physical body - through its spiritual powers, through the individual spiritual powers that lie within each I. The astral body, which first of all becomes the I-bearer, becomes the I-bearer. The astral body, which was first given by the spiritual beings, we transform into what Rudolf Steiner calls the spirit self or our higher self. Our real self becomes richer to the same extent that this higher self, this spirit self, is formed. This is, so to speak, a power that our ego has at its disposal. In the Orient it is also called manas. Manas has to do with meynen, to think. Man, the word man, is also connected with it. It is an old Indo-Germanic word. The word man also comes from it. There is another word that comes from it that is found in the Bible, namely mana. When Moses travels through the desert with the Israelite people, he is given mana. It is nothing other than the powers of this spiritual spirit that come down in a certain way to the Israelite people as a whole, at that time not yet to the individual, but to the national community.
If we transform the etheric body through the power of the ego, then the etheric body becomes the life spirit. This power of the life-spirit then lives inside our I. This means that just as the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body surround our ego from the outside, so our ego encloses the spirit self and the life spirit within itself - figuratively speaking. They are part of this I. In the highest form, for example, it means that if I take only the spirit-self, that is, the transformed astral body, then it means that our I has become capable of creating an astral body out of nothing. It is something different from how we normally envelop ourselves in an astral body during our incarnation on earth. For the most part, it is only given to us by the spiritual world - and that will happen as long as we are not able to create one ourselves out of nothing. That is then actually our real astral body, but then we no longer call it astral body, but spirit self. It is then ours alone.
The aim of all initiation processes that have been taking place on earth since Egyptian times or that lead into the future in some other way is to form as much of this spirit self as possible. So, apart from the fact that we are forming our ego here on earth, the people who are really progressing spiritually are those who are already forming a good part of the spiritual self. It then becomes a task on the so-called New Jupiter - or what John calls the New Jerusalem of which I have spoken today - will be to form this spiritual self fully. But we should already have a certain part of it at the end of the earth's evolution, then we will at least be counted among the spiritually developed human beings. Yes, the life spirit is therefore the transformed etheric body. We will not be able to do this alone during the evolution of the earth, to transform the etheric body into the life-spirit. The etheric body to the life-spirit - we can co-operate in this, we can co-operate above all, or we can bring some things further in the direction through the help of the Christ. In that case it is really the help of the Christ, that is, something that cannot be accomplished by our ego. For example, the word "grace" is very important for this. This is a gift that the Christ gives us. As for the spirit self, that is already our own responsibility. That is the endowment with the Holy Spirit, you can call it. But this Holy Spirit is then our Holy Spirit. It is not something that hovers over us or directs us from outside, but something that ultimately belongs to our I, then it has only become real spirit-self, what we are now developing during the development of the earth, that we owe to our I alone. But what we are already bringing forth in life-spirit, at least in a preliminary form, we need the help of the Christ for.
The physical body and our ego-consciousness 1:12:07
And a fortiori we need even the father forces' for this, but which are mediated by the Christ, in order to spiritualise even something of our physical body. Sounds paradoxical. What is a spiritualised physical body? That sounds like a contradiction right now. You have to think, what is the purpose of the physical body in which we are now normally embodied on earth, the physical and material body? Physical and material are not exactly the same thing. The material is actually what fills the physical form. If, for example, the Luciferic temptation had not come, that is, if we had not come under the influence of the adversary forces, then we would not have such a physical body as we have today, in truth, it would have been invisible to sensual eyes.
There are a whole lot of physical beings that are not visible to our eyes. For example, there are elemental beings that certainly have a physical body and yet are not visible to us with sensual eyes. There are whole realms of physical worlds out there that are not visible to us because they are not material. So, our physical body becomes visible through the material. But what does this physical body give us precisely through the fulfilment with the material and through the problematic that is connected with it? It is precisely through the material that the whole physical body tends to decay. The material has this principle of decaying within. If the etheric body is no longer inside and constantly renews these substances in these seven-year cycles we have been talking about, then it simply decays, just as the corpse decays with death. So, by itself, our physical body cannot keep its form. That is because we have this luciferic impact. By being filled with the material, our actually not perfect invisible physical body was actually damaged. This made it visible. Through this it became mortal. But through this we also got our I-consciousness - and get it precisely through the fact that we are mortal.
Our ego-consciousness wakes up at the processes - also in life - when they are processes of decay. For example, with every nerve impulse that passes through, something dies in the brain. It is then excited again, but actually something dies there until death, until a salt-like state in the nerves. That is precisely why the brain is an instrument with which we can acquire consciousness. For this very purpose we need the physical-material brain. Not for thinking, actually. Thinking is not a function of the physical brain. We need the brain to become aware of these thoughts, which are actually etheric forces. Today, as a rule, we have not yet reached the point where we can consciously experience the etheric, which is not visible to the senses, but only leaves its trace in the sensory - then in the forces of growth - so that we can consciously experience this at all, these image forces, these etheric forces, it must be reflected in the physical brain and it is reflected when these decay processes take place in the brain. Then, when it is regenerated again or at least largely regenerated, the consciousness is already gone again. That's when the dying process must take place, that's when we become awake. We have death, the constant death, which has accompanied us in truth since birth, to which we owe consciousness - that is a prerequisite for it - and namely our I-consciousness in particular.
Imagination - Experiencing in the spiritual 1:16:35
Of course, an astral body belongs to it and an etheric body belongs to it, but this ability to die through the material body is very important for our consciousness. That is why we have it and why we need it. We will need it until our consciousness has become capable of getting along without the help of these dying processes. That is, when this consciousness can now look for another counterpart, another mirror, when it no longer needs this physical mirror', when it can, for example, mirror itself in the etheric, that is, in the life forces. This mirroring in the life forces, then, when we enter this life world, we actually acquire another consciousness, a consciousness with which we can already see a little into the spiritual world. That is the consciousness in which we experience imaginations, images, and now we are making huge inverted commas around the word "images" - I will come back to this - images of the spiritual world. They are living images. You can't describe these images like an oil painting, an old painting on the wall, because it's a moving image that changes continuously. You can't really capture it at all. There is a movement in it - we have already discussed the paradox - a movement that takes place in timelessness. The movement arises from the fact that we can look at this picture from different perspectives, can go through it and, if I translate this into the sensual, then a temporal development series, a temporal event becomes out of it. But in the etheric, I can go forwards, backwards, take branches, move freely at any time. But in meditation, when you really get to a real imagination, so that time no longer plays a role, a real imagination, it is experienced in complete timelessness. I think, if I remember correctly, in the first lecture we had, that is, we already had two lectures, I mentioned briefly in the first lecture that one can experience this. Because especially when you do a meditation with today's consciousness, it's not like you're completely out of it and just float in another world, but we still retain the consciousness here for the sensual world, even if we don't concentrate on it, but it remains there. I remain aware that I am in the physical world with my body. I don't go into a dream-like consciousness where I am lifted out and just float completely above it, somewhere. One can really notice under certain circumstances when there is a clock somewhere on the table that I have an incredibly intense imagination, that is, a moving image, as we have discussed, an incredibly rich image, one definitely has the feeling inwardly that what I am experiencing is hours long, that it is something very, very long that is unfolding and unrolling before me - and when I look at the second hand of the clock, it seems to stand still. So what I experience inwardly like hours or days, outwardly no time passes. So that is experienced in an instant, measured against our external time. Similarly, in the dream, in truth, it can also happen sometimes. It is often the case when such a dream is triggered by something, when waking up especially, it is the case when one comes into the sensual world. For example, the morning sun comes in through the window, even when the eyelids are closed, the senses somehow take it in without the sunlight coming to our consciousness. We are still inside the dream and in the dream suddenly a huge fire breaks out, a huge fire, and there you experience a long story: the fire brigade comes, there are dramatic scenes that take place so that the inhabitants in the house can be saved and you think, that took two hours now. You wake up and look at the sun that has just come around the corner, that has just appeared, almost at the same moment. So actually, these dream images also unfold in timelessness, basically. This consciousness, this imaginative consciousness is connected with the fact that when we no longer need the physical body as a mirroring apparatus for consciousness, then we mirror in the living etheric body, then we go out of the time stream and can move freely in time.
The Soul World and Time 1:22:26
In the astral world, in the soul world it is still different, there is a very special paradox, there time seems to come towards us. Future, time seems to move in reverse. That is very important, because that is the way in which creative impulses come into the world. In order for something to manifest creatively in the physical world, there must always be a physical time stream that goes from the past into the future, that we know in normal life. There must be the etheric, where timelessness, above all mobility, prevails in time - and something must come from the future, actually from the end of the process of development - and where the stream from the past and the stream from the future collide, it becomes our momentary present. Something is happening there.
With every event that takes place in the world, it is never only a consequence of the past, as is often believed in natural science, because they only have the physical-sensual means at their disposal, therefore they only know this time stream that comes from the past and goes into the future and they can only deduce what will perhaps happen in the future from what has happened in the past. With simple things, you can even predict it: How a stone falls, that can be predicted quite well as a physicist, unless something disturbing comes along, if a bird flies by or something; but otherwise, most real events that happen in the world cannot be predicted, because they are not only determined by the past, but are co-determined, half so to speak, at least half, by what steers us from the future. That has to come together. So that means that when we move on into the imagination or from the imagination, something comes in that goes beyond this picture consciousness and that shows us something of the future. Something shows us where this development is going, because this goal actually meets us, in a way. We have to look at the beginning and at the end in order to be able to understand the present moment of development at all. These two currents have to come together.
I will now read to you in between sentences from the Apocalypse, where this is also indicated to a certain extent, very clearly. Again, where basically the Christ speaks or at least the angel speaks through the Christ. It says:
"I am the Alpha and the Omega."
This is what is meant in Greek, the beginning and the end. The first and the last letter in the Greek alphabet, the Alpha and the Omega.
"Thus saith the Lord our God, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Commander of the universe."
That's all in there. The is, the was and the is to come. The present, that's where it starts with the present, "he who is". So that's important, to keep it in view as well, so the order is not random, because the experience always begins in the present moment. The moment is at the same time, the whole of eternity is in it at the same time. From here, I look to both sides, to what was there, so I look back, so I also look at what determines my destiny, because - as far as we human beings are concerned - all the mistakes that we have made and that we have to repair in the future, that is, what we have to work on, are also in there. We also see something that we are heading towards, namely our ego, our individual ego. Every individual ego has a special nuance. It's not that we all have exactly the same goal. We all contribute together perhaps to an even higher goal, that's how you might outline it. You can also find that in there in the words.
The Spiritualisation of the Physical Body - Goal of Human Evolution 1:28:22
Now I come back to the seven Creator Spirits in connection with the physical bodies of man. I have not yet told you what becomes of the physical body when it is spiritualised. Now I hope that you have gained a little impression that the physical can also be spiritualised - and that is not simply to be equated with the material-physical, which we know as our body. That there is actually also an invisible physical, that it is in truth the actual physical. If we succeed, with the help of the Christ and with the help of the Father forces, in restoring this originally spiritual, but in such a way that it now completely fits our I, then we produce our highest spiritual, which we can now once attain, this is what Rudolf Steiner so aptly calls the spiritual man. That is the highest spiritual thing that we can develop at all, as far as we can grasp it at all, that lies precisely in the spiritualisation of the physical. The physical must not be held in low esteem, but one must see that the greatest task of man lies in at least collaborating in the spiritualisation of this physical. This is also connected with the resurrection of the Christ. The resurrection powers of the Christ, which could not come into effect without the effect of the Father, are connected with the transformation of the physical body into spiritual people. That it really succeeds completely means that out of our own strength, out of our own ego, we are then able to bring forth such a high, such a spiritualised physical body. But this is certainly no longer a body that is material. So we will then not walk around on a material globe or other sphere - or however it may be shaped - in a material body, but that will be just the highest spiritual that will then enter. For this you must think, why is it actually the highest spiritual and how else is it connected with the material?
I mean, the physical is the most difficult thing to work on. In the soul we can already work a little today, at least to some extent, to bring forth the spiritual self, consciously or unconsciously. An artist, when he is really creatively active, when he creates a new work in his soul and then realises it externally, but for that he must experience it in his soul, then he is creatively and spiritually active, then he is active out of his spiritual self. That is to say, he transforms the astral, the soul into real spirit-self. This spiritual self, or this little spark of spiritual self that he has within himself, he has created out of his ego. Out of nothingness, basically. He has taken it from nowhere else, from nowhere outside, but from himself.
It is much more difficult to create etheric forces out of nothing, that is, to develop life spirit. That is much more difficult. We are not yet able to do that on the whole, but we need the help of the Christ to be able to do it. We don't even need to talk about the physical, because we can hardly do anything ourselves, namely consciously. In order for it to become our own, we must be able to do it consciously, that is, consciously transform the physical body into this high spiritual man. That is only rudimentarily the case.
Even today, only the highest spiritual hierarchies, namely the Christ and the Father Divinity, can really work on the physical, but very high angelic beings are involved as executing organs. For example, the "thrones" are in the leading position. They are in the upper group of three hierarchies. Above them are only the zodiacal beings, the cherubim and then the seraphim, who are basically connected with the whole cosmos, beyond the visible universe - and even beyond the visible, at least for our eyes beyond the visible. So these are very, very high spiritual entities that stand behind the physical. In the spiritual, no matter who can work today, so to speak. The angelic beings who are closely connected with us, the actual angels, they all cannot do that. But we are about to reach the point where we will be able to create a complete physical body. It will then no longer be called a physical body, but it will be called a spiritual person. It is he who will make our highest consciousness possible.
Today we only have a mirror image, because today we also become most conscious at the physical, but through the material, which is basically contaminated. We cannot yet become self-aware on the etheric body. We cannot yet do that. If we only had ego and astral body, we would not know anything about ourselves, nothing at all. It is precisely in the physical that one can develop the highest consciousness. This is just as true for the spiritual man. That is to say, the spiritual man is the highest spiritual element that we can acquire. How it then continues is another chapter, that is not our subject.
Now I have made a huge insertion, just to explain a little bit what the seven number is all about, these stages of development. We have come via these seven stages of human development or these seven members of the being, via the physical body, via the etheric body, via the astral body, via the I, which stands in the middle, up to the spiritual members of the being, which we can acquire by our own strength, the spirit self, the life spirit, the spiritual man. That has to do with the number seven. And we have come to these, simply because it was of seven churches that John speaks, to whom he addresses himself and to whom he now writes a letter in a certain way, to the seven churches. In doing so he mentions the seven creative spirits, I'll read the short passage again.
"John to seven churches in Asia:
May grace and peace be yours,
from him who is, and who was, and who is to come,
and from the seven creative spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ."
The seven creative spirits are precisely the spiritual beings who help to create our seven members. For in general, that we also have to bring forth the higher spiritual members of being, which we actually have to bring forth ourselves - because only then are they ours - they still have to be prepared. That is, so to speak, if you express it in earthly terms, a model for it. That has to be prepared. These seven creative spirits are working on this. It would go too far to say which angelic beings they are, they are also high angelic beings, very high. You should not be surprised that the thrones, for example, have something to do with preparing the physical body and also the spiritual man, that they have their hands in this, because they are capable of working into the physical, for example. Just as a small hint.
On the spiritual vision of John on Patmos 1:37:53
Now I want to read something to you at the end of the lecture, namely also from the first chapter, what John now writes in detail to these seven churches:
"I, John, your brother and companion in destiny, both in all trials and in the inner kingship, and in the enduring power which we possess as those who are united to Jesus, was on the island of Patmos. There I was to be made partaker of the divine word of the world and to be made worthy of the testimony of the passion of Christ".
It says the suffering of Jesus in the translation. The translation, by the way, is the translation of Emil Bock, one of the founding pastors of the Christian Community. So, on the island of Patmos he has this spiritual vision. He describes very clearly an imagination and how this imagination was translated into sensual images. He cannot communicate the image in any other way than translating it into sensual words. He now describes it like this, which is very typical:
"On the Lord's day I was transported into the spirit realm and heard behind me a tremendous voice like the sound of a trumpet.
This is often so in spiritual experiences that one has the feeling "behind me is this" and my first test is, do I turn around or not. Do I have the courage to turn around, because if I have the courage to turn around, it means I'm going over the threshold in a sense. And that is a kind of death experience. One must also be aware that it is a death experience. And it is also connected with, how shall I say, with the unpleasant side of death, that is, to feel this loss in the physical-physical world - without completely stepping out of the body. You really have the experience of going through death. Without that, you don't cross the threshold. That means the first test is: do I dare to turn around now or not. Of course, this has nothing to do with the outer physical turning over, but in the spiritual world. That is, the turning is to let go of everything that is sensual in order to turn towards the spiritual. This mighty voice like the sound of a trombone. Incidentally, a trombone means - and since we are talking about sound in the first place - that inspiration already plays a part in the emergence of the imagination. In truth, every spiritual experience begins even at a higher level, with intuition. I have to become one with a spiritual being in order to enter the spiritual world at all. That is intuition. But it does not become conscious immediately. It is the prerequisite, so to speak, and forms the unconscious background.
The next stage is inspiration. If you have a real spiritual experience, then you at least have an echo of this inspirational experience, without being able to fully grasp its content, that you hear a voice like a trombone, which is loud and powerful and devastating, but you don't really understand it at that moment.
The third and last thing is actually the imaginative image that builds up - and this image is not a sensual one at first, but it is, you could say, a kind of highly differentiated mood of the soul that you experience. I will perhaps talk about this in more detail another time. There is not enough time now. It is actually a highly differentiated soul experience that one has, which one can now survey like a panorama, which is in motion, which changes, and in this experience one can, so to speak, wander around mentally. That is the actual imagination. But John has to describe it as a mental image. So he hears this voice and he goes on to say or write:
" She said, Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches. To Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea ".
So these are the seven churches. Ephesus, the first, with which John was very closely associated, by the way, that is, in the period long after the events in Palestine, after the death of the Christ on the cross. The island of Patmos, by the way, is very close by, on the coast of Asia Minor, on the mainland there is Ephesus and the mystery site of Ephesus relatively close by. That is another advantage, that there was a mystery site there, an important one. In the beginning, the important Christian centres were all located where the ancient mystery sites were - so this mystery site of Ephesus was closely connected to Patmos, or vice versa, Patmos was in a way an offshoot of the mysteries of Ephesus. So, there are seven churches and the voice speaks that now and John goes on to write:
"And I turned to see him whose voice spoke to me. And when I turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks and in the midst of the candlesticks a figure like that of the Son of Man."
So the Christ appearing in human form.
"Clothed in a long-waisted robe,
his breast girded with a golden girdle,
with a white head, whose hair shone like white wool and like snow,
with eyes like flames of fire,
with feet as if they were gold ore glowing in the fire,
with a voice like the sound of great rivers of water,
in his right hand he held seven stars,
out of his mouth came forth like a sharp two-edged sword,
and his face shone like the sun in all its power."
This is quite a powerful experience. The sensual image is a tired imitation of what is really behind it in the imagination. But it points the way. And how powerful that was comes out further:
"and when I saw him, I fell down at his feet and was as dead. But he laid his right hand on me and said - we have already read this today - Fear not. I am the first and the last and the living. I was dead, yet I carry the life of the world through all the eons. Mine is the key to the realms of death and shadow. Write down what you see, the present and the future. The secret of the seven stars you see in my right hand and the seven golden candlesticks is this. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks are the seven churches themselves."
This ends the first chapter of the Apocalypse and with that I would like to close for today from my side.
Thematic reading suggestions
Supplement as needed...
