LECTURE TWO
September 6, 1924
We
will now take a closer look at the connection between the act
of consecration of man and apocalyptic things, so that we will
then be able to approach the Apocalypse and to see its
significance for the present and future activities of
priests.
Yesterday we had to point to three past epochs of the
mysteries, in so far as these mysteries tried to give each
priest experiences which put him into an apocalyptic mood. We
pointed out that there was a very ancient mystery period during
which the gods descended into the mystery centers in order to
work with human beings, and a semi-ancient mystery period when
the gods sent down their forces, so that the men who lived in
this sphere of forces were able to work with the gods in the
cosmos.
One
could say that the path was completely reversed during the
third epoch when the mysteries were partly renovated. At that
time man shaped and developed forces so that they could lead
him up to the gods. We saw that man looked for a way up to the
world's divine, spiritual forces through the intonation of
magical words in cultic ceremonies. These words either worked
directly upon the auditor's whole soul mood, so that he became
aware of the spiritual activities of the gods in the words, or
else magical words were spoken into the smoke in the way which
was indicated yesterday, and the smoke drew Imaginations out of
the words.
This development of a certain religious feeling, which one can
really only describe separately, always went parallel with a
certain condition or a certain kind of transubstantiation which
was the center of the holy act of consecration of man. Priests
are now being called upon to experience this transubstantiation
and everything else that is connected with their activities in
a new way. They will not be able to do this very well without
an understanding of what transubstantiations and apocalypses
were really like in each of these four successive periods of
human evolution.
One
thing we have already seen is that the act of consecration of
man and its transubstantiation process involves a working
together of human beings and the gods in the süiritual
world. Priests cannot really work properly unless they're aware
that men and the gods can work together.
If
we take another look at the oldest form of transubstantiations
and acts of consecration of man we find that the gods found the
way to men at certain times that are really differences between
what one can calculate in the course of time and what the
cosmos does. The gods descended during such blank or holy times
when men must add something to the times they calculated
because their calculations are incorrect. In these times men
had to expose themselves to cosmic influences directly in order
to carry our transubstantiations, and they saved what had
occurred in the substances during such times in order to carry
out transubstantiations with the preserved things that had been
transformed by forces from the cosmos.
The
right place for priests and lay brothers to be in for these
transubstantiations at that time was a cave or a grotto. And in
fact, wherever people were fully aware of the presence of the
gods and of the significance of transubstantiations in the
ancient mysteries, we see that they tried to carry out the
sacred rites in subterranean rock temples or caves.
The
fact that they tried to do this is connected with the
experiences which priests had during the transubstantiations. A
transubstantiation consists of a transformation of the given
earthly materials. If one wants to understand the process
completely one should add the communion or the ingestion of the
transformed substances by the human being to it, so that
actually the two last parts of the act of consecration of man,
transubstantiation and communion, constitute a unity, whereas
the gospel reading and the offering are a preparation for them.
Taking transubstantiation and communion as a unified priestly
or cultic act, let's look at a view which the initiates we call
fathers had in the oldest mysteries.
The
“fathers” refers to the father grade of initiation,
and this name is still given to priests in many confessions
today, — pater. Now when a priest carried out a
transubstantiation in his earth or rock temple, he experienced
the union of his physical organism with the whole earth. This
is why they had the temple underground or in a rock. Today we
can also feel united with the surrounding cosmos in our
ordinary earthly consciousness as we live between birth and
death, and this has been the case during the whole time that
mankind has been evolving on earth.
The
air which is in your body now was outside it a moment ago, and
it will soon be outside again. The air which is outside your
body and the air inside your body constitute a whole. The real
state of affairs is that there is an aery ocean, and when man
inhales, one part of this aery ocean becomes transformed in the
human being. The air is absorbed, and it penetrates and fills
man and thereby assumes a human form. Then this form
immediately dissolves again in the ocean of air. An aeriform
man is continually being created and destroyed, although one is
usually unaware of it.
However, Indian yogis knew about it whenever they did their
conscious breathing exercises. They didn't feel separate from
the earth's ocean of air; they felt that they were united with
it, and they felt this creation and destruction at each systole
and diastole. One can easily experience this by doing these
breathing exercises, although they are no longer appropriate
for men today.
However, man is not just a man in connection with physical,
earthly things. Although he is an earthly man where the
so-called physical, body is mainly active, he is also a fluidic
man. The whole human being is filled with circulating fluids
which work upon each other. This fluidic man is mainly
dependent upon the ethers. For the forces in the etheric body
work more upon fluids and not so much upon solids.
We
also bear an aery man and a warmth man in us. This aery man,
which takes care of respiration, is controlled by the forces of
the astral body. And the warmth man: you need only recall that
if you measure some place on the surface of your body or
inside it with a thermometer, you get different temperatures.
This crude procedure already shows one that man is a
differentiated warmth organism. The latter is mainly under the
influence of the ego — organization or ego.
Thus, we find four elements in man. Earth is under the
influence of the physical body, water is influenced by the
etheric body, air is under the influence of the astral body,
and warmth or fire is under the influence of the ego.
The
transubstantiations and communions which the ancient fathers
carried out made them feel that their physical body was
connected with the earth, when they had gone into their rock
temple or earth temple, in order to unite themselves with these
earthly developments. What actually happened here? Alan's
supposedly scientific view of himself today is really wrong; it
is really complete nonsense. We must rethink all of our ideas
about human beings. The ancient fathers received the right
ideas about man through direct perception when they carried out
transubstantiations during sacrificial rites which consecrate
human beings.
They knew that we don't just breathe air in through our
respiratory organs, but that we are continually taking in all
kinds of substances from the cosmos through our sense organs.
All kinds of substances are continuously being taken in through
our hair and skin. Just as someone who is watching his
breathing feels that air is entering his respiratory organs, so
the ancient priest felt that substances passed over from the
siliceous environment of the consecrated subterranean temple
and penetrated his nerve-senses system just as aery man feels
the air which is going through him, for when he breathes in a
conscious way he can feel that these substances permeate his
entire organism. The priests knew that none of the substances
in the metabolic-limb man come from what we eat. Nothing of
what one eats becomes part of the metabolic-limb man. One takes
in substances from the cosmos. The whole modern nutritional
theory is really wrong. The celebrating father felt that what
is eaten and then transformed by the digestive system passes
over from the metabolic man to the nerve-senses man and
especially to the head. He knew that what you eat is
transformed into the substances of your head and what is
connected with it. But the substances which become the organs
that take care of your metabolic functions are taken in from
the cosmos by a finer breathing. Thus he felt that his
metabolic-limb man consisted of cosmic substances which are
taken in from all sides through the senses and nerves. And he
felt that the food that one eats and transforms goes the
opposite way and becomes the upper man.
When a father carried out a transubstantiation he had a current
in him which flowed upwards and another one which flowed
downwards. Then when he took communion he knew that he was
connected with the cosmos, because he had become aware of his
physical body by means of these streams. He had become united
with the earth and he united what he had prepared at the altar
with his body, with currents that belong to both the earth and
his body, and with divine things on the earth which are a
reflection of the universe.
He
knew that he was united with the outside universe. He knew that
the meal which he had taken in in this way was a meal which his
cosmic man had completed. He felt that his divine man arose
through what streamed into the current which went upwards and
the one which went downwards, and that it could be a companion
of the gods who had descended. He felt that the gods had
transformed him into a divine human being in his physical body,
that is, he felt that he had been transubstantiated. And at
this moment he could say from the depths of his heart: Now I am
not the one who walks around in the physical world; I am he in
whom the descended god lives; I am he whose name includes all
sounds and who was at the beginning, is in the middle and will
be at the end. I am alpha and omega.
The
extent to which he could really participate in the secrets of
the cosmos, in the divine working and creating in the cosmos,
and in the manifestation of forces, substances and beings there
while divine, spiritual work was being done, depended on the
way his inner life was shaped by this feeling. This is the way
priests worked in the ancient mysteries.
If
we go on to the semi-ancient mysteries we find that holy water
and washing and sacrificial actions which are connected with
water had become very important, and also that the temples had
been moved aboveground. They were no longer put into
subterranean caves out of the same longings as before, or if
they were placed there it occurred through tradition and it was
no longer understood in a living way, and it was precisely for
this reason that the tradition lived on, even though it had
lost its living content.
Such traditions also remained with regard to the dipping of
people into the dew, as it were. What the priest did at
baptisms was less dependent upon the actual watery element than
upon the Inner force which he applied during the sacrificial
action in order to unite the fluidic man in whom the forces of
the etheric body were active with the universe.
When a transubstantiation was being carried out and one
observed things which involved the fluidic element before or
after it in the act of consecration, one felt that the etheric
organization was working in a temporal way. While the
transubstantiation was being carried out one felt that one's
growth since childhood had occurred under the influence of the
fluidic element in one, and that the etheric body was active in
this streaming from the past through the present and into the
future.
In
ancient times priests felt that their physical body was
connected with the earthly element, and during the less ancient
mysteries the one who performed transubstantiations felt united
with the watery element which exists in the whole universe. He
felt the growth forces of all creatures sprouting, germinating,
growing and unfolding in him into fully developed organisms and
then contracting into seeds again. He felt this sprouting,
shooting living and dying activity whenever he carried out a
transubstantiation.
At
every moment he could say to himself: Now I know how creatures
come into being in the world and how they die. For both
ascending and descending etheric forces were active in him. He
could, as it were, feel eternity in the sacred
transubstantiation.
The
priest who was performing a communion in conjunction with a
sacred act of transubstantiation knew that the substances which
were transformed in the way we described yesterday were
absorbed by his etheric, fluidic man. He felt that he was
united with everything which preserves immortality in the
universe and with everything which is created and born or is
killed and destroyed. Birth and death wafted over the altar and
from there into the faithful who were assembled. The priest
became permeated with feelings of eternity. This permeation
with feelings of eternity had replaced the previous feeling of
being united with the whole cosmos through the earth.
Then when the third epoch of holy acts of consecration arose,
man was to experience his union with the aery element and
thereby with the cosmos. Oriental yogis could become aware of
the streaming of divine, supersensible world forces in
inhalation and exhalation in a different way and for their own
personal development. They took hold of breathing in a direct
way.
People intoned magical words into their breath in Europe, and
to a lesser extent in Asia Minor, but they didn't take hold of
the undifferentiated breath directly. Thereby the breath or the
air streaming in and out of them was taken hold of by magical,
cultic words. The striving up of magical forces towards divine
ones became manifest indirectly in what was spoken into the
sacrificial smoke, or directly in what was experienced in the
intonation of the magical, cultic words. Whenever someone
prays, he is basically trying to ascend to divine, spiritual
regions with his forces, and these people felt that when they
intoned magical, cultic or prayerful words they were ascending
to a region where they met the gods. When someone intones
things, the godhead becomes manifest and speaks in the cultic
words, so that it's not he who is speaking anymore. The godhead
was now revealing itself in the aery element. Man felt that he
was in something which controls the forces in the air from his
own astral body.
The
transition from the second, semi-ancient mystery epoch to the
third, partly new mystery epoch was a large one. In ancient
times fathers experienced things in their physical body. This
involved an intensification of its activities. The sun priests
of the second epoch experienced an enhancement of their etheric
or fluidic body. When a priest intoned cultic words in the
third epoch he experienced the streaming of divine spiritual
forces in his astral body. The astral body of the average
person was only a mediator of consciousness to a very slight
extent. At the beginning of the third epoch a priest could
still say: when I speak magical cultic words, a god is speaking
in me. However later on this awareness diminished. The new
consciousness which arose was unaware of the astral body's
activities. Today, ordinary consciousness is completely
oblivious to the latter. The verbal content of the ritual
gradually became something which made qualified people aware of
the gods' presence, whereas unqualified people were unaware of
what was connected with the intoned words. The latter was
increasingly the case for a large number of priests who were
active in Catholicism.
Hence it gradually came about that the act of consecration of
man or mass became something that the priest celebrated,
although he himself was not present in it. However, one cannot
celebrate with words or intone words which have aery beings
incorporated in them in such a way that there is no
spirituality there. Spiritual things immediately appear
whenever something material is being shaped. And so if an act
of consecration is celebrated with real cultic words by even
the most unworthy priest, his soul, may be absent but
something spiritual is present. So the fact is that if the
liturgy is correct, the believers who are listening to it are
participating in a spiritual event under all circumstances.
While things were developing like this at the end of the third
epoch, some of the Protestant confessions which were working in
a more rationalistic way thought that they could throw the mass
out altogether. They were no longer aware of the significance
of cultic rites or of a real collaboration between gods and
men.
This inner circumstance then led to the time in which we are
living. There was less and less understanding for the act of
consecration of man which brings the divine, spiritual life
right down to earth. People no longer understood the
apocalyptic things which the rites were supposed to take one
experience. This is basically the experience you had when you
came one day and said: A Christian renewal must occur. You felt
that the religious life of all the confessions and other things
that exist in our civilization had become separated from real
spiritual things in the real spiritual world. You were looking
for the path to the real spiritual world again. This impulse
can show us the way and can lead us into the depths of the
mysteries, which are connected with apocalyptic things.
So
we saw that in the first epoch transubstantiation was connected
with experiences with the physical body, in the second epoch
the connection was through experiences with the etheric body
and in the third epoch through experiences with the astral
body. The grasping of apocalyptic things and of the act of
consecration by the ego of mankind depends upon you and your
inner experience of the working and weaving of spirituality in
the world. Therewith we only have a right view of what should
be done by this movement for religious renewal if we look upon
what is to be done as the carrying out of a task which has been
given us by the supersensible world and as a task which places
what one does at the service of supersensible powers. For if
you don't take your task seriously enough, what you do will
come to nothing in the present evolution of the world, and it
will only have been a kind of disturbance. Or else you will see
how deep and profound your task is and you will Immediately
feel that this task is connected with the activity of the gods
throughout earth evolution, and not just with human activities.
In that case you can say: we are called upon to help with the
shaping of the fourth mystery epoch in human earth evolution.
This task will only be placed in the service of the powers in
the spiritual world from whom the content of the ritual flowed
two years ago when we were assembled here, if you have the
courage, strength, seriousness and perseverance to find your
way into your task in this way. Only then will what you took
upon yourselves through the content of this ritual, which is a
revelation from the spiritual world and which radiated down
upon you as such, become real.
Then you will increasingly sense and feel: it's really the case
that Christ came into earth life in a real cosmic and tellurian
ritual. The Mystery of Golgotha is present as a real ritual. In
our time man must first unite this ritual with his ego; for the
first commemorations of the Lord's Supper were still immersed
in the third mystery epoch, when the astral body took in and
controlled the cultic activities which occurred in the aery
element. But now it's a question of connecting one's innermost
core with the Christ so that each human being can begin to
understand apocalyptic things in a new way.
How
did one look upon apocalyptic things in the first mystery
epoch? One experienced them as the presence of the gods, which
are the beginning, the middle and the end, alpha and omega.
How
did one look upon the presence of divine forces in the second
mystery epoch? One experienced them as something which resounds
through the world as the music of the spheres, and which lives
in the cosmic word that created everything and that creates in
everything, and which streams from the heavens to the earth.
One experienced what is at the beginning, in the middle and at
the end of time simultaneously, as it were. One experienced the
alpha and the omega in the cosmic, world word. Whenever the
subject of the Greek alpha and omega, the first and the last,
came up in this or that epoch, people always tried to find out
what the first and last letters of various alphabets really
contain.
And
how did one understand apocalyptic things during the third
mystery epoch? One understood apocalyptic things in such a way
that people were developing cultic words which were still half
conscious. Apocalyptic things were perceived during the third
epoch when these half-conscious cultic words transubstantiated
themselves as they were being intoned and when things were as
follows. Most of you have probably heard some music on a day
when your soul and senses could be entirely receptive to the
impressions of the outer world, and then you fell asleep and
woke up in the middle of your sleep. It was as if you lived in
a surging back and forth, but in a transformed surging of the
symphony you heard during the day. This is the way it was for
priests in the third mystery epoch.
What happened to them is comparable to the trivial thing I just
mentioned. They celebrated the act of consecration with cultic
words, and they experienced that the godhead appeared in them.
They had sent the cultic words up and the godhead had streamed
into them. Then they left the sacred ritual in an appropriate
mood. They not only experienced the presence of divine
spirituality in human, cultic words during the act of
consecration of man, but afterwards, they experienced a
supersensible echo of what they had spoken in the liturgy of
the mass. These transubstantiated, transformed words streamed
towards them and revealed apocalyptic things.
The
god revealed apocalyptic things as a counter present for an
appropriately celebrated sacrificial rite. This is how one
experienced apocalyptic things during the third mystery
epoch.
The
one who felt that he had been made into a priest, by Christ
Jesus himself, namely, the author of the book which we want to
study, the Apocalypse, was more or less the first to feel that
an apocalyptic content merged with his ego, — and only
very few people have experienced this since. For it was the
astral body which received the echo that. I mentioned, where
the god gave apocalyptic things as a counter present for words.
However, the one who wrote John's Apocalypse felt that his
fully conscious ego was united with the content which he had
given the Apocalypse.
The
priest who wrote the Apocalypse and who felt that he had been
anointed by Christ Jesus himself, was inspired by the afterglow
of ancient Ephesian rituals, and he felt as if he were
continuing frequent celebrations of this ancient act of
consecration up to an advanced age. One day he felt that the
ego which had been completely filled with the significance of
the sacred ritual was now also completely filled with an
apocalyptic content.
Hence John expressed his Apocalypse in the same way that one
says the single word “I” in one's ordinary
consciousness. When a human being says “I” he is
expressing his inner nature with a single sound. The only thing
which can be meant by this is what the individual human being
is. But this one thing has a large content. This large content
is the content of apocalyptic things.
If
everything which religious feeling can give a meditating soul
and if all the enlightenment which is gained by energetic
effort and by a striving towards an understanding of the
supersensible can work in men's spirits, — if all of this
is oriented in the way it can be oriented and if we
let ourselves be stimulated by everything that can stimulate us
through a contemplation of the three past mystery epochs which
can become the inspirer of the fourth one, and if we let
ourselves be stimulated by what was outlined in an introductory
way yesterday and today, that is, by what lived in the first,
second and third mystery epoch which was the living inspirer of
the fourth, and if we let the power of the Spirit God —
which is possible again today work in our souls — we will
be able to experience that there is not just one Apocalypse but
that there are numerically just as many apocalypses as there
are human, God-fearing, priest's egos in the priest-renewal who
speak to the Christ who is to be found again through this
Christian renewal.
There is only one apocalypse from a qualitative point of view,
but from a numerical viewpoint it can become the content of the
soul of each individual priest. Conversely, every single soul
that undergoes the act of consecration of man, so that it
prepares the ego to become identified with the content of the
apocalypse, can become a proper priestly soul. We are egos as
human beings. We become priests in the modern sense of the word
if the ego becomes aware that it is creating a copy of the
Apocalypse at every moment in life, so that it isn't just
something which is finished and printed in the bible, and it
isn't just memorized by heart. Take the following analogy.
Someone gives the content of a book. It is sent to the
printers. This might seem like a pedantic, philistine analogy,
but it's useful nevertheless. The book is printed and a large
number of copies go through the world which are different,
although they all have the same content. What you are referred
to right at the beginning of the Apocalypse is a single thing
and what Christ revealed to John is a single thing. For this is
“The revelation of Jesus Christ” which was received
by “his servant John.” There is only one content,
but it is multiplied by those who recreate this content in
themselves after they have been prepared through the wisdom of
supersensible worlds.
This is an understanding of John's apocalyptic things. In the
deeper sense of the word, this also amounts to an understanding
of the words: Christ has ordained us to be priests. You have
felt how the Apocalypticer says that Christ Jesus anointed him
to be a priest; one becomes anointed as soon as one feels how
the content of the Apocalypse arose in John and as soon as one
feels that people want to become priests today by creating the
Apocalypse in themselves so that they experience that their ego
is in the Apocalypse. If the ego becomes apocalyptic, the ego
is priestly. We will take this up again tomorrow.
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