LECTURE THREE
September 7, 1924
View the blackboard drawing from the German edition for this lecture
Yesterday we referred to the important turning point in human
evolution at the beginning of the third mystery epoch, when
man's participation in the cosmic things in transubstantiation
and in the act of consecration of man began to occur in the
astral body. This is that member of the human being which
leaves the physical body as far as ordinary consciousness is
concerned, and which is unreceptive for percepts from the
environment during the time of the separation.
Let's try to get a clear idea of how this astral body functions
in present-day man. It is the member which transmits the
thoughts which enable us to understand the world. For thoughts
about one's environment disappear as soon as one's astral body
leaves the physical and etheric bodies.
We
can round out this idea if we realize that the ego-organization
— the actual ego in man as he is today — is the
receiver of sense impressions. However, the latter are
obliterated when the ego-organization leaves the physical and
etheric bodies.
So
that we can say: here are the physical and etheric bodies of
the human being, and during sleep the astral body and
ego-organization are outside. The ego-organization gives us our
sense percepts and sensations when we are awake. There is no
sense perception during sleep, because the ego-organization is
not in the physical and etheric bodies and because the ego is
not receptive for impressions from the environment during that
time. Likewise, the astral body gives us thoughts when it is in
the physical and etheric bodies, but when it is outside it is
not sensitive to things in the world and it gives us no
impressions.
However, it was this astral body which became receptive for
what I described to you, during the third mystery epoch when
man was to connect himself with divine, spiritual beings
through cultic words and through everything the priest did in
the way of preparatory exercises. It became receptive for the
elaboration of the transubstantiation in itself during
communion, and after the transubstantiation was elaborated it
became receptive for apocalyptic things.
The
same kind of thing has to happen in the ego-organizations of
people from the present epoch on. Even though this
ego-organization can only experience sense impressions in
ordinary consciousness, it must be constituted in such a way
that it experiences transubstantiations and in such a way that
it can participate in apocalyptic things through the
latter.
People can really become receptive for these things today, that
is, someone can really become a priest if he takes in ideas
which are true spiritual copies of the supersensible world.
Therewith we have described the esoteric or inner connection
between the esotericism which rightfully exists today and what
must live in a priest's soul. We have described what can make
the Christian Community a bearer of an important part of the
new mysteries. We must only consider how the Anthroposophy
which is approaching human beings today is really
constituted.
I
have often used an analogy. I said that people are inclined to
accept things which are supported by outer perceptions and
experiments today, but they don't want to accept things which
are not supported in this way. However, anyone who has this
attitude is like a person who says: every rock on earth must be
supported so that it won't fall down and therefore the planets
in the universe must also be supported so that they won't fall
down. Of course, since it's taught in a traditional and
authoritative way, people believe that the planets in the
universe mutually carry each other without supports. However,
many people doubt that Anthroposophical truths support and
carry each other, and that they don't have to be supported by
outer observations and experiments.
As
soon as one sees that Anthroposophical truths are valid because
they all support each other, so that the truths mutually
support each other, in that moment one will stop saying: I
can't see anything in the spiritual world yet and therefore I
can't understand the content of Anthroposophy. Instead one will
begin to understand Anthroposophy through the fact that its
truths mutually support each other, and one will then work
one's way further into it.
The
main thing which can and must put this body of priests on its
inner path today is the task of penetrating what is given about
the spiritual world. If it does tread this path, we should make
it clear to ourselves that the attitude of soul which someone
gets into if he takes possession of Anthroposophy in an honest
way enables him to approach the Apocalypse. It enables one to
approach it in such a way that one can say: It's true that the
Apocalypse exists, but if I let it work upon me, each one of
its images or Imaginations becomes united with my own ego. And
then comes the moment where this Apocalypse can be a creation
of the human ego and not just a personal experience. However,
we must try to approach the Apocalypse in an Anthroposophical
way. There's no other context which leads to it today.
We
will now try to grasp a few of the main points in the
Apocalypse in a spiritual way, if I may put it that way.
“I am Alpha and Omega.” Expressed in an ancient
form: one only understands alpha or A if one knows that a sound
or letter as a component of a word was not the abstract,
separate and meaningless thing back then, that we experience
today. A sound was something which deserved to have a name.
Mankind has treated The sounds of language which really enclose
a great mystery in a peculiar way.
Mankind has treated the sounds of language in the way that a
policeman treats a criminal. A long time ago it numbered the
letters in the way that we give numbers to criminals when they
are put into their cells, so that they lose their names and get
numbers. Sounds have lost their identity through the numbering
process. This is a pictorial way of putting it, but a true one
nevertheless.
For
if we go back before the late Hebraic period when they first
gave numbers to the sounds, we find that mankind was fully
aware that it is quite right for a sound to have a name, and
that one can say alpha to it because it is a divine,
supersensible being. If we want to find out what this first
letter alpha of the so-called alphabet really is, we will have
to go through a kind of spiritual development or conceptual
development.
You
know that Anthroposophy goes back in earth evolution through
Moon, Sun to Saturn. It tries to dig up things in the world
which are connected with the evolution of man. We find the
first cosmic human germ on Saturn, which became the present
human body after manifold transformations during Sun, Moon and
earth. Man was present on Saturn in his first, germinal
form.
For
anyone who honestly and seriously wants to see the true state
of affairs in this area, it's no doubt quite important to ask
what men really experienced on old Saturn. Man experienced
successive conditions of warmth. Man absorbed various states of
warmth and cold. He existed in states which really only told
him something about warmth conditions in the cosmos, for
although they also told him many spiritual things, they only
disclosed a limited region of the spirit through differentiated
warmth and cold.
If
we go on from Saturn to Sun, we find that man's organism has
become differentiated. During Sun existence man lives in a
physical body which is differentiated into warmth ether and
air. Differentiation also occurs within as man becomes filled
with a richer content. He not only perceives the differentiated
warmth like on old Saturn, but something like an inner life
emerges. Man perceives the warmth on the Sun with his old
perception and he also perceives an inner breathing rhythm in
himself which in turn is an expression and a reflection of
cosmic secrets.
Just look at how the human being becomes richer as he evolves
from Saturn to Sun. He also gets richer as he evolves from Sun
to Moon and from Moon to Earth. And he will continue to get
richer as he develops on Jupiter and up to Vulcan.
Let's ask ourselves what the relation of man to the world is on
ancient Saturn. On old Saturn man's relation to the world is
such that he perceives a very large number of different
warmths, but qualitatively he perceives very little. Not much
of the world is in man. Man is present as man and he is just a
man, as it were; not much of the world is in him yet. As he
moves forward through Sun, Moon, earth and on to Jupiter his
inner life becomes filled with the world more and more, and
therefore it is richer. We already have a large part of the
world in us here on earth. And when the earth gets to the stage
where it will pass away again, man will have elaborated a large
part of the macrocosm and he will bear it in him as earthly
copies.
We
bear it within us already, but people are not usually aware of
this. When a human being moves upwards through Imagination,
Inspiration and Intuition to a knowledge of the spirit, his
inner soul life becomes ever more magnificent. Look at how
little man knows about the human eye in his ordinary
consciousness. But this eye is a whole cosmos, and like the
macrocosm all of its details are marvelous and great. Every
single organ in man becomes unveiled in a wonderful way in his
physical body already. So that when an initiate looks around
him he sees a world with the elements down below and its sun,
moon and stars up above. If he looks into himself he sees that
the eye, ear, lung, liver and every other organ is a world in
itself, and that man's physical body is a marvelous interaction
of worlds. Some of these worlds are finished, others are just
beginning, some are sensory, others are half supersensible or
entirely supersensible. Man really bears ever more worlds in
himself as he works his way through one evolution after
another.
Thus we can distinguish man at the start of old Saturn
evolution, where he is just beginning, where he is man,
although he doesn't bear the world in himself yet. The first
thing which man acquired during old Saturn evolution was a
perception of the circumference of the warmth body which he
felt that he was. So that in a schematic way we can say that
man feels that he is warmth on old Saturn, but after he has
felt that he is a warmth mollusk he gradually feels something
like an accumulation of warmth, like an outer skin, a warmth
skin, a somewhat cooler sheath than the warmth which is in him.
He feels manifold degrees or intensities of warmth within him,
and the warmth skin is the coolest.
We
express this in our present language, but this language is
abstract and it doesn't conjure up the greatness of such a
mental image before our soul, if we look into the course of
time and we want to go back to old Saturn. However, people who
are moved by a perception of these things at all are also moved
by the awe with which such things were looked upon in the
ancient mysteries. In the ancient Greek chthonic mysteries,
they still spoke of Saturn men who didn't have a warmth skin
yet, and then of men who had taken the first part of the world
into their warmth skins; for the latter had a certain structure
and form which imitated the world. This was the first thing
from the world.
What do man's experiences which he had while he was still a
warmth man look like from a subjective, psychic viewpoint? They
are like absolute amazement about the world. If one wants to
describe them, one has to call them complete amazement. For one
cannot grasp warmth in any other way than as sheer amazement.
Outwardly it is/warmth and inwardly it is complete
astonishment. It's only because people have become as
blockheaded as old Kant was, that they speak of a thing in
itself which can't be explained. The thing in itself of warmth
is astonishment;' and Saturn man is astonishment just as much
as he is warmth. He lived in amazement or astonishment about
his own existence, for he was just entering into this
existence. This is alpha; the Saturn warmth man who is living
in amazement. And the first thing which man experiences as the
housing of the world, namely his skin, is beta, —
building, this building or house. Man was a man in his house,
and the house or temple or skin was the first thing from the
world: beta.
If
we go through the alphabet like this, we go through the whole
world. When man gradually absorbs everything which the world
was and unites it with his being, until by Vulcan he will
become united with the whole wide world to which he belongs, he
will be the one he was at the beginning of Saturn evolution
plus the whole world. He will be alpha and everything else too.
But everything else amounts to the whole world. This is omega
— man and everything in him which is the world. The
“I am alpha and omega” describes what man will be
at the end of the Vulcan period. At the end of Vulcan
evolution, man will be able to say: I am alpha and omega. Let's
look at the Mystery of Golgotha from the vantage point of what
we have placed before ourselves as the beginning, middle and
end of human evolution. At the Mystery of Golgotha or
approximately the halfway point in world evolution, we have the
being who dwelt in Jesus' body at the stage of development that
man will be in at the end of Vulcan evolution. We have a being
as god which man will be at the end of Vulcan evolution.
What is the difference between God's existence and man's
existence? The difference between a god's existence and a man's
existence is that the god already is what the human being will
be later on in time. Don't say that this brings the god down to
the human level and makes him into a human being. It doesn't.
Because for supersensible perception, time is a simultaneous
reality, if you'll permit me to use this paradoxical
expression. The difference between man and God is the one which
existed at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One shouldn't
relate different times or beings from different times when one
looks at these things.
A
great deal of what is in writings like the Apocalypse is
expressed in the language which was used in the mysteries, and
it can only be understood if it is deciphered. On the other
hand, one shouldn't blame the author of the Apocalypse for
speaking in mystery language, for it was customary for people
to do this at that time. People still knew that sounds are
supersensible beings and that alpha is the supersensible human
being when he was first created, and that when one goes from
alpha to beta one is turning away from man and towards the
world, including the divine world, and that if one goes through
all the sounds to omega one has the entire divine world in
omega.
It's rather shocking that we're surrounded by experiences today
which we consider to be trivialities. For instance, all the
sounds are basically trivialities for us. Someone who only
knows the alphabet doesn't know very much. The ABCs are
trivialities. However, these trivialities point to divine,
spiritual beings at the starting point, and our trivial letters
are the descendents of what were once divine, spiritual beings
for mankind. The whole alphabet was a number of such divine
spiritual beings. Sounds were gods who assailed men from all
sides with their din. The sounds AB were man in his house, and
so on. Man with the whole world was alpha to omega. When
someone uttered a sound he felt that it permeated him with
spirituality.
A
last remnant of this life of a divine, spiritual element in
sounds still existed in the intonation of cultic language
during the third mystery epoch. They still understood this
completely in very ancient times. When someone successively
intoned what has now become our abstract, traditional alphabet,
he was intoning the cosmic word. He intoned everything which
exists and he connected himself with all the gods: In the
beginning was the word. And when Christ says “I am alpha
and omega,” he could say “I am the word” and
mean the same thing.
You
can see that the Apocalypse is written in a mystery language,
and it uses terms which remind us of the long period during
which man felt that the macrocosm was a speaking universe. We
have obscured the sounds of our language and made them trivial,
whereas men used to know that they were something very
spiritual. We must be able to feel what happened there. What
happened? The sounds exist, but the gods are no longer in them
as far as men are concerned. The gods have left the sounds. Our
sounds contain Ahrimanic beings in a demonic way. The popular
idea that the fixed sounds of our language are connected with
black magic is not entirely unfounded. This idea of the people
is a healthy one. For our sounds are now Ahrimanic gods. The
gods who were once in them left, and Ahrimanic beings moved in.
People will permeate language with more and more Ahrimanic
powers if they don't find their way back to the gods in this
sphere.
We
must approach the Apocalypse with such feelings about,
language. This is the only way that the real greatness and
power of what is placed, before our souls in the Apocalypse can
become manifest to us. For what does the author of the
Apocalypse want to do? He wants to do the same thing that all
those who speak out of a true knowledge of the Christ want to
do. He wants to place the Christ before mankind. He draws
attention to the fact that he is there. He begins by saying
that he exists. For if one takes the first words of the
Apocalypse and translates them into our language in accordance
with their real meaning, they read: Look at the manifestation
of Christ Jesus: Look over there; I want to show you the vision
of Jesus Christ which God has given.
Thus the first thing which is pointed out is that the author of
the Apocalypse wants to let Christ appear to humanity in an
apocalyptic way. But he also points out that he doesn't just
want to report about the appearance or the Imagination of Jesus
Christ, which presupposes vision, but he also wants to indicate
that the divine world power which placed this phenomenon into
the world and made it visible also expressed it in words.
God
has sent these words by his angel unto his servant John, and
they are like an interpretation of the vision of Jesus Christ.
This is how we must read the beginning of the Apocalypse.
Two
things are really being said here. An Imaginative element in
Christ is mentioned, and something is said about what Christ's
tidings are. And what John affirms and testifies to in his
second sentence is the vision of Christ and the interpretation
of this vision. The Christ in a picture and the Christ in
words. The author of the Apocalypse wants to place the Christ
before human beings in a picture and in words.
Therewith we are also made aware of something which was quite
obvious to people at that time, although most people today have
lost sight of it completely. Our impoverished psychologists
speak of sense percepts and ideas. To make the thing as poor as
possible, people let the sense percepts arise through the
senses and they say that ideas are created within. Everything
is subjective and there is nothing cosmic there at all; they
make a Kantian world out of a rich one, and they completely
forget that man is standing in the whole world.
The
intuitive element in our words has shriveled into impoverished
ideas: the second thing or so-called supersensible percept
which John affirms, testifies to and tells us about is what the
Apocalypticer places there as the manifestation of Christ. So
that we have to say “Behold the manifestation of Jesus
Christ which is given by God, for this is how God must be shown
to you (I will interpret this later). He has put it into words
and has sent it to his servant John via his angel. John has
affirmed God's words and the manifestation of Jesus Christ in
the way that he saw it. He wants to give mankind what he has
seen and a letter he received from God.”
We
must approach Christian writings in this concrete way again. If
you really want to become priests out of the deepest and most
honest impulses in your heart you will have to see to it that
these writings become concrete. For the fact is that people are
basically dishonest when they say they understand the gospels
the way they are translated today. The Apocalypse begins in the
way that I said. One translation of the beginning of the
Apocalypse reads, “This is the revelation of Jesus
Christ, which God gave unto him to show his servants, and he
has interpreted it and sent it to his servant John by his
angel;” this is how it reads. And then the whole world is
told that this is what the Apocalypse says. But no one can
really make any sense out of these words. The same goes for
most of the gospels, because one wants to explain things to
people with wording which doesn't tell one what's really there
anymore. This is why the idea gradually arose that one
shouldn't penetrate very deeply into the gospels. For how can
one really do that? No matter what modern language one reads
the gospels in, one can't really read them if one is honest
about it. For the modern versions tell one nothing.
One
has to go back to what is really there, just as we did this for
the first two sentences and as we will continue to do it. Or
some people might say that one has to go back to the Greek for
certain parts of the gospels. Now, with all due respect to our
contemporaries, who take great pains to understand Greek, the
fact is that no one understands Greek any more today, because
we don't have the same things in us which the Greeks had when
they spoke or listened.
We're basically like sacks of flour when we listen to someone
or when we speak ourselves. We remain just as quiet inwardly as
flour in a sack should, if it is packed properly. This was not
the case with the Greeks. The consciousness of a Greek vibrated
when he listened to someone. He became alive inwardly and he
spoke out of this vitality. The words which he heard and spoke
were alive; they were still living bodies. Not to speak of
oriental people. The latter are decadent today but unlike
European people they can still perceive and understand things
inwardly in a vital way when they speak or hear.
Just listen to an ordinary oriental like Rabindranath Tagore
and watch how he presents the inner weaving and life which can
exist in language.
Today one has language in such a way that one even thinks one
has it if one takes a dictionary and a German word stands on
one side and the English word on the other. People very calmly
place the English words where the German words are. They are
blissfully unaware that one steps over an abyss here and that
one comes into an entirely different world, and that one really
has to treat what lives in language as something which is
divine.
People have to become aware of this again. Then they will
decide to go back to what vibrates out of writings like the
Apocalypse, which conjures up a vision of Jesus Christ before
our soul. If we can see this mighty vision it's as if the
clouds, which could give us wonderful things, suddenly became
concentrated and took on human and angelic forms, and the past,
present and future welled out of the clouds' substances as they
go past and revealed the world's content of spiritual
substances, which includes human beings. This is how the
manifestation of Jesus Christ is presented.
The
vision is there and we fall silent before it, so that we become
united with the world and are no longer conscious of ourselves,
and so that we confront the vision until nothing but the vision
remains, while we become insignificant.
Then when we perceive the Father God who has given the vision
we find that he holds back the inspiring words behind the
vision. The words are the interpretation of the vision and they
are his secret; but the time is at hand and God gives the
secret to an angel, and he brings it down to men as an
epistolary message from God on the path on which Inspirations
from God generally come down.
As
soon as a man becomes quiet and disappears and becomes immersed
in the vision and begins to be not in himself, and he takes in
God's letter, which he first has to open, which is sealed with
seven seals, which he takes in as a letter with seven seals
which has been sent to him by the godhead — as soon as he
does this he becomes the letter, because he gets to the point
where he looks upon the contents of the letter as his own
ego-being. Then he stands before the vision with God's ideas
and concepts and with spiritual mental images.
If
you imagine John the priest in this way, with the vision of
Jesus Christ before him, disappearing selflessly, if you see
him receiving the letter of God that is sealed with seven seals
from the angels there, and if you see the resolve arising in
him to unseal God's letter and to communicate its contents to
mankind — you have the picture or Imagination which
stands at the beginning of the Apocalypse. For we must
interpret the words which stand there in what we receive in
such a way that it is like the Imagination I described. This is
what the author of the Apocalypse wants to say. That is why he
says, “Blessed is he that reads and hears the words in
the macrocosm and who takes in and preserves what is written in
the book, when he understands it. For the time for this has
come.”
It
has come. It is not just chance that we're discussing the
Apocalypse in this context; it lies in the karma of the
community for Christian renewal.
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