LECTURE FIVE
September 9, 1924
The
most important thing we must do here is to read the Apocalypse
in the way it should be read today. Already for the reason that
we must become fully conscious of what is guiding spiritual
life today, since spiritual development is now taking place
under the sign of the consciousness soul. Hence it will be a
matter of orienting ourselves to what the Apocalypticer tells
us and of absorbing it in a fully conscious way.
The
communications of the Apocalypticer have meant nothing to
ordinary priests so far, and at most they meant something to
the highest initiates, although there have been ever fewer of
them in recent times. Priests must now become aware of the real
contents of the Apocalypse.
We
pointed to the seven churches from a particular point of view,
for the world is very complex and one can look at things from
many different viewpoints; so that we can describe the
community in Ephesus in the way that we did yesterday. We then
find that the Christianity there developed out of certain
heathen conditions.
However, we can also point out that much of the basic structure
of the first post Atlantean epoch was contained in these
impulses — in fact, to an even greater extent than it was
contained in the later phases of Indian civilization. So that
in a way one can look upon the Christianity which developed in
Ephesus as a Christian continuation of the first world view and
view of life after the Atlantean epoch, whereas the original
Persian culture lived more in the second community —
Smyrna — and passed over into Christianity.
Then again, Pergamos is described as a community which
cultivated the third post Atlantean culture. If we let the
message to Pergamos work upon us, we find a more or less clear
reference to the words of Hermes, which lived in this cultural
milieu.
Then in Thyatira we are referred to the fourth post Atlantean
culture, in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place. If we let
this important message work upon us, we are constantly reminded
of the direct way in which the message of the Mystery of
Golgotha worked.
And
then comes the church in Sardis, which we discussed yesterday.
I showed you that this church in Sardis was somewhat
astrologically oriented, and that it was oriented towards
astronomical work. Therewith this community bears a lot of the
past in it — which of course every community does from a
historical viewpoint. But precisely this community in Sardis
also bears a lot of the future in it.
And
now take what we're trying to bring into our spiritual view of
the present. We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.
If one looks at Sardis' past one sees that there was still
something germinal there which hadn't been taken to completion
at the time when John wrote the Apocalypse. The whole tone of
this fifth epistle is different. It points to the future. The
future to which he pointed at that time, which is as it were
germinally contained in Sardis is our future; it is the time in
which we're living.
So
the development of the successive post Atlantean periods is
hidden in the developing Christian churches, and the same thing
is indicated from another side in the seven seals.
We
have another indication, as it were, of what the secret of the
seven churches is in the seven seals. We will describe the
other meaning of the seven seals later, but when the fourth
seal is opened, it corresponds to a secret of the fourth post
Atlantean epoch, for a pale horse appears, and there is talk
about the death which has come into the world. This touches
upon one of the most important secrets of the Apocalypse
— at least, it is very important for our time. In a way,
death really entered into humanity during the fourth Post
Atlantean epoch. You should make this clear to yourselves. One
finds out what human nature is if one contemplates something
like this; one can really get to know it quite well.
If
we go back to the first, second and third post Atlantean epochs
we find that the way man felt about himself, and his whole
frame of mind was different in these early times than it became
later. Man had a distinct inner feeling that he was growing
into his earthly abode. Even though this consciousness had
dimmed considerably by the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, men
had a distinct memory in their ordinary consciousness
that they had lived up in the spiritual world before their life
on earth. In the first, second and third post Atlantean epochs,
everyone knew that they had been a spiritual being before they
had become a child. One doesn't find this, in external
documents very much, but the fact is that people, took the
continuation of their stay upon earth backwards into the
spiritual world for granted. Human beings only began to feel
that their life on earth was closed off by the two portals of
conception or birth and death in the fourth post Atlantean
epoch, which coincided with the Mystery of Golgotha.
This consciousness or attitude of soul first arose in the
fourth post Atlantean epoch, so that this consciousness of
being strictly enclosed by the boundaries of earthly life
developed from about the eighth century before Christ up to the
15th century after the Mystery of Golgotha. A new consciousness
is being prepared in the present epoch, but we're only at the
beginning of it. Only about five centuries have elapsed since
then, and this corresponds to about the third pre-Christian
century with respect to the preparation of the fourth post
Atlantean consciousness. The consciousness which they had then
was quite different from the one they had when the fourth post
Atlantean consciousness was fully developed. Likewise, most men
today are not wearing the clothes of the new consciousness yet,
but they are still wearing the consciousness of the fourth post
Atlantean epoch. Our whole civilization tends to create this
situation.
Just think of how much has been carried over from the fourth
post Atlantean epoch and of how much people are living in the
fourth post Atlantean epoch in a matter of fact or coquettish
way. The fourth post Atlantean epoch is still working on in
our entire high school education. Scholars who use Latin are
still back in the fourth post Atlantean epoch. People in public
life still think in the way that they thought in the fourth
post Atlantean epoch. We haven't arrived at full humanity with
respect to the development of our consciousness soul, as it
were, in the fifth post Atlantean epoch. And this is why men of
the present still think that their earth life is closed off by
the two portals of birth and death.
The
consciousness soul is being developed, but this development
only becomes evident in people who have a special talent for
it. I have met quite a few talented people like this during my
lifetime; but one usually doesn't notice them. There is an
awareness that a man with this fifth post Atlantean
consciousness doesn't completely fit into the period between
birth and death, that death plays into earthly life, that one
really dies a little bit every day, that we're dying
continuously all the time and that death exists. Some people
are very much afraid of death, because they feel that it is
undermining their ability to be human on earth. On the other
hand, I have also known people who loved death because it
always accompanied them, and they were really longing for
it.
This is something which will arise evermore during the fifth
post Atlantean epoch, namely, people will see death walking
alongside them. To put it even more concretely: men will
perceive an intimate fire process in themselves which is
connected with the development of the consciousness soul. They
will experience this development of waking consciousness like a
kind of fire process which consumes them, especially at the
moments when they pass over from sleeping to waking
consciousness. The consciousness soul is a very spiritual
thing, and spiritual things always consume material ones. The
consciousness soul consumes material and etheric things in
human beings through a kind of intimate fire process or
transformation process.
This is something which men will perceive more and more in the
course of this fifth post Atlantean epoch. Except that you
shouldn't think that it's like a burning candle flame; one
shouldn't think of it in such a physical way. Rather he will
incorporate this proximity of death into his moral soul.
The
situation with most people today is as follows. If you see how
the good resolves and firm intentions which they have disappear
in the next moment, hour, day or month, then in accordance with
the prevailing, materialistic world view, one considers this to
be something which simply occurs. But one will gradually begin
to feel differently about this. One will begin to feel that a
good intention which one was too weak to carry out weakens
one's life and reduces one's moral value, and one will see that
one becomes morally lighter and less significant in the
universe thereby.
People today generally feel that what is present here is a
weakness in their soul, and not something which works on in the
universe. But this will change. Likewise, there will be certain
intellectual qualities which people will increasingly feel are
weakening them, as if a fire in their soul were consuming them.
These phenomena are already here, and some of them exist on a
large scale. But they are not being felt in an honest way.
There is a way to find one's way into the spiritual world where
one goes step by step and where one also takes what is given in
How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? and in
other books into account; thereby one arrives at a harmony
between spirit, soul and body. But through the way in which
most people cultivate a spiritual life today without these
exercises, namely, through the way in which people in various
confessions pursue a religious life, the latter is active in
them in such a manner that it reduces their moral value
and makes them lighter.
These are things which people are becoming aware of more and
more. People in this fifth post Atlantean epoch are changing a
great deal. For it is a significant change if one feels that
one's whole manhood is strengthened or weakened by what one is
in one's soul. It's quite a change if one feels that destiny is
not only a matter of circumstances which work upon one and
which are present around one outside, but that it is something
which makes one morally lighter or heavier. It's not as if
one's physical body were protected against this, for one feels
that one becomes lighter or heavier as a whole human being.
You
see, this is the consciousness which is being prepared, and one
can see externally and empirically that it is being prepared.
The time is beginning today when the priesthood will have to
think of these things, when the faithful are standing before
them. For it's a question of dealing with what is rising in
men's consciousness in such a way that a man is comforted and
strengthened. These things are not fully conscious yet, and
they are coming up together with all kinds of unrest,
nervousness and disharmonious emotional contents.
You
priests will find that it's becoming increasingly impossible to
treat individual people in accordance with the general ideas
which you have formed. Don't be offended by this, but in a
certain sense clichés have been the decisive thing in the
past and in many respects they still are today. If you ask what
a priest did with someone who came to him with some kind of
delusive ideas, one will hear that he tried to make him feel
aware that he was a sinner, and that he did the same with a
second case, and so on. Thus everything is pervaded by
clichés.
I
once went to three burials in one day, and I noticed that the
same priest began each burial with the statement, “As
high as the heavens are above the earth, so much higher are my
thoughts than your thoughts.” Here we have another
cliché, which was relatively justified in the fourth post
Atlantean epoch. Like the other things that I mentioned, this
has reached over into the fifth and it rules our thinking,
whereas a finer observation shows that all things must be
transformed in our cultural epoch. Priests must begin to be
able to look into the hearts of other human beings again.
Very few people can do this today. Human beings know terribly
little about other human beings today. For you see, if one
reads the passage about the white raiment which people who have
fulfilled the task of the fifth cultural epoch will have to
wear, and if one does this with a certain reverence —
because one can't really read the Apocalypse without reverence
— one gets the impression that here it's a question of
looking deeply into the special kind of consciousness which
each human being has with the eye of a priest. It's a question
of their becoming acquainted with the people who appear before
them in the fifth post Atlantean age. We are being admonished
to become acquainted with each human being in his soul garment,
and not just in the clothes which he wears through what he is
in the outer world. This admonishment of the Apocalypticer is
addressed to our present time through this letter.
Today's priests must penetrate the souls of human beings as
they momentarily disregard all the external things into which
men are placed. Priests must really begin to look at human
beings in the way I described, namely, in the way one must look
at them if one wants to investigate their karma. The day before
yesterday I said that if one wants to investigate someone's
karma one has to immerse oneself in his soul and in the
qualities which can come to expression in any profession and
basically in any capacity, and one shouldn't look at people
from the viewpoint of their vocation, social ties, and ability
or non-ability. For one has to look at what a human being was
in his past earth life. Now priests don't have to go quite that
far, but they must begin to see through external things and to
look at man's inner life and his purely human side, and at what
gives each inner human being an individual constitution. It's
really the case that if we read up to this Book of Revelation
we feel that what is written in it is like a direct exhortation
to present-day humanity. And if we read on we can get an even
deeper impression.
Just consider the following. We're going through the fifth post
Atlantean epoch; during this fifth post Atlantean age man is
changing his consciousness in such a way that he sees through
the work and activity of death itself. He will understand it.
He will not learn to see through it in such a way that he knows
how much longer he has to live; but he will see the working of
death itself; he will have it as a constant companion. Of
course he will have to have a soul content which will make this
standing next to him of death seem natural, and this is
something which will have to be created in the various spheres
of life. If one's soul forces are constantly alert one will be
able to have death next to one as a good friend and a constant
companion.
You
should realize that when you look out into your environment
today, you are still seeing things like a man of the fourth
post Atlantean epoch. You're basically looking at life which
has death in it in every plant and rock, but you don't see the
death, because you still don't see it in yourself. People will
soon begin to see death all the time. This is what one will
increasingly have to say to present-day men. People's whole
perception will change as they see death more and
more.
If
one sees death one sees many things which are completely hidden
in the phenomena. We see nature in a rather stable way today
because we don't look into certain fine, intimate things in
nature at all. We walk through the countryside, and we see
signs which say that there is a lot of foot and mouth disease
in this area. However, in reality something happened in the
more intimate things above such a place — if one can see
it — which can be compared with an ocean which is roiled
by a storm or with a volcanic eruption. This is what will
approach mankind in the sixth post Atlantean epoch.
Today people can observe the eruption of a Vesuvius or a great
earthquake by means of a seismograph, but because they don't
see death yet they don't see the tensions in the etheric which
become manifest in all kinds of things, such as when a
significant genius lives somewhere or is born there. People can
see the tremendous working and weaving of the spirit behind the
planets and stars and their configurations just as little; the
latter are just an external manifestation of the former.
People will see all of this in a certain way during the sixth
post Atlantean epoch. The sun and the stars and planets in
their present form will have fallen down from the heavens. One
will see the working and weaving of spirit where the materially
abstract stars shine today. Thus the way that men see
themselves will change a great deal in the course of the fifth
post Atlantean age and the way they see the whole world around
them will change greatly in the course of the sixth. For
example, don't think that an initiate sees the world like a
non-initiate does. Something similar applies to successive
stages of consciousness. Human beings see the world differently
in successive epochs.
The
fact that we are living at a time when man and the way the
world looks are being transformed is indicated in a number of
ways but also by the fact that there is a relative uniformity
in the description of the first four letters. The first letter
is unsealed and a horse appears, a white horse. The second
letter is unsealed and a red horse appears, but it's a horse.
The third letter is unsealed and a black horse appears, but
it's a horse. The fourth letter is unsealed and a pale horse
appears, but again it is a horse.
The
fifth letter is unsealed and no horse appears; there is no
mention of horses anymore. The decisive thing here is indicated
in an entirely different way. If we go on reading the letters,
we find that a very important transformation which is occurring
during our age is pointed to in this way.
We
can only say that we must prepare ourselves to become the new,
transformed community of Sardis. This new and transformed
community in Sardis must realize that it's rather trivial to
know plants, animals and rocks, for one only really knows these
things if one finds the activities of the stars and planets in
every stone and in every plant. The stars must fall down from
heaven in a spiritual way. One can already begin to perceive
this.
I
would just like to give a particular example of this. People
accept the outer forms of such things. One doesn't pay much
attention to the way in which something like this is present in
the whole spiritual evolution of mankind. Each person can only
do something at the place where he stands. Before I went on my
last trip to England, the following thing happened. You may
know that when I'm here I give the people who are working on
our building one or two hours a week during their working time,
where I talk to them about scientific and spiritual things. I
let the workers give me the themes, and they really like to do
this. The workers like it if they can choose the themes. Now
they wanted to know about things which are possible in
present-day spiritual life. This is one of the things which
priests should really understand.
When I walked into the classroom before I went on my trip to
England, a worker had a prepared question: Why is it that only
certain rocks and plants have an odor? Where does the fragrance
of flowers come from? Now these workers were educated by the
lectures which have been given for years to such an extent that
they're not particularly interested in chemical explanations,
where one tells them that one has this or that substance which
is giving off this or that aroma, along the lines of
explanations which tell one that destitution comes from
poverty. The workers want real explanations.
Now
you see, I had to tell them the following. I will briefly
repeat what I explained to them for about an hour. Things which
smell refer us to our sense organs; we perceive the aroma
through our organ of smell. But let's ask ourselves whether we
have developed our organ of smell to the point where we can
compete with a police dog. You will have to admit that we
can't. On the contrary, you will have to admit that man has a
rather crude organ of smell and that one runs into more
sensitive organs of smell if one goes down to certain lower
forms in nature.
One
can see this from the following. Take a dog, which has this
sensitive organ of smell, so that it can become a police, dog.
You will see that it has a receded forehead which follows the
olfactory nerves that bear smells into its system. All of this
is puffed up into a forehead in us; our intellectual apparatus
and especially our ability to recognize things is a transformed
organ of smell. This explains why we find more sensitive
organs of perception when we descend to lower creatures.
Now
spiritual science teaches us that the fragrant flowers of a
large number of plants are really organs of smell; they're
vegetable organs of smell which are extraordinarily sensitive.
And what do they smell? They smell the omnipresent, world's
aroma. The worldly smell which is emitted by Venus is different
from the ones which are given off by Mars or Saturn. For
instance, violet smells are the aromatic echo of the cosmic
smell which violets perceive. Such pleasant smelling plants
perceive the elements of the world's smell which come from
Venus, Mercury and Mars. Stinky asafetida smells Saturn odors
and reproduces them.
Here one has to explain to people how the stars fall down,
because they want to know this; for the things of the world are
basically nothing else than what they give out or radiate down.
If one wants to talk about things in a realistic way, one has
to say that the stars are really falling down already, because
they are in the plants. Plants are aromatic and they are also
olfactory organs. This morning I let the workers give me some
more questions. One of the questions was: If what was said
about smells is correct and plants are sensitive organs of
smell, where do plant colors come from?
I
had to explain that although plant aromas come from the
planets, plant colors come from the power of the sun. I gave an
example to make this seem plausible. However, one of the
workers wasn't entirely satisfied with this answer, and he
said: this doesn't explain why rocks have colors; I can
understand why plants have colors, for if there's a plant
growing in the cellar where there's no sunlight, it has a form
which has an aroma, because the world's aroma passes through
the walls of the cellar; but the sun doesn't shine through the
walls and so plants remain pale or even white; but how do rocks
become colored? Then I had explain[ed] that we have the course
of the day, with a revolution with respect to the sun in hours,
and we have the course of the year which brings about the
seasons during which the sun goes up towards the zenith and
back down again; but we also have something else. I had to
explain the Platonic year, and I explained that although the
sun is now in Pisces at the vernal equinox it was previously in
Aries, Taurus and Gemini, and that it takes 25.920 years for it
to go all the way around. So that the sun is connected with the
course of a day, the course of a year and the course of a world
year; and whereas plants get their colors from the sun in the
course of a year, rocks get their colors in the course of a
world year.
The
power which the sun develops in its movement through a Platonic
year lives in the colors of green emeralds, wine yellow topaz
and red rubies. And so you see that if one begins to speak
about the spiritual world people are no longer satisfied if one
explains their questions about earthly things with the
trivialities which come out of our laboratories and dissecting
rooms. They want to know things, and they feel very satisfied
if they know them in a Sardisian way or in a way where one
brings in the stars and planets and their activities. After
all, by placing Sardis into the present time, one is doing the
same thing that the Apocalypse is doing.
You
see, this is an example, but on the other hand, one has to
begin to carry this sensing of the stars and their beings into
the present People will have to begin to see that the Christ is
a sun being again. But this is what they fight most of all. But
if I tell you such things, namely, if I tell you that our
modern, fifth post Atlantean epoch must be the resurrected
Sardis, in the way that this is concisely and wonderfully
described in the fifth community and in the fifth seal, when
these things are unsealed, if I say this to you, you will feel
that one of our tasks is to develop this particular
understanding of the Apocalypse today, namely, to be able to
understand the tasks which are demanding our heartfelt
attention every day. It doesn't do any good to merely interpret
the Apocalypse today. We must put the Apocalypse into practice
in everything we do, otherwise we might just as well forget
about it. A desire to interpret it in order to satisfy one's
curiosity doesn't have much value.
Thus I have tried to show you the second thing which belongs to
a reading of the Apocalypse. Yesterday I tried to indicate the
formal aspect to you; today I tried to indicate that it takes
will power to read it. But this is only natural. For
apocalypses have always arisen through inspirations of the
will, and here we touch upon a really apocalyptic point,
because it is an apocalyptic point which is full of life.
We
already have people today who are being trained in an
apocalyptic way; but they are being apocalyptically trained so
that they receive their training of the will in a way which is
oriented specifically towards the Roman catholic church; these
are the Jesuits. There is something very apocalyptic about the
Jesuits' training and exercises. The Jesuits' exercises involve
a training of the will, which always underlies the perception
of apocalyptic things. Hence anyone who takes a real priesthood
in the sense of a Christian renewal seriously today has to keep
this training of the Jesuits in mind.
He
must understand the Apocalypse so that he can find the right
impulse for his will in it, whereas although the impulse for
the will which was given by Ignatius of Loyola was wonderful,
it was very one-sided, and it has become Ahrimanically hardened
today. For Ignatius of Loyola is a good example of how wrongly
we can look at the world if we don't gain knowledge of it in a
spiritual scientific way.
People ascribe the present development of the Jesuits to
Ignatius of Loyola. But it no longer has anything to do with
him. Ignatius of Loyola reincarnated a long time ago, and of
course he has separated himself from the movement completely,
for he lived as Emanuel Swedenborg; and so the Jesuitic
movement has become completely Ahrimanic since then. It is no
longer connected with Ignatius and it is active in an Ahrimanic
way. Here you have a kind of shadowy counter image of what you
must train yourself to do, when you take apocalyptic things
into your ego in the way I mentioned, so that your ego becomes'
a sum of active forces which are also apocalyptic.
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