LECTURE SIXTEEN
September 20, 1924
View the blackboard drawing from the German edition for this lecture
I
would now like to go back to something so that we can proceed
from there in our deliberations. I pointed out that one sees
something strange today, namely, there is a strong longing for
spirituality in the subconscious wishes of the human soul. What
is experienced on the physical plane today in a superficial and
external way is basically quite different from what is really
present in the souls of present-day men.
Something rather surprising happened today that confirms this.
A few days ago I told you about the strange form my lectures to
the workmen is taking in terms of their content due to the
questions that are being asked. As I mentioned, one can see
from the desires which are developing there that one can speak
to people out of the spirit of the Apocalypse today if one
finds a suitable tone. Sven though one doesn't talk to them
about the Apocalypse right away, one can speak out of its
spirit just as we're doing here.
Now
the rather surprising thing that happened is that I arrived at
something that I had to tell you today, because it arises out
of the whole context of our studies here. This morning when I
gave my lecture to the workmen, when everything which we will
now have to discuss stood before me quite clearly, a question
was asked that made it necessary to present scientific things
that I had intended to present to you today. Here one can see
the presence of subterranean influences and one can see that
what is happening here in a real, spiritual way through the
fact that these lectures are being given, arouses longings over
there that would otherwise not exist. That lecture over there
would never have been given today if we had not been talking
about the Apocalypse here. And yet the lecture over there was
given in response to a question that I didn't know outwardly,
but which was asked.
This shows that our time is being taken hold of by a spiritual
life that is still present in most people's sub-consciousness,
and this especially concerns priests who must investigate the
extent to which an inclination to enter into spiritual things
is emerging from souls. Now we will have to contemplate our
topics here in the spirit of the Apocalypse. That is what we
intended to do today, but I had to indicate a number of things
this morning about the same matter from quite different
viewpoints in response to a question. One has to take such
things seriously, for they are important.
We
should point out how much more intimate the terminology of the
Apocalypticer is, for if you take everything that has been said
so far you will realize that when the Apocalypticer how man
stands in the whole world he basically looks upon the stars and
the earth as a unity. He connects man's real nature with both
the stars and the earth. We will now have to point to the real
thing that the Apocalypticer is referring to when he speaks
about the seven-headed beast, the two-horned beast and about
beasts in general. Up till now we have looked for these real
things by pointing to what man can experience inwardly.
However, you will find that whenever the Apocalypticer speaks
about fixed stars he is talking about the divine spirit, as
people continued to do during the whole Middle Ages. Whenever
he speaks about planets he's speaking of angelic intelligences
or intelligences which, have a hierarchical, angelic character.
But when he speaks about beasts he's also referring to
something concrete like this. He lets human beings participate
in the crystal heavens, fixed stars and planets but also in the
whole development that underlies the beasts that are
continuously being mentioned in the Apocalypse. Now what outer
physical reality do these beasts correspond to?
Whenever the Apocalypticer refers to beasts, he's really
speaking about the forces and activities of comets. Once you
know about this terminology you will begin to understand a
number of things that the Apocalypticer knew about the nature
of comets, although mankind in general then forgot about these
things. So let's take a look at the nature of comets in
connection with the Apocalypse. I would like to present this as
follows.
If
one takes the Copernican solar system that one learns in school
with its sun, Mercury, Venus, earth, Mars, asteroids, Jupiter,
Saturn and also Uranus and Neptune, one finds that it has a
calculable regularity. If one doesn't make serious errors in
one's calculations and if one makes the appropriate
corrections, one finds that all one has to do is to turn the
telescope to the calculated spot, and one will find the body in
one's instrument. These are calculable things. Then one also
has the orbits of various comets in there. One can calculate
the orbits of many comets and the calculation gives rather
strange results that can almost drive one crazy if one simply
takes them as they stand.
I
will just give one example. It was 1773 and a famous astronomer
by the name of Lalande said that he would give a lecture about
comets at the Paris Academy. The rumor spread that he was going
to prove that there would be a collision between a comet and
the earth that very same year. According to his calculations
the orbits of the comet and the earth would intersect and a
collision was inevitable. Just imagine the atmosphere at the
time; this rumor was going around in Paris in 1773 and there
was a big surge in the number of miscarriages, premature
births, and deaths among severely ill people, who were shocked
by this rumor. Catholic priests were getting rich because
everyone was running to confession, and they all wanted to have
last rites because the world was coming to an end. This report
caused a terrible panic in Paris in 1773, so that the police,
who after all do have a mission, forbade this lecture, because
it was too dangerous. Since the lecture could not be given and
since it turned out that all the miscarriages and premature
births were unnecessary, it's not clear how Lalande would have
explained the absence of destructive effects, for the
calculation was correct as far as the collision of the comet
and the earth was concerned, but in effect it also predicted
that the collision would displace large quantities of ocean
water at the equator and produce tremendous floods on the
masses of land between the north and south poles. This
catastrophe did not occur, even though the calculation was
correct.
We
can understand what happened here if we connect this incident
with what happened to another comet, namely, the famous Biela
comet. If one connects these two one arrives at the following.
People were quite right to be very interested in the orbit of
Biela's comet in 1832 and in all that can be predicted from
calculations of the same. The appearance of this comet
confirmed the calculations. The comet came so close to the
earth that people said: this could get dangerous; for each time
it comes back it's getting closer to the earth. And since
Biela's comet came back every 6 or 7 years, people were
particularly interested in its appearance in the mid 40's, for
according to the calculations the comet was going to pass at a
distance of thirteen times the radius of the moon's orbit
around the earth, which is too close for comfort. The comet
continued to get closer each time, although observers noted
that it was getting fainter and fainter the closer it came. The
1860s were unfavorable for observations for the closer it got
the fainter it got. However, when it was getting dangerously
near the earth one discovered that it had split in two. And
people were very curious about the decisive thing that was
supposed to happen in 1872, because if the calculations were as
accurate as for that other comet in 1773 something terrible
would happen to the earth.
I
was only a little boy in 1872, but I still remember quite well
that pamphlets were distributed everywhere which said that the
end of the world was at hand. A great deal was said and written
about the earth's destruction at that time. I can't quote any
statistics about the number of miscarriages and deaths and
absolutions, but people certainly awaited this event with
considerable anxiety. The big day came and I still remember how
excited and expectant everyone was but 10 and behold the only
thing that appeared was a very beautiful and magnificent meteor
shower the comet didn't come back at all. It was a wonderful
shower of meteors; as if a nocturnal fire in the sky was
falling down to earth in many scintillating sparks. The comet
had split up even more into a lot of small fragments which
could be absorbed by the earth's atmosphere and which became
connected with the earth; it had taken a course whereby it
could be absorbed by the earth.
Now
an astronomer by the name of Littrow wrote a very interesting
paper back then; you should really read it, it is very
interesting. He made very nice calculations, and taking
everything into consideration he said that nothing too serious
could happen through the near miss in 1872, but that if the
comet stayed together his calculations showed that a real
catastrophe would occur in 1933. That's right: 1933. That's
right.
That is, if the comet had remained the way it was, there would
have been a real catastrophe in 1933, for all the oceans would
have flooded the earth in such a way that all creatures on
earth would have perished. But it broke up into particles
before then and was absorbed by the earth; the earth feeds on
this world substance. So there will be no collision in 1933
— it's not too far away; but what the earth has absorbed
will come up from the earth then as a spiritual reflection.
What the earth has absorbed becomes spiritualized by other
substances, and the spiritual elements rise up. The earth
digests the comets and the spiritual elements rise up. That is
why spiritualized, cometary things in the earth rise up from
time to time.
Now
this has a deep significance in the world context. I have often
mentioned the odd things that transpired when railroad trains
were first introduced. When people suggested that the post
master in Berlin should have a railroad built, he said that he
was already dispatching two coaches a week, and they were
practically empty, so why bother building a railroad. And when
people asked the medical board in Nuremberg whether it would be
all right to build a railroad from Nuremberg to Fuerth, they
said that this would not be advisable, because people's nerves
would suffer terribly from it; people shouldn't be exposed to
this for their body and soul would be deleteriously affected.
However, if people did feel compelled to give in to this
foolishness, the medical advisory board said, they should at
least put up high wooden partitions on either side of the
tracks so that the farmers would not get brain
concussions.
That was the verdiet of the learned board in Nuremberg at that
time. One laughs about that today because one thinks: people
were really narrow-minded back then. However, as I've often
mentioned, I can't get too mirthful about this because the
learned board was right, if one goes by the state of
scientific knowledge at the time. Although people don't go by
what science knows too much. However, given the state of the
art at that time, the experts had to say: people will ruin
their nerves if they ride in railroad trains. That is even true
to a' certain extent. If you compare present-day human nerves
with earlier ones, you will see that the Nuremberg doctors were
not entirely wrong. For I have always heard that people from
Nuremberg never hang anyone until they get their hands on him.
And Dr. Rittelmeyer will agree that they won't use a science
that they don't already have.
So
those scientists were only saying what they knew, and they
would have been right — if comets didn't exist. People
wouldn't be able to endure the demands that are made upon their
physical bodies by their astral bodies, if these astral bodies
which constitute the bestial element in man weren't being
continuously corrected and healed by the absorbed cometary
substances that are radiated back to the surface of the earth,
and that have an equilibrating effect upon human capacities. So
you see that man is placed into the universe in a strange way
in this respect.
Let's look at Biela's comet of 1872. Fire falls from heaven;
the earth absorbs it, so that someone who can percelve these
things spiritually sees that something comes up again and
influences man's astral body in a favorable or unfavorable way.
Some comets have a therapeutic effect upon men's nerves, and
others which the earth absorbs unleash wild astral forces in
man when, they press upwards again.
Thus the Apocalypticer looks at cometary phenomena and he lets
them run parallel with the descriptions of his beasts. He
compares them with seven-headed beasts because at that time the
latter were much more closely connected with physical
conditions, and a comet that was split into seven parts was a
heavenly expression of what occurred on the earth. Likewise,
the two-horned beast referred to a comet with two tails.
Wild superstitions were connected with comets, and they
prevented people from knowing much about them, except that one
calculated their orbits and one was bothered by their erratic
manifestations, etc. Once in a while someone with a good head
like Hegel pointed to other connections between cometary things
and earthly things. Hegel occasionally treated himself to a
bubbly glass of wine, and he quite rightly observed that good
and bad wine years are connected with comets. Now just consider
the matter in its large, cosmic connections. Just consider that
the earth consumes cometary substances and ejects them again in
a spiritualized form. This becomes united with human astral
bodies in a good way or a bad one. The cometary essence that we
see in the sky at a certain time is up there. Where is it after
this particular time?
In
a lecture in Paris in 1906, I pointed out that cometary
substances contain compounds of carbon and nitrogen or
cyanogen. This was before anyone else had mentioned anything
about it, although scientists later confirmed it through
spectral analysis. That is rather significant, because the
cyanides that are distributed in the earth in trace amounts are
used to purify astral bodies. An indispensable cosmic doctor is
at work in the cosmos and he carries out such therapies more or
less continuously.
Just consider that a comet that one sees at a particular time
becomes atomized in the way that I described and comes down
from the heavens as a rain of fire; later it is in the ground,
still later it goes from the soil into the roots, stems, leaves
and flowers of plants. We eat the cometary bolts and the
ferments that are given to the earth by the cosmos in our daily
bread.
The
Apocalypticer looks at the phenomena and he sees that favorable
spiritual effects arise from one comet and unfavorable ones
from another. A beast, or a comet in a cosmic sense, frees
itself from its imprisonment in the earth. The beast gets
out» this means something for human evolution. And so one
will point to very intense realities if one wants to indicate
large, important points in the evolution of the earth and
mankind.
The
earth and everything that exists on it might I have perished in
1933 if another wise arrangement weren't there that can't be
calculated, so that the calculations may not always be correct
if the comets have taken on the other form. From the
Apocalypticer s viewpoint one would say: Before men can grasp
the etheric Christ in the right way, mankind must first meet
and deal with the beast who will rise up in1933.
That is spoken from an Apocalyptic viewpoint. Here a spiritual
view is united with an observation of nature. The basic
spiritual character of what is present in the universe becomes
clear here. If you consider the farmers in 1872 who stood
outdoors and observed this rain of light and you add the
spiritual knowledge that is available about this, which I have
outlined here, and if you compare this with some of the
descriptions in the Apocalypse you will see that it agrees word
for word and that the Apocalypse refers to real events in
nature.
This justifies one in saying that the Apocalypse is a book with
seven seals. One has to unseal it in this way so that one finds
out what is meant. It doesn't seem much wiser to me to ask why
the Apocalypticer wrote something that has seals than to ask
why we seal our letters when we mail them. We seal them so that
people for whom they weren't intended will not read them. The
same goes for the Apocalypticer. He wanted the Apocalypse to be
read by people who are qualified to do so and who know how to
open the seals. No one knows how to open them if he isn't
competent in a certain sense, that is, if he doesn't, as it
were, get a knife from the spiritual powers to cut the scroll
open.
So
this shower of light was there in the 1870s. The comet's
activity was much more spiritual in 1872 when it was supposed
to came back, than in its previous appearance's; it was almost
entirely a Spiritual activity. The comet has poured down upon
the earth as a shower of luminous meteors ever since, and the
earth absorbs them. And Michael approached the earth and began
to rule it in a shower of golden light at the end of the
seventies. Here you have events in nature that are really
spiritual events, or spiritual events that are strong enough to
be nature events. You will only arrive at a real insight into
the way that the world is designed if you see that all natural
events become spiritual events, and that all spiritual
occurrences have the intensity of natural occurrences. Then you
will connect moral things with natural things in evolution and
you will no longer say that faith should be the only content of
religious life and you will be more inclined to make knowledge
the content of religious life. That is something you can gain
through a more intensive study of the Apocalypse.
We
will probably be able to conclude these studies tomorrow or the
day after.
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