IV
IN the last lecture
we showed how the Apocalypse of John prophetically points to the
cycle of human evolution lying between the great upheaval upon our
earth which the legends of various peoples describe as a flood,
and geology the glacial period on the one hand, and that event
which we designate as the War of All against All on the
other. In the epoch between these two events lies everything
prophetically referred to in the Apocalypse — that book
which reveals to us the beings of past ages in order to show
what is to fire our will and our impulses for the future. We
have also seen how we ourselves, in the spiritual movement to
which we belong, should consider the words of the so-called
fifth letter as a summons to action, to work. We have seen
that we ought to follow that Being with the seven Spirits of
God and the seven stars. Then we saw how, through this
spiritual movement, the next age is prepared which is
represented by the community of Philadelphia, the age
when — among all those who have under-stood the word of
the summons — there is to be that brotherly love over the
whole earth which is described in the Gospel of John.
Afterwards another age, the seventh, will follow, which the
writer of the Apocalypse describes by saying that on the one
hand there is placed all that is bad in the community
representing the seventh age, that is lukewarm, neither hot
nor cold, that could not warm to the spiritual life and hence
must fall away, and on the other hand those who have
understood the word of invitation, those who will form his
following who says, “I am the Amen,” that is: I am he who
unites in himself the goal of the human being, who contains
the Christ principle in himself.
Now let us
keep for a later occasion all that could be added in further
explanation of the several letters and in justification of
the several names of the cities. To-day we shall pass on in
our studies to that which presents itself to the pupil when
he advances to the next stage of initiation. We were
confronted by the seven sub-ages of the present cycle of
humanity, and we have said that this entire cycle with its
seven sub-ages is itself a small cycle contained in a longer
period also containing seven epochs. Our epoch, which
embraces seven ages, was preceded by the Atlantean epoch,
during which were prepared the races whose echoes still
exist. When the seventh age of our present epoch is at an
end,it will be followed by another epoch again consisting of
seven parts. The present epoch is preparing indirectly for
the following one, so that we may say, our age of
civilization will gradually pass over into one of brotherly
love, when a comparatively small part of humanity will have
understood the spiritual life and will have prepared the
spirit and attitude of brotherly love. That civilization will
then again divide off a smaller portion of human beings who
will survive the event which will have such a destructive
effect upon our epoch, namely, the War of All against All. In
this universal destructive element there will be everywhere
individuals who lift themselves above the rest of warring
humanity, individuals who have understood the spiritual life
and who will form the foundation for a new and different
world in the sixth epoch.
Something
similar also took place during the transition from the fourth
epoch to ours. When one who with spiritual vision can review
the course of time has passed back through the ages we have
considered, the Graeco-Roman, the Babylonian-Egyptian, the
ancient Persian and the ancient Indian and beyond the time of
the great flood, he comes into the Atlantean epoch. We need
not now consider it in detail but we must at least
under-stand how this Atlantean civilization passed over into
our own. There, too, the greater part of the Atlantean
population was not sufficiently mature to develop farther, it
was incapable of coming over into our epoch. A smaller part,
living in a region near to our present Ireland, developed to
the highest flower of the civilization of Atlantis and then
journeyed towards the East. We must clearly understand that
this was only the principal stream. There were always peoples
who emigrated from the West to the East, and all the later
peoples of Europe, of northern and central Europe, proceeded
from the stream which then went from the West to the East.
Now that most advanced part of the Atlantean population was
under the guidance of a great leader of humanity and
eventually settled down as a very small tribe of chosen
individuals in Central Asia. From this point the colonists
migrated to the various regions of civilization mentioned, to
ancient India, to Persia, Egypt, Greece, etc.
You might now
be inclined to say: Is it not an extremely bitter thought
that whole bodies of peoples remain immature and do not
develop their capacities; that only a small group becomes
capable of providing the germ for the next civilization? This
thought will no longer disquiet you if you distinguish
between race-development and individual soul-development, for
no soul is condemned to remain in one particular race. The
race may fall behind; the community of people may remain
backward, but the souls progress beyond the several races.
If we wish to form a true conception of this we must say
that all the souls now living in bodies in civilized
countries were formerly incarnated in Atlantean bodies. A few
developed there in the requisite manner, and did not remain
in Atlantean bodies. As they had developed further they could
become the souls of the bodies which had also progressed
further. Only the souls which as souls had remained backward
had to take bodies which as bodies had remained at a lower
stage. If all the souls had progressed, the backward races
would either have decreased very much in population, or the
bodies would be occupied by newly incoming souls at a low
stage of development. For there are always souls which can
inhabit backward bodies. No soul is bound to a backward body
if it does not bind itself to it.
The relation
between soul-development and race-development is preserved to
us in a wonderful myth. Let us imagine race following race,
civilization following civilization. The soul going through
its earth mission in the right way is incarnated in a certain
race; it strives upward in this race, and acquires the
capacities of this race in order next time to be incarnated
in a higher one. Only the souls which sink in the race and do
not work out of the physical materiality, are held back in
the race by their own weight, as one might say. They appear a
second time in the same race and eventually a third time
bodies in similarly formed races. Such souls hold back the
bodies of the race. This has been wonderfully described in a
legend. We know, indeed, that man progresses further in the
fulfilment of the mission of the earth by following the great
Leaders of humanity who point out the goals to be attained;
if he rejects them, if he does not follow them, he must
remain behind with his race, for he cannot then get beyond
it. Let us think of a personality who has the good fortune to
meet a great Leader of humanity, let us suppose such a
personality confronting Christ Jesus himself, for example;
he sees how all his deeds are evidence for leading humanity
forward, but he will have nothing to do with this progress,
he rejects the Leader of humanity. Such a personality, such a
soul would be condemned to remain in the race. If we follow
this thought to its conclusion such a soul would have to
appear again and again in the same race, and we have the
legend of Ahasuerus who had to appear in the same race again
and again because he rejected Christ Jesus. Great truths
concerning the evolution of humanity are placed before us in
such a legend as this.
We must
distinguish between soul-development and race-development. No
soul is undeservedly obliged to remain in an old body, no
soul will undeservedly remain in a body belonging to our age.
Those who hear the voice which calls them to progress will
survive the great period of destruction — the War of
All against All — and appear in new bodies which will
be quite different from those of the present day. For it is
very short-sighted if one thinks of the Atlantean bodies of
men as being like the present bodies. In the course of
thousands of years the external physiognomy changes and after
the great War of All against All man will have quite a
different form. To-day he is so formed that in a certain
sense he can conceal the good and evil in his nature. The
human physiognomy already betrays a good deal, it is true,
and one who understands this will be able to read much from
the features. But it is still possible to-day for a scoundrel
to smile most graciously with the must innocent man and or
taken for an honest man; the reverse is also possible; the
good impulses in the soul may remain unrecognized. It is
possible for all that exists in the soul as cleverness and
stupidity, as beauty and ugliness, to hide itself behind the
general physiognomy possessed by this or that race. This will
no longer be the case in the epoch following the great War of
All against All. Upon the forehead and in the whole
physiognomy it will be written whether the person is good or
evil. He will show in his face what is contained in his
inmost soul. What a man has developed within himself,
whether he has exercised good or evil impulses, will be
written on his forehead. After the great War of All against
All there will be two kinds of human beings. Those who had
previously tried to follow the call to the spiritual life,
who cultivated the spiritualizing and ennobling of their
inner spiritual life, will show this inward life on their
faces and express it in their gestures and the movements of
their hands. And those who have turned away from the
spiritual life, represented by the community of Laodicea,
who were lukewarm, neither warm nor cold, will pass into the
following epoch as those who retard human evolution, who
preserve the backward forces of evolution which have been
left behind. They will show the evil passions, impulses and
instincts hostile to the spiritual in an ugly, unintelligent,
evil-looking countenance. In their gestures and
hand-movements, in every-thing they do, they will present an
outer image of the ugliness in their soul. Just as humanity
has separated into races and communities, in the future it
will divide into two great streams, the good and the evil.
And what is in their souls will be outwardly manifest, they
will no longer be able to hide it.
If we look
back and see how humanity has hitherto developed on the
earth, we shall find that this development of the future just
described is quite in harmony with it. Let us look back to
the origin of our earth after Saturn, Sun and Moon and a long
interval had passed. The earth then emerged anew out of the
cosmic darkness. At that time, in the first part of the earth
development, there were no other creatures upon the earth
besides man. He is the first-born. He was entirely spiritual,
for embodiment consists in a densification. Let us imagine a
body of water suspended in space which, through a certain
process, partially crystallizes into ice, first a small part
and then the same process continually repeated. And now let
us imagine that the small pieces of ice which have
crystallized fall from the body of water, so that they are
now separated from the whole mass. Now, because each small
piece of ice can only grow larger so long as it is in the
whole body of water, when it has separated from this it
remains at the same stage. Let us imagine a portion of the
body of water separated in the form of very small pieces of
ice; let us imagine that the freezing of the water continues
and at the next stage more water assumes the form of small
lumps of ice; these again fall out, and so on, till finally a
very large part is crystallized out of the mass of water and
takes the shape of ice. This last has taken the most out of
the mother-substance of the water; it has been able to wait
the longest before separating.
It is the
same in evolution. The lowest animals were unable to wait,
they left their spiritual mother-substance too early and
hence have remained behind at an earlier stage of evolution.
Thus the gradually ascending grades of lower beings represent
backward stages in evolution. Man waited until the last; he
was the last to leave his spiritual divine-mother-substance
and descend as dense substance in fleshly form. The animals
descended earlier and therefore remained at that stage. We
shall see the reason for this later. At present we are
interested in the fact that they descended and have remained
at earlier stages of evolution. What, therefore, is an animal
form? It is one which, had it remained united with the spirit
from which it proceeded, would have developed up to our
present humanity. But the animal forms have remained at a
standstill; they have left the spiritual germ; they have
separated themselves and are now degenerating. They
represent a branch of the great tree of humanity. In ancient
times man had the various animal natures within him, as it
were, but then separated them off one after another as side
branches. All the animals in their different forms represent
nothing else than human passions which condensed too early.
That which man still possesses spiritually in his astral
body, the several animal forms represent physically. He kept
this in the astral body until the latest period of earth
existence, and hence he could progress the furthest.
Man still
has something within him which must separate itself from the
universal evolution as a descending branch, as the other
animal forms have done. That which man has within him as
tendency to good and evil, to cleverness and stupidity, to
beauty and ugliness, represents the possibility of an upward
progress or a remaining behind. Just as the animal form has
developed out of progressing humanity, so will the race of
evil with the horrible faces develop out of it as it
progresses towards spirituality and reaches the later goal of
humanity. In the future there will not only be the animal
forms which are the incarnated images of human passions, but
there will also be a race in which will live what man now
hides within him as a portion of evil, which to-day he can
still conceal but which later will be manifest. Let us make
clear the chief thing that will appear by an illustration
that may perhaps seem strange to you.
We must
understand that this separation of the animal forms was
actually necessary to man. Each animal form which separated in
bygone times from the general stream signifies that man had
then progressed a step further. Imagine that all the
qualities distributed throughout the animal kingdom were in
man. He has purified himself from them. Through this he was
able to develop higher. If we take a muddy liquid and allow
the gross matter in it to settle to the bottom, the finer
part remains at the top. In the same way the grosser parts
which man would have been unable to use for his present
condition of development have been deposited in the animal
forms. Through man having cast out of his line of development
these animal forms — his elder brothers, as it were — he
has reached his present height. Humanity has risen by
throwing out the lower forms in order to purify itself and it
will rise still higher by separating another kingdom of
nature, the kingdom of the evil race. Thus mankind rises
upward. Man owes every quality he now possesses to the
circumstance that he has rejected a particular animal form.
One who with spiritual vision looks upon the various animals
knows exactly what we owe to them. We look upon the lion form
and say, “If the lion did not exist in the outer world, man
would not have had this or that quality; for through his
having rejected it he has acquired this or the other
quality.” This is the case too with all the other forms in
the animal kingdom.
Now the
whole of our fifth epoch of human
evolution (including the various stages of civilization from
the ancient Indian to our own), really exists in order to
develop intelligence and reason and all that belongs to them.
Nothing of this existed in the Atlantean epoch. Memory was
present and also other qualities, but to develop the
intelligence and what pertains to it — the turning of the
attention to the outer world — is the task of the fifth
epoch. If we direct our spiritual vision to the surrounding
world and inquire, “To what do we owe the fact that we have
become intelligent; what animal form have we put forth from
ourselves in order to become intelligent?” curious and
grotesque as it may appear, it is nevertheless true to say that if there
were not around us the animals which belong to the horse
nature, man would never have been able to acquire
intelligence.
In former times men were aware of this. All the
intimate relations existing between certain races of men and
the horse originate from a feeling which may be compared with
the mysterious feeling of love between the two sexes, from a
certain feeling of what one owes to this animal. Hence when
the new civilization arose in the ancient Indian age, it was a horse
that played a mysterious role in religious ceremonial, in the
worship of the gods. And all customs connected with the horse
may be traced back to this fact. If you observe the customs
of ancient peoples who were still clairvoyant such as, for
instance, the old Germans, and notice how they placed
horse-skulls in front of their houses, this leads you back to
the fact that these people were aware that man has grown
beyond the unintelligent condition by separating out this
form. There was a profound consciousness that the acquisition
of cleverness is connected with it. You need only remember
the Odyssey and the wooden horse of Troy. Such legends
contain deep wisdom, much deeper than our science contains.
Not without reason is such a type as the horse employed in
legend. Man has grown
out of a form which once contained within it that which is
now embodied in the horse; and in the form of the centaur,
art still represented man as connected with this animal in
order to remind him of the stage of development out of which
he had grown, from which he had struggled free in order to
become the present human being.
What
thus took place in bygone times in order to lead to present
humanity will be repeated at a higher stage in the future. It
is not the case, however, that this would in the future have
to run its course in the physical world. Those who become
clairvoyant at the boundary between the astral and the
devachanic planes can see how man continually purifies and
develops that which he owes to the separation from the horse
nature. He will accomplish the spiritualizing of the
intelligence. After the great War of All against All he will
elevate to wisdom, to spirituality, that which to-day is
merely reason, merely cleverness. This will be experienced by
those who then will have reached the goal. The fruits of
that which was able to develop in humanity in consequence of
the separation of the horse nature will be manifested.
Now let us imagine one who clairvoyantly looks into the future of
mankind. What will he see, what will it show him?
Everything which man has prepared throughout the seven ages of
civilization (for his soul was incarnated in the past
civilizations and will again be incarnated in the future
ones) will be there in a following age, and survive the great
War of All against All into the more spiritual epoch. In each
age he took what could be taken up. Think how your soul
lived in the ancient Indian civilization! You then received
the wonderful teachings of the Holy Rishis; although you have
forgotten them you will re-member them again later. Then you
progressed further from one incarnation to another. You have
been able to learn what the Persian, the Egyptian and the
Graeco-Roman civilizations made possible. All this is within
your soul to-day, but it is not yet outwardly manifest in
your countenance. You will live further into the age of
Philadelphia and into the age which will be led by the
“Amen.” And a community of people will develop more
and more who will manifest in their countenances what has been
prepared in the various ages of our epoch. What is already
working in your soul, that which you received in the Indian
age, will appear in your physiognomy in the first sub-age of
the epoch following upon the great War of All against All.
And that which a man acquired in the ancient Persian age will
change his countenance at the second stage. And so on, stage
after stage. The spiritual teaching, which you who now sit
here receive and unite with your souls, will bear its visible
fruit in the epoch after the great war. You are now uniting with
your soul that which the seven Spirits of God and the
seven stars give. You carry it home. No one will read it in
your faces to-day, nor even after centuries; but it will
come after that great war. In the sixth
epoch there will come a fifth age and then you will bear the
image of it in your face; on your forehead will be written
what you have now worked out, what are now your thoughts and
feelings.
So step by step, after the great war, will issue
and reveal itself all that is now hidden in the soul. Let us
imagine the beginning of the great war; the soul which has
heard the call which from age to age the Christian principle
has uttered, will live on after all that is indicated in the
“letters.” What these ages can give has been given
throughout seven ages. Let us imagine how the soul waits, how
it waits on. It is sealed seven times. Each age of culture
lays one seal upon it. Within you is sealed what the Indians
wrote in the soul; within you is also imprinted what the
Persians, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans have written in
the soul, and what our own age of civilization inscribes in
it. The seals will be unloosed, that is, the things written
there will be outwardly revealed after the great War of All
against All. And the principle, the power, which brings it
about that the true fruit of our ages of civilization shall
be made manifest in the countenance, is to be found in Christ
Jesus. Seven seals of a book must be opened. What is this
book? Where is it?
We will explain what a book is according
to the Bible. The word “book” occurs in the Bible only
seldom. This must not be overlooked. If you search in the Old
Testament you will find the word in Genesis
(Gen. v. I):
“This is the book of the generations of man; When God created man,
in the likeness of God made he him; and he created him male-female,
and blessed him, and called his name Adam.” You may then
open where you will, you will only find the word “book”
again in the first Gospel
(Matt. i. 1).
“This is the
book of the generation of Christ Jesus, the son of David, the
son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob,”
etc. Again generations are enumerated. That which flows
through a long series is enumerated. And again the expression
“book” appears here in the Apocalypse of John. It appears
where it is said that the Lamb alone is worthy to open the
book with the seven seals. The expression “book” has always
the same significance, it is never used otherwise. We only
need to understand the records literally. A book in our
present sense is not intended. The Domesday book or register
of landed property had the old signification of the word
“book.” The word “book” is used where
something is entered consecutively, where one thing depends upon
another, where a possession is registered so that it may be handed
down from generation to generation. In such a record we are dealing
with something whereby a foundation is made for that which is
handed on by heredity. In the Old Testament the word “book”
signifies a document in which are recorded the generations
transmitted through the blood. It is there used in no other
sense than that the generations are recorded. It is used
afterwards in the first Gospel in the same way for the
recording of the lineage. Hence what follows consecutively in
time is written in a “book.” By a book nothing else is ever
intended than the recording of what follows in time, that is
to say, approximately in the sense of a chronicle, a history.
The book of life which is now laid down in humanity, in which
from age to age is written in the “I” of man that which
each age supplies, this book which is written in the soul of
man and which will be unsealed after the great War of All
against All, this book is also meant here in the Apocalypse.
In this book there will be the entries made by the various
ages of civilization. Just as through the generations the
entries were made in the genealogical tables of the old
books, so it is here, only that in this case that which man
spiritually acquires is written down. And as he acquires
through intellectuality what it is possible to acquire in our
age, the gradual progress of this development will be
represented imaginatively by the symbol which corresponds
with this quality. By having passed through the Indian age in
a frame of mind in which he turned away from the physical
world and directed his gaze towards the spiritual, man will,
in the first age after the War of All against All, gain the
victory over the things of sense. He will be the victor by
acquiring what was written in his soul in the first age.
Further, that which appeared in the second age, the conquest
of matter by the ancient Persians, will appear in the second
age after the War of All against All; the sword here
signifies the instrument for the over-coming of the external
world. That which man acquired in the Babylonian-.Egyptian
age, when he learned how to measure everything correctly is
seen in the third age after the great war, as that which is
represented by the scales. And the fourth age shows us what
is the most important thing, that which man acquired in the
fourth age of our epoch through Christ Jesus and his
appearance on earth; the spiritual life, the immortality of
the “I.” All that is not fit for immortality, that which
has to die, falls away; this must appear for the fourth age.
Thus
everything that has been prepared throughout the ages of this
present epoch comes out consecutively in the next, and it is
indicated by the symbol which corresponds with the
intelligence. If we read about the opening of the first four
seals in the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse of John, we
shall see that what is revealed expresses stage after stage
in a mighty symbolism, what will in the future be revealed.
“And I saw, and behold a white horse” — this indicates
that the spiritualized intelligence comes forth. “And he
that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him;
and he went forth to conquer, and he conquered. And when he
had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say,
‘Come and see.’ And there went out another horse that
was red. And to him that sat thereon was given power to take peace
from the earth, and that they should kill one another.” (That
that might be destroyed which is not worthy to take part in
the ascent of humanity.) “And to him was given a great
sword. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the
third beast say, ‘Come and see.’ And I beheld, and lo, a
black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in
his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say,
‘A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley
for a penny.‘” “Measure” and “penny”
to indicate what humanity learned in the third age; the fruits are
carried over and unsealed. And in the fourth age Christ Jesus
came to conquer death, and the manifestation of this
achievement is seen. “And when he had opened the fourth
seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, ‘Come and
see.’ And I looked and behold a pale horse; and his name that
sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” “Behold a
pale horse” — this all falls away, falls into the race
of evil; but that which heard the call, which overcame death,
partakes in the spiritual life. Those who have understood the
“I Am” and his call are those who have overcome death.
They have spiritualized the intelligence. And now what they have
become can no longer be symbolized by the horse. A new symbol
must appear for those who have understood to follow the call
of him who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars.
They now appear under the symbol of those who are clothed in
white garments, who have put on the robes of the immortal,
eternal, spiritual life.
We are then
further told how all that appears which goes upward to good
and that which goes downward to evil. This is clearly
expressed. “And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw
under the altar the souls of them that were slain because of
the word of God and because of the testimony which they held;
and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord,
holy and true, dost thou judge and not avenge our blood on
them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given
unto every one of them; and it was said unto then, that they
should rest yet a little season, until there came to them
their fellow-servants and their brethren, who should be
killed as they were” — will be killed as to the external
form and live again in the spiritual. How is this expressed?
Let us
realize what according to Anthroposophy becomes of the
external sense world. How have we described the seven stars?
We went back to Saturn and showed how the physical human body
originated, how it was constructed out of warmth. We then saw
how the Sun appeared; we drew a mental picture of it. The
sun is for us not merely a physical sun; it is the bringer of
life which in the future of humanity will appear as the
highest form of spiritual life. The moon is to us the element
which retards the rapid march of life and slows man down to
the necessary pace. Thus we see spiritual powers in sun and
moon. And the knowledge we acquire through Anthroposophy also
appears rightly symbolized in a future age; to our spiritual.
vision the sun and moon appear as the forces which have
constructed man. Symbolically the external physical sun and
the external moon disappear, they become like a human being,
but in an elementary form! “And I beheld when he had opened
the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; and the
sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as
blood.” All this is the symbolical fulfilment of what we are
seeking in spiritual life. Thus we see that what is being
prepared in this epoch is prophesied in significant pictures
for the next epoch. We now carry invisibly within us the
transformation which we take in hand with the sun and moon
when the physical changes into the spiritual elements. When
spiritual vision is directed toward the future, the physical
disappears and the symbol of the spiritualizing of humanity
appears before us.
To-day we
have pointed out in somewhat bold features what the seven
seals and their unveiling in the Apocalypse should say to
us. We must go still deeper into the subject, and then much
of what might seem improbable to us to-day will become quite
clear. We have, however, already seen how the mighty pictures
described by the seer regarding the present and future
development of humanity are arranged in a necessary order;
how this goes on into the future and thereby gives us
stronger impulses to live into the future and to do our share
in the spiritualizing of human life.
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