The Rudolf Steiner Archive

What the original state of what is called “ancient wisdom” was and how it came to earth is today's topic.

There are two kinds of knowledge and realization. Let us imagine the inventor of a clock: he makes one, two, three clocks according to the plan that was originally present in his mind. First there was the thought, then the actual reality. This is one way of knowing something.

To get to know the other way, let us imagine that the watchmaker has died; the watches are there and someone else studies them, figures out the plan and makes other watches. He has the same knowledge but has obtained it in a different way; for him, the sensory perception was first, then the idea; for the other man, the idea was first.

These two ways of acquiring knowledge also exist in the great universe. Such a thought, which corresponds to the laws of reality and is there before the sensory object, is called “intuitive thought”. It is born of the spirit itself, a child of the mental world. The other is a child of the sensory world, it is called “inductive thought.

Now let us see how the difference between the above and the disciples would manifest itself. The inventor will be able to communicate his thoughts because he is the shaper, the creator, because he was there when the sensual arose from the mental. The one who has imitated will also / gap in the transcript /

The same difference is between the first teachers of humanity and all later ones. For the first teachers of humanity were involved in creation, were among those who formed, they participated when the world was still a cosmic thought. They [gap in the transcript]

The first Arhat or Maha were involved in the creation of the world. In the middle of the third root race, when the human kingdom came into being, A also embodied himself.

They brought knowledge from the workshop with them, and that is “ancient wisdom”; they brought with them what they had experienced.

The knowledge that one gains afterwards is the same as that which the original great spirits have from the laws of creation themselves. [Gap in the transcript] If you really know something, then you also have the laws by which the world is created. Manas and Mahat are therefore the same in content. Only Manas is in us: I. And Mahat is spread out as a tableau over the whole world. Only the way they are is different, the content is the same. The more we increase in knowledge, the more /gap in the transcript]

What was taught at that time from the creative activity of the sculptors was the first wisdom, and it is therefore more than all science can acquire. This occult sentence, that the world has its origin in cosmic thoughts and that knowledge culminates in human thought formation.

The I enters into the formation of the world; outside of the I - Mahat. The I, the creator, encompasses Mahat. The development consists in the I expanding its sphere over the whole of Mahat, and in the end Mahat itself is within the I. What is the difference? Beginning: Mahat is outside of the I, end: Mahat is in the I.

The only difference between the beginning and the end is that the ego sacrificed itself as a special being and, as a result of this sacrifice, acquired Mahat as its content.

The process of world formation consists in the fact that the I, which was previously excluded from Mahat, afterwards has Mahat as its content. Not Mahat, but the I has undergone a development. Meaningful sentence: The world is enclosed in cosmic thought formation [gap in the transcript], the I is outside.

This is only partly true, because in reality the ego is a part of Mahat. With us, every thought is a part of Mahat; let us try to symbolize one as content. Let us take the sentence: Evolution consists in the fact that each part of Mahat grows to such an extent that it becomes identical with the whole Mahat. The assimilation of all individuals to the whole Mahat takes place. The great sacrifice takes place. The whole Mahat gives its essence to all parts, that is development. The purpose of the world is that the whole gives its essence to each of its parts. It is certain that the whole was perfect at the beginning; but if it had no parts, it would remain as it is. Since it has them, it has given each of the parts its whole being, so that its own perfection is ultimately contained in each of its parts.

Beginning: Mahat is outside the “I”

End: Mahat is in the “I”

The only difference between the beginning and the end is that the “I” sacrificed itself as a separate being and, as the result of this sacrifice, received Mahat as its content.

Evolution consists of each part of Mahat growing to such an extent that it becomes identical with the whole Mahat. The “great sacrifice” takes place: the whole Mahat gives its essence to all its parts. This is development.

We must distinguish between the essence as such and between the perceptions and actions of the essence. These depend not only on the essence, but also on the world in which it is placed. The human being is in different worlds at different times, going through planets and globes. We have become acquainted with four of the three worlds. If he is to perceive and be active, he must form organs out of the world in question. In order to be able to work on the physical earth, he must form organs of perception out of the earth's materials. Thus we must distinguish between the being, which belongs to the world of the eternal, and the organs that it has formed out of the materials of the worlds it passes through.

If we did not have a physical hand, we would not be able to move an object, but would pass through matter. The hand must be impenetrable. [Gap in the transcript] It is the same with the sense organs. [Gap in the transcript] eyes. These organs are called Indriyas, and a distinction is made between Indriyas of the senses or perception and Indriyas of action. Every being forms organs of action and sense from the materials of the world through which it passes. Man belongs to the eternal world with his being, but with his organs to the world through which he passes. When he has traversed these worlds, he takes something from the worlds through his organs, which remains his possession. You had eyes when you emerged from the bosom of the Eternal, but they had no [gap in the transcript]

What you perceived remains. The eyes as organs of the physical world fade.

We see from this that people are wrong about what they call real. What appears as the effect of the processes is precisely what is real, lasting. Thus, through its organs, which it receives from time to time, the being draws the fruits from the different worlds, which it then takes with it. That is why the Greeks had beautiful symbols in the mysteries: They called the soul bees because the soul gathers the honey from the worlds and lays it down at the altar of the Eternal.

Why do the initiates use such images for the people? Does it have any value? Everything that is a myth is an outer garment for deeply inner truths.

How will we work on the statues more easily? Will we first work on the rough image in the block of stone or start with the finest execution? I think the first. The priests of different times acted according to this principle. They said [gap in transcript]

I instill in this soul a figurative idea that people do not understand at all. But it prepares his mind so that he can perceive the pure truth later. This had value as long as the priests were so imbued with reincarnation.

Back to the main idea: the beings take from the worlds what they need for their organs. For us: the physical, soul and spiritual worlds, of which we are composed. Man lives in these three worlds, the physical, astral and mental, and is therefore a threefold being.

Above the spiritual and below the physical, there are other worlds in which humans do not live directly, but other beings do. Let us imagine that these beings, which are only soul and spirit, are two-tiered for us. Such beings are called devas, who are not incarnated in the physical world, whose lowest form of existence is the astral. Myths have treated the knowledge of such beings allegorically, either by making them appear in fiery clouds. But we also find in myths that they appear in the form of animals - Zeus.

The animal often represents an astral being because it expresses the passionate more clearly than the human. This therefore corresponds to an astral reality, but is not to be thought of in the physical sense in the ordinary sense; rather, the people to whom it appeared were in a trance for the moment.

Besides these, there are other entities that are only physical-spiritual, lacking the spiritual. They are not animals, because with their generic character they belong to the spiritual; their generic soul belongs to the devachan. There are such entities that have no spiritual expression at all. It is only possible to reach them if you are not dependent on spiritual expression. I would have to be clairvoyant in the astral plane to perceive their astral essence. The earth is much more populated than one would think. A being lives in every rock and tree, but they do not express themselves because they have no spiritual expression. They are called elemental beings.

Man only perceives their effects when they manifest themselves to him, as it seems, by chance.

There are devas that have natures that are above the spiritual, and elemental beings that are below the physical. But they are none of our concern. These have organs that belong to the same worlds as we do. The devas do not perform acts that directly belong to the sensual world, so we do not perceive them; the elementary beings have no organs that can express themselves spiritually, so they are not there for humans.

In every church window, in every saga, in every folk building, in the ideas of everyday life in the Middle Ages, we can find the expression of deep truths. Poems that are not understood today are born out of the spirit of deepest wisdom. The material of “Heinrich von der Aue” was also taken from the circle of European initiates. The “Poor Henry”. Nowhere is it indicated that one is dealing with theosophical poetry; least of all did G. von H. know.

Heinrich von der Aue is a noble servant on the large estate of Aue in Swabia. He is an exceptionally capable knight in all worldly matters, but does not care much about things that go beyond the worldly. Therefore, he was punished with an illness called: Miselsucht - a leprosy that was considered incurable. All German doctors – and in those days they were doctors who healed with the help of spiritual powers – had given up on Heinrich von der Aue; only a master in Salerno had offered the prospect of salvation. A pure maiden must sacrifice her life. But he does not believe this; he realizes that it is the punishment for his worldly knighthood. He gives away his possessions and withdraws to a farm, where he is cared for by the daughter. She decides to sacrifice herself for him; he travels with her to Salerno. Then he realizes that it must not be, and would rather remain ill. But the sufficient sacrifice is not physical death, but the will, the joyful, spiritual will.

One principle was adopted by all poets. One should keep the measure, the harmony. 'Diumaasze'. A theosophical principle often expresses it: It does not depend on the external success, but on the right will. 'Who' - says the poet - 'in the mind strives for purity and nobility and wants the right, finds balance and honor.' – the bliss that emanates from the sixth principle. Through such words, Heinrich von der Aue implies that he has striven for something deeper. Everything he has written breathes the same spirit.

“Erek and Enita” describes how the search is on for moderation, how love arises from uniqueness and harmony from disharmony. Erek marries Enita. He is a bold knight who stipulates that his wife never warns him of danger. But harmony arises from the trials.

Iwein marries the daughter of a giant, but leaves her a year after the wedding because Gawain advises him not to 'get lost', not to become lazy and careless. He goes away for a year to pass tests, promises to come back, but does not, and loses the favor of his wife and his mind. He is saved by fighting lions and dragons. Seventeen years of wandering.

Only through spiritual knighthood can one attain the ability to exercise spiritual rule. In the legends, the higher, purer soul is always symbolized by a female soul; the higher consciousness is represented as the virgin feminine. Through his pure higher soul, which knows what love actually is, through the Master of Salerno, who points out to him how the higher spiritual connects with him through sacrifice.

What is misery for someone who knows what the spiritual and the physical actually are? We know that in earlier developments, man was a higher animal, only earthly development is there to put manas into kama. Basically, all beings in our development partake of this kama-manasic nature. In the animal, manas is not in the head, it is directed by manas. In the various kingdoms, the laws of wisdom come to light. This was not yet the case on the moon, which was only enveloped in an atmosphere of wisdom.

It would be an irregularity on earth if a new kama were grafted directly onto kama itself. If a being lived on kama, it would be the life relationship of the moon. There are such things on earth: they are parasites, insects that live on other creatures. And in the plant world there is mistletoe, a parasite that draws nourishment from already existing life. What the Kama root needs to live is what remained from the moon epoch. Mistletoe remained behind, only stunted, and must live parasitically to complete its development.

Hence the construction of insects, which are often in a horn shell, came into earthly development unfinished and [gap in the transcript]. Animals with an exoskeleton are those that are latecomers from the lunar epoch. It is therefore understandable that mistletoe plays such a role in ancient myths and legends. It is associated with those [...] and who are therefore still attached to the moon, to the Kamic, which was justified in the past.

In the saga, the beings that cause evil, connect their urges with the Kamic, are associated with mistletoe in the most spiritual way. [Baldur] is killed by mistletoe, which stems from an earlier epoch. If it extends into our epoch, it will bring about destruction. Earthly Kama must be ruled by Manas. Life on Earth is being destroyed by the lunar parasites. This is why the devil is called the lord of the flies.

If man himself abandons himself too much to Kama in earthly development, he grafts Kama onto Kama onto Kama and then becomes disharmonious within himself. This disharmony can be seen in the disease that breaks the measure. He is afflicted by the addiction that underlies this plant. Those who abandon themselves to the passions remain stuck in what belongs to the lunar. This damming up of the wave of life produces the disease of misery.

Those who do not strive for spiritual enlightenment experience a stagnation in their whole life. This cannot be understood by a physical doctor, only by someone who knows the connection between all planes. When the dammed up wave of life is lifted, when selfishness is truly sacrificed, then healing occurs.

Iwein is also a deeply symbolic piece of writing. Here again a female being represents the higher self. In this case it is the daughter of a giant, a race preceding humanity. The fusion of man with nature, as well as with [gap in transcript], was the gigantism. At the beginning of his development, Iwein is still close to this original development. He must now awaken Manas within himself. Manas was originally a gift of the gods, connected with the soul. Now he loses the higher gift in order to regain it as inner human intellect. When he reconciles with the higher self, he gains it, but by freeing the lion from the dragon, that is, from selfishness, from the wisdom that is directed towards the worldly.

It is wonderful when we consider the Mithras mysteries: their seven degrees. The fourth degree is the lion. When the fourth principle – lion – awakens in the higher sense, it strives towards the fifth and wants to be freed from the third, the dragon.

These poems arose from tremendous depths; it takes until the sixteenth century for them to surface. With the Copernican revolution, poetry becomes more secularized. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there is tremendous esoteric depth.

These Monday gatherings are intended to develop into truly intimate gatherings of our Theosophical community. Those present should speak as much as possible. I believe that this is the best way to enable a real discussion, with questions and answers from the group.

I would like to talk about apocalypses because this topic is suitable for leading more and more into the whole current that we call theosophical. When we talk about apocalypses, we will have to discuss all kinds of deeper, theosophical questions. Today, only a brief introduction will be given. We will then also have the opportunity to talk about a wide range of topics.

Of all the apocalypses, the best known is the secret revelation of John, which can be found at the end of the New Testament. There are a great many interpretations of this apocalypse. If you delve a little deeper into these interpretations, you will find that they often go very deeply into theology; but some are also very shallow. I myself will try to introduce you to the Apocalypse of John from a mystical point of view and then also to other apocalypses.

You might wonder why I am touching on this topic. However, the audience should be aware that we will be delving deeply into theosophy, touching on profound theosophical questions, and we would hardly find words if, in connection with this topic, the basic questions and basic goals were to be discussed in detail.

When speaking about such a lofty topic as the Apocalypse, it must be assumed that the main basic concepts of theosophical knowledge and theosophical goals are in place, and that you are convinced that Theosophy has a place in the world and that it not only has a general human but also a good scientific basis. You cannot talk about apocalypses if you still doubt whether Theosophy is superstition or real knowledge. We need to be clear about this fundamental question. The questions that are part of preparing the ground for Theosophy will all be touched upon. I will not only give the basic concepts of Theosophy, but the related questions will also be discussed. So, by talking about apocalypses, I would like to assume that the basis of the Theosophical worldview is generally given.

What does it mean to talk about apocalypses? First of all, I would just like to note that an apocalypse is a very specific way of looking at the world. You see the world in the form of an apocalypse. The one who can express an apocalypse himself has reached a certain point of view. You can read the apocalypse of others and you will learn very deep truths from it. But one cannot, without having reached a certain level of realization, utter what is contained in an apocalypse. There have been apocalypses among all peoples and at all times. We too, in Theosophy, have apocalypses.

Who can now speak in terms of apocalypses? I will answer this question, and that will lead us deeper into the essence of the apocalypses than a definition. The path of knowledge is prescribed for us; we are told how to come to knowledge and thereby to real spiritual effectiveness. Perhaps you have followed the stages one has to go through to enter and follow the path. You know that one has to develop very specific qualities in order to gain the freedom of vision that takes us away from what is merely sensually perceived and allows us to glimpse into the spiritual world. To do this, it is necessary for the human being to learn to distinguish between the 'eternal' and the 'temporal', to direct their gaze not at the temporal, not at the passing, but at the eternal, at what remains, so that they can then change their whole perception of the world around them, namely that certain things that are extremely important to the everyday person become unimportant to them, and other things gain in importance. What the everyday person finds important, such as the satisfaction of desires and everything that our self-interest dictates to us, must become unimportant. What must become important is what we have in mind as the eternal goal of humanity. We must have a sense of the ideal, of that which cannot be determined according to all possible advantages, but from the insight that it is about the human being, for the sake of the human being. If we have a sense of the ideal, we must also develop the sense that we learn to love it. The ideal is tremendously valuable. How many can sincerely look into their hearts and say that they truly love the ideal as one loves a child or a loved one? The ideal is far too intangible for people to grasp. But we must learn to love the intangible, that which exists only in the mind.

Then another quality we have to develop is “thought control”. We must not let our thoughts drift to and fro, but must practice controlling them so that we are able to hold on to a thought for as long as necessary to gain very specific knowledge through it and to become clear in a certain way through it. Man must realize that thoughts usually control him. To control thoughts means to master thoughts. We must not let ourselves be carried away by this or that urge to do this or that action. We must be given a sure direction. We must control ourselves only through the center within ourselves.

The third thing is that we acquire a certain even-tempered attitude towards the events of everyday life, which usually make people either euphoric or sad. We must have a certain “even-temperedness” both towards events that lift us up to heaven and towards those that plunge us into the deepest sorrow. Only by maintaining our composure throughout events can we find the way to judge things perceptively.

Then we must develop what we call 'tolerance'. This is a word that is easy to pronounce but means much more than is usually thought. How often in life do we condemn without asking why this or that person has come to this or that action. We must always ask: how and why? We must not be carried away to criticize. We must understand, understand everything in the broadest sense. If we develop this attitude, we will enter into the state of mind that kindles the life of knowledge in us. Do not think that the mind has no influence on the life of knowledge. Today, people overestimate the one-sided intellect and underestimate the qualities that lie deeper in the soul. They do not believe at all that these are the things that lead to knowledge. You can be a great scholar, you can have great knowledge and still not have free judgment. It would be quite easy for a wise man to feel superior to a child in his simplicity. But it would be quite wrong for him to give in to this sentiment. The wise man rejects the thought of being wiser than a child. Those who insist that they are more understanding and clever than others can never become wise. Those who accept the judgment of others with equanimity can become wise, can learn to understand by stepping back and judging from the perspective of the other. The fact that they understand the simple – even the simplest – is uplifting and useful for real progress and is a result of their tremendous tolerance.

A further quality must then be developed, which in Theosophy is called “faith”. Those who believe that they have come to a conclusion with their knowledge will not progress. The wise man must always be in the mood to realize that he actually knows very little and that every moment can teach him something completely new, that every expression of life can be a revelation to him. The one who truly walks the path of knowledge takes it so far that he says to himself: I may experience something in the next minute that throws everything I have believed and assumed so far overboard. In ordinary life, one will not take this to the extreme, but in the moment when one approaches anything in search of knowledge, one must really take it so far as to give up belief in one's previous knowledge. The wise man will never say: 'That cannot be', but will say: 'Everything is possible'. Through what I already know, I must never allow a judgment to arise about the possibility or impossibility of anything. The belief in the possibility of progressing to ever new revelations is a quality that the pathfinder must develop.

Then there is a quality that comes by itself, a quality that is called 'objectivity' or 'balance'. This helps us to avoid the pitfalls of life that condemn us to proclaim an apparent truth everywhere. This balance is not just a sum of everything else. Those who want to become wise must remain in balance; they must not let themselves be driven off course.

Once these qualities have been developed within us, the highest that can be attained at the preliminary stage of development comes, namely that man has the 'longing' to be truly free.

The theosophical movement wants to liberate people by speaking with universal tolerance of that which can apply to all people at all times.

This is what the pathfinder develops. When he has developed these qualities to a certain degree, then he is ready for what is called discipleship.

Then comes the moment when he has a great experience of tremendous significance: from this point on, he receives impressions from the spiritual world, from a completely different world, from a world that lies behind our world and of which our world is only the effect. He enters the world of the spiritual. He then looks at the world from the other side. What we call space and time no longer apply to him. It makes no difference to him that he is living in this particular incarnation. He could just as easily be living in a different incarnation. He could have lived thousands of years ago – when he looks at what he is now seeing, he would see it in the same way. He could even be living in the future and would still experience everything in the same way.

This is the first level of discipleship. Such a person is called a homeless person; he is removed from the Heimav. In return, he also says things that no longer refer to this or that place, to this or that people, to this or that race, but he says things that refer to all races, to all times and all peoples.

The first stage enables him to see only what is nearest. At this stage, he only sees what belongs to a so-called “root race”. The disciple, then, sees what relates to our present root race, back to the time when the Atlanteans disappeared.

Then the second stage of discipleship begins, which is not attained through theory, not through concepts and ideas, but through a real insight. The Theosophical worldview teaches that man does not live only once in the world, but many times, that he embodies himself again and again and that his actions are related. The individual lives are connected by cause and effect. This can be seen by observing life. It is also possible to understand this concept in theory. Many followers of Theosophy are still at the stage of believing reincarnation and karma to be true only as a conceptual and intellectual realization. However, the second stage of discipleship has the knowledge of the truth of reincarnation and karma. The disciple does not suspect the truth of reincarnation and karma – he knows it.

Now comes the third stage of discipleship. Re-embodiment is not an eternal thing. Before the middle of the Lemurian period, there was not yet what we call reincarnation, and after the middle of the sixth root race, this kind of reincarnation will cease again. Another kind of life and re-embodiment will then be there. Up to the middle of the sixth root race, man will be reincarnated. Reincarnation will then depend on the will of the person; today it is independent of it. We can say there is a first moment before reincarnation and a last moment after it. Before that, man was one who did not incarnate, and after that he will be one who no longer reincarnates. To see beyond the realm of reincarnation is the attribute of the third level of discipleship. This disciple, this chela at the third level, is called “swan”. When he looks at the first and the last, that is, at that which is higher than all reincarnation, then he is able to write and speak of apocalypses. What is contained in any apocalypse initially comes from those initiates who not only overlook the time of reincarnation, but see from the first to the last. To show how man has come into this reincarnation and how he comes out of it again, that is the task of every apocalypse. It has to describe a distant past and a distant future, and in doing so it also encompasses the present. In the Apocalypse of John you will find a description of the seven sub-races of our fifth root race, because what is said of the seven churches refers to the seven sub-races of the fifth root race. The admonitions that the apocalyptic John addresses to the churches are the admonitions that the chela John calls out to the individual sub-races. Each sub-race is connected with a very specific constellation in heaven. Therefore, there are seven stars that represent the seven angels: they guide the genii of the seven sub-races. Then one is led to the first and to the last. The first is the human being who stands before reincarnation, and the last is he who still stands after having overcome reincarnation.

John was in a so-called initiation shell. He also says that he was in spirit. And what is revealed there is nothing other than the inspiration of a chela in the third degree of discipleship; it is an apocalypse of the swan. The swan is the one who establishes the connection between the most highly inspired and man. This is expressed in the most important legends.

So the disciple becomes homeless at the first level. Those who have become swans can attain the higher revelations. They are those who come into our world, but you are not allowed to ask them their name because they come from a world beyond. This is expressed in a great, powerful allegory that also has a deeply mystical meaning. It is a very profound truth that is expressed in the Lohengrin saga; through Lohengrin, who comes with the swan, who was thus a disciple - a chela - of the third degree. Great truths are found with him. Only he who understands the saga of Lohengrin understands world history from the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth century.

Now I have explained to you the origin of who can speak apocalyptically, who can create a picture of the world, independent of space and time. We will also talk about the distant past, the present, but also the future. This will become clear when we talk about the apocalypse revealed by Theosophy. There we will see what man can set as a great goal, because it really is a great goal.

From the question and answer session

The materialist says that we follow animality to the stage where it has become human, and now we follow the urge present in man at a certain higher level.

But this is not based on knowledge, it is based on materialistic dogma. You do not follow the laws of nature by dogmatically limiting these laws of nature to a very specific point and saying: so far and no further. You can only follow the laws if you recognize them. You have to combine the knowledge of the laws with following them.

An example of this: the religious person will not merely rely on the fact that he says: I do not lie because it puts me at a disadvantage or makes me contemptible in the eyes of my fellow human beings. He is much more convinced that lying has a broader meaning, that it is something that goes against the divine order of the world and that it brings its punishment, its effects, with it. If you support the truth, you are supporting the advancement of a certain development. If you describe events differently than they are, you do the same as if you were to suppress a plant germ: you withhold a very specific direction of development. This does not seem so bad as long as you are not aware that you can also withhold something in spiritual growth. But the occultist says: a lie is a murder. What would have developed as a living being is killed by the lie.

The division of the sexes is related to birth and death.

The second stage of discipleship resolves doubt and makes superstition impossible.

The investigation of the reincarnation of another human being must be completely impersonal. If the researcher is asked, he can get involved.

In answer to the question of which student would be able to read in the Akasha Chronicle, I would like to reply: anyone who is ready to become a disciple can read in the Akasha Chronicle. There are two types of reading in the Akasha Chronicle: the actual reading is possible as soon as one becomes a disciple at all. But one must first learn to spell. The Akasha Chronicle throws mirror images into the astral plane. It is located at the boundary between the rupa and arupa levels. But you can, for example, find Caesar's war campaign in the astral plane as a reflection of the records in the Akasha Chronicle.

Last time, I spoke about the stage of human development at which one is able to speak of an apocalypse. I showed that one should look at the world in such a way that one's gaze extends over such long periods of time that one can see the time before man began to undergo his individual incarnations, and one can also see the time that lies after these wanderings through birth and death. I have also said that it is necessary for the so-called chela to have attained the third degree of chelaship.

The Apocalypse of John also emerged from such a school. He who thus surveys the world does not see it differently from how other initiates see it. You must realize, above all, that the 'visions', the 'higher experiences' or whatever you want to call it, are no different from one another, and that, however strange it may seem to the uninitiated, when, for example, the four animals are mentioned, it will never sound different from the mouth of one than from the mouth of the other. Two initiates will not report the same thing in different ways.

To give you an idea, I would like to speak of what every such initiate experiences about the development of humanity. The one who made the statements contained in the Apocalypse surveyed the period of time that lies before our present root race, he surveyed the two races that preceded our race, he surveyed the time when man first took on his present form in the middle of the Lemurian period, and he surveyed life beyond birth and death. Now, before the point in time that we call the point of human incarnation in the middle of the Lemurian period, there is a very specific form of humanity that is different from what we now call human. I will start from a very specific point.

The present man, as you know, consists of seven bodies. We have the physical body first, then the etheric double body, thirdly the astral body and four more. First of all, we are only interested in the three lower bodies: the physical body, which can be perceived with the ordinary senses, then the so-called etheric double body, which cannot be perceived with ordinary senses. This etheric double can be seen by those who have acquired the ability to do so when they subtract the physical body. They then see in space a double of the person, which has approximately the color of a peach blossom. Embedded in this is, so to speak, the astral body, a luminous oval. When a person dies, the event of death initially means that the sum total of the higher bodies, the etheric body, is released from the physical body. In the first period after death, the astral body is united with the etheric double. Later, in a few days, the astral body leaves the etheric double. The astral body then goes through the experiences it has to undergo between death and a new birth. Today, the etheric double body has only an intermediary position. It mediates the activity of the astral body with the physical body. While man walks on the earth today, the physical body has the greatest significance for him. The physical brain is the instrument of man's highest spiritual activity. The etheric double body acts as a link, mediating the activity of the physical body with the higher bodies. The dissolution [of the etheric body] did not yet take place in the time of the first races and also not yet in the first time of the third race. This was not yet the case in the first time of the third root race. In the so-called polaric race, the etheric body was the most significant. The whole body was a fine, thin etheric matter. Only later did the etheric body become denser by becoming imbued with physical matter. At the end of the first root race, human beings on our earth were not yet tied to the ground in the same way as they are today; they floated through the etheric earth, and their organs were also etheric. Man was an etheric being. Gradually, he became denser until, in the middle of the Lemurian period, he had become so dense that he was able to take on a physical body. But even in the middle of the Lemurian period, man was not yet as dense as he is today. The matter at the beginning of our third root race was somewhat denser than the matter that you can see today in the clouds of fog that drift over the mountains. These people would appear to us today like fiery clouds. That is why those who came to Earth from other regions as the highest intelligences to teach people are called “Sons of Fire Nebula.

When the geologist takes us back to the specific point on Earth where the physical remains of humans first end, the physical trace is lost. Man was simply made of such fine matter at a certain time that no physical imprints of it can be found in the early layers of the earth. That transition from finer matter to physical matter, those beings that have developed up to physical density, the esotericist designates - to have a word for it in our language - as the “eagle” stage of man. He described the physical human being of that time as the eagle. In esoteric language, the eagle is the human being of the Lemurian race, the human being who works his way up out of ethereal matter into dense matter.

Then comes the Atlantean race. Initially, they were only endowed with a denser etheric body. At that time, the human being was still able to master the seed life forces in plants. They heated their ships with the prana of the plants, as described in the book 'Atlantis' by Scott-Elliot. This shows us that in those days man had greater control over his etheric double than he has today. Later man will gain control over the higher bodies. The details of this process, which is a real, actual process, are described by the apocalypticist.

The second stage, in which man still has control over the etheric body, is referred to in the esoteric art term as the stage of the “Lion Man”. This is a technical term for the Atlantean.

Then comes the man of the fifth, the Aryan race, who is referred to by the word “bull”, because physical strength is the predominant expression.

If you take these three designations, you have three very specific successive stages of human development. Those who are initiated into certain mystery schools learn a very specific language and writing in which those who learn the comprehensive truths know how to express themselves in their experiences. It is a language that all initiates around the world write and speak. It is a symbolic language. Anyone who has learned it understands it and knows when they find a certain sign in old documents that it refers to something very specific.

I will mention some of these characters, the most elementary ones, in the course of these lectures. A frequently used symbol to characterize this stage of humanity is two interlocking triangles that together form a hexagonal figure. These two triangles always have something else in them when they appear in occult works. [Here - see drawing - in the angles filled with A, L and St are the images of the eagle, lion and bull. And here below is a triangle that symbolizes the previous states. The three angles remain unfilled. They represent the original three states of humanity. In the middle is always the actual human being. This constant element, which runs through all incarnations, remains through all stages. This is what is meant by the human being.

Here you have the four natures through which man has become human in the course of his development. You have indicated these in the two interlocking triangles. If you look at this sign, you will understand why these animals appear wherever an apocalyptic speaks about these three stages of development. They also appear with the prophet Ezekiel. With John they are described in a very special way.

The apocalypticists overcome that shell that separates people from the areas where they can see those earlier stages. For people to really be able to see what has taken place on earth, other organs must develop for them. Those stages of development that humanity has gone through and that have become imperceptible and unconscious to it must be revived. So the etheric body of the apocalyptic must be revived, he must begin to really see, to become an eye, a real eye.

Therefore, the chela must not only be able to project himself back to the stage of the eagle, to the stage of the lion and the bull, but he must also be able to project himself back to the stage of the seer. It is only in the third stage that the chela truly attains this vision.

What I have described here is what you will find in the fourth chapter of the Apocalypse [of John]. The Apocalypse not only describes the past stages of humanity, but also the future stages of human development. Only he can grasp this future who has an eye for the ascent to the use of the etheric body and the higher bodies, which, so to speak, have fallen out of use in the course of development. The human being of the fifth race can only move freely, can only become aware of himself in the physical body. But now he is developing in such a way that he can later become aware of himself again in the higher bodies.

We have developed and achieved a very deep development, the development of the purely physical mind, in the present sub-race of the fifth root race. Our present sub-race will be followed by the sixth and this by the seventh. This marks the end of our root race. Then comes a new, higher root race and then another one. This development consists of man finding his way more and more into the use of his higher bodies.

We are heading towards a very specific goal, because we are, after all, on the way from the fifth to the sixth race. In everything, the human being uses the physical mind, he uses a very specific moral code and a religion. This dominates him for the reason that the physical mind rules. The individual must essentially seek his fortune at the expense of others. The individual who strives for the higher already strives beyond what is required by general life. In occult schools, there are three words that describe the new age, the age of a new, later humanity. In the realm of social life, it is

That is why the Theosophical Society has included universal brotherhood as the most important item on its agenda, because it wants to prepare for life in the sixth root race. Man will only feel happy there if happiness is not attained at the expense of others. That is morality. Our science is materialistic. This will be different in the next sub-race. We are striving for a different scientific state. That is to say, “pneumatology, the doctrine of the spirit and of spiritual things, will be decisive in the new race. And especially in the sphere of religion, something will be decisive that is not possible today because the intellect is in the way: ‘self-authority’. Man will himself hear the tidings of the existence of a divine world spirit. That is the free religious principle of the next race. Brotherhood, pneumatology and self-authority in religious matters characterize the race that is gradually and slowly preparing itself, and which will shape the future. A seventh race will take on completely different forms, which we will deal with another time.

The race in which Christianity developed is the fourth. This was preceded by the third race. In certain periods of time, what has already taken place is repeated. The first three sub-races briefly repeated the eagle, lion and bull stages. These were preparatory races, while what the following race had to accomplish emerged within the fourth sub-race, which is essentially characterized by man or by God incarnate. Christianity arose within the fourth sub-race. Around the middle of the Middle Ages, it was replaced by the fifth, our present sub-race, which we broadly characterize as the “Germanic” one. It replaced the so-called “Latin race”; by this was understood everything that had slowly absorbed the stream of Christianity and also slowly developed in a spiritual sense in Europe. Before that, three other races went through it, which essentially briefly repeated the earlier conditions.

Within the Apocalypse, these seven conditions are expressed as the seven churches. The churches represent the seven sub-races. What is spoken to the church of Ephesus, to the church of Smyrna and so on, are the words that are addressed to the different sub-races. There are still members of the various races living in the world today, and there are still members of the first sub-race of the fifth root race. The Indian people essentially belong to this. The Indian people have expressed the culture of thought in the highest sense. The highest deification of thought was expressed in ancient India. This had to briefly repeat what Lemurian man had developed. The Lemurians were sentient beings. The members of our race are thinking beings. Memory only developed in the Atlantean race. The Lemurians had no memory. Although people in the first sub-race thought, they thought in sensations, and you can find an account of their thoughts in the ancient Vedic culture. You will read these works correctly if you read them with the thought that the thought revels in a wonderful world of feeling. In the cultures that serve thought more with memory, in which external custom then holds the culture of memory in the service of heroes, because the memory of a great inventor or discoverer or king is fixed in morality and in which the long catalogs are created that then led to the calendar. Much was noted in the first races by the ancient Indians and Persian magicians. And from these notes the first beginnings of the calendar emerged. From these first sub-races emerged the present-day humans. Man has advanced to the fifth race because he has understood: within himself is the God; because he has understood the apocalyptic advance.

But the first race, which expresses itself in the Vedas, could also most easily fall into error. The feeling is not yet strong enough for the thought to internalize itself. So it has come about that the Indian cultural epoch has two sides next to each other. On the one hand, we have the wonderful, lofty conceptions of spiritual deities, as we find them in the ancient Vedic culture, that wonderful religion of which those who do not know it cannot form a conception of the depth of the Vedanta. This is a purely spiritual teaching of such clarity that it is said in Europe – but this is more or less true: Every day that one penetrates anew into these wonderful depths is, for those who have already become accustomed to remaining silent and calm, yet another source of new admiration. Compared to what the ancient Vedic culture of India offers, the admiration that applies to our present-day life cannot be lasting. There is nothing that can be compared to what this ancient Indian culture offers. On the other hand, the people have fallen into the most abject idolatry. What is usually found in books about Indian culture is a colorful jumble of idolatrous and religious ideas that gives no real picture. The idolatry of the people must be distinguished from the great and powerful spiritual world of the Brahmins. The great bright sides of humanity always have great dark sides as well. People who often have members within their nation, within their tribe, who have attained the highest spiritual perfection, have themselves often remained attached to the most external things. The Apocalypse seeks to illustrate these phenomena that I have described to you in the church of Ephesus, on the one hand in those who have kept their first love, and on the other hand in those who have abandoned the works of their first love and have sunk back. The Nicolaitans are mentioned, who only see in outward appearances what man should strive for. A monumental word is to be directed to those who live in such a community.

I just wanted to show how world-important events are addressed by such a passage, as directed to the community of Ephesus, as a representative of these conditions:

I know your works, labor and patience; and how you cannot bear those who are evil, and you have tested those who say they are apostles, and they are not, and you found them false; and you have tolerance and patience, and for my name's sake you labor, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from whence you are fallen, and repent. And do the first works. Otherwise I will come unto you quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. [Rev 2,2-7]

If you want to understand the beginning of the Bible, you have to know what things refer to. We have spoken of the Hyperboreans. That was not a race so dense that it could not have been reached. - Air beings. Therefore, we need not be surprised if they have left no signs of remembrance, no bones and so on. Only what was physically hardy could leave remains. What takes place in the first chapter of Genesis is even higher than the Hyperborean time. Only up to the astral, above all physical.

Let us review the seven rounds: only the fourth round has produced people like the present ones; the archetype of such a human being was created who could realize himself within the mineral kingdom. Before that, he had gone through the elemental realms.

5. Round plant kingdom
6. Round animal kingdom
7. Round human kingdom

So that one cannot actually say of the present round that man is in the image of God. It is only in the seventh round that he will be God-like in his human nature. Only the physical body has attained perfection. Further development is again the attainment of earlier stages, but in a higher form. Man became physical as he is today when he got warm blood.

We must make a clear distinction between warm- and cold-blooded animals. Fish have no passions. Man has also gone through the state of cold-bloodedness. The Lemurian race were cold-blooded until the appearance of sexuality. We must reach this state again in a higher form. Christianity strives to regain this state of cold-bloodedness. It wants to curb and ennoble the passions. The esotericist says that Christians are Pisces, who overcome everything that comes from warm-bloodedness.

The astral body will only be complete in the next round. When our fourth round has passed, the mineral will no longer be there. Man will not be tied to the ground; he has also developed out of the form of moving in the air: hence the symbol of the eagle. During the sixth round, he absorbs the plant world. Humans and animals will divide in the absorption of the plant world. Animals will process the tendrils; humans the seed power.

In the seventh round, man is then present as the image of God.

So in the first round, only the first elementary realm is present; the mineral kingdom begins.

What makes an object perceptible is the mineral kingdom; man needs higher organs to see beyond the physical; he must develop new senses. During the first four rounds, the world was visible because it gradually developed the mineral. The moment the mineral kingdom flashes, the world shines. Before that, it would have been completely lightless. At first, this light was dark red; everything that is to develop later is still present in the darkness. Everything that was preparing to become mineral earth was light. Everything else that came over from the moon was darkness, with the exception of the mineral. Everything that is light is now the sun, everything that is darkness is the moon.

Heaven is all spiritual. Waters are that from which the earth was formed, its astral basic germ. When we now look at the mineral kingdom, we cannot distinguish one stone from another; nothing is separate. It was only in the second round that individual beings were singled out; this is indicated by the fact that the spiritual was separated from the physical. If the image of the spiritual did not remain, a plant could not be recreated. The stone remains, needs no separation. The

plant needs it; this is the task of the second round. “Waters are the beings, the unified. The division lies in the separation of the spiritual from the physical.

They were plants that we would call sponges or algae today; not what we would call herbs today. They have a different nature, but they are plant-like beings. Especially those that do not yet have the correct green color.

During the third round, everything that not only takes life from the ground but also carries life forward is created. The difference between seed-bearing plants and sponges. The sponge still takes life from the general nature. When we look at the animal's astral body during the third round, it is something quite unfinished, it is merely the mineral ground that is being prepared. The animal has a plant nature, it reproduces and has an astral nature of feeling, it feels. But what concerns us here is only the mineral imprint. So what is created during the third round is the mineral imprint, and it consists of the fact that it has a plant body that carries seeds. The Genesis writer describes only what has remained of plants and animals, the solid shell; he omits the ethereal and astral. – Snail in its shell as an example. He describes what carries seeds.

During the fourth round, the mineral continues to develop to the point where it can become a shell for plants, animals and humans. In the third round, animals could not see the moon and stars because they were not yet mineral; now they will.

What has come from the lunar condenses as a moon body; the sun is condensed light.

We have not yet come to the end of the fourth day, because the round has not expired. What happens later? The birds are the future astral bodies of humans; winged animals are cherubs and angels. This multiplication is not a sexual multiplication.

The sixth round: one must think of the process as having been elevated into the mental realm, where everything becomes pure. God gives plants to man for food: absorption of the plant kingdom. Everything that is now an animal will then, as it were, be summoned into its astral body. The lion first strives towards his kind, he is not yet in his kind. Only in the sixth round will each animal be in its kind; then their earthly development will cease and a higher one will begin. Only now is man the ruler: he must be able to rule magically. Then man will be male-female again. All herbs and tendrils to the animals.

Heaven, the highest spiritual realm, is also completed. God can only rest when man is also complete. The later states are always repetitions of the earlier ones. For our fourth state, we can also imagine that we find the future hinted at in the present. A derived sense is possible because each following one on a higher level repeats the previous one: the first three days of creation correspond to the first three rounds. The four last days of creation on the Arupa-, Rupa-, astral and etheric-physical phase of the earth up to the time in the Lemurian race.

The real original meaning: seven rounds and taken in the most spiritual sense. But then a derived one [gap in the transcript]

because each following one at a higher level repeats the previous one.

Very few knew what the Genesis meant; the point in time when it was first set down in writing coincides with the beginnings of Christianity. Philon Judaeus of Alexandria was the first to give something as we have taken it today. The time when an esoteric teaching was first entrusted to a book coincides with the time when the mystery was overcome. Those who were initiated experienced the sacrificial death of the god in the mysteries, and if they were initiated higher, their own sacrificial death. What had previously been experienced by the individual in the crypt was carried out into the world arena. What was previously only experienced by those who saw was now to be shared with those who believed. While Philo, as far as possible, published the esoteric for the first time, Christianity presents it as a mystical fact. History is made of what was previously experienced only in the mysteries.

This is the central cosmic significance of Christianity and its founder. Everything that came before points to it, everything that came after rejects it. What happened earlier in the mysteries was like a prophecy. Therefore, Christianity is a fulfillment. “I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill.”

The second chapter of Genesis begins where, in our present round, the physical state occurs. In the etheric state, animals and plants did not yet exist, because man is actually the first. The polar race is still etheric, but already physical. As man develops from the etheric human being, who is still male-female, animals and plants arise as waste products. In the beginning, man had all the qualities that are now distributed among the other plants and the animals: the rage of the lion, the cunning of the fox. So the middle of the Lemurian period is an important point in time for all beings. Beings with warm blood did not exist earlier.

Now, the seven days of creation are the seven rounds; the conditions that preceded our physical ones can also / gap in transcript ]

the fourth round begins / gap in transcript ]

In the Egyptian mysteries it was recorded that the seven days are seven rounds. Our own physical development is described in the second chapter. Now the seventh day is meant only with regard to mineral-physical development.

The etheric was there, and in the etheric, like fog figures, people separated out – etheric double bodies.

The lower Indian yogi tries to achieve psychic experiences by changing the breathing process. A body in which the carbonic acid is active is not capable of harboring spiritual things, but it can harbor psychic things. Those who hold the carbonic acid in them longer than is the case in the normal process become more plant-like as a result. The psyche and soul have passed over and now take possession of the etheric body they find, shaped by the gods of form; union of the soul with the dust of the earth, physical mineral etheric body. All matter that is today separated into two celestial spheres is united in the etheric sea. In the center between the present Earth and the Moon was the ether sphere; in it was united what later separated, daughter spheres are from the mother sphere, which is referred to as “Paradiso”. Only through this did the Earth become ripe to attain physical density, through which man has become so. So indeed Paradise existed, from which man was expelled.

Only now, after the separation, do plants develop. Man could not develop further if he did not give up certain parts that became plants. “If they had not chosen a lower existence, I would not have developed higher,” man must tell himself.

The whole of evolution arises from taking and giving. Evil also arises from this, which only lies in time and must be balanced out later. The corresponding good is created for the evil in later time; this is how development comes about.

Now everything that man needs was available on earth. All the life force that man does not need is in the plants; in the middle of the tree of life, what he needs, the life force. It is man's own prana, purified for him by giving up some of it.

The sympathetic nervous system spreads like a tree in his body. Nothing can arise in the universe without its counterpart appearing. Man must now find his complement in the other tree, in the polaric: spinal cord and brain. In addition to mere prana, his organs for knowledge are developing. The human spirits were able to connect with him and take up residence in the tree of knowledge. We will skip the four currents this time.

[Gap in the transcript] you will die. All life that existed until now did not know what we call birth and death today. What was physical was immortal. In order to create an organ for the spirit, [gap in the transcript] a duality was created. The abundance of the human spirit was like a large amount of liquid in relation to a vessel that cannot hold it; the series of lives are the various vessels. It is natural that man, when faced with the choice, should either retain his immortality in the lower realms or purchase it through many lives.

In order for man to turn to the spiritual, it is necessary that birth and death arise. Because the spirit has many facets, it is important that man comes into different situations. The diversity of characteristics would not be achieved and different destinies would not arise if the mother only gave birth to a daughter without the means of sexuality; only now did the mixture come and with it the diversity: the diversity among people and thus the possibility of creating the most diverse destinies. Sexual reproduction is a necessary counterpart to birth and death.

In hermaphrodites, only the characteristics of the ancestor can be inherited; for entirely new characteristics to arise, the mixture of two must be added. Amphimixis is the necessary correlate of birth and death. In the period when humans acquired bones, that is, a mineral basic structure, humans divided into men and women; the Persian Genesis still contains the meaning well.

At this moment, with the physical evolution of man, all warm-blooded creatures arise - “hm entsprechend” means “of the same nature”. In the wake of man, the animals arose.

The sleep into which Adam falls: Before that, man was a physical being into which the spirit was driven from the outside; now what used to come from the outside must sprout within, must break out. Consciousness from the outside can only become inner by man crossing a threshold. He sleeps over.

With the becoming male and female of the human being, the work on the physical plane begins at the same time. Now he is dependent on himself. He used to be connected to higher matter and the spirit.

And now they realize that they are naked. What has now come is matter, because before that it was finer matter in which the sense organs had not yet been formed. Seeing was only possible once eyes had been formed. The moment when the spiritual organs of prehistoric times became sense organs was the moment when man became a special being. He saw himself in his selfhood.

I would like to continue today with my reflections on the Apocalypse. Anyone who wants to understand the full meaning and spirit of a work of writing such as the Apocalypse must, above all, realize how religions work and how Christianity worked in its early days, that is, what forces made it possible for Christianity and other religious systems to pour out this mighty and magnificent life of the spirit over humanity.

Today, the belief is all too widespread that the simple, plain word that everyone can understand must actually contain the truth, and there is a certain “tendency” today against the elevation of the spirit to the heights of thought, to the heights of supersensible vision - thus a “dislike”. We often hear even theologians say: anything that cannot be clothed in the simplest words that every person can understand without fail, that cannot be of much use to the truth. Those who think this way will not be able to understand the full meaning and spirit of a work of writing such as the Apocalypse is, and as the mystical Gospel of John already is. Admittedly, nothing should be said against the correctness of the saying that the truth must be proclaimed in simple words, because whoever wants to proclaim the truth must find the ways to be able to speak to the simplest hearts. He must find the words to speak to those who stand on the heights of science, culture and education, as well as to those who are referred to by the expression “simple man from the people”. But the power, the inner power, cannot find expression in the simple, plain word. This power comes from the highest heights of spiritual life. In its early centuries, Christianity also had mystery initiation sites where not only simple words, not only generally understandable things were proclaimed, but where the revelation of the highest spiritual vision was proclaimed, which in the Gospel of John reaches up to the regions where space and time have no meaning. Not every outsider could then speak of these revelations of the highest regions. The church fathers and teachers of the first centuries then found the very popular, simple word through which they found access to the uneducated. They themselves had the power, the authority of spiritual proclamation from the highest heights of spiritual life. And something like that is also implied in the Apocalypse as if by itself. You only need to read the most important passages in the Apocalypse with understanding and you will find that what has been brought down from the heights of the spirit is set in a world picture, that a world picture has been designed from it.

I, John, who am also your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and power of Jesus Christ, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. [Rev 1,9-10]

With this he expressed that he was on the “island of Patmos” - he meant a mystery place - and had received this revelation. And in the Spirit he had received it. And in other places he speaks differently. At the beginning of chapter four, he says:

After this I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven; and the first voice that I had heard speaking like a trumpet said, 'Come up here, and I will show you what-after this shall take place.

The first three chapters contain what I have already tried to outline in the last lesson. But then the fate of the root race that will replace ours is described. Therefore, the Apocalypse distinguishes precisely between the two types of vision, inspiration and intuition. This is necessary if one wants to proclaim the one and the other. A low intuition is enough to reveal the destinies of a root race, but a higher intuition is needed to see what happens after this root race of ours, for example, when the sixth and seventh root races have emerged. This cannot be seen in the way of seeing that underlies the first three chapters; it can only be seen when one ascends to devachan. The destiny of a root race can never be revealed to us in the realm of highly developed astral vision. That is why John says that he heard the voice in spirit. Until the end of the third chapter of the Apocalypse, we are dealing with higher astral vision; from the fourth chapter on, we are dealing with devachanic vision. The initiates of all times speak as the apocalypticist speaks.

There is only one thing in the Apocalypse that is different from the other profound initiation texts. In the Apocalypse, the point of view is different. The theologian John speaks in the Apocalypse as a Christian, from a Christian point of view. Therefore, anyone who wants to read the Apocalypse with the right sentiment, with the right feeling, must completely identify with the confession, and above all with the very human confession, not just with the theologian's confession. They must identify with the feeling of a highly initiated Christian, with the feeling that a Christian has when the full power of Christian revelation has taken hold of him. One must know this.

A significant word can be found in the first letter of John:

There are three witnesses on earth: blood, water and the Spirit.

And there are three witnesses in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit. [1 John 5:7-8]

To the theosophist, these three principles that give birth in heaven are known as Atma, Buddhi and Manas. The Christian calls the principles that underlie the world: Father, Word and Holy Ghost. To speak about the Father would have been rejected by the Christian of the first centuries, because

No one comes to the Father except through me. [John 14:6]

And the one who spoke these words is the great Christian Master himself, the one through whom Christianity itself came into the world. I now speak entirely in the spirit of an initiated Christian of the first period. He believed in the Father, and he believed that he could not get to know him other than through the word.

And what was the word? Only a weak idea can be given to the uninitiated of what the initiated Christian of the first time calls the word, and that is through a comparison. The highest that man can rise to is the thought, the mental. Man always rises through the thought to the life in Devachan. He lives in Devachan, he is just not aware of it. That is the characteristic of the earthly human being that he lives in three worlds at the same time: in the physical world, in the astral world and in the devachanic world. But he is only conscious in the physical world. The highest expression that exists in the world was, for all religions, including the first Christian religion, the world-creative will. And if the Christian says anything at all about the Father, it is solely that the Father is the world-creative universal will. When man wants to express the highest that lives in him, the Devachanic, the thought, through the will, that is, through the world-creative principle, it happens first through language. In man, the word is the enunciator of the spirit through the will. And so the first Christian said: Everything that our world is is conceived in the highest sense through the word - but now through the word that came into being through the highest world-creative will. Just as man expresses his highest through the power of the will to the word, so the Christian says: The Father expressed His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, through the power of the word. That is why it also says in the Gospel: “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made.

The Third Person is the Holy Spirit. He is to the universe what the spirit of the individual human being is to that human being. This Spirit descends in the Word of the world. If a Christian wanted to visualize this, he would say to himself: Just as a person speaks, how his word resounds into the air, setting the air in motion in waves, and how his thought thus lives on in the waves of the air, and the word is the embodiment of the human spirit, so the world is the embodiment of the word of God.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. [John 1:3]

This also means that the actual fundamental principle is the highest that man can embody in the world, that is the word. And this word is referred to as the second divine person or as the Son of God, as the highest being, not as an abstract, pantheistic image of the world soul, but as a being much more personal and individual than the human personality, the human individuality. It must be firmly held that we are dealing with a supreme being and that the word is an expression of the supreme being through which the whole universe, like man, can see with eyes, hear with ears, and comprehend with the mind. For the first Christian, this has become man in the one whom he recognizes as the proclaimer of the gospel.

Thus, for the first Christians, the event in Palestine had a cosmic value. He who walked in Palestine was not a man like the other men for the first Christians. He was for them the Word made flesh, that which can see with eyes, hear with ears, and comprehend with the mind in the whole universe, and this infinite being in the form of a human being. Those who do not understand it this way, who want to quibble about the incarnate God, about this Word of the incarnate God, who do not see it as the incarnation of God in Jesus, cannot put themselves in the shoes of the first Christians.

He was a unique personality. The gospel expresses this in a magnificent, wonderful, and powerful way. That the Christ ascended to the devachanic vision is clearly expressed in the gospel for those who can read these things.

But in order to fully understand Christianity, I ask you to consider one thing. We have a great similarity in what we call the narrative of the life of Jesus and in what we call the narrative of the Buddha's life. This similarity in the proclamation, this similarity of the years of apprenticeship and so on has been emphasized in many ways. Where this similarity comes from is known to the mystic, because he knows that such a life is repeated at certain periods of humanity. But the Christ-life has something else, something essentially different from the Buddha-life, and that was understood by the first Christian initiates. If you follow the Jesus-life, you come to a point that is described as the Transfiguration. Jesus went with his disciples Peter, John and James to the mountain and was transfigured, he became radiant from within, and Moses and Elijah hovered on either side of him. The disciples then received significant revelations. This indicates an extremely important moment. Moses and Elijah appear at the side of Christ Jesus. Time is suspended, the past is present. This is how it is in devachan. Here in the physical world we have space and time. In the astral world we have only time. But the devachanic world is without time and space. Moses and Elijah, who have long since passed away, are immediately present. This means that at the transfiguration the three disciples Peter, James and John were raised to devachanic vision.

Starting from this transfiguration, we can see what is important: it is the actual sacrificial death, the suffering, dying and sacrificial death, that is, what you do not have in the Buddha-life. Buddha went out with his disciple Ananda and became radiant. When you see this scene depicted in the Buddha-Life, you see it in a different form; that depends on popular opinion. But in the last moment we have the transfiguration. Buddha's Life concludes with the transfiguration. The Jesus-Life begins its really significant epoch only with this fact. This indicates what the Christ wanted to say about all the old religious systems of the preceding sub-races of the fifth root race. The Christ wanted to say: We do understand the prediction of what came through the Gospels in the preceding religious systems, we do recognize that in the old mysteries the Word of Truth was taught and given. But there is one thing that has come into existence only through Christianity, and that is expressed by the key-word: “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” – That is the great, the world-historic significance of Christianity in its Gospel.

What was once accomplished in the mystery temples, closed off from the world, for a select few through initiation, through beholding the great truths of the world in the interior of the mystery crypts, should also be able to become and become so inwardly free and elevated in soul, even those who do not go so far as beholding, but who can only believe. Therefore, in Christianity, what used to take place in the secrecy of the mysteries, the highest, the mystery in which man himself passes through the gate of death to rise again in a higher life, this deepest mystery secret, which an uninitiated person cannot understand in its true meaning, was moved to the great horizon of world existence. What took place in Palestine took place as a historical, real fact, which occurred in all its details as previously the mystery acts inside the mystery sites. In the mysteries, sacrifices and sacrificial deaths were repeatedly performed. The ancient mystery teachings had to be brought to the world in a popular form. But with that, a further step has been taken through Christianity, a step in the conception of an initiate of the first Christianity, a step that leads people beyond the stage that the old religions could have given them.

Who were the teachers of the old religions? They were the teachers of humanity. What they taught was what mattered. The teachings of Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, Hermes, Pythagoras, Laotse, [Socrates, Plato] - it was the words themselves that mattered. They stood, as it were, on a high mountain, and from there they proclaimed the highest, the holy word. But something else was possible. It was possible for this word itself to descend and take on human form, and for once it was not what was proclaimed that mattered, but what was lived, lived in the deepest sense of the word. The goal was there. In ancient times, the path was indicated to our fifth root race. In addition, there were the teachings and commandments of the old religious founders, of Laotse, Confucius, Moses, and Buddha – their truths. But then the Word itself came down in the form of flesh and lived among us. And the threefold Word became true:

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

And so the Christian disciple and the initiate saw in his founder the 'way', the 'truth' and the 'life'. In a profound saying the Christian disciple has indicated what I have said. All the founders of ancient religions were regarded as embodied angels, messengers of the Godhead. 'Angel' means nothing other than messenger of the Godhead. But now there came One before Whom the angels covered their faces in reverence and lay down at the feet of the Mystic Lamb, the feet of God made flesh. That is the mystery, that in the incarnate Lamb a deeper descent to men, a life with men, can be seen. From the mountain the ancients proclaimed the Word. But Christ descended into the valley and lived as a human being among humans. He did not command what should be done, he did not say what is true, but he showed by the way he lived that the word had been realized. In this, the Christian saw his religion distinguished from the other religions. This also placed him at the center of what the Christian initiate has to proclaim as an apocalypse or secret revelation. Why the Incarnate Word is also called the “Lamb” is what we will discuss next time.

It will have become clear to us that we must place this Lamb at the center of the Apocalypse, and that through this Lamb alone the future of humanity can be proclaimed. In the fourth chapter of the Apocalypse, when man is led up, when heaven is open, the truths of the beyond are proclaimed to him. This is the mystical Lamb who breaks the seals of the world. There the transfigured flesh meets. Hence the question: What revealed itself to you when you stepped beyond the mere height of Christian vision? Then the mystical Lamb revealed itself to him. The devachanic world opened up to him, and with it the possibility of revealing the actual secret that must be revealed when the time is fulfilled, when the seventh sub-race of our fifth root race is over and a new race of humanity with a new stage of development is about to begin.

Thus we have described in the Apocalypse the fate of the fifth sub-race and the beginnings of a new world order, which is described with three key words: 'pneumatology', 'community life' built on love, and 'moral teaching'. This world announces itself in the world secret, which is revealed through the seven seals that are opened by the one who, by going among men, made this secret possible in the first place, and who will fulfill it when the time has come for our root race to mature, to pass over into that world and reach that stage of evolution that is designated by these three words. The content of the Apocalypse must be drawn from such depths. This is not to say that true Christianity can only be drawn from these heights. But it must be imbued with fire, and this fire can only be won by man if he draws strength from higher vision, and the result of higher vision in the Christian sphere is precisely the Apocalypse.

Before continuing with the explanation of the apocalypses, I do not want to fail to repeat once more that this explanation of the apocalypses really has a true value only for those who have been in the theosophical movement for some time and approach the theosophical worldview with a certain benevolent understanding. There are some things that have to be said here that could easily give opponents of Theosophy the opportunity to impute all kinds of fantastic things to Theosophy. There are some things that have to be said that at first seem like a flight of fancy to the reasonable person, to the rationalist. One must be familiar with the way of thinking and feeling of a theosophist if one does not want to misunderstand too much of what is said in the Apocalypse.

We must keep in mind the explanation I have given regarding the position of Christianity to Jesus the Christ, and also the explanation regarding the relationship of the apocalyptic to Jesus, if we want to understand the rest. The greatest value for grasping the world position of Christianity lies in the correct understanding of the saying: “Blessed are they that have faith, even though they see not.” I have already pointed out that this saying has its significance in that Christianity has become, so to speak, the greatest world mystery, that through Christianity that which used to take place in the depths of the temples has been carried out onto the great world plan. I have already remarked that this does not in the least detract from the historical fact of what took place in Palestine between the years 1 and 33, but rather the one who sees through things is quite in favor of the conventional Christian tradition being an historical truth, so that in this respect Theosophy coincides with the beliefs of Christians on every single point. But this historical fact from the beginning of our era is also something else, and we understand the fact in the right sense if we grasp it as a mystical fact, if we realize that the Passion, the Death, the Resurrection, the Ascension, are world-historical events that took place earlier in the Mysteries. Christianity has a word that indicates how the ancient mystery relates to the fulfillment of that mystery in Christianity. Christianity calls everything that pointed to the Christ before the appearance of the Christ a “promise.” Those who see through things know that promise means nothing other than that the event that took place in Palestine was promised in the depths of the mysteries.

We can understand this almost literally if we read the ancient scriptures. Let us go back to the mysteries in Greece. What took place in them, deeply mysterious, and known only to the initiates, was the suffering, death and resurrection of the Son of God. However, they experienced it because the initiates were prepared through schooling on higher planes. So in the mysteries, the initiates saw the suffering, death and resurrection of the Son of God. This was presented to them in their spiritual vision. That is the promise. And then this promise was fulfilled in Palestine. This explains the saying: Blessed are not only those who see in the mysteries, but also those who can believe, not only in the word shown to the mystic, but in the Word made flesh. That is the meaning of this saying. From this point of view, we must grasp the connection and the relationship in which the apocalyptic John stands to the mysteries of antiquity and to the Christian mystery, and who thus comes to stand between the mysteries of antiquity and the Christian mysteries. Then light is shed on many a word.

In the Apocalypse, we are told that seven seals will be opened. What does the 'opening of seals' mean in the language in which the Apocalypse is written?

From time immemorial, the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God had been foretold to the adepts. And the presentation of this mystery on the physical plane is called, in the language of the apocalypticist, the breaking of a seal. In the secret language, “unlocking a seal” means nothing other than to proclaim something that was previously only proclaimed to the initiated and that was previously only depicted in the mysteries. This goes so far that the image is accurate down to the last detail. What was later revealed had previously only been contemplated in the mysteries. During the time of the mysteries, there was no book in which what took place in the mysteries was written. Only later did such books come into being. And one of these books is the Gospel. What was previously presented in the mysteries is written in it, and what is written in it will be unsealed for those who will be ready for it.

Who will be ready? Here is something that you must grasp in its full context in the Apocalypse. We have seen that something is being proclaimed to seven communities. You have seen that these communities represent the seven sub-races of the fifth root race. Who are the ones who proclaim? And who are the ones to whom it is proclaimed? From the esoteric point of view, we must consider the appearance of Christ in comparison with other appearances. If you have taken the last issue of “Lucifer” in your hands, you will have found something there that I will briefly repeat here. Humanity is guided in its evolution by great leaders. These leaders regulate the progress of humanity's evolution. In esoteric language, these leaders are called “Manus”. A Manu is therefore the one who, at the beginning of a race, gives the great impulse, the direction in which this race should develop. We are now in the fifth root race. When this fifth root race began its career after the downfall of the Atlantean, the fourth root race, it was given the great impulse by the Manu of our fifth root race. This Manu is not a human among humans in the same way as the other outstanding human individuals. Rather, this Manu was already at a high level of development before humanity was even filled with spirit on Earth. If we go back to the third root race, where the human spirit first flashed in the human body in the middle of the Lemurian period, we have such leaders of the human race. In those days, when men were young, when they were still children, they could not guide themselves. But their guides were not their own kind. These entities, who had already attained a higher development in an earlier evolution, which is not the human one, were so far advanced that they could be human guides before the spirit had incarnated in human bodies.

These were superhuman entities. There are two types of such superhuman entities. The ones who, at a time when human beings were still children in a spiritual sense, had already progressed so far that they had reached a level that humanity will only reach in the distant future, these highly developed individuals, these Manus, are called “the holy spirits” in the esoteric language.

Then there was a second type of being that was already closer to humans, but still superhuman in nature. They are called “sons of God.” And the next group of individualities were those who were already human among humans.

If we go back to the middle of the Lemurian period and follow man in his development, then we have three stages of individualities within the evolution that has something to do with humanity. We have a high group of individualities that are far more exalted and that went through those stages of development in times long past that man will only attain in the distant future: the holy spirits. The second group are the Sons of the Gods; they are those who are nearer to men, but are still far above them. And the third group are those who, as men, were still children, but who, among the first men, were nevertheless the most advanced. They were called the “Fathers,” the “Pitris.”

Thus there are three stages, and it is the entities of these three stages that lead men.

If we now go back to the beginning of the fifth root race, we find at the beginning the superhuman Manu, who gave the great impulse. But then, in the course of the fifth root race, something very peculiar happens - namely, in the course of the fifth root race, human beings themselves come to such a point that some of them are able to take over the spiritual leadership of the human race. Those whom we call fathers or elders will then be able to lead humanity in the same way that the superhuman beings led people before. Thus, the leadership of humanity passes from the Manus to the human brothers themselves. The holy spirits, the sons of God, the fathers, were the guides of humanity in the successive periods. [...]

When the Word took on human form - so the apocalyptic says in his language - this Word, the Logos, took on human form in the form of this Son, just as the Word had previously taken on human form in the form of a spirit. Or - since Christian esotericism calls the spirit “Engeb” - the Word was previously an angel before it became flesh. That is Christian esotericism. First there is the Word, the Logos, an angel. Then it has become flesh as the Son, and then it will become an elder, a father. That is the succession of stages. This is what the Christian initiates have always proclaimed. One must only understand their words in the right way.

One of the most outstanding Christian initiates, Paul, could only express the deepest secrets in suggestive language. He also said what I have said in a suggestive way. When the Word was still an Angel, the Word was still on the supersensible plane. The Word is spoken from the clouds, from the supersensible, when the commandments are proclaimed. The time of the law is the time of the promise. When the word was an angel, that was the time of the law. Then the word became flesh. Later the word becomes an elder or a father. This is what Paul, who was initiated, proclaimed in his letter to the Galatians. There you will read what I have now said with the following words:

But the law is not of faith; but, “The man who does them will live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree!”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, and we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Brethren, I speak in the manner of men: Though it is but one man's covenant, yet if it has been confirmed, and if nothing else is added, then nothing else, though it be added, is valid. Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “Through the seed,” as of many, but as of one, “Your seed,” which is Christ. Now this I say, the covenant, that was confirmed beforehand by God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, does not set aside the promise. For if an inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise, free of charge.

What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed to whom the promise belongs should come. And it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not for one mediator; but God is one. How is it that the law is opposed to God's promises? For far from it! But if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would truly have come by the law. [Gal 3,12-21]

In other places, too, we find it stated that the Word was angelic, but later took on flesh. What happened as a result of the Word taking on flesh? It was proclaimed to the sub-races of the fifth root race, how they should develop in the future. The apocalypticist now presents to us in the letters to the seven churches how this development takes place. Not all reach the goal, not all those who have entered into the development also reach this goal in the time that is at issue here. Something special is happening here. But let us ask ourselves, in order to understand this correctly: how does the apocalyptic continue to present this to us, which was rightly handed down by the Fathers, by the Elders? Do the Elders themselves come to meet us in the Gospel? Yes, they come to meet us at the time when the angel became the Son. The Fathers are not yet ready to accept the Word within themselves. They had to be referred to the future. At the time of the promise, the fathers are not yet ready. They will only understand the word when they have reached the end of the fifth root race, where, within themselves, as fathers, they will only understand what remained veiled to them at the time of Christ, their master. The twelve disciples are the elders. They are destined to appear before the Christ again. Then, however, the book that was given to them sealed will be unsealed at the end of the fifth root race.

But there is something else special going on during evolution. We are told what it will look like when the fifth root race is ready to decide whether to survive into the sixth root race. I will only hint at what I will explain in more detail in the following lessons. And as we will hear, the onset of the sixth root race is announced with the trumpets:

And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. [Rev 8,12]

This is the third that was left behind, which would not have been necessary. The letters to the churches contain not only exhortations but also sharp reprimands. Not all of them reach their goal. The third part falls away completely from evolution. So we have one third that will reach the goal, a middle third that will be left behind, and a last third that will not reach its goal and will fall away completely. One third does not reach its goal, a second third will only reach its goal later, which together makes two thirds, and only one third of those who started the evolution will have reached the corresponding stage of evolution by the end of the fifth root race.

72 elders were called to enter into evolution and should develop further. The exhortations to the seven churches that they had to lead show us that only a third of them will reach the goal. If we take one third of the 72 elders, we come to 24 elders who will still be there when the seven seals of the book are revealed. This revelation of the majesty of God is something that has been proclaimed with the appearance of Christ. In the fourth chapter of the Apocalypse it says:

After this I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven; and the first voice that I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.

And immediately I was in the Spirit. And behold, a throne was set in heaven, and on the throne sat one; and he that sat was like to look upon like the stone jasper and sardius; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like to look upon like an emerald. And around the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white robes, and golden crowns on their heads.

And out from the throne came lightning, thunder, and voices. And before the throne were seven lamps of fire, which are the seven Spirits of God. And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And each of the four beasts had six wings, and they were full of eyes all around, and they had no rest day or night, saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is coming!”

And when the beasts gave glory and honor and thanks to him who sat on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fell down before him who sat on the throne, and worshiped him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying: Lord, you are worthy to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created.

This is the future stage of evolution, where those who have overcome will have become real fathers.

I said that what took place in the depths of the mysteries will be unsealed later. Now I have told you that in the Greek mysteries the appearance of Christ on earth was depicted. What was then a secret was revealed through the appearance of Christ. We could have gone into the Greek mysteries and there we would have seen suffering, death, resurrection and ascension. The seven seals will fall in the future. If a mystery is also proclaimed then, it will again be a mystery whose seal will fall in a later future.

I will tell you a mystery, as far as it can be told in our configuration, a mystery that has been celebrated since the time of the ancient Indian Rishis and is of the deepest significance. I will try to express it symbolically in the following way:

There is a horse with its front hoof raised. On this horse is a divine figure with a bow. He gives a certain sign, then the horse steps on a snake's head with its front hoof. This is the horse Kalki. This shows that everything that is still of a lower nature will fall away, that a future will come when the Son of God - that is, the one sitting on the horse - will come and, as king, adorned with the crown, will bring the revelation of what is hidden in the book with the seven seals. This is a mystery that you can find everywhere.

I could only hint at it very superficially. But even today it is still something that can only be experienced and seen as a mystery by an apocalypticist, but which will be revealed to us in the future in the same way that John revealed to us and wrote down the unsealing of the old world. Then we shall understand that it points to the time when the elders, the fathers, will receive the revelation of what underlies this mystery and will appear when it is unsealed.

The sixth chapter of the Apocalypse reads:

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, “Come and see.” And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering, and to conquer. And when he opened the second seal, I heard the other beast say, “Come and see.” [Rev 6,1-3]

This is repeated four times. The unsealing of the mystery of the Fathers, as contained in Christianity, is the most significant word spoken in the Mysteries. Where does man come from? Where is he evolving to? From Father to Father. This is revealed in the Father through the Mediator.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

You see, the entire evolution of the world, the past and the future, is truly expressed in the Apocalypse. These are, by the way, only the most elementary allusions. One must first be able to use the words of the Apocalypse in their true sense. We will learn more and more about them.

This evening I only wanted to evoke a feeling that one can delve into this writing and then realize that it is of unfathomable depth. That is the only thing I can still assure. This Apocalypse is one of those writings that truly inspire humility and devotion, and through which one learns what the Indian esotericist calls “faith”. There is an experience that teaches us this faith in the deepest sense. It is this: After we have endeavored to understand such a writing, we first think we know something about it. But when we try to pursue it further and then approach it again, we find that our earlier interpretation was quite childish. We see that only now do we really understand the matter. And when we have done that and live for a while and pick up the book again, we feel the same way as the last time. If you have experienced this a few times, you will have “shraddha”, faith. You will then become more and more absorbed and also find more and more in it. That is the inexhaustible source of such scriptures, which we can read with firm confidence, but can never learn everything from them. At the same time, it is an incentive to be humble towards such scriptures, to research in them and to continue this research forever. It then becomes clear to us that, however profound an explanation may appear to be, it will become even more profound in the future. From this then springs the awareness that the best that is given to man does not come from human imperfection, but from divine perfection, because it is divine wisdom, that is the revelation of divine wisdom. Documents of wisdom are given to us in these books. Our understanding of them is still weak, because these writings come to us not from human beings, from below, but from the gods, from above. We must develop ourselves upwards to understand them. This gives the esotericist a sense of the truth of the saying, in which he must live, which must become his guiding principle, which must increasingly permeate the theosophist, because it is not knowledge of dogmas, not knowledge of doctrines that constitutes the theosophist, but being permeated by the wisdom of this saying, being filled in his attitude with what the saying contains. The saying is:

The Highest is a given from the beginning of time. We are a completely free association with regard to our truths. The Society is merely a place where these truths are represented, depending on what the individual knows to say about these truths. Particularly when it comes to these most difficult problems, you may well experience that, out of the basic theosophical mood, a diversity emerges between what the individual personalities express. You need not think that one is in any way opposed to the other, for we know that the truth is higher than we are and that we can only approach this truth from the most diverse sides. It is as if we were looking at a city from different points of view. Due to the perspective, some things may appear somewhat different to us. Not everyone can and may present things differently than how he sees them. And with regard to the question of the Christ problem, there is not really unity but rather diversity in the way we look at it, which, however, will probably lead to a unification of views in the next few years. But the situation today is still such that each person can only proclaim what his or her point of view gives him or her. In doing so, he is not fighting against the other's point of view, but perhaps he will contribute something to harmonizing the views. One of the views held by some of those who can speak authoritatively on such matters is that Jesus of Nazareth was born 105 years before our era and that he died not by crucifixion but by stoning. I have never made a secret of the fact that I cannot subscribe to this view, but that I have to present what I know about it. I have also never made a secret of the fact that my view is that the so-called tradition, as it is given, is to be held fast, and that it is also to be held fast with regard to the historical course, insofar as it arises from a real view, which can then rectify the view of the Gospels. Now you should not find it strange that two occult teachers can have different views on one and the same point. If you consider that two travelers who come to a foreign country and write about their travels often agree very little, in that although they have both seen the same thing, they describe what happened quite differently. If this is possible on the physical plane, then it is easy to understand that on the higher planes, the same differences can arise. For on these higher planes, observation is certainly possible, but not necessarily easier than on the physical plane. The perspective relationships through which one sees a phenomenon are so difficult to unravel that a shift in perspective can easily occur. The following can happen, for example: if you see an event in the occult field that took place 1900 years ago, you may have two figures next to each other. These two figures, although they appear next to each other in the occult field, may be 100 years apart. So, although you see things together, they may be related to each other 100 years earlier or 100 years later. I do not want to say anything more with this, but only to hint that observation is subject to such errors. I could not express a better word than that I have to stick to the traditional point of view. This also applies to the crucifixion, because it is occultly difficult to distinguish a crucifixion from a stoning. It is therefore not surprising when two opinions arise.

From the Q&A

Was Christ's death culpable or innocent?

Socrates also seems to have been condemned to death innocently. Aeschylus was condemned to death because he had revealed a secret of the mysteries. That is why Socrates was also condemned. Betrayal of the mysteries was punished by death under all circumstances, even in the community in which Jesus lived. It was also said of Jesus: You cannot live with this man, because he does too many signs. In the resurrection of Lazarus, the reason for the condemnation is found. Renan has noticed very well that the resurrection of Lazarus is connected with the condemnation of Christ. But this reason is never given. This is one of those cases where evolution causes tragedy. The death of Jesus was not a death based on karma. Karma begins at one level and once ends.

Was the suffering necessary for the establishment of his teaching?

This is connected with involution and evolution. Involution had to take place in death. No mustard seed can develop unless it first dissolves into the soil.

Every occultist knows the great dangers that lie in the frivolous popularization of occult truths and insights. On the other hand, however, it should also be taken into account that Theosophy, among other things, imposes the duty of spreading and advocating certain occult teachings that come only from occult research. When we do this, those who have familiarized themselves with such teachings feel the need to learn something about the methods by which such insights are actually gained. Theosophy speaks of the development of humanity and of the world, of races, rounds and so on, of planetary systems and other things. Those who hear these truths will, even if they believe that the intellect can grasp them, still feel the need to ask what the paths are by which such insights are attained.

Now, in general, it is not easy to talk about this path. However, today a few remarks will be made about the nature of what the occultist calls clairvoyance. One must not confuse occultism and theosophy. Theosophy is basically only the external expression for the experiences gained in the field of occultism. Occultism is the source of the theosophical teachings. Today we will talk about one chapter of this occultism.

The experiences on which the theosophical teachings are based are made in completely different states of consciousness than those that are characteristic of the ordinary person. Two such different states of consciousness come into particular consideration. We will start with what the ordinary person experiences. This person has their everyday, waking daytime consciousness – through which they are able to perceive the things around them and to educate themselves about cause and effect and the other laws of this physical world through their mind, through their reason, in short, through their intellectuality.

But this state of consciousness is not the only state of experience for the everyday person. The human experience extends far beyond what is accessible to his consciousness. The normal person has two other states of experience, which are the so-called dream sleep and dreamless deep sleep.

This second state of consciousness, sleep interspersed with dreams, does not plunge the person completely into the unconscious. The person is able to bring something into the waking consciousness. However, what he brings into consciousness is not the content of the actual experience he had during the dream-filled sleep. The experience is something quite different from what he later becomes aware of. It is, so to speak, only a bringing across of individual fragments, of fragmentary mirror images. What a person experiences in a completely different world during dream-filled, not very deep sleep, are coherent, ordered facts. And of these facts, which he experiences but of which he does not become aware, he has some memory. He has brought them into his memory for the waking consciousness and later remembers what happened over there. However, the content is remembered only sparsely and distorted. This content cannot be compared in any way with what is experienced over there.

This is a world that, if it could be seen through, would be filled with the facts of the so-called astral world. Just as the physical world is filled with the facts of the sensual world, here one experiences the spiritual facts. But over there we experience feelings, passions, desires, cravings, instincts as facts. We experience them only as they exist as mental processes, not as they otherwise are in our personal form, refracted through our earthly life. It is simply a different world that the human being experiences there and from which he only brings pieces over into the ordinary waking consciousness of the day. No one should ever characterize the experiences in the so-called astral realm by what he brings over from the content of his dreams into his waking consciousness. This is just as rich, indeed much richer, than the world of the senses, and in terms of the contrasts it offers, it cannot be compared to what goes on in our world of the senses. The manifoldness of what appears good, bright, radiant, and, on the other hand, of the terrible, repulsive, and gruesome phenomena, cannot be compared to what our sensory world offers.

The third state is dreamless sleep. In most people, very little of the experiences that occur during the dreamless sleep state come through into the waking day consciousness. What comes across is usually not consciously perceived. The experience of dreamless sleep appears in the waking 'day consciousness' not in its causality, but in its effect. What is experienced there are the great laws of reality, the true, to a certain extent much more true, original causes and essences of our world. What takes place in the outer physical forms of existence in the animal and plant kingdoms (the mineral kingdom does not belong here, for nothing can be learned about the true nature of the mineral kingdom in dreamless sleep) — the way in which life manifests itself in these kingdoms, how forms develop from one to another, what great laws life actually has – that, if we were to penetrate it in its true form, would suddenly illuminate many connections in life that are otherwise mysterious and obscure in the ordinary consciousness. Man undergoes all this without retaining anything consciously in his waking day consciousness.

This is nothing more than a description of the three states, of which only one is a real state of consciousness that we encounter in people.

Now it is self-evident that none of the experiences gained in this way can be the content of occult teaching. Occult experience begins only when a very specific transformation of the state of consciousness has taken place. This transformation will be briefly characterized.

There is a point in ordinary human consciousness that marks a turning point in the development of every person who is in any way reflective or sensible. This is the awakening of self-awareness. You all know that at first the child does not speak in the first person, but says: “Charles wants,” “Mary wants.” It is a very specific stage in the development of the human being when the possibility arises that he may say “I”. This awakening of self-awareness is different from all other facts that one can experience. It is a very intimate experience. Everyone can say “I” to themselves. You can give any other thing a different name. I can only say “I” to myself and no one can say “I” to another “I”. Only a person can refer to themselves with the very specific name, “I”.

Self-awareness is something completely different. The thought of the ego is exclusive and cannot be compared to any other. There is now a way to work on the ego in such a way that, just as it is only within itself in ordinary self-awareness, its entire world of thought is shaped from the center of the ego in the same way that the thought of the ego usually occurs. When, through diligent and sustained meditation, a person brings himself to face his entire world of thoughts in the same way that an ordinary person faces only the point of the ego, and not only his world of thoughts but the world of thoughts in general, then he is called an intuitive person. Then the world of thoughts emerges from the center of his being itself. He then produces thoughts in the same sense as he previously produced thoughts of the ego.

This stage of ego development can be attained. Through correct meditation in a certain sense, a person can come to relate to his world of thoughts in the same way as he previously related to his ego. Two sentences in “Light on the Path” have the power, when applied in the right way, to bring the ego to this point of view. They are not mere abstract sentences, but are written out of the astral experience of thousands of years. These two sentences, which are an extraordinary means of education, are:

Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears.
Before the ear can hear, its sensitivity must fade.

There is strength and life in these sentences; they need only be applied in the right way. When man has reached this stage, then something else necessarily occurs: he is able to experience in an orderly way what is otherwise only experienced in dreamless sleep and what otherwise comes only in fragments. In this way, this world, which takes place in the astral, becomes just as real to him as the world of the senses was real to him before. Man then has the memory of the facts of the Kama world.

The next higher level is where the person no longer has dream-filled sleep, but is able to look into the higher world through intuition. This world is full of spiritual clarity; there is no longer any arbitrariness. Two perceptions are associated with this intuitive state. When a person has reached this stage of development, he perceives in his own experience the dangerous enemies of human life: the elemental spirits of birth and death, which continually lurk in the adjoining natural realms, which are always there, which try to seduce the human being, and so on. These elemental beings, which move into the astral body and influence its desires, are always there. In ordinary life, they are hidden by the veil of Maya.

These enemies in the neighboring natural realms are what a person first becomes aware of at this stage of development. And this is of the utmost importance for development in occultism. In this state, which can be compared to dreamless sleep, the person perceives – this is his first experience in this state of consciousness – what the enemies are that pull him down and lead him to the lower realms. It is good that these forces, which thus prevail in man, are hidden from the ordinary person. It is good that a veil is spread over them here. For it is not speaking of them, but really getting to know them, that only those who have attained a certain level of self-confidence and moral strength within themselves can bear. Therefore, no true occultist will give instructions on how to reach such a level before a person has achieved a decisive development of character in the direction of self-confidence, morality and presence of mind, so that he does not run the risk of losing himself, but can hold his powers together. These three qualities are required for every occultist.

That which is hidden from the consciousness of the day in this way, and which confronts man at this stage, is called the Guardian of the Threshold. He guards the threshold because he must not allow the ordinary man to see what is behind it. However, it loses much of its horror if the person has the designated character traits or has acquired them to a certain degree. By the end of the Atlantean era, people had ceased to develop these moral powers sufficiently. Hence the peculiar conditions arose that are known from the description of Atlantis.

In the continuation of this path, man must not only be brought to experience the world of thought as his own, but in order to be able to connect with reality at a higher level, he must also transform the entire world of feeling. Then the ability to see things directly in the higher worlds during the waking day consciousness begins, for example the human aura; initially only in the lower stages. When a person has reached this stage, he has basically already opened up a source of extraordinarily profound experience. Then he lives just as consciously in the spiritual as the ordinary person lives within the sense things.

On the third level, however, he lives where there is no longer any conscious experience for the ordinary person. He experiences the same as the ordinary person in the outer sense world, only on a higher level. He then experiences the laws of the world of causes. There is no longer any difference between the experiences in the so-called unconscious state of sleep and the conscious state of the day. This is the continuity of consciousness, which is gradually and very gradually attained. But relatively soon the separation of the soul will have progressed so far that it can live not only in thoughts but also in sensations. Then he can form concepts from these, as things actually look in reality.

“Light on the Path” gives the right instruction to reach this stage. It requires patience, perseverance and steadfastness in an extraordinary degree. The possibility for this lies in the forces hidden in the next two sentences:

Before the masters can speak, the wound must be unlearned.
Before the soul can stand, the blood of its heart must moisten its feet.

They contain the forces that lead people to direct experience and direct perception.

Those who have reached this stage and are able to say “I” to their world of feeling are now able to consciously experience all the truths related to devachan. The teachings of devachan can be consciously experienced at this level of consciousness.

One may well believe that when man has passed through evolution to this stage, he becomes a dreamer, that he loses his usual soberness and power of judgment. On the contrary, the possibility of yielding to superstition or dogma ceases. Even doubt and skepticism disappear from the soul when man has arrived at a concept of this stage of development. There is now a state analogous to dream-filled sleep and to deep sleep. When man has progressed so far as to see the Devachan, there are still other states into which he can consciously place himself. These are states in which he can experience something much higher. These states consist in the following.

From direct observation, one learns to recognize how the various forms of the universe transform and metamorphose into one another. It becomes clear how a thought form is formed out of mental substance, then encloses astral substance and plastically dominates the astral substance. But it is also learned how the beings of higher planes, from the mental plane through the astral plane, move down to the physical world. The entire sum of possible transformations of form in the universe lies before the initiate. He can answer the question of what forms a plant has undergone in earlier, long-gone epochs. The various forms of transformation that belong to our planetary system are revealed at this level of knowledge. This is called the conscious experience of form development in esotericism.

The state that is analogous to dreamless deep sleep shows how life, the essence itself, pours into the various forms. In this case, the difference is that during the second state, the various forms are perceived in very different colors than in the third stage. When a thought form is perceived, for example, it can appear in bright yellow colors. There are thought forms that are perceived in this way. There are also thought images that have a certain spiritual form. In the third stage, the vital ether flows into these thought forms, which may, for example, have the beautiful light color of a peach blossom. You can then not only see rigid or completely mobile forms that transform into one another, but also perceive how these forms are animated from their center.

The result is that you can place yourself in the various etheric forms of consciousness, so that you can not only recognize the laws of devachanic life, but also the transformations of our earth – only our earth, it does not go further – that it has undergone during the time of the so-called round developments. The process of passing through several planets or globes, of Arupa planets and Rupa planets and the like, is undergone. These transformations can be learned in this state of consciousness. And then the different rounds themselves can be undergone, learned.

Thus, through appropriate exercises, man can learn to understand part of the teaching that the theosophical movement has brought into the world. The further path can no longer be presented. On the other side, the state of consciousness begins, which consists of becoming insensitive to the possibility of external sensation. And with that, the actual life of the adept begins. From the experiences of the adept, only that which goes beyond the designated boundary can be gained.

The purpose of what has been presented here is to indicate the methods that lead to the knowledge that is available in the theosophical textbooks.

After all, the communication and reception of theosophy is partly based on trust. This must also be the case today. But it can be demanded that explanations be given as to the origin of this knowledge, which we in the West have the opportunity to access again. In this, the leading spiritual individuals, the masters, have the opportunity to provide not only the teachings, but also the esoteric perspectives, which, if used correctly, can promote development in a corresponding spiritual direction.

In addition to the significant work of “Secret Doctrine” by H.P. Blavatsky, the book “Light on the Path” has also been inspired, which really is a light on the path that humanity is to follow from now on into the future. When this path is trodden, or at least understood, only then will it be possible to know something of how this knowledge and this will, which are to lead to our goal, can be attained and how they must be attained in the future. For only a few today may the path be passable. This should not be talked about further. But we can be clear about the fact that that human experience in which the appearance of meaning ceases and higher experience occurs cannot be attained other than through a certain development of the spiritual life.

In a more intense way than in any other way, it is precisely through this spiritual development, which should live through teaching and word in the theosophical movement, that the great goal of development can be achieved, which has been expressed in that deep realization, that great esoteric truth, which can easily be said but is difficult to understand, and which belongs to the most ancient wisdom of mankind:

One life dwells in all beings, one and many, like the moon that reflects in many images on the water.

You have seen that we can only understand the Apocalypse correctly if the fundamental essence of the Christian mystical fact is placed in the right light. We have taken up the saying “Blessed are they that have faith, even though they do not see” in order to present the fundamental essence.

What was seen by the initiates in the centuries before Christianity was founded, what took place in the depths of the mystery grottoes and temples, that became, as we have seen, a world-historical fact, that was carried over to the great plan of world history. The story of the suffering, the dying, the resurrection and the ascension, these phases of the mystical life, as the initiate saw them in the mystery temples after the proper preparation, could now be believed by the believer as an historical fact. Thus what had previously been a secret or mystery had become a matter of faith, proclaimed, had become the gospel. So in the gospel there is nothing given other than the content of the old mystery books. Before, the content of the Gospel of John, in particular, from the thirteenth chapter to the end, was proclaimed to the initiated in the hidden books of the mysteries. But now it was proclaimed to the whole world, even to those who could not be directly convinced of the mysteries by psychic, mystical evidence. Blessed were those who did not see and yet believed. Thus the ancient mystery was revealed by Christianity. The gospel had become the revelation of ancient mystery books.

But what was a mystery at one time and was revealed at another time, that is, if it were simultaneous, is the same in content. What was later revealed to the whole world was always proclaimed in the mysteries in the times before, when humanity was not yet ready for it. What had become a revealed mystery in the first centuries of Christianity, at the time of its proclamation, was hidden earlier. For the first times in Christianity, the mystery appears again as a revelation that is supposed to prepare for a very distant future. The record of the events of the very distant future is contained in the Apocalypse of the Theologian John. And now let us see how.

We all know the development of the fifth root race of humanity through the various sub-races. We know that the sub-race of the Aryan race in which Christianity was absorbed was the fourth sub-race, and that we ourselves now live in the fifth sub-race, and that this will be followed by the sixth. To understand what is written in the Apocalypse, let us take a look at the development as we have to imagine it according to our present theosophical apocalypse of the future of the next race and the rest of our own fifth cultural epoch.

Let us return once more to the sentence: “With Christianity, the preceding mysteries became apparent to a certain extent.” The fourth sub-race [the Greco-Latin cultural epoch] was initially concerned with this – and it was its task – to establish this belief in Christianity as a mystical fact, this belief in this great mystery unfolding on the stage of world history. Now the fifth sub-race, our own, has emerged; it is the sub-race of intellect that wants to understand everything. Comprehending, explaining and understanding is the task of our era. This task will have been fulfilled when everything that the intellect is capable of comprehending has been grasped. The leadership of this, our fifth sub-race, will have fulfilled its task when it has been led to the point where the intellect will grasp and understand what was previously believed, so that we can explain it. This apocalypse of our fifth sub-race is presented to us in such a way that we are told: “A time will come when the personality that founded Christianity, the mystical Lamb, will unseal the book with the seven seals. What was mere belief remained sealed. But little by little the seven seals will fall from the Book, which was previously merely a book of faith and therefore a book closed to the mind.

What is in this book? This book contains the secrets of successive developments, the seven secrets that are repeated over and over again in every development of rounds and races, and in all other cyclic developments – including that of man. Let us take a look at how these seven secrets present themselves in man. I will only need to shed a little light on a few of these secrets, and you will immediately see what they are.

Consider the human being as he presents himself to us in seven parts in the theosophical classification. First, the physical body into which he moves in order to fulfill his world career in it. This is the first, the move into the world. The second is the settling into the so-called life principle. In prana, in which beings come to life, they enter the realm of struggle, the realm of war of everyone against everyone, the realm in which particularity stands against particularity. In order for this struggle, this particularity against particularity, to be brought into outer harmony, it is necessary that the will of man brings justice into this realm of struggle. But justice is not the only creator of harmony in the outer world. What must be brought into it occurs on the fourth level, where man not only establishes justice outwardly, but where he permeates external justice with the principle of love, which shines down from above, from the higher principles.

If you compare this with the opening of the seven seals in the Apocalypse, you will see that we are dealing with exactly the same situation:

And I looked, and behold, a white horse; and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

First of all, there is the materialization of the going out.

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And another horse went out, red; and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword. [Rev 6,3-4]

Here the special fights against the special in the principle of life.

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. [Rev 6,5]

— the scales of justice.

And I heard a voice among the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see that you do not harm the oil and the wine. [Rev 6,6]

And when he 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 called Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword, and with hunger, and with death, and by the wild beasts of the earth. [Rev 6,7-8]

The lower nature is killed, the higher nature emerges. The lower dies so that the higher spiritual can be redeemed.

If we apply the image not to the individual human being, but to the fifth race, then it has set out to solve the mission, to redeem the second sub-race, which was the warlike one. We thus enter the time of the struggle of the individual peoples against each other. Then comes the Kingdom of Justice, the kingdom that, according to the biblical historian, is reckoned from Abraham. There you will find the gradual ascent of the third principle, that of justice. The fourth principle signifies the advent of Christianity itself. The conquest of death through love is a higher realm than that of mere justice.

Then will come the kingdom that corresponds to the fifth sub-race. This kingdom, when it comes to an end, will understand the whole task of the fifth root race. It will understand from within what previously could only be believed from without. Thus the seals that have closed the rest of the understanding of the world will also fall. The world will become an open book. When the fifth cultural epoch is complete, the world will lie before our minds like an open book.

After that, calm sets in. This is nothing other than the hour in which the sixth sub-race prepares itself. The seals have been broken, the truths lie open before the eyes of men. And that will be the characteristic of the men of the sixth sub-race, that the truths lie open before the eyes of men, that they no longer need to be believed or grasped by the intellect, but that they can be seen with the eyes, be seen with an intuitive spirit. This is how the truths will present themselves to people in the sixth cultural epoch. In this sixth cultural epoch, humanity will have reached a higher level.

On an even higher level, people will once again experience the unveiling, the revelation of the secrets. This renewed manifestation of the secrets is depicted in the Apocalypse as the trumpeting of the angels. How open the truths will be then, not just like in a book, but so that they speak to us from all sides. The truths will not be like a thought, but like a spoken language. That is what the trumpeting of the angels means. And it is like the mood of the sixth sub-race emerging when the trumpeting of the angels is described to us. We will follow this in more detail at another time.

From there, follow the whole development further, and you will see that the Apocalypse also touches on those important points that will arise in the course of the development of the sixth sub-race, including the most important point, which can be characterized by the fact that people will be enlightened about the nature of good and evil in a completely different way. Since the truths will be obvious, the character of good and evil will be obvious to people. They will learn to read in the account book of their karma. That is the important point in time that will occur for the people of the sixth cultural epoch, when the law of karma will take on flesh and blood and the realization of justice will occur. Those who absorb such an awareness will then live to continue the next root race.

In this next root race, a great and significant event will occur. It is already prepared by the knowledge of good and evil, and it will be prepared to a higher degree during the sixth sub-race; for something quite different will occur then, and we must understand this if we want to understand the apocalypse. We remember that the way in which present-day humanity lives is not an absolute one, that it arose once, that it became sexual in the middle of the Lemurian race. It was only in the middle of the Lemurian period that this type of reproduction began in humanity, and also this type of living together, as it is in humanity now. What we now call birth and death only came into humanity then. Before that, the way life was lived was quite different. With birth and death, that individual karma came into being, as did reincarnation or re-embodiment. Everything we are now describing and recognizing as re-embodiment and karma and as the course of the individual human life between birth and death, only started in the middle of the Lemurian period. It was only then that people took on the form in which they currently embody themselves. Before that, they had other forms. This form, which once began, this passing through birth and death and this repeated embodiment, all this will also come to an end. Just as it began in the middle of the Lemurian period, so it will come to an end in the middle of the sixth root race. Then, in a part of humanity that will have already reached the corresponding level of development, in those who are called the firstfruits of humanity in the Apocalypse, the state that existed at a lower level before the Lemurian time will occur again. Then man was still asexual and not yet entangled in birth and death. This will come again after man has gone through his apprenticeship through the reincarnations. For him the time will come when he will again have, at a higher level, the spirituality that had previously been his at a lower level, but liberated from the physical form, the form that is directly present in the here and now.

Now, in Christian esotericism, one calls those entities, which weave and work in the evolution of the world, in the shaping of the world in the most diverse fields, angels. These entities are higher than the present human entities. Man works on earth, but higher entities have worked on man himself. That which must be accomplished in the evolution of the world by higher beings, that is, that which is of a higher nature, is assumed by Christian esotericism to have been brought about by beings it calls angels. In theosophical teachings, we speak of the Dhyanic nature, which in its power and wisdom lies above human development. Now, Christian esotericism calls those formers who are not on our level of consciousness and activity higher beings, angels, and the angel who formed the human form in the middle of the Lemurian period addresses them as the archangel Michael. Michael is the shaper of the human form as it is subject to birth and death, as it is subject to sexuality. Because man has entered birth and death and the angel of form, Michael, has given him precisely this form, the adversary of Michael has appeared on the other side, who always works in the course of evolution and who in Christian esotericism is called the dragon or the serpent. If we understand human evolution since the middle of the Lemurian period as the battle of the archangel Michael with the dragon, then this battle must enter a new phase in the middle of the sixth root race. The purest form must have been achieved in the human form, and the human being must have reached his goal in relation to the human form. Everything that was inhibiting must have been overcome. This battle, which takes place in the middle of the sixth root race, is described in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse.

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; and he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were also thrown down with him. [Rev 12,7-9]

In the beginning, the human being had to enter into the human form and had to take upon itself what the form brings with it and overcome it in the time of development alone. The human being had to take upon itself sexuality, birth and death. As hermaphrodites, as asexual beings, human beings entered evolution and became bisexual, became man and woman. Again, asexuality will have to occur in the middle of the sixth root race.

If you read the Apocalypse further, you will find the whole thing described in more detail in the fourteenth chapter.

Then I heard a voice in heaven, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of a great thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harps playing.

And they sang as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.

These are the ones who have not been defiled with women, for they are virgins and follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These have been redeemed from among men as the first fruits to God and to the Lamb.

This mystical fact of the return to the Godhead is expressed in this passage of the Apocalypse. Now you will find a description of everything that is necessarily connected with it: that birth and death have been overcome, and that the first new resurrection is celebrated. But the other dead will not come to life again.

In the twenty-first chapter, verse 4, it says:

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore, for the first has passed away.

When man has developed to the highest flower, then - in these high states - he can no longer suffer. Man will then have reached the highest level of his seven-part division. The specialness that was achieved precisely through the form of matter, as it occurred in the middle of the Lemurian period, will have attained the most robust form. No longer will man be enclosed within this physical form, which can only gain knowledge of the environment through the gates of the senses. He will have other, new senses. You will find this depicted in the Apocalypse in that it is no longer necessary for the sun and moon to shine because a different kind of perception will come into being for people. Then it is further said that a new city will come to earth for people.

What is understood as a new city? People have developed in their present dwellings. There is an esoteric expression for the present dwellings of people. What are the present dwellings of people? It is the sum of all human bodies, and every human body is a house within this one great city of people, in which all live. In Christian esotericism, every body is seen as a house in which the soul dwells. Now the human community in the form in which it existed in the middle of the Lemurian period is called the oldest Jerusalem. The form in which this human city existed at the time when Christianity was founded is called the “middle Jerusalem,” and the form that will then be there in the middle of the sixth root race is called the “new Jerusalem.

The founding of this new Jerusalem is again described in the Apocalypse, and it describes it in such a way that even the most unbelieving must realize what is being described. What kind of answer will we get when we ask: What will the houses be like? The apocalyptic says:

And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.

And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as great as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.

And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel. [Rev 21,15-17]

The city is found to have the measure of man. This is the measure that man will one day have; to this measure man will develop in the sixth root race.

Thus, you see, the Gospel was the revealed mystery of ancient times. The Apocalypse is the new mystery of the early Christian era. Just as the ancient mysteries contained the birth, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of man, and just as this mystical suffering, dying, and resurrection and ascension into heaven was the content of the ancient mysteries that was revealed in the Gospel, so the Apocalypse contains the new mystery of the future of humanity in the early Christian mysteries. The Apocalypse of the Theologian John is nothing other than that which was taught and interpreted in the first Christian mysteries.

Just as you would find in the Greek mysteries, when the pre-celebration of Christ's suffering, death and resurrection is celebrated in the form of the suffering Dionysus, who is dismembered and exalted, in the temple of the mystery, the mystery consists precisely in the fact that the secret is transferred to the initiates, so that they can prepare the time for it. Thus the first Christians, who experienced the great event as world-historical, were taught in the first Christian mysteries what was to be prepared through Christian education.

And this, in turn, is combined with the theosophical view of esoteric Christianity. We know that the description of what took place in Palestine is called the “gospel”, the “glad tidings” and is exoteric. But in addition, the following was also taught in the Christian mysteries: After the resurrection, Christ taught intimate disciples for years in the first Christian mysteries, and the teaching that was given there is contained in the Apocalypse. The interpretation was the one that we are only now able to give again through Theosophy. However, the Apocalypse was interpreted in our theosophical sense. This is the only thing meant by the introduction given by the theologian John himself. He says quite clearly who appears to him: it is he who was the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega, he who alone is as pure as man was before he entered the life of development in the middle of the Lemurian time and as he will be again after he has left the process of development in the middle of the sixth root race: that is Christ, the first before the beginning of birth and death and the last after birth and death will be completed. The first and the last also reveal here at the center of development the Christian mystery, the secret of the sixth root race.

I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day and heard behind me a great voice like a trumpet. [Rev 1,10]

He, as an intimate disciple, has been granted the special grace to hear the trumpets already now. At this point in the establishment of Christianity, this is an anticipation. The voice spoke:

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last. Write the things you see in a book and send it to the churches in Asia: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.

And I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. When I turned, I saw seven golden lampstands.

And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girded about on the chest with a golden girdle.

His head and hair were white like white wool, like snow, and his eyes like a flame of fire.

And his feet like unto brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

This description is the one the mystic seer draws, also of the first incarnation, of the first descent into matter, where matter is not yet so densely condensed, where the eyes are still glowing, still active, and not merely gates to the outside world; and then again, where solid matter of the whole body world passed into liquid matter, where it is liquid like glowing metal.

That, you see - we will hear more about the details - is what is embodied in the Apocalypse, in the way one speaks in mystery books. And at the same time, you can see from this the essence of the mystery, which consists in the fact that what is to be revealed to a majority only later is first proclaimed to individual initiates. There are no secrets, no secret truths that do not become a revealed secret, a revealed truth at some time. They can only be revealed when people are ready for them. And in order for them to become ready for them, there must be individuals to lead humanity. These are initiated into the secrets in which only later other people are initiated. Only those who know the goal can lead to it. Only those who knew the goal could prophesy Christianity as prophets. To proclaim the gospel from the mysteries is to prophesy. At the same time, that which can become common property for all in the distant future should be revealed to people.

This is the course of spiritual world history, this is the evolution in world history, shrouded by circumstances that we can no longer speak of today. Humanity's great laws of development were shrouded at first. Over time, they are revealed and evolved. Mystery after mystery is unveiled. What was only known and guarded by initiates will, in the course of time, be revealed. That which was first sealed will be unsealed; that which the eyes have read will later resound in the opened spiritual ear like a revelation from outside, from the outer world, as if through a trumpet.

From the question and answer session

[Mr. Schouten asks some questions about the fourth dimension]

I intend to give a lecture on the fourth dimension and would then like to try to bring about an understanding of this fourth dimension by following up Mr. Schouten's remarks. It will be better if I speak about the fourth dimension in connection with the direct experiment.

Is John the theologian the same as the author of the Gospel of John?

The writer of the Gospel of John is the most intimate disciple of Jesus. This also enabled him to give the deepest form to the teaching. Today it is impossible for most people to understand. In the nineteenth chapter it says:

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside him, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” [John 19:25-26]

To love a disciple means to be an initiate. Then he says to the disciple:

Behold your mother! And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

This is a significant passage. It tells us that the mother's name cannot have been Mary. John never refers to the mother of Jesus as Mary. There is another passage from the second chapter that deals with this.

And when the wine failed, Jesus' mother saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

I would just like to note that this implies that the mother of Jesus is hinting at something very special. She is the spiritual substance from which he creates his work. The old Judaism, which was to become Christianity, referred to Jesus, when he had become a Christian, as his mother. This mission of his people calls him, calls him first when he is to turn the old water into wine. Then he says: Woman, my hour has not yet come. The Jewish people have been handed over to the son of the Jewish people with the words: Behold, this is your mother. It was this John who then also wrote the Gospel and the Apocalypse.

Can't the long time of development actually be shortened by people's brotherly cooperation?

The fraternal cooperation of people can indeed shorten the long time of development. The years are not the same length on the higher planes. Only on the physical plane are the years of equal length. Imagine whether you would have any measure of time at all if you no longer had physical events. Or imagine that the sun would move faster, then the years would become shorter.

Is the Theosophical Society also based on evolution?

The Theosophical Society was founded on the evolutionary point of view.

What do the words mean: What will happen shortly?

This is a passage that says as much as what you will achieve shortly.

What is meant by the “community of saints”?

The “community of saints” is the great brother lodge of the masters, the adepts. It is easy for those who know nothing about them to make mocking remarks, which has been done enough already. The higher individualities are united in brother lodges. These are the anticipation of what all humanity will achieve in the middle of the sixth root race. And it is this principle of fraternization that is to be achieved in the sixth root race. And what can only be achieved by the spiritual emerging from the physical-material. This community of saints is what is presented as the next stage of development. Spiritual evolution has two stages: becoming blessed and becoming holy. Blessed is derived from soul. The eight beatitudes are a guide to becoming blessed in oneself. But to find blessedness outside of oneself, one must become holy. The saints live in absolute community.