Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 17 October 1904, Berlin

LXII. On the Apocalypse III

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.