# Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

## GA 90a — 1 November 1904, Berlin

### LXVI. Summary of the Previous Discourses on the Apocalypse

We can only understand the Apocalypse if we accept the fundamental nature of Christianity as a mystical fact. This fundamental nature is contained in the words: “Blessed are they that have believed, not seen.” What once took place in the interior of the crypts has now been carried out into the arena of world history itself. The old mystery was revealed in Christianity: that which is a mystery at one time becomes manifest at another. The content of ancient mystery books is reproduced in the Gospels; the record of future events is contained in the Apocalypse of John.

Anyone who wants to understand the spirit of such writings must, above all, know how religions work.

Today, there is a widespread belief that the simple word contains the truth, and there is an aversion to elevating the spirit. Nothing should be said against the simplicity of the word: but the inner strength from which such speech flows springs from the highest heights of the spirit. Not everyone could speak of the revelations of the highest regions. The church father had the strength, the power of the [gap in the text]

A destiny seen in mystery is described to us in the apocalypse. A lower initiation is enough to see beyond one root race, a higher one is necessary to see beyond many. To create an apocalypse, the third degree of chelaship is necessary. In the realm of highly developed astral vision, the destiny of a root race unfolds before us. From the fourth chapter on, the Apocalypse is devachanic vision. He who wrote the Apocalypse overlooked the period up to the middle of the Lemurian race and the future until sexuality ceased. The higher experiences are no different from each other. Never do two initiates report in different ways. The initiates of all times spoke as the apocalyptic did. In the Apocalypse, the author speaks from the Christian point of view.

Let us look back at the formation of the races.

Before the Lemurian race, there was a development of humanity that was quite different. The etheric body had not yet solidified; it did not walk on the ground, but floated through the etheric earth itself. Its organs were luminous. Man incarnated in fiery clouds at the beginning of the Lemurian race. The esotericist describes that transition from fine to physical matter, those beings that developed into physical density, as the eagle state of man. The eagle is therefore the human being who has developed from the ether to physical matter.

In the Atlanteans, man had a strengthened life force, he could control prana, use the seed power. During the present race, for about thirteen million years, he has only mastered physics. Later he will regain control over the etheric body and the astral body.

This second stage, in which man still has control over the etheric body, is symbolized by the lion man.

For the Aryan, who has descended completely into the physical, the symbol is the bull.

Three very definite successive stages of humanity are thus designated.

The symbolic language is understood by everyone who has learned it; they know what is meant by the special signs.

A frequently used character is two interlocking triangles: an eagle at the top, a lion on the left, a bull on the right; in the middle, a human face. This means that there is a triangle below that characterizes past conditions. The three angles therefore remain initially [gap in the text]

In the middle is the inner man, the actual permanent essence. These are the four natures, through which man is actually human, can be seen in the two intertwined triangles.

These three animals appear wherever the development of the human being is discussed. But in the Apocalypse of John, there is still another way of speaking. The apocalyptic overcomes the veils that separate him from the earlier stages. In order to be able to see himself back, the earlier organs must be enlivened. He must draw animals that see and look. Eye, all eye.

The future stages can only be grasped by someone who has an eye for the ascent, the use of the higher bodies. Now we are in the stage of the purely physical mind. This mind requires a certain moral teaching and a certain religion. In essence, the individual must seek his fortune at the expense of the other. Those who strive for the higher must already rise above the rest. In the occult school, there are three words that describe the new age. These are:

Brotherly love: the love of community as a moral ideal.

Pneumatology: the doctrine of the spirit and the spiritual as the decisive thing: scientific ideal.

Free religious principle: self-authority in religious matters.

This will be the sixth race.

A well-known occult law is that in certain time cycles, what has happened before will be repeated. The eagle, bull and lion were repeated in the first three sub-races. The fourth sub-race is referred to as “human”. In it, Christianity emerged.

The people of the first sub-race, the Indian people, had expressed the culture of thought, the highest deification of thought. They had to repeat in brief what the Lemurians had experienced. The Lemurians were people of feeling; the Indians thought in feelings; what thought radiates in feelings we find in the old Vedic culture - thought takes hold of feelings in the Indian. In cultures where thought is served more by memory, we have the culture of heroes, the long catalogs that have led to memory. Much was noted. And from the notes of the ancient Persians, the Magi, the Chaldeans, the calendar books were created. From them developed astronomy, astrology, technology, mathematics, and so on.

Thus man came to the race where he understood what it means: in man himself, the god has come to life.

The first race could fall away most easily. The feeling is not yet strong enough for the thought to really internalize.

Every day that one delves deeper into Vedanta-Alchry is a source of new admiration. On the other hand, the most abject idolatry that the people have fallen into confronts us. But the great virtues of people always have the greatest dark sides as well. The Apocalypticist seeks to make us understand this phenomenon by using the example of the community of Ephesus, symbolized by the sect of the Nicolaitans; it is intended to show us how, in the fifth root race, the most external lives alongside the highest.

Let us visualize how the early Christians viewed their Christianity.

“There are three that begat it on earth, and three in heaven.” Atma, Buddhi, Manas. Father, Son and Spirit.

To speak of the Father would have been rejected by the early Christian. He believed he could only recognize the Father through the Son, through the Word: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The highest that man can aspire to is thought, the mental. It is characteristic of man on earth that he lives in three worlds at once: the spiritual, the soul and the physical - but only in the physical consciously.

The highest for all religions was the world-creative will. When man, through the will, wants to express the thought, then it is first through the word. The word is the expression of the spirit through the will. Thus the Christian said: The Father expressed his spirit in the world through the power of the word. This is the second person of the Trinity, the third is the Holy Spirit, and He is expressed in the Word. The world is the embodiment of the Spirit and came into being through the Word of God, as the vibration of air comes through human speech. This Word is to be thought of as the Second Person, as the highest Being, much more personal than a human individuality. This highest being became man for the first Christians in the one whom they recognized as the proclaimer of the Gospel. He who does not understand this, he who wants to dispute the Word made Flesh, cannot place himself in the frame of mind of the first Christians. That the Christian has risen to devachanic vision is clear to him who knows how to read the Gospel.

The Christ-life has something essentially different from the Buddha-life, and this was understood by the first initiates. Time is suspended, the past is present: such is devachan. At the transfiguration of Christ the three disciples are uplifted to devachanic vision.

Here we have something that we do not have in the Buddha life. Buddha became luminous... here it concludes. The Christ life begins its most significant epoch with this fact. Thus the first Christians said: “We well understand the pre-announcement of this, which is fulfilled in the present, through the old religions... But blessed are those who believe, not see.

What had previously been achieved by beholding the great truths of the world in the interior of the crypts could now be experienced by those who merely believed. The mystery was brought out into the open world arena. The cross of Golgotha is the same act, erected before all eyes. The ancient mystery doctrine had to be brought to the world in a popular form. A step has been taken that leads further than the old religions.