Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge II

GA 90b — 19 March 1905, Cologne

XXVII. The Apocalypse of John II

What Christianity has become in the world was long in preparation. The core saying of Christianity is “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

In the most ancient times everything was imbued with a religious atmosphere. Those who were to know something of the secrets of the world were prepared for their divine calling in mystery schools. There they were initiated into the riddles of existence. The secret schools of Egypt also served this purpose. Above all, those who were to be initiated had to have attained a certain maturity in life. Then one had to undergo very specific exercises that prepared the person to free themselves from the sensual, to purify the passions, so that the person no longer clung to the views that come through the gates of the senses. He had to free himself from this and reach a certain maturity. In the mystery schools, one received scientific, occult instruction. In it, it was made clear to the student how the spirit has developed. They thought of a sleeping god in the stone, then a god who has a little more consciousness in the plant and so on. The world spirit then woke up completely in man. All sciences were imbued with these views. They knew how man has developed through the realms. Goethe also depicted this in the development of the homunculus. Everything that is spread out in nature is, as it were, an outstretched human being. Every single link in the human being is related to something out there in the world.

The physician in the sense of Paracelsus has recognized the connection between a remedy and the human organism; that man has been related to anything in nature. He saw the deity spread out in nature and summarized in man again. When man had attained this knowledge, when he had undergone certain exercises, he was brought into a completely closed room in a different state of consciousness. There the person underwent a very specific process that lasted three and a half days. He now experienced in reality in the soul room what he had learned in class, namely the emergence of Horus from Isis and Osiris. The god really descended to earth, and in descending, he was spread out in the natural realms.

Man then learned to understand himself as a spiritual being. The pupil experienced an entombment, a resurrection and an ascension in all religious mysteries. The profound myths, which are symbolic representations of great truths of the world, are not contrived.

The Germanic myths also show in detail, in a wonderfully vivid way, what the mystery school student experiences. What was told of Wotan and so on were symbolic experiences in the mysteries. In the astral, the mystery school student experienced the descent of the god, the spreading of the god, entombment, resurrection and ascension. All this always takes place in the astral realm. It is a familiar experience in the astral realm. What the initiates were able to see in ancient times, people in Christianity were supposed to believe, even if they did not see it. Christianity was a mystical fact.

What took place in the astral realm for the mystery school student took place on the physical plane as the incarnation of Christ. The mystery school student had anticipated all of this. The physical is only a condensation of what happens in the realm of the soul.

Every external action that takes place in the physical world is only a condensation of an often-repeated action in the astral realm. There, rhythmic repetitions of what is to happen physically take place beforehand. Nothing happens in the physical that has not been repeated many times in the astral realm. The physical is a stepping out onto the physical plane of what had taken place in the astral realm. The incarnation of Christ was the physical realization of an astral experience.

Paul was the first to experience the incarnation of God within himself, to experience it inwardly. For him, the conviction was drawn solely from the walk to Damascus. After the incarnation of Christ, one could become a nature mystic on the physical plane, in contrast to the soul mystic of antiquity. The fact that Christ was there has brought about something that was not there before. Mystics like those of Christianity were not there before. Budhi, grace or gnosis, the second ability of the higher trinity, could only be attained through the mysteries. Christ could only come to life within through the incarnated Logos in the flesh.

The mystery students of antiquity were called prophets. They told of their experiences in the astral realm, which took place there repeatedly before becoming physical. Everything that is a mystery today will become reality in the future. Everything secret will one day be revealed. The fulfillment of the old mystery is the incarnation of Christ. This provided the opportunity to tell something new that would happen in the future, when the time was fulfilled.

Humanity has developed through several root races in this round, and we are now in the fifth root race. In this root race, the development of the intellect is to take place. The previous root race was the Atlantean one, which lived on the lost continent of Atlantis. They did not yet have our thinking mind, they still had an [intuitive] visual faculty.

Spiritual life within, in the sense of the material age, is called a 'sealed book' in the occult language. You have the option of hiding your inner self. A lion or a fish will openly display their character, but humans do not do that now. Since he has been processing external impressions with his passions, he is a sealed book. This begins with the fifth root race. First it begins in Indian culture. In the Vedas we still have a faint reflection of this ancient Indian culture. The second culture was the Persian, the third the Egyptian-Babylonian-Assyrian, but especially the ancient Semites. Judaism is one of its main expressions. The fourth culture begins around eight hundred BC and is related to the Druidic and Celtic cultures. Christianity was founded within the fourth sub-race.

The conquest of the third sub-race by the fourth is expressed in a spirited myth in the Trojan War. Homer was a mystic, a “blind seer” - that is the constant expression of the mystics by which the seer was designated. The Trojan War is the external, symbolic expression of the replacement of the third sub-race by the fourth sub-race, the replacement of the priestly culture by the kings. It was only in the fourth sub-race that the combining intellect fully developed. The means by which man of the fourth sub-race has overcome the third sub-race is the combining mind, the cunning of Odysseus. The horse is the symbol of the mind. It is also the symbol for every sub-race within the fifth root race.

What has been sealed in the first four sub-races is the mind in its most diverse forms. Through Christianity, the mind is internalized and spiritualized. The mission of Christianity will only be fulfilled in the sixth sub-race. This mission is foretold, and in the sixth sub-race people will have developed in such a way that what is now hidden in man will be unsealed. The seals will gradually be broken by the Mystic Lamb at the throne of God. During the sixth sub-race, six seals will be broken. This shows how the intellect will gradually emerge.

The first seal: a white horse appears. This is what happened to the first sub-race that went out to populate areas of Asia, with the first secular culture. The solution of the second seal means the whole culture of the second root race, which is based on war. Occultism does not see these conditions as past. Today, alongside the other cultures, we still have the culture of the second sub-race, the red horse. This is also a veiled intellectual point of view.

At the third seal, the black horse appears, the symbol of the third sub-race - in which the law, justice, is expressed. Paul writes about this law in contrast to grace. The god of the third sub-race was a god of justice. The rider on the black horse holds the scales in his hand as a symbol of this.

The fourth horse, a pale horse, signifies the dying to the lower nature, the realization of what the higher life is. At the fifth seal the higher life begins. There is no horse again. The white robe of the souls is the outer garment that they receive when the inner is awakened. The sixth seal is the last that can be opened.

In the fifth Atlantean sub-race, it was the Proto-Semites who went forth to found the sub-race of the fifth root race. All sub-races of the fifth root race contain a proportion of these Proto-Semites. In the seventh sub-race, man will not only feel Christ mystically, but will also recognize Him. This realization is represented by spiritual sounds. The spiritual man will then be able to hear the inner word through initiation, which is a presentiment of clairaudience. This is expressed by the trumpets. The seven sub-races of the sixth root race are indicated by the sounding out into the world through the trumpets of the angels. The sixth root race is a counter-image to the Lemurian root race. In it, individual karma ceases again. A higher state occurs. Then man consciously attains what he previously went through in a dream-like state. In the sixth root race, the decision comes. The one unites completely with the material, the other completely with the spiritual. The angel of the abyss pulls down man, who burdens himself with kinship with matter. Man has made the kinship with the material so great that he is pulled down by it.

The differentiation of sun, earth and moon develops in reverse in the sixth sub-race. The sun and moon are depicted as the two witnesses of earthly development.

With the seventh root race, the earth enters the astral state. This is described in the Apocalypse. Everything is born in the astral globe. Then everything on earth will shine and live out its soul. The soul of the sun and moon then stands out. This is the woman, clothed with the sun and the moon at her feet. She carries in her body the state that the earth will undergo.

The astral body develops out of the human animal. The beast with seven heads is what is left of the seven races. The seven parts are the seven parts of man, and the three are the hidden higher parts, the logoi.

The two-horned beast: The horn always represents a globe. The seven globes are seven horns. The Earth represents two such globes for the occultist. Mars and Mercury together form the Earth for him. The Earth is the two-horned beast in the astral Mars and Mercury.

The occultist places the globes on the hundreds places. On the ones places he puts the sub-races, on the tens places the root races, on the hundred places the globe. At the sixth sub-race of the sixth root race on the mental globe, the sixth, Johannes stops. He says where the human animal has arrived, namely at wisdom, the number 666.

What now develops through a Manvantara is called by the apocalypticist a new earth, a new Jerusalem. He calls the old one Babylon. This is what was the main thing in the whole round: Kama-Manas, the characteristic of the whole fourth round of the earth. Babylon is overcome in the fifth round, Kama is then overcome.

In the fifth round, the result of karma can be seen. People will bear on their faces what has developed within them. Most people will then have reached a point in their development where they have settled their karma; but those who have acquired higher knowledge for selfish purposes will be eliminated from development. They will go to the eighth sphere. Those who eliminate themselves out of selfishness will go there.

During the fifth round, the elimination cannot yet take place completely. The recognizing element emerges from the Manichaean. But the creative and lasting can only emerge from the Budhi element. During the fifth round, it is decided what will be separated. But during the sixth round, the complete separation takes place. This only occurs in the Budhic development of the sixth round. The casting out of evil from the Earth is described in chapter 17, verse 10 of the Apocalypse. Five have fallen, one is – the sixth round – and one will come – the seventh round. The Beast that was, has gone to ruin; it is the casting out of evil into the eighth sphere.