1st lecture on the Apocalypse of John (documentation)

By Dr. Wolfgang Peter

Summaries (2)

From listener H. H. :

Apocalypse means unveiling, the revelation of the nature of Jesus Christ, but also the unveiling of the nature of our ego.

Man finds himself between the spiritual world above us and the world below us, and the boundary between them is the earth. Humans must not shy away from the confrontation with the underworld.  In his "Divine Comedy", Dante describes the path of Christian initiation as it is also described in the "Apocalypse of John". Lazarus, who has fallen into a death-like initiatory sleep, is brought out of it by Jesus, who brings him the Gospel of John. (The resurrected Lazarus is this John).

In the Apocalypse it is described that John addresses his words to the 7 churches in Asia. The number 7 always has to do with a temporal and living development, which we can see for example in the 7-year rhythm of the human body, where the etheric body causes a 7-year rhythm. The 7 churches also represent stages of development. And the 7 creative spirits have created the 7 body shells for the human being, which are called: physical body, etheric body, astral body, I, spirit self, life spirit, spirit man - the physical body, which was spiritual and perfect, was destroyed by the Fall and cannot keep its form on its own. For this we have received the I-consciousness and together all I's contribute to something higher. When the physical is transformed, it becomes the spiritual man, that is the highest spiritual being and for that one needs help from the highest spiritual beings. To develop the spirit of life, it needs the help of the Christ. Today it is already our responsibility to train the spirit self, that is the transformed astral body, with the help of the ego. 

On the island of Patmos, which is closely connected to Ephesus, John had the vision of the spirit: He saw 7 golden lampstands (these are the 7 churches) and in the middle the figure like that of the Son of Man (Christ) and in his right hand 7 golden stars (angels of the 7 churches).

From listener B. G. :

We have already worked on the first sentence of the Apocalypse. Who is John? The evangelist John? How did he become this person? He is, in truth, Lazarus raised from the dead. The raising of Lazarus from the dead is an initiation process. Similar to the Egyptians. Will powers were trained to walk on the edge of death. Those ripe for the great test were put into a death-like state for about 3.5 days, a shining state. The aim of the initiation: to be able to report something from the spiritual world. How does one come to experience beyond the threshold? Why 3.5 days? After death, one experiences a review of life for about 3 days - a panoramic view. One gets to know oneself. From an interesting distance. Negative events are also remembered. This is a very sunny joyful experience. The descriptions of Mohammed in Islam, the "joys of paradise", refer to this experience of the panorama of life in the period of about 3 days after death. The life forces that animated the body during life, the etheric body of the human being, is the actual carrier of memory. It remains in compact form for about 3 days, then it dissolves and dissolves into the world ether, then the panorama disappears. Then the dead person goes on into the world of the soul, he has passed over the threshold. During the initiation you have to come to this threshold so that you can get a glimpse of the soul world. But one must be careful during the initiation that the connection of the etheric body to the physical body is not completely severed. If the connection is completely severed, there is no way back. Therefore, the priesthood supervised the process. When the time came for the return, sunlight was let fall on the initiate, recitations were made, etc., the initiate then quickly reported what he had seen over there, as in dreaming in the morning, the dreamed also disappears very quickly. An imagination is difficult to hold in memory. But the words I tell from the other world I can remember. With a single hearing, they retained these words in their memory. The subjects spoke in a cultic language. Poetic-cultic, that immediately imprinted itself on the memory. A translation of the soul-spiritual experience of the initiate. The initiate could bring this experience in for himself and for the priesthood. 
 The same thing happened with the initiation of Lazarus. He fell into this state of his own accord, or rather it was the after-effect of the priest's words, because he was a follower of the Christ. As a result of the after-effect of the experience, he fell into a death-like state of his own accord, so deep that people thought he had died. When Christ realised that people thought that Lazarus had died, he waited for two days, then left, and on the fourth day he awakened Lazarus. Very close to the final death, he awakened Lazarus saying, "Lazarus come out!" Lazarus brought a lot with him. From this came the Gospel of John. Why is he now called John and no longer Lazarus? Shortly before Lazarus was raised, John the Baptist was beheaded. By order of Herod. After the death of John the Baptist, this John the Baptist became, as it were, a guardian spirit of the twelve apostles. A community spirit. The twelve apostles also included the two sons of Zepedeus, James and John, so also a John - John Zepedeus. At first John the Evangelist is not included, but gradually this John the Baptist becomes the community spirit, later this community spirit condenses to three apostles, to the two Zepedeus sons James & John and to Peter. They thereby received a higher possibility of knowledge than the other apostles, until the transfiguration of Jesus as a spiritual experience. At the raising of Lazarus the last condensation took place, the transfiguration of Christ, a very intimate communion of Lazarus, who is raised, with John the Baptist arises. In every initiation, a human being on earth works together in truth with a spiritual being. One does not simply enter the spiritual world, but only with a relationship to a spiritual being with whom one is fatefully connected. Lazarus now receives his initiation name John. The resurrected John takes part in the Last Supper, is now one of the twelve apostles, is now the apostle John during the Last Supper, the circle of twelve is completed. John Zepedeus was previously the representative of John the Baptist. Maundy Thursday, the experience of Good Friday, the death on the cross is also the moment of the fullest incarnation of Christ. The incarnation of Christ begins with the baptism of John in the Jordan and lasts until the last minute, when it is finished. "It is finished!" Now the incarnation has been completed. The incarnation occurs in a single moment immediately before the death of the Christ. Christ then descends into the realm of death, into the underworld, which is not normally possible for spiritual beings. Man preceded all spiritual beings in entering the kingdom of death. But for all other spiritual beings who are above us, up to the Christ, death does not exist. Christ has completed his humanity, which brings him to be able to descend, into the kingdom of death. Apocalypse = unveiling, revelation = unveiling of the nature of Jesus Christ. Christ is strongly related to the human I. Apocalypse also has to do with the unveiling of the nature of the I. Encounter with Christ: "And when I saw him, I fell down at his feet and was as death". It is an image of an experience beyond the threshold, a spiritual experience. But he laid his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid! I am the first and the last and the living. I was death! Yet I carry the life of the world through all the eons."  No spiritual being was ever dead before. Christ holds the key to the realm of death and shadows. The key of David is the key to the spiritual world. So if we strive for it, we have access to both keys. We can open and close the gate to the spiritual world and open and close the gate to the kingdom of death - by our own power. The realm of death is where Lazarus/John entered in his initiation. In the initiation process is the encounter with the realm of shadows. Very gruesome experiences take place there, which the initiation students had to endure until the final test. In the Apocalypse there are many experiences of the shadows, of the dark world, not only of the spiritual world. A special position we have as human beings, we stand between the spiritual world above us and the underworld. The earth is the borderline. We have to deal with both realms. Ancient Oriental initiation is about getting something of the world above us. Today: if man wants to have spiritual experiences and insights and wants to have them in a healthy way, he must not shy away from the confrontation with the dark forces. Dante: "Divine Comedy". Describes subterranean realm, Paradiso. The path to the upper spiritual world goes through the underworld. The right path does not go directly, that would be the world of the luciferic entities, retarded spiritual entities.  In pre-Christian times this was not yet so problematic. It goes down to the centre of the earth. Into the dark depths of one's own being. On the one hand, the earth is filled with high spiritual forces, but it also carries dark forces within itself, below is the realm of darkness, the realm of Ahriman. Purification mountain, Purgatorio = Purgatory, the first supersensible realm that leads beyond the earth. There we must purify ourselves from the Luciferic forces in order to be able to ascend into the real spiritual world. The stages are everywhere, also in the Apocalypse. New Jerusalem = new planetary state that will one day become of our earth. The earth will pass away, be destroyed, the New Jupiter, a new planet, is still very far away. There we will be transferred into a new higher spiritual state. Comparable to the angelic beings of today.  

First death and second death: to put off the physical body, that is the first death, we must also put off the etheric body (life forces), that is the second death. John addresses the words to the leading seven churches in the New Testament, we will often encounter seven numbers in the Apocalypse, it stands for temporal development, 7 = number of the etheric, because life takes place in time. Death > decay, where 7 is written, living development is meant, the human body renews itself about every 7 years, change of teeth at 7 years, puberty at 14, at 21 the I enters. Physically a human being renews himself every 7 years, a material exchange, this is scientifically proven, every 7 years new, but we keep the form, so that we recognise ourselves, the form (etheric forces) remains, we die every 7 years, inconspicuously, behind this is the rhythm of the etheric body, with sub-rhythms, chronobiology, daily rhythm, rhythms of 7, week, is a quarter of a month, lunar rhythm, 7-day week, the etheric body (the etheric world) is behind the rhythms, fast, nervous rhythms of the nervous system and leisurely rhythms for the metabolism. The 7 churches were representatives of stages of development, of that which IS, that which WAS and that which COMES. In the spiritual, time does not have the role that we have on earth, to be able to move freely in time, that already begins in the etheric world, there we can move freely, we can etherically go back into the past or go forward into the future, the physical is something born out of the etheric world, the etheric world is much more manifold, we only see in the physical what has died out. Things have to happen as compensation for something that happened in the past: karma, repeated earth lives, death > soul world > spiritual world > new reincarnation, we don't manage our development in a single reincarnation, similar to how we repeat a class at school. Even the angelic beings do not have the freedom that humans have. The angels fulfil the will of God out of a matter of course, the high spiritual flows into them and out of impulse they act without error, but there is no free decision. Through the divine self the possibility of freedom had to be created, we can decide not to follow the spiritual world, that is the prerequisite for being able to turn to the spiritual again in freedom. We fulfil the spiritual because we want it and this freedom has another quality, that is comparable to the highest spirituality, consubstantial with the highest divine, we are then the embodiment of the divine. Paul: "Not I, but the Christ in me", our small everyday ego, must be removed, being grumpy has nothing to do with the spiritual world, ego = I want, I need, we must/are allowed to discard this, we do not experience our actual I in everyday consciousness. How much money we have has nothing to do with the "I". Children experience their higher I until the third year of life, as a child one experiences: I am my own spiritual being, suddenly one experiences: I am something different from the others. The philosopher Schelling describes this experience, it is not to be compared with the everyday I, it has something to do with the apocalypse, I and Christ are beings in one moment, not my little I but my real I, our I develops through many earth lives, we can only acquire the consciousness of our own I through countless incarnations, but we can also make mistakes, through this we change the course of the world, it is up to us to repair what we destroy in ourselves. By making mistakes, we put our I in danger and in the next incarnation we have to repair this mistake = karma. The I strives to eradicate the damage it has done to itself. Christ works in the I! He helps us to carry the karma, gives the I the strength, karma is related to error/error, to learning.

John to the 7 churches in Asia: "May grace be given to you by Him who WAS, who IS and who IS TO COME and by the 7 creative spirits before His throne". The 7 creative spirits, what are they? Essentially those spiritual beings/powers that created our physical bodies and prepared so that our physical bodies could one day be transformed into spiritual powers. 1) physical body, 2) etheric body (life forces), 3) astral body, which makes us a sensitive and conscious being, in the etheric body we are still asleep, in the astral body we are already dreaming. 4) I or I-bearer. Incarnation means that the I penetrates and carries the body shells, the I, which incarnates by unfolding its spiritual powers, forms the astral body, the etheric body and finally the physical body. We transform the astral body into the spirit self, our higher self, our real I becomes richer to the extent that this higher spirit self is formed, which is then a power that the I has at its disposal. In Oriental language, this is called manas, thinking, man, man, "manna". Manna is given to Moses and his people = forces which are conducted from the spiritual worlds to Moses and to the Israelite community of people. When we transform the etheric body through the power of the I, it becomes the life spirit, which also lives in the I. Spiritual self = transformed astral body = our I has become capable of creating our astral body out of nothing, that is something different than when it is only bestowed upon us by the spiritual world, that is only our real astral body, our spiritual self, that is really ours. The aim of all initiations is to form as much spirit self as possible. In the New Jupiter this is then continued. GRACE = gift, but the spirit self is our own responsibility, the endowment with the Holy Spirit, father forces to spiritualise something of our physical body, what is the task of the physical/material body? There are a whole lot of physical beings that are not visible to our sensual eyes because they are not material, the elemental beings, our body only becomes visible through the material. Substance disintegrates when the etheric body is no longer inside, the physical body cannot hold the form by itself, our physical body was damaged by the material, the material fills the physical form, only through the Luciferic adversary forces has our physical body become visible and thus mortal, but for that we also got our I-consciousness, because we are mortal, our I-consciousness wakes up through processes of decay, through the brain we acquire consciousness, thoughts are etheric forces (life-image forces), but we need the physical brain to make images conscious. We owe the I-consciousness to death, an astral body, an etheric body belongs to it, we will need it until our consciousness is capable of getting along without dying processes. When it learns to mirror itself in the etheric, the consciousness in which we experience imaginations, pictures of the spiritual world, living pictures, not an oil painting, the picture changes, a movement that takes place in timelessness. Consciousness in which we experience imaginations, an imagination is experienced in timelessness, living images, moving image in timelessness. Time no longer plays a role, in a meditation one remains conscious of the physical world, similarly in a dream, we are in a dream, in a dream, for example, a conflagration breaks out, that lasts, one wakes up and notices that the sun has come around the corner. Dream images also unfold in timelessness, imaginative consciousness, when we no longer need the physical body for consciousness. In the astral world (soul world), time seems to come towards us. 


Future, time seems to move in reverse, time from the past into the future, and something from the future, current from the past and from the future, that's where our present is, that's where something happens, an event is never just a consequence of the past, as science says, but is also half co-determined by what comes to us from the future. If we go further in the imagination, then something comes in that goes beyond image consciousness and shows something of the future. "I am the Alpha and the Omega", the beginning and the end, thus says the Lord our God, who IS (present), who WAS (past) and who IS COMING (future), the Commander of the All, we are heading towards our individual I, we all contribute together to a higher goal, every human being has a different goal by a nuance, also the physical spiritualising. There is an invisible physical, with the help of the Christ and the Father forces, we produce our highest spiritual that we can reach, the highest spiritual, is the spiritualisation of the physical, this is connected with the resurrection powers of the Christ, transformation of the physical body, out of our own power, out of our own I; to produce a spiritualised physical body, then it is no longer a material body, but the highest spiritual. Why is this the highest spiritual? The physical is the most difficult thing to work on, to bring forth the spirit self, an artist who is creatively active in his soul, he transforms the astral into the spirit self, he himself out of his I, he has not taken that from anywhere else, it is much more difficult to create etheric forces out of oneself (the life spirit), and we don't even need to talk about the physical, we can hardly manage anything there, to consciously transform the physical body (into spirit man), only the highest spiritual hierarchies, the thrones, cherubim and seraphim (are connected with the universe), can do that, they stand behind the physical. The simple angels cannot do that. It is precisely on the physical that one can form the highest consciousness. That was the insertion about the number seven. Spiritual man is the highest thing we can acquire. 7 members of being: 1) Physical, 2) Etheric, 3) Astral, 4) I, 5) Spirit Self, 6) Life Spirit, 7) Spirit Man; 7 Creator Spirits. The 7 creative spirits are those spiritual beings that help us to have the 7 members of being, high angelic beings that prepare the physical body up to the spirit man. John writes to these 7 churches. I John, your companion in destiny, was on the island of Patmos, he describes an imagination, in sensual words: "On the day of the Lord I heard behind me the sound of a trumpet,...", do I have the courage to turn around? That is a kind of death experience, connected with the unpleasant side of death, to feel the loss, that is the first test, do I dare to turn around, i.e. to let go of everything that is sensual and turn towards the spiritual? In truth, every spiritual experience begins with an intuition, I have to become one with a spiritual being in order to get there, but one is not aware of that, the next stage is inspiration, an echo of this inspirational experience, the third and last is imagination, an imaginative picture, a highly differentiated soul mood, a soul experience, the voice spoke: "Write what you see in a book and send it to the 7 churches, 1). Ephesus (mystery place), 2.) Smyrna, 3.) Pergamum, 4.) Thyatira, 5.) Sardis , 6.) Philadelphia, 7.) Laodicea. And I turned to see him whose voice spoke to me, when I turned I saw 7 golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the candlesticks a figure like that of the "Son of Man", the Christ appearing in human form. "In his right hand he held 7 stars", as an imagination, "I fell down at his feet and was as if dead. Fear not,...". The 7 stars are the angels of the 7 churches and the 7 candlesticks are the 7 churches themselves.