22nd Lecture on the Apocalypse of John (Documentation)

We are standing at the 7 seals. It is about the opening of the seven seals. In short, we have not yet done so much, we have spoken about the first seal, we have read the second seal briefly, we will go further today. But let us just briefly imagine the scenery again, the scenery that is described before the throne in heaven, surrounded by the 24 smaller thrones with the 24 elders. In front of it the sea of glass, which is a symbol for the mineral kingdom of the earth, that is, for the crystalline kingdom. We said that there is a certain connection between the crystallisation forces and our I-forces. That there is a certain commonality, that it basically has the same source somewhere. And that the spirits of form also play a role in this, they are also behind the mineral kingdom, that is, behind the forms of the mineral kingdom as we have it today and they also have something to do with our I, namely in the sense that the impulse for our I was actually once given from their spiritual deed, from their sacrificial deed. But of course there is something much greater behind it, namely the Christ who works through the community of the seven Elohim and that means that the actual source of our I-power is ultimately the Christ himself, but mediated through the community of the Elohim, the spirits of form. And this forming principle is particularly characteristic of our human I-power. 

It is different with the angelic beings, it is different with the archangelic beings and it is also different with the primal angelic beings. They all preceded us in their becoming human, i.e. actually in their becoming I in the earlier planetary states of development. We have discussed this in detail, they also belong to the 24 elders who stand around the throne. So there are 7 groups on Old Saturn, 7 on the Old Sun, 7 on the Old Moon, and during the Earth's development we were also preceded by 3 stages, so a total of 21 + 3 from the Earth, which makes a total of 24. These are the 24 Elders. That is the scenery. Then we see the book with the 7 seals and the Lamb who stands before the throne and who is the only one empowered to open this book with the 7 seals. In the book with the 7 seals, basically the whole development of humanity is written in imaginative pictures, if you like. That is what it is about. On the one hand with a view to the past, but also of course with a view to the future. 

These apocalyptic images that are now being described, when the seals are opened, can certainly be applied to different periods of time. They have a kind of archetypal character, i.e. they can be applied in a certain way to any time, but they are particularly valid for the time that follows our 7 cultural epochs. If you remember, we are now in the age of the 7 cultural epochs, of which we are now quite at the beginning of the 5th cultural epoch, i.e. we still have two great epochs before us. Each epoch lasts about 2160 years, which is one twelfth of the time it takes the vernal equinox to pass completely through the zodiac. This changes the position of the Earth's axis and the position of the Pole Star. The fact that today it is pretty much exactly in the north only applies to now, a few thousand years ago it was different and in the future it will be different again. It moves. These 2160 years together for 7 epochs add up to a little over 15,000 years, which is the period of our cultural epochs in which we are now standing. The essential thing was also, according to the statement  R. Steiner that basically towards the end of this time of cultural epochs the phase is already beginning where people will no longer incarnate on earth in a physical body or rather in a material-physical body. That is to say, where humanity, if you look at it externally, slowly begins to die out. In the external sense. It will still take a while for the process to take place.  

Basically, we are now in the epoch where the largest number of people on earth is embodied. This will perhaps continue until the end of this century, roughly until 2100, when the world population will probably decline again. This means that even in the current cultural period in which we are standing, in the 5th cultural epoch, towards the end, there will be significantly fewer people on earth. Not because so many are no longer incarnating, but simply because the periods between incarnations are becoming longer again. At the moment they are very dense and the development is therefore incredibly rapid. It is so that really all people are pushing down at the moment and want to be there almost at the same time and come several times in the same cultural epoch, which is very unusual because simply now the highest spiritual development speed is there. Spiritual development speed for what we can develop as long as we are in a physical-material body. Because at some point towards the end of the cultural epochs we have to learn to get along without such a physical-material body. Yes, that is, we now have great spiritual tasks to accomplish, but we also have the strength to accomplish them now, we must also be aware of that, we now have the strength to do so. Of course, there are also many opposing forces, especially in our century, beginning in the 20th century. 

Because the 20th century was a pretty big disaster from an intellectual point of view. On the other hand, also something very positive, because with the beginning of the 20th century the Anthroposophy has come into the world. But as is so typical, when such a strong impulse comes into the world, then comes a strong counter-impulse. That actually always belongs together. But the counterattacks are also the prerequisites in truth for the spiritual impulses to be able to develop further. They have to assert themselves against this resistance in truth. Only today in our 21st century there are at least as strong counter-forces, in truth they are stronger, but they already work on a much more subtle level. In the 20th century, there was a great deal of external violence, war, hunger, poverty and the like in the first half, in preparation for the great economic miracle after the Second World War and the spiritual sinking into materialism. Now I don't want to say anything against the economic miracle, let's be glad that we have a lot. But the problem is that the real spiritual striving has declined very strongly. The awareness of the spiritual in general. Especially in the natural sciences. But that too has something important and good, because many of the objections of the natural sciences against the spiritual as such are quite justified, because many spiritual ideas that we still carry with us from the past are powerless and in truth wrong. They may be very idealistic and enthusiastic somewhere, and imagine the spiritual world beautifully, but they do not immerse themselves in the reality of the spiritual world, but basically in fantasy images. The fantasy images that we have been carrying around for a long time are in part really counter-impulses. If you cling to them, you are prevented from entering the spiritual world. 

This is the typical Luciferian way of distracting people by making them believe in a beautiful spiritual realm, which unfortunately is not the real thing, but is Lucifer's realm. The adversaries basically always work with the means, and more and more also Ahriman, that they actually show people something beautiful, something pleasant, something good, where you say, yes, that's it. Ahriman today works much more with seduction, what technology, the economy, material things offer, it is not in the nature of Ahriman that he wants to torment us externally, that all this has to be connected with war and hardship, etc., it simply hasn't worked that way yet, he hasn't really been able to gain a foothold there. But where it really becomes dangerous is basically where it all looks so nice and desirable. Comfortable, enjoyable, fun, creating happiness. These things are much more dangerous because they corrupt people much more easily. When there is hardship, danger, war and fear, people immediately say, "I'll be glad to be rid of that. But if you're actually doing well anyway and you don't even notice the inner emptiness because you have enough external distractions and people are satisfied with that, then you really fall into mental inertia. That is the great problem of our century. Where we have to stand up against it in a certain way. 

But the Apocalypse shows very clearly - we will see this when the seals are opened - what counter-impulses are necessary, but what we also have to take upon ourselves for this. Because the message that may seem unpleasant at first glance is that we have to consciously take on a certain suffering in order to be able to develop spiritually. In truth, this is also the great message of Christianity in general, that in contrast to all other religions, Christianity is actually more than a religion, but since it is also an external confession, it can also be understood as a religion. But basically it is the only religion that first gives its followers the image of the Suffering and accept the suffering. And not promising to take away the suffering. But that the path to salvation actually goes through suffering. 

If you look, in contrast, at Buddhism, the basic principle is actually: How do I lead a life that frees me from suffering? You mustn't just call that wrong now, because at the end of the earth's evolution that will be very necessary so that we can then come out of the incarnations. But it is important that we have gone through this suffering beforehand in order to fulfil our earthly task at all and then to be able to continue in a higher form without earthly embodiment, without losing our full I-consciousness and without losing our freedom. But we have to fight for that ourselves. This is a foresight, because many esoteric currents - there are hundreds of thousands of them today - on every corner you can find something that at least has the title esotericism on it and some of it really does draw from old impulses, but the majority of things promise great happiness in life. And that is the real goal, so to speak. That's what it's all about. How do I free myself quickly from suffering? How do I get into a beautiful happy life? The direct way there does not work. It would mean that we would miss our earthly task, that we would not be able to develop our I properly, and that we would not be able to fulfil the task in a much more distant future that we should actually fulfil or that is intended for us. Namely, to really become world-creators ourselves on a grand scale. That is a very distant perspective, that it is really on a large scale. But we are already doing it today on a small scale. 

One must not overlook how much we have been working on the earth ever since human beings first stepped on it in an incarnation, even before they stood with their feet firmly on the ground, and the shape of the earth and how life unfolds here is very essentially co-determined by human beings. The animal, plant and  The mineral kingdom is basically something that man has created out of his soul-spiritual being. This manifested itself before he himself entered the earth in its present form. That alone is a first step in which the human being is strongly involved. With the help of higher beings, he was not yet able to do it alone. But it is essentially co-determined by the way we have developed spiritually. 

Since we are in the first incarnation, we have had an enormous influence on the earth. When we talk about climate influence today, it is a tiny thing, a trifle, compared to what man has already done in the past. It is interesting to follow this, you can even follow some of it externally. When mankind began to spread on earth, you can also trace it a little externally, then you see that wherever man has immigrated, there is a catastrophic extinction of species. 80 percent of large animal species are dying out. In the same millennium that humans arrive, they die out. You don't just have to call it a catastrophe, you simply have to know that humans are helping to reshape the earth, and in the process certain new animal forms are being formed and many more are being eliminated from development. That simply happens. I don't want to judge this at all, it is simply a phenomenon that can be observed. 

Today, in truth, the earth would not be able to survive without humans. That is hardly seen today. Because many people have the feeling that if humans didn't exist, the earth would be much better off, because we ruin so much. That is also true, we ruin a lot. But without us, it would die on its own. That is the problem. We are very much connected with the development of the earth. We are now in the age where we should become clearly aware of this. Not only through our outer deeds, but through the spiritual background of our deeds. That is the much more crucial thing still. It is not only the CO₂that we blow into the air. It is an essential factor, for example, our still very strongly materialistic, rigid, dead thinking. This has a great influence on nature over a long period of time. The forces of thought are actually life forces. If we cause them to die, which is what we are doing in today's thinking, then we are actually disturbing our own organism. Because today people are getting older on average than in the past. The maximum age was already pretty much the same in ancient times, even then there were nine-year-olds, but just not as many. But the fact that there are more today is actually due to our dead thinking. The question is, how positive is that for the earth? It is a necessity today that many people have to deal with these death forces that they carry in their own organism. Because we simply develop a different consciousness when we die at 40 or at 90 or 100. Because it is in the confrontation with these forces of death that we develop. If we develop a strong consciousness, we develop the strongest power to develop spiritually. In other words, we have to use the youthful forces that we take with us to raise them into consciousness. And in order to really raise our awareness of what we do more instinctively in youth, we need these age forces. They are also very important. We have to learn.

Of course, the adversary is also involved in these forces of old age, namely the Ahrimanic adversary, who has something to do with it. He is behind these death forces. But they are not simply something evil, they are also something necessary. So this awareness is also important for the future, that the adversaries are necessary for our development. And the confrontation with them. And the simple classification of good and evil, you have to look at it, man becomes evil when he simply gives the adversaries too much space. That can certainly be said. Whether the adversaries as such are evil is a completely different question. Because they fulfil a necessary task in the world and the world would not be better if they were not there, because then we would not be able to go through our regular development. The world would be different. But the human being could develop his I in the way it is pre-determined for him, pre-determined is actually a wrong word, but in the way it is made possible for him, so the human being is given the possibility to develop a unique free I. We are only at the very beginning. We are only at the very beginning. 

When, for example, natural science, neuroscientists, say today, yes, what you always talk about an I, I have looked into the brain, I have not found an I anywhere, and it doesn't look like it either, because people are actually, in truth, they have so many different personalities in themselves that are contradictory, that you sometimes experience in yourself that you are not always one with yourself, so they know nothing at all about the real I. And they are right, because we hardly experience anything of it in everyday consciousness. And they are right, because we hardly experience anything of this in our everyday consciousness. We only suspect that we have one. I have often spoken of the black hole in the wall, we only see that there is a hole, but we do not yet see what is really inside. But now the time is dawning for us to slowly become more aware of our I. To be precise, we are becoming more aware of the violence of our I. We are becoming more aware of the violence of our I. Namely, we are becoming more aware of the enormous creative power that is inside. But we can only activate it ourselves. Nobody can show us what our I is like. We have to become active and watch this activity ourselves. That is also the way into the spiritual world. That is where it begins. When we learn to observe our own spiritual activity. Very consciously. Because we don't observe it in our normal mind thinking. We observe the thoughts that come out, but we do not observe the living thinking from which they are formed, but only the finished product that comes out and is then there as a dead concept. We then put it together somewhere. 

Real thinking is pure life force. It is the same force that shapes nature, plants, animals. Yes, even the minerals. Because a mineral crystallises out of a living process. Only when the process is finished, then it is the dead mineral with its strong geometric form. Everyone can experience this in winter with the ice flowers. Look at the patterns that emerge at the window. That is a crystallisation process. Plant-like forms are created in a very typical way. Because the crystal actually emerges from a living process that at some point stops and solidifies and then the finished mineral is there. 

I.e. we must learn to experience the process of living thought itself as the first step in our thinking before it is crystallised into a finished thought. That is the first step we can take. This is what R. Steiner described quite clearly in his "Philosophy of Freedom". Here, very concrete spiritual perception begins at the lowest level, namely at the level of the etheric forces. I begin to experience them, feel behind them, of course, that the I is there and that it flows from the source. But to intercept it on this living level is the first step. And when you increase it, you come to the imaginative experienceThe first step is the development of imaginative consciousness, i.e. a perception of the spiritual world in images of the soul. 

Cue the little horse (of the apocalypse). Namely, the mind had to prepare itself. The preparation for this was that the human being enters the earth at all, that he begins with his incarnations, that he stands up, that is the first thing that begins, that language develops, first a song and finally thinking. And then with thinking, brain formation also takes place. Interestingly, that is actually the last thing. So it starts with the erection. It starts with the skilful use of the hands and the differentiation of the feet and hands. This differentiation is not so pronounced in the monkeys that have left this development, because the monkeys don't really have real feet, they are half hands. They are not specialised in carrying this column and perhaps developing the upper limbs for grasping, for gesticulating, but in the monkey this is still undeveloped somewhere. The hind legs can also be used for grasping, and so on.

Comment from a participant: "You can say the monkey is all hand!" 

W.: Yes, that's right. With us it is totally differentiated! Then comes the formation of the brain, where enormous etheric forces are necessary for it to be built up and maintained at all. Not true, our brain is a catastrophic organ from a biological point of view. It needs almost a quarter of the body's energy just so that it doesn't die. And it does so day and night. Our energy production has to run non-stop so that the thing up there doesn't break down. A huge amount of effort is needed for this and it also actually attracts enormous life forces in order to be able to shape itself through. And it always has a tendency to die in the process. But it is precisely through this dying process that consciousness comes about. That is very important, that is strongest at the top. So there are enormous etheric forces that have to be drawn in. For this to be possible, even before the human being has really begun to rise up, the horses had to be eliminated from the soul-spiritual human being that comes down. So the horses came into being shortly before the human being entered the earth in this upright human form. Therefore, from a knowledge of ancient times, the horse has always been a symbol for the intelligence of man. Because that had to be excreted. Horses have an enormous etheric head, which is even much larger than the physical horse's head, that's why they say that one should "leave the thinking to the horses, because they have the bigger head".They even have a much bigger head. Other animals too, but especially horses. 

We had to draw these very forces in and use them, or waste them, however you like, for brain building. That is the point. Hence the horse as an image for intelligence. Hence this very symbol is now appearing in the seals. What does seal mean anyway? Seal means that a disposition was created with it, which was first sealed in man himself, i.e. was inscribed in his being already in the Atlantic timeBefore the time of the cultural epochs, one would say the Ice Age or the Stone Age. At that time, this physical development took place, i.e. the instrument was created and sealed in the human being. During the cultural epochs, up to the Greco-Latin period, attempts were made to slowly raise these forces into the soul. In the primal indian time still very little, there was still much more almost clairvoyance that was predominant, not even sensory perception, that is only just beginning. Thinking is actually still entirely imagination, so thinking is still very little. But it then already becomes stronger in the Urpersian periodthen a special cut is inside as the advanced civilisations begin with the Egyptian-Chaldean periodThere is a great leap in it, so it already goes very sharply into the development of the mind. 

It is true that it is not yet the development of the mind-soul, because that only comes in the Greek period, but a great deal is already being prepared there. Especially the Egyptian initiation: one of the essential initiation goals was the initiation into thinking. To anticipate what then came forth on a broader level in the Greco-Latin period in a "natural" way or through cultural development. There it was an initiation step. That was the point. Precisely in order to be able to really administer the great advanced civilisations, e.g. the Egyptian empire, and suddenly no longer have only small village communities, but to supply large peoples and somehow form large peoples on earth into a community. That was a huge step and that's where this thinking already plays a very strong role. Of course, the initiates had gained it in a different way and also exercised it in a different way than we do today or also the Greeks, for example, but nevertheless that's where it starts. The real development of the soul only really begins in the Egyptian period. We have also talked about that. 

It starts with the Sentient SoulThat is, in the sensation, in the feeling, one feels it, one begins to feel the truth and these things, that is where this internalisation begins. Before that, the soul was something external, it was experienced much more outside in the world. Now you start to carry it inside. And then the climax basically in the Greco-Latin periodThis is when this intellect is most strongly developed, the brain is most strongly developed, and this has an effect right up to our time. Now it is slowly blossoming, I wouldn't say to a final point, but to a final point with the highest refinement. Now we only really have, in everyday thinking at least, the dead intellect. The dead intellect means that these etheric forces have really been sealed into the brain. Therefore, it is true when natural scientists say today that it is the brain that thinks. For today and for today's dead thinking, that is essentially true. Now and then, something else does snowball in, but those are the lucky moments. So on the whole, the natural scientists are right and therefore it is good that they also say this loud and clear so that we don't start looking in the wrong place. That is therefore very important! Natural science, if it is done correctly and if it has a completely materialistic approach, is therefore a total help here to recognise and slowly overcome false spiritual ideals. Because to spint like that, yes, the spirit is somewhere, wherever it floats there, but with today's thinking nothing floats at all. It has crashed. But it is a necessary belly-flop that we make with it. 

I read in the Apocalypse so that we also get the images: The imaginative images in which it is now basically being unsealed, which forces are actually active there. Namely to bring out the powers of the mind and what that means soul-wise, etc. The first seals we already read last time. I repeat it: "And I looked, and, behold, the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four beasts speak with a voice of thunder: Come; and I looked, and behold a white horse, and his rider held a bow in his hand, and a crown was set upon his head. And being victorious, he went forth to further victories." So this is the first seal that is opened. This is only the very tender beginning, where these powerful etheric forces have begun to take hold of the brain, where the consciousness was in truth still a completely clairvoyant, a completely imaginative consciousness. This is ultimately the origin of our present intellectual thinking arose. From this old imaginative experience. Old in the sense that it was not yet consciously directed out of the I, but that it simply came in as an inspiration, that in contrast to today's imagination it was very much based on the physical instrument, but not yet so much on the brain, but first on the forces down there (Wolfgang puts his hand on the area of the belly). It starts with a kind of clairvoyance of the belly, then it goes more up through the middle (Wolfgang puts his hand on his chest), and then it slowly goes up towards the head and there it finally dies down to the intellect. 

Therefore, in the case of ancient clairvoyance, I have already mentioned this several times, it has always had a certain increasingly sensual-pictorial character, at least since the time of the cultural epochs, even in primal Indian times. This means that clairvoyant experiences were basically like dream-like sensory impressions. Modern clairvoyance has a completely different character, it is stripped of this sensual imagery, which can at most be a preparation, like the descriptions here, because we cannot describe it in any other way, but actually it is about the purely spiritual-mental experience. This will be important when we come to our cultural epoch. 

That means we have to learn to live in the purely spiritual. To experience these spiritual shocks that happen inside. This is something that we cannot really communicate today. We have no language for it. No words for it. We know a little bit of emotional life, moods. But that is not yet the real life of the soul. It is not even our own real soul life and certainly not the soul world as such. It is much more intense, much richer and has a completely different character than our mere emotional moods, because in our emotional moods there is always sensuality mixed in. We not only have senses on the outside, but also senses on the inside. Sensations. One also says sensations. But also inner sensations. For example, if I have a breathing obstruction, then that is a physical process once primarily, or can be triggered by something physical, but there is immediately a feeling of fear associated with it. I can't prevent that at all. When I get into respiratory distress, I get scared. Even if I have meditated a lot beforehand, it rises up one day, I can perhaps fight against it, but it comes out naturally. It comes out because the sense of life senses that the breathing is blocked. That now transfers to a mental experience. What I experience during normal anxiety in respiratory distress is a mixture of sensual and spiritual experience. 

That is, when I go into pure imagination, I have to be able to experience the pure feeling of fear, but I have to be able to separate it from what is happening physically. That is one of the first things I have to be able to separate. And that is not easy at all in the beginning! In the same way, if it is a feeling where I feel good, where I am happy or something like that, which is often physically connected to the fact that I can exhale well, let go of the tension well, every breath has this change: inhalation presses, is even a constriction that I feel, exhalation frees. It always goes back and forth in rhythm. It is the exhalation that liberates. Breathlessness arises when I have the cramp of having to breathe in, and I can't do it properly, or I think I can't breathe in enough, then this tension arises with the fear. But I become more aware of it. When I exhale, I always fall asleep a little in truth. I free myself. I let go. We know it ourselves, it's a good technique: when you're hectic and nervous, tense, take a few good breaths and make sure you exhale well so that you get rid of that, when you do that the stress starts to go away from you. At the same time, you become a little more dreamy, you feel better, it's a light, very gentle step in the direction of excarnation, you could say. 

Whereas this feeling of fear, the shortness of breath, that's actually the incarnation feeling. So it is not so pleasant to incarnate. Before the incarnation, you have decided that you want to go down there, and at first you throw yourself into the task with a lot of joy, but the last phase is very difficult. Forcing oneself into the body is not a pleasant feeling, then there is the next shock, the very big shock is with birth and the first breath, the first inhalation, that is a drama in truth, but we have to go through it, otherwise we cannot become human beings on earth. It is the primordial drama par excellence, this first breath, the first time everything is pressed into it, that is a very first experience, but one that has not yet reached the surface, of what it means for an I to incarnate. That is called drama. There is always drama where the I incarnates. Nothing else. And where it is allowed to incarnate, it is liberation in truth. 

That's why in ancient cultures, ex-carnation, that is, death, was always perceived as something liberating, as something beautiful. With the Indians it is still very strong, they still have some of it in them today. The white robes and so on as something full of light. Finally away from this sorrowful history down there. Because life on earth has something painful about it, because we have to, should, can and may develop consciousness here. We have also chosen it. Because we want to go down again and again. But nevertheless it does not spare us this going through the difficult and also painful situation. 

Comment from a listener: "And thank God when he presses you and thank him when he releases you."

W.: Yes, you can't put it more beautifully. That's right. And in a very small way we go through that with every breath. Very small, it's just the approach to it. We go through it continuously. Even when we enter into the real imagination, it is basically connected with an exhalation process, only now we have to manage to remain fully conscious. Normally we go into a quiet state of sleep or dreaming when we exhale. If we want to experience the imagination consciously, we have to stay fully awake. Without the physical tool. Without the help of something pressing and squeezing us, so to speak. Without this external restraint that actually helps us to become conscious. We are now on the threshold of being able to develop this through our own strength. That we can hold ourselves. 

As I said, in the primal Indian time this was still very weakly developed, which is why this image in the Apocalypse is still a very beautiful and pleasant image. Because basically one still lived completely in the spiritual and flew from victory to victory, i.e. simply experienced in the spiritual. This now emerges as a spiritual experience, as the fruit of brain development and the development of the whole human being from the Atlantean time. This is experienced in the primal Indian time and now we are unsealing it, so to speak, so that we can begin to understand what forces were actually at work behind it. Right now, especially in our time, we can begin to really grasp and understand this consciously. 

In the second epoch it becomes much more dramatic. There it goes: awaken the consciousness. This is pronounced very dramatically. "And when it opened the second seal, I heard the second beast speak: And there came forth a second horse, the colour of fire. And to its rider was given power to take peace from the earth, so that mutual slaughter broke out. A great sword was given to him." That does not sound so friendly. This is where the confrontation with the materialising forces really begins, namely with the Ahrimanic forces from below. That's where it starts. And above all in consciousness. It is never a question of external wars. As it says so beautifully in the Mystery Dramas, the outer wars are a picture of the struggle within. In truth, that is already true of the past. And we are now slowly entering the time when we will actually no longer have the outer wars. There are still enough! But the wars of the future are no longer wars that take place on the outside, they take place on the inside, within ourselves. And between people but on a soul-spiritual level, not on a physical level. This is beginning slowly. 

It will become even stronger in that century and it will be especially strong in the next cultural epoch. Even the great war of all against all, which we have already spoken of and which will bring a great break at the end of the seven cultural epochs, will not essentially be an external war. It will be a war that will be fought on a spiritual level. But it will also be fought between ahrimanic-material forces and spiritual-spiritual forces. Because at that time, of course, it will have reached a very high stage of development, what is there today in an almost ridiculous approach: with Artificial intelligenceWith machine intelligence, that is the ahrimanic intelligence. An intelligence that has no soul behind it, that lives from the fact that it actually consumes the etheric forces and has no soul experience in the process. That is what lies behind it. That goes completely into the dead. So this consciousness that we have in the soul, these entities, these machine entities, with which, however, man will be in contact, will perhaps, not only perhaps, but will certainly merge. R. Steiner says this quite clearly. That will come: The fusion of man with machine beings. 

That will come for sure. That means we will have to fight against it! Above all, not to let ourselves be overwhelmed by it. That is the problem. The problem will be that this is already decided long before birth, if it still happens naturally at all, and one is simply born into an entity that partly has this Ahrimanic machine character. That will come! It will even be necessary because natural fertility will simply no longer be sufficient. It will come sooner than you think. These are not such pleasant prospects. Although many people will not feel it that way at all. Because they will have a tremendous amount of technical intelligence at their disposal. We are already very close to outsourcing a lot of our intellectual thinking to technology, and technology can already do a lot of things better than we can. Very specialised things. 

It's far from being able to really compete with humans in the creative or something, although even there there are already approaches that show how far machine technology can go. I think I mentioned it before, there are programmes today that can create works of art so that experts can't tell them apart from the real thing. For example, programmes that paint with real colours in the style of an artist, but a picture that is not a mere copy, but a new motif. And the experts cannot distinguish it from the real thing by the way it is painted. It even feigns moods of the soul, although it is not painted out of a mood of the soul, but out of quite sober computational processes. Because in the computer, only computational processes take place. And with compositions, this has been going on for a long time. Today, you can compose works by Bach that Bach never composed and you can't really distinguish it from the original. You can't really say for sure what is machine composition, what is real? Even experienced musicians have a hard time with that. That is now the tiny beginning. 

These efforts have only existed since the time after the Second World War. So it started during the Second World War. The first attempts were made to encrypt and decrypt messages during the war. Alan Turing, for example, was very much involved in this. A British scientist, mathematician, who worked on decoding German radio messages. He built the first large calculating machine that was capable of decoding them. Because it was very sophisticated. With the Germans, everything was still mechanical, but the encryption system was very sophisticated. Alan Turing built the first machine that could decode it. From there, development basically continued very quickly. Today we already have amazing things: the software can recognise faces better than any human being. If you have a film shot in the dark, the software can recognise the face. Even if it's partially obscured. It happens on a totally unconscious pattern recognition. It can recognise exactly the patterns and it can calculate the characteristic parameters for each face and it finds out whether that is inside the face or not. The hit rate is much higher than even trained observers can manage. That is quite amazing. And it does so from all possible angles. Every modern mobile phone has face recognition. It doesn't work with the Corona mask. But they'll soon figure that out, too. Because already the eyes are very characteristic. So these things are incredibly advancing. We will have to deal with these things in the future. This will really be a spiritual war. 

Spiritual peace has, so to speak, left the world. This begins in the development of culture in the Urpersian period. Basically, larger peoples began to fight against each other. The contrast between the Iranians and the Turanians at that time alone was the beginning of this conflict. The Turanians had very strongly developed earthly-ahrimanic forces, the Iranians these light forces of Ormuzd. It is the struggle of light and darkness. That is where all the dualistic systems begin. Struggle of good with evil or whatever you call it, of the spiritual with the unspiritual, of spiritual light with spiritual darkness. From that time at the latest, peace has truly departed from the earth. Because the struggle does not leave us until our last incarnation. But it becomes more and more a spiritual struggle. In ancient times it was fought out externally physically and thus indirectly transferred to the soul through the pain and suffering that had to be experienced. So of course it also had an effect on the soul and even helped to deepen and strengthen the soul. 

In truth, everyone knows where you really learnt something, those were the bad situations in life. If you are completely honest. You gratefully accept the good situations as a gift. But you learn from the things where you have basically suffered pain, suffered suffering, where you have failed, where things have gone wrong. It's from those things that you move on. That is the truth, and unfortunately it has to be said. I cannot spare you that. You won't hear from me that esotericism, that everything will be all right, that everything is beautiful and that tomorrow is best, only follows us. I can't promise you that. It is still quite a dry spell. It will be quite different, of course, when we no longer have these earthly incarnations. But then there will be other challenges. We will deal with that later. Let's take a look at it in small doses. Otherwise it will be too much for the beginning. 

We are given a great sword, so the rider is given a great sword, which is the double-edged sword of the I. He takes hold of it. That's when he really starts to grasp it. In the primal Indian time it is still a little bit of sitting there, a dreaming of the past, a seeing in the present, still a little bit of the spiritual and a wondering how it gets darker and darker. The grasping of the I is not yet very strong. But in the Urpersian time it begins very massively. The sword is already pressed into one's hands. But then you see that it is not about fighting with each other externally, but above all it is about transforming the earth with this power. Really reshape the earth. And to reshape it through human beings, and consciously through human beings. Consciously in the sense that in the initiation we naturally seek the advice of the gods and ask how it should be done.  into the world or what impulses are to be put into the world, but to translate it into the technical blueprint, the technical process, for that I already need these powers of understanding as they begin.

This is already the case with the Egyptians. It is true that the people do not yet have it on a broad scale, but the initiates do. For otherwise they could not administer this great empire and not make these great buildings. They are not simply built instinctively. They are built with a great deal of knowledge, with a great deal of skill and with understanding. The prerequisite for this is the administration of the entire empire, i.e. orderly plots of land that are flooded again every year with the Nile flood, that have to be newly marked out, the allocation of food has to be organised, food stores have to be built, lists have to be created, because the Pharaoh has to know how much I have available for the next year. He can plan according to that. According to that he has to make decisions. It is similar with the Babylonians and the Sumerians. With the Sumerians, for example, the first writing that comes is not used to record words, but they are used to create lists of goods. How much of the wheat has been stored at the time? How much do I have available. How much was delivered that day? That is how the scripture begins. The scripture starts with practical tasks first. One could not have communicated about the gods with it. That is only the next stage.

The hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians has a double-edged character. On the one hand, there is the practical side, and then something is brought out of the imaginative-spiritual. But the primordial beginning is completely outside in the practical. One imagines the initiation in the old times or the religions in general, as in the old times, wrongly, if one imagines that people did nothing else than pray to the gods and spend the whole day wondering what it looked like up there in heaven. No! They connected with the spiritual world to get impulses on how to change the earth, what to do there, how to recognise the seasons, how to align themselves with it in order to set up life here on earth. Indwelling on earth. Incarnation on earth. That is actually the great theme. It begins very delicately already in the primal Indian time, even at the end of the Atlantean time in a certain way, but there it is still much weaker, but in any case in the time of the cultural epochs this is the decisive task. The spiritual impulses all serve to change life here on earth. That is very important. And this task remains with us until we are in our last incarnation here on earth. Because that is how long we have to work here as human beings on the physical earth and to work with the earth. Therefore, that is the primary thing that is at stake. In truth, if one enters properly into initiation, enters properly into imaginative perception, into spiritual recognition, then it is always a question of drawing out forces in order to master the earth task here. Nothing else! 

It is never a question of leaving the earthly world and becoming blessed up there. There is not yet time for that. We must first acquire the strength to then be able to become active on a higher level. To be able to become active on a purely soul-spiritual level. But that is the primary thing, that we now bring it down still in a certain way. Of course, there is already more spiritualisation in it, but the great conflicts with the earthly world and with the mineral world are still before us in truth. On the one hand, there is already a spiritual ascent, especially in our cultural epoch, because we are at the threshold where we can, on the one hand, go with our consciousness back into the spiritual, but on the other hand, we have exactly the opposite pole, that in the development of the earth something is descending completely into the depths. We have to deal with that. Ascension is not possible without a descent, which is driven by the forces of the adversary. We must only succeed in wresting a great deal from these descending forces for the ascending. This will accompany us in this form until the end of the 7th cultural epoch.  

But now let's look at the picture that roughly corresponds to Egyptian times or the mindset that is there. "And when it opened the third seal, I heard the third beast speak: Come; and I saw, behold, a black horse, and his rider holding a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice speaking in the midst of the four beasts: A measure of wheat for a denarius, three measures of barley for a denarius. But to the oil and to the wine you shall do no harm." There is reference to measuring and weighing, it all comes out in this Egyptian time. That's where it starts. The measuring and weighing of the earthly world. Yes, basically it is the way into materialism if you like in a certain way, but also a way to inscribe the spiritual into the material. And our task is ultimately the whole one, namely really to rework the whole earth. That is our task. And we don't have much time left at all. That doesn't mean that we have to dig holes everywhere down to the core of the earth. Even if we are to rework the whole earth, we already have many influences today that in fact permeate the whole earth. Be it the electrical engineering that we have today, which penetrates the whole earth's atmosphere, which penetrates into the water. What we have in the way of tremors through artificial earthquakes, if you like, if you only think of the nuclear tests and these things, these are things that shake the earth down to the smallest detail. These are quakes that go through and change the earth in reality. Very small. These are subtle changes. But there are spiritual changes going on with the earth with these things that we human beings trigger, that we do, and the spiritual changes are the essential thing. Of course, external physical changes are also brought about, but it is the spiritual changes that are important. 

Because behind the earth there is not only a physical, a sensual, but also a supersensual. So life forces (etheric forces), soul forces and ultimately spiritual forces and one must not forget that the Christ himself has connected himself with the earth. So he helps with that! He is active in transforming the earth. And gives us the strength to be able to do this at all. But it is not the Christ who determines the direction of development, it is us. We have to be aware of that. What we fail to do will not happen. The Christ does not do it for us, but only provides us with the necessary strength for it to happen on this large scale. But the plan for it, the will impulse for it, we have to give. That is the goal of earth evolution in truth, that we can develop will impulses basically on a planetary level. Our will must go so far. That far our spiritual will works out of the I, that it already gets a planetary scale, but as a community of the whole human being, not a single person who determines everything. But precisely from this multitude of people. And as a training ground for the whole, external technology and all that is necessary for it. Not because the machines are so important, not because what is dug up externally is so important, but because in the confrontation with it we develop the necessary spiritual forces. That is the path we have to go through today. We are now at the beginning of the time to which Dante already referred in his Comedy, basically from afar, when one says that Dante's abridged version is Divine Comedy is: The way to heaven leads through hell. 

I am serious about this now! We have to deal with these underworld forces, because we have to penetrate them. Because the earth is largely made up of these forces. These Ahrimanic forces are working there. We have to redeem them. We must also redeem the spiritual beings who are affected by the adversaries, who suffer from them, for example, all the elemental beings, who also suffer from the adversaries who are down there. It is not true that the elemental beings of the earth are always affected by these especially ahrimanic entities that are underneath or seduced by the luciferic entities, but that is still the less bad thing. But especially by the ahrimanic beings. That is to say, our spiritual task consists precisely in liberating these natural beings. That is the real goal. The outer globe will one day crumble to dust. That is not the essential thing. But the entities that are connected with it are the essential thing. That is where we have to become active. But in order to do so, we must also know how to "a measure of wheat for a denarius measures or three measures of barley for a denarius." 

Even the money is inside. In the money and financial system, some things are rightly seen as very questionable today. But money is also one of the most important inventions mankind has made. But it is totally an Ahrimanic invention on the other side. In "Faust" there is a beautiful scene with the invention of paper money. Goethe is so clairvoyant in there, even for our time. A scrap of paper. A piece of paper, one would say in Viennese. A piece of cheese paper. It has no value in itself. Today it's not even that, it's just numbers in a computer database. They are basically just numbers. 

Comment from a member of the audience: "It's called appearances!" 

W.: Yes, a money note. It is deception. It is appearance. It is nothingness. But it is one of the tools that enable us to have spiritual freedom here on earth. 

Question from a member of the audience: "Where does the word "Schein" come from in connection with money?

W.: Yes, I don't know either, either someone was very clairvoyant, what that means. In any case, it's something that only has signs on it. It must have something to do with the fact that the word banknote doesn't actually represent any real value. It only represents an ideal value. It is there when all people believe in it. If suddenly all of humanity no longer believes in the dollar, then the dollar is finished, then billions and quadrillions are nothing from one day to the next. Zero. 

The other side is: we need it for free spiritual development. We would not be able to do that with barter alone. We would still be at the beginning of the primitive Indian times. There was barter between people who lived together directly in a small or large family. Then the task of transforming the earth and thereby fulfilling the earth task of humanity cannot be tackled. That is the point. We must therefore also be aware, as anthroposophists in particular, that our spiritual striving also means that we cooperate in the transformation of the earth. And not say that we leave that to the Ahrimanic people and that I don't want to have anything to do with them. But we must cooperate with them. Because otherwise we leave it unilaterally to the adversaries. The danger is very great! Fortunately, many of those who seem to think in such an ahrimanic way actually have a spiritual impulse behind them. Even if they themselves would never admit it and deny it. Not everything is as catastrophic as it looks at first glance. It is catastrophic! But there is real hope too. One must not be afraid of the future! One must just not let up.

I have often said that people today who are so opposed to the spiritual are right, first of all, if they have unhealthy, old, basically fantastic spiritual ideas that do not correspond to spiritual reality, that they should be thoroughly swept away, that is very important, and we have a lot in our traditions that is so very close to the past. In truth, when you delve into it and the philosophers have delved into it, they have gone exactly the wrong way. Where many people really still believe that the human soul is immortal and that my consciousness, as it is now, is the same after death. That is, of course, complete nonsense. Something changes enormously. We certainly have no idea of the consciousness we have after death, if you judge it from everyday consciousness, but I really have to enter into another experience of consciousness, at least into the imaginative stage initially, then I get a bit of an idea of how different it is and that you can't compare it like that. These are false ideas that really have to go. Natural science is right when it sweeps that away. Totally. 

The second thing is that people who resist the spiritual hand and foot are usually those who are very close to it themselves and are afraid of taking that next step because it might turn their lives upside down. And that's the way it is. Because walking over the threshold, even just an initial experience, changes your life completely. A new world opens up, you recognise yourself in a completely different way, of course, because if it's a healthy crossing of the threshold, then pretty much one of the first encounters should be with the little guardian of the threshold, or the double, however you want to put it. This experience is once shattering. Really devastating. Because it simply shows you how small you still are spiritually, how much burden you carry from the past and how big the task is that lies ahead of you. And it's so ruthless that all you really want to do is crawl into a hole and say, "What else can I do? Not a chance. But then the decision arises that I basically can't help but change my life fundamentally.

And yet not get into the danger, yes, now I'm going back into solitude and only do more meditation, but still remain in the midst of life, but with a completely different inner attitude. Without outwardly pleasing others with my spiritual outpourings, that is not necessary at all. Just do things differently in detail and tell everyone only what they need at the moment, what they are ready for at the moment. What is the biggest mistake that can be made today is to drive people into materialism when you want to attack them with spiritual things at a time when they are not yet ready. Today that is a push down into the materialistic world for them, because they have no choice but to retreat. They are too close and if they are caught on the wrong foot before they are ready, they will somersault backwards into the abyss. Because that's what they're familiar with, the materialistic abyss. You have to be incredibly careful, and what we need today is this sensitivity, to recognise what lives in the soul of the other person? And to sense how far I can go, may I go? What words can I drop? Which should I avoid as much as possible? Because he has to discover it for himself. 

Basically, it just has to be that somewhere the maybe picks up a word and asks: "What do you mean by that now? How does this go on? I want to know!" If he doesn't say that, then that's it. Maybe he doesn't ask until twenty years later. Or not until the next incarnation. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I notice this very clearly today, that if you cross that boundary line and ask them to do something spiritual that they are not ready for now, you immediately scare many people away. Although they are close to it. That's where you can make the most mistakes. Someone who is a materialist anyway, who says, my God, you can talk about the spirit and God, I don't care about all that, I don't believe in it anyway. That doesn't worry him. At most, he says, you're not all there. That's all that happens. He is not frightened. People who are close to it are the most frightened, because this crossing of the threshold turns life upside down, that's the problem. It is simply dramatic. 

Comment from a listener: "Pedagogy gives me the opportunity to develop this sensitivity. Schools, kindergartens, social groups, where you get close."

W.: Absolutely. That's right! We simply have to develop more and more of a feeling for the core of the other person's being. In other words, it doesn't matter what they look like on the outside, what skills they have on the outside or how they act. He may be a ruffian on the outside, in which case I may have to restrain him a little, but what is at the core of his being is something quite different, there may be some cause, karmic cause or other, why he may be a very disagreeable contemporary on the outside, but one must be able to see through all that, so to speak, i.e. it has nothing to do with how intelligent he is, with regard to this intelligence of mind, how mannerly he is in his external behaviour. Yes, perhaps he is someone who has perhaps even committed a crime and yet there is something else behind it, that can be anything. So overcoming appearances, i.e. not making excuses for every mistake, that's not what I mean at all. But I have to see through what is really behind it, what is behind this particular fate, then you can give impulses and in truth you will get many impulses back, precisely because you simply get involved with the other person, that is, these real encounters with people. 

Because until recently, social coexistence on a large scale was still very formal, you do that, you don't do that, that's good manners, that's bad manners, you can divide it up according to class or whatever, but it's all external. I'm not saying anything about good manners, nothing at all, but the problem is that if they don't come honestly from within, but are simply made from the outside and you act like that and of course with the consciousness, oh how great I am, you look down on the others because they can't do that, then that can have an incredibly soul-destroying effect on other people, actually it does that on everyone, because in truth then one person is envious of the other. Who is better? Who is the more honourable? These things happen a lot. These are all things that are destructive today. So be totally awake to that. To develop this social sensitivity. That is where real spiritual perception begins. If you want clairvoyance. For what the soul, the spiritual being of the other really is. To feel it once. Once you start to feel it, it will perhaps also become an imagination at some point, and imagination means that I then really have a large panorama of what is really going on with the person. Then it's not just a feeling for it, it becomes a clearer and clearer image of the soul that I form of the other person. But I can separate it from my sympathies and antipathies. It is not true that perhaps for karmic reasons or for other reasons we find some people simply sympathetic, others antipathetic, but all that must be kept out of it. Afterwards I can say that I still don't like him inside. I can be honest about that. It's not that we have to love everyone and find everyone sympathetic, that won't work in the short term, certainly not. That's dishonest. We can't do that. It is also not necessary. I can also say, ok, actually he really gets on my nerves the way he is, but I see his inner core, it's something different, I even want to give him an impulse. But please not every day, because I can't stand him every day. It's like this. 

Comment from a listener: Maybe this is what "Love your neighbour as yourself" means? Because you can't stand yourself every day!

W.:  Absolutely! R. Steiner calls it: "Awakening at the Other ME. The interesting thing is that you also get to know your own I much better, namely the real I, not the idea of I that you have formed in the course of your life. Because that is a distorted, either an embellished or a darkened image, because roughly speaking there are two types of people, one thinks he is God knows how good, and the other thinks he is always, No, I am the last of all and I can't do anything. Both are not usually true at all. Because they are usually not true. It is difficult to discover the image of one's own self, but the best way is to awaken to the other, because that is the only way. There is no other way. If I'm locked up in a closet all my life, I don't get to know myself at all. I awaken to the other! That is very important! 

Comment from a member of the audience: May I say something about this? It is frightening when you work as a kindergarten teacher, that was 50 years ago when plastic was introduced, only for hygienic reasons, but everything was made of plastic and then you learn through spiritual science that this sense of touch that the little child has, and when it is constantly deceived by the cold material, plastic is always the same somewhere, that this, this metamorphosis is exactly this sense of I that you have now described. That is to say, 50 years ago people were already going after this sense of 'I'. That is frightening! We can speak of luck, if I may discover that. What has actually happened there? This has been in the world for a long time and mankind has no idea of such a thing." 

W.: Yes, yes! That's right! There are many challenges waiting for us. There are an incredible number of impulses that also storm against this I. That's clear. That is clear. But that has to be natural, so that we develop this awareness. Because as long as it's all natural and the wooden toys are there, because we didn't have anything else, we don't even think about it. That is the problem. And we have to consciously grasp it today. But it is tragic. 

We are now looking at the fourth seal. The 4. seal is connected with the Greek-Latin period. What is it called now? "And when it opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast saying: Come; and I looked, and behold a pale horse, and the name of his rider was Death, and the kingdom of the dead is his retinue. Authority has been given to them over a quarter of the earth; they may kill with the sword, by famine and death, and by the beasts of the earth." So this already characterises the Greco-Latin period. Death is becoming more and more a companion of the human being. I think I already mentioned this in an earlier lecture, that the so-called immortality of the soul is not simply something given. It was in ancient times, but there it was something group-soul-like, it goes back to the Atlantean times and earlier, of course it continues to have an effect, but it pretty much ceases in the Greco-Latin times. Then only the sensual-mortal soul remains, through which we experience the sensual outer world, through which we develop the normal intellect, through which we develop the feelings, which are also very strongly connected with bodily activity, with breathing or the like, this part of the soul is gone very quickly after death. Really very quickly gone. That which is really immortal soul in a new individual form, now really in the appropriate form that belongs to the I, that really also has to be formed by the I itself, this immortal soul, that is only the search for it, the struggle for it, in the Greek-Latin period. And that's why in the Greek-Latin period, when you talk about life after death, you only see the underworld. What is the underworld? That is basically the world where we put our karma packets, i.e. that soul that has been destroyed by us in such a way that it cannot dissolve in the soul world in truth. These are our karma packets. You could say that they are solidified in the soul. Soul-destroyed, soul-solidified, so that they cannot be dissolved in the astral world. They actually form the dark realm below. That does not pass away. 

It is something immortal for the time being, but I say for the time being because it is our task to ultimately resolve it until the end of our incarnations on earth. But it is a provisional indissoluble for now. Because the spiritual world cannot dissolve it for us, we can only dissolve it ourselves. But that is precisely what burdens us. That is not felt as beautiful. That's why they feel, yes, what remains of my soul? They don't see the spiritual in that way anyway, because the spiritual is even more difficult to grasp, because with the spiritual I can't even say, what is it like? With the spiritual, there would still be some content that I could say about, but there most of it dissolves, because as far as the sensual world is concerned, what the Greeks loved so much, the Romans also loved very much in their own way, above all sensual enjoyment, but the Greeks too, that's all gone. What remains are all the transgressions that are so strong that they have destroyed the spiritual to such an extent that it cannot be dissolved. That remains. They feel that. They feel it very strongly. Actually, they notice that the dead person seems to go there, which is not true, of course, because the actual, the I of the human being does ascend into the spiritual world, but it can be felt very strongly, aha, a soul remains down there, but that is terrible. But the really immortal soul in the positive sense, which then really becomes eternal, is that which the I has really spiritualised in the soul through its spiritual activity during life on earth, i.e. has transformed into the so-called spirit self. This is only an immortal soul again. In the past it was a group soul, that was also immortal, then the more people initially came to their ego, the more the group soul receded, i.e. people only needed a little, the people soul remained, the Greek soul remained, at least for a long time until it then changed, but that was still of no use to the individual Greek, because his individual soul, he felt it, actually the hell packs remain down there, the karma packs in truth, the rest - where is it? 

It is only slowly beginning that humanity is working on this again, individually. It becomes stronger in the 8th-9th century AD, so that the Christian thinkers feel it above all, ok, there is an immortal soul, because we are working on it. So somehow unconsciously they feel, although they are not clairvoyant, but they feel it somewhere, they feel, the Arabist thinkers, the Arabs with their brilliant minds, they don't understand. They still believe it is so, that the soulish blows away above somewhere and goes back into the world soul, and the individual soulish disappears. That was the great battle in the Middle Ages between the Arab thinkers and the Christian thinkers. That is to say, since about that time, humanity has only been really keen to develop its truly immortal soul in an individual way. So we have to struggle for it. In the Greco-Latin period, which lasted until the end of the Middle Ages, people felt it very clearly, death was very close, it was actually a companion, even in the Middle Ages you often saw the skeleton of the dead with the scythe, it accompanied people. Actually, we should also feel it today. Especially when we develop spiritually, we should feel it, but not as something negative, but something that is necessary for our development of consciousness, like a friend who accompanies us our whole life. It accompanies us from birth until shortly before the end of life. 

He accompanies us and goes with us. It is one of the most reliable friends we have, it always goes with us, and it means no harm in truth for us. Because at some point it's time to go and get the spiritual refreshment again in the after-death existence. In order to then quickly come down again in our time and continue. That is why we need the refreshment. Today, human life means, if possible, an intensive, spiritually working life on earth, great if it is very long, has the time to develop a lot, but it can also be great if it is only very short and is a great spiritual impulse. It just depends on fate. As a rule it is the case today, because people are getting much older on average, that many have the chance to acquire and work out something spiritually here for a long time, which can only be worked out here on earth, and then to carry that through death. And actually to be happy when one can say that my earthly task for this incarnation has been fulfilled, and now I may let it mature over there. And can basically come down again very soon, because I want to come down again very soon. That basically describes the spiritual present situation. 

Hence the image of death here in the fourth seal. The difference is that today we should also feel it, only really death as a reliable companion, which is nothing evil, that is counteracted in such a way, because today death is only pushed away as far as possible, it should all be far away, death is the great catastrophe. Of course it is tragic when one loses a person, that is quite clear, again it is connected with suffering, connected with suffering above all for those who are left behind, of course also for those who have to detach themselves, no one will say, hurrah, I'll die tomorrow, that will probably not be said so easily either, quite clear, it is connected with suffering, but again with awakening of consciousness too, I have already described this several times, the moment of death, when the whole body disintegrates and is destroyed, is a very strong moment of consciousness, so strong that you are blinded for the moment, that you don't even notice it for the moment, but then it is exactly the light that carries you through to the new birth, that is how intense this light is. 

Question from a listener: By body destruction do you mean burning or something similar?

W.: Well, at all, that with death you discard the physical body. It doesn't matter whether the body is burnt or buried or even mummified. If it is mummified, then of course the point is that the soul is very strongly bound to the earthly, so that it does not become free so easily. Today it is best, but everyone must decide for himself, but it is most liberating if it goes through the combustion today, through the quick dissolution, because what we no longer need so absolutely, above all as spiritually striving human beings, is to go down into solidification and to acquire materialism, i.e. if we have worked spiritually correctly in the past, then we are over the phase that we must now strive even further into materialisation, so to speak. We have to understand and use the material thinking of our time and connect it with the spiritual, but we don't have to go into an incarnation where we are completely blind to the spiritual. But of course there are still enough people who have an incarnation before them where they are blind to the spiritual. Because in principle, for freedom to be guaranteed, every human being must have at least one incarnation that is basically quite materialistic. Where he says with the deepest conviction, so help me God, I am a materialist. I say it deliberately in such a paradoxical way. Where I have a deep belief that there is only the material world. Where that is a deep heart conviction in truth. That is the case with many people today. We are just inside the time where it is really deep conviction. As long as it's only a mental conviction, it's still weak. Of course, it was there in the 19th century and it was there before that. And in the 20th century it was always stronger. But today it is so real with many that they simply believe that there is only the material and nothing else can exist, everything else is nonsense. Then you have to say, ok, you are now in the phase where you have to go through such an incarnation, because everybody has to go through it. There is no cheating by. An incarnation has to be like this! 

Audience comment: Or a part of life? Is it possible to reshape that?

W.: Yes, of course! You can reshape it. It depends on what a person has gone through in the past. But ultimately an incarnation is necessary which is completely cut off, which can prepare itself in an incarnation before and which can have an after-effect in a next one, as a rule that will be so, that is, which is then only semi-materialistic, where then at some point the turning point comes and before that, before it was completely materialistic, there was preparation where one slowly comes into doubt, but one is necessary where the lid is closed on the spiritual world. I say that quite clearly! And when you notice that a person is in such an incarnation, then you have to respect that. That is so! He is not lost because of it. You don't have to believe that he will fall into the kingdom of Ahriman. I mean, if he goes through ten incarnations like that, then it becomes questionable. But if he goes through one, then it is a necessity. Otherwise he never gets the real freedom. Otherwise the spiritual striving always gets something unfree. Something that just lingers on from the past somewhere. Where one does not have the courage to face one's own self. And that is what we are talking about today. 

That access today comes through our own I and only from this can we then freely give spiritual things to others out of the I. That is the important thing that today it goes via the I and not simply the angels give it to us so freely and we take it and it is beautiful. That is the important thing, that today it goes via the diversions of the I and not simply the angels give us so freely and we take it and it is beautiful, but it must take the path through the I. The whole spiritual world is within the I in truth. The whole spiritual world is inside the I in truth. But it is a different path. It does not come from outside and give us something undeservedly or without our doing, but we gain it. We awaken spiritual forces within us. It is already the first thing that we take on tasks that are normally fulfilled by our so-called guardian angel. 

R. Steiner describes it very beautifully, I have also discussed the picture so often, there is a nice blackboard drawing by R. Steiner, there is a white circle, and there is a green line downwards and a yellow line upwards. When you see that, you think, what does that mean? I have no idea! It means: If man develops spiritually so that he frees his angel from certain tasks, because he takes them on himself, then the angel can ascend. If the human being fails to do this, the angel descends. That is, we have influence on the hierarchies that are above us. Because in truth, this then continues. If the angel is held back, then the archangel has to take over tasks for the angel from which he would otherwise be relieved, because the angel develops more strongly. And so it goes through. Basically, by doing this, we create a restraint in the higher hierarchies. In a way, we bring a disorder into the realm of the hierarchies above us. That is already up to us today. That is, we have to take on spiritual tasks and we can already take them on. It starts with getting a feeling for one's own karma, so I don't have to look at where I was in a previous incarnation, that's mostly just spinning anyway, because when it's time, you experience it. Then we don't need to talk much about it, or best of all, we don't need to talk about it at all. Then you just know and that's it. 

But it is important to feel where there are moments when karma demands something of me, gives me a task. To recognise where there are karmic connections with other people and how I can dissolve them in a fruitful way or spin them further. Also to recognise that karma is not always something negative. Karma also opens paths for the future. It is also very important for the future to prepare something now for the next incarnation. That is to say, to voluntarily connect karmically with someone else, not through an atrocity, so to speak, but simply to prepare something for the future. That is the karma that can become fruitful for the future. It is not a question of owing something to the other person, but that we can give something to each other. Already through the karmic disposition in the next incarnation. That will become very important. 

The fifth seal: This now basically concerns our present task. It concerns us now. I.e. we should now unseal what has already been predisposed in us throughout the past, we should unseal that now in order to recognise where is our task? Where do we stand? This is the point where I said at the beginning that it was getting a bit grim. I mean, it hasn't all been pleasant so far, the riders, the first one was still very nice, the second one was a bit warlike, the third one, ok, there's a lot of trading going on, he's neutral somewhere, the death in the fourth one was a bit unpleasant, but what about now? Because now, suddenly, the horse is no longer the image, i.e. it is no longer this brain-bound intelligence that matters, but now it is already the new mental experience, the new form of imagination, imaginative thinking, i.e. mentally perceiving thinking. The horse is no longer the image for this. But what does one experience then? How is that marked? One might think that this is a liberating image, an uplifting image, because this step is an enormous step, in reality a very positive step, when we enter into this perception. But how is that portrayed? 

"And when it opened the fifth seal, I saw beneath the altar, the souls of those who had suffered sacrificial death for the sake of the divine Word and for their witness. And they cried out with a loud voice: Holy and true Lord of the world, how long wilt thou delay in the judgment which our blood atones for upon the inhabitants of the earth? And to each one of them was given a white robe, and it was said to them, 'They should remain in the world of rest for a little while longer, until the destinies of their fellow servants and their brothers, who would suffer death like them, would also be fulfilled.'" This is the fifth seal. This is our time. At first glance, it doesn't look very friendly. Why is there now a basically frightening picture? That doesn't get any better in the sixth image. I have already hinted at this very quietly or half aloud recently: In this cultural epoch, at least a part of humanity is consciously acquiring spiritual perception. That is, to go beyond intellectual thinking to a really concrete spiritual perception. That is just around the corner! In a certain way, but this will not be the best way, it will come naturally, i.e. without training and without consciously striving for it, because then one may not be able to do much with the imagination, because then one will have soul-spiritual experiences, but under certain circumstances they will again be connected with sensual images, because one cannot separate them so precisely, but one will not be able to do anything with them. 

There are already enough problems today that people have with such things and who therefore run to a psychiatrist or somewhere else, especially in America. They are ahead of us in this respect, precisely because they have to fight so hard against the adversary powers, especially the Ahrimanic ones. There, this new clairvoyance, caused by nature or culture, is more frequent than one might think. It is no longer quite the old one, but it is also not yet quite the new consciously acquired one; it is a new one, but it has much of the character of the old one. That first has to be trained, let's put it that way. They could all do something with it, if they start with conscious training, then that is something quite positive, then they don't need to run to the psychiatrist any more, i.e. they should actually study spiritual science, then in truth they would be best served. But they would have to be willing to do that themselves. That is where it is most awkward to try to talk them into something. If they find it themselves by fate, then it is good, if you meet them by fate and can give them the right impulse, then it is good. But then you must not do anything wrong and want to push them somewhere. But under certain circumstances there is a helpful word that is the key to them consciously getting hold of it. 

But at any rate in this epoch it is a question of at least a part of humanity consciously acquiring this spiritual imaginative thinking, this imaginative seeing, as the first stage. Only then will it be possible to consciously shape the earth out of spiritual experience, and this will also contribute to the shaping of technology, but above all to the shaping of nature. Because we have to think that when I say we have to transform the whole earth, then that also concerns the whole of nature. So you must not simply imagine the transformation as if we were now turning the whole earth into a technical apparatus, although R. Steiner once said that the earth will be transformed into a technical apparatus. "become a self-acting electric device in the future".So at least that will also play a role. The earth will change in a comparatively short time, by that I mean centuries to millennia, but that is nothing at all for the development of the earth, it will look completely different than it does today. And nature will look different. Nature will become culture. A cultural landscape. Completely. Right down to the smallest landscape profile. 

That is, it will be a landscape that is shaped by people. Co-shaped. That will come. That is our task. But of course a lot can go wrong. Because it will also require technical forces, it will above all require enormous life forces, we human beings will also get hold of the life forces, even during this development of the earth, and that is connected with an enormous responsibility. This is the time when R. Steiner says, yes, it will be possible to create life in the laboratories, even animal life, but that may only happen when the laboratory table becomes the altar. When there is a completely different spiritual attitude inside. Because otherwise something terribly harmful will come out of it. But that doesn't have to happen. At any rate, it doesn't have to happen exclusively. There will always be a negative part, that has always been the case in human development, but we have to do a lot to move in a positive direction. 

For this, it is necessary to develop at least this elementary spiritual perception and that more people develop this and from this, for example, do science and from this give technology its direction by also taking this into account and taking it with them. It is not for people who sit in the closet and watch television, so to speak, but it is simply a real life task, a very practical life task. So that's what it's all about! But in order to acquire this purely soul-pictorial imaginative experience, the soul life must be strengthened, the intensity of this soul life must become much more intense. That is to say, this soul life must be shaken up enormously. But I am fully consciously in control of this shaking from within the I. And through this shaking we will be able to become more intense. And we will go through these shocks. We will experience them. That is exactly what is described here. In other words, we will be hit by spiritual shocks. So we must not imagine that the path to this spiritual vision is simply a comfortable path. 

It will not be a comfortable path, but it will bring tremendous shocks with it, it will really be connected with the experience of death every time I cross this threshold, and that always has two sides. It has the side that here once the world disappears in front of me, that I lose the attachment to it to the attachment partly to my body, at least in this experience of consciousness. And that is always a leap. Even if I know beforehand that I'm entering something light and positive, it's still not easy for us to jump off. And that is connected with the greatest intensity of consciousness. Death is actually the most conscious moment. Through this dying process, through this separation from the physical body, an enormous light of consciousness arises. This light is quite positive because it carries us through the spiritual world, but it is an immense intensity of consciousness, precisely because it is so immense, it blinds us and - fortunately - usually immediately, and blinding in this case means that we simply experience nothing at all. Dazzling means I am blind, I see nothing. I am so dazzled that I see nothing at all. And that is good. Because if I were to experience this suddenly, it would be the most incredible pain I could experience, because consciousness is always connected with pain. Only where there is pain there is consciousness. Usually it's so muted that we don't even notice it. But in reality, every light that hits us is a pain in the eye. It is so well dosed that we don't actually feel it as pain. With the unpleasant neon lights it is more so if you are a little sensitive to it, with warm light less so. But still, even with the warmest and most pleasant light, it is actually a quiet pain that happens. Consciousness is always connected to that. Because it takes us across a border. There's always a little dying inside. That's no use. 

Comment from a listener: It doesn't matter what causes the shock, I have the awareness when I don't care about the pain either. It is there, I take note of it. But actually it's completely uninteresting. It's about something completely different. And that can also happen with beautiful experiences. But it is about something else. One should not disregard that, that one gets a sensitivity for the fact that there is also consciousness in the beautiful!

W.: Exactly! That's right! We can talk about it again in more detail. Otherwise it will be too long today. 

In any case, it is a very intense experience that is necessary. And that's why it's described quite bluntly in the Apocalypse. But you don't have to be afraid of it either. That you think I can't stand it. It is always dampened to the extent that one can bear, in truth. Just barely tolerable. Because it is actually about the expansion of consciousness, i.e. the further development of consciousness. That means basically always taking a step beyond the limit of what I have been able to go beyond up to now. I could go to a certain limit until now and the spiritual development is called: the next step. Only the next step. Not ten steps. One step above. That's where the wind blows in our faces, so to speak. There it simply becomes very intense. That's where the real soul-spiritual experience begins to shine. Which is still very vague at the beginning. It is very blurred. You don't do anything with it. You only know, ok, I am now experiencing something that has nothing to do with the physical, nothing to do with the sensual, but there is some kind of experience there. But it is completely different. I can't say I see it. That's the interesting thing about imagination, I can't actually say I see it like a sensual image. It is a purely mental experience. It has none of the sensory qualities. Nevertheless, I experience something spiritual, which can also be experienced in a weakened form in various sensory qualities. In colours, in smells, in tactile impressions. But that is only something attenuated that I have with the senses, now I experience it in its pure form. It's completely different there. But it still gives me the possibility to capture it in sensual images and to describe it that way, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to communicate it at all. In other words, the images are chosen very carefully.  

Especially with John, it is very clear that the images are really very consciously chosen and designed by him. One must not imagine that he experienced it in the same way, but that he had this spiritual experience and transformed it into a sensual image, whereby he borrowed from the Old Testament or something, there are many images in it that are, for example, in the prophecies of Daniel. Most of the elements are already there. You only have to read it once. There are many similarities, but also slight differences. After all, some time has passed since then. And John is much more conscious of it. In Daniel's case it was really a vision, or a whole host of visions, i.e. this old clairvoyance, which is not yet so strongly imbued with the I. And which is also really more closely related to the body. And what is also really more strongly bound to the physical and is therefore automatically translated into sensory impressions. That was the case with the old clairvoyance. That's where the images come from. But the images are still coherent, of course, somewhere. But they are still only images. The spiritual reality looks different. You always have to be aware of that. 

So now, here in our epoch, it is about taking this one small step next step. To get the first fine impressions. And to be quite conscious and sure, ok, this is not my fantasy, and certainly not a fantasy, because fantasy is something good, there is an imagination behind it, but fantasy also has something similar to the senses. I have to get rid of that. I have to remove the curtain. And really experience the imagination behind it, the purely spiritual. In our century, in the 21st century, that is one of the most important things to develop. And to raise it to the level of scientific, spiritual knowledge. R. Steiner has given us a great deal to do here. Only now the century has dawned where, just as we have researchers in chemistry and physics outside, so we should have many spiritual researchers outside. Who not only study in the book what R. Steiner said, but who now investigate all the great white fields that are still free on the spiritual map. Not even R. Steiner could describe everything. That is a fraction. The spiritual world is basically inexhaustible. There are many districts open and many areas to be discovered and much to be explored further in detail. Spiritually, too, there is further research to be done.  

And in the future also to combine external research with intellectual research. The ideal researcher of the future is the one who can combine both. In the life sciences, in biology, for example. Biology is one of the most important disciplines at universities today.  most materialistic sciences. Much more materialistic than physics in truth. Physics knows, the foundation of the world: I cannot explain matter in a material way. There is something behind it that I can perhaps describe with formulae, but which is certainly not material in character. I cannot yet imagine what it is, but I know it is not matter in the classical sense. Atoms are not spheres. Elementary particles are also not spheres that I imagine. But it is something that somehow appears as an incomprehensible effect in space, which I can describe with certain mathematical relationships, how likely they are to occur, but even the hardest matter is basically deception. Physics knows that! Even if most physicists don't think about it philosophically, but basically they know it. In principle, physics, especially theoretical physics, is a speculative spiritual science. That is, it aims at a purely spiritual explanation of the world. Very abstractly, of course. They do not speak of spiritual beings. But the basis of the world, which they try to capture in their formulae, is ultimately something purely spiritual, something purely abstractly spiritual even today, but basically they are looking for a purely spiritual basis of the world. With the physicists, that's there! Individuals are also quite aware of this. 

It looks much worse in biology. Because they don't drill down that deep. They stay more on the surface of the material, with the molecules or somewhere, and you imagine them to be quite materialistic. And that's enough for that. That's why the life sciences today - I don't want to say anything against anyone - but my experience is that biologists in particular, when they hear something about the spiritual, they get a screaming fit. Especially there, and I have to agree with them absolutely, because the theory of evolution plays a big role, which is based on Darwin or what has become of it, that they don't want God to intervene somewhere with some mumbo-jumbo and control the development of living beings, so to speak. And they are right! Because that's not how it happens. 

I said this quite clearly last time, you must not imagine the development of the world in this way: The good Lord has his engineering office somewhere where he has a big plan inside of how the world will run in detail. That is not how world creation works. World creation is an artistic process. It is always in living motion and there are many possibilities open and what is realised at the moment is not written anywhere beforehand. Nowhere! What is given as a world plan is a certain framework within which it moves, but within this framework there are infinite possibilities. Outside the frame, perhaps, there are also infinite possibilities that are not realised, that are not within the plan. So the spiritual impulses are the essence inside. In truth, one can also introduce this into biology. But that is still very difficult today. That will be the next struggle. In physics it is already succeeding to some extent. The chemists are pretty much keeping out of it. They are usually the least philosophical. They just mess around with their stuff. But with the biologists, the next step is really the life level. 

For example, to really explore the workings of the etheric forces in concrete terms. To see how it works concretely in the plant and in that plant. How does something work in that organ, how in that organ. These are things that need to be investigated strictly scientifically. But this also requires a certain degree of spiritual perception. I can't do that with speculation. I have to be spiritually perceptive. And R. Steiner has given all kinds of examples of this. But these are just a few examples out of hundreds of thousands that still need to be explored. You have to see that too. As in external research. There are many things to be researched. Especially as far as illness and health are concerned. Only on the biological-etheric level. There is still so much to explore. Then the whole science will come to a higher level. That should happen in this century. It will happen. I am hopeful that it will happen in this century. In the 20th century there was too strong a counter-impulse. That is also there now. But it is necessary in order to purify us from the false spiritual impulses, from the illusory spiritual fantasies that still resonate from the past. Because you have to think, especially in the Christian Middle Ages, because especially in the Christian Middle Ages people were not clairvoyant, i.e. they could not experience imaginatively, most of them at least, especially in the High Scholastic period, it was completely dark spiritually. For the greatest thinkers of scholasticism, it was spiritually dark. Otherwise they would not have been able to produce this scholastic philosophy. 

But that also means that they have spun out many ideas without having seen intellectually what is behind them, because some of them are very intelligent and very clever, but often miss the point in truth. Because it is speculation and not real spiritual perception. And these things have then almost become dogma and they have dragged them on. And now the natural scientists come and say that there is something wrong with it. And they are right. Because something is being dragged along from a speculation that just wasn't right. Where even then there was a materialistic misinterpretation of the spiritual. Because it was no longer possible to imagine it any other way. We have to get rid of that! We also have to get rid of that in this century. This will probably also mean getting rid of many cherished spiritual ideas that were in fact illusory ideas, illusory images. Many things will also have to fall. We must have a very serious, concrete grasp of the spiritual. It is no longer enough to simply live in the fantasy of the spiritual. It can be stimulating. And we have to bring it to children, for example, who need a lot of imagination, where the spiritual really lives inside the imagination. That is clothed in sensual, real images. We need that! We also need people later in life who, precisely when they have the right preparation, can grow beyond that, can cast off the sensual images from the imagination and enter into this real imaginative experience. And then become researchers in this field and at the same time also research in the outer world. That would be the programme for the century. That is what should happen. And we have to put aside all sentimentality and sensitivity towards materialistic thinkers and say, let's talk together, we have to talk about this in a very tangible way, I don't want to talk you into some kind of fantasy, but let's talk hard and fast about what this means. 

That's why the descriptions in the Apocalypse are so hard-hitting. The images are powerful. You have to know that these are the first experiences, that they are shocking. In the end, they are positively shocking. They look so bad at first, when we are not used to it. In other words, these bad images are actually not as bad as they appear at first glance. I.e. not that they are really destructive. With this image he tries to bring out the intensity of the experience, which goes through and through and which I nevertheless have to face quite freely. That is the difficult thing. Because the I is then caught up in a storm of the soul, it even creates this storm of the soul itself, because the imagination has to shape it itself, and I am scared to death of what is coming up out of my creative power and what is shaping it, and where I notice what forces are in there, yes, perhaps at the beginning I notice what dark forces are coming up, for God's sake, I also have them at my disposal. That is why R. Steiner says, especially for our present time: There is no crime, no matter how bad, that every human being of our present time is not capable of. He has the power to do it within himself. And most of them are only lucky that fate leads them in such a way that this does not come out. It wasn't so bad in times past. It has become worse and worse, but now we have it within us. 

Comment from a listener: What was that again about authority? Also over evil.

Yes, we also have authority over evil. I have often quoted the phrase: That in our I "the same authority is given to Me that I received from My Father".. This is what the Christ says. That is, the same spiritual power is in our I as the Christ has. No less! But now the other side is, we also have the powers of the adversaries in us, even more. Because: where do the adversaries come from? Where do the adversaries come from? As adversaries were the Angelic beings z. Selected, for example, who have not quite finished their development at the Old Moon, who have lagged behind, who have failed to develop certain powers. Other powers were strong and well developed, but some were not. They were suitable to take on the role of adversary. On the Old Sun these were the ArchangelOn Old Saturn, that is, the first cosmic embodiment of our earth, these were the Archai, the Urengel. Who will be the next hierarchy of adversaries? Us! Of course! I.e. the separation of spirits also means that a part will set out to become the next adversary hierarchy. This must also be clear to us. 

That is, to deal with the forces of all the other adversaries, to learn from them, to absorb forces from them, to train oneself with them. And every human being must come to terms with this. Every human being must confront the whole abundance of these forces and then ultimately choose freely at some point: Which path do I take? That is the perspective that is there. I want to end with that now. I know it is not an inspiring conclusion. It is a damper because it means that we have some tasks to do. But I believe we must talk about it today and we must also say that we can and may talk about it today because we have the strength to deal with it. I say we have it at our disposal. We just have to realise it first. Of course, we have to take action. But the power is actually there. With that, I thank you for your patience. I hope I have not burdened you too much with these things. But it is the preparation for what is yet to come. But there is a great goal at stake. We just need this shaking to take us to the next level. Thank you! 

Question from a listener: Where is "the authority of the I"? I can't find it in three versions. 

W.: Yes, it is in Emil Bock's version. It is in most of the translations in Luther or in the Einheitsübersetzung, where it is formulated a little more unclearly. In the second chapter of the Epistle to the church in Thyatira, verse 27. "The same authority of the I shall be his which I have received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star."

The sea of glass : symbol of the crystalline realm.
Commonality with our ME.
Christ works through the community of the Elohim = spirits of form.

The book with the 7 seals. The Lamb is empowered to open the book.

The mental background of our thoughts is essential.

Imagination is related to the exhalation process.

Exhale liberates: easy step to excarnation.
Inhale: Incarnation.

The first breath at birth is a drama. Death, on the other hand, is something liberating.

2nd seal = second beast, fiery red horse. Wars within us on a spiritual/soul level.

"War of all against all" = not an external war, but between ahrimanic and spiritual forces. Fusion of the human being with the machine being.

Double-edged sword of the I. It is a matter of consciously transforming the earth through the human being.

3rd seal = Third animal, black horse. Its rider has a pair of scales. The materialistic world is measured and weighed.

Nuclear testing is shaking the earth. Spiritual change is important. Christ helps us to transform the earth. The will impulse for this must come from us humans. For this we need spiritual powers. The way to heaven is through hell. We must redeem the negative adversary beings.

Money is an ahrimanic invention. However, we need it for spiritual development.

Anthroposophists have a duty to work for the transformation of the earth.

The encounter with the double (or little guardian of the threshold) is shattering.... so small we feel.

Wir brauchen heute die Fähigkeit – wenn wir mit anderen Menschen sprechen – nur das zu sagen, was  gehört werden will resp. kann. Wir sollen den Wesenskern des anderen  Menschen erkennen. Wir sollen erkennen, was hinter seinem Schicksal steht. Dies bedarf sozialer Feinfühligkeit. Da fängt geistige Entwicklung an. „Erwachen am anderen ICH“. Das Bild des eigenen ICH läßt sich am anderen erkennen.

4. seal = is related to the Greek/Latin period. Time. The fourth horse is a pale horse; its rider is death. 1/4 of the earth is in the power of the 4th horse resp. its rider (hunger/death).

Das in GEISTSELBST verwandelte ICH wird unsterblich bleiben. Wir müssen auf individuelle Weise an der Unsterblichkeit der Seele arbeiten. Es ist wichtig, dass wir im  Leben intensiv geistig arbeiten.

We have an influence on our angels. Our angel changes its development through us.

5. Siegel :  Kein Pferd! Keine gehirngebundene Intelligenz!
                 Our present task. Where do we stand?

Geistig wahrnehmendes Denken. Es geht darum,  dass Menschen in dieser Kulturepoche auf natürliche Art zu geistigen Wahrnehmungen kommen. „Neues Hellsehen“. Ein Teil der Menschheit muss sich imaginatives Schauen erwerben.

Nature becomes culture. Landscape is shaped by people.

It becomes our elementary life task to strengthen the imaginative soul life, also by means of soul shocks. A painful immense intensity of consciousness.

Images from the prophecies of Daniel in the A.T. There they were visions, i.e. sense-like images.

The spiritual world is inexhaustible. Biology today is very materialistic.
Theoretical physics is a speculative human science.

We must seize the spiritual!!!

We humans have the same authority (spiritual power) as Christ received from His Father.

See Emil Bock, Apocalypse, 2nd chap., 27, letter to the church at Thyatira.

There will be a divorce of spirits.