11. lecture on the Apocalypse of John (documentation)

Community of Sardis, this is us, our cultural epoch (1413 - 3573 A.D.), also with a few remarks on the previous cultural epoch, the turn of time, the earthly life of the Christ, through which the development of humanity has changed decisively, insofar as the power of the I has now really arrived on earth and in humanity, there are thereby important new possibilities, e.g. the problem is thereby solved, or a solution is initiated, that we can cope with the adversaries insofar as we can redeem them. We can really redeem the adversaries. Last time we discussed the dramatic experience that the I of the Solomon Jesus experienced in the body of the Nathan Jesus, in the years from the 12th to the 30th year of life, and at the end he came to the Essenes and found that yes, they do their exercises, they purify themselves of everything that is impure in their souls, but it is imposed on the people who live all around, and especially the adversaries, whom they can no longer attack, but who now go to the people outside basically. That was the problem until the earthly life of the Christ, that there was not this possibility to dissolve the powers of the adversaries. Purification always meant that one who rises high carries out this purification at the expense of others. This is true for the whole ancient oriental wisdom, also for the Atlantean time, there was no such possibility. This possibility has only existed since the Mystery of Golgotha with the death on the cross, in which the incarnation of the Christ was completed, the incarnation into the body shells of the Nathanian Jesus, with the baptism in the Jordan the I of the Solomon Jesus went out, now the Christ-I, the great macrocosmic I begins to penetrate these body shells, right into the bone system, that is the decisive factor. This is completed at the moment of death. Then this incarnation is complete in this human body, but one can then go on to say that the earthly incarnation of the Christ only really begins with this, because now with the death on Golgotha he connects himself with the whole earth, from then on the body shell of the Christ is the whole earth, He penetrates the whole earth, especially the dark subterranean realm of the dead, the dark realm, the realm of shadows, which was spoken of especially in the Egyptian-Chaldean period and the Greek period, when this dark world was seen more and more. The life after death has different stages, the lowest stage is this dark realm where we lay down our karma packets, which is called hell in the church. From this time on, it is a question of really dissolving the karmic packages! To do this, I must have the ability to creatively dissolve the soul into nothingness, not just to purify it, that is the great task. To a certain extent it also concerns etheric forces, which can also be attacked, namely by the ahrimanic influence, but for this we need the help of the Christ. We alone are not yet in a position to dissolve the etheric. The redemption of the ahrimanic forces, which have much to do with the etheric, this redemption will certainly not happen during our earthly development, but this kind of redemption will rather take place at the beginning of the New Jerusalem, the next embodiment of our earth or our solar system, which is spoken of at the end of the Apocalypse. But something is already possible today. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, we can work on transforming our soul, above all our astral, into spirit self. That is especially the task of our time today.

A brief overview: Which members of the being are particularly developed in which cultural epochs? Elements of the human being: a) physical body, beyond that the life forces (etheric body), astral body (soul body, because the soul is woven out of these forces), nevertheless it is not exactly the same, because soul only arises through the fact that our I first works unconsciously in the astral, It also works unconsciously on the other bodies, on the etheric body and on the physical body, but at first this work is unconscious, and through it the soulish members of the being come into being, the soulish members of the being are all parts of the astral body, but parts that we have already unconsciously reworked. And it begins in such a way that in the Egyptian-Chaldean time people began to transform their astral body into the Sentient Soulis called soul, there is an inner lifeAn inner experience, an internalisation takes place. Soul is inner world. Before Egyptian times, people did not have an inner life, at least not in the way we have it today. Until the beginning of the Egyptian period, we were a dependent part of the world, we lived with what was outside, the soul was not inside, but outside. There are still typical remnants of this today: in the South, we know the mourners who cry and weep loudly when someone dies, because people don't experience it inside, they need it outside. They couldn't experience the pain of mourning inside, it had to take place outside, cultic customs in the community, as an individual you couldn't experience it inside.

That only begins in the Egyptian period with the development of the Sentient SoulThis also awakens a certain consciousness for the objective world outside, they feel inside what is outside, which begins in Egyptian times with the first soul member - the feeling soul. They do not yet have what we today call our independent thinking, all sensation, connected with certain emotions. What we today call thinking-feeling-wanting is still something very unified, not yet really separate. This can be traced back to the physiognomy of the Egyptians, at least in ancient Egyptian times. The nose is still very recessed, very uniform in profile, the nose does not protrude.

It changes somewhat in the Greco-Latin period, the inner life is now further differentiated. There is also the Mind and spirit soul, an independent thinking slowly begins to awaken, but it is still very closely connected with the mind, with feeling, thinking and feeling as a unity, hence a very strong sense of truth in Greek philosophy, today everything logical or a sense of good and bad. But it can express itself in thought. Aristotle then founded logic, how do I speak in clear words, about what I experience inside. That is where logic begins. This also has an effect on physiognomy. Typically Greek: classical profile > forehead line merges exactly into the nose line, forms a line, the chin is set off, i.e. the will has become something independent, it sets itself off. Thinking = forehead, feeling is nose/eyes/middle of the face, forehead and nose/eyes still form a strong unit, that is typical for the beginning of Greek philosophy. But this is not yet our modern intellect, which has strongly separated from feeling and completely liberated itself, strictly logical, pure ratio, facts and figures, without feelings. See dealing with Corona today.

In the Middle Ages one accepts the Christian faith, that was a reliable feeling that this is so, one was convinced of the reality of these things from the heart, today faith = not knowledge. That was not faith in the Middle Ages, faith was a certainty of the heart, but not with full clarity of mind. At the end of the Middle Ages, complete clarity of understanding came in, especially in theology, with Thomas Aquinas, then it went downhill again with clarity of understanding. It first had to be established that this thinking is worthy of this feeling that one has in the middle. This was due to the confrontation with Islam and the Arabs, with the Arab thinkers, who had a very distinctive intellect that was supported by a strong conviction of faith. The Europeans, from the 10th century onwards, had the faith in the middle. the faith in the middle, from the middle, but thinking rather thin, the Arabs had that, the thinking, the logic, they had that because the Greek philosophers were driven east and south with the founding of Christianity, they were called pagans, That's why academies were founded in Persia (the Academy of Gundishapur, a medical academy that was far ahead of what was there in Europe, where they only mixed herbs and partly had remnants of a clairvoyant medicine among the Celts and Germanic tribes), in Europe they were basically barefooted in thinking. The confrontation with Arab thinkers led to the blossoming of Christian theology, then came the exploration of the outside world, scientific thinking, the interest in the outside world grew, and scientific thinking developed from this. Because the certainty of the heart slowly disappeared and the interest was in the outside world. The whole theological development has led to the fact that it has formed the thinking tool to develop natural science. Without looking at the spiritual at all. That has its necessity. It was a step into the freedom of man: "I want to look", not "I only hypothesise", but "I want to verify", "I want to prove", "I don't want to have inspiration from somewhere". In the church of Philadelphia: there is talk about the key of David, there we get the key in our hands. The key of David opens or closes the door to the spiritual, heavenly world, it is important to be able to close the gate for our freedom.

The connection between the Greek-Latin epoch and our present epoch: philosophical thinking, where felt thinking detaches itself from the will and becomes independent, begins around the 6th century BC. This is the beginning of the last pre-Christian Michael Age (550 BC), not only in Greece, but there was also philosophical thinking in India, in China, it went through all the cultural countries of that time, and it was intensified towards the end of this Michael Age, which ended around 200 BC. There are Alexander's traits, where Greek philosophy is outwardly carried as far as India, but there were already good preconditions, the Indians themselves developed such thinking. Leucipp and Democritus spoke of atoms, which the Indians had already understood in the 6th century BC. BC. He accompanied his father on pilgrimages, he observed how the pilgrims dropped grains of rice, he picked up the lost grains of rice, he knew that a handful of rice can feed a person for the whole day, that's why: the small things matter, the whole world is built of small things (Anu), is supported by the small things, a first atomic theory was born, a spiritual atomic theory, because with the Greeks the atomic theory was already very materialistic. 

All this was triggered by this Michael impulse, which precedes the Christ impulse. A Michael Age is not as long as a cultural epoch, today we are also in a Michael Age, an Archangel Age, is not as long as a whole cultural epoch, lasts about 350 years, is connected with the lunar rhythm, a classical lunar year lasts 354 days, an old rule developed by the Chaldeans: When it comes to large cosmic dimensions, you have to convert the days that happen in a year into years, instead of 354 days, 354 years have a great significance, in the Middle Ages this was then associated with the archangel epochs, but not always exactly 354 years, not like clockwork, where there is spirituality inside, calculability ceases. Difference: What is reality? What is reality? Reality is what has become, what is left over from the past as dross, what we can attack, what no longer moves, if then through causal influence from outside. Reality has to do with that which does not yet exist, but that which creates the future, that which has an effect, always has a view into the future. That is why communication between natural scientists and anthroposophists is difficult at first, because some look at what has come into being, what laws lie in it, and project it into the future. But in the 20th century it was discovered that things don't always work like that, even in natural science the future is not always predictable, there is more at work > that was the great discovery of quantum mechanics, the so-called quantum of action, an impulse into the future that is not predictable, cannot be predicted, deterministic, no! I cannot predict the individual case. Statistically I can say the majority of cases will be like this and like that, but not in individual cases. Physics is slowly coming to the conclusion that it is not the finished reality that is important, but the active behind it that leads into the future, the non-existent, the becoming, Hans Peter Dürr, a student of Heisenberg, says that they are not particles, atoms and electrons are not real, they are not there, they only have effects, an electron does not fly on a path, it only has different effects, statistically distributed, the path is an illusion, we think it, an idea, the fixed table is not reality. A spiritual thing, but it depends on what kind of spiritual thing it is, we touch spirit or un-spirit, it is really connected with the ahrimanic, not material reality. It starts with the fact that you can dissolve material things into energy in truth. It is only warmth, only heat, imprisoned heat, which corresponds with R. Steiner's world evolution on Old Saturn, where everything arose out of warmth, behind warmth stands the willpower of spiritual beings, when this will is sacrificed, warmth arises. This is the basis of all matter today. Material things are the will of high spiritual beings (thrones), from which Old Saturn arose, what materially supports the world is the throne. Thrones give the foundation. We experience it as matter, behind it are the thrones, high spiritual entities from the first hierarchy above. Shakespeare: "We are the stuff of dreams." Substance is spirit, our material brain is also spirit, condensed spirit. R. Steiner always compared, as an image: Water freezes into ice, the solid ice is material, it is still water, can change into different forms. Liquid is ethereal, steam is spiritual, ice is physical, when it becomes solid we see it with our senses, as if we did not see the flowing and the steamy, because we experience it differently, at first anyway only as a mirror image, in our everyday consciousness. There we do not yet have the reality of the soul, that is the big lump that all spiritual seekers also have to live with. Many seekers believe: my soul is what I experience inside, every day, but that is only the reflection of the really spiritual in the physical, that is gone after death after 3 days at the latest, as long as the etheric body is not yet completely dissolved, it still retains certain sensual activities, it no longer perceives the outer world, but the experience still takes place in sensual images. Then this is gone, then we experience completely differently, so differently that we cannot describe it with words. Experiencing soul colours is already a sensual (etheric) experience, behind the colours there is a soul reality, which is like this with red and different with green, but I don't see the red or the green, but I see the soul reality behind it, which can only indicate that I say red, green, etc. a spiritual experience, express it in words, for example, green, but that is an approximation.

In fact, with the old clairvoyance it was more body-bound, clairvoyant experience was automatically translated into a sensory experience, as we also have in dreams, with modern clairvoyance this is not there, it is a purely mental experience, I cannot describe it, there are no words for it, now I have been doing spiritual exercises for 30 years and still see nothing, but perhaps we have been seeing something for 10 years but have not yet realised it, maybe we have false expectations, an aura is a hallucination, but it's about the imagination, it's only there for a moment, if I sleep through the moment, it's gone again, if I can catch it and go with it mentally, then I can see it in external timelessness, time stops running, you can move inside it, you can see the passage of time, like a film, you can go back to childhood, see the relationships, how is childhood related to old age. At death, the panorama of life, what one has experienced in this life, still has a sensual quality, a seeing with joy.

What is the relationship to our age? We are now again in a Michael Age, which began in 1879 and will last for a while, about 350 years, so we are in the middle of it, and now the task is to put this life of consciousness, this experience of thought, on a new level. The way it was prepared in the 6th century, it was a strong impulse for the incarnation of the Christ, respectively That people had an understanding of it, because through the philosophical thinking that the Greeks developed, a real self-awareness only began, in order to be able to grasp the Christ event clearly, at the same time the consciousness was strongly directed towards the outer world, the last remnants of clairvoyance were lost with the beginning of philosophy, especially among the philosophers, with the exception at the beginning of the last initiates like Heraclitus, even there the spiritual perceiving disappears, what was initiation, intuition, inspiration, becomes philosophical thinking. Goethe had both, but that is a later stage.

Theme: What becomes of our soul life? What becomes of our thought life? In Egyptian times the Sentient Soul I have developed an inner world for the first time, there is something in there, with the Greeks it becomes even clearer through the Mind and spirit soulNow, since the beginning of modern times, the Consciousness soulI can look soberly into the outside world, the Greek not yet so soberly, therefore the Greek could not bear something unaesthetic, they were not yet so interested in nature studies, above all art, experiencing beauty, they always wanted the beautiful at the same time, Good, truth, there is still this strong connection, I see outside, I think inside, but I feel in the middle, feeling somehow connects it with the Greeks, with Romans it goes more into a separation, with them courage, bravery plays a role, my courage, my strength, I have to connect it with the world outside. Today that is separated, with the beginning of the modern age I separate thinking from what is outside, I can also begin to eliminate feeling, I think quite soberly about things outside, I observe, find regularities, Galileo sees the church chandeliers swaying, he derives the laws of the pendulum, quite soberly, the swaying is regular. Why is that? In the past, people made natural history, collected objects, now thinking wants to find laws in nature, the Greek did not yet think about laws of gravitation, he thought about geometric forms, vividly, geometrically, geometric proofs, the Greeks mathematised vividly, always geometrically. The Indian has more of an arithmetical experience, living in numerical rhythms, huge epochs where something new always comes, where something new springs from the egg, something new springs from nothing, that's where our zero comes from. Zero is the fertile egg from which something new emerges, actually nothing, but when something is fertilised inside, something new emerges, that's what the Indians brought into the numbers, that's why zero was important, that's where the decimal system emerges from. The Romans reckoned with Roman numerals, so it's a bit tedious to reckon with larger numbers, to say the least. India > Arabs > that's how the numbers come to us, we are the last to get it, it all comes from there - a different way of thinking.

We need another way of thinking and experiencing today. Today - especially since the dawn of the Michael Age - we must enter into a way of thinking that finds its way back to where it actually comes from, from spiritual, clairvoyant experience, that is where it really comes from. Greek mythology is still a reminder of something seen clairvoyantly, from which philosophy slowly arises, there it becomes thought, but which in truth has a clairvoyant origin, from which it comes. It is precisely in thinking that it goes up to intuition, in which we connect with other spiritual beings, when we grasp a thought, form a concept, then that is an encounter with a spiritual being, that is behind it, we don't get that with our intellect, we make definitions, But there is little reality behind it, in truth we have to build on basic concepts that go further and further back into the clairvoyant, into the inspirational, then we also understand what the imaginatively seen image means and finally we unite with the being from whom it emanates, every thought, every idea, every concept is an encounter with a spiritual entity, when we think of a rose, as a concept, there is a spiritual entity behind it, namely the group soul or the group spirit, from which the genus of the rose is created, which creates the genus rose, and we wouldn't recognise a rose as a rose if we didn't unconsciously have this encounter with the spiritual, we don't become aware of it, we also do everything we can not to recognise it by placing definitions and demarcations over it, the leaves look like this, 5-count, for example. B., but that's abstract, but there we only see the corpse of the plant, the dead remains, in that we're great, biology and biochemistry is only "ghouls", we've worked that out to excellence, we study the reality, the dead, the reality of the rose is where it's still alive, but not in the laboratory after I've cut it off. Then it is dead. That would have to begin, that is the great task, the consciousness soul, which we first trained, developed on the dead outside world, in natural science we always think in small objects, that is the objective, reality, we do not grasp the liquid, not even the gaseous, gas theory. The pressure of a gas is created by small spheres, molecules, when I heat it, the spheres move faster, thus the gas pressure becomes stronger, with this I have described the gas as a physical phenomenon, when we breathe we experience the gas, if I want to understand air, I have to study the breathing process, not only mechanically, but everything it means for life, what it means mentally: inhaling = becoming more conscious, exhaling = becoming a little more dream-like. If you inhale very strongly, you become a bit more awake, more aware, you feel yourself more strongly, also through the tension, if I let go, I become a bit more dreamlike, that can become pleasant. Because waking consciousness can hurt, consciousness goes so quietly in the direction of pain, consciousness and pain are connected, waking consciousness is subdued pain, without pain there is no consciousness, the more the living the duller the consciousness becomes, also in our organism, from the building forces, where life is exuberant we feel little, at most a feeling of well-being.

But we have a pronounced feeling of pain, which means that we must learn to have a deeper consciousness of that which goes beyond reality, it is the dead from the past, it is the unreal. Reality is not yet there sensually, but it builds the future, when I turn my gaze there, I am in the spiritual with my consciousness, then I am in the resurrection forces, not in the dying forces, that is what began with the Mystery of Golgotha, where resurrection begins in thinking, in the thinking process, it is not for nothing that the cross stands on the place of the skull (= Golgotha), above everything dies first, through this our consciousness arises, our modern abstract thinking, that has died off, the last remnant of clairvoyance is finally completely outside, the outer science insists on this with a certain right, it wants nothing else in it but what has died off. The human intellect is supposed to order and find regularities. But it only looks for traces from the past, just as we find fossils in nature, I can put them next to each other, then I get a theory of evolution, as Charles Darwin did with great merit, but with the belief that from the simple thing the complicated has developed externally by itself, materially from one thing to the next. But that is not true, in truth spiritual impulses come into it, they are the active thing that drives evolution forward, without which nothing happens. We should recognise that today! To do this, we need the counter-impulse of external natural science, which fulfils its task precisely by not letting in anything spiritual, how far can I get with this external observation, in physics we are already reaching the point that this is not actually reality, these are only appearances, behind them there is something active. Physics has already come this far. Elementary particles, atoms, these are not things. Behind them there is something active. Something begins there because one has consistently gone the way to the end. If you spint of something spiritual beforehand, but you don't perceive it at all, you only think about it, then I get into the unhealthy. This is how many unhealthy things came about, for example the body/soul problem, which has been haunting philosophy since modern times. Rene Decartes: "I think, therefore I am!" But R. Steiner says: "I think that's why I'm not!" Because in thinking I only have a mirror image, I am not in my reality, I experience myself in the mirror image only as a mirror image and not in my reality. Decartes introduced the body/soul problem into the world, the human being does have a soul/spirit, whereby the distinction between soul and spirit is unclear, it is a mishmash. The other is the physical. Decartes said that animals are only physical, they have no soul. You have to explain them mechanically. With humans, Descartes recoils, because I experience something there, that also exists, therefore there are Res extensa (the extended thing, the physical, the material), the animals have that and we have that too, but there is also thinking, Res cogitans (soul/spiritual substance). How do they interact with each other? How does the non-extended spirit set the extended body in motion? Descartes says that the pineal gland in the brain has the property of not being paired, and that this is the point where the spiritual attacks. But how is this supposed to work in concrete terms? Neuroscience today says there is nothing spiritual, we only investigate the material. And they are on the right track. Because that's not how it works. Neuroscientists are still arguing about it today, today they say we only have the material, curious in neuroscience, everything is done by the brain, everything is material, but why do we have a consciousness then? Why do we need it? Then consciousness is completely superfluous. You come up against limits because of that, that's ingenious about the natural sciences, that they always come up against their own limits, they're only supposed to go further. It is better to let the neuroscientists go to the end, only to go further, it is much better to let them go further with materialism than to artificially introduce some kind of spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the human being is more than something material, many theories, it doesn't work, for that you would have to be able to think the world spiritually at all, science has to get there, to think the material spiritually, not spirit and matter, but matter is a manifestation of the spiritual, to be able to recognise that is one of the consequences of the Christ's life on earth.

The age of Michael is characterised by the further development of this thinking. R. Steiner says Michael is the administrator of cosmic intelligence, not our present intellect, but a cosmic wisdom = social rules of interaction between the spiritual entities, which tasks they take on, the interaction of the spiritual entities, that is an expression of cosmic intelligence, the reality is always spiritual entities, it is a hierarchy of spiritual entities, starting from the Godhead (Trinity) > angels > elemental beings > we human beings as beginning spiritual entities, that is the reality, not in its physical form, but what is spiritually behind it. That then also builds the forms of appearance, up to the densest material form of appearance. This is the antithesis of what materialism claims today, but which in truth is no longer tenable in physics today.

In 1879 the Michael Age begins. Before that, a strong conflict starts, which begins with the end of the Goethe Age. This Michael Age is preparing itself in the spiritual world. Before the Michael Age dawns, it prepares itself in the spiritual world. R. Steiner calls it the spiritual Michael School. A community of spiritual beings, with which people are also connected who are striving spiritually, those who are between death and a new birth or who are just living on earth, such a one was Goethe. These impulses came into Goethe's work in the "Fairy Tale of the Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily", from which the Mystery Dramas emerged. This also has an effect on other works by Goethe, not consciously, but as imaginations, certain images, from which he creates his works, Goethe writes very pictorially, very pictorial experience, he wanted to become a painter until his Italian journey, he had already written Werther at that time, but he was not sure where his artistic talent lay. After he returned from his Italian journey, he decided: my task is to write poetry, to write, he writes pictorially, unlike Schiller, who is musical, although not a musician, outwardly unmusical, not having played an instrument himself, but in his poetry he is musical, a melody comes to him and he then writes according to the melody. Schiller makes music in his poetry. Goethe, however, paints in his poems, through his imaginations he catches something from the Michael School, out of this arises the fairy tale, to depict pictorially imaginatively the spiritual path of development of a human being who develops a consciousness that is appropriate to our present cultural epoch. Rudolf Steiner brought the imagination even more clearly into the mystery dramas. He wanted the fairy tale as a play. In the first drama you can still see that the characters come from the fairy tale, the two will-o'-the-wisps, Kapesius and Strada. Maria is the beautiful lily in the drama. These are impulses from the supernatural Michael school. Goethe dies in 1832, what happens then?

Then the technical age begins rapidly, the materialistic age, the first railways, railways important for Steiner's life, because his father was a railwayman (stationmaster). R. Steiner grew up in nature and with the most modern technology of the time, the earth was changed by the rails that were laid, a strong ahrimanic impulse (materialism) came. This is connected with Michael's fight with the ahrimanic dragon, but even Michael is not able to redeem Ahriman, he can fight him, drive him out of the spiritual world, Ahriman comes from below and wants to go up to the spiritual source, he wants to conquer the source, but that must not be, Michael pushes him where he belongs, we now have him on earth. This means a strong fertilisation of human thought by the ahrimanic element. Through the overthrow of the ahrimanic dragon, the first thing we get is the ahrimanic intellect, the Arabs were the great intellectuals of the Middle Ages, they pioneered this, they also have an ahrimanic background, although these peoples have something luciferic, but for that very reason they need an ahrimanic impulse to balance them. This impulse, which came from the Arabs, connects with the ahrimanic forces that are crashing down upon the earth, that is one thing, the other thing is, if people, if they do not turn to the ahrimanic forces one-sidedly, but also open themselves to the Michael forces, then they can get access to the cosmic intelligence through Michael, who remains in the spiritual world, but in a conscious form in freedom with full I-consciousness. The same power as the Christ-power. "The same authority of the I shall be his which I have received of my Father".

There is a long way to go before we can confidently dispose of this power. But we should start with it. In the Apocalypse, it is the 5th cultural epoch, the community of Sardis, that corresponds to this. In principle, it is possible for human beings to become clairvoyant by their own power, by bringing back the thinking from which it originated, from the clairvoyant. But not unconsciously, but with the same alertness as I study nature, look into the microscope, study the details, also turn to the spiritual with the same alertness. That must now begin to seek the way to it. All human beings have imaginations, otherwise we could not live at all. The art is to be awake enough to be able to grasp the imaginations. That is the problem. Getting away from thinking only about reality, but thinking that also serves action. Thinking in a lively, creative way, not just depicting laws, because that way we don't grasp the forces at work, because reality prepares something. It is the becoming. That is the impulse that goes into the future. Steiner totally defended Ernst Haeckel, the German representative of Darwinism. Although Haeckel was a materialist, he was a pope in a previous incarnation. He never scolded Darwin. It is necessary that this be discovered. Only through this antithesis will one find the spiritual side to it. Otherwise one only gets into spiritual reveries, like a body-soul problem, how is it all connected. Only materialism lived out, fully conceived, helps to sweep away the one-sidedness. Through downright strict materialism this is swept away. A materialism that reaches its limits in order to come to the truly spiritual. Otherwise it is only Luciferian dreams.

We must add something else, a scientific occupation with the spiritual. With an alert mind, soberly, with love and with humility that does not make us small, not as servants of God but as small partners. That is also the Christian impulse to become partners. Not servants, but co-workers for the future. Spirit is love. With an awake unsentimental element that has nothing of the rapturous. Like much of contemporary esotericism, which is in the rapturous, which fails in reality, I need full wakefulness and awareness, not dreamy, rapturous. This includes recognising my abilities. I w i l l , out of my impulses. We have gone through many incarnations, we have developed a self. Each I is different from that of another person. We have become individualities. Each of us has developed very special abilities. We appear in different personalities during the series of incarnations, through this we have developed abilities on this path of development, we may give these abilities away with love. The spiritual is a source that generates something out of nothing. Creative generates out of nothing. It is a source that must bubble. If nothing comes, the spirit is not there, then it is asleep. Element of love, giving oneself away, otherwise the spirit is not there. Spirit is not possible without love. To give away what I have in abilities in service. That is one side, the second side is to be able to accept what others give. But not in order to reproduce it exactly like that, but what I receive is a new ferment for me that gives me new powers, but perhaps I do something completely different with it. I have to be able to give a gift selflessly and say, do what you want with it. The more I give away, the more powers come in. And then release it. Because I must not restrict anyone's freedom. Give out of freedom, take in freedom. "Blessed are the givers, for to them shall be given."

Apocalypse of John: "And to the angel of the church at Sardis write, saying to you, he who has power over the seven creative spirits and the seven stars, I see through your doings; you have the name of a living being, and yet you are dead!" The name has something to do with the I. You should be a living I, but you are dead in your thinking. "Strive to awaken in your consciousness, and awaken what is still alive in your soul, lest it also die." Intellect and science cannot grasp spirit, the spiritual cannot be grasped with it, all that is dead thinking, all that I can calculate, can calculate, that only grasps what has become, reality, but not reality. It only grasps what comes from the past and slowly decays, but not what the future will become. What we need now, in addition to dead thinking, is resurrection in thinking, creative thinking, developing thinking through this until it comes into contact with the spiritual world, comes into contact with beings, with other spiritual entities, with the cosmic intelligence that Michael administers, there is nothing else involved than this social community of spiritual beings, a real spiritual deed is creative insofar as it is in truth attuned with other spiritual beings, thus an impulse arises that has a connection with everything, if I really create from the spiritual, then I create from the whole, with all spiritual beings, they are within. Goethe expressed it: "Idea", idea cannot be plural, there is only the one great idea, because everything is connected, in the material I can separate, in the spiritual it is always a unity, I always create from the whole, and yet it is I who create from the whole and next to me there is also someone who creates from this whole, who creates something else, we include everyone. We are connected with the whole spiritual entities - inseparably. The adversaries are also included, we must not get into any one-sidedness. The kingdom of the Christ is the same kingdom as the kingdom of Ahriman, both are connected with the earth, still increased Ahrimanic forces deep in the earth. By developing spiritually and seizing our freedom, by doing so we redeem Ahriman, for his task was to help lead us to freedom, to the extent that we use this freedom, become spiritually active creatively out of nothingness, look at reality, not only at reality, bring about the future, then Ahriman has fulfilled his task and he may rejoin, may be taken up again. Love, however, not as a sentimental feeling, like "I love all people!", but it is connected with a creative task, then it is love, more than a feeling, creative power, love = giving away my spiritual being to the world, giving away my being to the people around me. But each person has their own abilities and tasks. If I do not make them available, then they are missing. Every human being is counted on. Every person who fails to be active out of creative love contributes to the impoverishment of the world. What the New Jerusalem (New Jupiter according to R. Steiner) will look like is already being determined by us now, because the world development is there for us, that is the intention, the plan of creation, to create people who will carry the plan of creation for the first time in freedom. Now in our age is the appropriate moment to become aware of this. The people for whom this light is dawning are the modern people. The people who only cling to the past (reality) enter into a covenant with Ahriman, who can juggle well with the old, combine it anew, but no reality arises from it, only deception and illusion.

We are realists today and live in a totally illusory world in every respect. Covid - what is really going on? No one knows reality. Presumptive knowledge. People insist on numbers. The statistics are right, but the facts are not. There is a lot of illusion.

Apocalypse: "I cannot confirm to you that your actions have full reality before the divine face. Revive in yourself the memory of all that you have received and heard from the spiritual worlds. Nurture it within you and change your mind. If you do not awaken to a higher consciousness, I will come like a thief, you will not know at what hour I come upon you. However, you have a few names in Sardis who have not stained their robes. In white robes they will walk my paths, they are worthy of it. He who overcomes shall likewise be clothed in white robes, and I will not blot out his name from the book of life. I will confess his name before the face of my Father and before his angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." The secret name of man is the I. The unspeakable name of God. Everyone can only say I to himself. "Not I, but the Christ in me." That is, the real me in me knows it.

To the question of a participant: The soul is the first creative thing that the spirit brings forth. By transforming the astral body. The soul members are formed by the I. The psychic comes into being through the creative activity of the I. In the beginning unconsciously or subconsciously. Since modern times it can happen more and more consciously (consciousness soul). When I succeed in turning the soul towards the spiritual, in turning consciousness towards the spiritual, then I reach the immortal soul. Most of the soul, our everyday life, is gone with death! The I goes beyond one incarnation. We do not exhaust ourselves in a single personality, but in a multitude of personalities. It was so in the past, with the exception of a few high initiates, that the immortality of the personal soul did not exist. The spiritual continues. But the personality built up in a particular earth-life blows away, it is gone. But I learn from the personality as which it was embodied, but from the one quality of incarnation it takes nothing with it into the spiritual. That there really is something immortal in the soul, the possibility only begins since the turn of time, it begins with the I becoming capable, Astral from nowhere out of it independently without help. This is essential, because even initiates in pre-Christian times already transformed astral things into nothingness. Nevertheless, it was not 100 per cent theirs, because they could not freely dispose of this creative power. Basically, however, this has only been possible since Christ's life on earth. Now it is only ours, i.e. when we begin to creatively change our soul out of the spiritual, consciously and out of freedom, we can take that with us in the future, because we have it as a creative power. The astral will blow away, but we can create it again at any time. What was useful, we can incorporate into the soul in the next incarnation. We can incorporate the fruits into our next personality.

Every human encounter should be immersed in love. Love has nothing to do with sentimental feelings. It can lead to hard-hitting arguments (example: drug addict. An argument can save him, that is the way of love, but a feigned pity and giving in is not, that is not really love). The pouring out of the bowls of wrath is an expression of divine love. Love consists of helping the other person to get rid of everything that is negative in his soul, to transform it. That means pain. At the end of the cultural epochs, it turns into a battle of all against all, a spiritual conflict where love is won precisely because everyone has to deal with the other. In the depths of our soul there are still many dark forces that we cannot yet imagine. But we are moving towards that time. We have been loading karma on ourselves for many generations. The worst things come from the early days. That's when we made the most mistakes, right into the black magic. That will slowly come out. The apocalypse predicts this for us. The animals are all coming out of us. We have to arm ourselves to deal with them. The struggle is to redeem these animals through love, that is, to dissolve them. I can drive them out, but then they are still there. They then destroy somewhere else. Dissolve them in love. Transforming them by connecting with them in love. Giving them my positive powers. Love of enemies in Christianity. Goes beyond the slap in the face. It is mental battles. It will require strong forces. At the end of the apocalypse, we are in times where we will no longer be corporeal. Incorporeal. The first death has already taken place (last incarnation). There is no more spatial separation then. Everything in each other. Redemptive power for the soul forces. Then also in the etheric, for this we need the Christ forces. The spiritual is our task.