18th Lecture on the Apocalypse of John (Documentation)

We are standing in the Apocalypse before the throne in heaven, the throne in the centre surrounded by 24 other thrones on which the 24 elders sit. We talked last time about what these 24 elders are all about. A short repetition, because it is important and gives a glimpse of how complex the whole world development is when you look at it from a spiritual perspective. For our earth evolution is preceded by three other planetary states of evolution. I.e. it does not start with our earth evolution, but it is preceded by three stages: Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon. 

The old Saturn was a pure world of heat; on the old Sun, on the one hand, there was light as a more refined state compared to heat, and on the other hand, there was a condensation into air, into gas. So refinement and condensation belong together. In the case of the Old Moon, there is a further condensation to the aqueous and a refinement to the so-called sound ether. What is the sound ether? It has something to do with harmonic musical relationships, with laws, with numerical relationships, which is why the sound ether is also called number ether, which is the area from which the laws of nature that we have today originate. They come from the ether of sound. That is to say, a certain order arises in the whole, which did not exist before, which only begins to develop slowly during the Old Moon, so that we now have it at our disposal on the fourth stage of the Earth's development. 

I.e. one has to think that our earth's development, if I look at it with all the laws of nature, that is approximately the area that natural science can survey today. If it goes back to the formation of our universe with the laws of nature that are valid, within this universe the formation of our sun, our earth, etc., then that is only a middle stage, which has already been preceded by three stages and which will be followed by three more. And only the whole gives the total development. We can foresee the future because we can estimate certain possibilities, especially in the etheric sphere, but exactly how it will happen, yes, that the future will show. Of the possibilities that are given, certain realities will come to pass in time. That will depend very much on us in the future. In the past it was set in motion much more strongly by spiritual entities that are above us. Now, beginning at the turn of the times, and now more and more, we are involved in the creation of our earth. In other words, the future will depend very much on us. That is to say, we are human beings on our earth today!

From a spiritual perspective, being human means first and foremost developing a human "I". The I is the spiritual core of the human being, that which actually constitutes the human being. This is the state to which he also returns after death, ultimately he withdraws into this I-area. There he takes something of the soul with him, as far as he has spiritualised it, has really made it his own. Everything else is a shell that is made available to us during our life on earth, that is bestowed upon us. At the end of development it will be so far that we will be able to produce, to maintain, to use all these limbs by our own power. However, in a different form than we know today. 

What are these other members of the human being? What we know today as the material body, which should more correctly be called the physical body. This physical body, as it will be in its true form one day, as it was in the past in a different way, is actually something supersensible. One should not believe it, because the physical body appears to be the most material thing, that is, not at all supersensible. But this is only an effect of the opposing forces that are also involved in development. But this effect of the opposing forces is necessary to enable us to become completely free beings, which is a special feature, a privilege, because even high beings who are above us do not have that in this way. Instead, they are the direct fulfilment of the divine will. 

We can also refuse the divine will, that is the principle of freedom. But we can therefore also turn to this divine will out of freedom. We human beings, as we are today on earth, have already been preceded by other beings who also went through their I-development, who were also human beings in this sense, but in a different way, because they could not develop this freedom that we have today. On the Old Saturn they were those entities that we today refer to as Urengel These are already very sublime entities, they are also called Archai called, from the Greek, gr: archei Primordial Beginning. They were actually present at this primordial beginning because they became spiritual entities at that time, because they received their I at that time. There is not only one group of these archaic entities, but there are 7 groups of archai. This is related to the fact that a planetary development goes through 7 life stages. At each of these stages of life, certain entities develop their I. Hence 7 types of archai. 

It is similar on the Old Sun. There, those entities go through their human development, that is, their I-development, which today we call the Archangel e.g. Archangel Gabriel, Archangel Michael, etc. There are also 7 leading archangels, because there are also 7 groups in total, because this Old Sun goes through 7 great stages of life. 

It is similar on the Old moon, this already liquid to viscous world. There the Angel their level of humanity, that is, those entities that we call angels today, at that time they were human beings in a certain sense, but also under different conditions as we are today and there too there are 7 groups, that is, 21 groups of human beings who preceded us.

Where do we stand today? Today we are on the 4th life stage of earth evolution. This is the middle of the earth's development, 3 have already preceded and another 3 will follow. The apocalypse will of course have to deal intensively with these 3 following stages of development, and it does so because it foresees how the earth's development will continue. But 3 stages of the earth's development are already behind us, people have already received their I there too, so there are still 3 groups = 24. These are the 24 elders. The beings who preceded us in being human in a certain way. 

But there is something else that is important: from all these groups, however, adversary beings have also emerged who have been assigned to their task, who have predestined themselves for this task by being somewhat behind the normal development, i.e. by not having developed all the powers that they could develop. This is one of the selection criteria for them to become adversary beings. One must not see this lagging behind in development only negatively or as a failure, but one can also see it in such a way that they thereby preserve certain older abilities and refrain from developing other abilities. Or they are invited to renounce, because they did not become adversaries out of complete freedom, but were appointed to do so. 

Now, the older the time of the retarded beings, the stronger they are because, if we take those who are retarded from the time of Old Saturn, they are already on the level of the primal angels, that is, they are quite high spiritual beings, but perhaps they have not quite reached this goal, but they can still be classified in this category. Therefore, these retarded entities from the Old Saturn Time be the strongest opposing forces. To be clear, it is the opposing forces that are very much in the mix today, the so-called "opposing forces". Asura's. Indian: A-Suras. Light spirits are the Suras, these are the really advanced primal angels, they are connected with the light powers. The dark ones are the asuras, forces of darkness, of non-light, a = negation in Sanskrit. These asuras are very strong today, especially since the end of the 20th century, in the underground in truth already during the 20th century. They have become especially so since the turn of the century. 

One category below that, which are somewhat weaker, are those entities that are on the Old Sun the next embodiment of our earth, these are the ahrimanic entitiesThey are related in origin to those entities that we now call archangels, which are the opposing forces to them, quasi dark archangels. 

The mildest form of the adversaries are those who are on the Old moon the third embodiment of our earth, these are the Luciferic forces. They're about angel level. That is at least the starting point. That is to say, it is quite typical that the adversaries are actually in a very close connection from the beginning, but also through this, with our human development, because they are those who have remained behind in their human development at that time or have been held back. This is exactly the effect they have on us today, that they have a restraining effect on our development. That is the resistance that we always have to rub up against somewhere.

A side note on this: It would be even more dangerous if there were adversary powers that came from an even higher hierarchy than these three, e.g. from a hierarchy like the Elohim. These are the creator gods described in the Bible, "In the beginning the Elohim created the heavens and the earth".who are a community of creator spirits, they are directly above the primal angels, so they are more powerful and stronger. One may ask: When did the Elohim become spiritual beings? Before and beyond the development that we can survey, i.e. at the beginning with Old Saturn, they are already present as spiritual entities, i.e. they already have their I, they have developed it in other ways than the archangels, the primal angels, the angels and we, outside our development cycle. World evolution is something huge! We are not only dealing with our small earth development, but there are 7 stages to it, and that is basically not all, apart from that there are still developments on which all the other higher spiritual entities have emerged, so it results in a huge living structure that is behind it. Perhaps we can also understand from this how difficult it is for natural scientists today to really explain the origin of the world, because they do not have an overview of this wide horizon, which is still in the periphery, even apart from it. Because they can only look at the beginning of the development of our present cosmos. That is the maximum where one can look. But with God, that is not the beginning of development. There is much that precedes it. There is much that cannot be described as preceding, therefore I only say apart from it, because ultimately with Old Saturn, time only begins to run in our sense. It will be over when the seventh planetary embodiment of our Earth has come to an end, then time in our sense will cease. That is to say, time is not what is commonly imagined today, because the endless thread comes from somewhere in infinity, and goes somewhere into the future into infinity. Time is actually a time organism that has a closed form, that is also closed in itself in terms of time. In addition, there are other developments that are perhaps also time organisms in themselves, but I cannot classify them in terms of time before or after, but I can only somehow say off of it. I can't think of a better word for it. 

There is still a lot ahead of us to understand all this. But it is not so important for us at first. It is difficult enough and sufficient for the time being that we have an overview of our time organism and these are these 7 planetary stages of development, which in turn are subdivided into 7 stages of life (polar, hyperboreal, etc.). This is just to give you an idea of the background to the whole thing. The interesting thing about such an organism of time, to state this decisively at this point, is that the understanding of time within the organism of time, i.e. within these 7 stages, we have to get away from our present classical perception of time as a linear experience of time, the flow from the past into the future. Time is a living organism where everything is connected with everything else, i.e. the beginning of the primordial is connected with the end of development, even in between, there are always connections with each other, it is an organism, but not a spatial but a temporal one, where the earlier is connected with the later, where in a certain sense the overall development is present at every moment according to its possibility. That is something quite incredible. Only here in the physical, as it manifests itself physically, does it spread out for us in such a way that we then have this passage of time. But it started once and it will end once. Just as it is with our life on earth, it begins once and it ends once, then it passes through the spiritual, comes out again, etc.

That will be one of the very important things, that we develop a different understanding of time than we have in everyday life, and not only in everyday life, but also in the sciences. Starting in the 20th century and today in physics, we are slowly coming to understand the concept of time. That should actually be changed. Just as the concept of space, as we classically imagine it, is simply not sufficient to explain the physical facts. Today, we are beginning to realise that time is something else. We are beginning to suspect it. But there is much more to it. If you want to gain an understanding of biology, how living beings develop on earth, then in reality the linear concept of time is not enough. You also have to see how later things have an effect on earlier things and vice versa. How time is an organism in which, however, in every detail in every moment, the whole is somehow reflected in a specific way and is inside. 

To give you an idea, you all know a hologram, it's on credit cards, on banknotes too, this shimmering thing, there's an image inside, it makes a spatial impression, although it's a flat thing, a spatial hologram. The exciting thing about this hologram: if I cut it up, then the whole image is inside every little shred, I can reconstruct the whole image, it only becomes blurrier, but always the whole image, in every point of the hologram the whole is present. It's similar in time. In every moment, however, the whole is present in a slightly blurred way, not in all details, but it is there. This is necessary for the overall development to make sense, for the past to be connected with the future, to play together, not a blind development into nothingness, but something comes towards us from the future, something works from the past and only where this collides in the present does something happen. Something has an effect there. These are things that are only in the 24 elders. In concrete terms, this means that the effect of these spiritual entities, also as they were then and as they will be in the future, play a role here and now, i.e. something from the past has an effect, but the stages that come from the future also have an effect, because if we look at it closely, we have said: 24 elders, because we have 3 planetary stages with 7 periods each behind us, plus 3 from the Earth's development (age Saturn, Sun and Moon), we are standing in the middle today. How does it look when I look into the future? 3 will still follow during our earth evolution, then another 3 planetary states (New Jupiter, New Venus and Vulcan), then there are 24 periods ahead of us, there again and again beings will develop their I, i.e. go through their humanity stage, this also has an effect on us already. That which has not yet happened externally in physical experience, however, already has an effect from the future. You could say that 24 impulses from the past have an effect, and you would have to say 24 younger ones, which is not written in the Apocalypse, but you would have to introduce the term, 24 younger or youngest ones, who come to meet us from the future. 

All this determines what happens now, here and today, that's how big the horizon should actually be. If we try with our little minds today to deduce what is happening today causally from what happened a few days before, then that is something very small. It may be logical, it may be understandable, but in reality it doesn't apply to the big world events at all. When two bullets collide, I can calculate what happens. If there are several, it is no longer possible. In physics, you can solve the two-body problem, but a three-body problem can no longer be solved exactly. I can only approximate more, unpredictable things already arise. In truth, this is because the distant past is involved and the distant future is already working its way in. That is always inside. We are already moving beyond the predictable. It has to be like that when the spiritual works. Then we get beyond the calculable, because the calculable is always only the dross that falls out of the spiritual. That is what has solidified. As long as the process is in motion, the result is open in truth. There is a great deal behind this development of the earth. It is all in the image of the throne with the 24 elders behind it. This is simply a repetition and deepening of what we already discussed last time. 

Before the throne there are "the sea of glass"is also an important term. This sea of glass is supposed to indicate the crystalline mineral kingdom, which only developed during the evolution of the earth. I.e. on the Old Moon this crystalline kingdom did not yet exist, it was a liquid to viscous state, on the Old Sun, which was gaseous, even less so, and on Old Saturn it was only heat at all. The crystalline element did not exist then. It only exists today during the development of the Earth and particularly strongly in the phase in which we are now standing. At the beginning of the earth's development it takes some time until the liquid begins to solidify into a crystal, and the crystalline will also dissolve again in the future. But now it is important for us because it gives us the solid ground for our I-development. Only we have this solid ground. The 24 elders who preceded us did not have it, they had at most the liquid state, an I that one acquires in a liquid embodiment is simply of a different nature than one that also takes the crystalline element into itself. 

This crystalline element was very strongly spiritually penetrated by the Christ, he preceded us, but we are to follow him, to penetrate this mineral kingdom with the power of our I. This is indicated very quietly in the biblical story in the New Testament when it is about the crucifixion, about the death of the Christ. This is hinted at very quietly in the biblical narrative in the New Testament, when it is about the crucifixion, about the death of the Christ, but where it is said, "I don't want him to get his leg broken". This seems to be external, because it was customary for the legs of the crucified to be broken, but this is not meant externally, it is implied that the Christ, precisely during the death of the cross, where he hangs on the cross and enters into this death, completely also penetrates the physical crystalline element of his body down to the bones during this time. That is the essence. That gives our I the special quality that it is connected with the crystalline element, very strongly, crystal power, crystal = the Christian universe, the Christian universe, that is inside the word, not necessarily etymologically derivable, but it is inside wonderfully. One can use this image because there is a truth behind it, i.e. in the crystalline there is really a very special I-power, which the Christ has applied in order to penetrate the mineral-crystalline. And thus the hardest, firmest thing there can be. In the future, when the next planetary embodiments come, there will be nothing more dense than this element, i.e. today we are in the densest, firmest state, which on the one hand is the deadest, but which must be revived through the spiritual - until the resurrection in the end. That lies within the I-power of the Christ. And it is also in our I-power, when it takes up this Christ-power within itself, precisely the "equal authority of the I" receives. That is why this remark about the sea of glass in the Apocalypse is of great importance. 

We can now go further with this. We have the image with the throne, with the one sitting on it, the 24 thrones around it, the sea of glass in front of it. What is the next step? "And I looked, and behold in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book with an outer writing and an inner writing, sealed with 7 seals. And I saw an angel of great strength proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book and to loose its seals? But no being in heaven and on earth and under the earth was able to open the book and read in it. I had to cry a lot because no one proved worthy to open the book and read it. Then one of the elders said to me, 'Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah has gained the victory, the Root of David, he can open the book with its 7 seals. And I looked, and there stood in the midst of the throne of the 4 beasts, and in the midst of the elders a lamb, as though it were already sacrificed. It had 7 horns and 7 eyes. These were the 7 divine creative spirits to whom the whole earth was assigned as a place of activity. The Lamb approached and took the book from the right hand of the one on the throne. And when he took the book, the 4 living beings and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb. Each held a harp, and a golden bowl of incense in his hand, these are the prayers of those who are devoted to the Spirit. And they sing a new song, you are worthy to receive the book and to loose its seals, for you were sacrificed and bought for God by your blood people from every tribe and tongue and people and race. You made them kings and priests for our God. They will be kings over the kingdom of the earth." 

A great image, the lamb in the middle, the sacrificial lamb, an image for the Christ, i.e. the Christ is the only one who can open this book with the seven seals. And you have to awaken this power in yourself in order to understand what will now follow in the Apocalypse. In other words, we will only have a real understanding of what is to come if we can awaken this Christ power in ourselves through our own I, in our own I, and actually awaken it actively; it is not only a question of knowledge, but it is a doing, a spiritual doing above all. And only out of this spiritual action is it possible in truth to really understand the images that are now described in the Apocalypse and to lead one's own actions out of this understanding. That means Apocalypsis of Jesus ChristThe unveiling of the Christ, the unveiling of the Christ in one's own spiritual activity.  

R. Steiner expressed it beautifully in a series of lectures he gave to the priests of the Christian Community. There is a cycle dedicated to the Apocalypse, which he gave because he thought that the Apocalypse of John is the priestly book par excellence. My postscript to this is: it does not only concern the ordained priests of the Christian Community or other priests, but it concerns us all, because we have just read it: "You have made them kings and priests to our God." So this concerns each and every one of us. Everyone who develops the I-power in himself in this Christian sense becomes both king and priest, both at the same time. We remember that in order for the Christ to incarnate on earth, two Jesus boys had to be born, one from the royal line (the Solomon Jesus) and one from the priestly line (the Nathan Jesus). Both had to unite in one person so that the Christ could incarnate with the baptism of the Jordan. For the future, every human being is called to unite both sides in himself. There should be no earthly leader who does not feel the priesthood in himself at the same time.

That is, his activity is not only determined by the outer world, but also by the inner world, by the spiritual world. And conversely, there is no priest who says that I am only responsible for the spiritual and that someone else should do the outer world. Rather, I must also be able to be king, i.e. the leading person in the outer world, to be able to practically tackle life. That is becoming more and more important. Of course, this is especially true for all initiates. As a rule, it will no longer be a fruitful path to withdraw somewhere into solitude for one's whole life. One can do that as a preparation for a year, but with the aim of then really placing oneself in the middle of the world, in the middle of the crossroads and being active in the midst of the greatest hustle and bustle. Just there, where things are quite unspiritual. This is the task facing every spiritual aspirant today. On all of us who strive in this direction. R. Steiner said to the priests of the Christian Community: "It is useless only to study and comment on the Apocalypse, that leads nowhere, but you must become apocalyptics yourselves, you must actually "write" your own Apocalypse. Writing not necessarily in the form of a book, but in the form of your life, i.e. we are called to write our own individual apocalypse. This is the starting point from which the opening of the seals is made possible. 

Up to this point, where we have read, it is still possible to study to some extent, one gets something of the content that is in there, one perhaps still fails to make it effective, but one at least understands it somehow. But if we want to grasp the rest, then we have to become aware of the fact that it is connected with a spark already out of the I, i.e. creatively shaping our own apocalypse with the life we lead. Then we have become apocalyptics. By realising this in our lives. Don't be frightened, the dimension is of course huge, but start small, in the small modest area, the immediate area is in the human encounter, with another human being, a single other human being, with several other human beings, it starts there in the very small circle, it's not that we have to lift the whole world straight away, that would be missed, we wouldn't succeed straight away, but it starts where we meet other human beings. There we have the chance to become apocalyptics, i.e. to encourage each other in the spiritual realm by beginning to reveal this I-power that works in us and through it the Christ-power, to stimulate this in others and vice versa, that we awaken each other. That is the important thing! 

Today we are very much in the age of individualism, which is good in itself. The negative shadow side is egoism. Where there is light, there is also shadow, which must be dissolved at some point, but this individualism is not to be understood as isolation, so to speak, everyone withdraws to his or her own and then remains isolated, but rather there is an exchange between the individuals. That is the important thing that leads to the future. We have spoken of the next cultural epoch that is approaching us, the 6th post-Atlantean cultural epoch. R. Steiner calls it the Slavic culture, because it will carry something of the soul element of the present Slavic peoples. But of course it will be a worldwide culture, just as we have a worldwide culture today. Externally, it is a very materialistic culture, but there we have achieved this unification, because there is a mobile phone in every African village, we have that in common, the Eskimos, the Aborigines, at least many of them. That is something in common. But it is the external. 

But in the future it will be a matter of sharing the spiritual-cultural with each other. Therefore, in our 5th cultural epoch, the very great difficult task is that the peoples and individuals really meet each other. With the most diverse mentalities. Where people from cultures with a gap of thousands of years between them come together. The past is just as important as the future, which comes to us from the future. There is a good reason why some peoples or some groups of people still cultivate an old culture today and others perhaps anticipate a later one. That has to be there. That is good, but we have to learn to deal with it, i.e. to live together with each other. What we are already experiencing to some extent today in terms of mixtures of peoples, movements of peoples, will continue to grow enormously. It will grow until humanity is completely mixed and we can no longer speak of individual peoples, let alone races. Many things will change. The physicality of human beings will also change. Even the gender characteristics will change. They will converge. More and more. Until in the 6th - 7th millennium it will be so far that procreation will no longer be possible.

Then also hardly any more with external aids. Then we will go through our last earthly incarnation. The incarnations on earth began sometime in the past and they will end sometime. As we have already heard, in the not so distant future. The 6th-7th millennium is a lot from our individual perspective, but in terms of cultural history it is a comparatively short period of time. If you take for comparison, Egyptian culture began about 5000 years ago, that's not the grey prehistory or the Stone Age, that's where cultural development begins. Today we still have strong after-effects from this Egyptian period. A great deal is reflected in today's culture from the Egyptian period. Partly it is necessary because we have to transform it, but on the other hand, if it continues to have an effect untransformed, then it becomes disturbing, then it has a negative effect, just as it had a positive effect then, so it has a negative effect today because it is restrained. Then it takes us back to a level 5000 years ago. That can never be the point, we can't go back, we can only go forward. In the future, we will be faced with more and more tasks to develop this mixture of peoples, this understanding of different cultures and religions, and from this to develop an overall humanity, which, however, will have a very individual nuance for each person. The future will no longer consist of individual peoples or tribes, but of a large humanity, but one that is made up of completely differentiated individuals. That is the future we are heading towards. These are movements that are already underway and are creating enough turbulence. Today's migration problems are only the beginning of what will happen. The great mixing will come. We have to learn to bridge the cultural gap that will then exist, completely different customs, habits that will interfere with everyday life, completely different drives. But that is a learning process we have to go through. All sides have to learn along with us. We have to bridge these time gaps together. When I say the Egyptian culture, we are still very much in the thinking, we are 5000 years behind. Anthroposophy or any other modern spiritual science already contains something that comes from the distant future. It will certainly change in its outer form as it then appears, one need not believe that in the next cultural epoch anthroposophy will be practised as we do today, it will then be completely obsolete, but the spiritual core that is at stake will be there. It will gain a new form. R. Steiner himself says this quite clearly: Anthroposophy as it is given now is given for a certain period of time and we as anthroposophists do not give in to the delusion that it is meant for eternity and that nothing will change. It is for a certain time. For our cultural epoch. Then it will have to renew itself again. 

In between, it will also change because it goes through a life process. Otherwise it is not a living building, but a rigid doctrine. It is not a doctrine, it is a living force. That is what makes it Christian. In truth, the Christ also left no teaching, that is a mistake, the most important thing about him is the fact that he incarnated himself on earth. And thereby made it possible for human beings to receive into their I the full strength that "I received from my father."  That is the real thing. Even if all these books, such as the New Testament, were to disappear - and they will disappear one day - this Christ power is still there! And people will be able to draw the essence that is in the books out of themselves. They will be able to draw from the spiritual. A beginning for this is to become apocalyptics yourself. To develop this important book of the New Testament in an individual way. To inscribe history into one's life in one's own individual way. That is the book of life, that is where it is inscribed. Not in something printed. Then we realise it! 

It is the Lamb, the Christ, who can open the book with the seven seals. The root of David is called: We got to know David from the descent, of both Jesus boys, because they descend from the house of David, but something else important was the key of David, which was mentioned. This is the key to open and close the gate to the spiritual world, i.e. to connect completely with the spiritual world or concretely with the spiritual beings, or to be able to withdraw completely to one's own spiritual beingness. This is an ability that will remain with the human being if he develops in the right way. That is the difference to the spiritual hierarchies that stand above us. For they can withdraw completely to their own beingness, they cannot do that, because the moment they do that, namely withdraw to their inner being, then comes, especially with the angelic beings, but with the higher hierarchies this is also the case, then they do not experience themselves, but the whole spiritual world that stands above them. But they no longer feel themselves at that moment. And only when they are outwardly spiritually active do they reveal themselves in their works, in their deeds, when they withdraw, they no longer know anything about themselves, they only experience that - "only" is wrongly expressed in principle - because it is quite something rich, so they experience the whole rich world above them, but just with the small catch that they lose themselves in the process, can no longer experience themselves in the process. 

The human being can do this, he can withdraw to his own spiritual beingness, he must and should, it is only important that it happens in the right rhythm and change, with turning completely towards the spiritual world. In truth, this already takes place in social communication with fellow human beings. When real communication takes place, where not only outward words and sounds are exchanged, but where one really meets the other, i.e. meets with one's self. At the moment when I do this, I become completely absorbed in his I for a moment. But then I have to come back to myself again. This happens continuously, basically with every breath, back and forth, we breathe out in truth and give ourselves to the other, then we breathe in again, but we take something of the other with us, that is what we always give to each other, because the other person feels the same way. This is happening today, but there are strong opposing forces today that want to bring people into this isolation, where they are only thrown back on themselves, where they do not experience their real self, but only their ego, i.e. only their shadow self, and this is where it becomes dangerous, this is where the problem lies and this is where the opposing forces come in, these are very strong opposing forces today. Not only the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces are active today, but also the Asuras and something even worse is lurking in the background and is already present in the underground and was already present in many events of the 20th century. We will come to this later, because it is described very clearly in the Apocalypse anyway.  

So that one does not become discouraged with the whole story, I would like to add that this is only the shadow cast by the great light that is also there. It is a mysterious law that these adversaries can only be active in strength because this great light is also there. This light is waiting to flow through our I. To be grasped by our I. To be seized by our I. It cannot be forced upon us, otherwise we would have lost our freedom. But we can grasp it. Everyone can grasp it! No special training is necessary for this, but it is necessary to work on oneself. That is the only important thing. 

Small insertion: How do we deal with the apocalypse together? You will have noticed that I do a lot of repetition. Going in a circle, but it's not quite a circle, it's a spiral. It's repetition, but it's slowly moving towards a goal. Slowly it becomes more and more concrete until it hits the point somewhere at the end. That's the plan. Why is that the approach? Because it's not just about reading the Apocalypse, commenting on it, studying it, but it's about taking it as a training book. As a training book to become apocalyptic oneself. Then the book fulfils its purpose. Everything else is preparation for it. That is the path I want to try to walk with you. It is a very first beginning, very delicate, we  will not unhinge the world with it. But the time is more than ripe to go this way. By engaging with it in this way, we are walking this path of practice. Because practising means repeating, repeating, practising, practising! Every artist knows that! I may know how to perform a play, but I still can't do it. I have to practise to get it across. A musician knows that too! Someone can explain to me how to play the clarinet, but I won't be able to play right away. I have to sit down and practise. I will fail and have difficulties, but I have to practise again and again. The same exercises over and over until I get them right. That is very important! 

Even where one deals with other spiritual-scientific works, in other deep religious writings, one must in truth approach them in the same way. Simply to read the Apocalypse and say, I know what it says, I have informed myself about it, that is step zero, that is the preliminary stage, but then it means to bring it out again and again, again and again over years, perhaps over decades, no one is rushing us. No one is standing behind us with a stopwatch, because we won't be finished with it, not in this life, probably not in the next life and the life after that. But we should finish by the end of the earth's evolution. That is the perspective we are talking about. The book will perhaps no longer be there in printed form. We will then be able to get the images that are in it ourselves from the spiritual realm, because that is where they come from, it is not simply something that was dictated to John from above, he was not a writing medium, but he experienced it spiritually, that is why he was able to write it down. To become an apocalyptic yourself means to slowly experience individual fragments of it yourself, to grasp it in an individual way. John also experienced it in an individual way, but he wrote it down in such a way that it can be a stimulus for everyone. Ultimately, it is his apocalypse. There is no other way. We have to bring it in individually. And yet what everyone brings in individually can have a meaning for everyone else. Such things are then what we can give to people in truth. Not as instruction. Perhaps we don't need to talk about the apocalypse with the other person. But in the way we have become, in that we have trained ourselves in it, that passes on to the other as an impulse and vice versa. In this way we give each other the impulses. 

We read further: We stopped where the Lamb takes this book, the 4 living beings standing around the throne, these are the cherubim or almost seraphim, namely they are high cherubim, with the human face, with the face of the cow, the lion and the eagle, thus the great representatives of the zodiac (cherubim = high spiritual entities). Above the cherubim are only the seraphim. Then already comes the Trinity. With the cherubim it is so that the 4 cornerstones of the zodiac, the human being or Aquarius, the lion, the bull and the eagle, these are so to speak the 4 cornerstones of the zodiac, they are so because they are higher cherubim who actually almost have the level of seraphim. This is expressed very well here in the Apocalypse, because these 4 living beings each had 6 wings, all around and also inside they were full of eyes.  6 wings are the representational sign for the seraphim, not for the cherubim. The cherubim are normally depicted with 4 wings. Now this is not just a mistake that is in there, but actually, they are so developed that they have 6 wings. What does this number of wings mean? It has something to do with their spiritual effectiveness. 

The angelic beings normally have only 2 wings, the lower angels, so to speak. These wings are an image for a movement, just as we spread out our arms today, then our etheric arms also make a great movement, with this etheric movement we think of our destiny, i.e. we look over our earthly career, starting from the first incarnation, we look over what we did there, we look over all the incarnations we had, in truth we also look into the future. This will now become more and more important, that in everything we do we also experience a view for the karmic effect in the future, this will replace the voice of conscience as we know it today. The voice of conscience basically appears in the Greek-Latin period, where Oreste killed his mother because he thereby avenged his father, because the mother killed the father. A long story! In the older Greek dramatists, both Sophocles and Aeschylus, when he has murdered his mother, he is then chased by the Furies, by the Erinyes, i.e. he has had clairvoyant experiences, by entities that pursue and torment him by day and by night, this is what people have actually experienced when they have incurred heavy guilt, this has tormented them so much that they have handed themselves over to the judge and demanded the death penalty in order to escape this persecution. This is how Aeschylus and Sophocles describe it.

Euripides, a generation later, describes it differently: suddenly the Eurist sits there somewhat dejectedly and says: "I know from myself that I am guilty!" No Erinyes, no Furies. The voice of conscience! But what the future holds is something else entirely. In what we do or plan to do, there will be an increasingly conscious experience of what this means karmically for the future, what compensation we may have to create or what this will make possible in the future, because the word karma is usually seen negatively, in the sense of paying off debts, that is an essential side of karma, we carry a lot from the past with us, but karma is something that also makes something possible for the future, we can also do good deeds that open a gate for the future. The negative view is connected to this because it comes from the oriental understanding of karma, because at that time the power was not yet strong enough to consciously prepare future forces out of the I. That was the problem, it was something that made the future possible. But that was the problem, there were transgressions. One is guilty of misconduct and has to suffer for it in a later incarnation. It is a question of freeing oneself from that. That is the teaching of the Buddha ultimately. Live your life in such a way that you no longer create new karma, then you no longer have to incarnate on earth and you no longer have to suffer. Back in the 6th century before Christ, it was not yet possible to be consciously active out of the I. Today it looks different. Today it looks different. That's why today, when it comes to karma, we have to focus much more on the old, heavy things that we have to dissolve, but above all to see what positive karmic preparations we can make for the future. 

For example, in human encounters between people who perhaps karmically have not yet had any contact at all, or at least little, because in the meantime we have already been on earth so often that we have had a quiet contact with very many people karmically, but certainly not yet with all of them. But let's say, with someone with whom I have not yet had anything to do karmically, let's create something together for the future. To create something here now that will become something in the future. Perhaps other people will also join. Communities of people that are being prepared now and form a good karma for the future. Good in the sense that one can then achieve something great in the service of the development of humanity, in the service of the development of the earth. That is also part of becoming an apocalyptic. The apocalypse always looks to the future. We have to look a little bit into the past, where we come from, and see that we have to come to terms with that, but the gaze goes above all into the future. Becoming an apocalyptic means developing optimism for the future.

Because the apocalypse actually wants to strengthen us in the confidence that you have the spiritual power at your disposal to lead the future to a good goal. It is up to you. You can do it! No one can say as an excuse, no, I have far too few abilities to do it. We all still have a lot to learn and practise for the final goal. We will often stumble and do stupid things, but we can take the next step! The apocalypse wants to encourage us to take this next small step. In view of the present problems in our time, this is also totally important, because in truth the solutions always consist of falling back on all that. To operate with old hats that didn't work back then, but you try it again and again. But it would be good to let something new in, and not wait until the old has finally failed. And everything is destroyed, and then the new impulse comes in. That's where we have to become flexible. A person who is creatively active out of his or her I may have the courage to say, I am going a new way. Communities of people can form who say, we are going a new way. 

The adversary forces that are restrained do not want that and hold us back. And praise it to us with it, because it was actually once right in the past, only we humans then overlook that it is no longer appropriate today. What was good then can be destructive today. This must enter our thinking. We need a way of thinking that has the courage to leap into the void and bring something new out of it. Not just tinkering with the old. There is the master of Ahriman who says that you can still conjure up a lot out of the old. People are amazed because suddenly fifty new things come out of one old thing that look completely new, but that's a joke! He is deceiving us. In truth, the old forces are behind it. That is the case with many recipes that are supposed to solve the problems of the present. We see this today in the Corona crisis, in the helplessness to deal with it properly. It is a tinkering. The statistical data that are available are so meaningless. Decisions made on this basis can only be wrong by necessity. That's because science works according to the old principles, at least much of it still does, science is not up to date, we are not up to the problems of the present with the sciences, but we only create in one field, that is technology, which works with the dead, and I can understand the dead with the old thinking, as sharpened as the Ahriman makes it possible for us today, then it works quite well, but not one step beyond that. In the realm of the living it fails, and brings, when  you apply it, forces of death into the living. In other words, genetic engineering and these things. Nature has also been doing genetic engineering for millions of years, only nature can do it, it doesn't just do genetic engineering, there is life in it. It is perhaps technein the sense that the Greeks understood it, Greek..: techne is called artistry, from which the word technology is derived, because artistry has something to do with craft skills that were once still artistically designed. What we have today may be "designed" by someone, but it is no longer a craft, i.e. it no longer contains the soul and spirit of an individual human being that has a creative effect. 

To develop this new way of thinking, a way of thinking that is capable of perceptively entering the spiritual world. R. Steiner was already striving for this more than a hundred years ago. In truth, this is already contained in his philosophical writings, quite clearly in his "Philosophy of Freedom", which was completed in 1893 (published in 1894), on Michaelmas, by the way, so quite clearly a Michaelmas impulse, all this is already contained there. It describes how thinking can become so alive that it becomes spiritually perceptive, i.e. that it is not only dependent on outwardly observing the dead and thinking about it, but where it fetches the powers of thinking from the sphere of life, from the etheric, because that is where they come from, and does this quite consciously. That is what it is all about. That is why he speaks of the observation of one's own thinking, namely how thinking comes into being alive, that is the first spiritual observation that is inside. Today we basically only experience how thoughts die out of our thinking, we then experience concepts that we combine, that is the result of a living thinking process that is behind it. Because what is the concept of a plant? The primordial plant that Goethe experienced. At least that is what one would have to experience if I were to experience a concept like plant or anything else that is alive. When I have something of that, then I am only inside living thinking.

Everyone can come to it today, or at least prepare to come to it in a next incarnation. It is not enough today to practise anthroposophy or to study the Apocalypse with the old way of thinking, it is a first step to try it in the old way with the old way of thinking.  to understand, Steiner gave things in such a way that it could be understood with the old thinking, because in his time - and in truth still today - it was the most common. But we are now a hundred years further on and it must begin that more people become able to bring out this living thinking, to observe and to become active out of it, and in this thinking the spiritual world is already present. Then it is not yet clairvoyance in the large sense, but then it already makes it possible, for example, to really understand such things as the Apocalypse from the spiritual background and not only from the text that is written in the book. But to understand from the source from which the text has flowed, that is already possible at that level, that is where it already begins, then you can really start to read between the lines, then you realise that this is actually something like a map that leads me there, but please see for yourself what can be found there. Even if it says there is St. Stephen's Cathedral, I have to look at it myself. There is only a small symbol for it on the map. I don't know much about St. Stephen's Cathedral yet, but I know how to get there. Such a timetable is the text of the Apocalypse. 

If we want to become apocalypticists, as we should and as is possible for us today, then we must enter into this living thinking. Imagination then grows out of living thinking. "Clairvoyance" on a certain level. It is interesting that it is precisely these great connections that one can see much more easily than a concrete spiritual entity standing next to me. The more I want to go into detail, that is, to recognise a concrete spiritual entity, I must have trained these powers. First I see a general panorama. I see certain effects in there, I see certain images, these images consist in the deeds of these spiritual entities. But I do not yet see the beings themselves, I do not recognise them as such. I only see something active in the spiritual. That is the imagination. It is not experienced like an inner sensual picture, nor like an imaginary picture, a picture is already a translation, but it is experienced like a kind of mood of the soul, which is experienced as a great panorama. Imagine taking these pictures as they are described in the Apocalypse, which are certainly described in sensual pictures, then I can read through them, close my eyes, in order to imagine them very concretely, to imagine them quite sensually, because the pictures are sensual, but then I will have certain mental experiences in this picture, even experience shocks, if I am emotionally mobile, it is very important that I am mobile in the middle, i.e. if I can only read them with naked eyes, then I will experience them in the middle. That is to say, if I only read this with a sober head, then I will not come to an imagination or to a mood of the soul. Then I remain cold and uninvolved. 

No, it has to get to the point where I build up the image internally so much that it really shakes me through and through. In the last lecture it said: we have to shake ourselves. The shaking must come from ourselves. Today it is no longer a question of being shaken by events that come upon us from outside, that is the old way, humanity is tested by external wars and hardships, and the time for these things is certainly not yet over, but that is the old way, that is the way that is necessary, because we are not yet able to shake ourselves sufficiently, because we are not yet able to be shaken out of ourselves by what we experience, by what is quite harmless out there, but quite shaking in the positive as well as in the negative, with shaking not only the negative is meant, also the positive sides. 

I.e. If I am able to pick out an image from the Apocalypse, to place it before my eyes in a very intense spiritual way, quite sensually inwardly, as an image, to make this image strong, and to experience a spiritual mood from it, I certainly have to do this many times until I succeed, anyone can try it, at the beginning nothing happens, at the beginning you have difficulties building up the image at all until it becomes halfway clear, you are so busy with that, But that has little to do with the picture, it has to do with one's own feelings, which do not yet work, but if one does this for weeks, months, years, it doesn't matter how long it takes, it is only a question of persevering and doing it as regularly as possible, each as he can arrange it in his life, then in time it will be possible to experience more and more clearly the mood of the soul that the picture triggers in me. On the one hand, there will be very personal feelings, that some things are personally beautiful, uplifting, that much of what is written in the apocalypse is terrible because it is terribly depicted, but then that is still the surface, because that is my personal feeling about it. 

It is about the fact that behind the image there is an objectively spiritual thing that is dark or bright, pleasant, uplifting or dragging down, and that is what has to be experienced, and it is possible, once you have this experience so strongly that after a certain time you can get rid of the sensual idea, the sensual image of the image that you have built up, drop it, so to speak, and only remain in the mood of the soul that is there without the image concretely in front of your eyes, that one has built up, and only remains in the mood of the soul that is there, without having the image concretely before my eyes, only the mood of the soul, and experiences that it is not simply a mood, but that it is richly differentiated, that it changes, that it is mobile, that it lives - that is the mood of the soul. Imagination. If I can experience them, then I once have the outside of the spiritual world, the imaginative image is the outside, i.e. I do not yet recognise the entities as such, I would have to go into a higher level - into the InspirationThen this mood of the soul begins to sound inwardly, harmonies arise insofar as I begin to recognise connections, there is a certain mood and there is a certain undertone, they belong together, they do something with each other, others again, I begin to experience these connections, they only really make it clear to me what the whole thing means, which entities are behind it, from which the individual entities slowly detach themselves and begin to sound like an individual tone. Or like a kind of leitmotif. 

With Wagner's, the leitmotifs are in there, whenever a certain person appears, there is a leitmotif. In this inspirational sound, each entity has its leitmotif, I begin to hear this from the entire symphony, each individual spiritual entity, more and more as time goes by, blurred at the beginning of course, because our spiritual ears are not yet so developed, but with time this succeeds. You could also say that I begin to read in this whole panorama, or I begin to understand words, and out of this music there becomes more and more an understandable sound, like language, i.e. this image begins to speak to me, then I am still on a higher level of inspiration, it starts from the musical and goes up to the word, up to the meaningful word context. 

It is an inner experience that I try to translate into sensual language. The imagination thus becomes more and more comprehensible. John has exactly these two elements in his writings, the imaginative very strongly, through which he can describe these images that are deliberately sharp and brutal, we will get to know some images that are shocking. They are shocking themselves when you read it. It is meant as a suggestion that we ourselves have to experience this shock within ourselves. We have to find the images ourselves, build them up ourselves, in order to enter into this imagination. That is the reason why these images are so drastic. A person who actually had such imaginations was Hieronymus Bosch, also the painter Grünewald, they are not always the lovely pictures, they aim to shake the soul, to shake it up and at the same time to be completely awake. The problem with pictures that lift me up into beauty is that I easily slip away from my I-consciousness and enjoy floating out there. The shock of images that look terrible at first, second or third glance pushes me back into myself, I feel threatened, I withdraw into myself, but that is necessary so that I don't lose my I-consciousness. It is then not a recreational journey into this imaginative world. Neither in the apocalypse  nor with the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch or Grünewald. There are also the beautiful sides, the resurrection, that's great, but the crucifixion is shocking. It is drawn in all its hideousness, quite deliberately. But this strength also has an effect. That is why these pictures are said to have a healing effect. Because the strong shock is there, it sets something in motion. 

You have to see that such things in the way of representation only come out in modern times in our consciousness-soul age. The medieval representations are still much more stylised. There it is shown more symbolically. Especially in the Christian representations. In Greek art, when you go into Hellenism, the sculptures are very realistic and can be frightening. The Laocoon group is already very dramatic. This is no longer the classical Greek ideal of beauty, which one enjoys, which uplifts, but there one is already confronted with a shock, but this really comes in art in modern times. Even if you think of the art of the 20th century, what comes in with Expressionism, that is partly quite horrible, you think, have they now completely fallen away from the spiritual? No! They haven't. Perhaps without even knowing it, they are in the process of reaching that deeper level that is needed to become apocalyptic. To experience this shock, to face it and really live through it. Of their own free will. Although with the first painters who did this, it wasn't such a free decision at all, yes perhaps a decision from a previous incarnation, but where they themselves had suffered through this in their lives. In order for them to be able to approach this at all, to be able to depict it. They had to experience these things in their lives in order to be able to portray them. In the sense of the spiritual path, you have to be able to experience it without it. You have to be able to build it up inwardly. Both these shattering scenes and the uplifting ones. In balance. 

In the Apocalypse, too, it ends in quite uplifting images when the New Jerusalem is described. Only this one image of the New Jerusalem is the counterbalance to all the terrible things that happen before. It not only cancels it all out, but goes beyond it in a positive way. But the way to go through these shocks once is to trigger them in oneself. Building them up within oneself. We have an anticipation in Dante's descriptions both through the Inferno, through hell, and then on the Mount of Purification, already somewhat milder but still very dramatic, highly dramatic, then in the earthly paradise the scenes where it already seems to go completely into the good, then there comes basically the most horrible scene of all, on the top of the Mount of Purification, in the middle of the earthly paradise inside. There comes the worst scene of the whole divine comedy, if you like, and that is not by chance. A person like Dante, who is basically already about to step into the modern age, can already portray this quite clearly. And portray it very consciously, because he was aware that this is the decisive scene around which the whole divine comedy really revolves.  

Nevertheless, I want to encourage you for the positive power that lies within. It is always the stronger one. We must never lose sight of that. By being able to talk about the terrible things now, by being able to accept somewhere that they are there, that we have to face them, we have to see, we can recognise them at all, because the spiritual light is there. It is already there. We just have to learn to use this power, which is actually already there, to set it in motion, to handle it. That is what we have to learn. We are continuing on the path that every little child has to take at the beginning. The amount of spiritual power that comes in during the first three years of life is unbelievable. The highest spiritual power is in there. How little of this power we can raise to consciousness today. We know basically nothing about the first three years of life. Then we can think back a little to the moment when we first woke up: Ah, I am a me! Before that, there are all the spiritual forces that are in our I. These are the Christ forces. These are the Christ forces. But which we have at our disposal. "The same powers...." They are meant for us. To really have them, we must learn to seize them. This possibility is very much there today. One should not believe it, in the midst of the world of total materialism, which prevails to a great extent, and where great materialism does not prevail, there prevails a, how shall I say, very Luciferian esotericism, which also does not lead into the future. Which perhaps makes life pleasant. But apparently there is not much else. And yet this very light is there in great abundance! It is only hidden from the view of most people. We can open our inner eyes to it ourselves. We should not feel too small for it. That doesn't mean we don't have to be humble. We have to see that it is huge, but huge is also the power that we can gradually bring in. It is an unlimited abundance of power that we can bring in. We may look humbly at all that is there, but we may also have the courage, the conviction and the confidence that we can gradually bring it in. With this, we can basically grow spiritually in every situation that development can bring for us. So that we do not suffer spiritually, but on the contrary become spiritually stronger. I also ask you to consider the images that are coming our way - I'm beating about the bush because we will be confronted with really shocking images - I don't intend to skim over them and say, yes, we risked our left eye to look at them, but we will have to face them. We will have to plumb them. We will have to try to really come to this inner shock, so that they really reveal their true meaning to us. That is my offer to you! To begin this together, to practise it.  I see that as the real task. Then I think we can do justice to the apocalypse to the extent that we can today. In later times we will be able to do more. There will be people somewhere in the world who can do it today. What is important for us is how we can do it together here. That we live through it together. Not only to inform ourselves about it, but to live it. Then we will mature spiritually from this alone and the fruit of this, I dare to guarantee, is that we will also emerge stronger in our normal everyday life and will be able to deal with it better. The things that shake us outside in real life, that hit us, that cause us difficulties, that put problems in our way, they inevitably come, we can also deal with these things better. Deal with them more confidently. And let ourselves be less shaken by what is dramatised outside. As it is now. 

The biggest problem of today's Corona crisis, which we are in, is the fear that prevails among the people, the panic sometimes even, and basically the helplessness, how do I deal with it. Where you don't see what damage has happened in the social sphere in part, out of fear, out of the measures that are being taken. This does not mean that there should be no measures. Of course, one has to deal with such a situation. But in reality, it is not a rational way of dealing with it. Not one that is based on reality, but basically on a great illusion. There is a virus. That is clear. It attacks. It has a certain dangerousness. That is also clear. Whereas the dangerousness depends very much on how an individual person is predisposed to it, that is not a special wisdom to say, because the first virologists already said that. Robert Koch, for example. Luis Pasteur. It was clear to all of them: the virus, the pathogen is nothing, the environment is everything in which it unfolds. That makes the difference. The virus alone is nothing. 

We need to know that there are millions of different viruses that we don't even know about yet. Which play a big role in the life of the earth, nature and in ourselves. The name virus implies that it is something bad. A pathogen. Something that causes disease. But actually these viruses are incredibly important for the unfolding of life on earth, they are in fact the great genetic engineers, transporting genetic material from one species to another, back and forth, making sure that this great exchange takes place on earth. Life could not have evolved if it hadn't been for these viruses, actually as splinters that are secreted out of the living, because basically a virus is a splintered cell nucleus, but it now gets its own task to go out into the world and give what has been developed to all the others. On the whole, this is a positive gift. 

Basically, only there, if you make it difficult for these viruses, the hosts in which they have to live, if you put stress on the hosts in which they live, through bad conditions in which they live, which of course can also occur in nature, but which today are mainly man-made, for example, animal husbandry under bad conditions. I think we have a problem with this in the world today, because there is a great danger that these viruses, which are actually something benign and useful, will become malignant because they cannot develop as they want to under these conditions, and then they take a violent path. There is really a lot that is unconsciously bred by us humans. You don't need a conspiracy theory that someone has bred the virus. It is bred through wrong thinking. By treating animals inhumanely for the sake of profit. These things destroy. Such destruction is also there in the social life of human beings. People who can treat animals in this way also have a problem in social life in truth. These are the real pathogens. They are the ones who make the viruses ill or make them ill for us. 

From a spiritual perspective, one can begin to see through this. One could also see through many things in a scientific way. Some people do. You have to look at it from a higher perspective. This is where spiritual observation begins, when one takes on a certain higher perspective and does not only lose oneself in specialism. Specialisation is necessary today, no question. But every specialist would actually have the obligation to have the big perspective on it. To have an overview. How it plays out. If I'm a doctor or a virologist, I have to know what can happen in the social sphere and so on. I have to be able to assess these things. I must not overlook or forget them. 

That is to say, to develop the kind of thinking that the apocalypse requires, but also trains, that we will urgently need for the present and for the future. Because it is already the case today that most of the problems we have in the world are caused by our own outdated thinking, i.e. thinking held back by the adversaries. This is what triggers it. The thinking of our time is in truth not up to the mark. It is something that comes out of Greek times, is ahrimanically chiselled and prepared to the finest refinement, but no longer belongs to this time. At least not as the all-dominant and only thing. 

Our modern times require a new way of thinking. What is the old thinking? It has become that which is our own thinking. It has made us conscious. We spint something together. We make hypotheses, theories, try to explain the world with them.  But thinking is actually there to perceive spiritual reality and to draw from it, not only from our little thing up there, but to really reach into the spiritual world again and to actively appropriate there what is there, to make it our own, then to make it our own thoughts, to shape it further, to become formative. We then bring our own contribution into it. We have to see that there is a spiritual reality around me. Thinking is there to take hold of this spiritual reality. Today we have reached the point where we can develop this. We can develop this consciously. 

The Egyptians were just about to lose it, it was lost there, there you could only get it out through the initiation methods, there you could still reach into the etheric world. The statue, which actually represents the etheric body of the human being, has arms at the head, bent arms, because the etheric or one's own etheric body reaches out into the surrounding world and brings in living thought forms from there, and then experiences them imaginatively. That is the image behind it. We can consciously regain this today. The time has come when this can become a natural activity again. If we want it to be. Because in contrast to the past, where this was first simply there, then slowly faded away, it is now the case that it does not simply come back of its own accord, or come back in the right way, some of it also comes of its own accord, but in truth we can do nothing with it, but these are fingers that are not well suited to groping into the spiritual world that surrounds us, which will therefore then only bring out very distorted things. That will come, but we have to develop it in the right way ourselves. We can become active ourselves. Here and now! And everyone! It can be done. Actually, we should draw much more from that for the future in order to solve our problems, which we have caused ourselves. That's the only way it will work. 

The Corona crisis is a prime example of how things are not supposed to work. Without blaming anyone. It's just that this new thinking is hardly there yet. People can't. They have created institutions in their educational institutions all over the world that drive it out instead of promoting the new. Instead, they cement in the old. This is the Lord Ahriman. One of those adversary powers that are very strong today. And in the background the Asuras, the even stronger ones, who want that very strongly, because they try to lead man away from the path that he should go and that he can go, but there is a counterforce that wants to prevent that. But the positive spiritual power is stronger, it is inexhaustible. The power of the adversaries is finite. The positive spiritual power is infinite. It can always create anew. The adversaries have a huge arsenal of weapons at their disposal, but it is somewhere finite. Something new cannot come in. They can only rearrange it. Let us be aware that the real spiritual force is always the stronger one, if we want it to be.