\n\n
Today we will already take a look into the future, until now we have rather looked at the past, through the cultural epochs that correspond to the 7 communities that are addressed in the Apocalypse. Today we are in the 5th cultural epoch, the church of Sardis, and today we will take a look at the next cultural epoch. We are only in the first third of our present cultural epoch, the next one will begin in the year about 3100, we still have time. We will certainly have a few more incarnations in this cultural epoch, because the present epoch is one that brings very rapid changes, both in the social environment, in the technical environment, and also in the natural environment, so today the incarnations are much more frequent, that is, they follow each other much more quickly than they did in the past. There is a cosmic measure mentioned by R. Steiner that normally during an epoch 2 incarnations take place, once as a man, once as a woman, ideally taken because they are different perspectives on how one perceives the world. In the past, the changes during a cultural epoch were not as severe as they are today. If you take the ancient Egyptian period, the essence of ancient Egyptian culture is already there at the very beginning, and it basically changes very little until well into the Greco-Latin period. It still has an effect, in the Greek period there is also the Ptolemaic reign, who then rule there as pharaohs after the Alexander moves. Basically, however, it is still the ancient Egyptian culture as it has been for more than 2000 years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThat is no longer the case today. You only have to compare the world of Goethe's time with the world of today. There are eons in between. Accordingly, there are already one or two incarnations in between, depending on the case. That was one point of view. The second point of view is that today, when we want to prepare the future, through a spiritual striving that we are tackling now, for example when we deal with anthroposophy and the apocalypse, as we are doing here, then we are basically already preparing the next cultural epoch or creating a basis for it. The next cultural epoch is represented in the Apocalypse by the community of Philadelphia. Philadelphia means \"brotherly love\", the whole course of this cultural epoch draws from brotherly love. We have the beginnings of this today where it is least noticeable, namely in economic life. Not in spiritual life, not in legal life, in the legal system we are still living entirely in the Greco-Roman, above all in the Roman epoch, there is still little that is present. In most intellectual life we still live in the Greco-Latin cultural epoch. Only in the 20th century did something break out in art and science.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd, of course, anthroposophy, which around 1900\u00a0 <\/span>begins. This is a completely new impulse. Therefore, we should not be surprised that today, at a time when the old still has a tremendous effect, the new has not yet been taken up by so many people. Although many external endeavours that have emerged and are visible in the world, such as biodynamic agriculture, Waldorf education, curative education, are well accepted by many people, mostly without knowing much about the spiritual background from which it comes. What will prepare the future is this spiritual background. There are approaches in anthroposophy, in contemporary art, there are also many aberrations, but the visual arts and music have found new forms in the 20th century that are no longer derived from the classical Greek forms.\u00a0 <\/span>Which was sometimes perceived as unattractive, or as art-destroying, as ugly. But even in the Middle Ages, the third was perceived as something ugly, as a discordant sound, because people did not yet have the inner feeling that is necessary for the third. In Greek times, people still had a pentatonic feeling.\u00a0 <\/span>More is not yet possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt descends from the celestial spheres as an octave, enters the pentatonic, enters the third at the beginning of the modern era. This is also not yet what points to the future. The third octave is a step on the way to arriving on earth and, as an earthly human being, to feel pain, sadness and joy as a completely inner being. It is a step towards becoming a conscious soul being, but the third dimension does not yet contain what leads us on to the spiritual. It is the earthly side of the\u00a0 <\/span>Soul life, that is, that side of soul life which actually disappears for the most part with death. We need something to develop the soul further into an immortal soul. This once existed in ancient times, in pre-Christian times up to Egyptian times. In the Greco-Latin period, this begins to disappear in a very real way. It begins to disappear where the old collectives, the extended families, the collective consciousness recedes and the consciousness comes to the individual. The individual is separated from a truly spiritual soul that lives in a group soul, in the extended family, in the tribal soul. This has endured even beyond death; one could surround oneself with this soul and live in it even in the life after death.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut that has increasingly made room in the individual soul. This began to develop in the Egyptian period, but it takes time. It became stronger in the Greco-Latin period and today is striving towards a climax. Today, the human being must learn to perceive himself as an individual soul being who carries an independent inner soul world within himself. This is the goal of soul development. In ancient Egyptian times, the Sentient Soul<\/b> When the soul develops, a clear consciousness of the outer world awakens and a dull consciousness of the inner world, i.e. the soul is actually still very dull compared to what one used to see supersensually as the cosmic world of the soul. In contrast, the inner world, which one develops as one's own, is still something very weak. But the outer world of the soul has slowly disappeared from consciousness, and the inner world is becoming brighter and brighter. In the Greek period it is already becoming stronger. Mind and spirit soul<\/b> arises in the process. Thinking lights up, but is still strongly connected with feeling. But it is not yet something that establishes an immortal soul. Not the feeling soul at all. It has to do above all with sensory impressions and with the emotions that attach to them, that is, that one likes something, even develops a greed for it, or is disgusted by it and doesn't like something, but that is the transient soul, which is also bound to the physical tool.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn the Greco-Latin period, thinking comes in, something comes in from a spiritual realm, but the mental image of it is at first also still something mortal. That is what the concepts of understanding are. Intellectual concepts are the first thing that is gone after death. You can't take anything with you. Mind is the most transient thing of all. But behind the concepts of understanding there is a thinking that comes from the spiritual and draws from the spiritual, only we experience it, and the Greeks also experienced it in this way with their intellect and soul of mind, that something comes in from the spiritual but dies. It therefore also arises in\u00a0 <\/span>the great longing of the Greco-Latin period: But how can I prevent this from dying?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPlato's dialogue on the soul: Phaidon. It is not about proving what the soul is like, it is not even about describing what the soul is like. Rather, the point of this writing is to form a path of education so that an immortal soul can be formed. That is the real meaning. The background. Read on the surface, it is a philosophical treatise. But Plato had a much deeper knowledge. Therefore, behind the \"dialogue\" there is a training path for the knower. Which leads to: How can I make the soul into something immortal?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThat is to say, one is aware that the soul, as we have it since the Greco-Latin times at the latest, is not something immortal by nature, but that this immortality must be actively acquired. The greatest impetus for this comes with the turn of the earthly life of Christ, who passes through the Mystery of Golgotha and thereby gives the human I the power to transform the soul into something immortal out of its own being. That's where it begins very delicately. In the past, people felt that when I experienced something spiritual, something from the spiritual-mental outside world came into me, took hold of me and I experienced it. Today it is different! Today we have to rise out of our I, with our soul, to the spiritual. Then we also perceive the spiritual outer world. But first we have to go through this effort, and to rise there, that is not simply given to us. We have to become active, that is the essential thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd Plato already felt this, because he was certainly an initiate, but it took until well into modern times for these impulses to become stronger. There are individual philosophers who understand that philosophy is more than thinking about the deepest things in the world with the intellect, but who basically always fail because if I think about the world purely intellectually, then I basically only recognise the limits at which the intellect fails, that is the limit where it goes into the spiritual. In the highest case, philosophy can come to a limit where it says there is a wall where I fail, but there must be something behind the wall. That is the highest point that philosophy can reach. Or even with theology, because the latter uses a similar tool, namely the mind and the soul. In today's philosophy it is almost no longer possible, because the emotional element has practically disappeared in philosophy, there is only intellectual thinking, which has gained a high degree of precision, but basically only works with the dead.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhat we can do today to develop the immortality of the soul, or to develop it further, a spark will already be present here or there, is to turn our mental activity, our consciousness, from the outward perspective (sense world and outer mind) to the spiritual world. This is only possible when thinking becomes alive. That is, when we do not experience finished thoughts in consciousness, but begin to experience the thinking process itself. This is the great thing that R. Steiner has already established with his philosophy of freedom. There he shows the way from today's average intellectual thinking to an experience of the thinking process, that is the most important thing, this observation first of all of one's own thinking, with it I begin to watch my own spiritual activity, that is the very first spiritual experience in truth, with it I begin to sense myself as a spiritual being.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFrom there, one continues to strengthen this thinking, to make it more alive, to develop it further into imaginative, pictorial thinking, where a perception of the spiritual outside world really begins. There are various intermediate steps that one can experience. A typical feeling that many experience is that when one is inside this living thinking brought about by meditation, one notices that the thinking becomes independent of the brain. You notice that very clearly. It's as if the skull plate lifts off and you're outside somewhere. You have the feeling that thinking is all around you. It really is. In fact, the Egyptians still had this in an ancient form, but not with the consciousness that we have today. They felt it in such a way that one begins to feel the etheric outside world with one's own etheric powers, one's own etheric body, to become active outside, I feel that, there is something, it has something of its own, there is something that I begin to feel, begin to touch etherically, to grasp, we train our earthly grasping by grasping with our hands, but at the same time this also trains the ability to grasp in the etheric. The actual activity comes from the etheric when I move my hand in a living way, especially when I move it in a soulful way in gestures, in cultic gestures at the beginning, or perhaps in cultic dance, the movements that come from the etheric.\u00a0 <\/span>completely out of the etheric, and when I now lift these forces up and above the head, above the brain, then I begin to scan the etheric outer world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTake this as an image, because the etheric is actually not something spatial but something temporal. But then you can't describe it at all. We therefore put it in an image, but it is justified because at that moment you experience it like that, you have the feeling of being outside with your thinking above your head, the top of your skull lifts off, something formed, something spiritually formed then just bubbles up. The difficulty is not to get this abundance in, but to be able to grasp this abundance, there is more than one can grasp, and it is even more difficult to translate it into human thoughts and words - into our intellectual thoughts. If I can't do that, if I can't tell anyone about it, then I am aware that I had this experience, but I can't communicate it. That is basically painful, because I have a fullness that is a million times richer than the few sentences I can squeeze it into, it is a reduction to almost zero. That hurts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou feel I have to grab it in my brain, because\u00a0 <\/span>Without that I cannot form the outer mind thoughts, because outer mind thoughts need the brain as a tool. You notice the difference in the quality of thinking, because \"that's where the headache thinking\" begins, brooding over a difficult problem, my head bursts, but I don't get any further because it doesn't flow properly, you notice the transition very clearly when you go from this living etheric thinking, which is not bound to the brain, to the thinking of the mind, i.e. to the reflection on the brain. This is like a process of destruction. Only a little of it remains, but we have to be content with that for the time being in order to be able to communicate it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThese are all the things that can be found in R. Steiner's \"Philosophy of Freedom\"<\/i> can already experience by not only reading the book, but practising it. Over years. People usually don't like that because they want to read a book in one day and absorb knowledge. But then, with a book like that, you haven't really absorbed anything. At most, you have absorbed a misunderstanding. Aha, an interesting philosophical approach. But then you haven't grasped the real thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBecause in truth you have to live it. Live it for a certain period of your life and then keep on living it, because you never stop, it accompanies you through your whole life and continues to develop. These are approaches where it is possible today for every human being to gain access to this new way of thinking. And what will come out of this living thinking is already shaping the soul in such a way that an immortal part is emerging. I can take this soul with me even after death and also into the next incarnations, that is something that accompanies us. That is where a new immortality begins.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIndividual thinkers had this earlier, namely on the threshold from the Middle Ages to modern times.\u00a0 <\/span>People like Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas had this great competition with the Arabs, with Arab thinkers, like Averroes, who said, in a certain way rightly, because he describes the old way in which the soul was. This soulfulness that we take into ourselves and in which our intelligence and our thinking unfolds, that is not our individual at all, that is something supra-individual, that is accessible to us during life, but after death it no longer belongs to us. Then it is no longer individual but universal. That was quite right. It was still right for him and many of his time. But people like Thomas Aquinas already sensed in their thinking that it was different, they experienced it differently, they experienced this spiritual work that now emanates from them, from their I, and builds an independent soul, but one that is truly immortal. That was the great dispute between the Arab thinkers and the occidental thinkers. And of course it is connected with the consciousness that was there in Thomas Aquinas, that behind the I there is the Christ impulse and that this is the decisive factor. It gives our I the power that the spiritual becomes a reality, which comes out of the I.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nUntil the turn of time, the I was more of a preparation, a promise for the future, but in truth not yet an active force that could really create spiritually. That changed with the turn of the times. With the death of the cross, this begins with very few individual people. John, the writer of the Apocalypse, has this and can speak about what for most other people still lies in the future. He speaks a great deal about the future. We have only now reached the point in the Apocalypse where we turn our gaze to the future. We are in the third chapter of 22 chapters. We are at the very beginning. But at least at the crucial turning point from our perspective from now on we are looking into the future. With the study of the philosophy of freedom, with the Gospel of John, with the Apocalypse of John, we can continue this transformation of the soul into an immortal even now: What happens is that the astral body, the astral body is the bearer of the soulish, our soulish is a part of the astral body, a part is naturally given to us, but within this astral body we acquire our own, which is worked on by us, at first unconsciously, as long as it is unconscious it is still transient this own, it ultimately blows away with death. But now, when we develop the consciousness soul and turn it towards the spiritual, that begins to remain, that we take with us, that no longer becomes astral in the proper sense, but spirit self. Spirit Self is the transformed astral<\/b>The transformed body of the soul or the transformed soul in general.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe do this individually, we enrich the spiritual world with it, something comes into the spiritual world that was not there before, that comes in independently through us. This possibility begins on a certain scale in our time and will be the main task in the next cultural epoch, about 3,100 AD, the 6th cultural epoch, which R. Steiner also calls the Slavic epoch, but this does not mean that it will only take place in the East with the Slavs, above all because at this time the mixing of peoples will be so strong that it will no longer be possible to distinguish between them on the basis of the body. It is already disappearing. The mixture will become greater, but something of the depth of mind that is in the Slavic peoples will arise in a higher form, namely in the form that it will be transformed into a spiritual self, at least in part. Today this requires a strict path of initiation, so that individuals can attain it to a higher degree, the rest of us can attain it a little, but in the next cultural epoch it will be possible for a broader stream of people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut a separation of spirits will already begin, there will be people who cannot follow, who remain in the place of the consciousness soul, which is directed outwards into the world of the senses, which has a high level of intellectual intelligence, but which cannot be taken into the spiritual realm, and thus cannot be taken into the life after death. This separation will become more acute towards the end of this next cultural epoch, because in the last cultural epoch that follows, before a very great break comes, there will no longer be many possibilities to catch up. The last epoch of such a cycle of seven, be it in individual life or on a large scale, only serves to harvest the fruits of what has happened before and to prepare for when one goes through death or a new cultural epoch dawns, so that it can then become fruitful there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt is also our task in old age to really harvest the fruits of spiritual life, to make it ready for the next life on earth, so that it can then be the seed from which our next life can arise. That is very important. Everywhere in development there is an evolutionary process, evolution, \"evolvere\" means to develop, i.e. something that is already there at the beginning as a seed is increasingly placed in the outer life, developed, it then reaches a climax, then it begins to withdraw again externally, an involution occurs, what one achieves spiritually is wrapped up so that it becomes a seed for the next incarnation. It is the same with the cultural epochs. For example, what happened in the Greco-Latin period reached its climax at the turn of the century, with that everything important is done, the rest is being worked out to bring it to maturity, but the essential impulses are all there. Then it is wrapped up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThat then stood there as the seed for our present time, a lot has also come out of it, but now we have already reached the point where a new element has to be added. Even during the process of unwinding, something new must begin to be added at a certain point, otherwise it would be pointless, something old is wrapped up, then I unwrap it again, something is always added, that is the right impulse, we are now standing exactly in the time where the old is thoroughly unwrapped, but where we must produce something new that can then be wrapped up for the next epoch. In truth, we are preparing this through our spiritual activity. In quite different areas, Anthroposophy approaches it quite consciously and purposefully, the path is in any case taken in art, perhaps not always with the consciousness that we can acquire through Anthroposophy, but that will also come, even if they do not have it directly from Anthroposophy, then they will find Anthroposophy themselves in their own way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBecause anthroposophy is in truth not something that is written in books, but the real anthroposophy is a spiritual being. It is something in its essence. It is actually drawn from this. Steiner's writings serve to come into contact with the essence in order to draw the essence from it. Steiner's complete edition, like the Apocalypse of John, is in truth a guide. A guide to find it oneself, and to find much more than is written there, because many things cannot be written in our words. The terms do not exist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt begins in Egyptian times, writing, the emergence of pictographic writing, then the Phoenicians, from whom our alphabet is derived, it is the time of darkening, the characters initially still capture something spiritual, imaginative, clothe it in sensual images (Egyptian hieroglyphs), e.g. the spiritual is a bird. With writing, with the letters, the spiritual begins to fade more and more, if then even the process of writing it oneself goes away, of at least experiencing the spiritual in writing, in that it dies away in the writing, if I can then reproduce it through letterpress printing or today by electronic means, copy & paste, then there is no longer any possibility of connecting myself with the spiritual that lies behind it, from which it originates.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI.e. writing will eventually disappear because we no longer need it, it is already on a path of total extinction, like our languages. The ancient languages were much richer, more complex, not only the high culture languages but also the so-called primitive languages. They are much more complex because there are hundreds of thousands of exceptions and each has its own character. That's what we call primitive today. In truth, behind every concept, behind every sound, they have still experienced a spiritual being. Not some abstract scheme, grammar, that squeezes it all into a particular mind form. Grammar is a result of the activity of the mind. Before it becomes fully conscious as understanding, one begins to put grammar into languages. This is basically how Aristotle finds logic. Logic, logos: \"the word\", rules of right speaking, that's what logic is, that's what it came from. Today it has become even more abstract. But that is the dying thing.<\/p>\n
In the future, we will come to completely different forms of expression, language will take on a different character, writing will disappear. There will be a lot of change. It is good to occupy oneself spiritually in such a way that everything could be completely different one day and was different in the past. That is a first step into this living ethereal world, where one can move freely in time, time does not play the same role as it does in our outer experience. Imagine that things can be completely different, imagine vividly what it would have been like in an age where there was not yet writing, where there was not yet our intellect, how differently people must have experienced.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHow is it when all this is not there, how is it when I don't see nature with my senses, I don't yet have the modern mind, I don't have this inner spiritual experience, but actually everything is outside, every plant, every animal, every stone is animate, because I experience the spiritual outside, therefore I don't see the stone, the plant, the animal as we see them today. To speak of the human being completely. A coming away from the way we experience it now. That is an important point, that we get rid of the fact that it should always be like this and that we explain everything according to the pattern of how we explain the world today. We have to get over that. This is very difficult for us because it is in our habits of life. Habits of life are etheric forces, life forces. There are habits in them today that inhibit their vital unfolding. That was absolutely necessary in order to develop the mind. Hence the death of the cross on the place of the skull (Golgotha), that is not accidental, life dies up there (Wolfgang points towards the skull). The processes that take place up there serve to let the ethereal die off to such an extent that we can have, have to have, have had to have the dead concepts of understanding, we still need that today, it doesn't mean that we completely forget the intellect, but we also have to get over it, develop something for it, which can also make it alive, i.e. to the death on Golgotha must come the resurrection in thinking first of all, that's where the resurrection begins.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis is the very first resurrection. We will see that later in the Apocalypse there is talk of a \"first resurrection\". Resurrection is not resurrection. It is a very complex concept that has many different stages. In any case, one point is this coming alive in the etheric, in the etheric forces, which begins with the thinking coming alive. This means that in the next cultural epoch in the community of Philadelphia (brotherly love), in that part of humanity that is really at the height of its time, they will have developed a living imaginative thinking, a thinking with which they can really already perceive the spiritual world. Because living thinking becomes imagination and imagination is the first stage of spiritual perception. Inspiration must then be added to it in order to really understand what I am experiencing, that too will then already be the case to a great extent. And this must also be the case today with people who seriously want to turn to the spiritual. I deliberately say \"also\" because we still have tasks in the outer sensual world. We are to bring the spiritual into the outer world in order to transform it. The wholesome transformation of our earth will only take place if we bring something into it from the spiritual, i.e. inspirational-imaginative experience. No longer only out of intellectual and sensual knowledge.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSomething must also be added in all the scientific disciplines. What the natural sciences are doing today is necessary, it is necessary that they reach the limit to which sensual-material thinking can take them. Until they have reached the limit, they must not stop going on. They must strive to explain the world externally intellectually until they are where they fail at this limit. Where they fail so badly that they realise, with the kind of thinking I have, I can't get beyond it, but then something comes in from the other side. Where this shock is strong enough.<\/p>\n
This has also happened to individual external researchers, where major breakthroughs have been achieved that have shaken the old scientific world view and transformed it, this has happened several times, think of Copernicus<\/b>, Kepler<\/b> (world harmony), actually on the one hand very external, but it comes out of a strong spiritual impact. Kepler was basically aware of this. He speaks of having drawn from the golden vessels of the Egyptians and having carried that over. He was active at that time and experienced it in a different way. Something like a certain memory then comes out. That is only the case when an imaginative-inspirational experience is already there. Even the Newton<\/b>Newton, who is regarded as a very materialistic natural scientist, founded mechanics, and there too spiritual impulses come into it, the Newton against whom Goethe fought in the theory of colours. In the theory of colours, Newton no longer understood it, he only saw the exterior, whereas Goethe mainly saw the interior. Namely, he looked through the sensual to the spiritual. Newton could not do that with colours. Nevertheless, he had had spiritual impulses that led him to the path where natural science outwardly bumped up against the limits. And Kepler's view of nature did indeed reach its limits in the 20th century. Then a new gate opened up. With Einstein<\/b>, the great overcomer, again a new perspective, again new boundaries that are erected. There one will again bump firmly until it hurts so much that one will eventually get through. Sometimes we have to push our head through our self-made walls, we become aware of them and wake up, the bump on the head does us good. That's how it works in practice. We need this experience of the push.<\/p>\n
It is precisely through pushing that we develop the consciousness soul for the spiritual, precisely through failing in the last. What do we have today? We have spiritual materialism today because it is a deep belief for many. I believe in matter. For them, what is actually spiritual is matter. One of the great representatives of the materialistic theory of evolution in Germany at the time of R. Steiner was Ernst Haeckel<\/b>. The one for whom R. Steiner was an ardent advocate. He wrote a treatise: \"Haeckel and his opponents\".\u00a0 <\/span>He defends Haeckel absolutely, against all those who want to bring any spiritual fantasies into the teaching of evolution. Because that is completely unhealthy. Either I come to know with clear spiritual perceptions what spiritual forces are at work, then it is healthy. But if I speculate them out of my mind, with the feeling in the background that it would be so beautiful, I am a believing Christian, so it must be so. No, that is not up to the task, it leads absolutely into the Luciferic, it may be uplifting and inspire many people, but spiritually it is moronic, because it does not correspond to reality, not to reality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTherefore, as sorry as I am, as much as I sympathise with many modern brain researchers who still had this spiritual in their faith, now try with difficulty and cramp to interpret it into their research work. And they put ghosts in the most impossible places, but in reality they are not there. That is superstition. I have to get to the point where I recognise that what appears as matter is itself something spiritual, the outer manifestation of the spiritual. Then I must look through this barrier to see what spiritual layers there are, then I come to the etheric world, to the soul world\/astral world, and only then to something spiritual. And then it is not yet the really self-created spiritual, but a created spiritual, only then do I enter the Source. There are a lot of steps to overcome to get there. But one must not spare oneself the trouble of buying the way there and wanting to jump there at once, because then in truth I fall a victim to a Luciferic fantasy. Then it is not fantasy, but phantasm. That is the great distinction. Real artistic fantasy or even scientific fantasy draws from spiritual reality without consciously experiencing it as such, but as a fantasy image. Many researchers and artists do this time and again. But it must not be fantasy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPhantasies arise where I project my wishful thinking into things. Then it becomes completely wrong. Then I go astray. Therefore, those who want to explain everything in a strictly materialistic way, they are on the right path, they hit the wall at some point and the wall is so real that I can no longer deny it. Then it will be easy for them to be the first to come to spiritual perceptions there. Even the massive bumping against the wall is a spiritual perception. In truth, it is already this groping out to the next higher level. I have to go as far as where I can come with the intellectual thinking and with the outer research directed towards the sensual, then I bump into the wall, then it goes through. Then I start to really grope in the etheric self and be aware of it.<\/p>\n
With the Egyptians it is so accurately portrayed, when they represent the etheric body, the Etheric body KA<\/b>. Ka is a very good word because it indicates that it is the force that forms the physical body, they were aware of that. Ka, the edgy, that's right, because they realised that it shapes the outside. When they depict Ka, they depict it in human form, but above the head there are two bent arms, that is always the Ka, because that is exactly how they experienced it. But still with a different consciousness than we have. If we go over to living thinking today, the touching into the etheric, we can learn that today, with that we open the gate into the spiritual world, we still have the intellectual thinking but with that we close the gate. We have to know that everything we grasp in terms of the intellect, I close the gate with it. If, like R. Steiner, I practise spiritual science and begin to communicate it to people or write it down in books, then that is exactly what happens, continuously, I draw something from the spiritual, close the gate and translate it into something rational, there is no other way. In any case, there is no other way as long as I cannot bring others directly through my expressions to experience it themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhen more people have reached the point where they have this ability of spiritual perception, then you can communicate with them differently. Then they experience the same thing, from their individual point of view, but still a common thing. But as long as that is not the case, I always have to get something out, gate closed, so that I don't get irritated, then translate it into terms of understanding, basically with every single sentence I write down, with every word I choose. Continuously open \/ close. The closing is always the painful point, you think to yourself, Oh God, how little of this I've been able to get in. That's the problem. A tiny fraction of it. But it has to be enough to start with.<\/p>\n
We find these things again in the description in the Apocalypse of John about the church of Philadelphia, the church of brotherly love. Brotherly love will develop most strongly out of economic life. R. Steiner has described a threefold structure of social life: Spiritual life (education, religion, science, etc.), legal life, economic life.\u00a0 <\/span>R. Steiner has linked them to the three great ideals of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, fraternity. The assignment Freedom <\/b>for the Spiritual life<\/b> can be understood quite well. In legal life, freedom would not be the right thing, because free means everyone does what they want. Whether it harms someone else or not, it doesn't matter. That must be the law of equality. No one may presume that this is my freedom, but not that of others. In the Economy the fraternity<\/b>It is already partly realised in economic life today. Although we don't believe it at all. It has nothing to do with the sentimental thought that we are all brothers and we all love each other. The feeling is okay, but alone it is not enough. We know that if you build on it, it usually won't work. Because someone, for some reason or other, can't go through with it. Especially when there is a lot of money involved, the brotherhood is over. Or the other person is a brother who has a different opinion that you don't tolerate. Then comes the famous thing: \"And if you don't want to be my brother, I'll bash your head in.\"<\/i> No!<\/p>\nThis brotherhood that is meant here is one that lies within the structure of modern economic life. Because we have moved away from self-sufficiency, I work for my own needs, as a self-supporter, home economics, but we always work for others. We will not make a profit if we produce past the people who are supposed to be our customers. Because then no one will buy it. You can talk them into thinking they need something they don't want, but that's not sustainable. That is one reason for economic crises, because production bypasses the people. The economy is healthy when I know what people want, what they need and I can offer them the right product at a reasonable price. I will be successful with that. That will be inside the economic development. You never achieve one hundred percent of the ideals. That is the polar star you navigate by. It gives us the direction. This is the brotherhood of the Philadelphia community.<\/p>\n
\"And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, saying to you, He who is holy, He who is true, He who has the key of David, when He unlocks, no one locks, and when He shuts, no one unlocks. I see through your doings. Behold, I have caused the door to be open before You, and no one can shut it.\"<\/i> One could say as an afterthought: except yourself! The key of David is the key that opens or closes the gate to the spiritual world. Today in post-Christian times, which also concerns the time in which John is writing, the Mystery of Golgotha has already been accomplished, he feels that there is a power within the human I that has this Key of David at its disposal. Now out of the own power of the I. Interestingly, the Bible only mentions the key of David twice, once in the Old Testament, in the 22nd chapter of the Book of Isaiah, and the second time here in the Apocalypse of John, and really with reference to this text of Isaiah, because it is also about unlocking and locking. It is formulated similarly, but if you look at it more closely, it is about the gate being opened or closed from the spiritual world. Now it is we ourselves who open or close it. A small but important difference.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFor a larger part of humanity, this will be possible in the next cultural epoch in the community of Philadelphia. And there will be a part of humanity who will not be able to reach it, who will remain behind. Who remain on the outside. Who will then even go through a certain descent, who may still be ingenious in inventing external things, they will certainly have a high external intelligence, but they will not be able to be spiritually productive, they will not be able to advance science by their own efforts. They will receive certain Ahrimanic inspirations, because Ahriman is one who imposes his inspirations on man. But we also have the possibility to close the door to him with the key of David. Where he wants to misguide us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis key also serves to open and close access to the realm of the adversaries. It is not only about the upper spiritual world. It is a universal key. It also locks the gate to the abyss. Everything is described in the Apocalypse. It is also essentially about opening the gate of the abyss and locking up what we don't need now, but also about letting out what we need as a stimulus, as a resistance against which we can mature. These are precisely the resistances. Healthy is the outer explorer who goes to the limit where he fails with his mind and then breaks through. At this limit stands the Ahriman. Then he breaks through it and comes, however, not into the Ahrimanic realm, if he does it right, but exactly into the upper world. That is in truth the Ahrimanic lid that lies over there, which can then be pierced.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis means that in this community of Philadelphia, in the next cultural epoch, the people who cannot enter the spiritual realm will indeed be dependent on the others, also for their own development. There will not only be a division into two kingdoms, but to a certain extent there will be an understanding, even among Ahriman himself, that they need the spiritually productive people to bring in new impulses down there. Ahriman will only try to control this so strictly that the impulses that come in are then only used for his purposes. He will know, he already suspects, that through a human I, through the power of the human I, creative impulses come in. These will be used. The transformation of the world of nature and the world of earth will already have taken on gigantic proportions. If you compare Goethe's time with the way we see and experience the world today, especially in the big cities. A lot has already changed, not all to our advantage. It will happen to a much greater extent. Whether to the advantage or to the disadvantage, that remains to be seen. If these creative impulses do not come from above, it will only be to the disadvantage. Then it will only bring destruction. For the ahrimanic forces only destroy the old, mechanise it, engineer it, and bring forth a mechanism of death. That is all they can do. They can be highly intelligent machines. By being able to use the outer mind. It can all be done. The AI machines are then all networked with each other. What one machine in one place learns, all the other machines in the world learn immediately. At an ever-increasing rate. That will come very soon. It is only to be hoped that the people with their mental abilities are also up to it. You can see from this that we are in quite a bind today. Because the developments pushed forward by the Ahrimanic powers will come very quickly. You can already sense that today if you look at the speed of technical development.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe things of our daily lives, how long have they been around? The smartphone has been around since 2007, when Apple launched the first internet phone. That was about 13 years ago. Today it's worldwide, in every third-world village, with all the pluses and minuses. It doesn't matter that technology is evil per se, it becomes evil when I use it wrong. If they are developed properly, if they are built humanly and spiritually, so that they can be a tool to give spiritual impulses to transform the\u00a0 <\/span>If they can contribute to this, then they are most welcome.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNevertheless - everything that is technology has destructive forces. It is a disease process that must be countered by a healing process. Therefore, biodynamic agriculture is an important healing process in agriculture, one can speak of an earth healing. It will be seen that it will be important for the future to have a proper balance between the healing and the degrading forces, we need both. Just as we need them in our organism. We need the degrading forces as well as the constructive ones. The Lord Ahriman is primarily responsible for the degrading forces. That is one of his essential tasks. The death element works through him. The spiritual that we develop, that is, our free spiritual that we develop, must constantly be wrested from death. That is why this encounter is always there. It is not evil in itself. It is only evil when we let ourselves fall completely into one side. If death is not always followed by resurrection. On a small scale, it is always there where I die with the concepts of understanding and rise again with a living thinking. That is where it begins. Today. Immediately. On a larger scale at the time of the church of Philadelphia. Now there are still few who can go ahead. What we are doing now will not drive the whole world population in the near future, because many people still have to go through the strong dying phase. This is necessary, it is a prerequisite for being able to take this conscious step into the spiritual realm. Because otherwise it would at best be a relapse into old forces. That would be even worse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou cannot go into the future with old spiritual forces. Although for the time being certain old forces must be kept. Because we are not yet so far along the new path. The primitive peoples, for example, are not yet ready for the new forces. R. Steiner says that certain old primitive peoples will have to be preserved for a later future, because these old forces are connected with the physical, they are spiritual forces that are based on the physical, just as the old clairvoyance was also connected with the physical forces, with the spiritual that lies behind the physical. The body is not only something material, there is also something spiritual behind it. They worked with these forces, these forces are actually passed on through heredity, were and are passed on. These powers, which we cannot yet reach today on the new path, must be preserved by these peoples. Until a time comes when they can be spiritualised, when our spiritual development has progressed so far that we can reach what we cannot yet reach today. These will be the essential forces to transform the earth completely. It's all about the forces that transform the earthly. It is easier to get into higher, earthly, spiritual realms than into that which transforms the earth. That is the most difficult, that is the last thing we will learn.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nA first way to bring about a healthy transformation, which not only has consequences when the earth exists, but which also has consequences for the future. That is, once the earth has passed and a next stage of development begins, which is called the New Jerusalem here in the Apocalypse, that no longer takes place on earth in our present sense, but that is a new world, where nature will also look different. In order to prepare this world, we need precisely the forces to transform the earth. What we transform from the earth for the future of a new world will then be our new planet. It is therefore very important that the natural gifts that exist in certain peoples, which are also bodily conditioned, that something of this is preserved. So much for how to deal with the last remnants of primitive peoples that still exist. How do we ensure that these forces are preserved? But how can we also learn something from them, how can we illuminate it with the spiritual powers that we have today, which are basically still small for this area. We must learn more and more to see through these forces of nature.\u00a0 <\/span>These are the strongest forces.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThere is the complication. The adversary powers are also in there. But there are also high positive hierarchies inside. When I say positive \/ negative, I don't mean it morally, in a judgmental way, but as with electricity, plus \/ minus. The minus is also part of it. We should not wish that by some divine decree the adversaries would be defeated tomorrow. Then our development would be over. Then we would not have peace and joy and be at our goal, but then our development would be cut off. We need to confront these forces. We will need them for a long time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut in the end it will lead to the adversaries also being redeemed, at least as a possibility. There is also the possibility that at least part of humanity will not manage to keep up with this development, in which case part of the adversary forces will not be redeemed either. They then form a world of their own, which breaks away from the further development and goes its own way, where the actually creative-spiritual no longer plays a role. They have then finally lost access to it. In truth, this is also the most terrible punishment that could be inflicted on Ahriman. The punishment for having actually made the \"sacrifice\" of taking on the role of the adversary. I.e. he has been having trouble with it all the time now and suffers a spiritual deprivation, then he is condemned to drop out altogether and never approach the spiritual again. That would be a very bad thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTherefore, especially in the congregation of Philadelphia, in the next cultural epoch, among the people who can already experience the spiritual to a high degree, there will be precisely this awareness that their task is to recognise what the adversaries are for, to connect with them and to contribute to their redemption. This will be a conscious realisation. According to R. Steiner, the Manichaean task of the future. Not to fight against evil, but to connect with it and redeem it from within. As Morgenstern puts it, \"Love evil well!\" To truly love it, love not as a sentimental feeling but as an effective life force. R. Steiner does not name the astral body or the soul as the place that is connected with love, that would be the feeling of love, that should already belong to it, but that is the powerless side of it. The actual love body is the etheric body. Etheric forces are love forces in that they are life forces. They create life, they animate, they heal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhen a person lives out of these life forces, that begins with living thinking, which can be trained through the philosophy of freedom, and when that really begins to fill my life, and I can draw from that, then I have a surplus of life forces that I can give to others. If the will is there in the other person to receive it. And the openness. I have to be careful myself that I don't start imposing my gift on someone. But you can put it down, it's still wrapped, if you're curious and it interests you, then open it and look inside to see if it could be interesting for you. Or you can throw it in the bin. If I gave it as a gift, it's gone. Do what you want with it. It must not hurt me any more as the giver. Because otherwise I would actually have my egoism inside. The spiritual gives, whether it is accepted or not. Especially today.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn pre-Christian times, people who had prepared themselves were simply given gifts and they could take that. Today it is different, because when I give a spiritual gift today, it has an impact on the person when he receives it. It transforms him. He has to want that. It must not just happen. So to speak, \"I'm treating you now!\" Then it is not good. You have to wait until he takes it. Maybe he puts it in a corner somewhere for ten years, then one day it occurs to him, what is there in that dusty corner, what is that? A book, aha, interesting! Then perhaps the time is ripe. That is also an aspect of true brotherhood, which will only be there then, because only then will the ability to recognise be there: what does the other person need? Also spiritually. I give you something that I see and feel you could need. There is a spiritual perception behind it, that fits you now. To a large extent this is the case when a spiritual teacher advises a spiritual disciple to do certain things. Then he may only advise him to do something that he feels is already ripe in this student, that suits you. If he doesn't pay attention to that and doesn't recognise the student in his individual character, then it goes wrong. Therefore, today it is better to do without a spiritual teacher in the old sense. Maybe take a book, read it and put it away again. But not where a master guides me, you have to do this, you have to do that, but at the same time this so-called \"master\" doesn't even feel that the path of the disciple must be a completely different one. There is a very high responsibility. The way of passing on spiritual things must be absolutely freeing. It must be built entirely on the freedom of the person. No pressure in any direction. You can talk about something, but if I notice that he doesn't cooperate, then that's the end. You can also talk about many other beautiful things. And it's much better.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn the next cultural epoch, Philadelphia, it will be a very decisive factor how people can deal with each other. There will already be a very clear separation of the spirits at that time. People who can rise out of the I into the spiritual and others who cannot, who are very intelligent but cannot open themselves to the spiritual. The important thing will be to find a basis for communication, something in common where we can meet. Because otherwise it will end up in a war of all against all. Where one no longer understands the other. This then applies to everyone, because if the spiritually developed person can no longer understand the spiritually less developed person, then that person is also to blame for the fact that communication cannot take place and this conflict arises. This war of all against all, which is then described in the Apocalypse, through the age when the book with the seven seals is opened, then it begins to become dramatic, that is after the seventh cultural epoch. That still has a little time left, it goes up to about the 6th-8th millennium AD.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThere it will be necessary that this understanding is also there, there especially the spiritually developed are called upon to develop a very great understanding for those who do not yet come along on the path into the spiritual, who perhaps also do not feel the need for it, but still need a way to get there at some point. Of course, we should not let them go down for good. We have to be aware that those who have not yet entered the spiritual world have to learn some lessons in the outer world. And have things to put into the world, the transformation of the earth, the mechanisation, R. Steiner says that in the 6th-7th millennium the world will be transformed into a self-acting electrical apparatus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe technology, this ahrimanic element will have developed the highest refinement by then. This will strongly determine life on earth. Everything that is nature will be involved in this electrical apparatus. There will be an experience of nature and it will be dependent on this technology at that time. Technology, industry is destroying an insane amount. Environmental destruction. Climate crisis. Also because of the exhaust gases that are coming. There are huge influences on the climate. Not only through the exhaust fumes, but also through what people carry over spiritually into the afterlife. That is actually the much bigger impact. For we are not only changing the earth through what we do down here, that is only the preparation for what we then do over there on the spiritual side. These are the forces that help to determine the destiny of the whole globe. Ultimately, the whole solar system from the spiritual side. Higher hierarchies are helping, but they are guided by what spiritual impulses man carries into death, carries through there and is then woven into nature. We work continuously on this, on earth when we are embodied with outer means and from the spiritual side when we pass through life from death to the new birth. This belongs together. We are in truth preparing the earth for our next incarnation externally.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis causes the tempo of incarnations to rocket upwards. We have to adapt faster and faster to changes that are outside, we also make more and more external changes, and we have to come in faster and faster through this so that we can keep up at all. In order not to miss the next step. Because if we miss one, then we have a gap in our spiritual development. That accelerates the spiral at the moment. You then have to go through the spiritual quickly. Today that is often only decades. You can assume today that people from the beginning or the middle of the 20th century are already back and are already in it again. The world has changed enormously since then.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSo it will be important for the people who have progressed in a certain way that what they give spiritually is also appropriate for the people they are to receive and corresponds to their level of spiritual development. Whereby it is not a question of higher or lower development, because we need both parts. We need this cooperation. It is only a question of both currents coming together in the end, or as many as possible coming together, and from these the development continues in the New Jerusalem, in the New Earth that will come into being. That is the great theme of the Apocalypse, that is the goal, what it is all about. That is the perspective we have.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn this age, the ability to develop intuition, i.e. to become one with another spiritual being, especially in relation to one's fellow human beings, will be of great importance. This is much more than what is called compassion or empathy today. This ability should of course be cultivated, but it will go much further, it will go so far that one really becomes one with the other spiritual being in certain moments in spiritual experience. That is the highest power of love. To completely unite with the other spiritual being. Christ did this deed of love for all humanity. He unites himself completely with each individual human I. With each individual in an individual way. The entire full Christ power is there for each individual human I. Today we can only raise a part of it into consciousness or make it usable. This will be a huge topic in the church of Philadelphia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\"And to the angel of the church of Philadelphia write, saying unto you, He that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, when he unlocketh no man shutteth, and when he shutteth no man openeth. I see through your doings. Behold, I have caused the door to be open before you, and no one can shut it\"....<\/i> We have already been there. ...\"Your strength is still small, but you have kept my word in your soul and have not denied my name\".<\/i>... the Word is the Christ Himself and the Name is also, only the increase of that....\"Behold, I will cause some of the fellowship of the satanic spirit, who call themselves Jews unjustly and out of a lying spirit,\"<\/i>... for the word Jews you could also use Christians, that is still one thing at that time, ....\"come to you to throw themselves on the ground at your feet. Let them know that I love you.\"<\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis could be misread by saying that these are the lowly ones who should throw themselves to the ground and be glad that they are heard and see how much they are loved by the Lord, in contrast to those who throw themselves to the ground. But that would be a very unchristian picture if it were to be taken in that way. No!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThey should really learn to recognise the power of love that can take people in through the Christ, by the example of those who have already gone before. That they see it is possible. It is possible! You have to be able to let these people share in this experience. How this love lies in this Christ-power, but which flows through the I, then becomes our very individual power of love, how this is an effective power. To let others share in this experience, that is what it is all about. One has to be very careful when grasping these images. It is very easy to misinterpret them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOne can also see that it is becoming more and more urgent not to stick to the letter that has been handed down, even though it is as exact as possible, but to let oneself become aware that this is the signpost that leads me to where I first experience the real thing. What I experience there and can draw from there has real value. Not the letter that is written in there, that is too little in the meantime. I can't achieve anything in the world with it. I know in my head what is necessary or I think I understand it. I can really understand, grasp and experience it when it has become a living force within me. This living force shows itself in the form of imaginative perceptions. From this imaginative perception it becomes life force. That is what is behind it. Those who are now to throw themselves at the feet should feel that this life force can flow over to them. They feel in the other person how this life force works in him, they feel how it works through him and flows on. But where he also doses it in a certain way so that the other can absorb it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe know that we often have to feed up a sick person gradually. I can't tell him tomorrow you can eat a pork roast again, but we have to slowly bring him up to a healthy level. We have to slowly start nourishing him with the right food to the extent that he can tolerate it. That is what is meant by the word: \"I want them to know that I love you.\"<\/i> They should really recognise in the most positive sense not only as truth, but as reality. As a reality that they also feel in themselves. Because this power overflows. ...\"You have kept the word of my patience in your heart, and so I will keep you in the hour of the great temptation that is coming upon all mankind\"....<\/i> There will be a great temptation also to join this adversary current, because one must not imagine that these \"satanic spirits\"<\/i> They are weak or have no potential for activity, that they are helpless. No! They have tremendous powers within themselves, they have developed tremendous strength, because the development of humanity also needs this strength.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThey even have powers that, when things go very wrong, are turned into black magic, then it becomes dangerous, because then exactly the opposite happens, that they begin to steal powers from the light side, where it does not happen that they can be given out of love, because they do not want that at all, they would push that back, but they steal the powers. They have this refinement of being able to draw these powers from people who have actually developed in a positive sense, meant here again in a completely non-judgemental way, but at the moment when it goes into black magic, that's when it becomes bad, that's when it becomes evil, that leads to something really dropping out of development. But this also leads to the final consequence, when one wants to force a development on others out of the most positive intentions, which is meant positively, I do want to lead you into spirituality, but if it violates your free will and I force it spiritually, then I myself become a black magician. Today the danger of this is still relatively small. Because few people today still have a great spiritual potential that they could abuse.<\/p>\n
But at the time of the church of Philadelphia, this will already be developed to a much greater extent, the time of the black magicians will begin. And that will be on both sides. Many will be able to slip out of the positive sphere if they want to lead all mankind by force to the good, as they call it. This is almost the more dangerous seduction than that by the ahrimanic forces from below. Because from above I bring out forces from the spiritual worlds which Ahriman and his hosts do not have at all, but then insert them into the lower realm in the consequence which comes out. There, of course, Ahriman rejoices. He cannot force it, but he can seduce people into it. That out of the best of faith, yet out of an aberration, they manage to lead spiritual forces from above down there, which are then used wrongly. Because the development there is not mature and ready for it. There is a lot coming our way. But we don't need to be afraid of it either, when the challenges will be enormous, greater than those we are facing today. We will have developed more strength by then.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThat is the dangerous but perhaps also the good thing about our times. It forces us to develop at a fast pace. Today, as spiritually striving people, we are incredibly challenged. Anthroposophy, the spiritual current developed by R. Steiner, is now at the point where it must be developed further, with each individual who takes hold of it. Because so much has happened in the meantime, so much has happened in the dark world in the 20th century, if you look at it from the outside, but in the spiritual underground, let's call it the unspiritual underground, much more has happened. It is only now really beginning. All that is happening are external symptoms of tremendous unspiritual forces working in the underground. The Corona crisis is one of them. Behind this is a tremendous working of these dark ahrimanic forces. They are doing it because we are called upon to develop the counter-forces in order to create the future together with both. The future will consist of both forces together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n...\"All the inhabitants of Earth must pass this test. I come surprisingly quickly...\" <\/i>So it comes down to presence of mind in all of this. Of course we have to work on it all our lives, to have means of course to want to, no one dictates it to us, we can dictate it to ourselves, we know how difficult it is sometimes to bring ourselves to do what we want to do or would like to do, as long as we only want to do it, usually nothing much happens, because if it becomes strenuous, then we whistle about it again and say: tomorrow is also another day.<\/p>\n
But sometimes it is also good to wait days, weeks, years. Patience. We have to acquire the patience to know when is the right time to participate in the world. That will also be important. On the one hand, to have this tirelessness to develop further, to develop forces, to pass these tests - but the test also consists of putting the spiritual forces into the world at the right time and in the right way. Otherwise it is over again immediately. Otherwise we will do harm with it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n...\"Hold fast what you have achieved within, lest anyone rob you of your crown...\".<\/i> The crown is the spiritual self which we then have at our disposal. In ancient times, too, the crown that the ruler put on himself was also the spiritual self that the ruler had, from which he could draw, but which at that time was bestowed on him from above by the spiritual worlds. Today we must put on the crown ourselves, i.e. we must become active in order to acquire this power, in order to make it our own. The spiritual self is in a certain way already prepared in the spiritual world, we only have to make it our own.\u00a0 <\/span>People in the past were not yet able to do that. Today we have to take it into ourselves and then it becomes something of our own.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n...\"Whoever overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my divine Father. He shall no more leave this temple. And I will inscribe in his being the name of my divine Father, and the name of the City of God, the New Jerusalem, which descends from my divine Father out of heaven, and my own name, the new. He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit speaks to the churches.\"<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>The pillar in the temple, what is the pillar, what is the temple? The pillar is an image for the erect human being, classically tripartite, with head, middle (chest area) and base. The middle is very big. Centre is very important. The pillar carries the temple. Temple in the old sense is an architectural building, a spiritual temple, as R. Steiner thought of the Goetheanum, the first Goetheanum, or also the second Goetheanum, I love the first Goetheanum in its forms, but the contemporary is the second. The first one burnt down, the second one is really in the present, this power is in the forms and in the material, there is future in it. The first Goetheanum was a departure, but at the same time a conclusion of something old, in truth it would not have continued there, Steiner certainly did not know that at the time. That had to happen on New Year's Eve. So it was also a turning point, a turning of something old into something new. That is what we are facing. Building on a solid basis, then letting it live on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhat is the temple? The pillar is the people. 12 pillars, 14 pillars perhaps, a community of pillars. But these are no longer the architectural pillars, they are the human pillars. Humanity itself is the temple. On the way there, the buildings help to accommodate that. That already has a meaning. It has a meaning to experience the Greek temple. To experience the Romanesque churches, to grow out of the crypt, out of the catacombs. Then to grow into the Romanesque castle-like church. Then the launching pad with the Gothic, for flying up and the light breaks in, in the Baroque everything takes off completely, the dome is completely pierced, there it flies out into the sky in truth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe first Goetheanum was also a domed building, but the walls were permeable even though they were solid wooden walls, permeable to the spiritual by design. They must become more and more so. Permeable to the spiritual. The pillars become more and more permeable until they are no longer there, because it is the people who are standing there. The people are the pillars of the future, the city of God, the New Jerusalem, arises from the temple of man. The outer buildings will fall away, they will evaporate into nothingness. Only this will open the way to the New Jerusalem. That means that at some point the earth will disappear physically, then ethereally and astrally, then withdraw into the spiritual realm. There comes the great turning point. That is the point towards which the apocalypse is aiming. That's where this is going. \"And the building becomes man.\"<\/p>\n
Man must recognise himself in the world and the world in him and he becomes the world. He is the world. At times he has put something out of himself that can be confronted. He has to take all this back into himself spiritually, transform it, and a new world will emerge from it. We still need a lot of help for that. How it will be shaped depends on us. We will need help in implementing it, just as an architect needs a master builder to implement what he has planned. The plan, what it will become, that is up to us. We are already working on that. In other words, we are becoming more and more involved in the process of creation. We are not only creatures, but also co-creators. We are called to duty, but we can only commit ourselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIf many do not, then the new world will be poor. There is still a long way to go, but we must be aware that we have to start now. Otherwise it can go downhill much faster than we would like. It is already the responsibility of man today. Therefore, we need to know: How do we deal with the earth? We have to know, we have to transform the earth. There is no going back to nature as it was before. It has to be a forward. It is often said that the earth would be better off without human beings, because they ruin everything. no future at all<\/b>. Then it would only be subject to the forces of decay. The fact that we are ruining a great deal is due to the fact that we are still making use of these forces of decay. Therefore, in the future we must increasingly introduce living forces that come from a living spiritual experience and, at the beginning, from a living thinking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThen we will also produce the ideas, develop the plans that can be salutary for nature. Basically, the whole earth has to be cleansed from the Nature to culture<\/b> become. Right down to the individual living beings. We will transform the plants. We will transform the animals. Man will do that. While the earth is still evolving. But not through genetic engineering, as is being attempted today. Genetic engineering is a very clumsy attempt that only promotes destructive forces. But the transformation will be there. Down to the smallest bug, the smallest cell, the smallest bacterium, which also has its use. Then the negative bacteria, the bacilli, will also disappear because we will transform them into something good. Then the viruses will disappear. The viruses are just a splintering of cells, basically viruses are created by splintering of cell nuclei. Something breaks out of it, it is a destroyed cell nucleus. That is the origin. That gets its own envelope and spreads. That basically comes out of a degradation process. So if we learn to put more life forces into the world, and bring them into balance with the degradation processes, then such problems will also stop. It is not so much given by God, nor given by the devil, but we have a long-term influence on it, through which we develop. When we evolve spiritually, we also transform nature. This will be an essential task in the sixth cultural epoch of Philadelphia. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dr. Wolfgang Peter Here you will find useful summaries, transcripts, keywords, etc. If you would like to help to make this documentation even richer, please contact info@anthro.world. Many thanks to all hard-working helpers! Date of the lecture: Summary<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2795","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"featured_image_src":null,"yoast_head":"\n
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