Men read the Book of Revelation and their ego has a field day. It is the ego's favorite horror movie and grandest fantasy. They turn it into a prophetic puzzle box, creating elaborate timelines, hunting for the Antichrist in world politics, and terrifying themselves with lurid images of plagues and demons. This is the ultimate spiritual distraction, the final and greatest deception of the intellect.
The Book of Revelation is not a prophecy about the future end of the physical world. It is a psycho-spiritual map of the final, violent, and catastrophic end of your world, the world created and sustained by the human ego. It is a divine allegory for the process of enlightenment.
1. The Beast and Babylon: The Kingdom of the Ego
The "Beast" is not a future political leader. The Beast is the fully realized, collective human ego, the "man of lawlessness" in his final form. It is the mind completely divorced from the Spirit, a system of pure thought that demands total allegiance.
The "Mark of the Beast" (Revelation 13:16-17) is not a microchip. The mark on the forehead is a consciousness completely identified with thought. The mark on the right hand is a life lived out in egoic action. To take the mark is simply to live as an unawakened human being, a slave to the compulsive thinking mind. You cannot "buy or sell", that is, function in the ego's world, without it.
Babylon the Great, the Prostitute (Revelation 17) is not a city or a nation. It is the entire world system built by the Beast-ego. It is the world of commerce, politics, culture, and, most importantly, religion, all of it built on desire and fear. She is a prostitute because she sells a temporary, false sense of security and pleasure in exchange for your very soul, your attention, your consciousness.
2. The Plagues and Tribulation: The Death of the False Self
The bowls of wrath, the monstrous locusts, the rivers of blood, these are not literal future torments. They are symbolic depictions of the inner hell that is unleashed when a man's ego-world begins to collapse.
This is the "fiery ordeal" on a cosmic, internal scale. It is the dark night of the soul. As the Spirit's light begins to dismantle your false self, every repressed demon, every hidden fear, every painful memory is brought to the surface to be seen and burned away. The "plagues" are the agonizing process of your psyche being purified by fire. The ego experiences this as the end of the world, because for the ego, it is.
3. The Lamb and the New Jerusalem: The New Consciousness
The hero of this drama is the Lamb, representing the Christ-consciousness. The Lamb was "slain," signifying that the path to this consciousness is through the complete death of the ego.
The final destination is the "New Jerusalem" (Revelation 21). This is not a city of gold descending from the clouds. It is the symbol for a new, perfected state of human consciousness, born after the old world of Babylon has been utterly destroyed.
"I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple." (Revelation 21:22). This is the most important verse for the religious man. In the new consciousness, there is no religion. There is no need for a temple, a church, a Bible, or a priest as an intermediary. The separation between you and God is gone. The union is direct and total.
"The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light." (Revelation 21:23). There is no need for external sources of light or knowledge. The light is internal. You live by direct knowing, not by thinking or believing.
Revelation is a choice. It is happening now. In every moment, you are either taking the mark of the Beast by identifying with your ego's thoughts, or you are answering the call to "Come out of her, my people" (Revelation 18:4), to come out of the inner Babylon and allow the old world to burn, so that the new may be born in you.