Since the onset of the so-called 'Corona crisis', one increasingly gets the impression that mankind is being manipulated and 'driven' in a certain direction. However, one can also notice that it is becoming more and more important which image of humanity people have: whether they have ever thought about fundamental life questions such as health and illness, death, truth and lies or other fundamental topics. It currently seems to be becoming increasingly vital in everyday social interaction to know what people's attitudes are to all these questions. It becomes clear that people who live with thoughts of a spiritual world or who possibly also occupy themselves with Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science can cope with the current events of the world in a completely different way and set clearly different priorities than people who have a purely materialistic world view.
This observation can lead to the question of how the path of humanity will continue in the future, whether the gap between the two camps is widening and whether one must perhaps even assume that an incipient division of humanity is taking place.
Where is the 'Fourth industrial Revolution' Leading Us?
Klaus Schwab (born 1938 in Ravensburg, Germany) is the founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum. The Geneva-based foundation is a non-profit organization that hosts the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, a gathering of leading international economists, politicians, intellectuals and journalists.
His 2016 book The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Pantheon Publishing) was on the business books bestseller list for months. The goal of this 'fourth industrial revolution', he says, is to merge digital, physical and biological systems. He believes that this revolution will not change what we do, but will change humans themselves. [1]
The book reads like a creepy science fiction novel. According to Schwab, in just a few years it will no longer be possible to buy goods and services, but only to rent them. Total surveillance will make the concept of ownership obsolete. Ubiquitous artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms will regulate private and social life. For the great mass of people, there will no longer be anything like a private sphere. Freedom of movement would also only exist for vaccinated people. Tiny robots (nano-bots) in our blood vessels would take over the healing of diseases. Hospitals would then become superfluous. The limits of human intelligence are to be overcome by chips implanted in the brain. There is also talk of reprogramming cognitive prostheses and much more, which shows that humans are regarded as computer machines that can be 'reprogrammed' and 'enhanced' at will.
Regarding this 'enhancement' of people, Klaus Schwab states in his book: "Gradually we are now realising that it (technology) has much more to offer - but also that far more is at stake for us for all the reasons mentioned above, we are on the threshold of a radical system change that will require us humans to adapt continuously. It is possible that this will increasingly polarise the world into those who welcome change and those who reject it.
An inequality will result that goes far beyond the social inequality described earlier. This ontological inequality will separate those who are willing and able to adapt from those who refuse to adapt. It will thus basically define winners and losers in every sense of the word. The winners may benefit from certain forms of radical human optimisation brought about by particular elements of the fourth industrial revolution (such as genetic engineering) that are denied to the losers. This will create the danger of class conflict and other disputes that will be unlike anything we know."
Professor Kevin Warwick puts this view of the 'division of humanity' more bluntly in his infamous transhumanist [2] book, I, Cyborg (2002):
"Humans will be able to evolve by harnessing the super-intelligence and extra abilities offered by the machines of the future, by joining with them. All this points to the development of a new human species, known in the science-fiction world as 'cyborgs'. This does not mean that everyone has to become a 'cyborg'. If you are happy with your human condition, you can stay as you are. But be warned - just as we humans parted ways with our chimpanzee cousins years ago, cyborgs will also part ways with humans. Those that remain as humans will likely become a subspecies. They will effectively become the chimpanzees of the future."
Ahriman as a Writer
As surreal as the books by Klaus Schwab and Kevin Warwick sound, they should be taken seriously. One should not make the mistake that my grandmother made when she read Hitler's Mein Kampf and later, looking back, said that she did not believe all the crazy stuff that was written in that book. If 'leading personalities' in politics and economy, as for example, Klaus Schwab, write 'crazy stuff', one should probably prick up one's ears and remember that according to Rudolf Steiner, since Nietzsche's Antichrist, Ahriman has been writing with the help of his followers, thus publishing outright his views and goals.
Moreover, Rudolf Steiner repeatedly stated that among today's types of rulers, economic types, there has been an increasing trend to advance the worst to higher positions. It is often a selection of inferior types: "It is actually lamentable when one sees how numerous the phenomenon is in modem times that actually, people with a much, much better nature have to pay respect to those with far worse natures as if to special authorities. This is a general phenomenon. The respected authorities are truly not those who represent a selection of the better types of people." [3]
In this context. It is also interesting to note that in October 2019, Klaus Schwab's WEF co-sponsored the infamous Event 201 conference, which modelled and planned for a fictional coronavirus pandemic that then promptly broke out in early 2020. [4]
Already in July 2020, Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret published another book entitled Covid-19: The Great Reset, [5] in which both authors declare that Covid-19 is not a dangerous disease. Nevertheless, they use Covid-19 as a pretext for unprecedented social change presented under the banner of a 'Great Reset', which can certainly be regarded as the introduction of a new world order by certain 'controlling elites'.
Indeed, they even see Covid-19 as a great opportunity for the 'Great Reset' by which the "brave new world" is to be introduced and implemented in favour of wealthy elites. The agenda described above - as far as the plan goes - is supposed to be fully rolled out by 2030.
If one should find all this nevertheless rather crazy, then one can ponder what Rudolf Steiner said very forthrightly on 3 January 1919 in Dornach about the relationship between 'clever people' and 'crazy people':
"But one could also imagine that someone regards a great deal of what the 'clever people' have been doing for years as sheer madness, and he could consider very large majorities to be mad; but then he could also find it understandable why these very large majorities consider him, as a non-conformist, to be mad. For in a society of madmen, it is not the madman who is usually considered mad, but the person who is sane." [6]
Digital Immortality
Authors Moritz Riesewieck and Hans Block show in their book Die Digitale Seele (The Digital Soul) that digital development stops at absolutely nothing. They state that even death should now be understood digitally. Meanwhile, intensive work is being done to compile all of a person's data and 'digital traces' after his or her death into a 'digital double' in order to be able to continue to 'communicate' with the deceased in this way.
If an Internet user decides during his or her lifetime that he would like to become 'digitally immortal', he can prepare this 'immortality' independently. This means that he can already send all his data throughout his lifetime to a so-called 'doppelganger' [double] in real time, so that this 'double' will then continue to exist after his death, in which he, the deceased, can then "live on" so to speak, at least that is the materialistic, 'technophile' idea of it.
The Worship of Artificial Intelligence
Anthony Levandowsky of California is one of the best engineers in the field of self-driving cars. He helped build Google's fleet as co-founder and chief technical officer. He is considered a robotics prodigy and is very influential in the advancement of sell-driving vehicles in the United States. He founded an Internet church, Way of the Future Church, where artificial intelligence is worshipped instead of God. His goal is to remove people's fear of artificial intelligence and to integrate machines/robots into society. [7]
All this makes it clear that the 'digital world view' is a thoroughly materialistic world view, which wants to mechanise the human soul and merge the human being with artificial intelligence in a transhumanist fashion, so that it will certainly become very difficult for human beings to be able to detach themselves from the earth after their death. That in the meantime, artificial intelligence is to be properly worshipped as divine, shows the ahrimanic and luciferic direction mankind is to be led.
In the book The Digital Soul one can read the following introductory sentences: "Apparently only a few human beings can get along without the prospect of a further life of the soul after death. A new (secular) salvation narrative is still lacking. It has not yet been possible for billions of people to compensate in their lives for the loss of meaning that resulted when they turned away from religion. There is an enormous gap, which has not escaped the attention of technology companies, who see that void as an opportunity for the next big business idea. In prospect are billions of potential custom-ers, open to a new, contemporary message that will save them from the inevitability of death. In the slipstream of the digital revolution, start-ups all over the world are entering a race for this huge market - the market of digital immortality."
Future Perspectives
What does Rudolf Steiner, whose spiritual science has been available to humanity now for over a hundred years, say about the life after death of those people who have thought in a materialistic way during their lifetime and who want to preserve earthly consciousness and the earth?
"Here on earth materialistic thoughts are prevalent; the karma of this is that in the spiritual world, the materialistic consequence, the 'earthisation' of the spiritual bodies of the dead, so to speak, is prevalent." [8] Carl Stegmann explains this with reference to Rudolf Steiner in his book The Other America [9] as follows: "What does that mean, to become 'infused with earthward leanings' ['earthisation']. When, during life on earth, the etheric body engages in too close a union with the phys-ical body, it loses its own power and formative force and assumes the structuring order of the physical body. It rigidifies and solidifies more and more. That is an essential goal for the Ahrimanic powers. It is also the aim of the [Ahrimanic] double in us. People in this way chain themselves to the forces of earth. After death, when the physical body has been laid aside, the etheric body cannot dissolve, because the after-effects of the structural order of the earthly body, its solidity and densification, still persist. Due to that, such persons cannot free themselves from the earth's ether-surroundings in order to ascend to higher spheres of existence. For a long time, they remain bound to earth and must serve Ahriman."
If one lives with these thoughts for awhile, then one recognises that there are people who, through this kind of post-mortem experience, will fall out of the development that is guided by the good gods and will take other paths from now on. Ahriman is trying to separate the people of the earth from the gods of their origins in order to win them for his own planet, which he wants to shape until the end of the earth. Ahriman, who in many respects has usurped what the god Yahweh was justified in doing and has continued it in his own sense, connects himself with the old moon forces.
In his lecture of 14 October 1917, Rudolf Steiner states:
"And then a time will come when those who thus adhere to the materialistic mind will unite with the lunar powers, and together with the moon, will surround the earth when it has become dross, when it has become a corpse. For these beings, these people, who want to connect themselves completely with a materialistic intellect, want nothing other than to hold on to the life of the earth, to remain connected with the life of the earth, not to ascend in the right way from the corpse of the earth to what will then become the soul and spirit of the earth." [10]
Stegmann writes very seriously about this: "Here we are confronted by two world perspectives, two evolutionary possibilities. With deep consternation, we confront an infinite tragedy in human evolution: humanity will divide and [the two groups will] go their separate ways! There are those who will go with the dying earth, with the earth's corpse and sink down one level. The others will go on with the true spiritual earth in order to reach a higher level of human development. Ahriman prepares the former. Along with his appearance on earth, it will become apocalyptic reality; speaking pictorially: one part of humanity will bear on their forehead the sign of the beast; the other part will bear on their forehead the sign of God." [11]
How does the idea of the above-mentioned transhumanists fit in with this, that people who do not want to enhance their consciousness with the artificial intelligence of machines - for example, with a chip implanted in the brain - and who do not want to preserve their earthly life through the 'blessings of technology' are to become the 'chimpanzees' of the future?
In Rudolf Steiner's lectures on The Apocalypse of John the following can be found: "The possibility arose for man to enter our physical world. By surviving the Atlantean flood, he became able to create and develop his present human countenance. This is really an image of the Godhead of the 'I' that dwells within man. Only through the fact that towards the end of the Atlantean period the etheric body merged with the physical, and the forces of the etheric body moved into the physical head, did we receive our present human countenance, through which is reflected the spirit of God. Let us suppose that a man would deny that it is the spirit that has given him his human countenance. Then he would not use the body as an opportunity to come to I-consciousness and to spiritualize himself again, but he would grow together with the body, and become so fond of it that he would only feel at home within it. He would remain bound to the body and go down into the abyss, and because he had not used the power of the spirit, his outer form would again become similar to his previous form. The human being who descends into the abyss would become animal-like. Thus, such human beings would bring about what we have already indicated: those who do not use their life in the body merely as an opportunity to come to the consciousness of their 'I' will descend into the abyss and will form the evil race. They will have turned away from the impulse of the Christ Jesus, and out of the ugliness of their soul they will again form the animal shape that man had in earlier times; down in the abyss will be the race of evil with wild drives in animal form. And when up above, those who will have spiritualised themselves, who will have taken the Christ principle into themselves, proclaim what they have to say in regard to their union with Christ Jesus, from there below will sound words and names of blasphemy, from those who want to escape from what appears as spiritual transformation." [12]
According to Rudolf Steiner then, it is just the other way round: those who will not break away from materialism in the future will even have to take on animal-like forms again in their physical bodies.
It is of course an ingenious move by the ahrimanic powers to instil in people the idea that if they connect with so-called artificial intelligence, they will be vastly superior to the other people who reject this, and will possess much more power and money than these and will leave them behind or below them as so-called 'apes'. Moreover, the worship of artificial intelligence instead of Christ clearly shows how strongly the ahrimanic powers are already working at this point.
The Approaching Division of Mankind
According to Rudolf Steiner, at the beginning of the third millennium there will indeed be a physical incarnation of Ahriman. Carl Stegmann wrote already in 1991: "In the coming Ahriman incarnation much will become possible that Ahriman or those following him have envisioned for a long time but were not able to attain. As a being incarnated in an earthly body, he will succeed in making earth-thinking independent of the human brain, so that human beings can take it along into the world after death. Throughout the centuries, Ahriman has aspired to this, and by his own efforts, it will become partially possible for him. Human beings who follow in his direction are supposed to become capable of maintaining their thinking after death, and not only their thinking capacity, but their memory. They are able to take along the knowledge they worked to attain, and to elaborate on it. Then they will be in a position to maintain their earthly consciousness of self, even if their physical body has fallen away. It will not be a consciousness of their actual ego-being, but a limited earth-ether-consciousness. These human beings will not be able to unfold a free 'I', but instead will be consciously thinking group-beings of sorts, tools of Ahriman. They will become much more powerful than the dead heretofore in influencing human beings on earth and in producing world-destructive forces. Through the unlawfully active moon, Venus and Mercury beings on earth, Ahriman will furthermore succeed in implanting into human beings a new etheric body consisting merely of earth ether. This etheric body will be the bearer of will-devoid earth-thinking that is taken along [in death], the bearer of memory and a new self-awareness after death.
All this will make it possible for the doubles to remain in human beings when they cross the threshold of death. No longer will the [ahrimanic] doubles be threatened with dissolution of their consciousness; they will not be torn away into a direction that could prove to be dangerous for them; they cannot be pulled by the transformation of the earthly consciousness after death into a cosmic consciousness into a trajectory that could become dangerous for them through the transformation of earth-consciousness after death into cosmic consciousness. The doubles can only remain in an etheric body that has turned earthly, and in earthly thinking. They can then remain united with the earth and its forces and strengthen the dead in their earth-oriented thinking and doings.
Human beings who play a leading role in the pursuit of Ahriman's goals on earth, for example, those involved in occult groups with ancient cults, will be the first to attain for themselves Ahrimanic immortality." [13]
Could it not be that the forming of a 'digital double' will become a 'convincing way' for many human beings to be able to become part of this 'ahrimanic immortality'? One could therefore well assume that a division of mankind is already being prepared, or even already massively advanced, which is, however, perceived in very different ways.
Spiritual Science as a Necessity of the Times
Rudolf Steiner spoke again and again of the spirituality that is breaking into our fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, a spirituality which must be taken up by humanity if greater disaster is to be avoided.
"The disaster that would come if man were to repel the incoming spiritual tidal wave would be greater than all other disasters. Our real duty to all the spirits of the world who are connected with the development of mankind, is to acquaint man with that which today is necessarily taking place subconsciously, simply through the present laws of world development, in the soul of every man. In the age of the Consciousness Soul, there is a real need to bring this up into consciousness. With reference to what today is appearing so powerfully as a social demand, it is also necessary that today one gets to know what is actually going on in human souls. For outwardly, existence is becoming more and more masklike, more and more in the nature of a mere phenomenon. It is quite possible that in one's soul experiences today, one passes by the Guardian of the Threshold, but because of the materialism rampant today, one represses the consciousness of it. But what is repressed, what does not become conscious, is not therefore non-existent; it is still there nevertheless. A person passes by the Guardian of the Threshold - but through the nature of the present time, he represses the experience. How it then represents itself, the form it can take, can become something very different. It could be the actions of a Lenin, it could be the deeds of some [other member of a revolutionary political group], (it could be a 'Corona crisis'). [14] We must become aware and attentive in the present time that we have arrived in an age when, through the deceptive impulses of materialism, passing through certain spiritual impulses can mask itself externally in a form that endangers humanity in the worst possible ways.
The times are very serious. But one really takes account of these serious times if one simply has the honest will to seek to interpret with one's healthy human understanding what can be drawn from the spiritual world by a real spiritual science." [15]