Incidentally, it may be said that we are living in an epoch today when a similar call [to that of the Sun Oracle in Atlantean times] is once again going out to humanity. To be sure, this appeal is what is appropriate for today, a time when humanity sees only what is in the physical world. The call to humanity issues from unknown depths of the spirit, depths that humanity will gradually become acquainted with, asking that humanity prepare itself for a new culture of the future, which will be permeated with clairvoyant powers. As with Atlantis, a catastrophe will occur, and afterwards a new culture imbued with spiritual capacities will arise, and it will be linked to what we call the idea of the universal brotherhood of humanity.
But today, as in Atlantean times, the call cannot go out to those who stand at the highest levels of cultural life because they will not understand. The Atlantean clairvoyants and magicians, who were in a way destined to die out with their culture, occupied a position similar to that of people in contemporary life who occupy the highest positions in the realms of scholarship and external industrial life—the great inventors and discoverers of our time.
No matter how much the present leaders feel there is still to be done, they nevertheless occupy the same position as their Atlantean counterparts.
Contemptuously they look down on those who are beginning to feel something of the spiritual life to come.
The consciousness of this fact must be awakened in the soul of anyone whose cooperative efforts in the anthroposophical workshops are to be strengthened. When leading representatives of modern culture look contemptuously down at these small circles, those who are participating diligently in the preparation of future conditions must say to themselves that the intellectual giants of today cannot be counted on to lead the way in this task.
It is precisely the people who are held in contempt because they are not considered to have reached the heights of contemporary erudition who are being assembled today, just as the leader of the Sun Oracle once gathered around him the simple of Atlantis. These disdained people are being assembled to prepare the dawn of a new culture whereas erudition of the modern form will bring about the twilight of our culture.
This is mentioned in passing to fortify those who have to endure and hold their own against the attacks of the people who consider themselves to be on the cutting edge of contemporary culture.
1909-04-06-GA109
In the old days referred to [Atlantean times], the last remnants of clairvoyance were still present in people so that they were able to behold the Great Initiate.
In a certain way, things today are more difficult for human beings when a call from the spiritual world issues to an equally small group of people, something we designate as the call from/of the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings. But since people today are placed on the physical plane, these Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings are at first unknown to this small nucleus of human beings that has crystallized itself out of the mass of people.
As we can deduce from the facts of the present time, this small group feels in its hearts that there is such a thing as a new spiritual message that is meant to have an effect on the future just as the message in former ages has had an effect on the present. These human beings who today come from all walks of life and whom we can find everywhere are the true theosophists because they carry in their hearts a longing for a spiritual life that is meant to lay the foundation for future cultures. The true theosophists in our time are emerging — just as we now encounter a sensational discovery similar to the one in the Atlantean era.
In ancient times water was conquered through the highest technological progress; the same is true today in the case of air. This conquest will, of course, extend into a later epoch. But just as ships in our times have brought about mastery of the physical plane only, so the air ship that will lead human beings into the atmosphere and beyond will empower the pilots to find only matter — material things. Granted, new realms of the physical plane will be conquered, and this will be beneficial for the external world. However, the inner spiritual life is borne in the hearts of those who feel spiritually fulfilled by the promise of being able in the future to look into the spiritual world while being conscious of self.
Look into life and you will find out there our leaders of civilization, the pillars of external culture, active as inventors and discoverers, as scholars and natural scientists. They look with scorn and contempt on a small group such as the one assembled here today that constitutes itself as a new bearer of culture and that unites its members with others in spiritual scientific associations. The events of the ancient Atlantean era repeat themselves.
However, when the spiritual life touches your hearts with such force that you can compare yourselves with dignity to those who were gathered around the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle, then you will be the bearers of spiritual life in later ages. In addition to offering humanity the external, material, and corporeal realities, such a life would also make possible a renewed immersion in the spiritual world.
Although the Great Initiate gathered human beings around Himself in ancient times, today the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings [editor: White Lodge] fulfill a similar function and issue their call to you.
If you feel your mission from a sense of history, then your hearts will become strong enough to withstand all the ridicule and disdain that the so-called pillars of civilization heap on Spiritual Science from the outside. And if you understand your mission in this spirit, then your thoughts will be strong and any doubt that may reverberate into your souls from the outside will be unable to shake you in your conviction. Your thoughts will be spiritually refined by the very force that can issue from such a knowledge of our mission.
Even if we have to review thousands of years and establish far-reaching ideals, it is worth the effort because where such ideals are established, life is transmuted, and where they are absent, life is dead. Ideals transform themselves into the force of a moment even if they have been taken from vast periods of time and may seem to make the person subscribing to them appear somewhat petty and despondent.
You will be strong for the most insignificant task if you are capable of extracting your ideal from the loftiest heights.
This will make you stand fast when those who govern the world with their erudition talk with disdain and contempt about the little spiritual scientific associations where those people sit who "do not want to go along with contemporary culture." Oh yes, they do want to go along, and they also know to appreciate the accomplishments of the external, physical world, but they also know that just as a body cannot be without a soul, no external culture can exist without spiritual life.
1907-12-05-GA266
Our whole civilization has its origin in the spiritual world. That's where plans are made that govern our life on the physical plane. Down here we only see how one event after another takes place according to physical laws, but the great spiritual causes are hidden from us. It's events on higher planes of our existence that bring about physical events.
…
An especially important event took place on the astral plane in November 1879. Since then esoteric life has taken on a quite different direction. The esoteric stream that lived in mankind since the 14th century was replaced by a new one. Previously all occult life took place very quietly and hidden from the outer world under the direction of the archangel Gabriel ("annunciation").
Something quite similar to a birth took place on the astral plane in 1879. What had slowly ripened since the 14th century could now be carried into the world in a freer way, even though only for a few people. For Gabriel's rule was followed by that of the archangel Michael. He's the radiant sun that lets esoteric wisdom shine out into a small host of people.
Materialism is included in the divine plan of creation and it has a purpose in the whole world. But the time has now come for the esoteric sun to shine brightly under Michael's radiant direction. For materialism's dark forces are increasing.
Michael's radiant rule will be followed by a dark, terrible age that starts about 2300.
Together with Michael, a dark God has begun his rule — the God Mammon.
For occultism Mammon isn't just the God of money. He's the leader of all base, black forces. And his hosts attack men's bodies and souls to corrode and ruin them. There's a lot of talk about bacterial today, and they influence a lot of things. In future they'll increase in a terrifying way, and many human bodies will waste away from terrible diseases and plagues. The brand of sin will be stamped on men's bodies for all to see.
Another archangel — Oriphiel — will rule then. He must come to shake men up to their true vocation through terrible tortures.
So that this can happen in the right way a small group of people must be prepared today to spread esoteric life in the black age 400–600 years from now.
One under Michael's rule who feels the urge to participate in spiritual life is called upon to serve archangel Michael and to learn under him .. so that someday he'll be mature enough to also serve the terrible Oriphiel in the right way.
A sacrifice is demanded from those who want to dedicate themselves to a higher life. One should only want to receive spiritual life and experience an awakening if one later wants to use this to put oneself, one's will and everything one has in the service of mankind only.
In four to six centuries the small group of men who are being prepared today will serve the God Oriphiel so that mankind can be saved. If in that age men wanted to be spiritual leaders who hadn't been prepared to stand fast in all storms and to resist Mammon's hosts, they wouldn't be able to serve the God Oriphiel in the right way, and mankind would not be lifted out of their misery.
So in order to do it we must work very earnestly now to fulfill our tasks then.
But when dark powers rage most terribly, the brightest light also shines.
Oriphiel has ruled before. That was the time when Christ appeared on earth. Bad powers of degeneration and decadence were ruling everywhere on earth then. And the human race could only be shaken higher by terrible means. Oriphiel is called the archangel of wrath, who purifies mankind with a strong hand.
The story in the Bible where Christ swings a scourge to chase the money changers out of the temple has a deep meaning. Back when things were darkest on earth, Christ appeared as the savior of mankind.
Oriphiel's reign ended 109 years after Christ's appearance, and he was replaced by Anael. Then came Zachariel, then Raphael; Samael ruled during the Renaissance and Gabriel from the 16th century until 1879. Then Michael began to rule, and circa 2300 Oriphiel, the terrible archangel of wrath, will be ruling things.
And as once before, spiritual light will shine into darkness brightly and radiantly. Christ will appear again on earth, although in a different form than before. We're called upon to receive him and to serve him.
[Editor note: refer to Christ's appearance in the etheric, also referred to as the 'second coming']
Meditations
When you, my sisters and brothers, let the spiritual life that streams into your soul live in you so that it reverberates in your meditations, you then have the right fruit. You should let what's received echo in your meditations. While you do that the spiritual powers of the world stream into you.
The world is always flowed through by spiritual streams that proceed from the great Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings [editor, re: White Lodge]. The Masters continuously pour streams of love and wisdom over humanity, but men's souls aren't always ready and open to receive them.
But meditation words are magic words that open soul portals so that divine life can move in. That's why one shouldn't speculate with one's intellect about meditation words, but should open the soul for forces that are higher than merely intellectual ones. If one speculates about them with one's intellect then only forces that are already in one become active. But higher forces are supposed to awaken. One shouldn't want to solve riddles in one's meditation words, one should let them solve riddles, for they're much wiser than the intellect can ever be. That's why one should let them work on one and take in what they permit to flow into one's soul, let them live completely in one's soul.
1907-06-05-GA099
So you see, the spiritual movement has a quite definite goal, namely, to mould future humanity in advance. And the goal can be reached in no other way than through the acceptance of spiritual wisdom. This is the thought that lives in the mind of one who conceives spiritual science as the great task of mankind. He thinks of it as inseparable from evolution and he regards it not as an object of desire but as a task and duty that is laid upon him. And the more we acknowledge this, the more rapidly do we approach the future form of humanity in the sixth epoch.
...
We must endeavour to come out of materialism again, and societies with a spiritual aim must undertake to guide humanity, not from motives of arrogance and pride, but as a task and duty.
So a certain group of people must join together in order to prepare the future. But this union is not to be conceived of geographically. All ideas of locality have then lost their meaning because it is no longer a question of racial relationships. The point will be for people over the whole Earth to find each other spiritually, in order to fashion the future in, a positive way. For this reason, 400 years ago, when our epoch plunged the deepest into matter, the Rosicrucian Brotherhood emphasised that practical spiritual science which contains an answer to all problems of everyday life.
For the Reader
This page is is dedicated to the loneliness that a human being may experience, the scorn from others because of the above differences.
You are not alone, many people worldwide are in this situation, but just in a minority and very dispersed and scattered, amongst the millions and billions of people driven less consciously by the materialistic worldview and certain powers, driving our world into another direction.
[Positioning evil and doom .. love requires true freedom, meaning true choice between good & bad]
A certain dread concerning the destiny of humanity in the future may come over one who enters with feelings into the thoughts which occupied us at the close of our last lecture.
A picture of this future of humanity was brought before us which on the one hand was great and powerful, filling one with bliss, showing the future condition of the Man who has understood the mission of our present age upon the Earth, who has received the Christ-spirit and is thereby able to keep pace with the necessary spiritualization of our Earth, a glorious blessed picture of those men who are called in exoteric Christianity the 'redeemede, and, not quite appropriately, the 'electe.
But the opposite picture had also to be put before you, the picture of the abyss in which is found a humanity which was not in a position to receive the Christ-spirit, which remained in matter, which excluded itself, so to speak, from the spiritualizing process leading into the future; and this portion of humanity which has fallen away from the spiritualized Earth, and, in a certain sense apart from it, advances towards a frightful fate.
When the beast with the seven heads and ten horns glowers at us from the abyss, the beast led astray by the other frightful being, the two-horned beast, this picture gives rise to fear and horror, and many aright ask:
"Is it not hard and unwise on the part of Providence to lead a number of men to such a frightful fate, and in a way, to condemn them to the abyss of evil?"
And the question might arise,
"Would it not have been more fitting for a wise Providence to have averted this frightful fate from the very beginning?"
In answer to these questions, we might, to begin with, say something abstract, theoretical — and it already signifies a great deal for one who can grasp this theoretical statement is his feeling: It is extremely wise that Providence has taken care that this terrible fate is possible for a number of men.
For if it were impossible for Man to sink into the abyss of evil, he would not have been able to attain what on the one hand we call love and on the other freedom; since .. freedom is inseparably connected with the idea of love. It would be impossible for Man to develop either love or freedom without the possibility of sailing down into the abyss. A Man unable, of his own free decision, to choose good or evil, would be a being who would only be led on a leading-string to a good which must be attained of necessity and who had no power to choose the good of his own fully purified will, by the love which springs from freedom.
If it were impossible for Man to follow in the trail of the monster with the two horns, it would also be impossible for him to follow God out of his own individual love. It was in accordance with a wise Providence to give the possibility of freedom to the humanity which has been developing through our planetary system, and this possibility of freedom could be given on no other condition than that man himself has to make the free choice between good and evil.
But this is only an empty theory, you might say, and Man rises but slowly to the point where he not only says this in words and accepts it in moments of speculation as a kind of explanation, but also experiences it in his feeling. Seldom does Man now rise to the thought,
"I thank thee, O wise Providence, that thou hast made it possible for me to bring thee a love which is not forced but springs up free in my own breast: that thou dost not force use to love thee, but that thou hast given me tine choice of following thee."
[Further qualification - different segments/cohorts]
Nevertheless, Man has to rise to this feeling if he wishes really to feel this theoretical explanation. We can offer additional comfort, or rather another quieting assurance, from a clairvoyant observation of the world.
For it was stated in our last lecture that at the present day, he alone has an almost unalterable tendency to the abyss who is already entangled in some way in the prongs of the two-horned beast, which leads men to the practice of black magic. Even for such as now fall into the arts of black tragic it will still be possible to withdraw in the future.
But those who do not come at all into any contact with black magic arts (and this is for the time being the case with most people), these may have nevertheless a certain tendency in the period following the War of All against All, towards final evil, but the possibility in the future of turning back again and following the good will be far greater than the compulsion unconditionally to follow evil.
From these lectures it may be seen that for those who now turn to a spiritual conception of the world, in order to live beyond the great War into the sixth epoch (which is represented by the opening of the seals), there is the possibility to receive the Christ-principle. They will be able to receive the spiritual elements which are laid down in the age signified by the community at Philadelphia, and in the near future they will manifest a strong tendency towards becoming spiritual. Those who tarn today to a spiritual view receive a powerful disposition to enter upon the upward path. One must not fail to recognize how important it is even at the present time that a number of persons should not turn a deaf ear to the anthroposophical world conception, which is bringing to humanity in a fully conscious manner the first germs of spiritual life, whereas formerly this took place unconsciously. That is the important thing, that this portion of humanity should take with it the first conscious tendencies towards the upward movement. Through a group of people dedicating themselves to-day to the foundation of a great brotherhood which will live over into the epoch of the seven seals, help will be provided for those others, who to-day still turn a deaf ear to the teachings of Spiritual Science.
[again rephrased later in lecture:]
Today it is what we call black magic into which men can, in a certain way, fall consciously or unconsciously.
Those who are now living thoughtlessly, who are quite untouched by the spiritual conception of the world, who live un their comfortable everyday torpor and say, "What does it matter to me what these dreaming Anthroposophists say?" these have the least opportunity of coming into the circle of black magic. In their case they are now only neglecting the opportunity to help their fellow-men in the future in their efforts to attain the spiritual life. For themselves they have not yet lost touch.
But those who today are beginning in an unjustifiable way to oppose the spiritual life, are really taking up into themselves in the very first beginnings the germs of some-thing one might call black magic.
[Future outlook]
For the present, we have still to go through many incarnations of the present souls before the great War of All against All, and again up to the decisive point after the great War. And afterwards in the [sixth] epoch (of the seals) we also have to go through many changes, and men will often have the opportunity to open their hearts to the spiritual world-conception, which is today flowing through the anthroposophical Movement.
There will be many opportunities, and you must not imagine that future opportunities will only be such as they are today.
The way in which we are able to make the spiritual view of the world known to others is still very feeble. Even if a Man were now to speak in such a way that his voice were to sound forth directly like the fire of the spirit, that would be feeble as compared with the possibilities which will exist in later and more developed bodies in order to direct our fellow-men to this spiritual movement. When humanity as a whole will have developed higher and higher in future ages, there will be very different means through which the spiritual conception of the world will be able to penetrate into men's hearts, and the most fiery word today is small and weak compared with what will work in the future to give all souls the possibility of the spiritual conception of the world — all the souls now living in bodies in which no heart beats for this spiritual conception of the world. We are at the beginning of the spiritual movement, and it will grow. It will require much obduracy and much hardness to close the heart and mind to the powerful impressions of the future.
The souls now living in bodies which have the heart to hear and feel Anthroposophy, are now preparing themselves to live in bodies in the future in which power will be given them to serve their fellow-creatures, who up to that time had been unable to feel this heart beat within them. We are only preparing for the preparers, as yet nothing more.
The spiritual movement is today but a very small flame; in the future it will develop into a mighty spiritual fire. When we bring this other picture before our minds, when we let it enter right into our feelings, then there will live in us a very different feeling and a very different possibility of knowledge concerning this fact.
The spiritual influences of 'evil' that Mankind has to face and come to grips with in the current fifth cultural age, and distract from the righteous ideal development towards humanity's developmental goals, also find their concrete realities in the various influences that impact the evolution of society and culture worldwide. The world around us, right now.
This is especially so since the 'fall of the spirits of darkness' that have been cast down to Earth and are part of humanity since end of the 19th century. Though we are in an age of the archangel Michael and in the breaking of a new age after the end of the dark age of Kali Yuga (with the expected emergence of natural clairvoyance and experiences of 'Christ in the etheric'), the 20th century has known a dramatic shift in materialism after the 30 years war of 1914-1945, with an increase of the ahrimanic influences followed by asuric influences.
This page bundles various aspects where Rudolf Steiner commented on the 'then-future' we are experiencing and living currently.
The world and humanity is not always as it seems, see eg I-less human beings. Man is the stage for a raging battle between good and evil, a battle for the soul of Man (see eg 1922-12-03-GA219 below). The battle is for, and takes place in, the Human 'I' and the influencing of the development of the threefold soul. (see eg 1917-01-14-GA174 combined with 1917-01-01-GA174B on Development of I). This is key for the future, as Man's 'I' is the pivotal element in Man's bodily principles to rise to future spiritual development by transmuting the lower bodily principles, see Man's transformation and spiritualization.
However the 'I' can also just as well go wrong, and rather than to be 'lifted up' it can also be 'dragged down'. Examples to put some colour to these words: 'lifting up' one can think of ideals, of selflessness, of giving, of praying; in contrast 'dragged down' one can think of lower passions such as in violence or pornography, addictions such as alcohol, of 'taking'. This is quite concrete and personal, regarding habits of life in our etheric body, and the choices we make: consider the difference between consistently spending one or two hours each day in the virtual digital computer world with 'screens' (smartphone, television, computer), versus spending that same time each day on initiation exercises such as meditation and concentration. Clearly the second will have a more uplifting effect (as a cumulative investment in our development) than the first, considering one chooses the one or the other consistently over years and decades of life.
The task for Man is:
first, to become fully conscious of the influences - in culture and society, ànd in one's Self and own soul .. and not be asleep in and to them. This is one goal of this topic page.
secondly, to find a balance and act in the world in full consciousness, based on free choice and in full awareness of these influences, and the consequences of one's choices and actions. This will be subject of the Discussion area below and a separate Discussion page.
To conclude with the perspective of the current times: the key challenge for humanity in this Current Postatlantean epoch is to face the challenge of evil. The choices we make in every incarnation are key for our spiritual maturity and which cohort or segment we choose to be part of in the whole of humanity (see Parable of the Sower).
What was described above in a soft light way is put in its evolutionary context by Rudolf Steiner here:
Rudolf Steiner spoke about a multitude of elements that are part of this discussion:
Pyramidion statement upfront
besides the problem statement as described below with the challenges of the times in the current fifth cultural age, there is also a concrete solution statement. Rather than a head-to-head opposing the dominant stream of materialism, is the work on the alternative opposing stream inspired by the spiritual scientific worldview. Coined in the two sentences: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's' and 'My kingdom is not of this world.' (re 1917-01-15-GA174 in 'inspirational quotes' below and in full in the 'Lecture references' section).
Challenges for the current fifth cultural age
the task of the fifth cultural age of the current epoch is to come to grips with evil as an impulse in world evolution (1917-11-19-GA178),
the increase of ahrimanic materialism for the next five centuries,
the inevitable rise of the materialistic worldview (see second quote 1917-11-29-GA182 below)
and the future rise of epidemics, especially nervous diseases but also suicides
the rise of the asuric influences of the asuras or rakshasas, that a.o. have an influence in sexual perversions and black magic
as the cosmic plan exists and is known (see Occult atom), this implies that the forces of opposition plan their counterattacks accordingly
small 'secret' societies or brotherhoods that drive towards other agendas for the masses,
anaesthetization or stifling of the consciousness soul (1917-01-15-GA174)
western brotherhoods: chaining materialistic souls to use them as an army of discarnate souls (1917-11-18-GA178, 1917-11-25-GA178, described further in 1917-11-29-GA182)
the influence of the dead is used as a way to influence earthly matters and build power, without the masses even being conscious of this
hence there are strong agendas to push for materialism as very materialistic souls remain 'chained to the earth' and can be used for egoistic purposes
the ultimate goal of Western brotherhoods is to put another being in the place of the Christ, and divert from the Christ Impulse
eastern:
The individual responsability: dreaming culture vs conscious awareness with the consciousness soul
people turn a blind eye to matters of the world, are not interested or aware but nevertheless form opinions without much research or foundation (1916-12-16-GA173)
without impulse or to spiritual science or culture, a serious probability that humanity ends up as a culture of staggering dreamers (1923-07-11-GA224)
Contemporary and future realities - techniques of 'the powers that be'
compliancy with dominant materialistic worldview
the rapidly changing, and future further limitation, of freedom of opinion and speech in line with the authorized dominant materialistic worldview (1916-01-07-GA165)
suppression of individual thinking (1916-04-04-GA167)
techniques for mass media 'manipulation, bringing suggestions and impressions in large groups of people to carry out types of 'mass hypnosis' on a grand scale to direct events in a certain direction (1916-12-09-GA173)
information war, confusing, layered pyramid system with subtruths
the techniques of 'divide et impera': setting up various tracks and groups with dependencies and sometimes opposing goals, causing a web of untransparancy hard to unravel (1916-12-09-GA173)
disguising the truth by naming things not according to their true intention of goal, rather exactly the opposite (eg 1920-09-21-GA197, also GA174)
the blocking off by society and the powers at hand, of anything to do with spiritual realities. This is a continuation of the luciferic fall of Man, into the ahrimanic intellectual-materialistic fall of Man, see eg Fall and redemption - original sin and grace.
via the economic principle (1917-11-25-GA178, and not less important 1920-10-22-GA200 on I-less human beings)
from the British commercial and industrial element to economical world dominance, and the 'map of Europe' (1917-01-15-GA174)
via medical intervention (1908-02-16-GA244 - QA 155.1, 1917-05-20-GA174A, 1917-10-07-GA177, 1917-10-27-GA177)
the power of money that grew out of economy and the banker systems (1919-10-19-GA191)
Some introductory quotes to set the scene, from 1917-01-15-GA174
Those things which correspond to certain impulses do come to pass. For necessity governs world history and world evolution: these things do come to pass ... Opposing forces [develop out of necessity, and] must clash with one another, and in this clash reality evolves.
The events of the present time have been foreseen by the initiates of all nations. ... we must be able to observe on the large scale, as in small things; we must not allow ourselves to be deflected by the opinions and phrases one hears in the world today. We have to be able to rise a little above ourselves to understand the signs of the times.
And then also from 1917-01-15-GA174: the main pyramidion of this topic page, the top stone of the pyramid consisting of all underlying elements and subconclusions. This is the essential summary conclusion; read in full on the lecture or the extensive extract in the 'Lecture references' section below. (SWCC)
What can I myself do in these painful times?
The first thing one can do is to endeavour to understand things, to really see through things. This brings up thoughts which are real forces and these will have an effect. .. As a contribution to this understanding it is necessary that a number of people muster the strength to oppose the surging waves of materialism with their deepest personal being. ..
.. You can summarize in two sentences what is needed to work against materialism - which, after all, has some justification.
In the fifth Postatlantean age the world will become even more pervaded by the industrial and commercial element;
but the opposite pole must also exist: There must be people who work on the opposite side because of their understanding of the situation.
. .. you can express this counter-force in two sentences.
[Sentence 1: "My kingdom is not of this world"]
One of these is well-known to you, but it does not yet come fully out of the hearts and souls of human beings: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' ... must sound forth against that kingdom of commercial and industrial materialism which is to be spread over the physical plane and which is only of this world. ...
[Second sentence: "Render to Caesar"]
.. that other, second sentence which is to be added to the first .. is: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.'
This means that a proper attitude to life, a real cultivation of life, can only come about when one realizes that the spiritual element must be cultivated, because the spiritual world must penetrate down into the physical world.
These statements must be comprehended wholeheartedly in the soul: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's' and 'My kingdom is not of this world.' Then the atmosphere of the spiritual world will come, an atmosphere that has nothing to do with those materialistic things which have especially to develop in the fifth Postatlantean age. For this to happen, things must be seen in their true guise.
Illustrations
Schema FMC00.422 (and variant Schema FMC00.422A see below) illustrate humanity as a statistical distribution of a population of souls, with different segments or cohorts. One can imagine the distribution pie chart to represent spiritual maturity and also the choice for the light or the darkness, good or evil.
On the right, the thin black line represents black magic, around it cohorts or segments that tend or gravitate towards it, that are in the zone or field of attraction of this extreme direction, so to speak.
On the left side, the thin yellow line represents the white stream, with similarly people in the field tending towards that, whereby spiritual science could be imagined to represent a certain segment or colour. To get closer to the yellow and white is to make the conscious choice to put oneself on the path of initiation (see the next section of this paper on Initiation Exercises).
The simple drawing can be meditated upon to fill it with imagery and meaning, and confront our soul in feeling with the explicit responsibility that comes with the freedom of choice, and the development goal for this age of the consciousness soul: to make the conscious choice on where we want to be on this chart, and use our life to further this.
Spiritual minority in a materialistic world#1910-GA013 .28OeS.29 is the statement that the fifth and sixth cultural ages are the decisive ones, and that - at the end of the current epoch - approx. one third will attain its developmental goal, a second third not but will do so at a later stage, and a third one 'falls away completely'. These three thirds are represented in the Schema by colours yellow (left), white (middle), and grey (right). Note: the quote about "not all reach the goal etc" is to be found in 1904-10-24-GA090A or also 1904-10-24-GA092.
Lecture coverage and references
Overview
In the period of 1916 to 1918, Rudolf Steiner have series of lectures that stand out in his total work (the GA), in that they give an X-ray analysis of the political, cultural and economical forces in the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. This was part of an arc 'Cosmic and Human History' consisting of several consecutive volumes and cycles.
Only extracts of some of these lectures are given below. It requires a study on its own to purchase and study volumes GA173 - GA174 - GA178, along with lectures from other cycles incl. GA165, GA177 and GA185
1916-12-GA173: 13 lectures (Contemporary-Historical Examinations: The Karma of Untruthfulness, Part One)
note on other version of GA, showing GA173A+B+C together are 24 lectures
1917-01-GA174A: 12 lectures (Contemporary-Historical Examinations: The Karma of Untruthfulness, Part Two)
GA174B: 16 lectures on the spiritual background of the first world war, between 1914-1921
1917-09/10-GA177: 14 lectures (The Spiritual Background of the Outer World. The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness. Spiritual Beings and Their Effects, Volume 1)
1917-11-GA178: 9 lectures (The Spiritual Background of the Outer World. The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness. Spiritual Beings and Their Effects, Volume 2)
A lecture which holds a central place is this, for the topic of this page, is 1917-01-15-GA174.
Reference extracts
1908-02-16-GA244 - QA 155.1
states that vaccination and serum only affect the direct Personality, and Rudolf Steiner asks
can we excluse such help, while a larger damage, that is much less transparent, lies underneath? One helps the single person and Personality, but the consequences will only show in the child and grandchild
...
Man has to learn that the single person is [is thereby] only suffering the karma of the totality [the whole of humanity]
1912-04-11-GA158
.. That which must come, if the old impulses alone continue to have an effect, would be perhaps still unimaginable today: people will not only be overwhelmed, overwhelmed in external relations, but undergo a numbing domination, that takes over mere external technology and they would perish, because everything religious, scientific, philosophical, artistic and also in the higher sense any ethical interest would be taken away from the human soul. People would become a kind of living automaton if new spiritual impulses did not come.
1916-01-07-GA165 (c)
Perhaps we cannot yet do anything in our age against the completely materialist course of the matter-bound un-free mood of our times. But we must at least learn to perceive it as the compulsion it is. That is where we have to start. We do not have to indulge in delusions.
For if the world continues in its development as it is strives for in the sense of these materialistic impulses, then we will gradually enter into a development through which not only someone who unlicensed is forbidden from doing anything for human health, but also one in which relating to science, there is a prohibition against anyone saying anything other than that which is approved by those who have taken a kind of vow under the materialist world order. Today many things are forbidden, of which people do not feel any coercion from prohibition. But we are approaching times when, like any unlicensed concern for healing of human beings, every word will be banned, except in an institution guaranteed and approved by the materialistically developed powers.
If we do not feel the direction of this course, then we will sail full tilt into a future "freedom", which will consist of giving laws according to which no one may teach anything outside an authorised classroom; according to which everything will be forbidden, which could remotely hark after what is happening here. Because we do not see in which direction the trend is going, we do not keep that in mind today.
Certainly, it must be emphasized again and again, we will not be able to do much in our time. But things must start with thinking, must begin with perceiving the issue, and what we can commence with, we must make a start with.
... very shortly, after when one will have written the year 2000, there will come from America not a direct prohibition, but a kind of prohibition against all thinking, a sort of law which will have the aim ofsuppressing all individual thinking.
On the other hand there is the beginning achieved in this direction of suppressing all individual thinking into pure materialistic thinking where one does not need to work upon the soul on the basis of external experiments, in which the human being is handled as if he were a machine.
quote - freely translated from DE original
The larger part of humanity will get its influence from America, from the West, and go towards another development. ... It will not last much longer, when one will have written the year 2000, that there will come, not a direct, but a sort of ban, interdiction (a prohibitory decree) for everything will come from America, a law that will have as its purpose to suppress all individual thinking.
On one side already a start for this has been given with the current purely materialistic medicine, where one also cannot work on the soul any more, but Man is treated as a machine solely on the basis of external experiments
1916-09-17-GA171
Note well that I say the quiet and slow unfolding because the entire period of 2.160 years, starting in 1413 A.D., should be used for the gradual unfoldment of the forces I have named, that is, free imaginations and the gradual development of working with primal phenomena.
At intervals - by fits and starts, as it were - the luciferic and ahrimanic powers throw the whole weight of their opposition against this right evolution. When we bear in mind that everything is prepared for by the world beyond the earth long before it happens, we shall then not be surprised to find preparations being made to bring the strongest possible forces of opposition against the normal evolution of humanity.
We have already seen how the luciferic and ahrimanic powers poured what they had developed in Atlantean times into Greece and Rome. Now, in an altered form, they have tried to repeat these efforts before the arrival of the fifth post-Atlantean age.
[Genghis Khan]
It was actually the descendants of the old Atlantean teachers who were now working from a place in Asia.
A priest there had been educated to behold — to have a belated vision, as it were, of what the Atlanteans called the 'Great Spirit', and to receive his commands. These the priest communicated to a young man of remarkable energy and strength who, by virtue of this authority, received the name 'The Great Ruler of the Earth' from his community. This was Genghis Khan. The Great Spirit, through his follower and through that priest, gave to Genghis Khan the command to summon all the powers of Asia to spread the influence that would lead the fifth post-Atlantean age back into a luciferic form. These forces - and they were far more powerful than the forces established in Greek culture - were all employed to this end.
1916-12-09-GA173 (c)
Those who desire to work in this way are always concerned, not to stimulate just one stream but to make sure that one stream is always crossed by another, so that they influence each other in some way. Not much is achieved by simply running straight ahead with a single stream. It is necessary sometimes to throw a sidelight on this stream so that certain things become confused, so that certain tracks are covered up, and other things are lost in an impenetrable thicket. This is very important. Thus it comes about that certain secret streams which have set themselves some task or other also set about achieving the exact opposite. These opposing tasks have the effect of obliterating all tracks".
and
There exist ways and means in the world of carrying out what I might call 'mass hypnosis'. To bring about a suggestion on a grand scale you have to place something in the world which makes an impression. Just as it is possible to insinuate an idea into the mind of an individual (in the way I have shown), so too, by using suitable means, suggestions can be made to whole groups of people, especially when one knows what actually binds these groups together.
It is possible to steer a force that lives in an individual person in a particular direction. This person may then be totally convinced of his deep love of peace; and yet he does what he does because somehow or other a suggestion has been planted in him. He is quite at odds with what he does.
In the same way, with the right knowledge, similar things can be done to whole groups; it is merely a matter of selecting the appropriate means. You take a force that lives but has no particular direction (…) and by suggestion on a grand scale you nudge it into a definite direction.
1916-12-16-GA173 (c)
I am convinced that one of the chief causes for the painful events going on in the world today is the attitude that a blind eye can be turned to certain matters, while others are discussed on the basis of an entirely false premise. Even in the face of large-scale matters of this kind, each individual should start from a foundation of self-knowledge. And a portion of self-knowledge is involved if we recognize that to claim no interest in these things and to want only to hear of esoteric matters is, in a small way, no different from all that adds up to the events we are experiencing today. For spiritual things are not only those which have to do with higher worlds. These, to start with, are of course occult for everybody.
But much of what takes place on the physical plane is also occult ['hidden from sight or understanding'] for many people. ... we can only hope that much of what is occult and hidden on this plane may be revealed. For one of the causes of today's misery is that so much remains occult for so many people, who nevertheless persist in forming judgements.
1916-12-24-GA173
is about subconscious influences and lowered consciousness
You can see, particularly in peoples' everyday lives, what happens if they are being influenced at a subconscious level. You can hypnotise an individual person, so that once he is hypnotised he is in your power, and you can make him do things he would never consider doing in a waking state. You can hypnotise him, which means putting him into a state of consciousness belonging to ages long past, and you may have all sorts of intentions for doing so. In the same way, it is possible to hypnotise whole communities. An individual person is stronger in the physical world than is a group, and it therefore necessary to lower his consciousness considerably more in order to work through him while he is in this other consciousness.
In the case of a community or group of people the lowering of consciousness need not even be noticeable, for it can be far more slight....
1917-01-15-GA174 (SWCC)
...
Now we come to the third element, the one which corresponds to the fifth Postatlantean period and has the task of bringing into being the culture of the consciousness soul: the English, the British element. The sentient soul element, brought into culture by the Italian-Spanish sphere, expresses itself in the theocratic element of the cultus — the sentient soul does not live in consciousness. Similarly the political and diplomatic element corresponds to the French sphere. And now in the British sphere we have the commercial and industrial element, in which the human soul lives fully and entirely in the material world of the physical plane. But we must make clear an important difference. The Papacy could only pretend to world dominance for one particular reason.
Here [the lecturer drew] is the fourth Postatlantean period.
Now comes the first element, A, of the fifth Postatlantean period, the papal, hierarchical element. It strives for a kind of universal monarchy because in a certain way it is the continuation of the universal Roman Empire.
Here, B, is the culture of the intellectual or mind soul. It also strives for something universal, but it is something universal that is very much in the realm of ideas. The most important consequence of the spread of the French element are not the conquests, which are merely side-effects, but the saturation of the world with the political spirit, with political, diplomatic thinking and feeling — that diplomatic, political thinking found not only in French diplomacy and politics, but also in literature and even the other aspects of French artistic life. A universal monarchy in connection with this could only be described as a kind of universal dream. And the way in which France marched in the forefront of civilization is a very exact expression of this dream.-
In contrast, we now come to the third element, C. This, in harmony with the whole of the fifth Postatlantean period, which has the task of bringing to expression the consciousness soul, is what corresponds to the British element, the special bearer of the consciousness soul in the age which is to develop especially the consciousness soul. Hence the pretension of the British element to universal commercial and industrial world dominance.
.. things which have their foundation in the spiritual world will,with all certainty, run their course, and become fact.Do not imagine that you can moralize or theorize about this. Nobody need believe, therefore, that the mission of the British people will not - out of inner necessity - become fact: namely, the mission to found a universal commercial and industrial monarchy over the whole earth. The pretensions emerge as realities. These things have to be recognized as lying in world karma. And what people express and what they think is only a revelation of spiritual forces behind the scenes. So nobody should believe that British politics will ever be morally reformed and withdraw, out of consideration for the world, from the pretension to dominate the world industrially and commercially.
Therefore we need not be surprised either that those who understand these things have founded societies whose sole aim is to realize such aims by the use of means which are also spiritual means.
This is where the forbidden interplay begins. For obviously occult principles, occult means and occult impulses are not permissible as promoters, as driving forces, especially in the fifth Postatlantean period, which ought to be a purely materialistic civilization. The moment occult impulses work behind the spread of this purely materialistic culture, things become questionable. Yet, as I have shown you, this is what is happening. There are those who want to foster world dominance not only with the forces available an the physical plane, but also with the impulses of occultism, the impulses which lie in the world of the invisible. But these occult means are not used to work for the good of mankind in general but only for the good of a group. If you see the connection between such encompassing viewpoints, given to you from deeper knowledge, and everyday events, you will thoroughly understand a great deal.
There are still plenty of praiseworthy idealists — this is not meant as any kind of mockery, for idealism is always praiseworthy, even when it errs — who believe that the network of commercial and industrial measures, which has been spread by the British Empire over various countries, can only last as long as the war, and that after that people will once more be free to go about their own commercial business. Apart from a few illusions which will be raised by creating some interregnum or other, or by some other means to prevent people from becoming suspicious, all the measures that have been set up during this war to control commercial traffic throughout the world are not intended as something that will disappear once the war is over, but as something which is only beginning with the help of the war and will then continue. The war merely provides the opportunity for noses to be poked into business records. But do not imagine that this poking of noses into business records will cease after the war. I am speaking symbolically to describe something that will take place on the widest scale.
What I mean is that commercial world dominance will become more and more thorough.
I am not saying all this in order to be inflammatory, but simply in order to show you what, out of the impulses of world history, really is the case. Only by recognizing what is really the case can people learn to conduct themselves appropriately.
[Map of Europe]
That is no doubt why that map of the European world turned out in the way I showed you on the blackboard yesterday. Let me repeat: I have traced this map back to the eighties of the nineteenth century. How far back it goes beyond that I do not know. I state only what I know, only what I can assert with certainty. That is why I have said nothing about the Scandinavian countries, since I do not know whether any plans have been made for them too. I limit myself strictly to what I know, and wish to stress this particularly on this occasion, though it is a principle which I follow on every occasion.
Further, this map, this rearrangement of European affairs, has the tendency to serve the formation of a universal commercial monarchy. Europe is to be arranged in such a way that a universal commercial monarchy can be founded. I am not saying that this is to happen by tomorrow. But you can see that part payments are already being demanded. Only compare the most recent note to Wilson with the map of Europe, and there you have it. Nothing is said as yet about Switzerland. This payment on account will be demanded later. But as the demands appear one by one they will correspond to the map I drew yesterday.
The division of Europe shown there is suited to the founding of commercial world dominance. Study the details of this map and you will see that it is well conceived as a basis for founding what I have just said. I said: commercial world dominance. There is no need actually to possess all the territories, for it is quite sufficient to arrange them in such a way that they fall into one's sphere of influence. It is also very cleverly arranged so that at first those very regions will be drawn into the sphere of influence which I yesterday coloured yellow, as being the ones to be claimed as British: the peripheral ter-ritories. Indeed, in order to leave the others a little longer in the warm glow of a certain idealism, it is possible to arrange things in such a way that one practises the commercial domination oneself while leav-ing the others to play about with territories for a little longer. But the spheres of influence will be established as the drawing shows. It is quite irrelevant whether in the year 1950 there will be a Belgium, or a France extending right up to the border. The important thing is what power Belgians have in Belgium, or the French in France, and what power the British have in Belgium or France. In order to found commercial world dominance it is not necessary to actually possess the territories. What we must be clear about is that this world dominance is to be commercial and industrial. This is the basis for something extremely important.
[Two regions, the divide]
I should have to give a whole series of lectures if I needed to prove these things to you in detail. This would be perfectly possible, for the things I am saying can be proved very profoundly. Today, however, I can only draw an outline.
In order to found a commercial and industrial world dominance, the first thing to do is to divide the main region into two parts. This has to do with the nature of commercial and industrial affairs. I can only explain this by using an analogy: Whatever takes place on the physical plane always requires a splitting into two parts.
Imagine a teacher without any pupils; there is no such thing. In the same way there cannot be a commercial empire without another region which is its counterpart. Therefore if a British commercial empire is founded, then a Russian opposite pole must be founded too. So that a differentiation can arise between buying and selling, so that the necessary circulation can come about, two regions are needed. If the whole world were to be made into a unified realm, it would be impossible to found a universal commercial realm. It is not quite the same, but similar to saying that if you produce something you need a buyer, otherwise you cannot produce. So this twofold split is necessary.
And the fact that this has been initiated as a major trend is a great - indeed, a gigantic - conception on the part of those secret brotherhoods of which I have spoken. To create this contrast is a conception of universal proportions, against which everything else pales into insignificance: this contrast, between the British commercial empire on the one hand and, on the other, all that emanates from the Russian sphere involving, through their spiritual capacities, preparations for the sixth Postatlantean cultural age, together with everything I have described to you. It is a great, gigantic, admirable conception of these secret brotherhoods about whom we have spoken. Put simply, it is hardly possible to imagine a better opposite pole for what has developed in the West — namely, the supreme flowering of commercial and industrial thought — than the future Russian Slav who in times to come is sure to be even less inclined than he is today to occupy himself professionally with commercial matters, and who, just because of this, will be an excellent polar opposite.
...
[section]
...
In short, you can follow in every detail the gigantic, splendid thought on which this map is based. We have not enough time today to go through everything in detail. But it is a gigantic, splendid thought to leave only the southern ports which lead to the Mediterranean open for France, whilst keeping the others under one's own sphere of influence. This means that the French Empire, which France was anyway only able to found under the protection of the others, becomes an Illusion, and can also be included in one's sphere of influence. If you follow all this, you will see in how gigantic a manner is to be realized - out of what belongs to the culture of the consciousness soul - what these occult schools are striving to achieve.
Those things which correspond to certain impulses do come to pass. For necessity governs world history and world evolution: these things do come to pass. But they come to pass in such a way that forces really do mutually affect one another. Just as there can never be positive without negative electricity; where opposites work on one another with varying intentions — so is it also in the events of human history.
Therefore we must be careful, when we turn our attention to such things, to apply judgement that is free of moralizing. This also saves us from asking: Why must such a thing happen? For in the mission of one element or another is included the fact that things develop which must develop. And the adversary, the opposite pole must also exist: namely, something that resists whatever it is that wants to come about. This also must exist.
So if we now once again take a wide view of all these things, we shall see something working in from the periphery which we have characterized as these three elements.
First let us return to the centre. Our concern here is that the adversary, the opposite pole should be there, so that a kind of brake can always be applied. This brake is just as necessary as the other element.
And I blame one as little as I praise the other. I am simply describing the impulses and the facts. I have not the least inclination to pronounce a morally disparaging judgement on something I am describing as a necessity arising out of the whole character of the fifth Postatlantean age.
There is nothing bad about giving the world a materialistic, industrial, commercial culture, for this is a necessity. But the opposite pole must exist, too, for human evolution cannot proceed in a straight line. Opposing forces must clash with one another, and in this clash reality evolves.
...
.. truth is not the concern of this note, for its aim is to say what it wants to say while counting on it that the magical power of modern journalism has persuaded people to believe everything. And you can certainly often count on this. The power of journalism is indeed one of the means on which certain societies count.
..
...
You will agree — neither one thing nor the other can be called either justified or unjustified; things simply have to be comprehended as necessary facts. But we must be clear that we surely ought to under-stand these things properly.
It is easy to ask the question: What can I myself do in these painful times?
The first thing one can do is to endeavour to understand things, to really see through things. This brings up thoughts which are real forces and these will have an effect.
What about the question: Have the good forces no power against the evil forces we see all around us? To answer this we have to remember how difficult human freedom makes it for the spiritual world to assert itself amid the surging waves of materialistic life. This is what it is all about. Is it to be made so very easy for human beings to enter fully into the life of the spirit?
Future ages will look back to today and say: How careless these people were with regard to adopting the life of spirit! The spiritual world is sending it down to us, but human beings resist it with all their might. Apart from all the sadness and suffering holding sway at present, the very fact that all this does hold sway is in itself a destiny signifying a trial. Above all it should be accepted and recognized as a trial. Later it will become apparent to what extent it is necessary for those who — so it is said — are guilty, to suffer together with those who are blameless. For after all, during the course of karma all these things are balanced out. You cannot say: Are not the good Spirits going to intervene? They do intervene to the extent that we open ourselves to them, if we have the courage to do so. But first of all we must be serious about understanding things; we must be deeply serious about trying to understand.
As a contribution to this understanding it is necessary that a number of people muster the strength to oppose the surging waves of materialism with their deepest personal being.
[Japanese and Chinese following]
For something else is going to unite with the materialism that works in the industrial, commercial impulse; something coming from other, retarded impulses from the Chinese and Japanese element, particularly the Japanese element, will become increasingly caught up in materialism. Yesterday somebody asked whether the societies working from the West for a particular group did not take into account that the Japanese might follow suit from the East. Indeed, the people who belong to these societies do not regard this as something terrible, for they see it as a support for materialism. For what follows suit from Asia will simply be a particular form of materialism.
What we must be clear about, at all costs, is that we have to oppose the waves of materialism with all our strength. Every human being is capable of doing this. And the fruits of such efforts will be sure to follow. There is no need to give a name to whatever it is that must work against materialism. ... But do consider how a counteraction of forces can come about and how this can be objectively proved.
[Important section: the two sentences]
You can summarize in two sentences what is needed to work against materialism - which, after all, has some justification.
In the fifth Postatlantean period the world will become even more pervaded by the industrial and commercial element;
but the opposite pole must also exist: There must be people who work on the opposite side because of their understanding of the situation.
For what is the aim of these secret brotherhoods? They do not work out of any particular British patriotism, but out of the desire to bring the whole world under the yoke of pure materialism. And because, in accordance with the laws of the fifth post-Atlantean period, certain elements of the British people as the bearer of the consciousness soul are most suitable for this, they want, by means of grey magic, to use these elements as promoters of this materialism.
This is the important point. Those who know what impulses are at work in world events can also steer them. No other national element, no other people, has ever before been so usable as material for transforming the whole world into a materialistic realm. Therefore, those who know want to set their foot on the neck of this national element and strip it of all spiritual endeavour — which, of course, lives equally in all human beings. Just because karma has ordained that the consciousness soul should work here particularly strongly, the secret brotherhoods have sought out elements in the British national character. Their aim is to send a wave of materialism over the Earth and make the physical plane the only valid one. A spiritual world is only to be recognized in terms of what the physical plane has to offer.
This must be opposed by the endeavours of those who understand the necessity of a spiritual life on earth. Looked at from this point of view, you can express this counter-force in two sentences.
[Sentence 1: "My kingdom is not of this world"]
One of these is well-known to you, but it does not yet come fully out of the hearts and souls of human beings: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' The sentence 'My kingdom is not of this world' must sound forth against that kingdom which is to be spread over the physical plane, that kingdom which is only of this world, that kingdom of com-mercial and industrial materialism.
There is not enough time today to explain to you how the words `My kingdom is not of this world' link up with the cultivation of what belongs to mankind as a whole — not to what is German, but to what belongs to mankind as a whole. In ancient India there were four castes, in ancient Greece four estates. They came into being one after the other during the course of the second, third and fourth Postatlantean periods. In the fifth Postatlantean period the fourth estate, social life, that which belongs to mankind as a whole, must come into being.
Not everyone can be a priest, but the priestly element can strive to become the powerful, the dominant estate. We see it doing this in the third cultural age; there we see it coming to life again in the hierarchical, theocratic, Roman force. And we can see the second caste, the kingly estate in ancient Greece and Rome, coming to life again in the second Postatlantean element, where the diplomatic, political element is particularly active; for the republican element in France is only the opposite pole of this, just as everything generates its own counterpart. The actual character of the French state corresponds solely to the monarchic principle, so that even now France is a Republic in name only. In reality she is ruled by a king, who happens to be a lawyer who used to conduct cases in Romania. ' It is not a question of terminology but of facts. What is so terrible today is the way people allow themselves to be so easily intoxicated by words. If somebody is called a president it does not necessarily mean that he is a president, for what matters is the actual situation.
The third estate, as we know, is the industrial element, what was commerce in ancient Egypt and Greece. This is striving to come to the fore again in the British Empire and for the moment must still be dominant over the fourth element, which will eventually be the general, human element.It is interesting to observe this in one particular phenomenon. You do have to gain some insight into what is really going on if you want to understand the world.
...
On this basis its three great principles are developed:
Firstly the principle of the materialistic view of history,
secondly the principle of added value, and
thirdly the principle of class war.
...
It is interesting that no theory has been worked out for the general human element, the fourth caste or dass. In this element there can be no question of dominance, for there is nothing below it over which dominance might be exercised; it is solely a matter of laying the foundation for human beings to relate with one another. A theory for this will only come about when the general human element given in anthroposophical spiritual science is made the foundation.
[Second sentence: "Render to Caesar"]
This, if it is not misunderstood, will lead to that other, second sentence which is to be added to the first: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' The second sentence is: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.'
This means that a proper attitude to life, a real cultivation of life, can only come about when one realizes that the spiritual element must be cultivated, because the spiritual world must penetrate down into the physical world. But there is no point in making any statements at all unless they can be comprehended wholeheartedly in the soul.
These statements must be comprehended: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's' and 'My kingdom is not of this world.' Then the atmosphere of the spiritual world will come, an atmosphere that has nothing to do with those materialistic things which have especially to develop in the fifth post-Atlantean period. But for this to happen, things must be seen in their true guise.
…
It is not what is said that is important but whether what is said conforms with reality.
1917-05-20-GA174A
DE PDF page 186
discusses 869 and monism, and goes on to say
And it will come - and do not think this is a joke - that the spirit will be abolished. To the various types of medicines that exist for the body today, will come another series that will have as a purpose to treat those who talk about such fantasies as spirit and soul. Those people will be treated and be infused with medication, so they do not talk about spirit and soul any more. For the spirit, it sufficed to just abolish it; however the soul will only be cast out of Man by the right medical treatment.
As grotesque as it appears today, the tendency of this stream goes towards finding substances, whereby one will vaccinate children with things so the bodily organization gets paralyzed in such way, that the materialistic attitude will live so well in Man, that he will hardly come to consider the old ideas of soul and spirit as something other than what people believed in ancient times.
'Spirit' was eliminated (as I have often related) from Western humanity in the year 869 at the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople. The dogma was then drawn up that Christians must not regard man as consisting of body, soul and spirit, but of body and soul only, though certain spiritual qualities were to be ascribed to the soul. This abolition of the spirit is of tremendous significance. It was dogma, — that in the year 869 in Constantinople, it was decided that man must not be regarded as endowed with 'anima' and 'spiritus,' but only 'unam animam rationalem et intellectualem.' The dogma that 'The soul has spiritual qualities' was spread over the spiritual life of the West in the twilight of the ninth century. This must be overcome. Spirit must again be recognised. Trichotomy — body, soul and spirit, — regarded as heresy in the Middle Ages, must again be recognised as the true and exact view of man's nature.
The time will come — and it may not be far off — when quite different tendencies will come up at a congress like the one held in 1912 and people will say: It is pathological for people to even think in terms of spirit and soul. 'Sound' people will speak of nothing but the body. It will be considered a sign of illness for anyone to arrive at the idea of any such thing as a spirit or a soul. People who think like that will be considered to be sick and — you can be quite sure of it — a medicine will be found for this. At Constantinople the spirit was made non-existent. The soul will be made non-existent with the aid of a drug. Taking a 'sound point of view', people will invent a vaccine to influence the organism as early as possible, preferably as soon as it is born, so that this human body never even gets the idea that there is a soul and a spirit.
The two philosophies of life will be in complete opposition. One movement will need to reflect how concepts and ideas may be developed to meet the reality of soul and spirit. The others, the heirs of modern materialism, will look for the vaccine to make the body 'healthy', that is, makes its constitution such that this body no longer talks of such rubbish as soul and spirit, but takes a 'sound' view of the forces which live in engines and in chemistry and let planets and suns arise from nebulae in the cosmos. Materialistic physicians will be asked to drive the souls out of humanity.
with below the German version from the fifth edition (1999)
Man soll sich nur nichts vormachen. Man steht vor einer ganz bestimmten Bewegung. Wie damals auf jenem Konzil in Konstantinopel der Geist abgeschafft worden ist, das heißt, wie man dogmatisch bestimmt hat: Der Mensch besteht nur aus Leib und Seele, von einem Geist zu sprechen ist ketzerisch -, so wird man in einer ändern Form anstreben, die Seele abzuschaffen, das Seelenleben.
Und die Zeit wird kommen, vielleicht gar nicht in so ferner Zukunft, wo sich auf solch einem Kongreß wie dem, welcher 1912 stattgefunden hat, noch ganz anderes entwickeln wird, wo noch ganz andere Tendenzen auftreten werden, wo man sagen wird: Es ist schon krankhaft beim Menschen, wenn er überhaupt an Geist und Seele denkt. Gesund sind nur diejenigen Menschen, die überhaupt nur vom Leibe reden. - Man wird es als ein Krankheitssymptom ansehen, wenn der Mensch sich so entwickelt, daß er auf den Begriff kommen kann: Es gibt einen Geist oder eine Seele. - Das werden kranke Menschen sein. Und man wird finden - da können Sie ganz sicher sein - das entsprechende Arzneimittel, durch das man wirken wird. Damals schaffte man den Geist ab. Die Seele wird man abschaffen durch ein Arzneimittel. Man wird aus einer «gesunden Anschauung» heraus einen Impfstoff finden, durch den der Organismus so bearbeitet wird in möglichst früher Jugend, möglichst gleich bei der Geburt, daß dieser menschliche Leib nicht zu dem Gedanken kommt: Es gibt eine Seele und einen Geist.
So scharf werden sich die beiden Weltanschauungsströmungen gegenübertreten. Die eine wird nachzudenken haben, wie Begriffe und Vorstellungen auszubilden sind, damit sie der realen Wirklichkeit, der Geist- und Seelenwirklichkeit gewachsen sind. Die ändern, die Nachfolger der heutigen Materialisten, werden den Impfstoff suchen, der den Körper «gesund» macht, das heißt, so macht, daß dieser Körper durch seine Konstitution nicht mehr von solch albernen Dingen redet wie von Seele und Geist, sondern «gesund» redet von den Kräften, die in Maschinen und Chemie leben, die im Weltennebel Planeten und Sonnen konstituieren. Das wird man durch körperliche Prozeduren herbeiführen. Den materialistischen Medizinern wird man es über- geben, die Seelen auszutreiben aus der Menschheit.
Ja, diejenigen, die glauben, daß man mit spielerischen Begriffen in die Zukunft sehen kann, die irren gar sehr. Mit ernsten, gründlichen, tiefen Begriffen muß man in die Zukunft sehen. Geisteswissenschaft ist nicht eine Spielerei, ist nicht bloß eine Theorie, sondern Geisteswissen- schaft ist gegenüber der Entwickelung der Menschheit eine wirkliche Pflicht.
1917-10-14-GA177 is about link between Ahrimanic spirits and bacilli (form of bacteria)
If you were to go back to very early times in evolution, you would find a battle similar to the one I have just described.
As already mentioned, these battles have recurred over and over again, but always on different issues.
In the distant past, the crowd of ahrimanic spirits were also cast down from the spiritual worlds into the earthly realm when they had lost such a battle. You see, they would return to the attack again and again. After one of these battles, for example, the crowd of ahrimanic spirits populated the earth with the earthly life-forms which the medical profession now calls bacilli.Everything which has the power to act as a bacillus, everything in which bacilli are involved, is the result of crowds of ahrimanic spirits being cast down from heaven to earth at a time when the dragon had been overcome. In the same way the ahrimanic, mephistophelean way of thinking has spread since the late 1870s as the result of such a victory. Thus we are able to say that tubercular and bacillary diseases come from a similar source as the materialism which has taken hold of human minds.
...
This is tremendously important. There always is the danger of people continuing in materialism, in the materialistic, ahrimanic way of thinking, and carrying this on into ages when, according to the plan of things, it should have been overcome. The people who do not turn away from the ahrimanic, materialistic way of thinking and want to keep it, would then be in league with everything which has come about through similar victories won over the dragon by Michael. They therefore would not unite with spiritual progress in human evolution but with material progress. And a time would come in the next sixth cultural age when the only thing to please them would be to live in something which will have been brought about by bacilli, those microscopically small enemies of humanity.
...
You see from this how unconsciously human beings are, in fact, being guided. But we are now in an age when such things must be perceived and understood. It is necessary to link such an idea with the other ideas we have characterized today. A time will come when we must have transformed our materialistic ideas to such an extent that we can progress to a more spiritual form of existence, but by then the earth will have been a corpse for a long time. It will no longer support us, and incarnations in the flesh such as we seek today will no longer be sought. But the individuals who have become so tied up with the materialistic way of thinking that they cannot let go of it will still sneak down to that earth and find ways of involving themselves in the activities of bacilli — the tubercle bacillus and others — bacillary entities which will be rummaging through every part of the earth's corpse. Today's bacilli are merely the prophets, let us say, of what will happen to the whole earth in future. Then a time will come when those who cling to the materialistic way of thinking will unite with the moon powers and surround the earth, which will be a burnt-out corpse, together with the moon. For all they want is to hold on to the life of the earth and remain united with it; they do not want to take the right course, which is to progress from the earth's corpse to what will be the future soul and spirit of the earth.
I have spoken of the profoundly significant battle which took place in the spiritual regions of the world between the early 1840s and the autumn of 1879. This was one of the battles which occur repeatedly in world and human evolution and are customarily represented by the image of Michael or St George fighting the dragon. Michael won one such victory over the dragon on behalf of the spiritual worlds in 1879. At that time the spirits of darkness who worked against the Michaelic impulses were cast down from the spiritual realm into the human realms. .. from that time onwards they have been active in the feeling, will and mind impulses of human beings. Present-day events can therefore only be understood if one turns the inner eye to the spiritual powers which are now moving among us.
...
On the other hand, the spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be found. The most dangerous thing you can do in the immediate future will be to give yourself up unconsciously to the influences which are definitely present. For it makes no difference to their reality whether they are recognized or unrecognized.
It will be the main concern of these spirits of darkness to bring confusion into the rightful elements which are now spreading on earth, and need to spread in such a way that the spirits of light can continue to be active in them. They will seek to push these in the wrong direction. I have already spoken of one such wrong direction, which is about as paradoxical as is possible. I have pointed out that while human bodies will develop in such a way that certain spiritualities can find room in them, the materialistic bent, which will spread more and more under the guidance of the spirits of darkness, will work against this and combat it by physical means. I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination towards spirituality out of people's souls when they are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body.
Today, bodies are vaccinated against one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated with a substance which it will certainly be possible to produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not develop foolish inclinations connected with spiritual life - 'foolish' here, of course, in the eyes of materialists.
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The whole trend goes in a direction where a way will finally be found to vaccinate bodies so that these bodies will not allow the inclination towards spiritual ideas to develop and all their lives people will believe only in the physical world they perceive with the senses. Out of impulses which the medical profession gained from presumption — oh, I beg your pardon, from the consumption they themselves suffered — people are now vaccinated against consumption, and in the same way they will be vaccinated against any inclination towards spirituality. This is merely to give you a particularly striking example of many things which will come in the near and more distant future in this field — the aim being to bring confusion into the impulses which want to stream down to earth after the victory of the [Michaelic] spirits of light [in 1879].
The following two GA178 lectures should be read completely, as they sketch the whole situation.
(two versions on rsarchive) describes how materialism will rise for the next 4-500 years, and how brotherhoods headed by initiates are driving masses and populations into materialism, so these souls are fastened to the earthly sphere (see ties between dead and living)
But many other brotherhoods, called those of the left, tried to keep this knowledge for themselves, because when it is possessed by a small group, it gives them power over others who do not have it. And so endeavours were always made by certain groups to assure them power over others. Thus it could come about that a certain kind of knowledge was regarded as an esoteric possession, but was in fact utilised in order to gain power over one thing or another.
...
In this present time it is particularly necessary to be really clear about these things. For you know that since 1879 mankind has been living in a very special spiritual situation. Quite particularly powerful spirits of darkness were then cast down from the spiritual world into the human realm, and those persons who in a wrongful way keep the secrets connected with this event in the possession of their small groups are able to bring about everything possible by this means.
...
... brotherhoods always influence public opinion by disseminating this or that in such a way that it will disturb people as little as possible — who put out the idea that the time of materialism will soon be over, or indeed that it is already at an end. The poor, pitiable 'clever people', who to-day are promoting through so many gatherings and books and societies the idea that materialism is finished and that something of the spirit is now within reach, but without ever being able to offer people more than the word "spirit" and little phrases of a similar kind — these people are all more or less in the service of those who have an interest in declaring what is not true: that materialism is in ruins. That is far from true: on the contrary, a materialistic outlook makes progress and prospers best when people are taught that they are no longer materialists. The materialistic outlook is fast making headway and will continue to advance for some four or five hundred years.
and after some explanations (read lecture in full), comes the message:
Thus we see that in these cases - we might call them normal nowadays - when the threshold of death is crossed by souls who have not wanted to have anything at all to do with spiritual ideas and feelings, the souls become destructive centres, because they are held back in the earth-sphere. Only those souls who in this life are permeated by a certain connection with the spiritual world go through the gate of death in such a way that they are accepted in the spiritual world, set free from the earth-sphere, and are able to weave the threads that can continually be woven from themselves to those they have left behind. For we must be clear about this: the spiritual threads between the dead and those of us who were close to them are not severed by death; they remain and are indeed much more intimate than they were during life.
This that I have been saying must be taken as a very serious and important truth. Once again, it is not something known to me alone; others know that this is how things are at the present time. But there are many who make use of this truth in a very bad sense. For while there are misguided materialists who believe that this life is the only life, there are also initiates who are materialists and who disseminate materialistic teachings through their brotherhoods. You must not suppose that these materialists take the feeble-minded view that there is no such thing as spirit, or that men have no souls which can live independently of the body. You can be sure that anyone who has been really initiated into the spiritual world will never succumb to the foolishness of believing only in matter. But there are many who have a certain interest in spreading materialism and try by all sorts of means to ensure that the majority of men will believe only in materialism and will live wholly under its influence. And there are brotherhoods led by initiates who have this interest. It suits these materialists very well when it is constantly said that materialism has already been overcome. For anything can be promoted by talking about it in an opposing sense; the necessary manoeuvres are often highly complicated.
What then are the aims of these initiates, who in reality know very well that the human soul is a purely spiritual entity, independent of the body, and nevertheless cherish and cultivate a materialistic outlook in other people?
What they want is that the largest possible number of souls should absorb only materialistic ideas between birth and death. Thus these souls are made ready to linger on in the earth-sphere, to be held back there. And now observe that there are brotherhoods which are equipped to know all about this. These brotherhoods prepare certain human souls to remain after death in the realm of the material; then they arrange things - and this is quite possible for their infamous power - so that these souls come under the aegis of their brotherhood, and from this the brotherhood gains enormous strength. So these materialists are not materialists, for they believe in the spirit, these initiate-materialists are not so foolish as not to do that, and indeed they know the truth about the spirit well enough — but they compel human souls to remain bound to the material realm after death, in order to be able to use these souls for their own purposes. Thus these brotherhoods build up a sort of clientele of souls from among the dead who remain in the earth-sphere. These souls have in them certain forces which can be guided in the most varied ways, and by this means it is possible to achieve quite special opportunities for exercising power over those who are not initiated into these things.
Nothing less than that is the plan of certain brotherhoods. And nobody will understand these matters clearly unless he keeps the dust out of his eyes and refuses to be put off by suggestions that either such brotherhoods do not exist or that their activities are harmless. They are in fact extremely harmful; the intention of these initiates is that men should be led farther and farther into materialism, and should come to believe that there are indeed spiritual forces, but that these are no more than certain forces of nature.
and then is explained how the influence of the souls of the deceased are used for gaining earthly powers
In this way the 'harmless' people gradually become entirely dependent in their soul-life (on the lodge), without knowing that they are dependent or from what source they are being guided.
and continues:
Here we have the beginning of a trend which will gather force throughout the next four or five hundred years. For the moment the evil brotherhoods have put the brake on, but they will continue their activities unless they are stopped - and they can be stopped only if complacency regarding the spiritual-scientific world-outlook is overcome.
with the intentions of Western brotherhoods
There is something that works against this materialising of human souls, this exile of souls in the earthly sphere. The lodges exist on earth, and if the souls are to manifest and to be made use of in the lodges, they must be kept in this earthly exile. The power that works against these endeavours to operate through souls in the earthly realm is the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha. And this also is the healing impulse which acts against the materialising of souls. Now the way taken by the Christ is altogether outside the wills and intentions of men. Hence there is no man anywhere, and no initiate, whatever his knowledge, who can influence those actions of the Christ which in the course of the twentieth century will lead to that appearance of which I have often spoken to you and which you can find indicated in the Mystery Plays. That rests entirely with Christ alone. The Christ will be present as an etheric Being within the earth-sphere. The question for men is how they are to relate themselves to Him. No one, not even the most powerful initiate, has any kind of influence over this appearance. It will come! I beg you to keep firm hold of that. But measures can be taken with the aim of seeing to it that this Christ-Event is received in one way or another and has this or that effect.
.. the aim of those brotherhoods I have spoken of, who wish to confine human souls in the material realm, is that the Christ should pass by unobserved in the twentieth century; that His coming as an etheric individuality should not be noticed by men. And this endeavour takes shape under the influence of a quite definite idea and a quite definite purpose. These brotherhoods want to take over the Christ's sphere of influence, which should spread out more and more widely during the twentieth century, for another being (of whom we will later speak more precisely). There are Western brotherhoods who want to dispute the impulse of the Christ and to set in His place another individuality who has never appeared in the flesh — an etheric individuality, but a strongly Ahrimanic one.
All these methods I have told you about, this working with the dead and so on, have finally one single purpose — to lead people away from the Christ who has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, and to assign to another being dominion over the earth.
This is a very real battle, not an affair of abstract concepts; a real battle which is concerned with setting another being in place of the Christ-Being for the rest of the fifth Postatlantean cultural age, for the sixth and for the seventh.
One of the tasks of healthy, honest spiritual development will be to destroy and make away with such endeavours, which are anti-Christian in the highest degree. For this other being, whom these brotherhoods want to set up as a ruler, will be called "Christ" by them; yes, they will really call him "Christ!" And it will be essential for people to learn to distinguish between the true Christ, who will not this time appear in the flesh, and this other being who is marked off by the fact that he has never been embodied on the earth. It is this etheric being whom these brotherhoods want to set in the place of Christ, so that the Christ may pass by unobserved.
Here is one side of the battle, which is concerned with falsifying the appearance of Christ during the twentieth century. Anyone who looks only at the surface of life, and pays heed to all the external discussions about Christ and the Jesus-question, and so on, knows nothing of the deeper facts. All these discussions serve only to hide the real issues and to lead people away from them. When the theologians discuss 'Christ' in this way, a spiritual influence from somewhere is always at work, and these learned men are in fact furthering aims and purposes quite different from those they are aware of.
This is the danger of the idea of the unconscious: it leads to unclear thinking about all such connections. While the evil brotherhoods pursue their aims very consciously, these aims never enter the consciousness of the people who engage in all sorts of superficial discussions. We lose the truth of these things by talking of the "unconscious," for this so-called unconscious is merely beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness, and is the very sphere in which someone who knows about these things can manipulate them.
Here we have one side of the situation: a number of brotherhoods actually do wish to substitute for the working of Christ the working of another being and are ready to use any means to bring this about.
and Eastern brotherhoods influencing the masses
On the other side are certain Eastern brotherhoods, especially Indian ones, who want to intervene no less significantly in the evolution of mankind. But they have a different purpose: they have never developed an esoteric method of achieving something by drawing the souls of the dead into the purview of their lodges: that is far removed from their aims. But in their own way they also do not want the impulses of the Mystery of Golgotha to work into the course of human evolution. Since the dead are not at their disposal, as they are for some of the Western brotherhoods I have mentioned, they do not wish to set against the Christ, who is to appear as an etheric individuality during the twentieth century, some other individuality; for that they would need the dead. But they do want to distract attention from the Christ; to prevent Christianity from rising to supremacy; to obscure the truth about the Christ, who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha after His one and only incarnation of three years on earth, and who cannot be incarnated again on earth. These brotherhoods do not want to control the dead in their lodges: in place of the dead they employ beings of another kind.
When a man dies, he gives up his etheric body, which separates from the physical body soon after death, and is then normally taken up into the cosmos. But before the Mystery of Golgotha something else was possible, and even afterwards it was still possible, especially in the East. When a Man surrenders his etheric body after death, certain beings can clothe themselves in it and become etheric beings with the aid of these etheric bodies of dead men. This is what happens in the East: demonic beings are enticed to clothe themselves in the etheric bodies which men have cast aside; and it is these spirits who are drawn into the Eastern lodges. The Western lodges, therefore, have the dead who are banished into matter; the Eastern lodges of the left have demonic spirits — spirits who do not belong to earth-evolution but have insinuated themselves into it by donning the discarded etheric bodies of dead men.
Esoterically, the procedure is to make this fact into an object of worship. You know that the calling up of illusions belongs to the arts of certain brotherhoods, because when men are not aware of how far illusion is present in the midst of reality, they can easily be taken in by skilfully produced illusions. The immediate object is achieved by introducing a certain form of worship.
Suppose I have a group of men with a common ancestry; then, after as an "evil" brother I have made it possible for the etheric body of a certain ancestor to be taken over by a demonic spirit, I tell the people that this ancestor is to be worshipped. The ancestor is simply the man whose cast-off etheric body has been taken over, through the machinations of the lodge, by a demonic spirit. So ancestor-worship is introduced, but the ancestors who are worshipped are simply whatever demonic beings have clothed themselves in the etheric bodies of these ancestors.
The Eastern peoples can be diverted from the Mystery of Golgotha by methods such as these. The result will be that for Eastern peoples — or perhaps for people generally, since that is the ultimate aim — the coming manifestation of Christ in our earthly world will pass unnoticed. These Eastern lodges do not want to substitute another Christ; they want only that the appearance of Christ Jesus shall not be noticed.
There is thus an attack from two sides against the Christ Impulse that is to manifest in etheric form during the twentieth century; and this is the situation in which we stand today. Particular trends are always only an outcome of what the great impulses in human evolution are bringing about. That is why it is so saddening to hear it said continually that influences from the so-called unconscious, are an effect of suppressed love or the like, when in fact influences from a highly conscious spirituality are at work on humanity from all sides, while remaining relatively unconscious if no conscious attention is paid to them.
continues on the topic of 'brotherhoods manipulating masses' (SWCC)
I am not setting out historical laws or ideas, but stating facts that are connected with the plans and purposes both of certain personalities who are held together in brotherhoods and of other beings who work on these brotherhoods and whose influence is also sought. They are beings who are not incarnated in the flesh, but are embodied in the spiritual world. It is essential to keep this in mind when you hear what I told you yesterday. For where these brotherhoods are concerned, we have to do with various parties (re: earlier lectures, e.g. 'The Occult Movement in the 19th Century'). Thus there is one party which stands for keeping certain higher truths absolutely secret; and again, allowing for various shades of opinion, there are brothers, particularly since the middle of the fifteenth century, who hold that certain truths, if only those called for by the needs of the moment, should be carefully and pertinently disclosed. Besides these two main parties there are other variations; hence you will see that whatever influence is finally exerted on human evolution from the side of these brotherhoods will very often reflect some kind of compromise.
Early in the 1840s, those brotherhoods who have knowledge of the spiritual impulses that play into history saw coming on that battle of certain spiritual beings with higher spirits which terminated in 1879, when certain angel-beings, Spirits of Darkness, were cast down, an event symbolised by the victory of Michael over the dragon. When therefore, in the middle of the nineteenth century, these brotherhoods felt that this event was approaching, they had to decide what attitude to take towards it and to consider what should be done.
Those brothers who wished above all to reckon with the demands of the moment were actuated up to a certain point with the best intentions, but they were mistaken in their approach to the materialism of the time; they thought that men who were prepared to accept only what could be known in physical terms should be offered something from the spiritual world in a materialistic form. So it was with good intentions that Spiritualism was launched on the world in the 1840s.
Since at that time a critical mentality, concerned solely with the external world, was due to prevail on earth, it was necessary to give people at least some inkling, some feeling, that a spiritual world existed around them. And so now this compromise, as is the way with compromises, was put into effect. Those brothers who were altogether against communicating spiritual truths to mankind found themselves outvoted, one might say; they had to give in and agree. Even so, it was not their original intention to introduce the phenomena connected with spiritualism into the world. Where collective groups of people are concerned one always gets compromises, and naturally, when a collective decision has been reached, not only those who favoured it will be looking for results, but those who at first opposed it will be expecting something or other from it.
Thus the well-meaning members of these brotherhoods took the mistaken view that through the use of mediums people would be convinced of the presence around them of a spiritual world; then on the basis of this conviction it would be possible to impart higher truths. This could indeed have happened if the phenomena that came through the mediums had in fact been interpreted in the intended way, as evidence for the presence of an interpenetrating spiritual world. But — as I explained yesterday — something quite different resulted. The mediumistic phenomena were interpreted by those who took part in the seances as coming from the dead. Hence the experiment was a disappointment for all concerned. Those brothers who had allowed themselves to be outvoted were very grieved that the séance manifestations could be spoken of — sometimes correctly — as coming from the spirits of the dead. The well-intentioned progressive brothers had not expected any mention of the dead, but rather of a general elemental world, so they too were disappointed.
These activities are pursued above all by persons who have been in some way initiated. And besides the brotherhoods already mentioned, we have to reckon with others, or with sections of the same brotherhoods, wherein a minority of members, or even a majority, consists of initiates who within their brotherhoods are known as "brothers of the left;" they are those who treat every impulse that enters into human evolution as a question of power. Naturally, these brothers expected all sorts of things from spiritualism.
As I told you yesterday, it was these brothers of the left who were specially responsible for dealing in the way I described with the souls of the dead. Their interest was centred on observing what came out of the seances, and by degrees they got control of the whole field. The well-intentioned initiates gradually lost all interest in Spiritualism; they felt in a certain sense ashamed, because those who had all along opposed Spiritualism said they might have known from the start that nothing would come of it. But the result was that spiritualism came under the power of the brothers of the left. Yesterday I said that these brothers had been disappointed in the following way. They saw that spiritualism could bring to light what they had set on foot, and they were above all anxious that this should not happen. Since the persons attending the seances believed they were in touch with the dead, communications from the dead might reveal what the brothers of the left were doing with the souls of the dead. The very souls which they were misusing might manifest in the course of a séance.
You must please once more keep in mind that I am not expounding theories but relating facts — facts that go back to particular individuals. And when individuals are united in brotherhoods, they will differ in what they expect from the same event. When one speaks of facts that belong to the spiritual world, it is always a question of looking for the outcome of individual impulses. In ordinary life one action will often contradict another. If theories are discussed, the rule of contradiction must be observed. But when one is speaking of facts, then — just because they are facts — we shall very often find that facts in the spiritual world agree just as little as do human actions on the physical plane. Therefore I ask you to keep this in mind. One cannot talk of realities in these matters unless one talks of individual facts. That is the point. Therefore we must keep the various streams apart and distinguish between them.
Two powers, especially, stand in opposition to each other: the power representing the principle that was overcome at the end of the eighteenth century and the power representing the new age. A great many people, of course, are instinctively supporters of the new age. Therefore the representatives of the old impulses, those of the eighteenth, seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, must be yoked by artificial means to the forces which emanate from certain brotherhoods who are working for group-egotistic ends. The most effective principle for extending power over as many men as may be needed is to-day the principle of economic dependence. But that is only an instrument: the real thing is quite different. The real issue you can gather for yourselves from all the various hints I have given. The economic principle is connected with everything which seeks to enlist a great number of men all over the world as a kind of army in the service of these principles.
These are the powers which stand opposed to each other. And this indicates what it is that is really battling in the world today. In the West we have the principle which is really rooted in the eighteenth, seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, but which passes unnoticed because it clothes itself in the phrases of revolution and democracy. It wears them as a mask and by this means strives to gain all possible power for itself. These endeavours are favoured if as many people as possible do not exert themselves to see things as they are, and in this field allow themselves to be lulled to sleep again and again by the illusion that today there is a war between the Entente and the powers of Central Europe. In reality there is no such war; only by going behind this illusion can one get at the real struggle, but light can be thrown on it if it is approached along the lines which, for certain reasons, I only hint at. At least we should endeavour not to take illusions for realities: then gradually the illusion will be dispelled as far as it need be. Above all we must strive to see these things objectively, as they really are.
goes into the influence of the dead on the evolution we see in the world on Earth, bringing home more descriptive reality of what was said in 1917-11-18-GA178 (see above), of souls bouncing against a ceiling of the lower kingdoms if no spiritual concepts and thoughts in life on earth instead of solely materialistic. Short extract SWCC as a pointer to the lecture:
An essential aspect of life between death and a new birth is precisely that as souls we increasingly widen our circle of acquaintances. Just as here in earthly existence we widen our experiences between birth and death and acquaint ourselves with more and more of the world around us, so there we undergo more and more experiences that relate us to the fact that one senses the existence of other souls, that one knows that through some of the souls one experiences a strengthening of the will, through others a weakening. This is an essential part of our experience there.
You can realize the actual significance of this for all existence, for all cosmic existence. It means that actually, in a certain relation between death and a new birth, a spiritual circle of acquaintances is being formed among a great portion of humanity around the Earth .. . Really, if we look at what we experience between death and a new birth, we do not live all so far from human beings on earth. This is not an abstract bond but a really concrete one.
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In yesterday's lecture I went so far as to draw attention to how a person, if he fails to acquire spiritual mental pictures during his earthly life, chains himself to this earthly life; in a sense, he cannot escape from it, and he becomes therefore a source of disturbance. Many of the destructive forces working in the Earthly sphere come from these dead individuals imprisoned in it.
One must have compassion for such human souls rather than judge them critically, because it is not particularly easy to have to remain after death within a realm that is actually not suited to the dead. The realms in this case are the mineral and plant realms, actually that mineral realm that the animals bear within them, that man himself bears within him. These beings are permeated by the mineral realm. For individuals who have not absorbed spiritual mental pictures, the situation is such that they shrink from this experience after death; feelings are aroused at all times, warning them that they cannot enter the realms that govern animal and human spirituality and that they can enter only what is mineral and plant nature.
I can scarcely depict this, because language has no words for it. One can only approach slowly and gradually what lies actually at the foundation, because the approach is at first something too frightful.
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I consider it my main task today, through such mental pictures as these, to arouse in the consciousness an understanding of how the dead are participating in human evolution. One would really like to say these things today in public lectures, but one cannot, because people do not allow themselves such mental pictures unless they have already gone through something that has been communicated in our groups.
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We must be clear that the dead have not died; the dead are still living on and working in the historical process of human evolution. We must be clear that the forces that spiritually surround us are forces of the higher hierarchies but also forces of the dead. The greatest illusion that future humanity could entertain would be to believe that the social life on earth that people develop among themselves through their feelings and their will happens merely through earthly arrangements, with the exclusion of the dead. This simply is not possible, because the dead are already participating within feeling and willing.
and then on the worldview war specifically:
The Mystery of Golgotha is not only a one-time event and, as such, the greatest single event in all of earthly evolution. It is also a continuing event, an impulse that continues to be active. Humanity must do something to allow this force to work on it in the right way. For a long time I have been emphasizing that the task of our spiritual science is connected with the impulse of Golgotha, that spiritual science must exist in a certain way for the impulse of Golgotha to be understood in the right way in our age and in the immediate future.
You can be sure that, as an earthly science that has become at the same time the world religion, natural science will gain greater and greater influence. I am often reproached for seeming to be unfriendly to the natural sciences, even in their radical developments, a reproach that belongs to the most old-fashioned prejudices imaginable, because whoever understands the course of the evolution of the earth understands that the natural sciences cannot be proved wrong and that, on the contrary, they will spread further and further. A kind of religious belief in them that now sweeps through the world is not to be halted in any way. It will come. It advances confidently, and it comes "for the blessing of humanity!"
The time will not be long, perhaps only a few decades, before all the religious faiths will find themselves unable to save even the most simple, primitive human beings from consciousness of a purely natural existence such as natural science cultivates. This is inevitable.
1918-10-18/19-GA185
(From Symptom to Reality in Modern History). In 1918-10-18-GA185 (see evolution) the 30-years war is described in context of symptom on the surface of underlying impulses of consciousness soul. In 1918-10-19-GA185 then is described how from the stream of the crusades that spawned the Templars, that was supressed by Philip the Fair (members of the Order executed as heretics and their wealth confiscated ) there derived a stream totally divested from its spiritual substance ..
The extract below provides a meta-perspective on the whole secret brotherhoods theme, now connecting it in as a symptom of opposing influences into the evolutionary goals of the epoch (namely the consciousness soul).
.. In order that Man may not be caught between the striving for the consciousness soul and the limitations of consciousness imposed upon him by Rome, attempts were made to stifle his aspiration for the consciousness soul, to undermine this aspiration even more radically than Rome.
...
And that from which spiritual substance had been extracted like the juice from a lemon, that which was transmitted in the form of exoteric freemasonry in the York and Scottish Lodges and pervaded especially the false esotericism of the English speaking peoples - this squeezed out lemon which contained the secrets of the Egypto-Chaldaean epoch, the third Postatlantean epoch, now served as a means of implanting desiccated impulses into the life of the consciousness soul. Thus there arises a situation which is a travesty of the future course of evolution
...
But what one takes over from the past can be used not only to suppress the autonomy of the consciousness soul by the power of suggestion, but also to blunt, even to paralyse its dynamic energy. And in this respect a large measure of success has been achieved; the incipient consciousness soul has been anaesthetized to a large extent.
...
Rome — I am now speaking figuratively — makes use of incense and induces a condition of semi-consciousness by evoking a dreamlike state. But the movement to which I am now referring lulls people to sleep (i.e. the consciousness soul) completely.
…
We have therefore two streams in contemporary history:
on the one hand, since the impulse towards the consciousness soul already exists, there is the chaotic search for fraternity, liberty and equality.
on the other hand we see the efforts on the part of widely differing Orders to suppress this awakening in the consciousness soul for their own ends.
These two currents interact throughout the whole history of modern times.
...
By the middle of the nineteenth century there was no political future for liberal ideas, for their representatives in later years give more or less the impression of casualties of political thinking. The latter-day liberal parties were simply stragglers, for, after the middle of the nineteenth century, the effect of what emerged from the Orders and secret societies of the West began to make its influence increasingly felt, namely, the anaesthetization, the stifling of the consciousness soul. Under these circumstances spirit and soul are no longer active, and only the forces of the phenomenal or sensible world are operative.
1918-10-26-GA185
It would have been a splendid thing if only a few people could have been found in Central Europe who, from an understanding of certain Masonic impulses, could have realized the significance of what I said here two years ago on the subject of secret societies. But, inevitably, there was no response. One cannot imagine a more sterile attitude than that of Central European Masonry in recent decades. This is shown by the fact, frequently mentioned, that one meets with resistance when one refuses to amalgamate in any way the teachings of spiritual science with the Freemasonry of Central Europe.
…
In order to arrive at an understanding of this, one must swallow a whole library of books — a most unpleasant prospect! But people find this prospect unpalatable, most unpalatable!
But if people find this prospect unpalatable, that is due to the impulse which is impelling our age towards catastrophe, to the tragedy of our time. This situation, however, is no cause for pessimism; rather is it a call to energetic action, to translate our knowledge into deeds. And this cannot be repeated too often.
Extract angels/archangels in blood/CNS
Before going on, I want to draw your attention to something of great significance which lies behind all these things. As you know, the transition from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period of civilization came in about 1413, that is in the fifteenth century. This has been characterized in many ways, but let me add today that spiritual guidance of earthly affairs involved mainly members of the hierarchy of Archangels — you will find some of the details in the small volume entitled The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Humanity. [ Note 1 ] As I said, they were mainly involved. Try with all intensity to gain an image of this: angelic spirits pursued their tasks in the spiritual worlds. Much happened on earth as a result. History, human life in the fourth post-Atlantean age, resulted on earth. Angelic spirits belonging to the hierarchy of Angels served the higher hierarchy of Archangels; they did this in such a way, however, that the relationship between members of the two hierarchies was entirely above the earthly and in the spiritual realm, hardly touching on human life. This changed with the coming of the fifth post-Atlantean age, for then the members of the hierarchy of the Angels became more independent in their task of guiding humanity. Thus humanity was more under direct guidance from the Archangels during the fourth post-Atlantean age and will be under direct guidance from the Angels during the fifth age — that is throughout our present fifth age, until the fourth millennium. We can therefore no longer say that the relationship is entirely unconnected with the physical world. This is how the fact can be presented at the spiritual level.
It can also be presented at a more physical level, for all things physical are in the image of the spirit. Looking for the indirect route by which the Archangels guided humanity by working with the Angels during the fourth post-Atlantean age, we can say: This was done via the human blood. And the social structure was also created via the blood, for it was based on blood relationship, on blood bonds. Both the Archangels and the Angels had their dwelling place in the blood, as it were. Truly, the blood is not merely something for chemists to analyse; it is also the dwelling place of entities from higher worlds.
During the fourth post-Atlantean age, therefore, the blood was the dwelling place of Archangels and Angels. This is changing with the fifth post-Atlantean age, for the Angels — I am referring to the Angels of Light, the normal Angels — will take possession more of the blood, and the Archangels will be more involved in the nervous system. This is putting it in the terms of the modern science of physiology. Using an older terminology I might also say: during the fifth post-Atlantean age the Archangels are essentially more at work in the brain and the Angels in the heart. You see, therefore, that a major change has occurred which can be traced all the way to the physical structure of human beings.
The things people do and achieve here on earth are connected with the spirits which are at work in them. People tend to imagine — not always correctly — that Angels and Archangels are somewhere in Cloud-cuckoo-land. If we were to take the whole of human neurological life as a place, and the whole of the blood life as another place, and add what belongs to these when we are in the other worlds between death and rebirth, we would have the realms of the Archangels and Angels.
The fifteenth century marked a specific period in earth evolution and in the corresponding evolution of the spiritual world. We can characterize the events of the time more or less as follows. In the fifteenth century the earth held the greatest attraction for the regular Archangels who were seeking to make the transition from the blood to the nervous system. Going back from the fourteenth to the thirteenth, twelfth and eleventh centuries we find the earth's power of attraction growing less and less; beyond that time it would grow less and less again. We might say the Archangels were directed by higher spirits to love earthly existence most of all during the fifteenth century. Strange as it may seem to many people today who think only in grossly materialistic terms, it is nevertheless true that earthly events are connected with such things.
How did America come to be rediscovered in such a strange way, and people began to make the whole world their own again — exactly at that time?
Because at the time the Archangels were most attracted to the earth. They therefore guided partly the blood and partly the nervous system in such a way that human beings began to go out from their centres of civilization to make the whole earth their own. Events like these must be seen in conjunction with spiritual activities, otherwise they cannot be understood. It does, of course, sound peculiar to people who think in crude materialistic terms if you say: America was discovered and everything we read about in so-called history happened because, within certain limits, that was the time when the earth held the greatest power of attraction for the Archangels.
The Archangels then began to train the Angels to take possession of the human blood, whilst the Archangels wanted to make the transition to the nervous system. By the early 1840s the point had come where certain retarded Angels made the attempt to take the place which belonged to the Archangels in the nervous system rather than reside and reign in the blood. We are therefore able to say that in the 1840s a significant battle developed in the way I have described and, if we consider its most material physical reflection, it took place between the human blood and the human nervous system.
The Angels of Darkness were cast out of the nervous system and into the human blood, and now wreak the havoc in the human blood which I have described. It is because they are at work in the human blood that all the things I have described as due to the influence of retarded Angels are happening here on earth. It is because they are at work in the human blood that people have become as clever as I have said. All this developed slowly and gradually, of course, and we are able to say that whilst the profound break came in 1841, the whole of the nineteenth century had been infected with it.
On finance
For once, therefore, a man woke up and saw that what mattered was not to proclaim democracy but to see the full reality, not to follow slogans, but to see things as they are. This would be particularly important today, for people would then realize that the events which reign with such blood and terror over the whole of humanity are guided and directed from just a few centres. People will never realize this if they persist in the delusion that nation is fighting nation, and allow the European and American Press to lull them to sleep over the kinds of relations that are said to exist between nations. Everything said about antagonism and opposition between nations only exists to cast a veil over the true reasons. For we shall never arrive at the real truth if we feed on words in order to explain these events, but only if we point to actual people. The problem is that this tends to be unpalatable today. And the man who woke up and wrote these statements in 1910 also presented some highly unwelcome accounts in his book. He produced a list of fifty-five individuals who are the real rulers and exploiters of France.
The list can be found in Francis Delaisi's La Democratie et les Financiers, [ Note 11 ] written in 1910; the same man has also written La Guerre qui vient, a book which has become famous.
In his La Democratie et les Financiers you will find statements of fundamental significance. There you have someone who has woken up to reality. The book contains impulses which allow one to see through much of what we should see through today, and also to cut through much of the fog which is made to wash over human brains today. Here again, we must resolve to look to reality.
The book has, of course, been ignored. It does, however, raise issues which should be raised all over the world today, for they would teach people much about the reality which others intend to bury under all their declamations on democracy and autocracy and whatever the slogans may be. The book also gives an excellent exposition on the extremely difficult position in which members of parliament find themselves. People think they can vote according to their convictions. But you would have to know all the different threads which tie them to reality if you wanted to know why they vote for one thing and against another. Certain issues really must be raised. Delaisi does so. Thus, for example, he considers a member of parliament and asks the question: Which side should the poor man support? The people pay him three thousand francs a year and the shareholders pay him thirty thousand francs!' To pose the question is to answer it. So the poor dear man gets his three-thousand-franc allowance from the people, and thirty thousand francs from the shareholders! I think you will agree it is a good piece of proof, a sign of real acumen, to say: How nice that a socialist, a man of the people like Millerand [ Note 12 ] has gained a seat in parliament! Delaisi's question goes in another direction. He asks: How far can someone like Millerand, who was earning thirty thousands francs a year for representing insurance companies, be independent?
So for once someone did wake up.
He is well aware of the threads which run from the actions of such an individual to the different insurance companies. But such things, reported by someone who is awake and sees the truth, are ignored. It is, of course, only too easy to talk about democracy in the Western world. Yet if you wanted to tell people the truth you would have to say: 'The man called so and so is doing this, and the one called so and so is doing that.' Delaisi has found fifty-five men — not a democracy but fifty-five specific individuals — who, he says, govern and exploit France. There, someone has discovered the real facts, for in ordinary life, too, a feeling must awaken for the real facts.
Here is something else from Delaisi: There was once a lawyer who had all kinds of connections, not just insurance companies, but centres of finance, financial worlds. But this lawyer wanted to aim even higher; he wanted sponsorship not only from the worlds of finance, industry and trade, but also from the academic world of the French Academy. This is a place where the academic world can raise one to the sphere of immortality. There were two 'Immortals' within the Academy, however, who were involved in illegal trust dealings. They found it perfectly possible to combine their work for immortality with trust dealings which the law of the land did not permit. Then our sharp-witted lawyer defended the two Immortals in court and managed to get them off, to whitewash them so that no sentence was passed. They then had him admitted to the ranks of the 'Immortals'. Science, responsible not for the temporal things of the world but for things eternal and immortal, made itself the advocate of this selfless lawyer. His name is Raymond Poincar. [ Note 12 ] Delaisi tells the story in his La Democratie et les Financiers.
It is not a bad thing to know these things, which are ingredients of reality. They must be seriously considered. And one is guided to develop something of a nose for reality when one takes up anthroposophy, whilst the materialistic education people have today, with innumerable channels opening into it from the Press, is designed to point not to the realities but to something which is cloaked in all kinds of slogans. And if someone does wake up, as Delaisi did, and writes about how things really are, how many people get to know about it? How many people will listen? They cannot listen, for it is buried by — well, by a life that again is ruled by the Press. Delaisi shows himself to be a bright person, someone who has gone to a lot of trouble to gain real insight. He is no blind follower of parliamentarianism, nor of democracy. He predicts that the things people think are so clever today will come to an end. He says so expressly, also with reference to the 'voting machine' — which is approximately how he puts it. He is entirely scientific and serious in his discourse on this parliamentary voting machine, for he understands the whole system which leads to these 'voting machines', where people are made to believe that a convinced majority is voting against a mentally unhinged minority. He knows that something else will have to take the place of this if there is to be healthy development.
This is not yet possible, for people would be deeply shocked if you were to tell them what will take its place. Only people initiated into spiritual science can really know this today. Forms which belong to the past will definitely not take its place. You need not be afraid that someone speaking out of anthroposophy will promote some kind of reactionary or conservative ideas; no, these will not be things of the past, but they will be so different from the 'voting machine' which exists today that people will be shocked and consider this madness. Nevertheless it will enter into the impulses of evolution in time. Delaisi, too, says: In organic development certain parts lose their original function and become useless but still persist for some time; in the same way, these parliaments will continue to vote for quite some time, but all real life will have departed from them.
You know that human beings have parts of the body which are like this. Some people can move their ears because the muscles for this existed in the past.
We still have those muscles, but they have become atavistic and have lost their function.
This is how Delaisi sees the parliament of the future; parliaments will be such atavistic remnants which have died and will drop off, and something quite different will come into human evolution.
I have quoted Delaisi and his book which appeared not so long ago, in 1910, to show you that there really are enough people — for one such individual will be enough for many thousands. It is important, however, not to ignore these people.
Apart from my efforts to introduce you to the laws of spiritual life and the impulses of spiritual life, I also regard it to be my function to draw attention to significant elements in present-day life. It means, of course, that initially you will hear aspects called significant in these lectures which are not considered significant in life outside, if you find them mentioned at all. The things we do must be radically and thoroughly different from those which are done outside. And we can only truly follow the science of the Spirit in the way it should be followed if we accept this in all its depth and seriousness
1918-11-03-GA185
On the other hand, amongst the English-speaking population in the West the princes and the aristocracy have everywhere infiltrated the Lodges.
It is a characteristic feature of the West that one cannot understand the state organization unless we bear in mind that it is permeated with the spirit of the Lodges - and France and Italy are thoroughly infected by it - any more than one can understand Central Europe unless one realizes that it is impregnated with Jesuitism.
We must bear in mind therefore that grievous mistakes have been made in respect of freedom of thought and social equality that must necessarily accompany socialism.
1919-10-19-GA191
In this lecture, Rudolf Steiner lays out that since the time of the reformation three stages have been gone through, the dominance of econonomical Man, the bankers, and capitalism. He describes how at a time individual bankers held the power (with the well known example of Rothschild), but how the underlying powers have become impersonal, so we can talk of a spiritual power across souls and a subgroup of humanity.
1920-09-21-GA197
.. if we want to achieve something in the world, then it is a question of giving it the opposite name to what it actually is in the normal sense for the development of mankind, so that one acquires an opposite name, so to speak. Humanity must learn to rise beyond blind faith in names ..
1921-03-21-GA174B
main motives of leaders of the anglo-saxon politics:
the future has to lead to world domination by the anglo-saxon race
the unfeasibility of marxism has to be tried out in Russia
1922-12-03-GA219 (SWCC)
It is certainly true that .. the battle of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings in the Cosmos for the being of Man is still hidden from the majority of people in the dark recesses of their inner nature.
But these battles are now beginning to send their waves into that realm of existence of which men are clearly conscious. And today, if we are not to lead a sleepy existence in our civilization, we must know how to recognize the first waves that beat in upon us from those regions of the spiritual world which I have just characterized.
These two hosts - the Luciferic in the warmth and airy element of the Earth, the Ahrimanic in the solid and watery - these two hosts send their waves into our cultural life today.
1923-07-11-GA224 (c)
.. gradually human beings do not want to think anymore, because it has begun to become unpleasant. Thinking has become uncomfortable. Mankind would much rather dream than think.
...
.. and if those external things, the outer development of cultures, were to go on and on and if there were not a strong inner spiritual drive in development, then it would actually be the case of all people becoming staggering dreamers.
This is to be taken quite seriously, such a thing is a possibility for humanity.
And this very thing can only be counteracted by really getting involved in courageously and boldly getting stuck into the spiritual world in the way that spiritual science wants to and as it really can. Today it is still possible that we will gather ourselves up so strongly as humanity that people will turn to inner activity. But it must be worked upon seriously using every means by all those who understand this.
Some quotes by Noam Chomsky
"The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies."
...
"There has been a deepening recognition among elites in the West that as you begin to lose the power to control people by force, you have to start to control what they think."
.. before this century is out he [Sorat] will show himself by making his appearance in many humans as the being by whom they are possessed.Human beings will appear of whom it will be impossible to believe that they are real human beings.
They will even develop externally in a peculiar manner, for outwardly they will have intense, strong dispositions with savage features and furious destructiveness in their emotions. Their faces will be like the faces of beasts. The Sorat human beings will be recognizable by their external appearance; in a terrible way they will not only scoff at everything but also oppose and want to push into the pool of filth anything that is spiritual.
Discussion
Note [1] - Commentaries on lectures
>Commentary [1.1] on 1917-10-07-GA177 and 1917-10-27-GA177
These excerpts state, plainly states, that the materialistic society will develop as to inject people with a physical medical intervention, so as to avoid them becoming spiritual.
In the year 2021 such global injection campaign has taken place, bearing the 'karma of untruthfullness' lectures and the 'untruthfullness of our ahrimanic times' in mind.
An interesting link may be seen with statements in other lectures that describe how the use of the pituitary gland is crucial for spiritual science to work on the etheric body, and it's further loosening. And, how people who do not use this 'newly developed organ', will have this organ degenerate and fall pray to the Mammon. Read the embedded text on Schema FMC00.353 (inserted below with the excerpts pointed to in the schema -a).
In this case we can fill in the term Mammon by the 'large economical money machine of materialism'.
FMC00.353
Esoteric Lessons I GA 266 Number 21
Berlin, 10-23-'07
The rejection of spiritual wisdom is a sin against the Holy Spirit.
Gabriel transformed men's brains and an organ developed in the
forehead that should be used. If no spiritual content flowed into it
this part of the brain would wither, giving rise to infectious
diseases and pestilence. Spiritual science was kept secret under
Gabriel. This science is suppose to stream out into the open under
Michael. Brains are already worked on in the mother's body. When we
look at an outside object it sends light (through Michael) into our
eyes, and this creates a mirror image in the brain. The resulting
mental image enables us to perceive the object consciously. In
meditation we have to create the mental image without an outer object.
Through the pictures that we create for ourselves the force of what
we've made a picture of can stream into us. We can create such
imaginations more easily through the forces that we take into us in
esoteric classes. We should take in such teachings with hearty
feelings.
Saturn forces work on the sense organs. The terrible degenerations
that we see in sexual things will get much worse when Saturn rules the
earth 400 years from now. It's a matter of training warriors to combat
sensual things. We're called upon to train ourselves so that we can
fight this battle. Michael needs hosts of helpers to fight out on the
physical plane what he's already overcome on the astral plane. That's
the great task that we have to fulfill.
Many people think that they're working for the good of mankind from
morn till eve, but this is questionable. A clairvoyant can see that
efforts coming from materialistic thinking have the wrong effect, and
it may lie in some people's karma that they should wait until they can
do certain things. Then a higher being can whisper such a task in his
ear, so that it's not induced by outer circumstances. Life is a
destructive process for someone who only devotes himself to outer
sense impressions. A meditating esoteric doesn't let his life be
determined by outer circumstances as much. One who makes repeated
meditational efforts isn't exposed to astral confusions at night and
makes himself ready to receive the instructions of spiritual beings.
And it's very necessary that we be instructed in this way. For since
1879 we've entered a new stage of human evolution. Gabriel worked on
the development of a new organ in man's brain by regulating human
births (1525–1879). A 16th century man would not have
understood our present theosophy. It's up to archangel Michael to
stimulate men to use their newly acquired organ, that degenerates if a
man doesn't use it. Such a man comes under the influence of Michael's
opponent, Mammon or Beelzebub. This is the God of hindrances, who
wants to prevent men from making progress. The bacteria that arise
under his influence can give rise to terrible epidemics and strange
nervous diseases; children could be born with a ruined nervous system.
After Michael's reign comes Oriphiel who gives the divine wrath that
should only be used by highly developed people. Jesus drives the
merchants out of the temple.
The dominant contemporary worldview to which we are educated and conditioned or 'maintained' through education and media, contains essential views about Man in the world: just a speck in the wide universe, an accident of evolution, we only live once, etc. These references to a materialistic belief system (with a big bang creation, Darwin theory of evolution, no spiritual Man and so no reincarnation) sneak in every day in many small details, but they are philosophical ground principles that Man's soul needs to give meaning to life.
As a result of the contemporary worldview also, certain assumptions in the view of the world are put forth and assumed implicitly as evident. For example that consciousness has evolved slowly but has more or less remained the same in Man over cultures, that all human beings are the same. From which follows that materialistic Man is given a projection that what mankind 'ought' to strive for is a world - as we know it today, live in it, and project the past historical versions - where all human beings live on the same foot, each worth the same, with no hunger or injustice or war, good care for our planet, etc. However this has never been the case, and it will never be.
The reality is that instead of focusing on the mineral material side of things, Mankind should be working morally and not just physically .. individually and societally, on its spiritualization. The spiritual scientific worldview positions our current epoch versus the two previous ones, and the next one, and from is evidently clear that Man and the world in the next epoch will be vastly different than what we can imagine. And this is less than 10.000 years away. The future is spiritualized Man, not physical Man as we know today.
Hence, the forces that spoonfeed and condition us with education and mass media control to stay within the matrix of the dominant contemporary materialistic worldview, are 'a major distraction' that misguides souls. Instead of educating them to their developmental task.
(2) accepting reality
Positioning the dominant worldly forces. Several sources speak about a 'New World Order', views that unfold into secret societies and brotherhoods that are controlling the world and humanity at large through control over key levers such as central banks (organizing money and value exchange for material goods and services), media (influencing opinions to direct the course of events), etc. The 'discovery' of such reality if often experienced as so shocking that, in one go, it is perceived as offensive and injustice .. whereby the process of positioning and understanding stops there.
However, throughout the history of mankind there have always been dominant controlling worldly forces, whether it was the roman empire under a Caesar, the empires of Attila the Hun or Ghenghis Khan, the Egyptian king farao, or emperor Charlemagne. The difference today regarding the powers at hand and their grand achievements is the untruthfullness, in the sense that either humanity is not informed on and educated to them, and/or that humanity is asleep in their state of consciousness regarding these matters. Because information does exist on this in the world. And the track record of achievements is impressive. However one needs to be able to 'place it' in a broader frame. Empires have always existed, they come and go.
History teaches us that throughout time, people lives within the frame of operations offered. Most people, in any previous life, also were not the individuals change this frame of operations, even though one can make one's own moral judgment.
Once again, the same point, in Steiner's words from1917-01-15-GA174 above:
.. we must be careful, when we turn our attention to such things, to apply judgement that is free of moralizing. This also saves us from asking: Why must such a thing happen? For in the mission of one element or another is included the fact that things develop which must develop. And the adversary, the opposite pole must also exist: namely, something that resists whatever it is that wants to come about. This also must exist.
And I blame one as little as I praise the other. I am simply describing the impulses and the facts. I have not the least inclination to pronounce a morally disparaging judgement on something I am describing as a necessity arising out of the whole character of the fifth Postatlantean age.
There is nothing bad about giving the world a materialistic, industrial, commercial culture, for this is a necessity. But the opposite pole must exist, too, for human evolution cannot proceed in a straight line.
Opposing forces must clash with one another, and in this clash reality evolves.
(3) a frame of understanding is required to make conscious choices
Focusing on this one point (2) limits the broader perspective. It is the naivety of (1) that makes for a harder awakening (2). The real challenge for each individual is to awaken once conscious awareness, and develop a guiding worldview compass to make conscious choices as Free and individual Man.
Two statements to broaden this perspective are: 'give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar' and 'my kingdom is not of this world'. (see 1917-01-15-GA174 above)
These lead to a spiritual scientific understanding of the material powers at hand in the physical world, and how they fit into the broader picture of spiritual evolution and development of Mankind amidst other spiritual beings. Including these of a previous and future planetary stage, Old Moon (Luciferic) and Future Jupiter (Ahrimanic).
A first picture that may be useful to calibrate our worldview perspective is that of the pie chart distribution: the world at large consists of manifold influences and cohorts of subpopulations. See ao:
the implication of the Fall of the spirits of darkness is that the retarded angels have been cast down on earth and live between us in humanity (+ change in the blood)
It is a basic principle of evolution, spiritual scientifically speaking, that 'not all reach the development target for any given period of evolution, maybe one third does', as the 'parable of the sewer' describes.
A second step is to discern the spiritual in the worldly influences.
The fact that the majority of humanity is asleep versus the potential state of conscious awareness, is described and positioned as an ahrimanic continuation of the luciferic fall in Fall and redemption.
The power of money, as in the mechanisms of central banks and world economic powers, is called 'serving the Mammon'.
The main characteristics of the media orchestration to influence the masses with information to suit materialistic agendas with untruths, is the ahrimanic character of our times.
Similarly the increase in certain diseases, and the impact of recent technology developments on humanity at large and the future youth, can be understood from a spiritual scientific worldview perspective, differently than the dominant materialistic worldview based on mineral science. And to understand always helps to accept, responsibility comes with conscious awareness.
Didactically, it is important to therefore also learn how below the surface of world events are spiritual realities and truths, see History
In the 17th century, a 30 years war took place to stunt the spiritual development that was to emerge in central europe following the rosecrucian impulse
In the 20th century, a 30 years war took place between 1914 and 1945 to stunt the spiritual development that was to emerge in central europe in o.a. german and slavic cultures, following the impulses of theosophy, anthroposophy since the start of the Michael age in 1879, and the emerging clairvoyance and appearance of Christ in the etheric from the 1930s onwards.
also 1924-08-08 - correction of karma confusion
Last, the hindsight homework done individually by studying spiritual science, also offers the advantage of a certain degree of foresight perspective.
It is crucial to build an understanding of evil, because it is central to our current fifth cultural age. And the societal phenomena of mass killings or rise of violence and sexual decadence have to be understood in the context of black magic and asuric influences, because these things will not go away but develop and increase. The polarization of good and evil is just at its start, and the gap will widen in the future, upto the development of the future evil races in a far future (see eg FMC00.077A). Times are not going to become any simpler or easier, when contemplating the Future Oriphiel age in just two or three centuries, or the evolution towards the end of this epoch and the War of all against all - even if this is millenia away.
(4) implications
Free Man Creator posits that Man can be free and in a state of consciousness that is able to consider, understand, and accept all of the above and more. And with the conscious awareness then comes the freedom to make choices regarding how we live and act in the world. The conscious awareness also brings responsability to ourselves, our dear beloved, our fellow men, and humanity.
Arguments to contemplate are a.o:
it would not be wise to fight a losing battle, based on limited insight. Where do we place our chips, when we invest our time and life energy to contribute to the world?
point (2) above was concluded with the distinction between making one's own moral judgment, and the ability to impact or change this frame of operations
this is one incarnation, but we are part of the past and the future. Our deeds today contribute to the future we will be part of. What does this mean for our individual feelings and will?
the compassion with our fellow human beings in times that are ever becoming more difficult, where souls will become more isolated of purpose and answers on meaning, and more confronted with illness and evil.
These elements now have to be integrated and brought down to our individual lives and circles of influence and control, using the energy of our circle of concern (which may be a lot larger) to give the best of what we can offer and contribute.
1 - Panem et circenses and gefundes fressen in the infoglut
Panem et circenses is latin for 'bread and circuses' or 'bread and games' is phrase attributed to Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis), a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century AD and the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the Satires— and is used commonly in cultural and political contexts.
It means that public approval is gathered by offering diversion and distration, and satisfying the most basic requirements of the population and offering them food (bread) and entertainment (games, circus). Juvenal used to phrase to decry the selfish purposes of common people, their neglect of wider concerns, and a population's ignorance of civic duty as a priority.
Two thousand years later, think of (a) media: newspapers, radio, television, now internet and social media - including the news and film industry; (b): sports: olympics, world championships, and all kinds of local and national sports, but also (c): the culture of beer and alcohol in pubs, restaurants, culturally embedded social and business drinking.
Technology gets sponsored and hyped, because the less barriers, the easier to lure people in and chain them. Online streaming allows you to see any film at any time from anywhere.
Gefundenes fressen is german for 'the food stuff you find' and this case, as the term is often used, refers to the information you bounce into and happen to find, the soulfoud that you end up eating'. In the infoglut and infowar
Seeds are planted and flypapers (fly-trap or fly-catcher) appear to feed rumours and opinions. Suppose you orchestrate so many, that by architecture and design the information landscape becomes a labyrint and the seeker for the truth looses the way, gets sidetracked. One who looks will find stuff thinking to be on to something and following the track, but what if that was consciously placed to serve those who would try to look around to check rumours, or their own common sense. Just like false flag, false pointers.
Infoglut is used here with the focus on glut, in terms of etymology of the word from the latin gluto: the overload of what you swallow.
2 - Diffused consciousness and subconscious ahrimanic influences
Through intensive programs of social cultural conditions, the population has become a victim of and suffers from what Rudolf Steiner called 'an anaesthetization of the consciousness soul' (1917-01-15-GA174).
This can be related to ahrimanic elementals in the subconscious of Man's soul (see 1924-08-19-GA243 and Schema FMC00.238 on Ahrimanic influence on Man), and from another angle to a continuation of the initial Luciferic fall in a broader Fall of Man, see Fall and redemption.
What is happening here should be taken together with a number of symptoms of the ahrimanic influence, including the age of untruthfullness, and the problems of eroding health and increase in illnesses.
Note [3]
This page is one where the conflict between worldview wars flows from the pure spiritual science into contemporary reality in the world around us. Whereas the first is of no interest to the established 'powers that be', the second is highly sensitive in a world where media management is the major lever for controlling the direction of political acts. What is meant is (a) 'influencing the majority', so whatever plans will always go down and come to pass due to 'control of the official or majority opinion'; and related: (b) the careful management and control of all alternate opinions.
Imagine a pie chart: statistically if one controls the 80% like the pareto rule, all the rest can be positioned as weird, strange, or dangerous outliers. This is indeed how communication-technically it is done. Hence all who are not in line with the majority-belief are stamped as dangerous outcasts. These practices are as old as humanity, see Worldview wars.
The goal of this site is not to take any political position, but rather to help building an understanding and a a position of wisdom based on a deeper understanding of impulses. This is necessary to avoid knee-jerk reactions or engaging in fighting a loosing battle. This wisdom is the basis to be able to make one's own decisions in full consciousness; make choices as Free Man Creator.
As per the 'pyramidion' statement on top of this page: Christ did not come to take on the Roman empire. Each cultural age has its developmental purpose. And in the wisdom of the deeper understanding one finds acceptance and the best way to take position and act, dedicating oneself in the most effective way to the future of Man which is spiritual.
The twenty-five lectures that comprise the two volume set of books by Rudolf Steiner entitled: The Karma of Untruthfulness, are quite insightful for our times. Even though Steiner is speaking in 1916, as bombs were falling all around Dornach, Switzerland, where he was constructing the first Goetheanum (largest wooden building in history) he carried on the "good work." Steiner's words are just as helpful now as they were then. Workers from dozens of nations, many of whom were at war with one another, joined together in peace to build this beautiful 'temple of wisdom.'
As WWI raged all around him, Steiner and his followers built the most beautiful wooden building in history with love. Determined to not let the insanity and cruelty of his time effect his spiritual work, Steiner pushed on to accomplish this astounding deed. He looked evil in the face and then constructed the antidote – the path of spiritual development built, carved, painted, sculpted, and spoken into this temple. Truly, Steiner is an example of how to balance an imbalanced world, or how to confront evil by doing good.
The historic symptomology of WWI is given in The Karma of Untruthfulness and many amazing insights and predictions can be found in this work. It is a gold mine of spiritual insight into all wars and the sources of those wars. Steiner gives us a prediction that would have been surprising at his time, during the middle of the "great" war:
"It is hardly necessary to have knowledge of spiritual matters today in order to know that once this war in Europe has come to an end only a few years will pass before a far more furious, far more devastating war will shake the earth outside of Europe."
Steiner knew this truth because he could see the "karma" of the untruthfulness (lies and propaganda) that started WWI. The seeds of WWII were already laid through the karma that would arise from the falsehoods of WWI. These lectures are a sobering and chilling appraisal of Steiner's circumstance. His remarks were destined to come true with horrifying accuracy. Steiner was a spiritual warrior for Truth, Beauty and Goodness. His remarks about truth in The Karma of Untruthfulness bring great insight into why truth is so paramount in spiritual development.
Truth
All of the following quotations are from Rudolf Steiner's lecture series entitled: The Karma of Untruthfulness, Volume I, December, 1916, Dornach.
"Only if hearts exist which see things in their true guise and penetrate that terrible fog of untruth which shrouds everything in the world today, can we progress in an appropriate way."
"The attention paid to historical and other connections of life in our materialistic age, is not permeated with the truth."
"Truth speaks and will be an impulse which, when things are at their worst, can lead humanity to some kind of salvation.
"Falsehood is monstrously vigorous. Falsehood is nothing other than the corresponding counter-image for spiritual endeavor which ought to exist but does not."
"Today so very much is born out of ignorance. This is caused by that black magic known today as journalism. It is a king of black magic, and there was a certain truth in the way folk legend felt the inventors of the art of printing were black magicians."
"All these untruthfulnesses that buzz about in the world enter into what might be called the spiritual aura and generate there a thick fog which the dead find impossible to penetrate – which the spiritual world simply cannot penetrate. The thick fog contains all that black rubbish which comes from today's journalism in the form of untruths which are printed and repeated, creating an aura of untruthfulness spanning the earth."
"The greatest danger is an aberration into untruthfulness brought about by a failure to take reality into account in a living way. The insidious poison of untruthfulness seeps into the social organism turning into social poison."
"Our time lacks a strong, intense urge for the truth. If the urge for truth had been sufficiently strong, it would have sufficed to lead mankind far more extensively towards spiritual life than has actually been the case. It is because of the lack of striving for truth today that current affairs are inversions of the truth."
"People are inclined to pass by the very thing that matters. This thing that matters is the flight from truth into which souls have fallen today! Souls run away from the truth; they have a terrible abhorrence of grasping the truth in all its strength and intensity. People today flee from the truth."
"The moment you believe history as it is written today you become a victim of maya, of illusion. For the truth is not a child's game to be arranged according to personal interests. To adhere to the truth is a grave and holy act of worship. This must be felt and sensed. Yet the whole tendency today is none other than to make maya absolute and declare it to be the truth."
"Wherever we strive to enter higher realms we have to reckon with living, not dead truth, and the living truth bears within it its own counter-image, just as in physical existence life bears death within it. The counter-image of Imaginative life is fabrication, the creation of fabrications about reality and a corresponding thoughtlessness in alleging this or that."
"If you cannot develop the urge for truthfulness in yourselves, you will always be open to the danger of being infected, influenced, by the untruthfulness that lives in the world. For today one of the foremost demands made of those who are truly concerned with the welfare of mankind and the progress of mankind is that they should not allow themselves to be taken in by untruthfulness."
"We have today this great desire to remain held fast in maya because we are far too exposed to the danger of taking the word for the fact. To a great extent words have lost their meaning, by which I mean the living soul-connection of the word with the reality that underlies the word. Words have become mere abbreviations, and the intoxication in which many people live with regard to words is no longer genuine ecstasy, because only a deepening as regards the spiritual world can make genuine the words we speak. Words will only regain real content when human beings fill themselves with knowledge of the spiritual world. Ancient knowledge is lost, and for the most part we speak in the way we do just because the ancient knowledge is lost and we are surrounded by maya, which gives us nothing but mere words. Now we must once again seek a spiritual life which gives the words their content. We live, in a way, in a mechanism of words, just as externally we shall gradually completely lose our individuality in a mechanism of technology until we are at the mercy of external mechanism."
Propaganda
"You know how a crowd, a group, can be seized by a certain intoxication if it is handled in a suitable way. I have met orators who knew by instinct how to speak in a way which does not directly address the intellect but uses slogans and telling images to speak to a consciousness that is somewhat askew, somewhat delirious. The approach has to be stronger in the case of an individual, but for a crowd no more is needed."
"First you force the other fellow to defend himself and then you treat him as the aggressor. It is a very effective method and one that plays an enormously strong role in the world today. The attacker hides behind the clamor he raises after he has forced the other to defend himself by labelling him the aggressor."
"Much that is launched on the public from occult sources in not untrue, but half true, a quarter true, and eighth true, and just because it bears within it a part of the truth it can be used to achieve one aim or another in a one-sided way."
"In certain communities these things have to be learned, namely, how to describe things in pictures, how to use images, bring about intensifications, and employ comparisons. This is a special art which is diligently practiced in the grey brotherhoods. But there is no need to belong to a grey brotherhood in order to practice such an art, one can use these methods."
"There exists ways and means in the world of carrying out what I might call 'mass hypnosis.' To bring about a suggestion on a grand scale you have to place something in the world which makes an impression. Just as it is possible to insinuate an idea into the mind of an individual by using suitable means, suggestion can be made to whole group of people, especially when one knows what actually binds these groups together. It is possible to steer a force that lives in an individual person in a particular direction. It is a matter of exercising influence by means of suggestion. You can do one thing and say another and often do something that seems to be the opposite of what is supposed to happen."
Secret Brotherhoods
"These occult streams which live through the secret brotherhoods have, as one of their basic doctrines, the teaching that the English-speaking peoples are for the fifth post-Atlantan epoch [our epoch] what the Romans were for the fourth [previous epoch]."
"There stood in England a powerful and influential group of people who pushed matters openly towards a war with Germany and though whom the way was paved for the world war. Until 1908, or even, 1909, there existed in England extensive circles quite close to King Edward VII, who considered it an impossibility that Russia should ever be allowed to approach Constantinople or enjoy free passage through the Dardanelles. It is impossible to avoid realizing how powerful was the group who, like an outpost for mighty impulses, stood behind the puppets in the foreground."
"Since intellectuality is so well-developed in England, this is where spirituality can be systemized, organized. The English folk element makes it to a certain extent necessary to materialize what is spiritual."
"At the end of the fifth period [our epoch] the nature of everything must be filled with the culture that is to arise out of the English-speaking peoples. It has always been taught that, just as the Germanic-British (English-speaking) element opposed the Roman, so will the Slav element come to oppose the English element."
"The Western world never emancipated itself from the lodges. The influence of the lodges was always strongly at work. The lodges knew how to find channels through which to impress certain directions on people's thoughts." (Some of the other secret brotherhoods mentioned by Steiner were: Omladina, Narodna Odbrana, high grade Freemasons, Orange Lodge, Mazzini's secret societies, Carbonari, Cortes of Spain, Illuminati, and high-level British politics.)
"The papal, hierarchical element strives for a kind of universal monarchy because it is the continuation of the universal Roman Empire. The British mission is to found a universal commercial and industrial monarchy over the whole earth."
"Thus it comes about that certain secret streams which have set themselves some task or the other also set about achieving the exact opposite. These opposing tasks have the effect of obliterating all tracks. A certain Jesuit influence was brought to play so that the Masonic and Jesuit influences met; for there are higher instances, 'empires', which can quite well make use of both Masons and Jesuits in order to achieve what they want to achieve through the collaboration of the two.
"Those who enter the circle of certain societies practicing ceremonial magic are securing for themselves a power that reaches beyond death, a kind of Ahrimanic immortality. The more a person gains by way of materialistic immortality, or rather Ahrimanic immortality, the more he loses of the consciousness of true, genuine immortality. As a rule these societies are organized in such a way that the ceremonial magic they practice influences only those who are unaware of the implications, merely desiring to make contact with the spiritual world by means of symbolic ceremonies."
Materialism
"Today's tragic destiny of mankind is that in striving upwards today, human beings are endeavoring to do so not under the sign of spirituality but under the sign of materialism. The brotherhoods want to develop the impulses of the mercantile element, commerce and industry, in a materialistic way on a grand scale. This is today's main conflict."
"For many people, especially now in this materialistic age, thinking has come to be virtually contained in language. People today think hardly at all in thoughts but very strongly indeed in language, in words"
"Socialism is not something connected with truth; above all it is not connected with spiritual life, for what it wants is to connect itself with materialism."
"The fifth post-Atlantean period [our epoch] is the one which is concerned with the development of the material world, and if the human being is not to degenerate totally into a mere accomplice of machines – which would make him into nothing more than an animal – then a path must be found which leads from these very machines to the life of the spirit. The priority for those working practically with machines is that they take spiritual impulses in their own soul. From machines, in particular, a path will truly have to be found into the spiritual world."
Truth and Spiritual Science
Truth for Steiner was the antidote for untruthfulness. Materialism was the karmic result of this untruthfulness. He saw materialism as "turning away" from the truth of the reality that behind physical material substance is the spirit. Materialism is the result of believing that maya (illusion) is real, the only real truth in the world. Materialism is promoted by science to teach that only material substance, discovered by the five senses, is real – the human soul and spirit are not real.
Modern materialists avoid truth at all cost and attempt to live in the physical world without any connection to the spiritual world or the spiritual development of humanity. Life ends at the grave and essentially means nothing. This is the karma of living in an untruthful age where lies, distortions of the truth, and evil intentions to extinguish the spiritual self of the individual are prevalent.
Our age is so filled with disinformation that the seeking soul can get lost in the fog of untruthfulness and be overwhelmed with the deadening forces of materialism. Only Truth, Beauty, and Goodness can raise the human soul to the spirit and leave behind the evil of a materialistic world. Through spiritual science, the evil of modern science can be defeated as the knowledge and wisdom of the spiritual world brings salvation to the seeker of Truth.
5 Transform What is Lower Within us to a Higher State of Being
The astral body as it exists today is composed of that part which has been acted upon and conditioned by the I, and that part which has not been acted upon and conditioned by the I. The part that has been properly conditioned and acted upon by the activity of the I is called spirit-self (or manas) , this is part of the astral body has been totally spiritualised or 'spirit filled', by the activity of the incarnate I- being or I.
See: Human Astral Body (below)
Each human being conciously or unconciously is already participating in this process, through spiritual science and initiation exercises we make this process concious, and it occurs more deeply and rapidly than would be the case if left to evolution (and the process of reincarnation).
This process of purification and 'ordering' of the astral body, which results in the transformation of the astral body is fundamental to esoteric development, and to the healthy development and growth of the total human being. This process of purification or Cartharsis means that through the activity of the I, certain thoughts, feelings and impulses that arise within the human being and his astral body, are in a sense corrected by the corresponding moral impulse. Each time the I conciously resists these lower impulses and acts to correct them, through what may be termed 'Strength of Will and Moral Thinking', he is strengthened.
During this process of purification of the astral body, the I must so act upon and face every single desire thought impulse that has been impressed and stored within the astral body [and is part of one's Individuality and karmic package]. Every desire or thought is faced again through this process of astral purging.
This is essentially the process of Karma Loka [kamaloka], that generally the human being experiences after death, whereby he experiences the 'burning out' or exhaustion of the forces which he has bestowed through his thinking, feeling and willing activity during life on Earth upon material desires and urges.
This astral bottle becomes the alchemical vessel within which the corrupt material or corrupt forces are cleansed by the fire, or a kind of astral combustion. As an I being, we inhabit this astral vessel, that this burning out of or combustion of the corrupt forces of the desire nature must occur within, and the greater the desire life of the individual, the more intensified this experience of astral purgation is. [re Purgatorio in Dante's Divine Comedy]
When we practice meditation and initiation excercises, this process of cartharsis is stimulated within us whilst we are incarnate in a body upon Earth. The exercises and anthroposophical literature are written with an exactly planned order and structure so as to stimulate the processes of cartharsis or astral purging).
See: Initiation exercises (below)
Every time that, as I beings, we give our thoughts and forces to desires of a material nature, we are creating experiences that we must face during catharsis. And the greater force of the desire bestowed, the greater will be the intensity of the experience during the purging and cleansing of the astral body. The greater the force of the desire, the greater the 'will force and moral fortitude' that is required to redeem it.
This is one of the reasons why the individual is guided through religion, anthroposophy and philosophy to find constructive outlets for the forces that arise through his generative function.
When the life is correctly ordered, and these forces applied to constructive activities,
not only do we prevent the increase of corrupt astral content that we have to purge,
but we are in the process of purging the existing content stored within this Astral body, and strengthening our being through the reclaiming of the forces previously bestowed upon the world of desire by our previous thoughts, feelings and actions.
These forces are claimed through 'moral thinking and strength of will' and enobled through the contemplation of spiritual knowledge, through meditation and specific initiation excercises, through artistic expression, through character development and improvement, through moral thought and action, through meeting the responsibilites and necessities of our life pattern and karma, through self sacrifice and community participation, through any dedication which results in inner growth we raise these forces up within ourselves and build this vestiture of our I, which is our astral body. We gradually develop our purified astral body into what is termed the 'pure, chaste and wise Virgin Sophia'. This is the fulfilment of the processes of astral catharsis, it means it has been totally cleansed, enobled and correctly developed.
This entire process also develops the organs of supersensible cognition. At this stage we are enabled to cross the threshold of the invisible veil (that separates the astral plane from our view) and are initiated, by the illumination of our astral being by the inflowing of the Holy Spirit.
Contemplating the above, is it any wonder that there are not more human beings today endowed with Supersensible perception?
PART 2
The above development is stunted and frustrated by desires of a physical or sexual nature and the forces required, for the purification, reformation and illumination of the astral body are corrupted and dissipated.
This occurs through the fulfillment of such thoughts, feelings and activities as those pertaining to the desires arising in our lower nature. These forces of our lower nature are what we must sacrifice, and offer up in order that higher forces might be enkindled within our nature. This is the sacrifice of the animal nature with us is the universal sacrificial animal, put to death upon the altar of the temple as a sacrifice to the Gods, we must sacrifice this animal self, and out of its force forge a new being.
The forces which become the generative forces and substances arise in the astral body. These forces act upon the etheric body to stimulate the generative processes through the nervous and endocrine glandular systems, they begin as astral and etheric force or light, and through the kind of overshadowing, activiating and stimulating the glandular structures, these forces become organised into the biochemical compounds that are involved in the generative process.
These intermingled astral and etheric forces forces which have been bound into formations as biochemical substances (various hormones and precursors) and those forces which, as a karmic heredity we have received as a generative endowment, are those which must be liberated and redeemed, by 'Will and Wisdom or Moral thinking'. When these forces are won and cultivated they enliven and strengthen us.
Rudolf Steiner tells us in plain english [well actually it was German] that we fashion the higher out of the lower forces, and it occurs in somewhat the manner described above.
The human astral body is one of Man's bodily principles part of the structural make-up of Man, and so closely intertwined with the other bodily principles it should not be studied or considered as a separate entity. In one's lifetime, Man develops the astral body approximately between 14 and 21 years from the age of puberty.
When the astral body is together with the physical body, it has an egg-like shape. In accordance with individual characteristics, it has various radiant colours fluctuating and enclosed in an egg-shaped sheath. The auric egg has an underlying blue colour with a dark violet spot in the middle of the brain. It extends about two-and-a-half times the length of the head beyond the physical body, surrounds it like a cloud and fades away as you go from the head downwards. See also: Human aura
It has three key energy centers in a triangle consisting of brain, liver and heart. In the spirit world these form a six pointed figure, in the astral world a triangle. After death it is a wonderfully radiant, mobile formation.
Man's astral body is made up of a dual nature. Although the astral bodily principle was developed on Old Moon, the higher spiritual part only merged with the lower physical part in the Lemurian epoch in the current planetary stage Earth. As a result, Man still contains a lower animal nature. The spiritual beings living in Man withdrew slowly as Man developed his own I-consciousness, see development of the I.
Therefore in ancient legends and art we still find the image of the Centaur, which reflects an actual human form in a certain stage of evolution (Lemuria before Separation of the Moon) and above man and below animal. (see 1908-09-09-GA106 below). Man is to a certain extent a centaur as his humanity is somehow 'mounted upon' his lower, bestial, astral nature. This dual nature is related to how Man moved from four to two legs and assumed an upright position in the Lemurian epoch.
You should always keep in mind the principle of limits that we find in Nature. Ice will remain ice until a certain critical point in temperature which will transform it into water. Water will remain in its liquid form until a certain point in temperature which will transform it into vapor. It is the same with the exercises. You may struggle for years to accomplish a certain feat and you may get desperate that you are not progressing. Yet you are progressing towards the critical limit without being aware of it. Some day, unexpectedly, you will wake up and begin to live consciously within the astral and spirit worlds. But unless you persist and persevere you cannot go very far.
1908-01-07-GA266/1
When a person meditates, this awakens forces in and develops the hypophysis (pituitary gland), it begins to to shine brighter and brighter, sends forth rays, and gradually with its rays it encompasses the pineal gland lying in front of it, and stimulates it. This process organizes the organic formation of the astral body, from the chaos of feelings and sensations, into spirit-self or manas. When the pituitary gland causes golden threads to flow around the pineal gland, then the time has come when [the transformation of the astral body into spirit-self, into manas], has progressed far enough ... for the etheric body to be transformed into buddhi.
Conscious Breathing
This exercise is part of IIH Step 1
1908-01-16-GA266/1
Notes by Anna Weissmann from an esoteric lesson
Those who strive for inner development must begin already today to get these forces gradually more and more under their control.
They do this by learning consciously to inhale and exhale. When humans inhale, then the forces of the 'I' become active, the forces that connect them with the powers of the universe, the forces that radiate outward from the heart.
And when human beings exhale, and when they hold their breath, then those forces of the 'I' become active which push toward the middle point, toward the heart, and create for them there a solid center.
Thus pupils are learning already today, when they consciously carry out their breathing exercises in this sense, gradually to become master of the forces of their 'I.'
However, no one should believe that he or she is allowed independently to undertake such exercises if he or she has not yet received any instructions for them. [editor: Rudolf Steiner warned many times for inappropriate special/excessive breathing exercises such as pranayama and others, this is different for conscious breathing as in modern 20th century esoteric practice such as the teachings by Bardon or Daskalos]
On Skin Brushing and / for Pore Breathing
Frater Johannes
in 'Praktische Vorbereitungen Zur Magie', translated as 'Practical preparations for magic', this is covered also (see extract below, freely translated)
The skin is, besides the lungs, the most important breathing and exchange organ, and this not just in relation to magic, but in fluidic and astral radiations.
The countless pores of the skin is a complex apparatus of a very fine art of functioning, like an type of antenna or polarity apparatus for very fine electromagnetic skin processes.
Blockages of skin pores disable or paralyze this important double function and will show in noticeable signs of congestion that can be experienced, as they spread across and infringe functioning of organs and thereby negatively influence vitality and hamper the radiation of the vital force 'od' by the magician.
In esoteric magical development methods of the ancient sciences, this personal hygiene or care was described in ritual fashion and existed out of particular, often quite complex cleansing exercises.
1912-08-28-GA138
One must practice self-observation and try to bring home to oneself, without either mercy or consideration, the really grievous faults one knows oneself to possess, so that there comes before the soul a feeling, into which one must live deeply, of how little one corresponds to the great ideal of humanity.
1922-11-17-GA218
Steiner covers what he calls exact clairvoyance and ideal magic, and at a certain point comes to describe:
When we survey our life with our ordinary consciousness, we perceive that in a certain sense we underwent a change with the years and decades that passed by. Though slowly, our habits gradually changed. We acquired certain capacities and certain others disappeared. One who observes himself honestly in regard to certain capacities pertaining to his earthly life can say that whenever he acquired a new capacity he became a different person. This is how life transforms us. We completely surrender to life and life educates and trains us and develops the configuration of our soul.
But those who wish to enter the supersensible world with full knowledge — in other words, those who wish to acquire ideal magic must not only intensify thought, as described, so that it enables them to recognise a second form of their existence. But they must also emancipate their will from the physical body on which it depends in ordinary life. We can only activate our will through the fact that we use our physical body, our legs, our arms, our instruments of speech. The physical body is the foundation of our volitional life.
The following can be done, and this has to be done quite systematically by those spiritual investigators who wish to attain to ideal magic in addition to exact clairvoyance. Such strong will-power should be unfolded, that at a certain moment of life they can say to themselves: I must lose a certain habit and my soul must assume a new habit.
When we apply our will-power strongly in order to change certain forms of experience completely, a few years may sometimes be needed for this — but it can be done. We can be educated as it were not only by life itself, through the means of the physical body, but we ourselves can take in hand this education, this self-training.
Such strong exercises of the will, which are also described in the above-mentioned books, lead those who wish to be initiates in the modern meaning to new experiences besides those that imply the retrospection of our daytime experiences during sleep.
1922-04-09-GA082
is a lecture about the visual arts and architecture, but worth reading in full (and what an opportunity for us to now be in the audience almost 100 years later). In this lecture Steiner discusses space, and then invites us to imagine a different kind of etheric space (underlined below).
.. I touch here on a secret pertaining to our human way of looking at the world - a secret that our present-day perception has, one might almost say, quite lost.
You will permit me to set out from a way of looking at things that is apparently - but only apparently - quite abstract, theoretical. But this excursion will be brief; it is intended only as an introduction to what will be able to come before our minds' eyes in a much more concrete form.
When we intend to apply to objects in this world the space of which I spoke yesterday - we apply it, of course, geometrically, using, in the first place, Euclidean geometry - we set out, as you all know, from a point and set up three axes at right angles to one another. But there is another space than this ..The secret of this space is that one cannot set out from one point and relate all else to it. One must set out from the counterpart of this point. And what is its counterpart? ..
Nothing other than an infinitely remote sphere to which one might look up as at, let us say, the blue vault of heaven.
Imagine that I have, instead of a point, a hollow sphere in which I find myself, and that I relate all that is within it to this hollow sphere, determining everything in relation to it, instead of to a point by means of coordinates. So long as I describe it to you only in this way, you could rightly say: Yes, but this determination in relation to a hollow sphere is vague; I can form no mental picture when I try to think it. Well, you would be right; one can form no mental picture. But Man is capable of relating himself to the cosmos — as we, yesterday, related ourselves to the human being (the "anthropos"). As we looked into the human being and found the three dimensions — as we can determine him in relation to these three dimensions, saying: his body extends linearly in one of the dimensions; in the second is the plane of the extended arms and all that is symmetrically built into the human organism; and in the third dimension is all that extends forwards and backwards, backwards and forwards — so, when we really look at the "anthropos" as an organism, we do not find something extended in an arbitrary way in three dimensions. We have before us the human organism built in a definite way.
We can also relate ourselves to the cosmos in the same way. What occurs in the soul when we do so? Well: imagine yourself standing in a field on a clear, starry night, with a free view of the sky. You see regions of the vaulted sky where the stars are closely clustered, almost forming clouds. You see other regions where the stars are more widely spaced and form constellations (as they are called). And so on. If you confront the starry heavens in this merely intellectual way — with your human understanding — you achieve nothing. But if you confront the starry heavens with your whole being, you experience (empfinden) them differently.
We have now lost the perceptive sense for this, but it can be reacquired. Facing a patch of sky where the stars are close together and form almost a cloud, will be a different experience from facing constellations. One experiences a patch of sky differently when the moon is there and shines. One experiences a night differently when the moon is new and not visible. And so on. And precisely as one can "feel" one's way into the human organism in order to have the three dimensions — where space itself is concrete, something connected with man — so one can acquire a perception of the cosmos, that is, of one's cosmic environment (Umkreis). One looks into oneself to find, for example, the three dimensions. But one needs more than that. One can now look out into the wide expanses and focus one's attention on their configurations. Then, as one advances beyond ordinary perception, which suffices for geometry, one acquires the perception needed for these wide expanses; one advances to what I called, yesterday and the day before, "imaginative cognition".
If one were simply to record what one sees out there in cosmic expanses, one would achieve nothing. A mere chart of the starry heavens, such as astronomers make to-day, leads nowhere. If, however, one confronts this cosmos as a whole human being, with full understanding of the cosmos, then, in face of these clusters of stars, pictures form themselves within the soul — pictures like those one sees on old maps, drawn when "imaginations" took shape out of the old, instinctive clairvoyance. One receives an "imagination" of the whole cosmos. One receives the counter-image of what I showed you yesterday as the basis, in man, of the three geometrical space-dimensions. What one receives can take an infinite variety of shapes.
