The anthropopper is enjoying a few days off in France right now, house-sitting for his in-laws. They live in a hill village between Nice and Vence, with views over the Baie des Anges. Sitting here besides the pool, under the shade of an old olive tree, in the warmth of what the poet Apollinaire called “la paix solaire”, I watch a solitary eagle rising and circling on the thermal currents in the cloudless azure sky. The only sounds are the endless chirping of the cicadas and the chime of the clock on the church bell tower marking the hours. Occasionally, a gentle breeze sends a subtle waft of scent in my direction from the climbing jasmine at the corner of the house. An idyllic scene indeed, an earthly paradise.
And yet if I walk to the other end of the pool and look out towards the south-east, just beyond the valley of the Var river, I can see in the distance the artificial promontory into the sea on which sits the runway of Nice Airport, where our plane had landed three days before. Outside the airport, the palm tree and flower-lined Promenade des Anglais runs alongside the sea into the centre of Nice; and it was there, just a fortnight before we arrived, that a hired truck came to a halt outside the Hotel Negresco, unable to proceed further in its murderous rampage because of the quantity of mashed and mangled human bodies choking its running gear.
My wife met someone who knew one of the victims; all that had been found of her, the sole identifying feature, was one of her hands. Apart from the 84 people who were murdered, there are many others who have lost limbs and who will bear the physical and mental scars for the remainder of their lives. Some of the members of the emergency services who had had to deal with the aftermath are themselves suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, after seeing sights that no-one should ever have to witness. After the attacks in Paris, Nice and the even more recent murder in Normandy of an elderly priest celebrating Mass, France itself is in a state of shock and disbelief. La belle France, la douce France, how can it have come to this?
To try to gain some small insight into what is really going on right now, those of us who are anthroposophists will turn to what Rudolf Steiner had to say about the nature of evil. From his spiritual perception, Steiner was able to describe the various forces of evil in our time, as well as their main opponent, the Archangel Michael. In our materialistic and sceptical times, many people will find it difficult to take seriously the concept of spirits of darkness and beings of light; and yet for some of us, it is only when we take these concepts as worthy of serious consideration that we can begin to make some sort of sense of this battle of cosmic dimensions in which we are all involved.
Those of you who are familiar with anthroposophy or who have been reading this blog for some time, will be aware of Steiner’s concept of the two poles of evil, which he calls Lucifer and Ahriman, and which I have written about here. But there are other hierarchies of evil I have previously hesitated to mention because I find them too horrifying and disturbing; yet since it seems to me that what is happening now bears the unmistakeable stamp of these hierarchies, I shall have to face my own fears and go into the area of what St John in the Book of Revelation called “the two-horned Beast.” This two-horned Beast is the antithesis of the Being of Christ, and is designated by the mystical number 666. Rudolf Steiner interprets this number as signifying the name of the Sun Demon, Sorat, the adversary of Christ. It is Sorat’s goal to destroy both the human ‘I’ (the Self or ego) and the earth. 666 is also the number of those human beings who “out of their own cunning free-will have become black magicians by placing spiritual forces in the service of their own egotism.” (GA 104a, 21/05/09)
I am convinced that what we are seeing in the phenomenon of Isis, Daesh, Islamic State or whatever one calls it, is inextricably tied up with the workings of black magic. It is only when what Steiner calls the ABC of black magic is being practiced that humans actually set out along that route which will bring them to Sorat:
“The ABC consists in the pupil of a black magician being taught to destroy life quite consciously, and in doing so to cause as much pain as possible and to feel a certain satisfaction in it…The beginning in black magic is to cut and stab into living flesh … This draws the pupil closer and closer to the being described as the two-horned Beast.” (GA 104, 29/06/08) Steiner also says that: “in certain schools of black magic the followers are taught the horrible and diabolical practice of gashing living animals with a knife at the precise part of the body which will generate this or that force in the wielder of the knife.” (GA 94, 02/06/06).
My suspicion is that IS followers no longer bother to practice on animals but instead go straight to work on their human victims. They are even getting children to learn how to behead their hostages.
Steiner continues: “In no way can one so readily assimilate destructive astral forces as by killing. Every killing of a being possessing an astral body evokes an intensification of the most brutal egotism. It signifies a growing increase of power. In schools of black magic, therefore, instruction is first given as to how one cuts into animals.” (ibid.)
So murder, sex and the infliction of pain (we should note that these are also major preoccupations of our Western entertainment culture) are the essential prerequisites for black magic to unfold. The black magician gains sensual pleasure in cruelty; the urge to kill creates a void around themselves in the astral world in which their egotistic desires can unfold. This void in the astral world is created by acquiring power through seizing the life force of another living being, by deliberately killing or destroying it. The first rule of black magic is: Life must be conquered. (GA 94, 02/06/06)
It is in this context that we should look at the actions of the adherents of Islamic State. We should note first of all that many of the people who get caught up in it are very far from the ideal of the good Muslim. The driver of the Nice truck, a 31-year old Tunisian man, was known to police because of allegations of threats, violence and thefts over the last six years, and he had been given a suspended six-month prison sentence earlier this year after being convicted of violence with a weapon. The man’s father, who lives in Tunisia, has revealed that his son showed signs of mental health issues — having had multiple nervous breakdowns and volatile behavior. The man was also said to have had sex with both men and women, beaten his wife, taken alcohol and used drugs. Similarly, at least two of the men involved in the Paris attack at Le Bataclan music venue were people who smoked drugs, drank alcohol and had convictions for petty crime. So these were people who one could say did not have much of a stake in society and were vulnerable to manipulation by more powerfully-minded individuals.
Hitherto-suppressed reports are now starting to emerge from police who were involved in the aftermath of the attack on Le Bataclan in Paris. These police reports found evidence of torture on the bodies of some of the 89 victims. This includes the gouging-out of eyes, the cutting-off of testicles and stuffing them in the mouth of the victim, and the stabbing of female genitals. If these reports are true, they indicate that black magical practices of inflicting maximum pain, horror and humiliation while killing were being used.
While the Islamic State group is losing territory in its self-styled caliphate, it is tightening its grip on the estimated 3,000 Yazidi women and girls held as sex slaves. These women were captured in August 2014 after IS overran Sinjar in northwestern Iraq. In a fusion of ancient barbaric practices and modern technology, IS sells the women like packaged goods on smart phone apps and shares databases that contain their photographs and the names of their “owners” to prevent their escape through IS checkpoints. In June this year, 19 Yazidi women who refused to have sex with IS fighters were burnt to death in iron cages in Mosul. For those that remain, multiple rape and beatings are the reality, these being techniques of black magical practice through which the oppressors can assimilate their victims’ astral energies. IS has actually issued a “rape handbook” to its fighters, with fifteen rules of how rapes may or may not be carried out on “infidel women”.
Steiner says that: “The black magician draws the most powerful forces out of the morass of sensuality. The purpose of sexual rites is to introduce such magic into these circles.” (GA 93a, 17/10/05)
The favoured IS method of beheading its victims (as seen in the UK with the attempted beheading of Fusilier Lee Rigby) or throat-slitting (as done with Fr Jacques Hamel in Normandy) are also standard black magical practices. Fr Hamel is reported to have said: “Va-t-en, Satan!” (Begone, Satan!) to his attacker. This is an exact naming of the force that was possessing his attacker, and by making it clear that he recognised what it was he was facing, the priest was helping to defuse the worst of the effects.
Those people who would seek to turn opinion against Muslims in the wake of such Islamic State atrocities should recall Steiner’s statement that after Christ’s crucifixion in what he calls the “Mystery of Golgotha” which blunted Sorat’s aim 2000 years ago, a second wave of attack came from Soratian forces in the 7th century AD through the Persian academy of Gondi-Shapur but this attack was largely thwarted by the creation of another counterforce – the religion of Islam. According to Steiner:
“Through the appearance of Mohammed and his visionary religious teaching, there was a deadening of the influence that was meant to go out from Gondi-Shapur. Above all, in those regions where it was wished to spread the Gnostic wisdom of Gondi-Shapur, Mohammed took the ground from under its feet…Here you can see the wisdom in world history; we come to know the truth about Mohammedanism only when, in addition to other things, we know that Mohammedanism was destined to deaden the Gnostic wisdom of Gondi-Shapur, to take from it the strong ahrimanically seductive force which would otherwise have been exercised upon mankind.” (GA 184, 12/10/18)
Furthermore, it was only though the convergence of Christianity and Islam during the period from the mid-sixth century to the thirteenth century that it was possible for our modern culture to come into being. In the monasteries of mediaeval Western Europe, Arabian concepts of philosophy and science started to influence Christian clerics.
So for us to turn against Muslims in the wake of IS atrocities is not only unjust and counter-productive, it also fails to recognise how the advent of Islam saved our own societies in the West all those centuries ago. To get through our present crises, fear and hatred are precisely the wrong answers. Instead, France, Germany, Britain and the rest will have to learn how to cherish and better integrate our Muslim citizens.
That is not to deny, however, that some current Islamic beliefs are in serious and urgent need of overhaul, particularly notions regarding paradise. A recent opinion piece by Kamel Daoud in the International New York Times contended that some Muslims, including those drawn to Islamic State, are giving up on any idea of improving life on Earth through independence, egalitarianism, development, wealth creation or justice. Their dreams have been destroyed by the authoritarian regimes, corruption and political failures in the Arab world, and the marginalisation of Muslims within Western societies. In their place, paradise is the new country dreamed of by the poor, the unemployed and the jihadists. Its main selling point is women, who are promised in vast numbers as a reward for the righteous. The women of paradise, the houris, are beautiful, submissive, languorous virgins.
This rather begs the question of what the Islamic paradise offers to women. If men can have dozens of virgins, what do the women get? It seems that the woman’s heavenly reward is to be her husband’s happy wife throughout eternity, the two of them destined to enjoy perpetual conjugal felicity (though presumably the husband is still taking full advantage of the houris).
But it cannot be ignored that this fantasy of eternal bliss requires that, before you can get to heaven, you first have to die. If you don’t have much else going for you here on earth, or if you are angry with the manifold injustices you see around you, then the prospect of a glorious death and entry into paradise may be tempting.
It does, however, take much more than a desire for paradise to turn a human being into the kind of creature that can force children into becoming soldiers who kill and behead hostages; that can throw homosexuals from rooftops; that can enslave and rape Yazidi women and girls in the belief that they are less than human; that can torture and behead its victims, bury them alive or burn them to death inside cages. For this, it takes black magicians who are able to create powerful egregora or thought forms, which can then take over the consciousness of those whose souls have become susceptible. Let us recognise what we are truly dealing with here: Rudolf Steiner speaks of human beings possessed by Sorat to such a degree that one could have every reason to doubt whether they are really members of the human race.
It was only in the twentieth century that humankind was first subjected to the Soratian attacks without the luciferic and ahrimanic masks that were previously used to lead human beings astray in preparation. We saw this with the decisions of politicans and generals in the First World War that led to 17 million deaths and 20 million wounded; we saw it in the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933 (the year when Steiner said more and more individuals would start to become aware of Christ in the etheric body of the earth), and whose racial extermination policies would lead to the death of 6 million Jews and an overall death toll during the Second World War of between 50 to 80 million; we saw it in the rulership of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, who was responsible for the deaths of 20 million of his fellow citizens; or of Mao-Tse-Tung, who between 1958 and 1962 was responsible for the deaths of 45 million people, who were worked, starved or beaten to death; or of Pol Pot whose Khmer Rouge were said to be responsible for the deaths of 2 million Cambodians. We saw it again in the massacre of up to 1 million Tutsis in Rwanda by Hutus in 1994, and in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the ethnic cleansing and genocide that took place there. These examples from the last century could be multiplied and the present century is shaping up to be just as bad.
Whereas Ahriman’s aim is to lead us into an ever-intensifying form of brain-bound, earth-bound materialistic thinking, and Lucifer’s is to tempt us into believing that we are gods, the aim of Sorat the Antichrist, the Sun Demon, is to destroy the human ‘I” (the Self, the bearer of the Christ principle or the indwelling divinity in the human being) and to destroy the earth itself, which the ‘I’ needs for the future development of the human soul. Climate change, war, the sixth great extinction, genocide, materialism, racism, and human degradation – these are all facets of attacks from the same enemy. This is the true scale of the battle with which we are now engaged.
About this, Rudolf Steiner said: “What people in our epoch must learn is the need to wage a fully conscious fight against the evil that is making its way into human evolution.” In my next post, I will try to look at this in more detail.
anthropopper 
Yes, Steiner tried very hard to warn people what the consequences would be if they didn’t get their act together by the year 2000, didn’t he, and even by 1925 it was clear that the mission was failing. We now see the results.
“You must undertake to transform abstract ideals into concrete ideals in order to contribute to an evolution that moves forward. If we do not succeed in this, the earth will sink into materialism, and humanity will have to begin again, either on the earth, after a great catastrophe, or on the next planet. The earth needs anthroposophy! Whoever realises this is an anthroposophist.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/ReapChrist/19100227p01.html
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Hello Jeremy,
Your post has moved me to respond with a sonnet I wrote 29 years ago. It seems to be a lot more timely now than then. It’s still mid-summer season, a bit early for a Michaelmas, but as the old man with the lamp in Goethe’s fairy tale states: “The time is at hand!”
Tom
============================
THE DARKNESS AT MICHAELMAS
============================
I grip the hollow goblet of despair.
I move with blunted madness down the street.
A weary nothingness is all I wear.
Behind me echo footsteps without feet.
—-
A picture in my pocket shows the face
of one who looks with sadness on the earth,
who once bestowed the beauty and the grace
of God, but that was long before my birth.
—-
Archangel Mi-cha-el! I cannot meet
your gaze! It burns my eyes with shameful light.
This self I am is darkness in defeat.
My hope has died; my faith has swallowed night.
—-
Entranced, intoxicated by the day,
I nod to every pilgrim on the way.
=======================
from “Post-Existential Sonnets,” Folio I
by Tom Mellett, Austin, Texas, 1987
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It’s very moving, Tom – thank you!
Jeremy
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Yup TM…very nice….and thank you Jeremy for your thoughts, insights and research into this terrible, and terribly important subject. The notion of the Anti-Christ, the Beast 666 has unfortunately become something of a spiritual ‘pop-culture’ subject, which despite Biblical (and Anthro) references to Sorat) remain rife with an almost recreational speculation. Of course, as your piece so well illustrates this is no laughing matter, and is manifest in the horrific happenings you describe.
For those interested in additional spiritual-scientific research and revellation into Sorat, one of the very few sources of (arguably) sufficiently advanced initiate perception can be found in Judith von Halle’s fascinating book-‘Descent Into the Depths of the Earth’. Her research details in-depth information about Sorat’s role in the Mystery of Golgotha, the derivation and chronology of the 666 number and the battles between Sorat and the Christ.This is one of the few studies of these subjects to have been carried out by so evolved an initiate. Highly recommended. John H
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Hi John,
If you have read Judith von Halle, then you will be able to see the importance of these primal words from Rudolf Steiner concerning what the Manichees knew about the importance of evil, and how it must be overcome by the good. The present and future works of anthroposophical wisdom are in this direction.
“You must not think that evil has no part in the plan of creation. It is there in order that through it may come the greater good. Those who are being prepared in their souls by such teachings, so that in the future they will, be able to accomplish this great task of education, are the pupils of the Manichaean School. The Manichaean teaching is generally misunderstood. When you hear anything or read something about it, you find merely phrases. You may read that the Manichees believed that from the very beginning of the world there have been two principles: good and evil. This is not so, the teaching of the Manichees is what we have just explained. By the name “Manichaeism” should be understood the above teaching and its development in the future, and the pupils who are so led that they can accomplish such a task in future incarnations. Manes is that exalted individuality, who is repeatedly incarnated on the earth, who is the guiding spirit of those whose task it is to transform evil. When we speak of the great leaders of mankind we must also think of this individuality who has set himself this task. Although at the present day this principle of Manes has had to step very much into the background because there is little understanding for spiritual work, this wonderful and lofty Manichaean principle will win more and more pupils the nearer we approach the understanding of spiritual life.”
GA104, 25 June 1908
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Thinking Must Become Apocalyptic:
We live at a time in which thoughts must begin to envision the future. Thus, any contemplation of the present travails must recognize the need for wisdom in any future conduct. Even on a conceptual level, anthroposophical wisdom exhorts over the present ignorance and incompetence seen with the fundamental social issues of our time.
“We are in the fifth post-Atlantean period. What can we remember? In the first period the ancient Indians could conceive the first earth-epoch; in the second period the Persians had the principles of good and evil; the ancient Egyptians could picture the third epoch in its trinity. The period of the Greeks, the old Germans, the Romans, had its Olympus. It remembered the godlike figures of Atlantis. Then came the modern time, the fifth period. What can it remember?
It can remember nothing. This is the reason why in this period, godlessness has been able to make headway in many respects. This is why the fifth period is driven to look toward the future rather than the past. It must look toward the future, when all the gods must arise again. This reunion with the gods was prepared in the time of the bursting-in of the Christ-force, which worked so powerfully that it could again endow man with a godly consciousness. The god-pictures of the fifth period cannot be memories. Only if man looks forward will life again become spiritual. In the fifth post-Atlantean period, consciousness must become apocalyptic.”
GA106, 3 September 1908
“In our age of civilization, the fifth, we have nothing to repeat. Let us bring this thought before our minds: we have nothing to repeat, no ancient remembrances. We have given birth to a fifth age of civilization, one whose results will be seen in the future, while the four previous ages were repetitions of the four preceding cosmic epochs. Our age must give birth not merely to an ancient wisdom, but to a new wisdom, a wisdom which points not only to the past, but which must work prophetically — apocalyptically — into the future. In the mysteries of past ages of civilization we see an ancient wisdom preserved, but our wisdom must be an apocalyptic wisdom, the seed for which must be sown by us. Once again we have need of a principle of initiation so that the primeval connection with spiritual worlds may be renewed.”
GA105, 5 August 1908
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Interesting and relevant quotations, Steve – thank you.
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Dear Jeremy – strangely enough I have only just recently had the courage to take up the very same lectures about evil in German and I am glad to say that we are very much on the same page …
Enjoy your place under the old olive tree…Eva
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Yes, Jeremy describes a very sublime place to be in order to smell the scents of the jasmine and the olives of old, and yet, he experiences something his old in-law folks don’t understand. He gets to live in the very scents and smells of a populace in which his elders do not experience. He does.
So, while hating his stance on ‘brexit’, they take a vacation while he watches their place, and enjoys his position. This seems right for someone who needs time off.
Jeremy, you are loved by all those who you hold most dear, and especially your in-laws, who knew your stance and still invited you to watch their place and enjoy it while they were away..
Steve
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I would like to know two things from the French authorities.
(1) How did a large, articulated vehicle gain entry to an area that was closed off to small vehicles?
(2) The lorry was caught on surveillance video before it entered the cordoned off area. Why was it not arraigned at that point? There were police in the area.
I want to add a note on this kind of ‘terrorist act’ – because in Liège yesterday, there was a knife attack. As a result of this, the authorities closed off large parts of the city centre, wheeled in armoured personell carriers (they looked like beefy landrovers) with armed police/gendarmes/soldiers.
I can understand the need for such an act if a real terrorist is in the area, but for a knifing like the one in London that was the result of a failed bank robbery? In the real world, the police were never interested in ‘domestics’ – only now they are because they call them terrorist acts.
The problem isn’t just Muslim terrorists, it’s the over-reaction of the authorities. Mind you, with the recent strikes in France that all but closed the country down, having armed police to hand would sort that kind of problem.
Wouldn’t it?
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By the way, the bus driver I spoke to in Liège said that the problems with the bus service was due to road works.
Well, I guess that is what they had been told?
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Thank you for another interesting post Jeremy.
It is very well crafted.
I am puzzled by the relationships between Ahriman, Lucifer and Sorat. You say, ‘It is Sorat’s goal to destroy both the human ‘I’ (the Self or ego) and the earth.’ It seems to me that this goal runs counter to aims of Ahriman and Lucifer, who want to make use of humanity and by implication, humanity’s playground – the earth – for their own goals. If the earth is destroyed what theatre of operation would Lucifer and Ahrimn have to work in?
You say of Ahriman and Lucifer, ‘… Ahriman’s aim is to lead us into an ever-intensifying form of brain-bound, earth-bound materialistic thinking, and Lucifer’s is to tempt us into believing that we are gods.’ Where would they carry out these purposes if the earth and the human ego are destroyed?
It seems to me that Ahriman and Lucifer have no interest in seeing Sorat achieve its aims.
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Those are very good questions, Tom, and I am not entirely clear in my own mind about the relationships between Ahriman, Lucifer and Sorat. But my working assumption for now is that Christ as the Sun God is opposed by Sorat the Sun Demon, and that Sorat is assisted by Lucifer, Ahriman and the Asuras. Lucifer and Ahriman are seeking to divert humanity into the Eighth Sphere, their own realm which is apart from the seven other spheres (which include Earth), so ultimately they have no need of Earth and are therefore content to assist Sorat and the Asuras. These are deep waters, though, and I hope that someone with more knowledge than me will come to our aid here with additional information.
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Jeremy wrote:
“Lucifer and Ahriman are seeking to divert humanity into the Eighth Sphere, their own realm which is apart from the seven other spheres (which include Earth), ”
The seminal place where Steiner describes this forming of the Eighth Sphere is the fifth lecture of his cycle, “The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century”, GA254.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA254/English/RSP1973/19151018p01.html
The Eighth Sphere is an accident of sorts, with immense consequences for eath evolution. Out of its origination, the external world of phenomena [appearance] arose as its effect, and matter [materialism] as the result. Our instrumentation of sense perception exists to perceive this outer external world of appearance, i.e., Maya, and this is owed to how the Eighth Sphere formed, and what it is. Lucifer and Ahriman were postured specifically for this creation, but what is much less well known is how they came to gain a kind of independence from the Beings of the Third Hierarchy in order to make this their designated task in earth evolution.
Steiner describes in the sixth lecture of the course, “Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and the Kingdoms of Nature”, how these two, as carry-overs from the previous Old Moon sphere, or stage, of Consciousness, were fully committed to this hierarchy of Angels, Archangels, and Archai, and the orders of the Divine Will standing above them. Yet, through a certain calling, owing to their previous work on “Old Moon”, they received a kind of inspiration and encouragement to seek to break free of their brethren of the 3rd Hierarchy, and work independently.
This is what sets up the struggle with the Exusiai [Spirits of Form] at that point where the mineral element passes over to the Earth, and the moon separates. This happened in the last half of the Lemurian Epoch. Thus, the roles of Lucifer and Ahriman are wholly owing to a sacrifice made to separate from the Beings of the Third Hierarchy in order to conduct a very special operation in earth evolution, which was the creation of the Eighth Sphere, and the gaining of access into the human astral and etheric body. This access is what has served to make us free beings, along with an outer external world for perceiving with the senses, and cognizing with the faculty of thinking-logic.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA136/English/SBC1981/19120408p01.html
Steve
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Tom Hartshea
I’ll give it a go to untangle a few things.
Lucifer Lucifer, the fallen light, has to do with our ability to think. More precisely, our ability to imagine. As you will know, you can imagine anything – just as long as you can imagine it (which is where Ahriman dips his finger in this pie, but that is too much of a digression).
The point about Lucifer, when uncontrolled is that we can imagine things that are quite unreal. Like Newton imagining that pure, white sunlight contains all the colours. Yet, if you look at the sun – allowing that you do so with a degree of care not to blind yourself – all you will see is white light. If it is darkened, say, of an evening, it will appear yellow, orange and as it is darkened by the atmosphere, red. Goethe was right, Newton was wrong. But Newton did not know how to discern what he imagined from what he saw, because he imagined white light to contain all the colours – because he could ‘split’ light through a prism. Goethe showed this as an effect of the action of a prism on light – that is not the same thing as saying that white light contains the other colours.
The point being to temper one’s imagination against the reality that you behold. In this way, Lucifer becomes part of the truth again -the truth that is expressed all around us in that which grows.
Ahriman Now this guy is a little more tricky to handle. He is the ruler of all that lies beneath our diaphragm – the organs in our abdomen. Yet we have no control over these, and no feeling either – save when we are ill. That is to say, they lie in the realm where we have no consciousness.
This means that there is no manner, means or way to sense Ahriman in any way. It is most important to grasp this image, for the process can be applied in many ways. The problem is that under Ahriman’s rule, we do things that we do not know we are doing. Nor is there any way to discern this from within ourselves.
Now this is the important bit, and it is directly relevant to the topic of terrorists: what are these people doing that they are unaware of?
We can see it, they cannot.
The first step in taming Ahriman is to first understand why such evildoers do such dreadful things, imagining (ahem!) themselves to be right! When they couldn’t be more wrong…
Armed with this consciousness of your own abilities to do evil – for to recognize what an evil doer does is to recognize one’s own abilities – one confronts Ahriman. Usually this is a bitter pill to swallow, and is why evil doers are shunned, both physically and mentally.
This is not to say that they are justified in what they do: they are unconscious of the needs of others.
Now I use this example not only because it is pertinent to this post, but also because evildoing is pretty obvious to all. Further to this, I received this message from a friend about ten minutes ago, and it is apposite: “I’ve been increasingly aware of my own blind spots since I’ve had to cooperate with so many more people while working at the bar.”
The finer points of evil – such as Soradt – are necessarily for those who have at least the foundations of understanding what Ahrimanic evil is all about. This is more than mere words: it must be a clear image of the process that underlies so many confusing events.
Without this concrete foundation – which is far more concrete than any printed, material evidence, and will be seen to be so as a person progresses – any further understanding will fall under the class of ‘illusion’, but there will be no way in which to decypher Lucifer’s rule in your soul.
There is only one way to deal with one’s blind spots, that is to say, where Ahriman rules: understand what motivates people around you. If that is unconscious – as will be the case with most people – then all you can do is learn from their mistakes. If it is conscious, then they will learn something from you too, even if you do not.
As to
That is the nature of the parasite: it kills the host. It will kill all those who have not dealt with their inner Ahriman, or their Lucifer. Not for nothing is Ahriman the great leveller. The two of them are only doing what their fallen nature tells them to; we have the consciousness to transform them, and that is the challenge of evolution.
Anybody – anybody – who refuses this challenge can count themselves out of the next stage of evolution.
It’s why we have evil in our world.
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Dear Gemma, Thank You, I appreciate your response to my comment. You say, ‘The finer points of evil – such as Soradt – are necessarily for those who have at least the foundations of understanding what Ahrimanic evil is all about.’ I would guess that a conceptual understanding is not enough. It is only through living experience that one will begin to understand what Ahriman is about and then one may begin to apprehend the activity of Soradt. You describe Lucifer and Ahriman as ‘parasitic’ and that is the way I have always understood their nature. It is interesting that you say the parasite will kill the host. That is the bit I don’t understand. In the sense world there are many examples of the parasite killing the host but then there are always many more hosts available to inhabit/consume. As long as there are humans there will be plenty of opportunity for Lucifer and Ahriman to find new hosts. But if the Soradtic beings destroy the earth there will be no hosts.
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I thought everyone here was aware that Ahriman has already incarnated? His incarnation was brought forward, like that of Christ. Many of you have attended Ahriman’s occult ‘school’, and you are looking right now, as you read this, at your ‘screen’, on which you can see words, pictures ….. one person seeing this, another that.
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Tom Hart Shea,
when you say,
It is sufficient to become aware of them, but only as a concept. The real issue here is to deal with Ahriman and Lucifer, and this demands an understanding of the processes that they stand for. This cannot be thought of by means of concepts: this requires a higher understanding, that of being able to form living pictures of the processes themselves.
This in itself is the first step to understanding the demands of our higher self. Only you can discern what these are, for your path is your own. You cannot rely on outside ‘gurus’ or even Rudolf Steiner himself – indeed he said as much himself – this is where you must work directly with those beyond the threshold. Your task is to discover how this can be done when it cannot be seen directly.
If we continue to despoil the planet in the way we are, how long will it be possible for humans to incarnate? Fukushima has already polluted the northern half of the Pacific. This is pure Soradtic evil let loose: through our demand for electricity we have harnessed two of the fallen ethers to create it. In turning to nuclear power, we have turned to the ultimate evil we are capable of: death itself. In Fukushima, we literally grow death. What is more, we cannot stop it now.
Soradt has won and humanity still wants to build more of these power plants because they know nothing of the forces with which they play. Indeed, the current physicist’s imagination of nuclear power, is, thank God, but a tiny shred of the real power. A teaspoon of which would suffice to split our planet in two.
What is the old saying? “Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread”? That is what we have done in order to sate our demands for cheaper and cheaper energy.
When all the time the challenge was not to use any at all!
In the following passage, substitute the word ‘justice’ for ‘evil’ and the meaning remains the same. There is a world of difference between doing something consciously and not knowing what one does. With nuclear power it has never been more apparent.
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Tom wrote:
“It seems to me that Ahriman and Lucifer have no interest in seeing Sorat achieve its aims.”
This is true. Their fundamental function is to enter earth evolution prematurely in order to steal their way into the human being, and wrest from the Spirits of Form a controlling influence in the Astral Body, Etheric Body, and Ego, [Lucifer-Ahriman-Asuras]. They bring these influences to bear in order to make us free beings. This is their fundamental purpose in serving human evolution.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA107/English/AP1954/19090322p01.html
Steiner began to sculpt, “The Representative of Man” in 1917, but two years earlier, in his mind, he was formulating its imaginative expression as to what it must contain as the loving and compassionate downfall of Lucifer and Ahriman by Christ as the central figure. This is owed to the knowledge of the sacrifice of Lucifer and Ahriman in making humanity a freely individual human being; Universal Human.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/ChrLuc_index.html
Soradt, the anti-christ, can be likened as well to the “anti-representative of man”, who forcibly resurrects Lucifer and Ahriman in order to do his biddng. Thus, he empowers them against their will to work now against freedom. This ‘anti-man’ has to be imagined as the grotesque opposite of Steiner’s sculpture.
Life today is at a critical juncture, in which free being is threatened in ever-increasing measure by the forces of Soradt, who is a six-fold asuras in the same sense that Christ is a six-fold Elohim. When Jahve, the seventh Elohim, remianed with the earth-moon, after the exit of the Sun, which ended the Polarean Epoch, the six remaining Elohim (Sun-Dwellers) rather than remaining individuated, began to amalgamate together, and this is how the Christ formed.
This process assured that its opposite would also form in order to be influential in earth evolution at a particular point in time, which was 333 years after the mid-point of the fourth cultural epoch, which was 333 AD. 333 years before, the Mystery of Golgotha took place. Thus, in 666 AD, the Academy of Gondi-Shapur had a leader who could, and did try, to bring forth the future Consciousness Soul era prematurely. It was offset for various important reasons which could be described.
Steve
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As a healthy anthropological counterweight Steiner described: In intuitive consciousness the ordinary lower ego ‘disperses’, ‘dissipates’. The ego-consciousness, in the human heart, is an unaware Intuition that comes into being, when the true ego submerges into the physical body (Supersensible Man, in: GA 67_10, untranslated public lecture 1918, cf. SteinerHandbook 2015).
À propos historical Islam: “The Turks brought from their original residences no sense of nature with them, but an immense sense of a spiritual God, a god one can only express in thoughts, that you can’t behold anywhere. And this particular way to look at their God now passed over to Islam, to Mohammedanism.”, GA 353_07 (1924, not translated). By the way, the notorious Muawiyah was caliph in the year 666 AD.
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On the Turks, see GA 353, Transl..: From Beetroot to Buddhism p.95 f. (google ce0GELWHI5sC )
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Steiner describes the early influences of Arabic culture and its leading figures in this seminal lecture, GA 235_10.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA235/English/RSP1972/19240316p01.html
Mohammed’s “Koran” had the effect of diverting attention away from the intentions of the Academy at Gondi-Shapur to flood the world with consciousness soul, and thereby cancel out the intellectual soul. Mohammed’s book “skimmed the cream off the top” of this initiative, which forms Soradt’s first attempt to intervene and disrupt the aims of the Logos.
Today, it is easy to see what is going on. Having achieved the intellectual soul, in spite of Soradt’s earlier attempt to subrate in favor of a premature consciousness soul, the goal now is to keep everything intellectual, and this is done by the continuing advancements seen in materialism, and all the emphasis within Ahriman’s domain. Soradt now wants to cancel out the Consciousness Soul, and keep everything surface-level and superficial. This makes the culture of the spiritual-scientific movement the enemy.
But, one day, the culture of spiritual science will be as compelling and compulsory as was the Renaissance and Enlightenment for drawing the sentient soul to its intellectual soul companion.
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Yes, “… the greatness of Mohammedanism is overclouded by the Turkish element … Arabism is flooded, swamped, by the Turkish element.”. This is Islam as we know it today.
Summary (1925) on Arabism, Aristotelism and intellectualism in Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts (GA 26_c27).
A third kind of beings was also specified by Steiner (1920) in The New Spirituality (GA 200_02), but differentiated: premature (incorporated) in the West and retarded (in dreams) in the East including Russia.
Older literature on asuric, anti-egotic beings in: Nesfield-Cookson 1998 (google mQv4y_TNTUoC) and Prokofieff 1999 (google zjpD3MUe2Y0C).
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“the greatness of Mohammedanism is overclouded by the Turkish element … Arabism is flooded, swamped, by the Turkish element.”. This is Islam as we know it today.
This fact is intimately bound up with the betrayal of Constantine in transferring the Palladium to Turkey, rather than returning it to Troy, as promised. He founded Constantinople in 330 AD, in order to bring the Roman Empire closer to the frontier. Thus, the Palladium risks being sent further into the darkness of the East unless redeemed by the West.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/SunMys_index.html
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I wrote:
“This fact is intimately bound up with the betrayal of Constantine in transferring the Palladium to Turkey, rather than returning it to Troy, as promised. He founded Constantinople in 330 AD, in order to bring the Roman Empire closer to the frontier. Thus, the Palladium risks being sent further into the darkness of the East, unless redeemed by the West.”
Students of spiritual science remember a riddle of sorts, wherein Rudolf Steiner had occasion to say that Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Christ, had formerly been Judas Maccabeus of the Old Testament revolt against Antiochus IV of Syria. And, this Judas would reincarnate again in order to serve a third betrayal. This was Constantine. Steiner had recourse to leave it unnamed because it would have caused waves of opposition as shown with his previous course, “From Jesus to Christ”, GA 131. Some matters simply need to be left to the intuition.
“Through a later reincarnation of Judas Iscariot, the fusion of the Roman with the Christian element occurred. The reincarnated Judas was the first who, as we might say, had the great success of spreading Romanized Christianity in the world. The treaty concluded by the Judas of the Old Testament with the Romans was the prophetic foreshadowing of what was later accomplished by another man, who is recognized by occultists as the reincarnation of that Judas who had to go through the severe soul-testing of the betrayal. What through his later influence appears as Christianity within Romanism and Romanism within Christianity is like a renewal of the alliance concluded between the Old Testament Judas and the Romans, but transferred into the spiritual.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA139/English/AP1986/19120916p01.html
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Aside from the influences of Sorat and the Asuras – too horrific to truly contemplate, as you say, Jeremy. Steiner stated numerous times that the incarnation of Ahriman was inevitable and that it would occur in the 21st century at a time best suited for his intervention: when chaos would rule and the world was looking for a ‘saviour’.
9/11 seems to me to have been the overture to what has now taken on a life of its own. It was at that time that GW Bush announced that the ‘clash of civilizations’ described by Samuel Huntington in his book of that title, had taken off.
Since 9/11, Bush ‘brought democracy’ to Afghanistan and Iraq, then Obama continued the task by bringing it to Libya and Syria (still on-going) – all the while aiding Saudi Arabia in its attempt to bring it to Yemen (also still on-going). Not to forget the coup in Ukraine.
The mass migration of people into Europe is the outcome – Gaddafi had come to an agreement with the Italians to block the boats of people heading to Italy and Greece, and it was working well. So he had to be eliminated because he was a cruel tyrant.
But even when thousands were moving into Europe daily by land and sea, the peoples of Europe, though grumbling, were mostly letting it happen without too much protest.
The European parliament, of course, hadn’t, and till hasn’t, a clue as to how to put a stop to the flow – they are helpless, the poor dears!
So these laid-back Europeans had to be made aware of the grave danger posed by all these Muslim migrants – the situation had to come about where they would demand the intervention of their national governments in defence of their security.
Since lip-service must be paid to ‘democracy’ these days, what better way to convince people of the grave danger to their societies than the actions of ‘useful idiots’ – it worked so well with Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo in June 1914 that by August the whole world at war! And ‘useful idiots’ can be found on every street corner, just waiting to intervene and finally become ‘someone’ in the pages of history.
So, one lunatic attack after another… and the police are now armed and the soldiers are patrolling the streets of Europe. After all, even if defence against knife wielding and truck-driving mentally deranged lunatics may not require the army in the streets, it’s better to be ‘safe’ that sorry.
“By their actions shall you know them” : and one could safely say that the members of IS are truly possessed by evil beings – but what about their enablers? Who created them and who fed them arms and money? Surely these people are further ‘advanced’ on the path of evil than the actual idiotic perpetrators! They are not interested in the 72 virgins for eternity – they know what they are doing and are willingly and in full consciousness sponsoring and enabling all these atrocities.
Their predicted ‘clash of civilization’ and their efforts to bring it about seems to be a step toward the chaos necessary for the ‘second coming’.
————
Robert Mason has an interesting compilation of the various factions of evil in his “The Advent of Ahriman”
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/biblianazar/ahriman.htm
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Dear Liliana,
As always, your raves against the machine and its chaos, is duly recognized. Yet, I suspect that much like Tom Shea, you would like to have it all be made clear and then resolved on the surface. Robert Mason is one that makes it perfectly clear, and then writes about himself, which only adds to the onerous effects of trying to express the simple discourse of the science of the spirit, which Rudolf Steiner first exclaimed. His discourse, as you cite, is worth the effort of going over, and yet, what seems entirely lacking is the work of Steiner in displaying how the migration of the Arabic influence from east to west took place beginning in the 7th century.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA124/English/RSP1985/19110313p02.html
This lecture describes how Soradt made its way from Gondi-Shapur in 666 AD, when Muawhiya was caliph, through North Africa, and then across the Rock of Gibraltar with the help of Tariq [the conqueror], in order to find Charles the Great to fight for the sake of the greater European continent. Eventually, they settled in Spain as the Hispanic culture, and then looked to the continent of the Americas to conquer and rule.
In short, today’s world is a democracy ruled by America, which has eventually gained the east-to-west migration of Soradt from its source. And that is why Steiner laid a certain emphasis on describing how James [VI/I] came to become the king of England in 1603. James gave a certain birth to the Consciousness Soul age, which led rather immediately to the colonization of America, although certain books of the Bible had to be excluded, and Francis Bacon was made a knight.
In GA184, Steiner tells of a premature consciousness-soul age which had to be overcome by the power of faith in the intellectual soul’s ability to form the various religious systems of the world. In GA185, Steiner tells of how James I was compelled to extend the European initiative into the so-called “New World”.
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I’ll just pick up on one point, Jeremy says about the Islamic view of heaven
“But it cannot be ignored that this fantasy of eternal bliss requires that, before you can get to heaven, you first have to die. If you don’t have much else going for you here on earth, or if you are angry with the manifold injustices you see around you, then the prospect of a glorious death and entry into paradise may be tempting.”
My response to this is that it is no more a “fantasy” than any of the other versions of an afterlife offered by various other religions, including the notion of reincarnation.
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Dear Gemma, this comment is in response to yours of August 10, 2016 at 12:50 pm, but I can’t see how to get it in the right place in the thread.
You wrote, ‘The real issue here is to deal with Ahriman and Lucifer’.
I try to deal with them on a daily basis. I feel they are my companions in the evolutionary process. From a positive point of view I certainly would be already dead and will be blind without Ahrimanic investigative procedures and medications, and my life would be seriously impoverished without Lucifer’s inspirations and temptations. I would not wish to be without them.
My own experience of the negative side of Ahriman is that this being uses fear to paralyse human initiative and make people susceptible to his suggestions which usually have the forces of logic and dread behind them, whereas Lucifer’s modus operandi is closer to seduction.
It seems to me that the voice of Christ is one of hope and courage, that no matter how many mistakes we seem to make (and I believe that we cannot always be sure which of our actions are mistakes and which in the long term will be beneficial), if our orientation is to the Christ then He is beside us even as we are deceived by Ahriman and bewitched by Lucifer, – and in the end good will prevail.
Having been an anti-nuclear activist in my youth I do share your anxiety about the use of nuclear power, however I no longer feel certain that nuclear power is somehow fundamentally wrong.
The population of the earth will have to be much smaller before we can manage without it. It is dangerous, but so are Theocracies.
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Good morning, Tom Hart Shea.
If there is no ‘reply’ button, it is because threads can only be three deep on WordPress unless the owner has changed this. Thus, after three comments there are no reply buttons – to respond, go to the last reply button in the thread and your comment will appear beneath the last one. Adding a name to the response in the way you did will help clarify matters in case someone else posts in between – and thus the comment may appear a response to them and not the one intended. I make this mistake regularly 😉
As to your thought
Are you familiar with the process that creates fear? It is a long, slow process that many are unaware of: if you look to my posts on dementia, it is described there. Because dementia is where fear has overwhelmed the human and it eventually erodes the last vestiges of consciousness.
I would like to add here that fear leads to confusion – extreme cases being dementia – thus it is impossible to discern Ahriman from Lucifer. Thus Lucifer can ‘seduce’ through a person’s Ahrimanic weaknesses. This leads to your statement: “make people susceptible to his suggestions which usually have the forces of logic and dread behind them”.
Dealing with Ahriman implies – as you are aware – dealing with one’s own fears. However the problem here is that one is fearful of other things, other people. It is they who bring you the challenge. A person like Socrates brought this to those who lived around him, but did so consciously (see my earlier comment).
He is recorded as having said: “If he fled Athens his teaching would fare no better in another country, as he would continue questioning all he met and undoubtedly incur their displeasure.” Those who were consumed by their fears condemned him to death for “corrupting the youth of Athens” and of his being “impious”.
People do not like being challenged… and that is the challenge of the Threshold. It is this which has led directly to our dependency on electrical power, which can be thought of as the epitome of the eighth sphere (albeit that the internet is a closer one – but the unconscious profligacy with which we use electricity is quite as bad). If a person says of electricity that it is “natural” (see the Wikipedia article on the electromagnetic wave, where they plunge into illusion saying, “Visible light is an electromagnetic radiation.”)
It is in this way that Soradt has entered, backstage. I cannot be more firm on this isssue: Fukushima is poisoning our planet irridemably. Within two hundred years this planet will be uninhabitable for humans, and shortly afterwards to any other kind of life. Rudolf Steiner spoke of how we have the capacity to make our planet a wasteland where even bacteria could not live.
In nuclear power, we have achieved this – albeit, like dementia, the initial signs are difficult to determine. Only when there is sufficient evidence for the material scientist will it finally dawn on them what is happening – I can imagine them employing a few excuses, or blaming others for the problem.
That doesn’t make any difference to the reality, though. I apologize to all readers of this who are upset by these words; humanity has created challenges for ourselves that we must all become conscious of.
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Dear Gemma, I pondered for a few days before making a reply to your comment.
You wrote, ‘I cannot be more firm on this isssue: Fukushima is poisoning our planet irridemably. Within two hundred years this planet will be uninhabitable for humans, and shortly afterwards to any other kind of life. ‘
I have no way of knowing the accuracy of your prediction but i would like to say that I feel it must be a heavy burden for you to live with this thought.
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Tom Hart Shea.
You say, “I have no way of knowing the accuracy of your prediction but i would like to say that I feel it must be a heavy burden for you to live with this thought.”
No, for the truth remains the truth.
When you have absorbed the consequences of the nature of the will, you will come to understand why we have created the Eighth Sphere, why it achieves nothing and why it will destroy us. Fukushima is but the most apparent element of this.
There are a dozen other happenings that I could cite as easily – as to whether they would be believed is another matter.
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Gemma wrote in response to Tom’s heartfelt words about the Fukushima disaster in 2011, and how it stands to decimate all lifeforms in 200 years:
“When you have absorbed the consequences of the nature of the will, you will come to understand why we have created the Eighth Sphere, why it achieves nothing and why it will destroy us. Fukushima is but the most apparent element of this.”
We did not create the Eighth Sphere. It came about through the incentive given to Lucifer and Ahriman, as retardant beings from the Old Moon evolution, to seek a kind of independence from the third hierarchy, and thereby steal mineral substance meant for the earth, and place it into the remnant of the ‘old moon’, having passed over to the earth. As a result, the external-visible world of phenomena was created, and a materialistic world-view began. Thus, L & A gained entrance into the astral and etheric bodies of mankind, in spite of the governing Exusiai, who wanted to hold these bodies within their bosom, and keep them divine and undefiled. But, by gaining entry into these bodies through the activity which created the Eighth Sphere, our own sphere of independence and free being began.
Today, the Eighth Sphere has been taken over by Soradt, who uses L & A against their original purpose, in order to steal precious mineral substance, largely from the human head, in order to vanquish it into the Eighth Sphere. This is why a kind of paralysis of thinking exists today, which Steiner predicted would occur in the third millennium. Dementia is nothing other than the loss of memory which occurs when the intellectual soul is taken into the Eighth Sphere. Thus, the Eighth Sphere is expanding, and this is why nuclear disasters are taking place on earth. Science, and scientific thinking devoid of the spirit, wants to rule supreme. As a result, normal human intelligence stands to become senile until the science of the spirit for the good of the Consciousness Soul age is taken up with the kind of fire and enthusiasm warranted by these discussions.
Back in the 1950’s, when the greater nuclear threat existed with the so-called, “Cold War”, in which a much bigger bomb needed to be built and tested, some 87 above-ground tests were done with mega-tonnage far in advance of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs of 1945. None of that effort has served to destroy the world so far, and I suspect that Fukushima will prove to show the restorative powers of Christ, who works miracles. He spent nearly 2000 years within the etheric envelope of the earth in order to build the moral-etheric element, and it was designed to withstand anything coming out of the evil domain of Soradt, including Fukushima.
Steve
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Steve Hale.
<blockquote.Thus, L & A gained entrance into the astral and etheric bodies of mankind
You cannot blame Lucifer or Ahriman for participating in nature in the manner in which they are ordained. They gained entrance through those humans who knew not how to deal with them, and as a consequence were overwhelmed by them.
If you understood their roles, you would understand the way in which they influence people. You would then know how people, thus influenced, created the Eighth Sphere from their own weaknesses, weaknesses that allowed Lucifer and Ahriman to inspire humans.
No evil being can create things: this must be clearly understood.
Motorcars, electric engines and computer servers do not appear without the ministration of at least one human hand. Or head.
With such an understanding you would not blame dementia on the Eighth Sphere – but place the blame firmly on the very weakness that led to the human activity that created them both.
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Gemma wrote:
“You cannot blame Lucifer or Ahriman for participating in nature in the manner in which they are ordained. They gained entrance through those humans who knew not how to deal with them, and as a consequence were overwhelmed by them. If you understood their roles, you would understand the way in which they influence people.”
I’m not blaming L/A for anything. Quite the contrary, they have performed their function in earth evolution as those so-called “backward angels” held over from the Old Moon stage, and perforce ordained to play a very significant role in the eventual achievement of human freedom today. By circumventing the Spirits of Form, who guide earth evolution as the Fourth Sphere, and gaining a foothold with the creation of the Eighth Sphere, They unwittingly entered the human astral and etheric bodies in order to be a kind of influence that would lead to individual human freedom. This was their intended task by the One Who encouraged them to seek a kind of independence from the 3rd Hierarchy.
The reason that I give reference-points from primary anthroposophical literature, i.e., Steiner’s lectures, is that they convey in detail what I am merely trying to indicate in a few words. Steiner’s sculpture, “The Representative of Man” contains a huge riddle to be solved. And its solution proves that L & A can be understood in terms of their respective functions as defiling forces in the aforesaid astral and etheric bodies, which by extension also involves the Sentient Soul and the Intellectual Soul.
One only becomes safe and stands on firm ground if it is realized that Spiritual Science exists to cultivate the Consciousness Soul, and saves the Intellectual Soul in that quest. Otherwise, the death of the Intellectual Soul stands to be the fate of many today in the growing epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease, which is an extreme form of dementia in which a complete and unfree return to the dependent state of birth signifies the death of a soul function, i.e., the Intellectual Soul. The brain of an Alzheimer’s victim is ravaged of all mineral substance, and leaving only a mess of tangles and plague. This is what begs the question: where did the mineral substance go?
You see, we are most conscious today in our head, and this is because the greatest concentration of mineral substance exists in the head, and to a lesser degree in the arms and legs. Thus, waking day consciousness is a depiction of pictures of an outer-external world; a world of mineralized content, which becomes our field of awareness in the waking state. This is the consciousness of the Head. To see it vanquished, which is a growing reality today, is a painful thing to endure. Spiritual Science exists for the precise purpose of keeping the Intellectual Soul intact for the Consciousness Soul. But it has to be taken up as a sincere vocation.
The history of the 20th century involves materialism in its grandest form, and yet we are only educated in order to cognize an outer-external world through logic and sense perception. Thus, the Intellectual Soul is doomed on its own merits. Steiner predicted this would happen in the lecture from GA 130, “Bodhisattva’s, Buddha, and Christ”, in which only paralysis of thinking can arrest the present dilemma of immoral conduct while remaining clever, or moral tenets held through ignorance, or non-thought. Either path leads to the dementia seen today, and in which only Spiritual Science can provide the solution as a matter of education and culture.
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Steve Hale.
You clearly stated that: “We did not create the Eighth Sphere. It came about through the incentive given to Lucifer and Ahriman”
You cannot have it both ways. Either Lucifer and Ahriman created the Eighth Sphere – as is implicit in your words above, or we did. In your lengthy comment, you did not answer this point.
This is most certainly not as case that “They unwittingly entered the human astral and etheric bodies in order to be a kind of influence that would lead to individual human freedom.”
They were most certainly determined in the above action; it was we that unwittingly allowed them entry.
When your understanding of evil has a more firm footing in the realities of the world we live in, you will see the process whereby this takes place. The part of the evil, fallen beings is conscious. Our part in creation is to become conscious of these beings within ourselves and thereby consciously restrain them from activities that are not rightfully theirs. This is the key to understanding evil. It is also the key to understanding freedom.
These beings only have entry to heaven when they behave as is ordained in heaven – and they can only do this in that we have become conscious of them. You stated your confusion in imagining that the Eighth Sphere to be the cause of dementia is a clear case in point: for the Eighth Sphere and dementia are both expressions of a humanity that has not become conscious – that is to say, free – of the evil that lies within them.
These are not easy concepts to master, and they were not intended to be. The challenges that we as humanity have wrought for ourselves are now all but insurmountable.
Nor can you wish these away. When you “suspect that Fukushima will prove to show the restorative powers of Christ, who works miracles.” Christ’s incarnation was not intended for the performance of miracles to delight the earth-material minded! If we sin, we can expect forgiveness – but we cannot expect Christ to come again to earth just to sweep up the mess we made.
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Or ‘by the higher gods’:
[Human beings] did not follow Lucifer because something was introduced into the evolution of the earth by the higher gods that prevented them from becoming light enough to do so. As I have shown you, what is called the eighth sphere was introduced into earthly evolution in ancient times.” 172_10 (1916)
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Hello teleile,
Since you wrote the following:
I thought everyone here was aware that Ahriman has already incarnated? His incarnation was brought forward, like that of Christ.
I thought it very important that I reveal to you the actual incarnation of Ahriman as he was discovered and named by one of the foremost American Anthroposophists living today, Joel A. Wendt.
In his trenchant essay Ahriman 2012 Joel applies 4 decades worth of new clairvoyant development in perceiving the spiritual beings and forces of the present social realm, founding all his perceptions on the epistemological “rock” of Steiner’s PoF and Theory of Knowledge. Suddenly, almost without warning, Joel reveals the present incarnation of Ahriman himself. I quote relevant excerpts below.
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Ahriman2012.html
Mostly people trying to find Ahriman seem to be looking for some kind of bogeyman, instead of a mostly ordinary human being with remarkable talents of a peculiar kind. . .
Ahriman incarnated via the birth of Karl Christian Rove on Christmas Day, 1950, revealing thereby the often ironic nature of cosmic humor. . . .
Ahriman’s march into the center of Earthly Power (the Bush II administration) on the very cusp of the inauguration of the Third Millennium (2001) ought to give a clue as to his identity. He began by drafting Bush II all the way back in Texas, and guiding him carefully forward, taking advantage of this immature son of privilege, who has no truly independent mind of his own. Rove/Ahriman also cultivated at that time and then won a position deep inside the Religious Right that was very useful for his designs. . . .
Rove/Ahriman’s work has greatly influenced the Life of Rights in America during the Bush II years, at the same time when the lies of all lies (the economic religion of free market capitalism) has captured many of our imaginations. This is part and parcel of what Steiner called: the Ahrimanic Deception (materialism is all its forms). . . .
Most people living in this confusion, authored by the Father of Lies, don’t have a clue what to do, and given their own sympathies and antipathies are pre-disposed to a great deal of conflict bordering on violence. Just watch Fox News for the constant escalation of hate-rhetoric (more Rove/Ahriman talking-points) now in play.
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No, that’s not Ahriman.
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Tom Mellett led me here, so sorry if this is either intrusive of seems off topic.
Rudolf Steiner’s writings and lectures create a very difficult situation for arriving at spiritual knowledge. If he said it, then so many assume they have the truth of something, that all thought kind of stops at that seemingly closed door, and does not pass through Steiner to grasp what he might not have known. I only gained what I have learned by acquiring the ability to discard all Steiner-thought, and seek to go to the Source myself.
I can remember, for example, being told again and again, that Steiner had succeeded at becoming something called “the all human”, as if there were no remnants anymore of any biases that might go with being basically Central European. Would that that were true.
Fundamentally my concern here is with the Ideas of Good and Evil. If we surrender our thinking to Steiner’s conceptions we will ignore other places in the spiritual life of humanity that don’t take such a “dualistic” point of view. A friend of mine, Stephen Clarke has dealt with this in detail ( http://www.rsarchive.org/RelArtic/ClarkeStephen/Dilemma.php ).
For example, the traditions of English spirituality include the idea of the Land of Faerie, or the Underworld, without forcing the thinking to take a dualistic (good and evil) view, but something much more nuanced. The same is true with aboriginal peoples all over the world. It is middle-Europe, with its St. Paul-like vision of good and evil, that makes us take such as Sorat, and the Asuras, coupled with Steiner’s general take on things, and then end up mis-perceiving much modern social phenomena.
I am, perhaps, one of the few among the circles of Steinerism, that can speak with any experience regarding “magic”, having studied Hermetic Science through the works of Franz Bardon. The terms “black magic” are often used with the hidden idea that these things should not exist, and are to be shunned. Bardon taught me to recognize that there is nothing truly “unclean” in the whole of the Creation. Everything has its place. We are required then to master our antipathies and sympathies, in order to perceive the World Song – what the world speaks to us, should we wish to set aside our tendency to “judge” everything unlikeable, as if it should not exist.
That someone in ISIS would cut off another person’s head, does not mean that “black magicians” are standing behind all such acts. Next I will offer a general statement, from my own research, which will of course be an oversimplification as a necessity:
There are three basic types of occult brotherhoods seeking to influence modern civilization: the whites, the grays, and the blacks. In our Age, magic powers are, shall we say from the point of view of the Higher Beings, outlawed. Christ as Artist of Karma is able to confine those who wish to practice such arts to a kind of karmic “cul de sac”. No one freely incarnates, and those whose hungers for magic powers is such that they do not belong to this Age, are – the extent they do incarnate – imprisoned and limited.
Keep in mind that Steiner’s readers and listeners were frequently so asleep at the wheel, that he often exaggerated various dangers just to get their attention.
The white brotherhoods fully support individual human freedom, and as a consequence are very much hands off. It is the grays that are so dominant today. Like Lucifer, prior to the Incarnation of Christ, the grays believe normal human beings cannot be trusted with the management of macro-social processes.
So we have a Bill Clinton go to England as a Rhodes Scholar, and is there influenced by some grays as to how to approach economic reality. All of that kind of influence takes place against a much larger “context”, which is ruled from within by the forces of the Evolution of Consciousness.
To even begin to appreciate modern social-political events, the thinking has to ignore outsides. Ignore history even. Assuming what is sought is an understanding of the World in which humanity unfolds its many incarnations.
Keep in mind that all members, or associates, of the occult brotherhoods also incarnate, and are therefore subject to the same “laws” and limitations.
The main focus of the attention of the hierarchies connected to the Holy Mother (Justice) and the Son (Love) is on the individual biography. Macro social events are incidental by-products of taking care of what is needed by the individual human being. Each biography is itself (in this Age) the Holy Grail in action ( http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/grail.html ).
Western Civilization is not so much devolving, as it is undergoing a metamorphoses, and just beginning to enter the chrysalis stage of chaos, which is required before new social forms can arise. Since the individual must have conflict in the individual biography, in order for the free moral potential of the Consciousness Soul to unfold, the world enters the Third Millennium within extensive conflict everywhere, which is to be a Rite of Passage, the Hopi called: The Day of Purification.
John the Baptist put it this Way: “While I may bathe you in the water of repentance, the one coming after me – I am not strong enough to even carry his sandals. He will Baptize you in Holy Breath and Fire.”
For details, my “The Art of God: an actual theory of Everything”:
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/artofgod.html
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Hi Joel, and thanks for taking the time to write here with a certain encouragement about the so-called “ahrimanic incarnation”. In 2012, when the GWB years were long gone, and Karl Rove was nothing more than a footnote in recent political history, it was being touted by certain authors, i..e, Robert Powell, that Barack Obama was the veritable incarnation of Ahriman in the 21st century. Yet, you seem to take the position of Democrat over Republican. Could it be that both parties are culpable over the last 16 years for all that now ails the world? I’m sure that we can both agree that America’s so-called “global democracy”, regardless of party affiliation, rules the world with might and mane.
Any of those that contest this position, like Europe in general, or Britain, and particularly England, which acutely sees the situation today, might find your discourse an enlightening relief to what is seen as a ruling machine mentality, i.e., ahrimanic, coming out of America. Yet, America has also a version of the Consciousness Soul which is truly related to freedom for the world. Note: an earlier thread marked the difference between America and the original European colonists.
Now, two place that need explaining, Joel.
“Rudolf Steiner’s writings and lectures create a very difficult situation for arriving at spiritual knowledge. If he said it, then so many assume they have the truth of something, that all thought kind of stops at that seemingly closed door, and does not pass through Steiner to grasp what he might not have known. I only gained what I have learned by acquiring the ability to discard all Steiner-thought, and seek to go to the Source myself.”
“Keep in mind that Steiner’s readers and listeners were frequently so asleep at the wheel, that he often exaggerated various dangers just to get their attention.”
You don’t really know that, do you Joel? But it sounds good. It creates a typical stereotype and characterization of the modern anthroposophist, who hasn’t got a mind of his/her own. But, what if we’re looking at all of the aspects and perspectives that exist in today’s seemingly volatile world, just as you are with your experience?
Maybe we’re all on the same line and page. This blog shows that experience, intelligence, and value for what is needed in the rightful world is willed and encouraged. It even has the courage to say that the habitable world, i.e, Earth, has only 200 more years to live due to these nuclear disasters of late. I find that very compelling, considering what Rudolf Steiner had to say about our Earth evolution, especially this fifth cultural epoch, which is only 603 years into. What a loss if we all fail to even approach the 6th Cultural Epoch, c. 3573 AD. That is when the Marriage in Cana, which was the first miracle accounted in the Gospel of St. John, was to be experienced as the era of Christ/Sophia, perceptible and cognizable.
I would hate to see that not happen.
Steve
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Joel writes, ‘The terms “black magic” are often used with the hidden idea that these things should not exist, and are to be shunned. Bardon taught me to recognize that there is nothing truly “unclean” in the whole of the Creation. Everything has its place. We are required then to master our antipathies and sympathies,…….’
It is morally suspect o use the word ‘antipathy’ for the revulsion that any moral person feels against black magic, which, as Jeremy says, involves (amongst other things) the infliction of pain on animals and humans, murder and abusive sex. It is a kind of deceit. This use of language has the effect of diminishing the horror of carrying out these actions. Just as ‘collateral damage’ when used by the military has the effect of ‘setting apart’ the horror of the deaths of innocent bystanders.
‘Antipathy’ is an appropriate word when speaking of things one may not like, – people, food, music, etc.. I may have a powerful antipathy to a particular politician but this does not mean that I would contemplate murdering or sexually abusing her or him.
I find Bardon/Joel’s line of thought disturbing, not because of any ANTIPATHY to “murder, [abusive] sex and the infliction of pain”, but because THEY ARE EVIL ACTIONS for which there can NEVER be any justification.
No ‘perceiv[ing] the World Song – what the world speaks to us,……’ (Joel’s understanding of Bardon’s teaching) can ever justify the deliberate causing of pain and death to another being.
Does Joel really think that someone might not cause unnecessary pain or sexually abuse someone, or murder someone in a grisly and humiliating fashion just because they have an ANTIPATHY for the act?
The tone of this passage of Joel’s reminds me of the tone of Uncle Andrew’s pronouncements in ‘The Magician’s Nephew’. In the following quote Uncle Andrew is using moral blackmail to persuade his nephew, Digory, to carry out an action that Uncle Andrew is afraid to do himself) –
“Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true: most right and proper, I’m sure,……… but you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys – and servants – and women – and even people in general, can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny.” (From ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ Chapter 2. by
C. S. Lewis.)
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Tom Hart Shea.
I want to explain something about black magic. Now be patient with me, for the concepts involved are extremely subtle – and demand much.
Any evil doer – whoever they may be – will do this evil because they think it is the right and proper thing to do. In this, they live in an illusion – an illusion that can be carried over several incarnations.
But this is not the point: we who wish not to engage with evil must take it upon ourselves to understand that which drives others to acts of evil. This in itself will take you beyond the intellectual soul decision of “like:dislike” – for understanding is what lies between these. One has to see what it was that drove that person to act in that way.
If one has done this properly, one will also be able to determine if that was an act that came out of full consciousness – and there are boundaries to the evil that one may do in full consciousness. That boundary was known to Socrates.
The essence of what one will discover from this exercise is not a love of evil; far from it. One will see what that person could do for good, by acting out of these same impulses, but enacting them beneficially – and please bear in mind that black magicians will be highly developed in one way or another. They have much to give this world, should they ‘see the light’ as it were. Christ spoke thus: “I tell you that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous ones who do not need to repent”.
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Here is Steiner’s definition (1919, GA 191_11): unjustified magic practices “are based essentially on the fact that certain human beings learn to employ their will wrongfully, in such a way that they do not confine the destructive forces to their normal operations within the organism but extend them over other human beings.”
“If the exercises leading to intuition are carried out, their effect extends not only to the ether body, but right down into the supersensible forces of the physical body.” (Occult Science, GA 13_c05-07).
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Dear Gemma, thank you for your response to my comment about black magic.
You wrote, ‘Any evil doer – whoever they may be – will do this evil because they think it is the right and proper thing to do.’ This Socratic view of evil was based on various premises that Socrates believed to be true, such as that no-one will willingly act in such a way as to harm themselves. These premises are open to debate when one comes to the activities of those who have chosen to try and kill that which is good in their souls, to destroy it entirely.
I am not sure that you have understood the point of my remarks as you return again to the ‘intellectual soul decision like/dislike…’.
I was not saying that there is no forgiveness for those who become involved in black magic, for as you rightly say, some will practice it mistaking it for the good and Christ, the Lord of Karma is a merciful judge.
To put it in terms of english philosophy – to suggest that one might not do evil acts because of antipathy, which is what Joel is suggesting, or, as implied by your comment, ‘dislike’ for the acts, is to make a kind of category mistake. There are actions which are evil regardless of whether anyone likes them or not. The activities of Fred West and Ian Brady come to mind. No doubt those two men personally derived some sort of ‘liking’, some pleasure from what they did, – it assuaged some need they had.
Joel’s comment suggests that in some way the activities of black magicians are acceptable because they are part of “the world song…what the world speaks to us…”.
From my point of view the decision to do or not to do evil is not a decision in the realm of the intellectual soul though people may justify what they do or don’t do using the intellect.
I agree with you that “we who wish not to engage with evil must take it upon ourselves to understand that which drives others to acts of evil. This in itself will take you beyond the intellectual soul decision of “like:dislike” – for understanding is what lies between these. One has to see what it was that drove that person to act in that way.
If one has done this properly, one will also be able to determine if that was an act that came out of full consciousness – and there are boundaries to the evil that one may do in full consciousness.”
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Tom Hart Shea.
The point about evil is that it is part and parcel of the fallen powers. That is to say, Lucifer – and more commonly, Ahriman. Therefore the decision cannot be in the realm of the intellectual soul, as it is beneath the level of our consciousness.
What with the person lacking self-development, this implies that they will be bound by the mentality of the Fourth (Post-Atlantean) Epoch. The intellectual soul by any other name.
Such people will, as you say, make excuses by this means.
People do not commit acts of evil because they are conscious of what they do. Most people drive cars without the least worry that they have immersed themselves in the Eighth Sphere by doing so. They will make all manner of excuses as to why it is necessary for them to engage with it in this way.
You must understand the nature of the subconscious: nobody can see into their subconscious by looking into themselves. If one tries to, all one will find is illusion. What is more, when challenged, you will find them peddling excuses as to why they engage in such practices.
The path to the realms beyond lie squarely in the material world – but it has to be stated that this is the part of the material world that has nothing to do with evil practices.
Has this clarified what I said earlier? This is not an easy subject to speak about, and is made the harder in that I cannot see your expression or your gestures.
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I believe Steiner said some other things about Islam — in explanation that the number of the Beast in the Bible is 666, Steiner said that was the year when Islam was bursting out all over. Steiner also said that Islam as a religion is ahrimanic, but the soul states of Muslims are luciferic. I would add that the Qur’an and core texts of Islam explicitly deny that Jesus was divine, deny that he died on the cross, and deny that he was resurrected. According to the Qur’an, Allah is not a father, and he has no children. Jesus was just a prophet, and second to Muhammad in significance.
It’s true that the year 666 may be quite near the epicenter of the massive aggressive expansion of Muslim warriors through North Africa into Spain, and moving north and east from Arabia all the way to the edges of India. They did that within a single century, and mostly by violent jihad, thus conquering one of the hugest empires in history. During that time, long before the Christian Crusades, the Muslims took over perhaps half of the existing Christian world.
As a recent article in Atlantic magazine argued persuasively, the Islamic State is very Islamic. Indeed, if one reads the core Islamic texts, the Qur’an, the canonical Hadith, and the earliest Muslim biographies of Muhammad, one sees that Muhammad himself is recorded as having done many of the things that IS is now doing.
Many Muslims are not particularly religious and have no interest in following the example of Muhammad. Many Muslims are also not informed about the content of their own core texts; they have only ever prayed the Qur’an in Arabic, as it is supposed to be prayed, but do not themselves speak Arabic (four-fifths of the Islamic world is not Arab), much less the archaic Arabic of the Qur’an. Consequently they have but vague ideas, in many cases, of what Islamic teachings say. But polls of Muslims worldwide, and human rights reports on Muslim-majority nations, show that large percentages of Muslims adhere to a number of Muhammad’s totalitarian tenets.
What is Europe to do about this? Deport its large and rapidly growing Muslim population? Or acquiesce in policies like those of Angela Merkel, when she seeks on her watch to import millions more Muslims into Europe? Is there some middle way between those extremes? In my view, if Europe does not wish to become like Islamic nations in a generation or so, that is, like nations where human rights are everywhere strongly curtailed (to varying degrees) because of the core texts of Islam and Muhammad’s example, and where women, gays, and non-Muslims become victims of Islamic law or at least of a widely taken for granted Islamic-law ethos — then Europe, if it wishes to continue on the multicultural path, should import its foreign cultures mainly from non-Muslim parts of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Those who are already citizens cannot and should not be deported, though if they advocate Islamic law, or at least the violent implementation of it, they should be subject to penalties. The four main schools of Islamic law all call for death to those who leave Islam, and agree on perhaps 75% of their teachings, which are often totalitarian and supremacist toward non-Muslims, so it is a mistake to attribute some sort of post-modern malleability — at least at this time — to Islamic law.
Perhaps the best introduction to the whole question is the book The Third Choice, by Mark Durie, a brilliant Australian pastor and linguist who studied in Indonesia for many years, and learned about Islam through the Indonesian language. Durie is compassionate toward Muslims, and yet does not stick his head in the sand about Islam and the totalitarian threat it represents.
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What is taking place today with the massive immigration of Muslims into Europe, and especially into Germany, is owing to an evil objective which supposedly comes out of an organization called, ISIS, which is no different in its way than the Al-Qaeda, which was supposedly the force behind 9/11 and launched the War on Terror, although GWB made it official, against all objections coming from the United Nations Security Council, c. March 2003. Just look at the opposition from Europe when this war was announced. Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was excoriated by his own populace for supporting Bush, and the protests against it were enormous. In America, this protest coming from our European neighbors was quashed in the news media. We were fed the notion of an historic catastrophe occurring on U.S. soil, from a foreign source, and needing to be avenged at all cost.
Yet, this has all taken place before now. As late as 1998, with the evacuation of Kosovo, we can see the manipulation of Eastern Europe to the dictates of the West. This was also an evacuation of immigrants from their homeland, and yet WJC, POTUS in 1998, did nothing to avert this situation, until bombing Belgrade, and mistakenly hitting the Chinese embassy.
So, what are you saying, Traeh? Whatever Steiner had to say about Soradt in 666 is really not at all about Islam. No, Islam has proven to be the cover and scapegoat for the larger evil, much like WWI and WWII, and Vietnam, and the present War on Terror.
Could a present forced immigration of Muslim people be possible without the aforesaid intervening influences? Who rules the world with evil intentions? Answer: not normal people who even study spiritual science. Thus, it must come down to those that see the need to control the world, and rape its resources, and subjugate its inferior cultures.
Would that resolve entail ISIS, the Muslims, Al-Qaeda, or even the Taliban? No, likely, as astute modern history assesses, it comes out of the western-most economic ruling forces, who are clever in their machinations, and love to construe stratagems as an honor to Ahriman.
In other words, whatever is occurring in the world, such as mass migration of Muslims into Europe, is being orchestrated by America. Why? Because the United States is powerful enough to have stopped it from taking place in the beginning. In other words, none of this needs to be taking place, except for the fact that the anti-christ exists. Where? Guess.
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Steve Hale,
my only doubt is your last paragraph:
This isn’t a question of the US being powerful enough to stop it; the problem is that countries in the Middle East were small enough to have a war with – whilst guaranteeing the US won it. Thus leaders that were demonized by the US – Hussein, Ghaddafi and Assad spring to mind – were easily removed. One side effect of these wars was migration from those impoverished countries.
I detailed on another blog what would have stopped this migration, suffice it to say that if the Americans had invested their money in the economies of those countries rather than in bombs, the result would have been twofold:
(1) People who were able to afford a reasonable standard of living, and
(2) The Americans might even have made a return on their investment!
Bombs are to economics what blue is to yellow. That is to say, it is entirely destructive – to both parties! The first in lost money, the latter in lost goods.
The real question here is why America needed to demonize these people in the first place… and yes, it is easy to say that they had the power to do so. The real point is that in doing so, they kept other news out of the papers. News like the US national debt and where all those American jobs went after the industries they worked for were shipped overseas.
Like all things Ahriman, these are not big problems in themselves – but they become the bigger when ignored.
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Steve Hale,
There is enough evil in the world to go around. You give a bit too much credit to America. Conversely your comment surely gives far too little credit to the rest of the world, including the Muslim world, which is not merely a passive victim of a history formed by others.
As I said in my previous comment, Steiner, for whatever it is worth, directly connected Islam with the number 666 and the Beast. It may seem noble to criticize the U.S. superpower while defending the Islamic world as the underdog, but perhaps the picture is more complex. There is something of a holocaust against Christians and other non-Muslims currently going on in the Islamic world. And the Islamic world is itself a superpower, not economically, but on account of its huge and rapidly growing population, its control of over 50 nations, and its extraordinarily potent ideology driving Muhammad’s jihad imperative all over the world. That expansionist, violent, totalitarian ideology explicitly denies the divinity of Christ, and denies further that human beings are made in the image of God.
Qur’an 42:11
“The Creator of the heavens and the earth. He hath made for you pairs of yourselves, and of the cattle also pairs, whereby He multiplieth you. Naught is as His likeness; and He is the Hearer, the Seer.”
http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/verses/042-qmt.php#042.011
That and many other characteristics of Islamic theology and the life of Muhammad seem akin to what some mean with respect to the name of Sorath: the will to destroy the human “I.”
This is not to underrate the responsibility of the United States for problems in the world. And let’s not forget China, where the dictatorship kills off most meaningful criticism and thus creates a darkness within which, for example, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been murdered in order to sell their organs, to name just one evil that has been well-documented as taking place under the Chinese government. Meanwhile, Jews are leaving France now because of what they face from Muslims there who are motivated by the Qur’an’s frequent hatred against Jews. The earliest Muslim biography of Muhammad tells us that Muhammad had 600 to 900 captive, unarmed Jews beheaded. The same biography, astonishingly, tells us that Muhammad ordered a man tortured (a fire was kindled on the man’s chest) in order to get hold of a treasure. It also tells us that Muhammad then had the man beheaded, and “married” his widow, the beautiful Safiya, whose father and brothers Muhammad and his soldiers had also just recently killed. Let’s also not forget that gays are starting to hide their identities in parts of Europe because of the new dangers they face from substantial portions of the Muslim populations there. Even to criticize Islam as an ideology in public, under one’s own name, has become dangerous. I have literally dozens of news stories in which public institutions, artists, journalists, comedians, authors, and teachers admit they censor themselves about Islam because of death threats and violence from Muslims, who are moved by canonical Islamic texts’ death penalty for criticism of Islam or Muhammad. If anyone doubts the statements I am making about the core Islamic texts, I can give you citations to a university database and point you to the relevant pages of the online copy of the earliest Muslim biography of Muhammad.
If European freedom is to survive the next fifty years, one of the things you must surely do is stop or drastically slow Islamic immigration. Assimilate the Muslims who are already citizens. Multiculturalism and immigration can be continued by importing non-Muslim populations from Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
With respect to all the foregoing, Europe surely needs a First Amendment and more freedom of speech. The remedy for incorrect statements or even for “hate speech” is more speech, not arrests and prosecution (except in truly exceptional emergency situations, or where someone is explicitly inciting violence). Too often in Europe, freedom of speech is suppressed by the powerful, who label something “hate speech” and prosecute it because someone felt offended. But freedom of speech laws are not there to protect inoffensive speech. Inoffensive speech needs no protection. Freedom of speech laws are there precisely to protect speech deemed “offensive” by some group or individual. But perhaps you have a sort of “emergency” situation in Europe even now. Is France still literally under the legal “state of emergency” that came in force some months ago after jihadist massacres there? Perhaps Europe is currently under attack by a kind of jihad, both stealthy and open, and so “hate speech” infringements of speech freedom are coming into use because people are simply afraid that truthful speech in certain directions will lead to a violent result. Hate-speech laws may even start appearing in the U.S., as the Muslim population grows here to levels comparable with those in Western Europe, and people become so afraid to criticize Islam publicly that they demand “hate-speech” laws to prevent anyone from publicly criticizing Islam. To be clear, I am personally against hate speech, if it is truly hate speech, but I am also against any legal prosecution of true hate speech, since such prosecutions too often in practice do not actually target hate speech but legitimate criticism that someone wants suppressed. Besides, which state authority is to be given the power to distinguish between so-called hate speech and “legitimate” criticism? I don’t believe Rudolf Steiner would have supported any legal limitations on speech, except with respect to true emergencies, explicit incitements to violence, or a state of war.
The idea that America orchestrates everything overrates American competence. It may give a feeling of security to imagine that everything is controlled by one group. But the world is a spontaneously emergent order that no one group controls. Recall that
“many things, having full reference
To one consent, may work contrariously:
As many arrows, loosed several ways,
Come to one mark; as many ways meet in one town;
As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;
As many lines close in the dial’s centre;
So may a thousand actions, once afoot.
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
Without defeat.”
Order emerges spontaneously from countless independent centers. Evil comes not only from the U.S. Evil is coming massively from Islam and the example of Muhammad as well, and from the Chinese government, and many other sources, no doubt including, too often, ourselves.
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Wonderfully said, traeh!
There’s an interesting short article here, on how criticism of Islam is censored:-
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263311/american-gulag-phyllis-chesler
I think most people don’t know the reality of Islam. I hear it trotted out frequently that Muslims respect Jesus. That’s missing the point. They do not believe Jesus Christ was divine; in other words, they are calling Jesus a liar. Why would you respect a liar?
In the Quran a curse is pronounced on those who believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
‘In blasphemy indeed are those that say that God is Christ the son of Mary. -Surah 5:17
(Yusuf Ali)
They say: “God hath begotten a son!” – Glory be to Him! He is self-sufficient! His are all things in the heavens and on earth! No warrant have ye for this!
Say ye about Allah what ye know not? -Surah 10:68
(Yusuf Ali)
They said, “The Most Gracious has begotten a son”!
You have uttered a gross
blasphemy. The heavens are about to shatter, the earth is about to tear asunder, and the mountains are about to crumble. Because they claim that the Most Gracious has begotten a son. It is not befitting the Most Gracious that He should beget a son. –
Surah 19:88-92
(Rashad Khalifa)
‘… the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say.
Allah’s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the truth!’ -Surah
9:30 (Yusuf Ali)
Most people don’t know much about the reality of Islam. I lived right next door to a mosque for some years in London, and some of their literature was an eye-opener.
However, there is a collective karma at work here. Every country has a different karma, which, as with humans, is based on what they were given, and what they did with it. Great Britain’s karma, for instance, is not at all the same as that of America. The US will never be overrun by Muslims.
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Teleile wrote:
“I think most people don’t know the reality of Islam. I hear it trotted out frequently that Muslims respect Jesus. That’s missing the point. They do not believe Jesus Christ was divine; in other words, they are calling Jesus a liar. Why would you respect a liar?”
“Beginning in the sixth century A.D. and exercising a very vigorous influence upon all aspects of development, we have the religion brought by the Arabians from Africa over into Spain: this represents a re-emergence, in a different form, of the Jahve-Moon-religion. The intervening Christ Impulse has been ignored. It is not possible to enumerate all the characteristics brought over with the religion of Mohammed; but it is important to realise that the Christ Impulse is disregarded in the religion of Islam which was actually a kind of revival of Mosaic monotheism. This idea of the One God, however, included a good deal derived from other sources, for instance from Egypto-Chaldean religion, which had yielded very exact knowledge of the connection of happenings in the starry heavens with earthly events. Thus the thoughts and ideas current among the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Babylonians and Assyrians appear again in the religion of Mohammed but pervaded by the One God, Jahve. Speaking scientifically, what we have in Arabism is a kind of gathering-together, a synthesis, of the wisdom-teachings of the priests of Egypt and Chaldea and the Jahve-religion of the ancient Hebrews.
In such a process there is not only compression but also rejection and elimination. In this case everything connected with clairvoyant perception had to be discarded and men were to depend entirely upon reason and intellectual thinking. Hence the concepts belonging to the Egyptian art of healing and to Chaldean astronomy — which in both these peoples were the outcome of clairvoyance — are to be found in the Arabism of Mohammed in an intellectualised and individualised form. Something that had passed as it were through a filter was thus brought into Europe by the Arabians. Old concepts that had been current among the Egyptians and Chaldeans were denuded of their visionary, pictorial content and re-cast into abstract forms. They reappear in the wonderful scientific knowledge possessed by the Arabians who made their way into Europe via Africa and Spain. Whereas Christianity brought an impulse connected essentially with man’s life of soul, the greatest impulse given to the human intellect was brought by the Arabians. Without thorough knowledge of the course taken by the evolution of humanity it is impossible to form any idea of how much the world-conception which arose in a new form under the symbol of the Moon, has given to mankind. There could have been no Kepler, no Galileo, without the impulses brought by Arabism into Europe. For the old mode of thinking appears again, but now denuded of its ancient clairvoyance, when the third culture-epoch celebrated its resurrection in our own fifth epoch, in our modern astronomy, in our modern science.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA124/English/RSP1985/19110313p02.html
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So what is the reality of the Muslim religion?
We have believers in a true and all merciful god… Allah.
Yet to anybody who doesn’t believe in him, he’s not merciful at all!! He’s the fount of all wrath…
is that merciful?
No!
We have an inherent contradiction in this religion – or this expression of it, which might more accurately be called Wahhabism (the Saudi extreme of Islam). That contradiction – of loving those who love you and hating everybody else – is a very modern phenomenon that derives its impulse from Ahriman.
The Koran itself is written in a way that speaks of Ahriman: it uses words that are long and technical in nature – that is to say, such words have one specific meaning that is not based on the context of its setting. Over time, that meaning has been lost, and Islamic scholars argue to this day over the meaning of the Koran.
And this is supposed to be the word of God!!!
It’s like when I was part of the Facebook Anthro group. I would write using the term ‘Beasts of the Threshold’ – and boy, did it put the pigeons to flight! The moderators screamed in fright, told me not to use words of that kind.
So I didn’t.
I wrote about the realities of meeting the beasts instead… and since I had not employed the secific term, the Moderators who knew nothing of the realities of anthroposophy, were quietened. For they could not perceive – imagine – what I was speaking about!
They had formed a group of people where Allah was merciful… but watch out if you step out of line!!
Islam is based on fear: and the more fearful a person is, the less tolerant they are. It is the essential ‘process’ of Ahriman. What’s more, it’s always someone else than the herd who will be scapegoated. And it always relies on perception, for to become aware means one has to be tolerant of it.
When awareness dawned on the Vorstand at the Goetheanum, their tolerance was challenged. In refusing this challenge, a civil war broke out and scapegoats were excommunicated. Today, all is calm because only true believers want to play a part.
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Repeatedly, Steiner marked a difference between Mohammed’s Arabism and a later, spiritualized (Turkish) Islam.
Though, for our time he stressed the influence of “Bolschevism, that will inserted in the whole earthly evolution of mankind” (GA 346_08).
“And whilst Islam had accepted much that came from earlier times, both art and science, the Turks really threw out anything that might be called art or science and really became hostile to art and science.” From Beetroot to Buddhism (1924) p.95 f.
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Steiner’s point of view on good and evil seems to be “dualistic” in the sense of Manichaean (Gruwez 2014, AbpvBAAAQBAJ).
In general, Steiner in his lectures (e.g. GA 101) discerned the magician (adept, master) from the initiate and the clairvoyant. And parallel to these degrees, he used his schooling concepts of intuition, inspiration and imagination.
A counterexample to Rove would be the current Russian president, with a PhD in economics, in power as prime minister since August 1998, and Acting President on the last day of the millennium.
(GA 191: spreading of the confidence in the mechanistic-mathematical world conception; spreading of economic utilitarianism; nationalism; and one-sided traditional or confessional conceptions of the Gospels.)
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It is possible to understand Putin’s behaviour as president of what is effectively a ‘gangster’ state without postulating that he is an incarnation of Ahriman. Everything he does can be seen as reactive to the USA’s empire building and aggressive policies in the middle east and on the borders of the Russian Federation. Also as reacting to the internal dynamics of a country where the rule of law is second to the striving for power.
I am also not convinced by the choice of Karl Rove, undoubtedly an unpleasant character, but again one can understand his behaviours very well in the context of American power play without insulting Ahriman with such a grubby little persona.
My own guess is that Ahriman’s incarnation will be undiscernable to anyone except an initiate of Rudolf Steiner’s standing.
Perhaps the best we can hope for is to know that Ahriman is present on the earth through the thought forms which come to dominate the consciousness of the intellectual elites and power-brokers. We do not need to know exactly which body s/he is inhabiting. Indeed I would wonder at why anybody would seek to know that.
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Sure, Tom, that is possible. Can one find a better candidate discernible today, who wants mankind to be unconscious of his true nature, taking Steiner’s list of preparations in account? (The West is opposed to oriental Asia and could include European Russia).
The Russian president is an independent politician since December 1991 (39 years old), a KGB foreign intelligence officer (secret school) for 16 years, and a strategic planner(dissertation), allegedly taking his decisions alone, and not reactive to one foreign power. He is also a nationalist and an Eastern Orthodox Christian.
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Summarizing Steiner, the Two-horned Beast from the Abyss in Revelation Ch.13 (‘Sorat’) ‘will occur in numerous people, as the entity of which they are possessed’ in 1998. It will only admit the old Father-Principle, the physical relations (346_08).
And `before even a part of the third millennium of the Christian era has run its course’ (i.e. on December 31, 1999?) the real incarnation of the Seven-headed Beast from the Sea (‘Ahriman’) in a human body would take place (191_11, cf. 193_10 and 195_02). For example, as a civilian under the name of ‘John William Smith’ (195_03).
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Dear Ton:
If we consider what Steiner says in GA195, lecture 3, it also serves to allow a caricature of the present ahrimanic incarnation to be represented in freedom. Yet, the moderator of this list won’t allow. Knocking on the door of facial depiction, albeit a pure ahrimanic biography to boot, yields Steiner’s vision of a ‘John Smith’. So, let’s take that into account, and see where this being might actually reside in this day and age. Hint: we are certainly talking about Putin here 😉
“Now, it is essential for the favourable working of that which Ahriman will bring to humanity — he will bring advantageous gifts just as Lucifer did — that man shall take the right attitude. The all-important thing is that man shall not through sleeping miss the coming of Ahriman. When the incarnation of Ahriman takes place in the Western World we shall simply see inscribed in the local Register, the birth of John William Smith (of course, this will not be the name) and people will look upon the child as a citizen in comfortable circumstances like any other, and they will sleep through what has in reality taken place. Our University professors will certainly not trouble whether man sleeps through it or not. For them what has taken place will be merely the birth of J. W. Smith. But in the Ahrimanic age it is all-important that men should knower that they have here to do only externally with J. W. Smith, that inwardly Ahriman is present, and that they must not deceive themselves through sleepy illusion about what has happened. Even now we may not yield to any deception. These things are in preparation. Among the most important means which Ahriman has to work with from the other side, is the furthering of abstract thinking in Man. And because men cling so firmly today to this abstract thinking, they are working in the way most favourable for the coming of Ahriman. You must realize that there is no better way to prepare for the fact that Ahriman is endeavouring cunningly to capture the whole Earth for his evolution, than that man should continue to live an abstract life, steeping himself in abstractions, as he does in the social life of today. This is one of the ruses, one of the clever tricks, by which Ahriman prepares in his own way for his lordship over the earth. Instead of showing men today out of conclusive experience, what has to happen, leaders offer them theories on every subject, including the social question. To those who give out these theories, knowledge gained by means of experience is abstract, because they have no inkling of what real Life is. All this is preparation from the Ahrimanic point of view.”
Actually writing the words out rather than merely referring to 195_03 could prove to be important. Just like posting the facades of Ahriman and his frowny-faced incarnation in the flesh. He had a precursor who wore the “mark of the beast ” on his forehead, and yet nobody saw its symbolism until their own country was dashed to bits. Thus, Ahriman has a forerunner, much in the same way that Christ had John the Baptist.
But, it is Soradt/Sorat/Sorath, who has orchestrated it all, and it comes out of the West, as previously indicated with the diagram. The United States. GHWB made for the destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991, and Michael Gorbachev abdicated to the west, now under safe haven. Only an ahrimanic personality/incarnation could pick up the pieces after that.
Jeremy should post the pics, and maybe now he will with a few more words on the subject. I hope so.
Steve
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Steve, The East (Asia, China) is contrasted with the West as ‘Europeans and their American affinities’ in this connection (GA 191), which includes Russia.
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The elementary, anti-egotic Rock Being, or World Humour in Steiner’s sculptural group (GA0181/19180703) can be seen as a counter image to the mocking Two-horned Beast from the Abyss (a winged head represents an Archai, 243_09).
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Muavija is a representative spirit in the first century after Mohammed, but one whose thinking is no longer patterned in absolute conformity with that of Mohammed; he draws his impulse from Mohammed, but only his impulse. He has not yet discarded the religious core of Mohammedanism, but has already led it over into the sphere of thought, of logic. And above all he is one of those who are ardently intent upon pressing on into Europe, upon forcing their way to the West. If you follow the campaigns and observe the forces that were put into operation under Muavija, you will realise that this eagerness to push forward towards the West was combined with tremendous driving power, but this was already blunted, was already losing its edge.
… If we follow this Muavija, one of the earliest successors of the Prophet, as he passes along the undercurrent and then appears again, we find Woodrow Wilson.
Take the fatalism that had already assumed such dimensions in Muavija and transfer it into the age of modern abstraction. Feel the similarity with Mohammedan sayings: “Allah has revealed it”; “Allah will bring it to pass as the one and only salvation.” And then try to understand the real gist of many a word spoken by the promoter of the Fourteen Points. — With no great stretch of imagination you will find an almost literal conformity.
Karmic Relationships:
Esoteric Studies – Volume I
GA0235 http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19240316p01.html
In 1917, a year before the great war ended, Woodrow Wilson was promoting his Fourteen Points. Otto Graf Lerchenfeld, a member of the Bavarian Royal Cabinet, asks Rudolf Steiner for advice. Steiner begins work with Lerchenfeld to articulate the Threefold Society.
From Lerchenfeld’s journal:
“Three hours with Dr. Steiner today. The solution to everything lies before me. I know that there can be no other. He calls it “threefold social organism” and placed it before me like the egg of Columbus ….”
Chronology of Events: Dec 1916 – Sep 1919
Click to access Education_As_a_Force_for_Social_Change-Rudolf_Steiner-296.pdf
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The radical, fundamental difference between what we justifiably call the Christian way of the Spirit and the Jesuit way of the Spirit, which gives a one-sided exaggeration to the Jesus-Principle, is that the intention of the Jesuit way is to work directly, at all times upon the Will. The difference is clearly shown in the method by which the pupil of Jesuitism is educated. Jesuitism is not to be taken lightly, or merely exoterically, but also esoterically, for it is rooted in esotericism. It is not, however, rooted in the spiritual life that is poured out through the symbol of Pentacost, but it seeks to root itself directly in the Jesus-element of the Son, which means in the Will; and thereby it exaggerates the Jesus-element of the Will.
This will be seen when we now enquire into the esoteric part of Jesuitism, its various spiritual exercises. How were these exercises arranged? The essential point is that every single pupil of Jesuitism goes through exercises which lead into the occult life, but into the Will, and within the field of occultism they hold the Will in severe discipline; they ‘break it in’, one might say. And the significant fact is that this discipline of the Will does not arise merely from the surface of life, but from something deeper, because the pupil has been led into the occult, in the way just indicated.
From Jesus to Christ: Lecture I: Jesuit and Rosicrucian Training (GA131)
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19111005p01.html
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“….the Jesuit way of the Spirit, which gives a one-sided exaggeration to the Jesus-Principle,…”
“I [Steiner] was recently sent a kind of lexicon listing the names of writers. [ Note 3 ] It purports to list the names of all writers who have a connection with Judaism and anything which seeks to bring Judaism to realization in this world. I am one of the writers listed in the book, the reason being that, according to the author of the lexicon, I have many similarities with Ignatius de Loyola who is stated to have founded the Jesuits precisely because of his Judaism.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA177/English/RSP1993/19171001p01.html
The lecture below contains a tracing of the incarnations of Loyola, and alludes to a former life similar to the one described that eventually saw Voltaire in the 18th century, who wrote a play about Mohammed. If the roots of Jesuitism can be found in the Moslem religion, and where history tells of how the Prophet, and proclaimed successor of Jesus Christ, offered himself and his religion to both the Jews and Christians, with scorn and opposition as the result, it could prove to be an important link in the western migration of Islam under another guise, i.e., the Society of Jesus, which also fails to see the divine nature of Christ-Jesus, but considers itself the army of Jesus, and the so-called “powers of the earth”. Steiner reveals this perception of Jesus to be Ahriman, in actuality, ref. GA 197.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA240/English/APC1953/19240824p02.html
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In fact, Steiner later highlighted three forms of ‘unfavourable initiation knowledge’: Anglo-Americanism, Jesuitism and Leninism (Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind, GA 197, 13 June 1920, p.43).
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Yes, and if we just take the very first one, i.e., “Anglo-Americanism”, its fundamental tenet can be found in this document from July 4, 1776:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Please note, with specific intention the foregoing words: “the powers of the earth”, and “Nature’s God” entitle them”. This forms the crux of the anglo-american incentive.
Now, going back to GA 240, and Steiner had some other important referrals to Jesuitism in GA 197, which occurred some four years before, in 1920, we can gauge how Loyola had both an antecedent incarnation, in which the martyrdom of Jesus took root, and a following incarnation in which Emmanuel Swedenborg was born. Swedenborg (1688-1772), wrote many early works of a profoundly material science not known before, and it came out of a kind of remembrance of the arabic culture which existed at the time of the Academy of Gondi-Shapur. Thus, Swedenborg is noted for producing works of early material science, which could only have come out of a profound remembrance of an earlier period; the period in which arabism arose.
Looking ahead to Swedenborg’s next incarnation, we find a man very inclined to become a Jesuit, with very scientific inclinations. He also espouses the army of Jesus, and worships the “powers of the earth”, especially as he feels compelled to fight in WWI for the French. He wanted to bear arms, but because he had already taken vows as a Jesuit, he had to be a medic, and stretcher-bearer for the wounded. This task he endured for four years.
Then, having found the Christ on the battlefield of WWI, he was sent to China on a mission which found fossil remains of an earlier ancestor of mankind. Yet, he had found the Cosmic Christ for the Jesuits, and espoused this fact in many essays and books until his death. The Jesuits censored any of these works while he lived, and continue today to deny his fundamental discovery, i.e., Christ-Jesus is a cosmic being for the good of mankind on earth.
They never let him return to France from his exile to China, despite many pleas. And his books were only published after his death.
Who was this man?
Steve
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The Bolshevist/Leninist Russian Constitution and Darwinism were also linked to apocalyptic forces by Steiner (and by Teilhard?):
“Not the World War, but what followed and is more terrible and even will be more terrible, for example, the current Constitution of Russia, …” (Book of Revelation GA 346_08)
“The cleverness of the human animal, the cleverness of human animal nature, is coming to the fore in human evolution through Leninism.” (Polarities, GA 197 p.43)
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“In fact, Steiner later highlighted three forms of ‘unfavourable initiation knowledge’: Anglo-Americanism, Jesuitism and Leninism (Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind, GA 197, 13 June 1920, p.43).”
The mixed metals collapsed in a heap.
Interpretation of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points by Colonel House
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/doc31.htm
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Who was this man?
If we first look at Ignatius Loyola appearing again in the soul of Emanuel Swedenborg. (GA0240, 5) It is seen how materialists become spiritualists and spiritualists become materialists
Fundamentals of the Science of Initiation
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19191017p01.html
If we now try to avoid reaching the positive results of spiritual science, if we find it boring to enter into the details of spiritual science, and only like to hear again and again how man’s soul becomes mystical, if we concentrate our chief attention upon the methods leading to the spiritual sphere, this will be the greatest temptation for really becoming materialists. The greatest temptation for becoming materialists is to ignore the concrete results of spiritual science and to emphasize continually the importance of mystical research, mystical soul-concentration, and the methods of entering the spiritual world.
You see this is a paradox. Those who observe natural science, natural research, become spiritualists; those who disdain to reach a real spiritual knowledge and who always speak of mysticism and of how spiritual knowledge is gained, are exposed to the great temptation of becoming more than ever materialistic. This should be known to-day. We cannot do without the knowledge of such things.
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Who was this man?
Steve, was it Charles Darwin?
(In parenthesis I dare say the sense of freedom that the American soul inherently feels is not understood by the rest of the world)
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I think Steve must be referring to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Thanks Jeremy, I have not heard of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin before. His life history is remarkable as well as his work. A lot to think about.
Best regards,
Caryn
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Yes. A very good book that traces his struggles, and how he gained consciousness of Christ as a cosmic-evolutionary Being is “The Jesuit and the Skull”, by Amir Aczel.
Father Teilhard died of a heart attack on Easter Sunday 1955, and only then was his well-kept secret legacy allowed to be transmitted to the world. The Jesuits consider him still to be an aberration of Catholic dogma. In truth, he was one of the shining lights of spiritual-evolutionary cognition, and a doctrine of pan-christosophy in the twentieth century.
Regards,
Steve
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It is seen here how Pierre was not recognized by the catholic church. Terrible when a man’s life is dictated to by oppression.
1939: Rome banned his work L’Énergie Humaine.
He then stayed in France, where he was immobilized by malaria. During his return voyage to Beijing he wrote L’Energie spirituelle de la Souffrance (Spiritual Energy of Suffering) (Complete Works, tome VII).
1941: Teilhard submitted to Rome his most important work, Le Phénomène Humain.
1947: Rome forbade him to write or teach on philosophical subjects.
1948: Teilhard was called to Rome by the Superior General of the Jesuits who hoped to acquire permission from the Holy See for the publication of his most important work Le Phénomène Humain. But the prohibition to publish it issued in 1944, was again renewed. Teilhard was also forbidden to take a teaching post in the College de France.
1949: Permission to publish Le Groupe Zoologique was refused.
1950: Teilhard was named to the French Academy of Sciences.
1955: Teilhard was forbidden by his Superiors to attend the International Congress of Paleontology.
1957: The Supreme Authority of the Holy Office, in a decree dated 15 November 1957, forbade the works of de Chardin to be retained in libraries, including those of religious institutes. His books were not to be sold in Catholic bookshops and were not to be translated into other languages.
1958: In April of this year, all Jesuit publications in Spain (“Razón y Fe”, “Sal Terrae”,”Estudios de Deusto”) etc., carried a notice from the Spanish Provincial of the Jesuits that Teilhard’s works had been published in Spanish without previous ecclesiastical examination and in defiance of the decrees of the Holy See.
1962: A decree of the Holy Office dated 30 June, under the authority of Pope John XXIII warned that “… it is obvious that in philosophical and theological matters, the said works [Teilhard’s] are replete with ambiguities or rather with serious errors which offend Catholic doctrine. That is why… the Rev. Fathers of the Holy Office urge all Ordinaries, Superiors, and Rectors… to effectively protect, especially the minds of the young, against the dangers of the works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and his followers”. (AAS, 6 August 1962).
1963: The Vicariate of Rome (a diocese ruled in the name of Pope Paul VI (who had just become Pope in 1963) by his Cardinal Vicar) in a decree dated 30 September, required that Catholic booksellers in Rome should withdraw from circulation the works of Teilhard, together with those books which favour his erroneous doctrines. The text of this document was published in daily L’Aurore of Paris, dated 2 October 1963, and was reproduced in Nouvelles De Chrétienté, 10 October 1963, p. 35.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin
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Dear Caryn,
Read his letters to his friend, Leontine Zanta, to whom he outlined his whole vision and idea. She was an important correspondent.
https://archive.org/details/LettersToLeontineZanta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9ontine_Zanta
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His initial Noogenesis work reminds me of Hegel’s Philosophy of History although I see from the below link “Noogenesis” has been turned into an artificial intelligence study.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noogenesis
Where is the Emanuel Swedenborg connection to be found?
🙂
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“Where is the Emanuel Swedenborg connection to be found?”
A flash of Intuition after much study, contemplation, and patient consideration. That lecture (5) from Volume VIII of the KR series is a decidedly unique study of Ignatius Loyola, and much can be gleaned by its careful consideration. Loyola did not go through the normal process of kamaloca and devachan after he died, but rather, was taken in hand by a Mars genii and remained outside of the higher worlds. Thus, while in the life after death, due to the influences of this Mars genii, and remaining more closely proximal to the earth, Loyola could continue to influence the activities of the Society of Jesus, and transform the original aims which he had in mind while he lived, into what now constitutes the Jesuit/Ahrimanic army of Jesus. Thus, modern Jesuitism is owing to a Mars influence that passed over to the society from the soul of Ignatius after his death. His original design for the society likened discipleship to Jesus-Christ in the form of a knighthood of the Holy Grail, and this was effectively overthrown through the influences of the Mars genii.
This study becomes the first consideration in the active dialectic and research involved in doing original spiritual-scientific investigation. Early on, I was directed to a significant prior life involving the recognition of Jesus, but opposition coming from Judaism, and causing warring activity, and this is what brought the Mars genii to bear in the afterlife of Loyola. Thus, he reincarnates in a completely different setting, within the Swedish culture, and now his life is split in half. The first half is devoted to extraordinary and original leading-edge scientific studies involving various aspects of the material earth, which could only have their source in the arabic sciences that evolved out of the Academy of Gondi-Shapur, and thus pointing to the pre-Loyola incarnation.
The second half of Swedenborg’s life finds him transported suddenly onto the astral plane, where he is now in communion with spiritual beings. Steiner has discussed this phase in various places, and how Swedenborg’s findings are
distorted because he meets again this Mars genii, who acts as a barrier to clear spiritual perception. But his life has suddenly been transferred to the spiritual world for some thirty years, until his death in 1772.
So, indeed, he passes from materialist to mystic in that life as Swedenborg, and can now return to the Jesuit order in his next life in a renewed quest to redeem the original intent of Ignatius Loyola. This we see in the magnificent work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wherein the Christ Impulse beats with fire and enthusiasm throughout his soul, and yet, now he becomes the victim of oppression due to the very influences that he had sent down through the Mars genii in the afterlife of Loyola.
There are other important factors, but this is a synopsis of the connecting links.
Steve
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Gemma wrote:
You clearly stated that: “We did not create the Eighth Sphere. It came about through the incentive given to Lucifer and Ahriman” You cannot have it both ways. Either Lucifer and Ahriman created the Eighth Sphere – as is implicit in your words above, or we did. In your lengthy comment, you did not answer this point.”
Please allow me to make it perfectly clear. The Eighth Sphere came into being at the time when the mineral kingdom, which formed via Jehova’s occupation of the earth-moon combination, passed over to the Earth, and thus causing the separation of the physical moon. During the transport process of passing the mineral substance over to Earth, guided by the Spirits of Form, Who were the regents of Earth evolution as the 4th Sphere, Lucifer and Ahriman, having been postured for the purpose of intercepting mineral substance meant for the Earth, attempted first to return it to the moon, and thereby gain the independence that they were encouraged to seek by rebelling against the Third Hierarchy.
The Physical moon, though, having now separated from the earth-moon combination had also been sealed-off, and therefore L & A had no recourse but to place mineral substance in another place. This other place was the relic of “Old Moon”, which had been made inert when the moon separated. The Eighth Sphere formed when mineral substance snatched by L & A from the Spirits of Form, was placed in the relic/remnant of “Old Moon”.
Thus, a sphere now exists that surrounds the earth, and is centered in the moon, but is transparent. Its content consists of densified imaginations, which mineral substance becomes in a domain where minerality does not belong. Lucifer and Ahriman are in the continuous process of wresting mineral substance for the Eighth Sphere. How? Because their activity has been relegated to the astral and etheric bodies, and thereby they can control the consciousness of human beings.
This process of mineral export from the moon to the Earth took place in the last half of the Lemurian epoch, and that is why Genesis gives a particularly early account of its occurrence beginning in chapter 2, v. 4, where “in the day the Lord God created earth and heaven” leads to the forming of man from the dust of the ground, i.e., mineral earth, and the Lord God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; man became a living being”, ref. v. 7.
So, all of this occurred long before mankind had any kind of individual freedom, and could make decisions or judgments related to good and evil. The human being only began to take on his present shape, form and figure, when the earth became a physical-mineral sphere. This began in the second half of the Lemurian epoch, possibly 50,000 years ago, when calculated to the 25920 year great Platonic cycles.
GA 254, lecture 5 particularly, gives a detailed description of how the Eighth Sphere formed, and how as a result, Lucifer and Ahriman took on their specific functions in the human being, and how our freedom is owed to these two, as well as the consequence of the existence of the Eighth Sphere.
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Thankyou for that insight. I accept what you say about the seed of the eighth sphere, if you understand me correctly. And, as you say, it is the basis for our freedom.
But we only have this freedom when we have consciously transformed both Ahriman and Lucifer. That is when one can truly tackle one’s own involvement with the eighth sphere.
Now, as you say, this was implanted in material creation from the start. This was something that heretofore I had overlooked. However, I have approached this issue from another point of view on my blog. Namely that of pain, which is an expression of what you speak of, but not the ultimate cause.
However, none of this answers the problems we face today. Just knowing that we can blame Ahriman and Lucifer for creating the Eighth Sphere simply isn’t going to help, is it? Nor, for that matter, knowing about pain.
Because whilst I accept your point as to its genesis, its continuing creation is entirely our own fault. Our unconscious striving for improved technology will only bury us deeper in the mire. As mentioned, only consciousness brings us freedom, and that consciousness must include the entire concept of the Eighth Sphere.
In short, you are saying that it was there to tempt us to abuse. My point is that we have abused it for far too long and in that we have abused our freedom to pillage rather than to consciously husband, we have created the catastrophe that is unfolding all around us today.
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Dear Gemma,
I think that largely you’re still missing the point of spiritual evolution. Lucifer and Ahriman are not to blame for the creation of the Eighth Sphere. It happened to arise out of their only solution to their dilemma of seeking a kind of independence. As a result, we gain the freedom that was not a part of the original plan of earth evolution.
The original plan of earth evolution is described nicely here in a lecture in which human evolution on earth, i.e., the fourth sphere, was to be a spiritual human being from beginning to end. We were designated to be the Fourth Hierarchy in the original plan, and Lords of the Earth. But, due to anomalies associated with the third sphere, or ‘Old Moon’ evolution, it came to pass that the original plan had to be scratched, and mankind driven down below its original divine status, and made the human kingdom, or lord over the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms.
This revised plan is what is described in Genesis, chapter two. The first chapter still holds to what God had in mind in the first place, i.e., chapter one, vs. 26-28. This accounts for the original conception in the Mind of God of a Fourth Hierarchy.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA233a/English/RSP1965/19240111p01.html
Now, the original plan of earth evolution was seen as humanity evolving from beginning to end in gaining the fourth hierarchy, or egohood under the auspices of the Exusiai, and in which Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man, would be the eventual outcome to completion. Yet, the prior conditions coming over from the 3rd Sphere would have caused this whole attainment to become a travesty. Mankind would have evolved to perfection, indeed, but also would have become a kind of statue, or monolith in the making.
By revising the original plan, and bringing humanity down a notch, and making it the ruler of the lower kingdoms, i.e., mineral, plant, and animal, the books of the OT of the Bible became our standard of spiritual history. Mankind was brought down in order to devolve through the so-called “Fall”, in which the 39 books of the OT describes very nicely. Mankind, as such, has had to reach a low point.
Then, Christ entered earth evolution at this low-point , which also happened to be the mid point of earth evolution, in which middle age was 33 years old. So, the miraculous redemption of the earth and humanity began, and miracles from above were seen as needed in the ongoing ravages owing to the onset of materialism, and its eventual corruption. To think that miracles are not a continuous presence in the life of human beings, and this very earth itself, is likely the cause of pain and sorrow felt today. But pain has a salve. It recognizes the Christ, and our own angel guardian, who confirms it.
So, Gemma, talk about pain experienced, because I would never have even broached the subject, although it is a reality with fallen humanity. My experience is losing a wife suddenly after 37 years of marriage, and we were just planning our retirement together. Then, she died of a heart attack, and left me alone. This is pain, and why I admire those, like Jeremy and Caryn Louise, who still have their mates to contest with. Pain is a nice subject to discuss, although spiritual science likely has the answer for a reasonable contemplation.
Steve
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The point of spiritual evolution is to arrive at a state where thoughts are clear. That is to say, where one’s thoughts meet the outside world without any interference from preconceptions.
This will lead to an ability to witness the truth, both large and small – and through its simplicity, will guide one away from thought constructions that are based on an initial misconception. I will repeat myself: the truth is simple.
Anything that is complex is the result of an initial misconception. The sheer size and complexity of the LHC at CERN is a case in point. A nuclear power plant is another. The banks’ ability to spin money out of thin air using computer algorithms that cheat the stockmarkets is a third.
None of these things is the result of clear thinking, because were that thought clear, it would have sought a far simpler solution. What is more, a solution that is far more powerful, useful and profitable. Believe me, simplicity works wonders.
As to pain, is it not the truth that it is subjective? Furthermore, is it not the result of an external circumstance? It is one reason why Ahriman is so hard to tackle: the results are initially painful.
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Steiner wrote of the dire condition of humanity falling into the realm of sub-nature in his final leading thoughts, published after his death. Here, he tells of the inevitability of mankind descending into the realm of technical science and mechanisms as a ruling power. Thus, Evil emanates from below upwards.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c29.html
In October 1911, [ ref. Etherization of the Blood, GA 130], he gives a graphic description of this sinking into sub-nature, and how Lucifer, Ahriman, and Asuras, create the technical materialism seen in today’s world from these lower regions. Evil is marked by what has occurred on the surface of the earth by these activities, and yet, it is part of the Riddle of Christ that He brought these powers down in order to inhabit the lower worlds. Thus, it is Christ who is actually the instigator of all material progress and advancement seen today in the renewed quest for spirit recognition. Evil, of course, seeks to maintain chaos and confusion, and keep humanity ignorant of the cultural imperative that awaits.
“We have the physical world, the astral world, the Lower Devachan and the Higher Devachan. If the body is thrust down lower even than the physical world, it comes into the sub-physical world, the lower astral world, the lower or evil Lower Devachan, and the lower or evil Higher Devachan. The evil astral world is the province of Lucifer, the evil Lower Devachan the province of Ahriman, and the evil Higher Devachan the province of the Asuras. When chemical action is driven down beneath the physical plane — into the evil Devachanic world — magnetism arises. When light is thrust down into the sub-material — that is to say, a stage deeper than the material world — electricity arises. If what lives in the Harmony of the Spheres is thrust down farther still, into the province of the Asuras, an even more terrible force — which it will not be possible to keep hidden very much longer — is generated. It can only be hoped that when this force comes to be known — a force we must conceive as being far, far stronger than the most violent electrical discharge — it can only be hoped that before some discoverer gives this force into the hands of humankind, men will no longer have anything un-moral left in them.”
Reflected as sub-physical world:
Astral World the province of Lucifer
Lower Devachan the province of Ahriman
Higher Devachan the province of the Asuras
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Steve Hale.
Again, you suggest that “Lucifer, Ahriman, and Asuras, create the technical materialism seen in today’s world”
Yet your argument rests on a quote from Rudolf Steiner that includes the following:
Thus the evil powers are responsible for the force we know as magnetism as well as the electric force.
These are not technology. These are elements of creation that have been pulled below the surface of the earth, and have a function to play there.
I must also emphasize that Rudolf Steiner speaks here of the electric force, which is part of what we commonly call ‘electricity’. Albeit that this is more correctly called electrical power, because it comprises of an electrical and a magnetic component.
In our creation of electrical power, we have brought fallen light (electric force) and fallen sound (magnetic force) and conjoined them like some bastardized siamese twin.
In the last part of your quotation, Rudolf Steiner says,
Given our dependence on the un-moral actions of humans in exploiting electrical power, is it any surprise that part of its generation we should pull Soradt’s evil out of its denizen as well? This was not Soradt’s doing, it was – is – ours. He stands as guardian of this ultimate toxicity in order that only those driven out of the highest moral qualities might use it beneficially.
It has to be emphasized again that technology and electrical power in particular is the result of our doing. It is the result of our not having met the challenges of Ahriman or Lucifer that evil of this kind has proliferated. Had we met their challenges, their inspiration would have led to beneficial technologies, not the destructive ones we see all around us.
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Gemma,
I didn’t suggest the downfallen roles of Lucifer, Ahriman, and Asuras, rather I stated this:
“Lucifer, Ahriman, and Asuras, create the technical materialism seen in today’s world from these lower regions. Evil is marked by what has occurred on the surface of the earth by these activities, and yet, it is part of the Riddle of Christ that He brought these powers down in order to inhabit the lower worlds. Thus, it is Christ who is actually the instigator of all material progress and advancement seen today in the renewed quest for spirit recognition. Evil, of course, seeks to maintain chaos and confusion, and keep humanity ignorant of the cultural imperative that awaits.”
Thus, it is the Christ Who has made material progress possible for 2000 years now. Electricity and magnetism are fallen properties that human ingenuity has made a part of the renewed Age of Light since the end of the long dark Kali Yuga in 1899. Responsible creative and inventive power of the human intellect has harnessed electricity and magnetism with positive results, and yet, the Asuras stands at the lowest level of the sub-earthly, and begs to influence these positive achievements with the deadly destructive force of the anti-trinity. Thus, Asuras, which equates to Soradt, makes Lucifer and Ahriman pawns in corrupting human intelligence at every possible opportunity.
Spiritual science exists to cultivate conscious vigilance for all that is good by recognizing all that is bad, or evil. You see, evil cannot truly be conscious as claimed. Soradt’s consciousness is inverted, or inconscient. He is the great exploiter of all that can be used to serve death and destruction. He lacks all logic, which is why he uses special operatives that can mimic human intelligence at the present level of shadow-thinking, and create seemingly logical stratagems, but always with the underlying illogic of pain, suffering, and death and destruction as the outcome. Thus, Soradt uses replicants to fake a kind of intelligence which is not real. Ref. GA 204, lecture 14.
You stated earlier: “The point of spiritual evolution is to arrive at a state where thoughts are clear. That is to say, where one’s thoughts meet the outside world without any interference from preconceptions. This will lead to an ability to witness the truth, both large and small – and through its simplicity, will guide one away from thought constructions that are based on an initial misconception. I will repeat myself: the truth is simple.”
Yes, ultimately, the truth is simple. And, we will get there some day, hopefully. But earth evolution has been made extremely complex through the Fall, and whereby the original Spiritual Man, became the Human Kingdom. If Christ had not come to earth and conducted the Mystery of Golgotha, we’d all be right down there with Lucifer, Ahriman, and Asuras, as sub-earthly dwellers. Consider that.
But, because of Christ, the ascent has been made possible, and the entire spiritual-evolutionary system has been infinitely expanded through the forming of Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan as the spheres that will embody Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. Thus, the fall of man was not without a purpose and sacrifice. In truth, we haven’t really sinned. Lucifer and Ahriman were simply made compulsory influences when we had no choice in the matter.
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If you knew what electricity actually does in esoteric terms, you would turn pale.
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So please lighten us in our darkness, Gemma, and tell us what you know electricity does in esoteric terms.
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Gemma, why would someone not turn red? Are we talking about a future absence or replacement? I am sorry to wait so long to ask. Should this find you and you wish to answer, try shizz at proton mail dot com perhaps.
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If I did, Jeremy, would it only be “my point of view”?
Understand this: if a person expresses themsevles, that is them showing their point of view. If they see or speak of confusion – as is done on this comment thread – you will know they have work to do.
If you, yourself see confusion in something a person writes, then you must ask yourself “is it me, or is it them?”
The ways of the fallen ethers in our material world is one that is paradoxical and confusing, and rightfully so. They are our challenge now, if humanity is to have a future.
You can take what I say, if I say it, but you must not take it as a weak minded person shovels up the words of their guru – or for that matter, Rudolf Steiner – and merely parrot them. It is your job to take those words and digest them inwardly. Only then can a master know that they have someone from whom they can truly learn – and share the inner workings of their own mind. And do so in the knowledge that they aren’t going to be shouted at for being confrontational.
Being confrontational is our work in the Fifth Epoch.
Only when a person is ready to take confrontation from any angle, and be able to discern that which is merely abusive from that which is conscious – see my comment about Socrates, above – only then are they on the path where the secrets of the fallen ethers will have meaning.
But I warn you, it will be a very painful and very shocking meaning.
Are you ready for that?
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Don’t beat about the bush, Gemma, confrontation is your default setting. Let us have it!
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Those who engage with me, who accept confrontation as part and parcel of our work in the Fifth Epoch, will quickly discover there is no bush to beat around.
Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds.
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Well, Gemma, that either means: (a) you don’t think I’m qualified to receive your esoteric knowledge about electricity; or (b) you haven’t got any such knowledge yourself. Which is it, please?
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Let me put this to you: the people I’m looking for are not prejudiced. They don’t go around looking for people in authority: they, like my wise man, can learn from a frog or a frump. They will be able to distinguish the quality of what they learn from a frog – which may well be better than that of a frump.
They’ll never know unless they dispense with their prejudices, their assumptions, and simply watch, listen and absorb. I will add that this is how I learned, for initiates are few and far between in our day and age. All I had were books written a century ago.
The people I am looking for do not state dichotomies of the kind you have – the ‘either/or’ statements, both statements assume something about (a) yourself and (b) me which may (or may not be) true. Dichotomies arise from the Intellectal Soul.
Just as the inability to deal with the confusions one meets in one’s life. That is to say, seeing them as confusions and not a challenge to one’s own ability to reason. Meeting a frog is a challenge, just as is meeting a frump. Both challenge a person’s assumptions about the world.
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Ah, we’re back to your “intellectual soul” trope. This is the assumption you frequently make about individuals without knowing the first thing about the person you are describing.
Since you’ve not responded to my request for more information about the esoteric effects of electricity, my new assumption about you is that you probably don’t know anything about it. Or is that unfair?
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“troupe”? Why disparage that which lies within us all?
As to my knowing – or not knowing – would you honestly expect an answer when you keep denigrating my comments?
It is one thing to do this consciously, in the manner described by Socrates.
It is quite another to think oneself correct to do so.
You show the very negativity that lives in the intellectual soul during the fifth epoch, where the intellectual soul is no longer sufficient to deal with the conditions we now live in? Which means it must fight for breath in the only way it can?
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The word I used was “trope”, Gemma – it means a common or overused theme, device or cliche, e.g. as you’ve just demonstrated in your constant references to the intellectual soul when making comments about me, although we’ve never met or spoken.
Is it negative for me to point out that you have claimed to have knowledge of the esoteric effects of electricity but have then failed to provide any evidence of this knowledge, despite having been asked politely to do so on several occasions? You decide.
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Jeremy, I never said that I would tell you, did I? I stated:
All you have done is make demands of me, and complain when I keep my counsel.
You have never yet shown me that you can think something through for yourself.
If you thought things through for yourself, you would realize where I was wrong and you were right – rather than avoiding the question entirely.
And so we go around again, you demand, I refuse.
Because if I simply told you, you’d look at me wih a funny expression. You’d not realize the significance of the words I used, because you only read the words and accept them as words and nothing more.
The entire point of initiation is that it cannot be described in words. But it can be described using words. The question is how one does this.
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Gemma, I think people will draw their own conclusions from these exchanges.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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For those of them who have opened the eyes of their consciousness soul, will be able to see with clear sight those who are bound by the intellectual soul.
Those who are still bound will forever be puzzling as to how this is done…
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I know you must always have the last word, Gemma, so let us leave things there.
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Please allow two utterly nonsensical statements to be posted for comparison:
Ton writes today: “The elementary, anti-egotic Rock Being, or World Humour in Steiner’s sculptural group (GA0181/19180703) can be seen as a counter image to the mocking Two-horned Beast from the Abyss (a winged head represents an Archai, 243_09).”
and,
Gemma writes: “Anything that is complex is the result of an initial misconception. The sheer size and complexity of the LHC at CERN is a case in point. A nuclear power plant is another. The banks’ ability to spin money out of thin air using computer algorithms that cheat the stockmarkets is a third.”
I see these two statements as showing a lack of reality within the context of this particular discussion. They each demonstrate the lack of a cohesive position, and only serve to confuse the entire issue. It only proves that in today’s world, the word is not mightier than the sword, and any opinion can be stated to the derision of any other. Spiritual-scientific facts are nothing more than another opinion, waiting to be superseded, like these above. I would love to hear from these two contributors just what they mean by their respective statements.
Steve
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Steve Hale.
Such things only ‘confuse the entire issue’ becuase you cannot see the single process that underlies each of the three happenings I spoke of.
When a person speaks of confusion, or of someone else making statements that are confusing, that is a clear statement that they see the world through the eyes of the Intellectual Soul.
If somebody says something that is confusiing, ask yourself “is it me or is it them?” Because if it is your own inability to see through confusion, then that is the point at which you nust work. It is no different for me, and it is no different for you.
If a person can only see confusion, it is a clear statement that they do not possess clarity in that area of their thinking. I know this because there are areas that are not clear in mine; the difference is not only that I am aware of this when it happens, but am aware of what to do about it.
Most people want Christ to do the work for them, work that is their own duty in this, the Fifth Epoch. Your duty is to see what underlies all these confusing happenings, and you cannot do it by thinking that is fit for the Fourth Epoch.
Because that is what you use when you see confusion.
Our task is to see the processes that lie beneath the veil of confusion.
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Steve, even to Prokofieff (1999) the “essential nature and cosmic origin” of the “Beast coming up out of the earth” (Rev.13), “who does not belong to human evolution” (p.15), remained a mystery.
Doesn’t the same hold for World Humour, “in a sense growing out of the rocks”, as described by Steiner (1918), with the methodical remark: “You know how often, when the highest spiritual subjects are being discussed, I mix with our considerations something not designed to take you out of the mood, but simply to banish any egoistic sentimentality from it.”?
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Steve, even to Prokofieff (1999) the “essential nature and cosmic origin” of the “Beast coming up out of the earth” (Rev.13), “who does not belong to human evolution” (p.15), remained a mystery.
Doesn’t the same hold for World Humour, “in a sense growing out of the rocks”, as described by Steiner (1918), with the methodical remark: “You know how often, when the highest spiritual subjects are being discussed, I mix with our considerations something not designed to take you out of the mood, but simply to banish any egoistic sentimentality from it.”?
Cf. “So one day someone came before the provisional form of the statue of the new Isis, and up above at the left was placed a figure of humorous deportment, which in its world-mood had something between seriousness, a serious idea of the world and, one might say, even a chuckling about the world.” GA180/19180106
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“Whenever electricity is used — and much else besides — there is far more of demon magic because this operates with entirely different forces having an entirely different significance for the cosmos. Obviously, anyone who understands spiritual science will realize quite clearly that these things should not be done away with, that we cannot be reactionary or conservative in the sense that we must be opposed to progress. Indeed, the demon magic signifies progress, and the earth will continue to make more and more progress. Developments in the world soon will make it possible to produce immense effects ranging outward into the universe. Doing away with these things or condemning them is not what we are after because they are obviously justified. But what must be borne in mind is that since they must appear on the one side in the course of human progress, counter forces must be created on the other to reestablish a balance. Counter forces must be created. They must bring about a balance that can be created only if humanity again comes to understand the Christ principle, if humanity finds the way to Christ.” GA 172_09
“Humanity must learn to deal with nature as the gods have done; it should learn not to construct machines in an indifferent way but to fulfill a divine service and bring sacramentalism into everything that is produced.” GA 172_10
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/ConEle_index.html
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/SecSoc_index.html
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“Whenever electricity is used — and much else besides — there is far more of demon magic because this operates with entirely different forces having an entirely different significance for the cosmos.” – is this the technology that you suggest Christ inspired?
Because bringing sacraments into the things we make means leaving pure, unredeemded evil behind. Our problem is to redeem the sub-earthly forces, bring them into the light above the surface of the earth in a way that does not pollute our planet.
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The full quote will bring the importance of conscious human redemption into account for the working of machines and the elementary forces harnessed thereby. Christ inspires conscious transformation of the sub-earthly powers right here on the surface, where humans work. It is a matter of our taking responsibility for technology by turning all productive potential, and its outcomes, to the good; and in the name of Christ.
“If it is to turn to this worship of Christ, mankind will still need a long time on earth. Nevertheless, we must begin again to take Christianity earnestly. It is taken least of all seriously by the theologians who are frequently in conflict over whether or not Christ performed miracles and, for example, drove out demons through them. Well, it is entirely superfluous to argue over whether or not Christ drove out demons. It is more important that we learn to reproduce His miracles and thereby cast the demons out now where we can. We still have little power to cast out demons in the higher sense as antiquity knew how to do through its atavism. That is the destiny, the karma, of our epoch. But we can begin to drive out those demons of whom I spoke yesterday; they are there and it is negative superstition to suppose that they are not. How do we drive them out? Humanity will be convinced that they are being driven out when what is unholy service today becomes holy; that is, permeated with the Christ consciousness. In other words, this means that we must change to a sacramentalism in which man’s deeds are imbued by the consciousness that the Christ stands behind him everywhere. Thus, he ought to do nothing in the world except that in which the Christ can help him. If he does something else, the Christ must also help him but He is thus crucified again and again in human deeds. The crucifixion is not merely a single deed; it is a continuing deed. So long as we do not drive out the demons through what lives in our souls by changing external mechanical actions into holy actions, we will continue to crucify Christ. It is from this point that our education to a true Christianity must begin. What was symbolically practiced in the ancient cults of Christianity and was once performed only on the altar must take hold of the entire world. Humanity must learn to deal with nature as the gods have done; it should learn not to construct machines in an indifferent way but to fulfill a divine service and bring sacramentalism into everything that is produced.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA172/English/AP1984/19161127p01.html
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Steve Hale.
“The full quote will bring the importance of conscious human redemption into account for the working of machines and the elementary forces harnessed thereby.”
It must be remembered how Rudolf Steiner describes mechanically (electrical, material) light and compares it with sunlight, true light. Mechanical light, produced by the sub-ethers has no counterpart on the other side of the threshold.
Sunlight exists both across the threshold and here on earth too.
You continue thus: “Christ inspires conscious transformation of the sub-earthly powers right here on the surface, where humans work.”
Indeed so, but does so in our minds. For this is the truth of how the sub-earthly electrical force can be transformed.
It is not transformed through any action of humans or fallen spiritual beings on earth. This is because it has no counterpart across the threshold.
Truly inspired thinking, however, does.
The only moral technology is one that is free, and can be inspired by the mind that is illuminated by the Christ forces you speak of. That this technology is moral, it can have no basis in karma. That is to say, it can have no contact with the products from beneath the earth or the sub-earthly forces.
When you can reason this out for yourself and have no need to rest on the karma of Rudolf Steiner’s quotes, you too will come to see how the free decision can have no association with karma.
This part of ourselves – be it ever so small – is that part of us that is eternal. It rests on the foundation of the consciousness soul, which in itself, rests on the intellectual soul, which rests upon the sentience that we share with our animal friends. Thus the intellectual soul is important in our lives and we cannot speak inways that denigrate it; however its place in our conscious lives must be subordinated beneath the needs of the consciousness soul.
Just as the consciousness soul bows to that which is eternal in us.
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I’ll put it the other way around: if we are to work with a technology that is truly inspired by the Logos, we must work with Creation and not against it.
That is to say, such technologies will not rely on so-called fossil fuels. Which are, after all, dug out of the ground, burned and cast aside as warmth and ashes. We cannot rely on a technology that pulls the electric and magnetic ethers from beneath the ground. Through our confusion, we combine these two to form… ‘electricity’ (you really couldn’t confuse the situation any better if the technologists had tried!).
Therefore: we must redeem the fallen sound ether and redeem the fallen light ether – and employ them for the benefit of all creation, not just to sate our own greed. That is to say, we must raise them from the dead, but not in a way that brings death to us all.
We must do this in a living way. A moral way. That is to say, using thinking that does not rely on anything else but our own power of reason. Anybody who quotes, or defers their decision-making to another person must learn how to make decisions for themselves.
Terms and conditions apply 😉
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Dear Gemma,
“Terms and conditions apply”. I agree with you absolutely, and hope that you agree with me that we are dealing with a situation that far exceeds the mere means of the so-called “we” that you seem to indicate is what is needed to save the world against all of the evil agents that would have it their way.
You see, the “we”, which you continuously refer to, represents the bulk of humanity today, and buys easily into the fossil fuel mentality, amongst other nonstrocities, which also prevail into the modern propaganda.
So, in the consideration that the “we” of normal human well-being is oriented to Christ-consciousness, owing to the actual event occurring nearly two thousand years ago, wouldn’t that entail that the “we” of humanity knows that another force and power exists for the good of mankind? I remember always thanking Christ for what He had brought into the world, even as a child. As an adult, I got to see the opposite of what I knew was true as a child, and yet I knew that this must be the workings of the Logos, and needing to be accepted in our day and age.
I would hope that these discussions might prove to be a remembrance for us all. Last week, I drove through my old neighborhood when I was a boy and remembered how us kids were embraced by Christ as we were growing up. I would invite anybody to walk or drive through their old neighborhood now, and remember what it was like. Now, having just turned 66, I am convinced of my mission in life. It is to help Gemma feel the Christ working in her life.
As such, please note that the “we” that you seem to degrade is actually the Soradtic opposite of Christ, which is the one that wants to kill humanity. Normal humans make me go back to my childhood, and remember that we were firm in His bosom, although there were other elements which noted the unknown at the time. Life brings these into focus; even now. They show those that see only a miserable failure of mankind.
I have never seen this as a possibility, although my father died feeling that the world was worthless, owing to his experiences in the Battle of Okinawa. Thus, he tried as best he could. For myself, I remember growing up on a peaceful little street, and I thank God for that.
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Dear Gemma,
I liked this response very much, but felt impelled to write last night about your overuse of the terms, “we”, and “our”, and even “us”. You see, I feel that the combine of we/our/us is referring to everyday human beings who work in the humilitous conduct of life, according to what has been provided and is useful, including modern-day technology. Thus, the Christian perspective today is owing to what is useful and true, as it benefits society, and even knowing that it originates out of demonic forces. This fact becomes the responsibility that students of spiritual science see and write about here.
What I sought to convey originally, which never appeared, is that the forces of evil have a hand, as well, in all this progress, and for a different purpose, ultimately. They would have we/our/us kowtowing to their tune, but it isn’t happening. Why? Because the Christ Power that made it all possible in the first place, is winning out. People today utilize and make value out of what is given, and they do it sensibly and with a great deal of reason.
Thus, even the denizens of technology are being lifted up, as we speak.
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“I feel that the combine of we/our/us is referring to everyday human beings who work in the humilitous conduct of life, according to what has been provided and is useful, including modern-day technology.”
We were all created equal when the Logos created us. We all had the same chances and we brought the challenges we face through our own karma.
We cannot deal with our own karma by imagining Christ will do it for us.
I am sorry if I have made too much use of the words “us” and “our”.
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“We cannot deal with our own karma by imagining Christ will do it for us.”
That is true, and alludes to a very weak fundamentalist viewpoint. In reality, we must find the Christ again without any illusory imaginations owing to karma, but rather, with the strong and responsible incentive to redeem the lower self through all the possibilities and challenges given in today’s world, and helped greatly with the initiation science afforded by anthroposophical studies, e.g., GA 187, which tells of how the Spirits of Personality (Archai), are now the creative powers working for the good of ego development.
Remember, the Asuras would have the human ego succumb to the forces of evil if it weren’t for the Archai, Whose Time Spirit is Michael Himself. Thus, Michael aligns nicely with Christ, and making it possible for simple, faithful, trusting do-gooders to populate the earth for all the right reasons. This fact is proven, regardless of religion, or existentialist/secular incentive. That is why the “we of us” is important.
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The life-ether (atomistic ether 93a_09, sense-ether 114_07) and its sub-physical opposite, the third force (130_06), seem to be connected with the principle of resonance (wireless telegraphy) and with crystals (in explosives and in digital electronic semiconductors):
“A similar force to that by which wireless telegraphy works will be at man’s disposal in a future age, without even any apparatus; this will make it possible to cause great devastation over long distances, without anyone being able to discover where the disturbance originated. Etc.”, 93_20 (1906).
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Another aspect is the Mystery of evil as yetzer hara (the inclination to do evil):
“There is no crime in all the world, but that every single human being, inasmuch as he belongs to the fifth Post-Atlantean age, has in his subconsciousness the inclination towards it — I say again, the inclination. Whether in one case or another the inclination to evil leads to an external evil action depends on quite other circumstances than on the inclination itself.” 185_05
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Ton wrote:
“There is no crime in all the world, but that every single human being, inasmuch as he belongs to the fifth Post-Atlantean age, has in his subconsciousness the inclination towards it — I say again, the inclination. Whether in one case or another the inclination to evil leads to an external evil action depends on quite other circumstances than on the inclination itself.” 185_05
We all bear the inclination to do evil, but largely repress it, and even when we succumb to it, we feel mounds of guilt for its conduct. This is the tendency to be cruel to others. It bears a great price for the Christian soul because it hurts for the doing, and maybe for a long time. But, it also shows that the Christ Impulse is a very strong force working in the world in order to gain the ultimate advantage over evil, which is the Soradtic initiative, which also has its history of allegiance.
Thus, cruelty is what makes for the evolution of evil, and likely most of us could hardly stand to hear how its novitiates stood to take the test. It starts with vivisection to live beings; animals in the early stage, and human beings today.
I quote:
“When someone forms such concepts, s/he actually slashes — spiritually, I mean — into the person with whom s/he is dealing. If we do not wish to slash into a personality with our concepts, we should simply have to characterize in a loving way the nature of the school in all its narrowness and how it brought forth this individuality. But people slash — and criticize, which is surely slashing in many respects. What is the cause of this?
It comes from cruelty, a quite definite characteristic that is widespread in the thought system of the present and is rooted in the subconscious. Since people lack the courage to practice this cruelty outwardly, they are cruel in their concepts and ideas. In many works of the present time we observe this cruelty in descriptions and representations. We observe it in much that is done and said, and it is far more common at the bottom of the soul than is ordinarily supposed. I have told you that in some schools of black magic the custom exists of acquiring the means for performing black magic by having the novitiate cut into the flesh of living animals. Certain characteristics are thus developed in the soul. Not everyone can do that at present, but many people gratify the same lust through their system of concepts; this does not lead to black magic, of course, but to our present civilization. Much today is permeated by this characteristic; of this we must be entirely clear. We arrive at an unprejudiced grasp of the world only by paying attention to such things; it is achieved in no other way.
Today, beginnings tending toward attaining a particular view of the relationships of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch do exist everywhere. We do not come to understand this period when we simply criticize it or surrender to an abstract idealism, without taking into consideration that what appears in the form of mechanism, as a mechanistic culture, belongs absolutely and necessarily to it. Merely to condemn the mechanical element has no meaning whatever. Now, beginnings toward some understanding of what gives continuing life to our fifth post-Atlantean epoch have actually appeared, but few concepts that correspond with reality have yet been found for it and there is little inclination to pay attention to those who have tried to grasp it. It will be necessary for us to deal with these people whose endeavors will be a point of departure for true energetic, spiritual scientific activities.” GA 172_06
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In general: [the forces of evil] exist in order that man, when he reaches the stage of the Spiritual Soul, may break through into the spiritual life. (Evil and the Future of Man, 185_05)
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Ton Majoor.
Tell me how one can discern within oneself the ‘Spiritual Soul’ within ourselves? How does this differ from the intellectual soul that dwells within us all?
Given that one cannot rely on what other people say or write, if one is to develop one’s Spiritual Soul…
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“For example: As long as I am simply looking at these flowers in front of me and my feelings are moved by the pure whiteness of the rose, I am given up to my Sentient Soul. If, however, I avert my gaze and no longer see the flowers but only think about them, then I am given over to my Intellectual or Mind-Soul. I am working in thought upon the impressions I have received. If now I say to myself that because the flowers have given me pleasure I will gladden someone else by presenting them to him and then pick them up in order to hand them over, I am performing a deed; I am passing out of the realm of the Mind-Soul into that of the Consciousness-Soul and relating myself again to the outer world. Here is a third force which operates in man and enables him not only to work over in thought the impressions of the outer world, but to relate himself to that world again.” 119_02
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Ton, you responded with a very good quote from 119_02, in answer to Gemma’s question:
“Tell me how one can discern within oneself the ‘Spiritual Soul’ within ourselves? How does this differ from the intellectual soul that dwells within us all; given that one cannot rely on what other people say or write, if one is to develop one’s Spiritual Soul…?”
We need to consider the concept of the emancipation of thinking in the so-called “Head organization”, and how it seeks to be independent of the rest of the human organism, i.e., heart and limb systems. As such, the inner planets Venus and Mercury work in relation to this cause of the head seeking its realization in the supersensible worlds. They work to accelerate, based on their respective motions, a more ‘heady’ experience than can be experienced through the earth itself, which seeks to keep the head at rest.
Thus, we could say in all honesty, that Venus and Mercury are working in close association with Spiritual Science in order to achieve a kind of clarity of meaning in our day and age. As planetary influences, they will be with us even after death whilst we enjoy all that we have striven for in the domain of spiritual science for telling the awful truths that must be told in this very profane world.
Yes, with the head, we can emancipate ourselves from the mere thoughts that accord the Intellectual Soul. Yet, while a measure of freedom exists owing to the Intellectual Soul and the Ego that is born unto the Consciousness Soul, it can only be the latter, i.e., the Consciousness Soul that can truly know and exclaim the truth. The moral imperative for a Moral World Order, thus, exists with us.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/ManHiero/19200502p01.html
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Ton Majoor,
you quote a figure in authority. That was the challenge he set you: to understand what he said, but to transform it within yourself so that you have no dependence on the things he merely said.
But share in the understandings he could only hint at in the things he wrote.
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Gemma, the quote illustrates my understanding of the difference in dynamics between intellectual and consciousness soul (already known as kinetikon and dianoetikon by Aristotle, On the Soul).
And this dynamics does not only hold for Truth, but also for the goal of moral Goodness:
“Although the highest manifestation of the “I” belongs to the consciousness soul, one must, nevertheless, say that this “I” raying out from it fills the whole soul, and through it exerts its action upon the body.” 009_c01_4
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Ton Majoor,
“the quote illustrates my understanding of the difference in dynamics between intellectual and consciousness soul”
Only the very fact you use a quotation means the dynamic of the things you say is firmly rooted in the intellectual soul…
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Gemma, is your quote on August 18 derived from your own unpublished book ‘Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds’? If that is not the case, why would you rely on Steiner’s quote and authority to suggest you should be called an initiate yourself? And then prescribe to me something, you don’t do yourself…
Using your consciousness soul (dianoetikon) is not enough, it should be filled with the spirit-self (nous).
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Ton Majoor.
I am quite sure you are aware of the provenance of that quotation.
If you have read my other comments, you will see that the number of times I have quoted someone is relatively rare.
You continue by using terminology; which is all well and good. The point isn’t whether you employ terminology, but whether you understand what those concepts mean in your own conscious self. For it is one thing to write them, and quite another to fully understand how they manifest themselves within you.
It is for this reason that I ask those who comment to employ their own understanding, and that implies expressing themselves using their own words – and no terminology. That way everybody can see where you are coming from.
Just as you would be able to see where I am coming from had you…
… but that is the point, isn’t it?
Because if you could see where I am coming from, you wouldn’t question whether I was an intitate or not: you would know if I were or not.
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Gemma, I suspect that most of us have already come to our own conclusions on that last point.
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Gemma, ‘Only the very fact you use a quotation [by Steiner] means the dynamic of the things you say is firmly rooted in the intellectual soul…’. That is why you’re so fond of Socratic dialogues.
But suppose you are a (Rosicrucian?) initiate, how can you escape the dilemma, that other people will look at you as an authority (rooted in the intellectual soul, where as my own judgements are rooted in the consciousness soul)?
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Ton Majoor,
when you say
What dilemma is there to escape from? All I can say is that I truly pity poor Rudolf Steiner, with his troops of Anthroposophists who quote his words – but who never do the things he asked them to do in those very quotes.
It is why I now treasure my outward appearance as someone that people habitually disregard – or even ridicule! Because I know that if someone does that to me, they have already failed the test.
Because if you had developed your consciousness soul, you’d not even have raised the point… the tone of our exchange would have been very different from the start. You would have known with whom you were speaking simply by the way I answered you – and asked questions of you, in response.
Because if there’s one thing I share with those who know me well, it is how easy it is to do this. Because there is always a point at which my friends say “these people ask me how I can know these things about them when I have only known them for ten minutes. Yet it’s so easy… but just try to explain it to them. They just don’t get it.”
As to whether that makes me an initiate or not, I leave to you. It matters not a fig to me what you think; I am interested in those who share with me. They can share because they have the confidence that arises with the blossoming of the consciousness soul.
My work is not to change people; my work is to find those who are ready to change.
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So, Ton Majoor.
When you meet someone, what question do you ask them in order to know if they are an initiate?
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Gemma, you only say, you want to fill their intellectual soul with the contents of your own consciousness soul.
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And what happens when they have a consciousness soul? What happens then?
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Ton wrote:
“Gemma, you only say, you want to fill their intellectual soul with the contents of your own consciousness soul.”
Indeed. She also says:
“All I can say is that I truly pity poor Rudolf Steiner, with his troops of Anthroposophists who quote his words – but who never do the things he asked them to do in those very quotes.”
Of course they do. They are being informed, which begins a process in which the content of information is taken into the Kinetikon as concepts. It takes three days for concepts to be rounded-off and enter the Threptikon [Etheric Body]. Thus, knowledge in the form of concepts begins to become understanding in three days. That is why it is important to sleep, and never make haste. This diagram further elaborates the importance of Venus and Mercury for the waking Dianoetikon, as previously indicated from GA 201_11. So, you see, citing quotes is done to indicate both scholarship and practice.
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Steve Hale.
You say that “Thus, knowledge in the form of concepts begins to become understanding in three days.”
That is true to a degree, albeit that there are times when this doesn’t happen so fast.
Could you tell me how you would find out if the knowledge you shared with someone has truly become understanding? Because you can’t just ask them ” do you understand this?” – because they’ll just say yes (when they don’t actually fully understand the concept you were trying to share).
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Gemma wrote:
“and what happens when they have a consciousness soul? What happens then?”
It is possible at that point to prove that a very significant event occurred in which the possibility of a Consciousness Soul began.
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Steve Hale.
You say “It is possible at that point to prove that a very significant event occurred in which the possibility of a Consciousness Soul began.”
Proof lies in the realm of the intellectual soul.
That which cannot be proven is what the consciousness soul is all about.
Are you following me?
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All recognisable kinds of initiates exist (see examples above). E.g. Jesuits work directly upon the will of their pupils (see Caryn’s quote above), with vivid images or examples from the Gospels.
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Ton Majoor.
You say “All recognisable kinds of initiates exist”
Rudolf Steiner was heard to say, with respect to freemasonry, that it should be a freemason who should speak about freemasonry. He went on to say that there were no initiates in the halls of freemasonry, the people who would be eligible to speak about freemasonry.
Given that there are none in freemasonry, it is unlikely that there would be an initiate in the earthly institution that is Jesuitism. Or many others…
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Gemma wrote: “Proof lies in the realm of the intellectual soul. That which cannot be proven is what the consciousness soul is all about. Are you following me?”
Yes, but I disagree that the consciousness soul is all about that which cannot be proven. That sounds like another excuse to reject what spiritual science exists to prove, and upheld by living human experience. In other words, the consciousness soul is as much a proof-bearing entity as is the sentient soul, and the intellectual soul. Why? Because all three support an Ego, in which Thinking, Feeling, and Willing comprise the total package of Truth, Reality, and, yes, all the proofs necessary to make this known.
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Quote: “… there is probably no such Freemason in existence in the whole of Europe” (GA093/ 19041209).
An initiate in the narrower sense (not clairvoyant or magician) uses the intellect to understand the laws of the supernatural worlds (GA 101, called initiation in GA 10 and inspiration in GA 13).
The encounter with evil forces on a daily basis occurs when waking up (lesser guardian, inward, imagination) and falling asleep (greater guardian, outward, inspiration). See 119_03 and 124_05, cf. 013_c05-09.
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Hello Jeremy,
Please do not feel bereft anymore because Gemma is just too shy and circumspect to answer your question about electricity.
Just today, Andrew Linnell, a long-time Anthroposophist with a career in high ahrimanic computer technology has just published a working draft of his paper called “Refined Breathing,” where he thoroughly answers your question about electricity in the light of anthroposophy.
I believe this link will bring you directly to page 39 of the document. The entire exposition ends on page 44
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1h2pH8c3laU0HoTNjZbZLHix2NKuMmizUvHKBaK8eB_4/edit#slide=id.g11743523d1_2_406
Tom
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An interesting and useful link, Tom – thank you.
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This paper does not deal with the immediate and subjective elements of breathing – which, by the way, are completely different processes. These two processes have a direct manifestation in the way we feel when breathing in and breathing out. This can be taken further when associating the will with breathing.
His thoughts on the threshold are materialistic.
For example, he says
Clever, yes; knowledgeable, no. This must be clearly understood if one is to understand the manner in which they inspire us – and the part we play when thus inspired. In short, there are things the gnomes cannot do, that we do for them. If we are unconscious of this, how can we know if we are acting morally?
This is something we can only do within ourselves, and this aspect has not been dealt with in this paper. He speaks of how the intellect is in decline, of how this is an objective reality – but he does not speak of this in a way where we can learn what we can to to counter this within ourselves.
Later he speaks of “Matter and anti-matter” – it must be emphasized that Counter-space, the realms beyond the threshold are not a mirror of our material world. Which is what anti-matter suggests (see my post on my public blog which looks at this in detail along with a hint of the reality).
Later, he speaks of gravity and levity; these things, if they exist at all, are material concepts. The truth of the etheric is subtly different – and like Goethe’s explanation of how the prism works on pure light, shows that Newton’s material science is correct in what it sees, but not in what it assumes or ascribes.
In short, he broaches none of the things that I would speak of electricity, were I speaking with someone who could grasp them.
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Over the last weeks I have been consumed with moving from my 10 acres of rural land and house into a new and simpler phase of life. Tonight I read through weeks of discussion on Islam and technology. The overall impression I have is how some understand the evil present in Islam, while others understand the evil present in “fallen light.”
I have wondered if anyone would articulate the various threads? Some appear to fear the Western powers, others the Eastern and others the MiddleEastern. While blame is placed on man, or Christ, or Cosmic Law there also does not appear to be reference to a broader Cosmic plan that includes evil and freedom. – There was such reference in passing, but most of the debate was placed in Islam vs. Technology and the role Christ has in both of these. I suppose it is a sign of where we are in our evolution that we must focus on “who” was the cause, rather than accepting the situation and how we may face it?
Islam is the vehicle for evil in the MiddleEast and this is now being exported to Europe. It does not matter if at one time Islam served a purpose, although study of its origins is enlightening. In the here and now it is a vehicle, and that vehicle was germinated in the life of Muhammed.
Technology and the beings associated thrive off of the fallen ethers. Yet to be a luddite is antithetical to a solution. The path then is to bring consciousness to technology. Shutting down nuclear plants will not bring consciousness to technology, even if such thoughts are comforting. It is interesting to me that there is no contrast made here between nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors. Are they one and the same?
In both cases then the question is how we react to the march of these forces of evil in our time? Do we raise our consciousness or remain mired in “who” started it? Does it matter more “who” started it or “how” we meet it? – Oh, and I almost forgot the discussion on Ahriman’s incarnation. The reference to Karl Rove or Cheney is rather insulting to Ahriman. Someone pointed that out brilliantly! To think that such caricatures of the left-wing would be Ahriman tells you more about who proposed such an idea.
I have to run, but with Tom’s late breaking input with Andrew’s very well crafted slides I thought a summary of where we are stands to order. More to come.
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Dear Gemma,
You wrote:
“The only moral technology is one that is free, and can be inspired by the mind that is illuminated by the Christ forces you speak of. That this technology is moral, it can have no basis in karma. That is to say, it can have no contact with the products from beneath the earth or the sub-earthly forces. When you can reason this out for yourself and have no need to rest on the karma of Rudolf Steiner’s quotes, you too will come to see how the free decision can have no association with karma.”
I realize that I quote Steiner, but it is only because it is both an efficient and expedient means to get the point across that technology must be made to subscribe to moral principles, as you state above. In fact, this was my objective in early 1999, when after many years working for Boeing as a systems analyst, I took the position of recruiter, or “head-hunter” in the very competitive field of human resource acquisition in the various aspects of computer business logistics for companies, like Microsoft, here in the Pacific Northwest.
Thus, the morality of technology was uppermost on my mind at the time. How to stamp what is moral and good on every computer product was my initiative. So, when you say, “the only moral technology is one that is free, and can be inspired by the mind that is illuminated by the Christ forces…”, it really takes my breath away. I used to stand and look out the window of my office on the fifteenth floor of an executive office suite, and contemplate these very words. Astounding to hear them resound back after all these years.
But it is still true, and even more than true today. When all efforts are to make technological advancements a moral imperative, such as TVA in 1933, which brought hydroelectricity to the impoverished people of Tennessee, it creates a standard which can then be applied to other less exalted exploitations of progress, like nuclear power plants, based on the fissionable materials of nuclear separation. You see, it is one thing to find the demon in the force of water, and make its harnessing a useful product, and quite another to split the so-called “atom”, and wreak havoc. We have seen both, and their consequences.
So, Morality and Technology as a theme. It blows me away because it is so timely, and has been as an imperative of spiritual science since Steiner made its consideration what it is. That is why quoting him is worth it on every occasion. Since his death, even more comes to bear, obviously.
Steve
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Mr Hale, you say, “I realize that I quote Steiner, but it is only because it is both an efficient and expedient means to get the point across that technology must be made to subscribe to moral principles, as you state above.”
If you are to get your point across, why reach for karma and the words of a recognized figure of authority? I know it is expedient – and expedience is how Ahriman works. If you can think these things through for yourself, you too can express yourself concisely on these issues.
As to your attempts to moralize the machines you were creating, how many of them are now still in service? How long did your moral impulse last?
The point of honing one’s ability to form moral decisions – that is to say, using the power of one’s own reason and putting all karma behind one – is to discern within oneself that which is eternal. I can understand that this is an uncomfortable subject for some, that only means it is then their challenge to deal with this aspect of their lives.
One may employ material things if one wishes to develop it, but it does not help to rely on the thoughts of others when doing so. In working with electricity, you were working with the commonly accepted assumptions of other engineers and scientists. Those you will need to work with and transform in order to be able to see electricity for what it truly is, and not for what it is commonly held to be.
In the way that Goethe saw the reality of the transformation of light through a prism, where Newton’s ideas were influenced by illusion.
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Gemma,
It is nice to see points where we agree. I wholly agree with you that to rely on another person’s words to convey your own meaning is like using a pre-packaged card to share your anniversary. I’d rather purchase blank cards and write my own message. When I receive a card that is made for me, those are the one’s I save, even if they are short and less “witty.” They then convey something out of the soul life of the writer.
I also agree that for those in the engineering and technology world, we often feel a need to justify our moral existence. For myself, I don’t justify my work based on the moral deed of the creation, but by the method of the creation together with other human beings. From a cultural perspective we need to fully develop technology and fully understand it. So my drive and motivation is three-fold. To be creative out of my individuality in my technology development. To be fair and just in my sharing of technology. And to be socially driven in the method of development.
Now what is the alternative? To not develop technology? To return to the farm and drive cattle to pasture? These are also noble deeds, but not the future of human society. It is questionable to moralize about the difference between being a farmer and being a computer programmer. The program will exist and will evolve with human consciousness. We can either penetrate its entry into our world or cower in a corner with the lambs.
I’ve been through enough spiritual science meetings to see how this all works out. Most of the spiritual scientists are terrified of technology and don’t understand it. Others kind of get it and condemn it. I have yet to meet someone who correctly penetrates our relationship to technology. Certainly the engineers I work with understand technology, but not spiritual science. And the spiritual scientists do not understand technology, but fear it.
I myself considered becoming a priest and giving up my role in technology development. After all one was “moral” and the other “immoral.” Yet why do so many priests visit the incarcerated and gain so much from their prison ministry? Yes, technology can be viewed as the anti-Christ. It can serve the three temptations of the Christ: bread from stones, healing without transcendence, self-serving ego-hood. Yet what is the priesthood serving if not the fallen man? The Christ entered the desert to be tempted. He returned victorious.
I do not plan to convince you of the ethics of technology. There is no ethical system to be found there. Nor is there bread in a stone. Technology may tempt us to work outside of the cosmic plan, but that temptation exists in any case. It is within our fallen nature. Technology has the potential to become the vehicle for our stepping outside of the progressive cosmic evolution. It is the human mission to develop our social natures in spite of such temptations.
There are great mysteries that lie in technology. There is the possibility to understand the human being and the human mind in ways that otherwise would not exist. In technology development, we look to copy the heavens and the earth. The cosmic structures live in this development. Is that sacrilege? Only if you are not human enough to transcend its temptations.
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Daniel Perez.
It is clear from this statement that you have an understanding of what Eighth Sphere is founded upon, and what individual creativity is.
There are many, however, who prefer the beauty of a pre-printed card; they value the fact that it has been bought for them at great expense. They would be offended if they were presented with something which looked miserable, yet far more trouble and effort had been expended in creating it for them.
It must be made clear that to understand the lands beyond the threshold, one is dealing with a realm where material, kinetic activities no longer have sway. It is a place where striving is everything and ‘purchased striving’ – the printed card – vanishes into nothing.
Knowing this, you have one way to listen to those who live beyond.
That need to justify oneself is to make excuses for working in a world that is detrimental to the life of the earth. I do agree that the interaction with other humans is what forms the moral deed, but this will not improve the terrible things we have wrought.
This technology you speak of here will not help humanity’s future, though, will it? We pull the oil from the earth and burn it to propel people faster – but this achieves nothing in their lives. The essence of the Eighth Sphere is that it achieves nothing, even in material terms. Intelligence will always lessen the need for technology of this kind.
I quote here from Wikipedia: “The clock still works, and like his [John Harrison] previous clocks has a wooden movement of oak and lignum vitae. Unlike his early clocks, it incorporates some original features to improve timekeeping, for example the grasshopper escapement.”
This is an example of non-intrusive technology. The thinking is determined and creative; the materials employed almost entirely drawn from the near-dead world of the living. That is to say, wood. Only the small pinions were made from sub-earthly brass.
The quality of the clock and the technology involved show what is possible when working with a true technology: the clock has not needed oiling since it was first installed in 1720. The various kinds of wood interact naturally to form a bearing surface that needs no lubrication. The grasshopper escapement reduces friction to almost nothing.
There is no moralization needed here. For both shepherding and programming are part of a person’s karma. It is not what one programs but how one does it; in a like manner, it is not that one shepherds, it is the way in which one shepherds. In this respect, both activities become activities where humans engage with others.
This is key to understanding what one’s life’s task is – and how one might truly engage with it. Whilst in the first case, remaining a programmer of infernal machines and on the other, to tend one’s sheep in a chilly corner of their winter stable.
Here we have the two prongs of Ahriman’s attack on humanity. If an engineer does not understand the destructive nature of the sub-ethers, he does not understand the technology he works with. Those who fear technology bind their hands and cover their eyes because of this: they cannot engage with other humans when such fears exist within their hearts.
I know of nobody who understands the nature of the fallen ether. I meet many who know anthroposophy from within their hearts and thereby have no fears when interacting with other humans – which I find predominate in the society that Rudolf Steiner established.
But I know of nobody who has come even close to grasping the essential facts of what we are doing when we exhume the sub-ethers. If one cannot do this, what then is one’s understanding of the technologies based on such things? Believe me when I say that a technologist will fear such things, just as the bookish anthroposophist fears all that lies outside their library.
So you intend your ministry to be amongst the prisoners incarcerated in the subterranean server stacks? 😉 😉 😉 Most technologists are imprisoned in a way that makes a prisoner’s sentence seem trivial. For the technologist is imprisoned by their fears, just as you speak of anthroposophists. Or, for that matter, a great number of people. Yet they all hold the keys to their prison cell…
Not quite. He did not turn the stones into bread as we do. I write of this on my blog – and I wrote of the truth about turning stones into bread, and what it implies. Not only that, but how we need this to form any large society – but not to abuse it as many do. The division of labour is something we can handle morally, or we can employ technology to avoid these difficult, moral decisions. (It always saddens me that Steiner chose this word, for in the English language it is so easy to confuse with moralistic thinking.)
Technology is the result of people who have remained within their fallen nature – that is to say, they have remained within the part of themselves where there is no fear. The challenge we face is to face our fallen nature and thereby to tackle such fears, and as stated, in doing so, one is directed to the kind of technology that does not rely on the sub-ethers.
The more one has transformed those ‘sub-ethers’ within oneself, the less fear one has, and the clearer one’s thinking will be. This is in itself the first step beyond one’s karma, but it is also a step within it, for we are all material beings. If one is to create that which is eternal, the first step is to understand what the transformed sub-ethers actually are, and how one can employ them in a truly beneficial technology.
You go on to say, “Is that sacrilege? Only if you are not human enough to transcend its temptations.” So, I ask you, how many people do you know who understand the true nature of the sub-ethers? How many people do you know who have truly transcended these temptations?
For those temptations are so insidious, the horrors of the effects of these excuses are now so total, that the fear of taking that first step in understanding is an absolute. I know of three people who are working with their fears.
Three.
I want to add that those mysteries we have unveiled through technology are worthless, for they deal with the un-dead of the sub-ethers and not the living reality of nature. It was Georg Unger who described the image of the activity of modern atom-smashers. I speak as one trained in this science. For he describes nature as a piece of glass. We can smash it, so we can study the shapes and forms of those pieces. We can grind the pieces into a fine powder and study the shapes we have created through this process, and thereby call these the “building blocks of nature”.
When all the time, nature is the undamaged piece of glass.
The reality is that we cannot put those shards of glass back together – we can only do that in our imagination. To study something we have broken is to study the effects of our karma on nature.
To study the true nature of nature herself is to rely on the reality we wake up to each morning.
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Dear Gemma,
My position in relation to morality and technology is that I saw my role as being a kind of mediator in making the world of work better for those I supported. Thus, as a so-called, “agent of beneficial change”, I worked to find solutions that made for the requirements of a better system. And it worked. I was acknowledged many times for providing a better work environment for those in need of a better system.
So, when you say:
“If you are to get your point across, why reach for karma and the words of a recognized figure of authority? I know it is expedient – and expedience is how Ahriman works. If you can think these things through for yourself, you too can express yourself concisely on these issues. As to your attempts to moralize the machines you were creating, how many of them are now still in service? How long did your moral impulse last?”
You don’t really listen with any kind of sympathy, do you? You just react, based on some kind of motive of your own. I never said anything about moralizing machines I was creating, but rather the people who need to inhabit these machines. As an HR consultant, after having spent 10 years in developing business systems for Boeing, it was my task to find qualified candidates for positions in the various computer disciplines. My moral impulse lasted as long as it took to place the right professional in the position required.
As for the implications of the sub-ethers, and how nobody gets it but you, this has been gone over right here on this thread. That is why moral conduct enters the issue. Some display it, and some don’t. We live in a world far greater because the sub-ethers have been extracted for their beneficial values, and exploited by those that see its worth. I am one of these, and likely there are others.
Steve
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Steve Hale.
You say in your latest comment “I never said anything about moralizing machines I was creating”
So when you said “How to stamp what is moral and good on every computer product was my initiative.” I can only assume you didn’t mean this.
I mean you say that you stamped what is moral and good on a machine, or you can say that you never said anything about it. This is a question for the intellectual soul, as there is a clear difference between the two statements.
Can you tell me which was right? Whether you did, or whether you did not.
Because as they stand, your comments contradict each other, and thus show a lack of consciousness when it came to writing them. And consciousness, after all, is what one needs if one is to begin working with your consciousness soul.
You go on to say: ” My moral impulse lasted as long as it took to place the right professional in the position required.” Which, put another way, is to say that it was morally expedient to do so and go no further. That is, after all, how Ahriman keeps the unwary enclosed within their intellectual soul.
Broadening one’s consciousness does involve a lot of self-criticism; those I meet who are engaged in this process rarely have a problem with people who point out the odd fault or two.
As I do.
And when it comes to determining those who are still largely dependent on their intellectual soul, it works like a charm. That is to say, their reaction will be one of “not listening with sympathy” or “how can you know that about me?” or half a dozen others that are used time and time again by a large number of people.
Finally, you say, “We live in a world far greater because the sub-ethers have been extracted for their beneficial values, and exploited by those that see its worth.”
Exploitation, like expedience, is Ahriman’s domain. Because in extracting the un-redeemed sub-ethers, you have let their etheric properties loose – and I will speak no more than that, for it would be unsympathetic to those reading this to do so.
In short, those sub-ethers were hauled out of their denizen into our world without being redeemed.
Those so-called beneficial values have brought little to human society, but have come at a very high price.
Well, that’s how Ahriman works when people aren’t conscious of what he’s up to. so when you say, “I am one of these, and likely there are others.” I suppose you probably are, and given that there are so many who think as you do, humanity’s future really is in doubt.
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Gemma, I think your interrogatory style is a useful technique for you, and the fact that you are listening and seem to care, also refreshing. Yet, you come to certain conclusions that are shuddering in their utter failure to grasp what is being said. In my case, it was clearly stated here:
“….this was my objective in early 1999, when after many years working for Boeing as a systems analyst, I took the position of recruiter, or “head-hunter” in the very competitive field of human resource acquisition in the various aspects of computer business logistics for companies, like Microsoft, here in the Pacific Northwest. Thus, the morality of technology was uppermost on my mind at the time. How to stamp what is moral and good on every computer product was my initiative.”
So, you see, not one word about ‘machines’, but rather, ‘computer products’, in the form of qualified professionals. My moral impulse extended from one to the other, i.e., client and candidate. Also, I find nothing offensive in using the term, “exploit”, because I use it in the positive sense of usefulness and responsibility.
Didn’t you say that you were an ad-writer for Google? Well, what is that all about but clever words and phrases designed to invoke Ahriman and create revenue for Google. Yet, I would never criticize any of the means necessary to earn our daily bread. What is necessary is to arrest Ahriman, and put him under your feet. Thus, disarm, disable, and shackle the critter. This is possible only through conscious awareness, and I was fully aware of Ahriman’s influence throughout my career in the disciplines of technology. I was a student of spiritual science, then and now.
Therefore, your final summation is way off the mark. I’m just a simple householder doing his best to successfully navigate between Scylla and Charybdis, and had the opportunity to engage in some leading-edge efforts at the time that mainframe computers were being replaced by the etheric world. So, knowing that Christ developed the moral-ether out of His position within the earth’s etheric envelope helped me everyday to do my best to serve.
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Good morning, Steve Hale.
Thankyou for your kind words about my interrogatory style. It is one I have honed through the years in face to face meetings – and serves me extremely well.
Because when you say,
I will explain why I come to those conclusions and why I consciously fail to grasp what you are trying to say to me.
I was, for example, all to well aware of the fact that you wrote the following:
Only here it is you who misses the point. Because it was in another comment where you suggested you were trying to moralize the machines themselves. When you deal with Ahriman, you have to be as clever as he is. We’ll come to that in a moment. The point I wish to make here is that you contradicted yourself with the things you, yourself, have said. In the comment threads on this page. Just search for the term moral and you will discover where you said it.
You make mention of the fact that
Only it is quite clear that you do not know how to work this system – and how Google actually rewards such knowledge. My next post in my series “The Secret of Systems” will deal with this issue in detail. Because what most people imagine marketing to be leaves me wondering at people who utterly fail to grasp what is being said to them. I will add that this was one of the primary reasons that I no longer do it, because most people think of marketing as wasted money.
If you’ve never heard of a guy called Claude Hopkins, it’s likely that you don’t know enough about marketing to make it profitable. Even so, these days, it does take a substantial investment to get it rolling.
You say:
I would. Because it is only with this kind of self-searching that one can see what one is doing. Indeed. all the best marketers do this for the businesses they work for, acting as a friendly antagonist. If a company wants to improve its profits by 25% then it needs someone who has the courage to do this; and not act as some pigeon or sheep who meekly does as the businessman asks. Again, this will be dealt with in my forthcoming post on Adwords. (I will add that this needs to be done in conjunction with one other bitter pill that a businessman must swallow… and knowing this one detail told me that I was wasting my time with them).
You speak about Ahriman, saying
Which is to misunderstand his challenges to you. Because you have to let him free, which is of course, where things do get a little dangerous.
Well, that’s why most people prefer to bind him, isn’t it?
There are ways to let him free, and one can only do this consciously because he’ll do things that are utterly unexpected. You’ll never learn these things if you shackle him. Because this is the gift he brings. It’s also the key to improving the profits of a business – and when most businessmen prefer to shackle their business and stifle it than make it profitable, that taught me a hard lesson. I will tell you, it was a bitter pill to swallow: to realize that most people would rather shackle themselves – which is what shackling Ahriman boils down to in the end – than reach for their own destiny.
After all, only free beings can cross the threshold safely. Only those parts of Ahriman that YOU have unshackled can enter heaven and eternity.
Unshackle your Ahriman. It will take time; in fact, it will take a good five years of your life… he will chase you to every corner of your soul and challenge every single thing you have done in your life, both conscious and forgotten. That is the challenge that is concomitant with stepping out of the realms of the intellectual soul and into those of the consciousness soul where everything is open to doubt.
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Gemma, I think that any allusion you find in unshackling Ahriman in order to make him free, will proves to be unsound. I was hoping that another kind and considerate soul would have done this by now, but obviously not. So, I get to do it again. Michael binds both Lucifer and Ahriman in today’s realm, and that is why honest souls, without any measure of pretense, get to write about how they were simple householders, working in the world. You wrote:
“After all, only free beings can cross the threshold safely. Only those parts of Ahriman that YOU have unshackled can enter heaven and eternity. Unshackle your Ahriman. It will take time; in fact, it will take a good five years of your life… he will chase you to every corner of your soul and challenge every single thing you have done in your life, both conscious and forgotten. That is the challenge that is concomitant with stepping out of the realms of the intellectual soul and into those of the consciousness soul where everything is open to doubt.”
Wow, I would invite comments on this, and appreciate the results.
Steve
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The apocalyptic bonding of the ten-horned beast by the Woman and of the two-horned beast (false prophet, deceiver) by Michael is pictured by Steiner in: GA 284 (1907), Seal 5 and 6 (wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Bilder/Bilder_index.html), and is described in GA 104 (1908);
their release after thousand years (Rev. 20) in: GA 346_10, 12 and 18 (1924).
An early (1907) sketch of the development of Luciferic beings, Ahriman and Asuras as counter-forces in: GA266/19070129.
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Gemma, you wrote:
Steve Hale.
You say that “Thus, knowledge in the form of concepts begins to become understanding in three days.”
That is true to a degree, albeit that there are times when this doesn’t happen so fast.
Could you tell me how you would find out if the knowledge you shared with someone has truly become understanding? Because you can’t just ask them ” do you understand this?” – because they’ll just say yes (when they don’t actually fully understand the concept you were trying to share).
Gemma, again you fail to see that it is one’s own soul that meets the test in making knowledge available. By rounding off the edges, it enters another domain, and this is where it becomes receptive. I’m not saying that I have ever done this, and certainly not with you, but it is possible to meet people with understanding after the edges have been worn off and entered the etheric body. I know people right now who do this, and I would love to name them because they show love in their heart. Okay, Jeremy is one, and also another, but Jeremy is well known, so we need only speak of how we need to get along, because it is possible, I think. To feel it would require words from you that entail a kind of smoothing in your current demeanor, which is possible and hopeful. May I suggest that seeing the people you are communicating with as being on your side would be very good to know. Honesty in volumes should make that clear, so why be so defensive?
We’re here, and for each other. I know that.
Steve
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In other words, you wouldn’t ask them a question, you would merely assume that they were nice people – so what’s the problem.
Is that it?
Any talk of people with understanding worn off at the edges and having entered the etheric body is very much part of that which needs examining…
… and questioning.
Just because they use the right terms does not imply that they are using those terms to mean the same thing as you do. The problem is to find out what they mean before it comes to a crisis in the relationship.
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Gemma wrote:
“In other words, you wouldn’t ask them a question, you would merely assume that they were nice people – so what’s the problem. Is that it? Any talk of people with understanding worn off at the edges and having entered the etheric body is very much part of that which needs examining, and questioning. Just because they use the right terms does not imply that they are using those terms to mean the same thing as you do. The problem is to find out what they mean before it comes to a crisis in the relationship.”
No, not at all. I’m not talking about terms and terminology. I’m talking about how knowledge becomes understanding, and thereby, how increased proficiency and confidence is born in the soul. This is part of the realization and why of the several 7-years life cycles we experience. Each is a gradual process of rounding off the initial inception, and proceeds in attaining the understanding that leads to the next cycle. The Life-Body is the mediator in an ever-progressive rounding-off of cyclical periods numbered by seven years.
Now, when I was a systems analyst, and I think I understand what you’re saying with your own clients today, it is, indeed, very much about asking questions and finding out problems. This is how new systems are formed out of old and worn-out legacies. So, getting what is required is the matter of interviewing and investigating with the client. Later, I put that emphasis to good use in finding out what people wanted to do with their lives. Some needed to find another line of work, but a few showed their worth, and went to work for some of the best software companies in the Pacific Northwest.
Always, there was the factor of fear to surmount. Fear of change; fear of the new. That is why advocating beneficial change always involves the courage to overcome fear. So, my clients learned to trust me. Why? Because I was involved on their behalf. We worked together.
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Dear Jeremy,
I would like to add something to these foregoing comments, and which addresses the real responsibility that exists today for occult studies. Today, the world and its people are in a kind of abject fear of all of the destructive forces that have been wrought over the course of just the last fifteen years! Taking the 20th century as our model of evil destruction due to warfare in the name of peace, we should look at these paragraphs:
“There are beings in the spiritual realms for whom anxiety and fear emanating from human beings offer welcome food. When humans have no anxiety and fear, then these creatures starve. People not yet sufficiently convinced of this statement could understand it to be meant comparatively only. But for those who are familiar with this phenomenon, it is a reality. If fear and anxiety radiates from people and they break out in panic, then these creatures find welcome nutrition and they become more and more powerful. These beings are hostile towards humanity. Everything that feeds on negative feelings, on anxiety, fear and superstition, despair or doubt, are in reality hostile forces in supersensible worlds, launching cruel attacks on human beings, while they are being fed. Therefore, it is above all necessary to begin with that the person who enters the spiritual world overcomes fear, feelings of helplessness, despair and anxiety. But these are exactly the feelings that belong to contemporary culture and materialism; because it estranges people from the spiritual world, it is especially suited to evoke hopelessness and fear of the unknown in people, thereby calling up the above mentioned hostile forces against them.”
However, these are just rather modern cultural feelings, and materialism is suitable because it cuts off the human beings from the spiritual world to call these hostile powers against him by hopelessness and fear of the unknown. If I express myself quite clearly, I have to say, when the human being sees that gate of death, he also sees numerous pernicious forces hampering him. Most human beings attract forces by fear of death. The bigger the fear of death, the stronger is their power. The fear of death is generally a part of the feelings of fear. These powers appear like dried up bags if the human being makes himself strong and knows that he cannot change the event of death by fear of death.
The human being is only able to overcome the fear of death and to face death courageously if he knows that an immortal everlasting core is in his inside for which death is only a change of the way of life. As soon as the human being finds the immortal core in himself with the help of occult science, he educates himself more and more for overcoming all such feelings, last also the fear of death. However, the more materialistic the human being becomes, the more he is frightened at death. No occult science can protect the human being to see the truthful behind the scenery. It has to show how the everlasting life, how karma entails the big balance in the spiritual life. This spiritual science has to show various things. It cannot show the beatitudes behind the scenery of life without showing the dreadful powers at the same time, the enemies who lie in wait for him. This is true. However, it also shows how he can overcome any fear of these enemies. It shows how he can face all that with free, courageous eye. It teaches him to become objective and impartial if he leaves himself patiently to its education.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA056/English/eLib2015/19071212p01.html
The Knowledge of Soul and Spirit: The So-Called Dangers of Initiation
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I am puzzled by Steiner’s remarks, quoted by Steve above.
‘The human being is only able to overcome the fear of death and to face death courageously if he knows that an immortal everlasting core is in his inside for which death is only a change of the way of life.’
In my experience, working every week with people who are dying, this is simply not true. There are plenty of atheists and humanists around who face their own death courageously and with a bright spirit. It is very moving to see how some terribly ill people display such courage, acceptance and good humour that others who are more fearful are comforted.
Steiner continues, ‘However, the more materialistic the human being becomes, the more he is frightened at death.’ This is not true for everyone. Materialists often see death simply as an end to all suffering, an end to consciousness – there are people who look forward to oblivion with hope. The only thing they fear is the pain associated with being ill!
For some people believing that there might be ‘an immortal everlasting core’ is a more fearful scenario – it is through such fears that the Christian churches have sought to control people for their own nefarious purposes.
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Dear Tom,
You sound like quite the humanist/existentialist with these words of concern for the ill and dying. But, was that concern what I was really referring to? I realize that the ill and dying likely do not want to hear now how they missed the mark about attaining a kind of “supermanhood”, which would have placated all illusions about death in the physical. You said:
“For some people believing that there might be ‘an immortal everlasting core’ is a more fearful scenario – it is through such fears that the Christian churches have sought to control people for their own nefarious purposes.”
I wrote:
“The human being is only able to overcome the fear of death and to face death courageously if he knows that an immortal everlasting core is in his inside for which death is only a change of the way of life. As soon as the human being finds the immortal core in himself with the help of occult science, he educates himself more and more for overcoming all such feelings, last also the fear of death.”
So, the concept of the immortal and everlasting self is real because it attaches to both preexistence as the unborn self, and postmortem as the corpse which ascends into the spiritual world.
I wrote about the “immortal core” for a reason that has less to do with the fear of death and more to do with finding the essential self, which can be found in waking conscious experience. Once found, it subrates any illusion of death because death is an illusion. The “immortal core” can be likened to terms such as: The Invisible Man, The Witness Self, The Real ‘I’, Linga-Shariria, and Time Body, all of which accompany our various incarnations between birth and death.
Thus, having an individual Ego that is sustained across all of our earth lives is to be expected.
Steve
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Steve, I was mistaken about when you were quoting from Steiner and when you were expressing your own thoughts. I apologise for not reading more carefully.
I had taken your 4th paragraph to be Steiner and felt he would not have expressed those thoughts in that way.
I am OK, with being ‘quite the humanist/existentialist’, Steve – there have been some very noble and inspired souls who would have happily accepted those labels.
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“I am OK, with being ‘quite the humanist/existentialist’, Steve – there have been some very noble and inspired souls who would have happily accepted those labels.”
I meant it with the highest respect.
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Dear Tom,
We are having an interesting discussion on another list, which addresses working with the Dead. I saw your comments as being very useful in helping those reaching the threshold. I have some experience in hospice work, and reading thoughts of anthroposophy to the departing soul. It is amazing that a comatose patient is hearing these words, but it makes sense when we know that anthroposophy is what they need to hear. I offer this lecture on how the Dead are with us, and how we speak, and they speak in return.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/DeadUs_index.html
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I was member of the anthroposophical society and a follower and student of Steiner for over 40 years, leading an active life of meditation, prayer and study. It has led me, in the end, to an active life as a muslim. I can’t believe how distorted the western knowledge about islam is, nor how distorted the texts that we take for granted as representing the message of Jesus Christ pbuh
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