A gigantic task for anthroposophists

This is a slightly edited version of an address I gave at the Midsummer Festival organised by the Anthroposophical Society in Sussex at Emerson College on Sunday 23^rd June 2024.

 We are now at the Summer Solstice, that time of the year when in the Northern Hemisphere we have our longest day and shortest night. In his Calendar of the Soul, Rudolf Steiner wrote a verse, (No. 12) for this time. Here it is, in a translation by Daisy Aldan, the Pulitzer-nominated poet and acclaimed translator and teacher, who in the late 1960s or early 1970s was invited by Francis Edmunds to teach Creative Writing here at Emerson:

The beauteous lustre of the world

Compels me from the depth of soul

That I release to cosmic flight

The godly forces of my own life:

To leave myself below,

And trusting, seek myself

In cosmic light and cosmic warmth.

And at this Midsummer Festival of John the Baptist, the forerunner and proclaimer of Christ, it is worth remembering that John loved Nature and was able to excarnate into it so that he could communicate with the nature spirits and the angelic realm. It was because of this that he was able to meet Uriel, the archangel whom Steiner tells us is most associated with this time of year, and to foretell the coming of Christ. Part of his work in baptising people was to give some of them the ability to excarnate as well. All of us excarnate just a little bit at the height of Summer when we go on our holidays, and we all find that thinking is a little more difficult when the sun shines and Nature is at its most glorious. We don’t really come back properly into ourselves until Michaelmas at the end of September!

But Midsummer is also the time of year when we can extend our celebration of John the Baptist so as to encompass Lazarus-John who was raised from the dead and became the disciple whom Christ loved, the Apostle John, the only one of the disciples who stood at the foot of the Cross and who was entrusted by Jesus with looking after his mother Mary after the crucifixion, and who later on was exiled by the Romans to the island of Patmos, where he wrote the Book of Revelation. I don’t know how one can explain all of this in rational terms, except to say that there is a John mystery unfolding, which Rudolf Steiner referred to in his last lecture, in which he linked the beings of Elijah, Lazarus-John, Raphael and Novalis.¹

Because of what Christ the Sun Being brought to humanity and the Earth by taking on physical incarnation, and because of his own karma, the Apostle John was enabled to become a fully-realised human being; that is to say, through the help of the Christ-principle he was able to transform both his astral body, and his etheric body, and so was able to look into Heaven and Earth and tell us in the Book of Revelation what would come to be. Thus the Johns whose festival we celebrate today stand before us as exemplars of what will be possible for all human beings as we advance towards the next stage of Earth evolution, the Jupiter epoch, which is many thousands of years into the future. 

But what of our present and near future? 

In a lecture given in Dornach on 19^th November 1917, Rudolf Steiner told us the true challenge of our present age. He said that “it is humanity’s task in this period to come to grips with evil as an impulse in the evolution of the world”.²

That is our task and clearly we don’t have to look very far to find multiple examples of evil throughout the world, in terms of war, genocide, famine, disease, and so on. I’d like to focus here on one particular aspect of the evil coming up to face us and that is the challenge to our humanness posed by artificial intelligence and biotechnologies. I’ve spoken at Emerson College before about Ray Kurzweil, Google’s former futurologist, a leading computer scientist and inventor. His prediction, made in his book The Singularity is Near ³, is that we human beings will become more godlike as we become more machine-like and as machines develop more god-like powers. Kurzweil says that we humans are nothing special in the animal kingdom: we have no immortal soul, there is no essential human self and our thoughts and emotions are the product of electrochemical impulses which can in the future be modelled by algorithms. Our future lies in the hands of technologists, people who are experts in biotechnology, artificial intelligence, cognitive and computer science. Their work will produce new tools that will become parts of our bodies. We will have bionic hands, feet and eyes, while nanorobots will move through our bloodstream looking out for disease and repairing the damage of age and injury. We shall have wearable and implanted devices to expand our senses and alter our moods, while biological tools will enter our cells, remodel our genes and give us new and better flesh, blood and neurons.

By a strange coincidence, Kurzweil’s sequel book, The Singularity Is Nearer – When We Merge with AI, is scheduled to be released in just two days’ time, on June 25, 2024.

Kurzweil describes his law of accelerating returns which predicts an exponential increase in technologies like computers, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence. Once the Singularity has been reached, Kurzweil says that machine intelligence will be infinitely more powerful than all human intelligence combined. The Singularity is also the point at which the intelligence of machines and humans would merge; Kurzweil predicts this date: “I set the date for the Singularity—representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability—as 2045.” Just over 20 years away. Kurzweil says: “Some people find this frightening. But [The Singularity] is going to be beautiful and will expand our consciousness in ways we can barely imagine, like a person who is deaf hearing the most exquisite symphony for the first time.” 

Rudolf Steiner foresaw all of this, as far back as 1910. This is what he said in Lecture 12 of the series ‘The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric’:⁴

(…) “the will is there to harness human energy to mechanical energy. These things should not be treated by fighting against them. That is a completely false view. These things will not fail to appear; they will come. What we are concerned with is whether, in the course of world history, they are entrusted to people who are familiar in a selfless way with the great aims of earthly evolution and who structure these things for the health of human beings or whether they are enacted by groups of human beings who exploit these things in an egotistical or in a group-egotistical sense. That is what matters. It is not a question of the what in this case; the what is sure to come. It is a question of the how, how one tackles these situations. The what lies simply in the meaning of earthly evolution. The welding together of the human nature with the mechanical nature will be a problem of great significance for the remainder of earthly evolution”.

I’m not saying that Kurzweil is evil but I do suggest that at a time when we are expecting the incarnation of Ahriman, his work lends itself well to Ahriman’s purposes. And do we believe, as Steiner had hoped, that all these changes will be entrusted to people who are familiar in a selfless way with the great aims of earthly evolution and who will structure these things for the health of human beings?  Or is it more likely that greed, lust for power and conquest are going to be the motivating forces?  I think we have to accept that Ahriman is currently enjoying great success: many of our fellow citizens do not seem to have the faintest idea  about the true nature of their humanness. As people choose to retreat into virtual worlds on their screens rather than engage in real life, the harmony and positivity of the soul suffer accordingly. There is a great loss of reality, while common sense and the ability to make sound judgments are diminishing.

If Ray Kurzweil is right about what he calls the Singularity, that time when human and machine intelligence will merge, by 2045 millions of human beings will be embodied with their entire constitution in the bodiless experience of virtual reality. Not like today’s primitive virtual headsets and virtual games, but full daily immersion in bodiless virtual reality. For the people living in this reality from early childhood as their ‘natural’ reality, death will not really make a difference. They will die and remain in the same virtual Ahrimanic sphere of influence and experience.

And this is, of course, part of Ahriman’s goal, that people will no longer experience any real difference between life in the physical world and life after death. The result is that when they enter the spiritual world after death, they are unable to orientate themselves and Ahriman can use them to unconsciously influence those of us still in incarnation. This is because it is only to the extent that one has already touched the spirit during the physical world that one can see, know and experience the life after death in the spiritual world. If you are immersed in virtual reality for most of your earthly life, you will certainly not feel that death makes any difference, because the virtual life will simulate the life outside the body so perfectly. Many people will remain bound after death to life on earth, not even realising that they are dead. The difference is, however, that after death they will be part of the sub-human and sub-natural Ahrimanic world – and this leads to the death of the soul, following the death of the body.

Rudolf Steiner was speaking about these things just over 100 years ago and, of course, a great deal has changed since then. We are told by some modern anthroposophical seers that the spiritual realm has changed even more in the last 100 years than things have here in the physical world. For example, Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon in his book The Time Is At Hand, ⁵ says this:

“The twenty-first century is the second, middle century of the three centuries of the present age of Michael, and it is the most decisive one. If humanity again misses the goal of Michael, it will be hardly possible to recuperate from it, and human evolution will be derailed for a long time. The present age of Michael can therefore rightly be called ‘the Apocalypse age of Michael.’ The most important goal of Michael in his present age is that the new revelation of the etheric Christ will be fully grasped, because the resurrection of humanity depends on this.”

Are Thoresen, a remarkable anthroposophical seer and healer, is similarly pessimistic about our prospects. In his book Experiences from the Threshold ⁶, he says the following:

“In my opinion, we have but one possibility to save our culture, and that is to understand and accept that there is a spiritual world. If not, we will destroy ourselves in materialism. The only way to really ‘believe’ in a spiritual world is to experience it for ourselves, which an increasing amount of people want to do.”

Are Thoresen, who was recently here at Emerson as a workshop leader, says that the only way for us to experience the spiritual world is to open our spiritual sense organs and pass the threshold, and he gives techniques for how he himself has done this in his books (though I have to say I find them very hard to understand). He also says that the Nordic archangel, Vidar, has replaced Michael as the guardian of the threshold, following Michael’s transition to becoming one of the Archai. These are deep waters, which I don’t propose to go into during this talk, except to quote from Rudolf Steiner, who in a lecture given in Oslo on 17^thJune 1910, ⁷ said:

“Whoever recognises Vidar in all his significance and feels him in his soul will understand that in the twentieth century the capacity to behold the Christ can again be given to man: Vidar, who is close to all of us in northern and central Europe, will again stand before him. He was held secret in the Mysteries and occult schools as the god who will receive his task only in the future.”

Has Vidar now received his task? According to Are Thoresen, the path of knowledge to a higher consciousness by way of the School of Michael is a very difficult one. Again, I’m not going to explore this further here, except to quote from Are Thoresen’s book, Meeting Michael ⁸, in which he says:

“So I ask the question: might this Michael path be too ‘difficult’ for many people today? Is Michael still accessible to all? Maybe another path needs to be available, based on Vidar’s teaching? This is the same Vidar who was entrusted by Michael as an Archangel, and who perhaps also offers a safe and straight path to the living Christ.”

One could be feeling quite gloomy about all of this and sensing that Ahriman is winning all the battles. But I’m inclined, perhaps against all reason, to be optimistic about our future as human beings, and it seems to me that our present situation represents a gigantic task for anthroposophy. What is this task? It is to find a way to talk to other people about what it really means to be a human being. One of Steiner’s main preoccupations was to inform all of us about our true situation as human beings in the world – what it means to be a human being. This he wanted to do by creating an understanding of the fact that we are spiritual beings currently in physical bodies, that the whole universe is suffused with soul and spirit, that human thoughts are connected with cosmic thoughts, human souls with cosmic souls, human spirits with cosmic spirits, with the creative spirituality of the universe. It is only by awakening people to the full reality of their humanness that Ahriman’s plans can be hindered sufficiently to make a worthwhile difference.

And this is of course a difficult task, to find a way to reach people and the language with which to do it, that won’t alienate them and make them regard us as members of a cult. How many of us here who are anthroposophists have family and friends who regard our anthroposophy as something eccentric, unlikely or downright unbelievable? I know that I do. And I know that I have not yet found a way to convey my beliefs that can meet where the other person is coming from. One recent personal example of this came when I sent to a friend a link to an article I’d written on my blog about ‘Assisted Dying and the Spiritual Consequences of Suicide’. In it, I spoke about the experiences of a clairvoyant and an anthroposophical doctor in observing the consequences of assisted dying and referred to the effect that suicide, which is the real name for assisted dying, has on the etheric body. My friend replied as follows: “Thank you for sending this… a lot to consider in this seemingly radical approach.” And what I took from this polite reply was that my friend was unconvinced so far and regarded the concepts in that article as eccentric.

This is of course part of the dilemma faced by anthroposophists in this age of the consciousness soul, who live in societies in which many people not only do not have the concepts that would allow them to understand the issues at stake but who would also regard the wider spiritual viewpoint with disdain. Rudolf Steiner himself was well aware of this problem of finding the right language to convey anthroposophical ideas to non-anthroposophists. In 1923, in a lecture given at Stuttgart, he said the following:

“Last summer I gave a course of lectures at Oxford on the educational methods of the Waldorf School. An article appeared in an English journal that, though I cannot quote it verbatim, made the following point. It began by saying that a person who attended the lectures at the Oxford educational meetings without prior awareness of who Dr. Steiner was and that he had some connection with anthroposophy would not have noticed that a representative of anthroposophy was speaking. Such a person would simply have thought him to be a man speaking about pedagogy from a different angle than the listener’s own.

I was exceedingly delighted by this characterization because it showed that there are people who notice something that is always my goal, namely, to speak in a way that is not instantly recognized as anthroposophical. Of course, the content is anthroposophical, but it cannot be properly absorbed unless it is objective. The anthroposophical standpoint should lead, not to onesidedness, but, on the contrary, to presenting things in such a way that each least detail can be judged on its own merits and its truth be freely recognized.” ⁹  

And it’s perhaps relevant here to say that Rudolf Steiner would have liked his books to be re-written every fifteen years so as to keep them current. Language idioms and methods of communication change over time and what was right a century ago is probably not going to be as useful today. Many young people nowadays simply do not read very much, unless something is on a phone screen, so it could be that even updating Steiner’s books would make little difference to widen their opportunities to hear about anthroposophy. Perhaps podcasts and YouTube videos are part of the way forward, but they will only stand a chance of being effective if we can first find a way to engage the interest of viewers and listeners without using anthroposophical jargon.

I referred earlier to Are Thoresen’s point that the only way for people to believe in a spiritual world is to experience it for themselves, and he says that an increasing number of people want to do this. Although my own path has so far largely been based on faith rather than direct experience, I’m sure he’s right about that and one can see signs of this hunger and thirst for genuine experience here at Emerson, with some of the courses and workshops which run here, though several of them are not, it has to be said, based on anthroposophy.  There is anecdotal evidence, too, from therapists that many of their clients, whether as a result of trauma, bereavement, lucid dreams or intuitions, are seeking something universal, some truth beyond what they can find on their screens.

In this connection, we’re told by Steiner that many human beings are going unconsciously and unprepared through the threshold. This is what he said in a lecture called ‘The Crossing of the Threshold and the Social Organism’ given in Dornach on 12^th September 1919: ¹⁰

“What the individual human being experiences consciously when he strives to attain clairvoyance in the spiritual world, namely, the crossing of the threshold, must be experienced unconsciously by the whole of mankind, during our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Humanity has no choice in regard to this; it must experience this unconsciously—not the individual human being, but HUMANITY, and the individual human being together with humanity.” 

And I remember that Steiner says elsewhere that to cross the threshold unprepared is like sticking one’s head in an ants’ nest! This is an amazing lecture and in it Steiner gives indications that are relevant to my theme here of how to reach out to people in language they can relate to. He says:

“We may say: every kind of pessimism is wrong. But this does not imply that every kind of optimism is right. Right and justified is, however, the APPEAL TO THE WILL. It is not at all a question of whether something takes place in this or in that way, but that we should WILL things in accordance with the direction of human evolution. We should realise over and over again that the old time has come to an end and that we must close our accounts with it. A real understanding of the present can only be gained if we rightly close our accounts with the old time. For the NEW time can only be taken into account from a SPIRITUAL standpoint! We should not delude ourselves that we can carry over into the new time the things which we have cherished in the past. In our external life, we must begin to turn to the new thoughts, which are now beginning to be active.”

This appeal to the will and the realisation, surely very general in today’s society, that the old ways of doing things have come to an end, and that the new time can only begin with a spiritual standpoint, may be the way to reach people in our time when it is obvious that so many things have to change if humanity is to survive. This is also the challenge for us as anthroposophists, to find new ways to meet and engage with people without speaking jargon or even referring to Steiner as the initiate and teacher who has all the answers. If we fall into that trap, we will end up speaking only to ourselves.

While acknowledging that Ahriman is feeling triumphant at this time, I’d like to draw to a close on a more optimistic note with a story related by Steiner. Steiner says he saw the image of Ahriman sitting in a cave under the earth. Ahriman works. He writes things down, counting and counting, calculating and calculating. He tries to build up a whole world out of a new mathematics (and of course AI algorithms are part of the new mathematics). There, Steiner says, Michael stands beside Ahriman waiting. For Michael knows that he will make the final addition. Michael with his sword, will make the sum. The moment has not yet come. Michael is waiting, standing by the side, waiting. He can do this when people on earth are there fighting and going with him. But he can’t do it without us! And that is the really important point – in this present age of the consciousness soul, Michael can only act if we help him to do it. If we do, he will in turn help us to find much more positive outcomes from the extreme technologies that are threatening our existence today. 

And finally, I wonder how many of you saw the marvellous production of Mary Poppins the Musical by classes 9 and 11 at Michael Hall School this week? There are all sorts of life lessons that can be found in the Mary Poppins story, and I’m sure that all of the children in that production will have learned all kinds of things and derived huge benefits from getting up on stage to entertain us so wonderfully. But perhaps what is not so well known is that Pamela Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, was a student of Gurdjieff and devotee of Sufism, and she was able to build into her books all kinds of simple messages based on sound spiritual principles and life lessons she herself had learned. She was able to do this without using any jargon from Gurdjieff or the Sufis but simply by reminding us of what in essence is a spiritual standpoint in the relationships between human beings – encompassing kindness, decency, selflessness, the need to enjoy what we do, recognition of who we really are and trying to be practically perfect in every way! A wonderful example of how to reach out through art to people of all kinds. I hope that we anthroposophists might soon find comparable and accessible ways to reach the hearts of others by expressing universal truths about what it means to be human.

Thank you for listening.

¹ From Rudolf Steiner’s Last Address, (GA 238), given on 28^th September 1924 in Dornach.

² From Lecture 10, ‘The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric’ (GA 178) – Individual Spirit Beings and the Undivided Foundation of the World: Part 2, given in Dornach on 18^th November 1917.

³ The Singularity Is Near, published in 2005 by Viking Books. ISBN 978-0-670-03384-3

⁴ From Lecture 12 of the series ‘The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric’, (GA 178).

⁵ The Time Is At Hand, published in 2024 by Temple Lodge Publishing Ltd. ISBN 978-1-915776-12-9

⁶ Experiences from the Threshold, first published in English in 2019 by Temple Lodge Publishing Ltd. ISBN 978-1-912230-33-4

⁷ From Lecture 11, ‘The Mission of Folk Souls’ (GA 121), given in Oslo (then called Christiania) on 17^th June 1910.

⁸ Meeting Michael, first published in English in 2024 by Temple Lodge Publishing Ltd. ISBN 978-1-915776-14-3

⁹ From Lecture VII, ‘Awakening to Community’, given on 28^th February 1923 in Stuttgart.

¹⁰ From ‘The Crossing of the Threshold and the Social Organism’, (GA 193) given in Dornach on 12^thSeptember 1919.