Initial stance
"How
many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?"
Was Abraham Lincoln killed in 1865 because he kept asking this question
and kept answering, " Four! " and not " Five!"? In any case, I agree with him
for the reasons yet to be stated, which at first may seem as though unrelated,
but in fact are, because that also is implied in the Christian mystery.
That will be the stance of this writing.
1. Foundations of Christianity
"Jesus said to him, “I am the
way, and the truth, and the life…" (John 14 6)This reality can also be pointed out by its opposite:
"Anti-Jesus did not say to anyone: “Non-I is the dead-end, and the lie, and the death."
It should be borne in mind that, at that time, Christ was in the body of Jesus - what John the Divine shows in several places:
"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth. The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he."(John 4 23-26)
As will be seen from the further exposition, the words "in spirit and truth" can be replaced with "the Holy Spirit and Christ." Next:
"Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17 3)
"...But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ… (John 20 31)
And Paul also says:
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God…”(Col. 1 1)
Therefore in the above statements we can put “Christ” instead of “Jesus”, and “AntiChrist” instead of “AntiJesus,” so that it reads this way:
Christ said to him, “I am (is) the way, and the truth, and the life…”
AntiChrist did not say to anyone: “Non-I is the dead-end, and the lie, and the death.”
One should meditatively delve into this Christian mystery. Since all human-microcosmic “I”s are contained in the macrocosmic Christ-I, that other variant is also given in the parentheses. That “to him" refers to Thomas, and can also refer to every man - every man who asks!
Human beings - not just in the sense according to Lincoln - mean all kinds of things using the same expression; in addition, often for the same concepts they use different words, express themselves differently, and thus provide specific coloration or indicate the position which in this context they have (this regardless also of the different languages and times). That may be confusing and very often it leads to conflict among people who call the same thing by different names and under which they imagine that they mean something else entirely. In the remainder of this exposition I will always try to point to the essence of things that are often called by quite different names.
Thus, in the Gospel according to John, in many places “Son" stands for Christ, and at the very beginning the “Word" does stand for Christ, the Word which is one God. This is certainly not without profound meaning, because in fact it points to the creation of the world, and which is confirmed by this:
"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was made from things that are invisible. “(Hebrews 11 3)
This is also indicated by Paul:
"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Col. 1 15-17)
Thus out of the general spirituality the Word or the Son separates, and with him time and space and everything in them begin to exist - everything that is the truth. This truth human beings can, to a greater or lesser extent, perceive with their senses, but not the Spirit of Truth as well:
"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.“(John 14 16-17)
"All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14 25-26)
"When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me." (John 15.26)
These are the words that Jesus Christ directed to his disciples during the Last Supper before the holiday of Passover. The Spirit of truth is already with them and will be in them (the announcement of Pentecost) and he will then teach them and remind them about what they perhaps did not understand at the time and will witness for him. This means: From man’s inner being comes the science about what they have externally experienced as the truth. This is the act of knowing: perception comes from the outside, while from within comes a concept that corresponds to it, since this is conditioned by the nature of human consciousness. Paul also points to the necessity of knowing:
"For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.” (Rom.10 2)
From these brief quotations - if one delves into them deep enough - one can also grasp the mystery of the Holy Trinity, which nevertheless is a unity. Out of the FATHER comes the SON (the Truth) and HOLY SPIRIT (the Science):
"But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you." (John 16 13-14)
So, that Spirit of truth will guide us into (will explain it to us) the truth that we perceive, and it will not speak out of itself (from its own imagination) but what it hears (what corresponds to that truth), and it will announce to us (will give the knowledge) about that which will come (on the basis of the known laws which govern the world). It will take from the truth of Christ one part and will announce the concepts that correspond to it and thus will celebrate this truth (will give knowledge about it - will merge the perceptions with the corresponding concepts). While:
"...If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8 31-32)
And before that:
"Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.“ (John 7 16-17)
Thus, only the truth is of the Christ (what we perceive), while the science of it is not. Science does not come from the Christ. It comes through the Holy Spirit. One should keep delving meditatively into this Christian mystery. Since all human - microcosmic — I-s are contained in the Christ’s - macrocosmic - I, in the above sentence the variant in parentheses was also given.
In this sense Peter's words can also be understood, those he says after the resurrection:
"This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.” (Acts 2 32-33)
Now when Jesus was resurrected, he received from the Father the Holy Spirit, merged with it, and went to the Father. While even before the mystery of Golgotha, Jesus said:
"I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.” (John 16 28)
This again confirms the unity of the Holy Trinity: And the Word through which the whole truth came into being was in the beginning with God, as well as the Spirit of that truth, that is the science of it. From God the Father these two streams come out: the Son of God, who is the all encompassing truth and God the Holy Spirit, who is the all encompassing science about this truth. And these two streams are one with the Father.
In human consciousness this truth appears from the outside through all man’s senses, while the science of it appears through thinking, through concepts acquired by thinking. By connecting the observed truths with their corresponding concepts one comes to comprehension, and through that man is made free.
And comprehension itself is not a mere satisfaction of curiosity, but is creation, spiritual creating that becomes part of the overall happening in the world:
"... and cognition is the most perfect link in the organism of the universe."[1]
That is a free human act, it is a new creation, it is a conquest in the realm of freedom, also earlier indicated by John:
"... you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8 32)
And this way one does not lose his individuality, because:
"In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” (John 14 2-4)
Each individuality that is filled with a piece of the all-encompassing truth has its own mansion, it does not dissipate into some general spirituality, it becomes a microcosm within the macrocosm. Into that microcosm, however, no untruth can enter:
"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Rev. 21 8)
This is a confirmation of that death, to which I pointed out at the beginning of this chapter.
* * * * * * *
The above presentation is given succinctly in the Creed. God the Father is the Holder and the Creator of all the visible and the invisible. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the only-begotten and born before all ages; He is the Light and the true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father and through him all things were created. The Holy Spirit is Life-giving, comes from the Father, is jointly celebrated with the Father and the Son and has spoken through the prophets.
Thus, out of the Almighty (universal spirituality) in whom absolutely everything is included, the Son is born (he is not created separately but is rather removed from the wholeness) even before time existed. Through him came everything that is true (what human beings perceive), and this way both space and time were created. Because, space comes into being only when someone (a human being) observes two or more things simultaneously and as separated, while time comes into being when observation of something replaces or excludes the perception of something else.
Through the Son was therefore created everything we perceive - we can say the whole sense world. At the same time under senses we ought to understand not only the senses usually taken into account, but also the ones that most people do not even have, but which are developed in some people, and can be developed and are being developed in other people - consciously or unconsciously.
The Holy Spirit comes out (is not born, is not separated from) from the Father, is like a continuation, an extension of the spirituality of the Father, but is in some way related to what has become through the Son (he spoke through the prophets), was announcing and explaining the truth contained in the Son, just as the prophets themselves are contained in the Son. He is Life-giving, because after their death human beings resurrect and live in him. He is the bearer of this whole world of spirit that corresponds to the sense world which comes from the Son.
This is all connected with human consciousness. Anthroposophy - the wisdom of man - points to this. In human consciousness perceptions of all that has become from the Son are separated from the concepts that correspond to these perceptions and which man receives from the Holy Spirit.
This was indicated already in the first book of Moses: man gives names unto every plant and animal. (1 Moses 2.19). In other words, man adds the concept to his perception (common nouns like "lion", "oak", etc. are concepts - something purely spiritual).
And since different people have sets of differing sets of perceptions in them, they - when they find the true concepts about them - thereby individualize themselves. Through the Son and by means of the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of truth - they come to the Father, where there are "many mansions" (for each a special one). But if a man linked an incorrect, inappropriate concept to a perception, he cannot come to the Father with it, that part has to be severed and man loses it, it does not make him individual. Man comes to the Father only through the Son, who is a true God, and in this the Holy Spirit helps him, whom the Father sends as a “helper-comforter” after the Son’s plea.
* * * * * * *
Above were quoted the words told by Peter, Simon whom Jesus calls "Peter" (“The Rock") and tells him that on that rock will he build a church (Mat.16 18). "Rock" indicates the subconscious force in man in general, and with that subconscious power did Peter also recognize the Christ - not with his consciousness. Indeed, with the power of this human subconscious recognition was for centuries Christianity suddenly being spread.
Although that was the time of the development of the intellectual soul, there were then few people in Europe like Thomas, who asks about the above-mentioned "many mansions" of the Father, and seeks an explanation:
"Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”” (John 14 5-6)
Around Jesus Christ there were many people who were asking, but Thomas is perhaps the most outstanding representative of that fourth cultural epoch, which at that time had not yet come to its midpoint. For the development of the intellectual soul it is required to ask both of others and of oneself, and then with one’s reason to verify whether that is true. This is especially emphasized with Thomas, who refrains from accepting the statements of the other apostles on the appearance of the risen Christ, until he himself is personally convinced, thus he does not believe until through Christ his clairvoyant senses open, enabling him to become "faithful". (John 20 24-29).
In the first Christian centuries, in other parts of Europe and the Middle East the intellectual soul was still not sufficiently developed, so there human beings were receiving Christianity with their innate subconscious power. The exceptions were the initiates into the mysteries. But from 1413 the era of the development of the consciousness soul started, and with 1899 the period of the "dark age” was over (Kali Yuga in the Hindu). Human beings can now no longer receive Christianity with their subconscious powers. Now they have to receive it with their understanding and consciously, because the epoch of the development of the intellectual soul is over, while the epoch of the development of the consciousness soul has begun a long time ago. And conscious acceptance of Christianity means not only understanding but also acting according to the Christ impulse and in the sense of the Christ. That is why through Rudolf Steiner ANTHROPOSOPHY was announced, the wisdom of man, of the development of human consciousness.
Already about a hundred years ago, in many of the books from the collected works of Rudolf Steiner a lot of interpretation of the Christian mystery was given. And this writing of mine is just its small extension, which takes into account what has happened in the meantime and is happening now, and what announces itself that it might come. In it is also considered the state of consciousness of new generations and the tasks that they need to solve, if they want to take Christ’s path and in the spirit of the present time as indicated by the archangel Michael.
* * * * * * *
As one very concise foundation of Christianity, into which one ought to enter in a deep meditative way, I will give here the first fourteen verses of the Gospel of St. John as Rudolf Steiner translated it into German[2]. In translating this I tried to give as precise meaning as possible, but in translation one can never also give the coloration as given in the original. This was certainly also a big problem for Rudolf Steiner, and of course for all translators - especially with older writings.
Here it should also be noted that John was initiated by Jesus Christ himself, while the other three evangelists were initiated in other mystery temples. Hence there are certain differences in their descriptions of the same events and these should not be seen as contradictions, but as complements to each other, observations of the same events from different points of view, none of which should be neglected - all four gospels should be studied. And in the following verses the deepest mysteries of Christianity are given very succinctly, wherewith during meditation one should bear in mind the note given in the final words of the Gospel of John, that "Jesus did many other things as well." (John 21 25). Thus:
“Im
Urbeginne war das Wort; und das Wort war bei Gott, und ein
Gott war das Wort.
In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
Dieses
war im Urbeginne bei Gott.
The same was in the beginning
with God.
Alles
ist durch dasselbe geworden; und außer durch
dieses
ist nichts von dem Entstandenen geworden.
All things were made by him
and without him was not anything made that was made.
In
diesem war das Leben, und das Leben war das Licht
der Menschen.
In him was life and the life
was the light of men.
Und das
Licht schien in die Finsternis, aber die
Finsternis
hat es nicht begriffen.
And the light shone in the
darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.
Es ward
ein Mensch, gesandt von Gott, mit
seinem Namen Johannes.
There was a man sent from
God, whose name was John.
Dieser
kam zum Zeugnis, auf daß er Zeugnis ablege
von dem
Licht, auf daß durch ihn alle glauben sollten.
The same came for a witness,
to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe.
Er war
nicht das Licht, sondern ein Zeuge des
Lichtes.
He was not the light-, but a
witness of the Light.
Denn das
wahre Licht, das alle Menschen erleuchtet,
sollte
in die Welt kommen.
For the true Light that lighteth
every man was to come into the world.
Es war
in der Welt, und die Welt ist durch es
geworden,
aber die Welt hat es nicht erkannt.
He was in the world and the
world was made by him and the world knew him not.
In die
einzelnen Menschen kam es; aber die einzelnen
Menschen
nahmen es nicht auf.
He came to each man (to the
individual Ego-man) but the individual men (the Ego-men) received him not.
Die es
aber aufnahmen, die konnten sich durch ihn als
Gottes Kinder offenbaren.
But as many as received him,
to them he gave power to manifest themselves as children of God.
Die
seinem Namen vertrauten, sind nicht aus Blut,
nicht
aus dem Willen des Fleisches, und nicht aus
menschlichem
Willen, sondern aus Gott geworden.
Those who believe in his name,
are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
but of God.
Und das
Wort ist Fleisch geworden und hat unter uns
gewohnet,
und wir haben seine Lehre gehört; die Lehre
von dem
einzigen Sohn des Vaters, erfüllt von Hingabe
und Wahrheit.
And
the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard his teaching, the
teaching of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.”After this Rudolf Steiner explains:
"The word “grace” in verse 14 has for St. John the same meaning as Buddhi; “truth” is Manas, the Spirit-Self.”[3]
2. HOLY TRINITY
Here we must discuss the dogma of Western churches which says that the Holy Spirit comes out from both the Father and the Son (filioque). This "filioque" is also in complete contradiction with Paul’s statement:
"For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Cor. 2 11-16)
This statement of Paul might be the foremost reason that for decades now in the West "Pauline Christianity” has been under attack. The same is confirmed by an unknown writer of the Hebrews:
"....God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” (Heb. 2 4)
For this "filioque" it is particularly symptomatic that those who claim to be the successors of Peter do not give importance to the above mentioned Peter's words, where it is unequivocally and explicitly stated that resurrected Jesus received the Holy Spirit from the Father. For the spiritual unification of Christians - not political, because that is a lie - it is mandatory that Western Christians accept these words of Peter, and not disparagingly to ignore them and reject them. For that of course courage is necessary. But:
"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4 18)
Taking into consideration the way the Western Christian communities are constituted, this return to the original Christianity could be most easily made within the Roman Catholic church: It is sufficient for the Pope to declare "ex cathedra" that these words of Peter are accepted and consequently that the decision of the eighth Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 869 is abolished. That would probably also encourage various Protestant and other churches to do something similar. That way a true spiritual ecumenism would be realized, Christian ecumenism, and not the false political one. The Pope would greatly contribute to this also by "ex cathedra" renewal of the celebration of the Council of the Archangel Michael, which was abolished by one of his predecessors. And that too is a Christian mystery.
In order to make this more obvious and because through the imposition of "obvious instruction" people have for generations become accustomed to obviousness, I will use these essentially very rough figures:
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1. Christianity
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2.
WITH FILIOQUE
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According to Figure 1, one might imagine both the unity of the Holy Trinity and their separation according to the Christian mystery, which, according to the above quotes, John the Divine also holds, as well as Paul and others.
Then according to Figure 2 it would be possible to imagine the understanding that comes from the dogma of the "filioque" ("and the Son"), and which the adherents of the western Christian churches consciously or subconsciously hold and act by, and which does not correspond to reality, which is an illusion.
In this figure the status of facts with the disposition of Western mankind is shown, which follows from the "filioque". This - when taking the path of cognition - that Spirit which arises also from the Son, takes for its explanation, or in other words associates with the perception of truths of the Son, receives some concepts from this spirit that are also taken from these perceptions, whereby it should be taken into account that one’s own representations are also perceptions.
With his senses man always observes something that exists, thus what is true, but the explanation that he gives in his soul, out of his inner being, when thus observing, does not always correspond to what he perceives, sometimes he creates the wrong representation about it. For example, out of the rock that is observed in the dark or in the distance, a man sometimes thinks, creates a representation, that it is a sheep, not to mention the countless other illusions. Thus in Hinduism that whole world of external phenomena is called "Maya" or "Great Illusion". If the Holy Spirit would ensue also from that truth into which is to man's consciousness also mixed this grand illusion, then it would not be the Spirit of Truth, because it would be leading man into illusions. If the observed truths are not interpreted from the Spirit derived only from the Father, but from the Spirit derived also from the Son, then it means that man, because of his organization, introduced into his interpretation his illusions as well, since he is incapable of knowing the truth directly.
The Spirit derived also from the Son can only be the Spirit of Illusions or - as Paul calls it - "the spirit of this world" (1 Cor. 2 12). That Spirit of Illusion ought not to be underestimated, it is the spirit of the entire Western science, that Spirit of Illusions. In Western man there is a correct perception of truth, but he then interprets it with the science of the Spirit of Illusion or the Spirit of this world. That is also how materialism arose.
This figure furthermore shows that the dogma of the "filioque" (added in the "Creed") also reduces the significance of the Son a lot, and even more the significance of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit were derived from the Son also, it would somehow be of a lower rank than him, and besides, it would turn out that it was created in time just like everything else that has come into being through the Son. On the other hand, Christ was incarnated from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary - according to that same "Creed". It then enters the subconsciousness of the Western Christians as if the Christ was incarnated from the Spirit of the Illusion, or the Spirit of this world, which is derived from him as well as from the Virgin Mary, who was also created in time. This then caused the effect that in the Western churches Christ is not seen as a very high divine being, but as a king who should rule this world or as an extraordinarily good man from Nazareth. The former was first evident in the Roman Catholic church, despite the fact that he himself explicitly denied it:
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3 Hindu
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4 Wrong
Hindu
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"Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” (John 18 36)
And the latter is represented by the various Protestant communities. With this key the understanding of countless historical events can be comprehended, especially since the year 380 when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, and all the way until today, as well as in the coming future.
Figure 3 shows the predominant eastern humanity’s disposition, which is given here according to the Hindu tradition, but that which may, with different variations, also apply to other religions of the East. That which in Christianity is called the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, was also known by the most ancient peoples, and in Hindu it is called Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. The understanding is therefore the same as in Christianity, only the names are different, so it is also presented similarly.
Figure 4 shows the wrong understanding of the East. Although it was not done by some intellectualistic dogma as was the one adopted in 869 at the so-called Eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (recognized only by the Western Churches), there arose that other confusion because it was known that the perceived truth does not give the direct reality to man, it was very well known that what man perceives in his waking state does not correspond to the spirit that he used to perceive in his atavistic clairvoyance, which people still possessed in the times when they called it Maya. At that time, they had the knowledge, the science of the spiritual world which they clairvoyantly observed. However, after several thousands of years, that seeing of the spiritual world was lost and only the tradition about it remained, recorded for example in the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Vedanta. That tradition was so strong, that in the East people even today think that the world of the sensory perception is just a great illusion - Maya, thus the world of illusions which arises out of the spiritual organization of man, that because of that organization man creates wrong representations about the perceived truths, and these wrong representations are Maya. That way they came to the belief that - according to Christian names - Son comes from the Father and the Holy Spirit, while according to Hindu, Vishnu comes out of Brahma and Shiva.
I will also here add one of my own observations, which should not be taken as absolutely true. While working in India, I had seen several temples dedicated to Shiva, but no temples dedicated to Vishnu (which does not mean that they do not exist, because there is even a sect with the name Vishnuits.) If it is considered that Vishnu is not only derived out of Brahma, but out of Brahma and Shiva, then the place of Vishnu is given to some wife of Shiva (woman represents certain force of Shiva), then either a shy goddess Parvati is put there or a powerful goddess Durga with eight arms or the goddess Kali, who is symbolically presented also with eight arms and a very frightening expression, but whose time - Kali Yuga - ended in 1889 (in a calendar in "Der Europäer" Nr.4, February 2011 it says “February 19, 1889"). To the goddess Kali is also dedicated one big temple in Calcutta, where the ritual sacrifice of goats is performed. When I walked into it, I had a sickening feeling - unlike in some Hindu temples where I would feel holiness, even extraordinarily great holiness, such as in Ramakrishna’s monastery of Belur near Calcutta.
Other religions and peoples of the East also feel resentment toward life in this world of illusion, because they have the science of the reality of the existence of the spiritual world, while they ignore the world of senses - they do not have the truth about it.
Thus here the disposition of the eastern humanity is shown, which ignores the importance of living in the sensory world and wants to be delivered from it. This was clearly expressed in particular in the learning of Gautama Buddha, who points out the way for man to be freed from repeated births in the world of suffering, and to thus dissolve into some general spirituality, into nirvana- to dis-individualize himself. But now, since out of the spiritual world he watched the mystery of Golgotha, he gives different impulses, in tune with it.
Figure 5 shows the current state of the whole of humanity, which arises both from the attitude of the people in the West as well as from the attitude of the people in the East. People of the Middle are in some way between these two dispositions. Of course, like all of humanity they also can be influenced either more by the Son and the Holy Spirit, or more under the influence of the Spirit of Illusion and Maya.
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5. Human consciousness and the
free guidance of the will
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3. LOOKING OUT INTO SPACE OR INTO THE SELF
In a lecture given in Dornach on October 17, 1919,[4] Rudolf Steiner states that if someone pays attention only to the results obtained from the scientific observation of nature, he becomes a materialist; while if one pays attention to the methods and the way one comes to these results in science, one becomes an idealist at least, but most probably a spiritualist, since he reaches to the spiritual. On the other hand, if someone avoids acquainting himself with the results and the details which the science of the spirit puts forward, and is engaged only in how his soul becomes mystical, into the mystical soul immersions, into the methods for entering the spiritual world, he is then tempted the most to become a materialist. No matter how paradoxical it seems:
"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.”
I would like to give a little explanation of the above quote from Rudolf Steiner. Acquiring knowledge, paying attention to the exactness of the research is a contemplative, therefore spiritual process, and this regardless of whether out of his prejudices man does not recognize that at first. Here he has to pay attention in order not to be deceived by that Spirit of Illusion. And if he receives only some facts - but also some untrue "facts" or representations - offered by someone else, and at the same time does not think about how this was acquired, then he completely ignores this spiritual process and sticks only to what his senses display as material, and which is a great illusion, easily leading to wrong representations.
On the other hand, if a man is not interested in the knowledge about the spiritual world, but only strives to reach certain supersensible seeing and experience by himself, he tries first to master his physical body - through asceticism and other ways. When he has more or less achieved this, he can have some very powerful and extraordinary soul experiences too, but they are - precisely because of this mastery over his body - tied solely to that body. The images and the experiences man acquires this way, are only the processes taking place in his body that are transformed into those images and experiences. Since higher spiritual beings are the ones directing these processes, these experiences can be magnificent, but in this way one does not reach to these spiritual beings, except if the man had previously gained knowledge about them. But real insights and knowledge about the spiritual world are only acquired when man in full consciousness frees himself from his body, and when at the same time he does not lose his self-consciousness. For many people - when by the mystical path they reach the point of separation from their physicality - this is a formidable experience, so they recoil from it, because at this moment it seems to them they will lose themselves, that they will lose their I. But those filled with Christ can overcome that too:
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. “(Romans 8 1-4)
"For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal.2 19-20)
Although not expressly stated in the above quotes, it can be concluded that Paul overcame the fear that with freeing himself from his body he will lose his consciousness, lose his I; it can be concluded that having received Christ he overcame the laws of the body.
Certain wrong occultists even consider this connection with the body as highly desirable, even as something to be deepened. Thus transcendental meditation - which originated in India - claims that it also activates that part of the brain that science has established as passive, one that man does not think with, one that is unused. This is over-materialization of materialism, through it man completely merges with matter. On the other hand, various asceticisms strive for the soul to gain the upper hand over the body in that the body is weakened, while in doing so it does not seek to strengthen the soul, which thus strengthened could master the body, which, however, should also be made stronger; by no means should the body be neglected, because it is the temple of God:
"Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”(1 Cor. 3.16)
A variety of oriental physical exercises also belong to this stronger attachment with matter - postures, breathing and martial arts - if carried out without the adequate soul-spiritual development, which is overwhelmingly the case when it is practiced by people from the West. This is undesirable also for other reasons for either the people of the West or those from the Middle, as I stated in my work "On Science" under the section "The consequences of seduction".
It should be added here that when a man looks out, into space, there he finds emptiness- the upper gods, according to Greek mythology. And if he directs his gaze at himself, there he finds egoism, passions and instincts - according to Greek mythology, the underground, true gods.
Based on the above, it can be seen that both incorrect and inconsistent research of nature outside of us, as well as the incorrect and inconsistent mystical immersion into oneself, lead to a materialistic understanding of the world and life with all its consequences. It is thus not only the West that fell into materialism, but also the East, only in a much more hidden way.
To find the correct path and understanding of existence, it is good to live into these words of Rudolf Steiner:
"To man's senses speak
Things in the widths of space.
Reveals itself to the power of the soul
The change in the course of time,
Waking himself for the spirit’s being,
It frees the inner being of man
Oneself from the boundaries of the body
And looks in the realities of the spirit
One’s own existence’s deep reign
In that realm of eternity. "[5]
4. AGNOSTICISM, ATHEISM, AND THE ACOSMISM
Given such widespread materialistic understanding and attitude and behavior, which come from Maya as well as from the Spirit of Illusion, it is necessary to say something more concrete, to state at least some concrete Facts from daily life, the facts that everyone experiences but does not pay special attention to them because he considers them as normal and self-explanatory, as if they should be such, so that they should not be and could not be changed. People have this attitude because they are too accustomed to think abstractly and take those abstract thoughts into their life. If this abstract thinking is limited only to some personal failings in the conduct of one's own life, it still is not too bad, it is easier both to realize it and to correct it. It is much more difficult, if various abstract postulates are imposed - forcefully imposed - on the social life of human communities. This is attempted, for example, by all possible programs made up by members of the various organizations which have a strong impact on society: political, academic, economic, religious, sport, and others. The only concrete thing found within them is to gain power with which they would be realizing some group egotistical interests, and whether they are fully aware of it or not. These interests may be a sheer satisfaction of pride, but may also be the acquisition of material benefits.
Unlike animals, man has hands that he can do many concrete things with, while animals live in entirely abstract thoughts. That should be borne in mind especially in this time of the development of the consciousness soul. Freeing himself from abstractions either in the world of senses, as well as in the world of the spirit is the sign of man's ascent and the acceptance of abstractions is his downfall.
So that the above postulation of the abstractness of the program would not remain merely an abstract and unproven assertion, here I will for each one listed above give one - only one - example, an entirely concrete example, while everyone can find for himself many more, because there are countless ones:
- Political programs on the fight against corruption are completely abstract, because they do not take into account that each signature or someone's word that bring some benefit or damage to someone are automatically included in the economic stream, and so they become commodities to be bought and sold, and thus no declaration or the law and legal actions can change it, but only the change of the social system, which however these programs do not include, since the system suits them and is desirable for the creators of the programs.
- School programs are made by the people who have never even seen children for whom these programs are intended. These programs are always made for "children in general," that is for the entirely abstract children. As for the nature of those programs, they are by their content full of abstraction, because the programers even with the best intention have neither the time nor the knowledge to examine what they are recommending.
- Economic programs are not made to satisfy human needs and improve the quality of their life, but in order to achieve the prophecy of Marx and Lenin's work on the withering away of the state, which should be achieved in some abstract future, which Fukuyama also announces as "The End of History," because according to him there is no history of cultural development, but only the history of relations between states.
- Religious programs confuse small, good and obedient people, because they can not know what kind of murder will take them into heaven, and what kind of murder to hell - and even in this world they do not know whether for that murder they will be rewarded or punished. They can not possibly know that, because the instructions are not directly given by the main chief - he is abstract for them, since they have never seen him - but through the hierarchical intermediaries, often through many hands, and some time even these intermediaries may deceive themselves or be deceived, and can also deliberately deceive him. In this way these hierarchical orders are also converted into moral abstractions.
- Sports programs are used to fight against the practice of "doping", but not against their production and provision, nor against awards for the athletes who take them for the awards’ sake, so these programs revolve only about abstract prohibitions. Especially also because here the price of a signature or certain words is relevant, and these come from the state system.
In any case, the materialistic conception has led - according to the words of Rudolf Steiner - to the a-cosmic art, to the agnostic science and to the atheist religion. Rudolf Steiner said this on September 26, 1920, on the occasion of the opening of the first university-level course in the, at the time, unfinished first Goetheanum in Dornach, which was burned on December 31, 1922. About that speech only a short note is preserved and not much attention was given to it. Only in 1928 was it published by Marie Steiner and after that it was never published.[6] Since only such short names or statements were given in it, I will endeavor to also explain them.
A. SCIENCE
I will here start with science, because it is the most dominant nowadays, it is declared infallible and people speak in its name with the highest level of authority - which of course is unscientific.
Science has become agnostic because the vast majority of Modern scientists have created confusion in their thinking. Instead of sharpening their senses - all their senses, so that by using them they can perceive as accurately as possible what the world of the senses provides while totally excluding what they themselves bring into the world of sensory perception as their representations, so that the reality thus perceived they arrange and systematize with their thinking, and that this way out of their inner being they get concepts that explain those phenomena and processes, modern scientists instead mostly mix into the perceived reality their own pre-made or accepted judgments, concepts and inventions that they created using their imagination or took over from other imaginative scientists, while parallel with this they try to subdue their senses, try to turn them off. Thereby, into the world of sensory reality they wish to study they bring a virtual world of their own or other people's imagination, which mixes up and confuses everything for them, because they are no longer able to distinguish between given reality and various fabrications, because imagination is in no way the truth about existence, through it only something new can become. On the basis of such confusion scientists then give various explanations and construct their theories about nature and its laws, while often they do not notice the sheer volume of their illogicality, which they thereby bring into them. The basic lack of logic is that from the study of nature, which shows itself and is experienced only through senses, they try to exclude the senses as much as possible, because they are supposedly "subjective". So then visually observed colors are subjective, while objective are the flashes of something that is not seen, something sub-sensible, no matter what nature it is and what it is.
In order for this not to be just some theoretical finding, I will here also give some concrete examples.
Modern scientists put a lot of importance on the objectivity of their research, while at the same time they point out that their findings and theories were based and proven in experiments. In doing so, in their confusion, inconsistency and illogical way of thinking, they do not realize that experiments are something that is the most subjective. For each experiment the experimenter had to think for hours, or also months, about how to execute it, and how to procure appropriate tools and instruments that many other subjects had made, based on their subjective experiences and experiments. Today’s experimenters did not invent either glass for their retorts or lenses, and even less they themselves "objectively" made them and incorporated them into their microscopes; neither did they invent nor create thermometers or weights which they "objectively" use performing their own, their subjective experiment, but have rather acquired them on the basis of subjective experiences and experiments of countless generations - starting then when using two stones the first man broke some tough nut in order to eat its core. The whole of technology is based on experiments, from which people have gained certain experiences, but these experiments have never been given in the already existing world, but people themselves subjectively built them up and performed them. On such majestic subjective creations of the human spirit, scientists believe they can objectively study nature as it is given. At the same time they are trying to completely exclude their senses which are often deceiving, but the sense of sight - at least for black and white for reading the instruments - they still have to retain, even though it is also entirely subjective.
A long time ago this was clear to the real scientists, so they created the whole science of calculating errors within this subjective observation and reading of the instruments, for example Gauss (1777-1855).
Here should be added the conclusion of recent scientists that the researcher’s observation itself brings about changes in the object of observation, because in some way it comes into contact with it - as Erwin Schrodinger says, and also that in each observation one encounters a new situation that arose in the course of this time - as Robert Oppenheimer says.
Bearing all this in mind and in order to avoid subjectivity, scientists try to include as much mathematics into their theories, because it is precise and in it it is well known what's what. However, in experimenting, mathematics is only the idealization of a situation which in reality does not exist. In an experiment, accurate measurement never coincides with mathematical prediction, it is always only approximate. And if they completely, or at least almost completely, do coincide, then it means that using mathematics one has penetrated into the essence of the laws of the world. Therefore Novalis also rightly says:
“The life of the Gods is Mathematics. All divine messengers must be Mathematicians.”
“Pure
Mathematics is Religion.”
However, since many
processes are conditioned by a vast number of factors, when doing the
mathematics usually those more subtle processes are always left out - sometimes
because we do not perceive them, and sometimes because we ignore them. The
latter is justifiably done in technology, the negligible amounts are discarded,
"the amounts of the second degree", but in science negligible amounts
should not exist, because they may indicate something that should also be
explored.In any case, especially because of and taking only the above quotes from Novalis - I quoted many more of his fragments in the 1989-1990 manuscript "The mathematical approach to spiritual science" - the mathematics has to be dealt with carefully, and with piety and commitment. We must not mix with mathematics some unverified, in rapture made assumptions, assumptions that are not based on reality, not based on truth. It must not be done the way that, for example, that exceptionally great mathematician Newton (1642-1727) was doing when he worked on his "Optics".
With his infinitesimal calculus Newton invented the existence of some infinitely thin beams of white, sun light, which run in parallel and since there are infinitely many of them, they form the beam of rays with limited circumference. Besides this, he now also took infinitely thin rays of the second order: each infinitely thin ray of white light is composed of infinitely many rays of colored light. Now as a master technician, involved in constructing telescopes, he ignores the fact that from different parts of the Sun with its radius of 1,391,100 kilometers “rays” go in various directions, including towards his hole (he mainly takes it with the diameter of a quarter of an inch) in the darkroom which is about 149.5 million kilometers away from the Sun and that they - purely in geometric terms - cross or intersect his “beam of rays” with the diameter of a quarter of an inch which goes from the same surface in the Sun to his hole. At his holes they intersect at angles from 0 to 30 minutes (1391100: 149,500,000 = tan 0 ° 30 '), while the closer to the Sun the angles are larger. As a mathematician, Newton had to take that also into account using his infinitesimal calculus. Also, that the "crossing of rays” may throughout this observed process disrupt something. Newton is also not interested in why it is that on the screen the cut off “beam of rays” that passes through his hole has its radius increase if the screen is moved away, and let alone why in the dark chamber - with regard to this little hole - in fact something else also looms. In addition, Newton is not interested in how it is at all that we can see the objects in the shadow, in other words where no "rays of light" reach.
There is a large literature about a series of Newton's wrong positions. Dennis L. Sepper[8] states the names of some fifteen scientists from the second half of the twentieth century, as well as those who lived earlier, who pointed that out, while Andre Bjerke[9] shows how physics teaching would be quite different today if in the 1660s instead of a telescope Newton had designed a microscope, because then his spectrum would have had purple color, and green would not exist. And, according to both, Newton's theory won because of the authority of the President of the Royal Society of the world empire. With this I do not diminish the importance of Newton as a mathematician and technician, but as a physicist he was not a worthy scientist.
Therefore, in any experiment objectivity does not exist! And not to mention the experiments made exclusively to prove some of these very scientists’ invented theories: there a scientist subjectively proves what he himself subjectively invented, and that can not be a scientific proof for the existing reality of given nature, purely given - without inserting subjective concepts and representations created by one’s own or someone else's imagination. That's what I wanted to show in the above example of Newton's positions, which through the power of political power entered the textbooks of the enormous number of generations around the world.
From this one must not draw the conclusion that I have anything against experimentation and hypothesis on which they are made, or against making the instruments by which we enhance the reach of the senses. On the contrary! But in all this, and because of that, one must clearly distinguish between what he himself brought into it, and what was given to him from the already created nature, and which by means of that experiment he aims to observe better. In doing so, one must not eliminate any of one’s senses, but sharpen them, and possibly also open the new ones.
Hypotheses have been the incentive for work and discovery of many new things, but hypotheses must not serve as established facts, as many modern scientists take them - for example Einstein - who thereby in fact prove that they are not scientists, but science fiction writers. Even Columbus came to America on the basis of the hypothesis that he will arrive to India, which is certainly very important, but because of his incorrect hypothesis, even today, those American natives are called Indians, and not, say the Americans, which would correspond to what the Europeans later called that continent and thus knocked down Columbus' hypothesis, pointed to the reality that this is a separate continent, far away from India.
However, today's materialistic science has created an entire religion out of its many hypotheses. Since its believers themselves have not done it, already in 2001 in the aforementioned treatise "On science" I wrote its creed and dogma (incomplete because it only has 36 dogmas on what was known to me) and apologetics. Scientific bigotry - a kind seldom found in members of other religions - declared the infallibility of science, even as many of its statements are scientifically disproved after a few years. But, what "science" now says that must be believed and acted upon accordingly. Out of all this, some also draw special benefits.
This of course proves that this is not science but politics and - I would say - politics of the world Leninist dictatorship, which would be impossible if enough people had common sense and would use it to initiate their will to right action. I called it Leninist, because that dictatorship is not limited by any laws and constitutions, and it cannot even be mentioned that it is a dictatorship.
State governments, in other words the politicians who rule and govern states, give diplomas and certificates of who has achieved some degree of scientific value, and on the basis of such certificates, install them at certain places in scientific institutions established either by them or by their predecessors, and then pay them and give them access to certain financial and other resources for their scientific work. It should be noted that generally these politicians have absolutely no idea about those sciences which they have issued certificates for; they are experts only for choosing what kind of a party or movement or organization to join and whom to listen to in order to occupy high positions in the state administration. Although he does not know anything about some science, a politician - let's say a Minister of Education - prescribes which of the books are authoritative for the acquisition of the appropriate scientific diplomas, i.e. the contents of which the candidate has to learn and the Minister then controls it through examiners who are totally dependent on him. Since he does not know anything about it, and even does not care, nor does he have time to study it even if he had the ability to do it, then with his signature he orders the existing textbooks to be established as references, or some new ones for which from his party he has received a directive to launch, as it will bring some economic benefit for his party, and consolidate its authority.
Almost exclusively the textbooks themselves are not written by research scientists, but by those who merely paraphrase, or copy others’ scientific work - sometimes inaccurately and incompletely. At the same time - since they are not scientists who know how to think scientifically - they do not perceive that they insert some theories into their textbooks that contradict each other, or are contrary to everyday experience, or simply have no common sense. Of course, the discrepancies between various writers can occur, of which the Minister of Education does not even think.
An example of the first is that children already are served the story that the planets move along some ellipses around the sun, and then they are given evidence that because of the other planets those are not exactly true ellipses, and later it is even added that the sun also moves in space, which means that the orbits of the planets can not move along any closed curve in a plane. If it is considered that this development of scientific thinking should also be taught, then it should be moved to the history textbooks, not astronomy.
For the second could serve the assertion that what is living arose from the dead, despite the fact that no experience or experiment has ever shown it, while many times every day it is seen and noted that out of the living the dead arises and this occurs in the most visible way.
For the third can serve all possible atomic theories, the justification of which I'm not going to go into here. According to all of them there exist some tiny specks of matter (protons and electrons, neutrons and many other kinds), from which atoms are made which are a little bigger, then even larger molecules, and so on. These material points are many, many times smaller in diameter (presumably they are round) than is their distance from each other. According to Oppenheimer the diameter of the atom is 10,000 to 100,000 times greater than its core. If we take that its core is compact, although it may have a lot of positrons and neutrons and others, that would be something like having a marble in one cubic kilometer of space. In other words, that space is almost entirely empty. - In such voids that are also extremely tiny those material dots are somehow moving and spinning. Through that emptiness (nothing) those material points (something) interact with each other, nothing prevents them in that. That action of two somethings through nothing is also noted on the macro level certainly with planets and this is adopted as a general law of nature, while to the question "How is that possible?" no response is given. - These empty spaces within which the dots that form atoms revolve, scientists do not describe directly, but indirectly attribute to them certain properties of a purely soul-spiritual kind. These gaps are - I add this - probably cubical or of some such kind, because if they were spherical still more gaps between these gaps would remain, they would not be able to fit in space, while this way various nothings are limited by similar nothings and the whole empty space is completely filled with nothing. - These gaps have certain likes and dislikes which are expressed in their will, because some of them stick to each other to form molecules and their aggregates, (and this would include adhesion and cohesion), while some bounce off each other. In addition, those that are sympathetic to each other can get angry, so when some power splits them apart they would not go back to being connected - for example, parts of a broken glass, in that their will is expressed. On the other hand, when they feed on warmth (what is warmth?) they somehow inflate, they become larger - except in ice where they shrink since its will is different - it is self-willed. - The same case is seen with gases in general: their gaps constantly want and tend to increase even without the addition of warmth, moreover when spreading they consume warmth. While the gaps in liquids are not so happy to be separated, but are still happy to exchange their positions with each other - thus their will is also different! - Gaps also have various affinities towards light. Some are willing to let it go through (in glass), some willfully reflect it (in mirrors), some again at will swallow it (the black boards), some willfully polarize or divert it (according to Newton, its "rays" would be wandering back and forth through these gaps and that way would also enter through a window on a skylight closed on all its sides), and the like. - With this of course we do not know what light is, but we know its speed. Einstein even says that it is the only constant in nature, but does not say what is it that is constant that he uses to prove and confirm it, just as he talks about the curvature of space, without saying compared to straight what he compares it to. According to the statements of the already mentioned Dennis L. Sepper some scientists again in the middle of the nineteenth century have already measured that the speed of light is greatest in vacuum, while smaller in denser media. - Some gaps also want to let electricity (what is it? - according to Rudolf Steiner it is decayed light) gladly go through them and some do not. However, with magnetism (what is it? - according to Rudolf Steiner it is transformed chemical force) the gaps can not prevent its penetration, its will is probably stronger that theirs. - That it is only the gaps that react, and not the material dots - is supported by scientists’ assertion that when those dots are "hit" by the "ray of light", they cease to exist, they are destroyed. Thus it is likely that these material dots are not the carriers of those soul-spiritual traits of the gaps, but the gaps themselves are.
Out of my a bit longer and jumbled exposition of atomic theories it can be seen that even materialistically inclined scientists, but real scientists - not those who fantasize - experience and acknowledge in their subconscious some spiritual world that with will - even wisdom - operates in the gaps, but they are afraid to admit it even to themselves. What are all those forces and powers found in the emptiness which act through the nothing upon that material something which is considered to exist, and regardless of how it is imagined? What are those forces that hold together or arrange and rearrange this matter? If they themselves are not matter, and materialists also make a distinction between matter and energy by their very claim that one can be transformed into another, what are those powers or energies or forces? May they be - unlike the material - called spiritual? For in them we see the will and wisdom and movement and form in that sense world - as explained by Rudolf Steiner in the fourth lecture given at the end of 1911 in Hanover.[10] And since in science it is asserted that they are of various kinds, as I have also mentioned it very roughly, may we say that these "gaps" are in fact the spiritual world filled with countless different spiritualities or spiritual beings, spiritual beings that could be scientifically differentiated also through investigation of nature?
Here we come to what was stated at the very beginning of this treatise: the same concept and the same reality materialists call "energy" and spiritualists call "spirit." However, both the materialist and the spiritualist, who into the perceived given world bring the fruits of their imagination or belief (which is similar), or desires and passion, and with these additions try to arrive at some knowledge - they all believe that the dog has five legs, not four.
There is a huge number of both materialists and spiritualists of this kind. This is especially deepened by the fact that, in modern times, the study of sensory nature is separate from the study of the spiritual world - the former is left to science, the latter to religion and thus both to belief, not knowledge. In doing so, in science the impenetrable wall of some limit has been reached, so that - to use Kant - we can never know a "thing in itself". This way science became agnostic.
B. RELIGION
And religion has become atheistic, because most often it entirely rejects knowledge and seeks only some hazy beliefs. In this European Christianity what is mainly not recognized, is what Angelus Silesius[11] already pointed to:
"No dust mote is so poor, no
dot is so small,
but the wise man sees God in it in
His glory.”
If in the framework of a religion one ignores or even rejects with contempt the study of the sense world - “dust motes,” if in that dust mote one does not see the divine revelation, then here also one sets the same Kant's limit, just on the other side. Then it is said in religion, that one cannot or must not believe in the world of sensory reality and any value of knowledge about it is denied, because "that is not of God." Thus religion in the modern times became atheistic because it does not recognize that God is also in the world of senses. Some abstract tales about one god or several gods of one kind or another, who are somewhere out there in the sky and eternity either in heaven or in hell or elsewhere, and lack of recognition that the world of the spirit is manifested in the world of the senses led people into the "realm of ghosts" - as Novalis says:
"I am convinced that one achieves true revelations by cold, technical understanding and calm moral sense rather than by fantasy, which just seems to lead us into the realm of specters, this antipode to the true heaven."
Current state and social systems are such a realm of specters. Those specters were - of course - actively created (and are maintained and nurtured) by the noblemen, while commoners participated passively, because they did not know, did not want it or were not able to oppose it. When I say "noblemen," I include in them not only the above mentioned education ministers and other official politicians and statesmen, but also all those who have any power to influence the social order, the power that is sometimes very hidden. While by "commoners" I mean all those who are without power and with almost no influence on this social order - bearing in mind that that Lincoln’s dog does not have five feet - as claimed by the Democrats - but rather four.
Just as the nationalization of science - as described above, made it agnostic, so with the nationalization of religion it was made atheistic. The noblemen distinctly realized that using religious feelings is a very good way to acquire and establish power, while this power is lost with religious knowledge. Therefore for centuries, and still today they have sought not to spread knowledge but only the belief about the spiritual world among commoners, belief of a certain kind and belief in certain things — as told by the noblemen. Of course, the world of senses was also explained earlier using belief, but when in spite of the burning of Giordano Bruno, and other persecutions, scientific thought began to break through, compromise had to be made: persistent scientists were allowed to examine the world of the senses (but the world of only five senses), while a priestly caste remained responsible for providing explanations about the world of souls (the spirit world was abolished in 869 in Constantinople). However, curious scientists have also observed various soul phenomena, and threw themselves into the study of them too. But being accustomed to research only what they called material, they began to interpret those soul phenomena also in a materialistic way, they created a psychology as "a science of the soul without a soul" - as expressed by Rudolf Steiner.
In any case, the boundary was drawn between science and religion, and for neither one nor the other the world of the spirit exists. And thus religion became atheistic. By the fact that it does not link the world of the senses and the world of the spirit it lost its own sense, because "religion" came from "re-ligio" - reconnecting these two worlds that appear separated to human consciousness. And this way religion itself could become a tool of the state, that statesmen and politicians govern its institutions (the awarding diplomas and hierarchical appointments, according to them, does not belong into any religion, but to the legal system), manage it (wherein the noblemen’s desires are presented as the basis of religion and it is invented that these are written and preserved in the holy books and legends, although they are not) and with its help they rule the world according to their will (among other things, with oaths to obey the noblemen, which also obligate them to do the killing and destruction on their orders).
True religion is essentially the same for all of humanity, as can be seen from its basic definition given above. Different names for religions do not indicate their essential difference, but only the points of view from which people seek to establish a link between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit - of course, if this is a true aspiration of its members, and not the occasion for the realization of their own group or egoistic interests. True religion is the same for all mankind just as the true science is - not the one that considers its own fabrications as part of the given world being investigated. In every religion the truth is sought, a genuine connection between the world of the senses and the spirit world; if it deviates from that, it means that politics has engulfed it, in which inherently a lie is involved.
And the stories itself about some religious tolerance, ecumenism and the like are pure political fabrications and they point to intolerance and division of the politicians themselves, who through their ministers came to rule over religions, too.
Even the designation "state religion" pointed to its enslavement by the state. If that term is not used now, it does not mean that there is no state religion. Politicians have allowed the "free" legal formation of religious communities and have permitted them some free assembly and manifestation, which however mostly boils down to possibly two or three hours a week - sometimes just for a change of ambience and to ward off boredom. However, the rest of the time all the people have to practice idolatry as the state religion and to constantly bow in front of the "golden calf" which is hiding behind the boss, the boss's boss, and so on because it depends on it whether someone will starve or not. It goes without saying that priests of that religion have more silver than the profane ones. And as Paul says:
"But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” (1 Tim.6 8-10)
"... greedy person (that is, an idolater)…" (Eph. 5 5, similar in Col. 3 5)
This is also one of the reasons for the attack on "Pauline Christianity", even though this is a warning full of love and compassion.
One can notice that the "world state religion" (even though it is killing states) is very strongly connected with the "scientific religion”, they even represent some unity. They are very widespread also amongst the people who do not officially recognize the decision made in 869 at the so-called Eighth Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople. That is why today's reigning world politicians started to preach that there is no difference between the Orthodox and - is it only? - Roman Catholic Church, because in their atheistic religion the spirit does not exist. World social politics has willingly or unwillingly imposed, and continues to impose, both “world state” and “scientific” religions all over the world, or at least on those who are not awake, but they are persecuted as heretics. But, also according to Peter:
"But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” (2 Pet. 2 1-3)
Peter already pointed to the "false words," as noblemen continue to do. A little further on he adds:
"For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.” (2 Pet. 2.18-19)
Strange that because of these words "Peter Christianity” is not attacked too.
Two genuine seekers of truth can never be in conflict, they always complement each other. It is the same case in religion and in science, as well as in their mutual relationship. Therefore, Novalis also has this to say about this Christian mystery:
"There is no religion that is not Christianity."[12]
This also follows from those quotes from the Gospel of John, given in the beginning:
"Jesus said to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the Life…"
I would like to explain this using the example of Islam founded in 622 AD. Although Muhammad (about 570-632) rejects the claim that Jesus was the Messiah or Christ or the Son of God, in the Koran in very many places he speaks about the truth and fights the lies. In fact, in his subconsciousness he actually experiences the Christ very strongly, while in his conscious life he only sees his incarnation in Jesus, to whom he attaches extraordinarily great importance. Through Muhammad a strong materialistic impulse came from the spiritual world, through which a counterweight was established to the excessively strong spiritual impulse from the Academy of Gundishapur (in modern-day Iran). If not for Islam, under the influence of the Academy of Gundishapur, human beings would have developed too early, while still immature, certain spiritual abilities with which they would dissipate in the spiritual world, would not develop and preserve, their I.
That would be contrary to Christ's impulse and his proper guidance of mankind, by which higher and higher human abilities are gradually developed. In fact through Muhammad were acting high spiritual beings who lead mankind on the path of Christ. This strong materialistic wave came through Arabism to Western Europe, too. Certainly under this wave in 869 the dogma of the "filioque" was also established, although also independently of Islam it was introduced for the first time in 589 at the Synod of Toledo, and even before that the famous west Gothic Bishop Wulfila (about 311-383), who also translated the Bible into Gothic, wrote in his "Credo" ("I believe"):
“…And ye shall receive power coming upon you by the Holy Spirit." (Acts 1 8) Neither God nor Lord, but the faithful minister of Christ; not equal, but subject and obedient in all things to the Son. And I believe the Son to be subject and obedient in all things to his God, similar to the Father, as God created all things through Christ and sanctified through the Holy Spirit.”[13]
This fully corresponds to the earlier scheme given in Figure 2.
The truth, in other words Christ, is the only unifier of humanity, and there is no religion that would fight against the truth. If someone presents himself as being a member of any religion, but uses a lie, he is - as described above - a member of an "atheistic religion".
All efforts to unite various religions on a different path and in a different way, but not in the search for truth, in connecting the sensory with the non-sensory, are political, and lying is immanent to politics - as the politicians themselves admit (hiding the truth with the "secret documents" and inducing people through “high-sounding" words to act according to their wishes).
To this would also belong political invention of new religions, which in their names always point out that they are universal, united, unificational and the like. Some brotherhoods have even started spreading the idea that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are one and the same, because they all believe in only one God, while other religions are polytheistic. That this is a political rather than religious preaching can be seen from the fact that the holy books on which these three religions are based talk about various gods, and even name them, while the very names angels, devils and the like denote spiritual beings who in other religions are called gods. This was already mentioned at the beginning of this treatise, that one should look at the essence and not at the word as it is called. In support of this, I will only mention that Jesus' confirmation of Psalm 82.6:
"Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are "gods"'?" (John 10 34)
The religion which would not search for the truth, that would be some dog with five legs. The same with science.
From the above presentation it can be seen that true science and true religion are only the two names for the same thing, because neither one nor the other recognizes that artificially created border between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit. These are merely different names and points of view and starting points, perhaps methods also. "Perhaps," because in both, senses and common sense and a sense for truth must be developed, as well as the wakeful attention that in researching the given world one does not bring in the products of his own or someone else's imagination. Certainly one should not ignore or neglect one’s own imagination, but rather cherish it for one’s own ability to create something new. Out of one’s own "moral fantasy" - according to Rudolf Steiner - as a free being man ought to derive his ethical intuitions, while
"...the moral life of mankind is the sum total of the products of the moral imagination of free human individuals."[14]
C. ART
As for art, here I will point to it again using the words of Rudolf Steiner:[15]
“In primordial days
The spirit of the heavens was approached
By the Earth’s spirit being. It said, praying:
Heart of the worlds to man’s heart.
I know how to speak
with man’s spirit;
However for that speech also
I beseech
With which to speak knows
Heart of the worlds to man’s heart.
Then merciful world spirit bestowed
To the praying Earth spirit:
Art.”
Although for the ordinary understanding - particularly materialistic - this is very difficult to understand, it is confirmed here that art was at first cosmic, not a-cosmic; that it was connecting the heart of the worlds with the heart of man who was lowered to the Earth which is separated from the heavens. And its comparison with science Rudolf Steiner gave in this:[16]
“Into mass, what is stiff, dead,
To embed life and spirit,
Is artist’s goal;
Into spirit, what is vanishing, unsteady,
To give form and firmness,
Researcher’s is endeavor.
And when the pinnacle of that work
They reach
Then must in the one
Both of them to meet.”
With this Rudolf Steiner points to the connecting of the genuine, Cosmic art with the genuine, Gnostic science, and thereby through it also with the genuine, Theistic religion - as discussed above. All of them, art and science and religion, once represented a unity, have been split for a long time and now again should be merged, in order to manifest their true being. That separation gradually came with the arrival of the Dark Ages (Kali Yuga), when from the human consciousness the direct experience of the spiritual world was fading, while now it is again gradually returning, so man now with increased consciousness, with the development of his consciousness soul needs to re-establish that connection.
From the second verse it follows that this merger is possible only if the existence of the spirit is recognized, which is contrary to the dogma of 869 from the Synod in Constantinople. Although very few people even in the West have some knowledge of it in their full consciousness, it has for centuries worked in their subconscious. And since those Western nations are the main carriers of this current cultural epoch, it has also very much entered into the subconscious of the rest of humanity, which perhaps does not know of this dogma, or - if it knows it - it even consciously and firmly denies it, and yet subconsciously acts according to it.
This subconscious action of "the dogma of the abolition of the spirit" may best be noticed in art, where the "heart of man" should listen to the "heart of the worlds" - not the head, where man is conscious and awake in his thinking. The wave of materialism that was created and deepened, supported by the dogma from 869, has remarkably strongly seized all types of art. Artists have rejected the "gift of the spirit of heaven" and instead of "Into mass, what is stiff, dead, To embed life and spirit”, they imbued themselves with it, while with their "spirit of man" - their head - started merely amending and upgrading what is “stiff, dead,” which they learned from the "spirit of the Earth", they lost the awareness of the connection with the universe.
So from that spiritual representation, say in the icons, they turned to representation of souls in portraits, then to the embellishment of commissioned portraits, and to the physical representation in landscapes and "still life" (first naturalistic then impressionistic and expressionistic) - to take as an example only the art of painting. From the cosmic they shifted to the earthly, but then they went even further, or better said even deeper: painting of caricature and the ugly including the representation of human beings as animals and demons as human beings. While according to Rudolf Steiner:[17]
“Severed is the connection with the spirit,
If it is not sustained by beauty.
Beauty also links the 'I' with the body."
Socrates already had pointed to the connection between the beautiful and the good, saying that those two are in fact one and the same.
With the turning to the ugly the sub-sensible is entered, the very depths of the Earth are entered. Abstract painting is, however, an attempt to return to the spirit, but that is a very difficult path and not always successful. In addition, it is entering into some general spirituality, not into the differentiating of specific spirits - as for instance in good icons or in the Greek time when the gods were portrayed as people, or in the Egyptian time when people were portrayed as gods.
What I have presented in painting can also be seen in other arts: architecture became a technique; dancing has moved into an instinctual jumping and ugly flinging; music lost melody - and even harmony - and kept only the rhythm and the continuous roar; in its naturalism the art of theater has become banal and vulgar, while actors have lost the skill of speaking; even sculpture began to send forth uncut stones or welded rods or concrete constructions. Through this forcing of the ugly upon people they have begun to also lose the moral sense for the good. And that also shows that the cultivation of beauty in art is directly, closely, linked to true religion - not only by that connection through science, pointed at earlier.
Such art is itself corrupted in the same way as science and religion are - through the state and the statesmen and their policies. Statesmen and politicians have also taken art under their control. They also created their own schools for art, art galleries, and others, and filled their leading positions with those whom they find in some way likable or - as Titoists or Leninists would say - "morally and politically correct". And there some ministers of culture, who have neither head and let alone the heart to listen to the heart of the worlds, are directing what is to be done in art. The very institution of schools for arts points to the fact that only art techniques are taught in it, that only man's head is spoken to. While art, however, must come from the heart, and this can not be taught at all. This of course politicians can not realize with their heads, by which they took over the arts. The most striking evidence for the influence of politicians in art is in their ability to also present the beautiful in an ugly way - which is particularly conspicuous in numerous advertisements of every kind, and which, especially in the cities, pollutes people’s view and hearing, and thus also are their souls polluted.
Also in the state-controlled art the process is similar to that in science: its leading positions are always given by noblemen to those whom they for whatever reason find more likable, because objectivity among politicians is not possible, because they only know how to rule over society. Moreover, while in science we can still talk about some "objective and visible" work results - even if erroneous, in art that is impossible. After all it was said already a long time ago that in matters of taste, there can be no disputes! Accordingly, in art it is always the taste of those who have the power that is authoritative, thus of some minister or someone that he installs, and who is then totally dependent upon him. And the one who is dependent must always take into account the taste or the politics of his master, or his wishes. If there are two or more candidates for some position in any art institution, the one who is in line with the ruling group will certainly be elected - whether that group is public, official or hidden. Here, of course, the occasional buying of artworks, awarding of prizes, and providing of opportunities for public performances, and more, is also included.
In this way, by becoming state-controlled, art has become a-cosmic.
5. ENSLAVEMENT OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
From the above exposition it can be seen that states or their noblemen have completely enslaved science and art and religion, for which it can be said to represent the social spiritual life in the narrow sense. They of course did the same with the legal and economic life, melting it all together into one state unit. Here I will not discuss this more closely, because how this state-controlled unified life moves, that everyone observes very well and is not happy with it, but is only missing the key for the understanding of how this occurred, whether it has to be this way and how can one be saved from it. That is why in this treatise I mainly dwell on the spiritual life itself, because it is the food for the entire society, only from it can fruitful ideas be derived for the healthy social life - not from politics in general, and even less from the politics of those in power - officially and unofficially.
Those in power have enslaved and polluted that spiritual life, and this has introduced disease into that wonderful, spirited culture of the fifth Post-Atlantic period, which began in 1413. And in the twentieth century, this culture which was given its main tone by the European, Christianized nations, died of this disease. It died because its rulers and their conscious or unconscious adherents and followers mirrored the example of how Judas sold Christ. Will the rulers and their devotees continue to follow the example of Judas?
“ When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. “I have sinned," he said, "for I have betrayed innocent blood." "What is that to us?" they replied. "That's your responsibility.” So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.”(Mat. 27 3-5)
Here I would like to add the words of Rudolf Steiner:[18]
“A new dawn for the white race
Will be revealed in the Earth's field
Only when out of this race those in the know
Feel soul connection with spirit
And in them begins to work
The feeling of that shame,
Which darkens the souls, when they
The human being in terms of matter
Want to understand.”
This "in terms of matter” can also be translated with “by dint of understanding matter" or "through the character of matter" or “by dint of the meaning of matter", thus in a materialistic way.
All that I have presented so far, and will continue to present, should in no way be seen as some moralizing. I do not consider myself to be on such a level as to be able to morally evaluate these things. I only scientifically describe and systematize these things, and point out some causes and effects or specific spiritual dependencies, which are usually not heeded. I do it searching for the truth in quite the same way as I did in the example of Newton. To make it clearer why there is no question here of some moralizing, although at first glance it may seem unrelated, I will again quote the words of Rudolf Steiner:[19]
"In matter seeks the knower of the holy
Spirit eternal mastery of the Creator.
In the storm and war’s raging
To his spirit watching is revealed
Worlds’s wise goal of the gods."
Here under "gods" should be understood all spiritual hierarchies listed by Dionysius the Areopagite, while generally I will mainly look at actions of the lowest hierarchies, especially the archangels or the folk spirits. So the following presentation should be taken to relate only globally to peoples and races in which single incarnated human individualities may also work quite differently and divergently, and even opposite from what can be seen as some generalized whole. In that way should the above indication of Judas’s betrayal also be understood, and with that should also be taken into account the fact that he was one of the twelve and that Jesus Christ himself chose him and knew that he would betray him. And besides:
"Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve.” (Luke 22.3)
"Jesus answered them, Did not I choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil? Now he spake of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.” (John 6 70-71)
In describing the events of the Last Supper, John casually mentions something very important:
"...Since Judas had charge of the money.." (John 13 29)
That white race, especially its western part - the one with "hard currencies" - has become the world's treasurer.
Before these words John says:
"Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages." He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.” (John 12 3-6)
These are heavy words spoken by one so exalted a man as John the Theologian. And heavy is also the temptation of the keeper of the money bag.
Thus, Christ Jesus himself chooses Judas for whom he knows that he would betray him, and during the Last Supper he washes his feet too and shares table with him, and also even says:
“...What you are about to do, do quickly." (John 13 27)
And even after receiving Judas’s treacherous kiss:
""Friend," Jesus asked him, "why have you come?”"(Mat. 26 50)
This is a great Christian mystery, specifically Christian mystery:
Christ brings unconditional love among human beings, bows to or washes the feet of those lower than himself and does not affect the freedom of will of anyone, not even the one into whom Satan entered and even calls him a friend!
These three things recur throughout the New Testament - and of course many other things.
* * * * * * *
In unconditional love, even toward the enemy who prosecutes and hates us, one should see and understand that we are all human beings - also including enemies - members of one and the same body, the body of Christ, and therefore hatred against another man is senseless, because we have all been created to be the hierarchy of freedom - unlike the other gods. In Hinduism this is expressed with the words: “That is you!" or “With your karma created in earlier incarnations you had also caused these current friendships and enmities towards you!". And as a counterpart to this, but on the international level, can serve the above words that in the madness of war "the goal of the gods” is revealed. If the large masses of people cherish a defective social organization and attitudes and dispositions, then this inevitably leads to such storms with which higher gods indicate to people the need to correct something, and if they do not correct it, that they themselves have to fiercely do it.
Bowing in front of those lower than yourself is humility and gratitude to them for one’s higher level of existence. It is a necessity and lawfulness in the evolving world that someone can rise only at the expense of the other who lags behind. Plants could not exist without minerals, animals without plants, man without them all and so on. This can be seen in the following example among the human beings themselves: If someone strikes you on one cheek, and you turn to him the other cheek too, thanks to his fall into passion you elevated yourself, because with this you put under control your urge to strike back, and with this you realized the freedom of your will - you did not operate automatically but consciously.
As for the freedom of the will itself, it could not possibly exist if there were no possibility of choosing between at least two things. If there were only Christ’s way, man would have worked as some automaton, would not have free will. For his free will man should thank and pay homage also to Satan, who offers him also the second possibility, the possibility of also choosing something else. That is the reason why Satan itself was sacrificed and stayed behind in his development, was not raised to a higher level as the other spirits of his hierarchy did, and so this way it became man’s "friend" - as stated in Matthew. It depends on the man himself whether out of his freedom he will receive Christ or Satan into himself, or whose path will he take. That is dependent on his whole disposition, which is likewise his free decision or choice. At the same time this is not about some disposition that is immutable for all time, because then also there would be no human freedom. This is also indicated by that sentence of Rudolf Steiner given at the end of the chapter 3, “Looking out into space or into the self,” which is also schematically shown in Figure 5.
Here I have compared the white race with Judas Iscariot. Under the influence of this white, mostly Christianized race, in the first half of the twentieth century Christ is crucified again - not his physical but his etheric, life body, invisible to the ordinary man. This is symbolically drawn by Salvador Dali: in the heavenly heights on the tesseract of the crucified Christ, watched from below by Gala. It is given here in Figure 6,[20] and about tesseract (spatial cross of eight cubes) as a representation of the fourth dimension in space, in 2002 in the manuscript "On Nature" I gave an explanation by Rudolf Steiner from his lecture held on May 31, 1905 in Berlin.[21]
And almost two thousand years ago, Paul writes:
"For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery-- so that you will not be wise in your own estimation-- that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; In this way, all Israel will be saved, as it is written, "The Deliverer will come from Zion; he will remove ungodliness from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.” From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God's choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. For God has imprisoned everyone in disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone.
 |
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?""Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”(Rom. 11 25-36)
All are thus “imprisoned in disobedience,” because that is the requirement for the attainment of freedom.
* * * * * * *
In the present, fifth
Post-Atlantean epoch, which began in 1413, humanity is going through the
development of its consciousness soul. In
the fourth, the Greco-Roman epoch (747 BC to 1413 AD) human beings were
developing their intellectual soul. In the third, the
Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Jewish epoch (2907 to 747 before our time
reckoning) mankind was passing through the development of the sentient soul.In that third epoch human beings did not have developed self-consciousness yet and were guided mainly by the beings from the hierarchy of angels, the first hierarchy above man. In that epoch the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem (962-955) is built, and even before that, those magnificent buildings in Egypt and Chaldea. Some of those angels continued to further their development and walked in Christ’s path, having also received the impulse of Golgotha, while some in the course of thousands of years remained at their level from the third epoch and those act very strongly again in the present cultural epoch. Their impact is most visible through that part of Israel which is fossilized, and also through Islamic communities, as well as through various occult brotherhoods, those based on the Egyptian mysteries and those Jewish ones connected to the construction of Solomon’s Temple. Of course they also influence other people, and in parallel with them also act those angels who have been evolving regularly under the impulse of Christ.
Paul writes the above words to the Romans in the fourth cultural epoch, when people were largely left to themselves, when the angels’ guidance withdrew. Then from the intellectual soul human beings - although also with the help of the old gnosis - could receive and at least some could to some extent also understand what happened on Golgotha, but those who have become "disobedient" still remained under the influence they had received from those angels who stayed behind in the third epoch - "became fossilized". The polytheists, on the foundation of those who were being fossilized and also out of the knowledge nourished in the Greek mysteries, could more easily accept the mystery of Golgotha, understand it or at least emotionally accept it. However, the vast majority of the white race, especially those outside the Roman Empire - spiritually even more backward - afterward received Christianity more out of some feeling that it is true, and this way - of course also with the guidance from the spiritual world - exoteric Christianity quickly spread. Thus also the Emperor Theodosius I (379-395), originally from Spain, with his edict from 380 proclaimed Christianity as the state religion. It is then that religion begins to be political and atheistic.
In that fourth epoch, when almost all people have lost the insight into the spiritual world, various rational and abstract interpretations of Christianity and the mysteries connected with it were created. Because of this a need was also created to strengthen Christianity and define it with dogmas made at ecumenical councils, and after the separation of the churches the Roman Catholic one continued with this, while the Orthodox ones remained with only the first seven councils.
In the fourth epoch Islam also arises, which Muhammad established with a very pronounced intellectual inspiration. He intellectually accepted many things from both Judaism and Christianity and in his own way he shaped and adapted it for the soul dispositions of the Arab tribes and peoples. However, this has been shown to also match the dispositions of a remarkably large number of other peoples. Certainly he was guided from the spiritual world, otherwise he would not have been so accepted. As was said earlier, the activities of the Gondishapur were to be paralyzed through it.
In the present, fifth cultural epoch some sort of "explosion" of the white race happened. The white race was used after Columbus' discovery of America by inserting into it a storm of madness and war in order to achieve a goal of the gods: to destroy the culture of the red skinned people which fell into a terrible decadence and into horrible black magic rituals. In the race of red skinned people itself no power was found that could bring them out into the right path, thus the strike from the other side was necessary. The hunger of the white serfs and the greed of their masters are only the outward, visible cause. However, this greed is then transferred to the serfs also and so the white race embarked to conquer the whole world, bringing a storm of madness and war into all other races and peoples. This then provoked hatred of the white race in all of these peoples, and hatred is a terrible destructive power. The cause for what the white race did to itself especially in the twentieth century should also be sought in this hatred by the rest of the world, which has contributed to the darkening of the consciousness of those who run the white nations, so that in fact they were not fully aware of what they were doing. This is the only way to explain the savagery, which white nations exercised especially in the twentieth century. This is - as Rudolf Steiner says on October 23, 1922, in Dornach:
“Out
of the dark age we must enter into the light luminous age. And because people
can not do it — that is, they imagine that they cannot do it — because people
do not want it, because people cling to the old, and don't want to step into
the new, and because the old does not fit any more — it is because of this that
we experience the terrible catastrophes in our present time. And we will
experience them still more if people don't want to take the trouble to enter
into the new. —What occurs as catastrophe is the reaction of the dark age, which
does not belong in our time.”[22]
For
that, of course, those in power are more responsible than the serfs, although
much depends on them too.
*******
The culture
of the fifth
epoch has largely been built by the
white race, but the vanity of its ruling class has also affected it. Besides
that famous battle in science about whether the Earth is flat or spherical, and
even the above example of Newton, we also see the impact of politics on science
in the case of the quarrel between Paris and London, about where the prime
meridian will
pass, or in the fact that in scientific geographic exploration some flags have
always been placed, and then the political conquerors would draw the borders on
maps using a ruler, and so even the desolate Antarctic was divided. And again
this can be seen especially when politicians found out that scientific results
can be used in technology, and began to finance and direct the research in the
direction that will be beneficial to them: for the manufacture of weapons, as
well as to satisfy their needs and desires for domination. Since this is
increasingly linked to materialism, because technology is mastered by matter,
science has become agnostic, just as already in the fourth epoch art started
becoming a-cosmic, because it was more and more directed to the satisfaction of
the enjoyment of the ruling class.
As
stated above, in this fifth cultural epoch mankind is going through the
development of the consciousness soul, which means that human beings are
becoming increasingly responsible for their behavior, out of their freedom
can do a lot, because it becomes
conscious for them. Human beings are again still very strongly also linked with
their angels, and - although that appears strange - every man can help and
improve or can ruin or interfere with his angel’s correct work. That is a huge
responsibility for each man individually!
This
can really appear as strange. But to this also point those
difficult to understand, but certainly also perhaps clumsily translated, words
of Paul:
"Do
you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters
pertaining to this life!”(1 Cor. 6 3)
Difficult
indeed are these words
to understand, so it is no
wonder that translators have translated them wrongly or inaccurately. In any
case a close relationship of man with the angel is here pointed to, and one
that will yet come into being. Probably not that man will be set above his angel
and will evaluate the angel’s works, and therefore make a judgment about
whether the angel ought to be rewarded or punished. It is more likely to assume
that man will have some "vital role" for the development of his
guardian angel too, and this depending on what man does out of his freedom. And
this future time that Paul mentions is precisely our own, starting with this
current cultural epoch, the epoch of the development of the consciousness soul.
In a
lecture held in Zurich on October 9, 1918,[23] Rudolf Steiner talks about this connection between angels and man during the development of his consciousness soul. Under
the guidance of the spirits of form, angels form
pictures in man's astral body, which will later in a transformed humanity
become a reality. Through them the social life of the future will be created.
According to him, people should achieve "the brotherhood in the absolute
sense," they shall see in each and all of his fellow-men “a hidden divinity” and
thus achieve “complete freedom in the religious life" and so “will
reach the spirit through thinking". This work of the angels people ought
to observe with their consciousness soul, with their conscious thinking. That
is in accordance with Christ’s impulse.
Against
this Christ
impulse fight the Luciferic beings,
which also want to make man act out of the spirit, but to do so automatically,
without free will that can only be gained on the earth.
Against
this Christ
impulse fight also the Ahrimanic beings, but so to kill in
man the consciousness of his spirituality, especially at this time of the
development of the consciousness soul, to obscure man’s insight into his divine
origin.
Certain
spiritual beings - the angels especially - achieve their development through man. In the development
of the consciousness soul human beings ought to consciously receive those
images that angels create in their astral bodies, thus in a waking state. If
people would reject that and for example sleep through the repetition of the
mystery of Golgotha on the etheric level, through the appearance of the etheric
Christ and other events, the angels will have to enter those images not into
the astral but etheric and the physical bodies of human beings while they are
asleep.
"Here
lies the great danger for the age of the Spiritual Soul. This is what might
still happen if, before the beginning of the third millennium, men were to
refuse to turn to the spiritual life! The third millennium begins with the year
2000, so it is only a short time ahead of us. It might still happen that the
aim of the Angels in their work would have to be achieved by means of the
sleeping bodies of men — instead of through men wide awake. The Angels might
still be compelled to withdraw their whole work from the astral body and to submerge
it in the etheric body in order to bring it to fulfillment. But then, in his
real being, man would have no part in it. It would have to be performed in the
etheric body while man himself was not there, just because if he were there in
the waking state, he would obstruct it.”
If
this happens, the action of the angels would show in man's instincts, not in
freedom, and that would be harmful. Men would come to certain instinctive
knowledge also in connection with the mystery of birth and conception, with the
sexual life as a whole, and then:
"Certain
Angels would then themselves undergo a change — a change of which I cannot
speak, because this is a subject belonging to the higher secrets of
Initiation-Science which may not yet be disclosed.”
Certain
instincts connected with the sexual life would arise in people, which would
also pass over into and configure the social life, would above all prevent men
from unfolding brotherhood in any form whatever on the earth. Natural science
will then explain this as a natural necessity, also when “men become half
devils through their sexual instincts.”
Secondly, “from
this work which involves changes affecting the Angels themselves,” humanity
will also gain some instinctive knowledge of certain medicaments, but knowledge
of the harmful kind! They will like this, and
man will also come to know
through certain instincts what kind of illnesses can be induced by particular substances and treatments,
entirely as suits his egotistical purposes.
Thirdly, people
will “Instinctively come to realize in this way the possibility of exercising a
certain spiritual guidance and control of the mechanistic principle by bringing
into accord certain vibrations”, and human egoism will find this of tremendous
use and benefit.
It depends on human beings whether out of the chaos the social cosmos will come again:
"If,
in some epoch, the men who ought to be vigilant fail in this respect and do not
discern what really ought to happen then nothing real does happen. Instead, the
ghost of the preceding epoch walks - as the ghosts of the past are walking in
many religious communities today, and as the ghost of ancient Rome still haunts
the sphere of jurisprudence.”
With
his consciousness soul man ought to bring into the social life those images
that the angel is weaving in his astral body. However:
"If
we had not the Consciousness Soul, there would be no need to exert ourselves,
for then other Spirits, other Hierarchies, would certainly step in to bring to
fulfillment what the Angel is weaving. But because our task is to unfold the
Consciousness Soul, no other Spirits step in to carry the work of the Angels
into effect.”
In
Egyptian time some other angels were weaving, but were replaced by other
spirits and darkened man’s atavistic clairvoyant consciousness from those
times. But for man today
“it
behooves him not to sleep through what is being inculcated into his conscious
life in the epoch that will end before the third millennium does. Let us draw
from anthroposophical Spiritual Science not only teachings, but resolutions as
well!”
In order to develop the habit of being awake, we can perceive in every day of our life that a miracle
happened, and that some things that could have fundamentally changed our lives
were prevented.
In a little while it will be a hundred years since Rudolf Steiner gave this lecture,
and sixty or eighty years since it was translated into Serbian by chemistry
professor Sinisa Stojkovic. What happened or did not happen in that time I will
not get into - that everyone can study and discern. This is only a contribution
to the understanding
of Paul's sentence, but it
should also be taken into account what was already mentioned above, that there
are angels who, under the impulse of Christ, were developing regularly, and
also those who were lagging behind in their development.
* * * * * * *
Therefore,
also in this fifth epoch the influence of the angels who developed normally in
terms of Christ is particularly felt, but also those who were lagging behind.
The influence of the angels who stayed behind on the level of the development
that matched the third epoch is evident in the fact that they mostly act
through man’s sentient soul. Thus also various occult brotherhoods which are
under their influence entice the new members from among young people who are
just developing their sentient soul - between the age of 21 and 28. If someone
approaches them after that age at all, it is more out of speculative reasons and that acts
destructively in such brotherhoods.
Under
the influence of these angels who in their development stayed behind in the
third epoch - when the voice of conscience had not yet spoken from man’s inside
as in Euripides (485-406 BC), but through Erinyes as in Aeschylus (525-450 BC)
- certain people consider that even now they may control others not only in
general, but also using the magical methods of the third epoch, also including
hypnosis and acting in general on their subconscious. Through this of course
they also fall behind in their development, and with themselves also bring deeper down their own angels, instead of elevating them in their
development.
Although
the fifth cultural epoch started in 1413, it should be kept in mind that its inklings
began even earlier, and also that the effect of the fourth epoch continued
after this year and will continue throughout the first third of the fifth
epoch, that is, until about the year 2133. This is most obvious in
“caesar-papism", as well as in Roman and Sharia law, which are the fruits
of the development of the intellectual soul and which are adapted to the
egoistic desires of those in power. Out of this and because of the merging of
the spiritual, the political-legal and economic life, we have today all those monolithic states, and with all its
possible variants but based only on the ideas from the fourth cultural epoch.
Even though so much in the life of human beings has changed, no new ideas
entered their social system - only the phrases. For example Athenian democracy
of the Pericles’ age is celebrated, and in so doing his system is both
preserved, and it is buried that in it, 2% of democrats (to them do not belong
slaves, women and the underaged) manage 90% of the national income by their
whim, and thereby it is claimed that "demos" wants it that way, and
also gives a tacit suggestion that the "demos" includes slaves,
who accounted for 90% of the population of Athens.
In their own time both
Roman and Sharia law signified an enormous progress for humanity. They defined
the position of an individual - of personality - towards the society for the
awakening of self-consciousness. But then people harvested using sickle, not
combine, while the fastest travel was on horses rather than on planes. In
addition, both are based on some kind of racism: a Roman citizen or a Muslim
had greater rights than the rest, and this is preserved even now: the members
of the states with hard currency have the rights to at will exploit those with
a soft currency, which then of course they themselves skillfully "soften"
- it is not a problem for the leaders of several stock exchanges to make a deal
about the exchange rate of each "soft" currency.This economic racism should first be pointed out in the English-speaking nations, because in this epoch of the development of the consciousness soul it is they who are leading the development of this consciousness soul in particular, and are thus the most responsible for what is now happening in humanity. Some of their occult circles even consider that they should rule the world, not only now, but also to be nannies or educators of the Slavic race for the sixth cultural epoch. Since I do not know whether this is being publicly discussed by them, and if it it is it is certainly insufficiently so, so it is good that I point out at least, as one such infant or pupil who did for some time (and at the end of the twentieth century!) live through an officially organized economic ghetto, and my whole life in the unofficial one. The organizing of the official economic ghetto was accompanied by fiery speeches of racist hatred coming from many nations, which under the current "international law" are treated as war crimes. This should not in any way be understood as some incriminating criticism, but only as a brotherly reminder out of complete humbleness of one “region of development“. And who has more economic power, also has a greater responsibility in front of the spiritual world and he will experience this very clearly after death.
In addition to the above “speech of racist hatred" I would add "the silence of racist hatred." Silence is also a kind of speech, such as "negative speech". If you are explicitly talking about something, and are not mentioning something that is entirely like that, or is closely associated with it, then that is a speech of silence, and untruthfulness is very strongly expressed in it.
This way of expressing racial hatred is very, very widespread. I will here give only a few examples:
- In the last six or seven decades it is constantly being spoken - and it should be - about over six million Jews killed in German concentration camps, and along with that there is a complete silence about perhaps ten million Russian prisoners starved in Germany at the same time, and - I do not know how many - Russian women and children who were brought there as slaves. I saw them during the war by the thousand in Nuremberg - women with children in their hands and with those who were up to eight years by their side, while the older ones were separated from their mothers and taken to other camps.
- Both during World War II and afterwards there was talk about the Polish victims in the Katyn Forest, and because of that last year in April Polish President Lech Kaczynski was supposed to parade there, but was killed on his way there in a plane crash. First there was talk about 14 000, then about 22 000 Polish officers who were executed there in 1939. But it is never talked about how many of these officers in 1919 - thus before Poland was re-established as a state - under the self-proclaimed Marshal Pilsudski performed atrocities against the Orthodox Russian population in Galicia and Ukraine, including killing newborn and unborn children. There is documentation about that in the Serbian Academy of Sciences and certainly in the archives of Georges Clemenceau, who was kept informed about it at the time.
- There is silence, or at least outside of Poland one cannot hear anything about how many Poles were killed in Warsaw by the Germans near the end of World War II, those who have turned their weapons against the Germans when the Red Army was approaching. Probably they were not counted, and so it is not known whether there were more or less of them than those killed in the Katyn forest.
- Never in Serbia and let alone in the world has it been publicly talked about how many Serbs were killed by Tito’s partisans in Bosnia in the last months of World War II, those lured by Draza Mihailovic's promises of the victory of the anti-communist forces, which were at that time falling apart and were suffering defeat after defeat. I have privately heard that about two hundred thousand of them were killed, which Draza Mihajlovic accepted as volunteers at the time and certainly very pathetically armed. And one colonel who after the capitulation was made a general because of his abilities must have had a clear view of whether there was a chance to win or not. Should we here also mention those of his "recruits" who died of typhus? It is also symptomatic that in the court which sentenced him to death Mihalović spoke of things that were in favor of the Leninist revolution. And this is certainly one of the reasons for the silence about the whereabouts of his grave - in which part of the world, when did he pass away, and was buried there.
- It is not talked, nor has it ever been talked, about how many German prisoners of war were executed by Tito's partisans. From one participant I learned that along the Avala road (near Belgrade) about 20 000 prisoners were executed - disarmed prisoners - and I made a note of this in my "Historical Symptomatology" (written between 2003 and 2005). In addition it has not been talked about the fact that Tito's partisans also killed about 20 000 Ustashe, in fact mobilized Croatian soldiers - “The Domobrans,” while the Ustashe themselves fled and received asylum in various parts of the world, for example Artuković in the United States.
- About the Serbs executed by Tito's partisans after the "liberation" it was talked only among the Serbs, while almost nothing was said before the world public. Especially about those killed in the Kočevje Rog Plateau in Slovenia, brought there to Tito by the English soldiers from Austria. Nor was it ever published how many Serbs were killed in Jajinci by the Titoists or in the Belgrade Karadjordje’s Park and elsewhere. For Jajince it was talked- only in private - that within only two or three months more Serbs were killed than during the four years of German occupation.
- The world public also remained silent about the fact that starting on Easter day and afterwards in 1945 the Allied US planes’ bombs killed more Serbian civilians in Belgrade than did the enemy German ones in 1941. There was also silence about the fact that then and even earlier American and British planes bombed civilians in some other twenty or so Serbian cities from Smederevo and Nis to Podgorica, Niksic and Bileca, and no study was ever made of how many Serbian civilians were then killed and wounded.
- There was also silence about the Greeks killed in the post-war civil war, while according to some estimates, there were over a million of them.
- It has probably been talked about in Hungary, but not in the world public, that there also over a million people were killed during the uprising in 1956. There is silence because this was a rebellion against the world Leninist revolution, which has been systematically conducted for a hundred years already.
- Little is said about the two million killed in Biafra, but there is a decades long silence on the massacres that for more than a hundred years have been done by the paid assassins of the colonial powers in Africa and Asia and Latin America.
- There is also a systematic silence about the war crimes committed towards their own soldiers and citizens. The perpetrators of these crimes are even celebrated and monuments are raised for them, because “the end justifies the means" (this was not supported by Ignatius of Loyola). Thus, already in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire there was a saying among the Bosnians mobilized by force, “Here's rum - there will be a storm!". Getting one’s own soldiers drunk in order for them to get killed in the assaults is certainly a war crime. This also includes the exposure of its citizens to death in order to organize hatred of the selected enemy, and also mobilizing and sending minors to war. The list of such war crimes and their concealment is vast, so it could not fit in the framework of this presentation. For this not to be just an abstract talk, I will list some of the recent events. There is a systematic silence about the fact that under Tudjman young Croats were mobilized, that they were given drugs (instead of rum) and were then forced to storm towards the well defended Serbian strongholds and were then massively killed. About thousands of Croats who thus perished nothing is mentioned, and even less about those who were producing, passing and pouring those drugs into their food and on whose orders. Orders of those who were the first to recognize the independence of Croatia? Something similar appears to have been done with Shiptars and others during the "disintegration of Yugoslavia."
- While I write this (March 2011) only general phrases are spoken - which is the same as silence - about the simultaneous upheavals in about ten Arab countries from Morocco to Oman and Bahrain. At the same time there is talk about the humanitarian reasons for the bombing of Libya (similar to the earlier one of Serbia), and there is silence about the "collateral damage" -the number of those killed will perhaps be announced when the bombings are finished.
This is all the silence of racist hatred, about which one should seriously ponder, as on the international level racism is officially condemned.
Besides, if people are bombarded with information about the less significant events, and are not informed about the more important ones, those more decisive for understanding of what is happening in this world, so that based on that understanding they could take the proper attitude, then this points to the enslavement of the spiritual life - that it has already been largely enslaved. And the failure to disclose certain facts that are of crucial importance for making some decisions, that is a lie.
* * * * * * *
Under the influence of
the fourth cultural epoch the present English common law was
also created, according to which it is considered that the judges from the
earlier generations had a higher sense of justice than the present ones, and so
those from today must look up to the fairness of the older ones in making their
judgments. Of course to those of today, infallibility is attributed to
currently established facts as well, in order to preserve their authority as
representatives of the ruling class. Prosecutors can of course also make
mistakes, but do not suffer any consequences as a result if out of their orders
an innocent man would spend an indefinite number of years in pretrial
detention, since the prosecutor is himself a significant representative of
Caesaro-papism, he also belongs to a higher race. And in common law it is
supposed that in people's lives essentially nothing changes.However, since certain changes can still not be ignored, a huge number of new laws are passed. Into them a special kind of racism is also introduced - a little more veiled than in the Roman or Sharia law. Accordingly through this racism, those in power legislate what will benefit them and from which they themselves will draw profit. In the US they even speak openly about it - consciousness soul is highly developed among them - that some "lobby" in the legislature influences the adoption of a law that some group benefits from. The same is done in other countries, only it is not talked about it. And that is one of the reasons why in some countries there are tens and hundreds of thousands of laws, which in fact represents lawlessness, since the government can at will apply them or not, because a common man can not know everything about them; just like one does not know what kind of laws will be passed by those that one “has elected" - one is not clever enough for that.
In this way this legal racism is also transferred to economic relations: there are business owners and those who carry out their orders or in other words their servants or slaves. This is all the consequence of the politicians taking into their own hands the spiritual and the political-legal and the economic life and merging them all into a single whole. In this way, the politicians place themselves against the present time period in which the consciousness soul is developing, so this is still true:
"But Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them.”” (Mat. 20 25)
Here it should also be noted, that “those in the know among the white race,” began, in the second half of the twentieth century - perhaps first in the US - launching a fight against racism based on the color of the skin, which has already brought some fruit, even if it may seem imperfect to some. That is certainly at least a small - and maybe not quite small - step in the sense of the above-cited sentence by Rudolf Steiner, because here human beings are not seen ‘from the material perspective,’ or skin color. However, those in the know among the white race must seek to also abolish that racism which divides people into masters and servants. This can be done only by breaking the state into three independent and equal areas: spiritual, political-legal and economic. It is high time that this is done at least somewhere in the world, because otherwise something will happen to the white race similar to what it itself was doing in America to the people of red skin. Only with the liberation of the spiritual life from the tyranny of politicians can new ideas for renewal be born, for the resurrection of today’s dead European culture. In this domain should “those in the know among the white race”also do something. They should start a resolute fight against that economic-legal racism which has enslaved spiritual life.
6. ON NON CONDEMNING
When the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery and said that according to the law of Moses she should be stoned:
"But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you,"Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8 6-11)
This is one great Christian mystery: "Then neither do I condemn you, go now and leave your life of sin."
According to the law of Moses such a woman should have been stoned to death. According to the Koran she should be whipped a hundred times, which certainly also means to be killed, just as the false witnesses with only eighty whips (XXIV / 2.4). While according to Christianity, she should not be condemned, but warned not to sin. And for the politicians who are appointed to high positions in order to preach atheistic religion, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are one and the same, because they all believe in one God, in spite of the fact that in their sacred writings other gods as well are even listed by name. On the other hand, Christianity is at least in this quite similar to Buddhism. And with this intervention of Christ the intended perpetrators of stoning are also saved from the suffering they would have lived through after their death because of the pain they would inflict on the woman - they would feel her pain on themselves. About that Muhammad also knows nothing, and under his influence even Christians do not think about the suffering of hangmen, experienced after their death.
This is not in contradiction with the statement that all religions have something in common. All of them are trying to establish a link between the world of the senses and the spiritual world, to get to know the truth about it. But that in certain respects they differ, their very names point to it. Gnostic scientific attitude is to observe both the consistencies and similarities, but also the differences, and not on the basis of a single quality to declare that other qualities do not exist. That is done only by the agnostic scientists and the representatives of the atheistic religion, because they are harnessed in the service of politics, which in a similar vein has also created a-cosmic art, art aimed only at the interior of the earth and its forces.
* * * * * * *
This non-condemning attitude is also found in other writings of the New Testament:
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”(Mat. 7 1-2)
"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6 37-38)
And a little before that, Luke says:
"Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” (Luke 6 30)
Here Luke speaks clearly about what it is one needs to forgive. It is what we have given, so then we should not ask for it back but forgive it. In this way brotherhood among human beings is strengthened - we give to the other some of our surplus. This is also indicated by the words of the Lord's Prayer:
"And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Some, even highly educated occultists, assert and think that one should always forgive insults and other attacks and injustices inflicted upon us by someone. But this kind of forgiveness means that we had first condemned this man, and then do not ask him for any compensation or satisfaction, we get over it, full of love we reconcile with him. It is certainly good if we raise ourselves up for such forgiveness also, but it is far better if we came to this - not to condemn. For one great mystery of Christianity is that: not to condemn! Not to condemn a man, but sin - a bad deed - yes! This way man's conscience is awakened, which only in the fifth century BC began to speak in a man, this way one learns the truth and is stimulated to the proper moral action. And by this man also attains his freedom. Even Jesus says:
"If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.”(John 12 47-48)
"If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.” (John 15 22)
To make this clearer, I will here use a very simple example. In the world there are certain laws - both in the physical and the spiritual world. If we drop a glass from our hand, it will fall to the floor and not to the ceiling. If in mathematics someone says: When “an A" is greater than “a B" and “a B" greater than “a C", then “an A" is also greater than “a C" - that's also something in accordance to a law, the spiritual one here. Certainly most people would agree with this. But if someone would claim that in this case “a C" is greater than “an A", he would certainly somehow fall behind from most of the people; people would separate into two parts in terms of this stance: one would be intelligent, and the other crazy. And here the judge would not be the one expressing this stance, but those words of his, that stance of his would divide people into those who accepted it and those who have not accepted it as true.
This is the simplest example, but one can also take something more complex. Some people go their own way, come across a river and want to cross over it. There comes a man who knows this river well and says to them: A bit further on there is a boat that can safely take you over, while here there are rapids and whirlpools which you will not be able to overcome. Some of these people believe him, make a certain effort and perhaps even walk across a difficult path for a little while, before they safely cross a river, while some others do not believe him and take a shortcut, seemingly easier and drown. Here also one can not say that anyone was their judge, because both out of their freedom have decided to go one way or another.
This is the Christian mystery: When a man hears the truth, he can act upon it, or he can also act otherwise. Certainly he should also “learn” the truth, receive it using his common sense, and not to blindly believe perhaps a "false prophet" who will distort the truth. All this transpires through the whole New Testament and in this it substantially differs from the Old Testament and its renewal through the Koran, in which the unconditional obedience to the Law is demanded, even when due to human weakness it is wrongly interpreted. Those scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus dissuaded from stoning the adulterous woman, they realized this, they realized that she needs to free herself from her sins, and they probably realized that they themselves are also complicit in her sins, towards which the incorrect social system steered her, and which they support in this or that manner. And perhaps somebody thought that the origin of his complicity also comes from an earlier incarnation, that this woman under his influence also has become as she is now.
And in terms of acting from knowledge or from ignorance of the truth Luke says:
"The servant who knows the master's will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”(Luke 12 47-48)
As for the kind of forgiveness where man passes over some insult or injustice, which according to both his judgment and assessment someone inflicted upon him, there a certain sophisticated egoism and pride is always hiding: the offended one always at least subconsciously thinks that he is above the one who hurt him. That this is a wrong attitude, one example will show. A man deliberately trips another man and he falls into the mud. Because of that he has to return home to change his clothes, spends some time on it and is late for the bus which he intended to take. After that he hears that the bus collided with a truck and tumbled into an abyss, so all the passengers were killed. Should he first condemn, and then forgive the man who pushed him into the mud or thank him for perhaps a bit more cruel favor? This would be a very obvious example, but such actions of one man towards another are countless, only we are unable to discern all the consequences of such actions, not having such capabilities. That is why folk wisdom in the event of such an accident says: Who knows why that is good? It was known in the past that sometimes the divine world saves human beings from worse evil using severe blows.
With his present consciousness man can not discern all those mutual dependence between human beings, especially when several incarnations are also taken into account. However, with present consciousness man can assess whether some act is good or bad, the act itself. Man can know whether a piece of wood will sink or float in the water. Man can also know that if through television offensive vocabulary is fostered or promiscuity is preached, that this will become a habit of viewers - especially those younger ones.
The ancient Romans already knew this as well, when they used to say, "Verba movent, exempla trahunt" ("Words move people, examples compel them.”)! This is still known today, and that is precisely why it is applied, because this is also one of the ways to rule over human beings: it is easier to impose suggestions on those who have less command over their passions. Who has command over them, is in general also much more awake. While the one who surrenders to the passions, he is already asleep, so it is also easier to work hypnotically on him.
Such television shows are of course justified by freedom of artistic creation - of course only of those who have grabbed the power, and thus have a monopoly on showing the works of art to the public. In this way they act on the moral conduct of other people and it is no wonder if such suggestions are received by some fifteen or sixteen year old, who can then even in his mature years hardly free himself from them. And whose fault is his behavior, whether his or of the society that made him be this way? That social specter? This is also indicated with the woman caught in adultery, and that cannot be encompassed by any law, because every law is something rigid and very restricted.
* * * * * * *
"And he said to his
disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through
whom they come! It is better for him if a millstone is hung around his neck,
and he is thrown into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little
ones to stumble.””(Luke 17 1-2)Of course those out of whom the seductions come are themselves perhaps seduced. Therefore, we should not condemn them either, as they will all take the paths required by spiritual laws and necessity. And those spiritual necessities come as a result of human beings’ preferences and free choosing. Whereby this should also be taken into consideration:
"But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Mat. 12 36-37)
Is profanity useful?
I would like to draw your attention to something else here. A man discovers something that is for him a very uncomfortable truth. For example, that it was through him that a certain seduction came into the world, while he has also learned those words from the Gospel of Luke quoted above. If upon learning that truth he feels fear in front of that truth or indifference in front of that truth, he will be sinking into ruin. But if he feels the devotion before this same truth, he will be on the road to salvation. This is also one of the spiritual laws. And here man also has the possibility of free choice, and after making that choice things will unroll according to the spiritual necessities, either in one or in another sense and all depending on that man's choice.
Fear of truth paralyzes a human being, and like the indifference to truth it also leads him to inaction. While devotion to truth incites a human being to action, primarily towards learning other truths too, and afterwards towards directing himself according to those learned truths.
* * * * * *
Truth is also learned
from other people, based on their statements about things that one is not in
the position to experience for himself. But at the same time one should not
trust the other blindly, but should judge
everything using one’s common sense and the sense for truth. At the same time
one may have confidence in the statements of only those who have developed
devotion to the truth within themselves to a large degree, but this should also
be judged. Only the statements by the one who himself is
"the way and the truth and the life" may one believe and receive directly:"To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8 31-32)
Freedom certainly means the freedom to act, freedom to act within the framework of the laws of the existing world, both sense world and spiritual world. If a man does not know the truth about these laws of the world, then he also errs. His errors or sins in the sense world are easier to recognize, while in the spirit world it is as if they are creating some other world, some parallel world in addition to the world of the existing true spiritual reality. If he does not find out the truth about this wrong world of the spirit, then he remains trapped in it, especially if he has some affection for this wrong world.
In the sense world this very often shows immediately, while sometimes only later and gradually, as for example in the pollution of the environment, as well as in climate changes due to deforestation and so on. While in the spiritual one this wrong "parallel" world consists of:
- Phantoms created by people’s lies, slanders and hypocrisy;
- Specters created by the improper relationships of the human beings in a community, bad laws and regulations and generally defective social order;
- Ghosts created by human beings who with a certain automatism, and also voluntarily, usher themselves also to make wrong decisions or impose various prejudices and by force lead them to false beliefs, according to which these then act fanatically.
During this period of the development of the consciousness soul man ought, with the help of his guardian angel while awake, to experience and observe that "parallel world", the world of phantoms, specters and ghosts. The angel gives him some pictures of it, and man - if not clairvoyantly - can still experience these images and influences in his awakened spirit. One can feel the attack of today so widespread falsehoods, slanders and hypocrisies, one can also observe the defective social orders and unjust relations prevailing amongst people, one can likewise see through the frauds and deceptions and suggestive activities played on both individuals and the masses. To make this clearer, I will give you a small example:
A phone rings, and the boss says to his subordinate: "Say that I am not here!" and the subordinate acts by that.
Although this seems like a small thing, it is still a large obstacle in the development of man, even the angels and the world. Through the boss some ghost in the astral was in some way created, through the interaction between him and his subordinate the specter of the hierarchical social dependence is reinforced in the etheric, while through the subordinate some kind of a phantom was created in the physical - fine physical that ordinary eyes can not see, and which is the instigator of diseases as well, recognized in the bacteria and the like.
Also this way for the angel a terrible disruption is put in the way of its bestowing the correct pictures into the human astral body which is made asleep by this ghost, and what it enters then into man’s etheric and physical body, is mixed with imprints of the specters from the times past or with the phantoms that act by bringing diseases. The angel thus brings those images into the etheric bodies which are interrupted in their development or pulled backwards in the development, and into the physical bodies which are ill.
In this regard it should be noted that Christ came into the world not to judge it, but to heal it and to save it from all this. In a lecture given in Stuttgart on October 14, 1922,[24] Rudolf Steiner talks about the need not only for the external but also for the soul history of humankind. Connected with this, he states that the human body has hardened and has thus become extremely useful for reason, intellectualism has developed. Because of that:
"But thus even more man must acquire the connection with the spiritual world with his soul. The initiates in the first Christian centuries already knew all about that, they were just expressing this thing with some boldness, not spoken with any longer today. They were saying that human beings would have gradually become physically more and more sick, if Christ did not come to them and from their soul made them healthy. That is why in the first Christian centuries Christ was not adored only in our abstractions, but was primarily praised for being a Healer, the great doctor of the world, the Savior."
This was - according to the Gospel - also recognized by the Samaritans:
"...now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world." (John 4 42)
Every, every man can in countless cases similar to the above example discern such things and on the basis of knowing these truths can also act. And a commoner is there in a more favorable position than a nobleman. That is why I have, in the already mentioned "Historical Symptomatology,” in the chapter on “The world revolution,” in the fourteen points, wrote “I seek clemency for a nobleman!”. Regardless of the way someone has gained any power, he should not be judged but one should feel sorry for him and pray for his salvation.
* * * * * * *
Paul also writes about non-judgment:
"Who are you to judge someone else's servant?" (Rom 14.4)
"You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat.”(Rom 14-10)
"So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.” (Rom 14.12)
"The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”(Rom. 14 22-23)
One of course needs to study this whole section, but here I would like to concentrate on not judging oneself. Paul is speaking here more of eating and drinking, but this also has a broader meaning. That should be connected with the other great commandment, which is like the first, thus:
"Love your neighbor as yourself." (Mat. 2.39 and Mark 12.31)
Therefore, as we ought not to judge our neighbor so we ought not judge ourselves either, because we are in some way in the same situation. If we adhered to this commandment and besides that judged ourselves, then we would be judging our neighbor, too. However, the deeds we have ourselves done we ought to evaluate and - if faulty - judge. And for the sake of objectivity it is necessary to separate ourselves from our deed. But all the while we must not stop only at judging this deed, but - if we did something bad - we ourselves have to strive to correct it and not to make similar mistakes any more - never to distance ourselves from it. And with the words "for what he approves,” Paul points to man's conscience, thus the voice that speaks from within a man - "Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2.20) - as opposed to laws that say the same thing but from the outside. Even the assessments of man's deeds now also come through the conscience from within, and not through the Erinyes (Furies) from the outside.
That voice of conscience should in fact be a stimulation for what a man at a given moment needs to do in terms of the proper development of the world, even if with his ordinary consciousness he may not be able to judge properly nor to consider all the consequences. Because on a certain occasion he can be merely a tool of some higher spiritual beings, that through him some higher karmic events for the development of humanity can be fulfilled. At the same time - so that he would not fall under the influence of the spirits not on the path put forward by the Christ - a human being must develop an unconditional and absolute love for all, to discard out of himself even the slightest trace of hatred, no matter what he does.
To make this clearer, one should dwell deeply into what Paul writes in this letter:
"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what (I) want to do (I) do not do, but what (I) hate (I) do. And if (I) do what (I) do not want to do, (I) agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer (I) myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For (I) know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For (I) have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For (I) do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being (I) delight in God’s law; but (I) see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind (spirit) and making me (my I) a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me (my body-ness). What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind (spirit) am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”(Rom. 7 14-25)
Those parenthesis and words in them I have added in order to provide a degree of emphasis and better understanding. In doing so, that (I) can be taken not as a personal pronoun but as a noun, as a particular concept, for this entire text should not be understood as referring only to Paul's personality but to all human beings.
It should be borne in mind here that law is certainly spiritual and that man only learns it with his spirit no matter in what form he receives it through the body from the outside - hears it or reads it, but within he directly gets to know it through the voice of conscience. Thus even the most committed materialists say that something is "in the spirit of the law," even if they interpret it only as a way of expression. In the same way the human "I" is also spiritual. If therefore, in the above quote, the "I" is taken as a noun for a specific concept, then those initial words can also be translated this way, and consequently also what follows it:
"We know in fact, that law is spiritual, and the I has the consciousness in the embodiment ..."
It is also fair to say this with regard to Paul’s, "it is no longer (I) myself who do it, but it is sin living in me." In Paul's time, during the period of the development of the intellectual soul, when man completely lost the insight into the spiritual world, human beings had felt their I as completely connected with the body, as if they were one. Although Paul makes a distinction between spirituality and physicality, he expresses himself in the way that was suited for the level of the development of human beings of that time, in a way that was at that time more or less customary and understandable, while of course he is also trying to initiate them into what they still do not know or understand.
With this in mind, and because almost two thousand years have passed and we now live in the era of the development of the consciousness soul, and besides, “The Dark Ages" or Kali Yuga was completed already in 1899, and thus all our contemporaries were born afterwards, for all that I will re-stylize this same whole message of Paul here and will try to make it more intelligible for the present state of human consciousness, to possibly contribute to the awakening of the consciousness soul. Therefore:
We know in fact that the law is spiritual, and the I has the awareness in the embodiment and as such is subject to sin. So, the I with its consciousness does not know what it does; because the I does not do what it as a spirit wants, but what it hates - that is what the I does with the consciousness dependent on the body. But if the I with the consciousness of embodiment does what the I as a spiritual being does not want to do, then it means that this I agrees with the moral law and recognizes it as good. Because it is not any more the I that acts, but the sinful (amoral) beings that dwell in the embodiment of that I. The I in fact knows that in its embodied consciousness, that is in its body, good does not dwell; because to want - that is in the I, but to do good - that is not. Because the I does not do the good it wants, but the evil it does not want, that is what it does. And when the I in the body does what it does not want, the I as a spirit does not do that any more but the sinful (amoral) beings that dwell in the body. The I, wishing thus to do good, finds that the moral law applies to it- that evil is in its embodiment. So according to the inner man (spiritual) the I rejoices in front of the God's law, but the I sees another law in its bodily limbs, which wages war against the moral law of its spirit and imprisons it with the law of the sinful beings, which rules in bodily members. Miserable is the human I, who will rescue it from this mortal body? The I is thanking God - through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Thus only with its spirit the I serves God's law, while its embodiment - serves the law of the sinful (amoral) beings.
There is certainly a need to give some explanations here.
The spirit that has self-consciousness distinguishes itself from everything else in the world and that is the human I. There is therefore on the one hand, the I, on the other hand the non-I. The human I is now awake and conscious of itself when it is in some physical body. In it it feels separated from the rest of the world, but that body is not part of the I. The I in a way takes it as its own - as can be seen from the expression "my body". But regardless of the fact that it takes it as its own and uses it, the I is not its absolute master. The I is very little aware of what takes place in "its body", so it can not completely rule over it or - rather - can rule over it only a little bit. Some other and numerous other forces rule in it much more, of which some maintain and improve the body, and some make it sick and destroy it.
Besides, in this same body some other beings dwell, not only the human I. If this body would depend only on the human I, it would quickly fall apart, because the human I, even when awake has absolutely no insight into the life processes taking place in that body, and let alone could it direct them. This is even more pronounced when a human being is asleep, because it is evident that it is some other consciousnesses and not the human I that control his digestion, breathing, tossing in the bed and other processes.
Besides those forces that can be imagined to exist only spiritually or as some spiritual beings, in the human body there are also the creatures that can be seen also with our senses through the microscope - bacteria, viruses, etc. In medicine they are also given some group names, and each group name indicates something spiritual. When we say "flock of sheep", that refers to a group of twenty, and also to a group of two hundred sheep of any kind, it therefore does not indicate anything physically existing. It is similar when one says "influenza viruses," it refers to something that is only spiritual, but materialistic scientists are not allowed to say that by this they refer to some spiritual being - regardless of how it is imagined. In any case such beings use the human body as well, dwell in it, and not only the human I.
In the human body all-powerful processes take place of which man is not conscious. Science also speaks of man's subconscious, which would refer to his soul, even though materialists avoid this word or use it for some physical processes. In the subconscious there are various instincts, drives and passions. In it is also a way of thinking, outlooks and habits acquired by man from his birth under the influence of his environment. Many of the actions performed through the human body, the I even with its awareness related to the body, does not in fact do according to its will, but they occur "automatically". These include the reflexes observed by the senses - for example the hand’s jerk when it is burned. So it can be concluded that these subconscious actions are the deed of someone else, and not of the man's I with its consciousness tied to the body. That is why Paul says that this is done by, “my sinful nature," and I expressed it with "sinful (amoral) creatures that dwell in the embodiment of that I”.
It is quite reasonable to conclude that, there are some beings here, since there is an act due to being-ness - and no matter how one imagines it. While what kind these creatures are, that is a special and a very complex question.
When this is taken into account, one sees that an act should be separated from the human being, and only the act evaluated, because the vast majority of bad deeds a human being did not make with full awareness, but out of the subconsciousness under the influence of other spiritual beings. Of course, such spiritual beings may use a human being also for the execution of some good deeds.
Out of his current subconsciousness man also does something that comes out of a higher consciousness that he had in the spiritual world before birth and out of which he decided to fulfill it in order to rectify some of the deeds that he did in some previous life on Earth.
* * * * * * *
Knowledge about reincarnations is not only oriental, as is commonly thought, Plato also spoke about it, and it is also a Christian mystery. Many places in the Gospels speak about it in parables, and I will here quote the direct statements:
"For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Mat.11 13-15, similar in Mark 9 13)
"As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”(John 9 1-3)
From this it can be seen that a human being could have also sinned before being born this time, so that in this incarnation with his blindness can correct something he had sinned against in the earlier one.
Since in order to develop his freedom it was needed for man to completely lose insight into the spiritual world, the leaders of the Western churches have even forbidden the reading of the Gospels, while the patriarch Photios in the ninth century encouraged Cyril and Methodius to translate and spread them among the Slavs, so that the Slavs receive Christianity in the full consciousness. Hence individualism was being developed in the West more than in the East, of course, also with its dark side expressed in an exceedingly great egoism. With Western Christians it appeared because their insight into the spiritual world was more hindered, while through Photios the Slavs received the impetus for the preparation of the current epoch of the development of the consciousness soul.
Western people were more inclined towards it, because they were - and still are - under the influence of materialistic Arabism, while the eastern European people were even later on protected from that Arabism through the Turks, who bringing the impulses from the East were not able to receive that materialistic culture, being much more spiritual. In this Turks were helped a lot by the Serbs, which is shown very clearly in Serbian folk songs about Marko Kraljevic[25], who is taken as representative of the Serbs, of the Serbian folk soul:
- In the "Marko Kraljevic and Alil-Aga" Marko exceeds a Turk in archery, which has a certain symbolic significance, so the two of them fraternize and together keep the border land for the emperor.
- In the "Marko Kraljevic and Mina of Kostura[26]" the Sultan from Istanbul invites Marko to the army and his mother encourages him to do it. Together with his “brother” Alil-Aga he fights against the Arabs in the Sultan’s army, while the Sultan is his stepfather, and he is his stepson.
- In other poems also Marko fights against the Arabs, and in "Marko Kraljevic and an Arab" Marko saves his stepfather the Sultan in Istanbul and his daughter, Marko’s adopted sister, from the black Arab. The Sultan addresses Marko with the “with God, my son", while the daughter does it with the “with God, my brother.”
Here it should be added that Marko’s family saint is St. George, who slays the dragon - the spirits of materialism. In these poems a highly initiated anonymous Serbian poet (or poets) clearly indicates that the Turkish people with the help of the Serbian people can prevail over the Arabic people - primarily in the spiritual field. In other words, spirituality of the Turks together with certain abilities of the Serbs that the Turks are missing or are weaker in them can prevail over the materialism of the Arabs. In the Western European nations this materialism was received from the Arabs and even amplified, so it far surpasses Arabism itself, and in recent times it even imposes itself on it with great ferocity, so now the Arab peoples are also waking up against it and are fighting it perhaps with some exaggerated opposition. If Turkish and Serbian people would introduce social, state community with the three-fold social order as proposed by Rudolf Steiner, that would then be the nucleus around which the other nations of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa would also gladly congregate. That would also be the impetus for the resurrection of culture. Of course those circles who want to remain in power will be against it, but - so much the worse for them, because they oppose the spirit of the times and the regular development of the world.
In any case, since through man’s physical body other spiritual beings also act, while man himself acts not only consciously but also from his subconsciousness, a human being should never be judged, because we do not know whether he does the act or someone else through him. But the very deed we can and should evaluate whether it is good or evil. This way the moral universe is being created.
* * * * * * *
Just as human beings are subjected to the law of karma, so are the peoples - of course, in a slightly different and more complex way. I have already mentioned above that the American red-skinned people had to perish, because with them black magic was very strongly developed. Human beings were of course doing black magic, human beings who were then setting the atmosphere in these peoples, but in this one sees a close link between human beings and their folk spirit, which was already previously discussed. If human beings who belong to some people, and who give that people its main tone, cultivate an improper way of life - that people perishes. While if they cultivate a healthy way of life, which expresses itself in the proper - imbued with Christ - nationalism, nationalism full of love for all the other nations, then this is a great help also for the archangel who leads that people, and he is in fact himself the spirit of that people, with full devotion one should serve the spirit of his people, and if that spirit of the people takes Christ’s path, it will never be hostile towards other peoples.
In a similar way as in one human body, where besides man’s I some other beings act there too, so it is also in the individual peoples but of course only even more complicated. Thus even with merely external observation it is easily recognized that human beings of various nationalities also mix and merge into each other. In addition, other spiritual beings also exert influence on the life of one people, and that is extremely difficult to perceive. And the archangel who leads some people for a while may, for certain reasons, leave that people, and then some other archangel can take his lead - one taking the proper development or one that is behind in its development. In any case, also if in some people immorality is widespread - a departure from Christ’s path - that is the harbinger of its destruction, just as in a human being.
This should not be viewed with some judging criticism either, because all of it has much deeper reasons than we can discern. Thus even the Archai who as spirits of time lead various cultural periods, even they likewise take turns together with their assistants. This was perceived by Homer, too, who in his "Iliad" described the transition from the third to the fourth cultural epoch. He particularly expressed this in Book 20, in the "Battle of the Gods", ones who are on the side of the Trojans against the others who are on the side of the Greeks. In the "Iliad" it even says that Poseidon saves Aeneas from Achilles - there was a need for some continued impact of the third epoch in the fourth. We also now need to model ourselves on Homer, who describes it all in a cold, dispassionate and objective, though artistic way (art was still cosmic then).
Although we can use the calendar to precisely determine the end of one and the beginning of another cultural epoch, based on the shift of the vernal position of the Sun, there is also always a longer preparation for the appearance of the new one as well as the prolongation of the activity of the previous epoch into the new. Homer described even this preparation with the events of the abduction of Helen and the sacrifice of Iphigenia. While the activity of the third epoch evolving into the fourth finds its parallel in the legend that says that the Trojan Aeneas came to Rome with “the palladium", thus the Romans descended from him. And another legend says that the Emperor Constantine brought, and hid, that "palladium" somewhere in his city on the Bosphorus.
"Dark Ages" or Kali-Yuga came about before the start of the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, the epoch of the development of the sentient soul. With the darkening of the insight into the spiritual world human beings were then supposed to start feeling themselves, their I. At that time the theocratic social order was quite justified, according to which the few initiates into the secrets of existence led the rest of the people - even with magic - based on their interpretation of the will of the gods. In later times even these interpretations are lost, while acting magically on the people thus becomes decadent and harmful - especially for those who still apply them today.
In the fourth, Greco-Latin epoch humanity passes through the development of the intellectual soul. There people lost contact with the spiritual world even more, but on the basis of sensory perceptions they wish, and try, to understand their whole existence, thus to also orient themselves in it and adapt the perceived world to their wishes and needs, and thus to come to the consciousness of their I even more powerfully. This is given in the dictum: "Know thyself,” the beginning of which Homer showed with his Odysseus - Ulysses, the Cunning one - who invented the Trojan horse for the removal of the third epoch, and the rest for the building of the Fourth. In this epoch also arise all possible philosophical movements, human beings are being clever and even cunning for the sake of meeting the needs and desires of their I. In that epoch well-organized states and powerful empires are formed, with which other peoples are enslaved for the sake of the achievement of the group egoistic interests of those who are stronger, and especially those who lead them. There are even degenerated theocracies, that are theocracies only in their outer form, founded on the power of weapons. And toward the end of the epoch politics becomes increasingly pronounced.
In the present, fifth cultural epoch, human beings are developing their consciousness soul. They have - no matter whether correctly or not - achieved some self knowledge, knowledge of their I and now out of that I they try to do what they deem they need, and what is most commonly related with the needs or desires of their own I. Now politics comes to the full flowering, politics in the broadest sense, because the choice of the location where a man will settle is also a certain type of politics. The most typical example of political action is the establishment of the Anglican Church around 1534 under Henry the VIII. Unlike the Protestant churches, which all bring some theological changes too - though they are also very strongly politically inspired and motivated, the Anglican church was solely and exclusively politically separated from the Roman Catholic Church, or in other words it was freed from the political authority of the Popes. It should be noted here in passing that in this epoch the English people have the task to particularly develop the consciousness soul, and hence comes their so strong and dominant impact on current world politics. While under the inspiration of the English folk spirit there was also created the English saying: "Honesty is the best policy", and so I have also used the word "politics" in this sense, policy as a way of conduct, the principle of one’s behavior or doing.
As already indicated above, neither individual human beings, and even less individual peoples should be judged, but only their deeds should be as accurately as possible perceived and evaluated. And individual human beings, too, as well as the individual peoples, will develop further according to their karma or spiritual principles, to which all human deeds are subjected, but not all intentions and decisions to do something voluntarily are so bound. In these a human being can be free. Hence James also writes:
"Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom.” (Jam.2 12)
7. ACTING
The deeds of those human beings who set the atmosphere in some peoples are subjected to certain spiritual laws, and the consequences for that people as a whole were already somewhat discussed. Here I will also point to one tragic occurrence in the present.
As I described it for an individual human being in my essay "On Nature, Chapter 3, Goetheanism", it also applies to entire nations, so it can be discerned in them too. Namely, the slaveholder always becomes dependent on his slaves, must always react to the way they behave to keep them in his power, and then this becomes his nature, by which he automatically, un-freely acts - the nature of slaves is built into the nature of the slave owners. So have those peoples who have enslaved the other ones received enslavement as the characteristic of their being, enslavement as their attribute and an integral part of their life and social organization. They of course lie to themselves that they are some "free democracies" (just like the slave owners do), but they have created for themselves purely totalitarian, police states.
A people that masters another people receives a lot from this subjugated people. This was very well known, and is thus also expressed in the Latin proverb "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit ("Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror”). But from the subjugated people the conqueror does not receive only what is nobler and better than in his people, but also what is wilder and worse. This was also seen with the Romans for example under Julius Caesar, who himself in "The Gallic Wars" describes how he savagely killed all Gallic leaders - both secular and priestly. It was also evident in the Europeans who received the savagery of the African tribes when they were buying human beings from their chiefs, and then - as they were at a higher stage of the development of consciousness - they even increased this savagery while transporting them to America and by their further treatment of them. There are also many examples of this in recent history, and this can at least partly explain the savagery of European peoples starting from the twentieth century - of course, those of their members who have not received the Christ impulse, no matter how much they cross themselves and pray.
In all this a close connection between all peoples or all human beings on the Earth is seen; it is seen that all human beings constitute one body, in which individuals are its limbs. It is not good, however, when one member supposes that other members are of less worth, as Paul writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 12 12-31).
In addition, it should be borne in mind that each part of the Earth has its own special effect on the people who live there. This is of course physically very easily observed already by the external appearance of the people, but certain areas of the Earth make a very strong impact on the soul and spiritual qualities of people too. This is roughly expressed in that division between the East, the West and the Middle, but much narrower areas also give certain specific characteristics to the people who live in them, while the people themselves also leave their footprints in those areas. Different is the atmosphere, for example, in churches where one prays to God or in bars where one gets drunk, and this applies to much larger spaces as well. This difference can be felt even in two neighboring villages. And that would be the basis for some real “geopolitics," and not some economic interest and aspirations for satisfying the group egoistic interests by taking something not found on that territory.
Thus, for example, with their traits, Serbs are much closer to Hungarians than to Russians, because their habitats on the Earth affect them more than the racial traits. That does not mean that belonging to a race has no effect.
This was already known in the nineteenth century by certain English occultists, when they made a plan to create a certain "Balkan confederation” between East and West as something like a buffer zone, which would have included besides all the Balkan countries also northern Italy and the Middle East, perhaps also north-east Africa - of course under their leadership. Neither they nor their followers succeeded in this - even though they were working on it all the time, because this can not be achieved with some monolithic states nor with purely economic means with withered states, but only with the three-fold social order, as Rudolf Steiner attempted to realize it in the twenties of the 20th century in Germany and Silesia. In such political plans and their realizations there exist - besides the will of the human beings - certain spiritual laws too. If these laws are not taken into account, then no human plans can be achieved, no matter how strong the desire and the power of those who stand for them, not to speak about the fact that such plans can be opposed by the wills of others and also reinforced by the inertia of the vast majority.
These spiritual laws and the interconnectedness of human beings are expressed by the words:
"Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword." (Mat. 26 52)
In a very concise manner with these words is given in Christianity one - of course not only Christian - mystery: every act of a human being, and this also includes any spoken or unspoken word, is in some way incorporated into the human being.
This also in some way applies to the entire peoples or other kinds of groups of human beings. But the karma of peoples is not the subject of this exposition, and besides I can not go into that because I am not developed enough for it. But still I also can point to this spiritual law:
Free can be only the one who does not deny freedom to anyone!
Despite the fact that various spiritual beings operate in and through human embodiment, and through it all the best and the worst deeds can be carried out, a human being can also with his I do a lot through that body, including encouraging these beings towards the good deeds and the rejection of the evil ones. If a human being does this only with the consciousness dependent on embodiment, then this is not the true act of his freedom. However, the I can use that spiritual being and that awareness within embodiment in order to carry out something through it which is done out of complete freedom, out of one’s own moral intuition untroubled by the influence of the body’s sinfulness.
This requires vigilance with which one learns the truth:
"...Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”(John 8 32)
At the same time it is easiest - even if not easy - to get rid of one’s habits acquired during this life and under the influence of one’s environment. If a man is accustomed to drink brandy when in company, and finds out that it is harmful for him, then he can consciously free himself from that habit. Of course this is a very simple case, but it can also be applied to the habits of thought that have come as a result of all the erroneous and inaccurate ideas about certain things that were poured into one’s head from his childhood on; because when he finds out the truth about them, then he also frees himself from those habits of thought.
Habits always put one to sleep, so it is quite justifiable to say “a slave of habit." When a man wakes up in it, then his spiritual I can, through the consciousness it has in its embodiment, change this habit out of its freedom and this in spite of other beings acting within his embodiment and who may have turned this habit even into a passion, like with some drunkards. For the sake of this awakening it is good if a man, for the sake of the exercise, consciously keeps changing even the smallest and most banal habits.
Freeing oneself from passions, drives and instincts is certainly much more difficult, but is not impossible either. Here too the first step is for a man to get to know them with his waking consciousness. For example, if he loved and ate a lot of sweets, and finds out that this is bad for him, a man can abstain from eating sugar. I particularly cite the simplest examples, but this can also be achieved in much more serious cases. Man can with his waking consciousness - if not to completely abolish - at least to a large extent control, bridle and direct his drives.
With his waking consciousness and by knowing the truth man can act even on the processes in the physical body which are instinctively taking place, quite unconsciously taking place. If somehow man has found a connection between his soul moods and what in his body appears as an anomaly, as something sick, he can also willingly heal that- without any other adjuvants or drugs - just by his own conscious changing of those moods. About this connection between what is of the soul with what is of the body, many doctors know- they have a lot of evidence on the power of suggestion, but there is a very small number of them who apply that in treatment - for some perhaps because of the convenience of the patients themselves, but perhaps also "under someone’s directive” to use medications. About this conscious influence of man on the physical processes - besides the modern medics - yogis and fakirs, dervishes and others have also known about this for centuries, and thus very obviously they have been showing it.
Therefore, by getting to know the truth man can release himself from the influence of spiritual beings who act in his body, can completely suppress them, can overcome what in Christianity are called temptations. For this, of course, knowledge and full wakefulness are the prerequisite. This also is a Christian mystery often referred to in the Gospels - wakefulness. For example:
"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come." (Mat.24 42)
When a man is awake and is getting to know the truth, he completely suppresses the action of the spirits which are not on the Christ's path, but who act as seducers and obstacles instead. Then, in some way, a man directs them too to Christ’s path, and especially assists also his guardian angel, and even the other people with whom together he represents Christ's body, while individually they are all his limbs (1 Cor. 12 27). But:
"Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills. For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.”(1 Cor. 12 4-15)
And so on. It is good to read this to the end.
Different people, therefore, have different gifts and if each works according to his gifts, then a harmonious whole and advancement are created in humanity. Paul further indicates this by pointing out the role and dependence of various members which form the body as a whole and which would suffer without each other.
With smaller tasks too it can be seen that with his gifts one man alone cannot carry them out, that it is necessary for people of different abilities to act in community, such as for building a house. Different individualities with different gifts should agree and then a successful community is created for the realization of some work.
* * * * * * *
What is true for individual human beings, also applies to the entire peoples. Every people has its own peculiarities and gifts and only all, absolutely all together represent a harmonious whole, which provides a possibility for all human beings to develop in Christ’s sense. In view of their characteristics human beings incarnate according to their needs sometimes in one people, sometimes in another. If a man knows this mystery, then all chauvinism takes leave of him, but not also nationalism - against which the present rulers struggle, because a man who has chosen before his birth to be born in a certain people, has himself made that decision, and should do what is in the character of the archangel who leads that people, and so that out of his free will he will also contribute to that development indicated by Christ through that folk spirit. If a man is a true nationalist, he is never against other peoples, because only all the peoples together represent humanity as a whole — a Christ-like whole. In this one should be careful to distinguish the people from the state that bears its name, because the states are political institutions that are human, and are not or are only partially of the archangels.
Each people has something particular which should not be neglected at all. If above I have pointed to some of the character traits of the Serbs and the Turks, it does not mean that both should not also receive something from other people, for example from the Hungarians or the Syrians - to merely name their neighbors. Of course not only to receive from them but also to give them. Only all peoples together represent an entirety that allows each human being to develop in the right way, and with it all of humanity. Of course it is difficult for the I tied to the physicality to realize this, but with the comprehension of this truth and the love for the truth the I can, also with its consciousness in physicality, understand this if it has common sense and a feeling for truth. And that for this the universal love is required too, Paul also says immediately after this lesson:
"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (1 Cor. 13 1-8)
Love therefore also "rejoices with the truth", it is closely related to it. Indeed, if someone is lying to someone else, it means that he hates him, not to mention if he steals from him or - which is the same - exploits him.
I would add here also that sharing one’s possessions with the poor can also be done out of the hatred towards them, with the intention that they be morally ruined this way. What's more, even on a broad political field this is being done, but I will not go into it here. In any case, everything done should be done out of love and love imbued with wisdom, lest perhaps unconsciously by some giving something, an evil would be inflicted on the other. This is indicated by the words that love rejoices with the truth.
While hate leads people to destruction. Hate also leads whole peoples to destruction, if within them prevail the individuals with chauvinistic disposition, with a group egoistic rapacity, and not with nationalism soaked with love for all other nations. This destruction of whole peoples runs through several human generations, and this can be discerned today with ordinary consciousness through the statistics on births and deaths. And this is one spiritual law.
* * * * * * *
About some thing, the truth is only one, while lies can be innumerable. Thus, the truth may be received by absolutely all people, but not lies too. The truth in this way unites all the people, while lies divide them. Through learning the truth human beings unite with Christ, take his path:
"Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”(John 14 6)
The one who lies, falls off from this path. In the world of the spirit this is the law, just as gravity is, for example, in the world of the senses. Each lie takes man away from Christ’s path and he must make a special effort if he wants to return to that path.
Those who quite consciously lie in order to deceive and manipulate other people are in an especially difficult situation. This hatred toward others makes them tumble into the abyss. That does not mean that there is no way they can save themselves from this fall. That is why in Christianity there is talk of repentance. But that repentance must be in deeds, that by his act man corrects the evil he caused with his lies. But this opportunity is provided at this time of the development of the consciousness soul; if what had been done with these lies is not corrected then, the time will come when that will no longer be possible, in that period humanity will tear itself into two parts, the two races. This is schematically shown in that earlier figure number 5. There God, or Christ, is not the judge - as is shown in the West under the influence of the Roman law - that is simply a spiritual law which may be seen and understood also with the embodied consciousness.
Truth unites people and leads them in one direction, while lies break them and scatter them in different directions. Here of course there is also a lot of seduction and temptation to which every human being is exposed. Very often - in terms of Paul's comparison - the brain considers that the intestines ought to digest food differently, and also that circulation is not supplying it properly and sufficiently with food. If in its waking consciousness the brain causes a change in normal functioning of the bowel and the circulation, that leads to their illness, and the excessive supply of food to the brain accumulates in its malignant tumor. This is a picture of the current social order in humanity, which I will not further elaborate, because he who has ears will hear. I will only add this:
"If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.”(Heb. 10 26-27)
* * * * * * *
In the gospels there is much talk about acting and non-acting, and various gifts of people, but mostly in colorful stories. At the same time it should be borne in mind that non-acting is also a kind of acting, say negative acting. If someone can extinguish a fire which started smoldering, and does not do it, then with his non-acting he contributed to the fire’s flare up.
In any case, stories and myths from this period were much more comprehensible to people, being more vivid than the dry statements of the facts commonly used today, which correspond to the present state of human consciousness.
"Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.””(Mat.13 34-35)
In all these stories it is always pointed out that a human being can, according to his will, work correctly and incorrectly, in the sense of Christ or contrary to it. Unlike the Gospels, both Paul's and other’s epistles were written in terms of rational explanations, and even those deep secrets, about which the gospels speak perhaps in a less clear way, more picturesquely. But in them also, it is always talked about the fact that a man can choose what to do out of his will, and then also what the consequences this will have. This is what I have called the laws of the spirit world as opposed to the laws of the sense world, although these in fact also originate from the spirit. With our senses we perceive easier the latter than the former. And the most difficult is to discern the connection between the two. But this connection exists. In fact everything sensory - material - has its spiritual background. And that which is material, and which Hinduism calls Maya or grand illusion, has spiritual background and is not to be ignored at all. It would not otherwise have been created.
In the East, people are prone to neglect what is sensory and to seek some pure spirituality. In the West, people are again more likely to attach themselves only to the sensual and at the same time to be of the view that there is nothing spiritual, but only matter and material processes. Those former ones do not think that some Creator or Brahma - regardless of how it is perceived and named - created that world of senses with the specific intention which should not be underestimated at all but examined and understood, and thus act accordingly too. While the latter ones want to acknowledge the existence of only what they perceive with the senses, though at the same time at every step they contradict themselves in this rejection of the existence of anything spiritual.
Here the manner of expression is also in question, to which I pointed out at the beginning of this writing. When an Easterner says "Maya", he imagines that that is only an illusion, that it is nothing that exists. When a Westerner says "spirit", he also imagines that it is something non-existent. However, illusion also exists, even if it is only an illusion; while spirit also exists, even if we can not perceive it with the senses. As a consequence, the man with the Eastern understanding is in danger of dissolving himself into some general spirituality, while the man with the Western understanding is to be trapped in matter, to completely merge with it, to identify with it, to become himself an "illusion".
An Easterner has a science of the spiritual world and knows that the sense world is a grand illusion for the human being, and so he is not interested in the truth about it. A Westerner has acquired many truths about the sense world, but has no correct science about it, does not realize that that also is spiritual, that he experiences it differently only as a result of human organization.
From this it follows that both the Easterner and the Westerner - each in his own way - refer to materialism, and so yield to it. The former because they want to escape from that sense world, to reject all that is material as something harmful and thus they subconsciously form matter with higher intensity, while the latter do it by recognizing only the material and rejecting and denying the existence of anything which is not matter.
The salvation from materialism is in the recognition that the spirit is also in the matter, and that man only by his current organization and due to the seduction of Lucifer - the expulsion from paradise - can not discern that in the sense world the spiritual occurrence itself is always to be found as well. An Easterner is inclined to believe that the world created this way, and the great illusion experienced by the human soul, are not good, need to be overcome - to free oneself from everything material. While the Westerner thoroughly studies that sense world, but interprets it wrongly.
And inconsistently! In his everyday speech man uses much more the words that have a pure spiritual-soul meaning, than the words which denote something material. The word "house" as a general term does not denote anything material, it is material only when one says "this house" and points to an existing one. No abstract noun denotes anything material: "love," "joy," and the like, to say nothing about verbs, exclamations and connecting words and others. When we say "It shines", this suggests purely soul experiences. Also, "Eh!" or "Oh!". In the same way no mathematical concept signifies anything materially existing, while through mathematics atoms and molecules as something materially existing are invented.
If in terms of the exposition at the beginning of this writing we were to call spiritual all that is not material, then it could be said that the most unwavering materialists point to what is spiritual and of the soul much more than to what is material, but just do not admit it, are not aware of it. About what is called forces or powers it has already been discussed.
* * * * * * *
Similar or almost identical activity at one time and in one place and under certain circumstances can be good, while in another time or in another place and under different circumstances bad. It is good to transplant a tree in winter, and bad in summer. It is good to sow wheat on the fertile land, and bad on a rocky one. It is good to eat a cake if a man is healthy, and bad if he has an elevated blood sugar.
In this way one should also consider some guidances given in Paul's epistles - not all. For example, the instructions about eating the things sacrificed to idols (l Cor. 8 1-13) are no longer needed today. If Paul writes to Ephesians that our struggle is “against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6 12), one should take into account that several centuries later archangel Michael pushed them down to the Earth among human beings. If Paul says to the Romans that "there is no authority except from God” (Rom.13 1), that was valid for the time when power was acquired by sword, so then one could also have said that by some fate, or God's will, this or that human being was the victor; while now the authorities are elected or "elected" by the people, whereas in the meantime they came automatically through blood inheritance too. Even Paul himself writes to the Corinthians that the rulers of this world come to nothing. (1 Cor. 2 6) and that the end will come "after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.”(1 Cor.15 24). This refers to Christ, and also those who belong to Christ and work in his spirit.
At the present time those who strive for the introduction of the threefold social order are working on this, as proposed for the present age by Rudolf Steiner. This can not be implemented in the West, but in Central and Eastern Europe, and even further to the east. In the West people have fallen much more into matter and thus a strong individualization has occurred, often directed towards a terrible egoism, a desire to hold everything, truly everything in their own hands, of course within the limits of possibility provided that that possibility is expanded as much as possible. In the Middle and in the East this is not as pronounced. A Russian, Sergey U. Linder, points out that "a typical Russian lives - and experiences himself - through those close to him, within and through the community, not by focusing on his personality as a means of 'self-realization'" (Der Europäer, Nr.5, March 2011). In Central Europe self-awareness, the awareness of one’s I develops in a spontaneous way, and that has as a consequence understanding, better understanding, of the I of other people.
This is not a moral evaluation, but only a scientific ascertainment of facts. That it is not moralizing, can be realized by everyone who knows that a human being according to his individual needs incarnates once in one and another time in another environment and people. He who understands that, eliminates within himself any moral assessment of different peoples and races, because that would mean that he therefore evaluates his former actions in those peoples too. This would mean that, even though now he does not know his former actions, that he still morally evaluates them. Racism as a whole comes from such feeblemindedness.
It should be emphasized again that through correct nationalism, one which includes love of absolutely all peoples, a human being improves his folk spirit and helps it to develop in the spirit of Christ's impulse. The battle against such nationalism is the battle against Christ. Such nationalism is completely contrary to chauvinism, because chauvinism is in fact a group egoism of the members of some people, egoism based on the hatred of other peoples, peoples that one group wants to rule. This chauvinism is represented by the people who fell behind in development, who are not individualized enough and who associate their importance with blood affiliation. And through chauvinism, also expressed in various types of racism, men act on their folk spirit hindering its development, preventing that archangel from being raised to the level of the Archai in the distant future.
It does not mean that this will happen, because - even if in some people chauvinism would gain the upper hand over the correct nationalism - that archangel can also leave his people and through another task progress in the spirit of Christ. And then some other spiritual being may take his place - which I certainly can not perceive. But as one possibility for this case, the Archangel of the Roman people can be taken, who perhaps fell behind or gave its place to another spirit, which in this present cultural epoch now acts like a specter.
If one imagines that he should forcefully impose the impulses of his folk spirit on the other peoples, then he is falling into the abyss, and with this he also pulls down his archangel - which does not mean that he will also succeed in it, that it will also fall into the abyss. While if out of his nationality he spreads love for all nations and allows them to freely develop by themselves without his intrusion, through this he shows love for his archangel, and gratitude that he received speech and learned to think from him. The battle against this, proper, nationalism is fought under the banner of the Antichrist, so those concepts of nationalism and chauvinism are also twisted.
In the threefold social order both nationalist and religious, as well as legal and economic conflicts between people automatically fall off. In it is expressed:
- Personality through the experience in the freedom of the spiritual life;
- The impersonal through daily opinion in equality of political and legal life;
- Semi-personal through inspiration in the brotherhood of the economic life.
Unlike Paul’s and two of John's epistles, which are all written for certain districts or persons, the rest of the epistles have a more general nature and do not speak about some concrete and specific circumstances. Of course, even in the former, there are many general guidelines, which can also be accepted as valid now, and even in various parts of the world.
The epistle of James especially gives concrete instructions for acting, and less about knowledge. So as part of this chapter I will indicate something from it as an incentive to ponder about acting in the sense of the Christian mystery:
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” (Jam. 1 2-3)
"If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”(Jam. 1 5-6)
"When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.”(Jam. 1 13)
"But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it--not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it--they will be blessed in what they do.” (Jam. 1 25)
"But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.“(Jam. 2 6-9)
"Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”(Jam. 2 12-13)
"As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”(Jam. 2 26)
"For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.”(Jam. 3 2)
"Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good conduct, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.”(Jam. 3 13)
"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?” (Jam. 4 1)
"Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.”(Jam. 4 11)
"Therefore, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it is guilty of sin.”(Jam. 4 17)
"Come now, you who are rich, weep and wail because of the miseries that are coming upon you.”(Jam. 5 1)
"Above all, my brothers, do not swear, not by heaven or earth or by any other oath. Simply let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, so that you will not fall under judgment.”(Jam. 5 12)
"Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.” (Jam. 5 13)
"My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”(Jam. 5 19-20)
With these last words Jacob ended his epistle.
* * * * * * *
At the end of this chapter, and for a fuller understanding of this Christian mystery, the following short notes can serve, from lectures on the Apocalypse, which Rudolf Steiner gave in 1903 or 1904,[27] and which were not published in his collected works (GA), and thus passed quite unnoticed:
"Very respected audience! We have arrived at an important point in the consideration of the Apocalypse. What shall be stated further about it should bring us even more deeply into some hidden truths. We will see how this difficult to understand work expresses theosophical truths in a magnificent form. If we look back at what has already been said here, then we have to mark the Apocalypse as 'secret revelation’ of what human spirit will have to experience in its future development. But it would be quite wrong, if someone wanted to think that such predestination suppressed all the will of human beings, if one wanted to believe: so all this comes this or that way, no matter what a human being does. No, that is not the case at all. The great world laws of the spirit are not so given that they are awarded to human beings from the outside, but with the purpose that a human being receives them from within, so that he then develops himself in their spirit. According to a quite specific natural law oxygen and hydrogen are combined into water; but human will can make the conditions for their combining, so it can also be the cause of that law coming into effect. If it delves itself into the laws of nature, then it itself becomes an executor of these laws. It receives them into its spirit, and thus itself becomes the creator of nature. It is no different with the spiritual laws. In the world it is determined that it develops within spiritual laws, as it is established in nature that it is shaped by natural laws. And just as a human being is a worthy co-creator of nature only when he acquires a deep knowledge of the laws of nature, so also in the life of the spirit he may be active only if he makes these spiritual laws out of his knowledge. If we do not know anything about the laws of oxygen and hydrogen, then we can not participate in the way that they combine. We fulfill our human task through knowledge, through knowing of nature. These would exist and be valid even without our knowledge. But without our knowledge nature would pass us over. We would then stay in our subdued state and we might merely be the apathetic tools of its creation.
Also, the great laws of the spirit would be active without us too. What is said in the Apocalypse would be true, even if no human being would ever comprehend it, just as the law of combining chemical matter would be true, even if no human being ever would know anything about it. But this was placed into human hands so that through the observation of these laws a human being is approaching his divine goal. In his soul that light which is revealed in the world through the divine power must light up. In this highest sense a human being must understand this'Godly child-parent relationship.’ Some father does not keep his knowledge to himself, but lets the child know it so that it can itself develop in terms of this knowledge. Certainly, the child would get older, even if he did not pay attention to these laws, even when he would be passively watching how his father acts. But that child would remain undeveloped. Yet father’s love consists in that his child does develop. While the love of God for humanity lies in that that his will is revealed in the human soul. God has called a human being to become perfect. God not only creates, but he reveals himself; while man's will must make these Divine revelations the incentives of his will. What needs to happen is certainly ordered from the beginning, but it is also ordered that a human being himself fulfills these Divine revelations. God did not quite exclude man’s doing out of his world plans, but has from the beginning included him in it. Certainly through the father all that is necessary does happen even if the child were passive. But then in all this the child would not participate.
Apocalypse was added to the Gospels. The Gospel shows the good news for Christians about God’s or the divine Word’s becoming man. This 'Word' became flesh so that it can dwell among the people. This sacrifice of God means the liberation of a human being from the shackles of matter. A human being should through Christ be in Spirit united with his God. When he holds onto the Christ, he carries that Spirit of God in his heart. But this Spirit of God is the guide towards the will of the 'Father'. While the will of the Father is revealed in the scriptures, of which the Apocalypse is one. From Christ the strength ought to flow for Christians to understand what the Father from the very beginning decided about the world. Christ died so that a human being could live, live in the Spirit. In the Apocalypse is the spiritual will of the Father. The one who is through Christ initiated in this faith receives the strength to reach the Father through Christ. "No one comes to the Father except through me.” But a Christian should also reach the Father, that is, he should get to know the will of the Father through the revelation. The Gospel is the good news about the sacrifice of Christ for the people; Apocalypse is the revelation of the divine will of the Father. Christ said that after his death he would send 'Spirit'. And this theologian John merely faithfully wrote down what the Spirit promised by Christ revealed to him.
If a Christian beholds Christ, if he feels deeply united with him, then he receives the strength and the life for the understanding of the will of the Spirit; if he beholds this revelation, then he knows in what sense he should apply the strength received from Christ. Apocalypse is a book. And each book has value only if a human being has the strength to understand it. Life in Christ should give the Christian that strength to understand this ‘secret revelation’. This strength is granted by grace, as every spiritual strength is the gift of grace. However, this strength must be developed. Christ wanted to unite the human beings into the community of God's children; but the Spirit of revelation is meant to lead those God's children to a mature development.
Starting from this point we would like to penetrate even deeper into the Apocalypse next time.”
* * * * * *
8. CLOSING REMARKS
This is just a small presentation about the Christian mystery:
"Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21 25)
Done in Belgrade from December 14, 2010 to May 3, 2011
Vojislav Jankovic
Translated by
Svetlana and Paul Correa
[2] Rudolf Steiner; Das christliche Mysterium, GA 97, Koln 2.12.1906 i Wien
22.2.1907
[9][9] Andre Bjerke: Neue Beitrage zu Goethes Farbenlehre, Verlag freies
Geistesleben, Stuttgart, © Kosmos Forlag
Stockholm
[11]Johannes
Scheffler, 1624-l677, German mystic and poet
[12]Novalis - Band 2, Carl Hanser Verlag, Munchen-Wien, 1978, pp.763, 82
[13]Renate Riemeck: Glaube - Dogma - Macht, Urachhaus 1985
[14] Rudolf Steiner; Die Philosophie der Freiheit, GA 4, p. 242)
[15]Rudolf Steiner; Wahrspruchworte, GA 40, p. 118
[16]Rudolf Steiner; Wahrspruchworte, GA 40, p. 192
[17]Rudolf Steiner; Wahrsphuchworte, GA 40, p. 233
[18]Rudolf Steiner; Wahrspruchworte, GA 40, p.101
[19]Rudolf Steiner; Wahrspruchworte, GA 40, p.101
[20]
'Corpus Hypercubus' by Salvador Dali (1954)
[21]Rudolf Steiner; Die vierte Dimension - Mathematik ind Wirklichkeit, GA 324a
[22]Rudolf Steiner; Geistige Zusammenhänge der
Gestaltung des menschlichen Organismus, GA 218, III lecture, 23.10.1922, p. 104
[24]Rudolf
Steiner; The Soul and Spirit of Man Between Death and New Birth, GA 218, II
lecture
[27]"Der Europaer", Nr. 4, February 2011
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