Vojislav Janković
"Then," said Henry, "when will there be no more terror or pain, want or evil in the universe?"
"When there is but one power, the power of conscience; when nature becomes chaste and pure. There is but one cause of evil,--common frailty,--and this frailty is nothing but a weak moral susceptibility, and a deficiency in the attraction of freedom."
"Explain to me the nature of Conscience."
"I were God, could I do so; for at the moment we comprehend it, conscience arises.”
"Certainly," said Sylvester, "Conscience is the only begotten redeemer of every man. It represents God upon earth, and is therefore to many the highest and the final. But how far was the former science, which they called the doctrine of virtue or morality, from that pure form of this sublime, comprehensive, personal thought. Conscience is the innermost unique essence of man in full transfiguration, the divine archetypal man (Urmensch.) It is not this thing and that thing; it does not command in general sentences, it does not consist of individual virtues. There is but one virtue,--the pure, solemn Will, which, at the moment of decision, instantaneously resolves and chooses. In living and inherent indivisibility it dwells and inspires that tender emblem, the human body, and can excite all the spiritual members to the truest activity."
Novalis
Contents:
Forward page 3
Part One: The fundamentals of material science page 5
Creed page 5
Dogma page 5
Apologetics page 10
Part Two: Spiritual Scientific Explanations page 13
Fundamental Positions page 13
Scientist’s duty and freedom page 17
Obsession page 21
Allurements page 25
Consequences of seduction page 30
Threefoldness page 35
Something for the understanding of the Christ page 43
Remarks page 51
Forward
Beginning with the nineteenth century, materialistic science has, with enormous power, seized the minds of the most civilized part of humanity. Towards the end of the twentieth century – especially after the “fall of communism” also in Eastern Europe – a tendency appeared to move from this one-sided materialism into a mystical idealism, also one-sided. In order to avoid falling into this second mistake, the tenets of materialistic science are discussed here on the basis of Anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit, founded by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), which acknowledges the value of materialism and idealism. The bridge must be made between them, since neither can wheat be harvested with idealism, nor can moral ideals be created and man be understood as spirit using materialism.
Materialism comes from those observations directed only to the outside world, idealism or mysticism from the observations of one’s interior while neglecting the exterior. If one accepts this only as dualism, i.e. that both exist independently from each other, one easily falls into fatalism. One loses the conception of freedom, which is important for self-understanding. Likewise, idealism by itself, which emerges in various aspects of mysticism and various religions, can eventually theoretically refute the claims of materialism. However, those theoretical proofs are incapable of preventing materialism from becoming reality, man from binding himself with matter more than is needed, and thus remaining enchanted within it like a phantom. That suppression of materialism can only be accomplished with the knowledge of the spiritual science, which can even in the crudest substance encounter the spirit and can show man the way to resist that seduction, which would otherwise completely connect him with matter, instead of leading him through Christ into the other life. It can also protect him from another seduction, which comes from that befuddled mysticism coming from various religious types of narrow-mindedness, used here too to draw on a primitive eastern variant of the rule of the Roman Empire with throne and altar, and to replace it using the western one with altar and throne. When surrendered to pure mysticism man would not connect with matter, but would never become a free being either, and would instead get lost in some general spirituality.
In order to counter both of these two extremes, these two temptations, the Anthroposophical mode of expression would say: Between materialistic god Ahriman and idealistic god Lucifer, man should find the Christ, who keeps them in balance.
The supporters of the first and second of these seducers are indeed trying to completely leave behind the knowledge of the true being of Christ, because with this knowledge, they lose their power to rule over the people who worship these gods and oppose Christ’s impulse of freedom. For as Paul says: “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery."(Gal.5.1). These words of Paul are the major reason for the attacks against him and claims that he has perverted Christianity - of course not only these - and this propaganda has for years been maintained by certain circles in the West. For the same reasons, over the years, various circles have systematically used propaganda to claim that a drastic cleft should separate the East from the West, because they are two different worlds. Therefore, for many years – at least a century - hatred and bloodshed have also been organized in the former Yugoslavia. Such a drastic cleft should "abolish" (not only destroy but abolish) – so that it no longer exists – the Middle that has a mission to be a bridge between East and West, that keeps them in balance, so that neither one overtakes in its one-sidedness, but is well harmonized with the whole of humanity. This tendency for the "abolition" of the Middle is the result of feeble mindedness. The Middle will exist despite all the imposed iron, paper, and propaganda curtains, because it is in accord with the development of the world and humanity directed by much stronger and wiser forces than those of Ahriman and Lucifer.
The warriors against Christ are definitely trying to "abolish" the Middle using various machinations to also seduce some quite well-meaning people and lead them to work for them. They do that by implanting misperceptions and hypnotic suggestions and the like, making them gather into different groups and subjecting them to imposed group ethics. That is the reason they fight against ethical individualism, indicated by Rudolf Steiner, which points towards the path to freedom. In order to achieve this goal agents are skillfully injected also into the Anthroposophical societies, where, masked behind many good and correct things, they also infiltrate some depravity, which can then fundamentally destroy basic Anthroposophical tenets. Thus, a former general leader of the Anthroposophical society declared that the whole society was in "the occult slavery" - in other words, that ethical individualism, which is an expression of human freedom, cannot possibly exist. From all this it follows that thousands and thousands of members and supporters of the Anthroposophical movement - because the movement was once connected with the society - have only a group consciousness, not an individual one.
There are many such attacks. They are always - whether they come from full or twilight consciousness - always fruits of "de-individualization".
Written in Belgrade, from the end of July to the end of December of 2001, with the moral support of my wife Olgica.
Vojislav D. Jankovic
PART I - THE FUNDAMENTALS OF MATERIALISTIC SCIENCE
Creed
Credo:
• That there are only material particles, from which it is built all that there is, and there is nothing that is not built of them;
• That these material particles are subjected to unrelenting laws of nature and that these laws create both matter and energy, which can therefore be converted into each other;
• That any two of something can act on each other through nothing and that all material particles are subjected to this law, as well as all bodies are made up of a multitude of clustered particles of such material;
• That at one time something engulfed the material particles and stirred them up, and then they came under the influence of the inexorable laws of nature and were grouped in different ways, and that this event was unrepeatable;
• That out of this whirlwind of material particles everything dead was formed, and out of that all that is alive, then everything that feels, and then all that thinks;
• That the materialistic science is infallible and that only by its means can one come to the knowledge of any phenomena in nature.
Dogma
1. Only what can be expressed in measure, weight, and number exists.
2. Space is three-dimensional and infinite in all three directions.
3. Time is eternal and stretches endlessly from the distant past to the infinitely distant future.
4. There is no quality, just quantity. Thus, for example, sounds are undulation into larger or smaller units of groups of material dots (atoms or molecules), and colors are undulation of something unknown to us, thus called ether. Heat is also some kind of flicker of some particles. Smell and taste stimuli are irritations caused by tiny particles of matter and so on. The contents of a book and its value can be determined according to the number of words or letters, and the letters themselves could be determined by the number of flickers of air when they are pronounced - but it is a bit complicated with regard to the pitch of various human voices, so we do not do it. It is similar with the impression caused in a man when standing in front of a painting or landscape, but science will one day explain that too.
5. There exists sense world that cannot be perceived by the senses, such as atoms, mesons, protons, electrons, neutrons, etc., etc ., and according to the scientific atomic theory they will never be seen, because when illuminated by rays of wavelengths less than these particles, they cease to exist, but from them, however, were all things created, the whole real world.
6. The amount of energy in the universe is constant, even though matter can be turned into energy and energy into matter.
7. All the senses are subjective, so through them one cannot get to the objective reality, but only through instruments, even though these were subjectively invented and fabricated, and also made with the help of subjective senses and limbs.
8. However, since we perceive reality only with the senses, in order to be objective we must use only the sense of sight minus the ability to distinguish colors. The sense of sight therefore must only be used for reading the scale on the instrument and then it is not considered subjective but objective, although a separate science of errors made while reading the scales has been developed, as well as a science of subjectively perceived colors.
9. For scientific observation we must also not use the sense of balance, by which we acquired the concept of the three-dimensional space, and on which we based observations: up - down, front - back, right-left. However, this space is objective and real, regardless of subjectivity of the sense of balance, and the fact that it consists of material dots that are discontinuous and are set proportionally at large distances.
10. What is also real is time which we perceive with other senses as before and after, for example sweet and then bitter, hungry and then full, noisy and then quiet, dark and then light, etc., but these senses must not be used for the study of reality. They are subjective, and time is still objective, even though science has not explained what it is.
11. While as a result of stacking of one and then another, and then a third dimension we obtain space, the same is not allowed to be done with time. To explain reality time can be used potentiated to the first degree - for example, with velocity, also to the second degree - for example, when defining energy or labor, it may be potentiated to the third degree - for example, with force or effect, but about it one may at most speak as of the fourth dimension, as opposed to length, by which are obtained the three dimensions and which also appears in the real world only to the first, second and third degree.
12. It is not allowed to think about time separately, even though for the explanation of reality it also appears independently either potentiated to the first degree as in angular velocity or squared as in angular acceleration i.e. in connection with number, which, yet, cannot be explained as being composed of material dots, but it may still be used for their determination.
13. Mathematical concepts and operations are not real, but only they can unerringly be used to explain reality. And so besides circles, straight lines, squares, cups, rollers, real numbers, tetrahedrons, and others which may approximately be drawn or shaped in reality – beside them one is allowed to also use imaginary (thus conceived, non-existent) numbers, then also potentiation, logarithmic transformation, differentiation, integration, and the like, which is all mathematically invented; all this can be used to explain reality, even though it is itself unreal. In this way, the real observation is explained by the unreal means, and thus one comes to an unerring understanding of reality.
14. Phantasy can be used not only to create something new - like music, a novel, pie or tractor, mathematical concepts or other things, but also for the interpretation and explanation of something already created. Thus it can be imagined that for the creation of a locomotive its parts were randomly put together just like the rhinoceros’ parts, and not that some people have made it.
15. Scientific theories and hypotheses created by phantasy may be used as something that has been proven – and even though they are scientifically both unproved and unprovable – they may fill the books and the heads of hundreds of millions or billions of people down through generations.
16. General concepts such as triangle, lion, star, stone, milk, etc., though not real, may still be used for determining the laws that govern reality.
17. There exists nothing that is indicated by abstract nouns, as for example love, beauty, joy, anger, error, shenanigans, the truth, amazement, compassion, conscience, etc. Since the mind would belong there too, and scientists are still smart, then the mind has been moved into the category of the real by being measured with tests and expressed in numbers in accordance with the dogma number 1. If necessary, in order to prove their existence, some other similar categories can be expressed in numbers, for example damage, theft, earning, which are then expressed as a certain amount of money, itself created by phantasy, and which does not have to be a tangible real banknote or coin, but can be only a non-existent mere entry into books or computers.
18. Thoughts are, just like anger, beauty, joy, etc. secretions of the brain caused by genes, diet and so on, and science will in the not too distant future succeed in synthesizing mind and knowledge and then in a form of material substance will inject it into the brain. This will save you time-consuming, tedious and expensive education and will in a rational manner create the needed classes of people. In this way, the harmful and undesirable racism will disappear, which is a consequence of the development and deployment of the genes that have not yet been scientifically controlled or regulated.
19. There are no other miracles except the miracle of the creation of the universe, from all eternity and out of nothing and the way it is expressed in the scientific creed.
20. Scientific Creed is the product of scientific thought and proves that science exists. Although the word "science" is also one of the abstract nouns, science is still an objective reality, because it can be denoted as a number infinite, a number that is not determined by anything, but is still higher than any particular finite one. This is because it can constantly progress, and is thus more and more comprehensive, and the quantity of its findings could be expressed in numbers, from which it follows that it is real.
21. All religious symbols of faith are worthless because they are not based on scientific knowledge, but instead on the superstition of the uneducated and primitive people, and written in order to manipulate and dominate them. On the contrary, the scientific researchers do not want to manipulate and rule over people, but only seek to bring their scientific results into their brains to enlighten them, for them to work in the correct scientific sense and mode, and according to the highest achievements of scientific authority.
22. In order to obtain scientific results we must not only observe phenomena that occur in nature, but must also perform specially prepared experiments.
23. Results and laws identified on the laboratory table in a small confined space and in proportionally short time apply to the entire universe, which spans infinitely large space and which lasts an infinitely long time from the infinitely distant past to the infinitely distant future. According to these same laws all the processes are also practiced on the Sun and on Saturn and Neptune and Sirius and in a distant nebula millions of light years away (1,000,000 x 9,500,000,000,000 = 9,500,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers). Thus it is possible, and very accurately, on the basis of observation for a period of 5 or 5000 years, to determine the age of the Earth's stages of development, as it was 200,000 or 2,000,000 years ago, because in the meantime nothing important could have happened - the results need only be divided or multiplied with certain numbers.
24. Thus, even though no experiment can be done under ideal imaginary conditions and without impurities from some undesirable influences, its findings and the results are absolutely correct, because these effects can either be ignored or imagined as nonexistent or at least that they do not substantially affect the obtained results.
25. Even though through experimentation the measurements of the achieved results almost never correspond to the theoretically calculated formulas, they can still be considered to prove the accuracy of these formulas.
26. Conclusions about reality may also be carried out neglecting second or higher-order terms in formulas that express some laws, because that is more comfortable than splitting hairs with accuracy.
27. If reality diverges from theory based on observation of the obtained results, one must not think about it, because one could fall into superstition and believe that there are other miracles besides the one expressed in the dogma number 19 above. One must not ponder, for example, how is it that certain comets move around in hyperbolic orbits and still periodically return to our solar system, while we know that hyperbolas are open curved lines whose arms diverge.
28. Regardless of it being proven that the light bends under the influence of a magnetic field, in order to measure the distance of some star or nebula we must assume that it moves in a straight line through the empty space for thousands or millions of light years.
29. Neither must one think about why it is that one experiment positively determines the particle nature of light, and the other - differently organized - undoubtedly proves its wave nature, and no experiment can simultaneously prove both of these statements.
30. It may be assumed, in experimenting with light, that from two points on the Sun, towards which we turn the opening in a camera obscura, light rays can only go in parallel lines, even though we know that from an illuminating point, light spreads in all directions, and therefore in this experiment two rays can also collide. Likewise, when they reflect they still always remain parallel and unchanged, because a solar ray can quite freely pass through another - exactly in a way superstitious people imagine that ghosts do. Rays of course have an infinitely small diameter of cross-section, but when doing experiments we take rays to be something composed of an infinite number of such rays so that we could see it, and then in such a beam of rays we imagine that they neither intersect nor otherwise act upon each other.
31. One must not think about the wavelength of the color purple, because this would cast doubt on the authority of Sir Isaac Newton. Consequently, Goethe’s experiments with light and colors must not be recreated either.
32. In nature the law of evolution rules, by which the material swirling dots first somehow gathered and formed elements such as gold, hydrogen, silicon and more. Then the atoms of these elements were somehow put together and formed compounds such as water, silicates, lime and others. Out of these compounds, molecules randomly colliding formed organic cells, which then formed plants, and then animals more and more complex and perfect, until finally man was made from monkeys.
33. According to the same inexorable laws of nature, out of the accidentally swirling material dots sedimentary rocks and crystals were formed, fish are bred, trees grow, food in the stomach is digested, a cat meows when her tail is stepped on, a child cries when it cannot learn a lesson, an assassination of a king is being hatched, a sonata is composed, the end of the world pondered about, chatting over coffee takes place, and so on. These are all physical, chemical, electronic, magnetic, and similar processes, explored by science that will - if not already - one day be explained (time lasts for eternity).
34. Ignorant people think that they can freely, according to their own will, do something, because they do not recognize the inevitability of natural law, by which they themselves are made and based on those processes by which they act. Science has already discovered that the genes which determine a person and their features, also condition their actions in certain situations. If the genes are structured in one way - man sings well, if in some other way – he then steals. Freedom therefore does not exist, it is just a big illusion, Maya.
35. People with better composed genes lead people with less suitably composed ones. A new phase of the evolution of humanity has emerged where people with better hereditary, genetic features give appropriate substances to those who are backward in order to improve them, and science is now on its way to influence through genes these backward ones for the purpose of evolution. By doing so science will also improve what ignorant and superstitious people call morality, which also does not exist in reality and belongs to Maya.
36. Social relationships are based on the genetic traits of people. First, this is expressed in the family, clan, tribal, national, and racial identity, and on the other hand, people with other similar genetic traits gather and form various associations, political parties, and organizations. In such unions based on similar affiliation the affection towards similar people is enhanced, which common people call love, while that is only Maya. Ignorant people think that all this is an expression of their special human freedom, while in fact we have those same organizations in other animal species: swallows form families, elephants gather in herds and wolves in packs, bees join together into the hives that are more perfect than human organization and so on. When a man does something not in accordance with the prevailing genetic make-up of the group to which he belongs, then the defensive mechanism of that community fires up, since it threatens its survival. Ignorant people call that phenomenon conscience, which does not exist at all in material reality and this is also one of the great illusion to which people tend to surrender. And conscience is only Maya, because if a man acts according to the tone and direction provided by the people with better arranged genes, then it does not appear as a deception, as they then live in reality.
Apologetics
Before the development of science, people interpreted all natural phenomena they could not explain as the effects of different forms of invisible spirits. They did not know that fire is a rather ordinary natural chemical process of combustion, that lightning is a discharge of electricity from the clouds, that rain occurs due to condensation of the chilled water vapor that rose from the earth, that earthquakes are subsidence and shifting of certain layers of soil, that plant growth is influenced by biochemical processes fueled by solar heat and light, and so on. All that they did not understand primitive people attributed to some gods and spirits. Even about thoughts produced by the human brain they thought that these were somewhere around human beings and that somehow they got into their heads. The natural urge in the fight for survival and in procreation they mystified and attributed to an abstract love, and they failed to grasp that love is in the same category as the other instincts, like hunger or thirst, etc., and that without it some animal species could not exist. Based on the fact that the human being has such and similar emotions and feelings, a soul used to be attributed to him and based on the fact that he thinks they attributed to him to also have the spirit, not just the body. Having watched the human body decay after death, primitive man perfectly reasonably attributed persistence to the invisible soul or spirit after the decomposition of the body, that they have an existence independent of the body, and all this because he wanted to live forever.
Some people then, in their ignorance - as Plato still did - imagined that such a human spirit existed even before one’s birth and that it only enters into a body being born. Plato's student Aristotle himself was among the first to cast doubt on this superstition, but even he could not completely free himself of it, so Aristotle imagined a god, who creates a soul for every body that is born and that that soul after the death of the body still continues into infinity in some imaginary spiritual spheres.
However, Aristotle still gave certain scientific groundwork, which in the dark Middle Ages was preserved and cultivated only in Arabism, which starting with the year 622 AD received Islam, the religion founded by Muhammad. At the Battle of Poitiers in 732, Charles Martel rejected the Arab penetration into France, so they remained only on the Iberian Peninsula. Thus the ground was prepared for an almost completely illiterate Charlemagne to establish a vast empire, and afterwards to form an alliance with a very erudite Baghdad Caliph Harun al-Rashid. While caliphs were both religious and secular rulers, deciding on both religious dogmas and the life and death of their subjects, Pope Leo III (795-816), as a representative of the faith, "transferred" the secular authority to Charlemagne, by making him an Emperor in 800, even though the latter already had that authority. Since then Popes pretend that they are the ones who award secular power, but for the exclusive right to interpret religious dogma they had to wait until 1870, when under the Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope was proclaimed. And both the Islamic as well as the more than a thousand years younger Catholic dogma, modeled on the former, collapsed under science, because only the institutions that foster materialistic science can be infallible. Only science is infallible and only when its results are verified and confirmed by such institutions.
Also, under Pope Pius IX, in 1854, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary was established, that is to say that she, as well as her son Jesus, was conceived in some supernatural way. Science has, already for a long time, conclusively proven that no one at that time could have been immaculately conceived, because this technology in medicine developed only in the twentieth century, and only with it can something like that be achieved, what primitive people would denote as "immaculate conception". Because the Catholic Church wants to identify itself with Mary, they have perhaps only launched it symbolically. However, if one would just take the symbolic meaning of the "Immaculate Conception", then it can only refer to science. This is because science has emerged in the course of evolution from man's innate desire for the comprehension of nature and its grounds are impeccable or "immaculate," while this is not the case with the Catholic Church, which is based on beliefs which have no proof.
However, Pius IX also released, on the 8th of December 1864, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the encyclical with the Syllabus, which says that the belief in freedom of conscience is insanity, which was certainly done under the influence of the exact sciences, which later proved that the conscience does not exist, and also that there is no freedom.
Because science is not based on belief, from which also fanaticism develops, it is recognized that in the dark Middle Ages there were also enlightened people who would come to scientific truths. So there was a group of people gathered around Pope Nicholas I (858-867) and Pope Hadrian II (867-872) and the Constantinople Patriarch Ignacio (799-878) who recognized that it is pointless to say that man has a spirit. And so at the Eight Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, in 869, they established this as a church dogma. Eastern churches, under the leadership of Patriarch Photius I of Constantinople, rejected this and did not recognize that Council, and in that fact one may find the reason why, in the meantime, East fell so far behind the West. But science is also penetrating to the East, and there it is also increasingly recognized that some spirit does not exist at all.
That refusal of Eastern Christian churches to accept sich obvious fact that no spirit or spirits exist can be explained by the fact that these peoples felt threatened by the invasion of the Arabs, and thus refused to accept those scientific truths, too, that came to them from Arabism. Western countries - with the exception of Spain until the fifteenth century - did not have that fear, and were able to impartially receive from Arabism those scientific truths and to continue to improve them.
Thus for example Bacon Verulam (1561-1626), Chancellor of England's King James I and with his support, established his philosophy and was one of the most important founders of experimental methods, discarding all the theological and religious authorities. This way he formulated the Western basis of modern science, which followed up on Arabism and from which Darwinism and the rest were then to arise.
Out of the same eastern understanding James I himself founded various occult lodges, where people exercising various rituals and ceremonials gained some more noble, common disposition and where, instead of personal egoism that leads to conflicts, group egoism was implanted, as well as collective consciousness and behavior, in order to harmoniously and effectively work on the development and the well-being of mankind. Later on, out of this impulse and with similar postulates various sects were created. James I knew that the spirit does not exist, so he fought against the so-called individual spirituality, which, like a big deception, was seducing people off course and led all of humanity into chaos. His beneficent influence can be felt even today and is expressed in more conservative-minded parties and in the extraordinarily successful development of economic life, which with more and more success, meets all human needs and frees man from his everyday worries and makes him happier.
Contemporary with him, but only from a different territory, worked a Spanish Jesuit and theologian Suarez, who in fact originated historical materialism, Marxism and liberal parties, such as social democrats and others. His followers are thought to be in opposition to James I. However, it is significant that he himself is a follower of one of the most important figures of the Catholic Church, Ignacio Loyola (1491-1556), who in 1534 founded the Jesuit, Jesus order and thus in its very name pointed to the fact that those stories about some divine spirit, called Christ, are invented. Loyola of course had no scientific knowledge, and so needed help from the so-called revelation and tradition, but he very clearly emphasized that man has only body and soul, and he appreciated Jesus very much as a noble man with high abilities, and believed that in his name one should organize his earthly, and therefore material realm.
In any case, the West most consistently received the impulse of the materialistic science, which already came to the fore at the council of 869, and with the further scientific deepening in the nineteenth century arrived at the fact that even the soul does not exist. Already in the nineteenth century psychiatrists had come to this conclusion, and in the twentieth the irrefutable evidence was given of a connection between the so-called psychic phenomena with various physical substances, which alter the mood in humans and through which the brain may be acted upon in order to make it function in the desired manner.
It is interesting that the great scientists of the East, where body is otherwise neglected and where they only speak, in a mystical way, about soul and spirit, are still trying, by using a variety of exercises, to train the body to work more perfectly. For example, to use a larger part of the brain than is usually the case, or to improve the so-called soul qualities, using various martial arts and physical exercises. This is certainly a purely materialistic science and as such is welcomed and has spread in the West, and it is even practiced in purely scientific institutions.
Science has no prejudice and will gladly accept the claim that Wilson's famous Fourteen Points of January 8, 1918, addressed to the Paris Peace Conference, are fully contained in the Koran, and have a background in the Old Testament. Here Wilson also recognizes the importance of heritage and wants to establish, based on blood affiliation, The League of Nations with "people’s right to self-determination", therefore the right of a group with the same genetic characteristics, as opposed to the meaningless right of a person as an individual and a member of the entire heterogeneous humanity. If every man as an individual had full freedom to do what he wanted, then that would be chaos. In fact stronger and more sophisticated people of one group by heredity and inclinations should lead the others. Proper functioning of this natural law can be seen in higher animals - the strongest ram leads a flock of sheep, the strongest deer his herd, etc. and that leading position it acquires in a battle with possible competitors.
Materialistic science with its exact methods and persuasiveness is achieving remarkable success in improving social relations. Not only is it allowing people to live better, longer and happier, but it is also influential in the elimination or at least the alleviation of various conflicts among people, because through it people are freed from various prejudices and superstitions that cause those conflicts. Thus did, for example, those two streams - of James I and of Suarez - largely reconcile or agree. According to certain information, in 1912 Scottish Masons celebrated December 8th as their holiday. That was certainly established in order to be closer to the Catholic Church, in which a Spaniard Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer founded the "Opus Dei", admittedly based on a true monk's principles and discipline, but also fully focused on mastering the economy.
Eastern people fit very well, and more and more, into the economic life of the West, and have also largely accepted the historical materialism of the West. From their side, their more hidden, but therefore deeper materialism, greatly contributes to the development of the materialistic science of the West through the above mentioned transcendental and other meditations, physical exercises, awakening of the bodily functions, acupuncture, massage and others. In this way a variety of backgrounds and premises from around the world scientifically complement each other in an extraordinary way.
PART TWO - SPIRITUAL SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS
Fundamental
Positions
No real science, including spiritual science, is based on religious dogmatic a priori premises (which certainly do not have to be wrong, however), but on knowledge acquired through experience -- perceptions for which appropriate concepts are found, and using common sense and a sense for truth.
This cannot possibly be said for the materialistic science, which is today preached and professed by certain circles. That is why some of its previous basic premises are given here in the form of religiously shaped assertions - without proofs - and they will not be discussed here. Common sense itself, as well as the strict scientific thinking, will logically and consistently refute them. One who does not make this effort, will stay living in his phantasm, but let a representative of materialistic science, who has in himself a true aspiration for knowledge, first discuss at least the above named dogmas that are ingrained in his subconscious, let him lift them into his consciousness and judge them in his full awareness.
It should be emphasized here that spiritual science -- Anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit, founded by Rudolf Steiner –explains and gives evidence also for many religious claims, which were formulated and given for the state of mind of his contemporaries, only as accounts of the truth out of spiritual observation. In doing so, he uses only the strictest methods of modern science, but for observations he uses all the senses man is endowed with, and does not dampen and banish them as the contemporary materialistic science does.
We have twelve senses by which we observe the world and they give us completely objective perceptions of it. It is a separate question why we often wrongly and subjectively interpret these objective perceptions. But it is entirely unscientific for us to give up observing the world using all the senses, even when some of them have no clearly expressed physical organ, but are a sense spread throughout the body. We have twelve senses:
1. The sense of groping or touching,
2. The sense of life with which we feel vitality, disease, hunger, thirst, etc.,
3. The sense of movement with which we perceive when, for example, we’ve raised our hand and turned our head,
4. The sense of balance,
5. The sense of smell,
6. The sense of taste,
7. The sense of sight,
8. The sense of heat,
9. The sense of hearing,
10. The sense of word or speech, by which we can distinguish articulate voices from noise,
11. The sense of thought, by which we perceive the thoughts of another (not just through uttered words),
12. The sense of the observation of the distinctive I of another, and by which we perceive that that I has its own memory.
Science should be freeing us from those errors, born in our souls due to misinterpretation of perception by the senses, which otherwise quite objectively introduce into our soul impressions from the outside world. Not to first make sensual cripples out of us in order to recognize us as scientists. A real scientist would have to be happy when a new sense would open up for him and he would be able to perceive, for example, his atoms or what is called ether, so that he would get to be able to know the true nature of light and more.
This tendency of materialistic science to possibly exclude all the senses with which external phenomena are perceived, is in fact a tendency to not allow science to break away from mysticism, not even when observing the outside world. Only in mysticism is it normal in study to seek to penetrate into yourself, into your soul, by excluding all sensory perceptions. By means of such methods of mysticism the study of the phenomena in the external world is hampered. In spite of that even the strictest materialistic scientist does not renounce the use of all of his senses in everyday life: he will lie down when through his sense of life he notices that he is tired, he will communicate with another through his sense of thought, will respect the other through the sense of the observation of the I of another. Practical life already leads him that way. We just need to admit this as also scientific.
In a lecture held in Stuttgart on July 25, 1920, Rudolf Steiner points to the two opposing currents in the life of the human soul. One is abstract-mystical, and the other abstract-materialistic. This materialistic current was created three to four centuries ago out of the development of the science of nature and it has also greatly affected religious confessions, such as that of Jesuitism, positive evangelism and others, and it also manifests itself in the theosophical views about life and soul body as a more and more rarefied matter, and also in spiritualism, which indeed talks about the spirit, but whose evidence is materialistic. This materialistic way of thinking and representation should be transformed into spiritual knowledge.
What we perceive with the senses, is not a reality, but just phenomena, the world of appearance. Behind them there is no matter; matter should not be sought in the outer world. – Besides, this is not merely about correcting a wrong view, because the one who remains with materialistic notions about the material world, is unhealthy throughout his body. One who in the world of perceptions sees matter, is on his way to constitutional feeble-mindedness, which is a disease. Spiritual science does not only theorize, but tries to make man healthy. Because - as Steiner says at the beginning of this lecture:
"And today it's about this, that we penetrate to the ability to understand cognition as an act of human soul, so that we can understand that we - when we cognize - do not have in mind just a theory, an understanding, but that we have in mind something that is a will-imbued act in the entire connection between the development of the Earth and humanity."
Many people, dissatisfied with materialism, seek refuge in mysticism. Both mysticism and materialism in their one-sidedness are justified, but only when one sees through this one-sidedness. Usually it is considered that mystics retreat from the outer life, submerge into their interior and there encounter a tiny spark, in which the true spirit is revealed to them, which cannot be contained in the exterior matter. But mystics are often true materialists. They think they have risen above matter, but in fact it is material they find acting within them. True matter is revealed in human skin, not in the outer world, which makes impressions upon us. A mystic in fact brings into his consciousness that which boils and ferments in his inner metabolism, so this then appears to him as it acts toward the center of the heart - like some tiny flame or spark of the divine.
Just as a true result of Goetheanism (phenomenological methods) one must elevate to higher world understanding, likewise the results of mysticism should be sought when interpreting material operations. In chemical laboratories we deal only with external phenomena - such is a rainbow in the sky – not with the actual materiality. By means of mysticism we solve the riddle of the material and only that, and do not address the spiritual reality.
Through mysticism we get to know the Earth's matter. Physics itself admits that it does not understand the essence of gravity. However, our self-observation over a longer period of our life makes us perceive how in older age our body becomes heavier, we have an inner experience of that weighing, called gravity. Not through the falling of the stone because the stone does not contain the actual materiality. But in our self-observation we have to progress from experience in space to experience in time:
"One must first be able to accomplish self-observation. Through inner experience one has to find what can never be found in the world of external percepts. And they are another element of reality.”
"One who experiences the outer world of perception, what has he got? He has only the truth, but no science. One who experiences the inner, experiences abstractly-mystically, he has only science, but no truth; for one deceives oneself in terms of basic interior phenomena, because the inner experience of that mystical flame are material processes. One who in the outer world seeks pure materiality, interprets the world in Ahrimanic terms; the other who seeks truth purely in an abstract-mystic way in his interior, interprets it the Luciferic way. What must be searched for, as a truly Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, is a balance between the two, it is interweaving between truth and science. We must look for the truth toward one pole and science toward the other and be aware of how those living realities inhabit the poles themselves, as happens when the truth permeates science, and science permeates truth. Here cognition becomes an act, here something occurs. In cognition not only is anything logically defined or justified, but something is occurring as well, when one tends to experience science inwardly and to grasp truth outwardly, so one tends to mutually permeate the two."
One-sided is mysticism, and one-sided is materialism. Man must weave both in living acting and in that living acting man must seek true human inwardness. Our time has one-sidedly befriended materialism and is thus on the road to feeble-mindedness. One must be cured of it, to be healthy. The other extreme is the abstract mysticism, and that is a road to infantilism. As a child who has not touched the world yet, but lives only in the physical materiality, by physical material processes, thus is the mystic type presented, because later on he also has the same experiences as a child has.
This is a summary of the mentioned lecture from July 25, 1920.
The insularity of the materialistic science as well as materialistic religion with all their erroneous, dogmatically set presuppositions came as a consequence of the mentioned Council of 869, that "abolished" spirit, which also led to the spirit being mechanized, then the soul vegetabilitized and body animalized.
The real scientists realize that many of the claims of materialist science are unproven and unprovable. Certain of them were perhaps unconsciously received by some scientists who are incapable of freeing themselves from them, deposited into their subconscious since early childhood through the authority of teachers and educators, as well as through written books and magazines, and more. Many people of mature age are unwilling or unable to argue with long received representations and so remain living in such misconceptions and illusions to the end of their life.
However, if a man, with strictly scientific methods and ways of thought, went all the way with reexamining at least some of the here mentioned materialist dogmas, he would have to accept that there exists not only the material, but also the soul and spiritual world as absolute reality, and which can exist independently of materiality. The concept of some generalized right-angled triangle, for which Pythagoras already created his theorem can be realized nowhere in the material world, and let alone the theorem itself which has no material existence. It is the same with the general term "sparrow", even though we keep using it all the time for particular cases, and at the same time we know that what we perceive cannot be “sparrow in general," but only a concrete and individual one. Similarly, the terms "hatred" and "love", which can drive many events in the material world, but are themselves nowhere to be found in the material world. The concept of force - gravity and other - with which science operates is identical to the concept of the spirit that moves the table at spiritualist séances, and the terms cohesion or adhesion with enchantments by witchcraft or hypnosis. One must think about this, too.
The Duty of Scientists and Freedom
Freedom is the foundation for understanding the nature of being human. It cannot be realized contrary to the laws of nature, but every man has a feeling, at least a hunch, that at least in some circumstances he has the freedom to do or not to do something. This needs to be scientifically confirmed. It is the duty of scientists:
• To get to know the active spiritual world in all material phenomena and events;
• Not to stop at something left unsaid and not to flinch in fear in the face of unknown facts, but to take another step forward;
• To lift the Veil of Isis and get to know the true divine, spiritual nature, hiding behind the sensory world.
The word science is not used here for the general concept of "science", rather the recommendation is addressed to scientists as individuals. Spiritual Science is absolutely against any drowning of individuality in any kind of grouping, because man needs to develop as a free being, to liberate himself from any hereditary or other grouping, to realize his ethical individualism, not group ethics, which delves into his freedom and holds back his development, takes him back into ancient times when this was justified.
In human evolution the group ethics was necessary as a transitional period for the realization of full humanity. With his coming to the earth, Christ bestows the impulse for the completely free love: love towards enemies, too. Because if we love those with whom we are connected by blood or those who do us good and provide what is pleasant, this can to a large extent be - but not necessarily – nothing but the expansion of self-love, and with it also merging into group-ness. Only the love for everyone, even for those who are against us and bring us evil, only such love is the absolute proof of a real act of freedom.
In the world of the existing material natural laws, our freedom is limited: we cannot physically go through a rock or a wall blocking our way. But in that material world we can do something for the future: we can pierce a tunnel through that rock or tear down that wall. That way our will is engaged.
If our will is through our thinking made conscious so that we are aware of the reason we do something while it is also inundated with love for the whole world and for the act being performed, then we are realizing our freedom. If in our actions we listen not only to our conscience, but allow in our convictions and affinities and dispositions - not being forced under duress – thus if we do not obey only our conscience, but work with the recommendation, decision or order of some group, we collapse into sub-humanness.
If out of one’s free will - not under social compulsion, which includes its misperceptions and misconceptions - man organizes or even just participates in some social organizations, in which human personality is lost and broken down, then he collapses even below bestiality. The entire banking system with depersonalized lending policies, interest and other transactions, systems of money and securities (what value can security have and how can it spawn something and then drop dead like a borrowed kettle in the folk tale?), voting machines where most do not know and do not understand what they vote for, a computer system that provides formless solutions to impersonal questions, and everything else that is executed under the direction of Orwell's "Big Brother", all belong to such organizations. And also the materialistic science, which has through its victorious authority got hold of the consciousness of the vast majority of slightly educated people, and which sees in man merely a good natural automaton.
Only in spiritualization may personality be preserved, in knowing that man is a spirit among spirits, and that all events in the physical, sensory world are carried out through appropriate spiritual powers -- either those that promote human development, or those that impede it or reverse it.
In his freedom man may choose either the path into matter or the path into spirit. The path into matter is man's descent below the level of the animal world, because animals also have a soul, while this way a man turns into a kind of soulless matter, because if he coalesces with matter, then with such a body his soul also dies; and when this matter is no more, man continues to endure as some specter. The path to spirit leads man to a higher state of existence and to a life of self-conscious individuality. That is the meaning of Christ's words: "... I am the way and the truth and the life ..." (John14.6).
In this people are susceptible to a severe temptation and deception. Although the church seemingly sets itself as something contrary to materialist science, if a man does not care about his soul himself but leaves it to the church (or any other group), then together with his body, his soul is likewise subject to die. This speaks absolutely nothing against any church or religious community. They all have an outstanding and sacred role in educating people and doing other things about which there is no need to talk here, because it exceeds the framework of this presentation. But, if some church "father" ("Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven." - Mat.23.9) appropriates the right and even convinces others that it is he who will give others permissions and instructions about what to do for the salvation of their souls -- not general ones, which do not impinge on human freedom, but specifically "do or not do in this situation this and that", and without moral explanations and teachings from which man himself should form his insight and out of it make a decision -- then that church “father” abuses his position and places himself as his neighbor’s conscience. And according to Novalis, from the unfinished novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen":
"Conscience is the peculiar essence of man fully glorified, the divine archetypal man (Urmensch.)" -- "To speak accurately, this all-embracing freedom, this mastership of dominion, is the essence, the impulse of Conscience."
If a person surrenders before any authority and acts according to its instructions, then he actually says: I do not want to be a man!
The principle of authority is embodied by anyone who wants to rule over others. He also acquires his authority by hiding from the others the truths he possesses, because he increases his power through the ignorance of others. This is in a direct conflict with Christ who says: "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”(John8.31-32). Here we should add the following words of Christ: "So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."(Mat.l0.26-28). Naturally pearls should not be cast before swine, but those occult truths which people of bad faith have already got hold of, should certainly also be known by the benevolent, in order for them to be able to confront and resist the malicious ones, in order not to be seduced.
For this purpose it is also necessary to look back at the following words of Christ: "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come."(John16.12-13). In this we need to seek for the reason why did the forces opposed to the regular development of humanity and therefore forces contrary to the Christ, declare in 869 that man has only the body and the soul, not also the spirit, and in 1054 that the Holy Spirit was created in time. In place of the knowledge of the trichotomy - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they have declared the dichotomy - the Father and the Son, in other words that only they exist from eternity. For if, according to the Roman dogma of l054, the Holy Spirit came out from the Son also, then the Holy Spirit would also have belonged to the all that has derived through the Word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." (Johnl. 1-3).
This "abolition of the spirit" is most evident in the West, and there it led to the mechanization of the spirit. In the East, where the body is unfairly overlooked, because its role is not understood, and the attention is directed at some general spirituality and soulfulness, animalization of the body appears. In the Middle, where egoism and sleepiness of a pleasant life and insensitivity to others are very developed, a vegetabilization of the soul appears. These are all the consequences of not accepting the Christ or his impulse.
This is mostly so. But one misconception also entails others. Mechanization of the spirit as a result of the Council of 869 has led to the strengthening of the authority of Rome, which founded monastery schools and universities and fully controlled the development of the whole of science, although in these schools there were people with completely different, opposite disposition and convictions. After that, beginning in the 15th century, when science gradually separated from the direct influence of the church, it made the belief in authority -- now it’s own – even more firm: while the Catholic Church forbade the reading of certain books, science now orders which books children have to read and drum into their heads. Science goes even further: it determines what people, already as children, must be vaccinated with; determines first as sound, then as harmful to put lead into gasoline; that it is good, and then not good to feed ruminants with intestines, etc., etc. Under the authority of science real social experiments are also done, which lead to terrible misery and anguish of millions and millions of people. The most abstract and self contradictory theories are invented and inserted into life. For example, the right of peoples to self-determination, but not to determination, i.e. what kind of state organization they will choose – the Big Brother will decide that in a scientific manner. Or "controlled economic freedom" -- what many highly educated people do not mind representing. Or "money is expensive" -- it is not a medium for exchange of goods but becomes the goods worth something itself. And a whole lot more.
These and other "contradictio in adjecto" - the contradictions in the addition or the adjective, as "wooden iron", "angular circle" or "pentagonal square" or "green redness" are systematically infiltrated and accepted by the de-logicized people. Then there are the phrases which negate themselves. For example, "everything is relative" (meaning this claim also, so at least something is absolute), "everyone has their own truth" (meaning their error, since the notion of truth means that it is something unique that belongs to a particular thing). It is similar to calling a tail a leg and then claiming that a dog has five legs – as we previously talked about Lincoln. This joint counting of legs and tails is today extremely widespread and really so in highly civilized people - not the primitives.
When such contradictory stances are systematically imposed on people, with the intention of having them also widely incline towards them and accept them, the power of those standing behind such scientific authority increases tremendously. It is even stronger than when in 1910 the Catholic Church under the Pope Pius X (Pope 1903-1914) introduced an obligation to the Oath Against Modernism, by which this stance of the intellectual sphere was lowered deeper into the psyche of the people - into the sentient and volitional sphere. This was easiest to carry out in the West, where spirit is mostly mechanized, where the Spirit was "abolished", where dichotomy was introduced. And the repudiation of the spirit is feeble-mindedness.
This feeble-mindedness has also brought about, that in the 19th century, even the existence of the soul was not recognized any more. This was of course preceded by a complete loss of the knowledge about Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, because with the intellectuality, mostly developed since the fifteenth century, the Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha cannot be comprehended. This allows the spreading influence of Jesuitism, too, which builds Jesus-ology instead of Christology, of course, under its sheer authority, and with this it tends to make the concepts of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha become completely lost. Thereby Jesus ought to be the king of the whole earth and the Pope his representative. Contrary to what “Jesus said, 'My kingdom is not of this world...'" (John18.36). Then in the nineteenth century, theologians appear who can only describe Jesus as an extraordinarily good and great and exemplary man, but who do not have anything to say of the Christ’s divine being - just like Mohammed, for whom Jesus is a "great prophet". But the lack of knowledge of the Son is a tragedy.
Since the nineteenth century atheism also begins to develop very strongly, which particularly becomes evident in the twentieth century, also in materialistic science. And the lack of knowledge of the Father is an illness. This entails also the death of culture.
Ignorance of the Father is an illness, ignorance of the Son a tragedy, ignorance of the Spirit is feeble-mindedness. If a man surrenders to this, it then becomes very easy for various spiritual beings that are contrary to the regular development of man, contrary to the Christ impulse, to incorporate into man or to haunt him and to use his physical and soul constitution.
Obsession
Materialistic science which has completely excluded quality from its study, and can even hardly dare to acknowledge that people have different skin colors, is unable to comprehend that people also differ in their soul-spiritual characteristics and not only in their weight and height. As was already partly indicated, by certain common traits and dispositions spiritual science distinguishes and can understand the people of the West and of the East and those from the Middle,. We shall mention one example of this, related to obsession.
In his lectures from October 22 and 23, 1920, held in Dornach, Rudolf Steiner says something about these obsessions or embodiments of various spiritual beings into a human body. Spiritual development in the recent period strives to raise individuality: in the West it is done economically, in the Middle in the already outdated state-political-military way, and in the East in the outdated way according to the old spirituality that is in decadence. This must be brought from the spiritual world and it comes in a way that proportionally many of the people who are born, are not in the regular course of repeated incarnations. From the outside they look like humans, but in fact are other beings, who are embodied in human bodies – with the physical, life and soul body.
In the West, there are many people, who in fact are not re-incarnated human beings, but are carriers of creatures from the premature development stream, who should only at a later stage come into human form. They come in three types. – The first predominantly affects the metabolic system, and later acts in the rhythmical and in the nervous-sensory system. They have an affinity to elemental forces of the earth and they can feel how to colonize according to the natural climatic and other relations and how to link this further with the trade relationships and so on. - The second tries to suppress self-consciousness, so that the full consciousness of the consciousness soul itself does not happen and thus a certain frenzy is created in the surrounding, so that people are not self-accountable about the real motives of their actions. These beings incarnate through the rhythmical system of certain people. - The third kind of these beings set themselves the task that individual human capacities which are brought at birth out of the spiritual worlds, are forgotten, and that man is made to be some template of his nationality, that men do not come to the individual spirituality. These beings incarnate through the nerve-sensory system. - A greater number of people in the West who have fallen into secret societies, sects, and the like, belong here. These are premature beings that acquire many students and emit, as in epidemics, their own peculiarity onto other people.
Because of the especially developed economic way of thinking, these three kinds of beings have a good ground in the West where they tend to gradually eradicate the spiritual and political and legal life. The first type does not allow threefolding, i.e., that economic life exists only side by side with the spiritual and the state-legal life. The other suppresses the independent democratic state life through the spreading of superficiality, phraseology, and mendacity. The third beings are seeking to suppress individual capabilities and they endeavor that man be made to be a kind of template of his race and nationality, to avoid the emancipation of the autonomous spiritual life. If a man does not look at life with a sleepy soul, but with one that is awake, everywhere the work of such beings can be seen.
In the East, all the way to Russia, man is in a big rift: on the one side there is already decadent spirituality, on the other, getting accustomed to individuality. Therefore, when he is sleeping or dreaming or in general in some kind of a very common medial condition, he is exposed to - not premature beings as in the West - but certain retarded spiritual beings. These do not impregnate him as in the West, but make an impact on his soul by inspiring him for his daily work, not incarnating within man. Here, too, there are three types of such beings. - The first of these beings prevent man from completely possessing his physical body and prevent him from connecting with economic life and in general with public relations of today. – The second produce almost supra-individual beings, with a refined and hidden egoism, because out of selfish feelings they tend to be un-egoistic. – The third type of beings seek to eliminate the spiritual life from Earth, by spreading some dull mystical atmosphere. - These three kinds that do not incarnate in man, but operate from the spiritual world, are also enemies of the threefold social organism.
With people of the European Middle there also exists the possibility - although less than in the West - that those three types of premature beings embody into them. But they are also susceptible to receive the influence of those creatures that act by inspiring in the East. But with these people during their day wakefulness this does not appear as imagination, but fades and appears only as concepts and representations. And those embodied beings in the West give the people of the Middle certain direction, but not as strongly. Already in the course of centuries hardly any of the more significant people of the Middle were able to deliver themselves from the embodiment of both these beings from the West and the influence of those from the East, and that is why they are in a rift. In the waking state the beings from the West were attacking them and influencing the life of the drives and instincts, which are in the will and which is thereby weakened. In sleeping the beings from the East were often unconsciously acting in imaginations. So also on Goethe in his youth worked the beings from the West, and later those from the East, which led to his rift.
These are declarations out of the modern science of initiation established in the European Middle. Here one can say that this is arbitrary and unprovable. However, if one looks at life with all one’s senses and does not solely rely on what is perceived by the diminished sense of vision, without any particular initiation one can be assured that this is so.
In the twentieth century there were already many people who were in no way related to the Anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit, and who, like Spengler or Orwell, recognized these deviations in the social life of civilized nations. Research papers can be read about how television style informatics can only be bad and perverted, that its whole system and its organization are such that there is no way that it could be good. It is similar with journalism. However, even by such means, where the public is more misinformed than informed, it can be seen that in the public life, mainly of the West, which imposes itself on the whole world, there really participate beings that are not human, but which still provide the main tenor in world politics. In many of them one can see already in the look of their faces, for example, a mouth that looks like the mouth of a snake or a frog or a turtle. In others in their statements and behavior, which is not immoral as in many people who are in the regular development, but amoral - devoid of any kind of morality, as one finds in animals, while immorality is still a kind of morality, but one that does not fit with the understanding of the majority. In this amorality it can be grasped that these are not human beings, that such human bodies do not have their own I, but only the lower soul creations. They have infallible or almost infallible instincts by which they implement something, but this is completely amoral and it cannot be said that such apparently human figures have even the slightest shred of conscience, whose bearer can only be the human I.
Going along with logical contradictions has already been discussed. Here one can also add that famous Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" - "I think, therefore I am", from which it follows that when I sleep then I am not, and so every day I become and disappear. People go along with these because of their blurred consciousness, but one can point this out and correct them. However, in people who are obsessed by the described beings that is not an option, it is built into them and this is their style and way of life, which they impose on others with the tremendous force of their instincts and thus they are directing them in some directions spoken of by Rudolf Steiner.
This obsession can also be seen in ordinary people. Many say about themselves: I do not know what came over me when I did it! According to his whole soul constitution and disposition man would not do it, yet he did it. This is mentioned often in Scripture, and the modern science of the spirit only confirms and explains this in a way adapted to the current level of development of human consciousness. To a large extent it makes concrete what, for example, Paul says, "a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me – to keep me from becoming conceited." (2 Cor.12.7) or “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Eph.6.12)
Spiritual science perfectly and scientifically also expounds and confirms what Paul gave only as a statement in The Epistle to the Romans about the two natures of man: "As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me."(Rom.7.17). Paul now also gives an explanation of the redemption: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Rom.8.1). But he adds: "Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace." (Rom.8.5-6). Of the choice between these two paths it has already been spoken. Because there are many enticements to the path into matter, we need to point to at least some phenomena in the present society and to interpret them. When these enticements become conscious, then one gets the strength to resist them and to begin on the path of Christ. Thereby here no one is being condemned. One way or another everyone bears the consequences of all that he does or thinks (and thoughts are deeds, only in the spiritual world).
God does not judge anyone either– the way the Roman Empire incorporated it into Christianity from its legal system. Christ said that, too, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" (Luke12.14). God is love and out of love creates out of human beings free spiritual beings. And to be free human beings should have the possibility of choice. A thirsty man, he can drink water, and he can drink wine. In the first case, he remains sober, and in the other he gets drunk and it is absurd to say that God has condemned him to the hangover and headache. This is just a small example, and according to this principle the biggest events in one’s life also take place.
The creator created the world and gave it certain laws, under which man can exercise his freedom. Freedom can be realized only in that reality, which the truth points to or - in other words – in Christ. If someone deems that his freedom is limited, because he cannot make a square circle, then this shows that he is sick, feeble-minded. And such concepts as “square circle", "wooden iron", "everything is relative", "nothing is true" go around merely as some kind of specters in the spiritual world. If one saturates oneself in them, one also becomes a kind of specter. If one saturates oneself in the truth, then one has an eternal life as a free being. Because: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life."
In the attitude towards human freedom it can clearly be seen who is working in the spirit of Christ, and who in the spirit of the Seducer. "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." (Gal.5.1). Anyone who restricts the freedom of some human being believes in fact that the Creator has made a mistake and that he is the one who ought to correct that mistake. In his terrible pride he says, "Not their conscience – I am for the people with worse gene structure than mine, I am the man's fully transfigured innermost self, the heavenly archetype of man." Thus speak a whole string of different members of secret and public and semi-public and semi-secret organizations, led by the various aforementioned spiritual beings who obsess people and are often entirely without morality. Because only moral beings can comprehend and acknowledge the existence of human freedom. "And it is precisely this all-embracing freedom, mastery or the sovereignty that is the being, the activator of conscience." Based on the principles of "controlled freedom in the economy", "green redness", "each has one’s own truth about the same thing," and so on these amoral beings, of course, can give countless proofs that their position is correct. Following the same principles these beings even believe they can give some rights to nations, while the spirit of any people is so much bigger and more comprehensive than they are, that they cannot comprehend it at all.
Folk spirits use these obsessed men and others as a tool to achieve something those men cannot understand at all. But human beings, whom these men could comprehend, they believe they should rule over them and thus not provide an opportunity for the realization of their humanity. Thus the turning point from the XX to the XXI century can be characterized as organizing the most fierce slave society since the beginning of history. In the antiquity there was the physical enslavement, in the Middle Ages, the soul one (with the threat: heaven - hell), and starting with the end of the 15th century, the spiritual enslavement (with the instilling of misconceptions). And now is the tendency to unify all three.
Here one should also mention materialistic mysticism (or mystification?), according to which only with money can anything be done. Combine this thought with the idea that has been inserted into people’s subconscious that money can multiply as well as drop dead, just like the already mentioned kettle from the following folk tale:
One man lent another one a kettle, and after a while the latter brings back a small kettle, saying that the big one spawned it, and since he is honest, he is giving it back to its owner. The owner is a bit surprised, but receives it. Again after a time that man comes to the owner and lets him know with sadness that he cannot return the large kettle, because unfortunately it dropped dead. At the owner's remark that the kettle cannot drop dead, he replied: "If it could spawn something, then it can also drop dead."
Masses of people both consciously and subconsciously accept this as a possibility, because myths about money, markets, inflation and deflation, baskets of currencies, interest rates and stocks, etc., etc. make their heads spin, that they do not even think any more about these simplest machinations -- as about something unattainable. They do not ask themselves: How did Cheops build the pyramid when the International Monetary Fund did not yet exist? And: How dare those savages steal bananas growing on the land belonging, according to the international law, to the cultivated conquerors – will a colony in hell be establish for them because of that? But those successful business men do not think that the only remedy for their feeble-mindedness is to immerse themselves into words "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God." (Luke18.24). Have they consciously opted for a body that strives toward death - as Paul says?
Allurements
Allurements for the path to matter are indeed very strong. And this is not only about materialism being logically refuted, but resisting it as well, so that it does not become a reality. And it becomes a reality for the most part when ethical individualism is being suppressed and replaced with the ethics of group-ness or ethical group-ness – already spoken about. Then what is spiritual-soulful in man ceases to have meaning, and so after physical death the I-ness is being lost, and its image - as a phantom - is transformed into something Ahrimanic, described in the Scripture as "the second death" (Rev.21.8).
The words of Rudolf Steiner at the end of the lecture held in Zurich, on October 29, 1919, should be quoted here even though its main topic was the explanation of the need to break the state down into three parts independent of one another: the spiritual based on the principle of freedom, the political and rights part based on the principle of equality, and the economic based on the principle of brotherhood:
“We must not, however, think that the mere repetition of phrases to the effect that the spirit must govern the world will bring about, as by enchantment, the coming of the spirit. No! By the work of the human spirit alone can that spirit come into the world. In this respect also we must be true. We must not allow the falsehood to ring through the world, that the spirit must come. The truth must be proclaimed that the spirit will not appear until there are places in which not only the materialistic study of outer nature will be carried on, but in which a spiritual conception of life will be striven after…”
“Everything depends on the fact that people become true with regard to the spirit and to their spiritual endeavor. For the spirit can only be found on the path of truth.”
“It is no excuse, or, rather, it is only an excuse, to say that people are ignorant. In spiritual striving it is important to know that a lie, unconsciously persisted in, causes just as much harm as a lie, consciously repeated. For it is the duty of man at the present day to elevate his subconsciousness, in order to root out falsehood in every realm, even in that of the subconscious.”
Science has that sacred duty to uproot people from mendacity, so that they understand that they are not only earthly creatures, and then to understand the Christ being and their relationship with him and what occurred at Golgotha. Intellectualism, developed in the last few centuries, is unable to get through to the understanding of spiritual facts. Here an additional step needs to be taken. For that, in his lecture held in Dornach on October 20, 1923, Rudolf Steiner used also appropriate images, from intellectualist concepts he moved to the artistic interpretation of the world, which will be briefly explained here.
Man consists of the nerve-sensory system or system of the head, of the rhythmic circulatory and respiratory system or the system of the breast, and the metabolic system with the limbs, which mainly affects the lower part of the human body. However, all three systems are spread throughout the human body and permeate each other. The human head is the bearer of thoughts, the breast is the carrier of feelings, and the metabolism of the will. To these correspond certain animal species, whose representatives are: eagle for the head, lion for the breast, and cow or bull for metabolism (portrayed in the Sphinx, and also in the frescoes in depicting writers of particular Gospels). In fact these three animals also represent the corresponding cosmic powers. In human nature they are normally organized, if man is able to bring them into accord, to act harmoniously.
“In accordance with the general course of world events, however, we are now living in an age when the evolution of the world is threatened by a certain danger; and this danger will — if I may so express myself — actually take effect in man also in a one-sided way. From the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries up to our own day the facts of human earthly evolution are such that, to an ever increasing degree, the eagle activities wish to make one-sided claims upon the human head, the lion activities upon the human rhythmic system, and the cow activities upon the human metabolism and upon all man's activity on the earth.”
“This is the stamp of our age, that it is the aim of the cosmic powers to bring about a threefold division of man, and that, each form of these cosmic powers is always striving to suppress the others. The eagle strives to subjugate the lion and the cow and make them of no account, and in like manner with each of the other elements. Just in our present age something particularly alluring is working upon the subconscious in man; alluring because in a certain sense there is also something beautiful about it. In his conscious life man today is unaware of this but, for his sub-consciousness, three calls surge and sound through the world seeking to tempt him with their allurement. And I must say that it is the secret of our present time that, from the sphere of the eagle, there sounds down to man what actually gives the eagle his eagle nature, what gives him his plumage, what hovers around him as astrality. It is the eagle nature itself which becomes audible for the sub-consciousness of man. This is the alluring call.”
The Eagle’s alluring call comes from above:
“Learn to know my nature!
I give thee the power
To create a universe In thine own head.”
The Lion’s alluring call comes from the middle region:
“Learn to know my nature!
I give thee the power
To embody the universe
In the radiance of the encircling air.”
Upwards from Earth-depths rumbles the call of the Cow:
“Learn to know my nature!
I give thee the power
To wrest from the universe
Measure, number and weight.”
These voices that speak to man's subconscious have a strong effect, and a variety of human organizations are especially organized for that, to ensure that these are received. The West is particularly exposed to the allurement of the eagle, in particular the American culture. The European Middle is particularly exposed to the enticement of the lion, and the oriental civilization to what the cow utters. But:
“It is the orient which is primarily exposed to this alluring call of the cow on account of the ancient veneration of the cow in Hinduism, yet, if this allurement were actually so to seize hold of mankind that what arises from this call would gain the mastery, then these influences emanating from the orient would produce a civilization, which, spreading over centre and west, would hinder progress and engender decadence. The demonic earth-forces would work in a one-sided way upon earth-civilization. What then would actually happen?”
In the course of the last few centuries we received technology under the influence of external science. In it natural forces act in their lifeless form. That is the ideal of materialistic science and technology and they consider that only that exists which can be determined by scale, measure, and yardstick or number, what thus has weight, measure and number.
When reason by itself is used to deal only with scale, measure, and number, it is still not that bad.
“But if present-day civilization were to be transformed into initiation, things would be bad indeed, if this attitude of mind remained. And this can happen if the civilization of the west, which stands entirely under the sign of measure, number and weight, were to be flooded by what might well come to pass in the east, namely, that through initiation-science people might fathom what actually lives spiritually in the organism of the cow.”
If it gets to be known what it is that in the cow spiritually organizes the earth's gravity, then that which is weighed, measured and counted overpowers everything else in the civilization and spreads across the whole earth.
There is a tendency in all constructed machines to achieve an effect by means of oscillation, by means of periodic movement.
“But if once these machines in their coordinated activity could be constructed in such a way as can be learned from the distribution of foodstuffs in the organization of the cow, then the vibrations which would be conjured up on the earth-globe through the machines, these small earth-vibrations, would so run their course that what is above the earth would sound together with, vibrate together with what is happening on the earth; so that our planetary system in its movements would be compelled to vibrate with our earth-system, just as a string tuned to a certain pitch vibrates in sympathy when another one is struck in the same room.”
“That is the terrible law of the sounding in unison of vibrations which would be fulfilled if the alluring call of the cow would so decoy the orient that it would then be able to penetrate in an absolutely convincing way into the unspiritual, purely mechanistic civilization of the west and centre; and thereby it would become possible to conjure up on the earth a mechanistic system fitting exactly into the mechanistic system of the universe. Through this everything connected with the working of air, with the forces of the circumference, and everything connected with the working of the stars, would be exterminated from human civilization.”
Man would not experience the cycle of the year. Throughout human civilization only the clatter of oscillating machines and their echo from the cosmos as a reaction to this earthly mechanization would resound. One part of our current civilization is on its way to this terrible ruin.
If the Middle was seduced by the lion, civilization would not become mechanical and mechanisms would gradually disappeared, but man with this one-sidedness would be given over to everything found in the wind and weather and the cycle of the year. Man would be compelled to live in his rhythms of breathing and circulation and would develop in himself what his involuntary life can give him. He would become the breast nature and through this such egoism would come into earth civilization, that man would live for himself alone; he would not worry about anything but his immediate well-being. To this is the Middle exposed, which could award such life to the earth civilization.
If the allurement of the eagle would seduce the West thus, that it would spread throughout the earth its way of thinking and disposition in its one-sidedness, there would emerge in humanity a tendency to interact directly with the supernatural world, as it was at the very inception of the Earth. There would be a tendency to wipe out everything that man won over in his freedom and independence. Only in the unconscious will would life be lived, the will placed by the gods into human muscles, nerves. It would be the return into the original state of primitive clairvoyance. Man would strive to liberate himself from the Earth, by returning to its inception.
If a man would succumb to the allurement of the cow, which invites him to become the lord of the Earth, the mechanization of earth civilization would happen and the tendency to make the present eternal. Through the allurement of the lion there is a tendency to make the present superficial, as fleeting as the play of the year’s seasons in the wind and air. The eagle carries within the memories of what was at the inception of the Earth, with its physical nature the earth does not touch it. It does not want to have anything to do with the development of the solid Earth.
It is difficult today for man to really be man. He is like an antelope from a fable of the African negro tribe Felatas: It was caught by the lion, the wolf, and the hyena. The lion says to the hyena to divide it. The hyena wants to do it into three equal parts – one for each of the three. Then the lion tears the hyena apart and gives the antelope to the wolf to divide it. The wolf also divides it into three equal parts, but he gives to the lion both his and the hyena’s part, and then the third, because the lion is the wisest and bravest of all the animals. To the lion’s question of who taught him to divide in this way, the wolf replies, "The hyena" - and the lion does not tear the wolf apart.
In the face of the three animal types man looks like an antelope from this fairy tale. But what wills to be one-sided takes on a particular form. The lion remains lion, but he wishes to have his fellow beasts of prey as metamorphoses of the other animal representatives. The eagle is now the hyena that lives upon what is dead, and our head is what produces what is dead. In place of the cow the lion puts the wolf, which is in line with the degeneration. Thus we have the cosmic symbolism, which corresponds to those allurements: the hyena, the lion, and the wolf. When this fable is adapted to modern civilization, then it reads:
These three animals hunted the antelope together. “The hyena withdraws and gives a silent verdict, he does not dare to arouse the growling of the lion. Then the lion and the wolf begin to fight for the prey, until they both die from their wounds. Now comes the hyena and first devours the antelope, then the wolf and the lion after they have entered into a state of decay. The hyena is the image of what lies in the human intellect, the element in human nature which kills. He is the reverse side, the caricature, of the eagle civilization.”
Man’s answer to the allurement of these three animals should be:
“I must learn
Thy power, O Cow,
From the language
Which the stars reveal in me.”
“I must learn
Thy power, O Lion,
From the language
Which, through year and day,
Encircling space makes active in me.”
“I must learn
Thy power,
O Eagle,
From the language
Which earth-born life creates in me.”
With such responses one opposes the destruction and works on elevating the earth's civilization. He directs his physical gaze towards the cow downward, but turns his spiritual gaze upwards; he directs his physical gaze to the eagle upwards, and the spiritual downwards; and with the lion the physical gaze towards the east, and the spiritual towards the west.
Consequences of seduction
Man ought to keep cosmic activities of the eagle, the lion, and the cow or the bull in harmony and now, in the time of the development of the consciousness soul, keep receiving their proper influence, while that which comes in their one-sidedness and gets distorted, he ought to watchfully and consciously remove it. The Middle, which is mostly under the influence of the lion, ought to keep in balance the actions of the eagle and the cow and its main task is, with the intellectuality of the West, to see through and accept the spirituality of the East, to connect the truth with the science.
However, the seductions of the one-sided actions of these three cosmic forces are very strong.
Without getting into any further prehistory, it has already been stated here that in 869, in the Middle, at least in the circles holding the main political and legal power inherited from the Roman Empire - or at least pretending to it – it was declared that man has no spirit, but only body and soul. Those circles were seduced by that one-sidedness of the lion, which led them to egoism, insensitivity, and ease, into the fleeing and superficial present, with no thinking of the consequences of their actions; they rejected that correct impulse of the lion, which directs towards love, compassion, spreading of the understanding of what is in the East, as well as for what is in the West and in the Middle. With that official declaration that man has no spirit, it was made possible for the alluring call of the cow to penetrate, with terrible force, into the Middle, and even to the West.
There the lion had turned the cow into the devouring wolf; the materialistic impulse from the East out of Arabism and Islam begins then to form its center in the West and in the Middle.
"Through Copernicus astronomy becomes a pure world mechanics, a kind of describing of the world machinery."
In the same lecture held in Dornach on February 2, 1923, Rudolf Steiner adds:
"Yes, man has become so weak, that such terrible fear seizes him, if he produces any thought out of himself, if he does not merely read the thoughts from what the external nature offers. Thus pure thinking has primarily been developed passively in modern man.”
"I'm not saying this as a condemnation; because if humanity had immediately shifted to actively producing pure thinking, then it would have brought into this thinking all sorts of impure fantasies out of the old heritage. This was already a good educational tool for modern humanity, that people allowed a grandiose philistine - as for instance Bacon of Verulam – to seduce them, allowing him to lead them to keep developing their concepts and ideas only of the outside world, to allow the outside world to dictate everything."
Confirmation of this can also be seen in proudly emphasizing and imprinting the alluring call of the cow "Omnia in numera et mensura" - "All in numbers and measures," as from the 15th century has been publicly proclaimed as well in the astronomical observatories! Those words might also still be standing at the Belgrade Observatory.
It should be emphasized again that in this text also there is no intention to condemn anyone or anything. The science of the spirit never goes for it, but only tries to explain things, so that people wake up and lift what is in their subconscious to their consciousness, in order to properly orient themselves in life, to become aware of their humanity and the fact that everyone himself bears the appropriate consequences for their own actions.
The seduction of the lion also leads people to the political shrewdness, and the drowsiness that comes through mendacity, to the suppression of the self-consciousness with untruth, which also leads to a listless life and to complete self-direction and to insensitivity to others.
Today this is symbolically emphasized with twelve stars on the medium blue sky - neither of the day nor of the night, but the intermediate one, the dreaming one. It is the embodiment of the universe in the illusion of the encircling air, assisted by schengen visas and others; complacency and scorn for all that is outside of their own environment.
Against this one must fight with compassion out of which love develops, with feeling and understanding that all people are equal.
After the "abolition" of the spirit, and then the soul, the allurement of the cow has, with tremendous force, penetrated the West, even though the West is fundamentally mostly exposed to the seduction of the one-sidedness of the eagle. The materialistic way of thinking and the entire technically informed, mechanistic civilization are most developed - at least outwardly - in the West.
One phenomenon is interesting here. People of the West, and to a large part also those of the Middle, subconsciously feel that materialism is incorrect and are looking for some spirituality. However, they seek that spirituality in a completely materialistic way. Having lost the concept of Christ as the spirit and regarding him as either an earthly king or a great teacher, people are turning to the East for spirituality. But what do they find there? They find there - so to say - materialist spirituality, they find some spiritual science without truth (without Christ), which is based on the materiality that is in man.
In the nineteenth century first they naively started with spiritualism and mediumship, which they used to prove the existence of the spirit in material way. In the twentieth century in the West, and somewhat less in the Middle, there is a massive seeking of spirituality in the eastern non-Christian peoples, who do possess great spirituality, but in quite decadent forms, forms generally not understood and today inadequate even for those people, and especially for the western ones. Movements arise such as hippie, New Age, centers for various types of Indian yoga, transcendental meditation, Hari Krishna, acupuncture and acupressure with specific aspects of Chinese and other massages, healing with bioenergy; then martial arts as jiu-jitsu, aikido, karate and others, where spiritual exercises were most important, not the physical fight - as understood by the Westerners. All spiritual movements of the East listed here represent in fact super-materialization of materialism, because by controlling the functions of the physical body and its mastering and perfecting they want to gain some spiritual qualities and penetrate to some spirit - always in some pantheism where one’s own I is being lost. However, the correct way is for man to get used to thinking with the spirit, not the brain; to overcome the dependence on the physical body, through which he obtains his independence and freedom, and without losing himself in the general spirituality, but to preserve his own I. This ought to be kept firmly in mind.
From the outside it seems that the West is by far more powerful than the East. However, if one observes even superficially the results of the occult war being waged between them, which will become increasingly fiercer and fiercer, then this advantage is not at all convincing. The statements of David Marshall about the condition of "the world's only superpower” are symptomatic here. According to his account, in the US in 1989, 67% of the population reported that they had gained experience with spiritism, that two thirds of the universities and colleges offer yoga in their curriculum, that a quarter of the population is for New Age, and half of the top companies (500) hold seminars for the development of human potential, including Pacific Bell, NASA, Ford, General Motors, ICA, Boeing, Singer, IBM, RCA and Bank of America. From these brief statements it follows that a large part of the "only superpower" is under the spiritual occupation of the East. Of course the Middle has not been spared from it either, but we will not get into these various influences and fights.
To that whole mechanistic civilization also belong various computers and automatons, suggestions through advertisements and commercials, inserted also into the media that offers more disinformation than information and which also pollutes the view in the streets and countryside. These might also include various societies and sects and lodges, based on material group interests and working with the development of group consciousness, formed likewise by various physical processes.
All this is the terrible seduction of the one-sidedness of the cow, coming from the East with dreadful force, which like a boomerang returns to the East, but in that return through the depravity of the Middle and the West it turns into a kind of new religion, such as Marxism and fanaticism in industrial production. There also lies that danger of becoming familiar with synchronization of the oscillations through initiation.
Against the seduction of the cow one ought to fight by means of morality, conscience ought to be developed and the will awakened by initiative, the will for the free spiritual life.
By abolishing the spirit the Lion allowed the penetration of the wolf from the East, and then in the West he transformed the eagle into a hyena that feeds on carrion. In the 15th century he tore the hyena up, as told in the original Negro fairy tale, he destroyed the red man’s culture in the West. However, the torn hyena receives back its bird nature, but now as a phoenix. The white man receives the decadent occult techniques and magic of the red man, and so the hyena is reborn, but the one from the modernized fable given by Rudolf Steiner.
In the West, this reborn hyena comes upon the ground that the wolf has prepared with the support of the lion, comes upon a completely mechanistic civilization. Here not only the concept of the spirit is now lost, but also of the soul, and even life is explained in the mechanistic manner - biochemistry and biophysics are established as sciences. Here there is no more room for freedom, man does everything out of the unconscious will, whose basis is some genes, and incentives are some instincts and impulses awakened by some biochemical or electrical process. Here man is lowered to the level of an animal and this animalization shows very distinctly in the various cartoons and comic books, where mice, ducks, and horses are portrayed as people or even more, people as these animals. In some way this is also the repetition or return to the old Egyptian times, when people were depicted with heads of various animals, which at that time had a profound meaning, but now represents a major decadence. As if that was not enough, out of the decadent ways of thinking they invent and draw all manner of freaks, which here act like humans. Or are these those premature spiritual beings incorporated in the western humanity that are perceived by the primitive clairvoyance, as described in section 3 of the chapter Obsession?
The hyena that went through the phoenix phase brings people back into the past, studies and uses the old occult means of the red man, which has led to the terrible perversions and death, even the death of the soul. Seduced intellectualism is limited only to the earthly – to the economic relations, for which it has extraordinary developed instincts. The spiritual and political-legal relations - if at all understood - can only serve the economy. "The world economy under the leadership of the United States" - that is the slogan which has been preached for decades. For this of course it is also necessary to have the world police and world government and parliament, and the idea is already being preached about the world senate made up of the representatives of various religions, where all of them of course will "control the free economy" - under the direction of those who pay them. For this it is of course suitable to have the unification of faith – so they do not argue in the senate, and also because the economy and technology require standards; there must not exist an individual spirituality.
However, if some center is localized out of which “free economy is being controlled,” then they must resort to racism, because in this center there are people with better composed genes, and they are the ones who have to pull the strings in all financial manipulations. All treasures belong to them and they will carry out the redistribution of them from the whole Earth. Those with better composed genes will provide, if necessary, a loan to build a European wall or better yet a deep trench, which will cut the crust of the Earth across Europe, and that way merge one of its parts with America, and the other with Asia. At least this was very nicely published in the British magazine "The Economist" from September 1, 1990. And based on that map which by cutting into the Earth's crust separates not only "EURO-AMERICA" from "EURO-ASIA" but also "ISLAMISTAN", "HINDULAND" (maybe not "HINDUSTAN" so that it is clear whose it is) and "CONFUCIANIA" (in which beside China, Japan is also herded), based on this map will people with better composed genes give new form to the earth's crust. In so doing, probably due to a conspiracy, most of Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and insignificant islands like New Zealand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and others have sunk out of sight. Or perhaps it was a little awkward to have for instance, Taiwan merge with "EURO-AMERICA"? The symbols are special treats, but we will not get into that. In any case, based on this map also the ingenious Huntington wrote his "Clash of Civilizations". – However, racism should never be publicly advocated - people of all colors can have good genes, if they listen to the Big Brother.
This Anglo-American way of thinking had already spread over the entire Europe a hundred years ago, even to the east side of the channel or watershed given by "The Economist". That ideal of uniformity of all the news in the papers has spread out in the meantime to the news from the radio, then television. By this the public opinion is extraordinarily powerfully programmed and a veil thrown over the spiritual and the political-legal life, while in one’s own head a universe is created, even drawn on the mentioned map, as "A NEW AND ACCVRATE MAP OF THE W0RLD".
The way to fight against this seduction of the eagle is by spiritualizing the intelligence, by which through wonderment in front of all natural phenomena one comes to the knowledge of the existence of a real spiritual world and that in it all men are brothers, so through the awakening of self-awareness and personal freedom one overcomes the greed and selfishness.
Here it should also be emphasized that regardless of the seductions of the cow, the lion, and the eagle, people on Earth live under their various influences. In the East, people are mainly under the influence of the cow, under the influence of the metabolic system and the limbs. Their progress consists in that, through yoga, martial arts, and the like, they go towards conquering the rhythmic system, the system of the breast.
The people of the Middle live mainly influenced by the system of the breast- the lion - and their progress is to develop intellectualism, which is connected to the powers of the head. If they follow yoga or other oriental arts and sciences, that means that they are working on cementing themselves in the rhythmic system. And when they also do it in an amateurish way - which is usually the case, then they fall into the dormancy of the metabolic system.
Men of the West live under the influence of the eagle or a nerve-sensory system, the system of the head, and their progress is, through this system, and with intellectualism, to penetrate into the spiritual world in full consciousness. If they accept these Eastern occultisms, then they fall to a lower level; instead of penetrating consciously into the spiritual world they go into the dreaming state of the rhythmic system or into the sleepiness of the metabolic system, when they do it amateurishly. Likewise, when they dissipate themselves into the comfort of the material surrounding, they move one step back, into the dreaming state of the rhythmic system.
These are global cosmic influences, and in them particular individualities can develop in different ways. An Easterner does not need to keep himself in the development of the rhythmic system and its awakening; he can also master intellectualism which is tied to the system of the head, the only one in which we are awake and through it penetrate into the spiritual world, permeate his science with the truth. It is a similar case with the man from the Middle. Here we must remember that when awake, only in thinking related to the nerve-sensory system are we actually awake, while in feelings related to the rhythmic system we are in a dream like state, while in the will, tied to the metabolic system, we are in a consciousness of a dreamless sleep - even though otherwise awake.
Threefoldness
In the previous presentations the connection between the three cosmic forces and the three corresponding powers of the human soul was offered: the eagle – thinking, the lion - feeling, the cow - willing. Along the way the antelope was only mentioned as the human soul. In it these three forces at the present time diverge, and man with his I should consciously bring them into harmony, so that they work in accord with each other. So we have a total number of four as the number of the universe or creation. Therefore, we also have four gospels, and the four evangelists displayed with the already mentioned symbols: man, lion, bull, and eagle - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Because of that all four gospels should be taken as a whole, even though from a superficial, purely intellectualistic observation, it seems that they contradict each other. These are the same events observed from the four different sides and only all four put together can give a true picture of what happened with Christ's descent into a human body and what significance for the development of mankind and the world does the Mystery of Golgotha hold. One must not delve into only one gospel.
The divergence of the three aforementioned forces is also perceived in social relations. The cow forces or the metabolism in the human being correspond to the spiritual life, the forces of the lion or the rhythmic system to the political-legal one, and the forces of the eagle or the head to the economic life. Once upon a time they were harmonized this or that way by the central authorities, which were received by most people as part of normal, even divine order. However, with the development of the consciousness soul and individualism, starting with the fifteenth century, in all these areas strong individualities come to the fore, who deal with their areas and are disturbed by interference in their way of working and doing business, which would come from one of the other two areas. On the other hand, these others in their areas want with all their might to impose their way of working and thinking on the others. How much, where, and what works, it is a question of the soil on which such a society develops, which was already mentioned a bit.
In any case such conflicts exist and can now be seen daily. We will give some examples of that. The political-legal area wants through customs to control the flow of the goods across borders - immediately smugglers appear, who generally would not be able to work, unless they bribe or otherwise – through coercion - win over the customs officers. Someone wants to start an economic activity, but the political-legal area wants to interfere by setting up various - often unreasonable - conditions. Teaching staff believes that their work is worth more than that of selling popcorn, but the economy is not putting sufficient resources into the budget and the political-legal area can settle their requirements only by printing new banknotes, that is, with inflation. Out of the spiritual life comes an initiative for a good and ennobling event, but according to the economic calculations they would rather put aside the funds for some trash that will bring profit or else such an event does not fit into the political concept, so this initiative collapses. Various economic bosses want to grab as much natural resources for themselves or to have as many people working for them so they can squeeze them out to the maximum, and if the political-legal area here interferes, they bribe the relevant officials and the thing is legalized.
Here one can give examples such as "wooden iron" or "angular circle" or "everything is relative". On the basis of the ingenious Wilson-isms, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were first created, and then, based on the very same principles, they were split up. As a fruit of this, with great pride and "people's rights" represented by the United Nations and other high institutions, all possible kinds of small ethnic states were established, but now on the multinational principles, and thus did all those sacred rights come to the fore, just like the "angular circle". When the British were leaving India or fleeing from it, they did not divide it based on national affiliations but on the religious ones, so today’s Bangladesh was for many years East Pakistan, and from the West Pakistan it is as distant and its language as different as roughly are Bulgaria and Spain. About those Indonesias, Nigerias, and smaller and larger ones we should not even speak. In them all the democratic rulers, "when giving them freedom," accidentally left behind the most organized dictatorships – it is not the departing power's fault that it can no longer, using the democratically appointed governors, continue to exploit them.
In connection with this there is a lot to say, but this problem can most concisely be presented in the following words by Rudolf Steiner from his lecture held in Dornach on July 11, 1920. :
"Times are now so serious that it cannot be otherwise than to knock on the door of the deepest truths, behind which are those truths that are needed today for mankind. The mankind of the West with its American addition will perish in barbarism, if the understanding of the Christ does not remain preserved. But what this mankind has done and how it is oriented to continue with it, the understanding of Christ will disappear. Only and solely those who realize today that it is necessary to come to a new understanding of the spirit, to the new path of knowing the supersensible man, only within them is there a real, serious, strong will to preserve the understanding of the mystery of Christ for mankind. But there will be no social life, the way it is understood today from the dark, often perverse instincts, if the understanding of Christ is completely lost. For this social life will still take place in such a way, that in human soulfulness something in common will be able to live. What could the only thing be that they have in common? This only thing that can be in common, marked by the words of Paul is: 'Not I, but the Christ in me'. As many people as will be able to say 'Not I, but the Christ in me', that many will be possible to find as members of one mankind all over the earth without distinction of nationality and other differentiations in establishing a new social life.”
"We see manifold strivings today against this. We observe in certain nations how they somehow again develop flags of nationalities. What is the essence of such things developing? I have also described it here, from a certain viewpoint. The essence is that old religion of Yahweh. It consisted in the fact that Yahweh was the leader of that nation, namely that one Jehovah was the leader of the Jewish people. Today, when nations put their nationality into the first place, they all only come up to this Yahweh, but each has its own vision of Yahweh. That therefore cannot be the true Yahweh, but only an image in the mirror. One countenance can be mirrored in multiple ways. In fact it is precisely thus, that people in the present - because they have lost the ancient mystic wisdom that could point to the Mystery of Golgotha - that all of them have more or less received the religion of Yahweh, and under the leadership of the liberal world 'archbishop' Wilson! He who spoke about the deceptive figure of the 'League of Nations', that is, about one abstraction rather than about one specific impulse of Christ which passes through the human soulfulness, he was believed until this was broken because of his own behavior - certainly very quickly - for those who can still think a bit.”
"What this is about is for people to find again the path to come out of the Yahweh nationalism and towards the universal conception of Christ, towards what allows man only as a man to appear, but which does not also impoverish him in terms of the national, but also enriches him."
This can happen only when one acquires the understanding of the supersensible, because with it one can understand the Mystery of Golgotha. However:
"If we keep working as much in the science of nature, we in the West are in the year three thousand still barbarians, and likewise in America are barbarians. We then understand only what is dying in the life of the Earth, and so we experience only that in the life of the Earth which is dying. We are trying to take everything from the observation of the earthly, but only come to what is mortal."
The only salvation from that lies in the understanding of what happened at Golgotha.
It should be noted here that the League of Nations (in fact the league of states founded politically-militarily, not the nations) was established on January 10,1920, but at the peace conference in Paris, its program in fourteen points from January 8, 1918, was rejected. However, this abstraction, this little cosmos created in one’s own head, still lives under a different name, again with switched concepts of state and nation. The League of Nations did not stop World War II, nor the horrors that happened before it, such as the Spanish civil war and various camps of the left or of the right type, and which represent the greatest shame in the history of mankind. The United Nations are totally powerless not only to prevent the constant wars and bloodshed that take place since their founding, but in spite of all their beautiful and numerous organizations and declarations not even death from starvation of millions of people every year, while in other regions of the earth, food is being thrown away or in "controlled freedom" production is reduced from what is possible. But perhaps this is what is sought after, that people with badly composed genes become extinct, and those with good ones get to multiply and gorge themselves? And how can they be brothers, those from a better race with those from the poorer one? And how can an organization that already contains untruth in its title act in the Christ sense? What kind of a spirit could lead such an organization? Who is here being evoked under the flag of untruth? This should be carefully pondered.
In the Western Christian nations those who mostly give the tone are the non-Christians or even anti-Christians, supported perhaps also by the well-intentioned people in their drowsiness and love of ease. Of course where the official church has abolished the spirit, then declared dichotomy and finally also denied the Christ, and kept Jesus so that in his name it has justification for the establishment of its earthly kingdom, or only used him as a model for a good man, of course it is very hard for a man to find his way in life. Then how could the local people identify with the following words: “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life."(Jude1:20)? How can one find one's way, if it is believed that the Holy Spirit was created in time, and the Christ is not recognized as a spirit?
Such people (or some other creatures who took those human bodies) can neither accept the following instructions: "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person. Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth."(1.John3 16-18). And what do we say about those in certain nations or regions who especially organize scarcity - as it is done here for example (and of course, not only here)? Or others using perfidy assisted by human rights and arms that in addition ruthlessly exploit?
One such perfidy are the so-called hard and soft currencies. When money through the interest rates, which today have reached unimaginable heights, multiplies so much that on its territory nothing is left for it to devour, then it must drop dead. However, for the hard currencies to continue to live, they then begin to devour the soft ones - devalue the soft so that the hard can come into their place and thus they persevere. Previously this was done through several "reputable" stock markets and through other skills, and lately with the movement of your spawned money on someone else's territory, devouring of course the local ruling "soft" currencies. Thus, the "hard" money can still indefinitely be printed, and still in its territory no surplus shows, which would automatically devaluate it. The scheme is then very simple: in the territory to be exploited (because there live people with less well composed genes) a ton of paper is sent - now a bit sparkly - and as an exchange for it 50,000 or 100,000 tons of some raw materials and goods are imported. If someone would rebel there, he will go before an international or multinational court or simply be killed. It is adjusted that way, that for the same sheet of paper in one’s own territory one can for instance buy one kilogram of bread, on a neighboring territory two, a bit further four, and further still eight, and the salaries are of course proportional. How wonderful one feels who with the wages received on the more expensive territory for his money buys goods in a cheaper one! This is so wonderful that one can nicely snooze. He belongs to smarter nations or more wisely organized social systems, to those with better structured genes, while those others are unable to organize themselves. "In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother." (1.John3.10). "Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."(1.John3.13-15).
Under the rule of Mao Zedong one was not allowed to take interest on the borrowed money. There, Marxism was accepted as a religion. It may now be very tempting for exploited people, to seek salvation in the Chinese system, in their way of thinking and spirituality. There is much evidence that the Chinese are hardworking, humble, patient, dedicated to their job, conscientious in their work, that they are not greedy or fickle. Chinese people certainly should also be considered one’s brothers, because Christ died also for them, and not only for those who call themselves Christians. After all - as defined by Rudolf Steiner - Christian is also the one who has never heard of Christ, but is filled with truth and goodness. And the Chinese, therefore, ought to have the right to live and why wouldn't they be allowed to settle and cultivate the land emptied by the low reproductive rate? However, this does not mean that we should accept their spiritual life, but out of love for them, we should keep trying to enrich their spiritual life and to supplement it with what has come to be in recent times and with that knowledge about the Christ being itself. In this sense of course it ought to be worked out also with other people - and especially with those who call themselves Christians, but lie and do not look at every man as their brother.
In a lecture held in Berlin, on March 19, 1912, Rudolf Steiner warns about the risk of receiving the Chinese spiritual life, which is an inheritance from very early epochs -- from more than ten thousand years ago. If it would overcome the European-Western spiritual culture, then the latter might forget its own mission and task:
"As men live on into the future they will have to realize that from the Atlantean epoch there has survived upon our Earth, an imprisoned spiritual wisdom and knowledge greater than anything revealed by the disclosures concerning the old Brahman and Zoroastrian civilizations; this wisdom will be unleashed when the spiritual life of China emerges from its concealment."
This cannot be understood with the philistine pedantic style of the West, but by immersion in the ancient Taoist culture, built on the old Chinese culture. Those who are asleep and do not want to engage in what the science of the spirit offers will be astounded, when out of the Chinese culture a spiritual good is poured and they will study it as something of interest.
"But when the wisdom casts off its fetters over yonder, it will have another effect as well: its obvious and intrinsic greatness will shock and amaze. It will pour over what mankind has acquired in Christian culture in such a way that it will have to be seen in its true perspective, studied from the right point of view. The proper approach will be to say: This spirituality existed; in bygone ages it constituted the spiritual culture of our Earth. But every epoch has its own mission, and that of Western culture is to drink at the well-springs of the spiritual reality behind world-existence, so that this spiritual reality is perceived behind the material world, behind what eyes can see and hands can grasp — as a revelation from the spiritual world. Men will have to understand that their mission now belongs to a different age and that they must stand firm on the ground prepared by Christianity!”
“That is the other picture. Men will joyfully receive what derives from olden times but will illumine it, vivify it with what the more recent, Post-Atlantean, Christian culture has imparted to the soul. Weaklings, however, will say: “We will accept spirituality from whatever source it may come, for all that interests us is a sensational vista of the spiritual worlds.” There may actually be neo-theosophists who will say: “The truth is not to be found through deep comprehension of the Christ-Principle; it lies in what has been preserved by the Chinese, coming to light again when they bring forth the Atlantean wisdom hidden in the deepest strata of their souls.” Europe might well be offered a new “Secret Doctrine” compiled from the truths of Chinese wisdom. This would imply that, after all, the proper model for modern theosophists is a much more ancient Theosophy which did not feel called upon to derive the founts of spiritual life from Christian Mysticism and Christian Love — nor, for that matter, to plagiarize — and even that very imperfectly — the wisdom of ancient India somewhat embellished by the wisdom of ancient Egypt! As for the weaklings, they will be just as eager for Chinese wisdom as for the spirituality which they think is opened up for them by the ancient or also by the “newly revealed” Indian wisdom. After all, to Europeans, India is almost as remote as China; and if people are told of revelations made possible in China owing to certain forces having been set free, this may well seem more credible to them than that anything of the kind should have transpired in Berlin.”
It would be untrue to claim that this way the old spiritualities are neglected. One must gladly receive what has been preserved from the older spiritual times, but still stand firmly on the ground of what has been brought to humanity during the period of development.
With the exclusion of one’s affections and passions, science of the spirit explores and describes the facts as they are, it is never a question of attacking anyone personally, but of becoming aware of things and for everyone taking their own free stance in front of these facts - even if one feels attacked. Its basic mood is expressed by Jesus' words: "I am not going to accuse you either. You may go now, but don’t sin anymore" (John8.11). However, science of the spirit and those who are working with it are attacked indeed, attacked because they are revealing the truth. But: "Jesus answered, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John14.6). And: "If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours." (John15:20). The science of the spirit is a product of modern Christian initiation. Its statements of course must not be received out of the belief in some authority, but should rather be verified using common sense and the sense for truth and by observing life around and within oneself. It explains the Christ impulse in a manner adapted to the current development of mankind, so one should bear in mind the following: "And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. Whoever rejects me and doesn’t receive my words will be judged at the last day by the word I have spoken." (John 12 47-48).
Humanity is now in a state of divergence between the powers of thinking, feeling, and willing - as stated at the beginning of this section and because of that various dispositions of the people living in the East, in the Middle, and in the West were presented. Because of these different dispositions certain conflicts also arise. Rudolf Steiner also repeatedly speaks about the real occult war and wars, which are led and which are more horrifying than the armed conflict during World War One. Here we will quote his words from the lecture held on October 30, 1920 in Dornach :
"And even if it is perhaps only a symbol, certain people still have it standing in front of their soul: this decadent firm grip to the revelations of the East, the insignificance of the Middle, and only into the economic relations infiltrated wisdom of the West. And they talk like this is some future perspective - as if the Middle does not exist at all- about the great fight between Japan and the US that is in the offing. That also signifies something extraordinarily profound. And if what is real as the decadent in the East, which has not yet been born in the West, if it strikes at each other while ignoring the Middle, then so to speak that feeling for the I, which precisely in the Middle became evident, then the feeling for the I sinks into that chaos that occurs by crushing from the East and from the West. The thought about the I had disappeared together with the Middle European-idealist philosophy. Since the middle of the nineteenth century it does not exist anymore."
Or - as Rudolf Steiner described in the same lecture cycle on October 24, 1920 - Central European civilization has staggered into an illusion which is located in the maelstrom of wisdom from the East and the power from the West. A solely dominant economic life may only act devastatingly. This has to be opposed with completely free spiritual life.
It is difficult to talk about these occult wars, but something can be gathered here from the above facts. One would go too far elaborating on this theme. But that this exists, is symptomatically proven by the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the night between 7 and 8 of May 1999. In the Middle, the might of the West collided with the wisdom of the East. Several members of the crew of the US aircraft came from the West and killed, according to the initial news four persons, and according to the later news, three persons who came from the East. That is the first Chinese blood spilled in the war waged in the Middle. This is only a stimulus for reflection, because in this situation, inadvertent error is out of the question.
The external symptoms of the occult war being waged are also the current events in Afghanistan, where in it and its neighboring Islamic countries, the West is establishing its military and political base in the center of Asia, in the East. This was also preceded by the propaganda of many years ago, which could also be heard here even out of the mouth of the "most eminent representatives" of Orthodoxy, that Judaism, all possible religious communities of Christians and Islam are all one and the same, because they all believe in one God, while other religions are polytheistic. Here not only is the tail called a foot, but also the ears and who knows what else, and then it is all added up and the dog has as many legs as the centipede. Certainly, that craziness can come only from the one who does not know the Holy Spirit nor the Christ. This is of course a policy so that "Euro-America" gains as allies and puts under its command the "ISLAMISTAN," all to make it easier to tackle "HINDULAND", "CONFUCIANIA" and "EURO-ASIA" - as was given by "The Economist," Huntington and others.
In any case, such an occult war exists and is being waged with tremendous power and wisdom, and also using illusion - according to Goethe's fairy tale "The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily." The center is already largely crushed. However, if in that Middle not even the smallest place is found, in which all the occult movements will agree to realize the threefolding social system as recommended by Rudolf Steiner, then all over the world, more and more chaos will come and there will be greater and greater horror.
Western corrupted occultists, gathered in different lodges, go on to act on the rhythmic system, the feelings. The Middle corrupted occultists, such as the Jesuits, seek to operate on the metabolic system, on the will. The Eastern corrupted occultists seek to penetrate not the supersensible, but the sub-sensible world. Thus all this is opposed to what has been said above as the correct tendency to raise from the metabolic to the rhythmic, from the rhythmic to the system of the head, while from that nerve-sensory one to penetrate into the spiritual, supersensible world. Some leaders, of course, do not stop at lowering themselves only by one degree, but in different ways descend into the sub-sensible and connect with the spiritual beings that are opposed to Christ and his impulses. In this way one is not on the path of individualization, but on the path towards the immersion in various types of group souls, which has already been mentioned briefly. Therefore, in such organizations, such as in Jesuitism through the will or in various sects with the accents on the Old Testament and various lodges through ideas, a particular struggle takes place for the loss of the understanding of the Christ, from whom we have received our I like a small piece of him, and which under his impulse ought to be fully individualized and be free.
In all such organizations there are also entirely well-meaning people who are far from consciously fighting against Christ and his impulses. If they do not, even tacitly, accept and do not endeavor to, in the Middle or at least in its one tiny fraction, say in this small Yugoslavia, where by the Western arm fell the Eastern blood, to at least here break the state down into the spiritual area that will work on the principle of freedom, the political-legal area which will operate under the principle of equality, and the economic area which will operate under the principle of brotherhood, with all three coordinating on an equal basis, - if those various occult circles do not consent to this, and do not implement this - then woe to them and to humanity! If they agree, a buffer zone will be created, the spiritual and the political-legal and the economic buffer zone, which will be the only one able to alleviate those occult blows which are increasingly being prepared from all sides. For such occult blows there are no bunkers, in which the leaders could hide, and such blows exceed even the boundaries of birth and death.
So it has been said here, and each individual has the freedom to choose what he does or does not do from his position in society.
Something for the Understanding of the Christ
Purely intellectualistically, one cannot arrive at any concept about Christ, but one can come to the comprehension of the spiritual - as was previously presented. One cannot even historically - strictly historically - prove that there existed some Jesus of Nazareth, because all the writings about him arose only later, and of them only the much later made transcripts have been preserved, undoubtedly with errors. There are certainly errors also in their interpretation during the translation, even if the translators were the most learned and most conscientious. In addition, the Gnostic writings which out of the old mystery teachings and vision spoke about Christ - even before his entry into one human body - were systematically destroyed and are no more. Also, the apocryphal writings that seem to be partially preserved in the Vatican library, are however not accessible to the public, so we cannot know if there is a record in those documents from the time when Jesus Christ lived in one human body on earth.
However, the proof - but not pedantically historical - is the transformation that has occurred in mankind beginning with our era, and also everything that happened in the meantime. To consider that it was "someone" or "some organization" who invented it would be too unbelievable considering the durability and the vastness of what happened and is happening through the Christ impulse. With that, this whole thing cannot be entered in a purely intellectualistic way and with the pedantic historical research - which anyways leads to countless erroneous conclusions and confusion even about much, much simpler events and whose "proofs" are almost never true scientific proofs, but assumptions drawn sometimes from being uninformed, sometimes out of a bias, and sometimes from quite malicious and false representations and "historic" descriptions. A historian will, for example, perhaps correctly write that on the battlefield this side won and the other one was beaten, but will not know that the defeated party lost the battle, because, to its commander, someone specifically planted false information about the enemy's arrangement and strength - and that is indeed essential. Not to mention that they are not allowed to even embark on something like, "In the skies the saints began to battle; Many an omen they began revealing" – what was one artist’s experience. Neither the fight of the gods, described in the Iliad, and which was a true reality at a time when humanity was passing from the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch into the Greco-Roman, from the development of the sentient soul to the development of the intellectual soul. When one has the key to such understandings, then these are even more obvious proofs than some - perhaps especially incorrectly written - text.
Therefore, for the research about Christ and those impulses which he was bringing to humanity both before and after his dwelling in one human body, one must turn to the initiatic wisdom. On the one hand, towards the one preserved in the Holy Scriptures and other holy writings, and on the other hand, towards the new initiation, with which these things can keep being checked and explained in a way adapted to the present state of human consciousness. And every man who has common sense and a sense for truth can keep verifying it based on his experience and start by saying, "Perhaps this is so," while after he connects more of such statements into a whole, can say, "This can only be this way." Out of this second stance will the further presentation be set forth. Not from some belief in the authority of Rudolf Steiner, but from the power of truth that shows itself in man's interior, in the human I, and which is also the sense of his following words:
“The sphere of the Spirit is the soul's true home,
And a person will surely reach it
By walking in the path of honest thought;
By choosing as his guide the fount of love
Implanted in his heart;
By opening the eye of his soul
To Nature's script
Spread out before him through all the Universe,
Telling the story of the Spirit
In all that lives and thrives,
And in the silent spaciousness of lifeless things,
And in the stream of Time--the process of becoming.”
In a lecture held in Berlin on December 26, 1909, Rudolf Steiner says that the Gospels must be understood literally, because in such an understanding is the basis of the true wisdom. (Of course, one must pay attention to the aforementioned possible errors in translation.) In primeval times, man’s I is not yet formed, there were group souls to which belonged a certain number of people. At the time of Christ's descent group souls were withdrawing and each man was directed to develop within himself an individual soul, his true I-ness. This is one of the Christ's impulses, and today man is directed to remember his earlier embodiments, and the majority still cannot do that. People will be able to do it only later, in the epoch which will come in the middle of the fourth millennium, but:
"Whether they will remember correctly, that depends on how they have received the impulses for it in their souls today - whether they have made themselves capable of remembering correctly! In the future only those who have received the Christ impulse, the source of the true I, will correctly remember their present existence. But those who do not receive this source of the true I-ness, within them will instead form new group souls. Pray look at today’s external reality, how people today just rush to the group soulfulness, even though they do not have to, but could find the sources of truth, that originate for them in their own soul. Observe how everyone wants to do things only the way “everyone” does it. People are not looking for what they themselves can find in their own soul, but we see them striving for what is reducible into categories, into groups, and they are the most joyous when they have not independent truths, but what is shared with others. Yes, individuality is even being hated, so in this hatred against what is individual, is believed to be forged the strongest weapon against such wisdom as the Anthroposophical one...”
"Through the anthroposophical wisdom we become an individuality. If we receive this Anthroposophical wisdom in the correct individual way, in the way it is imbued with the Christ impulse, then that is laid into our soul which enables us to, in the sixth epoch, remember the I-ness, that which each one of us has for oneself, which is closed within itself. Contrary to this will the memory of those who today seek the artificial group souls, be such that the group soulfulness will exist again. In the sixth epoch people will remember their current incarnation; but then it will be clear to them that "In your views then you joined the views of others!" And that will be a terrible fetter for a man who will have to feel himself embedded in some group soulfulness.”
"Group soulfulness threatens those who in our time will not be able to receive the Christ impulse!"
The Christ impulse can be experienced within oneself through the understanding of it.
In order to get closer to the understanding of Christ's being, we will present here some concepts about the Holy Trinity, according to the lecture by Rudolf Steiner held in Dornach on June 4, 1924. In man's life on earth his I uses his physical body, which is similar to the mineral kingdom; then it uses the etheric or vital body, a body of formative forces, also in the plant kingdom; then the astral or soul body which animals also have. The human I is none of these bodies. World ether can be perceived in the blueness of the sky, and world astrality in the stars which are an expression of love (hence the name "astral"), but the I will not reveal itself in this milieu – in the physical, etheric and astral, because it is the ongoing repetition of the previous earthly lives, and also exists in the life between death and a new birth. In that life, the physical and the etheric do not have significance for the I, but only the astral. A human being lives there with the beings of the higher hierarchies, with whom he then forms his karma. If one observes a human I in its two consecutive earthly lives, then one cannot remain in the same space, not in the same cosmos that refers to the simultaneity, to the spatiality. One moves out of space and comes into a pure time flow, when one observes the I in repeated earthly lives.
On Earth time is experienced only through space, through the position of things in space (the Sun, the hands of the clock and others). In order to truly enter into time one must get out of space, and that means to die.
There are peoples and groups who look only to that spiritual which is of this spatial-cosmic world and they are not able to have thoughts about repeated earthly lives. These thoughts may be had only by those, who can present time in its purity, in its spacelessness.
In the earth’s sphere we have a three-folding cosmos, which consists of the physical (which belongs only to the earth), etheric and astral. When this threefoldness, in its grandeur, was being experienced, and was also observed with the old instinctive clairvoyance, one could get to the divine that pervades and weaves through space. And Christmas was established thus, by observing the Christmas mysteries and how a child is being born in that space. The relationship with one’s I was also visible there and it was being said: Ex Deo Nascimur - From God we are born.
The observed child is the external sheath of that which was born in space, and it was born out of time. And:
"Then we shall look up to the Sun, and say to ourselves: “As I look up to the Sun, I must behold in the sunshine that Time, which in the world of Space, is hidden. Within the Sun is Time, and from out of the Time that weaves and works within the Sun, Christ came forth, came out into Space, on to the Earth."
Space does not exist within the Sun, space itself is being radiated out by the Sun, and the Sun does not only radiate the light. Christ came to human beings from beyond Space, to human beings who had then completely lost time and fully became spatial beings, beings of space.
“Christ came to bring the element of Time again to men, and when the human heart, the human soul, the human spirit, unite themselves with Christ, then man receives once more the stream of Time that flows from Eternity to Eternity. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha man had become to so great an extent a being of Space that Time was lost to him. Christ brought Time back again to men. If, then, in going forth from the world of Space, men would not die in their souls as well as in their bodies, they must die in Christ.”
"But since the Mystery of Golgotha we cannot conceive of death, the bound of our earthly life, without this thought: “We must die in Christ.” Otherwise we shall pay for our loss of Time with the loss of Christ Himself, and, banished from Him, remain held spell-bound. We must fill ourselves with the Mystery of Golgotha. In addition to the Ex Deo Nascimur, we must find the In Christo Morimur. We must bring forth the Easter thought in addition to the Christmas thought."
Just as on the Earth man has his three bodies, the physical, the etheric and the astral, so in the cosmos we have the Etheric as the lowest, then the Astral and then the Spiritual Selfhood, which is not a single Being but the whole world of the Hierarchies. In the Physical the Earth has a sub-cosmic element, and in the Spirit-Selfhood the Cosmos has a super-earthly element. When you look out on the Earth and the surrounding Cosmos, it is the Father whose life permeates this Universe. The Father-God is the God of Space. Christ descended from the Sun, out of Time that he brought to humanity. Christ came down from the Sun, from Time — Time that was brought to people. If one receives Christ, one receives Time, and will not be held spell-bound in Space. One then finds the transition from the one trinity — Physical, Etheric and Astral — to the other trinity, which leads from the Etheric and Astral to Spirit-Selfhood.
“When those to whom Christ revealed these things had let the revelation sink deep into their being, then the moment came when they experienced the working of this mighty concept, in the fiery tongues of Pentecost. At first they felt the falling away, the discarding of the earthly-Physical as death. But then the feeling came: This is not death, but in place of the physical of the Earth, there now dawns upon us the Spirit-Selfhood of the Universe. “Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.” We are reborn in the Holy Spirit.”
"If we understand the relationship of the physical to the soul of man and to the super-physical — which contains the true freedom of which man is to become a partaker on the Earth, — then in the interconnection of the Christmas, Easter and Whitsun festivals we understand the human freedom on Earth.”
As an addition to this presentation we will offer here something from the lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Dornach on July 30, 1922. If man had always been conscious of the Christ in himself, then anything he would do, would have had to be done out of extinguishing his own I consciousness if he wanted to be good, but the good deeds accomplished by human beings would have been the deeds of Christ, not the deeds of human beings. So that man could be free, Christ disappeared from his immediate sight - even the way the apostles beheld him after the resurrection was pulled back. This is referred to as his Ascension into heaven. But then he sent to humanity the Holy Spirit, the imperceptible spirit.
"By sending the Holy Spirit, Christ gave humanity the ability to raise itself to an understanding of the spiritual out of the life of intellect itself. Hence it should not be said that the human being cannot grasp the spiritual, the super-sensible, through his own spirit. A man could only justify his inability to understand the spirit if he ignored the Holy Spirit, if he spoke only of the Father God and the Christ God.”
And in the gospels it is likewise pointed to the presence of the Holy Spirit even during Jesus' baptism in the Jordan, when the spirit of Christ came into him. From these brief presentations one can even better perceive just what a terrible sin it was, when in 869 and 1054 the dogma was made that the Holy Spirit was created also out of time, that is from "the Son also ", while it dwells in the spiritual world that is beyond both time and space. However, that is a sting which remained in the western Christian churches as an impulse from Gondishapur, which is still very strong in Rome. Of course, this sting exists in some other way also in the bodies of other Christians – it should not be considered that they are without it.
Rudolf Steiner talks about this in many places, and here a brief presentation based on a lecture given in Zurich on October 16, 1918, will be given. The Greco-Roman cultural epoch, in which human beings developed their intellectual soul, began in 747 BC and ended in AD 1413. Its middle point was in AD 333 and since then this epoch was in decline. Before that middle point, the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, and as many years after that, in AD 666, certain spiritual powers wanted to seize mankind in a particular way, that in its development it does not go according to the intentions of the good divine beings, who have led it from the start. These powers wanted to give something to humanity already in AD 666, for which it was not yet ripe, and was supposed to come only in the middle of our present, fifth epoch, that is, in 2493. These hostile beings wanted, using the Ahrimanic-Luciferic forces, already then to inject into man the conscious understanding of his personality:
"They wanted to give to man too soon the Consciousness Soul, whereby they would have instilled into him a nature making it impossible for him to find the further path to the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, the Spirit-Man. These Beings would have cut man off from the path to his future destiny and would have claimed him for a quite different kind of evolution.”
Because of the Mystery of Golgotha history did not evolve in this way, but still there are traces of it even until today.
When Justinian I (the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire from 527-565), as an enemy of everything that had emanated from the lofty wisdom of Greece, closed the School of Philosophy in Athens in AD 529, its scholars fled away into Persia, where the Syrian scholars had already taken refuge when in the fifth century the Greek sages had been driven from Edessa by the Emperor Zeno Isaurikus. Thus, when the year 666 was approaching, there in the Persian Academy of Gondishapur had gathered the most learned men and out of them was supposed to originate that terrible impulse.
The world was saved from that by the Mystery of Golgotha, so this impulse was blunted in advance, and then in its place came Islam, fantastic and pitiful Islam in place of that which was exceptionally great in Gondishapur. However, mankind has nevertheless received such impulse from it, so that it has also worked into the physical corporeality and caused that illness, which reveals itself by leading man to the denial of God the Father. - It's that sting or thorn, of which Paul also speaks prophetically (2Cor.12.7 and 7Rom.14-25). Because of it a man in modern civilization can be a complete atheist, but we all also carry it within us as the disease of the denial of God. Due to this illness the soul is more connected to the body than it should be by its nature. Through this it is more involved in the destinies of the body, and likewise increasingly in the destinies of birth and heredity and death.
"The aim of the sages of Gondishapur — in a more amateurish form it is also the aim of certain occult societies in our own time — amounted to nothing else than this: to make man very great, very wise, on the Earth, but, by instilling this wisdom, to lead his soul to partake of death, so that when he had passed through the Gate of Death he would have no inclination to participate in spiritual life or in subsequent incarnations. The intention was to sever man from his further evolution, and so win him for the aims of certain Beings in a quite different world. It was to preserve him as he is in his life on Earth, in order to divert him from the purpose of that earthly existence, which purpose he was meant to discover only slowly and by degrees, thereby finally attaining to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man.”
“The human soul would have become more intimately bound up with the Earth than had been intended. Death, which is foreordained for the body only, would in a certain respect have become the destiny of the soul as well. This was prevented by the Mystery of Golgotha. Man did become related to death, but through the Mystery of Golgotha he has been given a means of protection against it. Although, on the one side, a certain stream in world-evolution brought about a relationship between the soul and the body stronger than that originally prescribed for man, in order to maintain the balance, Christ linked the soul with the spirit more strongly than had been originally planned. Through the Mystery of Golgotha the human soul was brought nearer to the spirit.”
The alternating relationship between Ahriman and Lucifer must be compared with this relationship between the body and soul towards the soul and spirit.
“The Catholic Church, strongly influenced by the remains of the impulse emanating from Gondishapur, decreed as a dogma at the Eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in AD 869 that men were not to believe in the spirit. ... This was because the Church did not desire that everybody should be enlightened about the Mystery of Golgotha, but that it should be kept hidden. In the year AD 869, belief in the spirit was abolished by the Catholic Church.”
This force that in man’s soul resembles death, is a kind of an illness, an illness of denying God, and all of us today in the civilized humanity carry in our body a tendency for it.
“If we rightly understand our own nature, we realize that we cease to deny God only when, through Christ, we find him again. Just as our body has within it a potential sickness tending towards denial of the Divine, so, having the Christ-Power within us in consequence of the Mystery of Golgotha, we have a health-giving, healing force within us. In the truest sense of the word, Christ is for one and all of us the Redeemer the Healer of the sickness that can make a man deny God. Christ is the Physician for that latent sickness.”
In his quest for self-knowledge a man can feel powerless, which is in fact wholesome, because it points to the illness.
"When this powerlessness is experienced with sufficient intensity, there comes the sudden reversal — the other experience which tells us that if we do not depend only upon what our bodily forces by themselves enable us to achieve, but devote ourselves to what the spirit gives — we can overcome this inner death of the soul. We find our soul again and unite ourselves with the spirit."
On the one side we have the powerlessness through the body, and on the other the resurrection through the spirit.
"...the Christ-experience does not consist of the unitary realization of the Divine, but of the twofold experience of the death in the soul wrought by the body and the resurrection of the soul wrought by the spirit."
During the baptism at the Jordan river Christ’s spirit descended from the Sun into the body of Jesus, and the Mystery of Golgotha tells us how the Christ’s being became the spirit of the Earth, how it merged with it, in order to save mankind from remaining enchanted in space, to embrace it into itself and carry it over into another form of existence, when the Earth itself as a celestial body will no longer exist. To this also point - although very tersely - these words, told to the eleven apostles after the Resurrection:
"And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Mat.28.18-20)
These words should also be understood literally.
About the connection of Christ with the development of humanity and its impulses before and after the Mystery of Golgotha a lot can be said, and "the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (John21.25). But since the topic of this presentation is science, we will conclude this presentation with a quote from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner held in Dornach on October 13, 1918. Following up on the impulse from Gondishapur and Romanism which is based on cults and rhetoric, which date from the time of Emperor Augustus (born in 63BC, became the emperor in 3BC, died in AD 14) and which are most pronounced in Jesuitism on the one hand, while:
"The other side is made up of those who swear by the crudest science, who refuse to accept the spiritual, who value science only as technology, rejecting all that can be discovered concerning the spiritual content of the world through the great and powerful phenomena of nature. I once said, and this was truly not said rhetorically, but out of the deeper knowledge of the soul: Until our physics, our mechanics, the whole of our external science, come to be permeated by the Christ Impulse, science will not have reached its goal. Not only history should speak of the Mystery of Golgotha: men should also realize that since the Mystery of Golgotha natural phenomena have to be observed in such a way that Christ is known to be on the earth, whereas He was not on the earth before. A truly Christian science will not seek for atoms, not for atoms and their laws, nor for the conservation of matter and of energy; it will seek for the revelation of Christ in all the phenomena of nature, and these will thereby reveal to men their sacramental character.”
"From a contemplation of nature in this light there will spring a feeling for moral, social, political and religious principles in human life which will really answer to the demands of human living. If we absorb the divine element in nature, if we draw upon the power of Christ in our knowledge of nature, then we shall carry into the rules of conduct that we set up for mankind, and into all that we want to exemplify, whether in caring for the poor or in any other realm of social service — we shall carry Christology into all our works. If we are unable to look upon nature around us as permeated by Christ, if we are unable to discover the activity of Christ in all that lives in human deeds even when they are halting deeds, neither shall we be able in our social, moral or political life to meet the real demands of our time. In that case we should be left on the one hand with our crude science, which simply refuses to know anything about the super-sensible, or with mere rhetoric, which is a legacy of Romanism, the ghost of Romanism."
We find the rhetoric on the one hand in the Roman preaching in Jesuitism, and on the other hand in Wilsonism.
"Just as the unhealthy mood of mankind today on the one hand strives towards Rome, so on the other hand the human soul, which does not understand itself, which has been eroded by the crudest natural science and its understanding of the world, it strives towards that which today permeates the world as a pure rhetoric and what is opposed to everything connected to the true, blessed progress of mankind.”
“These things, my dear friends, cannot be expressed through a few bourgeois, philistine ideas. That which threatens our time from the direction indicated, and has to be looked at soberly when present events are considered, must also be recognized in all its significance. We must not allow the world to be Wilsonised because everyone is asleep. Let there be followers of Wilson in America, in Europe, or anywhere else, but there must also be people who know that a deep connection exists between Jesuitism on the one hand and Wilsonism on the other. There must be people who realize this. Certainly they will have to grow beyond the philistinism of today; they must not form their opinions according to what the day brings, or even the years; they must be able to take account of what the centuries conceal, and yet reveal to us, if really and truly, with the innermost active force of the soul, we are able to look up to the hill where stood the Cross of Golgotha, the symbol for everything that as a revelation of the primeval Mysteries has poured into human life. But it will remain always youthful, always bringing fresh revelations to mankind.”
REMARKS
The above cited GA numbers are given based on "Rudolf Steiner Verlag", Dornach, Switzerland.
"Therefore, faithful Christian, seek the truth, hear the truth,
learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, adhere to the truth,
defend the truth to death; for truth will make you free
from sin, the devil, the death of the soul, and finally from eternal
death.”
~ Jan Hus
(Born around 1370, burned alive in Konstanz in 1415)
Translated by Svetlana and Paul Correa
jankovic_9@yahoo.com
svetlanamacac@gmail.com
On Science
"Then," said Henry, "when will there be no more terror or pain, want or evil in the universe?"
"When there is but one power, the power of conscience; when nature becomes chaste and pure. There is but one cause of evil,--common frailty,--and this frailty is nothing but a weak moral susceptibility, and a deficiency in the attraction of freedom."
"Explain to me the nature of Conscience."
"I were God, could I do so; for at the moment we comprehend it, conscience arises.”
"Certainly," said Sylvester, "Conscience is the only begotten redeemer of every man. It represents God upon earth, and is therefore to many the highest and the final. But how far was the former science, which they called the doctrine of virtue or morality, from that pure form of this sublime, comprehensive, personal thought. Conscience is the innermost unique essence of man in full transfiguration, the divine archetypal man (Urmensch.) It is not this thing and that thing; it does not command in general sentences, it does not consist of individual virtues. There is but one virtue,--the pure, solemn Will, which, at the moment of decision, instantaneously resolves and chooses. In living and inherent indivisibility it dwells and inspires that tender emblem, the human body, and can excite all the spiritual members to the truest activity."
Novalis
Contents:
Forward page 3
Part One: The fundamentals of material science page 5
Creed page 5
Dogma page 5
Apologetics page 10
Part Two: Spiritual Scientific Explanations page 13
Fundamental Positions page 13
Scientist’s duty and freedom page 17
Obsession page 21
Allurements page 25
Consequences of seduction page 30
Threefoldness page 35
Something for the understanding of the Christ page 43
Remarks page 51
Forward
Beginning with the nineteenth century, materialistic science has, with enormous power, seized the minds of the most civilized part of humanity. Towards the end of the twentieth century – especially after the “fall of communism” also in Eastern Europe – a tendency appeared to move from this one-sided materialism into a mystical idealism, also one-sided. In order to avoid falling into this second mistake, the tenets of materialistic science are discussed here on the basis of Anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit, founded by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), which acknowledges the value of materialism and idealism. The bridge must be made between them, since neither can wheat be harvested with idealism, nor can moral ideals be created and man be understood as spirit using materialism.
Materialism comes from those observations directed only to the outside world, idealism or mysticism from the observations of one’s interior while neglecting the exterior. If one accepts this only as dualism, i.e. that both exist independently from each other, one easily falls into fatalism. One loses the conception of freedom, which is important for self-understanding. Likewise, idealism by itself, which emerges in various aspects of mysticism and various religions, can eventually theoretically refute the claims of materialism. However, those theoretical proofs are incapable of preventing materialism from becoming reality, man from binding himself with matter more than is needed, and thus remaining enchanted within it like a phantom. That suppression of materialism can only be accomplished with the knowledge of the spiritual science, which can even in the crudest substance encounter the spirit and can show man the way to resist that seduction, which would otherwise completely connect him with matter, instead of leading him through Christ into the other life. It can also protect him from another seduction, which comes from that befuddled mysticism coming from various religious types of narrow-mindedness, used here too to draw on a primitive eastern variant of the rule of the Roman Empire with throne and altar, and to replace it using the western one with altar and throne. When surrendered to pure mysticism man would not connect with matter, but would never become a free being either, and would instead get lost in some general spirituality.
In order to counter both of these two extremes, these two temptations, the Anthroposophical mode of expression would say: Between materialistic god Ahriman and idealistic god Lucifer, man should find the Christ, who keeps them in balance.
The supporters of the first and second of these seducers are indeed trying to completely leave behind the knowledge of the true being of Christ, because with this knowledge, they lose their power to rule over the people who worship these gods and oppose Christ’s impulse of freedom. For as Paul says: “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery."(Gal.5.1). These words of Paul are the major reason for the attacks against him and claims that he has perverted Christianity - of course not only these - and this propaganda has for years been maintained by certain circles in the West. For the same reasons, over the years, various circles have systematically used propaganda to claim that a drastic cleft should separate the East from the West, because they are two different worlds. Therefore, for many years – at least a century - hatred and bloodshed have also been organized in the former Yugoslavia. Such a drastic cleft should "abolish" (not only destroy but abolish) – so that it no longer exists – the Middle that has a mission to be a bridge between East and West, that keeps them in balance, so that neither one overtakes in its one-sidedness, but is well harmonized with the whole of humanity. This tendency for the "abolition" of the Middle is the result of feeble mindedness. The Middle will exist despite all the imposed iron, paper, and propaganda curtains, because it is in accord with the development of the world and humanity directed by much stronger and wiser forces than those of Ahriman and Lucifer.
The warriors against Christ are definitely trying to "abolish" the Middle using various machinations to also seduce some quite well-meaning people and lead them to work for them. They do that by implanting misperceptions and hypnotic suggestions and the like, making them gather into different groups and subjecting them to imposed group ethics. That is the reason they fight against ethical individualism, indicated by Rudolf Steiner, which points towards the path to freedom. In order to achieve this goal agents are skillfully injected also into the Anthroposophical societies, where, masked behind many good and correct things, they also infiltrate some depravity, which can then fundamentally destroy basic Anthroposophical tenets. Thus, a former general leader of the Anthroposophical society declared that the whole society was in "the occult slavery" - in other words, that ethical individualism, which is an expression of human freedom, cannot possibly exist. From all this it follows that thousands and thousands of members and supporters of the Anthroposophical movement - because the movement was once connected with the society - have only a group consciousness, not an individual one.
There are many such attacks. They are always - whether they come from full or twilight consciousness - always fruits of "de-individualization".
Written in Belgrade, from the end of July to the end of December of 2001, with the moral support of my wife Olgica.
Vojislav D. Jankovic
PART I - THE FUNDAMENTALS OF MATERIALISTIC SCIENCE
Creed
Credo:
• That there are only material particles, from which it is built all that there is, and there is nothing that is not built of them;
• That these material particles are subjected to unrelenting laws of nature and that these laws create both matter and energy, which can therefore be converted into each other;
• That any two of something can act on each other through nothing and that all material particles are subjected to this law, as well as all bodies are made up of a multitude of clustered particles of such material;
• That at one time something engulfed the material particles and stirred them up, and then they came under the influence of the inexorable laws of nature and were grouped in different ways, and that this event was unrepeatable;
• That out of this whirlwind of material particles everything dead was formed, and out of that all that is alive, then everything that feels, and then all that thinks;
• That the materialistic science is infallible and that only by its means can one come to the knowledge of any phenomena in nature.
Dogma
1. Only what can be expressed in measure, weight, and number exists.
2. Space is three-dimensional and infinite in all three directions.
3. Time is eternal and stretches endlessly from the distant past to the infinitely distant future.
4. There is no quality, just quantity. Thus, for example, sounds are undulation into larger or smaller units of groups of material dots (atoms or molecules), and colors are undulation of something unknown to us, thus called ether. Heat is also some kind of flicker of some particles. Smell and taste stimuli are irritations caused by tiny particles of matter and so on. The contents of a book and its value can be determined according to the number of words or letters, and the letters themselves could be determined by the number of flickers of air when they are pronounced - but it is a bit complicated with regard to the pitch of various human voices, so we do not do it. It is similar with the impression caused in a man when standing in front of a painting or landscape, but science will one day explain that too.
5. There exists sense world that cannot be perceived by the senses, such as atoms, mesons, protons, electrons, neutrons, etc., etc ., and according to the scientific atomic theory they will never be seen, because when illuminated by rays of wavelengths less than these particles, they cease to exist, but from them, however, were all things created, the whole real world.
6. The amount of energy in the universe is constant, even though matter can be turned into energy and energy into matter.
7. All the senses are subjective, so through them one cannot get to the objective reality, but only through instruments, even though these were subjectively invented and fabricated, and also made with the help of subjective senses and limbs.
8. However, since we perceive reality only with the senses, in order to be objective we must use only the sense of sight minus the ability to distinguish colors. The sense of sight therefore must only be used for reading the scale on the instrument and then it is not considered subjective but objective, although a separate science of errors made while reading the scales has been developed, as well as a science of subjectively perceived colors.
9. For scientific observation we must also not use the sense of balance, by which we acquired the concept of the three-dimensional space, and on which we based observations: up - down, front - back, right-left. However, this space is objective and real, regardless of subjectivity of the sense of balance, and the fact that it consists of material dots that are discontinuous and are set proportionally at large distances.
10. What is also real is time which we perceive with other senses as before and after, for example sweet and then bitter, hungry and then full, noisy and then quiet, dark and then light, etc., but these senses must not be used for the study of reality. They are subjective, and time is still objective, even though science has not explained what it is.
11. While as a result of stacking of one and then another, and then a third dimension we obtain space, the same is not allowed to be done with time. To explain reality time can be used potentiated to the first degree - for example, with velocity, also to the second degree - for example, when defining energy or labor, it may be potentiated to the third degree - for example, with force or effect, but about it one may at most speak as of the fourth dimension, as opposed to length, by which are obtained the three dimensions and which also appears in the real world only to the first, second and third degree.
12. It is not allowed to think about time separately, even though for the explanation of reality it also appears independently either potentiated to the first degree as in angular velocity or squared as in angular acceleration i.e. in connection with number, which, yet, cannot be explained as being composed of material dots, but it may still be used for their determination.
13. Mathematical concepts and operations are not real, but only they can unerringly be used to explain reality. And so besides circles, straight lines, squares, cups, rollers, real numbers, tetrahedrons, and others which may approximately be drawn or shaped in reality – beside them one is allowed to also use imaginary (thus conceived, non-existent) numbers, then also potentiation, logarithmic transformation, differentiation, integration, and the like, which is all mathematically invented; all this can be used to explain reality, even though it is itself unreal. In this way, the real observation is explained by the unreal means, and thus one comes to an unerring understanding of reality.
14. Phantasy can be used not only to create something new - like music, a novel, pie or tractor, mathematical concepts or other things, but also for the interpretation and explanation of something already created. Thus it can be imagined that for the creation of a locomotive its parts were randomly put together just like the rhinoceros’ parts, and not that some people have made it.
15. Scientific theories and hypotheses created by phantasy may be used as something that has been proven – and even though they are scientifically both unproved and unprovable – they may fill the books and the heads of hundreds of millions or billions of people down through generations.
16. General concepts such as triangle, lion, star, stone, milk, etc., though not real, may still be used for determining the laws that govern reality.
17. There exists nothing that is indicated by abstract nouns, as for example love, beauty, joy, anger, error, shenanigans, the truth, amazement, compassion, conscience, etc. Since the mind would belong there too, and scientists are still smart, then the mind has been moved into the category of the real by being measured with tests and expressed in numbers in accordance with the dogma number 1. If necessary, in order to prove their existence, some other similar categories can be expressed in numbers, for example damage, theft, earning, which are then expressed as a certain amount of money, itself created by phantasy, and which does not have to be a tangible real banknote or coin, but can be only a non-existent mere entry into books or computers.
18. Thoughts are, just like anger, beauty, joy, etc. secretions of the brain caused by genes, diet and so on, and science will in the not too distant future succeed in synthesizing mind and knowledge and then in a form of material substance will inject it into the brain. This will save you time-consuming, tedious and expensive education and will in a rational manner create the needed classes of people. In this way, the harmful and undesirable racism will disappear, which is a consequence of the development and deployment of the genes that have not yet been scientifically controlled or regulated.
19. There are no other miracles except the miracle of the creation of the universe, from all eternity and out of nothing and the way it is expressed in the scientific creed.
20. Scientific Creed is the product of scientific thought and proves that science exists. Although the word "science" is also one of the abstract nouns, science is still an objective reality, because it can be denoted as a number infinite, a number that is not determined by anything, but is still higher than any particular finite one. This is because it can constantly progress, and is thus more and more comprehensive, and the quantity of its findings could be expressed in numbers, from which it follows that it is real.
21. All religious symbols of faith are worthless because they are not based on scientific knowledge, but instead on the superstition of the uneducated and primitive people, and written in order to manipulate and dominate them. On the contrary, the scientific researchers do not want to manipulate and rule over people, but only seek to bring their scientific results into their brains to enlighten them, for them to work in the correct scientific sense and mode, and according to the highest achievements of scientific authority.
22. In order to obtain scientific results we must not only observe phenomena that occur in nature, but must also perform specially prepared experiments.
23. Results and laws identified on the laboratory table in a small confined space and in proportionally short time apply to the entire universe, which spans infinitely large space and which lasts an infinitely long time from the infinitely distant past to the infinitely distant future. According to these same laws all the processes are also practiced on the Sun and on Saturn and Neptune and Sirius and in a distant nebula millions of light years away (1,000,000 x 9,500,000,000,000 = 9,500,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers). Thus it is possible, and very accurately, on the basis of observation for a period of 5 or 5000 years, to determine the age of the Earth's stages of development, as it was 200,000 or 2,000,000 years ago, because in the meantime nothing important could have happened - the results need only be divided or multiplied with certain numbers.
24. Thus, even though no experiment can be done under ideal imaginary conditions and without impurities from some undesirable influences, its findings and the results are absolutely correct, because these effects can either be ignored or imagined as nonexistent or at least that they do not substantially affect the obtained results.
25. Even though through experimentation the measurements of the achieved results almost never correspond to the theoretically calculated formulas, they can still be considered to prove the accuracy of these formulas.
26. Conclusions about reality may also be carried out neglecting second or higher-order terms in formulas that express some laws, because that is more comfortable than splitting hairs with accuracy.
27. If reality diverges from theory based on observation of the obtained results, one must not think about it, because one could fall into superstition and believe that there are other miracles besides the one expressed in the dogma number 19 above. One must not ponder, for example, how is it that certain comets move around in hyperbolic orbits and still periodically return to our solar system, while we know that hyperbolas are open curved lines whose arms diverge.
28. Regardless of it being proven that the light bends under the influence of a magnetic field, in order to measure the distance of some star or nebula we must assume that it moves in a straight line through the empty space for thousands or millions of light years.
29. Neither must one think about why it is that one experiment positively determines the particle nature of light, and the other - differently organized - undoubtedly proves its wave nature, and no experiment can simultaneously prove both of these statements.
30. It may be assumed, in experimenting with light, that from two points on the Sun, towards which we turn the opening in a camera obscura, light rays can only go in parallel lines, even though we know that from an illuminating point, light spreads in all directions, and therefore in this experiment two rays can also collide. Likewise, when they reflect they still always remain parallel and unchanged, because a solar ray can quite freely pass through another - exactly in a way superstitious people imagine that ghosts do. Rays of course have an infinitely small diameter of cross-section, but when doing experiments we take rays to be something composed of an infinite number of such rays so that we could see it, and then in such a beam of rays we imagine that they neither intersect nor otherwise act upon each other.
31. One must not think about the wavelength of the color purple, because this would cast doubt on the authority of Sir Isaac Newton. Consequently, Goethe’s experiments with light and colors must not be recreated either.
32. In nature the law of evolution rules, by which the material swirling dots first somehow gathered and formed elements such as gold, hydrogen, silicon and more. Then the atoms of these elements were somehow put together and formed compounds such as water, silicates, lime and others. Out of these compounds, molecules randomly colliding formed organic cells, which then formed plants, and then animals more and more complex and perfect, until finally man was made from monkeys.
33. According to the same inexorable laws of nature, out of the accidentally swirling material dots sedimentary rocks and crystals were formed, fish are bred, trees grow, food in the stomach is digested, a cat meows when her tail is stepped on, a child cries when it cannot learn a lesson, an assassination of a king is being hatched, a sonata is composed, the end of the world pondered about, chatting over coffee takes place, and so on. These are all physical, chemical, electronic, magnetic, and similar processes, explored by science that will - if not already - one day be explained (time lasts for eternity).
34. Ignorant people think that they can freely, according to their own will, do something, because they do not recognize the inevitability of natural law, by which they themselves are made and based on those processes by which they act. Science has already discovered that the genes which determine a person and their features, also condition their actions in certain situations. If the genes are structured in one way - man sings well, if in some other way – he then steals. Freedom therefore does not exist, it is just a big illusion, Maya.
35. People with better composed genes lead people with less suitably composed ones. A new phase of the evolution of humanity has emerged where people with better hereditary, genetic features give appropriate substances to those who are backward in order to improve them, and science is now on its way to influence through genes these backward ones for the purpose of evolution. By doing so science will also improve what ignorant and superstitious people call morality, which also does not exist in reality and belongs to Maya.
36. Social relationships are based on the genetic traits of people. First, this is expressed in the family, clan, tribal, national, and racial identity, and on the other hand, people with other similar genetic traits gather and form various associations, political parties, and organizations. In such unions based on similar affiliation the affection towards similar people is enhanced, which common people call love, while that is only Maya. Ignorant people think that all this is an expression of their special human freedom, while in fact we have those same organizations in other animal species: swallows form families, elephants gather in herds and wolves in packs, bees join together into the hives that are more perfect than human organization and so on. When a man does something not in accordance with the prevailing genetic make-up of the group to which he belongs, then the defensive mechanism of that community fires up, since it threatens its survival. Ignorant people call that phenomenon conscience, which does not exist at all in material reality and this is also one of the great illusion to which people tend to surrender. And conscience is only Maya, because if a man acts according to the tone and direction provided by the people with better arranged genes, then it does not appear as a deception, as they then live in reality.
Apologetics
Before the development of science, people interpreted all natural phenomena they could not explain as the effects of different forms of invisible spirits. They did not know that fire is a rather ordinary natural chemical process of combustion, that lightning is a discharge of electricity from the clouds, that rain occurs due to condensation of the chilled water vapor that rose from the earth, that earthquakes are subsidence and shifting of certain layers of soil, that plant growth is influenced by biochemical processes fueled by solar heat and light, and so on. All that they did not understand primitive people attributed to some gods and spirits. Even about thoughts produced by the human brain they thought that these were somewhere around human beings and that somehow they got into their heads. The natural urge in the fight for survival and in procreation they mystified and attributed to an abstract love, and they failed to grasp that love is in the same category as the other instincts, like hunger or thirst, etc., and that without it some animal species could not exist. Based on the fact that the human being has such and similar emotions and feelings, a soul used to be attributed to him and based on the fact that he thinks they attributed to him to also have the spirit, not just the body. Having watched the human body decay after death, primitive man perfectly reasonably attributed persistence to the invisible soul or spirit after the decomposition of the body, that they have an existence independent of the body, and all this because he wanted to live forever.
Some people then, in their ignorance - as Plato still did - imagined that such a human spirit existed even before one’s birth and that it only enters into a body being born. Plato's student Aristotle himself was among the first to cast doubt on this superstition, but even he could not completely free himself of it, so Aristotle imagined a god, who creates a soul for every body that is born and that that soul after the death of the body still continues into infinity in some imaginary spiritual spheres.
However, Aristotle still gave certain scientific groundwork, which in the dark Middle Ages was preserved and cultivated only in Arabism, which starting with the year 622 AD received Islam, the religion founded by Muhammad. At the Battle of Poitiers in 732, Charles Martel rejected the Arab penetration into France, so they remained only on the Iberian Peninsula. Thus the ground was prepared for an almost completely illiterate Charlemagne to establish a vast empire, and afterwards to form an alliance with a very erudite Baghdad Caliph Harun al-Rashid. While caliphs were both religious and secular rulers, deciding on both religious dogmas and the life and death of their subjects, Pope Leo III (795-816), as a representative of the faith, "transferred" the secular authority to Charlemagne, by making him an Emperor in 800, even though the latter already had that authority. Since then Popes pretend that they are the ones who award secular power, but for the exclusive right to interpret religious dogma they had to wait until 1870, when under the Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope was proclaimed. And both the Islamic as well as the more than a thousand years younger Catholic dogma, modeled on the former, collapsed under science, because only the institutions that foster materialistic science can be infallible. Only science is infallible and only when its results are verified and confirmed by such institutions.
Also, under Pope Pius IX, in 1854, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary was established, that is to say that she, as well as her son Jesus, was conceived in some supernatural way. Science has, already for a long time, conclusively proven that no one at that time could have been immaculately conceived, because this technology in medicine developed only in the twentieth century, and only with it can something like that be achieved, what primitive people would denote as "immaculate conception". Because the Catholic Church wants to identify itself with Mary, they have perhaps only launched it symbolically. However, if one would just take the symbolic meaning of the "Immaculate Conception", then it can only refer to science. This is because science has emerged in the course of evolution from man's innate desire for the comprehension of nature and its grounds are impeccable or "immaculate," while this is not the case with the Catholic Church, which is based on beliefs which have no proof.
However, Pius IX also released, on the 8th of December 1864, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the encyclical with the Syllabus, which says that the belief in freedom of conscience is insanity, which was certainly done under the influence of the exact sciences, which later proved that the conscience does not exist, and also that there is no freedom.
Because science is not based on belief, from which also fanaticism develops, it is recognized that in the dark Middle Ages there were also enlightened people who would come to scientific truths. So there was a group of people gathered around Pope Nicholas I (858-867) and Pope Hadrian II (867-872) and the Constantinople Patriarch Ignacio (799-878) who recognized that it is pointless to say that man has a spirit. And so at the Eight Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, in 869, they established this as a church dogma. Eastern churches, under the leadership of Patriarch Photius I of Constantinople, rejected this and did not recognize that Council, and in that fact one may find the reason why, in the meantime, East fell so far behind the West. But science is also penetrating to the East, and there it is also increasingly recognized that some spirit does not exist at all.
That refusal of Eastern Christian churches to accept sich obvious fact that no spirit or spirits exist can be explained by the fact that these peoples felt threatened by the invasion of the Arabs, and thus refused to accept those scientific truths, too, that came to them from Arabism. Western countries - with the exception of Spain until the fifteenth century - did not have that fear, and were able to impartially receive from Arabism those scientific truths and to continue to improve them.
Thus for example Bacon Verulam (1561-1626), Chancellor of England's King James I and with his support, established his philosophy and was one of the most important founders of experimental methods, discarding all the theological and religious authorities. This way he formulated the Western basis of modern science, which followed up on Arabism and from which Darwinism and the rest were then to arise.
Out of the same eastern understanding James I himself founded various occult lodges, where people exercising various rituals and ceremonials gained some more noble, common disposition and where, instead of personal egoism that leads to conflicts, group egoism was implanted, as well as collective consciousness and behavior, in order to harmoniously and effectively work on the development and the well-being of mankind. Later on, out of this impulse and with similar postulates various sects were created. James I knew that the spirit does not exist, so he fought against the so-called individual spirituality, which, like a big deception, was seducing people off course and led all of humanity into chaos. His beneficent influence can be felt even today and is expressed in more conservative-minded parties and in the extraordinarily successful development of economic life, which with more and more success, meets all human needs and frees man from his everyday worries and makes him happier.
Contemporary with him, but only from a different territory, worked a Spanish Jesuit and theologian Suarez, who in fact originated historical materialism, Marxism and liberal parties, such as social democrats and others. His followers are thought to be in opposition to James I. However, it is significant that he himself is a follower of one of the most important figures of the Catholic Church, Ignacio Loyola (1491-1556), who in 1534 founded the Jesuit, Jesus order and thus in its very name pointed to the fact that those stories about some divine spirit, called Christ, are invented. Loyola of course had no scientific knowledge, and so needed help from the so-called revelation and tradition, but he very clearly emphasized that man has only body and soul, and he appreciated Jesus very much as a noble man with high abilities, and believed that in his name one should organize his earthly, and therefore material realm.
In any case, the West most consistently received the impulse of the materialistic science, which already came to the fore at the council of 869, and with the further scientific deepening in the nineteenth century arrived at the fact that even the soul does not exist. Already in the nineteenth century psychiatrists had come to this conclusion, and in the twentieth the irrefutable evidence was given of a connection between the so-called psychic phenomena with various physical substances, which alter the mood in humans and through which the brain may be acted upon in order to make it function in the desired manner.
It is interesting that the great scientists of the East, where body is otherwise neglected and where they only speak, in a mystical way, about soul and spirit, are still trying, by using a variety of exercises, to train the body to work more perfectly. For example, to use a larger part of the brain than is usually the case, or to improve the so-called soul qualities, using various martial arts and physical exercises. This is certainly a purely materialistic science and as such is welcomed and has spread in the West, and it is even practiced in purely scientific institutions.
Science has no prejudice and will gladly accept the claim that Wilson's famous Fourteen Points of January 8, 1918, addressed to the Paris Peace Conference, are fully contained in the Koran, and have a background in the Old Testament. Here Wilson also recognizes the importance of heritage and wants to establish, based on blood affiliation, The League of Nations with "people’s right to self-determination", therefore the right of a group with the same genetic characteristics, as opposed to the meaningless right of a person as an individual and a member of the entire heterogeneous humanity. If every man as an individual had full freedom to do what he wanted, then that would be chaos. In fact stronger and more sophisticated people of one group by heredity and inclinations should lead the others. Proper functioning of this natural law can be seen in higher animals - the strongest ram leads a flock of sheep, the strongest deer his herd, etc. and that leading position it acquires in a battle with possible competitors.
Materialistic science with its exact methods and persuasiveness is achieving remarkable success in improving social relations. Not only is it allowing people to live better, longer and happier, but it is also influential in the elimination or at least the alleviation of various conflicts among people, because through it people are freed from various prejudices and superstitions that cause those conflicts. Thus did, for example, those two streams - of James I and of Suarez - largely reconcile or agree. According to certain information, in 1912 Scottish Masons celebrated December 8th as their holiday. That was certainly established in order to be closer to the Catholic Church, in which a Spaniard Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer founded the "Opus Dei", admittedly based on a true monk's principles and discipline, but also fully focused on mastering the economy.
Eastern people fit very well, and more and more, into the economic life of the West, and have also largely accepted the historical materialism of the West. From their side, their more hidden, but therefore deeper materialism, greatly contributes to the development of the materialistic science of the West through the above mentioned transcendental and other meditations, physical exercises, awakening of the bodily functions, acupuncture, massage and others. In this way a variety of backgrounds and premises from around the world scientifically complement each other in an extraordinary way.
PART TWO - SPIRITUAL SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS
Fundamental
Positions
No real science, including spiritual science, is based on religious dogmatic a priori premises (which certainly do not have to be wrong, however), but on knowledge acquired through experience -- perceptions for which appropriate concepts are found, and using common sense and a sense for truth.
This cannot possibly be said for the materialistic science, which is today preached and professed by certain circles. That is why some of its previous basic premises are given here in the form of religiously shaped assertions - without proofs - and they will not be discussed here. Common sense itself, as well as the strict scientific thinking, will logically and consistently refute them. One who does not make this effort, will stay living in his phantasm, but let a representative of materialistic science, who has in himself a true aspiration for knowledge, first discuss at least the above named dogmas that are ingrained in his subconscious, let him lift them into his consciousness and judge them in his full awareness.
It should be emphasized here that spiritual science -- Anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit, founded by Rudolf Steiner –explains and gives evidence also for many religious claims, which were formulated and given for the state of mind of his contemporaries, only as accounts of the truth out of spiritual observation. In doing so, he uses only the strictest methods of modern science, but for observations he uses all the senses man is endowed with, and does not dampen and banish them as the contemporary materialistic science does.
We have twelve senses by which we observe the world and they give us completely objective perceptions of it. It is a separate question why we often wrongly and subjectively interpret these objective perceptions. But it is entirely unscientific for us to give up observing the world using all the senses, even when some of them have no clearly expressed physical organ, but are a sense spread throughout the body. We have twelve senses:
1. The sense of groping or touching,
2. The sense of life with which we feel vitality, disease, hunger, thirst, etc.,
3. The sense of movement with which we perceive when, for example, we’ve raised our hand and turned our head,
4. The sense of balance,
5. The sense of smell,
6. The sense of taste,
7. The sense of sight,
8. The sense of heat,
9. The sense of hearing,
10. The sense of word or speech, by which we can distinguish articulate voices from noise,
11. The sense of thought, by which we perceive the thoughts of another (not just through uttered words),
12. The sense of the observation of the distinctive I of another, and by which we perceive that that I has its own memory.
Science should be freeing us from those errors, born in our souls due to misinterpretation of perception by the senses, which otherwise quite objectively introduce into our soul impressions from the outside world. Not to first make sensual cripples out of us in order to recognize us as scientists. A real scientist would have to be happy when a new sense would open up for him and he would be able to perceive, for example, his atoms or what is called ether, so that he would get to be able to know the true nature of light and more.
This tendency of materialistic science to possibly exclude all the senses with which external phenomena are perceived, is in fact a tendency to not allow science to break away from mysticism, not even when observing the outside world. Only in mysticism is it normal in study to seek to penetrate into yourself, into your soul, by excluding all sensory perceptions. By means of such methods of mysticism the study of the phenomena in the external world is hampered. In spite of that even the strictest materialistic scientist does not renounce the use of all of his senses in everyday life: he will lie down when through his sense of life he notices that he is tired, he will communicate with another through his sense of thought, will respect the other through the sense of the observation of the I of another. Practical life already leads him that way. We just need to admit this as also scientific.
In a lecture held in Stuttgart on July 25, 1920, Rudolf Steiner points to the two opposing currents in the life of the human soul. One is abstract-mystical, and the other abstract-materialistic. This materialistic current was created three to four centuries ago out of the development of the science of nature and it has also greatly affected religious confessions, such as that of Jesuitism, positive evangelism and others, and it also manifests itself in the theosophical views about life and soul body as a more and more rarefied matter, and also in spiritualism, which indeed talks about the spirit, but whose evidence is materialistic. This materialistic way of thinking and representation should be transformed into spiritual knowledge.
What we perceive with the senses, is not a reality, but just phenomena, the world of appearance. Behind them there is no matter; matter should not be sought in the outer world. – Besides, this is not merely about correcting a wrong view, because the one who remains with materialistic notions about the material world, is unhealthy throughout his body. One who in the world of perceptions sees matter, is on his way to constitutional feeble-mindedness, which is a disease. Spiritual science does not only theorize, but tries to make man healthy. Because - as Steiner says at the beginning of this lecture:
"And today it's about this, that we penetrate to the ability to understand cognition as an act of human soul, so that we can understand that we - when we cognize - do not have in mind just a theory, an understanding, but that we have in mind something that is a will-imbued act in the entire connection between the development of the Earth and humanity."
Many people, dissatisfied with materialism, seek refuge in mysticism. Both mysticism and materialism in their one-sidedness are justified, but only when one sees through this one-sidedness. Usually it is considered that mystics retreat from the outer life, submerge into their interior and there encounter a tiny spark, in which the true spirit is revealed to them, which cannot be contained in the exterior matter. But mystics are often true materialists. They think they have risen above matter, but in fact it is material they find acting within them. True matter is revealed in human skin, not in the outer world, which makes impressions upon us. A mystic in fact brings into his consciousness that which boils and ferments in his inner metabolism, so this then appears to him as it acts toward the center of the heart - like some tiny flame or spark of the divine.
Just as a true result of Goetheanism (phenomenological methods) one must elevate to higher world understanding, likewise the results of mysticism should be sought when interpreting material operations. In chemical laboratories we deal only with external phenomena - such is a rainbow in the sky – not with the actual materiality. By means of mysticism we solve the riddle of the material and only that, and do not address the spiritual reality.
Through mysticism we get to know the Earth's matter. Physics itself admits that it does not understand the essence of gravity. However, our self-observation over a longer period of our life makes us perceive how in older age our body becomes heavier, we have an inner experience of that weighing, called gravity. Not through the falling of the stone because the stone does not contain the actual materiality. But in our self-observation we have to progress from experience in space to experience in time:
"One must first be able to accomplish self-observation. Through inner experience one has to find what can never be found in the world of external percepts. And they are another element of reality.”
"One who experiences the outer world of perception, what has he got? He has only the truth, but no science. One who experiences the inner, experiences abstractly-mystically, he has only science, but no truth; for one deceives oneself in terms of basic interior phenomena, because the inner experience of that mystical flame are material processes. One who in the outer world seeks pure materiality, interprets the world in Ahrimanic terms; the other who seeks truth purely in an abstract-mystic way in his interior, interprets it the Luciferic way. What must be searched for, as a truly Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, is a balance between the two, it is interweaving between truth and science. We must look for the truth toward one pole and science toward the other and be aware of how those living realities inhabit the poles themselves, as happens when the truth permeates science, and science permeates truth. Here cognition becomes an act, here something occurs. In cognition not only is anything logically defined or justified, but something is occurring as well, when one tends to experience science inwardly and to grasp truth outwardly, so one tends to mutually permeate the two."
One-sided is mysticism, and one-sided is materialism. Man must weave both in living acting and in that living acting man must seek true human inwardness. Our time has one-sidedly befriended materialism and is thus on the road to feeble-mindedness. One must be cured of it, to be healthy. The other extreme is the abstract mysticism, and that is a road to infantilism. As a child who has not touched the world yet, but lives only in the physical materiality, by physical material processes, thus is the mystic type presented, because later on he also has the same experiences as a child has.
This is a summary of the mentioned lecture from July 25, 1920.
The insularity of the materialistic science as well as materialistic religion with all their erroneous, dogmatically set presuppositions came as a consequence of the mentioned Council of 869, that "abolished" spirit, which also led to the spirit being mechanized, then the soul vegetabilitized and body animalized.
The real scientists realize that many of the claims of materialist science are unproven and unprovable. Certain of them were perhaps unconsciously received by some scientists who are incapable of freeing themselves from them, deposited into their subconscious since early childhood through the authority of teachers and educators, as well as through written books and magazines, and more. Many people of mature age are unwilling or unable to argue with long received representations and so remain living in such misconceptions and illusions to the end of their life.
However, if a man, with strictly scientific methods and ways of thought, went all the way with reexamining at least some of the here mentioned materialist dogmas, he would have to accept that there exists not only the material, but also the soul and spiritual world as absolute reality, and which can exist independently of materiality. The concept of some generalized right-angled triangle, for which Pythagoras already created his theorem can be realized nowhere in the material world, and let alone the theorem itself which has no material existence. It is the same with the general term "sparrow", even though we keep using it all the time for particular cases, and at the same time we know that what we perceive cannot be “sparrow in general," but only a concrete and individual one. Similarly, the terms "hatred" and "love", which can drive many events in the material world, but are themselves nowhere to be found in the material world. The concept of force - gravity and other - with which science operates is identical to the concept of the spirit that moves the table at spiritualist séances, and the terms cohesion or adhesion with enchantments by witchcraft or hypnosis. One must think about this, too.
The Duty of Scientists and Freedom
Freedom is the foundation for understanding the nature of being human. It cannot be realized contrary to the laws of nature, but every man has a feeling, at least a hunch, that at least in some circumstances he has the freedom to do or not to do something. This needs to be scientifically confirmed. It is the duty of scientists:
• To get to know the active spiritual world in all material phenomena and events;
• Not to stop at something left unsaid and not to flinch in fear in the face of unknown facts, but to take another step forward;
• To lift the Veil of Isis and get to know the true divine, spiritual nature, hiding behind the sensory world.
The word science is not used here for the general concept of "science", rather the recommendation is addressed to scientists as individuals. Spiritual Science is absolutely against any drowning of individuality in any kind of grouping, because man needs to develop as a free being, to liberate himself from any hereditary or other grouping, to realize his ethical individualism, not group ethics, which delves into his freedom and holds back his development, takes him back into ancient times when this was justified.
In human evolution the group ethics was necessary as a transitional period for the realization of full humanity. With his coming to the earth, Christ bestows the impulse for the completely free love: love towards enemies, too. Because if we love those with whom we are connected by blood or those who do us good and provide what is pleasant, this can to a large extent be - but not necessarily – nothing but the expansion of self-love, and with it also merging into group-ness. Only the love for everyone, even for those who are against us and bring us evil, only such love is the absolute proof of a real act of freedom.
In the world of the existing material natural laws, our freedom is limited: we cannot physically go through a rock or a wall blocking our way. But in that material world we can do something for the future: we can pierce a tunnel through that rock or tear down that wall. That way our will is engaged.
If our will is through our thinking made conscious so that we are aware of the reason we do something while it is also inundated with love for the whole world and for the act being performed, then we are realizing our freedom. If in our actions we listen not only to our conscience, but allow in our convictions and affinities and dispositions - not being forced under duress – thus if we do not obey only our conscience, but work with the recommendation, decision or order of some group, we collapse into sub-humanness.
If out of one’s free will - not under social compulsion, which includes its misperceptions and misconceptions - man organizes or even just participates in some social organizations, in which human personality is lost and broken down, then he collapses even below bestiality. The entire banking system with depersonalized lending policies, interest and other transactions, systems of money and securities (what value can security have and how can it spawn something and then drop dead like a borrowed kettle in the folk tale?), voting machines where most do not know and do not understand what they vote for, a computer system that provides formless solutions to impersonal questions, and everything else that is executed under the direction of Orwell's "Big Brother", all belong to such organizations. And also the materialistic science, which has through its victorious authority got hold of the consciousness of the vast majority of slightly educated people, and which sees in man merely a good natural automaton.
Only in spiritualization may personality be preserved, in knowing that man is a spirit among spirits, and that all events in the physical, sensory world are carried out through appropriate spiritual powers -- either those that promote human development, or those that impede it or reverse it.
In his freedom man may choose either the path into matter or the path into spirit. The path into matter is man's descent below the level of the animal world, because animals also have a soul, while this way a man turns into a kind of soulless matter, because if he coalesces with matter, then with such a body his soul also dies; and when this matter is no more, man continues to endure as some specter. The path to spirit leads man to a higher state of existence and to a life of self-conscious individuality. That is the meaning of Christ's words: "... I am the way and the truth and the life ..." (John14.6).
In this people are susceptible to a severe temptation and deception. Although the church seemingly sets itself as something contrary to materialist science, if a man does not care about his soul himself but leaves it to the church (or any other group), then together with his body, his soul is likewise subject to die. This speaks absolutely nothing against any church or religious community. They all have an outstanding and sacred role in educating people and doing other things about which there is no need to talk here, because it exceeds the framework of this presentation. But, if some church "father" ("Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven." - Mat.23.9) appropriates the right and even convinces others that it is he who will give others permissions and instructions about what to do for the salvation of their souls -- not general ones, which do not impinge on human freedom, but specifically "do or not do in this situation this and that", and without moral explanations and teachings from which man himself should form his insight and out of it make a decision -- then that church “father” abuses his position and places himself as his neighbor’s conscience. And according to Novalis, from the unfinished novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen":
"Conscience is the peculiar essence of man fully glorified, the divine archetypal man (Urmensch.)" -- "To speak accurately, this all-embracing freedom, this mastership of dominion, is the essence, the impulse of Conscience."
If a person surrenders before any authority and acts according to its instructions, then he actually says: I do not want to be a man!
The principle of authority is embodied by anyone who wants to rule over others. He also acquires his authority by hiding from the others the truths he possesses, because he increases his power through the ignorance of others. This is in a direct conflict with Christ who says: "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”(John8.31-32). Here we should add the following words of Christ: "So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."(Mat.l0.26-28). Naturally pearls should not be cast before swine, but those occult truths which people of bad faith have already got hold of, should certainly also be known by the benevolent, in order for them to be able to confront and resist the malicious ones, in order not to be seduced.
For this purpose it is also necessary to look back at the following words of Christ: "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come."(John16.12-13). In this we need to seek for the reason why did the forces opposed to the regular development of humanity and therefore forces contrary to the Christ, declare in 869 that man has only the body and the soul, not also the spirit, and in 1054 that the Holy Spirit was created in time. In place of the knowledge of the trichotomy - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they have declared the dichotomy - the Father and the Son, in other words that only they exist from eternity. For if, according to the Roman dogma of l054, the Holy Spirit came out from the Son also, then the Holy Spirit would also have belonged to the all that has derived through the Word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." (Johnl. 1-3).
This "abolition of the spirit" is most evident in the West, and there it led to the mechanization of the spirit. In the East, where the body is unfairly overlooked, because its role is not understood, and the attention is directed at some general spirituality and soulfulness, animalization of the body appears. In the Middle, where egoism and sleepiness of a pleasant life and insensitivity to others are very developed, a vegetabilization of the soul appears. These are all the consequences of not accepting the Christ or his impulse.
This is mostly so. But one misconception also entails others. Mechanization of the spirit as a result of the Council of 869 has led to the strengthening of the authority of Rome, which founded monastery schools and universities and fully controlled the development of the whole of science, although in these schools there were people with completely different, opposite disposition and convictions. After that, beginning in the 15th century, when science gradually separated from the direct influence of the church, it made the belief in authority -- now it’s own – even more firm: while the Catholic Church forbade the reading of certain books, science now orders which books children have to read and drum into their heads. Science goes even further: it determines what people, already as children, must be vaccinated with; determines first as sound, then as harmful to put lead into gasoline; that it is good, and then not good to feed ruminants with intestines, etc., etc. Under the authority of science real social experiments are also done, which lead to terrible misery and anguish of millions and millions of people. The most abstract and self contradictory theories are invented and inserted into life. For example, the right of peoples to self-determination, but not to determination, i.e. what kind of state organization they will choose – the Big Brother will decide that in a scientific manner. Or "controlled economic freedom" -- what many highly educated people do not mind representing. Or "money is expensive" -- it is not a medium for exchange of goods but becomes the goods worth something itself. And a whole lot more.
These and other "contradictio in adjecto" - the contradictions in the addition or the adjective, as "wooden iron", "angular circle" or "pentagonal square" or "green redness" are systematically infiltrated and accepted by the de-logicized people. Then there are the phrases which negate themselves. For example, "everything is relative" (meaning this claim also, so at least something is absolute), "everyone has their own truth" (meaning their error, since the notion of truth means that it is something unique that belongs to a particular thing). It is similar to calling a tail a leg and then claiming that a dog has five legs – as we previously talked about Lincoln. This joint counting of legs and tails is today extremely widespread and really so in highly civilized people - not the primitives.
When such contradictory stances are systematically imposed on people, with the intention of having them also widely incline towards them and accept them, the power of those standing behind such scientific authority increases tremendously. It is even stronger than when in 1910 the Catholic Church under the Pope Pius X (Pope 1903-1914) introduced an obligation to the Oath Against Modernism, by which this stance of the intellectual sphere was lowered deeper into the psyche of the people - into the sentient and volitional sphere. This was easiest to carry out in the West, where spirit is mostly mechanized, where the Spirit was "abolished", where dichotomy was introduced. And the repudiation of the spirit is feeble-mindedness.
This feeble-mindedness has also brought about, that in the 19th century, even the existence of the soul was not recognized any more. This was of course preceded by a complete loss of the knowledge about Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, because with the intellectuality, mostly developed since the fifteenth century, the Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha cannot be comprehended. This allows the spreading influence of Jesuitism, too, which builds Jesus-ology instead of Christology, of course, under its sheer authority, and with this it tends to make the concepts of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha become completely lost. Thereby Jesus ought to be the king of the whole earth and the Pope his representative. Contrary to what “Jesus said, 'My kingdom is not of this world...'" (John18.36). Then in the nineteenth century, theologians appear who can only describe Jesus as an extraordinarily good and great and exemplary man, but who do not have anything to say of the Christ’s divine being - just like Mohammed, for whom Jesus is a "great prophet". But the lack of knowledge of the Son is a tragedy.
Since the nineteenth century atheism also begins to develop very strongly, which particularly becomes evident in the twentieth century, also in materialistic science. And the lack of knowledge of the Father is an illness. This entails also the death of culture.
Ignorance of the Father is an illness, ignorance of the Son a tragedy, ignorance of the Spirit is feeble-mindedness. If a man surrenders to this, it then becomes very easy for various spiritual beings that are contrary to the regular development of man, contrary to the Christ impulse, to incorporate into man or to haunt him and to use his physical and soul constitution.
Obsession
Materialistic science which has completely excluded quality from its study, and can even hardly dare to acknowledge that people have different skin colors, is unable to comprehend that people also differ in their soul-spiritual characteristics and not only in their weight and height. As was already partly indicated, by certain common traits and dispositions spiritual science distinguishes and can understand the people of the West and of the East and those from the Middle,. We shall mention one example of this, related to obsession.
In his lectures from October 22 and 23, 1920, held in Dornach, Rudolf Steiner says something about these obsessions or embodiments of various spiritual beings into a human body. Spiritual development in the recent period strives to raise individuality: in the West it is done economically, in the Middle in the already outdated state-political-military way, and in the East in the outdated way according to the old spirituality that is in decadence. This must be brought from the spiritual world and it comes in a way that proportionally many of the people who are born, are not in the regular course of repeated incarnations. From the outside they look like humans, but in fact are other beings, who are embodied in human bodies – with the physical, life and soul body.
In the West, there are many people, who in fact are not re-incarnated human beings, but are carriers of creatures from the premature development stream, who should only at a later stage come into human form. They come in three types. – The first predominantly affects the metabolic system, and later acts in the rhythmical and in the nervous-sensory system. They have an affinity to elemental forces of the earth and they can feel how to colonize according to the natural climatic and other relations and how to link this further with the trade relationships and so on. - The second tries to suppress self-consciousness, so that the full consciousness of the consciousness soul itself does not happen and thus a certain frenzy is created in the surrounding, so that people are not self-accountable about the real motives of their actions. These beings incarnate through the rhythmical system of certain people. - The third kind of these beings set themselves the task that individual human capacities which are brought at birth out of the spiritual worlds, are forgotten, and that man is made to be some template of his nationality, that men do not come to the individual spirituality. These beings incarnate through the nerve-sensory system. - A greater number of people in the West who have fallen into secret societies, sects, and the like, belong here. These are premature beings that acquire many students and emit, as in epidemics, their own peculiarity onto other people.
Because of the especially developed economic way of thinking, these three kinds of beings have a good ground in the West where they tend to gradually eradicate the spiritual and political and legal life. The first type does not allow threefolding, i.e., that economic life exists only side by side with the spiritual and the state-legal life. The other suppresses the independent democratic state life through the spreading of superficiality, phraseology, and mendacity. The third beings are seeking to suppress individual capabilities and they endeavor that man be made to be a kind of template of his race and nationality, to avoid the emancipation of the autonomous spiritual life. If a man does not look at life with a sleepy soul, but with one that is awake, everywhere the work of such beings can be seen.
In the East, all the way to Russia, man is in a big rift: on the one side there is already decadent spirituality, on the other, getting accustomed to individuality. Therefore, when he is sleeping or dreaming or in general in some kind of a very common medial condition, he is exposed to - not premature beings as in the West - but certain retarded spiritual beings. These do not impregnate him as in the West, but make an impact on his soul by inspiring him for his daily work, not incarnating within man. Here, too, there are three types of such beings. - The first of these beings prevent man from completely possessing his physical body and prevent him from connecting with economic life and in general with public relations of today. – The second produce almost supra-individual beings, with a refined and hidden egoism, because out of selfish feelings they tend to be un-egoistic. – The third type of beings seek to eliminate the spiritual life from Earth, by spreading some dull mystical atmosphere. - These three kinds that do not incarnate in man, but operate from the spiritual world, are also enemies of the threefold social organism.
With people of the European Middle there also exists the possibility - although less than in the West - that those three types of premature beings embody into them. But they are also susceptible to receive the influence of those creatures that act by inspiring in the East. But with these people during their day wakefulness this does not appear as imagination, but fades and appears only as concepts and representations. And those embodied beings in the West give the people of the Middle certain direction, but not as strongly. Already in the course of centuries hardly any of the more significant people of the Middle were able to deliver themselves from the embodiment of both these beings from the West and the influence of those from the East, and that is why they are in a rift. In the waking state the beings from the West were attacking them and influencing the life of the drives and instincts, which are in the will and which is thereby weakened. In sleeping the beings from the East were often unconsciously acting in imaginations. So also on Goethe in his youth worked the beings from the West, and later those from the East, which led to his rift.
These are declarations out of the modern science of initiation established in the European Middle. Here one can say that this is arbitrary and unprovable. However, if one looks at life with all one’s senses and does not solely rely on what is perceived by the diminished sense of vision, without any particular initiation one can be assured that this is so.
In the twentieth century there were already many people who were in no way related to the Anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit, and who, like Spengler or Orwell, recognized these deviations in the social life of civilized nations. Research papers can be read about how television style informatics can only be bad and perverted, that its whole system and its organization are such that there is no way that it could be good. It is similar with journalism. However, even by such means, where the public is more misinformed than informed, it can be seen that in the public life, mainly of the West, which imposes itself on the whole world, there really participate beings that are not human, but which still provide the main tenor in world politics. In many of them one can see already in the look of their faces, for example, a mouth that looks like the mouth of a snake or a frog or a turtle. In others in their statements and behavior, which is not immoral as in many people who are in the regular development, but amoral - devoid of any kind of morality, as one finds in animals, while immorality is still a kind of morality, but one that does not fit with the understanding of the majority. In this amorality it can be grasped that these are not human beings, that such human bodies do not have their own I, but only the lower soul creations. They have infallible or almost infallible instincts by which they implement something, but this is completely amoral and it cannot be said that such apparently human figures have even the slightest shred of conscience, whose bearer can only be the human I.
Going along with logical contradictions has already been discussed. Here one can also add that famous Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" - "I think, therefore I am", from which it follows that when I sleep then I am not, and so every day I become and disappear. People go along with these because of their blurred consciousness, but one can point this out and correct them. However, in people who are obsessed by the described beings that is not an option, it is built into them and this is their style and way of life, which they impose on others with the tremendous force of their instincts and thus they are directing them in some directions spoken of by Rudolf Steiner.
This obsession can also be seen in ordinary people. Many say about themselves: I do not know what came over me when I did it! According to his whole soul constitution and disposition man would not do it, yet he did it. This is mentioned often in Scripture, and the modern science of the spirit only confirms and explains this in a way adapted to the current level of development of human consciousness. To a large extent it makes concrete what, for example, Paul says, "a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me – to keep me from becoming conceited." (2 Cor.12.7) or “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Eph.6.12)
Spiritual science perfectly and scientifically also expounds and confirms what Paul gave only as a statement in The Epistle to the Romans about the two natures of man: "As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me."(Rom.7.17). Paul now also gives an explanation of the redemption: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Rom.8.1). But he adds: "Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace." (Rom.8.5-6). Of the choice between these two paths it has already been spoken. Because there are many enticements to the path into matter, we need to point to at least some phenomena in the present society and to interpret them. When these enticements become conscious, then one gets the strength to resist them and to begin on the path of Christ. Thereby here no one is being condemned. One way or another everyone bears the consequences of all that he does or thinks (and thoughts are deeds, only in the spiritual world).
God does not judge anyone either– the way the Roman Empire incorporated it into Christianity from its legal system. Christ said that, too, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" (Luke12.14). God is love and out of love creates out of human beings free spiritual beings. And to be free human beings should have the possibility of choice. A thirsty man, he can drink water, and he can drink wine. In the first case, he remains sober, and in the other he gets drunk and it is absurd to say that God has condemned him to the hangover and headache. This is just a small example, and according to this principle the biggest events in one’s life also take place.
The creator created the world and gave it certain laws, under which man can exercise his freedom. Freedom can be realized only in that reality, which the truth points to or - in other words – in Christ. If someone deems that his freedom is limited, because he cannot make a square circle, then this shows that he is sick, feeble-minded. And such concepts as “square circle", "wooden iron", "everything is relative", "nothing is true" go around merely as some kind of specters in the spiritual world. If one saturates oneself in them, one also becomes a kind of specter. If one saturates oneself in the truth, then one has an eternal life as a free being. Because: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life."
In the attitude towards human freedom it can clearly be seen who is working in the spirit of Christ, and who in the spirit of the Seducer. "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." (Gal.5.1). Anyone who restricts the freedom of some human being believes in fact that the Creator has made a mistake and that he is the one who ought to correct that mistake. In his terrible pride he says, "Not their conscience – I am for the people with worse gene structure than mine, I am the man's fully transfigured innermost self, the heavenly archetype of man." Thus speak a whole string of different members of secret and public and semi-public and semi-secret organizations, led by the various aforementioned spiritual beings who obsess people and are often entirely without morality. Because only moral beings can comprehend and acknowledge the existence of human freedom. "And it is precisely this all-embracing freedom, mastery or the sovereignty that is the being, the activator of conscience." Based on the principles of "controlled freedom in the economy", "green redness", "each has one’s own truth about the same thing," and so on these amoral beings, of course, can give countless proofs that their position is correct. Following the same principles these beings even believe they can give some rights to nations, while the spirit of any people is so much bigger and more comprehensive than they are, that they cannot comprehend it at all.
Folk spirits use these obsessed men and others as a tool to achieve something those men cannot understand at all. But human beings, whom these men could comprehend, they believe they should rule over them and thus not provide an opportunity for the realization of their humanity. Thus the turning point from the XX to the XXI century can be characterized as organizing the most fierce slave society since the beginning of history. In the antiquity there was the physical enslavement, in the Middle Ages, the soul one (with the threat: heaven - hell), and starting with the end of the 15th century, the spiritual enslavement (with the instilling of misconceptions). And now is the tendency to unify all three.
Here one should also mention materialistic mysticism (or mystification?), according to which only with money can anything be done. Combine this thought with the idea that has been inserted into people’s subconscious that money can multiply as well as drop dead, just like the already mentioned kettle from the following folk tale:
One man lent another one a kettle, and after a while the latter brings back a small kettle, saying that the big one spawned it, and since he is honest, he is giving it back to its owner. The owner is a bit surprised, but receives it. Again after a time that man comes to the owner and lets him know with sadness that he cannot return the large kettle, because unfortunately it dropped dead. At the owner's remark that the kettle cannot drop dead, he replied: "If it could spawn something, then it can also drop dead."
Masses of people both consciously and subconsciously accept this as a possibility, because myths about money, markets, inflation and deflation, baskets of currencies, interest rates and stocks, etc., etc. make their heads spin, that they do not even think any more about these simplest machinations -- as about something unattainable. They do not ask themselves: How did Cheops build the pyramid when the International Monetary Fund did not yet exist? And: How dare those savages steal bananas growing on the land belonging, according to the international law, to the cultivated conquerors – will a colony in hell be establish for them because of that? But those successful business men do not think that the only remedy for their feeble-mindedness is to immerse themselves into words "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God." (Luke18.24). Have they consciously opted for a body that strives toward death - as Paul says?
Allurements
Allurements for the path to matter are indeed very strong. And this is not only about materialism being logically refuted, but resisting it as well, so that it does not become a reality. And it becomes a reality for the most part when ethical individualism is being suppressed and replaced with the ethics of group-ness or ethical group-ness – already spoken about. Then what is spiritual-soulful in man ceases to have meaning, and so after physical death the I-ness is being lost, and its image - as a phantom - is transformed into something Ahrimanic, described in the Scripture as "the second death" (Rev.21.8).
The words of Rudolf Steiner at the end of the lecture held in Zurich, on October 29, 1919, should be quoted here even though its main topic was the explanation of the need to break the state down into three parts independent of one another: the spiritual based on the principle of freedom, the political and rights part based on the principle of equality, and the economic based on the principle of brotherhood:
“We must not, however, think that the mere repetition of phrases to the effect that the spirit must govern the world will bring about, as by enchantment, the coming of the spirit. No! By the work of the human spirit alone can that spirit come into the world. In this respect also we must be true. We must not allow the falsehood to ring through the world, that the spirit must come. The truth must be proclaimed that the spirit will not appear until there are places in which not only the materialistic study of outer nature will be carried on, but in which a spiritual conception of life will be striven after…”
“Everything depends on the fact that people become true with regard to the spirit and to their spiritual endeavor. For the spirit can only be found on the path of truth.”
“It is no excuse, or, rather, it is only an excuse, to say that people are ignorant. In spiritual striving it is important to know that a lie, unconsciously persisted in, causes just as much harm as a lie, consciously repeated. For it is the duty of man at the present day to elevate his subconsciousness, in order to root out falsehood in every realm, even in that of the subconscious.”
Science has that sacred duty to uproot people from mendacity, so that they understand that they are not only earthly creatures, and then to understand the Christ being and their relationship with him and what occurred at Golgotha. Intellectualism, developed in the last few centuries, is unable to get through to the understanding of spiritual facts. Here an additional step needs to be taken. For that, in his lecture held in Dornach on October 20, 1923, Rudolf Steiner used also appropriate images, from intellectualist concepts he moved to the artistic interpretation of the world, which will be briefly explained here.
Man consists of the nerve-sensory system or system of the head, of the rhythmic circulatory and respiratory system or the system of the breast, and the metabolic system with the limbs, which mainly affects the lower part of the human body. However, all three systems are spread throughout the human body and permeate each other. The human head is the bearer of thoughts, the breast is the carrier of feelings, and the metabolism of the will. To these correspond certain animal species, whose representatives are: eagle for the head, lion for the breast, and cow or bull for metabolism (portrayed in the Sphinx, and also in the frescoes in depicting writers of particular Gospels). In fact these three animals also represent the corresponding cosmic powers. In human nature they are normally organized, if man is able to bring them into accord, to act harmoniously.
“In accordance with the general course of world events, however, we are now living in an age when the evolution of the world is threatened by a certain danger; and this danger will — if I may so express myself — actually take effect in man also in a one-sided way. From the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries up to our own day the facts of human earthly evolution are such that, to an ever increasing degree, the eagle activities wish to make one-sided claims upon the human head, the lion activities upon the human rhythmic system, and the cow activities upon the human metabolism and upon all man's activity on the earth.”
“This is the stamp of our age, that it is the aim of the cosmic powers to bring about a threefold division of man, and that, each form of these cosmic powers is always striving to suppress the others. The eagle strives to subjugate the lion and the cow and make them of no account, and in like manner with each of the other elements. Just in our present age something particularly alluring is working upon the subconscious in man; alluring because in a certain sense there is also something beautiful about it. In his conscious life man today is unaware of this but, for his sub-consciousness, three calls surge and sound through the world seeking to tempt him with their allurement. And I must say that it is the secret of our present time that, from the sphere of the eagle, there sounds down to man what actually gives the eagle his eagle nature, what gives him his plumage, what hovers around him as astrality. It is the eagle nature itself which becomes audible for the sub-consciousness of man. This is the alluring call.”
The Eagle’s alluring call comes from above:
“Learn to know my nature!
I give thee the power
To create a universe In thine own head.”
The Lion’s alluring call comes from the middle region:
“Learn to know my nature!
I give thee the power
To embody the universe
In the radiance of the encircling air.”
Upwards from Earth-depths rumbles the call of the Cow:
“Learn to know my nature!
I give thee the power
To wrest from the universe
Measure, number and weight.”
These voices that speak to man's subconscious have a strong effect, and a variety of human organizations are especially organized for that, to ensure that these are received. The West is particularly exposed to the allurement of the eagle, in particular the American culture. The European Middle is particularly exposed to the enticement of the lion, and the oriental civilization to what the cow utters. But:
“It is the orient which is primarily exposed to this alluring call of the cow on account of the ancient veneration of the cow in Hinduism, yet, if this allurement were actually so to seize hold of mankind that what arises from this call would gain the mastery, then these influences emanating from the orient would produce a civilization, which, spreading over centre and west, would hinder progress and engender decadence. The demonic earth-forces would work in a one-sided way upon earth-civilization. What then would actually happen?”
In the course of the last few centuries we received technology under the influence of external science. In it natural forces act in their lifeless form. That is the ideal of materialistic science and technology and they consider that only that exists which can be determined by scale, measure, and yardstick or number, what thus has weight, measure and number.
When reason by itself is used to deal only with scale, measure, and number, it is still not that bad.
“But if present-day civilization were to be transformed into initiation, things would be bad indeed, if this attitude of mind remained. And this can happen if the civilization of the west, which stands entirely under the sign of measure, number and weight, were to be flooded by what might well come to pass in the east, namely, that through initiation-science people might fathom what actually lives spiritually in the organism of the cow.”
If it gets to be known what it is that in the cow spiritually organizes the earth's gravity, then that which is weighed, measured and counted overpowers everything else in the civilization and spreads across the whole earth.
There is a tendency in all constructed machines to achieve an effect by means of oscillation, by means of periodic movement.
“But if once these machines in their coordinated activity could be constructed in such a way as can be learned from the distribution of foodstuffs in the organization of the cow, then the vibrations which would be conjured up on the earth-globe through the machines, these small earth-vibrations, would so run their course that what is above the earth would sound together with, vibrate together with what is happening on the earth; so that our planetary system in its movements would be compelled to vibrate with our earth-system, just as a string tuned to a certain pitch vibrates in sympathy when another one is struck in the same room.”
“That is the terrible law of the sounding in unison of vibrations which would be fulfilled if the alluring call of the cow would so decoy the orient that it would then be able to penetrate in an absolutely convincing way into the unspiritual, purely mechanistic civilization of the west and centre; and thereby it would become possible to conjure up on the earth a mechanistic system fitting exactly into the mechanistic system of the universe. Through this everything connected with the working of air, with the forces of the circumference, and everything connected with the working of the stars, would be exterminated from human civilization.”
Man would not experience the cycle of the year. Throughout human civilization only the clatter of oscillating machines and their echo from the cosmos as a reaction to this earthly mechanization would resound. One part of our current civilization is on its way to this terrible ruin.
If the Middle was seduced by the lion, civilization would not become mechanical and mechanisms would gradually disappeared, but man with this one-sidedness would be given over to everything found in the wind and weather and the cycle of the year. Man would be compelled to live in his rhythms of breathing and circulation and would develop in himself what his involuntary life can give him. He would become the breast nature and through this such egoism would come into earth civilization, that man would live for himself alone; he would not worry about anything but his immediate well-being. To this is the Middle exposed, which could award such life to the earth civilization.
If the allurement of the eagle would seduce the West thus, that it would spread throughout the earth its way of thinking and disposition in its one-sidedness, there would emerge in humanity a tendency to interact directly with the supernatural world, as it was at the very inception of the Earth. There would be a tendency to wipe out everything that man won over in his freedom and independence. Only in the unconscious will would life be lived, the will placed by the gods into human muscles, nerves. It would be the return into the original state of primitive clairvoyance. Man would strive to liberate himself from the Earth, by returning to its inception.
If a man would succumb to the allurement of the cow, which invites him to become the lord of the Earth, the mechanization of earth civilization would happen and the tendency to make the present eternal. Through the allurement of the lion there is a tendency to make the present superficial, as fleeting as the play of the year’s seasons in the wind and air. The eagle carries within the memories of what was at the inception of the Earth, with its physical nature the earth does not touch it. It does not want to have anything to do with the development of the solid Earth.
It is difficult today for man to really be man. He is like an antelope from a fable of the African negro tribe Felatas: It was caught by the lion, the wolf, and the hyena. The lion says to the hyena to divide it. The hyena wants to do it into three equal parts – one for each of the three. Then the lion tears the hyena apart and gives the antelope to the wolf to divide it. The wolf also divides it into three equal parts, but he gives to the lion both his and the hyena’s part, and then the third, because the lion is the wisest and bravest of all the animals. To the lion’s question of who taught him to divide in this way, the wolf replies, "The hyena" - and the lion does not tear the wolf apart.
In the face of the three animal types man looks like an antelope from this fairy tale. But what wills to be one-sided takes on a particular form. The lion remains lion, but he wishes to have his fellow beasts of prey as metamorphoses of the other animal representatives. The eagle is now the hyena that lives upon what is dead, and our head is what produces what is dead. In place of the cow the lion puts the wolf, which is in line with the degeneration. Thus we have the cosmic symbolism, which corresponds to those allurements: the hyena, the lion, and the wolf. When this fable is adapted to modern civilization, then it reads:
These three animals hunted the antelope together. “The hyena withdraws and gives a silent verdict, he does not dare to arouse the growling of the lion. Then the lion and the wolf begin to fight for the prey, until they both die from their wounds. Now comes the hyena and first devours the antelope, then the wolf and the lion after they have entered into a state of decay. The hyena is the image of what lies in the human intellect, the element in human nature which kills. He is the reverse side, the caricature, of the eagle civilization.”
Man’s answer to the allurement of these three animals should be:
“I must learn
Thy power, O Cow,
From the language
Which the stars reveal in me.”
“I must learn
Thy power, O Lion,
From the language
Which, through year and day,
Encircling space makes active in me.”
“I must learn
Thy power,
O Eagle,
From the language
Which earth-born life creates in me.”
With such responses one opposes the destruction and works on elevating the earth's civilization. He directs his physical gaze towards the cow downward, but turns his spiritual gaze upwards; he directs his physical gaze to the eagle upwards, and the spiritual downwards; and with the lion the physical gaze towards the east, and the spiritual towards the west.
Consequences of seduction
Man ought to keep cosmic activities of the eagle, the lion, and the cow or the bull in harmony and now, in the time of the development of the consciousness soul, keep receiving their proper influence, while that which comes in their one-sidedness and gets distorted, he ought to watchfully and consciously remove it. The Middle, which is mostly under the influence of the lion, ought to keep in balance the actions of the eagle and the cow and its main task is, with the intellectuality of the West, to see through and accept the spirituality of the East, to connect the truth with the science.
However, the seductions of the one-sided actions of these three cosmic forces are very strong.
Without getting into any further prehistory, it has already been stated here that in 869, in the Middle, at least in the circles holding the main political and legal power inherited from the Roman Empire - or at least pretending to it – it was declared that man has no spirit, but only body and soul. Those circles were seduced by that one-sidedness of the lion, which led them to egoism, insensitivity, and ease, into the fleeing and superficial present, with no thinking of the consequences of their actions; they rejected that correct impulse of the lion, which directs towards love, compassion, spreading of the understanding of what is in the East, as well as for what is in the West and in the Middle. With that official declaration that man has no spirit, it was made possible for the alluring call of the cow to penetrate, with terrible force, into the Middle, and even to the West.
There the lion had turned the cow into the devouring wolf; the materialistic impulse from the East out of Arabism and Islam begins then to form its center in the West and in the Middle.
"Through Copernicus astronomy becomes a pure world mechanics, a kind of describing of the world machinery."
In the same lecture held in Dornach on February 2, 1923, Rudolf Steiner adds:
"Yes, man has become so weak, that such terrible fear seizes him, if he produces any thought out of himself, if he does not merely read the thoughts from what the external nature offers. Thus pure thinking has primarily been developed passively in modern man.”
"I'm not saying this as a condemnation; because if humanity had immediately shifted to actively producing pure thinking, then it would have brought into this thinking all sorts of impure fantasies out of the old heritage. This was already a good educational tool for modern humanity, that people allowed a grandiose philistine - as for instance Bacon of Verulam – to seduce them, allowing him to lead them to keep developing their concepts and ideas only of the outside world, to allow the outside world to dictate everything."
Confirmation of this can also be seen in proudly emphasizing and imprinting the alluring call of the cow "Omnia in numera et mensura" - "All in numbers and measures," as from the 15th century has been publicly proclaimed as well in the astronomical observatories! Those words might also still be standing at the Belgrade Observatory.
It should be emphasized again that in this text also there is no intention to condemn anyone or anything. The science of the spirit never goes for it, but only tries to explain things, so that people wake up and lift what is in their subconscious to their consciousness, in order to properly orient themselves in life, to become aware of their humanity and the fact that everyone himself bears the appropriate consequences for their own actions.
The seduction of the lion also leads people to the political shrewdness, and the drowsiness that comes through mendacity, to the suppression of the self-consciousness with untruth, which also leads to a listless life and to complete self-direction and to insensitivity to others.
Today this is symbolically emphasized with twelve stars on the medium blue sky - neither of the day nor of the night, but the intermediate one, the dreaming one. It is the embodiment of the universe in the illusion of the encircling air, assisted by schengen visas and others; complacency and scorn for all that is outside of their own environment.
Against this one must fight with compassion out of which love develops, with feeling and understanding that all people are equal.
After the "abolition" of the spirit, and then the soul, the allurement of the cow has, with tremendous force, penetrated the West, even though the West is fundamentally mostly exposed to the seduction of the one-sidedness of the eagle. The materialistic way of thinking and the entire technically informed, mechanistic civilization are most developed - at least outwardly - in the West.
One phenomenon is interesting here. People of the West, and to a large part also those of the Middle, subconsciously feel that materialism is incorrect and are looking for some spirituality. However, they seek that spirituality in a completely materialistic way. Having lost the concept of Christ as the spirit and regarding him as either an earthly king or a great teacher, people are turning to the East for spirituality. But what do they find there? They find there - so to say - materialist spirituality, they find some spiritual science without truth (without Christ), which is based on the materiality that is in man.
In the nineteenth century first they naively started with spiritualism and mediumship, which they used to prove the existence of the spirit in material way. In the twentieth century in the West, and somewhat less in the Middle, there is a massive seeking of spirituality in the eastern non-Christian peoples, who do possess great spirituality, but in quite decadent forms, forms generally not understood and today inadequate even for those people, and especially for the western ones. Movements arise such as hippie, New Age, centers for various types of Indian yoga, transcendental meditation, Hari Krishna, acupuncture and acupressure with specific aspects of Chinese and other massages, healing with bioenergy; then martial arts as jiu-jitsu, aikido, karate and others, where spiritual exercises were most important, not the physical fight - as understood by the Westerners. All spiritual movements of the East listed here represent in fact super-materialization of materialism, because by controlling the functions of the physical body and its mastering and perfecting they want to gain some spiritual qualities and penetrate to some spirit - always in some pantheism where one’s own I is being lost. However, the correct way is for man to get used to thinking with the spirit, not the brain; to overcome the dependence on the physical body, through which he obtains his independence and freedom, and without losing himself in the general spirituality, but to preserve his own I. This ought to be kept firmly in mind.
From the outside it seems that the West is by far more powerful than the East. However, if one observes even superficially the results of the occult war being waged between them, which will become increasingly fiercer and fiercer, then this advantage is not at all convincing. The statements of David Marshall about the condition of "the world's only superpower” are symptomatic here. According to his account, in the US in 1989, 67% of the population reported that they had gained experience with spiritism, that two thirds of the universities and colleges offer yoga in their curriculum, that a quarter of the population is for New Age, and half of the top companies (500) hold seminars for the development of human potential, including Pacific Bell, NASA, Ford, General Motors, ICA, Boeing, Singer, IBM, RCA and Bank of America. From these brief statements it follows that a large part of the "only superpower" is under the spiritual occupation of the East. Of course the Middle has not been spared from it either, but we will not get into these various influences and fights.
To that whole mechanistic civilization also belong various computers and automatons, suggestions through advertisements and commercials, inserted also into the media that offers more disinformation than information and which also pollutes the view in the streets and countryside. These might also include various societies and sects and lodges, based on material group interests and working with the development of group consciousness, formed likewise by various physical processes.
All this is the terrible seduction of the one-sidedness of the cow, coming from the East with dreadful force, which like a boomerang returns to the East, but in that return through the depravity of the Middle and the West it turns into a kind of new religion, such as Marxism and fanaticism in industrial production. There also lies that danger of becoming familiar with synchronization of the oscillations through initiation.
Against the seduction of the cow one ought to fight by means of morality, conscience ought to be developed and the will awakened by initiative, the will for the free spiritual life.
By abolishing the spirit the Lion allowed the penetration of the wolf from the East, and then in the West he transformed the eagle into a hyena that feeds on carrion. In the 15th century he tore the hyena up, as told in the original Negro fairy tale, he destroyed the red man’s culture in the West. However, the torn hyena receives back its bird nature, but now as a phoenix. The white man receives the decadent occult techniques and magic of the red man, and so the hyena is reborn, but the one from the modernized fable given by Rudolf Steiner.
In the West, this reborn hyena comes upon the ground that the wolf has prepared with the support of the lion, comes upon a completely mechanistic civilization. Here not only the concept of the spirit is now lost, but also of the soul, and even life is explained in the mechanistic manner - biochemistry and biophysics are established as sciences. Here there is no more room for freedom, man does everything out of the unconscious will, whose basis is some genes, and incentives are some instincts and impulses awakened by some biochemical or electrical process. Here man is lowered to the level of an animal and this animalization shows very distinctly in the various cartoons and comic books, where mice, ducks, and horses are portrayed as people or even more, people as these animals. In some way this is also the repetition or return to the old Egyptian times, when people were depicted with heads of various animals, which at that time had a profound meaning, but now represents a major decadence. As if that was not enough, out of the decadent ways of thinking they invent and draw all manner of freaks, which here act like humans. Or are these those premature spiritual beings incorporated in the western humanity that are perceived by the primitive clairvoyance, as described in section 3 of the chapter Obsession?
The hyena that went through the phoenix phase brings people back into the past, studies and uses the old occult means of the red man, which has led to the terrible perversions and death, even the death of the soul. Seduced intellectualism is limited only to the earthly – to the economic relations, for which it has extraordinary developed instincts. The spiritual and political-legal relations - if at all understood - can only serve the economy. "The world economy under the leadership of the United States" - that is the slogan which has been preached for decades. For this of course it is also necessary to have the world police and world government and parliament, and the idea is already being preached about the world senate made up of the representatives of various religions, where all of them of course will "control the free economy" - under the direction of those who pay them. For this it is of course suitable to have the unification of faith – so they do not argue in the senate, and also because the economy and technology require standards; there must not exist an individual spirituality.
However, if some center is localized out of which “free economy is being controlled,” then they must resort to racism, because in this center there are people with better composed genes, and they are the ones who have to pull the strings in all financial manipulations. All treasures belong to them and they will carry out the redistribution of them from the whole Earth. Those with better composed genes will provide, if necessary, a loan to build a European wall or better yet a deep trench, which will cut the crust of the Earth across Europe, and that way merge one of its parts with America, and the other with Asia. At least this was very nicely published in the British magazine "The Economist" from September 1, 1990. And based on that map which by cutting into the Earth's crust separates not only "EURO-AMERICA" from "EURO-ASIA" but also "ISLAMISTAN", "HINDULAND" (maybe not "HINDUSTAN" so that it is clear whose it is) and "CONFUCIANIA" (in which beside China, Japan is also herded), based on this map will people with better composed genes give new form to the earth's crust. In so doing, probably due to a conspiracy, most of Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and insignificant islands like New Zealand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and others have sunk out of sight. Or perhaps it was a little awkward to have for instance, Taiwan merge with "EURO-AMERICA"? The symbols are special treats, but we will not get into that. In any case, based on this map also the ingenious Huntington wrote his "Clash of Civilizations". – However, racism should never be publicly advocated - people of all colors can have good genes, if they listen to the Big Brother.
This Anglo-American way of thinking had already spread over the entire Europe a hundred years ago, even to the east side of the channel or watershed given by "The Economist". That ideal of uniformity of all the news in the papers has spread out in the meantime to the news from the radio, then television. By this the public opinion is extraordinarily powerfully programmed and a veil thrown over the spiritual and the political-legal life, while in one’s own head a universe is created, even drawn on the mentioned map, as "A NEW AND ACCVRATE MAP OF THE W0RLD".
The way to fight against this seduction of the eagle is by spiritualizing the intelligence, by which through wonderment in front of all natural phenomena one comes to the knowledge of the existence of a real spiritual world and that in it all men are brothers, so through the awakening of self-awareness and personal freedom one overcomes the greed and selfishness.
Here it should also be emphasized that regardless of the seductions of the cow, the lion, and the eagle, people on Earth live under their various influences. In the East, people are mainly under the influence of the cow, under the influence of the metabolic system and the limbs. Their progress consists in that, through yoga, martial arts, and the like, they go towards conquering the rhythmic system, the system of the breast.
The people of the Middle live mainly influenced by the system of the breast- the lion - and their progress is to develop intellectualism, which is connected to the powers of the head. If they follow yoga or other oriental arts and sciences, that means that they are working on cementing themselves in the rhythmic system. And when they also do it in an amateurish way - which is usually the case, then they fall into the dormancy of the metabolic system.
Men of the West live under the influence of the eagle or a nerve-sensory system, the system of the head, and their progress is, through this system, and with intellectualism, to penetrate into the spiritual world in full consciousness. If they accept these Eastern occultisms, then they fall to a lower level; instead of penetrating consciously into the spiritual world they go into the dreaming state of the rhythmic system or into the sleepiness of the metabolic system, when they do it amateurishly. Likewise, when they dissipate themselves into the comfort of the material surrounding, they move one step back, into the dreaming state of the rhythmic system.
These are global cosmic influences, and in them particular individualities can develop in different ways. An Easterner does not need to keep himself in the development of the rhythmic system and its awakening; he can also master intellectualism which is tied to the system of the head, the only one in which we are awake and through it penetrate into the spiritual world, permeate his science with the truth. It is a similar case with the man from the Middle. Here we must remember that when awake, only in thinking related to the nerve-sensory system are we actually awake, while in feelings related to the rhythmic system we are in a dream like state, while in the will, tied to the metabolic system, we are in a consciousness of a dreamless sleep - even though otherwise awake.
Threefoldness
In the previous presentations the connection between the three cosmic forces and the three corresponding powers of the human soul was offered: the eagle – thinking, the lion - feeling, the cow - willing. Along the way the antelope was only mentioned as the human soul. In it these three forces at the present time diverge, and man with his I should consciously bring them into harmony, so that they work in accord with each other. So we have a total number of four as the number of the universe or creation. Therefore, we also have four gospels, and the four evangelists displayed with the already mentioned symbols: man, lion, bull, and eagle - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Because of that all four gospels should be taken as a whole, even though from a superficial, purely intellectualistic observation, it seems that they contradict each other. These are the same events observed from the four different sides and only all four put together can give a true picture of what happened with Christ's descent into a human body and what significance for the development of mankind and the world does the Mystery of Golgotha hold. One must not delve into only one gospel.
The divergence of the three aforementioned forces is also perceived in social relations. The cow forces or the metabolism in the human being correspond to the spiritual life, the forces of the lion or the rhythmic system to the political-legal one, and the forces of the eagle or the head to the economic life. Once upon a time they were harmonized this or that way by the central authorities, which were received by most people as part of normal, even divine order. However, with the development of the consciousness soul and individualism, starting with the fifteenth century, in all these areas strong individualities come to the fore, who deal with their areas and are disturbed by interference in their way of working and doing business, which would come from one of the other two areas. On the other hand, these others in their areas want with all their might to impose their way of working and thinking on the others. How much, where, and what works, it is a question of the soil on which such a society develops, which was already mentioned a bit.
In any case such conflicts exist and can now be seen daily. We will give some examples of that. The political-legal area wants through customs to control the flow of the goods across borders - immediately smugglers appear, who generally would not be able to work, unless they bribe or otherwise – through coercion - win over the customs officers. Someone wants to start an economic activity, but the political-legal area wants to interfere by setting up various - often unreasonable - conditions. Teaching staff believes that their work is worth more than that of selling popcorn, but the economy is not putting sufficient resources into the budget and the political-legal area can settle their requirements only by printing new banknotes, that is, with inflation. Out of the spiritual life comes an initiative for a good and ennobling event, but according to the economic calculations they would rather put aside the funds for some trash that will bring profit or else such an event does not fit into the political concept, so this initiative collapses. Various economic bosses want to grab as much natural resources for themselves or to have as many people working for them so they can squeeze them out to the maximum, and if the political-legal area here interferes, they bribe the relevant officials and the thing is legalized.
Here one can give examples such as "wooden iron" or "angular circle" or "everything is relative". On the basis of the ingenious Wilson-isms, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were first created, and then, based on the very same principles, they were split up. As a fruit of this, with great pride and "people's rights" represented by the United Nations and other high institutions, all possible kinds of small ethnic states were established, but now on the multinational principles, and thus did all those sacred rights come to the fore, just like the "angular circle". When the British were leaving India or fleeing from it, they did not divide it based on national affiliations but on the religious ones, so today’s Bangladesh was for many years East Pakistan, and from the West Pakistan it is as distant and its language as different as roughly are Bulgaria and Spain. About those Indonesias, Nigerias, and smaller and larger ones we should not even speak. In them all the democratic rulers, "when giving them freedom," accidentally left behind the most organized dictatorships – it is not the departing power's fault that it can no longer, using the democratically appointed governors, continue to exploit them.
In connection with this there is a lot to say, but this problem can most concisely be presented in the following words by Rudolf Steiner from his lecture held in Dornach on July 11, 1920. :
"Times are now so serious that it cannot be otherwise than to knock on the door of the deepest truths, behind which are those truths that are needed today for mankind. The mankind of the West with its American addition will perish in barbarism, if the understanding of the Christ does not remain preserved. But what this mankind has done and how it is oriented to continue with it, the understanding of Christ will disappear. Only and solely those who realize today that it is necessary to come to a new understanding of the spirit, to the new path of knowing the supersensible man, only within them is there a real, serious, strong will to preserve the understanding of the mystery of Christ for mankind. But there will be no social life, the way it is understood today from the dark, often perverse instincts, if the understanding of Christ is completely lost. For this social life will still take place in such a way, that in human soulfulness something in common will be able to live. What could the only thing be that they have in common? This only thing that can be in common, marked by the words of Paul is: 'Not I, but the Christ in me'. As many people as will be able to say 'Not I, but the Christ in me', that many will be possible to find as members of one mankind all over the earth without distinction of nationality and other differentiations in establishing a new social life.”
"We see manifold strivings today against this. We observe in certain nations how they somehow again develop flags of nationalities. What is the essence of such things developing? I have also described it here, from a certain viewpoint. The essence is that old religion of Yahweh. It consisted in the fact that Yahweh was the leader of that nation, namely that one Jehovah was the leader of the Jewish people. Today, when nations put their nationality into the first place, they all only come up to this Yahweh, but each has its own vision of Yahweh. That therefore cannot be the true Yahweh, but only an image in the mirror. One countenance can be mirrored in multiple ways. In fact it is precisely thus, that people in the present - because they have lost the ancient mystic wisdom that could point to the Mystery of Golgotha - that all of them have more or less received the religion of Yahweh, and under the leadership of the liberal world 'archbishop' Wilson! He who spoke about the deceptive figure of the 'League of Nations', that is, about one abstraction rather than about one specific impulse of Christ which passes through the human soulfulness, he was believed until this was broken because of his own behavior - certainly very quickly - for those who can still think a bit.”
"What this is about is for people to find again the path to come out of the Yahweh nationalism and towards the universal conception of Christ, towards what allows man only as a man to appear, but which does not also impoverish him in terms of the national, but also enriches him."
This can happen only when one acquires the understanding of the supersensible, because with it one can understand the Mystery of Golgotha. However:
"If we keep working as much in the science of nature, we in the West are in the year three thousand still barbarians, and likewise in America are barbarians. We then understand only what is dying in the life of the Earth, and so we experience only that in the life of the Earth which is dying. We are trying to take everything from the observation of the earthly, but only come to what is mortal."
The only salvation from that lies in the understanding of what happened at Golgotha.
It should be noted here that the League of Nations (in fact the league of states founded politically-militarily, not the nations) was established on January 10,1920, but at the peace conference in Paris, its program in fourteen points from January 8, 1918, was rejected. However, this abstraction, this little cosmos created in one’s own head, still lives under a different name, again with switched concepts of state and nation. The League of Nations did not stop World War II, nor the horrors that happened before it, such as the Spanish civil war and various camps of the left or of the right type, and which represent the greatest shame in the history of mankind. The United Nations are totally powerless not only to prevent the constant wars and bloodshed that take place since their founding, but in spite of all their beautiful and numerous organizations and declarations not even death from starvation of millions of people every year, while in other regions of the earth, food is being thrown away or in "controlled freedom" production is reduced from what is possible. But perhaps this is what is sought after, that people with badly composed genes become extinct, and those with good ones get to multiply and gorge themselves? And how can they be brothers, those from a better race with those from the poorer one? And how can an organization that already contains untruth in its title act in the Christ sense? What kind of a spirit could lead such an organization? Who is here being evoked under the flag of untruth? This should be carefully pondered.
In the Western Christian nations those who mostly give the tone are the non-Christians or even anti-Christians, supported perhaps also by the well-intentioned people in their drowsiness and love of ease. Of course where the official church has abolished the spirit, then declared dichotomy and finally also denied the Christ, and kept Jesus so that in his name it has justification for the establishment of its earthly kingdom, or only used him as a model for a good man, of course it is very hard for a man to find his way in life. Then how could the local people identify with the following words: “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life."(Jude1:20)? How can one find one's way, if it is believed that the Holy Spirit was created in time, and the Christ is not recognized as a spirit?
Such people (or some other creatures who took those human bodies) can neither accept the following instructions: "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person. Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth."(1.John3 16-18). And what do we say about those in certain nations or regions who especially organize scarcity - as it is done here for example (and of course, not only here)? Or others using perfidy assisted by human rights and arms that in addition ruthlessly exploit?
One such perfidy are the so-called hard and soft currencies. When money through the interest rates, which today have reached unimaginable heights, multiplies so much that on its territory nothing is left for it to devour, then it must drop dead. However, for the hard currencies to continue to live, they then begin to devour the soft ones - devalue the soft so that the hard can come into their place and thus they persevere. Previously this was done through several "reputable" stock markets and through other skills, and lately with the movement of your spawned money on someone else's territory, devouring of course the local ruling "soft" currencies. Thus, the "hard" money can still indefinitely be printed, and still in its territory no surplus shows, which would automatically devaluate it. The scheme is then very simple: in the territory to be exploited (because there live people with less well composed genes) a ton of paper is sent - now a bit sparkly - and as an exchange for it 50,000 or 100,000 tons of some raw materials and goods are imported. If someone would rebel there, he will go before an international or multinational court or simply be killed. It is adjusted that way, that for the same sheet of paper in one’s own territory one can for instance buy one kilogram of bread, on a neighboring territory two, a bit further four, and further still eight, and the salaries are of course proportional. How wonderful one feels who with the wages received on the more expensive territory for his money buys goods in a cheaper one! This is so wonderful that one can nicely snooze. He belongs to smarter nations or more wisely organized social systems, to those with better structured genes, while those others are unable to organize themselves. "In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother." (1.John3.10). "Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."(1.John3.13-15).
Under the rule of Mao Zedong one was not allowed to take interest on the borrowed money. There, Marxism was accepted as a religion. It may now be very tempting for exploited people, to seek salvation in the Chinese system, in their way of thinking and spirituality. There is much evidence that the Chinese are hardworking, humble, patient, dedicated to their job, conscientious in their work, that they are not greedy or fickle. Chinese people certainly should also be considered one’s brothers, because Christ died also for them, and not only for those who call themselves Christians. After all - as defined by Rudolf Steiner - Christian is also the one who has never heard of Christ, but is filled with truth and goodness. And the Chinese, therefore, ought to have the right to live and why wouldn't they be allowed to settle and cultivate the land emptied by the low reproductive rate? However, this does not mean that we should accept their spiritual life, but out of love for them, we should keep trying to enrich their spiritual life and to supplement it with what has come to be in recent times and with that knowledge about the Christ being itself. In this sense of course it ought to be worked out also with other people - and especially with those who call themselves Christians, but lie and do not look at every man as their brother.
In a lecture held in Berlin, on March 19, 1912, Rudolf Steiner warns about the risk of receiving the Chinese spiritual life, which is an inheritance from very early epochs -- from more than ten thousand years ago. If it would overcome the European-Western spiritual culture, then the latter might forget its own mission and task:
"As men live on into the future they will have to realize that from the Atlantean epoch there has survived upon our Earth, an imprisoned spiritual wisdom and knowledge greater than anything revealed by the disclosures concerning the old Brahman and Zoroastrian civilizations; this wisdom will be unleashed when the spiritual life of China emerges from its concealment."
This cannot be understood with the philistine pedantic style of the West, but by immersion in the ancient Taoist culture, built on the old Chinese culture. Those who are asleep and do not want to engage in what the science of the spirit offers will be astounded, when out of the Chinese culture a spiritual good is poured and they will study it as something of interest.
"But when the wisdom casts off its fetters over yonder, it will have another effect as well: its obvious and intrinsic greatness will shock and amaze. It will pour over what mankind has acquired in Christian culture in such a way that it will have to be seen in its true perspective, studied from the right point of view. The proper approach will be to say: This spirituality existed; in bygone ages it constituted the spiritual culture of our Earth. But every epoch has its own mission, and that of Western culture is to drink at the well-springs of the spiritual reality behind world-existence, so that this spiritual reality is perceived behind the material world, behind what eyes can see and hands can grasp — as a revelation from the spiritual world. Men will have to understand that their mission now belongs to a different age and that they must stand firm on the ground prepared by Christianity!”
“That is the other picture. Men will joyfully receive what derives from olden times but will illumine it, vivify it with what the more recent, Post-Atlantean, Christian culture has imparted to the soul. Weaklings, however, will say: “We will accept spirituality from whatever source it may come, for all that interests us is a sensational vista of the spiritual worlds.” There may actually be neo-theosophists who will say: “The truth is not to be found through deep comprehension of the Christ-Principle; it lies in what has been preserved by the Chinese, coming to light again when they bring forth the Atlantean wisdom hidden in the deepest strata of their souls.” Europe might well be offered a new “Secret Doctrine” compiled from the truths of Chinese wisdom. This would imply that, after all, the proper model for modern theosophists is a much more ancient Theosophy which did not feel called upon to derive the founts of spiritual life from Christian Mysticism and Christian Love — nor, for that matter, to plagiarize — and even that very imperfectly — the wisdom of ancient India somewhat embellished by the wisdom of ancient Egypt! As for the weaklings, they will be just as eager for Chinese wisdom as for the spirituality which they think is opened up for them by the ancient or also by the “newly revealed” Indian wisdom. After all, to Europeans, India is almost as remote as China; and if people are told of revelations made possible in China owing to certain forces having been set free, this may well seem more credible to them than that anything of the kind should have transpired in Berlin.”
It would be untrue to claim that this way the old spiritualities are neglected. One must gladly receive what has been preserved from the older spiritual times, but still stand firmly on the ground of what has been brought to humanity during the period of development.
With the exclusion of one’s affections and passions, science of the spirit explores and describes the facts as they are, it is never a question of attacking anyone personally, but of becoming aware of things and for everyone taking their own free stance in front of these facts - even if one feels attacked. Its basic mood is expressed by Jesus' words: "I am not going to accuse you either. You may go now, but don’t sin anymore" (John8.11). However, science of the spirit and those who are working with it are attacked indeed, attacked because they are revealing the truth. But: "Jesus answered, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John14.6). And: "If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours." (John15:20). The science of the spirit is a product of modern Christian initiation. Its statements of course must not be received out of the belief in some authority, but should rather be verified using common sense and the sense for truth and by observing life around and within oneself. It explains the Christ impulse in a manner adapted to the current development of mankind, so one should bear in mind the following: "And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. Whoever rejects me and doesn’t receive my words will be judged at the last day by the word I have spoken." (John 12 47-48).
Humanity is now in a state of divergence between the powers of thinking, feeling, and willing - as stated at the beginning of this section and because of that various dispositions of the people living in the East, in the Middle, and in the West were presented. Because of these different dispositions certain conflicts also arise. Rudolf Steiner also repeatedly speaks about the real occult war and wars, which are led and which are more horrifying than the armed conflict during World War One. Here we will quote his words from the lecture held on October 30, 1920 in Dornach :
"And even if it is perhaps only a symbol, certain people still have it standing in front of their soul: this decadent firm grip to the revelations of the East, the insignificance of the Middle, and only into the economic relations infiltrated wisdom of the West. And they talk like this is some future perspective - as if the Middle does not exist at all- about the great fight between Japan and the US that is in the offing. That also signifies something extraordinarily profound. And if what is real as the decadent in the East, which has not yet been born in the West, if it strikes at each other while ignoring the Middle, then so to speak that feeling for the I, which precisely in the Middle became evident, then the feeling for the I sinks into that chaos that occurs by crushing from the East and from the West. The thought about the I had disappeared together with the Middle European-idealist philosophy. Since the middle of the nineteenth century it does not exist anymore."
Or - as Rudolf Steiner described in the same lecture cycle on October 24, 1920 - Central European civilization has staggered into an illusion which is located in the maelstrom of wisdom from the East and the power from the West. A solely dominant economic life may only act devastatingly. This has to be opposed with completely free spiritual life.
It is difficult to talk about these occult wars, but something can be gathered here from the above facts. One would go too far elaborating on this theme. But that this exists, is symptomatically proven by the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the night between 7 and 8 of May 1999. In the Middle, the might of the West collided with the wisdom of the East. Several members of the crew of the US aircraft came from the West and killed, according to the initial news four persons, and according to the later news, three persons who came from the East. That is the first Chinese blood spilled in the war waged in the Middle. This is only a stimulus for reflection, because in this situation, inadvertent error is out of the question.
The external symptoms of the occult war being waged are also the current events in Afghanistan, where in it and its neighboring Islamic countries, the West is establishing its military and political base in the center of Asia, in the East. This was also preceded by the propaganda of many years ago, which could also be heard here even out of the mouth of the "most eminent representatives" of Orthodoxy, that Judaism, all possible religious communities of Christians and Islam are all one and the same, because they all believe in one God, while other religions are polytheistic. Here not only is the tail called a foot, but also the ears and who knows what else, and then it is all added up and the dog has as many legs as the centipede. Certainly, that craziness can come only from the one who does not know the Holy Spirit nor the Christ. This is of course a policy so that "Euro-America" gains as allies and puts under its command the "ISLAMISTAN," all to make it easier to tackle "HINDULAND", "CONFUCIANIA" and "EURO-ASIA" - as was given by "The Economist," Huntington and others.
In any case, such an occult war exists and is being waged with tremendous power and wisdom, and also using illusion - according to Goethe's fairy tale "The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily." The center is already largely crushed. However, if in that Middle not even the smallest place is found, in which all the occult movements will agree to realize the threefolding social system as recommended by Rudolf Steiner, then all over the world, more and more chaos will come and there will be greater and greater horror.
Western corrupted occultists, gathered in different lodges, go on to act on the rhythmic system, the feelings. The Middle corrupted occultists, such as the Jesuits, seek to operate on the metabolic system, on the will. The Eastern corrupted occultists seek to penetrate not the supersensible, but the sub-sensible world. Thus all this is opposed to what has been said above as the correct tendency to raise from the metabolic to the rhythmic, from the rhythmic to the system of the head, while from that nerve-sensory one to penetrate into the spiritual, supersensible world. Some leaders, of course, do not stop at lowering themselves only by one degree, but in different ways descend into the sub-sensible and connect with the spiritual beings that are opposed to Christ and his impulses. In this way one is not on the path of individualization, but on the path towards the immersion in various types of group souls, which has already been mentioned briefly. Therefore, in such organizations, such as in Jesuitism through the will or in various sects with the accents on the Old Testament and various lodges through ideas, a particular struggle takes place for the loss of the understanding of the Christ, from whom we have received our I like a small piece of him, and which under his impulse ought to be fully individualized and be free.
In all such organizations there are also entirely well-meaning people who are far from consciously fighting against Christ and his impulses. If they do not, even tacitly, accept and do not endeavor to, in the Middle or at least in its one tiny fraction, say in this small Yugoslavia, where by the Western arm fell the Eastern blood, to at least here break the state down into the spiritual area that will work on the principle of freedom, the political-legal area which will operate under the principle of equality, and the economic area which will operate under the principle of brotherhood, with all three coordinating on an equal basis, - if those various occult circles do not consent to this, and do not implement this - then woe to them and to humanity! If they agree, a buffer zone will be created, the spiritual and the political-legal and the economic buffer zone, which will be the only one able to alleviate those occult blows which are increasingly being prepared from all sides. For such occult blows there are no bunkers, in which the leaders could hide, and such blows exceed even the boundaries of birth and death.
So it has been said here, and each individual has the freedom to choose what he does or does not do from his position in society.
Something for the Understanding of the Christ
Purely intellectualistically, one cannot arrive at any concept about Christ, but one can come to the comprehension of the spiritual - as was previously presented. One cannot even historically - strictly historically - prove that there existed some Jesus of Nazareth, because all the writings about him arose only later, and of them only the much later made transcripts have been preserved, undoubtedly with errors. There are certainly errors also in their interpretation during the translation, even if the translators were the most learned and most conscientious. In addition, the Gnostic writings which out of the old mystery teachings and vision spoke about Christ - even before his entry into one human body - were systematically destroyed and are no more. Also, the apocryphal writings that seem to be partially preserved in the Vatican library, are however not accessible to the public, so we cannot know if there is a record in those documents from the time when Jesus Christ lived in one human body on earth.
However, the proof - but not pedantically historical - is the transformation that has occurred in mankind beginning with our era, and also everything that happened in the meantime. To consider that it was "someone" or "some organization" who invented it would be too unbelievable considering the durability and the vastness of what happened and is happening through the Christ impulse. With that, this whole thing cannot be entered in a purely intellectualistic way and with the pedantic historical research - which anyways leads to countless erroneous conclusions and confusion even about much, much simpler events and whose "proofs" are almost never true scientific proofs, but assumptions drawn sometimes from being uninformed, sometimes out of a bias, and sometimes from quite malicious and false representations and "historic" descriptions. A historian will, for example, perhaps correctly write that on the battlefield this side won and the other one was beaten, but will not know that the defeated party lost the battle, because, to its commander, someone specifically planted false information about the enemy's arrangement and strength - and that is indeed essential. Not to mention that they are not allowed to even embark on something like, "In the skies the saints began to battle; Many an omen they began revealing" – what was one artist’s experience. Neither the fight of the gods, described in the Iliad, and which was a true reality at a time when humanity was passing from the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch into the Greco-Roman, from the development of the sentient soul to the development of the intellectual soul. When one has the key to such understandings, then these are even more obvious proofs than some - perhaps especially incorrectly written - text.
Therefore, for the research about Christ and those impulses which he was bringing to humanity both before and after his dwelling in one human body, one must turn to the initiatic wisdom. On the one hand, towards the one preserved in the Holy Scriptures and other holy writings, and on the other hand, towards the new initiation, with which these things can keep being checked and explained in a way adapted to the present state of human consciousness. And every man who has common sense and a sense for truth can keep verifying it based on his experience and start by saying, "Perhaps this is so," while after he connects more of such statements into a whole, can say, "This can only be this way." Out of this second stance will the further presentation be set forth. Not from some belief in the authority of Rudolf Steiner, but from the power of truth that shows itself in man's interior, in the human I, and which is also the sense of his following words:
“The sphere of the Spirit is the soul's true home,
And a person will surely reach it
By walking in the path of honest thought;
By choosing as his guide the fount of love
Implanted in his heart;
By opening the eye of his soul
To Nature's script
Spread out before him through all the Universe,
Telling the story of the Spirit
In all that lives and thrives,
And in the silent spaciousness of lifeless things,
And in the stream of Time--the process of becoming.”
In a lecture held in Berlin on December 26, 1909, Rudolf Steiner says that the Gospels must be understood literally, because in such an understanding is the basis of the true wisdom. (Of course, one must pay attention to the aforementioned possible errors in translation.) In primeval times, man’s I is not yet formed, there were group souls to which belonged a certain number of people. At the time of Christ's descent group souls were withdrawing and each man was directed to develop within himself an individual soul, his true I-ness. This is one of the Christ's impulses, and today man is directed to remember his earlier embodiments, and the majority still cannot do that. People will be able to do it only later, in the epoch which will come in the middle of the fourth millennium, but:
"Whether they will remember correctly, that depends on how they have received the impulses for it in their souls today - whether they have made themselves capable of remembering correctly! In the future only those who have received the Christ impulse, the source of the true I, will correctly remember their present existence. But those who do not receive this source of the true I-ness, within them will instead form new group souls. Pray look at today’s external reality, how people today just rush to the group soulfulness, even though they do not have to, but could find the sources of truth, that originate for them in their own soul. Observe how everyone wants to do things only the way “everyone” does it. People are not looking for what they themselves can find in their own soul, but we see them striving for what is reducible into categories, into groups, and they are the most joyous when they have not independent truths, but what is shared with others. Yes, individuality is even being hated, so in this hatred against what is individual, is believed to be forged the strongest weapon against such wisdom as the Anthroposophical one...”
"Through the anthroposophical wisdom we become an individuality. If we receive this Anthroposophical wisdom in the correct individual way, in the way it is imbued with the Christ impulse, then that is laid into our soul which enables us to, in the sixth epoch, remember the I-ness, that which each one of us has for oneself, which is closed within itself. Contrary to this will the memory of those who today seek the artificial group souls, be such that the group soulfulness will exist again. In the sixth epoch people will remember their current incarnation; but then it will be clear to them that "In your views then you joined the views of others!" And that will be a terrible fetter for a man who will have to feel himself embedded in some group soulfulness.”
"Group soulfulness threatens those who in our time will not be able to receive the Christ impulse!"
The Christ impulse can be experienced within oneself through the understanding of it.
In order to get closer to the understanding of Christ's being, we will present here some concepts about the Holy Trinity, according to the lecture by Rudolf Steiner held in Dornach on June 4, 1924. In man's life on earth his I uses his physical body, which is similar to the mineral kingdom; then it uses the etheric or vital body, a body of formative forces, also in the plant kingdom; then the astral or soul body which animals also have. The human I is none of these bodies. World ether can be perceived in the blueness of the sky, and world astrality in the stars which are an expression of love (hence the name "astral"), but the I will not reveal itself in this milieu – in the physical, etheric and astral, because it is the ongoing repetition of the previous earthly lives, and also exists in the life between death and a new birth. In that life, the physical and the etheric do not have significance for the I, but only the astral. A human being lives there with the beings of the higher hierarchies, with whom he then forms his karma. If one observes a human I in its two consecutive earthly lives, then one cannot remain in the same space, not in the same cosmos that refers to the simultaneity, to the spatiality. One moves out of space and comes into a pure time flow, when one observes the I in repeated earthly lives.
On Earth time is experienced only through space, through the position of things in space (the Sun, the hands of the clock and others). In order to truly enter into time one must get out of space, and that means to die.
There are peoples and groups who look only to that spiritual which is of this spatial-cosmic world and they are not able to have thoughts about repeated earthly lives. These thoughts may be had only by those, who can present time in its purity, in its spacelessness.
In the earth’s sphere we have a three-folding cosmos, which consists of the physical (which belongs only to the earth), etheric and astral. When this threefoldness, in its grandeur, was being experienced, and was also observed with the old instinctive clairvoyance, one could get to the divine that pervades and weaves through space. And Christmas was established thus, by observing the Christmas mysteries and how a child is being born in that space. The relationship with one’s I was also visible there and it was being said: Ex Deo Nascimur - From God we are born.
The observed child is the external sheath of that which was born in space, and it was born out of time. And:
"Then we shall look up to the Sun, and say to ourselves: “As I look up to the Sun, I must behold in the sunshine that Time, which in the world of Space, is hidden. Within the Sun is Time, and from out of the Time that weaves and works within the Sun, Christ came forth, came out into Space, on to the Earth."
Space does not exist within the Sun, space itself is being radiated out by the Sun, and the Sun does not only radiate the light. Christ came to human beings from beyond Space, to human beings who had then completely lost time and fully became spatial beings, beings of space.
“Christ came to bring the element of Time again to men, and when the human heart, the human soul, the human spirit, unite themselves with Christ, then man receives once more the stream of Time that flows from Eternity to Eternity. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha man had become to so great an extent a being of Space that Time was lost to him. Christ brought Time back again to men. If, then, in going forth from the world of Space, men would not die in their souls as well as in their bodies, they must die in Christ.”
"But since the Mystery of Golgotha we cannot conceive of death, the bound of our earthly life, without this thought: “We must die in Christ.” Otherwise we shall pay for our loss of Time with the loss of Christ Himself, and, banished from Him, remain held spell-bound. We must fill ourselves with the Mystery of Golgotha. In addition to the Ex Deo Nascimur, we must find the In Christo Morimur. We must bring forth the Easter thought in addition to the Christmas thought."
Just as on the Earth man has his three bodies, the physical, the etheric and the astral, so in the cosmos we have the Etheric as the lowest, then the Astral and then the Spiritual Selfhood, which is not a single Being but the whole world of the Hierarchies. In the Physical the Earth has a sub-cosmic element, and in the Spirit-Selfhood the Cosmos has a super-earthly element. When you look out on the Earth and the surrounding Cosmos, it is the Father whose life permeates this Universe. The Father-God is the God of Space. Christ descended from the Sun, out of Time that he brought to humanity. Christ came down from the Sun, from Time — Time that was brought to people. If one receives Christ, one receives Time, and will not be held spell-bound in Space. One then finds the transition from the one trinity — Physical, Etheric and Astral — to the other trinity, which leads from the Etheric and Astral to Spirit-Selfhood.
“When those to whom Christ revealed these things had let the revelation sink deep into their being, then the moment came when they experienced the working of this mighty concept, in the fiery tongues of Pentecost. At first they felt the falling away, the discarding of the earthly-Physical as death. But then the feeling came: This is not death, but in place of the physical of the Earth, there now dawns upon us the Spirit-Selfhood of the Universe. “Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.” We are reborn in the Holy Spirit.”
"If we understand the relationship of the physical to the soul of man and to the super-physical — which contains the true freedom of which man is to become a partaker on the Earth, — then in the interconnection of the Christmas, Easter and Whitsun festivals we understand the human freedom on Earth.”
As an addition to this presentation we will offer here something from the lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Dornach on July 30, 1922. If man had always been conscious of the Christ in himself, then anything he would do, would have had to be done out of extinguishing his own I consciousness if he wanted to be good, but the good deeds accomplished by human beings would have been the deeds of Christ, not the deeds of human beings. So that man could be free, Christ disappeared from his immediate sight - even the way the apostles beheld him after the resurrection was pulled back. This is referred to as his Ascension into heaven. But then he sent to humanity the Holy Spirit, the imperceptible spirit.
"By sending the Holy Spirit, Christ gave humanity the ability to raise itself to an understanding of the spiritual out of the life of intellect itself. Hence it should not be said that the human being cannot grasp the spiritual, the super-sensible, through his own spirit. A man could only justify his inability to understand the spirit if he ignored the Holy Spirit, if he spoke only of the Father God and the Christ God.”
And in the gospels it is likewise pointed to the presence of the Holy Spirit even during Jesus' baptism in the Jordan, when the spirit of Christ came into him. From these brief presentations one can even better perceive just what a terrible sin it was, when in 869 and 1054 the dogma was made that the Holy Spirit was created also out of time, that is from "the Son also ", while it dwells in the spiritual world that is beyond both time and space. However, that is a sting which remained in the western Christian churches as an impulse from Gondishapur, which is still very strong in Rome. Of course, this sting exists in some other way also in the bodies of other Christians – it should not be considered that they are without it.
Rudolf Steiner talks about this in many places, and here a brief presentation based on a lecture given in Zurich on October 16, 1918, will be given. The Greco-Roman cultural epoch, in which human beings developed their intellectual soul, began in 747 BC and ended in AD 1413. Its middle point was in AD 333 and since then this epoch was in decline. Before that middle point, the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, and as many years after that, in AD 666, certain spiritual powers wanted to seize mankind in a particular way, that in its development it does not go according to the intentions of the good divine beings, who have led it from the start. These powers wanted to give something to humanity already in AD 666, for which it was not yet ripe, and was supposed to come only in the middle of our present, fifth epoch, that is, in 2493. These hostile beings wanted, using the Ahrimanic-Luciferic forces, already then to inject into man the conscious understanding of his personality:
"They wanted to give to man too soon the Consciousness Soul, whereby they would have instilled into him a nature making it impossible for him to find the further path to the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, the Spirit-Man. These Beings would have cut man off from the path to his future destiny and would have claimed him for a quite different kind of evolution.”
Because of the Mystery of Golgotha history did not evolve in this way, but still there are traces of it even until today.
When Justinian I (the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire from 527-565), as an enemy of everything that had emanated from the lofty wisdom of Greece, closed the School of Philosophy in Athens in AD 529, its scholars fled away into Persia, where the Syrian scholars had already taken refuge when in the fifth century the Greek sages had been driven from Edessa by the Emperor Zeno Isaurikus. Thus, when the year 666 was approaching, there in the Persian Academy of Gondishapur had gathered the most learned men and out of them was supposed to originate that terrible impulse.
The world was saved from that by the Mystery of Golgotha, so this impulse was blunted in advance, and then in its place came Islam, fantastic and pitiful Islam in place of that which was exceptionally great in Gondishapur. However, mankind has nevertheless received such impulse from it, so that it has also worked into the physical corporeality and caused that illness, which reveals itself by leading man to the denial of God the Father. - It's that sting or thorn, of which Paul also speaks prophetically (2Cor.12.7 and 7Rom.14-25). Because of it a man in modern civilization can be a complete atheist, but we all also carry it within us as the disease of the denial of God. Due to this illness the soul is more connected to the body than it should be by its nature. Through this it is more involved in the destinies of the body, and likewise increasingly in the destinies of birth and heredity and death.
"The aim of the sages of Gondishapur — in a more amateurish form it is also the aim of certain occult societies in our own time — amounted to nothing else than this: to make man very great, very wise, on the Earth, but, by instilling this wisdom, to lead his soul to partake of death, so that when he had passed through the Gate of Death he would have no inclination to participate in spiritual life or in subsequent incarnations. The intention was to sever man from his further evolution, and so win him for the aims of certain Beings in a quite different world. It was to preserve him as he is in his life on Earth, in order to divert him from the purpose of that earthly existence, which purpose he was meant to discover only slowly and by degrees, thereby finally attaining to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man.”
“The human soul would have become more intimately bound up with the Earth than had been intended. Death, which is foreordained for the body only, would in a certain respect have become the destiny of the soul as well. This was prevented by the Mystery of Golgotha. Man did become related to death, but through the Mystery of Golgotha he has been given a means of protection against it. Although, on the one side, a certain stream in world-evolution brought about a relationship between the soul and the body stronger than that originally prescribed for man, in order to maintain the balance, Christ linked the soul with the spirit more strongly than had been originally planned. Through the Mystery of Golgotha the human soul was brought nearer to the spirit.”
The alternating relationship between Ahriman and Lucifer must be compared with this relationship between the body and soul towards the soul and spirit.
“The Catholic Church, strongly influenced by the remains of the impulse emanating from Gondishapur, decreed as a dogma at the Eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in AD 869 that men were not to believe in the spirit. ... This was because the Church did not desire that everybody should be enlightened about the Mystery of Golgotha, but that it should be kept hidden. In the year AD 869, belief in the spirit was abolished by the Catholic Church.”
This force that in man’s soul resembles death, is a kind of an illness, an illness of denying God, and all of us today in the civilized humanity carry in our body a tendency for it.
“If we rightly understand our own nature, we realize that we cease to deny God only when, through Christ, we find him again. Just as our body has within it a potential sickness tending towards denial of the Divine, so, having the Christ-Power within us in consequence of the Mystery of Golgotha, we have a health-giving, healing force within us. In the truest sense of the word, Christ is for one and all of us the Redeemer the Healer of the sickness that can make a man deny God. Christ is the Physician for that latent sickness.”
In his quest for self-knowledge a man can feel powerless, which is in fact wholesome, because it points to the illness.
"When this powerlessness is experienced with sufficient intensity, there comes the sudden reversal — the other experience which tells us that if we do not depend only upon what our bodily forces by themselves enable us to achieve, but devote ourselves to what the spirit gives — we can overcome this inner death of the soul. We find our soul again and unite ourselves with the spirit."
On the one side we have the powerlessness through the body, and on the other the resurrection through the spirit.
"...the Christ-experience does not consist of the unitary realization of the Divine, but of the twofold experience of the death in the soul wrought by the body and the resurrection of the soul wrought by the spirit."
During the baptism at the Jordan river Christ’s spirit descended from the Sun into the body of Jesus, and the Mystery of Golgotha tells us how the Christ’s being became the spirit of the Earth, how it merged with it, in order to save mankind from remaining enchanted in space, to embrace it into itself and carry it over into another form of existence, when the Earth itself as a celestial body will no longer exist. To this also point - although very tersely - these words, told to the eleven apostles after the Resurrection:
"And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Mat.28.18-20)
These words should also be understood literally.
About the connection of Christ with the development of humanity and its impulses before and after the Mystery of Golgotha a lot can be said, and "the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (John21.25). But since the topic of this presentation is science, we will conclude this presentation with a quote from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner held in Dornach on October 13, 1918. Following up on the impulse from Gondishapur and Romanism which is based on cults and rhetoric, which date from the time of Emperor Augustus (born in 63BC, became the emperor in 3BC, died in AD 14) and which are most pronounced in Jesuitism on the one hand, while:
"The other side is made up of those who swear by the crudest science, who refuse to accept the spiritual, who value science only as technology, rejecting all that can be discovered concerning the spiritual content of the world through the great and powerful phenomena of nature. I once said, and this was truly not said rhetorically, but out of the deeper knowledge of the soul: Until our physics, our mechanics, the whole of our external science, come to be permeated by the Christ Impulse, science will not have reached its goal. Not only history should speak of the Mystery of Golgotha: men should also realize that since the Mystery of Golgotha natural phenomena have to be observed in such a way that Christ is known to be on the earth, whereas He was not on the earth before. A truly Christian science will not seek for atoms, not for atoms and their laws, nor for the conservation of matter and of energy; it will seek for the revelation of Christ in all the phenomena of nature, and these will thereby reveal to men their sacramental character.”
"From a contemplation of nature in this light there will spring a feeling for moral, social, political and religious principles in human life which will really answer to the demands of human living. If we absorb the divine element in nature, if we draw upon the power of Christ in our knowledge of nature, then we shall carry into the rules of conduct that we set up for mankind, and into all that we want to exemplify, whether in caring for the poor or in any other realm of social service — we shall carry Christology into all our works. If we are unable to look upon nature around us as permeated by Christ, if we are unable to discover the activity of Christ in all that lives in human deeds even when they are halting deeds, neither shall we be able in our social, moral or political life to meet the real demands of our time. In that case we should be left on the one hand with our crude science, which simply refuses to know anything about the super-sensible, or with mere rhetoric, which is a legacy of Romanism, the ghost of Romanism."
We find the rhetoric on the one hand in the Roman preaching in Jesuitism, and on the other hand in Wilsonism.
"Just as the unhealthy mood of mankind today on the one hand strives towards Rome, so on the other hand the human soul, which does not understand itself, which has been eroded by the crudest natural science and its understanding of the world, it strives towards that which today permeates the world as a pure rhetoric and what is opposed to everything connected to the true, blessed progress of mankind.”
“These things, my dear friends, cannot be expressed through a few bourgeois, philistine ideas. That which threatens our time from the direction indicated, and has to be looked at soberly when present events are considered, must also be recognized in all its significance. We must not allow the world to be Wilsonised because everyone is asleep. Let there be followers of Wilson in America, in Europe, or anywhere else, but there must also be people who know that a deep connection exists between Jesuitism on the one hand and Wilsonism on the other. There must be people who realize this. Certainly they will have to grow beyond the philistinism of today; they must not form their opinions according to what the day brings, or even the years; they must be able to take account of what the centuries conceal, and yet reveal to us, if really and truly, with the innermost active force of the soul, we are able to look up to the hill where stood the Cross of Golgotha, the symbol for everything that as a revelation of the primeval Mysteries has poured into human life. But it will remain always youthful, always bringing fresh revelations to mankind.”
REMARKS
The above cited GA numbers are given based on "Rudolf Steiner Verlag", Dornach, Switzerland.
"Therefore, faithful Christian, seek the truth, hear the truth,
learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, adhere to the truth,
defend the truth to death; for truth will make you free
from sin, the devil, the death of the soul, and finally from eternal
death.”
~ Jan Hus
(Born around 1370, burned alive in Konstanz in 1415)
Translated by Svetlana and Paul Correa
jankovic_9@yahoo.com
svetlanamacac@gmail.com
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