Contemporary worldview war

The spiritual influences of 'evil' that Mankind has to face and come to grips with in the current fifth cultural age, and distract from the righteous ideal development towards humanity's developmental goals, also find their concrete realities in the various influences that impact the evolution of society and culture worldwide. The world around us, right now.

This is especially so since the 'fall of the spirits of darkness' that have been cast down to Earth and are part of humanity since end of the 19th century. Though we are in an age of the archangel Michael and in the breaking of a new age after the end of the dark age of Kali Yuga (with the expected emergence of natural clairvoyance and experiences of 'Christ in the etheric'), the 20th century has known a dramatic shift in materialism after the 30 years war of 1914-1945, with an increase of the ahrimanic influences followed by asuric influences.

This page bundles various aspects where Rudolf Steiner commented on the 'then-future' we are experiencing and living currently.

The world and humanity is not always as it seems, see eg I-less human beings. Man is the stage for a raging battle between good and evil, a battle for the soul of Man (see eg 1922-12-03-GA219 below). The battle is for, and takes place in, the Human 'I' and the influencing of the development of the threefold soul. (see eg 1917-01-14-GA174 combined with 1917-01-01-GA174B on Development of I). This is key for the future, as Man's 'I' is the pivotal element in Man's bodily principles to rise to future spiritual development by transmuting the lower bodily principles, see Man's transformation and spiritualization.

However the 'I' can also just as well go wrong, and rather than to be 'lifted up' it can also be 'dragged down'. Examples to put some colour to these words: 'lifting up' one can think of ideals, of selflessness, of giving, of praying; in contrast 'dragged down' one can think of lower passions such as in violence or pornography, additions such as alchohol, of 'taking'. This is quite concrete and personal, regarding habits of life in our etheric body, and the choices we make: consider the difference between consistently spending one or two hours each day in the virtual digital computer world with 'screens' (smartphone, television, computer), versus spending that same time each day on initiation exercises such as meditation and concentration. Clearly the second will have a more uplifting effect (as a cumulative investment in our development) than the first, considering one chooses the one or the other consistently over years and decades of life.

The task for Man is:

• first, to become fully conscious of the influences - in culture and society, ànd in one's Self and own soul .. and not be asleep in and to them. This is one goal of this topic page.
• secondly, to find a balance and act in the world in full consciousness, based on free choice and in full awareness of these influences, and the consequences of one's choices and actions. This will be subject of the Discussion area below and a separate Discussion page.

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To conclude with the perspective of the current times: the key challenge for humanity in this Current Postatlantean epoch is to face the challenge of evil. The choices we make in every incarnation are key for our spiritual maturity and which cohort or segment we choose to be part of in the whole of humanity (see Parable of the Sower).

What was described above in a soft light way is put in its evolutionary context by Rudolf Steiner here:

• Spiritual minority in a materialistic world#1907-06-05-GA099
• Evil#1908-06-30-GA104.

It is suggested to read these two excerpts as they represent a meta frame to position all that is on this topic page.

This is call for conscious choice and action that speaks to the soul, and is closely related to the purpose and Meaning of Free Man Creator and Seeds for future worlds

Aspects

Rudolf Steiner spoke about a multitude of elements that are part of this discussion:

Pyramidion statement upfront

• besides the problem statement as described below with the challenges of the times in the current fifth cultural age, there is also a concrete solution statement. Rather than a head-to-head opposing the dominant stream of materialism, is the work on the alternative opposing stream inspired by the spiritual scientific worldview. Coined in the two sentences: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's' and 'My kingdom is not of this world.' (re 1917-01-15-GA174 in 'inspirational quotes' below and in full in the 'Lecture references' section).

Challenges for the current fifth cultural age

• the task of the fifth cultural age of the current epoch is to come to grips with evil as an impulse in world evolution (1917-11-19-GA178),
  • the increase of ahrimanic materialism for the next five centuries,
    • the inevitable rise of the materialistic worldview (see second quote 1917-11-29-GA182 below)
    • and the future rise of epidemics, especially nervous diseases but also suicides (Spectrum of death#1913-11-17-GA266)
  • the rise of the asuric influences of the asuras or rakshasas, that a.o. have an influence in sexual perversions and black magic
  • as the cosmic plan exists and is known (see Occult atom), this implies that the forces of opposition plan their counterattacks accordingly
• small 'secret' societies or brotherhoods that drive towards other agendas for the masses (oa 1920-02-21-GA196)
  • anaesthetization or stifling of the consciousness soul (1917-01-15-GA174, 1920-02-08-GA196)
  • techniques to influence the subconscious - see Various forms of spiritual perception and influences beyond waking consciousness
  • impulses due to I-less human beings heading and populating secret societies (1920-10-22-GA200 on I-less human beings)
  • western brotherhoods: chaining materialistic souls to use them as an army of discarnate souls (1917-11-18-GA178, 1917-11-25-GA178, described further in 1917-11-29-GA182)
    • the influence of the dead is used as a way to influence earthly matters and build power, without the masses even being conscious of this
    • hence there are strong agendas to push for materialism as very materialistic souls remain 'chained to the earth' and can be used for egoistic purposes
    • the ultimate goal of Western brotherhoods is to put another being in the place of the Christ, and divert from the Christ Impulse
  • eastern:

The individual responsability: dreaming culture vs conscious awareness with the consciousness soul

• people turn a blind eye to matters of the world, are not interested or aware but nevertheless form opinions without much research or foundation (1916-12-16-GA173)
• without impulse or to spiritual science or culture, a serious probability that humanity ends up as a culture of staggering dreamers (1923-07-11-GA224)
• see also: Fall and redemption - original sin and grace#Topic 1 - What is going on in the world today.3F

Contemporary and future realities - techniques of 'the powers that be'

• abolishing the soul - see 869#1917-03-27-GA175
• compliancy with dominant materialistic worldview
  • the rapidly changing, and future further limitation, of freedom of opinion and speech in line with the authorized dominant materialistic worldview (1916-01-07-GA165)
  • suppression of individual thinking (1916-04-04-GA167)
  • techniques for mass media 'manipulation, bringing suggestions and impressions in large groups of people to carry out types of 'mass hypnosis' on a grand scale to direct events in a certain direction (1916-12-09-GA173)
• information war, confusing, layered pyramid system with subtruths
  • the techniques of 'divide et impera': setting up various tracks and groups with dependencies and sometimes opposing goals, causing a web of untransparancy hard to unravel (1916-12-09-GA173)
  • disguising the truth by naming things not according to their true intention of goal, rather exactly the opposite (eg 1920-09-21-GA197, also GA174)
• the blocking off by society and the powers at hand, of anything to do with spiritual realities. This is a continuation of the luciferic fall of Man, into the ahrimanic intellectual-materialistic fall of Man, see eg Fall and redemption - original sin and grace.
  • via the economic principle (1917-11-25-GA178, and not less important 1920-10-22-GA200 on I-less human beings))
    • from the British commercial and industrial element to economical world dominance, and the 'map of Europe' (1917-01-15-GA174)
  • via medical intervention (1908-02-16-GA244 - QA 155.1, 1917-05-20-GA174A, 1917-10-07-GA177, 1917-10-27-GA177)
• the power of money that grew out of economy and the banker systems (1919-10-19-GA191)
• new technology with the capacity to set motors and machines in motion according to the laws of reciprocal oscillations will develop on a great scale among the English-speaking peoples, and this is counted upon as the means whereby the mastery over the rest of the population of the Earth shall be achieved in the current fifth post-Atlantean age. This technology will render the majority of human labour unnecessary within the regions of the English-speaking peoples, and give the possibility of paralyzing every uprising attempted by the then dissatisfied masses of humanity. (1918-12-01-GA186)

See also: History

Inspirational quotes

Some introductory quotes to set the scene, from 1917-01-15-GA174

Those things which correspond to certain impulses do come to pass. For necessity governs world history and world evolution: these things do come to pass ... Opposing forces [develop out of necessity, and] must clash with one another, and in this clash reality evolves.

another one from 1917-10-26-GA177

The events of the present time have been foreseen by the initiates of all nations. ... we must be able to observe on the large scale, as in small things; we must not allow ourselves to be deflected by the opinions and phrases one hears in the world today. We have to be able to rise a little above ourselves to understand the signs of the times.

And then also from 1917-01-15-GA174: the main pyramidion of this topic page, the top stone of the pyramid consisting of all underlying elements and subconclusions. This is the essential summary conclusion; read in full on the lecture or the extensive extract in the 'Lecture references' section below. (SWCC)

What can I myself do in these painful times?

The first thing one can do is to endeavour to understand things, to really see through things. This brings up thoughts which are real forces and these will have an effect. .. As a contribution to this understanding it is necessary that a number of people muster the strength to oppose the surging waves of materialism with their deepest personal being. ..

.. You can summarize in two sentences what is needed to work against materialism - which, after all, has some justification.

• In the fifth Postatlantean age the world will become even more pervaded by the industrial and commercial element;
• but the opposite pole must also exist: There must be people who work on the opposite side because of their understanding of the situation.

. .. you can express this counter-force in two sentences.

[Sentence 1: "My kingdom is not of this world" - more in 1917-10-01-GA177]

One of these is well-known to you, but it does not yet come fully out of the hearts and souls of human beings: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' ... must sound forth against that kingdom of commercial and industrial materialism which is to be spread over the physical plane and which is only of this world. ...

[Second sentence: "Render to Caesar"]

.. that other, second sentence which is to be added to the first .. is: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.'

This means that a proper attitude to life, a real cultivation of life, can only come about when one realizes that the spiritual element must be cultivated, because the spiritual world must penetrate down into the physical world.

These statements must be comprehended wholeheartedly in the soul: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's' and 'My kingdom is not of this world.' Then the atmosphere of the spiritual world will come, an atmosphere that has nothing to do with those materialistic things which have especially to develop in the fifth Postatlantean age. For this to happen, things must be seen in their true guise.

And a few extras:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(Elective Affinities, 1809 - origin quote tbc)

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free

1922-09-22-GA216

Modern men are clever, extraordinarily clever and astute; but cleverness does not necessarily mean that they really know the world.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.422 (and variant Schema FMC00.422A with annotations on the schema) illustrate humanity as a statistical distribution of a population of souls, with different segments or cohorts. One can imagine the distribution pie chart to represent spiritual maturity and also the choice for the light or the darkness, good or evil.

On the right, the thin black line represents black magic, around it cohorts or segments that tend or gravitate towards it, that are in the zone or field of attraction of this extreme direction, so to speak.

On the left side, the thin yellow line represents the white stream, with similarly people in the field tending towards that, whereby spiritual science could be imagined to represent a certain segment or colour. To get closer to the yellow and white is to make the conscious choice to put oneself on the path of initiation.

The simple drawing can be meditated upon to fill it with imagery and meaning, and confront our soul in feeling with the explicit responsibility that comes with the freedom of choice, and the development goal for this age of the consciousness soul: to make the conscious choice on where we want to be on this chart, and use our life to further this.

More background is given in the excerpts below.

• Spiritual minority in a materialistic world#1907-06-05-GA099
• Evil#1908-06-30-GA104
• Spiritual minority in a materialistic world#1910-GA013 .28OeS.29 is the statement that the fifth and sixth cultural ages are the decisive ones, and that - at the end of the current epoch - approx. one third will attain its developmental goal, a second third not but will do so at a later stage, and a third one 'falls away completely'. These three thirds are represented in the Schema by colours yellow (left), white (middle), and grey (right). Note: the quote about "not all reach the goal etc" is to be found in 1904-10-24-GA090A or also 1904-10-24-GA092.

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Note: the idea of a statistical distribution of humanity, going through evolution in the different epochs and cultural ages, is also depicted in Schema FMC00.562. This schema focuses on the choices made to benefit from each stage for a righteous balanced development, or not. See more on Sixteen paths of perdition.

Schema FMC00.422A sketches a snapshot of resulting outcome of the Development of the I representative for an evolutionary period, but here as an illustration of a quote specifically for the Current Postatlantean epoch.

To relate this for your Individual self and the current and future key incarnations, see also Schema FMC00.052 on Current Postatlantean epoch. Also see related pages such as, but not limited to, Sixteen paths of perdition and I-less human beings.

Note: the quote about "not all reach the goal etc" is to be found in 1904-10-24-GA090A or also 1904-10-24-GA092.

Schema FMC00.591: shows the decisive phase for the development of humanity between the third Lemurian epoch and the Sixth epoch. In the Lemurian epoch, the spirit and group souls descended into the physical bodies that had developed to sufficient complexity to be able to develop the Human 'I'. This is shown left with the extract from Schema FMC00.210. The process of individuation through the Development of the I is still ongoing in the Current fifth Postatlantean epoch. In the next Sixth epoch, part of humanity will spiritualize again.

A bifurcation is happening with a decisive division between good and evil branches of mankind, starting today but especially the coming millenia and onwards. As a result of this, the balanced and spiritually mature (represented by the path of the Christ) will be able to continue development in non-physical changing conditions on Earth and beyond. Others will be chained to the lower material realms and ultimately make up a lower kingdom on the next planetary stage of evolution Future Jupiter. This is shown right with an extract from Schema FMC00.583 and the evolution of the kingdoms of nature per planetary stage.

The central illustration is based and inspired on Rudolf Steiner's drawings in the lecture of 1911-10-14-GA131, see also Schema FMC00.591A.

Lecture coverage and references

Overview

In the period of 1916 to 1918, Rudolf Steiner have series of lectures that stand out in his total work (the GA), in that they give an X-ray analysis of the political, cultural and economical forces in the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. This was part of an arc 'Cosmic and Human History' consisting of several consecutive volumes and cycles.

Only extracts of some of these lectures are given below. It requires a study on its own to purchase and study volumes GA173 - GA174 - GA178, along with lectures from other cycles incl. GA165, GA177 and GA185

• 1916-12-GA173: 13 lectures (Contemporary-Historical Examinations: The Karma of Untruthfulness, Part One)
  • note on other version of GA, showing GA173A+B+C together are 24 lectures
  • GA173A online
  • GA173B online
  • GA173C online
• 1917-01-GA174A: 12 lectures (Contemporary-Historical Examinations: The Karma of Untruthfulness, Part Two)
• GA174B: 16 lectures on the spiritual background of the first world war, between 1914-1921
• 1917-09/10-GA177: 14 lectures (The Spiritual Background of the Outer World. The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness. Spiritual Beings and Their Effects, Volume 1)
• 1917-11-GA178: 9 lectures (The Spiritual Background of the Outer World. The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness. Spiritual Beings and Their Effects, Volume 2)
• 1918-10/11-GA185: 9 lectures (Historical Symptomology)

A lecture which holds a central place is this, for the topic of this page, is 1917-01-15-GA174.

Reference extracts

1895 - Gustave Le Bon

in 'The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind' (1895).

longer extract

It is not truth that is of use to crowds, but error. As already observed, they have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. A crowd does not admit doubt or uncertainty, and always goes to extremes. Their sentiments, good or bad, are always exaggerated. Doubtless it is thanks to this that they are so often heroic. For the very reason that they are unconscious of their actions, they devote themselves to certain causes with an unreflecting ardour that men of thought and reason would be incapable of. Such heroism, however, is composed of a mixture of ferocity and often of barbarity.

often quoted as:

The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.

1904-12-23-GA093

for longer extract and direct link see:

• Various forms of spiritual perception and influences beyond waking consciousness#1904-12-23-GA093
• Moral ideals#1904-12-23-GA093

This leveling-out process will bring war and bloodshed in its train — war in the shape of economic strife among nations, pressure for expansion, suppression in every form, strife in the sphere of investment and profit, industrial undertakings, and so forth. And by adopting certain measures it will increasingly be possible to handle vast masses of people by sheer force; the individual will acquire greater and greater power over certain masses of the people. For the course of evolution is leading not towards greater democracy but towards oligarchy of the brutal kind, in that the power of the single individual will immeasurably increase.

1908-02-16-GA244 - QA 155.1

states that vaccination and serum only affect the direct Personality, and Rudolf Steiner asks:

.. can we excluse such help, while a larger damage, that is much less transparent, lies underneath?

One helps the single person and personality, but the consequences will only show in the child and grandchild

...

Man has to learn that the single person is [is thereby] only suffering the karma of the totality [the whole of humanity]

1912-04-11-GA158

.. That which must come, if the old impulses alone continue to have an effect, would be perhaps still unimaginable today: people will not only be overwhelmed, overwhelmed in external relations, but undergo a numbing domination, that takes over mere external technology and they would perish, because everything religious, scientific, philosophical, artistic and also in the higher sense any ethical interest would be taken away from the human soul. People would become a kind of living automaton if new spiritual impulses did not come. 

1914-03-07-GA286

is another reference sketching a perspective of millenia from -3000 to +3000

internet translation of german original below

But terrible times are ahead for mankind in Europe.

We know that when the first third of this century is over, the Christ will be seen in his etheric form and that this will give a powerful impulse alongside all the tendencies of this century that are going under. In earlier times, such as around the year 1000, people probably had to believe what Lucifer and Ahriman told them because they did not yet have the true, conscious Christ impulse within them. But we no longer have to, we should voluntarily take up this new Christ impulse so that we can resist Lucifer and Ahriman.

In the 20th century it will be the case that Lucifer and Ahriman in particular will take possession of the name of Christ. People will call themselves Christians who will no longer have any trace of true Christianity in them; and they will rage against those who not only keep to what Christ once said according to the tradition of the gospels, but for whom the word applies: "I am with you always, to the end of the ages of the earth », who will align themselves with the living, ongoing Christ-Impulse. They will rage against them. Confusion and devastation will reign as the year 2000 approaches.

And then there will be no piece of wood lying on top of another from our Dornach building. Everything will be destroyed and devastated. We will look down on this from the spirit world.

But when the year 2086 comes, you will see buildings erected all over Europe that are dedicated to spiritual goals and will be images of our Dornach building with its two domes. That will be the golden age for such buildings, in which spiritual life will flourish.

german original excerpt, see full lecture

Furchtbare Zeiten aber stehen der Menschheit in Europa bevor. Wir wissen, daß, wenn das erste Drittel dieses Jahrhunderts vorbei ist, der Christus geschaut werden wird in seiner Äthergestalt und daß dies einen gewaltigen Impuls abgeben wird neben all den untergehenden Neigungen dieses Jahrhunderts. In den älteren Zeiten, wie zum Bei­spiel beim Jahr 1000, mußten die Menschen wohl glauben, was Luzi­fer und Ahriman ihnen weismachten, weil sie den wahren, bewußten Christus-Impuls noch nicht in sich hatten. Wir aber müssen nicht mehr, wir sollen freiwillig diesen neuen Christus-Impuls aufnehmen, damit wir Luzifer und Ahriman Widerstand leisten können. Es wird so sein im 20. Jahrhundert, daß Luzifer und Ahriman sich insbeson­dere bemächtigen werden des Namens des Christus. Menschen wer­den sich Christen nennen, die von dem wahren Christentum keine Spur mehr in sich haben werden; und sie werden wüten gegen diejeni­gen, die sich nicht nur allein halten an das, was der Christus einmal nach der Überlieferung der Evangelien gesagt hat, sondern für welche gilt das Wort: «Ich bin bei euch alle Tage bis an das Ende der Erden-zeiten», die sich richten werden nach dem lebendigen, fortwirkenden Christus-Impuls. Gegen diese wird man wüten. Verwirrung und Ver­wüstung wird herrschen, wenn das Jahr 2000 herannaht. Und dann wird auch von unserem Dornacher Bau kein Holzstück mehr auf dem anderen liegen. Alles wird zerstört und verwüstet werden. Darauf werden wir von der geistigen Welt aus herabschauen. Aber wenn das Jahr 2086 kommt, wird man überall in Europa aufsteigen sehen Bau­ten, die geistigen Zielen gewidmet sind und die Abbilder sein werden von unserem Dornacher Bau mit seinen zwei Kuppeln. Das wird die goldene Zeit sein für solche Bauten, in denen das geistige Leben blühen wird.

1916-01-07-GA165 (c)

Perhaps we cannot yet do anything in our age against the completely materialist course of the matter-bound un-free mood of our times. But we must at least learn to perceive it as the compulsion it is. That is where we have to start. We do not have to indulge in delusions.

For if the world continues in its development as it is strives for in the sense of these materialistic impulses, then we will gradually enter into a development through which not only someone who unlicensed is forbidden from doing anything for human health, but also one in which relating to science, there is a prohibition against anyone saying anything other than that which is approved by those who have taken a kind of vow under the materialist world order. Today many things are forbidden, of which people do not feel any coercion from prohibition. But we are approaching times when, like any unlicensed concern for healing of human beings, every word will be banned, except in an institution guaranteed and approved by the materialistically developed powers.

If we do not feel the direction of this course, then we will sail full tilt into a future “freedom”, which will consist of giving laws according to which no one may teach anything outside an authorised classroom; according to which everything will be forbidden, which could remotely hark after what is happening here. Because we do not see in which direction the trend is going, we do not keep that in mind today.

Certainly, it must be emphasized again and again, we will not be able to do much in our time. But things must start with thinking, must begin with perceiving the issue, and what we can commence with, we must make a start with.

1916-04-04-GA167

quote A

... very shortly, after when one will have written the year 2000, there will come from America not a direct prohibition, but a kind of prohibition against all thinking, a sort of law which will have the aim of suppressing all individual thinking. On the other hand there is the beginning achieved in this direction of suppressing all individual thinking into pure materialistic thinking where one does not need to work upon the soul on the basis of external experiments, in which the human being is handled as if he were a machine.

quote - freely translated from DE original

The larger part of humanity will get its influence from America, from the West, and go towards another development. ... It will not last much longer, when one will have written the year 2000, that there will come, not a direct, but a sort of ban, interdiction for everything will come from America, a law that will have as its purpose to suppress all individual thinking. On one side already a start for this has been given with the current purely materialistic medicine, where one also cannot work on the soul any more, but Man is treated as a machine solely on the basis of external experiments

1916-09-17-GA171

Note well that I say the quiet and slow unfolding because the entire period of 2.160 years, starting in 1413 A.D., should be used for the gradual unfoldment of the forces I have named, that is, free imaginations and the gradual development of working with primal phenomena.

At intervals - by fits and starts, as it were - the luciferic and ahrimanic powers throw the whole weight of their opposition against this right evolution. When we bear in mind that everything is prepared for by the world beyond the earth long before it happens, we shall then not be surprised to find preparations being made to bring the strongest possible forces of opposition against the normal evolution of humanity.

We have already seen how the luciferic and ahrimanic powers poured what they had developed in Atlantean times into Greece and Rome. Now, in an altered form, they have tried to repeat these efforts before the arrival of the fifth post-Atlantean age.

[Genghis Khan]

It was actually the descendants of the old Atlantean teachers who were now working from a place in Asia.

A priest there had been educated to behold — to have a belated vision, as it were, of what the Atlanteans called the 'Great Spirit', and to receive his commands. These the priest communicated to a young man of remarkable energy and strength who, by virtue of this authority, received the name 'The Great Ruler of the Earth' from his community. This was Genghis Khan. The Great Spirit, through his follower and through that priest, gave to Genghis Khan the command to summon all the powers of Asia to spread the influence that would lead the fifth post-Atlantean age back into a luciferic form. These forces - and they were far more powerful than the forces established in Greek culture - were all employed to this end.

1916-12-09-GA173 (c)

Those who desire to work in this way are always concerned, not to stimulate just one stream but to make sure that one stream is always crossed by another, so that they influence each other in some way. Not much is achieved by simply running straight ahead with a single stream. It is necessary sometimes to throw a sidelight on this stream so that certain things become confused, so that certain tracks are covered up, and other things are lost in an impenetrable thicket. This is very important. Thus it comes about that certain secret streams which have set themselves some task or other also set about achieving the exact opposite. These opposing tasks have the effect of obliterating all tracks“.

and

There exist ways and means in the world of carrying out what I might call ‘mass hypnosis’. To bring about a suggestion on a grand scale you have to place something in the world which makes an impression. Just as it is possible to insinuate an idea into the mind of an individual (in the way I have shown), so too, by using suitable means, suggestions can be made to whole groups of people, especially when one knows what actually binds these groups together.

It is possible to steer a force that lives in an individual person in a particular direction. This person may then be totally convinced of his deep love of peace; and yet he does what he does because somehow or other a suggestion has been planted in him. He is quite at odds with what he does.

In the same way, with the right knowledge, similar things can be done to whole groups; it is merely a matter of selecting the appropriate means. You take a force that lives but has no particular direction (…) and by suggestion on a grand scale you nudge it into a definite direction.

1916-12-16-GA173 (c)

I am convinced that one of the chief causes for the painful events going on in the world today is the attitude that a blind eye can be turned to certain matters, while others are discussed on the basis of an entirely false premise. Even in the face of large-scale matters of this kind, each individual should start from a foundation of self-knowledge. And a portion of self-knowledge is involved if we recognize that to claim no interest in these things and to want only to hear of esoteric matters is, in a small way, no different from all that adds up to the events we are experiencing today. For spiritual things are not only those which have to do with higher worlds. These, to start with, are of course occult for everybody. But much of what takes place on the physical plane is also occult ['hidden from sight or understanding'] for many people. ... we can only hope that much of what is occult and hidden on this plane may be revealed. For one of the causes of today’s misery is that so much remains occult for so many people, who nevertheless persist in forming judgements.

1916-12-24-GA173

is about subconscious influences and lowered consciousness

You can see, particularly in peoples’ everyday lives, what happens if they are being influenced at a subconscious level. You can hypnotise an individual person, so that once he is hypnotised he is in your power, and you can make him do things he would never consider doing in a waking state. You can hypnotise him, which means putting him into a state of consciousness belonging to ages long past, and you may have all sorts of intentions for doing so. In the same way, it is possible to hypnotise whole communities. An individual person is stronger in the physical world than is a group, and it therefore necessary to lower his consciousness considerably more in order to work through him while he is in this other consciousness. In the case of a community or group of people the lowering of consciousness need not even be noticeable, for it can be far more slight....

1917-01-15-GA174 (SWCC)

...

Now we come to the third element, the one which corresponds to the fifth Postatlantean period and has the task of bringing into being the culture of the consciousness soul: the English, the British element. The sentient soul element, brought into culture by the Italian-Spanish sphere, expresses itself in the theocratic element of the cultus — the sentient soul does not live in consciousness. Similarly the political and diplomatic element corresponds to the French sphere. And now in the British sphere we have the commercial and industrial element, in which the human soul lives fully and entirely in the material world of the physical plane. But we must make clear an important difference. The Papacy could only pretend to world dominance for one particular reason.

Here [the lecturer drew] is the fourth Postatlantean period.

• Now comes the first element, A, of the fifth Postatlantean period, the papal, hierarchical element. It strives for a kind of universal monarchy because in a certain way it is the continuation of the universal Roman Empire.
• Here, B, is the culture of the intellectual or mind soul. It also strives for something universal, but it is something universal that is very much in the realm of ideas. The most important consequence of the spread of the French element are not the conquests, which are merely side-effects, but the saturation of the world with the political spirit, with political, diplomatic thinking and feeling — that diplomatic, political thinking found not only in French diplomacy and politics, but also in literature and even the other aspects of French artistic life. A univer­sal monarchy in connection with this could only be described as a kind of universal dream. And the way in which France marched in the forefront of civilization is a very exact expression of this dream.-
• In contrast, we now come to the third element, C. This, in harmony with the whole of the fifth Postatlantean period, which has the task of bringing to expression the consciousness soul, is what corresponds to the British element, the special bearer of the consciousness soul in the age which is to develop especially the consciousness soul. Hence the pretension of the British element to universal commercial and industrial world dominance.

.. things which have their foundation in the spiritual world will,with all certainty, run their course, and become fact.Do not imagine that you can moralize or theorize about this. Nobody need believe, therefore, that the mission of the British people will not - out of inner necessity - become fact: namely, the mission to found a univer­sal commercial and industrial monarchy over the whole earth. The pretensions emerge as realities. These things have to be recognized as lying in world karma. And what people express and what they think is only a revelation of spiritual forces behind the scenes. So nobody should believe that British politics will ever be morally reformed and withdraw, out of consideration for the world, from the pretension to dominate the world industrially and commercially.

Therefore we need not be surprised either that those who understand these things have founded societies whose sole aim is to realize such aims by the use of means which are also spiritual means.

This is where the forbidden interplay begins. For obviously occult principles, occult means and occult impulses are not permissible as promoters, as driving forces, especially in the fifth Postatlantean period, which ought to be a purely materialistic civilization. The moment occult impulses work behind the spread of this purely materialistic culture, things become questionable. Yet, as I have shown you, this is what is happening. There are those who want to foster world dominance not only with the forces available an the physical plane, but also with the impulses of occultism, the impulses which lie in the world of the invisible. But these occult means are not used to work for the good of mankind in general but only for the good of a group. If you see the connection between such encompassing viewpoints, given to you from deeper knowledge, and everyday events, you will thoroughly understand a great deal.

There are still plenty of praiseworthy idealists — this is not meant as any kind of mockery, for idealism is always praiseworthy, even when it errs — who believe that the network of commercial and industrial measures, which has been spread by the British Empire over various countries, can only last as long as the war, and that after that people will once more be free to go about their own commercial business. Apart from a few illusions which will be raised by creating some interregnum or other, or by some other means to prevent people from becoming suspicious, all the measures that have been set up during this war to control commercial traffic throughout the world are not intended as something that will disappear once the war is over, but as something which is only beginning with the help of the war and will then continue. The war merely provides the opportunity for noses to be poked into business records. But do not imagine that this poking of noses into business records will cease after the war. I am speaking symbolically to describe something that will take place on the widest scale.

What I mean is that commercial world dominance will become more and more thorough.

I am not saying all this in order to be inflammatory, but simply in order to show you what, out of the impulses of world history, really is the case. Only by recognizing what is really the case can people learn to conduct themselves appropriately.

[Map of Europe]

That is no doubt why that map of the European world turned out in the way I showed you on the blackboard yesterday. Let me repeat: I have traced this map back to the eighties of the nineteenth century. How far back it goes beyond that I do not know. I state only what I know, only what I can assert with certainty. That is why I have said nothing about the Scandinavian countries, since I do not know whether any plans have been made for them too. I limit myself strictly to what I know, and wish to stress this particularly on this occasion, though it is a principle which I follow on every occasion.

Further, this map, this rearrangement of European affairs, has the tendency to serve the formation of a universal commercial monarchy. Europe is to be arranged in such a way that a universal commercial monarchy can be founded. I am not saying that this is to happen by tomorrow. But you can see that part payments are already being demanded. Only compare the most recent note to Wilson with the map of Europe, and there you have it. Nothing is said as yet about Switzerland. This payment on account will be demanded later. But as the demands appear one by one they will correspond to the map I drew yesterday.

The division of Europe shown there is suited to the founding of commercial world dominance. Study the details of this map and you will see that it is well conceived as a basis for founding what I have just said. I said: commercial world dominance. There is no need actually to possess all the territories, for it is quite sufficient to arrange them in such a way that they fall into one's sphere of influence. It is also very cleverly arranged so that at first those very regions will be drawn into the sphere of influence which I yesterday coloured yellow, as being the ones to be claimed as British: the peripheral ter-ritories. Indeed, in order to leave the others a little longer in the warm glow of a certain idealism, it is possible to arrange things in such a way that one practises the commercial domination oneself while leav-ing the others to play about with territories for a little longer. But the spheres of influence will be established as the drawing shows. It is quite irrelevant whether in the year 1950 there will be a Belgium, or a France extending right up to the border. The important thing is what power Belgians have in Belgium, or the French in France, and what power the British have in Belgium or France. In order to found commercial world dominance it is not necessary to actually possess the territories. What we must be clear about is that this world dominance is to be commercial and industrial. This is the basis for something extremely important.

[Two regions, the divide]

I should have to give a whole series of lectures if I needed to prove these things to you in detail. This would be perfectly possible, for the things I am saying can be proved very profoundly. Today, however, I can only draw an outline.

In order to found a commercial and industrial world dominance, the first thing to do is to divide the main region into two parts. This has to do with the nature of commercial and industrial affairs. I can only explain this by using an analogy: Whatever takes place on the physical plane always requires a splitting into two parts.

Imagine a teacher without any pupils; there is no such thing. In the same way there cannot be a commercial empire without another region which is its counterpart. Therefore if a British commercial empire is founded, then a Russian opposite pole must be founded too. So that a differentiation can arise between buying and selling, so that the necessary circulation can come about, two regions are needed. If the whole world were to be made into a unified realm, it would be impossible to found a universal commercial realm. It is not quite the same, but similar to saying that if you produce something you need a buyer, otherwise you cannot produce. So this twofold split is necessary.

And the fact that this has been initiated as a major trend is a great - indeed, a gigantic - conception on the part of those secret brotherhoods of which I have spoken. To create this contrast is a conception of universal proportions, against which everything else pales into insignificance: this contrast, between the British commercial empire on the one hand and, on the other, all that emanates from the Russian sphere involving, through their spiritual capacities, preparations for the sixth Postatlantean cultural age, together with everything I have described to you. It is a great, gigantic, admirable conception of these secret brotherhoods about whom we have spoken. Put simply, it is hardly possible to imagine a better opposite pole for what has developed in the West — namely, the supreme flowering of commercial and industrial thought — than the future Russian Slav who in times to come is sure to be even less inclined than he is today to occupy himself professionally with commercial matters, and who, just because of this, will be an excellent polar opposite.

...

[section]

...

In short, you can follow in every detail the gigantic, splendid thought on which this map is based. We have not enough time today to go through everything in detail. But it is a gigantic, splendid thought to leave only the southern ports which lead to the Mediterranean open for France, whilst keeping the others under one's own sphere of influence. This means that the French Empire, which France was anyway only able to found under the protection of the others, becomes an Illusion, and can also be included in one's sphere of influence. If you follow all this, you will see in how gigantic a manner is to be realized - out of what belongs to the culture of the consciousness soul - what these occult schools are striving to achieve.

Those things which correspond to certain impulses do come to pass. For necessity governs world history and world evolution: these things do come to pass. But they come to pass in such a way that forces really do mutually affect one another. Just as there can never be positive without negative electricity; where opposites work on one another with varying intentions — so is it also in the events of human history.

Therefore we must be careful, when we turn our attention to such things, to apply judgement that is free of moralizing. This also saves us from asking: Why must such a thing happen? For in the mission of one element or another is included the fact that things develop which must develop. And the adversary, the opposite pole must also exist: namely, something that resists whatever it is that wants to come about. This also must exist.

So if we now once again take a wide view of all these things, we shall see something working in from the periphery which we have characterized as these three elements.

First let us return to the centre. Our concern here is that the adversary, the opposite pole should be there, so that a kind of brake can always be applied. This brake is just as necessary as the other element.

And I blame one as little as I praise the other. I am simply describing the impulses and the facts. I have not the least inclination to pronounce a morally disparaging judgement on something I am describing as a necessity arising out of the whole character of the fifth Postatlantean age.

There is nothing bad about giving the world a materialistic, industrial, commercial culture, for this is a necessity. But the opposite pole must exist, too, for human evolution cannot proceed in a straight line. Opposing forces must clash with one another, and in this clash reality evolves.

...

.. truth is not the concern of this note, for its aim is to say what it wants to say while counting on it that the magical power of modern journalism has persuaded people to believe everything. And you can certainly often count on this. The power of journalism is indeed one of the means on which certain societies count.

..

...

You will agree — neither one thing nor the other can be called either justified or unjustified; things simply have to be comprehended as necessary facts. But we must be clear that we surely ought to under-stand these things properly.

It is easy to ask the question: What can I myself do in these painful times?

The first thing one can do is to endeavour to understand things, to really see through things. This brings up thoughts which are real forces and these will have an effect.

What about the question: Have the good forces no power against the evil forces we see all around us? To answer this we have to remember how difficult human freedom makes it for the spiritual world to assert itself amid the surging waves of materialistic life. This is what it is all about. Is it to be made so very easy for human beings to enter fully into the life of the spirit?

Future ages will look back to today and say: How careless these people were with regard to adopting the life of spirit! The spiritual world is sending it down to us, but human beings resist it with all their might. Apart from all the sadness and suffering holding sway at present, the very fact that all this does hold sway is in itself a destiny signifying a trial. Above all it should be accepted and recognized as a trial. Later it will become apparent to what extent it is necessary for those who — so it is said — are guilty, to suffer together with those who are blameless. For after all, during the course of karma all these things are balanced out. You cannot say: Are not the good Spirits going to intervene? They do intervene to the extent that we open ourselves to them, if we have the courage to do so. But first of all we must be serious about understanding things; we must be deeply serious about trying to understand.

As a contribution to this understanding it is necessary that a number of people muster the strength to oppose the surging waves of materialism with their deepest personal being.

[Japanese and Chinese following]

For something else is going to unite with the materialism that works in the industrial, commercial impulse; something coming from other, retarded impulses from the Chinese and Japanese element, particularly the Japanese element, will become increasingly caught up in materialism. Yesterday somebody asked whether the societies working from the West for a particular group did not take into account that the Japanese might follow suit from the East. Indeed, the people who belong to these societies do not regard this as something terrible, for they see it as a support for materialism. For what follows suit from Asia will simply be a particular form of materialism.

What we must be clear about, at all costs, is that we have to oppose the waves of materialism with all our strength. Every human being is capable of doing this. And the fruits of such efforts will be sure to follow. There is no need to give a name to whatever it is that must work against materialism. ... But do consider how a counteraction of forces can come about and how this can be objectively proved.

[Important section: the two sentences]

You can summarize in two sentences what is needed to work against materialism - which, after all, has some justification.

• In the fifth Postatlantean period the world will become even more pervaded by the industrial and commercial element;
• but the opposite pole must also exist: There must be people who work on the opposite side because of their understanding of the situation.

For what is the aim of these secret brotherhoods? They do not work out of any particular British patriotism, but out of the desire to bring the whole world under the yoke of pure materialism. And because, in accordance with the laws of the fifth post-Atlantean period, certain elements of the British people as the bearer of the consciousness soul are most suitable for this, they want, by means of grey magic, to use these elements as promoters of this materialism.

This is the important point. Those who know what impulses are at work in world events can also steer them. No other national element, no other people, has ever before been so usable as material for transforming the whole world into a materialistic realm. Therefore, those who know want to set their foot on the neck of this national element and strip it of all spiritual endeavour — which, of course, lives equally in all human beings. Just because karma has ordained that the consciousness soul should work here particularly strongly, the secret brotherhoods have sought out elements in the British national character. Their aim is to send a wave of materialism over the Earth and make the physical plane the only valid one. A spiritual world is only to be recognized in terms of what the physical plane has to offer.

This must be opposed by the endeavours of those who understand the necessity of a spiritual life on earth. Looked at from this point of view, you can express this counter-force in two sentences.

[Sentence 1: "My kingdom is not of this world"]

One of these is well-known to you, but it does not yet come fully out of the hearts and souls of human beings: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' The sentence 'My kingdom is not of this world' must sound forth against that kingdom which is to be spread over the physical plane, that kingdom which is only of this world, that kingdom of com-mercial and industrial materialism.

There is not enough time today to explain to you how the words `My kingdom is not of this world' link up with the cultivation of what belongs to mankind as a whole — not to what is German, but to what belongs to mankind as a whole. In ancient India there were four castes, in ancient Greece four estates. They came into being one after the other during the course of the second, third and fourth Postatlantean periods. In the fifth Postatlantean period the fourth estate, social life, that which belongs to mankind as a whole, must come into being.

Not everyone can be a priest, but the priestly element can strive to become the powerful, the dominant estate. We see it doing this in the third cultural age; there we see it coming to life again in the hierarchical, theocratic, Roman force. And we can see the second caste, the kingly estate in ancient Greece and Rome, coming to life again in the second Postatlantean element, where the diplomatic, political element is particularly active; for the republican element in France is only the opposite pole of this, just as everything generates its own counterpart. The actual character of the French state corresponds solely to the monarchic principle, so that even now France is a Republic in name only. In reality she is ruled by a king, who happens to be a lawyer who used to conduct cases in Romania. ' It is not a question of terminology but of facts. What is so terrible today is the way people allow themselves to be so easily intoxicated by words. If somebody is called a president it does not necessarily mean that he is a president, for what matters is the actual situation.

The third estate, as we know, is the industrial element, what was commerce in ancient Egypt and Greece. This is striving to come to the fore again in the British Empire and for the moment must still be dominant over the fourth element, which will eventually be the general, human element. It is interesting to observe this in one particular phenomenon. You do have to gain some insight into what is really going on if you want to understand the world.

...

On this basis its three great principles are developed:

• Firstly the principle of the materialistic view of history,
• secondly the principle of added value, and
• thirdly the principle of class war.

...

It is interesting that no theory has been worked out for the general human element, the fourth caste or dass. In this element there can be no question of dominance, for there is nothing below it over which dominance might be exercised; it is solely a matter of laying the foundation for human beings to relate with one another. A theory for this will only come about when the general human element given in anthroposophical spiritual science is made the foundation.

[Second sentence: "Render to Caesar"]

This, if it is not misunderstood, will lead to that other, second sentence which is to be added to the first: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' The second sentence is: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.'

This means that a proper attitude to life, a real cultivation of life, can only come about when one realizes that the spiritual element must be cultivated, because the spiritual world must penetrate down into the physical world. But there is no point in making any statements at all unless they can be comprehended wholeheartedly in the soul.

These statements must be comprehended: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's' and 'My kingdom is not of this world.' Then the atmosphere of the spiritual world will come, an atmosphere that has nothing to do with those materialistic things which have especially to develop in the fifth post-Atlantean period. But for this to happen, things must be seen in their true guise.

…

It is not what is said that is important but whether what is said conforms with reality.

1917-01-22-GA174

describes the strategy of certain brotherhoods striving for 'ahrimanic immortality'

see extract on: Structure of Man between death and a new birth#1917-01-22-GA174

1917-05-20-GA174A

DE PDF page 186

discusses 869 and monism, and goes on to say

And it will come - and do not think this is a yoke - that the spirit will be abolished.

To the various types of medicines that exist for the body today, will come another series that will have as a purpose to treat those who talk about such fantasies as spirit and soul. Those people will be treated and be infused with medication, so they do not talk about spirit and soul any more. For the spirit, it sufficed to just abolish it; however the soul will only be cast out of Man by the right medical treatment.

As grotesque as it appears today, the tendency of this stream goes towards finding substances, whereby one will vaccinate children with things so the bodily organization gets paralyzed in such way, that the materialistic attitude will live so well in Man, that he will hardly come to consider the old ideas of soul and spirit as something other than what people believed in ancient times.

1917-10-07-GA177

extract from online english translation

The time will come — and it may not be far off — when quite different tendencies will come up at a congress like the one held in 1912 and people will say: It is pathological for people to even think in terms of spirit and soul. ‘Sound’ people will speak of nothing but the body. It will be considered a sign of illness for anyone to arrive at the idea of any such thing as a spirit or a soul. People who think like that will be considered to be sick and — you can be quite sure of it — a medicine will be found for this. At Constantinople the spirit was made non-existent.

The soul will be made non-existent with the aid of a drug. Taking a ‘sound point of view’, people will invent a vaccine to influence the organism as early as possible, preferably as soon as it is born, so that this human body never even gets the idea that there is a soul and a spirit.

.

The two philosophies of life will be in complete opposition.

• One movement will need to reflect how concepts and ideas may be developed to meet the reality of soul and spirit.
• The others, the heirs of modern materialism, will look for the vaccine to make the body ‘healthy’, that is, makes its constitution such that this body no longer talks of such rubbish as soul and spirit, but takes a ‘sound’ view of the forces which live in engines and in chemistry and let planets and suns arise from nebulae in the cosmos. Materialistic physicians will be asked to drive the souls out of humanity.

with below the German version from the fifth edition (1999)

Man soll sich nur nichts vormachen. Man steht vor einer ganz bestimmten Bewegung. Wie damals auf jenem Konzil in Konstantinopel der Geist abgeschafft worden ist, das heißt, wie man dogmatisch bestimmt hat: Der Mensch besteht nur aus Leib und Seele, von einem Geist zu sprechen ist ketzerisch -, so wird man in einer ändern Form anstreben, die Seele abzuschaffen, das Seelenleben.

Und die Zeit wird kommen, vielleicht gar nicht in so ferner Zukunft, wo sich auf solch einem Kongreß wie dem, welcher 1912 stattgefunden hat, noch ganz anderes entwickeln wird, wo noch ganz andere Tendenzen auftreten werden, wo man sagen wird: Es ist schon krankhaft beim Menschen, wenn er überhaupt an Geist und Seele denkt. Gesund sind nur diejenigen Menschen, die überhaupt nur vom Leibe reden. - Man wird es als ein Krankheitssymptom ansehen, wenn der Mensch sich so entwickelt, daß er auf den Begriff kommen kann: Es gibt einen Geist oder eine Seele. - Das werden kranke Menschen sein. Und man wird finden - da können Sie ganz sicher sein - das entsprechende Arzneimittel, durch das man wirken wird. Damals schaffte man den Geist ab. Die Seele wird man abschaffen durch ein Arzneimittel. Man wird aus einer «gesunden Anschauung» heraus einen Impfstoff finden, durch den der Organismus so bearbeitet wird in möglichst früher Jugend, möglichst gleich bei der Geburt, daß dieser menschliche Leib nicht zu dem Gedanken kommt: Es gibt eine Seele und einen Geist.

So scharf werden sich die beiden Weltanschauungsströmungen gegenübertreten. Die eine wird nachzudenken haben, wie Begriffe und Vorstellungen auszubilden sind, damit sie der realen Wirklichkeit, der Geist- und Seelenwirklichkeit gewachsen sind. Die ändern, die Nachfolger der heutigen Materialisten, werden den Impfstoff suchen, der den Körper «gesund» macht, das heißt, so macht, daß dieser Körper durch seine Konstitution nicht mehr von solch albernen Dingen redet wie von Seele und Geist, sondern «gesund» redet von den Kräften, die in Maschinen und Chemie leben, die im Weltennebel Planeten und Sonnen konstituieren. Das wird man durch körperliche Prozeduren herbeiführen. Den materialistischen Medizinern wird man es über- geben, die Seelen auszutreiben aus der Menschheit.

Ja, diejenigen, die glauben, daß man mit spielerischen Begriffen in die Zukunft sehen kann, die irren gar sehr. Mit ernsten, gründlichen, tiefen Begriffen muß man in die Zukunft sehen. Geisteswissenschaft ist nicht eine Spielerei, ist nicht bloß eine Theorie, sondern Geisteswissen- schaft ist gegenüber der Entwickelung der Menschheit eine wirkliche Pflicht.

1917-10-14-GA177

is about link between Ahrimanic spirits and bacilli (form of bacteria)

If you were to go back to very early times in evolution, you would find a battle similar to the one I have just described.

As already mentioned, these battles have recurred over and over again, but always on different issues.

In the distant past, the crowd of ahrimanic spirits were also cast down from the spiritual worlds into the earthly realm when they had lost such a battle. You see, they would return to the attack again and again. After one of these battles, for example, the crowd of ahrimanic spirits populated the earth with the earthly life-forms which the medical profession now calls bacilli. Everything which has the power to act as a bacillus, everything in which bacilli are involved, is the result of crowds of ahrimanic spirits being cast down from heaven to earth at a time when the dragon had been overcome. In the same way the ahrimanic, mephistophelean way of thinking has spread since the late 1870s as the result of such a victory. Thus we are able to say that tubercular and bacillary diseases come from a similar source as the materialism which has taken hold of human minds.

...

This is tremendously important. There always is the danger of people continuing in materialism, in the materialistic, ahrimanic way of thinking, and carrying this on into ages when, according to the plan of things, it should have been overcome. The people who do not turn away from the ahrimanic, materialistic way of thinking and want to keep it, would then be in league with everything which has come about through similar victories won over the dragon by Michael. They therefore would not unite with spiritual progress in human evolution but with material progress. And a time would come in the next sixth cultural age when the only thing to please them would be to live in something which will have been brought about by bacilli, those microscopically small enemies of humanity.

...

You see from this how unconsciously human beings are, in fact, being guided. But we are now in an age when such things must be perceived and understood. It is necessary to link such an idea with the other ideas we have characterized today. A time will come when we must have transformed our materialistic ideas to such an extent that we can progress to a more spiritual form of existence, but by then the earth will have been a corpse for a long time. It will no longer support us, and incarnations in the flesh such as we seek today will no longer be sought. But the individuals who have become so tied up with the materialistic way of thinking that they cannot let go of it will still sneak down to that earth and find ways of involving themselves in the activities of bacilli — the tubercle bacillus and others — bacillary entities which will be rummaging through every part of the earth's corpse. Today's bacilli are merely the prophets, let us say, of what will happen to the whole earth in future. Then a time will come when those who cling to the materialistic way of thinking will unite with the moon powers and surround the earth, which will be a burnt-out corpse, together with the moon. For all they want is to hold on to the life of the earth and remain united with it; they do not want to take the right course, which is to progress from the earth's corpse to what will be the future soul and spirit of the earth.

1917-10-27-GA177

I have spoken of the profoundly significant battle which took place in the spiritual regions of the world between the early 1840s and the autumn of 1879. This was one of the battles which occur repeatedly in world and human evolution and are customarily represented by the image of Michael or St George fighting the dragon. Michael won one such victory over the dragon on behalf of the spiritual worlds in 1879. At that time the spirits of darkness who worked against the Michaelic impulses were cast down from the spiritual realm into the human realms. .. from that time onwards they have been active in the feeling, will and mind impulses of human beings. Present-day events can therefore only be understood if one turns the inner eye to the spiritual powers which are now moving among us.

...

On the other hand, the spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be found. The most dangerous thing you can do in the immediate future will be to give yourself up unconsciously to the influences which are definitely present. For it makes no difference to their reality whether they are recognized or unrecognized.

It will be the main concern of these spirits of darkness to bring confusion into the rightful elements which are now spreading on earth, and need to spread in such a way that the spirits of light can continue to be active in them. They will seek to push these in the wrong direction. I have already spoken of one such wrong direction, which is about as paradoxical as is possible. I have pointed out that while human bodies will develop in such a way that certain spiritualities can find room in them, the materialistic bent, which will spread more and more under the guidance of the spirits of darkness, will work against this and combat it by physical means. I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination towards spirituality out of people's souls when they are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body.

Today, bodies are vaccinated against one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated with a substance which it will certainly be possible to produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not develop foolish inclinations connected with spiritual life - ‘foolish’ here, of course, in the eyes of materialists.

...

The whole trend goes in a direction where a way will finally be found to vaccinate bodies so that these bodies will not allow the inclination towards spiritual ideas to develop and all their lives people will believe only in the physical world they perceive with the senses. Out of impulses which the medical profession gained from presumption — oh, I beg your pardon, from the consumption they themselves suffered — people are now vaccinated against consumption, and in the same way they will be vaccinated against any inclination towards spirituality. This is merely to give you a particularly striking example of many things which will come in the near and more distant future in this field — the aim being to bring confusion into the impulses which want to stream down to earth after the victory of the [Michaelic] spirits of light [in 1879].

another shorter quote from the above in other translation

Today [in 1917] bodies are inoculated against one and the other; in the future children will be inoculated with a substance which can certainly be produced, and this will make them immune so that they do not develop foolish tendencies connected with the spiritual life — 'foolish' here, of course, in the eyes of the materialists.

The following two 1917-11 GA178 lectures below should be read completely, as they sketch the whole situation.

1917-11-04-GA273

Today these Spirits have begun their work in a forceful way by emphasizing the principle of nationality abstractly. This abstract emphasizing of the principle of nationality, this drawing up of programmes based on the principle of nationality, forms part of the strivings which must be described as the strivings of the Spirits of Darkness.

They will approach Man far more closely, far more intimately, than did the retarded spiritual beings of the 4th Postatlantean cultural age, who belonged to the hierarchy of the archangels.

...

We have already described that ever since the last third of the 19th century the beings whom I designated as the Fallen Spirits of Darkness are active among men.

..

The significant fact in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch will be above all, that the beings who stand immediately above the hierarchy of Man, the angel-beings, will be able to approach the individual human beings, not only groups of men, in a very intimate way, so that these individual men will think that they are upholding things which come out of their own personal impulses, whereas — we may indeed say this — they are possessed by this kind of angel-beings of whom I have spoken.

1917-11-18-GA178

(two versions on rsarchive) describes how materialism will rise for the next 4-500 years, and how brotherhoods headed by initiates are driving masses and populations into materialism, so these souls are fastened to the earthly sphere (see ties between dead and living)

But many other brotherhoods, called those of the left, tried to keep this knowledge for themselves, because when it is possessed by a small group, it gives them power over others who do not have it. And so endeavours were always made by certain groups to assure them power over others. Thus it could come about that a certain kind of knowledge was regarded as an esoteric possession, but was in fact utilised in order to gain power over one thing or another.

...

In this present time it is particularly necessary to be really clear about these things. For you know that since 1879 mankind has been living in a very special spiritual situation. Quite particularly powerful spirits of darkness were then cast down from the spiritual world into the human realm, and those persons who in a wrongful way keep the secrets connected with this event in the possession of their small groups are able to bring about everything possible by this means.

...

... brotherhoods always influence public opinion by disseminating this or that in such a way that it will disturb people as little as possible — who put out the idea that the time of materialism will soon be over, or indeed that it is already at an end. The poor, pitiable 'clever people', who to-day are promoting through so many gatherings and books and societies the idea that materialism is finished and that something of the spirit is now within reach, but without ever being able to offer people more than the word “spirit” and little phrases of a similar kind — these people are all more or less in the service of those who have an interest in declaring what is not true: that materialism is in ruins. That is far from true: on the contrary, a materialistic outlook makes progress and prospers best when people are taught that they are no longer materialists. The materialistic outlook is fast making headway and will continue to advance for some four or five hundred years.

and after some explanations (read lecture in full), comes the message:

Thus we see that in these cases - we might call them normal nowadays - when the threshold of death is crossed by souls who have not wanted to have anything at all to do with spiritual ideas and feelings, the souls become destructive centres, because they are held back in the earth-sphere. Only those souls who in this life are permeated by a certain connection with the spiritual world go through the gate of death in such a way that they are accepted in the spiritual world, set free from the earth-sphere, and are able to weave the threads that can continually be woven from themselves to those they have left behind. For we must be clear about this: the spiritual threads between the dead and those of us who were close to them are not severed by death; they remain and are indeed much more intimate than they were during life.

This that I have been saying must be taken as a very serious and important truth. Once again, it is not something known to me alone; others know that this is how things are at the present time. But there are many who make use of this truth in a very bad sense. For while there are misguided materialists who believe that this life is the only life, there are also initiates who are materialists and who disseminate materialistic teachings through their brotherhoods. You must not suppose that these materialists take the feeble-minded view that there is no such thing as spirit, or that men have no souls which can live independently of the body. You can be sure that anyone who has been really initiated into the spiritual world will never succumb to the foolishness of believing only in matter. But there are many who have a certain interest in spreading materialism and try by all sorts of means to ensure that the majority of men will believe only in materialism and will live wholly under its influence. And there are brotherhoods led by initiates who have this interest. It suits these materialists very well when it is constantly said that materialism has already been overcome. For anything can be promoted by talking about it in an opposing sense; the necessary manoeuvres are often highly complicated.

What then are the aims of these initiates, who in reality know very well that the human soul is a purely spiritual entity, independent of the body, and nevertheless cherish and cultivate a materialistic outlook in other people?

What they want is that the largest possible number of souls should absorb only materialistic ideas between birth and death. Thus these souls are made ready to linger on in the earth-sphere, to be held back there. And now observe that there are brotherhoods which are equipped to know all about this. These brotherhoods prepare certain human souls to remain after death in the realm of the material; then they arrange things - and this is quite possible for their infamous power - so that these souls come under the aegis of their brotherhood, and from this the brotherhood gains enormous strength. So these materialists are not materialists, for they believe in the spirit, these initiate-materialists are not so foolish as not to do that, and indeed they know the truth about the spirit well enough — but they compel human souls to remain bound to the material realm after death, in order to be able to use these souls for their own purposes. Thus these brotherhoods build up a sort of clientele of souls from among the dead who remain in the earth-sphere. These souls have in them certain forces which can be guided in the most varied ways, and by this means it is possible to achieve quite special opportunities for exercising power over those who are not initiated into these things.

Nothing less than that is the plan of certain brotherhoods. And nobody will understand these matters clearly unless he keeps the dust out of his eyes and refuses to be put off by suggestions that either such brotherhoods do not exist or that their activities are harmless. They are in fact extremely harmful; the intention of these initiates is that men should be led farther and farther into materialism, and should come to believe that there are indeed spiritual forces, but that these are no more than certain forces of nature.

and then is explained how the influence of the souls of the deceased are used for gaining earthly powers

In this way the 'harmless' people gradually become entirely dependent in their soul-life (on the lodge), without knowing that they are dependent or from what source they are being guided.

and continues:

Here we have the beginning of a trend which will gather force throughout the next four or five hundred years. For the moment the evil brotherhoods have put the brake on, but they will continue their activities unless they are stopped - and they can be stopped only if complacency regarding the spiritual-scientific world-outlook is overcome.

with the intentions of Western brotherhoods

There is something that works against this materialising of human souls, this exile of souls in the earthly sphere. The lodges exist on earth, and if the souls are to manifest and to be made use of in the lodges, they must be kept in this earthly exile. The power that works against these endeavours to operate through souls in the earthly realm is the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha. And this also is the healing impulse which acts against the materialising of souls. Now the way taken by the Christ is altogether outside the wills and intentions of men. Hence there is no man anywhere, and no initiate, whatever his knowledge, who can influence those actions of the Christ which in the course of the twentieth century will lead to that appearance of which I have often spoken to you and which you can find indicated in the Mystery Plays. That rests entirely with Christ alone. The Christ will be present as an etheric Being within the earth-sphere. The question for men is how they are to relate themselves to Him. No one, not even the most powerful initiate, has any kind of influence over this appearance. It will come! I beg you to keep firm hold of that. But measures can be taken with the aim of seeing to it that this Christ-Event is received in one way or another and has this or that effect.

.. the aim of those brotherhoods I have spoken of, who wish to confine human souls in the material realm, is that the Christ should pass by unobserved in the twentieth century; that His coming as an etheric individuality should not be noticed by men. And this endeavour takes shape under the influence of a quite definite idea and a quite definite purpose. These brotherhoods want to take over the Christ's sphere of influence, which should spread out more and more widely during the twentieth century, for another being (of whom we will later speak more precisely). There are Western brotherhoods who want to dispute the impulse of the Christ and to set in His place another individuality who has never appeared in the flesh — an etheric individuality, but a strongly Ahrimanic one.

All these methods I have told you about, this working with the dead and so on, have finally one single purpose — to lead people away from the Christ who has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, and to assign to another being dominion over the earth.

This is a very real battle, not an affair of abstract concepts; a real battle which is concerned with setting another being in place of the Christ-Being for the rest of the fifth Postatlantean cultural age, for the sixth and for the seventh.

One of the tasks of healthy, honest spiritual development will be to destroy and make away with such endeavours, which are anti-Christian in the highest degree. For this other being, whom these brotherhoods want to set up as a ruler, will be called “Christ” by them; yes, they will really call him “Christ!” And it will be essential for people to learn to distinguish between the true Christ, who will not this time appear in the flesh, and this other being who is marked off by the fact that he has never been embodied on the earth. It is this etheric being whom these brotherhoods want to set in the place of Christ, so that the Christ may pass by unobserved.

Here is one side of the battle, which is concerned with falsifying the appearance of Christ during the twentieth century. Anyone who looks only at the surface of life, and pays heed to all the external discussions about Christ and the Jesus-question, and so on, knows nothing of the deeper facts. All these discussions serve only to hide the real issues and to lead people away from them. When the theologians discuss 'Christ' in this way, a spiritual influence from somewhere is always at work, and these learned men are in fact furthering aims and purposes quite different from those they are aware of.

This is the danger of the idea of the unconscious: it leads to unclear thinking about all such connections. While the evil brotherhoods pursue their aims very consciously, these aims never enter the consciousness of the people who engage in all sorts of superficial discussions. We lose the truth of these things by talking of the “unconscious,” for this so-called unconscious is merely beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness, and is the very sphere in which someone who knows about these things can manipulate them.

Here we have one side of the situation: a number of brotherhoods actually do wish to substitute for the working of Christ the working of another being and are ready to use any means to bring this about.

and Eastern brotherhoods influencing the masses

On the other side are certain Eastern brotherhoods, especially Indian ones, who want to intervene no less significantly in the evolution of mankind. But they have a different purpose: they have never developed an esoteric method of achieving something by drawing the souls of the dead into the purview of their lodges: that is far removed from their aims. But in their own way they also do not want the impulses of the Mystery of Golgotha to work into the course of human evolution. Since the dead are not at their disposal, as they are for some of the Western brotherhoods I have mentioned, they do not wish to set against the Christ, who is to appear as an etheric individuality during the twentieth century, some other individuality; for that they would need the dead. But they do want to distract attention from the Christ; to prevent Christianity from rising to supremacy; to obscure the truth about the Christ, who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha after His one and only incarnation of three years on earth, and who cannot be incarnated again on earth. These brotherhoods do not want to control the dead in their lodges: in place of the dead they employ beings of another kind.

When a man dies, he gives up his etheric body, which separates from the physical body soon after death, and is then normally taken up into the cosmos. But before the Mystery of Golgotha something else was possible, and even afterwards it was still possible, especially in the East. When a Man surrenders his etheric body after death, certain beings can clothe themselves in it and become etheric beings with the aid of these etheric bodies of dead men. This is what happens in the East: demonic beings are enticed to clothe themselves in the etheric bodies which men have cast aside; and it is these spirits who are drawn into the Eastern lodges. The Western lodges, therefore, have the dead who are banished into matter; the Eastern lodges of the left have demonic spirits — spirits who do not belong to earth-evolution but have insinuated themselves into it by donning the discarded etheric bodies of dead men.

Esoterically, the procedure is to make this fact into an object of worship. You know that the calling up of illusions belongs to the arts of certain brotherhoods, because when men are not aware of how far illusion is present in the midst of reality, they can easily be taken in by skilfully produced illusions. The immediate object is achieved by introducing a certain form of worship.

Suppose I have a group of men with a common ancestry; then, after as an “evil” brother I have made it possible for the etheric body of a certain ancestor to be taken over by a demonic spirit, I tell the people that this ancestor is to be worshipped. The ancestor is simply the man whose cast-off etheric body has been taken over, through the machinations of the lodge, by a demonic spirit. So ancestor-worship is introduced, but the ancestors who are worshipped are simply whatever demonic beings have clothed themselves in the etheric bodies of these ancestors.

The Eastern peoples can be diverted from the Mystery of Golgotha by methods such as these. The result will be that for Eastern peoples — or perhaps for people generally, since that is the ultimate aim — the coming manifestation of Christ in our earthly world will pass unnoticed. These Eastern lodges do not want to substitute another Christ; they want only that the appearance of Christ Jesus shall not be noticed.

There is thus an attack from two sides against the Christ Impulse that is to manifest in etheric form during the twentieth century; and this is the situation in which we stand today. Particular trends are always only an outcome of what the great impulses in human evolution are bringing about. That is why it is so saddening to hear it said continually that influences from the so-called unconscious, are an effect of suppressed love or the like, when in fact influences from a highly conscious spirituality are at work on humanity from all sides, while remaining relatively unconscious if no conscious attention is paid to them.

1917-11-19-GA178

continues on the topic of 'brotherhoods manipulating masses' (SWCC)

I am not setting out historical laws or ideas, but stating facts that are connected with the plans and purposes both of certain personalities who are held together in brotherhoods and of other beings who work on these brotherhoods and whose influence is also sought. They are beings who are not incarnated in the flesh, but are embodied in the spiritual world. It is essential to keep this in mind when you hear what I told you yesterday. For where these brotherhoods are concerned, we have to do with various parties (re: earlier lectures, e.g. 'The Occult Movement in the 19th Century'). Thus there is one party which stands for keeping certain higher truths absolutely secret; and again, allowing for various shades of opinion, there are brothers, particularly since the middle of the fifteenth century, who hold that certain truths, if only those called for by the needs of the moment, should be carefully and pertinently disclosed. Besides these two main parties there are other variations; hence you will see that whatever influence is finally exerted on human evolution from the side of these brotherhoods will very often reflect some kind of compromise.

Early in the 1840s, those brotherhoods who have knowledge of the spiritual impulses that play into history saw coming on that battle of certain spiritual beings with higher spirits which terminated in 1879, when certain angel-beings, Spirits of Darkness, were cast down, an event symbolised by the victory of Michael over the dragon. When therefore, in the middle of the nineteenth century, these brotherhoods felt that this event was approaching, they had to decide what attitude to take towards it and to consider what should be done.

Those brothers who wished above all to reckon with the demands of the moment were actuated up to a certain point with the best intentions, but they were mistaken in their approach to the materialism of the time; they thought that men who were prepared to accept only what could be known in physical terms should be offered something from the spiritual world in a materialistic form. So it was with good intentions that Spiritualism was launched on the world in the 1840s.

Since at that time a critical mentality, concerned solely with the external world, was due to prevail on earth, it was necessary to give people at least some inkling, some feeling, that a spiritual world existed around them. And so now this compromise, as is the way with compromises, was put into effect. Those brothers who were altogether against communicating spiritual truths to mankind found themselves outvoted, one might say; they had to give in and agree. Even so, it was not their original intention to introduce the phenomena connected with spiritualism into the world. Where collective groups of people are concerned one always gets compromises, and naturally, when a collective decision has been reached, not only those who favoured it will be looking for results, but those who at first opposed it will be expecting something or other from it.

Thus the well-meaning members of these brotherhoods took the mistaken view that through the use of mediums people would be convinced of the presence around them of a spiritual world; then on the basis of this conviction it would be possible to impart higher truths. This could indeed have happened if the phenomena that came through the mediums had in fact been interpreted in the intended way, as evidence for the presence of an interpenetrating spiritual world. But — as I explained yesterday — something quite different resulted. The mediumistic phenomena were interpreted by those who took part in the seances as coming from the dead. Hence the experiment was a disappointment for all concerned. Those brothers who had allowed themselves to be outvoted were very grieved that the séance manifestations could be spoken of — sometimes correctly — as coming from the spirits of the dead. The well-intentioned progressive brothers had not expected any mention of the dead, but rather of a general elemental world, so they too were disappointed.

These activities are pursued above all by persons who have been in some way initiated. And besides the brotherhoods already mentioned, we have to reckon with others, or with sections of the same brotherhoods, wherein a minority of members, or even a majority, consists of initiates who within their brotherhoods are known as “brothers of the left;” they are those who treat every impulse that enters into human evolution as a question of power. Naturally, these brothers expected all sorts of things from spiritualism.

As I told you yesterday, it was these brothers of the left who were specially responsible for dealing in the way I described with the souls of the dead. Their interest was centred on observing what came out of the seances, and by degrees they got control of the whole field. The well-intentioned initiates gradually lost all interest in Spiritualism; they felt in a certain sense ashamed, because those who had all along opposed Spiritualism said they might have known from the start that nothing would come of it. But the result was that spiritualism came under the power of the brothers of the left. Yesterday I said that these brothers had been disappointed in the following way. They saw that spiritualism could bring to light what they had set on foot, and they were above all anxious that this should not happen. Since the persons attending the seances believed they were in touch with the dead, communications from the dead might reveal what the brothers of the left were doing with the souls of the dead. The very souls which they were misusing might manifest in the course of a séance.

You must please once more keep in mind that I am not expounding theories but relating facts — facts that go back to particular individuals. And when individuals are united in brotherhoods, they will differ in what they expect from the same event. When one speaks of facts that belong to the spiritual world, it is always a question of looking for the outcome of individual impulses. In ordinary life one action will often contradict another. If theories are discussed, the rule of contradiction must be observed. But when one is speaking of facts, then — just because they are facts — we shall very often find that facts in the spiritual world agree just as little as do human actions on the physical plane. Therefore I ask you to keep this in mind. One cannot talk of realities in these matters unless one talks of individual facts. That is the point. Therefore we must keep the various streams apart and distinguish between them.

1917-11-25-GA178

Two powers, especially, stand in opposition to each other: the power representing the principle that was overcome at the end of the eighteenth century and the power representing the new age. A great many people, of course, are instinctively supporters of the new age. Therefore the representatives of the old impulses, those of the eighteenth, seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, must be yoked by artificial means to the forces which emanate from certain brotherhoods who are working for group-egotistic ends. The most effective principle for extending power over as many men as may be needed is to-day the principle of economic dependence. But that is only an instrument: the real thing is quite different. The real issue you can gather for yourselves from all the various hints I have given. The economic principle is connected with everything which seeks to enlist a great number of men all over the world as a kind of army in the service of these principles.

These are the powers which stand opposed to each other. And this indicates what it is that is really battling in the world today. In the West we have the principle which is really rooted in the eighteenth, seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, but which passes unnoticed because it clothes itself in the phrases of revolution and democracy. It wears them as a mask and by this means strives to gain all possible power for itself. These endeavours are favoured if as many people as possible do not exert themselves to see things as they are, and in this field allow themselves to be lulled to sleep again and again by the illusion that today there is a war between the Entente and the powers of Central Europe. In reality there is no such war; only by going behind this illusion can one get at the real struggle, but light can be thrown on it if it is approached along the lines which, for certain reasons, I only hint at. At least we should endeavour not to take illusions for realities: then gradually the illusion will be dispelled as far as it need be. Above all we must strive to see these things objectively, as they really are.

1917-11-29-GA182

goes into the influence of the dead on the evolution we see in the world on Earth, bringing home more descriptive reality of what was said in 1917-11-18-GA178 (see above), of souls bouncing against a ceiling of the lower kingdoms if no spiritual concepts and thoughts in life on earth instead of solely materialistic. Short extract SWCC as a pointer to the lecture:

An essential aspect of life between death and a new birth is precisely that as souls we increasingly widen our circle of acquaintances. Just as here in earthly existence we widen our experiences between birth and death and acquaint ourselves with more and more of the world around us, so there we undergo more and more experiences that relate us to the fact that one senses the existence of other souls, that one knows that through some of the souls one experiences a strengthening of the will, through others a weakening. This is an essential part of our experience there.

You can realize the actual significance of this for all existence, for all cosmic existence. It means that actually, in a certain relation between death and a new birth, a spiritual circle of acquaintances is being formed among a great portion of humanity around the Earth .. . Really, if we look at what we experience between death and a new birth, we do not live all so far from human beings on earth. This is not an abstract bond but a really concrete one.

...

In yesterday's lecture I went so far as to draw attention to how a person, if he fails to acquire spiritual mental pictures during his earthly life, chains himself to this earthly life; in a sense, he cannot escape from it, and he becomes therefore a source of disturbance. Many of the destructive forces working in the Earthly sphere come from these dead individuals imprisoned in it.

One must have compassion for such human souls rather than judge them critically, because it is not particularly easy to have to remain after death within a realm that is actually not suited to the dead. The realms in this case are the mineral and plant realms, actually that mineral realm that the animals bear within them, that man himself bears within him. These beings are permeated by the mineral realm. For individuals who have not absorbed spiritual mental pictures, the situation is such that they shrink from this experience after death; feelings are aroused at all times, warning them that they cannot enter the realms that govern animal and human spirituality and that they can enter only what is mineral and plant nature.

I can scarcely depict this, because language has no words for it. One can only approach slowly and gradually what lies actually at the foundation, because the approach is at first something too frightful.

...

I consider it my main task today, through such mental pictures as these, to arouse in the consciousness an understanding of how the dead are participating in human evolution. One would really like to say these things today in public lectures, but one cannot, because people do not allow themselves such mental pictures unless they have already gone through something that has been communicated in our groups.

...

We must be clear that the dead have not died; the dead are still living on and working in the historical process of human evolution. We must be clear that the forces that spiritually surround us are forces of the higher hierarchies but also forces of the dead. The greatest illusion that future humanity could entertain would be to believe that the social life on earth that people develop among themselves through their feelings and their will happens merely through earthly arrangements, with the exclusion of the dead. This simply is not possible, because the dead are already participating within feeling and willing.

and then on the worldview war specifically:

The Mystery of Golgotha is not only a one-time event and, as such, the greatest single event in all of earthly evolution. It is also a continuing event, an impulse that continues to be active. Humanity must do something to allow this force to work on it in the right way. For a long time I have been emphasizing that the task of our spiritual science is connected with the impulse of Golgotha, that spiritual science must exist in a certain way for the impulse of Golgotha to be understood in the right way in our age and in the immediate future.

You can be sure that, as an earthly science that has become at the same time the world religion, natural science will gain greater and greater influence. I am often reproached for seeming to be unfriendly to the natural sciences, even in their radical developments, a reproach that belongs to the most old-fashioned prejudices imaginable, because whoever understands the course of the evolution of the earth understands that the natural sciences cannot be proved wrong and that, on the contrary, they will spread further and further. A kind of religious belief in them that now sweeps through the world is not to be halted in any way. It will come. It advances confidently, and it comes “for the blessing of humanity!”

The time will not be long, perhaps only a few decades, before all the religious faiths will find themselves unable to save even the most simple, primitive human beings from consciousness of a purely natural existence such as natural science cultivates. This is inevitable.

1918-10-09-GA182

see: What takes place as we sleep#1918-10-09-GA182

The second aspect is that from this work which involves changes affecting the angels themselves, still another result accrues for humanity: instinctive knowledge of certain medicaments — but knowledge of a baleful kind!

Everything connected with medicine will make a great advance in the materialistic sense. Men will acquire instinctive insights into the medicinal properties of certain substances and certain treatments — and thereby do terrible harm. But the harm will be called useful.

A sick man will be called healthy, for it will be perceived that the particular treatment applied leads to something pleasing. People will actually like things that make the human being — in a certain direction — unhealthy. Knowledge of the medicinal effects of certain processes and treatments will be enhanced, but this will lead into very baleful channels.

For Man will come to know through certain instincts, what kind of illnesses can be induced by particular substances and treatments. And it will then be possible for him either to bring about or not to bring about illnesses, entirely as suits his egotistical purposes.

1918-10-18/19-GA185

(From Symptom to Reality in Modern History). In 1918-10-18-GA185 (see evolution) the 30-years war is described in context of symptom on the surface of underlying impulses of consciousness soul. In 1918-10-19-GA185 then is described how from the stream of the crusades that spawned the Templars, that was supressed by Philip the Fair (members of the Order executed as heretics and their wealth confiscated ) there derived  a stream totally divested from its spiritual substance ..

From the synopsis of the lecture of 1918-10-19-GA185

The two streams of recent history: the chaotic search for liberty, equality and fraternity; the various Orders which seek to stifle the awakening of the Consciousness Soul for their own ends. Thus the impulse to transcend nationalism by the development of the personality was blunted.

The extract below provides a meta-perspective on the whole secret brotherhoods theme, now connecting it in as a symptom of opposing influences into the evolutionary goals of the epoch (namely the consciousness soul).

..  In order that Man may not be caught between the striving for the consciousness soul and the limitations of consciousness imposed upon him by Rome, attempts were made to stifle his aspiration for the consciousness soul, to undermine this aspiration even more radically than Rome.

...

And that from which spiritual substance had been extracted like the juice from a lemon, that which was transmitted in the form of exoteric freemasonry in the York and Scottish Lodges and pervaded especially the false esotericism of the English speaking peoples - this squeezed out lemon which contained the secrets of the Egypto-Chaldaean epoch, the third Postatlantean epoch, now served as a means of implanting desiccated impulses into the life of the consciousness soul. Thus there arises a situation which is a travesty of the future course of evolution

...

But what one takes over from the past can be used not only to suppress the autonomy of the consciousness soul by the power of suggestion, but also to blunt, even to paralyse its dynamic energy. And in this respect a large measure of success has been achieved; the incipient consciousness soul has been anaesthetized to a large extent.

...

Rome — I am now speaking figuratively — makes use of incense and induces a condition of semi-consciousness by evoking a dreamlike state. But the movement to which I am now referring lulls people to sleep (i.e. the consciousness soul) completely.

…

We have therefore two streams in contemporary history:

• on the one hand, since the impulse towards the consciousness soul already exists, there is the chaotic search for fraternity, liberty and equality.
• on the other hand we see the efforts on the part of widely differing Orders to suppress this awakening in the consciousness soul for their own ends.

These two currents interact throughout the whole history of modern times.

...

By the middle of the nineteenth century there was no political future for liberal ideas, for their representatives in later years give more or less the impression of casualties of political thinking. The latter-day liberal parties were simply stragglers, for, after the middle of the nineteenth century, the effect of what emerged from the Orders and secret societies of the West began to make its influence increasingly felt, namely, the anaesthetization, the stifling of the consciousness soul. Under these circumstances spirit and soul are no longer active, and only the forces of the phenomenal or sensible world are operative.

1918-10-26-GA185

It would have been a splendid thing if only a few people could have been found in Central Europe who, from an understanding of certain Masonic impulses, could have realized the significance of what I said here two years ago on the subject of secret societies. But, inevitably, there was no response. One cannot imagine a more sterile attitude than that of Central European Masonry in recent decades. This is shown by the fact, frequently mentioned, that one meets with resistance when one refuses to amalgamate in any way the teachings of spiritual science with the Freemasonry of Central Europe.

…

In order to arrive at an understanding of this, one must swallow a whole library of books — a most unpleasant prospect! But people find this prospect unpalatable, most unpalatable!

But if people find this prospect unpalatable, that is due to the impulse which is impelling our age towards catastrophe, to the tragedy of our time. This situation, however, is no cause for pessimism; rather is it a call to energetic action, to translate our knowledge into deeds. And this cannot be repeated too often.

Extract angels/archangels in blood/CNS

Before going on, I want to draw your attention to something of great significance which lies behind all these things. As you know, the transition from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period of civilization came in about 1413, that is in the fifteenth century. This has been characterized in many ways, but let me add today that spiritual guidance of earthly affairs involved mainly members of the hierarchy of Archangels — you will find some of the details in the small volume entitled The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Humanity. [ Note 1 ] As I said, they were mainly involved. Try with all intensity to gain an image of this: angelic spirits pursued their tasks in the spiritual worlds. Much happened on earth as a result. History, human life in the fourth post-Atlantean age, resulted on earth. Angelic spirits belonging to the hierarchy of Angels served the higher hierarchy of Archangels; they did this in such a way, however, that the relationship between members of the two hierarchies was entirely above the earthly and in the spiritual realm, hardly touching on human life. This changed with the coming of the fifth post-Atlantean age, for then the members of the hierarchy of the Angels became more independent in their task of guiding humanity. Thus humanity was more under direct guidance from the Archangels during the fourth post-Atlantean age and will be under direct guidance from the Angels during the fifth age — that is throughout our present fifth age, until the fourth millennium. We can therefore no longer say that the relationship is entirely unconnected with the physical world. This is how the fact can be presented at the spiritual level.

It can also be presented at a more physical level, for all things physical are in the image of the spirit. Looking for the indirect route by which the Archangels guided humanity by working with the Angels during the fourth post-Atlantean age, we can say: This was done via the human blood. And the social structure was also created via the blood, for it was based on blood relationship, on blood bonds. Both the Archangels and the Angels had their dwelling place in the blood, as it were. Truly, the blood is not merely something for chemists to analyse; it is also the dwelling place of entities from higher worlds.

During the fourth post-Atlantean age, therefore, the blood was the dwelling place of Archangels and Angels. This is changing with the fifth post-Atlantean age, for the Angels — I am referring to the Angels of Light, the normal Angels — will take possession more of the blood, and the Archangels will be more involved in the nervous system. This is putting it in the terms of the modern science of physiology. Using an older terminology I might also say: during the fifth post-Atlantean age the Archangels are essentially more at work in the brain and the Angels in the heart. You see, therefore, that a major change has occurred which can be traced all the way to the physical structure of human beings.

The things people do and achieve here on earth are connected with the spirits which are at work in them. People tend to imagine — not always correctly — that Angels and Archangels are somewhere in Cloud-cuckoo-land. If we were to take the whole of human neurological life as a place, and the whole of the blood life as another place, and add what belongs to these when we are in the other worlds between death and rebirth, we would have the realms of the Archangels and Angels.

The fifteenth century marked a specific period in earth evolution and in the corresponding evolution of the spiritual world. We can characterize the events of the time more or less as follows. In the fifteenth century the earth held the greatest attraction for the regular Archangels who were seeking to make the transition from the blood to the nervous system. Going back from the fourteenth to the thirteenth, twelfth and eleventh centuries we find the earth's power of attraction growing less and less; beyond that time it would grow less and less again. We might say the Archangels were directed by higher spirits to love earthly existence most of all during the fifteenth century. Strange as it may seem to many people today who think only in grossly materialistic terms, it is nevertheless true that earthly events are connected with such things.

How did America come to be rediscovered in such a strange way, and people began to make the whole world their own again — exactly at that time?

Because at the time the Archangels were most attracted to the earth. They therefore guided partly the blood and partly the nervous system in such a way that human beings began to go out from their centres of civilization to make the whole earth their own. Events like these must be seen in conjunction with spiritual activities, otherwise they cannot be understood. It does, of course, sound peculiar to people who think in crude materialistic terms if you say: America was discovered and everything we read about in so-called history happened because, within certain limits, that was the time when the earth held the greatest power of attraction for the Archangels.

The Archangels then began to train the Angels to take possession of the human blood, whilst the Archangels wanted to make the transition to the nervous system. By the early 1840s the point had come where certain retarded Angels made the attempt to take the place which belonged to the Archangels in the nervous system rather than reside and reign in the blood. We are therefore able to say that in the 1840s a significant battle developed in the way I have described and, if we consider its most material physical reflection, it took place between the human blood and the human nervous system.

The Angels of Darkness were cast out of the nervous system and into the human blood, and now wreak the havoc in the human blood which I have described. It is because they are at work in the human blood that all the things I have described as due to the influence of retarded Angels are happening here on earth. It is because they are at work in the human blood that people have become as clever as I have said. All this developed slowly and gradually, of course, and we are able to say that whilst the profound break came in 1841, the whole of the nineteenth century had been infected with it.

On finance

For once, therefore, a man woke up and saw that what mattered was not to proclaim democracy but to see the full reality, not to follow slogans, but to see things as they are. This would be particularly important today, for people would then realize that the events which reign with such blood and terror over the whole of humanity are guided and directed from just a few centres. People will never realize this if they persist in the delusion that nation is fighting nation, and allow the European and American Press to lull them to sleep over the kinds of relations that are said to exist between nations. Everything said about antagonism and opposition between nations only exists to cast a veil over the true reasons. For we shall never arrive at the real truth if we feed on words in order to explain these events, but only if we point to actual people. The problem is that this tends to be unpalatable today. And the man who woke up and wrote these statements in 1910 also presented some highly unwelcome accounts in his book. He produced a list of fifty-five individuals who are the real rulers and exploiters of France.

The list can be found in Francis Delaisi's La Democratie et les Financiers, [ Note 11 ] written in 1910; the same man has also written La Guerre qui vient, a book which has become famous.

In his La Democratie et les Financiers you will find statements of fundamental significance. There you have someone who has woken up to reality. The book contains impulses which allow one to see through much of what we should see through today, and also to cut through much of the fog which is made to wash over human brains today. Here again, we must resolve to look to reality.

The book has, of course, been ignored. It does, however, raise issues which should be raised all over the world today, for they would teach people much about the reality which others intend to bury under all their declamations on democracy and autocracy and whatever the slogans may be. The book also gives an excellent exposition on the extremely difficult position in which members of parliament find themselves. People think they can vote according to their convictions. But you would have to know all the different threads which tie them to reality if you wanted to know why they vote for one thing and against another. Certain issues really must be raised. Delaisi does so. Thus, for example, he considers a member of parliament and asks the question: Which side should the poor man support? The people pay him three thousand francs a year and the shareholders pay him thirty thousand francs!’ To pose the question is to answer it. So the poor dear man gets his three-thousand-franc allowance from the people, and thirty thousand francs from the shareholders! I think you will agree it is a good piece of proof, a sign of real acumen, to say: How nice that a socialist, a man of the people like Millerand [ Note 12 ] has gained a seat in parliament! Delaisi's question goes in another direction. He asks: How far can someone like Millerand, who was earning thirty thousands francs a year for representing insurance companies, be independent?

So for once someone did wake up.

He is well aware of the threads which run from the actions of such an individual to the different insurance companies. But such things, reported by someone who is awake and sees the truth, are ignored. It is, of course, only too easy to talk about democracy in the Western world. Yet if you wanted to tell people the truth you would have to say: ‘The man called so and so is doing this, and the one called so and so is doing that.’ Delaisi has found fifty-five men — not a democracy but fifty-five specific individuals — who, he says, govern and exploit France. There, someone has discovered the real facts, for in ordinary life, too, a feeling must awaken for the real facts.

Here is something else from Delaisi: There was once a lawyer who had all kinds of connections, not just insurance companies, but centres of finance, financial worlds. But this lawyer wanted to aim even higher; he wanted sponsorship not only from the worlds of finance, industry and trade, but also from the academic world of the French Academy. This is a place where the academic world can raise one to the sphere of immortality. There were two ‘Immortals’ within the Academy, however, who were involved in illegal trust dealings. They found it perfectly possible to combine their work for immortality with trust dealings which the law of the land did not permit. Then our sharp-witted lawyer defended the two Immortals in court and managed to get them off, to whitewash them so that no sentence was passed. They then had him admitted to the ranks of the ‘Immortals’. Science, responsible not for the temporal things of the world but for things eternal and immortal, made itself the advocate of this selfless lawyer. His name is Raymond Poincar. [ Note 12 ] Delaisi tells the story in his La Democratie et les Financiers.

It is not a bad thing to know these things, which are ingredients of reality. They must be seriously considered. And one is guided to develop something of a nose for reality when one takes up anthroposophy, whilst the materialistic education people have today, with innumerable channels opening into it from the Press, is designed to point not to the realities but to something which is cloaked in all kinds of slogans. And if someone does wake up, as Delaisi did, and writes about how things really are, how many people get to know about it? How many people will listen? They cannot listen, for it is buried by — well, by a life that again is ruled by the Press. Delaisi shows himself to be a bright person, someone who has gone to a lot of trouble to gain real insight. He is no blind follower of parliamentarianism, nor of democracy. He predicts that the things people think are so clever today will come to an end. He says so expressly, also with reference to the ‘voting machine’ — which is approximately how he puts it. He is entirely scientific and serious in his discourse on this parliamentary voting machine, for he understands the whole system which leads to these ‘voting machines’, where people are made to believe that a convinced majority is voting against a mentally unhinged minority. He knows that something else will have to take the place of this if there is to be healthy development.

This is not yet possible, for people would be deeply shocked if you were to tell them what will take its place. Only people initiated into spiritual science can really know this today. Forms which belong to the past will definitely not take its place. You need not be afraid that someone speaking out of anthroposophy will promote some kind of reactionary or conservative ideas; no, these will not be things of the past, but they will be so different from the ‘voting machine’ which exists today that people will be shocked and consider this madness. Nevertheless it will enter into the impulses of evolution in time. Delaisi, too, says: In organic development certain parts lose their original function and become useless but still persist for some time; in the same way, these parliaments will continue to vote for quite some time, but all real life will have departed from them.

You know that human beings have parts of the body which are like this. Some people can move their ears because the muscles for this existed in the past.

We still have those muscles, but they have become atavistic and have lost their function.

This is how Delaisi sees the parliament of the future; parliaments will be such atavistic remnants which have died and will drop off, and something quite different will come into human evolution.

I have quoted Delaisi and his book which appeared not so long ago, in 1910, to show you that there really are enough people — for one such individual will be enough for many thousands. It is important, however, not to ignore these people.

Apart from my efforts to introduce you to the laws of spiritual life and the impulses of spiritual life, I also regard it to be my function to draw attention to significant elements in present-day life. It means, of course, that initially you will hear aspects called significant in these lectures which are not considered significant in life outside, if you find them mentioned at all. The things we do must be radically and thoroughly different from those which are done outside. And we can only truly follow the science of the Spirit in the way it should be followed if we accept this in all its depth and seriousness

1918-11-03-GA185

On the other hand, amongst the English-speaking population in the West the princes and the aristocracy have everywhere infiltrated the Lodges.

It is a characteristic feature of the West that one cannot understand the state organization unless we bear in mind that it is permeated with the spirit of the Lodges - and France and Italy are thoroughly infected by it - any more than one can understand Central Europe unless one realizes that it is impregnated with Jesuitism.

We must bear in mind therefore that grievous mistakes have been made in respect of freedom of thought and social equality that must necessarily accompany socialism.

1918-12-01-GA186

see also: Hints of future etheric force technology#1918-10-12-GA184

... there are the capacities having to do with so-called material occultism. By means of this capacity — and this is precisely the ideal of British secret societies — certain social forms at present basic within the industrial system shall be set up on an entirely different foundation. Every knowing member of these secret circles is aware that, solely by means of certain capacities that are still latent but evolving in Man, and with the help of the law of harmonious oscillations, machines and mechanical constructions and other things can be set in motion. ...

These things are at present in process of development. They are guarded as secrets within those secret circles in the field of material occultism. Motors can be set in motion, into activity, by an insignificant human influence through a knowledge of the corresponding curve of oscillation. By means of this principle it will be possible to substitute merely mechanical forces for human forces in many things. The number of human beings on the Earth today in actual fact is 1,400,000,000. Labor is performed however, not only by these 1,400,000,000 persons — as I once explained here — but so much labor is performed in a merely mechanical way that we say the Earth is really inhabited by 2,000,000,000 persons. The others are simply machines. That is, if the work that is done by machines had to be done by people without machines, it would be necessary to have 600,000,000 more persons on the Earth.

If what I am now discussing with you under the name of mechanistic occultism enters into the field of practical action, which is the ideal of those secret centers, it will be possible to accomplish the work not only of 500,000,000 or 600,000,000 but of 1,080,000,000 persons. The possibility will thus come about of rendering unnecessary nine-tenths of the work of individuals within the regions of the English-speaking peoples.

Mechanistic occultism will not only render it possible to do without nine-tenths of the labor still performed at present by human hands, but will give the possibility also of paralyzing every uprising attempted by the then dissatisfied masses of humanity.

The capacity to set motors in motion according to the laws of reciprocal oscillations will develop on a great scale among the English-speaking peoples. This is known in their secret circles, and is counted upon as the means whereby the mastery over the rest of the population of the Earth shall be achieved even in the course of the current fifth post-Atlantean age.

1919-10-19-GA191

In this lecture, Rudolf Steiner lays out that since the time of the reformation three stages have been gone through, the dominance of econonomical Man, the bankers, and capitalism. He describes how at a time individual bankers held the power (with the well known example of Rothschild), but how the underlying powers have become impersonal, so we can talk of a spiritual power across souls and a subgroup of humanity.

1919-10-27-GA193

is called 'The ahrimanic deception'

If we inquire: Who stirs up nations against each other? Who raises the questions that are directing humanity today?

the answer is: the Ahrimanic deception which plays into human life. And in this field men very easily let themselves be deceived. They are not willing to descend to the lower strata where reality is to be found. For, you see, Ahriman skillfully prepares his goal beforehand; ever since the Reformation and the Renaissance, the economist has been emerging in modern civilization as the representative governing type. That is an actual historical fact. If you go back to ancient times, even to those that I have characterized today as the Luciferic—who were the governing types then? Initiates.

The Egyptian Pharaohs, the Babylonian rulers, the Asiatic rulers—they were initiates. Then the priest-type emerged as ruler and the priest-type was really the ruler right up to the Reformation and the Renaissance. Since that time the economist has been in command. Rulers are in fact merely the handymen, the understrappers of the economists. One must not imagine that the rulers of modern times are anything but the understrappers of the economists. And all that has resulted by way of law and justice—one should only study it carefully—is simply a consequence of what economically oriented men have thought.

In the nineteenth century the “economical” Man is replaced for the first time by the Man thinking in terms of banking, and in the nineteenth century there is created for the first time the organization of finance which swamps every other relationship.

One must only be able to look into these things and follow them up empirically and practically.

1920-02-08-GA196

Do not say to yourself: "There is not time." You will sometimes hear it said: "A person has so much to do these days, so very much to do, that there is no time to glimpse spiritual truths." I would like to tally up with you the amount spent chitchatting at "five o'clock teas" and "snacks" and "afternoon teas" and "morning drinks" and, in certain areas, "evening drinks" (there are such things) and also just in "shooting the breeze" and things of the sort, and you will see that there is a considerable amount of time in which people would have the opportunity (if they wanted to) of familiarizing themselves with things of tremendous import to the future of human evolution. It has nothing to do with time; it has to do with people's nonchalance, with their dormancy.

The disease Enchephalitis lethargicat has begun to be physically evident in some individuals now; it has already afflicted many others in all avenues of life in their soul life. Sleeping sickness of the soul is a very widespread epidemic.

Because in the end, what really matters is having the will to actuate one's spiritual forces.

...

Think about these things, for they are matters of great importance.

1920-02-21-GA196

discusses the power of secret societies

1920-09-21-GA197

.. if we want to achieve something in the world, then it is a question of giving it the opposite name to what it actually is in the normal sense for the development of mankind, so that one acquires an opposite name, so to speak. Humanity must learn to rise beyond blind faith in names ..

1921-01-16-GA203

Today the soul enters the body in a way which is consumptive. To an ever increasing degree this is the case; the souls which are born today has some destructive influence and lame the body, gradually dragging death forces through it. If evolution is to continue this way it will lead to the undermining and decline of earthly life. People would become weaker and weaker in their will forces. People will appear less and less able to have a grasp for detecting active impulses. People will gradually go through life like automatic detectors. How sad this is that we have to see the future in this way, and how seldom it happens that people are inwardly fired up through lively ideas. How often we find that people at present can be said to suffer from a soul sclerosis, turning out dead ideas and only allowing their minds to accept tradition and thus becoming machines.

It is really like this: if we go with an unprejudiced attitude through life and observe how people are placed in life, we can basically not differentiate, one person from another, amongst dozens of them. We can actually not tell them apart. We talk to A, to B, and then with C and they all say the same thing. Each one individually believes in having said something particular, but we can't find any particular difference between them, they all say the same thing. We actually only have one kind of human being in a variety of copies, and we can ask ourselves: Are we not being deceived — isn't what we talked about today the same as yesterday's conversation?

This corresponds completely to the observation of consecutive earthly lives in relation to our present earthly life. The soul no longer brings with it what it had in earlier lives, which went from one earthly life to the next and ever again appear, although with a decreasing power which is like an innate wisdom. That is no longer there. When we consider such souls and their connection to the external, sense perceptible scientific observation, then we see they are packed with transitory wisdom; with a wisdom which when expressed in imaginative ideas, is regarded as transitory. In order to conceal this fact by a terrible illusion, the old “Law of conservation of matter” in the nineteenth century was reinvented by the “Law of the conservation of energy.” This law was made up to conceal that there is nothing which can be conserved in nature, that everything is transient, even matter and energy.

Nothing is left over for the soul when it is reincarnated in the future as a human machine; the soul being crammed with sensory observation and scientific material, because this fails to exercise anything alive and gives no fructifying power to the soul.

The soul born today comes over from an earlier earthly life, eager to be fructified by something which in turn will help it progress in its next earthly life. However the absorption of knowledge stemming only from the perishable offers a soul death; murders the soul. This is something which must be considered in all earnestness today, when the idea continues that non-understanding can relate to obsolete dogma, that only laming, deadening can come through non-spiritually penetrated scientific knowledge, and that the soul must experience a second death, suffer a soul death. It depends on individuals and on humanity, to rejuvenate their souls.

1921-03-21-GA174B

main motives of leaders of the anglo-saxon politics:

• the future has to lead to world domination by the anglo-saxon race
• the unfeasibility of marxism has to be tried out in Russia

1922-12-03-GA219 (SWCC)

It is certainly true that .. the battle of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings in the Cosmos for the being of Man is still hidden from the majority of people in the dark recesses of their inner nature.

But these battles are now beginning to send their waves into that realm of existence of which men are clearly conscious. And today, if we are not to lead a sleepy existence in our civilization, we must know how to recognize the first waves that beat in upon us from those regions of the spiritual world which I have just character­ized.

These two hosts - the Luciferic in the warmth and airy element of the Earth, the Ahrimanic in the solid and watery - these two hosts send their waves into our cultural life today.

1923-07-11-GA224 (c)

.. gradually human beings do not want to think anymore, because it has begun to become unpleasant. Thinking has become uncomfortable. Mankind would much rather dream than think.

...

.. and if those external things, the outer development of cultures, were to go on and on and if there were not a strong inner spiritual drive in development, then it would actually be the case of all people becoming staggering dreamers.

This is to be taken quite seriously, such a thing is a possibility for humanity.

And this very thing can only be counteracted by really getting involved in courageously and boldly getting stuck into the spiritual world in the way that spiritual science wants to and as it really can. Today it is still possible that we will gather ourselves up so strongly as humanity that people will turn to inner activity. But it must be worked upon seriously using every means by all those who understand this.

Some quotes by Noam Chomsky

“The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies.”

...

“There has been a deepening recognition among elites in the West that as you begin to lose the power to control people by force, you have to start to control what they think.“

1924-09-12-GA346

see Sorat#1924-09-12-GA346 for longer excerpt with context

.. before this century is out he [Sorat] will show himself by making his appearance in many humans as the being by whom they are possessed. Human beings will appear of whom it will be impossible to believe that they are real human beings. They will even develop externally in a peculiar manner, for outwardly they will have intense, strong dispositions with savage features and furious destructiveness in their emotions. Their faces will be like the faces of beasts. The Sorat human beings will be recognizable by their external appearance; in a terrible way they will not only scoff at everything but also oppose and want to push into the pool of filth anything that is spiritual.

2002 - Rawn Clark - A Bardon Companion

Section commentary on KTK in 'A Bardon Companion V1'

quote added because the key point: 'for the light' as opposed to 'against the darkness' is also made by Rudolf Steiner and explained very consistently, see eg quote above in 1917-01-15-GA174 and the two sentences: 'render to Caesar' 'materialism, evil, all that exists in the world has its own legal reason for existence as part of creation and 'my kingdom is not of this world' as in, we work for the light. So one should not be trying to fight the evil, but contribute to the better future and focus on the light, on the right things.

Many have sought the knowledge and use of the true kabbalah merely for the purpose of gaining great power, but none of these have succeeded. This will always be the case. Part of the Mystery is that in order to achieve this high a degree of initiation, one naturally outgrows all petty desires. Another part of the Mystery is that power this great is bound by the universal laws and can never violate those laws. In other words, even if the kabbalist could wish to use this art for a mundane purpose, he or she would not be able to. I would like for you to carefully think about the deeper significance of this. Consider for a moment all of the truly horrific things that occur in our world daily. Throughout every moment of our human existence, these things have been occurring to one degree or another. Simultaneously, there have always been individuals among us who have wielded the great power of the creative word or kabbalistic speech, any one of which would, in theory, have had the power to rectify these tragedies. But herein is another part of the Mystery - they have not rectified these wrongs because this would violate the universal lawfulness. The kabbalist does not work 'against the darkness'; instead, the kabbalist works 'for the Light'. There is a difference here that should be carefully considered, for the kabbalist realizes that the darkness is just as lawful a thing as is the Light.

Discussion

Note 1 - Commentaries on lectures

Commentary [1.1] on 1917-10-07-GA177 and 1917-10-27-GA177

These excerpts state, plainly states, that the materialistic society will develop as to inject people with a physical medical intervention, so as to avoid them becoming spiritual.

In the year 2021 such global injection campaign has taken place, bearing the 'karma of untruthfullness' lectures and the 'untruthfullness of our ahrimanic times' in mind.

An interesting link may be seen with statements in other lectures that describe how the use of the pituitary gland is crucial for spiritual science to work on the etheric body, and it's further loosening. And, how people who do not use this 'newly developed organ', will have this organ degenerate and fall pray to the Mammon. Read the embedded text on Schema FMC00.353.

In this case we can fill in the term Mammon by the 'large economical money machine of materialism'.

See also

• 'Links regarding the third eye and pituitary gland' on the Kundalini page: Kundalini#.5B2.5D - Links regarding the third eye and pituitary gland
• for more on the 'large economical money machine of materialism', see a.o. Mineral plant like spiders#Commentary

Furthermore:

1908-02-16-GA244 - QA 155.1

states that vaccination and serum only affect the direct Personality, and Rudolf Steiner asks:

.. can we excluse such help, while a larger damage, that is much less transparent, lies underneath?

One helps the single person and personality, but the consequences will only show in the child and grandchild

...

Man has to learn that the single person is [is thereby] only suffering the karma of the totality [the whole of humanity]

see also in a broader context: Model for hereditary physical body#Note .5B1.5D - Effects of substances

Note 2 - Commentaries

Commentary [2.1]

(1) about misguided views

The dominant contemporary worldview to which we are educated and conditioned or 'maintained' through education and media, contains essential views about Man in the world: just a speck in the wide universe, an accident of evolution, we only live once, etc. These references to a materialistic belief system (with a big bang creation, Darwin theory of evolution, no spiritual Man and so no reincarnation) sneak in every day in many small details, but they are philosophical ground principles that Man's soul needs to give meaning to life.

As a result of the contemporary worldview also, certain assumptions in the view of the world are put forth and assumed implicitly as evident. For example that consciousness has evolved slowly but has more or less remained the same in Man over cultures, that all human beings are the same. From which follows that materialistic Man is given a projection that what mankind 'ought' to strive for is a world - as we know it today, live in it, and project the past historical versions - where all human beings live on the same foot, each worth the same, with no hunger or injustice or war, good care for our planet, etc. However this has never been the case, and it will never be.

The reality is that instead of focusing on the mineral material side of things, Mankind should be working morally and not just physically .. individually and societally, on its spiritualization. The spiritual scientific worldview positions our current epoch versus the two previous ones, and the next one, and from is evidently clear that Man and the world in the next epoch will be vastly different than what we can imagine. And this is less than 10.000 years away. The future is spiritualized Man, not physical Man as we know today.

Hence, the forces that spoonfeed and condition us with education and mass media control to stay within the matrix of the dominant contemporary materialistic worldview, are 'a major distraction' that misguides souls. Instead of educating them to their developmental task.

(2) accepting reality

Positioning the dominant worldly forces. Several sources speak about a 'New World Order', views that unfold into secret societies and brotherhoods that are controlling the world and humanity at large through control over key levers such as central banks (organizing money and value exchange for material goods and services), media (influencing opinions to direct the course of events), etc. The 'discovery' of such reality if often experienced as so shocking that, in one go, it is perceived as offensive and injustice .. whereby the process of positioning and understanding stops there.

However, throughout the history of mankind there have always been dominant controlling worldly forces, whether it was the roman empire under a Caesar, the empires of Attila the Hun or Ghenghis Khan, the Egyptian king farao, or emperor Charlemagne. The difference today regarding the powers at hand and their grand achievements is the untruthfullness, in the sense that either humanity is not informed on and educated to them, and/or that humanity is asleep in their state of consciousness regarding these matters. Because information does exist on this in the world. And the track record of achievements is impressive. However one needs to be able to 'place it' in a broader frame. Empires have always existed, they come and go.

History teaches us that throughout time, people lives within the frame of operations offered. Most people, in any previous life, also were not the individuals change this frame of operations, even though one can make one's own moral judgment.

Once again, the same point, in Steiner's words from1917-01-15-GA174 above:

.. we must be careful, when we turn our attention to such things, to apply judgement that is free of moralizing. This also saves us from asking: Why must such a thing happen? For in the mission of one element or another is included the fact that things develop which must develop. And the adversary, the opposite pole must also exist: namely, something that resists whatever it is that wants to come about. This also must exist.

And I blame one as little as I praise the other. I am simply describing the impulses and the facts. I have not the least inclination to pronounce a morally disparaging judgement on something I am describing as a necessity arising out of the whole character of the fifth Postatlantean age.

There is nothing bad about giving the world a materialistic, industrial, commercial culture, for this is a necessity. But the opposite pole must exist, too, for human evolution cannot proceed in a straight line.

Opposing forces must clash with one another, and in this clash reality evolves.

(3) a frame of understanding is required to make conscious choices

Focusing on this one point (2) limits the broader perspective. It is the naivety of (1) that makes for a harder awakening (2). The real challenge for each individual is to awaken once conscious awareness, and develop a guiding worldview compass to make conscious choices as Free and individual Man.

Two statements to broaden this perspective are: 'give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar' and 'my kingdom is not of this world'. (see 1917-01-15-GA174 above)

These lead to a spiritual scientific understanding of the material powers at hand in the physical world, and how they fit into the broader picture of spiritual evolution and development of Mankind amidst other spiritual beings. Including these of a previous and future planetary stage, Old Moon (Luciferic) and Future Jupiter (Ahrimanic).

A first picture that may be useful to calibrate our worldview perspective is that of the pie chart distribution: the world at large consists of manifold influences and cohorts of subpopulations. See ao:

• I-less human beings and Human races
• the implication of the Fall of the spirits of darkness is that the retarded angels have been cast down on earth and live between us in humanity (+ change in the blood)
• It is a basic principle of evolution, spiritual scientifically speaking, that 'not all reach the development target for any given period of evolution, maybe one third does', as the 'parable of the sewer' describes.

A second step is to discern the spiritual in the worldly influences.

• The fact that the majority of humanity is asleep versus the potential state of conscious awareness, is described and positioned as an ahrimanic continuation of the luciferic fall in Fall and redemption.
• The power of money, as in the mechanisms of central banks and world economic powers, is called 'serving the Mammon'.
• The main characteristics of the media orchestration to influence the masses with information to suit materialistic agendas with untruths, is the ahrimanic character of our times.
• Similarly the increase in certain diseases, and the impact of recent technology developments on humanity at large and the future youth, can be understood from a spiritual scientific worldview perspective, differently than the dominant materialistic worldview based on mineral science. And to understand always helps to accept, responsibility comes with conscious awareness.

Didactically, it is important to therefore also learn how below the surface of world events are spiritual realities and truths, see History

• In the 17th century, a 30 years war took place to stunt the spiritual development that was to emerge in central europe following the rosecrucian impulse
• In the 20th century, a 30 years war took place between 1914 and 1945 to stunt the spiritual development that was to emerge in central europe in o.a. german and slavic cultures, following the impulses of theosophy, anthroposophy since the start of the Michael age in 1879, and the emerging clairvoyance and appearance of Christ in the etheric from the 1930s onwards.
• also 1924-08-08 - correction of karma confusion

Last, the hindsight homework done individually by studying spiritual science, also offers the advantage of a certain degree of foresight perspective.

It is crucial to build an understanding of evil, because it is central to our current fifth cultural age. And the societal phenomena of mass killings or rise of violence and sexual decadence have to be understood in the context of black magic and asuric influences, because these things will not go away but develop and increase. The polarization of good and evil is just at its start, and the gap will widen in the future, upto the development of the future evil races in a far future (see eg FMC00.077A). Times are not going to become any simpler or easier, when contemplating the Future Oriphiel age in just two or three centuries, or the evolution towards the end of this epoch and the War of all against all - even if this is millenia away.

(4) implications

Free Man Creator posits that Man can be free and in a state of consciousness that is able to consider, understand, and accept all of the above and more. And with the conscious awareness then comes the freedom to make choices regarding how we live and act in the world. The conscious awareness also brings responsability to ourselves, our dear beloved, our fellow men, and humanity.

Arguments to contemplate are a.o:

• it would not be wise to fight a losing battle, based on limited insight. Where do we place our chips, when we invest our time and life energy to contribute to the world?
• point (2) above was concluded with the distinction between making one's own moral judgment, and the ability to impact or change this frame of operations
• this is one incarnation, but we are part of the past and the future. Our deeds today contribute to the future we will be part of. What does this mean for our individual feelings and will?
• the compassion with our fellow human beings in times that are ever becoming more difficult, where souls will become more isolated of purpose and answers on meaning, and more confronted with illness and evil.

These elements now have to be integrated and brought down to our individual lives and circles of influence and control, using the energy of our circle of concern (which may be a lot larger) to give the best of what we can offer and contribute.

This links back to Worldview, Man's most important questions, the question of teleology on Meaning of life, and Meaning of Free Man Creator

Commentary [2.2]

1 - Panem et circenses and gefundes fressen in the infoglut

Panem et circenses is latin for 'bread and circuses' or 'bread and games' is phrase attributed to Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis), a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century AD and the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the Satires— and is used commonly in cultural and political contexts.

It means that public approval is gathered by offering diversion and distration, and satisfying the most basic requirements of the population and offering them food (bread) and entertainment (games, circus). Juvenal used to phrase to decry the selfish purposes of common people, their neglect of wider concerns, and a population's ignorance of civic duty as a priority.

Two thousand years later, think of (a) media: newspapers, radio, television, now internet and social media - including the news and film industry; (b): sports: olympics, world championships, and all kinds of local and national sports, but also (c): the culture of beer and alcohol in pubs, restaurants, culturally embedded social and business drinking.

Technology gets sponsored and hyped, because the less barriers, the easier to lure people in and chain them. Online streaming allows you to see any film at any time from anywhere.

Gefundenes fressen is german for 'the food stuff you find' and this case, as the term is often used, refers to the information you bounce into and happen to find, the soulfoud that you end up eating'. In the infoglut and infowar

Seeds are planted and flypapers (fly-trap or fly-catcher) appear to feed rumours and opinions. Suppose you orchestrate so many, that by architecture and design the information landscape becomes a labyrint and the seeker for the truth looses the way, gets sidetracked. One who looks will find stuff thinking to be on to something and following the track, but what if that was consciously placed to serve those who would try to look around to check rumours, or their own common sense. Just like false flag, false pointers.

Infoglut is used here with the focus on glut, in terms of etymology of the word from the latin gluto: the overload of what you swallow.

See also: History#.5B1.5D - On process

2 - Diffused consciousness and subconscious ahrimanic influences

Through intensive programs of social cultural conditions, the population has become a victim of and suffers from what Rudolf Steiner called 'an anaesthetization of the consciousness soul' (1917-01-15-GA174).

This can be related to ahrimanic elementals in the subconscious of Man's soul (see 1924-08-19-GA243 and Schema FMC00.238 on Ahrimanic influence on Man), and from another angle to a continuation of the initial Luciferic fall in a broader Fall of Man, see Fall and redemption.

What is happening here should be taken together with a number of symptoms of the ahrimanic influence, including the age of untruthfullness, and the problems of eroding health and increase in illnesses.

Note 3

This page is one where the conflict between worldview wars flows from the pure spiritual science into contemporary reality in the world around us. Whereas the first is of no interest to the established 'powers that be', the second is highly sensitive in a world where media management is the major lever for controlling the direction of political acts. What is meant is a) 'influencing the majority', so whatever plans will always go down and come to pass due to 'control of the official or majority opinion'; and related: b) the careful management and control of all alternate opinions.

Imagine a pie chart: statistically if one controls the 80% like the pareto rule, all the rest can be positioned as weird, strange, or dangerous outliers. This is indeed how communication-technically it is done. Hence all who are not in line with the majority-belief are stamped as dangerous outcasts. These practices are as old as humanity, see Worldview wars.

The goal of this site is not to take any political position, but rather to help building an understanding and a a position of wisdom based on a deeper understanding of impulses. This is necessary to avoid knee-jerk reactions or engaging in fighting a loosing battle. This wisdom is the basis to be able to make one's own decisions in full consciousness; make choices as Free Man Creator.

As per the 'pyramidion' statement on top of this page: Christ did not come to take on the Roman empire. Each cultural age has its developmental purpose. And in the wisdom of the deeper understanding one finds acceptance and the best way to take position and act, dedicating oneself in the most effective way to the future of Man which is spiritual.

My kingdom is not of this world

1917-10-01-GA177

When I say ‘the present time’ I mean quite a long period of time, going back several decades and also looking decades ahead. It is important to realize that it will be necessary to present truths based on the science of the Spirit that in many respects go utterly against current and generally accepted beliefs. The world holds opinions that not only differ but often are the direct opposite of the truths that have to be spoken out of anthroposophy. It is only to be expected, therefore, that people will consider these truths to be incredible, warped and downright foolish.

When truths which differed from generally accepted views had to be said in the past, in order to open up a road to the future, the difference between those truths and common opinion was probably never as marked as it inevitably is today. This may not be absolutely the case, but, relatively speaking, it is so, for people are tremendously intolerant in their hearts today and less able to accept views which differ from their own.

In the immediate future, people will feel more strongly than ever before that the new and different views presented to them are fanciful and absurd. Nevertheless, truths that until now were closely guarded by small groups of people, with strict silence demanded of anyone to whom they were made known, must increasingly be made public. It does not matter how public opinion and those who hold it react to these truths; nor do the prejudices and counter-currents matter that are provoked by them.

The reason for this will be discussed later on in these lectures. To begin with, I must speak of some of the ways in which people will react to truths today and in the immediate future. People believe they have long since outgrown the illusions and superstitions of the past, yet in some respects they are entirely given up to illusion. There is a growing tendency to live in illusion concerning some important and essential aspects of the great scheme of things, and this to such an extent that these illusions become powers that rule the world, nations and, indeed, the whole earth. It is important to realize this, for illusory ideas are a major element in the chaos in which we find ourselves today; in fact, they make it a chaos.

Let me tell you of one common illusion which exists today and is closely bound up with the materialistic trends of the age. It is the growing tendency to form utterly wrong opinions about what in the science of the spirit is called the physical plane. And the New Testament words that are fundamental in this respect: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, are increasingly less understood today. They are misunderstood in so far as the leading personalities of the outer world are caught up in the illusion that their kingdom should be very much of this physical world.

What do I mean to say? Anyone who is able to see the reality, and to see through it, knows that this world on the physical plane can never reach perfection. Yet people who think materialistically have the illusion that perfection can be achieved on the physical plane. This is the source of many other illusions, and particularly and characteristically the socialist illusion of the present age.

People's illusions come in all shades of meaning; they are coloured by party politics and so on. People who take a liberal view of the world and of life have constructed their own ideal of the physical world and believe that if they realize this we shall have paradise on earth. All that the socialists are able to think of is how to arrange things on this physical plane so that everybody can live what they consider to be the good life, the same for everybody, and so on. Their vision of the future on this physical plane is of a wonderful paradise. Do examine the programmes put forward by people who see themselves as belonging to the many different socialist parties and you will see for yourselves.

They are not the only people, of course, who have such views and opinions. Teachers also do, for instance. Today, every educational agitator and writer is absolutely convinced that it is up to him to establish the best possible educational system, the best principles of education one can think of. And in an absolute sense they really are the best, one cannot imagine anything better.

To go against such endeavours must seem sheer madness to people. The way things are today, people simply must consider anyone who does not want things to be the best possible in the world to be evil-minded. One can understand people feeling this way. Yet it is not evil-mindedness that stops us from thinking their way but a clear vision of the truth. It tells us that it is illusory to think such levels of perfection can be achieved in the physical world. And if it is a law that there never can be perfection in the physical world, just as it is a law that the three angles in a triangle add up to 180°, then people will simply have to face such a truth boldly and not shrink from it.

So there you have the kind of illusion which arises from entirely materialistic premises. Many say they believe in the world of the spirit, but with many of them this is mere words, nothing but hot air. In their innermost hearts, in their feelings and unconscious impulses, lives something different — the inclination to think materialistically. However much people may pretend to themselves that they believe in something else, in reality they believe only in the physical world. And since they do not believe in anything more than just the physical world around them, the only ideal they can possibly have is to arrange things in the physical world in such a way that it becomes a paradise; otherwise the whole world would make no sense to them. Until materialists are prepared to say that the world makes no sense at all, they can only live in the illusion that, however imperfect this physical world may be, it will be possible to create conditions that will put an end to imperfection and let perfection take its place.

Everything coming to the fore today in this respect — in general terms, with all kinds of political, social and other agitators making great words about it, or in specific instances, such as in education — is based on illusion because people are unable to see the connections between the physical world and the other spheres of the world. In no way can they gain an idea of what Jesus Christ meant when he said: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, and why Jesus Christ did not want to bring a kingdom of perfection to realization here in the physical world. There is nothing in the gospels to show that Christ intended to reform this outer kingdom of the physical world and make it into one of perfection. He certainly did not cherish that illusion. But he made up for this lack of desire to establish paradise in the physical world by giving people something which is not of this world: to let impulses enter into their souls which are always alive in the world but are not of this physical world.

Illusions of this kind dominate the human race today in the widest possible sense, and this creates an unhealthy climate. People are free individuals and therefore free to live in illusion. In more down-to-earth contexts their illusions would immediately be seen to be illusions. When we are dealing with physical objects, fools who invent things which merely work in theory are instantly seen to be under an illusion. It is not immediately obvious, however, in the vast field of social and political life.

Note 4 - Various other: our world today

In the real world:

• 2001-10-26: Patriot Act (USA) .. "hastily passed 45 days after 9/11 in the name of national security, the Patriot Act was the first of many changes to surveillance laws that made it easier for the government to spy on ordinary Americans by expanding the authority to monitor phone and email communications, collect bank and credit reporting records, etc"
• 2023-08-25: European Union ‘Digital Services Act’ (DSA): companies can be punished for sharing 'fake news'. This implies that the authorities will now decide for everyone what is true or not. Resistance to government censorship of 'the truth' happens but makes no difference.

Counter-reactions:

• 2006 - Julian Assange - WikiLeaks "is a media organisation and publisher that operates as a non-profit and is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources."
• 2013 - Edward Snowden - releasing classified information regarding illegal mass surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA), see more on the wikipedia page for the PRISM program.
• 2017 - Max Schrems and NOYB European Center for Digital Rights. See NOYB website and wikipedia page for NOYB.

Articles:

• 2022 - Johannes Mosmann: On the end of freedom of expression in Europe (online link)

Note 5 - the de-souling of our world by technology

see also the societal effect of mobile phones and social media on:

Mineral plant like spiders#Note 2 - Commentary

quote taken from a facebook forum (April 2024)

Though people speak of technology as proof of the current scientific paradigm it is rather a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I look at the world a certain way I will only be able to act on or with it in ways determined by that.

This is obvious but we don’t apply it to the whole scientific project.

If the paradigm does have a limited view there will come a time where it simply runs into a limit where even its own operation indicates its nullity. It will attempt to enter areas where it simply overreaches its capabilities. This being obvious it will have demonstrated its own exclusion from those areas.

A small but I think indicative example is drone delivery of food and drinks in restaurants. This is being attempted, but the results so far show more nuisance than help.

They will keep beavering away trying to make this kind of thing work, eventually having to make the humans adjust their behaviour and spaces to accommodate the lack of appropriate behaviour of the drone-delivery system. Why?

At a certain point people will seek out spaces suited to human behaviour, ie. with humans in mind on both sides of the interaction. In this way we will find a certain kind of self-cancellation of technology. It will prove itself, at certain points, to just be inappropriate to human needs.

Note 6 - Some key statements by Christ-Jesus

Introduction

The essence of the spiritual worldview can be represented in just a few phrases, the pyramidion stone on top of the pyramid, if we take a few quotes by Christ-Jesus in the New Testament.

We can group these into three categories

First:

• My kingdom is not of this world.

• You are from below, but I am from above

then, second:

• Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God'

which is sometimes supplemented by another quote by the French Sun King Louis XIV, to symbolize the wordly and the attachment to the 'I'

L'état c'est moi! The state is me

and finally, third:

• Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. (Matt. 24:35.)
• I am with you always, to the close of the age.

See o.a. Transition between Earth and Future Jupiter, Second Adam, Unification#Group Soul of humanity

Two central quotes

1917-01-15-GA174

see higher on this page under 'inspirational quotes' and in full in the 'Lecture references' section

• 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's'
• 'My kingdom is not of this world.'

1914-12-22-GA156 or 1914-12-20-GA156

We have already hinted at one crisis in the fact that science, art and religion no longer understand each other.

Another crisis is going through the world, which is noticed only by a few, but which is terrible in its effect, a crisis that stems from the lack of understanding between two currents.

• The one current is that which was once breathed through the world in the infinitely deep sayings engraved in the human heart: “My kingdom is not of this world” and “You are from below, but I am from above”. Man's root is in the spiritual world.
• The second current, which must develop more and more into a crisis-ridden confrontation with what is expressed in the words: “My kingdom is not of this world” and “I am from above, but you are from below,” is the word: “L'état c'est moi! The state is me!” My kingdom, the kingdom of my I, is completely bound to this world.

.

The right way lies in the synthesis of the two sentences. It lies in a universally conceived Christianity, expressed in the words “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.”

In correctly understood Christianity there is no false turning away from the world.

But there is also not that one-sidedness in it, which can only be lived out in the attachment to the material institutions of world existence.

Reference extracts

Kingdom not of this world

> 1000 occurences in GA?!

State is me and I

1905-06-19-GA090B

Without knowing the Sermon on the Mount, one cannot understand Christianity either. It is no coincidence that the Sermon on the Mount is at the beginning of the Gospel. But it, too, like so much else, has not only been misunderstood, but not known at all. This ignorance of such an important chapter stems from the fact that neither scholars nor the Church have even a hint of an intellectual grasp of the deeper Christian truths. If we want to understand something like the Sermon on the Mount, we have to be aware that today's homely, philistine view does not correspond to true Christianity at all. Such an understanding, as could not have been held by a Christian, but probably by the champion of the so-called French state morality - l'état c'est moi - would never have had the power that Christianity had - such power, which has been effective in such a way through the centuries, never has mundane sources, but has spiritual-occult sources. And we want to expose these in relation to the Sermon on the Mount. This lack of understanding of the Bible and the Sermon on the Mount stems from the fact that we do not actually have a proper translation of the Bible, and that the most elementary conditions are not met. People may say that the letter is dead, but the spirit gives life. In doing so, everyone takes some pride in the fact that they could interpret something like the Sermon on the Mount from a “fantastic” imagination; but a lot of arbitrariness can be found in it. You first have to know the letter; you have to know what is written there so that you do not value your own banality of spirit more than the dead letter. Only when one has understood the letter can one dare to explain the spirit. Therefore, today it will be a matter of first understanding the letter, and then interpreting this letter in the right spirit.

1916-12-18-GA173A

The Central European population has a different relationship to what might be called the idea of a state; that is it differs from that of the Western European, especially the French, population. In Central Europe the idea of a state has not been living for centuries as it has, for instance, in France, and furthermore the idea of a state as it exists in France is not suitable for what has remained in Central Europe. On the other hand, in what has remained in Central Europe something developed around the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century which is of such spiritual stature that it will even be admired in the West when one day the hatred will have abated somewhat. And this spiritual stature, which mankind will continue to savour for centuries to come, was achieved in Central Europe at a time when the West was making it utterly impossible for Central Europe to build a coherent state structure. Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Herder and all the others who are connected with this stream did not become great within a coherent state structure. They became great despite the absence of a proper state structure. It is hardly possible to imagine how different it was for Goethe, who became great without any coherent state structure, compared with Corneille, or Racine, who can scarcely be imagined without the background of that state structure which was given its brilliance and eminence by Louis XIV, the king who said: ‘L'état, c'est moi!’ These things should be looked at together. However, during the course of the nineteenth century impulses arose among the inhabitants of Central Europe which were at first entirely inward, impulses which gave birth to the inclination to want some form of state structure also. This inclination first came into being in an intensely idealistic way, and those who are familiar with the development of the nineteenth century know that the idea of a state which moved the inhabitants of Central Europe was at first anchored, above all, in the heads of all sorts of idealists, people who were more idealistic than practical, who were most unpractical with regard to the idea of a state, compared with the practical westerners.

1919-06-22-GA192

But this is what anthroposophy must aim to achieve: it must not only impart knowledge; admittedly, knowledge, but knowledge that can become inner enlightenment, that spurs on our power of discrimination. If it can do that, then much will be served in Central Europe. For we must be able to look to the west and to the east with a gaze that sees and recognizes the world. We in the west must be able to distinguish between what rises hostile to us and what is hostile only in the declining. Here too I recall from my boyhood, when I was in the area where the Styrian mountains are, how every week, twice, I had before me in the train that Count Chambord, who lived in Frohsdorf Castle, on whose face lay the most ancient catholicity, the most ancient ultramontane Jesuit education and at the same time that which was the reflection of the French “L'Etat c'est moi”. That was still truth.

Everything else is no longer truth. No matter how much France may develop her power today, she is in decline, just as the Anglo-American element is in the ascendant.

But these things must be properly assessed. We must see through them so that we can fertilize ourselves with the laws of spiritual life, so that we can transform thoughts into will and find the courage to really place ourselves in the present, which demands so much seriousness and so much significance from us. We must always renew the attempts and make these attempts again and again to knock on the door of our contemporaries: Do you want a free spiritual life, do you want a soil in which a free spiritual life can develop? For these attempts must always be made. If we want to let some truth and wisdom flow into humanity, then we must put it to the test, whether people want to accept it or not; it can very well impair the matter that people do not want to accept it. Therefore, I ask you not to lie down on a lazy bed by saying to yourself, according to Ennemoser's sentence: “Germany will fulfill its destiny or perish in the most disgraceful way, and with it European culture. “ These words are not to be understood in this way; rather, you must say to yourselves that Germany will fulfill her calling if there are people who have enough strength to revive the German spirit in themselves, unchauvinistically, unnationally, as a part of the world spirit, in whose sense we have to work between East and West. And if the world rejects what can come from Central Europe, then the time should have come for us, those who for decades have committed themselves to anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, not only with our heads but also with our hearts and with all our willingness to make sacrifices, to remember and say: We are here! And that we are here to cultivate the spirit should not be a lie of the soul, but should unfold as a truth of the soul!

Render unto Caesar

1910-09-12-GA123

All the parables founded on numbers are profoundly illuminating as regards the impulse brought by Christ to men.

Further, He makes it clear to those who regard His teaching outwardly, that many external thing must not be considered merely in a material sense, or in the most obvious way, but rather as symbols for something else. He wishes to point out to them the nature of their own thoughts. He asks for a coin, and showing them the likeness of Caesar imprinted on it, points out that something more is expressed by the coin than is merely contained in the metal, namely, its connection with a certain ruler, with a certain Empire. ‘What in this belongs to Caesar, render to him; it is his, and is contained in his likeness on the coin, not in the metal itself.’ ‘But learn,’ He also wished to teach them, ‘to regard men, and what is in them, in a like manner, for they are the temples of the living God. Look on men as you would look on a coin, learn, that in them you see the image of God; you will then know that they belong to God.’

All these parables have a much deeper meaning than the trivial one generally accepted. We learn this when we know that Christ did not make use of parables as is customary in the literature of the day. In making use of them He directs them to the whole nature of man, obliging people when they think them out to apply them to their whole nature, not to its separate parts. In this way He shows how, if they are to be shown that something is irrational, they must learn to pass with their thoughts from one realm to another.

alternative translation

In the lecture yesterday we heard how man evolves from below upwards: how as a flower of his human nature he unfolds the spiritual or consciousness-soul and develops to the stage where he encounters the Christ Impulse. The five members of human nature—etheric body, astral body, sentient soul, intellectual of mind-soul, consciousness-soul—developing through the five civilization-epochs, evolve from below to higher stages. A man can mature and so imbue them with the content which, when the time comes enables them to be permeated by the Christ Impulse. Humanity evolves in such a way that in future time all men can become partakers of Christ. But they must develop these five members to the appropriate stage. If they fail to do so they will not be ready to receive the Christ. If through their different incarnations they make no efforts to develop these members to the stage where they can receive the Christ, such men cannot be united with Him, even if He comes for they have ‘no oil in their lamps’.—that is, in the five members of their being. Those who have poured no oil into their lamps are depicted in a wonderful and beautiful parable as the five foolish virgins who have not trimmed their lamps in time and cannot therefore unite with Christ; the five, however, who have provided oil for their lamps are able to unite with Him when the hour has come. All the parables that are based on numbers shed profound illumination upon the impulses given by Christ to men.

And further.—Christ brought it home to those who concerned themselves with His teaching from outside that they, too, were accustomed not to regard everything merely in its material actuality but as a sign or token of something different. He wanted to call attention to their characteristic way of thinking. He asked for a coin and pointed to the image of the Caesar upon it. This was done in order to make the people realise that the coin gives expression to something quite apart from the metal itself, namely, the fact of being subject to a particular rulership, a particular ruler. ‘What in this coin pertains to Caesar, render unto Caesar’—and that lies in the image, not in the metal. ‘But learn’—so He wished to imply—‘learn also to regard man as the bearer and temple of the living God. Regard a man exactly as you regard a coin; learn to perceive in a man the image of God and then you will know that he belongs to God.’

In all these parables there is a meaning far deeper than the trivial one that is commonly accepted. And the deeper meaning is discovered when it is known that Christ did not use parables in the way they are so often used in our journalistic age. Christ draws them from human nature itself, giving them in such a form that if a man were to think them out and apply them to his own being, he would be compelled to adopt the attitude appropriate in each particular domain. It had to be demonstrated to man how his thinking must be carried over from one domain to another when it was desirable to show him that certain methods of thought may lead to absurdity.

1919-02-08-GA193

The second area of the social structure is what could be called the external rule of law, political life in the narrower sense, that which relates to the ordering of the legal relationships between people, that in which all people should be equal before the law. This is the actual life of the state. And the actual state life should basically be nothing other than this. Certainly, on the basis of pure, healthy human understanding, one can again see the necessity that this state life, this life of public law, this life that refers to the equality of all people before the law, to the equality of people in general, that this link of the social organism must stand independently for itself. But if we look at the matter again with the eyes sharpened by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, something quite different becomes apparent.

This life, the actual life of the state, is the only one within the social organs that has nothing to do with the prenatal or the afterlife. It is only in the world that man lives through between birth and death that it finds its order, its orientation. The state is only a self-contained whole with its primordial existence when it does not extend to anything that reaches into the supersensible world, whether on the side of birth or on the side of death. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.” But, one must add, not in prayer, but in deed, render unto God the things that are God's, and unto Caesar the things that are God's. He will reject it!

The things must be clearly distinguished, like the individual system structures in the human natural organism. Everything that can be included in the life of the State, that can be discussed or decided upon by the State, has to do only with the life between man and man. That is the essential thing. In all ages, the more deeply religious natures have felt this. But other men, who were not deeply religious natures, did not even allow people to speak freely, honestly, and sincerely about these things. For a conception has become fixed in the deeper religious natures about these things. These deeper religious natures said to themselves: State, it encompasses life, which, as far as humanity is concerned, has to do only with everything that lies between birth and death, that which relates to the mere earthly. It is bad when that which relates only to the earthly wants to extend its rule to the supernatural, to the supersensible, to that which lies beyond birth and death. But earthly spiritual life goes beyond birth and death, because it contains the shadows of the soul experiences of the supersensible beings. When that which pulses in mere state life takes hold of the life of earthly spirituality, then deeper religious natures call this: the power exercised by the unlawful prince of this world. Behind the expression “the unlawful prince of this world” lies what I have just hinted at. This is also the reason why in those circles that have an interest in confusing the three members of the social organism, this unlawful prince of this world is not spoken of gladly, it is even frowned upon to speak of it.

1919-02-11-GA193

For example, what shall we take as a preeminently earthly type of legal relationship? The relation to property, to ownership. If I own a plot of land, then it is solely by political means that I am given an exclusive right and tenure of the land. It is this which enables me to exclude all others from using the land, building on it, etc. So it is with everything that has to do with public law. The sum total of public law, together with the means taken to protect a society from external interference—all that makes up political life in the strict sense.

This is the genuine earth-life—the life connected solely with impulses which take their course between birth and death. However much the State may imagine itself to be God-given ... the truth to which all religious creeds, in their deeper meaning, bear witness is as follows. The first truth was conveyed by Christ Jesus when in the old phraseology he said: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” Faced with the pretensions of the Roman Empire, He wished above all to separate everything to do with political life from all that bears the imprint of the super-sensible. But when the purely earthly State seeks to make itself the bearer of a super-earthly impulse—when, for example, the State seeks to assume responsibility for religious life, or for education (this last responsibility, unfortunately, is taken for granted in our day)—then we have the situation characterised by the deeper teachings of religion, when they said: Wherever an attempt is made to mix the spiritual-super-sensible with the earthly-political, there rules the usurping Prince of this world.

What is the meaning of the “usurping Prince of this world?” You know, perhaps, my dear friends, that people have thought a great deal about this, without getting anywhere. Only through spiritual science can one reach the meaning. The usurping Prince of this world rules whenever an authority which should be concerned only with the ordering of earthly affairs arrogates to itself the spiritual—and seeks also, as we shall see later, to assimilate economic life. The rightful Prince of this world is he for whom the political realm includes only those things which belong wholly to the life between birth and death.

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In my book Theosophy, in the account of the soul-land and spirit-land, you will find this expressed in ideas which spring entirely from a living view of these conditions. We build up our own spiritual life with forces derived before birth or conception; the economic life we develop so that we can convey the forces belonging to it into the spiritual world; but the State, what constitutes the sphere of "rights" is the opposite of the impulses existing between death and a new birth; what is developed here on earth and belongs to the earth only is the life of polities, law, the State. That has no relation to the spiritual world.

We simplify matters by interpreting things of this kind as we find convenient. There are plenty of people who apply to the present day (perhaps with the idea of showing a little monarchical tendency in these republican times) the Biblical saying, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's "—but it is a misapplication. The saying cannot be understood apart from the circumstances belonging to it. In those days the Roman Caesar was held to be "God" and demanded divine honours. Caligula enacted such worship for the statues of the Greek Gods which he trans­ported to Rome, beheaded, and adorned with his own head in exchange, as he deemed fit and proper. (The Zeus statue alone escaped this fate.) Even at the time when Jesus of Nazareth spoke them, these words meant "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and reserve something for the God Whom you must seek in another being than Caesar." In many passages of the Gospels it is necessary in our time that they are correctly interpreted, and not as they usually are; so that we may be able thereby to struggle nearer to the conception of reality needed by our times.

During these few days it has been my task to show you, from various points of view, that the problem confronting mankind to-day is how to conduct this struggle, how to reach this view of reality, which can only be attained by grasping spiritual reality as something concrete, as concrete as sense-reality. Nothing does so much harm in the present day as shutting our eyes to reality. Men have gone on long enough with the policy of ignoring the truth, shutting their eyes to it. Anthroposophical spiritual science aims in seriousness at opening eyes to reality. To-day they are all but closed. Man's defective sense of reality is witnessed by the amazing things that are given out. I am obliged to draw attention to such things because they throw light on our times.

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I would like to point out that you are likely to know the word “God” in your language. When children are baptized, people have to be godparents. Now there are areas, I believe also here in Switzerland, where the man is called the Lord and the woman is called Gottel. This means that the godparents have to provide help. This is the same “God”. And the god was only the one who was the general god of the world. If you want to understand the things of the earlier times, you must always go back to the earlier times. So the god was the general god of the world. The name Goethe, the name of the German poet Goethe, also comes from the same word.

And that was the first thing one heard about the Christians: that the Christians did not believe that a human being on earth could be a universal god. For the Romans, this was something they could not grasp at all. Such terrible people, who do not accept the emperor as god, yes, they are very dangerous people. And the Christians, on the other hand, referred to the saying: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. — So, they referred to Jesus' saying, where the matter of Caesar and God is cut apart. God is the invisible. God is that which does not dwell in a visible man on earth. That is what the Christians claimed. And that was the big difference between the Romans and the Christians. And the consequence of that was that the Romans considered the Christians to be the most dangerous people of all, undermining the authority of the state because they did not offer sacrifice to the emperor in the temple. The sacrifices in the temples were offered to the emperor by the people. Now, the Christians sacrificed to a God who died in Palestine and who cannot be seen anywhere. That was something the Romans could not understand. And so the first Christians had to perform their sacrifices underground, under the earth. And these underground passages that they dug out there, in which they buried their dead and performed their sacrifices, are called catacombs. There are such extensive catacombs under the earth in Rome, in Italy in general, like small cities. The first Christians performed their sacrificial services there in the first centuries, while above, the Romans had large circuses, huge circuses. And there they had, for example, in such circuses, made a point of somehow tying a person they despised to a stake, to a pillar, and, after smearing him with pitch, setting him on fire and burning him alive. And they watched it in the circuses, just as people watch bullfights today. It was something that was quite common.

Related pages

• Current fifth cultural age
• Current Postatlantean epoch
• Worldview wars
• History
• I-less human beings
• Mineral plant like spiders

References and further reading

• Erdmuth Grosse: 'Das Wirken der okkulten Logen und die Aufgabe der Mitte zwischen Ost und West' (1987)
• Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman: 'Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media' (1988)
• Dieter Ruggeberg: 'Geheimpolitik' Band I and Band II (1990, 1994)
• Terry M. Boardman: 'Mapping the Millennium: Behind the Plans of the New World Order' (1998)
• Peter Tradowsky: 'Christ and Antichrist: Understanding the Events at the End of the Century and Recognizing Our Tasks' (1999, 1996 in DE)