Various forms of spiritual perception and influences beyond waking consciousness
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The majority of humanity today has mundane waking consciousness, only a small segment has already developed the new emerging clairvoyant capabilities that will continue to emerge in the current and next cultural ages. However latent spiritual faculties may be developed through the process of Initiation and Initiation exercises.
For the mainstream human being however, the structural make of Man allows for many different effects which appear in our waking consciousness in strange ways, defeating the frame of reference of our normal reality experience. Man's bodily principles are fully part of the realities astral and spiritual worlds, even though he is not conscious of it as all this is called the unconscious and subconscious by contemporary psychology.
Some examples are coincidence and synchronicity, epihany, serendipity, intuition, ... and popular media talks about spiritual effects as the law of attraction, influence of expectations, etc.
See temporarily also: Stages of clairvoyance#Various other forms or spiritual perception and influence beyond waking consciousness
Aspects
- Influencing the subconscious of crowds (1916-12-24-GA173, the Cola di Rienzi example appears also in GA157, GA173 and GA174).
- 'hit a target group of people' and arouse a delirious state of consciousness
- comparison with a group of unconscious (blind) people who are always a kind of Baldur in the current fifth cultural age - to play Loki with or through blind Hödr.
- specific examples of Whitsun (and use of certain techniques in combination with the starry constellation on these dates) of 20 May 1347 in Rome by Cola di Rienzi (1313-1354) and May 1915 in Rome by Signor d'Annunzio (1863 – 1 March 1938)
- though Rudolf Steiner does not go into it, study of the historical examples shows the commonality of a single event of one speaker addressing a large mass to take political power (ultranationalist, fascistic dictatorial expansionism). The link with Mussulini and Hitler's Nürnberg or Nuremberg Party Rallies is obvious. Hitler opened these events with Wagner's Rienzi (source). The Nuremberg rallies took place between 1923 and 1939, always around the first week of September. Movie technology was used from 1927 onwards to further the 'mass hypnosis', see Leni Riefenstahl's movies for the years 1933 to 1935.
- 'hit a target group of people' and arouse a delirious state of consciousness
Erroneous paths
- see lecture cycle 1924-GA243 'True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation'
- case of Ludwig Staudenmaier and mediumistic and spiritualistic practices of automatic writing and hearing inner voices (1923-09-16-GA228)
Various
- see also:
- Apparitions
- Lightning#Note 1 - Events affecting state of consciousness
- explanation for mystical experiences (as mystics in the middle ages), see Schema FMC00.647
Inspirational quotes
1916-12-24-GA173
You see, particularly in people's everyday lives, what happens if they are being influenced at a subconscious level.
You can hypnotize an individual person, so that once he is hypnotized he is in your power, and you can make him do things he would never even consider doing in a waking state.
.. now if someone wants to make use of a lowered consciousness, this can be achieved far more easily with a crowd than with an individual, since for a crowd no hypnosis is needed .. a crowd, a group, can be seized by a certain intoxication if it is handled in a suitable way.
Illustrations
Lecture coverage and references
1904-12-23-GA093
see also: War of all against all#1904-12-23-GA093
The downfall of our present epoch will be caused by lack of morality.
..
The fifth epoch of culture is a purely intellectual age, an age of egoism. The intellect is egoistical in the highest degree and it is the hallmark of our time. And so we must make our way upwards through intellect to spirituality before we can picture the spirituality that was once actively at work.
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. If morals are not ennobled, this will lead to brutality in every possible form.
This state of things will come, just as the great water-catastrophe came to the Atlanteans.
1915-07-06-GA157
You must realize that when the soul is so determinedly aiming for naturalistic materialism in what a nation is intending, the sense for the mystical cannot be lost on account of this. It persists. It is merely thrust out from consciousness and comes to rest elsewhere. It is not thrust out from man's true and innermost being. It now serves the powers we refer to by the technical terms of Lucifer and Ahriman. Those human faculties are then not directed along the path of the progressive deities but into the path,. of Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers.
One would assume that something will have to emerge in those nations when powers of a mystical nature are thrust out into public life. Can we find something of this kind in the South, a stream of mystical will that has been thrust out?
- It was in May 1347, on Whitsunday, that Cola di Rienzi walked up to the Capitol in Rome at the head of a great procession. He was wearing ancient Roman armour, which was in accord with the sentiments of that time, and had four standards. The Capitol is the place from which speeches concerning Rome civilization were traditionally addressed to the Romans. Rienzi proclaimed that he had come to speak in the name of Jesus Christ, as a man compelled to speak to the Romans in the name of freedom for the whole world. Rhetoric was very much the order of the day at the time. It did have a certain significance then — in 1347 — but no reality. The whole was something like a puff of smoke. But that is not really my point. I want to draw your attention to the fact that this happened on a Whitsunday — on 20 May 1347. It was then that the man representing this whole stream called himself an ambassador of Christ. Later, when he had further elaborated his message, he also called himself a man inspired by the Holy Spirit.
- It was also a Whitsunday that war was declared against Austria. Immediately before that a man who did not call himself an ambassador of Christ but nevertheless let it appear in what he said that he was filled with the Holy Spirit, had walked at the head of a large procession and made speeches in Rome. There certainly was no vestige in the soul of this man of the mysticism out of which Rienzi had formerly spoken. Yet — and here we get an element of mysticism that has been thrust out — the words were again spoken on a Whitsunday. Yet they were spoken in the service of those other powers. The Christ impulse had been thrust out from consciousness. And that it was very much the Ahrimanic element—an element we must of course expect in the present age—is evident from just a few words that were said at the time. A 20th century orator could not, of course, arrive in Roman armour and with four standards and so he came in a car. That is the kind of sacrifice one has to make in this materialistic age. But somehow he had to bring to expression — perhaps unconsciously — that an element of mystical power thrust out by man had been ceded to another power and was now on the move in the outside world, having been turned into its opposite. This man who calls himself d'Annuncio — in reality he is called something else — spoke in such a way that people might have believed all the great flaming speeches of Rienzi were coming to life again — it is easy to do this in Italian — deliberately making every sentence reminiscent of him. After his oration, which to the Central European mind consists of nothing but empty words, he picked up a ceremonial sword and he kissed this sword to indicate that the power of his oratory should pass into this sword. The sword was the property of the editor of a magazine one commonly sees around when one goes to Italy. The editor of a magazine had presented the sword to the Mayor of Rome as a sacred relic on this occasion. The sword belonged to the editor of the cosmic paper Asino.
In time to come a world judging these things on a different basis from that prevailing today, will realize that many of the things happening at the present time have to be judged from the point of view I have presented — that much of what is present in man by way of mystical powers is thrust out, handed over to the world process, but does not get lost. It becomes the spoil of Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers.
Rarely is the irony inherent in world history as obvious to the eye as in the case I have just presented.
1916-12-24-GA173
[Influencing the subconscious of crowds]
As with the individual, so is it also in social life: Certain impulses can be steered and guided to one side or the other. In social life, in particular, it is still possible nowadays to make use to a considerable extent of the unconscious, for every age has its unconscious aspect. As soon as you start to reckon with the unconscious or the subconscious it is possible to achieve effects which differ considerably from what can be done consciously, for today's consciousness will not achieve its natural connection with the cosmos until the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. Today, those who reckon with the unconscious bring things over from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch in either a mephistophelean or a luciferic way. Now, it fits in well with our present endeavours in these grave times to apply general truths of this kind to specific situations, for it is appropriate not just to play theosophical games but to gather serious knowledge which affects reality, even though this serious knowledge might make demands as to the degree of prejudice existing in our feelings. Also, we are in accord with a feeling for Christmas if we make the decision to approach the earnestness of life. Nowadays we cannot allow ourselves to indulge luxuriously in sentimental Christmas-tree feelings, for a true Christmas mood involves feeling one's way to its connection with the grave and shattering experiences of the present time.
You can see, particularly in people's everyday lives, what happens if they are being influenced at a subconscious level. You can hypnotize an individual person, so that once he is hypnotized he is in your power, and you can make him do things he would never even consider doing in a waking state. You can hypnotize 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 hypnotize whole communities. An individual person is stronger in the physical world than is a group, and it is 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. Yet certain things would not be achieved by continuing to speak, for instance, in the way we speak with one another. Therefore I must stress again and again: I shall never consider speaking other than in difficult concepts which require intellectual understanding, so that each person is forced to follow the line of thought and form concepts of what is being said. If we take the fifth post-Atlantean period and its requirements seriously, there can be no question of wishing to bring about any kind of intoxication, or of intending to work on anything other than the intellect. Even someone who knows nothing of Spiritual Science, but has a certain awareness of what it means to be in the fifth post-Atlantean period, will respect the inner freedom of the human being and speak in a way which does not dupe the feelings or create disturbances in the soul.
It would be different with a person who wanted to achieve effects different from those I have described, that is, if someone wanted to make use of a lowered consciousness, which can be achieved far more easily with a crowd than with an individual, since for a crowd no hypnosis is needed. You know how a crowd, a group, can be seized by a certain intoxication if it is handled in a suitable way. I have said on earlier occasions that I have met orators who knew by instinct how to speak in a way which does not directly address the intellect but uses slogans and telling images to speak to a consciousness that is somewhat askew, somewhat delirious. As I said, the approach has to be stronger in the case of an individual, but for a crowd no more is needed. I have given you examples of this.
...
In certain communities these things have to be learned, namely, how to describe things in pictures, how to use images, bring about intensifications, and employ comparisons. This is a special art which is diligently practised in the grey brotherhoods. But there is no need to belong to a grey brotherhood in order to practise such an art. One can be dependent in one way or another on the grey brotherhoods, perhaps without even knowing how dependent one is, and then one can use these methods.
What is all this based on?
It is based on the fact that a different kind of soul life is present when we speak with one another in a manner suited to the fifth post-Atlantean period, for then we direct ourselves to the intellect and not to a kind of delirium which would be brought about if we used some of the means I have just sketched. In the fifth post-Atlantean period we have to learn to withstand Hödr, we have to learn to withstand the remnants of an earlier time that resemble the mistletoe which has become a parasite in the plant world. We have to learn to withstand Hödr, the unconscious one, the blind one, the passionate one, the delirious one.
We can only win this capacity by making our understanding such that we feel quite isolated from the world, whereas those who develop a delirious type of consciousness immediately attract to themselves cosmic effects; they draw cosmic effects down into the present. With the consciousness of the fifth post-Atlantean period we stand in isolation on the earth. In a delirious consciousness, cosmic effects are drawn into the soul. And these, of course, have to be utilized in an appropriate way. Let us take an actual case.
Someone who today wants to work on others, on those whose consciousness is delirious, with the aim of achieving a particular end, can do the following: He can remember when something similar existed in an earlier age when the starry constellations were also similar. Now since everything goes in waves in the world, so that a particular wave returns to the surface after a certain time, in order to achieve certain effects he can make use of an event which under similar cosmic conditions is like a copy of an earlier event; he can make it a copy of an earlier event. Let us assume that someone wants to achieve something by influencing others in their delirious consciousness, by carrying out certain procedures involving certain facts. He goes back in history and recalls something which happened at an earlier date under a similar starry constellation.
Assume someone wants to bring something about on a day in the spring of a particular year. Having established that it is Whitsuntide, he goes back through time until he finds an event that is similar to the one he wants to bring about.
And it must fall in a year when the date of Whitsun fell approximately on similar days of the month. Then the starry constellation will also be roughly the same. By utilizing all this it will then be possible to work on those in a delirious state of consciousness. In a sense it will be possible, by bringing about a state of delirious consciousness under a particular starry constellation, to hit the target of a group of people who are always a kind of Baldur in the fifth post-Atlantean period; in other words, to play Loki with blind Hödr, or through blind Hödr.
Now let us take an actual case:
- In an earlier age Whitsuntide fell on 20 May 1347. At this time on a particular day the heralds, flourishing their trumpets, marched with a crowd — it does not matter that their relationship to the Whitsun Mystery differed from ours today — leading Cola di Rienzi, who made the proclamation, from that important place in Rome under that very starry constellation which fell on 20 May, which was to give him the title of tribune of Rome. The impression he made was comparable to the impression made on a group or crowd in a state of delirious consciousness. For the crowd believed that Cola di Rienzi had brought the Holy Ghost; and utilization of the starry constellation of the time made it possible, though for a very short time only, for him to achieve what he intended.
- A remarkable copy of this event took place under the same starry constellation in 1915 when, not Cola di Rienzi, but Signor d'Annunzio called together a crowd on the same spot in a very similar way! Again a delirious consciousness was affected by ideas and symbols which conjured up pictures that were eminently suitable for speaking to this delirious consciousness. I am not criticizing anybody's consciousness but merely reporting facts — facts which, if you like, have been pushed as far as possible down into the unconscious. But this does not alter their effectiveness. On Whitsun-day 1915 the same happened in Rome as had happened on Whitsun-day 1347, which also fell on 20, 21 May. One day makes no difference. On the contrary, the constellation was all the more identical. At Whitsun 1915 there was a repeat performance of what had happened under Cola di Rienzi in 1347. The new event was thus particularly effective, for it was borne on the same vibrations, the same waves, the same conditions. History will only be understood when such facts are known, when it is known what can be achieved with the help of such facts. Regardless of what the influences were, Signor d'Annunzio, through the life he had led so far, had the potential of succumbing to all sorts of influences, and he had the strength to put these influences to use. Let me remark merely that, because of his earlier poetry, this poet was called by a number of critics representing the healthy side of Italy ‘The singer of all shameful degeneracy’. In ordinary life his name was Rapagnetta, which I am told means ‘little turnip’, but he called himself d'Annunzio. Under this starry constellation Signor d'Annunzio gave a speech which you may judge for yourselves because I am going to read it aloud to you to the best of my ability. To put you in the picture: There were two parties in Italy at that time, the Neutralists and the Interventionists, and Signor d'Annunzio set himself the task of transforming all the Neutralists into Interventionists. The Neutralists wanted to preserve neutrality, and Giolitti, a man who had been very active in Italian political life for a long time, was for neutrality. That speech by d'Annunzio, which was like a repetition of the one made long ago by Cola di Rienzi under the same starry constellation, went as follows:
[further see online lecture]
Erroneous paths
1923-09-16-GA228
On the challenges faced by modern individuals seeking a genuine relationship with the spiritual world. Steiner recounts the case of Ludwig Staudenmaier, a materialistically minded investigator who attempted to access spiritual realities through mediumistic and spiritualistic methods rather than through the disciplined path of initiation exercises with moral ethical development. Staudenmaier’s unsettling experiences (marked by confusion, delusion, and disturbing visions) are a cautionary tale and illustration of the dangers inherent in approaching the spiritual world without adequate preparation or inner development.
From the wikipedia profile of Ludwig Staudenmaier (1865-1933)
Staudenmaier examined the then-fashionable spiritism from both theological and scientific perspectives and sought to provide a scientific foundation for it. Starting in 1901, he conducted self-experiments with automatic writing. He then experimented with hearing voices, the source of which he suspected was the ear. He attempted to prove that the brain's thought activity is transmitted to the auditory system, where it triggers sounds. An essay appeared in 1910, and the book was first published in 1912. It was ignored by scholars, but it was reprinted in 1918 and 1920, and a revised edition appeared in 1922 (republished in 1968). Staudenmaier had been suffering from nervous illnesses since 1879, which were influenced by his rigorous self-experiments. He visited the psychiatric clinic in Munich in 1918 and 1920.
lecture quote
Some of you will know a book by a man called Staudenmaier, entitled Experimental Magic, which appeared a good many years ago and is typical of the spiritual constitution of many modern scientific thinkers. Staudenmaier wanted to find out if there is any reality in the spiritual world. Of anthroposophy he admitted that he knew only what its opponents had written. People don't like studying anthroposophy; they find it difficult, particularly if they are typical scientific thinkers of today.
Staudenmaier attempted, by spiritualistic methods, to get into the spiritual world. He dulled his consciousness until he was in a sort of mediumistic state; then he began automatic writing and was surprised that he wrote a lot of nonsense which did not at all agree with what he knew about reality. In particular, the fact that spirits seemed to be speaking to him did not agree with it! He knew that was impossible and yet what he wrote assured him that spirits were speaking. He was appalled by the lies that these non-existent spirits told him. You should read in his book all the incredible lies which flowed into his writing. He became—to use no worse a word—a medium, and he did not know what to make of it all. A friend advised him to give the whole thing up and to lead a normal, sensible life and go out shooting. So he did, and he went out after magpies; but even there he found that whatever it was he had stirred up inside himself continued its activity, and he could not rid himself of it. If he looked up at a tree, he saw, not a magpie but a fearful dragon with terrible fangs, which looked at him with horrifying eyes. The same things happened everywhere, and he lived in an inner struggle to get himself back into a normal condition.
I mention all this because here we have experimental evidence that there is an immediate protest against the external order of Nature as soon as we are not merely dreaming while awake but are using this device to contact and arouse the inner being of Man. Obviously we regard it all as lies. When we have thought of a Man as a friend and as a decent fellow, and if after he has got into this mediumistic condition we see him putting out his tongue at us or making long noses, then inevitably we say that the spiritual world is lying and that this experience is simply that of a dream. Now there is something in this. Whenever Man approaches the spiritual world inside himself, within which everything inside his skin is enclosed, there is an immediate protest from this sphere against the natural order. It is not surprising that when a Man enters it with underdeveloped faculties of judgment, all kinds of elemental beings appear and create delusion. But there is always this protest against the natural order when we approach the spiritual; and ordinary dreams make this clear.
We ought to realize that we then enter a quite different order of being, and, even though it appears only in the fleeting form of the dream, it is all the same a protest against those admirable laws of Nature which we establish by laboratory experiments. This is the first step into the spiritual world where we immediately find the protest against natural laws, which are, as it were, robbed of their dignity as soon as we penetrate a little into Man's inner being.
