The Western Hemisphere

Everything having to do with North America, especially the United States, in the light of anthroposophy, is not only complicated but at closer analysis so thoroughly dark and sinister that I initially wrote my notes on this in Norwegian and shared them with a limited circle of readers -- among other reasons, because they touch upon Norwegian history in a special way that will become evident below.

Rudolf Steiner on America

When approaching the Mystery of America in the light of Rudolf Steiner's works, it's easy to be carried away in such a manner that it's experienced as being pulled into an abyss. This experience is particularly strong if the material referenced below is studied when living in the United States, and the longer one has lived there, the more deeply one has become entrenched in the so-called "American experience," the more intensely the sense of being pulled into an abyss is felt, if one really absorbs the gravity and seriousness that is contained in such communications.

Let me start off with something very simple that many people have probably noticed without thinking about it. Static electricity is much more powerful in North America than in Europe. That is, if you walk on a carpet with leather soles and then touch a metal door handle, you get an electric shock. This is also experienced in Europe and elsewhere on the globe, but the phenomenon is definitely strongest in North America and may increase the closer one gets to the magnetic North Pole in Canada.

This has to do with earth radiations in general, in this case electromagnetic fields in particular. Such phenomena influence the growth, physiology, and health of the inhabitants.

In this context I would like to begin by referring to an excerpt from GA 178, where Rudolf Steiner describes Hidden Forces in the Being of Man or, The Ahrimanic Double With Special Reference to America. I have chosen the second lecture in this cycle, from November 16, 1917 in St. Gallen, with the title, The Mystery of the Double: Geographic Medicine.

The excerpt is quite lengthy, so it should be commented as we plug through it before moving on to the next source. Let me just mention at the start here that I do my best to avoid involved discussions and speculations about what Steiner talks about with regard to secret lodges in the West. The reason for this is that after a sensational catastrophic event took place in the United States nine years ago, popular brainstorms with regard to such things have taken off so completely that it has become impossible to talk about conspiracies without being run down by loud, passionate hyperenthusiasts and fanatics who attribute all such planning to the external, material plane without mentioning the threshold of consciousness with a single word.

This virus began among rural Arab hillbillies in Pakistan and Afghanistan who swallowed everything said by their imans, namely that the entire terror attack was masterminded and carried out by Jews with stolen Saudi identities -- in conjunction, of course, with the Bush-administration in Washington. After that it spread like wildfire through France and from there all over the United States and became mainstream. I have no comment on this, except to say that my own perspective has always resonated with those of Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and other academics and investigative reporters of the same caliber.

To explore conspiracies, the other side of the threshold must be considered. I may get into that in a later blog, which would be a very demanding undertaking. It's inevitable that certain aspects of Western occult conspiracies are touched upon in passing when topics like the present, and the previous one, are explored, but I only include what is absolutely necessary and leave the rest for special treatment in a future article if time and opportunity permits.

Geographic Medicine

Rudolf Steiner:

"The earth, which is known only as a skeletal system, is a living organism. As a living organism it works upon the beings who walk around on it, including human beings themselves. And just as the human being is differentiated within regarding the distribution of his bodily organs, so the earth is also differentiated regarding what it develops out of its living nature, by which it influences the people who walk around on it. When you think, you are not exerting your right index finger or your left big toe but your head. You know perfectly well that you do not think with your right big toe; you think with your head. Thus things are distributed in the living organism, which is differentiated. Our earth is differentiated in the same way. The same things do not at all stream out everywhere from the earth onto its inhabitants. In the different regions of the earth, something entirely different streams forth. There are different forces, among them magnetism and electricity, but also forces that enter more into the realm of the living. All these forces come up out of the earth and influence people in the most varied ways at different points on the earth. They influence the human being in various ways according to the geographical formation.

"This is a very important fact. What the human being is initially as body, soul, and spirit has really very little direct relation to these forces that work up out of the earth. But the double about which I have spoken chooses to be related to these forces that stream up out of the earth. And indirectly, by way of mediation, the human being as body, soul, and spirit stands in relation to the earth, and to that which rays out at various points. This is due to the fact that his double cherishes the most intimate relationship to what streams forth there. There beings that take possession of the human being as Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian beings a short time before he is born have quite highly developed tastes. Some of these beings are especially pleased with the Eastern Hemisphere: Europe, Asia, Africa. They choose to make use of the bodies of human beings born there. Others choose bodies born in the Western Hemisphere, in America. What we have as a dim image in our geography is for these beings a living principle of their own experience. They choose their dwelling place according to this.

"From this you will see further that one of the most important tasks of the future will be to foster again something that has been interrupted: geographic medicine, medical geography. With Paracelsus it was torn away from the ancient atavistic wisdom. Since then it has hardly been nurtured because of materialistic views. It must take its place again, and many things must become known again if we are to come to know the connection of the illness-producing being in man with earthly geography, with all the fusions, with all the outward radiations that emerge from the earth in the various regions. It is very important for the human being to become acquainted with these things, for his life depends on it. In a very definite way he is inserted into this earthly existence by this double, and this double has his dwelling place within, within the human being himself.

"This has become so infinitely important only in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and will become especially important to human beings in the very near future. For this reason spiritual science must now spread, and this is now especially important because the present time calls upon the human being to reach an understanding of these things in a conscious way in order to find a relationship to these things. The human being must become strong in this epoch in order to adapt his existence to these beings.

"This epoch began in the fifteenth century, our present period beginning in 1413. The fourth post-Atlantean period, the Greco-Latin, began in 747 B.C. and lasted until 1413. This was a time when a milder incision in history took place. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch began at that time, and we continue to live in it now. Only gradually is it bringing forth its special characteristics in our time, although these have been in preparation since the fifteenth century. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch it was chiefly the Intellectual Soul (Verstandes- und Gemütseele) that was developed; now it is the Consciousness Soul that is being developed in the general evolution of humanity.

"When the human being entered into this epoch, the guiding spiritual beings had to consider his special weakness in relation to this double. Had the human being taken into his consciousness very much of everything connected with this double, it would have gone badly, very badly for the human being. Already in the centuries before the fourteenth century, the human being had to be prepared by being protected, so that he would take in very little of what was suggestive in any way of this double. Therefore the knowledge of this double that existed throughout earlier ages was lost. Humanity had to be guarded so that it would not take up anything of the theory of this double; not only this, however, but it had to come in contact as little as possible with anything connected with this double.

"For this purpose a very special arrangement was required. You must try to understand what developed at that time. In the centuries preceding the fourteenth century, the human being had to be guarded from this double. The double had to be gradually withdrawn from man's circle of vision. Only now is he gradually permitted to come into it again, now when the human being must adapt his relationship to him. A really significant arrangement was required, which could be attained only in the following way. Since the ninth or tenth century, conditions in Europe were gradually adjusted in such a way that the European people lost a certain connection that they had formerly, a connection that was still important for human beings in earlier centuries, the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. Beginning in the ninth century and especially from the twelfth century on, the entire shipping exchange with America with the kind of ships there were at that time, was abolished.

"This may sound very strange to you. You will say, 'We have never heard anything like this in history.' In many respects, history is just a fable convenue a legend; for in earlier centuries of Europe develop ships continually sailed from the Norway of that time to America. Of course it was not called America it had a different name at that time. America was known to be the region where the magnetic forces particularly arose that brought the human being into relation with this double. For the clearest relations to the double proceed from that region of the earth that comprises the American continent. And in the earlier centuries people sailed over to America in Norwegian ships and studied illnesses there. The illnesses in America brought about under the influence of earthly magnetism were studied by Europe. And the mysterious origin of the older European medicine is to be sought there. There one could observe the course of illness that could not have been observed in Europe, where people were more sensitive with regard to the influence of the double."

(Geographic Medicine, Hidden Forces in the Being of Man or, The Ahrimanic Double With Special Reference to America (GA 178) -- Lecture II, The Mystery of the Double: Geographic Medicine, St. Gallen, November 16, 1917)

In a different lecture I don't recall the reference to, Steiner mentions that these sea voyages to America always started off the coast of Jæren in Rogaland (Norway). Of course much of this is puzzling, first of all that the Vikings, who in spite of their incredible craftmanship in ship building seem to have been quite primitive, had ancestors or predecessors who conducted medical research more than a millennium before the age of science. Complicated and fascinating are also the connections in Europe at that time, especially between Rome and Norway through Ireland in the way Steiner describes it:

"Then it was necessary for the connection with America to be gradually forgotten, and this was essentially brought about by the Roman Catholic Church through its edicts. And only after the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch was America rediscovered in a physical, sense-perceptible way. This was only a rediscovery, however, which is so significant because the powers that were at work actually achieved their purpose: that nothing very much should be reported in the record of the ancient relations of Europe with America. And where it is reported it is not recognized, it is not known that these things relate to the connection of Europe with America in ancient times. The visits were nothing more than visits. That the Europeans themselves became the American people (as is said today when the expression 'people' is confused with 'nation' in an incomprehensible way) was possible only after the physical discovery of America, the physical rediscovery of America. Earlier there were visits that were made in order to study how the double plays a very special role in the differently constituted Indian race.

"For a long time before the beginning of the development of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, Europe had to be protected from the influence of the Western world. This is the significant historical arrangement that was cultivated by wisdom-filled world powers. Europe had to be protected for a long time from all these influences; and it could not have been protected if the European world had not been completely shut off from America in the centuries before the fifteenth century.

"The effort had to be made for a long time in the preparatory centuries to give something to European humanity that carried the finer sensitivity. You could say that the intellect, which had to take hold of its proper place in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, had to be very carefully protected in its first appearance. What was supposed to be revealed to it had to be presented to it very gently. Often this refinement was similar to the refinement of education, where sound measures of punishment are also applied, of course. Everything to which I am referring pertains, of course, to greater historical impulses.

"Thus it happened that Irish monks in particular who were under the influence of the pure Christian-Esoteric teaching developed in Ireland, worked in such a way that the necessity was perceived in Rome to cut Europe off from the Western Hemisphere. For it was intended that this movement arising in Ireland should spread Christianity over Europe in such a way, in these centuries before the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, that people would not be disturbed by all that was emerging from the sub-earthly regions in the Western Hemisphere. Europe was to be kept ignore of all the influences from the Western Hemisphere.

"This is a good Place to speak about these conditions. Columban and his pupil Gallus were essential individuals in the greatly significant mission movement that sought its success in Christianizing Europe by surrounding Europe at that time with spiritual walls, and allowing no influence to come from the direction I have indicated. Individualities such as Columban and his pupil Gallus, who founded the city where I am lecturing today and from whom it gets its name (St. Gallen) saw above all that the tender plant of Christianity could be spread in Europe only if Europe were Surrounded by a wall, as it were, in the spiritual respect."

Here Steiner mentions central historical personalities who played key roles in spreading the Christ Impulse from Ireland to the rest of Europe, including Norway. Olav Stokland writes quite comprehensively about this in his book Av Norges Indre Historie ("Of Norway's Inner History" according to Tazfish).

Steiner:

"Behind the processes of world history lie deep mysteries filled with significance. The history taught and learned in schools is only a fable convenue. Among the facts most Important for an understanding of modern Europe is this one: that from the centuries when Ireland began to spread Christianity in Europe until the twelfth century, the Roman Church worked on the problem at the same time through papal edicts, which gradually forbade shipping between Europe and America, so that Europe completely forgot the connection with America. This lapse in memory was needed so that the early period of preparation in Europe for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch could be developed in the right way. And only when the materialistic period began was America discovered again to the West, as is related today. From the East, America was discovered under the influence of the greed for gold, under the influence of purely materialistic culture, which simply must be taken into account in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and to which man has to find a suitable relationship."

It's a little misleading to imagine that North America was populated by Europeans exclusively because they were greedy for gold, but that's not what Steiner is saying. He is talking about the crucial discovery made by Christopher Columbus in 1492. This greed after gold primarily characterized the South Europeans; besides, Columbus was an arch-brutal conquerer who represents the worst in the history of colonialism, with devastating consequences for the natives of the Americas.

Columbus Ship

With regard to man's relationship to earth-energies and his Doppelgänger and so forth, Steiner continues in his lecture:

"In Eastern Europe there is relatively little inclination purely toward what streams out of the earth. The Russians, for example, are fervently connected through the soil, but they receive quite special forces out of the soil, forces that do not come from the earth. The secret of the Russian geography consists of the fact that the Russian receives from the earth the light that is first imparted to the earth and then reflected back again from the earth. The Russian actually takes from the earth what streams toward it from outer regions. The Russian loves his earth, but he loves it because to him it is a mirror of the heavens. Because of this the Russian, even though he is so territorially minded, has something in this territorial inclination that is extraordinarily cosmopolitan although today this remains at a childlike stage — because the earth, moving through space, comes into relation to every possible part of the earth's environment. And when a person receives into his soul, not what streams upward from below in the earth but what streams downward from above and then upward again, then it is different from receiving streams directly from the earth, which are placed in a certain kinship to human nature. But what the Russian loves in his earth, with which he permeates himself, gives him many weaknesses, but above all it gives him a certain ability to conquer that double nature of which I have spoken previously. Therefore he will be called upon to offer the most important impulses to the epoch in which this double nature must finally be subdued, in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch."

This is very interesting: In the sixth post-Atlantic epoch, or Sub Race, i.e. in about 1500 years, which according to Steiner will emerge on Russian soil, the subduing of the Doppelgänger-nature will be one of the major tasks for humanity. After this sixth epoch, however, a seventh and final epoch in our present cycle, or Root Race, will take place on American soil and lead to The War of All Against All and the destruction of the entire great epoch after Atlantis. I'll come back to this in connection with a different quote. Our own calculations would indicate that this seventh post-Atlantean epoch begins towards the end of the sixth millennium and lasts perhaps almost into the ninth millennium -- a very long time ahead indeed, but it's our own future we are talking about.

Rudolf Steiner continues:

"A certain portion of the earth's surface shows the closest kinship to these forces. If a person goes to this place, he enters their realm; as soon as he goes elsewhere, he is again outside their realm. For these forces are geographic; they are not ethnographic, not national, but purely geographic forces. There is a region where the force streaming up from below has the most influence on the double, and where, because with the outstreaming forces it enters most into kinship with the double, it is again imparted to the earth. This is the region of the earth where most of the mountain ranges run, not crosswise, from east to west, but where the ranges primarily run, from north to south (for this is also connected with these forces) where one is in the vicinity of the magnetic North Pole. This is the region where above all the kinship is developed with the Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic nature through outer conditions. And through this kinship much is brought about in the continuing evolution of the earth."

In our own time, with lots of travel and moving, there are certainly many people who have experienced personally that which Steiner describes here: "If a person goes to this place, he enters their realm; as soon as he goes elsewhere, he is again outside their realm." This is not likely to happen during weekend trips and short business travels, but by absorbing the environment during at least seven years, i.e the time it takes for every single cell in the body to be replaced through the nutrition consumed where one is living. If in addition to this, one allows oneself to be assimilated into the thoughts and feelings of the population, one should notice that which Steiner describes here when one has spent at least seven years on another continent later. An initiate, on the other hand, can undoubtedly harvest such experiences immediately.

The Andes

What he says here about the direction of the mountain ranges is also of tremendous interest, because this can indicate that the magnetic North Pole influenced the formations of the Rockies and the Andes in a far distant past, when the lava cooled off. When we take into consideration that this theme about impulses and forces from the Western Hemisphere is a concern for our entire post-Atlantic epoch, such details are important.

"Today the human being should not move blindly through earthly evolution; he must be able to see through such relationships. Europe will be able to come into a proper relationship with America only when such conditions can be understood, when it is known what geographical determinants come from there. Otherwise, if Europe continues to be blind to these things, it will be with this poor Europe as it was with Greece in relation to Rome. This should not be; the world should not be geographically Americanized. First, however, this must be understood."

This stern warning against the Americanization of Europe and the rest of the world came from Rudolf Steiner in October 1917, when Bolshevikism came to power in Russia as a social experiment planned in England and sponsored by American banks. There were many reasons why Rudolf Steiner, who was generous to a fault towards his sworn enemies, was yet so mercilessly brutal every time he talked about president Woodrow Wilson. He said once that he wondered what Woodrow Wilson's brain would be worth if he wasn't sitting in the White House chair(!)

Wilson was showered with blind homage, tribute, and fanfare, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, and looked up to as a role model and one of history's greatest presidents by all his successors in the White House, in spite of the fact that historical analysis can probably establish that his political actions were pivotal for the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the following Great Depression that in conjunction with the frustration and poverty that raged in Germany after Wilson's humiliating, disrespectful, and inconsiderate armistice of 1918 paved the way for Hitler's rise to power -- also through sponsorship by American and German banks. But the truth that the world is easily deceived cannnot be clearer than when those who lead the world into ruin are awared the Nobel Peace Prize. Rudolf Steiner could not foresee the detailed ultimate consequences of Wilson's policies, but he saw clearly that it could lead to catastrophe for Germany and Europe.

Woodrow Wilson

In lecture 16 from GA 346 (The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest, Dornach, September 1924), Rudolf Steiner does however mention that The Beast would rise in 1933, the very year Hitler came to power, based upon some work on a certain comet done by Austrian astronomer Joseph Johann Littrow a century earlier.

Steiner says:

"In 1832 a well-known astronomer, Littrow, published a treatise that was very interesting. I can still recommend studying it, even today; it is most interesting and its complicated calculations are entirely correct. Here was someone who knew what he was talking about. He made a calculation that took every possibility into account. He worked out that in 1832 there could not yet have been a calamity caused by a collision, but he said that if everything remained as it had been when the comet’s course was plotted when it was still a single body and not yet split, then a calamity would definitely occur in 1933; 1933 is what he said. So if the comet had remained as it was, then there would definitely be a catastrophe in 1933 in which all the oceans would spread over the earth in huge floods, making life on earth die out. Instead, the comet has disintegrated; in tiny particles it has been absorbed by the earth, the earth has nourished itself on this cosmic substance. So instead of a collision in 1933—that year is not far off now—what the earth has absorbed is spiritualized by other substances, and the spiritual rises up. The earth digests the comet and something spiritual rises up. Dear friends, spiritualized cometary substance does indeed rise up in the earth in this way from time to time."

Rudolf Steiner is speaking, of course, on the basis of John's Apocalypse, and in this case Chapter 13, where the Beast is described. The connection between such Beings and astronomical phenomena like comets are of course interesting, but it's beyond the scope of this article. I'll only mention what Steiner here said about 1933, but we should keep in mind that the spiritual properties of comets can also be benign and bring healing forces that are needed by humanity at certain points in evolution, like when we have to accustom ourselves to live in an urban environment saturated with electronics.

Rudolf Steiner on September 20, 1924:

"The Beast will be let loose from its imprisonment in the earth; that is what the comet is in the cosmic sense. That the Beast will be let loose is significant for the development of human beings. Such things are exceedingly powerful realities, great and significant points in the evolution of humanity and of the earth.

"In 1933, dear friends, there would be a possibility for the earth and everything living on it to perish if there did not exist also that other wise arrangement that cannot be calculated. Once comets have taken on other forms calculations can no longer be accurate. What needs to be said in the sense meant by the apocalyptist is: Before the Etheric Christ can be comprehended by human beings in the right way, humanity must first cope with encountering the Beast who will rise up in 1933. This is what the apocalyptic language tells us. Here a view of the spirit unites with a view of nature. What is there in the cosmos becomes clear to us in its fundamental spiritual character. Take the way the peasants described what they saw in 1872 as they stood and watched the shower of light, and add to it what the spirit tells us as I have described it, and compare this with many of the descriptions in the Book of Revelation, and you will see that even the very words used match one another. You will see that the Book of Revelation is speaking of actual natural events."

These historical remarks are a sidestep from our main topic, but the crucial moment in time at the end of the first world war, when Steiner spoke a great deal about such things, is very important. It was at the change of the last century, around 1900, that American leaders began to discuss the possibility of an empire, an unsurpassed world power, in all seriousness. The first world war facilitated America's expansion into Europe, although Great Britain still held the guardianship of global imperialism, which was taken over by the United States after the second world war with Winston Churchill's blessing.

Of course it is very easy, especially for Scandinavians and other West-Europeans, to feel comfortable and satisfied with the strong role of leadership that America has assumed in the world, with the entire entertainment industry and all the business initiatives, not to mention all the safety or security lots of people may be feeling because the American military industrial complex with its 750 military bases around on the globe appears to be so conscientious, considerate, selfless, altruistic and idealistic. They're taking care of the world and protecting it from evil and injustice at such great self-sacrifice because they love freedom and democracy and follow God's voice.

The uncritical embrace of the United States is comfortable because up until this point, our corner of the world has been invited to the party of the good, rich, and mighty and has therefore not experienced any of the suppression, exploitation, torture, war crimes, and genocides conducted by the CIA, which has been meted out on a daily basis to people living in less favored regions.

However, this should not give cause for antipathy or aversion against various influences and dependencies that exist, nor should it spur the cultivation of national or regional vanities. Time and time again, Rudolf Steiner emphasized that what is really needed and absolutely sufficient, is that one becomes aware, conscious, cognizant, knowing, of important phenomena and facts because they concern our relationship to the threshold and our double, our Doppelgänger. Nothing except knowledge of these things provide the counterweight required, and it is the lazy reluctance or indifference in this area that can easily lead to even greater catastrophes.

Rudolf Steiner continues in the same lecture:

"Yesterday I called attention to the necessity for spiritual science really to penetrate also into social and political concepts. For America's endeavor is to mechanize everything, to drive everything into the realm of pure naturalism, and gradually to extinguish European culture from the earth. It cannot be otherwise. Obviously geographical concepts are not concepts of a people as such. It is only necessary to think of Emerson in order to know that nothing is intended here as characteristic of a people. But Emerson was a man of European education through and through. This simply shows the two opposite poles that are developing. Precisely under such influences as have been characterized today, people such as Emerson develop, who develop as they do because they confront the double with complete humanity. On the other hand, people are developing such as Woodrow Wilson, who is a mere sheath of the double, through whom the double himself works with special effectiveness Such people are essentially actual embodiments of the geographic nature of America."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here it may be appropriate to insert a comment that a certain criticism of Rudolf Steiner may be justified, at least from a superficial or exoteric point of view, when he is accused of Eurocentrism. In Ralph Waldo Emerson, he saw a progressive soul in harmony with his Time Spirit, and the same may be said of Emerson's protégé Walt Whitman, who for the sake of simplicity may be called the American version of (the Norwegian national poet) Henrik Wergeland. But these connections are extremely complicated. The history of the United States is not only characterized by the greed for gold that Steiner is talking about -- a characterization that fits Central and South America better than North America because a major weakness for the Spanish was their love of plunder and gold while they despised hard work, which became the bastion of North America's superior wealth. The history of the United States, on the other hand, is a story of violence, genocide, slavery, and wars, and this has continued to exercise tremendous influence upon culture, politics, and economic priorities to this very day. And before we move on, we should also take a brief look at our own cultural heroes Emerson and Whitman from Noam Chomsky's perspective:

"Of course, Saddam Hussein could never in his wildest imaginings have the ambition of the Jacksonian Democrats -- and this ambition was imbued with extreme racism, including from leading figures. I mean, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, were explaining why we had to conquer Mexico because of the backward, ignorant Mexicans could never do anything and we could liberate them and free them and so on."

The Mexican Mysteries

But now we are going to penetrate even deeper into the dark and sinister occult secrets of the Western Hemisphere, namely the Mexican Mysteries that took place two thousand years ago -- in other words, contemporaneously with the Mystery of Golgotha in Palestine, in the region now called Mexico.

Rudolf Steiner tells us:

"Now I have already mentioned that something is coming to expression from two sides, even geographically, that will burst like a storm into our calm and peaceful evolution in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, predisposed as it is to calm and peace. I pointed to one of these directions when I told you how Genghis Khan was inspired by the priest who had seen a descendant of the 'Great Spirit' of old Atlantis. I also indicated how a certain ahrimanic attack was launched from the West through all that followed the discovery of America. It has been overcome in a certain respect but continues to live on in it as a resistant force. One must not think that things that are not seen are not there. Because what the ahrimanic powers took in hand in the Western Hemisphere did not come to outer physical earthly reality, our fifth post-Atlantean culture has been saved from the first attacks. But it goes on living in a sort of spectral form. It is there and impresses itself into men's impulses. People know nothing of it, however, and are unaware that it lives in and inserts itself into their impulses. Now it is only through placing pictures side by side that I can really lay a foundation for concepts that you must gradually create and form for yourselves in meditation. It would not be easy to find concepts in the present fund of ideas to explain what actually lives in the urges and impulses below the threshold. They push up, to be sure, into the ordinary soul life but they are normally covered over and unperceived in modern normal life."

(Inner Impulses of Evolution, The Mexican Mysteries and the Knights Templar (GA 171), Lecture III: The After Effects of the Atlantean Mysteries in America and Asia, Dornach, September 18, 1916)

Here it may be challenging to grasp what Steiner is talking about when I have pulled a piece of text out of its context this way, but it should become clear through the text that follows below, especially when it can also be linked to geographic medicine as described in the previous excerpts above.

"Upon the soil of the Western Hemisphere that was now trodden through the discovery of America, quite special conditions had gradually been taking shape in the course of past centuries. The general population inhabiting those parts was far from attaining the qualities that had meanwhile been developed in the Eastern Hemisphere of Europe and Asia. A people lived in the West who stood far removed from the intellectual capacities that had evolved in the Eastern Hemisphere, but among them were a great number of individuals who had been initiated into certain mysteries. Before the discovery of America, there were mysteries of the most varied kind in the Western Hemisphere and they had a large following for the teachings that came from them. Like a single central power whom all followed and obeyed, a kind of spectral spirit, a descendant of the "Great Spirit" of Atlantis, was revered. This spirit had gradually assumed an ahrimanic character because he still worked with forces that had been right in Atlantis or were already ahrimanic there.

"When the Atlantean spoke of his 'Great Spirit,' he expressed it, as we have seen, in a word that sounded something like the word 'Tao,' which is still preserved in China. An ahrimanic, caricatured counterpart appeared in the West as opponent of the 'Great Spirit Tao' but he was still connected with him. He worked in such a way that he could only be made visible through atavistic, visionary perception but whenever they desired his presence, he always showed himself to those persons connected with the widespread mysteries of this cult so they could receive his instructions and commands. This spirit was called by a name that sounded something like Taotl. Taotl was thus an ahrimanic distortion of the 'Great Spirit' — a mighty being and one who did not descend to physical incarnation. A great many men were initiated into the mysteries of Taotl but the initiation was of a completely ahrimanic character. It had a quite definite purpose and goal, which was to rigidify and mechanize all earthly life, including that of humans, to such a degree that a special luciferic planet, which has already been referred to in these studies, could be founded above earthly life. The souls of men could then be drawn out to it, by force and pressure."

At this point I should warn the reader most strongly with regard to what follows, because it is extremely revolting, so be prepared. And yet, it is very necessary that these things become widely known in our time.

"As we described yesterday, what the ahrimanic powers were striving for in the civilization of Rome was only a feeble echo of what those who, under the leadership of Taotl, set out to attain, and this in much fuller and wider measure by means of the most frightful magical arts. The goal they aimed to achieve was to make the whole earth a realm of death, in which everything possible would be done to kill out independence and every inner impulse of the soul. In the mysteries of Taotl the forces were to be acquired that would enable men to set up a completely mechanized earthly realm. To this end, one had, above all, to know the great cosmic secrets that relate to what works and lives in the universe and reveals its activities in earthly existence. You see, this wisdom of the cosmos is fundamentally in its wording, always the same, because truth is always the same. The point is, however, whether or not it is received in such a way that it is employed rightly.

"Now this cosmic wisdom, which was intrinsically not evil but held holy secrets hidden within it, was carefully concealed by the initiates of Taotl. It was communicated to no one who had not been initiated correctly by the Taotl method. When a candidate had been initiated in the correct way, the teaching concerning the secrets of the cosmos was then imparted to him. Now, it was necessary for him to receive these secrets through initiation in a quite definite mood of soul. He had to feel in himself the inclination and desire to apply them on earth in such a way that they would set up that mechanistic rigid realm of death. It was thus that he had to receive the secrets. Nor were they communicated except on one special condition. The wisdom was imparted to no one who had not previously committed a murder in a particular manner. Moreover, only certain secrets were communicated to the candidate after the first murder, but further and higher secrets were imparted to him after he had committed others.

"These murders, however, had to be committed under quite definite conditions. The one to be murdered was laid out on a structure that was reached by one or two steps running along each side. This scaffold-like structure, a kind of catafalque, was rounded off above and when the victim was laid upon it, he was bent strongly back. This special way of being bound to the scaffold forced his stomach outward so that with one cut, which the initiate had been prepared to perform, it could be cut out.

"This kind of murder engendered definite feelings in the initiate. Sensations were aroused that made him capable of using the wisdom later imparted to him in the way that has been intimated above. When the stomach had been excised, it was offered to the god Taotl, again with special ceremonies. The fact that the initiates of these mysteries lived for the quite specific purpose that I have indicated to you, imparted a definite direction to their feelings. When the candidates to be initiated had matured on this path and had come to experience its inner meaning, they then learned the nature of the mutual interaction between the one who had been murdered and the one who had been initiated. Through the murder, the victim was to be prepared in his soul to strive upward to the luciferic realm, whereas the candidate for initiation was to obtain the wisdom to mould this earthly world in such a way that souls would be driven out of it. Through the fact that a connection was formed between the murdered and the initiated — one cannot say 'murderer,' but 'initiated' — it was made possible for the initiated to be taken with the other soul; that is, the initiated could himself forsake the earth at the right moment.

"These mysteries, as you will readily admit, are of the most revolting kind. Indeed, they are only in accord with a conception that can be called ahrimanic in the fullest sense. Nevertheless, certain feelings and experiences were to be created on earth by their means. Now, naturally, the evolution of the earth would not continue if, over a considerable part of its surface, mankind and an interest in mankind should completely die out. The interest in humanity, however, did not quite die out even there because other and different mysteries were founded that were designed to counteract the excesses of the Taotl mysteries. These were mysteries in which a being lived who did not come down to physical incarnation but also could be perceived by men gifted with a certain atavistic clairvoyance when they had been prepared. This being was Tezcatlipoca. That was the name given to the being who, though he belonged to a much lower hierarchy, was partly connected through his qualities with the Jehovah god. He worked in the Western Hemisphere against those grisly mysteries of which we have spoken."

As we see, Rudolf Steiner pointed out himself that these Mysteries were extremely revolting and nauseating. We should however pay a little attention to a discrepancy with regard to a certain detail here, between Steiner's description and the ordinary, or "orthodox" historical conception of these rituals. In Stewart C. Easton's foreword and Frédéric Kozlik's introduction to GA 171, these things are mentioned, and one comes to the conclusion when reading this that the occult content in that kind of practice here described, is hidden later on for posterity; tradition tells us, therefore, that the heart was cut out instead of the stomach. The secret here concealed consists of the fact that the will is seated in the stomach, and it was the will to future physical incarnations that should be killed in order to make the victim seek his abode in a luciferic sphere instead of continuing his earthly evolution.

Here all kinds of questions may arise of course. If the intention behind the whole scheme was to implement a total mechanization of human society globally, why would this goal be served by comprehensive depopulation? I'm reminded of an old classical Norwegian psalm that they still keep singing in the Lutheran state church, written by Petter Dass. One line goes like this: "God is God if all lands lay waste / God is God if every man lay dead." You go figure it out. To my father, who was an agnostic, this was pure nonsense. To me to. Absurd. Yet they sing it in church. Everything lifeless, only "God"? Or as Taotl wanted it, only Ahriman? How should he carry out his plan to make the earth thoroughly intellectual through and through with no physical brains Even to make robots, human beings are needed.

Anyway, the Doctor continues:

"The teachings of Tezcatlipoca soon escaped from the mysteries and were spread abroad exoterically. Thus, in those regions of the earth, the teachings of Tezcatlipoca were actually the most exoteric, while those of Taotl were the most esoteric, since they were only obtained in the manner described above. The ahrimanic powers sought to "save" humanity, however — I am now speaking as Ahriman thought of it — from the god Tezcatlipoca. Another spirit was set up against him who, for the Western Hemisphere, had much in common with the spirit whom Goethe described as Mephistopheles. He was indeed his kin. This spirit was designated with a word that sounded like Quetzalcoatl. He was a spirit who, for this time and part of the earth, was similar to Mephistopheles, although Mephistopheles displayed much more of a soul nature. Quetzalcoatl also never appeared directly incarnated. His symbol was similar to the Mercury staff to be found in the Eastern Hemisphere, and he was, for the Western Hemisphere, the spirit who could disseminate malignant diseases through certain magic forces. He could inflict them upon those whom he wished to injure in order to separate them from the relatively good god, Tezcatlipoca. The powerful onslaughts were thus prepared in the West that were to be made upon the world of human impulses.

"Now at a certain time a being was born in Central America who set himself a definite task within this culture. The old, original inhabitants of Mexico linked the existence of this being with a definite idea or picture. They said he had entered the world as the son of a virgin who had conceived him through super earthly powers, inasmuch as it was a feathered being from the heavens who impregnated her. When one makes researches with the occult powers at one's disposal, one finds that the being to whom the ancient Mexicans ascribed a virgin birth was born in the year 1 A.D. and lived to be thirty-three years old. These facts emerge when, as stated, one examines the matter with occult means. This being set himself a quite specific task.

"At this same time in Central America another man was born who was destined by birth to become a high initiate of Taotl. This man had in his previous earthly incarnations been initiated as described above and through the fact that he had many, many times repeated the procedure involving the excision of the stomach, which has been described to you and which there is no need to recapitulate, he had been gradually equipped with a lofty earthly and super-earthly knowledge. This was one of the greatest black magicians, if not the greatest ever to tread the earth; he possessed the greatest secrets that are to be acquired on this path. He was faced directly with a momentous decision as the year 30 A.D. approached, namely whether or not, as a single human individual, to become so powerful through continuous initiation that he would come to know a certain basic secret. Through knowledge of this secret he would have then been able to give such a shock and impetus to the coming evolution of man on earth that humanity in the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean epochs would have been thrown into terrible darkness, with the result that what the ahrimanic powers had striven for in these epochs could have come into existence.

"Then a conflict began between this super-magician and the being to whom a virgin birth was ascribed, and one finds from one's research that it lasted for three years. The being of the virgin birth bore a name that, when we try to transpose it into our speech approximates Vitzliputzli. He is a human person who, among all these beings who otherwise only moved about in spirit form and could only be perceived through atavistic clairvoyance, in actual fact became man, so the story goes, through his virgin birth. The three year conflict ended when Vitzliputzli was able to have the great magician crucified, and not only through the crucifixion to annihilate his body but also to place his soul under a ban, by this means rendering its activities powerless as well as its knowledge. Thus the knowledge assimilated by the great magician of Taotl was killed. In this way Vitzliputzli was able to win again for earthly life all those souls who, as indicated, had already received the urge to follow Lucifer and leave the earth. Through the mighty victory he had gained over the powerful black magician, Vitzliputzli was able to imbue men again with the desire for earthly existence and successive incarnations."

So this was taking place contemporaneously with the Mystery of Golgotha in Palestine, at exactly the same time it seems, and may almost resemble a mirror image of that Mystery. Here one may speculate about the origin of some weird American Christian myths, like in Mormonism, the Latter Day Saints, the church which controls most of Utah and is perhaps best known for their choirs and their underwear. This religion has a strange origin, the story about Joseph Smith who had a revelation in New York in the 1820's by an angel who gave him some golden plates with Egyptian characters and helped him translate this text into Elisabethan English, i.e. the language of Shakespeare and the King James translation of the Bible from 1611. And one of these strange Mormon teachings says that when Christ had died on the cross, he did not spend those three days before his Resurrection in the realm of the dead, but in America to preach the Gospel to the Indians. So Christ spent 72 hours among native Americans between his death and resurrection. The Mormons claim Biblical support for this teaching where Christ says:

"And other sheep I have , which are not of this fold: them also I must bring , and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." ( -- john 10:16)

Personally, I have learned to take everything coming from America with regard to religion, spirituality, and metaphysics with a very large lump of salt, and I have to say the same about all claims to initiation and clairvoyance. Americans are excellent in the technical, practical, and economic realms, and also in their artistic and academic endeavors because they strive to expose the big deception, but religiously, spiritually, metaphysically, and philosophically, the forces coming from American soil are programmed, so to speak, to mislead humanity and spread lies, although a distinction clearly needs to be made between geography and people. This is intimately connected with those secrets that are described in this article with regard to the Western Hemisphere.

Rudolf Steiner continues in his lecture:

"Nothing survived from these regions of what might have lived on if the mysteries of Taotl had borne fruit. The forces left over from the impulse that lived in these mysteries survived only in the etheric world. They still exist subsensibly, belonging to what would be seen if, in the sphere of the spirit, one could light a paper over a solfatara. The forces are there under the covering of ordinary life, which is like the surface crust of a volcano.

"So, on one side, what came from the inspirer of Genghis Khan entered into the forming of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and, on the other, what worked on as the ghost or spectre of the events that had taken place in the Western Hemisphere. No more than a feeble echo was left of this when the Europeans discovered America. But it is even known in ordinary history that many Europeans who set foot on Mexican-American soil were murdered by the decadent priesthood, which, though no longer as evil as in earlier times, still cut out the stomach, as I described. This was the fate of many Europeans who trod the soil of Mexico after the discovery of America, and the fact is even known to history."

As already mentioned, exoteric history has altered this description by exchanging the stomach with the heart, but enough of that. Steiner continues:

"In Vitzliputzli these people revered a Sun being who was born of a virgin, as I have said. When one investigates it occultly, one finds that he was the unknown contemporary in the Western Hemisphere of the Mystery of Golgotha. One can, indeed, also describe these things superficially as modern people like to do to avoid giving pain. If, however, one desires real knowledge, the one must cast a fleeting glance upon these concrete facts of the past, as we have done today. Yes, when we regard this modern human soul, we see how below, in the direction of the subsensible, and how above, in the direction of the supersensible, it is exposed to great and serious dangers, and how forces play in that remain unknown. Yet it is good that they remain unknown because it is only in this way that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch can develop. The veil must be lifted now so that consciousness may be added to what still remains unconsciousness, because enough time has passed since America has been discovered. Otherwise, if consciousness did not gradually enter, these forces would become paramount, and the relatively beneficent conditions of the time of unconsciousness would turn around and become the curse of humanity. After all, many things, which in the way they have made their appearance have proved a benefit, bear the inherent tendency to become a curse to mankind."

Anthroposophical Madness

Here it is important not to be taken in by materialistic thought forms in connection with "a curse to mankind" -- that is, by concentrating exclusively on power politics, invasions, wars, torture, fraud, exploitation and so on. In this context Leonard Cohen has come up with an interesting comment, namely that we don't like America today, but we will like much less that which comes after America -- whether it means China or whatever. It's also wise to be exercise restraint regarding speculations about present-day activities of Western secret lodges because the theme has a tendency to spark off pure madness from anthroposophists who are struggling with their sanity. Many of these draw their conspiracy speculations in a strong anti-Semitic direction, i.e. they claim a Jewish global conspiracy reminiscent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which everybody knows was a forgery directly plagiarized from earlier works of political satire unrelated to Jews) and the Nazi propaganda against Jews in the 1930's. Some of them are even open and consistent Holocaust deniers. These are in fact Western antthroposophists and may be ragarded as an attack against the movement from within, not necessarily because wacky ideas infect the rest of the movement, but because they give the opponents wind in their sails when accusing anthroposophy of racism, anti-Semitism, and Nazism.

And yet, touching that which Steiner describes as the activities of the Western lodges is something that cannot be avoided, for the simple reason that these lodges are comprised of initiates with complete knowledge of all these occult secrets and know how to abuse such knowledge. This is what results in severe political and economic corruption and abuse all over the world, but because the conspiracy theorists, including the anthroposophical ones, have fallen completely for materialistic interpretations of external events, their texts sometimes resemble babbling from psychiatric patients. I have said many times during the last decade that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the madness that will be let loose in the nearest future -- not at least from anthroposophical quarters!

In other words, the topic of secret lodges and their activities seem unavoidable, but personally I'll save this hot potato for a future article with absolutely no promises.

America's Future

At this point, it may be a good idea to take a look at what Rudolf Steiner said about America's future. The following quote has been excerpted from a lecture given in Berlin on October 31, 1905 (GA 93a), i.e. a few years before Steiner began to experience opposition and enmity -- which first emerged from the theosophists in 1907 and Max Heindel's plagiarization and slander etc., and then broke out for real in 1911 after the lecture series From Jesus to Christ (GA 131).

"World-egoism proceeds from the Anglo-American Race. From that direction the whole Earth will be overlaid with egoism. It is from England and America that all the discoveries come that will cover the Earth like a network of egoism. So it is from there that the whole Earth will be covered by a network of egotistic evil. But from a small colony in the East [The Slavonic peoples.] there will be developed, as though from a seed, new life for the future.

"The English-American civilisation consumes European culture. The sects in England and America represent nothing other than the most incredible conservation of what is old. But such Societies as the Salvation Army, the Theosophical Society and so on, come into existence just there, in order to rescue souls from decadence, for race evolution does not run parallel with soul evolution. But the race itself is going towards its destruction. Within it is the seed of the evil race."

(Foundations of Esotericism, GA 93a, Lecture 28, Berlin, 31st October 1905)

These are really harsh words about America from Rudolf Steiner. Most people who feel very pro-West are likely to shake their heads and say that here Rudolf Steiner's prejudices are coming out -- his Sentral-Eurocentrism etc. Closer analysis will reveal that he was right, however, and that he was not exaggerating. In that context, it's very difficult to avoid getting into the secret occult lodges of the West and their indiscriminate manipulation and abuse of those geographical and evolutionary forces and powers we have been talking about. And here one may very well begin with external events, e.g. by referring to John Perkins' books: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004) and The Secret History of the American Empire (2007). Or Chalmers Johnson's Blowback Trilogy: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.

Now I will handpick an interesting quote from GA 186 (Die Soziale Grundforderung unserer Zeit In reänderter Zeitage) from December 1 1918, with the almost indigestible title The Mechanistic, Eugenic, and Hygienic Aspects of the Future. It was at this time that the West had conquered Central Europe for real, and here Steiner is talking about how the evil lodges of the West are striving in a conscious and calculating way to hinder the development of higher faculties among peoples in other parts of the world (i.e. among populations outside the English-speaking countries):

"These capacities appear differentiated, distributed among the humanity of the world, but at the same time in such a way that they intertwine. Through this intertwining will the future social bond of community life be determined throughout the world. But there are hindrances against the development of these capacities. These hindrances are manifold in character, and their action is really complicated.

"For example, in the case of the people of the Central countries and the Eastern lands it is an important hindrance to the evolution of these capacities, especially their evolution in a knowing way, when strong antipathies against the people of the Western countries are active within them. Then these things cannot be viewed objectively. This is a hindrance in the evolution of these capacities.

"But the potentiality of developing another occult capacity is also even strenghtened in a certain way if it is developed out of a certain instinct of hatred. This is a strange phenomenon. We often ask ourselves, and we are dealing here with something that must be considered quite objectively, why such senseless abuse has been practiced in the Western countries. This also comes out of the instinct leading toward these capacities. For what constitutes the profoundest impelling forces in Western occultism is fostered by nothing more powerfully than by the development of feelings that are untrue but are sensed as in some way holy, and that can represent the people of the East and especially those of the Central countries as barbarians. The potentialities of material occultism, for example, are fostered by the attitude of mind constituting the so-called crusading temperament in America. This consists in the feeling that America is called to spread over the whole earth freedom and justice and I know not what other beautiful things. Of course, the people there believe that. What I am saying here has nothing to do with fault finding. The people believe that they are engaged in a crusade, but this belief in something false constitutes a support working in a certain direction. If a person should consciously make an untrue statement, he would not have this support. For this reason, what is now happening is tremendously helpful on the one side and a hindrance on the other in the development of those capacities that we must assert to be still latent at the present time in the case of most individuals who bear within themselves the will toward evolution in the future and are destined to influence profoundly the social structure of humanity.

"Just think how everything that is happening at the present time is rendered luminous and transparent with understanding and insight when you fix your attention upon those backgrounds, and realize clearly that the subconscious instincts dealt with in our reflections lie back of everything that is constantly uttered today in a conscious way.

"The most important fact in this connection, however, is that it is precisely the English-speaking peoples who, by reason of quite special evolutionary processes, possess occult centers where these things are known."

(GA 186: Die Soziale Grundforderung unserer Zeit In reänderter Zeitage [12 lectures from Nov 29. to Dec 21. 1918]: 1. des. 1918: Die Entwickelung mechanischer, eugenetischer und hygienischer okkulter Fähigkeiten in der Zukunft.)

Three lectures by Dr. Steiner from GA 178 (Dornach, Nov 1917) about the dark occult activities of Western lodges are available through this link.

Here it becomes very clear that political considerations are very inadequate to shed light on such things. However, what Steiner says above about the crusading idealism in America is worth close attention: Namely that it's nonsense, a big lie, which is mankind's bounden duty to recognize in our time. But the world wants to be deceived and led to believe that the so-called leadership of the United States is a blessing for the planet.

Ahriman's Physical Incarnation

Last but not least we ought shed some light on American Christianity. And to approach this topic, we should keep in mind that Ahriman's physical incarnation is approaching, and that this will take place in the West, i.e. on the Western Hemisphere, probably in the United States. This event is of enormous significance, and it is absolutely inevitable because it is part and parcel of cosmic law: First we have Lucifer's incarnation in China, which became the origin of all old, primeval, so-called pagan wisdom; after that, we have the incarnation of Christ in the Middle East, and now very soon we will have Ahriman's incarnation in the West.

Ahriman

Rudolf Steiner tells us:

"The impulses entering humanity from a Luciferic source sank down gradually into the soul. On the other hand, however, another impulse, which we call the Ahrimanic, is growing stronger and stronger in modern times. It will become increasingly strong in the near future and on into future ages. The Ahrimanic impulse proceeds from a supersensible Being different from the Being of Christ or of Lucifer. Equally with ‘supersensible’ one can say ‘subsensible’ -- but that is not the point here. The influence of this Being becomes especially powerful in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. If we look at the confused conditions of recent years we shall find that men have been brought to such chaotic conditions mainly through the Ahrimanic powers.

"Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium, as there was the Christ Incarnation at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so there will be a Western incarnation of the Ahriman being some little time after our present earthly existence, in fact, in the third post-Christian millennium. To form a right conception of the historical evolution of mankind during approximately 6000 years, one must grasp that at the one pole stands a Luciferic incarnation, in the center, the incarnation of Christ, and at the other pole the Ahrimanic incarnation."

(The Ahrimanic Deception, Zurich, October 27, 1919, GA 193)

Many people may be thinking primarily about the natural-scientific, atheist superstition in connection with the ahrimanic deception, but fundamentalist Christianity stands in a very special position and must not be underestimated.

In the same lecture Rudolf Steiner says:

"These very people who swear by the Gospel alone and reject every kind of real spiritual knowledge, form the beginning of a flock for Ahriman when he appears in human shape in modern civilization. From these circles, from these members of confessions and sects who repulse the concrete knowledge brought by spiritual endeavor, whole hosts will develop as adherents of Ahriman. Now this is all beginning to come into existence."

In the United States, this homely "Old Time Religion" Christianity is an enormous cultural industry with its own radio stations, bookstore franchises, Bible universities and colleges, and gigantic church communities. In Norway, these are known as Evangelical Free-Churches, i.e,. Saron's Valley and so on, where the pastors, theologians, and youth leaders take their education in the United States.

American visions about the so-called "rapture" are a mixture of Bible verses, belief in flying saucers (from the 1940's), Star Trek (from the 1960's; see my article on Star Trek here) and so on, because Jesus is thought of as an astronaut expected to arrive in a star ship and beam onboard his elect, those who hold the correct religious beliefs, before he proceeds to torture unbelievers and heretics (like us) with all kinds of apocalyptic horrors and plagues. In addition to that, the core of Western protestant theology and eschatology is about the United States being God's favorite nation on earth and about Israel being God's chosen people. It doesn't matter if the true believer is Norwegian, Russian, Indian, or Nigerian; they will all confirm, regardless of their own nationality and ethnicity, that the United States is God's favorite country and that Israel is God's own land. Other people are Satan's children who don't have the right to live if they get uppity -- except those who are saved and born again, of course, because they echo their indoctrination whenever they speak. And God's own governments can of course never do anything morally suspect, because the ways of the Lord are always beyond reproach and holy.

American patriotism runs on slogans like "My country right or wrong," which is equivalent to "My mama drunk or sober." And very soon Satan Himself will come, or Ahriman, who will be believed by his followers to be Jesus the astronaut. Then Doomsday rolls in, and the lights go out.

American Christianity and Islam

In 1924, the last year he was able to give lectures before his health put an end to it, Rudolf Steiner revealed a very important secret about Woodrow Wilson:

"Open your history books, and you will find that the year 711 was of great significance in the situation between Europe and the Arabism that was storming across Spain. Tarik, Commander of the Arabs, sets out from Africa. He comes to the place that received its name from him: Gebel al Tarik, later called Gibraltar. The battle of Jerez de la Frontera takes place in the year 711. Arabism makes a strong thrust across Spain at the beginning of the 8th century. Battles are fought, and the fortunes of war sway hither and thither between the peoples who have come down into Spain to join with the old inhabitants, and the Arabs who are now storming in upon them. Even in those days the 'culture,' as we would say today, of the attacking Arabs, commanded tremendous respect in Spain. Naturally, the Europeans had no desire to subject themselves to the Arabs. But the culture the Arabs brought with them was already in a sense a foreshadowing of what flourished later in such unexampled brilliance under Haroun al Raschid. In a man such as Tarik there was the attitude of soul that in all the storms of war wants to give expression to what is contained in Arabism. What we see outwardly is the tumult of war. But along the paths of these wars comes much lofty culture. Even outwardly a very great deal in the way of art and science was established in Spain. Many remains of Arabism lived on in the spiritual life of Europe. Spain itself soon ceased to play a part in the West of Europe. Nevertheless the fortunes of war swayed to and fro and the fighting continued from Spain; in men such as Spinoza we can see how deep is the influence of Arabist culture. Spinoza cannot be understood unless we see his origin in Arabism.

"And then this stream flows across to England, but there it runs dry, comes to an end. We turn over the pages of history, and after the descriptions of the conflicts between Europe and the Arabs we find, as we read on further, that Arabism has dried up, externally at any rate. But under the surface this has not happened; on the contrary, Arabism spreads abroad in the spiritual life. And along this undercurrent of history, Tarik bears what he originally bore into Spain on the fierce wings of war. The aim of the Arabians in their campaigns was most certainly not that of mere slaughter; no, their aim was really the spread of Arabism. Their tasks were connected with culture. And what a Tarik had carried into Spain at the beginning of the 8th century, he now bears with him through the gate of death, experiencing how as far as external history is concerned it runs dry in Western Europe. And he appears again in the 19th century, bringing Arabism to expression in modern form, as Charles Darwin.

"Suddenly we shall find a light shed upon something that seems to come like a bolt from the blue — we find a light shed upon it when we follow what has here been carried over from an earlier into a later time, appearing in an entirely different form.

"It may at first seem like a paradox, but the paradox will disappear the more deeply we look into the concrete facts. Read Darwin's writings again with perception sharpened by what has been said and you will feel: Darwin writes about things which Tarik might have been able to see on his way to Europe! — In such details you will perceive how the one life reaches over into the next.

"Now from times of hoary antiquity, especially in Asia Minor, astronomy had been the subject of profound study — astronomy, that is to say, in an astrological form. This must not, of course, in any way be identified with the quackery perpetuated in the modern age as astrology. We must realise the deep insight into the spiritual structure of the universe possessed by men in those times; this insight was particularly marked among the Arabians in the period when they were Mohammedans, continuing the dynasty founded by Mohammed. Astrological astronomy in its ancient form was cultivated with great intensity among them.

"When the Residence of the dynasty was transferred from Damascus to Baghdad, we find Mamun ruling there in the 9th century. During the reign of Mamun — all such rulers were successors of the Prophet — astrology was cultivated in the form in which it afterwards passed over into Europe, contained in tracts and treatises of every variety which were only later discovered. They came over to Europe in the wake of the Crusades but had suffered terribly from erroneous and clumsy revision. For all that, however, this astronomy was great and sublime. And when we search among those who are not named in history, but who were around Mamun in Baghdad in the period from 813 to 833, cultivating this astrological-astronomical knowledge, we find a brilliant personality in whom Mamun placed deep confidence. His name is not given in history, but that is of no account. He was a personality most highly respected, to whom appeal was always made when it was a question of reading the portents of the stars. Many measures connected with the external social life were formulated in accordance with what such celebrities as the learned scholar at the Court of Caliph Mamun were able to read in the stars.

"And if we follow the line along which the soul of this learned man at the Court of Mamun in Baghdad developed, we are led to the modern astronomer Laplace. Thus one of the personalities who lived at the Court of the Caliph Mamun appears again as Laplace.

"The great impulses — those of less importance, too, which I need not now enumerate — that still flowed from this two-branched stream into Europe, even after the outer process had come to a halt, show us how Arabism lived on spiritually, how this two-pronged fork around Europe continued its grip.

"You will remember, my dear friends, that Mohammed himself founded the centre of Mohammedanism, Medina, which later on became the seat of residence of his successors; this seat of residence was subsequently transferred to Damascus. Then, from Damascus across to Asia Minor and to the very portal of Europe, Constantinople, the generals of Mohammed's successors storm forward, again on the wings of war, bearing culture that has been fructified by the religion and the religious life founded by Mohammed, but is permeated also with the Aristotelianism which in the wake of the campaigns of Alexander the Great was carried over from Greece, from Macedonia, indeed from many centres of culture, to Asia.

"And here, too, something very remarkable happens. Arabism is flooded, swamped, by the Turkish element. The Crusaders find rudimentary relics only, not the fruits of an all-prevailing culture. All this was eliminated by the Turks. What was carried by way of Africa and Spain to the West lives on and develops in the tranquil flow, so to speak, of civilisation and culture; points of contact are again and again to be found.

"The unnamed scholar at the Court of Mamun, Haroun al Raschid himself, Tarik — all these souls were able to link what they bore within them with what was actually present in the world. For when the soul has passed through the gate of death, a certain force of attraction to the regions which were the scene of previous activity always remains; even when through other impulses of destiny there may have been changes, nevertheless the influence continues. It works on, maybe in the form of longing or the like. But because Arabism promotes belief in strict determinism, when the opportunity offered for continuing in a spiritual way what, at the beginning, was deliberately propagated by warlike means, it also became possible to carry these spiritual streams especially into France and England. Laplace, Darwin, Bacon, and many other spirits of like nature were led forward in this direction.

"But everything had been, as it were, damped down. In the East, Arabism was able to knock only feebly at the door of Europe; it could make no real progress there. And those who passed through the gate of death after having worked in this region felt repulsed, experienced a sense of inability to go forward. The work they had performed on earth was destroyed, and the consequence of this between death and rebirth was a kind of paralysis of the life of soul. — We come now to something of extraordinary interest.

"Soon after the time of the Prophet, the Residence is transferred from Medina to Damascus. From there the generals of the successors of the Prophet go forth with their armies but are again and again beaten back; the success achieved in the West is not achieved here. And then, very soon, we see a successor of the Prophet, Muavija by name, ruling in Damascus. His attitude and constitution of soul proceed on the one side from the monotheism of Arabism, but also from the determinism which grew steadily into fatalism. But already at that time., although in a more inward, mystical way, the Aristotelianism that had been carried over to Asia was taking effect. Muavija, who sent his generals on the one side as far as Constantinople and on the other made attempts — without any success to speak of — in the direction of Africa, this Muavija was at the same time a thoughtful man; but a man who did not accomplish anything very much, either outwardly or in the spiritual life.

"Muavija rules not long after Mohammed. He thus stands entirely within Mohammedanism, within the religious life of Arabism. He is a genuine representative of Mohammedanism at that time, but one of those who are growing away from its hide-bound form and entering into that mode of thought which then, discarding the religious form, appears in the sciences and fine arts of the West.

"Muavija is a representative spirit in the first century after Mohammed, but one whose thinking is no longer patterned in absolute conformity with that of Mohammed; he draws his impulse from Mohammed, but only his impulse. He has not yet discarded the religious core of Mohammedanism, but has already led it over into the sphere of thought, of logic. And above all he is one of those who are ardently intent upon pressing on into Europe, upon forcing their way to the West. If you follow the campaigns and observe the forces that were put into operation under Muavija, you will realise that this eagerness to push forward towards the West was combined with tremendous driving power, but this was already blunted, was already losing its edge.

"When such a spirit later passes through the gate of death and lives on, the driving force also persists, and if we follow the path further we get this striking impression. — During the life between death and a new birth, much that remained as longing is elaborated into world-encompassing plans for a later life, but world-encompassing plans that assume no very concrete form for the very reason that the force behind them was blunted.

"Now I confess that I am always having to ask myself: Shall I or shall I not speak openly? But after all it is useless to speak of these matters merely in abstractions, and so one must lay aside reserve and speak of things that are there in concrete cases. Let the world think as it will: certain inner, spiritual necessities exist in connection with the spread of Anthroposophy. One lends oneself to the impulse that arises from these spiritual necessities, pursuing no outward 'opportunism.\ Opportunism has, in sooth, wrought harm enough to the Anthroposophical Society; in the future there must be no more of it. And even if things have a paradoxical effect, they will. henceforward be said straight out.

"If we follow this Muavija, one of the earliest successors of the Prophet, as he passes along the undercurrent and then appears again, we find Woodrow Wilson.

"In a shattering way the present links itself with the past. A bond is suddenly there between present and past. And if we observe how on the sea of historical happenings there surges up as it were the wave of Muavija, and again the wave of Woodrow Wilson, we perceive how the undercurrent flows on through the sea below and appears again — it is the same current.

"I believe that history becomes intelligible only when we see how what really happens has been carried over from one epoch into another. Think of the abstraction., the rigid abstraction, of the Fourteen Points. Needless to say, the research did not take its start from the Fourteen Points — but now that the whole setting lies before you, look at the configuration of soul that comes to expression in these Fourteen Points and ask yourselves whether it could have taken root with such strength anywhere else than in a follower of Mohammed.

"Take the fatalism that had already assumed such dimensions in Muavija and transfer it into the age of modern abstraction. Feel the similarity with Mohammedan sayings: 'Allah has revealed it'; 'Allah will bring it to pass as the one and only salvation.' And then try to understand the real gist of many a word spoken by the promoter of the Fourteen Points. — With no great stretch of imagination you will find an almost literal conformity.

"Thus, when we are observing human beings, we can also speak of a reincarnation of ideas. And then for the first time insight is possible into the growth and unfolding of history."

(Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume I, GA 235; Lecture 10, Dornach, 16th March, 1924)

I quoted a long passage from this lecture because it's a very interesting and informative history lesson on a subject that's very important for all Europeans today, when we are experiencing a renewed cultural challenge by the Arabic stream through Islam. But the crucial point here is how this Arabic thrust into Europe came back in a new and more advanced form through Woodrow Wilson, whom Steiner has also described as a mere shadow of his double. Monotheism was first introduced to the world by the Jews, through Judaism. Through the prophet Mohammed, this monotheism assumed a more extreme form, more onesided, because although Mohammed's angel "was not one of the best Angels although he was a very wise one," as Steiner put it in a lecture without title or reference, he did away with the trinity (Moon, Sun and Saturn disguised as Father, Son and Spirit) and proclaimed only one god that everybody must obey because Scripture (the Quran) says so. This type of monotheism means that the Word is not made flesh, like in Christianity, making each human being the carrier of divine truth; instead, the Word is made Scripture, a book, and this book must be obeyed unconditionally. The same principle applies, of course, to American Christianity. And the one and only god to be obeyed is not one of unconditional, self-sacrificing love, but a god of brutal justice, vengeance, and war: The god of the Old Testament. So Steiner's observations shouldn't come as any surprise when he said:

"Man may sense the Divine but may have no possibility to sense the Christ. In this respect we do not differentiate carefully enough today. We are satisfied with words, also in other spheres. For, if we test today the actual spiritual content of the view of many human beings of the occident and are not influenced by their words — they say they agree with Christian precepts, they believe in the freedom of the will, and so forth — we shall find that the whole configuration of their thinking contradicts what they thus express. Only through their participation in cultural life have they become accustomed to speak of Christ, of freedom, and so forth. In reality, my dear friends, a great number of human beings living among us are nothing but Turks; for the content of their faith is the same as the fatalistic content of faith of the Mohammedans — although this fatalism is often described as a necessity of nature. Mohammedanism is much more prevalent than we think. If we do not focus our attention upon the words but upon the spirit-soul content, we shall find that many Christians are Turks. They call themselves 'Christians' even though they cannot find the transition from the God they sense to the Christ."

The Mission of the Archangel Michael, GA194, IV: The Culture of the Mysteries and the Michael Impulse. Self-knowledge and its Permeation of the Three Strata of Consciousness, Dornach, 28th November, 1919)

And take this very interesting passage from an unidentified lecture:

"Just think how abstractly, how brutally, how heedlessly investigations are made into these things today and you will realize what is really lacking and has been killed, in spite of the fact that Arabism did conserve much of the wisdom, conscientiousness and skill of ancient times. It has been killed because Moon, Sun and Saturn—this Trinity which was then disguised as Father, Son and Spirit — disappeared and was repudiated by Arabian thought in Mohammedanism with the words: 'Away with this Trinity. Mohammed proclaims only one God!' (Mohammed himself did not say this, but the Angel who inspired him, did. He was not one of the best Angels although he was a very wise one.) And so we see that all differentiations in the world are allowed to disappear; things which ought to be known are darkened and our medicine has become an Arabian-Mohammedan medicine. European humanity was incapable of discovering the truth. Today these things must be known or mankind will go to pieces."

("Lecture IV" Dornach, April 24, 1924)

The working of the Arabic stream through the West as an integral part of the Western political, economic, and cultural power structure is extremely complicated. Because this also involves the history of Europe, I'll postpone further discussions until I get enough relevant material for a different article.

Technology, Science Fiction, and Anthroposophy

Time and Space

Science fiction is a genre of fiction where its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature. Exploring the consequences of such differences is the traditional purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas". It's about writing rationally about alternative possibilities. The settings are often contrary to known reality, but the majority of science fiction relies on a considerable degree of suspension of disbelief provided by potential scientific explanations to various fictional elements.

These may include: 1) A setting in the future, in alternative timelines, or in a historical past that contradicts known facts of history or the archaeological record. 2) A setting in outer space, on other worlds, or involving aliens Stories that involve technology or scientific principles that contradict known laws of nature. 3) Stories that involve discovery or application of new scientific principles, such as time travel or psionics, or new technology, such as nanotechnology, faster-than-light travel or robots, or of new and different political or social systems (e.g., a dystopia).

This is basically how science fiction has been defined in the Wikipedia, and it's a fairly useful summary. I'll come back to some of this, but one fundamental principle that I need to emphasize for the purpose of this article is the radical contrast between space thinking and time thinking, between the perception of man as a space being on the one hand, and time being on the other. Theosophy and anthroposophy comprise as unique body of thoughts precisely because the latter is emphasized, namely time, in contradistinction to the ordinary or orthodox perception of empirical truth, where space in considered our primary reality.

In order to clarify what I'm getting at with a reference to Rudolf Steiner, I have picked out a very special lecture from June 1924 in connection with the Whitsun Festival, where he gives a crystal clear description of this contrast, not only between time and space, but also between the materialistic and the spiritual conceptions of the universe.

"This modern scientific conception of the world examines the physical qualities of everything on the Earth, living and lifeless. It also investigates the stars, the sun, the moon, etc.; and it discovers — indeed it is particularly proud of the discovery — that these heavenly bodies are fundamentally of the same nature as the Earth.

"Such a conception can only result from a form of knowledge which at no point comes to a real grasp of man himself — a knowledge which takes hold only of what is external to man. The moment, however, we really take hold of Man as he stands within the Universe, we become able to discover the relationships between the several instrumental members of man's nature, the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body and the corresponding entities, the corresponding realities of Being, in the Cosmos.

"In regard to the etheric body of man, we find spread out in the Cosmos the universal Ether. The etheric body of man has a definite human shape, definite forms of movement within it, and so on. These, it is true, are different in the cosmic Ether. Nevertheless the cosmic Ether is fundamentally of like nature with what we find in the human etheric body. In the same way we can speak of a similarity between what is found in the human astral body and a certain astral principle that works through all things and all beings out in the far-spread Universe.

"Here we come to something of extraordinary importance, something which in its true nature is quite foreign to the human being of to-day. Let us take our start from this. (A drawing is made on the blackboard). We have, first, the Earth; and on the Earth we have Man, with his etheric body. Then in the Earth's environment we have the cosmic Ether — the cosmic Ether which is of the same nature as the etheric in man. In man we also have the astral body. In the cosmic environment too there is Astrality. Where are we to find this cosmic Astrality? Where is it? It is indeed to be found, but we must first discover — what it is in the Cosmos that betrays the presence of cosmic Astrality; what it is that reveals it. Somewhere or other is the Astrality. Is this Astrality in the Cosmos quite invisible and imperceptible, or is it, after all, in some way perceptible to us?

"In itself, of course, the Ether too is imperceptible for our physical senses. If I may put it so, when you are looking at a small fragment of Ether, you see nothing with your physical senses, you simply see through it. The Ether is like an empty nothingness to you. But when you regard the etheric environment as a totality, you behold the blue sky, of which we also say that it is not really there but that you are gazing into empty space. Now the reason why you see the blue of the sky is that you are actually perceiving the end of the Ether. Thus you behold the Ether as the blue of the heavens. The perception of the blue sky is really and truly a perception of the Ether. We may therefore say: In that we perceive the blue of the sky we are perceiving the universal Ether that surrounds us.

"At first contact, we see through the Ether. It allows us to do so; and yet, it makes itself perceptible in the blue heavens. Hence the existence for human perception of the blue of the sky is expressed in that we say: The Ether itself, though imperceptible, yet rises to the level of perceptibility by reason of the great majesty with which it stands there in the Universe, revealing its presence, making itself known in the blue of the vast expanse.

"Physical science theorises materialistically about the blue of the sky; and for physical science it is indeed very difficult to reach any intelligent conclusion on this point, for the simple reason that it is bound to admit that where we see the blue of the sky there is nothing physical. Nevertheless men spin out the most elaborate theories to explain how the rays of light are reflected and refracted in a peculiar way so as to call forth this blue of the sky. In reality, it is here that the supersensible world begins already to hold sway. In the Cosmos the Supersensible does indeed become visible to us. We have only to discover where and how it becomes visible. The Ether becomes perceptible to us through the blue of the sky.

"But now, somewhere there is also present the astral element of the Cosmos. In the blue sky the Ether peers through, as it were, into the realms of sense. Where then does the Astrality in the Cosmos peer through into the realms of perceptibility? The answer, my dear friends, is this.

"Every star that we see glittering in the heavens is in reality a gate of entry for the Astral. Wherever the stars are twinkling and glittering in towards us, there glitters and shines the Astral. Look at the starry heavens in their manifold variety; in one part the stars are gathered into heaps and clusters, or in another they are scattered far apart. In all this wonderful configuration of radiant light, the invisible and super-sensible astral body of the Cosmos makes itself visible to us.

"For this reason we must not consider the world of stars unspiritually. To look up to the world of stars and speak of worlds of burning gases is just as though — forgive the apparent absurdity of the comparison, but it is precisely true — it is just as though someone who loves you were gently stroking you, holding the fingers a little apart, and you were then to say that it feels like so many little ribbons being drawn across your cheek. It is no more untrue that little ribbons are laid across your cheek when someone strokes you, than that there exist up there in the heavens those material entities of which modern physics tells. It is the astral body of the Universe which is perpetually wielding its influences — like the gently stroking fingers — on the etheric organism of the Cosmos. The etheric Cosmos is organised for very long duration; it is for this reason that a star has its quality of fixity, representing a perpetual influence on the cosmic Ether by the astral Universe. It lasts far longer than the stroking of your cheek. But in the Cosmos things do last longer, for there we are dealing with gigantic measures. Thus in the starry heavens that we perceive, we actually behold an expression of the soul-life of the cosmic astral world.

"In this way, an immense, unfathomable life, yet, at the same time, a soul-life, a real and actual life of the soul, is brought into the Cosmos. Think how dead the Cosmos appears to us when we look into the far spaces and see nothing but burning gaseous bodies. Think how living it all becomes when we know that the stars are an expression of the love with which the astral Cosmos works upon the etheric Cosmos — for this is to express it with perfect truth. Think then of those mysterious processes when certain stars suddenly light up at certain times, — processes which have only been explained to us by means of physical hypotheses that do not lead to any real understanding. Stars that were not there before, light up for a time, and disappear again. Thus in the Cosmos too there is a “stroking” of shorter duration. For it is true indeed that in epochs when divine Beings desire to work in an especial way from the astral world into the etheric, we behold new stars light up and fade away again.

"We ourselves in our own astral body have feelings of delight and comfort in the most varied ways. In like manner in the Cosmos, through the cosmic astral body, we have the varied configuration of the starry heavens. No wonder that an ancient science, instinctively clairvoyant, describes this third member of our human organism as the “astral” or “starry” body, seeing that it is of like nature with that which reveals itself to us in the stars.

"It is only the Ego that we do not find revealed in the cosmic environment. Why is this? We shall find the reason if we consider how this human Ego manifests here on the Earth, in a world that is in reality threefold, — physical, etheric and astral. The Ego of man, as it appears within the Universe, is ever and again a repetition of former lives on Earth; and again and again it finds itself in the life between death and a new birth. But when we observe the Ego in its life between death and a new birth, we perceive that the Etheric which we have here in the cosmic environment of the Earth has no significance for the human Ego. The etheric body is laid aside soon after death. It is only the astral world, that shines in towards us through the stars that has significance for the Ego in the life between death and a new birth. And in that world which glistens in towards us through the stars, in that world there live the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies with whom man forms his Karma between death and a new birth.

"Indeed, when we follow this Ego in its successive evolutions through lives between birth and death and between death and a new birth, we cannot remain within the world of Space at all. For two successive earthly lives cannot be within the same space. They cannot be within that Universe which is dependent on spatial co-existence. Here therefore we go right out of Space and enter into Time. This is actually so. We go out of Space and come into the pure flow of Time when we contemplate the Ego in its successive lives on Earth.

"Now consider this, my dear friends. In Space, Time is still present, of course, but within this world of Space we have no means of experiencing Time in itself. We always have to experience Time through Space and spatial processes. For example, if you wish to experience Time, you look at the clock, or, if you will, at the course of the sun. What do you see? You see the various positions of the hands of the clock or of the sun. You see something that is spatial. Through the fact that the positions of the hand or of the sun are changed, through the fact that spatial things are present to you as changing, you gain some idea of Time. But of Time itself there is really nothing in this spatial perception. There are only varied spatial configurations, varied positions of the hands of the clock, varied positions of the sun. You only experience Time itself when you come into the sphere of the soul's experience. There you do really experience Time, but there you also go out of Space. There, Time is a reality, but within the earthly world of Space, Time is no reality. What, then, must happen to us, if we would go out of the Space in which we live between birth and death and enter into the spacelessness in which we live between death and a new birth? What must we do? The answer is this: We must die!

"We must take these words in their exact and deep meaning. On Earth we experience Time only through Space — through points in Space, through the positions of spatial things. On Earth we do not experience Time in its reality at all. Once you grasp this, you will say: “Really to enter into Time we must go out of Space, we must put away all things spatial.” You can also express it in other words, for it is really nothing else than — to die. It means, in very deed and truth: to die.

"Let us now turn our eyes to this cosmic world that encircles the Earth — this cosmic world to which we are akin both through our etheric body, and also through our astral body — and let us look at the spiritual in this cosmic world. There have indeed been nations and human societies who have had regard only to the spiritual that is to be found within our earthly world of Space. Such peoples were unable to have any thoughts about repeated lives on Earth. Thoughts about repeated lives on Earth were possessed only by those human beings and groups that were able to conceive Time in its pure essence, Time in its spaceless character. But if we consider this earthly world together with its cosmic environment, or, to put it briefly, all that we speak of as the Cosmos, the Universe; and if we behold the spiritual manifest in it, we are then apprehending something of which it can be said that it had to be present in order that we might enter into our existence as earthly human beings; it had to be there."

( -- Rudolf Steiner: The Whitsuntide Festival, Its place in the study of Karma, Dornach, June 4, 1924, GA 353)

Rudolf Steiner

Time Being contra Space Being

Contrary to science fiction, with its main focus upon infinitely long journeys through outer, external space, anthroposophy on the other hand is based primarily upon the concept of man as a time being instead of a space being. One may argue, of course, that man is both of these in our four dimensional universe, i.e. three dimensional space moving through time, which then becomes the fourth dimension, but let's make a small paradigm shift from this orthodox orientation and send the whole thing off in a more esoteric, i.e. heretical, direction.

In order to clarify what I'm getting at here, it may be helpful to read my website article Star Trek and Anthroposophy, where I've explored a few episodes from the Original Series from this angle. (Also available at Southern Cross Review.)

What is science fiction really? There are several types of speculative fiction, but the idea of science may seem perplexing because it's so comprehensive. It implies not merely science, but science-and-technology, i.e. discoveries and inventions in connection with physical and chemical natural laws. A more appropriate and precise label for this literary genre would therefore be science and technology fiction instead of only science fiction.

After the first world war, the sci-fi genre has been dominated by the English-speaking world so overwhelmingly that one may almost call it a cultural monopoly: The British Isles, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This is undoubtedly linked to the fact that it would be very difficult to translate the term "science fiction" into any other language. For this reason I'll focus primarily upon science fiction written in English in the course of the last century.

The trend is of course much older. In the 15th and 16th centuries, when there were yet no steam engines and the practical use of electricity hadn't been discovered, Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) developed ideas about how people could make machines that would enable them to fly. And in the 19th century a man appeared in France whose name was Jules Verne, and who also had a remarkable ability to predict technological development.


Rudolf Steiner as science fiction thinker

This ability must also be ascribed to Rudolf Steiner. 106 years ago (December 23, 1904), he said the following in Berlin:

"A man standing here [in Berlin], let us say, will be able, by pressing a button concealed in his pocket, to [explode] some object at a great distance, let us say in Hamburg, just as wireless telegraphy is possible, by setting up a wave movement and causing it to take a particular form at some other place. This will be within man's power when the occult truth, that thought and atom consist of the same substance, is applied to practical life."

(The Temple Legend: Freemasonry & Related Occult Movements, Lecture 10: Evolution And Involution As They Are Interpreted By Occult Societies [The Atom As Congealed Electricity], Berlin, 23rd December 1904, GA 93)

Today we know how easy it is to push a key on a cell phone in one's pocket and cause an explosion anywhere on the planet by calling another cell phone attached to a bomb.

Steiner's vision with regard to future technological development was usually quite sinister. In the same lecture from 1904 he says:

"In the seventh post-Atlantean cultural epoch, to be precise, this War of All against All will break out, in the most terrible way. Great and mighty forces will ensue from discoveries that will turn the entire globe into a kind of self-functioning electrical apparatus."

Hello? Rudolf Steiner seems here to have described the technological globalization process we are living with today already, but the time he is talking about, when the seventh epoch has led to the War of All against All, lies at least seven thousand years ahead of us. Seven thousand years! Think from 5000 B.C. until today, how long that is. Think equally long into the future. With this in mind, it's astounding that those discoveries Steiner is referring to, seem to be going full blast already, although we haven't seen much of those great and mighty forces that should ensue from these discoveries, unless he had in mind nuclear power, which he described the same year and became reality only four decades later, not seven thousand years.

These riddles, however, are undoubtedly intimately connected with Western occultism, i.e. the special kind of occultism that is due to evolve in English-speaking countries during the next seven thousand years.

Rudolf Steiner rarely gives exact dates or suggests numbers of years for long epochs; he normally speaks only about measured time in connection with those centuries and decades that are closest behind us. Longer periods represent a problem when we try to figure them out in actual time as we know it. What we call a year is contingent upon the earth's path around the sun in the manner we understand this through Copernicus and Galileo; the exact duration of the year itself was discovered by the Romans who made a sophisticated calendar with leap years and all that.

But if we proceed beyond the present-day so-called Root Race into the sixth, i.e. after the War of All against All, which brings about the destruction of the entire epoch in the eighth millennium A.D. or something like that(?), we see that earler Root Races, namely Polaris, Hyperborea, and Lemuria before Atlantis, involved the separation of Saturn, Sun, and Moon (when earlier planetary manvantaras were repeated in miniature so to speak). So what other paradigm shifts in our solar system can be contributed by a future like that, which will also entail radical changes in our measurement of time?

This measurement of time is in itself relevant if we are to consider ourselves time beings instead of space beings, a topic I'll explore a little further as indicated. So I have made a small calculation based upon our present-day understanding of time by imagining a clock with millennia as units instead of seconds, minutes, and hours. In this manner I calculated that the duration of our entire cosmic evolution as described by Rudolf Steiner, from the beginning of Old Saturn to the end of Future Vulcan, shouldn't take more than 100,000,000 (a hundred million) years, including the Pralaya rest periods in between.

For me, this doesn't look logical. A hundred billion years are something I might go along with, but a hundred million years seems short for some reason. It proves however that we don't need to go very far before our measurements and calculations no longer apply. So let us stick with the time periods closer to home in connection with the very mechanization of the global community under American leadership, i.e. the so-called Mexican Mysteries at the beginning of our era. (I'll get into that in the next article.)


Manvantaras and Epochs

In ordinary science fiction, man is experienced as a space being, not a time being. Time is therefore appended upon space, it becomes an extension of space; time becomes external places one can travel to, therefore time travels. Outer space also extends across unimaginable distances that are overcome by means of warp speeds, teleporting, long hibernation etc.

In anthroposophy, it's not outer space but time itself that becomes unimaginably enormous. The planetary incarnations we are talking about here -- Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan -- comprise, for the sake of simplicity, seven entire Big Bangs. We find some of of this in Hinduism, a breathing universe, inhaling and exhaling. It exhales after each Big Bang, and the universe expands; this becomes a Manvantara or planetary period. Then the universe withdraws inwards and enters a Pralaya, or a rest period of very long duration. (The gods have all the time in the world.)

But still the shorter periods, the so-called epochs (Root Races) within each Manvantara, are for us unbelievably long, e.g. from the destruction of Atlantis to the War of All against All sometime in the eighth, ninth, or tenth millennium A.D. We may possibly look back at such a Great Epoch, or Root Race, that has lasted for 20,000 years. During this long epoch or root race, three great Cosmic Beings will have incarnated among humanity.

In order to get a certain grasp of future technological development and how this will influence man, change man, we need to think of ourselves as time beings. Let me paraphrase Steiner here: We associate death with the end of life, i.e. the end of our present incarnation. However, we die through our entire lives: The infant dies and becomes a toddler, the toddler dies and becomes a big girl or boy, the young person dies when reaching middle age, and the middle aged person dies when growing old. From this perspective, fear of death is totally meaningless; we can all look at pictures of ourselves from when we were children and recognize that the child we see in an old photograph does not exist anymore; it is dead. Besides, it so happens that when an Angel sees a human being, it sees the time being, not the space being. Regardless of what stage in life the human being happens to be, the Angel sees all these stages in one picture; it sees the child, the youth, the grown up, and the old. And that is how we are gradually learning to see each other.


From Intellect to Art

Another thing of importance that is often forgotten by people who are religious and spiritual, whether they are traditionalists or into New Age, is that non-physical beings, i.e. higher beings as well as humans who are not incarnated, do not think; they are not intellectual, because intellect or thinking is associated with physical brains. For this reason, such spiritual beings, including nature spirits, find it problematic to follow us into the world we create exclusively with our intellect, namely the world of technology. They can perceive how we experience ourselves there, but they themselves cannot penetrate into those regions. The only exceptions are the so-called ahrimanic elementary spirits who take up their abodes in our technical gadgets which wouldn't work without their energy. So in connection with technology, Rudolf Steiner talks about something he calls subnature.

We human beings are in other words deeply entrenched in this subnature, through technology with ahrimanic elementary beings. It is only they who are involved in what we call our intelligence, and for that reason, we we have been getting all kinds of meaningless and confused discussions about creation and the origin of life. Creationists and other theologically oriented individuals speak about "intelligent design" in nature. The design they are talking about has nothing to do with intelligence, but has everything to do with artistic talent. For this reason, one cannot talk about intelligent design in nature, but artistic design.

In GA 230, Man as Symphony of the Creative Word, first lecture held in Dornach 19th October, 1923, Rudolf Steiner says:

"I have often drawn attention to the fact that, if we are really to understand the world, we cannot remain at the stage of mere intellectual comprehension, but that what is intellectual must gradually change into an artistic conception of the world."

If we throw aside our notions about intellectuality and technology for just a moment, we find something of crucial significance in Steiner's statement about not comprehending the world in mere intellectual terms, but to change our understanding to a more artistic mode of thinking, feeling, seeing and hearing. Steiner talks about how nature and everything that lives was created through cosmic tones, through compositions. Creation, cosmogenesis, astrogenesis -- these things don't belong to the intellect, intelligence and laboratories and analyses of the primordial chemical soup, but to the world of art.

At this point we arrive at the condition of consciousness that outstanding composers, painters, poets, sculptors etc. are developing towards, namely where one can hear colors and see tones. At that point one is inside the etheric. John Lennon came up with some interesting statements here. His favorite author was Lewis Carroll, who was mainly inspired by the fantasy world of young girls, in the doll houses and gardens and so on. In Carroll, Lennon saw the most ingenious author of the age, and many of his songs were influenced by him.

When mixing musical recordings in the studio to make arrangements and so on, John Lennon seems to have been the first to experiment seriously with playing things backwards. One of Rudolf Steiner's exercises consists precisely of thinking through the events of the day in backwards sequence in the evening, or one may take a work of art like a stage play and think it backwards, because on the other side of the threshold, one's own life is experienced in backwards sequence after death. John Lennon took an interest in in playing musical pieces backwards, and one of his most beautiful compositions -- "Because" -- was born after Yoko Ono had been playing the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven on the piano. One of the lines in the lyrics goes like this: "Because the sky is blue, it makes me cry."

John Lennon

Take his contemporary Bob Dylan, who is not only a composer and a poet, but such a good painter he has had exhibitions where his paintings have been positively appraised by critical art experts. In addition, he has been working with photography and cinematography. Leonard Nimoy is, in addition to being an eminent actor and director, also a composer and photographer. Artists of this ilk usually shun labels and definitions with regard to philosophies and religions, and this tends to confuse intellectuals who insist upon knowing whether a person is a Christian or a Jew or agnostic or whatever.


Anthroposophy as a Drug

Some people may want to object, when anthroposophy is linked to science fiction, that anthroposophy is compromised when presented as entertainment. What we're talking about is a spiritual science that's supposed to teach us to take life seriously, understand our cosmic duties, and not waste our time on fun and games, and at least not treat anthroposophy like a Saturday night toy.

And yet, many people do just that, and it's always been that way. When Steiner began his lecturing activities in 1900 or 1901 or whenever it was, he got a regular audience comprised of what may be called old German hippies from the 19th century. The men had long hair too, and this frightened Friedrich Rittelmeyer so much that his first impulse was to run away. But these German hippies -- aging librarians, schoolteachers, bookworms, etc. -- they had first been enjoying the works of Helena Blavatsky, which are far from easy reading but excellent science fiction that Henrik Ibsen also studied to the best of my knowledge, and Steiner's lectures carried them up into remote cosmic heights, from Old Saturn to Future Vulcan, from the hierarchy of the minerals beneath us to the Cherubim and the Seraphim far, far above us, about the War in Heaven behind a layer of meteorite dust that can still be seen, about the Powers of Darkness that were hurled down to Earth here amongst us and that we therefore confront on a daily basis.

For some of Steiner's regular followers, this wasn't mere entertainment or story telling. It became a drug; they sat there through lecture after lecture and got high on Steiner. This hadn't been the intention exactly. His lectures were supposed to wake people up, not lull them to sleep. It was pointed out to Steiner that some of his listeners just sat there and allowed his entertainment to intoxicate them, and he simply answered that he was aware of the situation; there was hardly anything else he could do, because it's up to each individual to be activated and inspired instead of using the material as some kind of sleep medicine.


Rudolf Steiner's Humanism

All kinds of occult, spiritual, and religious literature often have a lulling, pacifying, narcotic effect upon those who get hooked on that kind of reading. And there are undoubtedly many people who read and read Steiner until they stop thinking independently and critically; instead, they lean upon some authority or other that's doing all the thinking for them and serve the solutions to all the world riddles on a platter.

It was for this reason, especially in the 1890's, following the epistemology he had developed in Truth and Science and The Philosophy of Freedom, that Rudolf Steiner detested religious theologians and embraced instead materialistic atheists, especially rabid anarchists, because they had arrived at their philosophical views through the power of their own thinking instead of passive consumption of other people's efforts.

A major idea of mine behind this topic of science fiction and anthroposophy, is that one of the many creative projects one may embark upon when reading Steiner is to allow oneself to be inspired to write better science fiction, to raise the genre to a level that can contribute to transforming this type of literature into a powerful impulse for the future. Here we have many masterpieces as models, and I'm not just talking about Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which is an unrivalled achievement in spite of the fact that this particular genre is better categorized as fairy tale and fantasy than science fiction, and George Lucas' Star Wars saga. Tolkien was a Catholic and Lucas calls himself a Methodist-Buddhist; my point is that anthroposophy is an unprecedented and unique pearl among spiritual inspirations.

There are however also other great classics that have not been inspired by any spiritual or religious influence whatsoever because the authors were agnostics or atheists. A background like that is ideal because man himself is thereby rendered naked in the universe and has to stand fully and completely on his own feet with no divine apron strings to cling to.

In the tenth chapter of The Philosophy of Freedom: Freedom — Philosophy and Monism, Steiner writes:

"The moral laws which the metaphysician who works by mere inference must regard as issuing from a higher power, are, for the adherent of monism, thoughts of men; for him the moral world order is neither the imprint of a purely mechanical natural order, nor that of an extra-human world order, but through and through the free creation of men. It is not the will of some being outside him in the world that man has to carry out, but his own; he puts into effect his own resolves and intentions, not those of another being. Monism does not see, behind man's actions, the purposes of a supreme directorate, foreign to him and determining him according to its will, but rather sees that men, in so far as they realize their intuitive ideas, pursue only their own human ends. Moreover, each individual pursues his own particular ends. For the world of ideas comes to expression, not in a community of men, but only in human individuals. What appears as the common goal of a whole group of people is only the result of the separate acts of will of its individual members, and in fact, usually of a few outstanding ones who, as their authorities, are followed by the others. Each one of us has it in him to be a free spirit, just as every rose bud has in it a rose."

This is pure, unadulterated humanism. For this reason, one may wonder why some humanists have declared war against anthroposophy. One gets the impression that for many of those who are closely connected with the Humanist and Ethical Union, the ethical principle of placing the human being center stage is less important than the members' personal faith in atheism as a religion. It is in fact quite a feat by Steiner to actually harmonize his individualist anarchist humanism with a thoroughly hierarchical theism, namely Christology and the spiritual hierarchies -- something that seems to have the same effect upon atheists that one gets when waving a red flag in front of from a raging bull.


Western Occultism

Malignant or evil secret lodges and conspiracies belong to a different topic that I may attempt to discuss in a future article if I get around to it. The same is the case with the United States itself, which is extremely comprehensive and intimately linked to the former. I'll only touch upon some of this stuff in passing, to the extent that science fiction and technology are concerned.

In GA 186 we find a remarkable lecture from December 1, 1918, with the indigestible title, Die Entwickelung mechanischer, eugenetischer und hygienischer okkulter Fähigkeiten in der Zukunft -- in English: The Mechanistic, Eugenic, and Hygienic Aspects of the Future. What Rudolf Steiner describes here in the highly significant year of 1918, are the endeavors on the other side of the threshold, through the evil lodges of the West, to secure British-American dominion over the East, and "by the East," says Steiner in this lecture, "I mean the whole region lying from the Rhine eastward even into Asia." "The goal striven for," Steiner continues, "is to establish a caste of masters in the West and a caste of economic slaves in the East, beginning with the Rhine and extending eastward all the way into Asia." And: "The essence of the matter is to make the English-speaking peoples into a population of masters in the world."

After that, Steiner gets into the extremely long term occult motives behind this strategy. These motives have to do with special forces that man will have at his disposal in his future evolution. We're talking about different types of powers that will evolve in various populations on the planet. These lodges are attempting to steal these forces away from other populations to be owned exclusively by the West, while at the same time trying to prevent non-Western populations from acquiring these occult talents.

And here we have the relevance of all this to science fiction and technology: The capacity for which the English-speaking peoples are destined, is called material occultism. Rudolf Steiner says:

"By means of this capacity -- and this is precisely the ideal of the 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 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 fifth post-Atlantean epoch."

After this description of material occultism which is evolving among the English-speaking peoples, Steiner also talks about two other types of occultism that are evolving in the East, and about the methods employed by the evil lodges of the West for the purpose of hindering these other developments.

What we should pay attention to here is what Steiner says about capacities that are latent, i.e. not yet developed but in development, and that initiated, knowing people, i.e. initiates belonging to evil lodges in the English-speaking world, are abusing this knowledge.

GA 186 is explored to some extent in an article I wrote an article in 1997: The Secret Lodges Of The West And Their Sinister Plans With The World Population, with the summary: "An outline of the anthroposophical conspiracy theory with extensive quotes from Rudolf Steiner. How top secret occult fraternities in England and America is endeavoring to manipulate the spiritual evolution of humanity."

Something else that comes into consideration here, and that actually belongs to apocalypticism on a large scale, are the activities of Sorat, the Sun Demon, who stands behind the mystical number 666 in the Revelation of St. John. This Sun Demon is probably the most powerful of all demons ever mentioned by Steiner, a Being whose influence will be tremendous in a relatively distant future, when this power will make it possible for a certain section of humanity to descend very, very deeply into evil.

One of Sorat's modes of operation consists of introducing anachronistic elements into human evolution, especially by accelerating intellectual and technical development in such a manner that some discoveries and inventions occur much too early with regard to the moral and spiritual maturity of humanity. This is something we recognize from Rudolf Steiner's lectures, especially GA 346, about The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest, apparently the last lecture cycle he was able to complete in December 1924 before he became bedridden.

Here he describes Sorat's strikes against the Earth every 666 years, with increasing strength each time. The first strike took place in Jundi Shapur in 666 A.D. and brought, among other things, a materialistic science that was far ahead of its time, in an epoch when human beings did not yet possess the inner strength to endure such materialism without buckling under for it completely. According to Steiner, the worst consequences of this Arabic materialistic science in Jundi Shapur were blunted by the arrival of Islam, but 666 years after 666 A.D., namely in 1332 A.D., Sorat struck again with considerably increased power, this time through a certain niche in Catholicism, which led to the torture and total destruction of the Knights Templars, the Spanish Inquisition that followed a century later and so forth.

666 years after 1332, Sorat strikes for the third time with even greater strength in 1998. This time we have seen a lot of ugly torture by the West, not only through the most infamous and publicized examples through Guatanamo Bay and the Abu Graib prison in Iraq; the ugliest example to become known has taken place in Uzbekistan, where very few people survived arrests and imprisonment, and some of them were actually boiled alive.

The British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray was fired by his government because he complained about this; after that the attempt was made to discredit him with allegations of pedophelia and other things. The point is that the extreme reaction to Craig's disclosures of conditions in Uzbekistan came from the highest levels of the British and American governments.

This stuff belongs to a topic that's different from the content of this article, but it has undoubtedly a connection with the Sun Demon Sorat's third strike in 1998. Interestingly, in the eighth lecture in the aforementioned volume GA 186, September 12, 1924, in Dornach, Rudolf Steiner says the following about Sorat's preparation for his third strike in the aftermath of the first world war:

"The trail is being blazed for the entry of the demons, the adherents of the great Demon Sorat. To gain an idea of this you only need to speak to people who understand something of what led to the World War. It is fair to say that of the approximately 40 people who are guilty of causing that war, almost all were in a state of lowered consciousness at the moment when it broke out. Such a state of consciousness is always a way in for ahrimanic demonic powers, and one of the greatest of these demons is Sorat."

It is extraordinarily interesting that Sorat is described here as belonging to Ahriman's hierarchy, a hierarchy that has its origin far away from our own solar system and the progressive hierarchies above us that we belong to. But let us assume for a moment that one of Sorat's present-day influences consists of giving us even more future technology at a much earlier stage -- only as an anthroposophical thought experiment. As already mentioned, Rudolf Steiner said in 1904, in GA 93:

"In the seventh post-Atlantean cultural epoch, to be precise, this War of All against All will break out, in the most terrible way. Great and mighty forces will ensue from discoveries that will turn the entire globe into a kind of self-functioning electrical apparatus."

Let us add a short quote from GA 186:

"The people of the East and those of the Central countries will have to receive material occultism from the West. They will receive its benefits, its products."

In other words, outside the English-speaking countries, we will have all kinds of products imposed upon us as passive consumers. What kind of products are we talking about here? Steiner speaks about the seventh post-Atlantic epoch, or Sub Race, that lies many millennia ahead in time, but it looks like we have already been getting a good sneak 'premorsel' of this. It's fascinating what you can buy in stores today, and on the internet. Many technological innovations start with games, and a few years ago a new headset came on the market that makes it possible top play without mouse, keyboard, or joystick, but with thoughts alone.

Emotiv Headset

When this can be done with computer games, the technology may of course be made applicable to other everyday functions, even useful tasks. Ever since the nerds took over the role of innovation in the 1970's from the stiff, rigid, and regimented IBM, fun and games have been the main foundation for technological inventions. So what can this headset be used for, which is wired to the forehead to read EEG impulses from the brain and send these as commands to computer software? It means that we won't need to fool around with all those remote controls; instead, we can simply use the power of thought to turn on the TV set, increase the volume, change channels, unlock and start the car (no ignition key needed), switch on the light, the washing machine, the stove and so on.

The creators of this technology have figured out that many people won't bother to walk around with a gadget like that on their heads all day long. For this reason, they have developed an alternative, namely a microchip implant: A little chip in the head, made by Intel, the world's major manufacturer of microchips.

Here is a relevant news item from November 2009, with the headline, Intel wants a chip implant in your brain:

"Intel believes its customers would be willing to have a chip implanted in their brains so they could operate computers without the need for a keyboard or mouse using thoughts alone. The implant could also be used to operate devices such as cell phones, TVs and DVDs."

The application of such technology by itself has of course nothing to do with occultism. The information emitted through EEG signals and nerve impulses from the brain is simply translated into signals that can be read by software as commands. (The brain sensing chips are not yet available, but the researchers say they are very close.)

However, when we read what Rudolf Steiner said about Western material occultism in this fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, i.e. another 1500 years into the future more or less, it is easy to assume a connection here. Let's repeat what Steiner said in GA 186:

"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."

"By means of this principle it will be possible to substitute merely mechanical forces for human forces in many things."

"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 fifth post-Atlantean epoch."

The Brain and Initiation

Now the question arises: What should we human beings do in order not to be dominated and manipulated as passive consumers of technological products, to be pulled deeper and deeper down into subnature and be made into slaves -- not by machines through technological singularity, which is an illusion, but by evil initiates in the West when they apply their mighty and powerful forces to complete the development that is already active?

The answer seems undoubtedly to lie in Rudolf Steiner's suggestions about how to labor in the direction of clairvoyance and initiation. Mark the words "in the direction of." It is about gaining complete mastery and control of thoughts, feelings, and impulses. Learning to refrain from speaking or writing things that have not been thoroughly purged in thought. This discipline alone can be extremely challenging for many of us, but in the long run it gives us increased control over the configurations and convolutions of the brain. All psychological impulses and activities, i.e. thinking, feeling, and willing, must be conquered and controlled by the 'I'. An enormously demanding and exacting task that has now become more necessary than ever before.

I'll conclude this article with a couple of outstanding excerpts that illustrate "anthroposophical science fiction" at its very best:

The Spiritual Hierarchies, Lecture 10, Dusseldorf 18th April, 1909 (GA 110):

"In the time between the Jupiter and the Mars development — if I dare express myself in trivial words — a number of Beings from the sphere of the Mights or Spirits of Motion were detached; they were placed in such a manner within the course of evolution that, instead of helping it onwards, they had to put hindrance in its way. Thus the deeds of — if I may coin the word — ‘adversely-commanded’ Mights were thrown athwart the course of evolution. For the ruling world-powers of the Hierarchies said to themselves: ‘Never could that arise which has to arise if the way were always smooth. Greater things must take place.’ Imagine that you have a car to push. You develop your strength by pushing it. If heavy ballast is put into the car it will be heavier to push, but you would develop greater strength. Suppose the Godhead had let the world's evolution remain as it was, up to the time just after the Jupiter evolution, men could have certainly developed very well; but humanity could have become still stronger if hindrance had been in its way. For the good of humanity, certain Mights or Spirits of Motion had to receive adverse commands. These were not evil at first, one need not consider them as evil Powers, one might even say they sacrificed themselves by putting obstacles into the way of development. Therefore, these Mights may be called the gods of hindrance, of impediment, in the widest sense of the word. They are the gods of the impediments and hindrances placed in the way, on the high-road of development. And from that moment, the possibility was given for all that was achieved in the future. These ‘adversely-commanded’ Mights were not yet evil in themselves; on the contrary, they were the great promoters of development, promoting it through the storms they produced, but they were the breeders of evil; for, out of the storms they produced, evil gradually arose.

"Naturally, the path of development of these ‘adversely-commanded’ Mights shaped itself quite differently from that of their brothers; their action was quite different, and the result was that, during the Moon-development, they became the tempters, the seducers, of those beings we call Angels. The Angels were passing through their human stage during the Moon development. There were Angel-men on the Moon who, so to speak, looked at the way the hindrances acted on development, and who said to themselves: ‘We can now put ourselves in the way of conquering the hindrances, we can plunge into the whole stream of the Moon's evolution; but we prefer to pass it by, we do not want to plunge into it, we want to remain above with the good Gods.’ These Angels tore themselves away, at a certain moment of the Moon's development, from the Mights who were throwing hindering influence down into the Moon-evolution. But there were other Angels who said to themselves: ‘We will not follow our brothers, for if we follow them, development would turn back, nothing new would be embodied in it.’ Just because of the existence of these hindering influences, something new was infused into evolution, from the time of the Moon onwards. Those Beings who said to themselves: ‘I shall have nothing to do with that which is going on down there, I shall stay with the Mights who do not wish to be tainted by anything low,’ these withdrew from the mass of the Moon and became part of the followers of all that is connected with the Sun. They would not have anything to do with what was proceeding on the forsaken Moon, when all the hindering powers held sway. But the other Beings who plunged down into it, had now to take into their bodily nature; (which they received on the Moon) all the hindering influences that existed there. They had to harden themselves more, as it were, than would otherwise have been the case. Their bodily sheaths became denser than they would otherwise have been. In their bodies were implanted the consequences of the deeds of the Mights, but these deeds were well rooted in the divine plan of the world — we must keep that well in mind. A further result of this was, that as the Moon development passed on into that of the Earth, the whole process was repeated, and those Beings who had plunged into the full tide of the Moon's development, remained behind those who would have nothing to do with it, and others remained still further back, and were attracted by the retrograding development. The result of all this was, that during the earth evolution Angel-men existed, who were advanced, and others who were retrograde.

"The advanced Angel-men approached the men of the earth during the time, when, in Lemuria, they were ripe to receive the germ of the human ‘I,’ and gave them the choice, as it were, to rise into the spiritual worlds, then, and not to have anything further to do with that which since the time of the Moon, had mingled with the course of the world's development. The Beings who had stayed behind, whom we call the Luciferic beings, came into touch with the human astral body — they could not approach the ‘I’ — and grafted into that astral body all the results of the fight in heaven. While to the Mights was assigned the fight in heaven, for they were created Gods of Hindrance; the consequences of their deeds now slipped into the human astral body, and there signified something else; they signified the possibility of error and the possibility of evil. Man had now been given the possibility of error and of evil with the object that he should also have the possibility of rising above evil and error, through his own strength.

"Now consider that such Beings as the Mights, belonging to the second threefold Hierarchy, could not have had the power to become evil of their own free will; they had to be ‘adversely-commanded;’ and it was the Beings of the third threefold Hierarchy, and only those who stand nearest to man, the Angels, who first had it in their power to follow, or not to follow, the hindering Powers. Those who did not follow we always find represented in the pictures which illustrate the victories fought out in heaven. They express what happened during the Moon development, when Man had progressed as far as the organisation of his astral body, that is to the human-animal stage. Then those Angel beings who, so to speak, remained good, tore themselves away from the course of the Moon development, they escaped from what was going on down there, on the Moon. And this picture is represented to the Soul of man in different ways. It was originally represented in the fight of Michael with the dragon. You see it also in the symbol of the Bull of Mithra, where it is specially clearly expressed. It is, of course, not meant that in doing this these Angel Beings avoided their duty, but they were put forth as an ideal for the future. ‘These beings’ — it was said — ‘preferred to rise into the spiritual worlds, whereas you have descended. Other beings came down with you, those who followed the Powers of Hindrance. You must now work upon that which you have absorbed in this descent, and carry it up again into the spiritual world; when you rise again you must become a Michael, a conqueror of the Bull.’ For every symbol of this kind is used in a twofold sense.

"Thus we see that, because those ‘Mights’ were given certain orders, men first received the possibility of reaching their goal by their own strength, a thing which even the highest Seraphim cannot do of themselves. This is very essential. The Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones cannot do otherwise than follow the immediate impulses given them by the Godhead. The Dominions of the second threefold hierarchy, too, cannot do otherwise. A certain number of the Mights were ordered to oppose, so that those Mights also, who, as it were, threw themselves into the way of development, could not do otherwise than follow the orders of the Godhead. In what is called the ‘origin of evil’ they could but perform the will of the Godhead who, by means of evil, wishes to develop more powerful good. Now let us descend to those Beings we call the Powers or Spirits of Form. They also could not have come to this of themselves. They could not have grown wicked of themselves, nor could the Spirits of Personality, nor could the Spirits of Fire. For, when these were men on the Sun, the Mights had not yet been ordered to oppose, there was as yet no possibility of becoming wicked. The first who had the possibility of becoming evil were the Angels, for this could only happen after the development of the Moon. There, from the Sun to the Moon, the Fight in Heaven took place. A part of the Angels avoided this possibility, they would not be seduced by the forces which had to introduce hindrances, they held to the way of the old Nature. Thus, as far down as the Angels, or part of them, we have Beings who are absolutely unable to do otherwise than follow the divine Will. It is essential to remember this."

In a lecture entitled Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity, GA 211, April 2nd 1922 in Dornach, Rudolf Steiner gives a fascinating and clear description of Ahriman's entry into human evolution -- another example of "anthroposophical science fiction" at its best:

"The higher hierarchies contain in their being the forces that have formed Saturn, the Sun, the Moon and finally the Earth. If the higher hierarchies had expressed their teachings amongst themselves, as it were, up to the Mystery of Golgotha, they would have said: We can form the Earth out of Saturn, Sun and Moon. But if the Earth were to contain only what we have placed into Saturn, Sun and Moon it would never have been able to develop beings who know something about death, and can therefore develop the intellect within them. We, the higher hierarchies, are able to let an Earth proceed out of the Moon, on which there are men who know nothing of death, and on which they cannot develop the intellect. It is not possible for us, higher hierarchies, to form the Earth in such a way that it is able to supply the forces which lead man towards the intellect. We must rely, for this, on an entirely different being, on a being who comes from another direction than our own — The Ahrimanic Being. Ahriman is a being who does not belong to our hierarchy. Ahriman comes into the stream of evolution from another direction. If we tolerate Ahriman in the evolution of the Earth, if we allow him a share in it, he brings us death, and with it, the intellect, and we can take up in the human being death and intellect. Ahriman knows death, because he is at one with the Earth and has trodden paths which have brought him into connection with the evolution of the Earth. He is an initiate, a sage of death, and for this reason he is the ruler of the intellect. The gods had to reckon with Ahriman — if I may express it in this way. They had to say: the evolution cannot proceed without Ahriman. It is only a question of admitting Ahriman into the evolution. But if Ahriman is admitted and becomes the lord of death and, consequently, of the intellect too, we forfeit the Earth, and Ahriman, whose sole interest lies in permeating the Earth with intellect, will claim the Earth for himself. The gods faced the great problem of losing to a certain extent their rule over the Earth in favour of Ahriman. There was only one possibility — that the gods themselves should learn to know something which they could not learn in their godly abodes which were not permeated by Ahriman — namely, that the gods should learn to know death itself, on the Earth, through one of their emissaries — the Christ. A god had to die on earth, and he had to die in such a way that this was not grounded in the wisdom of the gods, but in the human error which would hold sway if Ahriman alone were to rule. A god had to pass through death and he had to overcome death.

"Thus the Mystery of Golgotha meant this for the gods: a greater wealth of knowledge through the wisdom of death. If a god had not passed through death, the whole Earth would have become entirely intellectual, without ever reaching the evolution which the gods had planned for it from the very beginning."