How to Dodge Big Brother in the Supersensible World

All over the industrialized world, there is increasing concern about government eavesdropping and espionage against private citizens. People are encouraged by police and intelligence communities to report suspicious utterances and extreme views. British police tells public to report anarchists and any information about them, then they retract all of it in embarrassment. In Norway, the public are encouraged to report any extreme views they come across on the internet or elsewhere.

Whenever you type something online, remember the internet never forgets. And if you don't upload your rants, the police have technologies called computer forensics to figure out what you've written and stored on your disk, even if you've deleted it.

One may always assume, at least to be on the alert and the safe side, that every phone call we make -- landline, IP, skype, cell phone, whatever -- every email we send, every message we write even to closed and private e-groups, is being monitored for certain key words or buzz words, in every language used by humanity. Cities have cameras everywhere, in the streets, in service stations, restaurants, even toilets (to keep junkies from shooting up). And we never know where the microphones may be.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument here, that you've mastered enough self-discipline to refrain from written or oral utterances that have not been thoroughly purged in thought, and that you have developed the habit of never writing or speaking, not even whispering, anything you don't want the public or the authorities to learn about. And you never talk in your sleep. Like a top professional spy or secret agent. Total paranoia, absolute conspiracy. Worst case scenario. Or is it? No, it isn't, we're not through yet.

Theoretically, they can still get to your thoughts and your dreams, even though you've never expressed these through language, nor through graphic imagery like drawings, paintings, sculptures etc. How? I'm not talking about the piece I wrote for fun two years ago, The Deep Agents of the Rocky Mountains. No, I mean EEG and things like that, technologies that can monitor your cerebral activities in a laboratory. They can hook you up when you're sleeping and monitor your dreams through brainwave activities.

The fact is that when we fall asleep, our astral body and "I"-organization leave our physical and etheric bodies. During deep, dreamless sleep, this separation is complete, and no brain activities are present and can therefore not be monitored. During dreaming, however, the astral body interacts with the etheric body, the body of thoughts and memories and so on. But imagine what would happen if a person had been capable of maintaining wide awake consciousness after exiting the etheric and physical bodies with the astral body and the "I". This person would then be capable of perceiving the beings and the activities of the spiritual world that is imperceptible to ordinary consciousness. And on the physical plane, there would only be a physical organism in the state of sleep, with no activities in the brain or other parts of the central nervous system to betray these activities, this consciousness.

Rudolf Steiner writes in the fifth chapter of GA 13, An Outline of Occult Science:

"Man acquires a knowledge of higher worlds if he develops a third soul state besides sleep and waking. During its waking state the soul surrenders itself to sense-impressions and thoughts that are aroused by these impressions. During sleep the sense-impressions cease, but the soul also loses its consciousness. The experiences of the day sink into the sea of unconsciousness. Let us now imagine that the soul might be able during sleep to become conscious despite the exclusion of all sense-impressions as is the case in deep sleep, and even though the memories of the day's experiences were lacking. Would the soul, in that case, find itself in a state of nothingness? Would it be unable to have any experiences? An answer to these questions is only possible if a similar state of consciousness can actually be induced, if the soul is able to experience something even though no sense-activities and no memory of them are present in it. The soul, in regard to the ordinary outer world, would then find itself in a state similar to sleep, and yet it would not be asleep, but, as in the waking state, it would confront a real world. Such a state of consciousness can be induced if the human being can bring about the soul experiences made possible by spiritual science; and everything that this science describes concerning the worlds that lie beyond the senses is the result of research in just such a state of consciousness."

This is the state of initiation, a place where Big Brother can't reach you by any material means. But you're not home free yet. Behind the police, behind the intelligence communities, governments, state authorities, all of whom know absolutely nothing of this, there are secret groups of so-called left-handed initiates who can stalk you on the other side of the threshold of consciousness described. Politicians, heads of state, department heads and other official leaders, are merely the unknowing puppets of these small groups that are so secret that only initiates know about them. So on the other side of the threshold, you perceive and interact with non-corporeal beings, spiritual beings, benevolent and malevolent, discarnate human souls, animal group souls, national and ethnic folk souls and so on. And the only effective protection against left-handed initiates trying to pry into your supersensible activities consists of the certainy of knowledge that they're there, and what they're up to.

But there are also secret societies of an entirely different kind, where the members are so-called right-handed occultists and initiates. The idea behind the secrecy is to do good and charitable deeds for others anonymously, to reap no credit, recognition or reward for such acts. We see all the time how all kinds of achievers lavish each other with public prizes, awards, honors and what have you. Members of secret right-handed organizations want nothing of the sort.

So behind the curtain of sense-perception and ordinary brain-bound consciousness, occultists and initiates work in secret, for good and for evil.