Jewish power and the Illuminati (Page 9 of 10)

All the elements of 'inverted dialectics' (there are three and five of them; cf. fig. 16, p. *) negate each other, but not in a constructive, creative manner - the 'war of each against all' is already being waged in their midst - and yet they exist after the fashion of an organic whole. They do not exist at the expense of their own members, but at the expense of culture and civilization, which they take over, 'vampirize' and thus destroy. It is important to make a broad and at the same time precise investigation, according to their symptoms, of the manifestations of the primary phenomenon of evil at the end of the 20th century and corresponding prospects at the beginning of the 21st. In this book we have at least come close to the fulfilling of such a task, we have tried to meet some of the pre-conditions for its fulfilment. And now, with a concluding example, we would challenge the reader to carry out his own independent research.

In contemporary Russia* Bolshevism is again growing in strength and influence, after having undergone a complicated metamorphosis. {*The end of 1998 is meant (Publisher's Note).} It displays a nationalistic colouring and thus combines with patriotic, national and nationalistic streams, behind which one can recognize the basic inspiration of the Jesuit 'Fathers' and their latest offspring. The nationalistic movements, for their part, occur in three variations: materialistic, clerical-fundamentalist, and neo-pagan. In the latter the tendency can occasionally be noted, to occupy the platform of national-socialist ideology. In this sphere, as though from a twilight realm, the entire 'front' arises, under the official name of the 'Left', and gives itself over to confrontation with Zionism; while at the same time there is enthusiasm for the racist policy of Israel, which is revered as an example worthy of imitation.* {*Such Bolsheviks often remind the Zionists, while they are heaping reproaches on them, that they owe the recognition of the State of Israel to them, the Bolsheviks; and this is absolutely true, as the documents reveal beyond a shadow of doubt. The Zionists respond in the press with the reproach that the Bolsheviks are starting to become anti-Semitic and to forget to whom they owe their existence. Here we are simply stating the facts of everyday political life in Moscow and many other cities.}

Much that is comparable can also be found in the West. For example, in June 1998 a discussion took place in Berlin on the 'Black Book of Communism' which had appeared in France. A 'Left' group involved in the discussion (these are the 'Right' in Russia) tried to break up the meeting. With whistles and shouting these people tried to prevent a discussion taking place by means of arguments, because they said that class-genocide was not a crime in Russia, as it is based on the scientifically-founded theory of Communism. The political agitators were carrying a banner with the slogan: Long Live Communism! They then shouted out in chorus: Germany never again! (Junge Freiheit, Nr. 27/98 of 26.6.98) - In just the same way, in Russia our 'Right'-wing chants: Russia never again! Thereby giving grist to the mill of the neo-Communists. And as to their nationalism, these people of the 'Left' were also called 'red Fascists' in the course of the discussion.

These are the symptoms which testify to encirclement by consciously directed chaos.

But of course antagonism predominates, because the Zionist lobby in Russia is a servant of Pan-Americanism (we already spoke of this) and therefore represents a strong political and financial power. The neo-Bolsheviks exhibit their 'sincere' concern for the good of Russia and, not without reason, blame the Perestroika democrats (who call themselves officially people of the 'Right'; in their terminology Stalin and Hitler belong to the 'Left') for the destruction of the land, of the economy, and accuse them of carrying out a real genocide on the peoples of Russia and its former republics.

This is the present situation. What, in view of all this, do the neo-Bolshevik nationalists (also known as 'Russian chauvinists', or the 'Red-browns') dream of especially? They dream of erecting again in Lublyanskaya Square, before the headquarters of KGB, the Felix-Dzerzhinsky Memorial, which was removed at the beginning of the Perestroika. The memorial to the Polish Jew who inspired the 'Red Inquisition' and turned the land into a single blood-bath; a genocide virtually without parallel in human history!

And who prevents the national-Bolsheviks from realizing their dream? The 'democratically' and Zionistically-oriented core (thus also nationalistic) prevailing in Russia at present, which works in the interest of Pan-Americanism, is now the only force that can hinder the re-birth of Bolshevism in Russia. If its power collapses, the people will again be swallowed up in an infernal dictatorship.

It is truly so - it is none other than these 'Right democrats' who are shielding the Russia of today from this cruel fate. But they perform this good work while destroying the land utterly by means of laws which stifle all production and at the same time plunder the land without mercy. Quite distinct sources agree in estimating that during the Perestroika years Russia was robbed of a trillion (one thousand billion) dollars.

In this way the land is being turned into a desert and the populace is dying under horrifying conditions. Historical experience shows that such conditions lead to the setting up of a dictatorship - for example, Germany in the '20's. When it has come to power the five centres of force of the inverted pentagram will regroup and continue, under the new conditions, to strive for the destruction of civilisation, in order finally to 'renew' it according to the method described by K. S. Mereshkovsky in 1903 in his utopian novel 'The Earthly Paradise'. If the reader is able to encompass in his consciousness this many-layered character of the occult-political panorama without falling into one-sided points of view, then he is quite certainly on the only right and necessary path.

We have thus arrived at the conclusion of our investigation. The five-headed evil that works in the five power-centres of the world is not the result of the 'free' play of bad tendencies in single individuals, but a strictly integrated, spiritually (or, rather, anti-spiritually) formed unity, one could even say - an organism, which is supersensibly personified, negates civilization and humanity, and by virtue of its inherent conformity to law, negates also itself (thus explaining the bitter mutual struggle of its single parts) but exists as a whole nevertheless. Looked at from the purely cognitive point of view, we have here to do with an extremely interesting phenomenon of overturned/overthrown dialectics. There is within it a striving for synthesis, in which only negation rules; its rudimentary elements do not attain a higher existence by virtue of their cancellation. (This opens up for us a deep understanding of the essential difference between Marxist and Hegelian dialectics.) In such a case egocentricity naturally assumes the character of the infinite - the attribute of the higher world; although man should not enter this 'infinity', because nobody knows what might happen to him if he were to be converted back into the primal condition of a 'lump of clay' of creation.

But today the question is not whether the human being would or would not like to follow this path, but what he needs to do if he does not want to follow it. In this case it is very important to recognize the archetypal phenomenon of evil that is dominant in the present European cultural epoch. As soon as he has understood this he can begin to orient himself in the insidious web of the occult-political world-struggle that is taking place before our eyes. At the end of the 20th century we were afforded a brief glimpse of its secrets (above all in Russia) and it is enough to read the newspapers to obtain confirmations in their hundreds, if not thousands, of the concreteness of what Rudolf Steiner gave to us 80 years ago in his historical symptomatology. We must avail ourselves of existing opportunities now, because soon they will be gone.

Nowadays many are seduced by the sweet lunacy of political pluralism and of freedom in the domain of occult acts. At the same time we can also recognize how the world-view of Pan-materialism is promoted by every means - political, scientific, occult, religious - 'pluralistically'. Ideology is helped by science: technical progress makes possible gene-manipulation, the monitoring and control of consciousness, but also of the material crossing of its traditional boundaries (on the level of electro-magnetic energies). Finally, even the highest that man on earth possesses - the science of initiation - is taking on Asuric features. In this connection we should pay special attention to the phenomenon of occult Bolshevism. It is practised in closed circles as an extremely dark system of initiation. It is now revealed openly through the books of Gregory Klimov and the ideology of the Soviet 'Polarians'. Victor Suvorov also has indirectly described it in two of his works.

In order to understand the descriptions of the said authors, we need the help of statements made by Rudolf Steiner regarding black-magical mysteries of a special kind, which were practised in ancient times on the North American continent - in old Mexico - and remnants of which were found by the Spanish conquistadors.* {*To the present day Mexico remains a particularly dark centre for practical and ritual magic. It was no accident that Trotsky lived there after he was chased out of the USSR. Carlos Castaneda was initiated in sub-natural magic there as well.} In those mysteries one venerated a ghost-like spirit of ahrimanic character, who was the successor of the Great Spirit of Atlantis. The latter worked legitimately in his time, but gradually, towards the end of the Atlantean period, assumed ahrimanic traits.

The name of this ahrimanic spirit was Taotl. His priests learned the cosmic secrets through offering up human sacrifices. The wisdom out of the cosmos - says Rudolf Steiner - which in itself was not bad, which even contained holy secrets, this wisdom was kept carefully hidden by the initiates of Taotl ...

This wisdom was imparted to no-one who had not committed murder in a certain way. And with the first murder he learned only some of the secrets. Only with the subsequent murders was he told further and higher secrets (Sep. 18, 1916, GA 171).

The murders or sacrificial acts were carried out in such a way, that the chosen victim was prepared for death in a very special manner. And when he freely consented to it, he was placed on a special catafalque so that his stomach was protruding very far, after which the priest undergoing initiation cut out the stomach according to a precise ritual and dedicated it, in a certain ceremony, to Taotl. The result of such a procedure was that a quite special connection was established between the initiand and the victim. The one who was murdered in this way was to be prepared thereby in his soul to strive upwards into the luciferic realm, and the initiand was to receive the wisdom so to shape this earthly world that souls would be driven out of it. Through creating a relationship between the victim and the initiated one - not murderer, one can say, but initiated one -, the possibility was given that the initiated one was borne off by the other soul, i.e. could leave the earth at the appropriate moment (Ibid.). Rudolf Steiner concludes of course that these had been mysteries of the most outrageous kind. Fortunately they ceased after some time, because otherwise earth civilization would have been threatened with extinction.

It happened that an unusual being was born in old Mexico, who according to tradition was named Vitzliputzli. He was a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth and was venerated as a sun being. His mother was a virgin. Vitzliputzli set off to fight against the mightiest black magician to be incarnated on earth at that time. The latter had already in several incarnations committed ritual murders in the mysteries of Taotl and now, at the age of thirty, stood immediately before an historic decision ... through continued initiation really to become so powerful as a single human individuality, that he would have known the fundamental secret through which he could have given so powerful an impulse to the subsequent human earth evolution, that humanity in the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean period would have been darkened to such an extent that the intentions of the ahrimanic powers for these periods would have been realized (Sep. 18, 1916, GA 171).

Vitzliputzli's battle with the great black-magician lasted for three years. Finally the magician was conquered, physically crucified, and his soul robbed of the forces of knowledge with which it had committed murders; the magician's soul was laid under a curse. Now there lives on, not what would have lived on from those regions if the mysteries of Taotl had borne fruit, but there lives on as it were only in the etheric world, what has remained of forces, of night-forces from what went on in those mysteries. All these forces exist; they exist sub-sensibly ... beneath the volcanic lid of everyday life, so to speak (Ibid.).

A considerable number of modern people will no doubt dismiss all this with a smile and regard it as a fairy-tale. In this case they will continue to believe that the world wars, revolutions, mass executions of millions of people occur by pure chance, just because 'in the little town of Simbirsk an ordinary boy called Lenin was born', that in the Austrian forest thicket an 'ordinary boy' called Schickelgruber came into the world, that somewhere in the backwoods of Georgia the 'ordinary boy' Djugashvili was born etc. One cannot hold a conversation with such readers; it would probably make more sense to declaim some revolutionary poetry to them, such as:

'Sleep, comrades, sleep.
Who, then, disturbs your repose?'

With regard to the political, or rather, occult-political reality what is now occurring as, perhaps, the greatest mystery of our times, is an awakening, an arising from the sub-sensible on to the outer, social plane, of those forces which held sway in the mysteries of Taotl. Even in the books of Carlos Castaneda one can read about their attitude of 'expectation' in the ancient tombs. But we have far more important reason to examine their interference in the life of Europe and the whole world today.

In development everything occurs rhythmically. And if at the time of the first coming of Christ the gigantic black-magical counter image of the Mystery of Golgatha appeared in the Western hemisphere, and the intervention of the infernal forces, which could bring about the irrevocable downfall of earthly civilization, was brought into opposition to the divine saving intervention in the destiny of mankind, how could the forces of Taotl not attempt to deliver a counter-attack in the 20th century, when the return of Christ is already taking place in the ether world? In addition to this, Ahriman is preparing his incarnation on earth. All these indications of Rudolf Steiner have profound methodological significance. They help us to understand the most important mystery of our time, the mystery of our epoch, which consists in the fact that all international or national socialistic experiments are deeply occult in their nature. This is why an attempt is being made to restore the old Taotl-mysteries, no longer according to the ahrimanic, but to the Asuric principle, so that they may be placed in opposition to the reappearance of the Christ.

If we now reflect, in the light of the communication given by Rudolf Steiner which we have quoted above, upon the phenomenon of the Lenin Mausoleum, surrounded by the 'eternal' Politburo, we understand where the Taotl-mysteries are nowadays celebrated in a metamorphosed form, and what they look like.* {*It is imperative that we quote here a further confession made by the occultists of Bolshevism today regarding the intensifying of the battle over their greatest relic - the mummy of Lenin. The newspaper 'Soviet Russia' published the following article on June 11, 1997: Marxism-Leninism assumed the status of the State religion whose structure was almost wholly derived from the Christian religion. Not without reason Engels already pointed to the astounding similarity between the emergence of early Christianity and that of the International Workers' movement. This fact can be explained. No social movement can jump over its own shadow, and thus it is forced, in order to forge a path for itself in the world, to use those means provided by the epoch in which it lives. Thus, despite its declared atheism, Marxism-Leninism has assumed clearly-defined traits of a religious cult. It has its Holy Scriptures, its theology, in which quotes from the Scriptures carry more authority than all references to experience or other sources, it has its apostles, saints and martyrs, its heretics and its most holy Inquisition. Whether it could have been different in the early socialistic revolutions is a complicated question. At any rate, the history of all great revolutions - including the Christian - showed that this was more often the rule than the exception...[ ¶] The body of Lenin has acquired a deeply sacred significance for millions of people. Therefore it is a gross insult to the feelings of the truly faithful if the mausoleum is visited purely out of curiosity... Alas, if this were otherwise, how many cynics and malcontents there would be. [ ¶] If the mausoleum were turned into a kind of theatrical enterprise, it would be as blasphemous as turning a church into an attraction with TV-coverage etc... In Soviet times taking snapshots was prohibited in the mausoleum. And there were purely religious reasons for this. Maybe we ought to take a further step in this direction. [ ¶] The best solution, in keeping with both the spirit of scientific communism and the demands of moral piety towards the dead, would be... if the Lenin mausoleum and all scientific and technical services belonging to it were left intact, but public access were prohibited or definitely restricted, if it were closed forever. Only special initiates should be concerned with the conservation of Lenin's body. They would be allowed access to the altar, as is customary in the Christian churches. Lay people are quite out of place there. (!) [ ¶] However, this is not a political but a spiritual question, the solution to which does not lie with the government or society as a whole. It is the task of Lenin's spiritual descendants and disciples, i.e. the Russian communists. Only their shared opinion can determine how the great tomb should be cared for.} We are probably not mistaken to assert that the reincarnated 'priests', the most important politicians of the 20th century, are initiates of those old American mysteries which took the heavens by storm with the help of ritual murders (by far not all of them are known in the outer world). Then we will also understand why people of this kind can be so immoral: so atavistic are they, that in the course of their reincarnations they have absolutely not yet encountered concepts like morality or compassion.

For this reason it is at present wholly inadmissible, indeed tragic and hopeless, for the Russians to believe in a difference between Stalin, Lenin or Trotsky, between Bukharin and Sverdlov etc., or to believe that anyone from this circle would have been able to think of the interests of Russia, to be simply human. By no means. All of them, together with the other bearers of five-headed evil, have pursued one single aim: to help the mysteries of Taotl to triumph throughout the whole world. As to the Western efforts to conquer them during the time of the Perestroika, it could well be that the intention was to extinguish them in one place, only to have them appear somewhere else. Black-magical mysteries exist also in the West. Their leaders believe that they are already in complete control of the situation on our planet, and they do not wish the earth to be destroyed prematurely, which would be the aim of the Soviet 'red priests'. But to find an accommodation with 'red civilization' (this concept was recently introduced into everyday political language by the Bolshevist occultists), is clearly impossible, as it has taken on an Asuric character. Its priests work with super-human but ahrimanized intellect, and a stupendous, luciferized will. They acquire this surplus of forces at the expense of the nullified, paralyzed sphere of feeling.

In his autobiographical novel The Aquarium Victor Suvorov writes that within a system (we would say, of Soviet Initiation) one immediately dissociates oneself from anyone who gives free rein to their feelings. Suvorov is himself admitted into the 'inner circle' because, as he is told: You have a brain like an electronic machine ... that is not tuned-in. But you can be tuned-in. 'Tuning-in', as he describes it, is achieved with the help of exercises that can be found in occult textbooks, but they are carried out for the sake of an illusory development of 'I'-consciousness. It appears to make the 'I' unusually alert, self-assured, autonomous and strong, but at the same time programmed into the tone given from without, as though it could produce through its activity nothing but lies, destruction and death.

It is of crucial importance to note that in Suvorov's book the intellectual training of the 'students' takes place in a Scientific Research Institute for Electromagnetic Radiations. This brings us face to face with the complex theme of the psychotronic manipulation of consciousness. The pedagogical principle applied, says Suvorov, is that success is achieved only when every aspect of the training (of the memory, the muscles, the psyche, will-power, stamina) leads the human being to the limit of his possibilities.

Beyond this limit lie, in the one case, the mysteries of the light, the higher 'I' of man, and, in the other, the present-day mysteries of Taotl, the realm of instinct: you need the automatic reflex ..., in five years, you will have the appropriate reflexes, the students are told by the teachers. The initiand must, as a future agent of the Secret Police (GRU) be transformed into an animal-man through a heightening of the instincts.

Suvorov describes his first 'hierophant', Major Kraftsov, as follows: He is an animal. Small, bloodthirsty, extremely dangerous. He knows his goal, goes straight for it without turning back once. I know his guiding star. It is called power. When Kraftsov sits by the campfire, red shadows surge over the wilful face with its projecting cheekbones. A black, regular profile. Red shadows. No more. No blending of outlines. No compromises. In short - none other than the priest of the mysteries of Old Mexico. His will to power is metaphysical. He enslaves by occult means everyone who comes into his sphere of influence: he enslaves on earth so that the effect will continue into the world beyond. But 65% of the GPU and KGB agents who remain in the West, because they do not want to return, return nevertheless after a very short time with a self-denunciation. We shoot them - says another 'Aztec'. They know it - and come back all the same.

Of course, this inhuman education of spies and 'diversants'* described by Suvorov can be justified as a means of defending the country. {*Communist word for saboteur, troublemaker} But if this were the only consideration, the Soviet Union ought to have lasted longer than the Inca Empire. It should have existed to all eternity. But the Perestroika has shown that all social-political and ideological bogies were no more than a veil concealing the black-magical mystery. To ensnare as many people as possible and guide them on to its course was, for this mystery, an end in itself. Remember how cynically the 'black professors' in Klimov's Protocols speak about their ruling ideology. And even Suvorov's 'teacher' tells him quite frankly: You can betray whoever you wish, even the Soviet Fatherland, but not me, i.e. not the laws of the black mystery, not the astral connection of the teacher (who performs the same human sacrifices, through in a renewed form) with the pupil; that connection which forms, in the esoteric centre, the 'eternal Politburo', the basis for ahrimanic immortality. Here, politics and ideology are only secondary; here other tasks await you. Don't you find pleasure in torturing other people, Kraftsov asks Suvorov, or do you only hide it?

Over the course of years the methods of initiation in the 'Red Order' changed. Formerly the human sacrifices, fully in keeping with the old Taotl traditions, were chosen from their own ranks. How well they were prepared was shown by their behaviour before execution. Marshal Tukhachevsky, for instance, called out: 'Long live Stalin!'

In the course of time wider sections of the population were drawn upon for the purpose of ritual murders. In his novel Control Suvorov shatteringly describes how normal and everyday this all appeared to be at first sight. However, the initiation-ritual became very complicated. In a certain 'sanctuary' belonging to a special, inner power-centre and located in a former monastery a specially chosen brotherhood of Chekists* worked without interruption. {*Chekist - a member of the Soviet political police 1917-1922. The word is still in use today.} Their life was strict and ascetic. Strenuous intellectual work alternated with physical exercises and military training of the members - the 'monks' and 'nuns' - and also the torture of a group of prisoners held in the monastery expressly for this purpose, and periodically special commandos were required to carry out the executions. 'Neophyte' Nastya Streletskaya, a Judo-master and highly-skilled parachutist who, thanks to her truly devilish intuition, had succeeded in performing an invaluable service to the leader himself, the 'high priest' - she had uncovered a conspiracy against him - was taking part in one of these executions. Suddenly she was grabbed hold of by those she regarded as her comrades, she was brutally beaten and dragged to a mass grave. She heard a bullet shoot past her ear, and then lost consciousness. Later it turned out that this had merely been the procedure of a higher initiation. Her 'friend' and fellow-member Kholovanov, called the 'Dragon', consoled her: 'We were testing you in the real thing', he said. 'The result is promising ... You are fulfilling our expectations.'

This is the way the old procedure of 'cutting out the stomach' is carried out in modern conditions. It is preceded by a long preparation with the aim of loosening the connection between astral and physical body. For this reason today's mystery pupils of Taotl continuously practise the free fall - sometimes from the stratosphere, sometimes from close to the ground - in which the opening of the parachute is delayed.

In one of his novels* Castaneda says of himself that, when he was once exposed to immediate outer danger, he experienced how a monster-like, unusually strong astral double suddenly released itself from him and delivered such a terrible astral blow to the witch, that she was even weakened physically. {*Castaneda's novels have been analyzed in another work by the present author: Triune Man of Body, Soul and Spirit in the Light of Anthroposophy (Volume I; Moskau-Basel-Verlag, 1993; Publisher's note).} Here he is describing a true occurrence. Under the effect of occult exercises whose main element is fear, the connection between Castaneda's astral and physical body is loosened. This normally results in a fettering of the lower nature, the luciferic-ahrimanic double of man.

The 'adepts' of the GRU experienced something of this kind; which is why they continuously exposed themselves to mortal dangers, so that finally certain changes took place in the solar plexus, the ganglion-system. Then the human being acquires the ability to awaken the forces of evil within him and put his 'I' in the occult service of evil.

It is a remarkable fact that the pupils of the 'Red Order' were mainly selected from among the Slavs. Owing to special factors in the ethnic development of the Slavs, the physical body of the Russians, Ukrainians and White Russians is more flexible than that of the other, older nations. Their connection of the 'I' with the body is more mobile; it fluctuates easily between the higher and the lower (double) nature. Hence they can so easily move from a boundless readiness to sacrifice to an equally boundless capacity for evil. In the mystery of the Asuras their development aims exclusively at the strengthening of the double.

The double represents the sum total of all the negative deeds of a human being in previous incarnations. The mysteries of the light help pupils to ennoble the double and live out negative karma, so that the path is opened up to true freedom. The mysteries of darkness lead their pupils in the very opposite direction - into total enslavement.

Occult Bolshevism remains true to its principles in every respect. Having pinned its hopes on the 'proletariat', the 'workers', it affords them free access to its mysteries. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and officers serving in the armed forces constitute in the 'Red Order' a kind of counterpart to the 'Rotary' and 'Lions' clubs in the West. Not much is divulged to them, but certain things are retained nevertheless. As they belong to the army elite, they arrive - even in a universal-human sense - at the deep conviction that human nature is, as Suvorov puts it, vicious and incorrigible, that we are all wild animals ... we fight always and everywhere. There is no truce, and there never will be ... life is a battle of evil with still greater evil. They are all subject to the strict rule and the vow: As soon as you have joined the organization, you belong to it completely. Of course not all - far from it - are aware how deeply this 'admission' leads into the infernal realms, or that a firm astral bond arises between 'priests' and 'lay people' (the sacrificial victims), which continues even beyond the threshold of death.

In the 'Red Order' one is not afraid of death; and this is the goal to which everything leads - death and the orgies of death. War is therefore an especially festive occasion for the Order. Peace - is war is proclaimed in the utopian world of 'English socialism', and, in his description of this, realized Bolshevistic socialism served as the model for George Orwell. This was a direct continuation of the Old Mexican Taotl-mysteries, in which the aim was to erect a mechanical, rigidified realm of death on the earth (Sep. 18, 1916, GA 171) through the 'killing' of all independence and of all movement of soul.

The activity of self-formation, and the descent of God and the hierarchies in the creative process, interpenetrate each other (fig. 10) and bring about in the Earth aeon a global turn in evolution. In the likeness of a Grail-vessel the evolutionary cycle (seven aeons) stands at first within eternity, formed by the timeless being of the hierarchies and permeated by the three hypostases of divine revelation. All this can be understood as the totality of laws determining everything that comes into being through evolution in time and space as a mirror-image of the 'vessel'.

Thus the material universe, the four kingdoms of nature, are a 'reflection'. They have been in a descending movement since Old Saturn; they have been falling away from God. During the Earth aeon this descent reaches its lowest point, its limit, and the process of ascent begins.

We may conclude from this that the evolution of man and the world takes place in two aspects simultaneously. In the extra-temporal realm it has already come to completion, whereas in time it has only reached the mid-point. This raises many questions concerning the nature of time, of predestination, freedom etc. The author addresses these in his work Triune Man of Body, Soul and Spirit in the Light of Anthroposophy, according to the method developed by him. In the present chapter we can only refer to this.

What is described in the Bible as the expulsion from Paradise is the transition of man from the world of the 2nd revelation to that of the 3rd, where he can develop freedom of the spirit. Whoever is unwilling to venture into the realm of trials and of error cannot attain spiritual freedom. And in order that human deeds might not work too destructively for the higher world of being, for the higher harmony, our dense, lifeless shadow-world was created, in which everything higher exists only in its reflection, as a likeness.

But we should not imagine that the polarity of two worlds - that of being and that of non-being - has only conditional significance. The world of being-other has the potential within it to cancel out the world of being, and become itself the sole reality. Something of this kind could take place if the purposes of the realm of darkness are realized in the time necessary to this realm, and not in the time necessary to the universe. If this were to come about, then good would transform into evil. And in order that this should not happen, the Son of God descended into the world of self-confrontation that had been willed by Him, and changed within it the law of descent, of materialization, of the Fall and of enmity, through transforming it into a law of ascent, of spiritualization, of all-unity and love.

After the Mystery of Golgatha the lawful and (for the sake of evolution) necessary descent of man into matter, the Fall into sin, must be arrested at the wish of the human being who has attained 'I'-consciousness. The Fall must be replaced by repentance. Every person can draw the necessary strength for this from the deed of the incarnating God, who went through death and gave the power of resurrection even to the physical body of man.

Figure 11

The cosmic constellation of the human being, particularly in modern times, is extremely complex. On the one hand he remains within eternity, in the lap of the Divine Trinity, only unconscious. On the other hand, if he is to become conscious of his situation - which is the main task of the spiritual ontogenesis of man, if one may so express it (because we can develop ourselves only in the totality of body, soul and spirit) -, he must for a period of time work upon himself within a further trinity: that of Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman. And if he errs (development always entails risks), he may quickly find himself within yet another trinity: that of Lucifer, Ahriman and Asura (a retarded spirit of personality, archai). He will then fall out of the evolution intended for him by the divine worlds, and take a different path of which the Gospel says that there reigns outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 22; 13). At some point this world too will be transformed into good, but today no-one can say whether the human being who takes this path will then still exist.

To the spoiled but also intimidated human being of today, it is highly uncomfortable to learn of truths like these. And yet he must either develop within himself the strength and the wish to face up to the truth, in order to recognize the true laws of development and work upon himself (then God Himself will be his helper), or sooner or later he will find himself on the path of 'continuous Fall'. In some black-magical occult circles this path is even considered the best, but such opinions belong to 'black' romanticism, which is a special kind of egoism.

Thus everything in man is predestined to good; but without risk, without an act of daring, without the possibility of choosing between good and evil, he cannot become a free spirit. The risk is permitted by God, and it does not lie within man's power to eliminate it. And the guarantee of security suggested by the Church is given at the price of the renunciation of 'I'-consciousness (the sin that cannot be forgiven), at the price of falling back into group-consciousness, for the overcoming of which so much effort has been expended. The falling back into group-consciousness leads man back into the grey distant past when he was still at the stage of animal-man. On this path nothing but the gravest perils await him.

The Fall

Since the human being is forced to live in a so catastrophic time as the present, he tends to ask himself why God allows this all. Does He not have the power to exclude Ahriman or Lucifer? And straight away the doubt arises: Maybe God is not perfect and all-powerful after all?

But God is perfect and everything lies within His power. He does not exclude Lucifer and Ahriman, because together with them He would also have to exclude a number of philosophers who deal with such questions, as Rudolf Steiner once remarked.

We could also ask the more comprehensive question: Why did God allow the Fall of man? Seen from the theological point of view we will not find an answer to this. And then all we can do is wrangle with God or deny His existence. Even in occult societies, where 'action' is preferred above spiritual cognition, where people know what they want but not what for, one does not get any further.

In Anthroposophy the process of the 'Fall' is said to be a part of evolution. And this is fundamentally true. Actually it already began when man's physical body was created in the aeon of Old Saturn. Since then the connection of man to material existence has grown ever closer (cf. fig. 11). Next to the, let us say, ideal course of evolution (the upper 'vessel'), there arises the realm of development in which the spiritual and the material interweave in a complicated way, in which the four natural kingdoms are formed. But all this remains within the sphere of divine creative deed, which, as three cosmic creative rays of force, provides the main law of our evolutionary cycle (they become energies only in the material world) (fig. 10, p. *). For this reason the Holy Trinity is the personified expression of the basic law of all being, and also of non-being.

In the Earth aeon the realm within which human evolution unfolds grows especially large. It reaches its boundary in the meeting with a purely spiritual existence, its divine original source. This comes to expression in the emergence of inorganic nature, which, in its four (alchemical) elements earth, water, air and warmth, reflects in an ideal manner (within the realm of 'being-other') the divine world order. Here 'being-other' attains perfection and at the same time its summit, its crown: the higher nerve-activity of man; we owe our reflective thinking to the mineralizing processes in our nerves.

In each aeon development begins with a repetition of the earlier conditions, after which the new arises. Man's sinking down into the solid realm of the earth was determined by his previous development. The Bible describes only in pictorial form how this took place, but does not explain why. It would be naïve to suppose that the first man, Adam, could have erred as an individuality. For this reason the 'original sin', which lives in us all, should be looked upon as an evolutionary rather than as a moral question. We atone for it through overcoming blood-ties and extending the evolution of species, which gave us the body so that it might become a vessel for the spirit, by means of our spirit and soul-evolution, whereby individual man becomes a species.

It is a real sin, if the human being does not wish to participate in the great transformation which took place in the middle of the Earth aeon, and after which any further descent into matter had no meaning. Man becomes guilty of something truly evil, a 'mortal sin', if he tries, with his 'I'-consciousness whose development entailed so many sacrifices from the spiritual world, to penetrate into the realm of sub-nature, thereby forfeiting the possibility of continuing on the human path of evolution. Especially effective in drawing man into this sphere is the now apparent 'reconciliation' between materialistic science and religion which has lost every trace of spirituality. In a tone of the highest positivity and tolerance, of the greatest benevolence, the leaders of the new universal ecumenism teach man to live with concepts like 'spiritual or rarefied material world', 'divine or energetic-informative world', etc.

Thus human development can take three directions within the context of the seven aeons. In figure 11 these are represented by spheres I, II and III. After man has attained individual consciousness he may choose any one of these, but he should first know what they mean and where each of them leads.

The upper path (sphere I) is for man the ideal and highest goal. Here he already stood as God's creation and was endowed by the spirits of form or Elohim with a spark of their fire. The 'I' lit up in him and man experienced his independence outside the material body. But this consciousness of the higher 'I' was an ideal mirroring of the world-all, and could not serve for cognition of the world. If man had remained in this condition, the Elohim would have endowed him with a purely supersensible form of consciousness-being corresponding to his nature. Instead of the skeletal system, says Rudolf Steiner, man would have had Imagination. The spirits of movement (Dynamis - the hierarchy above the Elohim) would have given him Inspiration instead of muscles, and the spirits of wisdom (Kyriotetes) Intuition instead of the nervous system (Dec. 30, 1912, GA 134). Man would have remained a threefold cosmic being existing in the three conditions of cosmic super-consciousness (which he is only now beginning to develop and must bring to completion in the coming aeons). But in this condition he would never had attained individual freedom, and his high level of consciousness would have had super-individual but group-like traits. In other words, that lofty unity would never have differentiated into the multiplicity of individual 'I's' which determines the original being of earth's humanity. The original being and the self-consciousness which man possesses today have arisen out of the fact that God Himself 'expelled' him from that high sphere of being, from Paradise, and gave him the task of returning to it as a free spirit.

For this 'expulsion' to succeed even the beings of the divine hierarchies had to oppose each other. But those among them who opposed the purely spiritual course of human evolution, says Rudolf Steiner, need not be considered evil forces. We can even say that they sacrificed themselves through obstructing the path of development. These powers can thus be called the gods of hindrance in the broadest sense of the word ... [they] were not yet evil as such, on the contrary, they were great furtherers of development in that they were up in arms against normal development. But they were the originators of evil (April 18, 1909, GA 110).

The diving down of man into material being was connected with the birth of time. When this process began, some of the beings of the highest hierarchies, the Seraphim, refused to accompany him on this path. They remained faithful to eternity, so that the downward development could in time return to them again. But such beings of the first hierarchy can also be called luciferic in a quite definite and very special sense.

A division also took place in the lowest hierarchy, that of the angels. Some of them helped man, when the spirits of form endowed him with the 'I'-spark to experience himself within it spiritually (in eternity). But the angels we call luciferic led into the human astral body, the bearer of feeling and consciousness, the principle of division that had occurred in the world of the hierarchies: the possibility of choosing between good and evil. Thereby man became a being of space and time. The division of the hierarchies reveals itself in so manifold a way.

Despite their grandeur and sublimity the beings of the higher hierarchies do not know freedom of choice. All that is untrue or evil is for them non-being. The evolution of their 'I'-consciousness took place in accordance with different laws than those prevailing in our cycle. Only in the third hierarchy, amongst the angels, archangels and archai does the possibility exist of freedom, and, connected with this, of error, i.e. of remaining behind in one's development. In this something always remains behind. In some cases the remaining behind occurs as a sacrifice for the benefit of a lower stage of development, in others not.

The beings of the third hierarchy developed their 'I'-consciousness within our evolutionary cycle, but already in past aeons. Some of them stayed behind, but this time not in the conventional way. To these belong the luciferic and ahrimanic beings - the retarded angels and archangels. The one who tempted man in Paradise is known to us as Serpent or Lucifer.

The possibility of freedom acquired by the beings of the third hierarchy cannot be lawful, since they cannot incarnate in physical bodies in order to tread the path of earthly man. In the spiritual world freedom and imperfection are irreconcilable. Their path would actually need to remain in the upper sphere (fig. 11, sphere I, p. *). But they have come into contradiction with the laws of higher being and at some time in the past missed the opportunity to develop their 'I'-consciousness, so that they now use man to make up for what they missed. Through their battle against the true gods a consolidation of spirit to the state of materiality is brought about; and an actual sub-physical realm is created in which the ether- and astral forces of the universe disintegrate. These beings know no bounds in their intentions. They hope to 'draw' the entire universe across into their sphere and, as it were, turn it inside-out.

Initially it was only given to man to develop the principle of freedom in the right way, and it is the foremost task of our entire evolutionary macro-cycle to create a hierarchy of freedom and love. It was for this reason that the Gods decided to drive man out into the material cosmos, whereby they also brought suffering upon themselves. In this way a tragedy entered world-development. You were bought at a price says the Apostle Paul (1. Cor. 7; 23). And Rudolf Steiner says Free will on the one hand, the possibility to choose between good and evil, between the beautiful and the ugly, between true and false, this free will on the one hand, and an apprehension of the divine so that it penetrates into our soul and we know ourselves to be inwardly filled, freely filled with the divine on the other hand, these are the two goals of human soul-development on earth (July 12, 1914, GA 155). In order to attain these, man received two religious gifts. One of them is intended to place into the human soul the forces that lead to freedom, to the distinguishing between true and false, beautiful and ugly, good and evil (Ibid.). This gift was the Fall. Through a further gift a seed was laid in our soul, out of which will rise the capacity to feel the divine within. The second religious gift is that which we meet in all that is expressed in the word: Mystery of Golgatha ... in these two religious gifts is contained all that is essential in world evolution (Ibid.).

The reader could raise at least two objections to what has been said above, if his quest for knowledge stops at the trivialities offered by modern science and theology with regard to the profound mysteries of existence. Above all he will object that freedom and predetermination are irreconcilable. But in this case he should consider that, as Rudolf Steiner says, man's free action will in future depend as little on what predetermined factors will be, as this freedom is dependent on his intention to live next year in a house whose plan he is now deciding upon. He will be free to the degree that he can be according to his inner nature, in the house he has built for himself. And on Jupiter and Venus he will be as free as his inner being allows, i.e. within the conditions that will arise there. Freedom will not depend upon what past conditions have predetermined, but upon what the soul has made of itself (GA 13, p. 413-414; emphasis by the present author).

To be free means to find oneself as spirit within oneself says Rudolf Steiner (May 15, 1910, GA 118).

A further objection will relate to the view of the Fall as a gift of God, and it will probably be raised with particularly strong emotion. Man can overcome this objection only within himself, through turning to spirit knowledge. Otherwise he would have to admit that God made a mistake etc.

The development of the human being is far more complicated than science claims, and the Biblical myth of creation needs to be deciphered, interpreted.

Man Between Lucifer and Ahriman

Nine kinds of spiritual beings, who rank above man in evolution, have achieved the development of 'I'-consciousness. For six of them this took place in cosmic conditions that have hardly anything in common with the present. The three lower hierarchies - angels, archangels and archai - went through their 'human stage' in past aeons, i.e. they then possessed object-consciousness. But not all of them succeeded in fulfilling the tasks in their sphere, for it is one of the evolutionary laws of our cycle that some remain behind and are overtaken by others in development: Thus, for instance, the angels who did not fulfil their task in the Old Moon aeon, cannot in the Earth aeon ascend to the level of consciousness that the archangels possessed on the Old Moon etc. They now have to catch up in their development, and this can only take place with the help of man, i.e. the human astral body, when this separates from the general astral body of humanity - or, figuratively expressed, from Adam.

This process was extremely complex. As a result of it, human consciousness could no longer be a mirror of the cosmos as the spirits of form had made it when they endowed it with the 'I'. In man the ability arose to control the pictures in his consciousness. However, this control did not proceed from the higher 'I', but from the astral body in which retarded angels - luciferic beings - were active. In this way the 'I', which ranked higher than the astral body, became dependent upon it. Man was from then on, says Rudolf Steiner, exposed to the continuous influences of the lower element in his nature (GA 13, p. 248); the possibility of error and of evil arose. The substances began to densify. The warmth ether caused physical warmth and the (lower) 'I' awakened by the luciferic desires of the astral body to arise in its first rudiments. If felt itself attracted gradually by the fiery materiality of earth, and man was drawn into this to an excessive degree. Untrue imaginations (at first supersensible but already becoming individualized - the serpent seduced man through knowledge) which could not be harmonized with higher spiritual influences, caused sickness and death. These come from our astral body.

The ether-body (which directs the life processes) was protected from the luciferic influence at the stage of the temptation. In part it was guided, as hitherto, by hierarchical beings (man was forbidden to eat of the fruits of the 'tree of life'), not by the 'I', which, after having become substantial, would have fallen as substance from the spirit, i.e. irrevocably. The physical expression of all the processes described became the gradual regulation of the mutual relations of (the planets) sun, moon and earth (GA 13, p. 250-252) and also of other heavenly bodies.

Death began to regulate the extent to which man came into contact with evil. Simultaneously with freedom and the possibility of error, fear arose. Behind the phenomena of death and fear there stand ahrimanic beings. They remained behind at a still earlier stage that did the luciferic beings. They ought to have attained the level of archangels already in the aeon of the Old Sun, but failed to do so.

Thus we see that complex transformations in evolution, which were related to the emergence of a new kind of self-consciousness that was also being elaborated by man, determined the polarity of good and evil in the cosmos. Here one should bear in mind that the (actively) willing 'I'-Logos represents the most essential element in cosmic evolution. There exist in the cosmos only beings endowed with the 'I'. This 'I' can be an individual or - for a time - a group-'I'. In the latter case being has a semi-illusory character. This is the most important truth of being, independent of any confessional prejudice. We should admit that the conditions in the world originate with the creator and not with man, and that it is therefore better to recognize than to deny and falsify them.

Everything in the world is determined by the laws of development. The laws themselves are beings, hierarchies in their rank and in their relation to each other (here lies the origin of the doctrine of the categories), whereby their deeds and their mutual interaction are determined. They are solely creative force of 'I'-consciousness. Human freedom also develops in harmony with the higher laws, since it is not arbitrary but the self-determined condition of the individual spirit. In order to attain this, the relation between subject and object has to arise within the original unified whole; the subject must, in order to become a subject, mirror itself in the object. At a given point in development this mirroring relationship assumes the character of polarity and negation. A world arises in which the higher condition of consciousness and being prevails through the negation of a lower. But the antithesis remains basically ethical, because everything is oriented towards the future synthesis, to all-unity - the unity of the entire multiplicity of 'I'-consciousnesses. In addition to this the negation is enclosed within the innermost being of man; where it has a perfectly legitimate function, for through it thinking arises.

The earthly human 'I' arises through the combining of these ingredients: thinking, feeling and willing. They all owe their genesis to the earthly existence of man: the higher nerve activity, the sensations and perceptions and a certain unconscious, instinctive force - the will. All three ingredients have a positive and a negative pole: affirmation is opposed by negation, a positive feeling by a negative one, constructive will is opposed by destructive will or absence of will. All this has long been known to the traditional sciences. Spiritual science completes the picture by adding the knowledge of the personified nature of all psychic and spiritual manifestations of man - his qualities.

When physiology speaks of the decay of nerve substance during the thought process, Anthroposophy provides in addition the teaching of ahrimanic beings, of their goals and world-mission. When psychoanalysis describes the 'sludge' in the soul and the various confusions arising in the human 'libido', Anthroposophy places over against this the teachings of the 'Doppelgänger'-being dwelling in the sub-nature of man, and of reincarnation and karma.

The conditions prevailing in the cosmos require of man that he should attain knowledge of the world-battle waged by the Gods against the luciferic and ahrimanic hordes. In this battle the highest God, who passed through death on earth and pointed the way to the final overcoming of the world-dualism of spirit and matter, is on the side of man. But man can follow Christ only in the 'I', for He is the God of the human 'I'. This means that, in his 'I', which he lives out in the combined faculties thinking, feeling and willing, the human being should strive for the ideal of the higher life, which brings not impoverishment and loss but enhancement of self-consciousness and the wealth of individual being.

On the path to higher stages of life hindrances are created by the luciferic and ahrimanic beings. As we have already mentioned, they need the human being, in order to catch up in their development. Thus they initially furthered man's individualization, his separation from the universal-human. But now man's task is not to follow them any longer, but to lead a strong, independent life in his 'I' through overcoming them.

When Lucifer and Ahriman influence human thinking, their aim is to arouse the false conviction that man in his inner being is only contradictory, and that the contradictions cannot be resolved. Thus they invent, says Rudolf Steiner, thought-combinations in the human soul such as: in tune, in harmony with the infinite, etc. Such conceptions arise because in their souls human beings are too cowardly to face up to contradiction, and want to let Lucifer-Ahriman invent for them a harmony with the infinite ... To seek satisfaction in such a world-view is equivalent to tying a blindfold over one's eyes. Today the human being shies away from looking at the multiplicity of battles that are fought in spiritual realms (Aug. 14, 1917, GA 176).

When attacking man, Lucifer approaches him from the side of the will (from below) and Ahriman from thinking (from above). Ahriman continuously strives to make man only into a head. Lucifer seeks continuously to cut off man's head so that he cannot think at all, so that everything is diverted through the heart and streams out as warmth, that he overflows with world-love and pours out into the world as world-love, pours forth as a cosmic fantasist (July 3, 1921, GA 205). Lucifer is fond of pious souls who strive for the spirit, for the good, but only out of egoism. Nowhere does Lucifer intrude more in our feelings - Rudolf Steiner says - than where people are striving for the divine out of their passions and desires (often cunningly refined) without illuminating the divine with the light of knowledge (May 18, 1910, GA 120).

Thinking has actually, if the human being truly masters it and does not merely use stereotyped phrases, the quality of will. Here instinctive will becomes conscious for the first time through the motive of an action, and then a deed becomes our own. The Luciferic beings, however, fetter the will that begins to free itself in man. They try to cast unclarity over the human being regarding the exercise of free will through making him into a good being. Lucifer wants actually to bring about - says Rudolf Steiner -, from the point of view I am alluding to here, the good in man, the spiritual. But he wants to make it automatic, without free will. The human being is, so to speak, to be automatically raised to clairvoyance according to good principles, but the luciferic beings want to rob man of his free will (and thereby) of the possibility for evil ... [They] have a strong interest in taking hold of man so that he cannot come to free (i.e. reasoned) will, because they did not achieve it themselves. Free will can only be attained on earth. But they want to have nothing to do with the earth ... They act in a highly spiritual manner, but they act automatically - this is of immense significance -, and they want to raise the human being up to their own ... spiritual height (Oct. 9, 1918, GA 182).

If we take note of these words and think of all the moral sermons with which all the confessions throughout the world wish to edify us, we realize at once that the utopia of K. S. Mereshkovsky will surely become social reality if people are unwilling to recognize in what times they are living. Where the luciferic beings once gave man the impulse to freedom, they now do the exact opposite. The reason for this is profound, for they remained behind in the aeon of the Old Moon, when man did not yet have an 'I'. The highest member of his revealed existence was the astral body. At that time they were not yet permitted to work upon it; but in the earth aeon they may. Here, however, man is developing the individual 'I', which is worked upon above all by the higher spirits; and through the 'I' they then work further on to the astral body and effect within it a catharsis. For this reason the 'I' is the enemy of the luciferic spirits, who try to extinguish it by working upon it from the astral body. They were allowed to inhabit this in order to fragment the unity of the astrality of mankind into a multiplicity of monads. Thanks to the luciferic spirits man can experience enthusiasm and elation - the source of his artistic activity. Thus human freedom was made possible, but at the same time the fall from God, and evil.

In a certain sense the human being strives for the ideal of ascending higher than his thoughts, feelings and expressions of will, to look upon them as something external in relation to himself as 'I'. But it is not easy to go through life in such a frame of mind. And at the same time, so long as it is not objectified in us, we can have no conception of the way 'I' and thinking, feeling and willing can stand over against one another, as this was originally intended by the divine beings.

The human being was intended to be an observer of himself, not to experience within himself - says Rudolf Steiner. But, he continues, Lucifer turned to man and spoke the following words: 'Just look, O man, how boring it is always to walk around in the world with this one central point 'I am', and merely look at everything else. It is far more interesting to dive down into your astral body. I give you the power to dive down into your astral body, and then you will not remain one-sidedly in your 'I' always staring only at your 'double', but you will dive down into it. Whatever may come over you as you dive into your astral body, which would feel like a drowning, I will compensate for by giving you something of my strength ...' And what man received by way of luciferic strength is the surplus of the 'I' over the astral body, it is the greater 'I-hood', which is actually luciferic (Dec. 29, 1911, GA 134). This is how we united through the higher 'I' with our thinking, feeling and willing and started to build our everyday 'I', so to speak, from below upwards.

The excess of the 'I'-force over the astral body gave rise to the excess of the astral body over the ether-body and this, in Lemurian times, led to the birth of individual life-processes.

The deeds of Lucifer had karmic consequences: Ahriman, whose main task in evolution is the consolidation of matter, intervened in the individual development of the human being. In proportion as the physical body densified, it acquired domination over the ether-body, thus giving rise to the phenomenon of death. But this intervention of Ahriman also made possible the development of the sense organs. As a further step the ether-body, under the influence of Ahriman in his active response to the deeds of Lucifer, begins to prevail over the astral body, and man senses himself throughout his whole body - glandular processes begin (Ibid.).

Thus to the degree that the harmony and balance of the threefold human body and 'I' created by the hierarchies is destroyed, the process of expulsion of man from Paradise takes place. Man was predestined to mirror world-consciousness perfectly through the members of his being, to be a kind of angel, but a withered angel, an object of world life - as Rudolf Steiner remarks. He was banished to the earth kingdom, which lies between the angel and animal-kingdoms. For this reason in the first period of life on earth the outer human form resembled that of animals. But this was only the form of archetypal man, within which he was ensouled by super-human divine wisdom. Gradually, however, this wisdom was extinguished in him, and in its place what we today call rationality slowly developed. In this Ahrimanic beings made their dwelling. In order to catch up on what they have missed they endeavour to tread the path of men to create his form in which he overcame the half-animal stage (e.g. achieved the upright posture). But it is not possible for them, and they experience terrible suffering. Rudolf Steiner describes this condition: It is as if an animal were to feel dimly within: You ought to be erect, you ought to be human - as though it wanted to tear apart everything inside itself. This is the terrible pain that is actually felt by the ahrimanic beings. It can only be assuaged if they approach man and take hold of his understanding. Then the understanding cools down the pain. This is why they cling as it were with their entire being to the human understanding, they dig their nails into it, harden their bones inside it (Oct. 23, 1921, GA 208). It is a terrible picture. But there is no sense in shying away from it; without reason there would be no consciousness. And reason needs a certain 'solidity' for support. And, since this already exists, man should spiritualize thinking, advance to an individualized perception of the intelligible world and enter the world of the hierarchies as a subject.

Man has the task of penetrating thinking with the will, of developing reason, of enlivening his thoughts, giving them substance and then carrying individually-willed thinking as the substance of his 'I' across the threshold of the supersensible world (on the path of initiation or after death). But Ahriman wishes to prevent this. He would like the will to remain separate, and thoughts to be especially formed only in us (in the way he wishes; July 3, 1921, GA 205). In this case we would lose our individuality. We would arrive at the moment of death with an altogether exaggerated, instinctively-formed thought. But we humans would not be able to retain this thought, and Ahriman would be able to take hold of it and integrate it into the rest of the world ... (Ibid.). Humanity faces this danger if it continues in present-day materialism (however broadly its concepts may be interpreted) with the result that the ahrimanic powers so gain in strength that Ahriman can steal thoughts from the human being and incorporate them in their effective working into the earth (i.e. the abstractions become reality) so that the earth, which is actually (in time) supposed to pass away (spiritualize) will be consolidated ... Ahriman works counter to the word: 'Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away'. He wants the words to be thrown away and that heaven and earth should remain (materially). This can only be accomplished when human beings are robbed of their thoughts, when human beings are de-individualized (Ibid.).

In the lecture quoted above Rudolf Steiner goes on to speak about the human brain, and says that it will grow ever harder if the ahrimanic influence persists, and that human beings would have to live with materialistic, obsessive ideas. The whole approach to pedagogy and education would be structured in such a way that the human being would no longer be able to have flexible thoughts, that even children from a certain age on would only have very rigid thoughts. And all this has virtually been accomplished today. In time means will be found to teach the human being instantaneously, outside school and at a certain age, everything he needs to know, so that he becomes an extremely clever automaton. Through injection with certain substances it will be accomplished (in such a case) that the ether-body is loosened in the physical body ... (and in that case) the interplay between cosmos and ether-body will be extremely lively, [but] man will become an automaton if his physical body is not educated through spiritual will here on earth (Ibid.). The reader who follows the latest achievements of science will say that this has already been done in individual cases. People will therefore have all the more reason to be concerned about their future, and not only the earthly one.

Manifold are the influences upon man, of Lucifer and Ahriman, who are antipodes in the cosmos. They reveal themselves as such also within us. Where, for instance, Lucifer hates any kind of law, Ahriman would like everything to comply with law: statutes, regulations, programmes and so on.

Right up into our own time, sexual aberrations have been included by the religious consciousness among the mortal sins. They were also condemned by the pagans. We can even read in Heraclitus: Nature is attracted not to what is similar but to what is opposite and creates out of this a certain balance and harmony. - Out of opposite qualities a wonderful harmony is created. - Nature has brought male and female together and established an original harmony out of the opposites. All the opposites are with God.

The Apostle Paul says: Who exchanged the truth of God for the lie ... For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful ... who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practise such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practise them (Romans 1; 25-32).

In the eyes of a Prof. Kohn Heraclitus and the Apostle Paul are both 'racists'. But in our century 'racists' are at the same time 'fascists', i.e. they are outlawed and condemned without trial. Would it not be fitting at last to examine what is our relation to these men of 'ancient' times, some of whom even call themselves Apostles?* {*Whenever something reasonable is brought forward about sexual aberrations, countless dishonest journalists launch a huge outcry about discrimination and a return to dictatorship. - We are thus faced with the choice of either agreeing with them or being branded as reactionaries. But this sector of propaganda also has its unpredictable aspects. Thus the anti-fascists defend homosexuality because it was forbidden in the Third Reich. But the Communists on the other hand wrote at the time they were attacking the National Socialists, that homosexuality was promoted by the SS-Orders. This would imply that the SS men were extreme anti-fascists. - In this way ideological madhouses are constructed today.} Although Anthroposophy would then have to be condemned too. For let us look at what Rudolf Steiner says: Thus the decisive point will come where one can go to the right: but then one will need to be awake; or one can go to the left: then one can sleep; but instincts will then arise, instincts that are abhorrent. What will the natural scientists say when such instincts arise? The scientists will say: This is a natural necessity. It had to happen, this is mankind's development.

[Man] ... would experience such a feeling of gratification in the pursuit of certain aberrations of the sexual instinct; he would praise it as a particularly lofty expression of super-humanness, of lack of prejudice, of enlightened judgment. Ugly would become beautiful and beautiful ugly ... and it would not be noticed because it would all be looked upon as a natural necessity (Oct. 9, 1918, GA 182).* {*The lecture is entitled The Working of the Angel in our Astral Body. We advise all those who are still incapable of distinguishing freedom from immorality or illness to read the lecture right through.}

The development of humanity under the condition of the duality of the sexes lasts many millennia. But the time will come (5th-6th millenium) when the sexes will unite again. Then those who have perverted these relationships will be unable to undergo the metamorphosis this entails. They will be cast out of the normal evolution of humanity into the subhuman, half-animal realm.

These people therefore sin against evolution for the duration of two root-races, and for this reason their sin is called a mortal sin. The Apostle Paul speaks of 'the judgement of God' in this regard. The mortal sin leads to the second death, the death of the soul.

In view of the fact that Ahriman's incarnation is shortly to take place, he is particularly interested in the propagation of this sin. The spirits of darkness therefore try to strengthen their power over the human being with respect to his evolution.

The extinction of morality, which is currently taking place, gives birth to a cosmic counter-image. The earth radiates disgrace out into the cosmos, as a confirmation to the Divine Hierarchies, that mankind has lost touch with the meaning of its existence!

A situation of this kind cannot be altered by means of a sentimental, moralizing sermon. The mysteries of darkness can only be countered by the mystery of light, and that is Anthroposophy. This is why it is so necessary that many awaken to its wisdom, because it shows the way out of the crisis. It is both old and new and contains the enormous positive experience of humanity, which has been gathered on the path to the spirit. Through Anthroposophy man can find a way to approach the practical questions of the present time.

Civilization is suffering under an outdated, chronic crisis; consequently, a momentary, speculative search for a solution is doomed to failure. Often people have no idea at all what the meaning of the crisis is. What can anthropology or even University psychology say about the destructive effect of an unbridled sexual instinct on the human 'I', on the psychic disposition, the sense of self-worth, the self-identity of the personality? What can psychology create culturally if it is based on the Freud-Jung doctrine of the all-determining role of the 'phallic' principle in the spiritual and even the religious life of humanity?* {*The Jungian interpretation of culture is no more than a crude invention. In early antiquity there was no sexual drive as an end in itself. Everything was a sublime sacrificial act for the purpose of perpetuating the human race. Reproduction was a holy service to humanity. The lower nature in us, as we know it at present, is the result of the luciferic temptation. But it is destined to become our higher nature, and this was known in the ancient world. The leaders of the old Mysteries were not so frivolous, cynical and philistine as people are today. Certain symbols of the ancient peoples - says Rudolf Steiner- which today are only interpreted in a sexual sense, symbols that are drawn from the lower nature, can be explained through the fact that the old Mystery-priests who used them, actually wanted to express in these symbols the higher that lives in the lower nature of man (October 8, 1917, GA 177). But how are we to discuss this with today's scientists, when the main element of their scientific apparatus is the dirty joke?}

All teachings of this kind will sooner or later be attractive only to the psychically ill, and to people who have kept their psychic health, the old wisdom will begin to speak in a modern language. The millenia-old mystery wisdom is not naïve; we are naïve; we are the victims of wildly fantastic conceptions in the epoch of materialism.

The Rosicrucian legend tells that it was prophesied to Hiram Abiff, the representative of the earthly, male Cain-wisdom, that he would beget a son who would be the progenitor of a new human race but who would be unknown to him. Among his descendants the union of the two sexes would take place. Rudolf Steiner revealed the essential meaning of this legend when he said: The old female (Abel- or priest-) culture gave way to the male culture. The female as a physical form will die out. Then the male must have in it a force to bring forth a (new) individual out of itself ... When man has acquired the strength, so that his larynx develops to the stage where his word is creative, and he is able to bring forth his own kind through the word, then the entire productive force will pass over to the male sex. What was once created by the Gods will pass to man. When was the word lost? When the individuality of the sexes began. It is buried, hidden. The sons of Cain only had it in their forefather. Hiram Abiff was at least to have the prophecy of it. Immediately after this he was killed.

The word is buried, but it is there. If it were not buried, man would be self-creative like the Elohim ... (Oct. 23, 1905, GA 93). But the lost word will be rediscovered when passive male wisdom (Hiram; it was already explained why it is passive) awakens activity - female intuition - within itself. For this reason Goethe says:

The eternal feminine
Still leads us on.

In the hope of finding the lost word people of the past joined together in associations and brotherhoods to form spiritual communities. This is what Lodges of the Freemasons were originally. They would no doubt have rediscovered the word if they had not fallen a prey to political occultism, which turned them into custodians of the 'sexual minorities'. After that, were there Freemasons in the world, who were still able to continue the good, even sublime, traditions of the fathers? We cannot answer this question. But at the beginning of the century a true Freemason could have said to himself or in the circle of his fellows: Everything that does not derive from our own science which has spread throughout the world, originates from the ancient times of rulership by priestesses. We do not only want to overcome this, we wish also to inaugurate a new cycle of existence. We are to give intuition to male Cain-cognition ourselves. This would be impossible if one were to deprive men of the power by sharing the secret with women. The moment we speak it out before women the whole thing would cease to have any effect (Ibid.).

For this reason women were for a long time not admitted into the Lodges. The speech organ is related to one's sex. This is why men, when they reach puberty, undergo the breaking of their voice. Rudolf Steiner continues in the above-mentioned lecture: Now you will also understand what the Freemason says: Only the man is destined to speak the lost word and transform it; only the male larynx is capable of speaking ... what can be regained through the lost word ... The female larynx has remained at a rudimentary stage. It is the male larynx which is formed into the future organ (Ibid.).

Thus spoke the Freemasons in the 18th, and partially also in the 19th century. But it was in the 19th century that they lost their connection to the outer world, and at the same time female wisdom was also lost; therefore there were no longer any higher degrees that preserved this wisdom. This process is to a certain extent legitimate. Man had to pass through materialism, which excludes the priestly wisdom, in order to build up his object-consciousness. As a result the old wisdom disappeared and man had to live in the outer world. But soon the time came when the wisdom was taken in, which is beyond the sexes, which in its essential nature is neither male nor female. This truth is Anthroposophy. It teaches that in the woman the male part is active, and in the man - his female part. On a higher level, in cognition, male and female unite. Anthroposophy therefore re-establishes the harmony of the unified human being.

The advent of Anthroposophy in the world was prepared by a considerable number of spiritual streams, among them Freemasonry. When in the 18th century so-called 'adoptive Freemasonry' was founded, which also admitted women (e.g. Baroness Dudevant, alias George Sand), the unification of the sexes was prepared. H. P. Blavatsky was a member of such a Lodge. But what had developed out of this in the middle of the 20th century, could produce nothing but a moral catastrophe.

The theosophical movement, too, had the task overcoming the one-sidedness of male strivings, but this fact was soon forgotten.

There is throughout the Middle Ages - says Rudolf Steiner - a grandiose preparation for the engendering within the man, of the other sex in a spiritual way. Through concentration within himself, the man first creates as a thought what later is to arise in him as being. This is why throughout the Middle Ages the Mary-cult arose in preparation. It is nothing other than concentration for the purpose of engendering the female in the male (Ibid.). Women have the same role in the Jesus-cult. Now you will realize - concludes Rudolf Steiner - what confusion was bound to arise when an Order appeared which broke with everything and wants to win back female wisdom. The aim is rulership of the world, which is to be conquered. If someone wants to leave ancient wisdom as it is, then he has to conquer the world for the sake of old forces. Such an Order exists: it is the Jesuit Order. It has consciously set itself this task. This is why the Jesuits and Freemasons stand in such stark contrast to one another (Ibid.).

In a complicated inter-connection one of the most important principles of evolution is falsified. On the one hand the difference between the sexes is cancelled in an unnatural way, and on the other it is heightened to the utmost degree. In the Mary-movement the claim is made to rulership of the world by the feminine principle, while religious fundamentalism places women in a condition of slavery. In this way humanity is attacked from two sides: by the luciferic and ahrimanic hosts. One side would stifle self-consciousness through unbridled sexuality, the other would proclaim celibacy as the ideal. Man can only overcome the working of the adversary powers through ennobling sexual love, and learning to love beauty through the cultivation of spiritual interests.

The Archetypal Phenomenon of the Mystery of Evil

Now that we have analyzed the inner structure, the spiritual personification, of the forces that are expressed in the antithesis of good and evil, we can ask the question regarding its archetypal foundation; or, rather, we have already broached this question because it was posed very generally with the help of figures 10 (p. *) and 11 (p. *). Figure 10 shows the Divine Trinity, the highest perfection in the universe (we called it triangle ABC). The threefold human spirit moves towards this highest goal as Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. World evolution unfolds, in correspondence with this striving, through a cycle of seven aeons. On the macrocosmic level two global tendencies arise within it. One is mediated by the activity of the nine hierarchical beings which proceeds from the Divine Trinity (@ BCD). This is the world of good, and its working is directed toward the creation, the world of the non-'I', which has arisen through the fall from God. The created world is shown as the triangle of forces with its point upwards (@ DEF). The force at work within it is the creatures' longing for reunion with the Creator. The Gnostics called this longing 'Achamoth'.

In the individual development of the human being both triangles interpenetrate; they form the sevenfold structure of man, since all that is in process of development bears within it the structure of the sevenfold metamorphosis. This is the nature of the hexagram - an ancient occult symbol. In one of its meanings it stands for development, namely the interaction between the threefold body and the threefold spirit (fig. 14). From their fusion there arises as the uniting element the higher 'I', which was instilled into man during the earth aeon.

Figure 14

This is, in very broad outline, the evolutionary principle of man. The working of forces in his hexagram can also be presented differently: with the point of the triangle symbolizing the spirit turned downwards, and the point of the triangle signifying the body turned upwards. Then we have before us the human being as God's creature. The first variant showed the constellation of the independently-striving individual spirit.

This is how evolutionary tendencies change. In one instance what is higher, the hierarchical, strives away from the Divine Trinity, and this leads to division of the hierarchies, the creation of man and the emergence of evil. In the other, they return by way of the creature, through its free will, to the Divine Trinity, thereby transforming evil into good. And man indeed becomes the 'measure of all things'.

The two curving lines in figure 10, which show the developmental path of the hierarchies working from above and the development of the many-membered human being from below, are transformed in the experience of individual becoming, when the human being takes his destiny into his own hands, into two 'staffs of Mercury' which we find very graphically represented in the first alchemical Rosicrucian seal (see fig.).

[Abbildung Umschlag DRM I]

Man owes his newest constellation, in which he is holding the 'staffs of Mercury' in his own hands, to the fact that he has been able to bring his lower 'I' into connection with the higher 'I' and develop the threefold soul - the sentient, rational and consciousness-soul. But, as we have already mentioned, these bear within them the luciferic and ahrimanic powers (also shown in the alchemical seal) which attack 'I'-consciousness by way of thinking, feeling and willing. Here too, man, as the subject of evolution, is a microcosm, the expression on a small scale of the cosmic battle between good and evil.

In the concluding phase of evolution evil also strives for threefolding, in a reversed way, but nevertheless 'in the image of God', which is further confirmation of the unity and divinity of the cosmos. But here there is no room for sentimentality. From the 20th century onwards we will be witnesses to an extremely dangerous development of the forces of evil, who are assuming the character of threefold unity (@ EFG).

Since Christ foresaw this, he descended not only to the physical plane but also into the sphere of the sub-physical mutual confrontation of Lucifer and Ahriman. On Easter Saturday He undertook the descent into Hell. He entered the sphere where human beings have, after death, to endure the consequences of the life they have led on earth under the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman. To the degree that man masters his 'I', the errors he commits begin to assume increasingly the character of objective evil, because the true source of evil is exclusively his 'I'. Only what has a personified character, if only to a small degree, can have reality in the world.

In his commentary to the 'Lord's Prayer', Rudolf Steiner says that man experiences temptation in his astral body. The human being can ... when he commits errors through his ether or life-body, become more of a sinner among his fellow human beings, he can neglect more the social obligations that weave from man to man and make human social life possible (Jan. 28, 1907, GA 96). Therefore the prayer says in this connection: And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us (Luke 11; 4). The physical body is related to the petition for daily bread. And when we pray Deliver us from evil we should think of the errors, the transgressions we have committed out of the lower 'I' in full consciousness.* {*The higher 'I' is expressed in the prayer in the trinity of the spirit: of Spirit Man (will), Life Spirit (kingdom) and Spirit Self (name).} As a special power which tempts the lower 'I' and, through it, stands in opposition to the higher 'I' there emerge as an ever-growing force the retarded spirits of personality (archai), known in esoteric tradition as the Asuras. It is they who form the trinity of cosmic evil (@ EFG) as an antitheses to the Divine trinity.

Rudolf Steiner characterizes the 'triangle' of evil in the following way. He says that in the sentient soul Lucifer is anchored and in the rational soul - Ahriman. In the new epoch man possesses the consciousness-soul, which, through its spiritual working, transforms the physical body into Spirit Man, i.e. creates within us the body of resurrection. And in the time which is now approaching (at the end of the 20th century this time has now come) the spiritual beings called the Asuras will steal furtively into this consciousness-soul, into what is called the human 'I' - because the 'I' is awakened in the consciousness-soul. The Asuras will develop evil with far more intensive force than even the satanic powers of the Atlantean or the luciferic spirits of the Lemurian time (March 22, 1909, GA 107).

In a more universal sense the Asuras stand in opposition to the world-ground of the Father, for their battle (through man) is waged against world unity, against the oneness of God. But their intentions are opposed by the Mystery of Golgatha; they should be regarded as belonging to the main opponents of Christ. Ultimately Christ's prayer at the Last Supper, which he addresses to the Father and which John the Evangelist gives to us in the 17th chapter, is concerned with this confronting of the Asuras. - In the present time two incompatible paths of development have come into an immediate contact with one another: one, the path through the Christ to the Father, the other, the path through the lower 'I' that is falling into chaos, to the Asuras, into the anti-world, and to the 'eighth sphere'.* {*The future Jupiter aeon, the future human condition, matures in the 'eighth sphere'. At the appropriate time unity in the divine sense will be restored.}

In contrast to the Asuras, the luciferic spirits have brought, in addition to the possibility to do evil, something that is good: freedom. For this reason the evil created by them in evolution will be completely overcome and transformed into good in the course of the earth aeon. The evil caused by the ahrimanic spirits will be overcome by the human being through the working of the karmic laws. But the evil sent by the Asuras is of quite a different nature, because they strive to unite the innermost being of man, where for the first time he becomes human in the truest sense of the word - the consciousness-soul and the first expressions of the higher 'I' - only with the sense-nature of the earth. Piece by piece will be torn out of the 'I'. And to the degree that the Asuric spirits lodge in the consciousness-soul, the human being has to leave pieces of his existence behind on earth. These will be lost irretrievably ... Not that the entire man has to fall prey to them, but pieces will be carved out of the human spirit by the Asuric powers. These Asuric powers are heralded in our time by the spirit that holds sway, which we could call the spirit of mere existence in sensuality and in obliviousness to all real spiritual beings and spiritual worlds ... a further step will be - and this is heralded ever more plainly - the base (group) passions of sensuality that descend to the earth more and more and obscure man's gaze with regard to ... spiritual powers. The human being will not know, and will not want to know, anything about a spiritual world. Increasingly he will not only teach that the highest moral ideas of man are only higher manifestations of animal drives, he will not only teach that human thinking is merely a modified form of what the animal also possesses ... that in his entire being he descends from the animal, but man will take this view seriously and live accordingly (Ibid.).

We have sufficiently shown in the pages of this book the extent to which these words of Rudolf Steiner have become reality in our time. We have every reason to conclude that the development of civilization in our century has taken a most difficult and tragic turn. Rudolf Steiner actually spoke in his day, of how the Asuras work in senseless outbursts of passion in sports stadiums. What more needs to be said about passionate outbursts at rock-concerts where everything is brought to a pitch by the musical element, which has a particularly strong effect on the lower 'I'? Much has become habitual and a part of everyday existence, so that in self-justification people whisper powerlessly: 'What can we possibly do about it?' 'Where else are the youngsters to go?' 'You have to move on with the times!' etc. But let us concentrate on one question at least - the task of cognition. One will only find strength to overcome the evil that is triumphant on earth, when one has recognized its nature. This nature is cosmic and not only a product of the irresponsibility of single individuals.

In a very early lecture Rudolf Steiner commented on the following explanation by C. G. Harrison as to the nature of the Asuric forces: The Asuras are in their nature fiery or dynamic, and their power to do evil was terrible. This was destroyed for ever through the appearance of Jesus Christ ... they are 'held in check', unable to move backwards or forwards, between the earth and the eighth sphere,* at the latent point where the attraction of both is everywhere the same, until the 'great day' of the 'meeting of the axes', when they will be irresistibly pulled into the vortex of the latter (appendix to June 10, 1904, GA 93). Human beings could also be pulled into this vortex; whereby they would be torn out of human evolution temporarily or for ever. {*The 'eighth sphere' is the spirit region in which, on the one hand, the substance for the future Jupiter aeon is prepared and where, on the other, the forces of evil bring into being their counter-image to this aeon.}

Figure 15

Viewed cosmically, the Asuras have already been overcome, because Christ entered the 'triangle' of evil and took the small human 'I' under His wing (fig. 15). But since man only possesses his higher 'I' when he develops free-will, he can only serve the Christ-force when he may freely choose. In order to prevent this choice, the Asuras lead the polar opposite of luciferic and ahrimanic forces to a synthesis and thereby create a completely new situation on earth, where man is exposed to temptation in all the elements of his nature: through daily bread (the socialistic and other social experiments), through the trespasses of the life of society within the state (but also between the different states) which is descending into planetary chaos, through the temptation of loosened morality, the exchange of freedom for arbitrariness, and finally through the evil of false doctrines, the hypertrophy of the lie, the world-wide advocacy of unbridled sensuality and the dragging of the consciousness-soul down into the sphere of the instincts.

At the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century the situation of the world and of the individual human being becomes fraught with still greater difficulty through the working, on the side of the Asuric forces, of Sorat - the Sun-demon, the opponent of Christ, as he is characterized by Rudolf Steiner. He describes this event on the 12th Sept. 1924 as follows: All that we do now, my dear friends, in this age as we take hold of the spirituality of our teaching is of great significance, because we do it for the human beings of the present time sub specie aeternitatis. It is a preparation for those great, encompassing, intensive spiritual deeds that are to take place at the end of the century, after a great deal will have occurred which works counter to a spiritualizing of modern civilization. Those great upheavals in Europe which were ushered in by the Crusades, coincided with the recurrence of the figure 666, and this fact found its outer expression in the downfall of the Knights Templars. Ever and again Sorat strives to oppose that which, from the Sun-genius, endeavours to work for a true Christianity.

The time is now imminent of the third return of the figure 666: 1998. At the end of this century we come to that point in time when, rising up again from the waves of evolution, Sorat will raise his head most powerfully, when he will be the adversary of that vision of the Christ which those human beings who are prepared for it will already have in the first half of the 20th century, through the becoming visible of the etheric Christ (GA 346).* {*We would like to quote here a further central thought of Rudolf Steiner concerning the Asuras: The Asuras remain behind on Old Saturn. As did fire-spirits on the Sun. Christ is the regent of the fire-spirits. The satanic hosts are the fallen fire-spirits. On Old Moon it is the luciferic spirits. In the Lemurian race Lucifer intervened in human development. He was drawn into earth development and served as a liberator through giving man independence and enthusiasm for wisdom. The satanic beings begin their 'work' in the Atlantean race (black magic). They are the gods of hindrance. The Asuras intervene only now in the fifth race. They are by far the most harmful and work mainly into the sexual life, i.e. the physical body. The many sexual aberrations of the present can be traced back to their strong influence. All forces of hindrance work in such a way that they seek to hold on to what exists at present, what is imperfect, to carry it through and reinforce it in its imperfection. The luciferic beings still worked as liberators, because they gave independence, the egoity together with egoism. We had to pass through egoism, which was, as it were, the first expression of the ego - just as error is the first expression of wisdom in a world of becoming, and animalistic love is the first expression of the highest spiritual love. Our task is the transformation in each case. The third root-race saw the separation of the sexes, in the sixth root-race it will be overcome; this has to be prepared in the sixth sub-race. The reproductive forces of man are undergoing transformation. Reproductive force in itself is the most holy in our possession because it is directly divine. The more divine what is dragged through the mud by us, the greater the sin. The reproductive organs in us will be heart and larynx. As the word became flesh in Christ, so in the time of the fulfilment of Christianity the flesh has to become word. [ ¶] ... Good and evil are as yet differentiated relatively little. And our eyes do not much penetrate the behind the uniform appearance of the flesh. Now it is still a relatively small step from evil to good, from good to evil. When the powers of the Masters and of those who support them with all their strength and will, and the powers of the gods of hindrance, also called Mammon (the Satans and Asuras), with their human following, intervene ever more strongly in the life of humanity, in earthly development - then good will develop into a divine good, and evil into something terrible, the Anti-Christ. Then every single one of us world-helpers (may this word be spoken in deepest humility) will need all the strength that can be gained from suffering and the overcoming of suffering, from evil and the overcoming of evil. It is the task of Theosophy (Anthroposophy), of Rosicrucianism, to summon human beings to this battle through knowledge of such things, and in the battle to bring them peace (GA 266/I, p. 169/170).}

In this 'complex' way the archetypal phenomenon of man, the pentagram of the microcosm within the 'triangle' of evil, is overturned/overthrown if it rejects the helping hand of Christ (fig. 16). It is 'overturned/overthrown' in an all-embracing manner in the wider sphere of social life, which takes on particularly great and even decisive importance in the epoch of the consciousness-soul. The organizations of world-evil shown in the figure incorporate into themselves virtually the entire spiritual elite of today's humanity. Anyone who in one way or another is gifted and creative serves one or even several forms of evil. Hardly has a human being discovered his creative capacities, than he is seduced, enticed or wooed by the corresponding associations, Parties and Orders. Other paths to self-realization will prove to be closed to him. The gifts of a human being and his ability to develop thereby become an enormous risk to him and the average person is simply manipulated within the mass.

Figure 16

However, it would not be right for anyone to accept the situation that has arisen in the world, as this would mean the abandonment of further evolution, whose quintessence is the human being; it would mean the forgoing of eternity, 'death of the soul', followed by the extinction of the human monad.

But the human being who does not conform will, if he endeavours to understand the primary phenomenon of universal evil and follow its further manifestations, be fulfilling the central task of man today. This is of course not easy to realize, as we have to do with something that is fundamentally new - with the principle of inverted dialectics. It is just as new for our times as classical dialectics was new (and also difficult) for the world of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

Another interesting chapter from Bondarev's book

The Spiritual Configuration
of Europe
By Gennady Bondarev

Translation from the German
by Graham Rickett

At the time of Old Atlantis the Aryan race was characterized by the fact that it lost its declining clairvoyant abilities more rapidly than the representatives of the other races. We must note that supersensible faculties constituted the main characteristic of the aristocratic elite on Atlantis. This is why the Aryans as a race were generally despised in times long past. The faculties germinating in them, all that we master as logic and conceptual thinking today, were not appreciated at that time, and so the Aryans were counted among the lower castes. After the migration some of them settled in the Southern area of the vast Siberian region, between the Urals and Lake Baikal (cf. Chapter VI, p. *). Others continued their migration further to the South. It would appear to be a result of this movement - against the stream of etheric forces of the earth - that the first post-Atlantean, Old Indian culture was passive and lived in a half dreamlike state. But in the course of this epoch man developed the individual ether-body and this meant the final overcoming of the animal-stage of human development. Seven Holy Rishis were sent from the Mystery centre of Manu to the Indian peninsula, in order to lead this culture.