Jewish power and the Illuminati (Page 10 of 10)

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Extracts from 'Secret Brotherhoods' lectures: comments by Tarjei Straume.

Whole lecture at:

The consciousness of this demonic spirit that led the lady back to her unlawful lover, this demon is indeed much shrewder in its consciousness than the lady is in her muddle-headedness, that is to say her consciousness.

There have always been endeavors whose aim was to secure power for certain groups over others. This could be achieved by considering a particular kind of knowledge as an esoteric possession but using it in such a way that the power over something quite different was expanded.

You all know that for a long time attention has been drawn within our anthroposophical stream to the fact that this twentieth century is one that should bring about in the evolution of humanity a special relationship to the Christ. This relationship to Christ will come about in the course of the twentieth century, and already in the first half, as you know, will begin the phenomenon that has been suggested in my first Mystery Drama, in which for a large number of people Christ in the etheric will be an actual, existing being.

We know that we actually live in the age of materialism. We know that since the middle of the nineteenth century this materialism has reached its climax. In reality, however, polarities must converge. It is exactly this climax of materialism within the evolution of humanity that must converge with the intensification in human evolution that leads to truly beholding Christ in the etheric. One can grasp that just the announcement of the mystery of beholding Christ, of this new relationship with humanity into which Christ will enter, would arouse ill-will and resistance from some human beings. These would be members of certain brotherhoods who wished to exploit the event of the twentieth century, this event of the appearance of the etheric Christ, who wished to use it for their own purposes and not allow it to become general human knowledge. There are brotherhoods, and brotherhoods always influence public opinion by allowing this or that to be publicized by such means as would be least noticed by people. There are certain occult brotherhoods who spread the message that the age of materialism has almost run its course, that in a certain way it is already past. These poor, pitiable, "clever people" - in quotation marks, of course - spread the doctrine in numerous assemblies, books, and societies that materialism has exhausted itself, that one can already grasp again something of spirit, but they can offer people nothing more than the word spirit and single phrases. These people are more or less in the service of those who have an interest in saying what is not true, that materialism has been ruined by bad management, as it were. This is not true; on the contrary, materialistic thinking is in the process of growing. It will thrive most when people deceive themselves by believing that they are no longer materialists. The materialistic way of thinking is in the process of increasing and will continue to increase for about four or five centuries.

Just as in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch the task lay in the struggle with birth and death, so we are now facing a struggle with evil.

This attitude has always been contestable, but in the post-Atlantean period in which we live it becomes especially ominous, because it has been particularly urged upon human beings by the powers of evil. When man under the present conditions of evolution passes through the portal of death, he takes with him the conditions of consciousness that he has created for himself between birth and death. The person who has occupied himself under present circumstances exclusively with materialistic ideas, concepts, and sense impressions of the material, of the sense world, condemns himself after death to live in an environment in which only concepts defined during bodily life have bearing. The human being who has absorbed spiritual ideas enters the spiritual world legitimately, but one who has rejected spiritual ideas is forced to remain in a certain sense within earthly conditions until he - and this may endure for a long time - has learned there to absorb enough spiritual concepts that he can be carried by them into the spiritual world.Whether we absorb spiritual concepts or reject them therefore determines our environment on the other side of the threshold. Many of those souls - and this must be said with compassion - who have rejected or were hindered from absorbing spiritual concepts here in life are still wandering about on earth and, though dead, remain bound to the earthly sphere. The soul of the human being, however, when no longer separated from its environment by the physical body - which can then no longer prevent the human soul from acting destructively - becomes a source of disturbance within the earthly sphere.

These initiates desire that there should be as many souls as possible who here between birth and death absorb only materialistic concepts. Through this, these souls are prepared to remain in the earthly sphere. They become to a certain extent fastened to the earthly sphere. Picture to yourself that brotherhoods are established that clearly know this, that are thoroughly familiar with these circumstances. These brotherhoods prepare certain human souls so that they remain in the realm of the material. If these brotherhoods then arrange - which is quite possible though their infamous power - that these souls come after death into the region of the power-sphere of their brotherhood, then this brotherhood grows to tremendous strength. These materialists therefore, are not materialists because they do not believe in the spirit - these initiate materialists are not so silly; they know full well the spirit's position. They induce souls to remain with matter even after death, however, in order to make use of such souls for their own purposes. From these brotherhoods, a clientele of souls is thus produced who remain within the realm of the earth. These souls of the dead have within them forces that can be guided in the most diverse ways, with which one can bring about a variety of things and by means of which one can come to special manipulations of power in relation to those who have not been initiated in these things.

What is it that such initiates desire, these initiates who know quite well that the human soul is a purely spiritual being, a spiritual being fully independent of corporeality? What do these initiates desire who, in spite of knowing this, shelter and cultivate the materialistic thinking of human beings? These initiates desire that there should be as many souls as possible who here between birth and death absorb only materialistic concepts. Through this, these souls are prepared to remain in the earthly sphere. They become to a certain extent fastened to the earthly sphere. Picture to yourself that brotherhoods are established that clearly know this, that are thoroughly familiar with these circumstances. These brotherhoods prepare certain human souls so that they remain in the realm of the material. If these brotherhoods then arrange - which is quite possible though their infamous power - that these souls come after death into the region of the power-sphere of their brotherhood, then this brotherhood grows to tremendous strength. These materialists therefore, are not materialists because they do not believe in the spirit - these initiate materialists are not so silly; they know full well the spirit's position. They induce souls to remain with matter even after death, however, in order to make use of such souls for their own purposes. From these brotherhoods, a clientele of souls is thus produced who remain within the realm of the earth. These souls of the dead have within them forces that can be guided in the most diverse ways, with which one can bring about a variety of things and by means of which one can come to special manipulations of power in relation to those who have not been initiated in these things.

This is simply an arrangement of certain brotherhoods. In this matter, one can see clearly only if one does not allow oneself to be deceived by darkness and fog, does not permit oneself to be deceived by the belief that such brotherhoods either do not exist or that their activities are harmless. They are by no means harmless; they are, in fact, extremely harmful. They say that human beings should enter more and more deeply into materialism, that they should believe, according to the thinking of such initiates, that spiritual forces exist, to be sure, but that these spiritual forces are nothing other than certain forces of nature.

I would like to characterize for you the ideal that such brotherhoods hold. One must exert a little effort to understand the situation. Picture for yourself, therefore, a harmless world of people who are somewhat led astray by today's prevailing materialistic concepts, who have strayed away a little from the old, established religious ideas. Picture for yourself such a harmless humanity. Perhaps we can picture it for ourselves graphically.

We imagine here the realm of such a harmless humanity (larger circle). As I said, this humanity is not completely clear about the spiritual world; led astray by materialism, they are unsure how they should conduct themselves toward the spiritual world. They are especially unclear how they should act in relation to those who have passed through the portal of death. Let us assume that the realm of such a brotherhood is here (small circle, green). This brotherhood spreads the teachings of materialism; it is concerned that people think purely materialistic thoughts. In this way the brotherhood brings about the procreation of souls who remain in the earthly sphere after death. These would become a spiritual clientele for the lodge (see drawing, orange). This means that dead people have been created who would not leave the earthly sphere but would remain on earth. If the right preparations have been made, they can be retained in the lodges. In this way, therefore, lodges have been created that contain the living as well as the dead, but dead who are related to earthly forces.

The matter is directed so that these people hold sessions in the same way as was the case with the séances held during the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, about which I have often spoken. It may then happen - and I beg you to bear this in mind - that what occurs in these séances is directed by the lodge with the help of the dead. The true intention of the masters of those lodges, however, is that the human beings should not know that they are dealing with the dead but rather should believe that they are dealing with higher forces of nature. People are made to believe that these are higher forces of nature, that psychism and the like are only higher forces of nature. The true concept of soul will be taken from them, and it will be said that, just as there is electricity, just as there is magnetism, so there are also such higher forces. The fact that these forces are derived from souls is concealed by those who are leaders in the lodge. Through this, however, these others, these harmless souls, gradually become completely dependent, dependent in their souls, upon the lodge, without realizing what is subjugating them, without realizing the source of what is actually directing them.

There is no remedy against this situation other than knowledge of it. When one knows about it, one is already protected. When one knows it to the extent that the knowledge has become an inner certainty, a real conviction, then one is protected. One must not, however, be too lazy in striving to gain knowledge of these things. It must be said, though, that it is never entirely too late. I have often brought the following to your attention: these things can become clear only gradually, and I can pull together only gradually the elements to bring you complete clarity. I have often made you aware that, in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, many brotherhoods of the West introduced spiritism experimentally to convince themselves through this test that they had gone as far with humanity as they had intended. It was a testing to see how far they were with humanity. In these séances they expected that people would say that there are higher forces of nature. Then they were disappointed, these brothers of the left, that people did not say this but rather said that in the séances spirits of the dead appear. That was a bitter disappointment for the initiates; that was exactly what they did not want, because it was just this belief in the dead that these initiates wished to take from man. Not the activity of the dead, not the activity of the forces of the dead, but this thought that the forces derive from the dead, this correct, significant thought, this was to be taken from man. The brothers see that this is a higher materialism; it is a materialism that not only denies the spirit but wishes to force the spirit into matter. They see that materialism has forms in which it can already be denied. One can say that materialism has disappeared. - we are speaking already about spirit, but all of them speak about spirit in a vague way. It is very easy to be a materialist when all nature has been made into spirit in such a way that psychism emerges. What is important is that one is able to cast one's glance into the concrete spiritual world, into concrete spirituality.

Here you have the beginning of what will become more and more intense in the next five centuries. These evil brotherhoods now are limiting themselves, but they are bound to continue their activity if they are not prevented, and they can only be prevented if one overcomes laziness toward the spiritual scientific world conception.

Through these séances, therefore, these brotherhoods betray themselves, so to speak. Instead of covering themselves, they have unveiled themselves through these séances. This showed that their scheme was not really quite successful. For this reason, the impulse sprang up within these same brotherhoods to strive to discredit spiritism for a time during the l890s. In short, you can see how deeply incisive effects can be achieved in this way with the methods of the spiritual world. What we are dealing with here is the enhancement of power, exploiting certain evolutionary conditions that must emerge in the course of humanity's evolution.

This growing materialization of human souls, this imprisonment of human souls within the earthly sphere - lodges are also in the earthly sphere - will be counteracted. If the souls therefore haunt the lodges and are to be effective there, they must be confined to the earthly. This striving, this impulse to work in the earthly sphere through the souls, is counteracted by the significant impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha. This impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha is also the healing of the world against the materialization of the soul. The way taken by Christ Himself completely outside the will and intentions of human beings. No human being, therefore, no matter how knowledgeable - also no initiate - . has influence over what Christ does, which will lead, in the course of the twentieth century, to the appearance about which I have spoken and of which you will find indications in the Mystery Dramas. This depends completely upon Christ Himself. Christ will exist in the earthly sphere as an etheric being. It depends upon the human being how he establishes a relationship to Him. On the appearance of Christ Himself, therefore, no one, no initiate however mighty, has any influence. It will come. I beg that you hold firmly to this. Arrangements can be made, however, for receiving this Christ event in this way or that, for making it effective.

These brotherhoods about which I have just spoken, which wish to confine the souls of human beings to the materialistic sphere, strive for the Christ to pass unnoticed through the twentieth century, for His coming as etheric individuality to be unobserved by human beings. This striving evolves under the influence of a quite definite idea, under a definite impulse of will. These brotherhoods have the urge to conquer the sphere of influence that is to come through Christ in the twentieth century and to continue further, to conquer it for another being, about which we shall speak later in more detail. There are brotherhoods of the West who strive to battle the Christ impulse. They wish to place another individuality who has never yet appeared in the flesh but only as an etheric individuality, who is of a strong Ahrimanic nature, in place of Christ.

All these measures about which I have just spoken regarding the dead and so forth serve in the end the aim of leading human beings away from Christ, Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, and of securing the rulership of the earth for another individuality. It is a real struggle, not just something that I know of as abstract concepts or whatever but a real struggle. It is a real struggle that concerns itself with placing another being in place of the Christ being in the course of human evolution for the rest of the fifth post-Atlantean period and for the sixth and seventh. It will be the task of a healthy, honest spiritual development to eradicate such strivings, which are in the true sense of the word anti-Christian, to remove them, to annihilate them. This can be achieved, however, only through clear insight. This other being whom the brotherhood wishes to substitute as ruler they will call Christ; they will actually designate him as the Christ. What will be important will be to distinguish between the true Christ, Who, when He appears, will not be an individuality incarnated in the flesh, and the being that is distinguished from the true Christ by having never yet incarnated during earthly evolution. This other being is one who has only reached etheric embodiment, and he will be put by the brotherhoods in the place of Christ, Who is to pass by unobserved.

There is no remedy against this situation other than knowledge of it. When one knows about it, one is already protected.

Countering this are brotherhoods of the East, especially Indian brotherhoods, who wish no less significantly to interfere in the evolution of humanity. These Indian brotherhoods pursue yet another goal. They have never developed the type of esotericism through which they could ensnare the dead into their realm, into the realm of the lodges. That is far removed from their purposes; they have no interest in such things. On the other hand, they also do not wish the Mystery of the Golgotha with its impulse to take hold of the evolution of humanity. They also do not wish this. It is not, however, that they do not wish it because the dead are at their disposal, as I indicated is the case with the brotherhoods of the West. They wish to fight against the Christ, Who will enter human evolution as an etheric individuality in the course of the twentieth century, not by substituting another individuality; for that purpose they would need the dead and these they do not have. Instead they wish to divert the interest away from this Christ. They do not wish to allow Christianity to become strong, these brotherhoods of the East, especially the Indian brotherhoods. They do not wish the interest in the true Christ, Who has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, to flourish, the interest in the Christ Who had only a single incarnation for three years here on earth and Who cannot appear again on earth in a physical incarnation. They do not wish to make use of the dead in their lodges but something other than what were once simply living human beings. In these Indian, Eastern lodges, a different type of being is made use of in place of the dead used by the Western lodges.

When a human being dies, he leaves behind his etheric body; it separates from him soon after death, as you know. Under normal conditions this etheric body is assimilated by the cosmos. This absorption is somewhat complicated, as I have shown you in many different ways. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, however, and even after Golgotha, particularly in the Eastern regions, something quite distinctive was possible. When the human being after death surrenders such an etheric body, certain beings are able to inhabit this etheric body; they then become etheric beings with these etheric bodies that have been laid aside by human beings. In Eastern regions, therefore, it now happens that not dead people but all kinds of demonic spirits are induced to inhabit etheric bodies laid aside by human beings. Such demonic spirits that inhabit the etheric bodies laid aside by human beings are taken into the Eastern lodges. The Western lodges thus have the dead who have been directly confined within matter; the Eastern lodges of the left have demonic spirits, spirits that do not belong to earthly evolution but who creep into earthly evolution by occupying the etheric bodies vacated by human beings.

Exoterically this phenomenon is transformed through veneration. You know that certain brotherhoods possess the art of calling forth illusions. Because people do not know how widespread illusion already is in reality, they can easily be deceived by artificially called forth illusions. It is done in this way: what one wishes to achieve is clothed in the form of veneration. Imagine that I have a tribe of people, a related clan; I have arranged ahead of time as an "evil" brother the possibility that the etheric body of an ancestor is occupied by a demonic being. I say to them that they must venerate this ancestor. The ancestor is simply the one who had laid aside his etheric body, which was then occupied by demons through the machinations of the lodge. The veneration of ancestors is thereby brought about. These ancestors who are being worshipped, however, are simply demonic beings within the etheric body of the respective ancestor.

One can divert the world conception of Eastern people from the Mystery of Golgotha by working in these ways, as they do in the Eastern lodges. Through this their purpose will be achieved, that Christ as individuality, as He is intended to pass over the earth, remains unnoticed by Eastern people and perhaps by people everywhere. They therefore do not wish to substitute a false Christ but to cause the appearance of Christ Jesus to remain unnoticed.

To a certain extent a twofold struggle is thus waged today against the Christ impulse appearing in the etheric in the course of the twentieth century. Humanity is actually inserted within this evolution. What we see happening in individual cases is essentially only a consequence of what is transpiring in the great impulses of humanity s evolution. For that reason it is sad that people will be deceived constantly when the unconscious, the so-called unconscious, is working within them - be it some receding love affair or something similar - when, in fact, impulses of extremely conscious spirituality are passing from all sides through humanity but remaining relatively unconscious if one does not trouble oneself about them in one's consciousness.

To these things you must add much more. Human beings who have been honestly concerned with the evolution of humanity have always taken into consideration such things as we have characterized, and they have undertaken what was right from their point of view. Much more than this the human being cannot or is not permitted to do.

A good sheltered place for spiritual life, an exceptionally good sheltered spot, protected against all possible illusions, was Ireland, the Irish island during the first Christian centuries. It was truly protected from all possible illusions, more than any other region on earth. This is also the reason that so many disseminators of Christianity in the early Christian centuries originated in Ireland. These disseminators of Christianity, however, had to work with a naive humanity, because European humanity, among whom they were active, was in those days naive. They had to take this humanity in its naiveté into consideration, but as far as they themselves were concerned, they had to know and understand the great impulses of humanity. In the fourth and fifth centuries particularly, Irish initiates were active in Central Europe. They began there, and their activity consisted in preparing what was to take place in the future. To a certain extent they were under the influence of the initiate-knowledge that revealed that in the fifteenth century (1413, as you know) the fifth post-Atlantean era was to begin. They were under this influence. They also knew that they had to prepare for a completely new age, that a naive humanity must be protected for this new period. What was it that was done at that time to protect this naive humanity, to build a fence around it, as it were, to keep certain harmful influences from entering? What was done?

Evolution was guided first by well-instructed and then by honest groups in such a way that gradually all ocean journeys were suppressed, journeys that in past times had been made from Northern lands to America. It was thus arranged that whereas in past times boats would cross from Norway to America for certain purposes (I shall say more about this another time), this knowledge of America would be completely forgotten by the European population, so that the connection with America was gradually obliterated. In the fifteenth century nothing was known of America by European humanity. The development was directed particularly from Rome so that for definite reasons the connection with America was gradually lost, because European humanity had to be sheltered from American influences. Especially involved in this process of protecting European humanity from American influences were just these monks from Ireland who as Irish initiates had spread Christianity over the European continent.

In ancient times quite definite influences were brought from America; in the age when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began, however, matters were arranged so that European humanity was uninfluenced by America, knew absolutely nothing about it, lived in the belief that America did not exist. Only after the fifth post-Atlantean period had begun was America again discovered, as is familiar history. One of the truths with which you are most likely familiar is that what is learned in schools as history is many times a "fable convenue." That America was discovered for the first time in 1492 is such a convenient fable. It was only rediscovered. It was merely that for a period the connections were cleverly concealed, as had to occur. It is again important, however, to know what the situation was, to know the true history. True history is that Europe was fenced in for a time and was carefully protected against certain influences that were not to come to Europe.

Such things show you how significant it is not to accept the so-called unconscious as an unconscious but rather as something that is extremely conscious and takes place beyond the threshold of everyday human consciousness. It is indeed important for a larger portion of humanity to learn about certain mysteries. I have therefore done as much as it is possible to do now in public lectures in Zurich. In Zurich, as you may know, I have gone at times as far as to explain to people the extent to which historical life is not grasped by human beings with the ordinary consciousness but is in reality dreamt, how the content of history is in reality dreamt by human beings. Only when people become conscious of this will health come to these concepts.

These are things through which one gradually awakens consciousness. The phenomena, the facts that will come about, will show us the truth of these things. One must only be sure not to overlook them. Human beings go blindly and slumbering through the facts; they also go blindly and slumbering through such tragic catastrophes as the present one. These are things that I would like to impress upon your hearts, today more historically. Tomorrow I shall speak about these things more explicitly.

I would like to add one more picture to these things. First, you have seen from the discussion what a tremendous distinction there is between East and West in the evolution of humanity. Second, I ask you to consider the following. You see, the psychoanalyst speaks about the subconscious, about the subconscious life of the soul, and so on. It is not so important to speak about such an indefinite concept of these things, but it is necessary to grasp what is truly beyond the threshold of consciousness. What is there? Much is certainly to be found down there under the threshold of consciousness. For itself, however, what lies down there is extremely conscious. One must come to understand what kind of conscious spirituality exists beyond the threshold of consciousness. One must speak of conscious spirituality beyond the threshold of consciousness, not unconscious spirituality. We must become clear that man has much about which he knows nothing in his ordinary consciousness. It would put the human being in a terrible position if he had to know in his ordinary consciousness all that goes on within him. Just consider how he would be able to go about eating and drinking if he were to acquaint himself exactly with all the physiological and biological processes that take place from the ingesting of food onward, and so on. All this takes place in the unconscious. There are spiritual forces at work everywhere, even in the purely physiological. Man cannot wait with eating and drinking, however, until he has learned what is really going on within him. So much goes on within man! For man, a large portion, by far the largest portion, of his being is unconscious, or to say it better, subconscious.

The strange thing is that this subconscious that we carry within us is taken hold of by another being under all circumstances. This means that we are not only a fusion of body, soul, and spirit, carrying within us through the world our soul, which is independent of our body; shortly before birth another being takes possession of the subconscious portions of the human being. This being is there, this subconscious being that accompanies man the entire way between birth and death. Somewhat before birth it enters man and accompanies him. One can also characterize this being as one that permeates man in those parts that do not come into his ordinary consciousness: it is a very intelligent being and possessed of a will that is akin to the forces of nature; in its will it is much more closely related to the forces of nature than is man. I must emphasize the peculiarity, however, that this being would suffer extraordinarily if under present conditions it were to experience death with man. Under present conditions this being cannot experience death with man. It thus disappears shortly before death; it must always save itself. It always has the urge, however, to arrange the life of the human being in such a way that it can overcome death. It would be dreadful for the evolution of the human being, however, if this being that has taken such possession of man should also be able to conquer death, if it could die with man and in this way enter the spiritual worlds that man enters after death. It. must always take its leave of man before he enters the spiritual world after death. In some cases this is very difficult for this being, and all sorts of complications arise.

This is the situation: this being that holds sway completely in the subconscious is extremely dependent upon the earth as a whole organism. The earth is not at all the being described by geologists, mineralogists, and paleontologists; this earth is a fully living being. Man sees only its skeleton, because the geologist, mineralogist, and paleontologist describe only its mineral nature that is the earth's skeleton. If you knew only this much, you would know about as much as if you were to enter this room and, through some special arrangement of your capacities for sight, could see nothing of this honored company but the bones, the skeletal system. Imagine if one entered through the door and on these chairs sat nothing but skeletons (not that you necessarily would have nothing but bones - that I do not expect of you - but we will assume that man has the capacity to see only bones; he would be fitted out with some kind of X-ray machine). This is just what geology sees of the earth; it sees only the skeleton. This earth, however, not only consists of skeleton but is a living organism, and this earth sends from its center to every point on the surface, to every territory, special forces. Picture for yourself the surface of the earth (see drawing):

Here is the Eastern region, there the Western region, to take it only on a large scale. The forces that are transmitted from the earth are something that belong to the life organism of the earth. Depending on whether a human being lives on this or that spot on earth, his soul, this immortal soul, does not come directly in contact with these forces but only in-directly - the immortal soul of man is relatively independent of earthly conditions. The soul is only artificially dependent upon earthly conditions, as. was shown today. By the circuitous path through this other being, however, this being that takes possession of man before birth and must leave him again before death, these various forces work particularly strongly. These forces are active in racial types and geographic differentiations in human beings. It is thus this double, which man bears within him, upon whom the geographic and other differentiations particularly exert their influences.

This is extremely significant, and we will see tomorrow in which way this double is influenced from various points of the earth and what the resulting consequences are. I have already mentioned that it is necessary for you to consider what I have said today with what will come tomorrow, because the one can hardly be understood without the other. We must now try to absorb into ourselves such concepts as become even more serious when related to the total reality, to that reality in which the human soul lives with its entire being. This reality metamorphoses itself in various ways, but how it is metamorphosed depends greatly upon man. Two significant metamorphoses that are possible become clear when one is aware of how human souls, depending upon whether they absorb materialistic or spiritual concepts between birth and death, imprison themselves on earth or come into the right spheres. In these matters increasing clarity must prevail in our concepts. We will then find increasingly the right relationship to the entire world. This will not occur in an abstract spiritual movement, but rather it must lie within us, in a concretely comprehended spiritual movement that reckons with the spiritual life of a number of individualities.

It is truly satisfying for me that such discussions - discussions that are also particularly significant for those among us who no longer belong to the physical plane but have passed through the portal of death, remaining our faithful members - that such discussions as these are fostered here as a reality, that they bring us ever closer to our departed friends.

Here you have the beginning of what will become more and more intense in the next five centuries. These evil brotherhoods now are limiting themselves, but they are bound to continue their activity if they are not prevented, and they can only be prevented if one overcomes laziness toward the spiritual scientific world conception.

These brotherhoods about which I have just spoken, which wish to confine the souls of human beings to the materialistic sphere, strive for the Christ to pass unnoticed through the twentieth century, for His coming as etheric individuality to be unobserved by human beings. This striving evolves under the influence of a quite definite idea, under a definite impulse of will. These brotherhoods have the urge to conquer the sphere of influence that is to come through Christ in the twentieth century and to continue further, to conquer it for another being, about which we shall speak later in more detail. There are brotherhoods of the West who strive to battle the Christ impulse. They wish to place another individuality who has never yet appeared in the flesh but only as an etheric individuality, who is of a strong Ahrimanic nature, in place of Christ.

This other being whom the brotherhood wishes to substitute as ruler they will call Christ; they will actually designate him as the Christ.

A good sheltered place for spiritual life, an exceptionally good sheltered spot, protected against all possible illusions, was Ireland, the Irish island during the first Christian centuries. It was truly protected from all possible illusions, more than any other region on earth. This is also the reason that so many disseminators of Christianity in the early Christian centuries originated in Ireland. These disseminators of Christianity, however, had to work with a naive humanity, because European humanity, among whom they were active, was in those days naive. They had to take this humanity in its naiveté into consideration, but as far as they themselves were concerned, they had to know and understand the great impulses of humanity. In the fourth and fifth centuries particularly, Irish initiates were active in Central Europe. They began there, and their activity consisted in preparing what was to take place in the future. To a certain extent they were under the influence of the initiate-knowl­edge that revealed that in the fifteenth century (1413, as you know) the fifth post-Atlantean era was to begin. They were under this influence. They also knew that they had to prepare for a completely new age, that a naive humanity must be protected for this new period. What was it that was done at that time to protect this naive humanity, to build a fence around it, as it were, to keep certain harmful influences from entering? What was done?

Evolution was guided first by well-instructed and then by honest groups in such a way that gradually all ocean journeys were suppressed, journeys that in past times had been made from Northern lands to America. It was thus arranged that whereas in past times boats would cross from Norway to America for certain purposes (I shall say more about this another time), this knowledge of America would be completely forgotten by the European population, so that the connection with America was gradually obliterated. In the fifteenth century nothing was known of America by European humanity. The development was directed particularly from Rome so that for definite reasons the connection with America was gradually lost, because European humanity had to be sheltered from American influences. Especially involved in this process of protecting European humanity from American influences were just these monks from Ireland who as Irish initiates had spread Christianity over the European continent.

In ancient times quite definite influences were brought from America; in the age when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began, however, matters were arranged so that European humanity was uninfluenced by America, knew absolutely nothing about it, lived in the belief that America did not exist. Only after the fifth post-Atlantean period had begun was America again discovered, as is familiar history.

One of the truths with which you are most likely familiar is that what is learned in schools as history is many times a "fable convenue." That America was discovered for the first time in 1492 is such a convenient fable. It was only redis­covered. It was merely that for a period the connections were cleverly concealed, as had to occur. It is again important, however, to know what the situation was, to know the true history. True history is that Europe was fenced in for a time and was carefully protected against certain influences that were not to come to Europe.

Second lecture

It is not a matter of my developing historical laws or ideas for you but of presenting facts that relate to the intentions and purposes of certain personalities who are allied in brotherhoods. They are also allied with other beings who influence such brotherhoods, whose influence is sought by these brotherhoods. These beings are not human beings incarnated in the flesh but are beings that incarnate themselves in the spiritual world.

(I think it's important to keep in mind that what Steiner is talking about is secret brotherhoods, secret occult brotherhoods consisting of initiates. This means that these lodges are not known to anyone except the members, who are initiates, and who therefore know how to keep their organizations secret. So we're not dealing with Freemasons, 'Skulls and Bones' or anything that anyone has ever heard of, because these people don't slip up or make mistakes whgat their secrets are concerned.

On the other hand, there are semi-secret organizations consisting of non-initiates, non-initiates who do slip up and make mistakes and cause leaks and may even get defectors who spill all the beans someday. The existence of these organizations may therefore be known to the public; they're more like boys' clubs. It's easy to assume, however, that when such boys' clubs playing with juvenile secrecy have members with political, economic, cultural, and spiritual clout, authority, and influence or high potential for such in the future, the leading members may be allied with initiates on the outside, who are in turn allied with "other beings" as Steiner puts it - beings who are not human, and who are not incarnated on the physical plane. Tarjei Straume)

It is necessary to bear this in mind, especially regarding such information as I gave yesterday, because with these brotherhoods we are dealing to a certain extent with different factions. You could recognize this already in last year's discussion. At that time I drew your attention to the fact that within such brotherhoods we are dealing with a faction that insists on absolute secrecy regarding certain higher truths. Opposed to them, with various shadings in between, are members of other brotherhoods who contend that, particularly since the middle of the nineteenth century, certain truths must be revealed to humanity, carefully and appropriately, even if to begin with only those truths whose revelation is most necessary.

(Certain very powerful members of these brotherhoods became strong and determined opponents of Steiner when he began to reveal secrets, and I picked up somewhere that this enmity was initiated with something revealed through the series "Von Jesus zu Christus" in October 1911 (GA 131). Tarjei Straume)

These various realms - gnomes, undines, sylphs, salamanders - are in a certain way independent. They do not work only as the rank and file from a single system, but they fight with one another. Their intentions have nothing to do with each other to begin with, but what then arises evolves through the most diverse working together of intentions. If one is familiar with the intentions one can see in what appears before us perhaps a working together of fire spirits and undines. One must never believe, however, that behind these beings stands someone who gives them a certain command. This is not the case. This idea is widespread today, and philosophers such as Wilhelm Wundt (about whom Fritz Mauthner unjustifiably said, "Authority by his publisher's grace," though he was the authority for almost the whole world before the war) aim to gather together as a unity all that lives in the human soul, the life of thinking, life of feeling, and life of willing. They say that the soul is a unity and therefore everything must belong to a unity, to a common system. This is not so, however, and those strong contradictions so full of significance in human life, which analytical psychology has discovered, would not emerge unless our life of thinking beyond the threshold were not to lead us back to quite different regions where other individualities influence our life of thinking, our life of feeling, and our life of willing.

Man is not in the position in this period to be led like a child. There are certain brotherhoods, however, which hold as their ideal to lead human beings like children as they were still being led in the third post-Atlantean period and in the fourth. These brotherhoods are therefore not doing what is right - they are not doing at all what should be done for the evolution of humanity: to direct human beings toward the spiritual world in such a way that acceptance or rejection of the spiritual world is left to the freedom of the human being.

I think it's important to keep in mind that what Steiner is talking about is secret brotherhoods, secret occult brotherhoods consisting of initiates. This means that these lodges are not known to anyone except the members, ....

(Communism was a social experiment planned by such lodges in London, and it is interesting to note that not only did Karl Marx write "Das Kapital" in London, but also Lenin planned his Bolshevik revolution in a London group.

Political Islam is probably sponsored by secrets groups in the West. Tarjei Straume.)

The welding together of the human nature with the mechanical nature will be a problem of great significance for the remainder of earthly evolution.

God is translated as gold, and one seeks behind the mystery to come to what can be described as the mystery of gold. Gold, representing what is sun-like within the earth's crust, is indeed something within which is imbedded a most significant mystery. In fact, gold stands materially in the same relationship to other substances as within thinking the thought of God stands to other thoughts. It only matters in which way this mystery is understood.

(Europeans have traditionally tended to assume that the words "In God We Trust" is written on American money because "the American has a dollar for a heart" as the Norwegian national romantic poet Henrik Wergeland expressed it in the 1840's. Although this is indeed true, not only for many Americans but for people throughout the world, the inscription on American money should probably read "In Gold We Trust," because the dollar, like most other currencies, was linked to the gold standard up until the 1929 Wall Street Crash, which resulted in one currency after another going off the gold standard during the following Depression. With the Doctor's exceptional hostility towards Woodrow Wilson in mind, I have been wondering how Wilson's Treasury Federal Reserve Bill (December 23rd 1913) affected the ensuing evolution of American and world economy. Someone better conversant with these things may enlighten me here. A lot of brain power has been expended on such topics - a lot:

http://www.barefootsworld.net/usfraud.html

http://kamron.com/economics/economics.htm

What it boils down to is that "In God (Gold) We Trust" is a lie today. Originally, bank notes/bills were given as receipts for deposited gold. A money bill testified how much gold the owner had in the bank. After the currencies went off the gold standard, money bills or bank notes were reduced to pieces of paper, the value of which are now subject to the whims of inflation, the stock market, and last but not least, how many notes a government sees fit to print, how much money is in circulation. Today, the value of money can probably be hacked just like a presidential election in Ohio; it can all be fixed on a keyboard. Tarjei Straume)

Today one looks at some living being, let us say a chicken. When in this living being a new embryo arises, the biologist examines how, so to speak, out of this chicken the egg grows. He examines the forces that are supposed to allow the egg to grow out of the chicken. This is a piece of nonsense. The egg does not at all grow out of the hen; the hen is only the foundation; the forces work out of the cosmos, forces that produce the egg on the ground that has been prepared within the hen. When the biologist today works with his microscope, he believes that what he sees in the microscopic field also includes the forces on which what he sees depends. What he sees there, however, is subject to the forces of the stars that work together in a certain constellation, and when one discovers the cosmic here, one will discover the truth, the reality: it is the universe that conjures the egg from the hen.

The notion will also spread from this direction that man becomes good not by learning all sorts of ethical principles, through which man can become good, but rather by, let us say, taking copper under a certain constellation of stars or arsenic under another. You can imagine how these things could be exploited for power by groups of egotistically inclined people.

It is only necessary to withhold this knowledge from others who are then unable to participate, and one has the best method of ruling over great masses of people. One does not need to speak about these things at all; one need only introduce, for example, some new delicacy. Then one can seek a market for this new delicacy, which has been tinged appropriately, and thus bring about what is necessary, if these things are comprehended materialistically.

Likewise, the attempt will be made from this direction to bring the problem of immortality into materialistic channels. This problem of immortality can be led into materialistic channels in the same way, by exploitation of cosmic constellations. One does not, of course, attain through this what is often speculated as being immortality, but one attains a different immortality. One prepares oneself - so long as it is impossible to influence the physical body to prolong life artificially - to undergo soul experiences that will enable one to remain in the lodge of a brotherhood even after death, to help there with the forces that one has at one's disposal. Immortality is simply called prolonging life in these circles.

I called to your attention last time that the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha was to be eliminated from the world by introducing another impulse from the West, a kind of Antichrist; from the direction of the East, the Christ impulse, as it appears in the twentieth century, is to be paralyzed by directing the attention, the interest, away from Christ appearing in the etheric.

Those concerned with introducing the Antichrist instead of the Christ have endeavored to exploit what could work especially through the most materialistic forces, yet working spiritually with these materialistic forces. Above all they strive to exploit electricity and especially the earth's magnetism to have influence over the entire earth. I have shown you how, in what I have called the human double, earthly forces arise. This mystery will be penetrated. It will be an American mystery to make use of the magnetism of the earth in its "doubleness," to make use of the magnetism in North and South to send guiding forces that work spiritually across the earth. Look at the magnetic map of the earth and compare it with what I am now saying. Observe the course of the line where the magnetic needle swings to East and West and where it does not swing at all. (I can only give indications at this time.) From a certain celestial direction, spiritual beings are constantly at work. One need only put these spiritual beings at the service of earthly existence and, because these spiritual beings working in from the cosmos are able to transmit the mystery of the earth's magnetism, one can penetrate the mystery of the earth's magnetism and can bring about something very significant of a group-egotis­tical nature in relation to the three things, gold, health, and prolonging life. It will simply be a matter of mustering the doubtful courage for these things. This will certainly be done within certain circles!

Man is to a certain extent really a centaur; he contains this lower, bestial, astral nature. His humanity is somehow mounted upon this astral beast.

(In another lecture (reference anyone?), Steiner explains how the centaur represents a definite stage in human evolution, before humanity had discarded all the animal forms. The develoipment of the intellect, of human thinking, was only made possible after the horse form was discarded. Tarjei Straume)

Through this cooperation of the twofold nature within the human being there is also a dualism of forces. It is this dualism of forces that will be used more by the egotistical brotherhoods of the Eastern, Indian stream in order also to mislead Eastern Europe, which has the task of preparing the sixth post-Atlantean period. For this, forces from Sagittarius are put to use.

The dead will actively participate for the remainder of earthly existence. How they will participate is what matters. Here, above all, the great distinction will appear. Through man's conduct on earth, the participation of the dead will be guided from a good direction in such a way that the impulses of the dead to work will be able to originate from themselves, impulses taken from the spiritual world that the dead are experiencing after death.

Opposing this will be many endeavors to lead the dead in an artificial way into human existence. By the circuitous route through Gemini, the dead will be led into human life in such a way that human vibrations will reverberate in a definite way, will continue to vibrate within the mechanical performance of the machine. The cosmos will bring motion to the machines through the circuitous route that I have just indicated.

For that reason, it is important that nothing inappropriate be applied when these problems appear; only elementary forces that are part of nature should be applied. One will have to renounce introducing inappropriate forces into mechanical life. From the occult sphere one must refuse to harness human beings themselves into mechanical factory work, a practice through which the Darwinian theory of selection is used for the determination of the work force, as I presented to you as an example last time.

There are mainly two powers that stand in opposition to each other: the representatives of the principle that was overcome at the end of the eighteenth century and the representatives of the new age. It is quite clear that a large number of people instinctively are representatives of the impulses of the new era. The representatives of the old impulses - still of the eighteenth, seventeenth, sixteenth centuries - must therefore be harnessed to these forces by artificial means, to forces emanating from certain group-egotistical brotherhoods. The most effective principle in the new age to extend power over as many people as one needs is the economic principle, the principle of economic dependency. That is only the tool, however. What is involved here is something entirely different. What is involved is something that you can deduce from all my suggestions. The economic principle is bound up with all that is involved in making a large number of human beings from all over the earth into an army for these principles.

These are the things that oppose each other. The one points essentially to what is fighting at present in the world: in the West, a rigid, ironclad principle of the eighteenth, seventeenth, sixteenth centuries, which makes itself noticeable by clothing itself in the phrases of revolution, the phrases of democracy, a principle that assumes a mask and has the urge to gain in this way as much power as possible.

Think for a moment upon the problem, "How much would Woodrow Wilson's brain be worth if this brain were not sitting in the Presidential chair of the United States?" Assume that this brain were in a different constellation: there it would show its individual strength! It all depends upon the constellation.

With the old wisdom by which human beings have reached the present, thousands of congresses can be held - world congresses and national congresses, and whatever - thousands of societies can be founded, but one must be clear that these thousands of congresses, thousands of societies, will not be effective unless the spiritual life-blood of the science of the spirit flows through them. What man is lacking today is the courage to enter into the real exploration of the spiritual world. It sounds strange, but it must be said that all that is needed to begin with is to circulate to a broad public, for example, the small brochure, Human Life in the Light of Spiritual Science. Something new would be achieved through this in calling forth knowledge of man's connection with the cosmic order. Attention is drawn precisely to such knowledge in this brochure. Concrete attention is drawn to the way in which the earth annually alters its conditions of consciousness and the like. What is said in this lecture and in this brochure is said with particularly full consideration of the needs of our time. To receive this would be of greater significance than all the wishy-washy talk of "cosmic feeling" and of entering sort some of "surging waves," or what have you. I have only quoted these things to you, because to reword them is impossible for me, as they are too senseless in their formulation.

One is not hindered, of course, by being attentive to these things, because they are important and essential. What I wish to draw to your attention is that we must not "mistify" ourselves, that we must be clear. Utter clarity is necessary if we wish to work for an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

I wish to point out once again that what is essential for humanity in this fifth post-Atlantean period is to enter into a special treatment of great issues of life that have been obscured in a certain way through the wisdom of the past. I have already pointed this out to you. One great issue of life can be characterized in the following way: an attempt will have to be made to place the spiritual etheric in the service of outer practical life. I have brought to your attention that the fifth post-Atlantean period will have to solve the problem of how human moods, the motions of human moods, allow themselves to be translated into wave motions on machines, how man must be brought into connection with what must become more and more mechanical. For that reason I called your attention a week ago to how superficially this mechanizing will be accepted by a certain portion of the surface of the earth. I presented an example to show how, following the American way of thinking, an attempt was made to extend the mechanical over human life itself. I presented the example of the pauses that were to be exploited so that, instead of far fewer tons, up to fifty tons could be loaded by a number of workmen. For this one need only carry the Darwinian principle of selection actually into life.

In such situations the will is there to harness human energy to mechanical energy. These things should not be treated by fighting against them. That is a completely false view. These things will not fail to appear; they will come. What we are concerned with is whether, in the course of world history, they are entrusted to people who are familiar in a selfless way with the great aims of earthly evolution and who structure these things for the health of human beings or whether they are enacted by groups of human beings who exploit these things in an egotistical or in a group-egotistical sense. That is what matters. It is not a question of the what in this case; the what is sure to come. It is a question of the how, how one tackles these situations. The what lies simply in the meaning of earthly evolution. The welding together of the human nature with the mechanical nature will be a problem of great significance for the remainder of earthly evolution.

I have deliberately drawn attention often, even in public lectures, to the fact that the consciousness of the human being is connected with the forces of disintegration. On two occasions I have said in public lectures in Basel that within our nervous system we are dying. These forces, these forces of dying away, will become more and more powerful. The bond will be established between these forces dying within man, which are related to the electric, magnetic forces, and the outer mechanical forces. Man will to a certain extent become his intentions, he will be able to direct his thoughts into the mechanical forces. Hitherto undiscovered forces within human nature will be discovered, forces that will work on outer electric and magnetic forces. The first problem is to bring together human beings with the mechanical, which will have to prevail increasingly in the future. The second problem consists in calling upon the help of the spiritual circumstances. This can only be done, however, when the time is ripe and when a sufficient number of people are prepared for it in the right way. The time must come, however, when the spiritual forces are made mobile enough to master life in relation to illness and death. Medicine will become spiritualized, intensely spiritualized. Of all these things, caricatures are being made from certain directions, but these caricatures show only what really must come. Again it is a question of whether this problem is attacked from the same direction to which I pointed regarding the other problem, in an outer egotistical or group-egotistical way.

The third problem is to introduce human thoughts into the actual evolution of the human species, in birth and education. I have pointed out that conferences have already been held on how in the future a materialistic science would be founded regarding conception and the relationships between man and woman. All these things indicate to us that something most significant is in the process of evolving. It is still easy today to say, "Why is it that people who know about these things in the right sense do not apply them?" In the future it will become clear just what is involved in this application and which forces are still actively hindering the foundation of large-scale spiritualized medicine or spiritualized national economy. No more can be accomplished today than to talk about these things, until people have enough understanding of them, people who are inclined to accept them in a selfless way. Today many people believe that they are able to do this, but many circumstances of life hinder what they are able to do. These life circumstances can be overcome in the right way only when a deeper and deeper understanding gains ground and when there is willingness to renounce, at least for a time, the immediate, practical application of these things on a larger scale.

These things have all developed in such a way that one can say that little has been retained of what was once hidden behind the ancient, atavistic strivings until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There is much talk today about the ancient alchemy. The proceedings of the procreation of Homunculus are also recalled at times, and so on, but what is spoken of here is for the most part groundless. If one once understood what can be said in connection with the Homunculus scene in Goethe's Faust, one would be better informed about these things, because what is essential is that, from the sixteenth century on, a fog has been spread over these things; they have receded in human consciousness.

The law that governs these things is the same as the law that regulates within the human being the rhythmical alternation of waking and sleeping. Just as man cannot rise above sleep, so, in regard to spiritual evolution, he cannot disregard the sleeping of spiritual science that has marked the centuries since the sixteenth century. It was necessary for humanity to sleep through the spiritual for a time in order that it could appear again in another form. One must comprehend such necessities, but one must also not allow oneself to be depressed by them. For this reason one must be very clear that the time of awakening has come and that one must take an active part in this awakening, that events often hurry ahead of knowledge and one will not understand the events that take place around us unless one accustoms oneself to knowledge.

I have repeatedly pointed out to you that certain egotistical groups are striving esoterically, and their influence is active in the ways that I have often indicated in these studies. First of all, it was necessary that a certain knowledge should recede within humanity, a knowledge that is designated today with such misunderstood words as alchemy, astrology, and so on. This knowledge had to recede, fall into a sleep, so that man would no longer have the possibility of drawing what pertains to the soul out of observation of nature but would have to become more dependent on himself. Through this he would awaken the forces within him, for it was necessary that certain things appear first in abstract form and later take on again concrete, spiritual form.

Three ideas have gradually arisen in the course of evolving during the last centuries, ideas which, in the way they have entered human life, are essentially abstract. Kant has named them falsely, while Goethe has named them correctly. These three ideas Kant called God, freedom, and immortality; Goethe called them correctly God, virtue, and immortality. When one sees the things that are hidden behind these three words, it is clear that they are exactly the same as what modern man views more abstractly but that were viewed more concretely until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the ancient atavistic sense they were also viewed more materially. They experimented in the ancient way, indeed, they sought at that time with alchemical experiments to observe the processes that showed the working of God in process. They tried to produce the Philosopher's Stone.

Behind all these things is hidden something concrete. This Philosopher's Stone was to present human beings with the possibility of becoming virtuous, but it was thought of more materially. It was to lead human beings to experience immortality, to put them into a certain relationship to the universe, through which they would experience within themselves what goes beyond birth and death. All these washed-out ideas with which one seeks today to grasp the ancient things no longer coincide with what was intended at that time. These things have become simply abstract, and modern humanity speaks from abstract ideas. They have wished to understand God through abstract theology; virtue is also regarded as something purely abstract. The more abstract the idea, the better modern humanity likes to use it in speaking about these things, even immortality. One speculates about what could be immortal in man. I spoke about this in my first Basel lecture, saying that the science that occupies itself today philosophically with questions about immortality is a starved science, an undernourished science. This is only another form of expression for abstract thinking in which such matters are pursued.

Certain brotherhoods in the West, however, have still preserved a relationship to the old traditions and have tried to apply them in a corresponding way, to place them in the service of a certain group egoism. It is really necessary for these things to be pointed out. Naturally, when these things are spoken of in public, from this corner of the West, in exoteric literature, then God, virtue or freedom, and immortality are also talked about in an abstract way. It is only in the circle of the initiates that it is known that all of this is only speculation, that these are all abstractions. For themselves, they seek what is being striven for in the abstract formulas of God, virtue, and immortality in something much more concrete, and for this reason, these words are translated for the initiates in their respective schools. God is translated as gold, and one seeks behind the mystery to come to what can be described as the mystery of gold. Gold, representing what is sun-like within the earth's crust, is indeed something within which is imbedded a most significant mystery. In fact, gold stands materially in the same relationship to other substances as within thinking the thought of God stands to other thoughts. It only matters in which way this mystery is understood.

This relates to the egotistical group exploitation of the mystery of birth. One is striving to wrestle here with real cosmic understanding. Modern man has completely replaced this cosmic understanding with a terrestrial understanding. When man today wishes to examine, for example, how the embryo in animals and man develops, he examines with a microscope what exists precisely in the place on earth onto which he has cast his microscopic eye; he regards this as what is to be examined. It cannot be a matter only of this, however. It will be discovered - and certain circles are coming close to this in their discoveries - that the active forces are not in what one meets with the microscopic eye but are rather within what streams in from the cosmos, from the constellations in the cosmos. When an embryo arises, it arises because into the living being in which the embryo is being formed are working forces from all directions of the cosmos, cosmic forces. When a fertilization takes place, what will develop out of the fertilization is dependent upon which cosmic forces are active.

There is one thing that will come to be understood today that is not yet understood. Today one looks at some living being, let us say a chicken. When in this living being a new embryo arises, the biologist examines how, so to speak, out of this chicken the egg grows. He examines the forces that are supposed to allow the egg to grow out of the chicken. This is a piece of nonsense. The egg does not at all grow out of the hen; the hen is only the foundation; the forces work out of the cosmos, forces that produce the egg on the ground that has been prepared within the hen. When the biologist today works with his microscope, he believes that what he sees in the microscopic field also includes the forces on which what he sees depends. What he sees there, however, is subject to the forces of the stars that work together in a certain constellation, and when one discovers the cosmic here, one will discover the truth, the reality: it is the universe that conjures the egg from the hen.

All of this, however, is connected above all with the mystery of the sun and, observed from the earth, with the mystery of gold. Today I am offering a kind of programmatic indication; in the course of time these things will become clearer.

In the same schools about which we are speaking, virtue is not called virtue but is simply called health, and one endeavors to acquaint oneself with those cosmic constellations that have a connection with the health and illness of human beings. Through acquainting oneself with the cosmic constellations, however, one learns to know the individual substances that lie on the surface of the earth, the juices and so on, that are connected with health and illness. From certain directions, a more material form of the science of health is increasingly being developed, one that rests, however, on a spiritual foundation.

The notion will also spread from this direction that man becomes good not by learning all sorts of ethical principles, through which man can become good, but rather by, let us say, taking copper under a certain constellation of stars or arsenic under another. You can imagine how these things could be exploited for power by groups of egotistically inclined people. It is only necessary to withhold this knowledge from others who are then unable to participate, and one has the best method of ruling over great masses of people. One does not need to speak about these things at all; one need only introduce, for example, some new delicacy. Then one can seek a market for this new delicacy, which has been tinged appropriately, and thus bring about what is necessary, if these things are comprehended materialistically. One must be clear that in all matter there are hidden spiritual workings. Only one who knows in the true sense that there is nothing really material but only the spiritual will penetrate beyond the mysteries of life.

Likewise, the attempt will be made from this direction to bring the problem of immortality into materialistic channels. This problem of immortality can be led into materialistic channels in the same way, by exploitation of cosmic constellations. One does not, of course, attain through this what is often speculated as being immortality, but one attains a different immortality. One prepares oneself - so long as it is impossible to influence the physical body to prolong life artificially - to undergo soul experiences that will enable one to remain in the lodge of a brotherhood even after death, to help there with the forces that one has at one's disposal. Immortality is simply called prolonging life in these circles.

You can see outer signs of all these things. I do not know whether some of you have noticed the book that for a time provoked a sensation, a book that also came from the West bearing the title, The Disturbance of Dying (Der Unfug des Sterbens). These things all move in this direction. They are only the beginning. What has gone further than the beginning is carefully preserved for the group egotism, is kept very esoteric. These things are actually possible, however, if one brings them into materialistic channels, if one makes the abstract ideas of God, virtue, and immortality into concrete ideas of gold, health, and prolonging life, if one exploits in a group-egotistical sense what I presented to you as the great problems of the fifth post-Atlantean times. What is called in a washed-out way "cosmic feeling" by Professor, Doctor of Theology, Doctor of Philosophy, is presented by many - and unfortunately by many in an egotistical sense - as cosmic knowledge. While science for centuries has beheld only processes occurring on earth, has rejected all study of what is approaching as the most important extraterrestrial occurrence, it will be precisely in the fifth post-Atlantean time that exploitation will be considered of the forces penetrating in from the cosmos. Just as it is now of special importance for the regular professor of biology possibly to have a much-enlarged microscope, possibly to use much more exact laboratory methods, so in the future, when science has become spiritualized, what will matter will be whether one carries out a certain process in the morning, evening, or at noon, or whether one allows what one did in the morning to be somehow further influenced by active factors of the evening, or whether the cosmic influence from morning until evening is excluded, paralyzed. In the future such processes will prove themselves to be necessary; they also will take place. Naturally much water will run over the dam until the materialistically oriented university chairs, laboratories, and so on, are handed over to the spiritual scientists, but this exchange must take place if humanity is not to come completely into decadence. This laboratory work will have to be replaced by work in which, for example - when it is a matter of the good that is to be attained in the future - certain processes take place in the morning and are interrupted during the day; the cosmic stream passes through them again in the evening, and this is preserved rhythmically until it is morning again. The processes are conducted in such a manner that certain cosmic workings are always interrupted during the day, and the cosmic processes of morning and evening are studied. To achieve this, manifold arrangements will be necessary.

You can gather from this that when one is not in a position to participate publically in what happens, one can only talk about these things. From the same direction that wishes to put gold, health, and prolonging life in place of God, virtue, and immortality, the effort is made not to work with the processes of morning and evening but with something totally different. I called to your attention last time that the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha was to be eliminated from the world by introducing another impulse from the West, a kind of Antichrist; from the direction of the East, the Christ impulse, as it appears in the twentieth century, is to be paralyzed by directing the attention, the interest, away from Christ appearing in the etheric.

Those concerned with introducing the Antichrist instead of the Christ have endeavored to exploit what could work especially through the most materialistic forces, yet working spiritually with these materialistic forces. Above all they strive to exploit electricity and especially the earth's magnetism to have influence over the entire earth. I have shown you how, in what I have called the human double, earthly forces arise. This mystery will be penetrated. It will be an American mystery to make use of the magnetism of the earth in its "doubleness," to make use of the magnetism in North and South to send guiding forces that work spiritually across the earth. Look at the magnetic map of the earth and compare it with what I am now saying. Observe the course of the line where the magnetic needle swings to East and West and where it does not swing at all. (I can only give indications at this time.) From a certain celestial direction, spiritual beings are constantly at work. One need only put these spiritual beings at the service of earthly existence and, because these spiritual beings working in from the cosmos are able to transmit the mystery of the earth's magnetism, one can penetrate the mystery of the earth's magnetism and can bring about something very significant of a group-egotistical nature in relation to the three things, gold, health, and prolonging life. It will simply be a matter of mustering the doubtful courage for these things. This will certainly be done within certain circles!

From the direction of the East, it is a matter of strengthening what I have already explained: the instreaming and actively working beings from the opposing sides of the cosmos are placed at the service of earthly existence. A great struggle will arise in the future. Human science will move toward the cosmic. Human science will attempt to move toward the cosmic but in different ways. It will be the task of the good, healing science to find certain cosmic forces that, through the working together of two cosmic streams, are able to arise on the earth. These two cosmic streams will be those of Pisces and Virgo. It will be most important to discover the mystery of how what works out of the cosmos in the direction of Pisces as a force of the sun combines with what works in the direction of Virgo. The good will be that one will discover how, from the two directions of the cosmos, morning and evening forces can be placed at the service of humanity: on the one side from the direction of Pisces and on the other side from the direction of Virgo.

Those who seek to achieve everything through the dualism of polarity, through positive and negative forces, will not concern themselves with these forces. The spiritual mysteries that allow the spirituality to stream forth from the cosmos - with help from the twofold forces of magnetism, from the positive and negative - emerge in the universe from Gemini; these are the forces of midday. It was known already in antiquity that this had something to do with the cosmos, and it is known even today by exoteric scientists that, behind Gemini in the Zodiac, positive and negative magnetism are hidden in some way. An attempt will be made to paralyze what is to be won through the revelation of the duality in the cosmos, to paralyze it in a materialistic, egotistical way through the forces that stream toward humanity especially from Gemini and can be put completely at the service of the double. With other brotherhoods, which above all wish to bypass the Mystery of Golgotha, it is a matter of exploiting the twofold nature of the human being. This twofold nature of the human being, which has entered the fifth post-Atlantean period just as man did, contains the human being but also, within the human being, the lower animal nature. Man is to a certain extent really a centaur; he contains this lower, bestial, astral nature. His humanity is somehow mounted upon this astral beast. Through this cooperation of the twofold nature within the human being there is also a dualism of forces. It is this dualism of forces that will be used more by the egotistical brotherhoods of the Eastern, Indian stream in order also to mislead Eastern Europe, which has the task of preparing the sixth post-Atlantean period. For this, forces from Sagittarius are put to use.

The question standing before humanity is whether to master for itself the forces of the cosmos in a doubly wrong way or simply to master them in the right way. This will give a real renewal to astrology, which was atavistic in its ancient form and would not be able to continue in this form. There will be a struggle among the knowledgeable ones in the cosmos. Some will bring about the use of the morning and evening processes, as I indicated; in the West, the midday process will be preferable, excluding the morning and evening processes; and in the East the midnight processes will be used. Substances will no longer be prepared according to forces of chemical attraction and repulsion; it will be known that different substances will be produced depending upon whether they are prepared with morning and evening processes or with midday or midnight processes. It will be known that such substances work in a totally different way upon the threefoldness of God, virtue, and immortality - gold, health, and prolonging life. From the cooperation of what comes from Pisces and Virgo one will not be able to bring about anything harmful. Through this one will achieve what in a certain sense loosens the mechanism of life from the human being but will in no way found any form of rulership and power of one group over another. The cosmic forces that are called forth from this direction will beget strange machines but only ones that will relieve the human being from work, because they will have within them a certain force of intelligence. A cosmically oriented spiritual science will have to concern itself so that all the great temptations that will emanate from these mechanized beasts, which man creates himself, will not exert a harmful influence upon the human being.

To all of this the following must be added: it is necessary for human beings to prepare themselves by not taking realities for illusions, really entering into a spiritual conception of the world, into a spiritual comprehension of the world. What is important is to see things as they are. One can only see things as they are, however, when one is in the position of applying to reality the concepts, the ideas, that emerge from an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. The dead will actively participate for the remainder of earthly existence. How they will participate is what matters. Here, above all, the great distinction will appear. Through man's conduct on earth, the participation of the dead will be guided from a good direction in such a way that the impulses of the dead to work will be able to originate from themselves, impulses taken from the spiritual world that the dead are experiencing after death.

Opposing this will be many endeavors to lead the dead in an artificial way into human existence. By the circuitous route through Gemini, the dead will be led into human life in such a way that human vibrations will reverberate in a definite way, will continue to vibrate within the mechanical performance of the machine. The cosmos will bring motion to the machines through the circuitous route that I have just indicated.

For that reason, it is important that nothing inappropriate be applied when these problems appear; only elementary forces that are part of nature should be applied. One will have to renounce introducing inappropriate forces into mechanical life. From the occult sphere one must refuse to harness human beings themselves into mechanical factory work, a practice through which the Darwinian theory of selection is used for the determination of the work force, as I presented to you as an example last time.

I make all these suggestions, which naturally cannot exhaust the subject in such a short time, because I think that you will meditate further upon these things, that you will seek to build a bridge between your own life experiences and these things, above all those life experiences that can be won today in these difficult times. You will see how many things will become clear to you when you observe them in the light that can come to you through such ideas. In our time, we are not really concerned with forces and constellations of forces confronting one another, the sorts of things about which one is constantly speaking in outer, exoteric life, but with entirely different things. Some intend actually to cast a kind of veil over the true impulses that are involved. There are bound to be certain human forces at work to save something for themselves. What is there to be saved? Certain human forces are at work to defend impulses that were justified until the French Revolution and were even defended by certain esoteric schools; they are being defended now in the form of an Ahrimanic/Luciferic retardation, being defended so as to maintain a social order that humanity believes has been overcome since the end of the eighteenth century.

There are mainly two powers that stand in opposition to each other: the representatives of the principle that was overcome at the end of the eighteenth century and the representatives of the new age. It is quite clear that a large number of people instinctively are representatives of the impulses of the new era. The representatives of the old impulses - still of the eighteenth, seventeenth, sixteenth centuries - must therefore be harnessed to these forces by artificial means, to forces emanating from certain group-egotistical brotherhoods. The most effective principle in the new age to extend power over as many people as one needs is the economic principle, the principle of economic dependency. That is only the tool, however. What is involved here is something entirely different. What is involved is something that you can deduce from all my suggestions. The economic principle is bound up with all that is involved in making a large number of human beings from all over the earth into an army for these principles.

These are the things that oppose each other. The one points essentially to what is fighting at present in the world: in the West, a rigid, ironclad principle of the eighteenth, seventeenth, sixteenth centuries, which makes itself noticeable by clothing itself in the phrases of revolution, the phrases of democracy, a principle that assumes a mask and has the urge to gain in this way as much power as possible. It helps this endeavor when as few people as possible exert themselves to see things as they are, when they allow themselves to be lulled to sleep again and again in this realm by maya, by the maya that one can express with these words: there is a war today between the Entente and the Central Powers. There is nothing at all like this in reality. We are concerned here with entirely different things that exist behind this maya as the true realities. The struggle between the Entente and the Central Powers is only maya, is only illusion. One can see what stands side by side in the struggle if one looks behind these things, illuminating them in the way that I, for certain reasons, have only suggested. One must at least endeavor not to accept illusions for realities, because then the illusion will gradually dissolve, in so far as it must be dissolved. One must endeavor today above all to consider the things as they present themselves to truly unprejudiced thinking.

If you consider in a coherent way all that I have developed here, then a seemingly incidental remark that I made in the course of these lectures will not seem to you to be merely incidental. When I quoted a certain remark that Mephistopheles made in confronting Faust, "I see that you know the devil" - he would definitely not have said this about Woodrow Wilson - it was no incidental remark. It is something that should illuminate the situation! One must really study these things without antipathy and sympathy; one must be able to study them objectively. One must be able above all to reflect today about the significance of constellations in something that is at work and the significance of individual strength, because behind individual strength often lies something completely different from what lies behind the mere constellation. Think for a moment upon the problem, "How much would Woodrow Wilson's brain be worth if this brain were not sitting in the Presidential chair of the United States?" Assume that this brain were in a different constellation: there it would show its individual strength! It all depends upon the constellation.

I will now speak abstractly and radically - I will not, of course, characterize the aforementioned case; it would never occur to me to do that in such a neutral country - but independent of that there is a very important insight in relation to the question, for example, about the brain. Does it have value because it is actually illuminated and made active by a particular spiritual soul force - does it thereby have a spiritual weight in the sense that I have spoken in these studies of spiritual weight - or does this brain actually have no more value than would show if one laid it on a scale and on the other side placed a weight? In the moment in which one penetrates beyond the mysteries I presented to you last time concerning the double, one arrives at the point (and I am not speaking of something unreal) of bringing value to the brain, which before had value only as a mass on the scale, because one is capable, if the brain is to be revived, of allowing it to be revived merely by the double.

All these things strike human beings today as being grotesque. What seems to them grotesque, however, must come to be something self-evident if these things are to flow into a healthy stream from an unhealthy one. And what use is it if one only chatters about them constantly? You must accept the idea that all this wishy-washy talk about "cosmic religiosity" or "the extent of the longing for it" or "the movement that undertakes to discover and unveil the circulation of life behind the senses," and so on, does nothing but spread a fog over things that must come into the world only in clarity. They can be effective only in clarity, and they must be carried in clarity above all as practical, moral-ethical impulses in humanity.

I can only make single suggestions. I leave it to your own meditation to build on these realms further. These things are in many respects aphoristic, but you will have the possibility of gathering a great deal from such a summary as this picture of the Zodiac if you truly use it as the substance of meditation.

For that reason it is sad that people will be deceived constantly when the unconscious, the so-called unconscious, is working within them - be it some receding love affair or something similar - when, in fact, impulses of extremely conscious spirituality are passing from all sides through humanity but remaining relatively unconscious if one does not trouble oneself about them in one's consciousness.