| G.A. Bondarev The Crisis of Civilization V. The Shadow of Roman Imperialism Rome and the Human Soul Every cultural epoch is continually hampered in the fulllfilment of its positive task by forces that destroy its creative achievement and are finally victorious, so that the culture disintegrates and dies. But its fruits remain; they pass through a metamorphosis and work on in the following epoch. A stronger hand as it were takes up the spiritual flame of culture when the previous one is growing weak. Thus is revealed the law of the struggle of life with death in the cultural-historical process. It testifies to the living, by no means abstract or ‘chance’, nature of the cultures. In the ancient Greek culture, for example, the Luciferic spirits attempted to subordinate to themselves the spiritual forces of the Greeks, with whose help they took hold of the old imaginations of the Chaldean-Egyptian culture. These spirits wished to refine the Greek life of soul to such a degree that it would sink entirely, even in everyday thinking, feeling and willing, into the world of phantasms and imaginations with the character of fleeting shadows. They hoped thereby to entice at least a part of the humanity of antiquity into their world which, in comparison with the divine, was a secondary world, without being, a world of mere reflections. Ahrimanic spirits (following the law of polarity) manifested in the founding of the Roman Empire and thereby opposed the realizations of the intentions of the Luciferic spirits. For, the Ahrimanic forces – says Rudolf Steiner – reckoned with a certain rigidifying taking place on earth through Romanism, in a blind obedience and blind submission to Rome. The Ahrimanic powers intended a Roman Empire to spread over the entire earth as it was known at that time. A Roman Empire that would embrace all human activity, that was to have been governed from Rome with the strictest centralism and the most ruthless exercise of power. A great and extensive state-machine proceeding from Europe so to speak, that at the same time would have assimilated all religious and all artistic life and subjected it to itself ... It would have let all individuality die out so that every human being, every nation, would have been only a member in this vast state-mechanism (Sept. 17, 1916, GA 171). These Ahrimanic intentions of Rome were again opposed by a Luciferic element – the emotionalism, the recklessness of the Roman citizens and legionnaires. But it was mainly the invasion of the Nordic peoples which rescued the human ‘I’ that had matured in the Greco-Latin culture. But the Ahrimanic forces of Rome were never fully overcome. When Christianity came to the Roman Empire, it was used by the institution of the Papacy to mechanize culture, now that of modern times (ibid.). In order to understand why in the first centuries of the Christian era a kind of combination of Christian development with the Roman Empire could arise, we have to look to the mighty process of degeneration that had taken hold of the mysteries of antiquity, and which had accompanied the decline of Hellenism and the appearance of the Caesars on the stage of history. The Roman Caesars intended to resurrect the old Egyptian power structures with the priest-Pharaoh as Initiate at the head. Under threat of violence they had themselves initiated into the secrets of the mysteries, although inwardly they were entirely unprepared for it. During this time the first political occultism was born. The claim of Rome to world-domination now rested on supersensible knowledge. The aim arose to consciously prevent all world culture from developing the intellectual-soul, the wish was, to ... conserve the sense, the feeling sense for the old cults, for the cults that were habitual in Egypt and the Near East thousand of years earlier... One wanted to exclude the human intellect, so to speak, to make the human intelligence ineffective, to bring only the sentient soul to development by performing before the people all the important, the great, mighty cults1 that were meant to be effective in olden times, effective at a time when human beings had not yet come to intelligence ... There were great and significant cults that were to replace reflective thought. They were to inspire in the souls in a semi-hypnotic state, so to speak, the enlivening of consciousness of God and blessedness in God according to old atavistic customs ... A mighty cult was to come from Rome that would lower consciousness throughout the whole world by removing the possibility of the rational soul as well as the later consciousness soul. Whereas the (Arabian) academy of Gondishapur was to have given to humanity (before its time) the consciousness-soul, so as to cut off what was to come later through what was to happen in Rome ... the consciousness-soul was not to be allowed to develop (Oct. 13, 1918, GA 184). Thus it was during the time of Augustus and also later. When Christianity came to Rome the enlightened Caesars recognized the mighty force hidden within it and immediately first attempts were made to put Christianity into their service, similar to what is attempted with Anthroposophy today. Rudolf Steiner says that already under Tiberius, the successor of Augustus, the politics began, which were followed by the initiated Roman Caesars towards Christianity. Tiberius openly proclaimed his intention to include Christ as a God among the other Roman Gods (Apr. 17, 1917, GA 175). Hadrian tried to carry further the work begun by Tiberius. But the Roman authorities were opposed to this since the form had not yet been found that would have been appropriate to falsify the nature of Christianity, a religion unacceptable to these authorities, and not only to them. Why – asks Rudolf Steiner – did such a strong antipathy develop in Rome towards what had appeared as Christianity in connection with the Mystery of Golgatha and why did it follow out of these impulses (of antagonism) that the spirit was abolished (at the Council of 869)? Things always have much deeper connections than we actually recognize. For the fact that Marx and Engels are Church Fathers will not be accepted by many people today;2 but that is not a very deep truth. It does lead to a deeper truth if we consider the following: It was primarily Sadducees who acted in the courts of law through which the Christ was condemned by ... people who wanted to anathematize, to do away with, all that came out of the Mysteries, ... people who were frightened and horrified by every mystery cult. But they were the ones who had the lawcourts in their hands (Mar. 27, 1917, GA 175). Theirs was the power in Palestine; but in turn they were slaves of Rome. They bought their official function and extorted money from the Jewish people. The Sadducees sensed – for their senses were already made acute by Ahrimanic materialism –, that what came into the world with Christ was in accord with the nature of the Mysteries and was mighty enough to destroy Romanism. The subsequent war of Rome against the Jews in Palestine therefore had as its goal to extinguish all those who had any knowledge at all of the traditions of the great Mysteries that were not doomed to decline. And there is a strong connection between this extinction – Rudolf Steiner continues – and the fact that the concept of pneumatic man (pneuma = spirit), the path to pneumatic man, was at first, I would like to say, blocked, closed off. It had become dangerous for those who, also from within Rome and Romanized Christianity, wanted to abolish the spirit. It would have become dangerous for them if many were still to be found, who out of the ancient schools of Palestine knew something about the paths to the spirit, who could still have testified to the fact that man consists of body, soul and spirit. Such people were a hindrance if one wanted to create an outer order that excluded all spiritual impulses. It would not have worked (at all) if too many people had known of the Mystery interpretation of the Mystery of Golgatha. For it was felt instinctively that that which was to develop out of Roman State was to contain nothing of the spirit. Church and the Roman State were wedded together (ibid.). Thus a form arose in which the old Roman Empire could make use of the power of Christianity and falsify its nature. This happened for the first time under Constantine, when the materialistic strivings of the Roman dignitaries, in harmony with the Ahrimanizised strivings of the Sadducees, united with the Luciferic heritage of the Roman Empire in order to hold humanity at a distance from the consciousness-soul. The word ‘spirit’ was not excluded from linguistic usage, but it was given a false interpretation. The situation did indeed take a dangerous turn when Lucifer and Ahriman ceased to cancel each other out under the phenomenon of the Roman Church. Since then, although the kingdoms of heaven are with us since the Mystery of Golgatha, the Imperium Romanum remained alongside in a descending development, in a decadent development. It remained what ... lives in our midst in the present time, permeating the nascent forms of Christianity. That is the spirit of the old Imperium Romanum, the spirit of Roman Imperialism! (Apr. 14, 1917, GA 175). Rome is rigidly set on retaining only that which is of use for the intellectual soul and which prevents humanity from striving towards the consciousness-soul. But where this goal is achieved already, Rome tries in addition to restore the spiritual conditions of the epoch of the sentient soul, the Old Egyptian epoch with the priest-pharaoh. The Greco-Latin element became dominant in the world around the 13th/14th century, i.e. at the beginning of the epoch of the consciousness-soul. Rudolf Steiner says that from those centuries proceed the impulses that influence the events of the 20th century. We will not understand our own time if we fail to gain insight into the great reciprocal relationships that have been prepared over a long time and flow today into the outer plane of life. As the sun of the old Roman empire set, so did the shadows lengthen that it cast into the epoch of the consciousness-soul, pervading all the emergent state structures in Europe today. The entire character of the states brought into being by the Italo-Spanish peoples is attributable – according to Rudolf Steiner – to the after-effects of the third and fourth cultural epochs. Particularly in the way, emanating from Rome and Spain, the cult borrowed from the Egypto-Chaldean epoch manifests itself as religion ... This cultic-hierarchic, ecclesiastical element into which the Roman culture was transformed in the Roman Catholicism that streamed into Europe is one of those impulses which work on as retarded impulses through the entire fifth post-Atlantean period, especially through its first third ... until 2135, so that the last waves of hierarchical Romanism will last (into the beginning of the third Millennium) (Jan. 15, 1917, GA 174). The scale of this impulse is truly astounding. And so it is often very hard to acknowledge that it is no more than a shadow of the ‘Giant’ from Goethe’s fairy-tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily –, an atavism that does not want to depart this life. But this is precisely what it is, and Rudolf Steiner speaks of it in all explicitness. A longer quote from a lecture now follows, to which nothing need be added. If we take this statement seriously, we can no longer live with old conceptions. He says, just as the first Mystery of Golgatha took place in Palestine, so the second was accomplished through Constantinism. For with the eradication of the Mysteries the Christ as a historical phenomenon was crucified, slain for the second time. For the terrible destruction that took place over centuries is such that it was not merely ... a destruction of the greatest artistic and mystical accomplishments, but it was also a destruction of humanity’s most important experiences. Only, one did not understand what one had actually destroyed in what had vanished outwardly, because the depth of concepts had already been lost. When the Serapis temple, the Zeus temple with their magnificent images were destroyed, people said: Yes, if this is destroyed, then the destroyers are right.3 Because we have been told in the old legends: when the Serapis temple is destroyed, the heavens will fall and the earth will turn to chaos! But the heavens did not fall and the earth did not turn into chaos, even though the Roman Christians razed the Serapis temple to the ground, the people said. Certainly, the stars have not fallen ... All the tremendous wisdom that spread mightier than the physical heavens in the eyes of the ancients; this is what fell with the Serapis temple. And this old wisdom, of which Julian the Apostate still sensed an echo in the Eleusinian Mysteries where the spiritual sun, the spiritual moon spread out above him and sent down their impulses ... what the ancients experienced in the Mithras-Mysteries and the Egyptian Mysteries when, in the sacrificial rite, they experienced inwardly the secrets of the moon and the secrets of the earth as they take place in man himself when he ... comes to knowledge of himself: this is what became chaos. It was true spiritually that the heavens fell and earth turned into chaos: for what vanished in these centuries is indeed comparable with what would vanish if we were suddenly to lose our organs of sense. Rudolf Steiner concludes: And we have to believe in the resurrection if we do not want to believe that all that vanished is lost altogether ... But for this it is necessary that people take into themselves strong and courageous concepts ... For people should feel that through karmic, World-karmic necessity centuries have been from certain points of view lived through in vain – of course only from a certain point of view is this a necessity –, that they were lived through in emptiness so that out of a strong inner urge for freedom the Christ-impulse can again be found ... ; but people have to cast off the self-complacency in which they live so strongly today (Apr. 24, 1917, GA 175). It can hardly be hoped that the outer world has heard these words, still less understood them. But it must be a cause for amazement that even in Anthroposophical circles, where esoteric Christianity is frequently spoken of, a great deal is done to ensure that the coming centuries will also be lived through in vain. Man has the tendency to think in alternatives. If he rejects the one, this is already a guarantee that he will choose the other. Only few are therefore able to understand that we owe materialism to the Churches ... And materialism will grow stronger and stronger if the Churches as religious confessional administrative bodies do not lose their power (Sept. 8, 1919, GA 192). Yes, the Church no longer destroys the sanctuaries of antiquity, but only because they are destroyed already. But it completely bars entry to the living culture of the epoch of the consciousness-soul. It does not oblige people to say that there is no God, but it clouds human consciousness, lets the place of God there, be taken by a Luciferic Angel, who leads people to a materialism that is refined and consequently more difficult to eradicate (cf. Nov. 26, 1916, GA 172). Examine, but examine precisely – Rudolf Steiner advises us – the scientific literature of the Jesuits. In its attitude, its manner of conception, it is the most materialistic imaginable. It strives to keep knowledge entirely within the world of the senses and to strictly separate out the knowledge that has only to do with sense-observation, or with the facts that can be observed through experiment, from that which is to be the object of belief or revelation. No bridge may ever be built ... between the realm of outer science and the realm of faith (Sept. 21, 1920, GA 197). Already in antiquity there was a circle of people inspired by Lucifer who, translated into the language of today, called themselves the representatives of the material. They made it their task to eradicate the burgeoning science of the time and to obstruct the path of human freedom. When, in those days, knowledge of the supersensible was taught the intention was to suppress all interest in sense- reality. And just as in ancient times one did not want mankind to descend completely to fullfill its earthly task, the intention now is to bind it to its earthly task, not to allow it to develop further from the earth. And those today who are the promoters of materialism call themselves ‘spiritualists’ or the priests of this or that faith, the representatives of the supersensible ... Today the most powerful source of materialism is not what came from Büchner, Moleschott or the fat Vogt, but this most powerful source is Rome and all that has anything to do with this centre of materialism ... That the supersensible was to be conquered for humanity through Rome is the world-historic lie of modern times, and this has to be recognized clearly and precisely! (ibid.). The Protestant and Evangelical Churches are in agreement with Rome on this last question. Jesuit Catholicism The last third of the Greco-Latin cultural epoch (until 1413) was altogether pervaded by attempts to prove that it is impossible to understand by means of human concepts what happens in spiritual reality, that the spiritual world can be known only through revelation. Thus the power of the Church was consolidated, and with it the dogma that the spiritual can only be believed. With the transition to the epoch of the consciousness-soul faith grew weaker and finally the supersensible began to be rejected altogether. It was now assumed that man had simply invented the supersensible. According to the guardians of faith of the previous epoch, any mention of the supersensible led unavoidably to heresy and errors; only the world of the senses is knowable. The modern Marxist, the modern social democrat, who is the rightful son of this attitude that is nothing other than the consequence of Catholicism from earlier centuries, says: all science worthy of the name can only be concerned with physical-sensible events. There is no spiritual science because there is no spirit; spiritual science is at most the science of society, the science of human life in community (July 30, 1918, GA 181). Here lies the origin of the actual ‘liberation theology’, which supports the Marxist movements in Latin America, and not only there. Of course the Catholic Church does not represent the whole of Christianity; even amongst the Catholics there are people who in their way of thinking follow mediaeval German mysticism and who have kept alive a faith in the living God. But we are speaking here of the world-historic role of Latinism, of its innermost nature, with which is permeated the entire religious-occult-political activity of the Papacy. Its nature is such, that since Paul IV4 we have ‘Jesuitic Christianity’ (Nov. 1, 1916, GA 292). What kind of Christianity is this? Rudolf Steiner gives a truly depressing answer: the society of Jesuitism, the purpose of whose existence is, basically, to drive the Christ-picture out of the Christ Jesus-picture and allow only Jesus to remain, as the tyrant over developing humanity (Aug. 6, 1918, GA 181). In his lecture-cycle From Jesus to Christ5 Rudolf Steiner describes the occult preparatory training of the Jesuits, which is a kind of initiation, since the future Jesuit has to go through a strict will-training, without which he is not allowed to participate in any activity in the world. The novice has first of all in deepest isolation to imagine a person who has made himself guilty of sin and who awaits a terrible punishment. The feeling has to ripen within him: this is I myself, who came into the world and abandoned God and exposed myself to the possibility of the most agonizing punishments! When this experience has been led to the level of imagination it is followed by the picture of the God of mercy who after a time becomes Christ who atones for the apostasy of men. The contempt for earthly existence has to transform in the pupil to a feeling of humility and of despair. The pupil lives for many years in strict discipline, painting in his imagination the pictures from the life of Jesus Christ. They are to work directly on the soul, without the involvement of thinking. According to the law of polarity, such exercises strengthen the will. On the next level the pupil concentrates his attention on the picture of Jesus, no longer of Christ, holding sway over the entire world. Jesus becomes the ruler over this world, as he would have become, according to the Gospels, had he not resisted the temptation in the wilderness. The future Jesuit experiences at this stage the following imagination: in the plain before Babylon he sees Lucifer reigning supreme, seated on a throne amidst smoke and flames. He is surrounded by hosts of fallen angels. Here the soul has to completely ... immerse itself in the imagination of the danger proceeding from the banner of Lucifer. Thereupon he sees another picture: Jerusalem and the plains surrounding Jerusalem, Jesus the King, his hosts around him. He sends them into battle and they scatter Lucifer’s hosts. Jesus becomes Ruler of the entire earth: his banner is victorious over that of Lucifer.6 Out of this supersensible experience the Jesuit concludes: we are the hosts of Jesus who is to become Ruler of the whole world. For a soldier of King Jesus it is a dishonour to betray his banner! With the help of such exercises a will is acquired that can work directly, violently, on the will of another human being (Oct. 5, 1911, GA 131). When this is grasped, it is easier to understand the success of the Jesuits in the world. Their activity extends everywhere. And if during the ‘Perestroika’, on the wave of supposedly religious revival in Russia, we suddenly hear: Jesus – our General!, we can imagine what this means and who is the inspiration behind it. The Jesuits put Lucifer in the place of Christ; consequently Ahriman is in Lucifer’s place. They sin against the Holy Spirit, says Rudolf Steiner. Catholic Rome initially opposed the founding of the Jesuit Order despite the fact that it stood in unconditional submission to the Pope. The Order was later prohibited, but Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine II of Russia rescued it. It became one of the most important factors in the meta-history of modern times, because there stands behind it a spiritual leadership of which the members of the Order are conscious. Jesuitism lives by the power of the kind of authority that weakens human beings; and only among the weak can the Papacy consolidate its power in the epoch of the consciousness-soul. Today the task of the human being is, by virtue of his ‘I’, to transform the astral body into the highest soul-member, in which he experiences universal-human interests as his own. Love for the other will then arise on the basis of an understanding of the unity of the destiny of all humanity. But the power is given to the Jesuit – the soldier of Jesus –,to put his words in such a way, so to direct the manner of his speech, that what he presents or what he does, insinuates itself, one might say, into the astral impulses of man (May 9, 1916, GA 167). This way of working is hypnotic in character. Jesuitism works on a large scale. Among today’s physicians we see a Jesuitism emerging that barely differs from Jesuitism in the sphere of dogmatic religion. We see how one strives out of a certain medical dogmatism to increase the power of the medical profession (Oct. 10, 1916, GA 168). In research of outer nature the Jesuits are opposed to seeking the spirit there. As scientists, they are the most extreme materialists ... they try to keep the spiritual as far away from natural science as possible. You can observe this tendency at work down into the study of ants by Father Wasmann (May 8, 1920, GA 201). And – we would add – to the ‘scientific’ principles of biology over which a fierce battle was waged in the period of Stalinism. Jesuits are not only active where they are themselves present. Through many and varied channels they can also work in places where entry is forbidden them. Therefore nothing is achieved through refusing them permission to travel into a certain area. Only through spiritual science can we understand what is involved here. According to Rudolf Steiner, their activity cannot easily be made visible since various little-known channels must be indicated through which their influence is spread. An example will help us. Rudolf Steiner speaks about the founding of the Jesuit State in Paraguay in 1610. On their journey over the waterways in the interior of the country the Jesuits made the tones of beautiful music resound everywhere, in order to mix into the musical, into the vocal element much of what they knew well from their practice and that spread, so to speak, between the waves of the tones and the voices, something that may be regarded as belonging to religious cult, to sacramentalism.8 The result was that the Indians came completely of their own accord. They assembled in large numbers and it was not long before the priests had gathered a great crowd of people into ... a kind of state, which they in their own way permeated with organization. They introduced a strict working-regime. After the militarized assembly for morning prayers (Trotsky intended to create something similar in Russia – a ‘work-army’) the Indians went out into their fields, bearing an icon of the holy Virgin Mary before them. The image of Mary was placed in a generally visible spot during work and was borne back to the settlement in the evening. Everything was pervaded by the cult, by sacrament. Thus the actions of the priest went directly into the astral body of the Indians, and he was so prepared that the entire state-structure was immersed in an aura of symbolism, of the sacramental. (It should not surprise us, therefore, that many people in Russia today simply cannot live without the Communist Party.)The only punishment was the form described in the utopian schemes of Thomas More and Campanella where a person is hanged for not long enough – until he is conscious that he must hang himself. (‘Confessions’ of the accused in the notorious trials of Stalin’s time). There one worked – concludes Rudolf Steiner – into the astral body, and then the brain vibrated with it ... through these musical and other cultic acts, the Indians were tied to the vibrations coming from these acts. They basically became complete members within a common astral aura (May 9, 1916, GA 167). In other words, it was black magic practised on the scale of an entire state, putting man into the condition of group-soul of that far distant epoch in which he was not yet man, but man-animal. The same experiment, we may add, is done in Russia. The principles of the Jesuit plan of a world-order have been impressively described by Dostoyevsky in the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor (The Brothers Karamazov), by Vladimir Nabokov in the novel Invitation to the Beheading and Zamyatin in the novel We. All these works are critical in their aim, warning humanity of the approaching danger. But Russian literature has another novel on the topic that is not critical but apologetic. It is The Earthly Paradise, written by K. S. Mereshkovsky (not to be confused with the famous D. S. Mereshkovsky). The novel appeared in Russian in 1903 – albeit in Berlin – and will be hardly known to any specialist today. K. S. Mereshkovsky claims that he arrived, on the basis of considerations of his own, at the Jesuit plan of a new world order and regards this plan as the best that humanity has ever conceived. The way he describes this plan in his novel is an absolutely brilliant illustration of what we have so far gathered from Rudolf Steiner’s words. But we are not sure whether the author was so naïve as he tries to appear, and the fact that the novel was published as early as 1903 is certainly of extraordinary significance. Mereshkovsky writes in the foreword that he represents a world-view which he calls ‘Terrism’ (from Latin terra = earth). It is to be accepted by everyone, regardless of personal viewpoints – whether idealistic, theosophical etc. Accordingly, people have not only the right but the obligation – an obligation placed upon them by reason and logic as well as by their feeling, their compassion for human beings – to be exclusively interested in earthly things; to occupy themselves with these alone, and to leave it to the inhabitants of heaven – should such exist –, to devote themselves to heavenly things. The organizing of earthly things, however, should be placed in the hands of only a few. He calls such a social order paternalistic. The novel has been given the form of a Utopia, and this form allows the author to carry it to its logical conclusion, to the most extreme consequences of what existed already in his time as an idea, but which in our time creeps out of every corner taking on a thousand forms in philosophy, sociology, art, politics and, finally, social actions. The hero of the novel, close to drowning in the ocean, loses consciousness and finds himself in a future world, in the 27th century,9 a time where – to put it simply – Jesuitism reigns over the whole world. The earth’s population has shrunk to a few million, living exclusively in the equatorial zone; in a warm climate where living-conditions do not demand a complicated technology or a high level of production. The human beings are extraordinarily infantile. All day they play various games; they are of youthful freshness, spontaneity, and show child-like trust. They live together in small communities, looked after by a few mentors and teachers. In addition there is the caste of slaves whose task is the service of all. In most respects the everyday life of this ‘happy’ humanity reminds us of antiquity, but works of art are missing and only mechanical music is played. (The author describes this in 1903!) The hero of the novel has a conversation with the mentor of a community and is told how it was possible to bring the world to this blissful state. The 19th century, he says, bore the mark of indecision, it was a mixture of science and blind faith, inventions of industry and militarism, of capitalism and socialism, the heightening of national consciousness and the emergence of cosmopolitanism. Gradually a striving for education to be the same for everyone crystallized out of this and impressed its stamp on the entire 20th century. In the middle of the 20th century intermediate education was compulsory for all citizens in many countries. As a result, the masses of workers had considerably more knowledge than they had bread to eat. The equality of education brought with it a longing for social equality. Countries began to adopt a socialist order. But not all countries joined this movement: England, America, Germany were set on putting these ‘dreamers’ into their rightful place, and this did not take place without bloodshed. (All this written in 1903!) Since the changes were based not on moral ideals but only on material calculation, the inhabitants of the poor countries migrated into the rich countries ... until life there became so cramped, and such a surplus of labour existed, that one began to squeeze out the immigrants, made further entry more difficult for them and at times refused them altogether. The solution of economic and other problems was hindered by the human egoism that had become necessary in previous centuries in the fierce struggle for survival, but which was completely out of place under the new conditions. The destructive spirit of individualism and heartlessness was especially marked in the Anglo-Saxon race which in the 20th century had extended its rule almost over the entire earth. The earlier struggle between individuals now gave way to the struggle of human groups, each with its own irreconcilable interests, the struggle of economic blocs. The Anglo-Saxon race based its world-domination on the socialist principle. But in order to be able to retain power and let others work for it, this power had to be expanded without limits, which finally led to the moral decline of those in power. Everything went back to its former state: nothing was left of the socialist order – banks, shares, usury, bankruptcy, luxury, gluttony, drunkenness etc. returned.10 And life flowed on aimlessly, without faith and trust, without hope of finding a way. Humanity lived ‘on bread alone’. But such a life was more than men of so complicated a spirit could bear; for them it was worse than death. Terrible times began. Those who became aware of the hopelessness of their situation sank into despair. But despair is the mother of bitterness, and this was everywhere present. All concepts became blurred; hatred took hold of people and turned them into animals ... Truly, the time had come that is described in the Apocalypse ... But no trumpets sounded, one could only hear the groans of desperation and curses. (An exact description of what is happening in Russia today.) And now the secret Society arose and made a resolve to put an end to suffering humanity. The members of the Society bombed cities, poisoned rivers and caused epidemics to break out. An agent without smell, taste and color was discovered, that made men infertile. The Society of destruction, renamed the Society of Renewers, decided to eliminate by means of this agent all people whose hereditary make-up was not impeccable. First they wanted to make an experiment in one country. For this purpose the Congo was purchased from the Latin Alliance (philosophical reflections appended to the novel by the author make it clear that he actually means Paraguay!), and experiments were made there openly in the artificial selection of human beings. But the Anglo-Saxons prevented this from being carried through to its conclusion. A wave of genocidal persecution swept through the Congo, but was unable to cause harm to the Society. Thanks to our wealth – the mentor tells the hero – and our unity we were able to infiltrate our own people and our enemies ... We had made the resolve to destroy all Asiatics without exception. Neither the Mongols nor the Negro race was to be part of the new, renewed humanity ... The complete extirpation of the Semitic race and, beyond that, nations such as the Armenians, Persian, Syrians etc. was planned, as from time immemorial they had been degenerate through and through ... whose character, steeled through millennia of hereditary succession, it would not have been possible to change by any kind of artificial selection. (It may be remarked here that we, matured by the events of this century, can no longer call the ‘imagination’ of our writer ‘unbridled’. As a result of certain ‘noises’ in the brains of progressive intellectuals, a society for the development of a new science, ‘eugenics’, was founded in London. A eugenic-socialist experiment on a large scale was carried out, from Lenin to Pol-Pot, in which entire strata of society, the flowers of nations, were declared unfit for the creation of the new man and were physically annihilated.) The nations were horrified – continues the mentor –, when they recognized our intentions and saw that humanity was melting away like snow in the spring sunshine! They remembered how it had been earlier and, filled with hatred, began to search for us ... We were considered monsters, we were declared outlaws. But it was already too late. The nations were dying out, the members of the ‘Society’ were multiplying unhindered. The whole affair was accelerated by the invasion from Asia – the Chinese and Japanese – of Europe, America and Australia. Our brave, gigantic, magnificent conspiracy – exclaims the mentor –, the conspiracy of a handful of people against all humanity – was successful! Now we stood before the task of creating a happy humanity. We had to approach this task with clean hands. It was also necessary to thoroughly cleanse our own ranks, stained by the work of mass-slaughter. (It is remarkable how exactly this corresponds to the speeches of the leader of the bloody Cheka – [the first name of Soviet-Russia’s secret police; abbr. for ‘extraordinary commission for the fight against counter-revolution and sabotage’], Dzerzhinsky, and their later practices.) It was further decided that humanity should consist of child-men, simple and naïve beings. But as such they cannot be without adults, without protectors and leaders. Out of the most backward, half-animal people, it was decided to create a special race of slaves in whom instinct reigns over consciousness and intellect. Theoretical principles of ‘renewal’ were elaborated, for example: mankind cannot be happy so long as human beings are not born anew through artificial selection and become like children. Such men cannot live happily without protectors, or a simplified life, or without slaves, because work has always been the root of all evil on earth. The slaves, on the other hand, are to work without becoming conscious of their situation etc. For the creation of a new humanity 650 women and 25 men of the Latin race with a minor admixture of Slavic blood (is the author paying tribute to his compatriots?) had been selected. Finally, however, one single man was chosen and by way of artificial insemination the entire humanity was begotten. (It sounds almost like the Book of Genesis!) This new humanity was few in number – there were only about three million people. Ten new commandments were ordained, including the following: Be simple and naïve like children. After having heard all this, the hero, a person of the 19th century who has awakened in the future earthly paradise and is held completely spellbound by it, expresses a doubting thought nevertheless: Don’t you think – he asks the mentor –, that you have lowered the level of the human spirit? Oh, certainly, certainly! – he exclaims – we have indeed lowered the level of the human spirit! We have simplified it! Our friends (the new people are meant) will never scale the heights attained by men of earlier times – we will see to that! ... All that we have done and will still do, all our principles, everything, absolutely everything is nothing other than the conscious realization of this fundamental idea, the greatest of all ideas ever brought forth on earth – the idea of the simplification of the spirit ... Who knows, the power of this idea may grow still further and spread far and wide ... maybe it will some day rule the universe ... In men of earlier times the level of the spirit was too high; such a flight of the spirit, such a flight of thinking and feeling contradicted the nature of man, it was incompatible with life; incompatible with a happy life on earth. Then the mentor expresses something that, for people who with the help of spiritual science are able to look behind the outermost veil of life, is highly interesting and symptomatic. He says: But you are wrong to reproach us for doing nothing to prepare people for a possible further existence. For, even if everything is as you imagine it, our people will, upon entering another, a spiritual world as those that they are, i.e. as innocent and good children, most definitely be prepared for a new life whatever it may be. It will be a pure and unspoiled material from which one may easily form anything one wishes, and just in the preservation of this pure and unspoiled material lies the nature of our task ... In this, too, we are right, when we have changed people into children, for ‘theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ as their great Teacher has said. If, however, it should turn out, the mentor concludes, that life in another world promises not only bliss but also holds sorrow in store, who knows whether we will then not have to do the same work there as we have done here. Maybe it will be our task there, too, to simplify life, to lower the spiritual level with the aim of providing human beings with an albeit simple but constant happiness! 11 We wish to remark here that so far we have found nowhere in literature a more simple, convincing and impressive description of the world-encompassing intentions of Lucifer than in this unknown work by a mysterious Russian author. He writes that his thoughts are ahead of their time (in 1903), but that humanity, at a later time, when it has reached the threshold of absurdity on the path of progress, will look at them with different eyes. And this time has obviously arrived, but in another sense than that meant by the author. His thoughts serve once more as a confirmation of the fact that humanity sleeps, while Rome and the Jesuits, appearing today in the new form of the ‘Opus Dei’, are awake. Thanks to spiritual science we understand that political power cannot protect humanity from a reduction, a simplification of the human spirit. Only a spiritual battle can save us. Rudolf Steiner remarks: Everywhere the Jesuits should be allowed to enter, but everywhere the possibility should be given to people in freedom to be as deeply informed in spiritual matters as the Jesuits are in- formed; then the Jesuits will do no harm. Only when one protects oneself and does not protect the other, but on the contrary fights against it, then Jesuitism will be dangerous. Jesuitism can be admitted everywhere if one lets the battle that has to be fought with it unfold in the same freedom and with the same unprejudiced sense as what is coming from the other side. According to the life-habits of the present day we are very far removed from that (Oct. 13, 1918, GA 184). Such is the one side of the question, namely where right-wing radicalism is at work. But there also exists left-wing radicalism. Without a doubt one of its most impressive representatives is Count R. N. Coudenhove-Kalergi. Unlike K. S. Mereshkovsky he does not write utopias. His ideological constructions could be characterized thus: he relates what is thought in the secret societies (but certainly not for the sake of the ‘sin of loquacity’). In the book published by the Paneuropa-Edition in 1925 under the title Practical Idealism, he writes: The man of the distant future will be a cross-breed ... The Eurasian-Negro of the future race will be outwardly similar to the old Egyptian ... The forerunner in modern Europe of the planetary human being of the future is the Russian as Slavic-Tartaric-Finnish cross-breed (!); because he, among all European nations, has the least race, he is the typical polypsychic man with the wide, rich, all-encompassing soul (p. 22-23). The antipode of the Russian is the insular Briton, the human being (here we may convey Kalergi’s meaning with the words of Mereshkovsky) with the over-complicated spirit. It is interesting that the ideas of both writers – the idealist and the materialist – come to full accord in the modern ideology of Catholicism. For brevity’s sake we will give only one example. Whoever has the opportunity to visit the church of the small village of Bühl (between Guebweiler and Murbach) in Alsace can see, behind the magnificent altar of the 16th century, a new altar (since 1993). A huge fresco in which the ‘literary dream images’ of both the rightwing Russian author and the liberal, German-speaking Count, are equally well depicted: a racially mixed and entirely child-like humanity revels in the bliss of earthly paradise gathered around a Negroid Jesus at the center. Rudolf Steiner drew attention to the fantasies, the social utopias of left and right-wing radicalism threatening the peoples not only of Europe but of the entire world. He said One aspires to be able to say at some future time: Centuries ago there existed a legendary humanity in the middle of Europe; they were successfully eradicated. They had to be eradicated because they were terribly haughty. They saw themselves as descendants of the Gods and even called their major poet Goethe so as to indicate that they had received a spirit sent directly from the Gods (Dec. 30, 1917, GA 180). If only a tiny portion of humanity could awaken to the fact that there exist breeding-grounds of immense concentration of power, where the opinion prevails that 2-3 Billion superfluous, useless human beings live on earth, who are only poisoning the planet! To the narrow circle of the financial, clerical and occult elite these people count for nothing, they are not even useful as slaves! Notes: 1 Here lies origin and meaning of the grandiose ‘shows’ of today, the ‘Disneylands’, the rock-concerts and other ‘cults’ that sink the ‘I’ into the abyss of the sentient soul and the instincts. 2 In our time an understanding seems to be dawning in individual souls in connection with what is known as ‘liberation theology’. 3 An unusually effective method in our days also. 4 Became Pope in 1555. He had clothing painted on the figures of the Last Judgment of Michelangelo. The Inquisition raged in Italy with especial cruelty during his reign. He introduced the ‘Index librorum prohibitorum’. 5 The Nachrichtenblatt No. 61/1995 published an intense controversy on the question whether the French National Society could, without being harmed, hold a conference in a Jesuit Centre. Thomas Meyer, for example, argues: ‘With the help of Steiner’s lecture-cycle ‘From Jesus to Christ’, in which Steiner contrasts the Christian-Rosicrucian (and spiritual-scientific) path of schooling with the Jesuit training, we could try to form a clear picture of what occult-spiritual potency is inherent in the Jesuit principle of initiation. It is peculiar that just this cycle has in parts been twisted and falsified in a quite incredible way in the only published French version to date. The expressions ‘Jesuits’, ‘Jesuitism’, ‘Jesuitical’ appear nowhere in the translation. The unspecified ‘Order’ is even said to ‘rightfully call itself a Christian path ... ‘ (Publisher’s Note). 6 This theme is taken up in the novels The Wrath of God and Death of the Planet by W. I. Kryshanovskaya, a writer of the theosophical stream who claimed that a spirit dictated her works. 7 We would like to bring a quote from Lenin for further consideration of the reader: The socialist order of society can only be enforced if we succeed in socializing healthcare. 8 They worked in a similar way in the Soviet Union. A large association of composers and poets was created (Dunajevsky, Bogoslovsky, Isaakovsky, Matussovsky, Rozhdestvensky, Frenkel, Solovyov-Sedoi, Pakrass, Fradkin and others) who were able to ‘listen’, to recognize – by means never clearly understood – how the soul of the Russian people reveals itself in the musical and poetic element. They even created the so-called Treasury of Russian Folksong by applying this knowledge. They wrote poems and composed songs that were gladly sung by the entire nation, for they seemed indeed to be close to the soul of the Russian people. But with these songs the Bolshevistic ideology crept into the souls unconsciously. We can hear today how similar songs are created and sung in Israel. Without understanding the language, we can still know what is being sung. 9 ‘Utopia’ sounds similar to the word for ‘drowning’ in Russian –’utopitj’. In the true sense of the word ‘útopia’ – drowning – takes place. 10 What a thing to read in the ’90’s of the 20th century in Russia! 11 Kaspar S. Merezhkovsky, Rai zemnoj, ili Son v zimnjuju noch, Skaza-utopija XXVII veka (The Earthly Paradise or the Winter Night’s Dream – a utopian Fairy-tale of the 27th Century). Berlin, 1903 Friedrich Gottheiner-Verlag), p. 47ff. – A new edition of the German version is available from Moskau-Basel-Verlag, CH-4009 Basel, Switzerland; 1997.
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