G.A. Bondarev
The Crisis of
Civilization
VI.
Britanno-Americanism, Latinism, Bolshevism
The Tyranny of ‘Inverted’ Dialectics
It is a widespread peculiarity
among anthroposophists to admonish to a positive
attitude in every life-situation. One or the other
reader is therefore likely to ask: ‘You are looking at
global phenomena of world events, but only show their
negative sides. Why is this? Is there nothing good and
creative there as well?’
We could reply that instead of a short chapter a weighty
monograph ought to be devoted to each one of the
problems touched on in this book. But even then the
causes of today’s crisis would only become more
impressively visible, an even more convincing picture of
the penetration of radical evil into the world would be drawn.
Of course this is only one side of reality. And if we
were asked about the other side, then the history of
esoteric Christianity, of culture and of philosophy
would need to be written. We would have to write about
Anthroposophy and social threefolding etc., with which
all these forces of evil are quite unconnected – except
in a negative sense.
But here we have set ourselves a different task.
Certainly no-one would think of reproaching a physician
for a negative world-view because he has made a
discomforting diagnosis. We expect of a diagnosis only
one thing: it must be reliable so that we know what
therapy is called for.
Nor will anyone today question the assertion that our
civilization is seriously ill. And there will be no
sense in dwelling on joyful memories. It is first of all
necessary to make a thorough and exact diagnosis of the
illness, so that one can then speak constructively about
the healing process.
Jesuitism, Pan-Americanism (Britannicism), Bolshevism –
harbour within them mighty destructive forces that are
able to send the whole of civilization to the grave, rob
the entire earth-development of its meaning; indeed,
destroy the whole planet. Most of us think about this
only abstractly. But we should become conscious of the
fact that if it were really to take place, all human
souls would pass over into the supersensible world.
After several centuries the necessity would arise for
them to incarnate again, but there would be nowhere for
the incarnation to take place. A soul approaching a new
incarnation cannot remain in the spiritual world; this
world begins to burn it – just as a sunbather must seek
shade after a while so that the benefit does not turn to
harm. Something similar is true for humanity: if it were
to lose the earth as the place of its incarnation, it
would be condemned to indescribable suffering for
millions of years, for as long as it takes for a new
heavenly body to be prepared. Only a few – the great
initiates – would not suffer that fate. The Apocalypse
describes how, at the end of earthly time, souls who
persists in evil, and are not ready to prepare for a
prolonged, exclusively spiritual evolution, will suffer
this tragic fate.
Modern humanism speaks merely of the possibility of a
general physical death that can befall humanity. Even
such a perspective helps people to learn to understand
each other despite differences of faith, nationality,
form of group-egoism. What is there to be said about the
threat of the second death, the death of the soul?
The danger emanating from those forces which we
absolutely have to learn to understand threatens also
those peoples in whom they have their root. The
estrangement of nations and nationalism of any shade
give additional support to those forces, because through
them people lose their ability to see and understand the
all-encompassing
general danger.
Internationalism and humanism, viewed as an abstract
complex of ideas, are of no help either but increase the
harm done. Such ideas are altogether falsified
as soon as they are taken hold of by the representatives
of the destructive forces mentioned here. We can and must come to
clarity in this matter by following Goethe’s maxim,
which we have allowed ourselves to change slightly:
Consider well the ‘What’,
The ‘Who’ still more (Faust II, Act 2).
Everywhere
there are people who can see the world beyond their own
nose. The unquestionably great English writer John
Tolkien says in a letter: It is easy
to invent a green sun; it is difficult to create a world
in which it would be natural. But this is true only for
man. For the dark, metaphysical forces of world-creation
there is nothing more abhorrent than our radiant golden
sun. These forces have made countless people into their
servants. Consequently there is a danger that they might
attain a universal, total power over humanity and lead
it to a ‘green’, maybe even a black sun. Tolkien
presented a similar idea, the idea of the Ring that bestows power
to rule over the world, in his famous trilogy Lord of the
Rings.
One (Ring) for the Dark
Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind
them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
There are
various forces that wish to assert their claim to
rulership over humanity. Two of them are already
traditional in a certain sense; namely Latinism and
Britannicism as two diametrically opposite forms of
spiritual imperialism. The origin of their antithesis
lies in the distant past, in the time when the great
migration of peoples began after the Atlantean
catastrophe. We know from spiritual science that the
most advanced – in respect of the development of the
intellect, thinking consciousness – of Atlantean
inhabitants, the Aryan race, turned, under the
leadership of the great Initiate Manu, towards those
regions that extend from the Ural Mountains to the
Hindustan Peninsula. Part of this stream formed the
beginning of the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch;
another remained for millennia in a slumbering state in
complete inactivity. At that time Siberia had a warm
climate. But then came the time when the entire gigantic
continent rose, the cold winds came from the North and
thus nature itself brought it about that people
migrated from East to West (Mar. 15, 1924, GA 353). The
inner cause for the migration was spiritual
pre-determination.
The migration began approximately two hundred years
before the birth of Christ and continued for several
centuries. The tribes pressing to the West settled in
the South of Russia for some time before they moved on
and became known as the East-Goths. The West-Goths
settled in the region of today’s Romania and Hungary,
the Saxons between Rhine and Elbe etc. Europe was
peopled at that time by the Celts – the descendants of
those Atlanteans who did not move further East with
Manu. The newcomers pushed them in part to the West or
mixed with them. From the South the Roman peoples
pressed into Europe – descendants of a different
migrating stream from Atlantis – and displaced the
Celts. After some time a ‘mixture’ of the most varied
old-Germanic tribes had established itself in
Middle-Europe. From there, as though raying out to the
periphery, groups of settlers were sent to the West,
North-West, North and South. And, says Rudolf Steiner, in the
Lombards and the East-Goths, something went
to the South that we could call: the Wotan-element,
spirit and life ... and this made possible the further
development, the further unfolding of this southern
culture.
With the Franks the Will-element, reason and movement,
went to the West ... To the British Isles there went
what found its later formation in English empiricism in
physiognomy, speech, sight, hearing (July 24, 1915, GA 162).1
In another place Rudolf
Steiner calls the stream that pressed to the South from
Central Europe cultic-hierarchical, the one going to the West political-diplomatic
and the one moving
to the North-West, mercantile. One caste moved to the
South, the one with the priestly tendency, the
priest-caste ... priestly in a good and in a bad sense.
That which was left behind became the opposition ... The
second caste moved to the West: the warrior-caste,
kingly caste, royalty. Only through various anomalies of development
did this caste later become republican, remarks Rudolf
Steiner (Jan. 22, 1917, GA 174).
In time the Latin
element triumphed over everything that had come from the
center to the South. The Roman became the dominating
element to a large degree in France, though not
everywhere. But the impulse of Central Europe was
preserved in the most noticeable way in the British
Isles (cf. July 24, 1915, GA 162). At the same time
occult impulses went out from three sides, making use of
the priestly, the warlike and the mercantile for their
group interests. Two of these forces turn towards the
heritage of the third and, partly, the fourth cultural
epochs. They follow again the path already trodden, so
to speak; the third force on the other hand turns
towards fulfilling the tasks of the fifth post-Atlantean
cultural epoch (ibid.).
We need to reflect that the main task of each cultural
epoch is only taken up by a small number of its
representatives. The general masses only catch up in the
course of development of the following epochs. The same
applies to the inhabitants of the new Europe. The
greater part is only now developing an individual
sentient soul (the task of the Egyptian epoch) and the
intellectual soul. For this it needed the
above-mentioned mixture of tribes and races.
To Middle Europe
fell the task of developing the phenomenon of the ‘I’ as
a center, that draws into a synthesis the experience of
the entire triune soul. The Italians learn to master the
individual ‘I’ out of the forces of the sentient soul,
the Spaniards and the French out of the forces of the
intellectual soul, the Anglo-Saxons out of the
consciousness-soul (cf. June 16, 1910, GA 121). In
Middle-Europe ... the national element lives itself as
the ‘I’. We find a
certain anticipation of the future in the Slavic world,
in Russia, and therefore this is the region where
the ‘I’ lives itself out – although the expression is
not entirely correct ... – as Spirit Self (Oct. 31, 1914, GA 157).
The task of individually elaborating the Spirit-Self is
set only in the next, the Slavic-Germanic cultural
epoch. The peoples of Russia therefore live in a mood of
anticipation; an apocalyptic mood prevails in their
midst. The fulfillment of the present task lies with the
Anglo-Saxons and this gives them their character as ‘men
of the world’.
The sentient soul contains in its deeper parts the
eternal driving forces of human nature, those forces
that pass through birth and death, says Rudolf Steiner (Mar. 7,
1915, GA 159). This is the archetypal phenomenal nature
of the ‘eternal’ city, the center of Italian culture.
Much of what we find in the Russian character is
grounded in the nature of the sentient soul, but
differently from the Italians. Anticipating the future
is only one side of our character; in their everyday
life, the Russians live in the element of the sentient
soul.
The intellectual or mind-soul contains half that is
temporal and half that is eternal. This determines the
archetypal phenomenon of the entire Roman culture, the
archetypal phenomenon of the ‘people of the Church’. The
consciousness-soul, as it now is, contains mainly the
orientation of man towards the temporal ... so that the
British people, according to a wonderful statement by
Goethe, has nothing in the nature of deep reflection,
but is directed to the practical, the outer, competitive
struggle for existence (ibid.).
Ideologues of the
so-called ‘Eurasian’ and ‘Atlantean’ direction attempt
to perceive these qualities. But since they reject
spiritual science (as ideologues and non-scientists they
must of necessity reject it), they do so as in a
half-sleeping state. They hopelessly confuse what is
evil with what is legitimate, throwing into disorder all
judgments without exception – an approach that will, we
may assume, bring further social chaos of a very special
kind.
The leadership of
humanity gave to the English people the task of evolving
the consciousness-soul as it must be developed in the
epoch of freedom and materialism, the epoch of the
greatest ‘God-forsakenness’. Herein lies the reason why
the Anglo-Saxons experience their fellow-men as
competitors. But it is the consciousness-soul in
particular that experiences in this way the other human
beings in the physical world. This is also why the
entire British philosophy, as an expression of the
individual spirit, has the air of being an ‘observer’ of
life. The greatest herald of the British soul was
Shakespeare (cf. Oct. 31, 1914, GA 157).
The positive task carried within a nation or race is
anchored in its instincts. For this reason, in the
sphere of English-speaking nations the intellect, the
substance of the thinking spirit, is given as instinct.
The
economic impulse and the spiritually productive impulse
– explains Rudolf
Steiner –, stand entirely in the shadow of
what comes out of the instinctive impulse that tends
towards the development of the consciousness-soul (Dec. 8, 1918, GA 186). For
this reason everything spiritual has to be materialized
to a certain degree in these nations. Thus, too, they
will incline to the firm conviction that everything
mediumistic, i.e. the heritage of antiquity, derives
solely from one single nation but not from the universal
human nature (cf. Dec. 18, 1916, GA 173). This will give
the direction for the occult strivings of the
Anglo-Saxon peoples2 now and in the future.
But these Anglo-Saxon peoples differ from one another in
their inner dispositions. Those who settled in North
America owe their existence to the retarded
spirit of personality, who does not lead them to a development
appropriate to the nature of today’s cultural epoch (cf.
June 8, 1910, GA 121). This is a fact of utmost
importance for understanding American geo-politics and ‘Americanism’ as a cultural
phenomenon.
Rudolf Steiner characterized the American soul
constitution thus: Overall one can see in the American
attitude how souls do not quite sit in their bodies.
Thus they want to grasp the body from the outside, and
even the study of psychology in America takes on a
character in which one basically has no true concept of
the ‘I’ ... This ‘I’-embodiment, as it now happens in
the West (i.e. Europe), [will] not be properly
developed. What appears then is, that one thought cannot
be placed together with another. It is called
‘Association-psychology’. Here man becomes as it were
the plaything of thoughts that associate in this way.
Curiously, something appears there, which ... is often
quoted in a defamatory way against us [as] the teaching
of repeated earth lives: one speaks of the ‘wandering of
the soul’. But in connection with repeated earth lives
we may not speak of a wandering of the soul if it does
not happen from a defamatory side (Dec. 14, 1920, GA 202).
Rudolf Steiner also said that the souls of people from
Europe who gradually settled America were incarnated in
Asia in the time before the Mystery of Golgatha. They
then spent a long period in the spiritual world and did
not incarnate. All of American culture with its love of
material values is the creation of such souls who now
dive down into bodies where this physicality is alien to
them. They are drawn down into the body with the
concepts which had already been decadent in the past,
and do not understand the body. They view it in a quite
primitively materialistic way, and more or less pass the
human being by, who has grown alien to them because they
basically sought extreme abstractions in their previous
earthly life. They cannot find their way into the
present incarnation, but carry over from their previous
earth-life all that then lives in the often sectarian
religiosity that is divorced from the outer observation
of nature. This goes even so far as the denial of matter
by Mrs. Eddy (founder
of ‘Christian Science’; Dec. 12, 1920, GA 202).
If in addition we
consider that something [develops] that tends
towards the absorption of
Britannicism into ‘Pan-Anglo-Americanism (May 21, 1918, GA 181), and
that Jesuitism and Americanism ...
are two very, very related things (Aug. 18, 1918, GA 183), then a
certain ‘Doppelgänger’ aspect of the
dialectic law of unity and conflict of opposites will be
revealed as a law of the development of the human spirit
which leads to infernal sociality and thereby prevails
as a law of the total destruction of civilization.
In all institutions of Society Latinism (Jesuitism) and
Americanism (Freemasonry) are antipodes – an expression
of the polarity of luciferic and ahrimanic forces. But
both are ruled by a pronounced tendency to materialism
and are furthermore united in the intention to find an impulse
through which one could put oneself in a position to
lead people away from an understanding of the Christ (Aug. 19, 1918, GA 183).
Therefore we may rightfully speak of a certain ‘inverted
dialectic’
contained in the Luciferic-Ahrimanic opposition to
Christ. In its highest aspect this dialectic leads to
the creative synthesis of opposites, just as it was
described with genius by Hegel and divined by Socrates.
In its negative aspect Marx used dialectics for his
sociology. Nowadays it is called a ‘conspiracy theory’
and is also discussed in the Anthroposophical press. It
is disputed whether forces exist that are striving for
world-domination, or whether economic conflict or the
desire for total control over the spiritual activity of
people are the possible motives. We have to examine this
question in its all-embracing significance.
If reality exists
for us as a complicated sense-supersensible
interweaving, the concept of the ‘natural’ must be
regarded as synonymous with the concept of lawfulness,
which is rooted in both spheres of reality. The laws of
dialectics as an organic part of the totality of the
laws governing world-development inevitably lose their
natural character in their ‘inverted’ sense, in their
reversed application. Thus that which dialectics brings,
in the one case, as a revelation of the divine creative
intention, is in the other case expressed by it in the
usurpation of the divine goal of development, which is
the nascent self-conscious, free individuality.
‘Conspiracy theory’ is therefore immanent in the
falsification of the spiritual laws of development of
‘I’-consciousness. This is, as it were, its
methodological foundation.
All earthly events that testify to the existence of a
‘conspiracy’ are merely a consequence of the
meta-historical-cosmic-transcendental ‘conspiracy’ of
the Luciferic-Ahrimanic forces against the divine
hierarchies. The Apocalypse of St. John prophesies the
future course of this battle, at whose threshold we
stand today. It is something global, world-encompassing.
The Luciferic-Ahrimanic forces falsify not only
cultural-historic phenomenology; they strive also to
turn the laws of development to their own advantage. It would
be helpful for man to know this so as not get burned
while playing with this fire, through which we fall out
of the human line of evolution and could sink directly
into the sub-natural realms.
The Jesuits are active in two directions: in the
dogmatizing of what man should seek for by way of
knowledge and by working in science itself, in natural
science. And [the Jesuit activity] – says Rudolf Steiner – wishes for
no other inner relationship than that between modern
science and Americanism, between modern science and
Jesuitism. Jesuitism excels in this: to do work of
enormous significance in the physical sciences. The
Jesuits are great spirits in the realm of physical,
sense-oriented science, for Jesuitism reckons with this
elemental tendency of human nature ... to
fear the spiritual. And it reckons on being able to
socialize this fear by telling people something like
this: ‘you cannot and should not approach the spirit’.
We administer the spiritual for you; we bring it to you
in the right way (July
30, 1918, GA 181). How they do this we know already –
through the reduction, the simplification of the human
spirit, through the introduction of Terrism to which, in
K. S. Mereshkovsky’s opinion, spiritualists may also
confess. And this they do already in every sphere – by
devoting themselves to parapsychology, suggestion,
psychoanalysis, the UFO-inquiry, TV-healing, by
developing further scientific-technological fantasy etc.
If on the other hand
we turn from Jesuitism to Americanism, the latter proves
that monotheism was victorious over polytheism because
it was cheaper. (We should compare the book The Law of
Civilization and of Decline by a certain Brooks Adams, to
which Th. Roosevelt wrote the foreword; Rudolf Steiner
referred to it on December 16, 1916; GA 173).
Protestantism is stronger than Catholicism for the same
reason; but atheism is even stronger than Protestant-
ism, for it is cheaper than all religions (cf. GA 65, p.
678). Americanism and Jesuitism thus work inwardly into
each other. Rudolf Steiner advises us not to take this
in an over-simplified, superficial way.
Their immanent
affinity has its roots in the entire crisis of European
culture. In the threefold constellation:
Montaigne, Locke, Comenius (we should recall that the
latter belonged to the initiators of the impulse of
Gondishapur in an earlier incarnation3) – says Rudolf Steiner – one can
effectually see how the turning away from the Logos and
towards the things of the senses becomes the greatest
impulse in the civilization of humanity. One was afraid
of the idol (Francis Bacon) in words ... And so we see
with what anxiousness Montaigne, Locke, Comenius want to
turn humanity away from anything supersensible, that
lives in the Logos ... How they ... seek to avoid all
that cannot be given through the senses, how they strive
to bring as much as possible of sense-content to young
people through pedagogy. We see how Comenius designs
books in order not to act by way of the word, but
through artificially made sense-perception ... We see
how our entire civilization can no longer inwardly take
up something like ‘In the beginning was the Word’, but
how humanity attaches its civilization to the outer
facts of the senses and how the Word, the Logos, is
taken only because it has become a tradition (Aug. 9, 1923, GA 307).
Truly unlimited
possibilities are offered for the failure of
civilization. In our century in particular one looks for
practical ways to make it fail. A new science was
inaugurated in 1912, ‘eugenetics’, by means of which we
allow the human race to ‘grow healthy’ through
selecting, by criteria that lie between those of
political economy and anthropology, men and women for
the purpose of reproduction. By taking the skull
measurements of rich and poor one wishes to ascertain in
advance what the human being will be like, depending on
the character of his work, and of his working functions
(cf. Oct. 7, 1917, GA 177). These are no longer an
author’s fantasies, but social Darwinism experimented
with in real life, that brings baffling successes such
as the clarification of organic structures.
Rudolf Steiner calls this the noises in the brains of those who have
freed
themselves from the soul. We meet these people amongst the scientific
elite of the Anglo-Saxon world and ... in the novel of a
Russian author propagating the Jesuitic model of the
‘renewal of humanity’. And if, as is claimed, eugenic
experiments were carried out under the auspices of
national-socialism, there is no reason whatever to look
upon them as original. Already in the epoch of old
Atlantis people were occupied with similar things. At
the time one tried to let various beings arise out of
the union of man and woman as
black-magical foolery (ibid.). It is now coming to life again, even
scientifically!
The central purpose behind all this is to erect an
insuperable barrier on the path to the
consciousness-soul. Rudolf Steiner undertakes a
comprehensive analysis of our epoch and describes in
great detail how this barrier can be overcome. Those who
do not want to know about it rob their life of its true meaning
because they refuse
to fulfill the task for which they were born in the 20th century.
In order to fulfill
the task of the century, and of the epoch, it is first
necessary to master the consciousness-soul. As a
personality one has to emancipate oneself from the old
group-consciousness, but without simultaneously
connecting oneself to a new center of
group-consciousness. This process is extraordinarily
complex; it requires joint human efforts, social and
spiritual relationship of a special kind. The
Anthroposophical Society should actually be engaged in
these tasks. If, however, as Rudolf Steiner says, one
were to abandon the human being to what is contained in
the free impulses of culture in its onward movement, if
one were to let him swim freely on the open sea of the
quest for the consciousness-soul, Rome would have
attained still greater power. But the human being would
lose all connection with his further development.
Confirmation of these words can be found at every step.
Yet this is not enough. An age-old principle is applied,
which becomes effective when the progressive impulses are
divested of the force of progress and the old is
allowed to prevail. It had been brought from the
Orient by esoterically initiated Templars, but
originally with a different intention. But after the
force of their striving had been weakened ... there
remained what had been brought as culture from Asia
... By way of many channels ... there filtered through
what the Templars had brought, but the actual
spiritual content had often been removed ... This was
essentially the content of the third post-Atlantean
period. Catholicism brought the content of the fourth.
And that which was propagated as exoteric Freemasonry,
the Scottish or York-Lodges or whatever, from which
the spirit had been pressed out like juice from a
lemon, that which was taken hold of by the false
esotericism of the English-speaking peoples, this is
the pressed out lemon which therefore, after having
been pressed out, contains the secrets of the third
post-Atlantean, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, and which
is now used to send impulses into the life of the
consciousness-soul (Oct. 19, 1918, GA 185).
In a certain sense something similar is created (due to the repetition of
cultures: the third in the fifth, the second in the
sixth; the fourth lies in the middle) to that
which wants to take place in the world when the
esotericism, the cults of the Egyptian-Chaldean era are
carried over. But one can now use what is carried over
not only to remove by suggestion the independence of the
consciousness-soul, but, to subdue, to lame the central
driving force of the consciousness-soul (to simplify the spirit) ...
Rome – figuratively
speaking – uses incense and puts people half
to sleep through causing dreams to arise in them (ibid.). This is what is done
from the one side. From the other, one proclaims the
slogan: Liberty, equality, and fraternity! But what is
coming from the first side works against an
understanding of the whole – for an
understanding is possible only through the
consciousness-soul! When men awaken in the
consciousness-soul, then they first of all feel
themselves (today)
in
the body, the soul and the spirit.4 But it is
exactly this that is to be put to sleep. So that we have
these two streams within modern history: on the one hand
one wants, now that the impulse towards the
consciousness-soul is there, fraternity, liberty,
equality in a chaotic way (out of the momentum of the
French revolution). There is on the other hand
the aim of the various Orders to extinguish the awaking
in the consciousness-soul, so that a few individualities
(the guild of
‘Mentors’) can use this awakening in the
consciousness-soul for themselves. These two streams
merge throughout the entire course of the historical
life of modern times (ibid.). Through these streams the luciferic and
ahrimanic spirits, who pursue to the detriment of
humanity their own exceedingly far-reaching – one could
even say cosmic aims –, penetrate the spiritual life of
humanity. These spirits, antipodes by their nature,
always appear together.
The geo-politicians of a Marxist bent try, as the
expression goes, to grab the devil by the tail with the
aid of the law of unity and the conflict of opposites.
But the unity appears in this case as the phenomenon of
penetration of asuric spirits into civilization. The human
being needs, not this unity, but the unity that can be
attained through Christ, whom today we seek in vain in
the Orders and Lodges (Brotherhoods). A modern author
writes with reference to the ‘History of Freemasonry’ of
G. J. G. Findel: the representative of English Deism,
Toland, proclaimed solemnly: There is no
need for a dogmatic teaching. He found support from Shubb:
No!
To dogmatic Christianity; Bollingbrock went a step further and concluded:
There
is no need for Christianity at all.
It is a peculiarity
of man to be incapable of moderation. Because of this
failing many noble works have been destroyed.
Anthroposophists would do well to impress upon
themselves this experience. For in our circles too there
are some (people of the older generation) who ever more
frequently repeat the statements of Rudolf Steiner
concerning Christianity in an abstract, indifferent and
hypocritical way. While others say: ‘Leave this theme
alone, it only offends people of other beliefs, we
subscribe to the principle of tolerance towards all
confessions’. The younger generation (not that of the
Moslems – of course) proclaims, or increasingly lives
by, the principle: There is no need for Christianity
at all.
The New Impulse of Gondishapur
We are approaching the year 1998, where the number of
the ahrimanic rhythm – 666 – will be repeated for the
third time. In the period of time around his ‘jubilees’
Ahriman intensifies his striving to anticipate future
developments, and prevent their occurrence at the right
time. In the surrounding world active preparation is
taking place for the second impulse of the Academy of
Gondishapur; this
time almost on the scale of mankind as a whole.
Everywhere the plea for the emancipation of the
personality can be heard, for the most extreme
individualism to the point of narcissism
(Jacques Attali), gentle
lawlessness, for
the complete intermixing of races, nations and genders.
This process has moved forward with especial vigour
since the French Revolution. At first the balance tipped
quite strongly to the side of Lucifer. Thus everything
took place in a stormy way, in crass contradiction to
every human rhythm. This called forth a counter-attack
by the ahrimanic forces, with the scale inclining
strongly to the right. Napoleon appeared – a body in
which, as Rudolf Steiner remarks, everything was subject
to a strict rhythm. The power that is the enemy of
mankind works within a rigid seven-year rhythm in such a
body: the preparation for the ascent to power lasted
seven years, likewise the triumph and the destruction of
Europe; and a further seven years of decline (ibid.).
The result of this confrontation of luciferic and
ahrimanic forces was their mutual extinction. Europe had
once more the opportunity to develop the impulse of the
consciousness-soul, an impulse that leads to the freeing
of the personality and the overcoming of national
barriers. But it does this exclusively on the basis of
the elevation of the personality, not through the instigation
of chaos and lawlessness. Therefore it is futile to look
for anything positive in the French Revolution or the
reign of Napoleon. But no conclusions have been drawn,
nor has the most important fact been recognized, namely,
that these two forces of evil extinguished each other
and that the path was thereby freed for normal
evolution. It was not long before the consequences of
this failure materialized.
Already in the
middle of the 19th century the impulse for the consciousness-soul
development of humanity was again extinguished. It lost
its autonomy because [of] the opposing stream
... of the Orders that, especially in England, infect
all of public life to an appalling extent, much more
than the outer world can imagine. Because of these Orders the
unfolding of the free personality cannot progress. And thus
we see remarkable personalities appear, like Richard
Cobden or John Bright.5 On one hand
they are true bearers of the impulse for the
emancipation of the personality, the overcoming of what
is national through the
personality over the whole earth. They came so
far that they touched upon something that could be of
tremendous significance politically if it would dare to
enter modern historical development, but differentiated geographically ... But
hardly had it appeared than it was completely stifled by
the other striving that arose out of the impulse of the
third post-Atlantean time. And we see how up to the
middle of the 19 th century
there arises in the West what is usually called
liberalism, the liberal attitude – soon it will be
called free thinking –, well, whichever one prefers ...
and (which) died out in the last third of the 19th century (ibid.).
For a certain time the impulse of the
consciousness-soul brought forth a wave of
liberalism whose representatives let
themselves be influenced by no-one, and had good control of
themselves. But from the middle of the 19th century
the fruit of what came out of the Orders and
secret societies of the West increasingly showed
itself: the putting to sleep, the lulling to sleep
of the consciousness-soul as such. Then all that
is of soul and spirit is no longer active; only
what is present in the outer, physical sense world
is active. And this appeared in recent times ...
in all the possible forms of the socialism that is
conscious of itself (ibid.).
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The exercise of power in an ahrimanic form hindered
and lamed the development of the consciousness-soul
in a large number of socialistically-oriented
countries. In the rest of the world the impulse of
the consciousness-soul was stifled in the chaos of
immorality, of ‘everything is allowed’, of
participation of the masses in a form of pseudo-art
that acts as a substitute for the fury that in other
instances can discharge itself in revolutions. The
personality is emancipated because the present time
demands it and at the same time it is everywhere
weakened, only
to be hardened in the next moment in an even more
rigidly ahrimanized social structure. The next step
on this path will be to disconnect people from
the leadership of the folk-spirits, the archangeloi,
through a mixing of the nations and races, through
abolition of a differentiated approach to the
question of emancipation. Marxists practised this
throughout the earth – in Russia, China, Ethiopia,
Cuba, Vietnam – where they introduced a unified form
of socialism. Under the pretence of liberating the
personality they in truth subjected it to a form of
unified slavery. Today this method appears to have
fulfilled its purpose. In its place another is used
to create globally and on a unified basis the semblance of the
emancipated personality, where in reality
emancipated cripples of soul and spirit already now
appear. But this means that the new
impulse of Gondishapur allows the so-called evil
race to arise in humanity before its time. This race is supposed to
appear only in the distant future. They would be
people who consciously reject the principle of the
emancipation that takes place with the help of the
Christ-power. They would develop an extreme
egocentricity leading to the ‘war of each against
all’. In that race all that is national would also
have been overcome, but in a different way than in
the ‘good race’, which would then bear the name
‘Michaelic’ (after the archangel Michael). Human
beings would be led to this race by the
folk-spirits, by way of the cultural process. And on
this path Social Threefolding should become the form
of the life of society in our time.
Three Papacies
We, the people of the epoch of consciousness-soul,
should understand how fundamental are the changes
undergone by the soul and spiritual nature of man,
and with it all factors of civilization, in the
transition from the fourth to the fifth cultural
epoch. We need to know that the fourth
post-Atlantean epoch, which encompassed Greece, Rome
etc. and lasted until the beginning of the 15th century, elaborated in an
entirely human way that which had previously been spiritual
revelation. In
the fifth epoch man began, to a still greater
degree, to live entirely for the physical without
developing new concepts, but by using what had lain
at his disposal in the fourth epoch. Learning how to
master the physical plane is, however, a legitimate
task of our epoch and the Anglo-Saxon race is best
equipped to fulfill it.
But the Catholic Church rejects the forces of
revelation of antiquity, the old clairvoyance, for
entirely different reasons. As we have already
pointed out, it is led by fear of the supersensible.
Already in the 9th/10th century the universal
Church makes its entrance into the entire
configuration of Europe through the battle it waged
everywhere against the clairvoyance of antiquity,
which had its rightful place until the beginning of
the 15th century. When the Christian-Rosicrucian mysteries
arose in Europe, which were in part described in the
legends of the Holy Grail, they were in no way
opposed to the mysteries of antiquity but were their
continuation. This was the esoteric path of
Christianity, which could be followed only by those
who were sufficiently prepared spiritually. In this
most
genuine Christianity
Catholicism recognized its enemy.
We can see, says Rudolf Steiner in this connection,
that where worldly power and the
power of the Church enter into a compromise ... we
speak of Princes and Popes ... leading the battle
against the heretics. Just think of the Waldensians
... the Cathars; there are such heretical elements
everywhere ... The remarkable thing is that from
amongst the heretics people gradually came forward,
who looked at Christianity from out of themselves
and could recognize that what comes from Rome is
something different from Christianity ... [They
were] actually fiercely-persecuted Christians, who
often remained quiet, founded all kinds of
communities, spread a veil of secrecy over this (Jan. 17, 1918, GA 180).
Having degenerated to a purely political force, Rome
had to look for means to instill enthusiasm into the
masses artificially. The crusades were one of these
means, but the ‘heretics’ took part in them as well.
One of them was Godfrey de Bouillon. And for
them the aim was initially a Christian one: with the
help of the crusades, by founding in Jerusalem a new
(spiritual) center against Rome, they wanted to put
a true Christianity in the place of the Christianity
of Rome ... And the secret motto of the Crusaders
was: Jerusalem versus Rome. This attempt failed when
the Papacy proved to be too powerful. But the
Crusaders found the opportunity to widen their
horizon; they were able to continue to work
secretly, to found Orders and alliances. Actually
at that time the difference developed which today
can only be met when one is visiting a church in
Italy, and in there someone has preached a sermon
against the Freemasons shortly before (ibid.). The Reformation
also fights this battle with Rome.
With the struggle against the heretics and the
disappearance of the last remaining elements of
legitimacy from Roman Catholicism, the intention
grew to extend its domination over the whole of
Europe. The ideology developed by Catholicism in the
fifth cultural epoch was brilliantly formulated by
Count de Maistre (1754-1821). This Jesuit
philosopher considered man to be a fallen creature.
With the beginning of the epoch of materialism, so
he reasoned, the whole of civilization has also
fallen into decline. Humanity divides into two
categories: those who are representatives of the
Kingdom of God and those who represent the earthly
realm. The people of the first category believe in
the age-old truths that have lost their place in
civilization since the 15th century. These people are
predestined (and St. Augustinus had spoken of this)
for salvation. The people of the earthly plane,
already given over to superstition in antiquity,
turn away from faith entirely today. Their fate will
be damnation. All people appear mixed together – but
the eye of the spiritual world distinguishes
strictly between sheep and goats (de Maistre does
not use these concepts). This opinion of the French
Jesuit is also shared in many aspects by the
world-view of the Eastern Church. And in recent
years it can be heard increasingly from Islamic
fundamentalism and the ‘New Right’ in Western
Europe, and also in Russia where it is made into the
basis for a new ideology and geopolitical theory.
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De Maistre developed grandiose ideas with
regards to Russia. He dreamed of uniting
the Eastern way of thinking, which extends
into Russia, with Rome. And it seems as
though today the time has come in which de
Maistre’s ideas are the blueprint for a
new movement that intends to lead Islam,
the Eastern Church and Catholicism to
synthesis in a unified Eurasian bloc and
place it over against the decaying world
of Pan-Americanism. This movement upholds
tradition and the imperial form of
organizing society, as a counterweight to
the process of Western emancipation that
destroys the personality.
The ‘New Right’ supports the restoration of the
Middle Ages, when the principle of statehood still
possessed something of the sacred. In 1810 in
Petersburg de Maistre wrote the book Essay
on the Creative Archetypal Ground of the State
Constitution,
in which he basically turns to the Christianity of
the epoch before scholasticism, to Augustinianism,
for de Maistre is an opponent of Aristotle; he would
like to banish him from culture altogether, despite
the fact that the Church Father Thomas Aquinas was
one of the most fervent pupils of Aristotle.
In another work, entitled Concerning
the Pope, of
which Rudolf Steiner said that it stirs the heart as
only spiritually-inspired books can do, de Maistre
attempts to present the Pope as the rightful
Prince of modern civilization; in other words, as the Prince of
this world!
The Popes and the Papacy, he writes, are not one and
the same thing. In the Papacy there is in a certain
way the incorporation of what, as the spirit of the
earth, is to take over the rulership of the whole
planet.
When we
familiarize ourselves with these things in the face
of all that takes place behind the scenes of outer
events in our century, we find astounding
interweavings of seemingly incompatible things. Two
books recently appeared in Russia by a certain
Gregory Klimov (hardly known to the wider circle of
readers, but all the more so by Western
Sovietologists).6 The then officer of the
NKVD7 fled to the West in the
late ’Forties and worked for many years in an
American institute that carried out research into
the Soviet Union. He has now reported for the first
time on the ‘Red Pope’, the mightiest ‘Prince of
this world’ existing in the very heart of
Bolshevism!
De Maistre’s final work is called Evening
Hours in St. Petersburg. After recapitulating the
above-mentioned ideas, he dedicates the book to the
radical struggle against Britannicism, and sides
with Roman Catholicism. This time he turns against
John Locke in particular. Disciples of de Maistre
today have shifted his struggle into the sphere of a
not merely spiritual but also political resistance
against Anglo-Americanism. Sometimes centuries lie
between the ideological ‘seed’ and its ‘shoots’.
Rudolf Steiner
characterizes de Maistre’s view of life as follows:
de Maistre basically saw the Godhead
present in the development of man only into the
fourth post-Christian century. He did not want to
confess to the continually active Christ ... he
wanted to return to olden times and thus the idea he
had of Christ took on something of the old Jahve
quality, something of the old heathen Gods; he
basically went back to the Ormuzd cult. There, of course, the
divine was sought outside the consciousness-soul. De
Maistre said that the Gods had a loathing of blood,
and if people were to sacrifice it they would be
able to be reconciled with the Gods. This might
appear ridiculous, concludes Rudolf Steiner, but we
should not forget that de Maistre has a great many
followers in the Roman Church, that he is an
illustrious representative of the French element
that revealed itself in the clergy and in politics
(May 1, 1921, GA 204). Today we have to add that the
‘illustriousness’ of the famous Frenchman has
blinded the ‘New Right’ in Russia. This ‘brightness’
helps us to explain and understand their truly dark
call for the spiritual values of the Orthodox faith,
behind which the nostalgic longing for the heathen,
pre-Christian past of the Slavs is habitually
exposed. And does not de Maistre’s Zoroastrianism
possibly explain the attempt to build a bridge
between Christianity and Islam?
Of course, in our time all relationships are reduced
to the political struggle, in which all means are
permitted. But de Maistre was an outstanding
thinker. The spiritual succession is unmistakable,
however, and it is of the greatest importance that
we are dealing here with one and the same basic
fact: the shadow of the old Roman Empire that has
taken Christianity captive. But Christianity is full
of life-forces and that is why Rome, acting in its
name, is able to give political and spiritual form
not only to Europe but even to all world-wide
connections.
In Spain, says
Rudolf Steiner, this is visible in the cult borrowed
from the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. It is the
cultic-hierarchical-ecclesiastic element into which
Romanism was transformed. It becomes apparent that what
gradually ripens in modern times as a state
structure is more or less permeated by this Roman
Catholicism. We see how the emerging English state
structure at the beginning of the fifth
post-Atlantean period is, to begin with, in the
hands ... of this Roman-hierarchic-cultic element
... There exists in Rome the aim to saturate, to
completely permeate the culture of Europe, right up
to the bulwark that it created for itself in Eastern
Europe, with this hierarchical Church element.8 – But
remarkably enough, such a striving, when it is a
retarded impulse, takes on an outward character ...
It flows, so to speak, into the widths and does not
have the strength to penetrate its own depths ... we
see, that ... Roman hierarchism ... in the countries
from which it rays out, undermines its own
population, it provides no inwardness (Jan. 15, 1917, GA 174).
To make this clear Rudolf Steiner suggests that one
should study the example of France; looking
particularly into the way the statesmen – Richelieu,
Mazarin – ceremoniously inaugurated world-politics
while the inner hollowness is revealed in the
revolutionary uprising of the people – the exact
opposite of the principle of hierarchic rulership,
of the kingdom.
From the vantage-point of the experience of the 20th century as it approaches
its close it may be added that through its
revolutionary upheavals the cultic-hierarchic
principle of Romanism comes to life again in
Bolshevik dictatorships. Though one is there forced
to forsake Christianity entirely and turn instead to
the ‘religion’ of atheism. But this should come as
no surprise when we consider that the whole process
boils down to no more and no less than the principle
of ruling the masses with the aim of preventing the
unfolding of the epoch of the consciousness-soul.
For this reason the Roman-Jesuitic principle, in
whatever form it appears in the world, will always
proclaim the precedence of the group over what is
individual. By this criterion one will be able to
recognize it behind any mask.
This principle that is actually luciferic in nature
is everywhere opposed by the ahrimanic nature rooted
in Pan-Anglo-Americanism. It is the intention of the
latter to prolong the present moment, to eternalize the epoch
of the conscious- ness-soul in its
material-instinctual aspect. Ahriman cannot fulfil
this task alone. He needs the support of the
retarded, ahrimanically retarded (the American
folk-spirit is luciferically retarded) spirits of
personality, i.e. the Asuras. This is a special
problem that has still to be addressed. Suffice it
to remark here that the ‘socialistic experiment’ in
Russia is the child of thoroughly abhorrent parents
– ahrimanized Britannicism and luciferized
Jesuitism. It has become, next to them, the third
force in the world, and yet is their fruit. Hence its double
nature – on the one hand, constant dependence on the
‘parents’ and, on the other, the longing to devour
them. This is in its innermost nature an asuric
phenomenon. To understand it we have to be able to
lift the veil from politics and ideology. This
phenomenon can lead a parasitic existence in any
ethnic group, not only the Slavs.
But let us return to the Anglo-Saxon world. The
impulse of Britannicism as such contains much that
accords with the tasks of the fifth cultural epoch.
Hence the pretension of the British element
towards (different) universal- commercial-industrial
world domination ... No-one should believe that
British politics will be converted morally and, out
of special consideration for the world, renounce its
pretension to take the world completely into its
hands industrially and commercially. For this reason
we need not be astonished to find that those who see
through these things have formed associations for
the sole purpose of realizing something of this
kind, and realizing it by employing means that are
at the same time spiritual
means. Here we have the beginnings
of a forbidden
interaction. For occult principles, occult means,
occult impulses may obviously not be used to
further, to promote, especially not in the fifth
post-Atlantean culture, which has to be a purely
material culture ... One wants to further this
culture (but
not politics) with the help
of the impulses of occultism, of the impulses that
lie in the world of the non-manifest.
Thus one works with occult means, no longer for the
benefit of general humanity, but only for the
benefit of a group (ibid.). Rudolf Steiner advises in
conclusion: When you connect such insights,
which arise for you out of deeper knowledge, with
everyday events, you will come to a thorough grasp
of many things (ibid.).
We will then understand that everything with which
our times are plagued has arisen and ripened through
the course of centuries – ripened as great
world-opposites that set development in motion. It
can also bring it to its grave if people
thoughtlessly and without will give themselves over
to religious or political fancies which are so
tightly interwoven with one another and form
unthinkable symbioses that are inwardly torn apart
by century-old polarities.
Rudolf Steiner elaborates that already in France the
impulses of liberty, equality and fraternity collide
violently with the pretension of Roman Catholicism.9 We should pay attention to
the reaction of the clerics during the social
experiments of Gambetta, to what lives in Napoleon
III, in Boulangism10, in the struggle over the
personality of Dreyfus and what lives on in our own
time (in the ‘New Right’ – Author’s note). There
lives here what is in inner, spiritual, archetypal-
radical contrast to what is across the Channel and
is basically incorporated in what is left behind
from something else, what has remained behind in the
various Freemasons’ Orders, Lodges. If, on the one
hand, we have initiated Roman Catholicism, then on
the other we have those secret societal streams ...
that represent the ahrimanic
stream. Rudolf
Steiner advises us to compare the parliaments in
France and England. In France everything arises out
of theory, a certain ideology (this was also the
case in Russia under the Bolsheviks and the same
emerges from the ‘New Right’ – a large-scale theory
of geo-politics). In England it is based on the
immediate practical relations of trade and industry
(Russia’s present liberals try unsuccessfully to
copy Anglo-American capitalism, they will never
master it). In France one fights for freedom etc.,
for the independence of schools from the Church, for
a general restraining of the Church. (In the same
way one could also fight for the mutual adaptation
of Church and State.) But the restraining is
unsuccessful because all this lives in the
unconscious depths of the souls but is fought out in
the realm of dialectics, in a certain debate. In
England, on the other hand, the question of power is decisive (May 1, 1921,
GA 204).
How far does this will to power extend? Rudolf
Steiner has the following impressive answer: at the
beginning of the 15th century there was a danger
that the exclusively physical strivings of
Britannicism might mix with the spiritual life
handed down from antiquity. This happened at the
time when the English sphere of rulership extended
across the Channel to include a part of France,
while Roman aristocratism advanced towards England.
But the rise of Joan of Arc decided Europe’s
destiny.
The occult life of Britain, which was no more than a
continuation of the occult streams of the fourth
cultural epoch, was formed as a result of these
processes, which also found their reflection in the
War of the Red and White Roses, in the battles of
the Scottish, the Norman and the French.
The occult schools of England were founded, but
their members were not able to advance to
supersensible cognition, since the ether-body of
modern man has become very inert. But
they preserved the old traditions in the occult
schools; they preserved what had been handed down by
the old clairvoyant observers and sought to
penetrate it with concepts. An occult science arose
that in reality only works with the experiences of
the clairvoyants living in the fourth and even the
third post-Atlantean epochs. But ... one worked this
through with purely physical concepts, with the
conceptual material that one has if one thinks only
through the physical body (Mar. 28, 1916, GA 167).
(This is the work with the symbols that is carried
out in the Lodges.)
The following dogma was fixed in these schools: The
fourth cultural epoch, in which the Greco-Roman
element was dominant, was succeeded by the fifth
cultural epoch in which the Anglo-Saxon element
prevails. The role of Britain was described as being
that of a nurse to the child-like Slavic nations.
Poland, it was said, has to join the sphere of the
Russian element; the independent Slavic nations
along the Danube will exist only until the great
European war and will then have to forfeit their
independence etc.
Similar ideas spread through the occult brotherhoods
in other countries. And in those days it was
understood why an English politician for example
publicly expressed his good-will towards a Danubian
state that belonged to Austria. At the same time a
book was published that contained a string of
insults directed against that same state and its
citizens in order to undermine what was seemingly
built up on the other side.11 This was a devilish, a
purely ahrimanic tactic (ibid.).
All these methods have been kept alive to the
present day. We find them in the period of the Cold
War as well as the era of ‘Perestroika’. Only they
are no longer hidden, they are completely open. What
could this mean? We will now try to answer this
question.
There are in civilization two Papacies who oppose
each other in the starkest antitheses: the Roman
(old, ‘white’) and the British-American (new,
‘black’). And above it all there arises as a
terrifying spectre the ‘red Papacy’ – mysterious,
unrecognized. Three deputies of certain ‘Divinities’
– ahrimanic, luciferic and asuric – threaten to
settle scores with the entire planet earth. Those
who do not wish to know them will not be able to
resist them; they will become their slave or servant
and it may mean the second death, the death of soul
for them.
Notes
1 Yet another impulse came
from the North Germanic nations which, when it
reached Russia, effected the creation of a form of
statehood.
2 Hence the attempts of
‘Eurasians’ to ascribe this occultism to themselves,
Romans or even the German-speaking world seem
paradoxical.
3 Some Waldorf
pedagogues are now busy rediscovering the
‘treasures’ of his educational wisdom. The system of
Comenius served as a basis for Russian pedagogy to
develop, out of it, its method. We all learned at
school: A- apple, B- bee etc.
4 The Catholic Church rejects
this trichotomy.
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5 R.
Cobden (1804-65), leader of the Manchester
Movement (extreme liberalism in economy: free
trade, competition without state interference
in the economy), chairman of a party that
demanded the abolition of the bread-grain
taxes. J.
Bright (1811-99), English statesman. After
1843 leader of the Manchester Movement.
6 The situation is changing now; the
books by Klimov are published in editions of
hundreds of thousands (Publisher’s Note;
1994).
7 NKVD – Russ. Abbreviation for People’s
Commissioner of the Internal; Soviet
political secret police 1934-1946
(Publisher’s Note).
8 For the first time
in the history of Catholicism a change comes
about in this question. It is as if the
‘bulwark’ is removed. This is accompanied by
the most fantastic trans- formations of
Jesuitism. Which is why it is so
extraordinarily important to understand the
current events in Russia. But who is capable
of this? Who indeed tries at all to do so?
9 This is also the
case in all other revolutions.
10 Léon Gambetta
(1883-1882), Prime Minister of France,
leader of the left-wing republicans; turned
against clerics and monarchists.
Napoleon III.
(1808-1873) was elected President, later
Imperator; the Crimea war and the war
against Austria fell during his reign.
Boulangism – movement of the ’80’s of the 19th
Century;
it was led by General Georges Boulanger.
This movement was nationalistic and was in
favour of war against Germany, a revision of
the constitution and dissolution of the
parliament. An echo of this point of view
can be detected in de Gaulle’s politics.
11 In
this connection we would advise Germans to
consider the compliments paid by
US-President Clinton in Berlin in 1994, when
he declared Germany a major power. Most
dangerous, terrible omens lurk behind it.
Behind the scenes of world politics it has
possibly been decided to assign Germany the
role of a European or World scoundrel. In
this case the Germans would be condemned
instead of the Yankees, which is especially
dangerous because Germany has no influence
whatsoever on world ideology, which still
remains in the hands of the USA.
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