| G.A.
Bondarev The Crisis of Civilization XI. Materialism, Ceremonial Magic. The Battle Against Christianity The True Nature of Materialism The history
of the epoch of materialism is an important theme in
itself. In it are united all the complex problems of
modern times: the emergence of ‘I’- consciousness, the
crisis of civilization, the crisis of knowledge, and
even the problem of the end of history, as well as the
transformations that are taking place on the level of
meta-history. This latter theme will only be touched
upon here insofar as it relates to the complex of
questions indicated in the title of this book.
The complete incarnation of man in ‘I’-consciousness presupposes a mastery of the experience of sense reality, an understanding of the material universe in all its unquestionably grandiose variety of macro-and micro-world. But two serious dangers await any one who pursues this path of knowledge. On one hand the material world, beyond the boundaries of ‘I’-consciousness, presents – in the language of philosophy – an ‘otherness’ of the spiritual world, i.e. a non-being from the standpoint of real being. The world of ‘otherness’ maintains its unity within itself, since the higher worlds allow this as an opposition against itself – the world of the true God. This opposition, entirely justified in the sphere of the inorganic and partly also the organic world, gradually extended into the realm of ‘I’-consciousness, where not opposition, but unity with God is the task of development. On the other hand since the beginning of the epoch of the consciousness-soul, man to an ever-increasing degree is afforded the right to shun the guidance of higher powers and, supported by his own experience and his thinking, to determine, himself, the course of cultural-historical development of the whole of civilization. In the epoch of materialism, particularly in the last 150 to 200 years, the Great Masters of Wisdom and the Harmony of Sentiments, also known as the White Brotherhood, have withdrawn to the East. (the word ‘East’ is used here in the sense of a ‘technical’ concept), and no longer have influence upon Western civilization (cf. Sept. 3, 1916, GA 170). (Representatives of Eastern occult streams in Europe say much about them, including much that is false, since they mistake them for a certain group of Luciferic initiates.) To help man, they bequeathed to him knowledge, knowledge of the spirit in the first place. But the materialistic attitude – Rudolf Steiner warns – is increasing and will continue to increase for four to five centuries. And those occult brotherhoods who advance the opinion that materialism is in decline only contribute to its further progress (cf. Nov. 18, 1917, GA 178). All that the mass-media present today as parapsychology, faith-healing, psychotronics, Ufology etc. has as its goal not a striving after the spirit, but the creation of a still more universal, all-encompassing, materialistic world-view into which one can mix all spiritual views that have existed, after they have been reinterpreted (and not rejected) in terms of endlessly refining energies that in their essence are nonetheless materialistic. Spiritualists, Rudolf Steiner warns, should be clear that there are no means whereby materialism can be proved false. One cannot prove from the portrait that the original exists. Just as little can one prove on the basis of the material counterpart of the spiritual world that spirit exists. There is no refutation of materialism. There is only one way – to point to the will active in the quest for the spirit as such. One has to find the spirit quite independently from matter, but then one also finds it creatively active in the material world. But the spiritual can never be deduced through any description of, or logical inference from the material world, because in matter everything exists as a reflected image of what is in the spirit. The historic conflict between idealists and materialists cannot be resolved by way of demonstration, but only by way of power (May 5, 1923, GA 225). One might add – even through violence, to which Marxism resorted in the course of its social experiment. The origins of the materialistic world-view lie in the far distant past (but not with the ancient Egyptians or with Heraclitus). The first significant impulse towards materialism came, in the 8th century, from that part of the world in which Caliph Haroun al Rashid (766?-809) had brought the Academy of Gondishapur to an especially high cultural flowering. Rudolf Steiner is the only one to have revealed the true meaning of this academy and its importance for the spiritual life of Europe. He said that at that time something grandiose – though not in the positive sense – happened to humanity. It happened at the time that humanity, which was subject to the impulse of Gondishapur, this new Persian impulse which brought back the Zarathustra impulse at the wrong time, that the whole of humanity, if I may put it so, if I may express myself trivially, was stricken with an inner deformity right down into its physical nature. Humanity received at that time an impulse that enters right into physicality, and which we continue to bring back with us at birth ... The illness was injected into humanity which, when it lives itself out, leads to the denial of the Father-God (Oct. 16, 1918, GA 182), i.e. to complete atheism. When members of the Soviet secret police obtained this communication by Rudolf Steiner, in which he speaks of disbelief in the Father-God as an illness, they even felt insulted, as one of their articles shows. One can understand them for, after all, they were used to calling everyone who believed in God, sick, and they had never met anyone who would have questioned their own health of soul. But it is just as Rudolf Steiner says: disbelief in Christ means a great misfortune for the human soul, while disbelief in God reveals no less than an illness of soul and spirit. Only a sick human being becomes a real atheist. The wise men of Gondishapur wanted to make man great and wise here on earth. But when they gave him earthly wisdom, it was their aim to have the soul partake of death, so that as it crossed the threshold of death it would lay aside the wish to participate in the life of the spiritual world and also in future incarnations. They wanted to conserve man in his earthly life, sever him from all development and prepare him for the Ahrimanic world. Only the Mystery of Golgatha saves the human being from this relationship with death. But in order to prevent men from recognizing this, Lucifer lent his help to the Ahrimanic intention. The Catholic Church, – so we learn from Rudolf Steiner – which stood very strongly under what remained of the impulse of the Academy of Gondishapur, decreed dogmatically at the Universal Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 869 that one is not to believe in the spirit – because it did not want to enlighten about the Mystery of Golgatha, but to spread darkness over the Mystery of Golgatha (ibid.). It is of interest to know in how complicated a way the preparation of the materialistic conception took place, by means of which a very concrete caste of initiates hopes to thrust cultivated humanity into barbarism in order to rule over it without difficulty. Already in the 18th century an association of people was formed which still exists today. They know in advance what will enter the world in one or two centuries’ time, and already in the 18th century were preparing certain thoughts, certain views that are insinuated into human souls and become active forces in the realm of what such societies want, and then enter social life, determining how people behave towards each other. The people concerned do not know where the things come from, that live in their emotions, their feelings and their impulses of will. But those who understand the principles of development know how to conjure forth these impulses and emotions (Oct. 20, 1917, GA 177). People in these circles worked on a book, for example, in which it was asked which part of the various animals belongs to the devil. And when Darwinism arose in the 19thcentury and people acquired the idea of man’s descent from animals, many had in their souls the idea that an animal – is the devil. This method is applied everywhere today: in film, literature, advertising etc. It is called ‘allusions’ (a concept of our time). In the Soviet Union a special censorship committee existed whose task it was to check every cinema production for possible unplanned, foreign allusions. The Bolshevik insurrection was prepared with the help of allusions. A great master in their construction was N. A. Rubakin (1862-1946), known in the outer world as an amiable person, an intellectual, a connoisseur of literature, and bibliophile.[1] When we have recognized the background of materialism we can observe the process of alienation and of the destruction of morals in the West from a somewhat different point of view. No Anthroposophist can be truly creative if he remains a creature of outer circumstances, not even when these are transposed into our own Anthroposophical midst. Hidden barbarism and the sting of materialism, with which we are born – these are the prerequisites each one of us carries within. The ordinary person of today – as a product of school education and of mass-culture – is implicitly the total destroyer in every sphere of activity. For this reason civilization in its present form is doomed to ruin and Anthroposophy bears within it the only hope for the salvation of the world, for it alone provides the means for the transformation of man himself. Therefore in those Anthroposophical associations where everything proceeds mechanically in ordered channels, and where compromises are made with the forces of death, Anthroposophy as such does not exist. The secret forces that work with materialism know as a rule what signs are given by the times, what should rightfully take place on earth, and they allow more or less free rein to the rightful impulses in order then – as from an ambush – to distort, profane and divert them. The epoch of materialism was unavoidable. But this does not apply to the ethical consequences drawn on the basis of materialism, that have led to atheism and to the complete Ahrimanizing of man’s soul and spirit. A detailed analysis of the way materialism is worked with in the secret societies in order to gain power and manipulate the destiny of the whole of mankind, would lead too far here. Therefore we will look at only two particularly important aspects: the role played by the English-speaking peoples in these manipulations, and ceremonial magic. The secret occult societies who are preparing the incarnation of Ahriman intend to subject the entire earth to the rulership of materialism. And since according to the laws of the fifth post-Atlantean time certain elements of the British people – we already spoke of – are, as bearers of the consciousness-soul, most suited for this, they want to bring it about through grey magic, that these suitable elements are used as promoters of materialism ... Other elements of the population could never in the same way be useful as material for transforming the whole earth into a realm of materialism, no other nation, no other section of the people. Thus it is the aim of the occult brotherhoods to make the physical plane all-prevailing. And of a spiritual world one wants to speak only as an outcome of the revelations of the physical plane (Jan. 15, 1917, GA 174). The
work is done from two sides. While on
the one hand the strong tendency exists to
scleroticise the human being Ahrimanically, an
especially Jesuitic tendency,[2] on the
other exists the decided tendency to place the
Luciferic beings in the service of the materialistic world order, so
that through materialism a Luciferic spirituality, a
spiritualization will result, which is Luciferically
oriented (Sept. 22, 1918, GA 184).
We would like to add that there is no more profound
thought than this, in that it
unveils the nature of what in Russia today is called
spiritual resurrection, but which is in reality the
unleashed Luciferic spirituality which in the near
future will be channelled entirely into the sphere
of materialistic interpretation. We are standing at the
threshold of a global materialistic view of life and
the world, compared to which the most diehard
dialectical materialism appears like child’s play.
The entire Bible is already interpreted in the
materialistic sense: Christ is declared a superman –
the astronaut from another star; one attempts to
understand his miracles through bioenergetics etc. This
is the latest phase of what has long been prepared.
Rome works towards the new doctrine with dogmas; for
example, the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope
or the bodily ascension of Mary. Working from the
other side, while taking Rome into account, there is
an occult center
that has a strong influence on
the English-speaking people ... The occult
Freemasonry, that is anchored in this center and has
great influence on the course of the outer culture
of the entire civilized world, promotes materialism
in the same way – i.e. with a conscious penetration of things – as Rome ...
has promoted it. Through the doctrine of
infallibility (and the bodily ascension) Rome
wanted to erect a dam against the inflow of
spiritual truths from the spiritual world. The
center we speak of promotes consciously the spread
of materialism in the modern cultural world ... and
the strange thing about this phenomenon is that, as
a rule, when the Anglo-American initiates ...
grumble about Rome, they are right in what they say. Exactly the same applies
to Rome when it
complains about this center, about occult
Freemasonry (ibid.). Thus
the work is done from two sides. The occult laws are
heeded on both sides, and each tells the truth about
the other. The human being is tossed, now to the
Ahrimanic, now to the Luciferic side and is unable
to grasp anything be- cause: he sees that truth is
spoken everywhere! And woe betide anyone who tries
to explain the principles (or lack of principles) in
this game. He is met by a wave of hostility and
hatred. Nevertheless, actions of this kind must
never be tolerated, especially not in Russia: for
there will connect itself to the materialism that
lives itself out in the industrial-commercial
impulse, that which is being driven ever deeper into
materialism out of other retarded impulses – the
Chinese-Japanese, particularly the Japanese element. When
Rudolf Steiner said this, he was asked whether the
secret societies did not consider that the Japanese
were advancing from the East. His reply was: Yes,
the people who belong to these societies do not
regard it as something bad , but ... as a support
for materialism. For, what is coming over from Asia
will be a quite special form of materialism (Jan. 15, 1917, GA 174). In
view of this, the mission of Roerich in Russia will
also be seen quite differently; his glorification of
‘Mahatma Lenin’, the statements in favour of
materialism (in his book The
Community),
according to which even Buddhism is supposed to be a
materialistic teaching etc. And today a ‘Roerichian’
has been appointed Culture Minister and, without any
knowledge of the subject, inveighs perfidiously
against Anthroposophy. The
picture becomes especially clear when we bring the
invasion of the Gurus from East to West in relation
to what in the Far West resonates in the occult
novels of Carlos Castaneda and wins enormous
popularity. All this is woven into the fabric of a
universal occult-materialistic teaching – an
ideology that is destined to regulate all relations
in the future evil race of human beings when, as
Rudolf Steiner says, all will be fettered together
by a chain and no-one
will experience
joy. The
struggle today has therefore to do not with matters
of taste, but with the fate of
humanity.
Materialism
in our time is already taking on the character of
the sub-natural. It is not materialistic science
that is growing in strength, but the magic of
materialism, the occult manipulations with
electricity and magnetism. It is the aim of certain
occult brotherhoods to over-materialize materialism
in a special way. One of these brotherhoods, Rudolf
Steiner tells us, which
is very widespread in the West and again appears in
many different varieties, embraces organizations
that enact ceremonial magic, in fact, ceremonial magic
of the worst kind. Through it a certain influence is
exerted in these brotherhoods on the physical body
of their own members. The cerebrum, the ganglion
system is influenced through certain magical acts.
It is in this way that the spiritual world gains
influence on people who take part in such
ceremonial procedures. This means that a possibility
is created for the dead, in addition to other
spirits, to affect those who are woven into such a
ring created by ceremonial magic. This is how in our
time materialism can be as it were
over-materialized. Imagine that a person is
altogether materialistically inclined, not just in
his world-outlook, but also in relation to his whole
sentient life, his life of feeling, and there are
enormously many such people in the West. This
materialistic attitude now intensifies to a high
degree. This person will then have the urge, not
only to exert an influence on the material world so
long as he is living in the physical body, but even
beyond death ... In our time there are already
people whose materialistic drive is so strong that
they strive to acquire the means that will enable
them to exert an influence in the material world
after death ... these are centers of a certain
ceremonial magic. We are speaking here of
something that has tremendously wide implications. For
just imagine that a number of people are brought
together to form a certain brotherhood. These people
know at the moment: others have gone before us, who
have developed such strong thoughts of the power to
dominate others, that a lifetime was not enough to
realize them ... For them we will create a circle
and through what we do, through the acts of
ceremonial magic we perform, they will work into our
bodies. We will gain stronger power than we now
have; when we come face to face with other, weaker
people from outside such societies, we will be able to exercise a certain
heightened magical power over them. When we utter a
word, when we deliver a speech, then these dead
souls will be working through us, because we are
prepared through having been entwined in the rituals
of ceremonial magic. There is a great difference
whether a person, let us say, is standing honestly,
simply in the cultural processes of our time and ...
holds a parliamentary speech ... or whether a person
is involved in circles of ceremonial magic, is
thereby strengthened with the power-impulses of
certain dead souls and now with these impulses holds
the parliamentary speech or writes the newspaper
article (Jan. 20, 1917, GA 174). A
person who becomes entangled in these manipulations
attains ‘immortality’, as it were. But it is of a
purely Ahrimanic nature and the price paid is
renunciation of spiritual evolution and separation
from it, leading ultimately to the complete
dissolution of the human monad in the sphere of
sub-natural forces. But one who has already started
out on this path will no longer listen to
explanations. However, the actions of such people
are, at the same time, in the highest degree harmful
for all of humanity. Rudolf Steiner indicates that
there are already a large number of them in the
West. But in his words do we not also find the
hidden meaning of all that is taking place in the
East, for instance the meaning of the mummification
of the corpses of the heads of state in the
countries of the so-called ‘socialist camp’? Could
it not be that these mummies indicate the scene of
operation of the occult Lodges where ceremonial
magic of the worst kind is practised? Let us ask the
following question: What does the cemetery in Red
Square in Moscow actually represent? What is
contained in those ritualistic, regularly-recurring
popular festivals before the tomb of the mummy in
which, as we learn from the technical literature,
the cells retain their
natural moisture-content, something not even the
ancient Egyptians with their occult science were
able to achieve? Was it not perhaps the ‘eternal’
Politburo-Brotherhood with the ‘eternal’ General
Secretary at its head, that assembled in Red Square,
where some of the members rest in urns in the
Kremlin Wall, while the others, the so-called
living, appeared before the eyes of millions from out of
the tomb (through the doorway of the
Mausoleum)[3] a few times a year, in
order, standing on top of the tomb, to reap the
fruits of the general fanaticism that had been
skillfully arranged in the Square – the temple of
Idols? This is the reason why even in the
epoch of ‘liberalization’ the mummy is not removed
from the Square. An especially infernal power[4] is concealed within it,
which is sorely needed by the forces of both the
Left and the Right.[5] They were no empty words
that were instilled into us:
Yes,
so it was and so it is today: The power of the dead
governs the actions of those who carry forward their
cause on earth. And it is utterly foolish to say
that some are better than the others. The murder of
‘one’s own’ people also had an occult meaning.
Before his execution Marshal Tuchatchevsky called
out (voluntarily) in the face of death: Long
live Stalin![6] Indeed, something of the
rituals of the old Incas, of their ritual murders,
found its way into the ritual magic of the
‘Bolsheviks’ and this is what made this terrible
phenomenon so unshakeable.[7] Its ‘founders’ – Lenin,
Trotsky, Lenin’s female partner, and other ‘comrades’
such as the millionaire Helphand, nicknamed Parvus
(‘the small’) – were pupils of the Western
brotherhoods, where they were introduced into the
circle of ceremonial magic: Trotsky in America,
Lenin in Zurich. Without an understanding of these
facts, whatever one might say about the origins of
Bolshevik power is no more than superficial chatter
ideally suited to conceal the true state of affairs. A
very special kind of human being is created with the
help of ceremonial magic, because it has nothing to
do with either bribery or the striving for power.
No, an answer is offered to the question of the
meaning of existence as a whole. Hope for Ahrimanic
immortality,
Rudolf Steiner tells us, lives
today in more people than you might think. The
thought of assuring an Ahrimanic immortality for
oneself ... which consists in being active not only
as a single individual, but in acting through the
instrument of such a ... society. Such societies
exist in the most varied forms,
and people of certain degrees within them know:
through such a society, together with the forces
which I would otherwise have to give up at death, I
become to a certain degree immortal, they are active
beyond my death. Through what these people
experience in the ceremonial magic they are,
admittedly, stupefied to such an extent that they
are no longer disturbed by the thought that would of
necessity arise before the soul of one who takes
these things in real earnestness and with true
dignity. For in the same measure as one grows in
immortal mortality ... in Ahrimanic immortality, so
does one lose consciousness of the other, the true,
genuine immortality. But materialism has taken hold
of many souls in our time to such an extent that
they are not deterred, they are stupefied and indeed strive for
Ahrimanic immortality. Such societies are, as a
rule, so organized that the ceremonial magic is
intended to work particularly on the unsuspecting,
on those who have a certain need to come into
relation with the spiritual world through all kinds
of symbolic acts. There are many such people (obviously the ones who
regard themselves as the regular Freemasons, devoted
to the spiritual quest). ... Those
who want to attain this goal are truly not of the
worst kind. Such people are now received into
the circle of ceremonial magic,
and then a small number gather together, who
actually only ... make use of the others as their
instruments (Jan. 20, 1917, GA 174) In
this way one tries to gain power in the realm of the
dead and obtains Ahrimanic reinforcement; one gains
access to the retarded spirits of the
Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, to its retarded angels.
Therefore such societies strive to carry remnants of
the third cultural epoch into social life. Hence,
when the communist dictatorships resort to the
ceremony of mummification of the dead, it quite
clearly has nothing in common with socialism. The
origins of their ‘socialism’ lie in the ancient
imperial realms of the Incas and Aztecs with their
black-magical mysteries of ritual murder. All these
things exist in the West as well; but for the
present they are still hidden behind the mask of
parliamentarianism, free elections etc. Regarding
those who bring about ceremonial magic, the masters
of the Lodges, they are – as Rudolf Steiner remarks
– definitely not so naive as to believe in simple
matter (as little as N. Roerich did, for example).
But they want to fetter to the Lodges after their
death as many as possible of those who have gone
through them, so as to extend the power of the
occult association. Thus
the brotherhoods create (as did the priests in
ancient Egypt) a
clientele of souls of the dead, who remain in the
sphere of the earth and are thereby robbed of the possibility
of passing through a higher spiritual evolution. For
the attainment of this end, the general, inactive
members of the brotherhood are presented the theory
of the higher nature-forces, of magnetism,
electricity, which are declared to be the basis for
man’s psychical activity. You see, Rudolf Steiner continues, it is a higher materialism: it
is a materialism that not only denies the spirit but
wants to force the spirit down into matter ... There
you have the beginning of something that will
intensify more and more over the next five
centuries. The evil brotherhoods have limited
themselves to this time-span;[8] but they will continue if
nothing is done to prevent them. They can only be
prevented if complacency towards the
spiritual-scientific world-view is overcome (Nov.
18, 1917, GA 178). When
reading this, it is difficult not to relate them
immediately to Soviet reality. For all of them –
dozens of those who bear the main guilt for the
crimes of Bolshevism,
and who lie buried in Red Square, are indeed here,
they are bound to the materialistic occult community
and there is no way of escape. The pressing question
arises: Are those who stand behind the scenes of
Perestroika – basically just the same kind of
participants in ceremonial magic – willing and able
to destroy the magic circle? And the new ideology?
Today we see under the badge of spiritual freedom
the establishment of what is literally the ‘highest
materialism’, which no longer denies the spirit, but
‘enslaves’ it. When this is once recognized, it is
easy to understand what is to be expected in Russia
in the near future. Where
the Anthroposophical movement is concerned passivity
has become the general rule. We must startle the
slumberers out of their sleep with no compunction.
And those in our circles who – as the saying goes –
go for the throat of Anthroposophy: the dark
masters, the inspirators who remain in the
background, those who circulate lies; all these need
to be put into their place. Let us not understate
the magnitude of the problem: the destiny of
humanity hangs in the balance. No price is too high.
We
have neither the factual basis nor the right to
entertain false hopes with regard to the aims of the
Orders, brotherhoods and Lodges that have fallen
into the most extreme atavism. Their high-degree
Masters know no less than we that Christ is God and
that everything written in the Gospels is true. But
they say to themselves: We no longer want as our leader
the Christ, who is
the leader through this normal world; we want a
different leader, we want to be in opposition to
this normal world. Such people, trained by
means of ceremonial magic, receive the
idea that this world of Ahrimanic forces is actually
a much stronger spiritual world (than the world of Christ). That,
above all, they can continue what they have acquired
here in physical life, that they can make immortal
the material experiences of physical life (Jan. 22, 1917, GA 174). The
masters of Ahrimanic immortality pursue their aims
in various ways. Here we may point to Mrs. Besant’s
attempt to declare Krishnamurti the reincarnated
Christ. (Several dozen false messiahs exist today;
interviews with them are held on Moscow Television.)
The dogmas of Papal infallibility and the bodily
ascension of Mary present another way. From the
standpoint of the first Church fathers these dogmas
are an open blasphemy. But in certain occult circles
one knows very well that they
are an immensely effective means to awaken
anti-Christian faith and divert people from the
normal Christian path of development. A
third way is to alter the relation between national
and individual. Christ
– says Rudolf Steiner – died
for the individual human being. We
must regard this as something that belongs very
essentially to the Mystery of Golgatha. The Christ
has an important deed to accomplish in the fifth ...
but also in the sixth post Atlantean period: namely
here on earth to become a helper (for human beings) to
overcome, to finally overcome all that arises from the national principle (ibid.). The said
Brotherhoods, in their fight against Christ,
proclaim the principle of national
self-determination. This is basically the work of
Ahriman himself, who, as Rudolf Steiner tells us,
was incorporated (not completely incarnated or a
mere inspirator, but representing the human ‘I’,
displacing it) in Woodrow Wilson. All
that has taken place in recent years in the former
Soviet Union, in the Caucasus and the former
Yugoslavia is the direct continuation of the
14-point program of Wilson. Not only nations, even
small national groups shut themselves off in their
national egoism, and in this way a wall is erected
to hinder the approach of the next, the
Slavic-Germanic, cultural epoch. At the same time
the development of the consciousness-soul is
paralyzed. The
increasingly violent racial mixing of the European
peoples is proving to be the new destructive factor
for the culture of the consciousness-soul – the
second ‘dagger’-point in Wilson’s politics of the
self-determination of nations. The racial principle
will one day be overcome; but in the present
‘outcry’ against racism there is not the slightest
indication of a true interest in upholding the
rights of the personality, only the intention to
anticipate the future, so that its healthy, normal
approach is made impossible. The same purpose is
served by the whipping-up of real racism: the
doctrines of racial superiority and the attempts to
put them into practice. Both represent the impulses
of Gondishapur coming to life again in ever new
variations. An
especially effective means whereby direct magical
influence is exercised in the world by the Ahrimanic
brotherhoods is the
spreading of lies that are virtually identical with
the truth. Most Anthroposophists, too,
are powerless against this. People are very willing
to swim with the stream of propaganda that has been
thoroughly instilled into them by the mass-media,
and of opinions, ideas and judgments that
have become habitual. Because these have already
found entrance into the ether-body, people are indignant,
furious even, when facts are presented, which
expose lies that have already become a part of
themselves. We
will now speak of the press and the mass-media.
Rudolf Steiner describes them as black
magic and tells of the existence
of a whole range of editorial offices (the
overwhelming majority today), which have ‘two
doors’: the usual one and the ‘sliding door’,
through which one has access to the occult
brotherhoods (cf. Dec. 26, 1916, GA 173). In these
one is aware of the great occult force that lies
hidden in the false ideas in which people believe.
Thus in the case of a great deal that is published
today the question is not so much, what the author
wants to express, but who pays
for the one or the other opinion? (Cf. Jan. 22, 1917, GA
174.) But by now the Adversary of humanity has grown
so subtle in his approach that he openly quotes
Rudolf Steiner. Soviet ideologists evaluated all
Western publications according to this same
principle. But they did this, while they themselves
were thoroughly deceitful, paid servants of the
ruling ideology in which they did not believe. This
is how complex the technique
of the lie has become. A
direct lie is rare today. Mostly one lies with
various false facts and corresponding ideas. It can
also happen that a lie is mendaciously refuted by
means of a lie. How can the individual still find
his way? Whom can we believe – whom can we trust? If
things are going to develop in this way everywhere,
one could sink into despair. A way out of this
situation is found only if one begins to experience
the problem of the universal crisis as a truly
serious one. Only in the broad perspective is its
highest significance. This lies in the fact that at
the time of the greatest opposition Christianity
will have to develop its greatest strength. In
the resistance that has to be developed against the
abolition of the soul the strength to know the
spirit again will also be found (Mar. 27, 1917, GA 175). The
Mystery of Golgatha is also the impulse of world
healing against the materialization of the soul. The
way of Christ Himself lies entirely outside the will
and the intentions of men. Thus no man, however
great his knowledge, nor even any Initiate, has
influence over what is done by the Christ in the
course of the 20th century, leading to his
reappearance. Christ
will be present as an etheric being in the earthly
sphere. And for human beings it is
important how they meet the Christ. No-one,
not even the mightiest Initiate, has any influence
whatever on the reappearance of the Christ. It is
coming, Rudolf Steiner affirms, I ask
you to remember this. But one can make preparations so that the Christ-event is
received in this or that way, that the Christ-event
has this or that effect (Nov. 18, 1917, GA 178). The
brotherhoods do everything in their power to ensure
that the Christ passes by unnoticed in the 20th century,
that human beings do not recognize His coming as an
etheric individuality (Ibid.). To this end world
wars and revolutions are unleashed, financial crises
created, Wilsonianism, Leninism, Trotskyism,
Hitlerism, Stalinism and a multitude of other ‘isms’
arise, right up to the various trends of
mass-culture. They emerge in our century, for the
natural development of cultural, spiritual and
historical life has been forcibly interrupted. It has happened for the
first time, but people did not want to see this. The
mighty occult-political forces had as the purpose of
their activity ... to conquer the sphere of
influence that is to come through Christ in the 20th century and beyond, for another
being, who has never appeared in the flesh at any
time ... All those procedures ... with the dead and so on,
ultimately serve such aims: to divert the mind of
men away from the Christ who went through the
Mystery of Golgatha and to hand over ... the rulership of the earth to
another individuality (Ahriman). This is a very real battle ...
relating to the intention to install another being
in the place of the Christ-being in the course of
humanity’s development, for the remainder of the
fifth post-Atlantean period, and for the sixth and
seventh. ... It will be the task of a
healthy, an honest spiritual development to
eliminate, to do away with, such strivings that are in the most literal
sense anti-Christian. But only clear insight can
achieve anything, because the other being whom these
brotherhoods wish to make ruler ... they will call him the ‘Christ’ ...
Yes, people who observe life only on the surface,
especially the outer discussions about Christ and
the Jesus-question and so on, do not look into the
depths. It is a fog, it is a smokescreen that is
conjured up before people’s eyes, just in order to
distract them ... from the truth of the situation (Ibid.).[9] Modern prophets,
such as Billy Graham, attract thousands of listeners
and do little more than make jokes on the subject of
Christ and unleash the phenomenon of ‘simplification
of the spirit’, usually with elements of
mass-suggestion. Nor does it look well with speeches
about Christ in the Anthroposophical Society. Here
too, not everyone who utters this name is a servant
of Christ. People speculate without scruple for the
sake of momentary advantage, of building up their
prestige, for the sake of disguise, or for quite
other reasons, about the most sacred things. Our
dozing along in the branches of the Society and the
blind allegiance with which we follow those who
seize positions of power in our movement can in no
way protect us from enslavement by our adversary. In
our dealings with people – from within our circle as
well – we can always observe at least two things:
First, that those
who today are spoiled, ruined by certain occult
brotherhoods, ... are in a way those whom it has
hardly any sense whatever to speak to (Nov. 26, 1916, GA 172);
and secondly, that today
we suffer from the selection of the worst, who
always rise to the top. This too is something that
belongs to a healthy sense of reality and thus also
to healthy common-sense: to realize this fact of the
selection of the worst (Nov. 24, 1918, GA 185a).
Notes
A
further example to clarify the concept of Allusion. When we had read Issue No.
32 of the Flensburger
Hefte we were firmly convinced
that its title was Anthroposophy and
National Socialism. We were very surprised to discover later
that it read: The
Anthroposophists and
National Socialism. But all this became clear when Issue No. 41
appeared under the heading: Anthroposophy and
Racism. What do
we mean by this? – That we had not been mistaken
when reading Issue No. 32, because even there
Anthroposophy was meant and not just individual
Anthroposophists. Only at the time they did not yet
dare to openly admit this. They still feared that a
wave of indignation could arise, so the word
Anthroposophy was encoded on the level of the
unconscious and the journal and its contents
designed in such a way that the eye saw one thing
but the soul perceived another. Having satisfied
themselves that there was no indignation, they
decided to come forward openly. As a preparatory
step Issue No. 40 had already been published under
the title Nationalism,
Racism, Xenophobia. The word Anthroposophy did not appear at
all, but everyone knows that this is a product of
the Anthroposophical press. We think it need not be
stressed that the xenophobic violence in Germany
should be thoroughly condemned, yet something else
is important in this connection. Just look at the
photographs that appeared in this issue, especially
on pp. 49 and 53 – they can mean all kinds of
things, one could put any caption whatever
underneath them. In the context of the Flensburger
Hefte, however,
they work as Allusions. It is deeply regrettable
that the human beings who have taken upon
themselves the task of standing wakefully in the
present, should leave their unconscious unguarded
and, just like any other person of today, expose
themselves to the suggestive influences. – Compare: No.
32: Anthroposophists and National Socialism This
is the way an Allusion is built up!
Imagine
what the souls of the yet unborn children, already
hovering above the heads of the parents, live
through in this popularized form of ritual magic,
what kind of shock this means for the souls before
their entrance into the earthly sphere.
The
culture in old America was (and this is quite
natural) no less tragic and contradictory than the
culture of the old and the new Europe. Various
mysteries existed there. In some of them gruesome
ritual murders were indeed carried out on human
beings. The entire social life in the spheres where
black magicians of these kinds of mysteries
(of Taotl) ruled was terrible, and recalls some of
the dictatorships of the 20th Century. But there existed
at the same time the mysteries of the good,
light-filled gods (of Tezkatlipoka) who resisted the
black-magical mysteries of evil, fought against them
and thus prepared the American continent for the
acceptance of Christ. The interested reader can find
an unusually telling description of the Mysteries of
early America in Rudolf Steiner’s lecture of
September 18, 1916 (GA 171).
The
questions of parapsychology, of the ‘psi-weapon’,
‘Ufology’ – can all be referred to the statements of
Rudolf Steiner quoted above. But how many
Anthroposophists are able and willing to think them
through from this aspect? – When all of this has to
do with the reappearance of Christ. At
all costs something must be done in our Society and
movement to ensure that the best people come to the
top.
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